by Roy Porter
Trenchard and Gordon, however, also grafted their neo-Harringtonian ideas on to Lockean contractarianism. The doctrine of inalienable rights enunciated by ‘Cato’ clearly echoed the Second Treatise. ‘All Men are born free,’ he proclaimed:
No Man has Power over his own Life, or to dispose of his own Religion; and cannot consequently transfer the Power of either to any body else. Much less can he give away the Lives and Liberties, Religion or acquired Property of his Posterity, who will be born as free as he himself was born, and can never be bound by his wicked and ridiculous Bargain.36
Liberty, that ‘unalienable Right of all Mankind’, was likewise defined in Lockean terms as ‘the Power which every Man has over his own Actions, and his Right to enjoy the Fruit of his Labour, Art, and Industry’.37 Not only were such rights defended but ‘men are naturally equal’, ‘Cato’ further boldly asserted, and ‘no Man was ever born above all the rest, nor below them all’.38 Far from being authorized à la Filmer by ‘the immediate Revelation of God’, governments were the creations of peoples, set up to safeguard their rights; hence force could ‘give no Title’.39 It had been precisely this ‘Principle of People's judging for themselves, and resisting lawless Force’ which had sanctioned the ‘late happy Revolution’. And lest readers feared resistance might go too far, ‘Cato’ stressed, echoing Locke, that subjects were so wary of disturbing the peace that they would not resort to protest until grievances grew intolerable – indeed, the true danger was that they would tarry too long, for ‘tyranny has engrossed almost the whole Earth, and… makes the World a Slaughter-house’.40 Eternal vigilance was imperative.
The early Enlightenment liberty platform thus had many planks: Lockean natural liberty was dovetailed into civic humanist political anatomy and other traditions besides – the Anglo-Saxon self-government ideal and its corresponding ‘Norman yoke’ theory, and the ubiquitous celebration of Common Law and the constitution:41
Then was the full and perfect plan disclos'd
Of BRITAIN'S matchless Constitution, mixt
Of mutual checking and supporting Powers,
KINGS, LORDS, and COMMONS.42
was celebrated by James Thomson's ‘Goddess of Liberty’ in his poem Liberty (1735).
Post-1688 England was thus the land of the free, destined to teach the world a lesson: ‘The sentiment of liberty, and the ever-active protection of the laws,’ groused the Prussian visitor von Archenholz, ‘are the cause why the common people testify but little consideration for persons of quality, and even for persons in office.’43 Indeed, such swagger had some basis in political realities. Flaunting the freedom of the press, journalists boasted of their role as guardians of British independence. ‘Those who declaim against the Liberties taken by News Papers… know not what they say,’ declared the London Evening Post in 1754; ‘it is this Liberty, that… protects all the rest.’44 Provincial papers echoed the chorus. ‘Every Englishman must be sensible that by encouraging a News Paper,’ affirmed the Reading Mercury, ‘he contributes to the support of the Liberty of the Press.’45 According to arguments recited in Thomas Hayter's Essay on the Liberty of the Press (1755), William Bollan's The Freedom of Speech and Writing upon Public Affairs Considered (1766) and similar works, freedom of speech was the cornerstone of all the others. It was ‘the great palladium of British freedom’, pronounced the jurist William Blackstone, while the pamphleteer ‘Junius’ styled it ‘the palladium of all the civil, political, and religious rights of an Englishmen’.46 This turned into a veritable Whig mantra: ‘Against despotism of any kind or in any shape,’ declared Richard Sheridan, ‘let me but array a free Press, and the liberties of England will stand unshaken.’47 The rationale behind free speech was spelt out by the bookseller John Almon. Man was, by nature, a communicative creature. As society expanded, it had become necessary to supplement the spoken word with the written, to ensure communication across great distances. Since liberty of speech was a fundamental right, liberty of the press, Almon concluded, must follow.48
Characteristically pragmatic arguments were further adduced by David Hume: press freedom was, paradoxically, a stabilizing factor, posing no danger to public order. The public was neither as gullible nor as menacing as the scaremongers alleged, and private reading actually lowered the political temperature:
A man reads a book or pamphlet alone and cooly. There is none present from whom he can catch the passion by contagion… The liberty of the press, therefore, however abused, can scarce ever excite popular tumults…
It has also been found, as the experience of mankind increases, that the people are no such dangerous monster as they have been represented, and that it is in every respect better to guide them, like rational creatures, than to lead or drive them, like brute beasts. Before the United Provinces set the example, toleration was deemed incompatible with good government; and it was thought impossible, that a number of religious sects could live together in harmony and peace… ENGLAND has set a like example of civil liberty; and though this liberty seems to occasion some small ferment at present, it has not as yet produced any pernicious effects.49
In short, champions of freedom exulted in English traditions and the ‘sacred’ constitution – Horace Walpole slept with a copy of Magna Carta on one side of his bed and Charles I's death warrant on the other.50 The Glorious Revolution was freedom's meridian. The period prior to 1688 had been characterized by intellectual ‘mysteries’ and by Popery, John Taylor reflected, before
LIBERTY at the Revolution, O bright, auspicious Day! reared up her heavenly Form, and smiled upon our happy Land. Delivered from the fears of Tyranny and Persecution, Men began freely to use their Understandings. 51
And these Whig myths assumed an enlightened hue: freedom was not just a political blessing but also the cradle of culture. ‘Where Absolute Power is,’ insisted the 3rd Earl of Shaftesbury, ‘there is no Publick.’52 Freedom, by contrast, spelt civilization: ‘All Politeness is owing to Liberty. We polish one another, and rub off our Corners and rough Sides by a sort of amicable Collision.’53
Civic humanism saw freedom as guaranteed by independent freehold property: only the landed truly had a stake in the country, unlike the moneybags benefiting from paper money and the public debt arising out of the founding of the Bank of England in 1694. Neo-Harringtonians feared the subversion of the ancient constitution by unscrupulous dealers whose hands were soiled by filthy lucre and place-hunting. ‘Landed men,’ held Bolingbroke, ‘are the true owners of our political vessel; the moneyed men, as such, are but passengers in it.’54
How was this danger to be forestalled? England, some insisted, should heed the examples of ancient Greece or the Roman republic, as depicted by Cato or Plutarch. ‘The Grecian commonwealths, while they maintained their liberty, were the most heroic confederacy that ever existed,’ held James Harris, ‘they were the politest, the bravest, and the wisest of men.’55 Yet were not such visions hopelessly at odds with reality? Hanoverian Britain was growing richer, more self-assured and centralized, and who could credibly deny that England's new greatness on the world's stage derived from trade, conquest and a powerful executive? All these, however, according to civic humanist dogma, were dire threats to liberty.56 So did the Whig ascendancy in reality subvert that very freedom it was purporting to defend? And if so, was British liberty just a shadow or even a sham?57 Many, of course, cried yes, wrung their hands and continued to intone the rhetoric of ‘corruption’ – notably the Revd John Brown, whose doom-laden Estimate of the Manners and Principles of the Times (1757) diagnosed national decay caused by the cancer of commerce.58 Yet these Jeremiads were being challenged by new enlightened discourses, anxious to vindicate commercial society.
Enlightened thinking, as we have seen, shunned the scholastic: it wanted not just to understand the world but to influence it. In this drive, none were more influential than Joseph Addison and Richard Steele, whose Tatler, Spectator and Guardian promoted key enlightened positions.59 Ideas were meant to be spread, and
to that end they looked forward to the day ‘when Knowledge, instead of being bound up in Books, and kept in Libraries and retirement, is thus obtruded upon the Publick; when it is canvassed in every Assembly, and exposed upon every Table’.60
Adopting the persona of ‘Isaac Bickerstaff’, Richard Steele edited the thrice-weekly Tatler (1709), dedicated to the reformation of manners and morals: ‘The general Purpose of this Paper, is to expose the false Arts of Life, to pull off the Disguises of Cunning, Vanity, and Affectation, and to recommend a general Simplicity in our Dress, our Discourse, and our Behaviour.’61 While it also included news coverage and a miscellany of essays, letters and information, social improvement was central from the start.
Two months after the final Tatler was published, with sales approaching 4,000, the first Spectator appeared, on 1 March 1711. It was an immediate hit. ‘The Spectator,’ enthused John Gay, ‘is in everyone's hands, and a constant topic for our morning conversation at the tables and coffee houses.’62 By the tenth issue Addison was boasting, ‘there are already three thousand of them distributed every day’ – and on his guess of ‘twenty readers to every paper’ that meant ‘about three-score thousand disciples in London and Westminster’.63 Gentleman's clubs met to discuss the magazine and it was read from Scotland to Surinam. And although the real public reached by those pioneering media men was sizeable, even more significant perhaps was their conquest of the public imagination: they were the talk of the town. While cleverly sustaining an air of elitist intimacy, Mr Spectator, the man about town, was the first media man.
Devoted to uniting ‘merriment with decency’ while instructing in taste and morality, the Spectator's ‘morning lectures’ were to be varied, light and crisp, so that ‘the busy may find time, and the idle may find patience’ to scan them. Ignorance, dogmatism, violence, boorishness, inanity, divisiveness – whatever militated against politeness was targeted. Promoting propriety, good manners and style, its lay sermons declared war on false values, foppery and folly – and low taste, like puns.
In the absence of political or religious unanimity, good taste was made the new social adhesive which would cement propertied élites together. Civilized role-playing and the poised presentation of self by the honnête homme flourishing among ‘the Fraternity of Spectators’64 became paramount on an urban stage in which all doubled as actors and audience. Piously doffing his hat, Addison noted that, whilst St Augustine had called life ‘a Pilgrimage’, Epictetus for his part had deemed the world ‘a Theatre, where everyone has a Part allotted to him’ and would be judged accordingly. Of the two, it was the classical moralist whom Addison chiefly commended – although, along with Steele, he was arguably the most influential Christian of his age.65
‘There cannot a greater judgment befall a country than such a dreadful spirit of division that rends a government into two distinct people… A furious Party spirit, when it rages in its full Violence, exerts it self in civil war and bloodshed.’66 Such wounds must be healed. ‘My paper has not in it a single word of news, a reflection on politicks, nor a stroke of party,’ boasted the irenic Addison; he would advance ‘no fashionable touches of infidelity, no obscene ideas, no satyres upon priesthood, marriage, and the like popular topicks of ridicule’.67 Politics and scandal might sell, but he aimed to draw ‘men's minds off from the bitterness of party’ and forge consensus.68 Yet, of course, the Spectator's anti-politics were utterly political, preaching moderation and acceptance of modernity, rather like that sworn foe of ‘Men of Heat’, Daniel Defoe, and later David Hume. New political extremism was as ruinous as old enthusiasm; the divided society had to be knitted together and political passions needed to be managed.69 Beguiling with their style and mocking the manners of the vulgar, the out of date and fashionable affectations alike, the Tatler and the Spectator sold the young idea of lifestyle politics, offered alluring glimpses of social success and peddled hope: ‘Half the misery of human life,’ Addison wrote, ‘might be extinguished, would men alleviate the general curse they lie under, by mutual offices of compassion, benevolence, and humanity.’70 Yet the price of improvement was regulation and ‘Mr Spectator’, writing from his coffee house nook, fantasized himself as the universal eye, meting out correction by naming and shaming. ‘Inspectors’ would be sent to check abuses, rather as with the Society for the Reformation of Manners, except that while that body policed the poor, the Spectator was to examine the élite.71 Appearances counted, after all: all aspects of the individual, readers were reminded – demeanour and decorum, attire and attitudes – were social signs making character and status legible, and hence demanded attention if self and society were to rub along.
Appearing day in, day out, the Spectator and its lookalikes became the oracles of modern élites conversing with themselves – and liking what they heard. In the first instance their appeal, in their conversational essays featuring familiar characters – the original soap opera heroes? – was to smart urbanites but, in due course, they captured the reading nation at large, as they were reprinted and imitated over and again. In the 1760s, Edinburgh's high priest of taste, the Revd Hugh Blair, could comment that it was ‘in the hands of everyone’; ‘there is scarcely an individual’, concurred Vicesimus Knox, cleric, schoolmaster and man of letters, ‘who has not digested the Spectators’.72 Many testified to its impact: Voltaire used it to improve his English, it taught Benjamin Franklin style, while another American, James Madison, recalled that it inculcated ‘just sentiments, an appetite for knowledge, and a taste for the improvement of the mind and manners’.73 Spectatorial periodicals were thus bibles of enlightened behaviour.
Addison and Steele were writing for political animals who had grown up seeing the city through jaundiced eyes – as Babylon, Rome or Vanity Fair – indeed, they themselves could portray it as a den of dissimulation, where ideals were subservient to interest and taste to tawdriness.74 Displacing this Augustinian or neo-Harringtonian bogey, they invoked an alternative image of a flourishing public realm founded upon benevolence. Spurred by altruism rather than advantage, true friendship would blossom in the relaxed, face to face environment of the tavern, coffee house or exchange, in the company of companions drawn from different walks of life – gentry, clergy, soldiers, merchants. Man's natural capacity for virtue would thereby be released and good living thrive. The modern city was capable of cradling, no less than corrupting, virtue. Once virtue shook hands with commerce, the asceticism of the Puritans and the anxieties of the humanists could be thankfully consigned to the past.
Thanks in large measure to Addison and Steele, a new politics began to displace those traditional rhetorics, especially as the post-1714 regime truly did seem to deliver the promised peace and prosperity. ‘Public liberty, with internal peace and order, has flourished almost without interruption,’ sang David Hume of the startling transformations so perceptible in his own lifetime:
Trade and manufactures, and agriculture, have increased: The arts, and sciences, and philosophy, have been cultivated. Even religious parties have been necessitated to lay aside their mutual rancour; and the glory of the nation has spread itself all over Europe; derived equally from our progress in the arts of peace, and from valour and success in war.75
Promoting practical morality was central to Hume's project, perhaps explaining his decision, after completing his Treatise of Human Nature in 1740, to abandon systematic philosophy for polite essay-writing à la Addison. As a vehicle for moralizing on human conduct, the essay suited his genius and his aims. Addison and Steele had addressed the aspirations of propertied urbanites, teaching them how to negotiate their private happiness in a complex society; Hume recognized that this emergent commercial order still needed defending, not least against noisy moralists.
Challenging civic humanism's sacred cows, Hume held that market society went hand in glove with liberty. ‘If we trace commerce in its progress, through Tyre, Athens, Syracuse, Carthage, Venice, Florence, Genoa, Antwerp, Holland, England, etc.,’ he submitted, ‘we shall a
lways find it to have fixed its seat in free governments.’76 Far from causing corruption, economic development was integral to social improvement. Supplanting the evils of scarcity and privation, the abundance of material goods produced by the market promised ‘the chief advantage of society’, and this could be secured by gathering larger populations together to improve security and capitalize on economies of scale and the division of labour.77
Greed detonated disorder, the civic humanists had claimed, and it was to this stumbling block that Hume turned his attention in the Treatise. The ‘insatiable, perpetual, universal’ passion for acquisition was, he admitted, ‘directly destructive of society’, but not if ‘curbed so as to ensure security of possession’. Such essential stability was provided by justice, which established the rules of property and its transfer, and the duty of contract-keeping. Justice was not, however, some innate idea or eternal fitness discerned by a priori reason; government itself arose only gradually, when peoples had to provide for external security by defending themselves against aggressors. Unlike in Locke's thinking, justice was thus consequential – a virtue which, Hume insisted, in a much-misread distinction, was ‘artificial’ without being at all ‘arbitrary’. Derivative rather than primary, justice was the product of conventions, just as government was an outgrowth of necessity not reason.78