THE COMPLETE WRITINGS OF WILLIAM FOX Abolitionist, Tory, and Friend to the French Revolution Edited by John Barrell and Timothy Whelan Trent Editions 2 Trent Editions Trent Editions aims to recover and republish landmark texts in handsome and affordable modern editions. Radical Fictions series Radical novels and innovative fiction, with an emphasis on writers of the British Isles. Series editor: John Lucas (Emeritus Professor of English, Loughborough and Nottingham Trent Universities) H. G. Wells, The Croquet Player, ed. John Hammond (1998) Patrick Hamilton, Impromptu in Moribundia, ed. Peter Widdowson (1999) Ellen Wilkinson, Clash, ed. Ian Haywood and Maroula Joannou (2004) Storm Jameson, In the Second Year, ed. Stan Smith (2004) Stanley Middleton, Harris’s Requiem, ed. 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Jenkins of the University of Wales, Donna Landry of the University of Kent at Canterbury, P.B. Munsche of the University of Toronto, Mark Nesbitt of the library Kew Gardens, John Briggs, at the Centre for Baptist History and Heritage, Regent’s Park College, Oxford, and Roger Blench of the Kay Williamson Educational Foundation, Cam- bridge. We would also like to thank Jon Mee of Warwick University and Har- riet Guest of York for reading the draft introduction and commenting on it most helpfully. We thank the staffs of the Guildhall Library, the Institute for Historical Research, the Genealogical Library, the University of York library, the British Library, for access to their collections of poll books; the National Archives at Kew; the Friends House Library; and the Angus Library, Regent’s Park Col- lege, Oxford, for access to church books and biographical materials on Mar- tha Gurney, and Dr. Williams’s Library, London, for information on dissent- ers and dissenting history. We owe thanks also to the Department of Special Collections, University of Michigan Library, for granting permission to pho- tograph the contents of their volume of William Fox; and Dr. John Scott, London, for allowing access to his collection of materials that included bio- graphical information on William Fox. Abbreviations CWP Philip S. Foner, ed., The Complete Writings of Thomas Paine, 2 vols (New York: Citadel Press, 1945). PH The Parliamentary History of England, 36 vols (London: R. Bagshaw, T. Longman, 1806-20). WEB The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, new edn, 14 vols (London: F.C. and J. Rivington, 1815-22). Introduction illiam Fox was one of the most brilliant writers of political pamphlets W in the 1790s, and for a short time the most prolific. That decade saw the most fundamental debate about politics – about sovereignty, political jus- tice, and the right of the people to participate in government - since the Eng- lish civil war. He began his career in 1791 by writing what became probably the most widely read pamphlet in British history, An Address to the People of Great Britain, on the Propriety of Abstaining from West India Sugar and Rum, in which he proposed a boycott on sugar as a means of bringing to an end not only the slave-trade, the target of almost all ‘abolitionists’ of the time, but the system of slavery itself. In 1793 and 1794 he published on average a new pamphlet every month, and won a high reputation among the liberal periodicals such as the Analytical Review, the Monthly, and the Critical, as an unusually sharp satirist and commentator on political issues. Since his death, however, his writings have been almost entirely ignored by scholars of late eighteenth-century his- tory, literature and politics. There are two reasons for this neglect. First, Fox was so independent a thinker that, as will appear later in this introduction, it was very difficult to slot him into the pattern constructed by historians of the political conflicts and debates of the 1790s. He seems to belong on all sides and on no side. Secondly, until very recently, almost nothing was known about Fox, and when he was referred to - usually only as the author of the Address - he was misiden- tified. Historians and librarians have attributed all of his pamphlets to one or the other of several wrong William Foxes. The most common beneficiary has been ‘William Fox, Attorney-at-Law’, to whom the British Library attributes all thirteen of its William Fox pamphlets. This William Fox, originally from Gloucester, published four works between 1796 and 1813, and even a cursory reading of them reveals that this William Fox was a devout Anglican and an outspoken opponent of religious dissent, the very opposite of ‘our’ Fox. Also sometimes confused with the pamphleteer is William Fox the well-known merchant and philanthropist (1736-1826), for many years a deacon in the Bap- tist congregation in Little Prescott Street, Goodman’s Fields, and founder in 1785 of the Sunday School Society. His son, William Fox, Jr. (1758-1821) (listed in the catalogue of the British Library as ‘William Fox, the Younger, of Hackney’), was an author as well, publishing five books between 1796 and 1821, and in some cases he too has been confused with our Fox. This misi- dentification has defrauded a remarkable writer of his proper place in the Introduction ix abolitionist movement, in the wider political debates of the 1790s, and in the history of political satire. It has also led to the neglect of a remarkable and resourceful woman, his publisher and business partner Martha Gurney (1733- 1816).1 This introduction will begin by giving some information about these two and their role in the abolition movement, before turning to discuss Fox as a satirist and a controversialist, and his writings on the British constitution, the British presence in India, and the revolution in France and the war with the French republic. Fox, his publisher, and their circle The 1790s was an especially divisive decade for dissenters. Those who actively engaged in the political issues of the day, primarily the slave trade debate, the repeal of the Test and Corporation Acts, parliamentary reform, and opposi- tion to the war against France, faced criticism, not only from Anglicans but also from many within their own denominations. Some were determined, ‘re- gardless of events … taking place on the theatre of the world’, to pursue their Christian course in relative isolation. Others, however, felt ‘themselves bound, because they [were] Christians and citizens of the great republic of human nature, to take an interest in the welfare of all mankind, and promote their highest happiness’, believing ‘that the laws of God applied to social bodies as well as to individuals’.2 The latter view was especially true of two London dissenters, Fox and Gurney. Between 1773 and 1794, William Fox ran a bookshop at 128 Holborn Hill, adjacent to Leather Lane and just opposite Fetter Lane, between Gray’s Inn Road and Hatton Garden. His imprint appeared on more than 60 titles, generally as part of a consortium, or ‘conger’ of booksellers.