Famous Radicals. |
By the early 1790s, it was blindingly obvious to
liberal-minded thinkers that Britain's corrupt electoral system was long
overdue for reform. Unless you were a member of the governing elite, of course
- the rich had inherited the earth, and their sons were destined to rule over
the middle and lower classes.
The Radicals included some prominent Whigs like Charles James Fox and Sir Francis Burdett. They wanted the abolition of rotten boroughs, the
introduction of annual parliaments, and a more representative franchise. Reformers
harked back to the Magna Carta, the Bill of Rights and the Glorious Revolution of 1688, which they believed enshrined men’s civil liberties and rights. They looked back to a long-lost Saxon golden age in which all men had
the vote. (On the other hand, the government asserted that there was no
historical precedent for universal suffrage).
Major John Cartwright (1740–1824) was convinced that
‘many of the political evils of the day’ emanated from ‘ignorance of the
principles of the constitution’. This
former naval officer, a neat, upright gentleman, had served with distinction
until the American War of Independence, but resigned in disgust over what he
perceived as Britain's unjust treatment of the colonists.
Charles James Fox. |
Cartwright, a prolific writer and campaigner, believed
that petitioning parliament was the only way to achieve radical reform. The
Major was a founder member of the Society of Constitutional Information in
1780, along with John Horne Tooke and others. Even Pitt the Younger, then the
great white hope of the reform movement, was a member – ironic considering his later treatment of the Radicals.
Thomas Paine. |
In the 1790s, Thomas Paine’s revolutionary ideas were
taken up by the Society of Constitutional Information and by the ‘corresponding
societies’. These societies wrote to one another about parliamentary reform and
the rights of man, and spread these ideas widely in Britain. One group, the
United Englishmen, expressed the views of many freethinkers in its
‘Declaration, Resolutions and Constitution’: ‘The House of Commons...is now
thoroughly corrupted, and from being the representative of a great and free
People, is become a junto of Placemen, Pensioners and Court Dependents...The
only effectual remedy...is a radical Reform of the Representation of the People
in Parliament’ (PC/1/42/144, 1798).
Corresponding societies were formed in London, Manchester,
Leeds,
Nottingham, Norwich and Sheffield. The Sheffield Society for
Constitutional Information had nearly two thousand members. The Society
resolved that Paine should be thanked ‘for the affectionate concern he has
shown in his second work on Behalf of the Poor, the Infant and the Aged; who
notwithstanding the opulence which blesses other parts of the community, are by
the grievous weight of Taxes, rendered the miserable victims of Poverty and
wretchedness’. (Resolutions of the SSCI, 14 March 1792, Sheffield Archives, MD
251).
Matthew Campbell Browne. |
The government's spies kept close watch on the corresponding societies. Although most of the societies' members were peaceful, there were a select few with revolutionary intentions, as we shall see.
Images:
Noted Radicals: John Wilkes, John Horne Tooke,
Sir Francis Burdett (5th Baronet), William Cobbett and Henry Hunt. History of England, Henry Fisher, Son,
& Co., 1828. Author’s collection.
Charles
James Fox, Dr Johnson’s Mrs Thrale,
T.N. Foulis, 1910. Author’s collection.
‘Mad
Tom, or the Man of Rights’. Courtesy Library of Congress, LC-USZ62-3847.
Citizen
Matthew Campbell Browne, ‘Delegate from the Sheffield & Leeds
Constitutional Societies to the British Convention’ at Edinburgh in 1794.
Engraving by John Kay, 1794. Hugh Paton (ed.), A Series of Original Portraits and Caricature Etchings by the late John
Kay, Vol. 2, (Adam and Charles Black, 1877). Author’s collection.
2 comments:
A very good article, Sue. It is interesting to compare the evolution of what was happening in the 1790s with what is happening now. Everything is always in flux it seems because things change.
Thanks, Tony. It is amazing how many parallels there are with today's political and policing issues and those of the 1790s and early 1800s.
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