Enlightenment: Britain and the Creation of the Modern World

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Enlightenment: Britain and the Creation of the Modern World Page 78

by Roy Porter


  2 Josiah Wedgwood, ‘An Address to Young Inhabitants of the Pottery’ (1783), p. 22. See above, chapter 15.

  3 Joseph Trapp, Lectures On Poetry (1742), quoted in Brian Hepworth, The Rise of Romanticism (1978), p. 58. See Henry Fielding's The Covent-Garden Journal, no. 33 (Saturday, 23 April 1752), which carried the tag: ‘Odi profanum vulgus. – Hor. I hate profane rascals’, and which banteringly spoke of ‘this very learned and enlightened age’. For ‘many are called’, see David Hartley, Observations on Man, His Frame, His Duty, and His Expectations (1791), vol. ii, p. 405.

  4 Quoted in Leslie Stephen, History of English Thought in the Eighteenth Century (1962), vol. i, p. 197. Some luminaries assumed a nastier tone. ‘The Church, like the Ark of Noah, is worth saving,’ spat Bishop Warburton to his friend Richard Hurd, ‘not for the sake of the unclean beasts and vermin that almost filled it, but for the little corner of rationality that was as much disturbed by the stink within as by the tempest without’: William Warburton, Letters from a Late Eminent Prelate to One of His Friends (1808), letter 47, quoted in S. C. Carpenter, Eighteenth-century Church and People (1959), p. 148.

  5 See Jenny Uglow, Hogarth: A Life and a World (1997); Colin Franklin, Lord Chesterfield, His Character and Characters (1993), p. 35; David Craig, Scottish Literature and the Scottish People 1680–1830 (1961), p. 59. For images of the vulgar, see John Brewer, The Common People and Politics, 1750–1800 (1986).

  6 Roy Porter, ‘The People's Health in Georgian England’ (1995); G. Miller, The Adoption of Inoculation for Smallpox in England and France (1957).

  7 ‘The histories of mankind that we possess are histories only of the higher classes,’ noted Thomas Robert Malthus: An Essay on the Principle of Population (1798), p. 32; John Brand (ed.), Observations on Popular Antiquities (1777).

  8 Peter Burke, Popular Culture in Early Modern Europe (1978), p. 285.

  9 Thomas Percy, Reliques of Ancient English Poetry (1765); Burke, Popular Culture in Early Modern Europe, p. 5; Bob Bushaway, By Rite (1982); Richard M. Dorson (ed.), Peasant Customs and Savage Myths (1968).

  10 Jeremy Black, An Illustrated History of Eighteenth-century Britain, 1688–1793 (1996), p. 158; Paul Baines, The House of Forgery in Eighteenth-century Britain (1999), pp. 103–24.

  11 Fragments of Ancient Poetry Collected in the Highlands of Scotland (1760), Fingal (1762), and Temora (1763) purported to be translations of ancient Gaelic poetry, but were mainly his own invention. Hugh Blair vindicated the poems, in terms of the ‘enthusiasm’ of primitives in the ‘infancy of societies’, in his A Critical Dissertation on the Poems of Ossian (1765): the poet was then the prophet. For the growing European interest in cultures and a past that were neither Christian nor classical, see Kirsti Simonsuuri, Homer's Original Genius (1979); Craig, Scottish Literature and the Scottish People 1680–1830, p. 107.

  12 William Wordsworth, preface to the Lyrical Ballads (1798), in The Prose Works of William Wordsworth (1974), vol. i, p. 124.

  13 See Keith Thomas (ed.), The Oxford Book of Work (1999), pp 16, 80f.

  14 Oliver Goldsmith, The Deserted Village (1770), p. 4. There is sentimentality about peasants too in Thomas Gray's Elegy Written in a Country Church–yard (1751):

  Let not Ambition mock their useful toil,

  Their homely joys and destiny obscure;

  Nor Grandeur hear, with a disdainful smile,

  The short and simple annals of the poor.

  Thomas Gray, Selected Poems (1997), p. 23. Raymond Williams, The Country and the City (1973).

  15 On negative attitudes to the poor, see Daniel A. Baugh, Poverty, Protestantism and Political Economy (1977–8); A. L. Beier, ‘ “Utter Strangers to Industry, Morality and Religion” ’ (1988).

  16 Roy Porter, ‘Civilization and Disease’ (1991). As ever, one must be alert to equivocations: in a somewhat Rousseauvian manner, Cheyne thought clodhoppers were healthier.

  17 Quoted in John R. Millburn, Benjamin Martin: Author, Instrument-Maker and Country-Showman (1976), p. 41.

  18 John Brown, Thoughts on Civil Liberty, Licentiousness and Faction (1765); for Brown, see James L. Clifford (ed.), Man versus Society in Eighteenth-century Britain (1968), p. 29. In mid-seventeenth-century debates, spokesmen like Henry Ireton commonly said that by the ‘people’ they did not mean the ‘poor’; C.B. Macpherson, The Political Theory of Possessive Individualism (1964), pp. 227f.

  19 Carl B. Cone, The English Jacobins (1968), pp. 11–12. In 1752, in the Covent Garden Journal, Henry Fielding published his ‘Modern Glossary’, which caustically defined ‘no body’ as all the people in Great Britain, except about 1200’: Gerald Newman, The Rise of English Nationalism (1987), p. 70. Compare David Hume in his essay ‘Of Commerce’ (1741–2): ‘The greater part of mankind may be divided into two classes; that of shallow thinkers, who fall short of the truth; and that of abstruse thinkers, who go beyond it’: David Hume, Selected Essays (1993), p. 154. ‘Rabble’ was a favourite word of Hume's.

  20 Quoted in John Marshall, John Locke; Resistance, Religion and Responsibility (1994), p. 298. Compare C. B. Macpherson, Democratic Theory (1973).

  21 John Locke, The Reasonableness of Christianity (1695), p. 302, quoted in Cone, The English Jacobins, p. 12.

  22 Locke, The Reasonableness of Christianity, p. 279. Locke disposed of claims to priesthood by lower-class believers: ‘day-labourer and tradesmen, the spinster and dairymaids’ must be told what to believe. ‘The greatest part cannot know and therefore they must believe.’

  23 James Thomson, ‘Summer’, in The Seasons, in Works (1744), 1. 1710, quoted by Marjorie Hope Nicolson, Science Demands the Muse (1966), p. 32. In one of the first flights ever undertaken by a large balloon, staged in 1787, just outside Paris, frightened peasants mistook it for the moon falling when it came to rest, attacking and badly damaging it: Margaret C. Jacob, Scientific Culture and the Making of the Industrial West (1997), p. 132.

  24 Paul Langford, A Polite and Commercial People (1989), p. 282.

  25 Bernard de Mandeville, The Fable of the Bees (1924 [1714]), vol. i, p. 91.

  26 David Hume, Hume's Dialogues concerning Natural Religion (1947 [1779]), section 6, p. 185.

  27 Quoted in Newman, The Rise of English Nationalism, p. 70.

  28 Anthony Ashley Cooper, 3rd Earl of Shaftesbury, Characteristicks of Men, Manners, Opinions, Times, 4th edn (1727), Second Characters, pp. 22–3, quoted in John Barrell, The Political Theory of Painting from Reynolds to Hazlitt (1986), p. 34.

  29 Shaftesbury, Characteristicks of Men, Manners, Opinions, Times (1999 [1723]), vol. i, p. 70.

  30 Joseph Addison and Richard Steele, The Spectator (1965), vol. iii, no. 411, p. 539. ‘Some men,’ opined Lord Bolingbroke, ‘are… designed to take care of that government on which the common happiness depends’: Lord Bolingbroke, A Letter on the Spirit of Patriotism (1738), in Henry St John, Viscount Bolingbroke, The Works of Lord Bolingbroke (1969 [reprint of 1841 ed.] [1754–98]), vol. ii, P. 353.

  31 James Miller, The Man of Taste (1735), p. 27.

  32 David Hume, ‘Of Essay Writing’ (1742), in Essays Moral, Political and Literary (1898 [1741–2]), vol. ii, pp. 367–70, quoted in Stephen Copley, ‘Commerce, Conversation and Politeness in the Early Eighteenth-century Periodical’ (1995). Hume contrasted the ‘rabble without doors’. Other key writings which built a social distinction into taste include Alexander Gerard's Essay On Taste (1759) and Lord Kames's Elements of Criticism (1762).

  33 G. J. Barker-Benfield, The Culture of Sensibility (1992), p. 291.

  34 Iain Pears, The Discovery of Painting (1988), p. 48.

  35 Thomas Reid, ‘Of the Powers We Have by Means of Our External Senses’, in Essays on the Intellectual Powers of Man (sn, 1785), p. 128, discussed in John W. Yolton, Perceptual Acquaintance from Descartes to Reid (1984), p. 3.

  36 Thomas Reid, The Works of Thomas Reid (1846–63), p. 302.

  37 Mary Wollstonecraft dismissed servants as ‘ignorant and cunning’: Mary Wollstonecraft, Thought
s on the Education of Daughters (1995 [1787]), p. 118. Her husband, William Godwin, warned against the vile character of servants, but explained that it was not their fault: their servile situation made them hateful: William Godwin, The Inquirer (1965 [1797]), essay IV: ‘Of Servants’, p. 201.

  38 Chudleigh is quoted in Moira Ferguson (ed.), First Feminists (1985), p. 217.

  39 Jane West, ‘To the Hon Mrs C[ockayn]e’ (1791), quoted in Clifford Siskin, The Work of Writing (1998), p. 130.

  40 Katherine Balderston (ed.), Thraliana: The Diary of Mrs Hester Lynch Thrale (1942 [1776–1809]), vol. ii, p. 547, quoted in Alice Browne, The Eighteenth-century Feminist Mind (1987), p. 125; the Gentleman's Magazine (1791), quoted in Maurice J. Quinlan, Victorian Prelude (1965), pp. 66–7.

  41 Richard Warner, The History of Bath (1801), p. 349; see John Rule, Albion's People (1992), p. 158.

  42 M. G. Jones, The Charity School Movement (1938), and Hannah More (1952), pp. 92–5.

  43 Joyce Taylor, Joseph Lancaster: The Poor Child's Friend (1996); John Lawson and Harold Silver, A Social History of Education in England (1973), pp. 241–6.

  44 For Owen, see chapter 19. Education and enlightened ideas of children have been discussed in chapter 15.

  45 Burke, Popular Culture in Early Modern Europe; Lee Davison, Tim Hitchcock, Tim Keirn and Robert B. Shoemaker (eds), Stilling the Grumbling Hive (1992); R. W. Malcolmson, Popular Recreations in English Society, 1700–1850 (1973). For contestation over magic and the occult arts, see chapter 9.

  46 Neil McKendrick, ‘Josiah Wedgwood and Factory Discipline’ (1961), pp. 52–3; E. P. Thompson, ‘Time, Work-Discipline and Industrial Capitalism’ (1991); Ann Finer and George Savage (eds.), The Selected Letters of Josiah Wedgwood (1965), p. 310.

  47 Desmond King-Hele, Erasmus Darwin: A Life of Unequalled Achievement (1999), pp. 199–200.

  48 James Parkinson, The Way to Health, Extracted from the Villager's Friend and Physician (1802). For Parkinson, see Arthur D. Morris, James Parkinson, His Life and Times (1989).

  49 James Parkinson, The Villager's Friend and Physician, 2nd edn (1804), p. 66.

  50 For background to such pastoral assumptions, see John Barrell, The Dark Side of the Landscape (1980).

  51 Parkinson, The Villager's Friend and Physician, p. 9.

  52 John Fielding, A Plan for a Preservatory and Reformatory for the Benefit of Deserted Girls and Penitent Prostitutes (1758), p. 7; see also John Bender, Imagining the Penitentiary (1987); Ian H. Bell, Literature and Crime in Augustan England (1991); Donna T. Andrew, Philanthropy and Police (1989), p. 116; W. A. Speck, ‘The Harlot's Progress in Eighteenth-century England’ (1980). The image of the prostitute as the victim of seduction runs through Georgian literature.

  53 Donna T. Andrew, Philanthropy and Police (1989), p. 124. Similar views – that thieves turned to crime out of necessity – were earlier aired by Daniel Defoe, for instance in The History and Remarkable Life of Colonel Jacque, Commonly Call'd (1722).

  54 Jonas Hanway, Defects of Police (1775), p. 54.

  55 Bernard de Mandeville, A Modest Defence of the Public Stews (1724).

  56 See V. Bullough, ‘Prostitution and Reform in Eighteenth-century England’ (1987); D. A. Coward, ‘Eighteenth-century Attitudes to Prostitution’ (1980); A. R. Henderson, ‘Female Prostitution in London, 1730–1830’ [1992]; Stanley D. Nash, ‘Social Attitudes towards Prostitution in London from 1752 to 1829’ [1980]; John B. Radner, ‘The Youthful Harlot's Curse’ (1976).

  57 Saunders Welch, A Proposal to… Remove the Nuisance of Common Prostitutes from the Streets (sn, 1758); R. Dingley, Proposals for Establishing a Place of Reception for Penitent Prostitutes (1758); Sherrill Cohen, The Evolution of Women's Asylums since 1500 (1992), p. 130; Sarah Lloyd, ‘ “Pleasure's Golden Bait” ’ (1996); S. Nash, ‘Prostitution and Charity’ (1984); Miles Ogborn, Spaces of Modernity (1998), pp. 34–79.

  58 The importance for Beddoes of science as the basis of medical authority is stressed in Roy Porter, Doctor of Society (1991).

  59 Thomas Beddoes, The History of Isaac Jenkins (sn, 1792) (the following quotations are from the 1796 edition). Sold cheaply or given away, this work went through numerous editions. In 1796 Beddoes claimed that an astonishing 40,000 copies of the tract been sold or distributed.

  60 Beddoes, The History of Isaac Jenkins, p. 5.

  61 Beddoes, The History of Isaac Jenkins, p. 37.

  62 Beddoes, The History of Isaac Jenkins, p. 40.

  63 Beddoes, The History of Isaac Jenkins, p. 43.

  64 For Beddoes on education, see Porter, Doctor of Society, pp. 39f.

  65 Joseph Priestley, A Sermon on Behalf of the Leeds Infirmary Preached at Mill Hill Chapel (sn, 1768), p. 18. See the discussion in Roy Porter, ‘The Gift Relation’ (1989), p. 164.

  66 For attitudes to charity, see Andrew, Philanthropy and Police; Gertrude Himmelfarb, The Idea of Poverty (1984). ‘Homo economicus’ is discussed further in chapter 17.

  67 See Andrew, Philanthropy and Police, pp. 17, 19.

  68 Addison and Steele, The Spectator, vol. ii, no. 232, pp. 401–5 (Monday, 26 November 1711). Addison continued: ‘Am I against all acts of charity? God forbid! I know of novirtue in the gospel that is in more pathetic expressions recommended to our practice… Our blessed Saviour treats the exercise and neglect of charity towards a poor man, as the performance or breach of this duty towards himself.’

  69 Betsy Rodgers, Cloak of Charity (1949), pp. 163f; D. Owen, English Philanthropy, 1660–1960 (1965), pp. 69f.

  70 J. T. Anning, The General Infirmary at Leeds (1963), vol. i, p. i.

  71 Priestley, A Sermon on Behalf of the Leeds Infirmary Preached at Mill Hill Chapel, p. 10.

  72 E. R. Frizelle and J. D. Martin, Leicester Royal Infirmary, 1771–1971 (1971), p. 24, quoted in Porter, ‘The Gift Relation’, p. 163.

  73 William Watts, in Frizelle and Martin, Leicester Royal Infirmary, 1771–1971, p. 24, quoted in Porter, The Gift Relation’, p. 176.

  74 Priestley, A Sermon on Behalf of the Leeds Infirmary Preached at Mill Hill Chapel, p. 10, quoted in Porter, The Gift Relation’, p. 163.

  75 Paul Slack, The English Poor Law, 1531–1782 (1995); George R. Boyer, An Economic History of the English Poor Law, 1750–1850 (1990); Brian Inglis, Poverty and the Industrial Revolution (1971); J. R. Poynter, Society and Pauperism (1969); G. W. Oxley, Poor Relief in England and Wales: 1601–1834 (1974); M. E. Rose, The English Poor Law 1760–1830 (1971).

  76 Daniel Defoe, quoted in Oxley, Poor Relief in England and Wales: 1601–1834, P. 35.

  77 Henry Fielding, ‘An Enquiry into the Causes of the Late Increase of Robbers’ (1751) in An Enquiry into the Causes of the Late Increase of Robbers and Related Writings (1988), quoted in Nicholas Rogers, ‘Confronting the Crime Wave’ (1992), p. 84. The sufferings of the poor are indeed less observed than their misdeeds noted Fielding. They starve and freeze and rot among themselves, but they beg and steal and rob among their betters.’

  78 Sir F. M. Eden, The State of the Poor (1797), various locations.

  79 Sir William Temple, The Works of Sir William Temple, Bart, 2 vols. (London: Churchill, 1720). Temple makes similar comments throughout; Arthur Young, The Farmer's Tour through the East of England (1771), vol. 4, p. 361. Young, however, recognized that incentives counted, for ‘the great engine wherewith the poor may be governed and provided for the most easily and the most cheaply is property’.

  80 It was in part for such reasons that Adam Smith advocated the liberal reward of labour: see chapter 17.

  81 See discussions in Mark Goldie (ed.), Locke: Political Essays (1997), p. xiii; Marshall, John Locke; Resistance, Religion and Responsibility, p. 331; Rule, Albion's People, p. 124; Beier, ‘ “Utter Strangers to Industry, Morality and Religion” ’.

  82 Marshall, John Locke; Resistance, Religion and Responsibility, p. 324; Maurice Cranston, John Locke: A Biography (1957), p. 424; Richard Ashcraft, ‘Lockean Ideas, Poverty, and the Development of Liberal Political Theory�
�� (1995), p. 48.

  83 George Clarke (ed.), John Bellers: His Life, Times and Writings (1993 [1987]); Michael Ignatieff, A Just Measure of Pain (1978), p. 13; W. H. G. Armytage, Heavens Below (1961), pp. 29–30. For Firmin, see Mitchell Dean, The Constitution of Poverty (1991), p. 41.

  84 Clarke, John Bellers: His Life, Times and Writings; Armytage, Heavens Below, p. 29.

  85 John Dyer, The Fleece (1757), bk II, 11. 239-48, anthologized in Roger Lonsdale (ed.), The New Oxford Book of Eighteenth-century Verse (1984), p. 172.

  86 Charles F. Bahmueller, The National Charity Company (1981), pp. 152, 193. The ecclesiastical echo of compellare intrare is obvious.

  87 Bahmueller, The National Charity Company, pp. 92, 142.

  88 Patrick Colquhoun, The State of Indigence (1799), p. 18.

  89 John Locke, Two Treatises of Government (1988 [1690]), vol. ii, p. 42; Goldie, Locke: Political Essays, p. xxv.

 

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