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The Character of an Independent Whig

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The Character of an Independent Whig THE CHARACTER OF AN INDEPENDENT WHIG: A STUDY OF THE WORK OF JOHN TRENCHARD AND THOMAS GORDON, INCLUDING A COMPARATIVE ANALYSIS OF THE SOCIAL AND POLITICAL THOUGHT OF BERNARD MANDEVILLE Annie Mitchell Supervisor: Prof. Fred Rosen UCL History Department University of London PhD a LO L ti Lail y rI (i) Acknowledgement I would like to express my gratitude to the Arts and Humanities Research Board for awarding me the funding necessary to carry out the research for this thesis. I would also like to thank the Committee of the University of London Central Research Fund and the Committee of the University College London Research Projects and Student Travel Fund for granting me travel bursaries, which enabled me to consult manuscript documents at the Spencer Research Library, Univesity of Kansas. My thanks are also due to the staff at the Spencer Research Library for permitting me access to its archives. I would also like to thank Professor Fred Rosen, my supervisor, for his invaluable help and my family and friends for their support and encouragement. (ii) Thesis Abstract Traditionally Cato's Letters have been seen as a keynote text in the construction of the civic humanist paradigm, a perspective which has come to dominate contemporary understanding of the intellectual currents at work in the shaping of eighteenth century Britain and America. Within this paradigm the Letters have been viewed as emblematic of a `neo-Harringtonian' critique of Court corruption and the `new economic order'. However there are significant problems with this interpretation and this thesis arguesthat the attitude of Trenchard and Gordon towards Walpole's ministry was more nuanced than is usually suggested;that they were prepared to lend his administration their support when occasion demanded. Against the trend to downplay the religious and ideological differences between Whigs and Tories, in order to prioritise the Court-Country division, this thesis suggeststhat Trenchard and Gordon's position towards Walpole can best be understoodin terms of their commitment to traditional Whig principles of freedom of conscience and opposition to arbitrary rule, rather than on the basis of a preoccupationwith issuesof wealth and virtue. Contrary to the accepted view that Trenchard and Gordon were opposed to commerce and the financial instruments which it generated,and that they viewed a society motivated by self-interest as a threat to civic virtue and liberty, this thesis contendsthat their `scientific' political and moral philosophy both naturalised self-interest and redrew it as the foundation of liberty. In the process of calling into question `Cato's' status as a civic humanist icon, this thesis also points to similarities between Trenchard and Gordon's thought and that of Bernard Mandeville, who conventionally has been represented as Cato's antithesis. By comparing the work of all three writers, and the way in which they were viewed by contemporaries, it is argued that in terms of religious, political and moral philosophy there are major points of convergence in their ideology. (iii) Table of Contents Chapter Introduction The Historiographical Background II The Character of Two Independent Whigs III The `Scientific Politics' of Trenchard and Gordon IV Neo-Harringtonianism and Deism V 'Cato' and Mandeville - Independent Whigs VI The Influence of the French Moralistes in the work of `Cato' and Mandeville VII The Janus Face of Republicanism VIII The Reception of 'Cato's Letters' in America Bibliography Introduction The subjects of this thesis are John Trenchard and Thomas Gordon, two political writers who cameto prominencearound 1720. Their fame largely rests on their co- authorship of The Independent Whig, a weekly series of anti-clerical papers, and more notably Cato's Letters, a series of essayson political and religious subjects which appeared, under the signature of `Cato', first in the London Journal and then in the British Journal from November 1720 to July 1723 and which, like The Independent Whig, were later collected in book form. ' The Independent Whig is largely concernedwith issuesof religion: the relationship between the Church and the state,the role of the clergy, freedom of conscienceand, particularly, the official strictures placed upon dissenters. Both of these publications enjoyed widespread popularity, not only in Great Britain but also in France and America throughout the eighteenth century, as did Gordon's translations of the histories of Sallust and Tacitus and his accompanying pointedly political commentaries, which drew parallels with the present and were similar in tone to The Independent Whig and Cato's Letters. By 1737 bound volumes of The Independent Whig had gone through at least seven editions in Great Britain and two in America and in 1767 it appearedin a French translation by Baron d'Holbach under the title L'Espirit du 'Trenchard and Gordon were the authors of 43 of the 55 numbers of The Independent Whig. In the sixth edition of the collected papers Gordon attributed authorship of the individual numbers: 'I have, at the End of each Paper, put the initial Letter of the Name of the Gentleman who wrote it. ', The Independent Whig: Or, a Defence of Primitive Christianity And our Ecclesiastical Establishment Against The Exorbitant Claims and Encroachments of Fanatical and Disaffected Clergymen, [T. G., J.T. and A. C. ] (London, 1732). It is generally accepted that the ten numbers of The Independent Whig which bear the initial `C' were written by the deist author Anthony Collins. It was perhaps on account of the great stir caused by Cato's Letters that Robert Molesworth laid claim to a part in their authorship, although Trenchard and Gordon repudiated the attempted appropriation. See Spencer Research Library, University of Kansas, MS G23, Trenchard-Simpson Correspondence, John Trenchard to William Simpson, 25 October [1721] and 8 November [1721]; 2 2 clerge. Similarly, Cato's Letters enjoyed a wide circulation. Two partial by collections appeared in Britain in 1721, followed by complete and then expanded editions in 1724,1731,1733,1737 and 1748 and by a final, corrected edition in 1754-5.3 Dutch and French translations of the Letters appeared in 1754 and 1790 respectively. Gordon's Tacitus also proved equally popular on both sides of the Atlantic as well as in France. A French translation of his Sallust appeared in 1759 and translations of both his Sallust and his Tacitus were published during the French Revolution. It is unfortunate that Trenchard and Gordon, so much read throughout the eighteenthcentury, should be so misread by historians today. This thesis seeksto address that misreading. The methodology it adopts to achieve this aim is an examination of their work in three major contexts, that of religion, politics and philosophy. It does so because these issues dominated the writings of Trenchard and Gordon. The following chapters show that these three aspects of Trenchard and Gordon's thought are inter-related and mutually reinforcing. In the process of showing this, it will become apparent that the hitherto accepted reading of the ideological basis of Trenchard and Gordon's work is invalid. The wider significance of this finding is that it calls into question the status of the civic humanist paradigm as the supreme vantage point for viewing the eighteenth and Cato's Letters Or Essayson Liberty, Civil and Religious, and Other Important Subjects,2 vols. (Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, 1995), dedication, p. 8. 2Holbach also used Trenchard's name as a shield when publishing his own fiercely anticlerical Le contagion sacree (1768), presumably deciding not to acknowledgeas his own a book that might be consideredblasphemous. 3One historian has noted: `The popularity and influence of The London Journal increased rapidly in the country as well as in London, and comments of the time refer to it more frequently than to any of its contemporaries. In London, the demand was said to have been so great on at least one occasion that the price was forced up from three halfpence to sixpence and even to a shilling, "a price hardly 3 century. This is becauseTrenchard and Gordon have been accordeda central role by advocates of the civic humanist paradigm in the formation of republican ideology in America and Great Britain in the eighteenthcentury. CHAPTER 1 discussesthe conventionalreading of Trenchardand Gordon as civic humanist icons. The small number of dissentingvoices, such as Ronald Hamowy, Marie McMahon and Michael Zuckert, who have cast doubt on the accepted representation of Trenchard and Gordon, are also briefly discussed. Welcome as these voices are, however, they present an incomplete account of Trenchard and Gordon's thought. Hamowy concentratesalmost exclusively on Cato's Letters and emphasises their Lockean dimension. McMahon, on the other hand, while examining a wider range of Trenchard and Gordon's work, stressesthe authors' anticlericalism. Zuckert, like Hamowy, concentrates almost entirely on the Lockean aspect of Cato's Letters. This thesis differs from previous studies in that, as stated above, it integrates the different elements of Trenchard and Gordon's thought in order to get closer to understandingthe ideas and values the authors sought to convey and to understandinghow they were read by their British and American audiences. To a limited, and not uncritical, extent it is in sympathywith the methodological writings of Quentin Skinner. CHAPTER 2 questionsthe validity of the Court-Country dichotomy which forms the basis of the civic humanist paradigm. It argues that the Whig/Tory division continued to operate as the dominant political axis after 1714 and that Trenchard ever given before" for a newspaper [The London Journal, 18 March 1721]', C. B. Realey, 'The Journal and its Authors 1720-1723', Bulletin of the University of Kansas, 36 (1935), 1-38, at 32. 4 and Gordon remained Whigs first and foremost. However, as a result of ignoring the close relationship played by religion and politics in Trenchard and Gordon's work, they have been mistakenly characterisedas `Country' opposition writers.
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