Thomas Paine

Paine by John Kay.

Another 'person of interest' to the British government was Thomas Paine (1737–1809), the son of a Thetford staymaker. His writings were truly revolutionary. His first great work, Common Sense (1776), was a plea for American independence.

His second major work, Rights of Man (part I) was a riposte to Edmund Burke’s Reflexions on the Revolution in France (1790), a powerful attack on French revolutionary ideals, and a plea for maintaining the current status quo.

Edmund Burke

But it was the second part of Paine’s Rights of Man (1792) which arguably had the largest influence on men’s thinking. He attacked the institution of monarchy: ‘Man has no power over posterity in matters of personal right; and therefore no man, or body of men, had, or can have, a right to set up hereditary government...we cannot conceive a more ridiculous figure of government, than hereditary succession’. 

He advocated the abolition of the poor laws. The state should provide for the poor, babies and old people. To add fuel to the flames, Paine’s Age of Reason (1794–5) lambasted organized religion.

Paine’s pioneering ideas spread like wildfire. His works had a massive circulation and were eagerly adopted by the Society of Constitutional Information (which he had joined), and by the so-called ‘corresponding societies’.

Tom Paine laces Britannia into a revolutionary corset.

In May 1792, Paine's Rights of Man was banned by the British government, but this act of censorship simply boosted sales of his work. Pitt's government now charged Paine with seditious libel; he fled to France, but was found guilty in absentia. Britain now became a very dangerous place for those who wanted to disseminate Paine's works, as we shall see.  

Illustrations: Thomas Paine, Kay's Original Portraits, courtesy the Internet Archive. 

Edmund Burke. Collotype after the painting by Sir Joshua Reynolds. Dr Johnson’s Mrs Thrale, T.N. Foulis, 1910. Author’s collection. 

'Fashion before ease'. Gillray cartoon, 1793, courtesy Library of Congress, LC-USZC4-3146.

 

New Book Contract: Regency Spies

I’m very pleased to announce that I’ve just signed a new book contract with Pen and Sword for their new Social History imprint!

‘Regency Spies: England's Rebels and Revolutionaries Exposed’ will explore the shadowy world of the network of government spies and agents provocateurs which kept watch on Britain’s underprivileged masses during the Napoleonic wars.  The upper classes feared a replay of the French Revolution on British soil: the threat of an armed insurrection or a French invasion was taken very seriously.  Any hint of sedition was ruthlessly suppressed.

The ‘Great War’ against Napoleon had a devastating effect on the British economy.  Taxation reached record levels to pay for the war, and the poorer classes endured great hardship.  Hunger fuelled riots for cheaper food and Luddite attacks on mill-owners, factories and machinery.

The spy network had some famous successes, like the discoveries of the Despard plot, the Pentrich Rising and the Cato St conspiracy.  Sometimes the government’s efforts descended into high farce, like the ‘Spy Nozy’ affair, in which poets Wordsworth and Coleridge were shadowed by a special agent.  But the stakes were incredibly high: agitators risked the horrors of a traitor’s death if found guilty.

The book will tell the stories of the real conspirators against the government, and the tragedies which befell ordinary folk entrapped by agents provocateurs.  The provisional launch date for ‘Regency Spies’ is mid-to-late 2015.

Images from the Library of Congress British Cartoons collection:

Satire identifying reform with revolution by Cruikshank, 1819. 
‘True reform of Parliament: patriots lighting a revolutionarybonfire in new Palace Yard by Gillray, 1809. Sir Francis Burdett is making a speech and waving a bonnet rouge [cap of liberty] shaped like a fool's cap as Horne Tooke lights on fire a pile of acts and charters, as well as a Bible, with a flaming baton labeled "Sedition" while three creatures add to the flames. James Boswell, Samuel Whitbread, Lord Folkestone, and Henry Clifford add documents to the pile as a mob destroys Parliament in the background.