The Collected Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Volume 1: Lectures, 1795: On Politics and Religion 9781400867844

Table of contents :
Contents
List of Illustrations
Acknowledgments
Editorial Practice, Symbols, and Abbreviations
Chronological Table
Editors' Introduction
A Moral and Political Lecture
Conciones Ad Populum. Or Addresses to the People
Lectures on Revealed Religion, Its Corruptions and Political Views
Lecture on the Slave-Trade
A Comparative View of the English Rebellion and the French Revolution: Prospectus of Six Lectures
Lecture on the Two Bills
The Plot Discovered: Or, an Address to the People, Against Ministerial Treason
An Answer to "A Letter to Edward Long Fox, M.D."
Appendixes
Index

Citation preview

THE COLLECTED WORKS OF SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE · 1

LECTURES 1795 ON POLITICS AND RELIGION

General Editor: KATHLEEN COBURN Associate Editor: BART W I N E R

THE COLLECTED WORKS 1. L E C T U R E S 1 7 9 5 : O N P O L I T I C S A N D R E L I G I O N 2. T H E W A T C H M A N 3. E S S A Y S O N H I S T I M E S 4. T H E F R I E N D 5. L E C T U R E S 1 8 0 8 - 1 8 1 9 : O N L I T E R A T U R E 6. L A Y S E R M O N S 7. B I O G R A P H I A L I T E R A R I A 8. L E C T U R E S 1 8 1 8 - 1 8 1 9 : O N T H E H I S T O R Y O F PHILOSOPHY 9. A I D S T O R E F L E C T I O N 10. ON THE CONSTITUTION OF THE CHURCH AND STATE 11. SHORTER WORKS AND FRAGMENTS 12. MARGINALIA 13. THE LOGIC 14. TABLE TALK 15. OPUS MAXIMUM 16. POETICAL WORKS GENERAL INDEX

SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE from a portrait painted by Peter Vandyke, 1795 London: National Portrait Gallery.

THE COLLECTED WORKS O F

Samuel Taylor Coleridge

Lectures 1795 On Politics and Religion EDITED BY

Lewis Patton and Peter Mann

ROUTLEDGE & KEGAN PAUL o§o BOLLINGEN SERIES LXXV PRINCETON UNIVERSITY PRESS

This edition of the text by Samuel Taylor Coleridge is copyright © 1971 by Routledge & Kegan Paul Ltd The Collected Works, sponsored by Bollingen Foundation, is published in Great Britain by Routledge & Kegan Paul Ltd Broadway House, 68-74 Carter Lane, London E.C.4 and in the United States of America by Princeton University Press, Princeton, New Jersey The Collected Works constitutes the seventy-fifth publication in Bollingen Series The present work is number 1 of the Collected Works

Designed by Richard Garnett Printed in Great Britain at the University Printing House, Cambridge

THIS EDITION OF THE WORKS OF SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE IS DEDICATED IN GRATITUDE TO THE FAMILY EDITORS IN EACH GENERATION

CONTENTS

page Ϊ Χ

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Xl

EDITORIAL PRACTICE, SYMBOLS, AND ABBREVIATIONS

XlV

CHRONOLOGICAL TABLE

XlX

EDITORS' INTRODUCTION

I. Coleridge in Bristol 1795: Lecturing and Politics II. Six Lectures on Revealed Religion, Its Corruptions and Political Views A Moral and Political Lecture Condones ad Populum. Or Addresses to the People Preface A Letter from Liberty to her dear Friend Famine Introductory Address On the Present War

xxiii Iiii 1 21 27 29 33 51

Lectures on Revealed Religion, Its Corruptions and Political Views Prospectus Lecture I Lecture 2 Lecture 3 Lecture 4 Lecture 5 Lecture 6

75 81 85 121 147 167 193 213

Lecture on the Slave-Trade

231 vii

viii

Lectures 1795: On Politics and Religion A Comparative View of the English Rebellion and the French Revolution: Prospectus of Six Lectures page 253 Lecture on the Two Bills

257

The Plot Discovered: or, An Address to the People, Against Ministerial Treason

277

An Answer to "A Letter to Edward Long Fox, M.D."

319

APPENDIXES

Al A2

FragmentsofTheologicalLectures A Sermon

335 345

B1

Star Report of Bristol Guildhall Meetings of 17 and 20 November 1795 B 2 Petition of the Inhabitants of Bristol Against the Two Bills B3 Thomas Beddoes A Word in Defence of the Bill of Rights, Against Gagging Bills B4 A. W. A Letter to Edward Long Fox, M.D.

369 385

INDEX

393

357 365

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS 1. Samuel Taylor Coleridge, from a portrait painted by Peter Vandyke, 1795 frontispiece 2. A Moral and Political Lecture. Title-page facing page 2 3. Condones ad Populum. Title-page facing page 24 4. An annotated page of Condones (p 22), from the copy Coleridge gave to John J. Morgan facing page 43 5. A leaf (f 1) from the manuscript of the Lecture on the Two Bills facing page 260 6. The Plot Discovered. Title-page facing page 282 7. An Answer to "A Letter to Edward Long Fox, M.D.". Titlepage facing page 320

ix

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I

A H indebted to the following libraries for permission to reprint material: the Harvard University Library for the Lecture on the Two Bills and for the annotations by Coleridge in their copies of Condones ad Populum and The Plot Discovered; and the Victoria College Library of the University of Toronto for the Lecture on the Slave-Trade; I am indebted also to Mrs H. Marsden-Smedley and the library of the University of Bristol for permission to publish a passage from the Pinney MSS. Mrs W. H. Werkmeister has significantly advanced our knowledge of Coleridge's early pamphlets, and she has been unstinting in her aid to me. I wish to thank Mrs J. R. H. Moorman for pointing out to me the London Star report of the Bristol Guildhall meetings. Mr Wal­ lace Brockway was good enough to supply the correction of an error. I received a valuable eighteenth-century Hanoverian pro­ clamation from Fraulein Ruth Eulert of the Auskunftstelle in the Niedersachsische Staats- und Universitatsbibliothek at Gottingen, for which I thank her, and I thank also Professor John Clubbe for translating it. I have been helped by many scholarly friends, among whom I wish especially to mention Professors David V. Erdman, George Whalley, Earl Leslie Griggs, and John Cunningham. I have benefited greatly from the resources and services of libraries, most of all the British Museum and its staff and the Duke University Library and its staff. Among the latter I hardly know how to begin my acknowledgments, but I will mention Miss Florence Blakeley, Miss Mary Cannada, Miss Mattie Russell, and Mr Emerson Ford; and Miss Marianna Long and the staff of the library of the Duke School of Law. I am grateful to the Yale University Library and to Miss Marjorie Gray Wynne; the Harvard University Library; the Huntington Library; the Cambridge University Library; the Bristol Central Library and Mr Peter Heaton- and the Berg Collection of the New York Public Library. The Bollingen Foundation has been most generous and helpful, and I wish to thank Mr John D. Barrett and Miss Vaun Gillmor. I am indebted to Mr Colin Franklin and members of the staff of xi

xii

Lectures 1795: On Politics and Religion

Routledge and Kegan Paul Ltd for their helpfulness. It is a pleasure also to acknowledge the benefits of the professional skill, as well as the hospitality, of Mr Brooke Crutchley and other members of the staff of the Cambridge University Printing House. Myfriend Miss Dorothy Roberts has helped with the typing and in every other manner that her kindness could devise. To two persons I am very deeply indebted: Miss Kathleen Coburn, whose learning, judgment, and encouragement have been essential to me; and Mr Bart Winer, who with his skill, zeal, and patience has helped me in ways, and to an extent, quite beyond my power to specify. I am grateful to my wife for much assistance as well as for much forbearance. LEWIS PATTON

Durham, North Carolina 15 April 1969

I AM indebted to Victoria College Library of the University of Toronto for permission to publish the transcript of the Theological Lectures as well as other Coleridge material; to Harvard University Library for permission to publish manuscript theological notes by Coleridge; and to Yale University for permission to publish the manuscript Prospectus of the Theological Lectures. I am grateful for the assistance given to me by, among many others, Mr Herbert Cahoon and the staff of the Pierpont Morgan Library, New York; Mrs Lola L. Szladits of the Berg Collection, New York Public Library; Miss Marjorie G. Wynne of the Beinecke Library, Yale University; Miss Caroline E. Jakeman of the Hough­ ton Library, Harvard University; Dr Elenor Nichols of the Widener Library, Harvard University. I should particularly like to thank Miss Lorna D. Fraser of Victoria College Library, Toronto Univer­ sity. Miss Lorraine Lospinusa gave me much help in the Coleridge Room at Victoria College Library. I wish to express my thanks for the help I have received from the staffs of other libraries whose resources I have made use of, especially the Brotherton Library of the University of Leeds, the Bodleian Library, Oxford University, and the British Museum.

Acknowledgments

χϋϊ

Colleagues engaged on the Collected Works of S. T. Coleridge have generously provided me with information and with assistance of various kinds and in various ways. I wish to thank them for their willingness to share their resources of skill and learning with me. My deepest gratitude must go to Miss Kathleen Coburn for her unstinted advice and help of all kinds and for her unfailing patience. To Mr Bart Winer I have a special obligation. He has been both for­ bearing and generous in allowing me to benefit from his wide reading, his editorial skill and experience, and his intimate knowledge of Coleridge and his times. Many friends and academic colleagues have helped me in innumerable ways, and I take pleasure in acknowledging their generosity and kindness. I have profited particularly from discussing Coleridge and his period with Mr Graham Martin and Mr E. P. Thompson. I should like to pay tribute to the late Humphry House, from whom I received much scholarly help and personal kindness. To Professor L. C. Knights I owe many long-standing personal and academic debts, which I am glad to acknowledge here, though inadequately and tardily. I much appreciate the beneficence of the Bollingen Foundation and I should like to thank Miss Vaun Gillmor for her kindness and help. To my wife I am grateful for much encouragement and much practical help of various kinds. PETER MANN

Leeds December 1969

EDITORIAL PRACTICE, SYMBOLS, AND ABBREVIATIONS

T

H E texts of works reprinted follow those of the original editions, except for the correction of obvious printer's errors. Corrections in the list of errata at the end of Condones have been incorporated into the text, with one exception (see headnote to Condones). "Corrections" in anno­ tated copies are given in footnotes. Texts printed from Ε. H. Coleridge's transcripts (Lectures on Revealed Religion; Lecture on the Slave-Trade) are printed literatim; textual notes indicate changes in words and order of leaves. The Lecture on the Two Bills and quotations from other Coleridge manuscripts are also printed literatim, including cancellations; marginal figures indicate original folios. Coleridge's square brackets (few in number) have been changed to parentheses; square brackets enclose editorial interpolations.

The editors' headnotes give further details of editorial practice. Coleridge's footnotes are indicated by symbols (*, f, etc) and are printed full measure. Editors' footnotes are numbered and (when not too brief) printed in double columns. The order of the editors' footnotes follows (perhaps Coleridgian) logic; i.e. it is assumed that when the text contains an asterisk or a dagger the reader then turns from text to note and then goes back again. The editors' footnotes, which are sometimes notes on Coleridge's footnotes, follow that order. Thus the footnote indicators within the text may leap from 1 to 5, notes 2-4 being notes on Coleridge's footnotes. Textual notes (a~b, etc) at the foot of the page, preceding the editors' notes, indicate all changes in or questions about the texts. Textual notes to A Moral and Political Lecture indicate passages not reused in Condones and give variant readings; those to Condones indicate passages added to A Moral and Political Lecture·, those to the Lecture on the Two Bills indicate passages that reappear in The Plot Discovered. See the headnotes to these works. The editions referred to in the editors' footnotes are, when they are known, those Coleridge used; "see" before the work indicates that it is not necessarily the edition Coleridge cites or quotes (though it may be one he is known to have used).

Abbreviations

XV

The following symbols are used in quoting from manuscript (with " wild" as an example): [wild] A reading supplied by the editor. [?wild] An uncertain reading. [? wild /world] Possible alternative readings. rWild1 A tentative reading(owing to obliterations, torn paper etc). [...] A n illegible word or phrase. (wild) A later interpolation by Coleridge. Strokes, dashes, and other symbols are Coleridge's.

ABBREVIATIONS (In the works listed, place of publication is London, unless otherwise noted) Allsop

[Thomas Allsop] Letters, Conversations and Recollections of S. T. Coleridge (2 vols 1936). Answer C. T. S. [S. T. Coleridge] An Answer to " A Letter to Edward Long Fox, M.D." (Bristol [1795]). A Reg The Annual Register (1758- ). A Rev Annual Review and History of Literature (1802-8). B Critic The British Critic (1793-1813). BL (1907) S. T. Coleridge Biographia Literaria ed John Shawcross (2 vols Oxford 1907). BM British Museum Bristol LB George Whalley "The Bristol Library Borrowings of Southey and Coleridge" Library xv (Sept 1949) 114-31. C Samuel Taylor Coleridge C&S S. T. Coleridge On the Constitution of the Church and State, According to the Idea of Each (1830). C&SB George Whalley "Coleridge and Southey in Bristol, 1795" Review of English Studies N.S. I (Oct 1950) 324-40. C Bibl Thomas J. Wise Two Lake Poets (1927). (Wise TLP) CC The Collected Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge (London and Princeton, N.J. 1969- ). CI The Cambridge Intelligencer (1793-1800). CL Collected Letters of Samuel Taylor Coleridge ed Earl Leslie Griggs (Oxford and New York 1956- ). CN The Notebooks of Samuel Taylor Coleridge ed Kathleen Coburn (New York and London 1957- ). Condones S. T. Coleridge Condones ad Populum. Or Addresses to the People (Bristol 1795).

xvi

Lectures 1795: On Politics and Religion

Cottle E Rec

Joseph Cottle Early Recollections; Chiefly Relating to the Late Samuel Taylor Coleridge, During His Long Residence in Bristol (2 vols 1837).

CRB

Henry Crabb Robinson on Books and Their Writers ed Edith J. Morley (3 vols 1938).

CRD

Diary, Reminiscences, and Correspondence of Henry Crabb Robinson ed Thomas Sadler (2 vols 1872). The Critical Review; or, Annals of Literature (1756-1817).

C Rev

Encyclopaedia Britannica (1 lthed 29 vols Cambridge 1910-11). Ernest Hartley Coleridge. S. T. Coleridge Essays on His Own Times, Forming a Second Series of " The Friend" ed Sara Coleridge (3 vols 1850). Farington Joseph Farington The Farington Diary ed James Greig (8 vols Diary 1922-8). Friend S. T. Coleridge The Friend ([Penrith] 1809-10). (1809-10) Friend S. T. Coleridge The Friend (1812).

EB EHC EOT

(1812)

S. T. Coleridge The Friend ed Barbara E. Rooke (2 vols London and Princeton, N.J. 1969). The Collected Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge iv. G Mag The Gentleman's Magazine (1731-1907). HNC Henry Nelson Coleridge HUL Harvard University Library H Works The Complete Works of William Hazlitt ed. P. P. Howe (21 vols 1930-4). IS Inquiring Spirit, a New Presentation of Coleridge from his Published and Unpublished Prose Writings ed Kathleen Coburn (1951). LCL Loeb Classical Library Friend (CC)

LL LRR

The letters of Charles Lamb to Which Are Added Those of His Sister Mary Lamb ed Ε. V. Lucas (3 vols 1935). S. T. Coleridge Six Lectures on Revealed Religion, Its Corrup­ tions and Political Views ms transcript by Ε. H. Coleridge.

S. T. Coleridge "Blessed Are Ye That Sow Beside All Waters!" A Lay Sermon, Addressed to the Higher and Middle Classes, on the Existing Distresses and Discontents (1817). M Chron The Morning Chronicle (1769-1862). M Mag The Monthly Magazine (1796-1843). MPhil Modern Philology (Chicago 1903- ). MPL S. T. Coleridge A Moral and Political Lecture (Bristol [1795]). M Post The Morning Post (1772-1937). LS

Abbreviations M Rev N&Q NYPL OED Pari Hist Pari Reg PD P Lects (1949) Poole

xvii

The Monthly Review (1749-1845). Notes and Queries (1849- ). New York Public Library Oxford English Dictionary (13 vols Oxford 1933). The Parliamentary History of England ed William Cobbett and John Wright (36 vols 1806-20). The Parliamentary Register [ed John Almon] (112 vols 1775— 1813). S. T. Coleridge The Plot Discovered; or, An Address to the People Against Ministerial Treason (Bristol 1795). The Philosophical Lectures of Samuel Taylor Coleridge ed Kathleen Coburn (London and New York 1949). M. E. Sandford Thomas Poole and His Friends (2 vols 1888).

PW (1829) The Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge (3 vols 1829). PW (1834) The Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge [ed Η. N. Coleridge] (3 vols 1834). PW (1844) The Poetical and Dramatic Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge [ed Η. N. Coleridge] (3 vols 1844). PW The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge ed (EHC) Ε. H. Coleridge (2 vols Oxford 1912). PW (JDC) The Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge ed J. D. Campbell (1893). RES Review of English Studies (1925- ). RHS Transactions of the Royal Historical Society (1871- ). Trans RS

Robert Southey

Rutt

The Theological and Miscellaneous Works of Joseph Priestley ed J. T. Rutt (25 vols 1817-31). John Livingstone Lowes The Road to Xanadu (rev ed 1930).

RX SCB

Southey's Common-Place Book ed J. W. Warter (4 vols 1849— 51).

Senator SL S Letters (Curry) S Life (CS) State Trials TT

The Senator; or Parliamentary Chronicle (1790-1801). S. T. Coleridge Sibylline Leaves (1817). New Letters of Robert Southey ed Kenneth Curry (2 vols New York and London 1965). Life and Correspondence of Robert Southey ed C. C. Southey (6 vols 1849-50). A Complete Collection of State Trials ed Τ. B. and T. J. Howell (33 vols 1809-26). Specimens of the Table Talk of the Late Samuel Taylor Coleridge ed Η. N. Coleridge (2nd ed 1836).

b

RCL

xviii UL

Lectures 1795: On Politics and Religion

Unpublished Letters of Samuel Taylor Coleridge ed Earl Leslie Griggs (2 vols 1932). VCL Victoria College Library, University of Toronto Watchman S. T. Coleridge The Watchman ed Lewis Patton (London and (CC) Princeton, NJ. 1970). The Collected Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge n. WW William Wordsworth

CHRONOLOGICAL TABLE 1772-1795 1772 (21 Oct) C b at Ottery St Mary, Devonshire, to the Rev John and Ann (Bowdon) Coleridge, young­ est of their 10 children 1774 1775 1776 1778 1781 1782

1783

George m king Wordsworth 2 years old Scott 1 year old M Post began Southey b American War of Independence C. Lamb b Adam Smith Wealth of Nations Gibbon Decline and Fall Hazlitt b Rousseau and Voltaire d (Oct) Death of C's father Kant Kritik der reinen Vemunft Schiller Die Riiuber (Jul) Enrolled at Christ's Hospital Priestley Corruptions of Christianity preparatory school for girls and Rousseau Confessions boys, Hertford (Sept) Christ's Hospital School, London, with C. Lamb, G. Dyer, T. F. Middleton, Robert Allen, J. M. Gutch, Le Grice brothers; met Evans family Pitt's first ministry (-1801)

1784

Samuel Johnson d

1785

De Quincey b Paley Principles of Moral and

1789

(14 Jul) French Revolution Blake Songs of Innocence Bowles Sonnets Burke Reflections on the Revolution

Political Philosophy

1790

in France

1791 (Sept) Jesus College, Cambridge, Exhibitioner, Sizar, Rustat Scholar; met S. Butler, Frend, Porson, C. Wordsworth, Wrangham (3 Jul) Encaenia, C's prize-winning Greek Sapphic Ode on the SlaveTrade

(Mar) John Wesley d Paine Rights of Man pt ι (pt π 1792) Boswell Life of Johnson Anti-Jacobin riots at Birmingham Pitt's attack on the slave-trade Fox's Libel Bill

xx

Lectures 1795: On Politics and Religion

1793 (May) Attended Cambridge trial of Frend (7 Nov) First poem in Morning Chronicle (2 Dec) Enlisted in 15th Light Dragoons as Silas Tomkyn Comberbache

(21 Jan) Louis xvi executed (1 Feb) France declared war on England and Holland (Mar-Dec) Revolt of La Vendee (Apr) Committee of Public Safety in Paris (6 May) Grey's motion for parlia­ mentary reform (8 May) Ridgway and Symonds sen­ tenced to 4 years in Newgate for selling Paine's works (Jun) Girondists arrested; Jacobins in power (26 Jul) Duke of Portland installed as chancellor of Oxford (15 Aug) Conscription—levee en masse—in France; a nation of soldiers (28 Aug) Toulon surrendered to Lord Hood (Aug-Sept) Trials of Muir and Palmer, Scottish reformers; sen­ tenced to 14 and 7 years' trans­ portation (Sept) Board of agriculture insti­ tuted (20 Sept) New French calendar (30 Sept) Bristol bridge riots: 12 killed, 50 wounded (8 Oct) Lyons recaptured by re­ publicans; massive reprisals (Oct) French planters in San Domingo place selves under British protection (16 Oct) Marie Antoinette executed (30 Oct) Brissot and other Giron­ dists beheaded (Nov) French army under Hoche defeated Austrians (27 Nov) Rev W. Winterbotham sentenced to 4 years in Newgate for preaching seditious sermons (Dec) Skirving, Margarot, and Gerrald arrested at reform meet­ ing in Edinburgh; sentenced in 1794 to 14 years' transportation (19 Dec) Toulon evacuated by British Godwin Political Justice Wordsworth An Evening Walk and Descriptive Sketches

1794 (7-10 Apr) Back at Cambridge (16 Jan) Edward Gibbon d (Jun) Poems in Cambridge Intelli- (4 Feb) Motion in Commons to gencer; set out with JosephHucks assimilate law of sedition in

Chronological Table 1794

to Oxford (met Southey), pantisocracy planned; Welsh tour (Aug-Sept) Met Thomas Poole; engaged to Sara Fricker (Sept) With RS published The Fall of Robespierre (Cambridge); Monody on Chatterton published with Rowley Poems (Cambridge) (Dec) Left Cambridge (Dec-Jan) Sonnets on Eminent Characters in M Chron (24 Dec) Began Religious Musings

xxi

Scotland to that of England defeated (17 Feb) Lansdowne's moiion in Lords for peace (Feb) Slavery abolished in French West Indies (Mar) Gerrald's trial in Edinburgh; death of Condorcet (Apr) Thomas Walker of ManChester acquitted of high treason; Danton executed; Kosciusko, leader of Polish insurrectionists, defeated Russians (May) Privy Council examined seditious letters, etc, leading to treason; Hardy, Home Tooke, Thelwall, and others arrested on charge of high treason (23 May) Habeas Corpus suspended (30 May) Fox's and Bedford's motions for peace (Jun) Howe's victory over French fleet in Bay of Biscay; Battle of Fleurus, in which Allies defeated; war of extermination against maroons in Jamaica (Jul) Fall of Robespierre (Sept) Retreat of Duke of York in Flanders (Oct) Kosciusko defeated by Rus­ sians under Suvorov (Oct-Dec) State Trials of Hardy, Tooke, and Thelwall, who were acquitted of treason; other defendants dismissed without trial (Nov) Suvorov captures Warsaw, 20,000 Poles massacred; Poland completely dismembered (30 Dec) Wilberforce, a supporter of Pitt, moved an amendment supporting a drive for peace (-1795) Paine Age of Reason Paley Evidences of Christianity RS and Lovell Poems

1795 (Jan) RS to London, to bring C (Jan) Intense cold doubled death back to Bristol; lodgings there rate; Stadtholder escaped to with RS and George Burnett England, and Batavian Republic established; first Turkish ambas­ (late Jan/early Feb) First political lecture sador made ceremonial entry into (Feb) Second and third political London (5 Feb) Habeas Corpus Suspension lectures (late Feb/early Mar) First political Act renewed

xxii 1795

Lectures 1795: On Politics and Religion lecture pub as Moral and Political Lecture (14 Mar-c 24 Apr) RS gave 12 his­ torical lectures (with C's help in composition) (spring-summer) C contributed lines to and corrected RS' Joan of Arc (c 19 May-c 12 Jun) Six Lectures on Revealed Religion (16 Jun) Lecture on the Slave-Trade (summer) Quarrel with RS; pantisocracy abandoned (Aug) Eolian Harp composed (Sept) First meeting with Words­ worth (4 Oct) Married Sara Fricker; moved to Clevedon in Somerset­ shire (17 Nov) In Bristol for meeting at Guildhall on attack on King (26 Nov) Lecture on the Two Bills (3 Dec) Revised Feb lectures (in­ cluding MPL) published as Con­ dones ad Populum (c 10 Dec) Lecture on Two Bills pub as The Plot Discovered ( c 18 Dec) An Answer to "A Letter to Fox" pub; planning The Watchman

(26 Feb) Abolition of slave-trade, to be gradual, postponed (Mar) Brothers, self-styled prophet, examined by Privy Council and declared insane; Camden ap­ pointed lord lieut of Ireland, and Catholic emancipation postponed (Apr) Prussia signed peace with France; Prince of Wales m Caro­ line of Brunswick; remains of British troops sailed from Bremen for home; riots owing to high cost of provisions at Oxford, Notting­ ham, Coventry, etc; Warren Hastings acquitted (Jun-Jul) Quiberon expedition (Jun) Intense cold killed thousands of livestock; riot at Birmingham owing to high cost of provisions (26 Jun) Meeting in St George's Fields to petition for annual par­ liaments and universal suffrage (Jul) Price of flour rose to nearfamine level; Westminster mob attacked crimping-houses (22 Jul) Spain signed peace with France (Aug) New French constitution (4 Oct) Insurrection in Paris; ended by Bonaparte firing on mob (26 Oct) Meeting of London Cor­ responding Society in Copen­ hagen Fields (27-8 Oct) French National Con­ vention dissolved, and Directory begun (29 Oct) Attack on King on way to open Parliament (4 Nov) Royal proclamation to pre­ vent seditious meetings (6 Nov) Grenville introduced bill in Lords for "safety of his majesty's person"; Pitt in Commons a motion to bring in a bill to prevent seditious meetings (10 Nov) Pitt introduced Conven­ tion Bill (8 Dec) Pitt announced that King was ready to treat for peace (18 Dec) Two Bills became law

EDITORS' INTRODUCTION I COLERIDGE IN BRISTOL 1795: LECTURING AND POLITICS LEWIS PATTON AND PETER MANN

D

URING the first half of his life Coleridge's pursuits were in large part determined by his friendships. Just prior to and during the period of the Bristol lectures the friend in the ascendancy was Robert Southey, and the lectures were a product of that relationship. They had met in June 1794, when Southey was at Balliol and Coleridge, before going on a walking tour to Wales, had come to Oxford to see an old school friend. They took to one another immediately, sharing as they did many vital interests such as poetry and politics, and their meeting seemed the luckiest of chances. In no time at all they conceived a daring plan of emigrating to America with a group of friends and forming there a Utopian colony. Southey supplied the original sugges­ tion, and Coleridge gave it a name—pantisocracy. "When Coleridge and I are sawing down a tree we shall discuss metaphysics; criticise poetry when hunting a buffalo, and write sonnets whilst following the plough".1 Under pantisocracy all would be equal, and individual property would be abolished; there would remain the "sole pro­ priety" of marriage.2 Marriage actually was central to the scheme, for the pantisocrats planned to sail in their ark in wedded pairs. When, shortly after their meeting, Coleridge and Southey visited Bristol, Coleridge was introduced to the Fricker family with its five daughters. One pantisocrat, Robert Lovell, had already married Mary Fricker; Southey was engaged to Edith; a third pantisocrat, George Burnett, had proposed, albeit unsuccessfully, to Martha. And Coleridge, the " Slave of Impulse",3 soon found himself engaged 1 RS to H. W. Bedford 22 Aug 1794: S Letters (Curry) ι 72. 2 "The leading Idea of Pantisocracy is to make men necessarily virtuous by

removing all Motives to Evil—all possible Temptations". C to RS 21 Oct [1794]: CL 1114. 3 C to RS 19 Sept 1794: CL 1106.

xxiii

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Lectures 1795: On Politics and Religion

to Sara, although he was already in love with another woman (to be sure, Mary Evans had refused him). Back at Cambridge in September, Coleridge's head and heart were alive with pantisocracy. "Since I quitted this room what and how important Events have been evolved! America! Southev! Miss Fricker!"1 A month passed, and a letter from Mary Evans asking him not to go to America revived his passion for her. He tried to restore his affections to Sara, "to her, whom I do not love", but was " wretched !"2 The "Joy of Grief " palsied his will,3 Mary was engaged to be married to another, and by early December, unable to settle himself to work, Coleridge left Cambridge without taking his degree and went to London, where most of his friends were old Christ's Hospital schoolmates, including Charles Lamb. To Southey's in­ creasingly urgent enquiries as to when he was returning to Bristol he replied in evasive terms. His reluctance to leave London is under­ standable. He had become fully aware of how much Mary Evans meant to him; pantisocracy, which Southey now proposed to re­ hearse on a farm in Wales, seemed both less likely and less attractive in its new form; and finally he had made a vigorous entry into London intellectual and radical circles and was meeting not only Lamb and old friends from Christ's Hospital but also Thomas Holcroft (re­ cently released from prison after having been indicted in October for high treason), Perry and Gray, editors of the Morning Chronicle, William Godwin, author of Political Justice, and Richard Porson; and he was writing poetry. All of this Coleridge had revealed, tact­ lessly perhaps, to Southey in a letter of 17 December.4 In a later letter he expressed in the clearest terms his attachment to Mary Evans and his absence of feeling for Sara Fricker: .. .but to marry a woman whom I do not love—to degrade her, whom I call my Wife, by making her the Instrument of low Desire—and on the removal of a desultory Appetite, to be perhaps not displeased with her Absence!—5 That Southey could read these explicit words and a fortnight later persist in bringing Coleridge back to Bristol and to Sara Fricker is astonishing. Southey, however, was adamant: Coleridge had given his word to Sara, and she was his fiancee's sister.6 So about the middle of January 1795 he went to London and led Coleridge back to Ι 2 3 4

C to RS 18 Sept [1794]: CL 1103. To RS 21 Oct [1794]: CL ι 113. To RS [3 Nov 1794]: CL I 123. CL ι 138-43.

To R S 29 Dec 1794: CL 1145. 6 see CN ι 1815n for evidence that Sara may have been on Southey's conscience. 5

Editors'1 Introduction

XXV

Bristol; "nor would he I believe have come back at all, if I had not gone to London to look for him", said Southey forty years after­ ward.1 One wonders what would have happened to Coleridge and to English literature if Southey's virtue had been less aggressive and self-confident. The immediate effect, at any rate, was to bring to an end Coleridge's anguish and indecision and to launch him into one of the most active years of his career. THE POLITICAL LECTURES BEGIN Tojudge from the testimony of his letters Southey set off for London in the week beginning 11 January,2 for by Friday, 16 January, at the latest Coleridge was back in Bristol, having been persuaded to return first to Bath with Southey, where Southey remained. Coleridge wrote to Southey in Bath on Monday, 19 January,3 and he had then been in Bristol, he says, "two or three days";4 he proposed walking over to Bath on the twentieth and returning on the same day.5 Southey may have returned with him then or on the next day, for in the Bristol Library register Southey's name appears as returning and borrowing books on 21 January. By the last week of January, at all events, Southey had joined Coleridge and George Burnett in the house in College Street that they were to occupy together until the following September. Once settled in College Street, Coleridge allowed the "Person, and polished understanding"6 of Sara Fricker to drive Mary Evans from his mind. He and Southey had resolved their differences, for the time being at least; Coleridge had reconciled himself to a Welsh prelude to pantisocracy in America, and both young men now turned their attention to earning a living. It was thought that £150 a year earned jointly by them would be sufficient for them to marry and carry out the temporary settlement in Wales.7 Originally Coleridge and Southey had hoped to finance the journey to America by Coleridge's Imita­ tions from the Modern Latin Poets and Southey's Joan of Arc, both works to be published by subscription. In January and February ι To Joseph Cottle 5 Mar 1836: S Letters (Curry) n 447. Lamb said that "when it was time for him to go and be married, the landlord [of the Cat and Salutation in Newgate Market] entreated his stay, and offered him free quarters if he would only talk". Allsop ι 205.

2 C L i 149n. 3 CL 1 149-50. 4 To RS [13] Nov 1795: CL ι 164. 5 CL ι 150. 6 ToGeorgeDyer [late Feb 1795]: CLi 151. 7 RS to Thomas Southey 21 Mar [1795]: 5 Letters (Curry) ι 93.

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Lectures 1795: On Politics and Religion

both men sought employment as reporters for the Telegraph. Also proposed was their joint production of a literary review, the Provin­ cial Magazine, which would print their poetry.1 In March they hoped for a post on a projected magazine, The Citizen.2 One venture for financing pantisocracy did not fall through—an ambitious series of public lectures on various topics that Coleridge began in late January or early February 1795 and in which Southey joined a month later. Coleridge no doubt was aware of the current lectures on Kant being delivered in London by F. A. Nitsch and even more aware of John Thelwall's political lectures. Thelwall was among the first lecturers to bring eloquence to the masses; like many popular orators of the day, he joined forces with the pamphleteer—indeed, he himself often wrote pamphlets. Coleridge followed his example, as he also followed the example of such ministers-of-religion-turned-lecturers as Joseph Priestley and Richard Price, for to Coleridge reform without religion was meaningless or futile. In his view, reform, in the true sense, had to have as its goal the diffusion of illumination and a sense of aware­ ness through the general public. Once this was done, public opinion, he believed, would be irresistible (as he declared later, in The Watch­ man, "That all may know the truth; and that the truth may make us free!")· Perhaps the specific problem was how, truly and wisely, to create, concentrate, and express power, as power is derived from human motive. After the first excitement of novelty was over and he sensed his public position, Coleridge began to develop in his Bristol lectures certain emerging patterns of thought that were to remain with him all his life. One he called "bottoming on fixed principles", by which he meant the establishment of the reform movement upon a basis more fundamentally moral and just—less merely opportunist —than that of existing philosophies. Another was specifically Chris­ tian and even Biblical in connotation; it was a hope for the creation of an "elect",3 a "saving remnant", or, as he later called it, a "clerisy",4 which would furnish an educated leadership in both Church and State. These two ambitions were only means to a third and major purpose—the salvation of the people through an education embracing the whole range of humanity's interests. An early and important acquaintance made by Southey and 1 C to RS [19 Jan 1795], to Dyer [late Feb]: CL ι 150, 152. RS to G. C. Bedford 8 Feb 1795: S Life (CS) ι 231, 232. 2 CL ι 155.

3 Cf Religious Musings line 88: PW (EHC) ι 112. 4 A word coined by C and first in print in C&S (1830).

Editors'1 Introduction

xxvii

Coleridge was Joseph Cottle, a young bookseller in Bristol with poetic aspirations who wished to be the patron of poets. He offered Southey £50 for his epic Joan of Arc when completed and offered each of the poets thirty guineas for a volume of poems. Generous with advances for many years, in spite of business reverses, he was useful to both Coleridge and Southey, though he came to prefer the latter. Un­ happily, he was to be the first to write extensively of Coleridge's early life. He had come to bear a grudge against Coleridge, some of whose scoffing remarks had become known to him.1 Nursing his wounded vanity, he was determined to get even, and after Coleridge's death was the first to publish details of his opium addiction.2 For this one could forgive him, but his record is an unreliable one, partly from haziness of memory and partly from unscrupulous handling of manuscripts. His Early Recollections (1837), for better or worse, is the principal source for the story of the Bristol lectures. Early in 1795, in February probably, though he may have begun in January, Coleridge gave three lectures. "S. T. C.", Southey wrote to Cottle on 5 March 1836, correcting errors in Cottle's manuscript, "gave his first and second lectures in the Corn Market and his third at a vacant house somewhere near Castle Green. These were followed by my Lectures, and you know the course of our lives till the October following, when we separated."3 Southey's dismissal of the later his­ tory of the lectures ("you know the course of our lives" till October) is for our purposes unfortunate. Southey's own memory in 1836 was unclouded, his mental breakdown still two years off, but Cottle's recollection, except when prompted by a document, was on any particular point never reliable. His account, even when he is trying to be honest, is a muddle; he lists some lectures by place of delivery, others by subject, and still others by date, so that one cannot tell whether one lecture is being listed once or three times. Beyond that remains the question of whether any of his "facts" are to be trusted. According to Cottle, Coleridge's first two political lectures were 1 Partly through C's letters to Wade and others, which he had borrowed, Southey was still alive when Cottle wrote his Early Recollections, the manuscript of which he sent to Southey in Feb 1836; he never saw Southey's private letters in which he was mentioned, some of the remarks in them on Cottle and his poetry even more scoffing than C's—e.g. "Cottle—who brayed thro the epic trumpet.. .hath

committed another work His head has lost something—but such a head it matters not what becomes,.To John Rickman Jan 1802: S Letters (Curry) 1267. 2 On Cottle's vanity see CN ι 566 and n, 1236; perhaps, if Cottle recognised the portrait, the unkindest cut of all, in print too, was in BL ch 2. 3 S Letters (Curry) π 448.

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Lectures 1795: On Politics and Religion

delivered at the Plume of Feathers in Wine Street, Bristol;1 according to Southey, in the Corn Market. "Q", writing in 1819, remembered the first lecture being given "in a room over the corn-market".2 Coleridge himself, in a letter to George Dyer conjecturally dated "late February", merely wrote: "Since I have been in Bristol I have endeavored to disseminate Truth by three political Lectures", not naming places.3 The "vacant house near Castle Green", in Southey's letter to Cottle, suggests that after the notoriety of the first two lec­ tures it was not easy to rent a room for the third—perhaps the reason that Coleridge did not give a fourth lecture he had planned. "I believe I shall give a fourth—", he wrote to Dyer in the letter of "late February", "But the opposition of the Aristocrats is so furious and determined, that the Good I do is not proportionate to the Evil I occasion.. .".4 The former Bristolian who signed himself "Q" when writing a quarter century later noted that Coleridge had appeared "like a comet or meteor in our horizon"J When he gave his Bristol lectures, Coleridge quickly became a central figure and felt the heady stimula­ tion of admiration. Incidentally, he learned the painful truth that the devil or Tom Fool often governs the tongue. A few years later, with his situation in Bristol yet fresh in mind, he said: What wonder... if in the heat of grateful affection & the unguarded Desire of sympathizing with these who so kindly sympathized with me, I too often deviated from my own Principles? And tho' I detested Revolutions in my calmer moments, as attempts, that were necessarily baffled and made blood-horrible by the very causes, which alone justify Revolutions (I mean, the ignorance, superstition, profligacy, & vindictive passions, which are the natural effects of Despotism & false Religion)... yet with an ebullient Fancy, a flowing Utterance, a light & dancing Heart, & a disposition to catch fire by the very rapidity of my own motion, & to speak vehemently from mere verbal associations... I aided the Jacobins, by witty sarcasms & subtle reasonings & declamations full of genuine feeling against all Rulers & against all established Forms!6 ι E Rec ι 19-20. 2 MMag XLVIII (Oct 1819) 204. The upper room of the Corn Market— popularly so called, but really the Cheese Market—was a schoolroom. The Plume of Feathers, also in Wine Street, was only a few steps away from the Corn Market. 3 CL ι 152. 4 Ibid. He was not alone in ex­ periencing such opposition. Joseph Farington records in his diary for 6 Jan

1795 that the publisher of Hayley's Milton told him that " Hayley first produced a life written in so strong a spirit of republicanism that.. .Hecould not print it. Hayley made alterations, but said He would print at a future time, as first written.—Hayley is a violent Republican." Farington ι 85. 5 M Mag XLVIII (1819) 203. 6 To Sir George and LadyBeaumont 1 Oct 1803: CL π 1000-1.

Editors'1 Introduction

xxix

Coleridge supplies a sample of one of these oratorical flights: Speaking in public at Bristol I adverted to a public Supper which had been given by Lord 1 forget his name, in honor of a victory gained by the Austrians, & after a turbid Stream of wild Eloquence I said—"This is a true Lord's Supper in the communion of Darkness! This is a Eucharist of Hell! A sacrament of Misery!—over each morsel & each Drop of which the Spirit of some murdered Innocent cries aloud to God, This is my Body! & this my Blood!—" —These words form alas! a faithful specimen of too many of my Declamations at that Time / fortunately for me, the Govern­ ment, I suppose, knew that both Southey & I were utterly unconnected with 1 any party or club or society

Setting aside the hostility apparent in her picture of Coleridge in 1795, Charlotte Poole's comment comes to much the same thing: "Tom Poole has a friend with him of the name of Coldridge: a young man of brilliant understanding, great eloquence, desperate fortune, democratick principles, and entirely led away by the feelings of the moment."2 The perils of ebullience quickly manifested themselves, even though Coleridge seems habitually to have lectured from a manuscript, albeit often a rough one, and his rueful comment suggests that he launched into impromptu eloquence. He said of his first lecture, which was published as A Moral and Political Lecture: "I was obliged to publish, it having been confidently asserted that there was Treason in it. Written at one sitting between the hours of twelve at night and Breakfast Time of the day, on which it was delivered, be­ lieve me that no literary Vanity prompted me to the printing of it— The reason which compelled me to publish it forbad me to correct it." 3 But the evidence supplied by the published lecture as well as by acquaintance with Coleridge's habits suggests that his memory may have been faulty on two counts. The very title of his lecture in its printed version, protesting a desire to appeal to calm and sober reason, persuades one that when he delivered it in Bristol he may have strayed beyond his hastily composed text. And no one at all familiar with Coleridge's ways as a writer could believe that he ever sent an unamended manuscript to a printer. "Q", attacking Coleridge's account of the Bristol lectures in the Biographia Literaria, remembered not only where the lecture had taken place and that Southey and Lovell were in the audience, but also that Coleridge "had talked of 'preparing the way for a revolution in this country, bloodless as Poland's but not, like her's, to be assassinated by the 1 2

Ibid 1001. Poole ι 124.

3 To Dyer [late Feb 1795]: CL1152.

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Lectures 1795: On Politics and Religion

foul hands of ——.' "1 A similar passage in A Moral and Political Lecture reads: "...if a great people shall from hence become adequately illuminated for a Revolution bloodless, like Poland's, but not, like Poland's assassinated by the foul Treason of Tyrants against Liberty".2 This passage is not found in the revised and expanded version of the speech published in Condones in December of the same year. " Q's" statement, and the motive behind it, are obscure, unless we assume that after nearly twenty-five years he is quoting from memory. His use of the blank certainly implies that C libellously or slanderously inserted an actual name or names. As to the manner and effect of Coleridge's lectures, which, if they were like Southey's, lasted about an hour,3 Cottle in his Recollections is uniformly complimentary. In one lecture "his audience were kept in good feeling, by the happy union of wit, humour, and argument".4 The effect of another was greatly heightened by " Mr. C's arch man­ ner of recitation",5 and in general "Mr. C's lectures were numerously attended, and enthusiastically applauded".6 Another hearer, writing in a contemporary publication called The Observer, was, though friendly to Coleridge, less than flattering about his appearance and manner: "...his speech is perfect monotonism; his person is slovenly.... Mr C would... do well to appear with cleaner stockings in public, and if his hair were combed out every time he appeared in public it would not depreciate him in the esteem of his friends."7 Cottle, though he described the lectures as "anti-Pittite",8 has little to say of their political repercussions. In Cottle's account the only instance of vocal opposition to Coleridge in his lectures occurs in this footnote: Few attended Mr. C's lectures but those whose political views were similar to his own; but on one occasion, some gentlemen of the opposite party came into the lecture-room, and, at one sentiment they heard, testified their disapprobation by the only easy and safe way in their power; namely, by a hiss. The auditors were startled at so unusual a sound, not knowing to what it might conduct; but their noble leader soon quieted their fears, by instantly remarking, with great coolness, "I am not at all surprised, when the red hot prejudices of aristocrats are suddenly plunged into the ι 2

M Mag XLviil (1819) 204. MPL 7; below, ρ 7.

3 ".. .Two lectures a week an hour each in recitation": RS to Thomas Southey 21 Mar [1795]: S Letters (Curry) ι 92. 4 E Rec ι 20.

s ibid ι 22. 6 Ibid ι 20. 7 The Observer. Part 1st. Being a TransientGlanceataboutFortyYouths of Bristol [summer 1795] 15. See also

below. 8 E Reel 20.

Editors' Introduction

xxxi

cool water of reason, that they should go off with a hiss!" The words were electric. The assailants felt, as well as testified, their confusion, and the whole company confirmed it by immense applause! There was no more hissing.1

Coleridge himself later told Crabb Robinson of another occasion on which he was hissed. "A fellow came and hissed him, and an alterca­ tion ensued. The man sneered at Coleridge for professing public principle, and said: 'Why, if you are so public-spirited, do you take money at the door?' 'For a reason,' said Coleridge, 'which I am sorry in the present instance has not been quite successful—to keep out blackguards.' "2 The charge for admission to Coleridge's lectures was one shilling, the same fee John Thelwall charged for his last two Beaufort Buildings lectures in December 1795. Thelwall's hearers, however, were numbered in the hundreds—one member of a lecture audience "judged there could not be fewer than 800 persons crowded together".3 Coleridge must have had a modest number, for we hear nothing of any considerable profit. The Observer implies that Coleridge ran into heavy weather in his political lecturing, but " Undaunted by the storms of popular preju­ dice, unswayed by magisterial influence, he spoke in public what none had the courage in this City to do before,—he told Men that they have Rights."4 The phrase suggests the "rights of man" and implies that Coleridge was a "democrat", a question raised many times, then and later, about his early political views. In Biographia Literaria Coleridge asserted that his early politics were "almost equi-distant from all the three prominent parties, the Pittites, the Foxites, and the Democrats ".5 "Q", who had known Coleridge in the Bristol days, agrees that he was anti-Pittite and also that he was anti-Foxite, for he remembers "a phillippic I once heard Mr. C. utter against that statesman"; but, he continues, "If ever a democrat existed" Coleridge was one.6 Earlier, in The Friend, Coleridge had attempted to erase the Jacobin label, defying his "worst enemy to shew, in any of my few writings, the least bias to Irreligion, Immorality, or Jacobinism "J This act of self-defence irritated Southey—"It is worse than folly, for if he was not a Jacobine, in the common accepta­ tion of the name, I wonder who the Devil was. I am sure I was, am 1 ERec I 178 n. 2 CRB ι 59. 3 Farington Diary 14 Dec 1795: ι 123. For his earlier lectures that year Thelwall had charged a sixpence admission fee.

4 The Observer^ 15.Cfbelow,plxxii; LRR, below, ρ 209. * BL ch 10 (1907) 1 121. 6 M Mag XLVIII (1819) 204. 7 Friend No 2 (8 Jun 1809): CC II 25n.

χχχϋ

Lectures 1795: On Politics and Religion

still, and ever more shall be. I am sure too that he wrote a flaming panegyric of Tom Paine, and that I delivered it in one of my lectures."1 It would take a skilful hand to dissect this piece of spleen. Did Southey, who had just accepted employment with the Quarterly Re­ view, hold this same line with his neighbours, Sir George Beaumont and Lord Lonsdale? Oddly enough, the Paine remark that he now restores to Coleridge he had claimed for himself in 1795.2 An attentive reading of Coleridge's writings and letters of this period diminishes one's interest in any of the standard labels. Coleridge makes it clear that his services were not appreciated in some quarters: "Mobs and Mayors, Blockheads and Brickbats, Placards and Press gangs have leagued in horrible Conspiracy against me... Two or three uncouth and unbrained Automata have threatened my Life—and in the last Lecture the Genus infimum were scarcely restrained from attacking the house in which the 'damn'd Jacobine was jawing away.' "3 Even if we allow for humorous exag­ geration, it is clear that Coleridge was stigmatised as a radical. Over a year later, writing to John Prior Estlin, the Unitarian minister in Bristol, Coleridge, who had preached in various other towns, laments that he is unable to relieve Estlin in the pulpit in Bristol because of "my political notoriety".4 This notoriety had its effect on his political lectures, for in a letter to Dyer of 10 March he said: "I was soon obliged by the persecutions of Darkness to discontinue them".5 The deterrent, if similar to that encountered in London and elsewhere by radical speakers, was the refusal of innkeepers and other owners of public rooms to lease them to anti-Government speakers. To do so might lead to withdrawal of licence or other reprisal by magistrates favourable to the Government.6 Thus Coleridge became aware of what it meant to belong to a minority: "The Democrats are... sturdy in their support of me—but their number is comparatively small ".7 However small their number, they were evidently a cordial and admiring group. The Critical Review for April 1795 found A Moral and Political Lecture "spirited, and often brilliant", with "more than sixpenny worth of good sense", and Coleridge "a young man who possesses a poetical imagination".8 Revised and expanded, this first political 1 RS to Charles Danvers 15 Jun 1809: S Letters (Curry) ι 511. 2 See below, ρ xxxiv. 3 To Dyer [late Feb 1795]: CL1152. 4 [22 Aug 1796]: CL ι 233. 5 CL ι 155.

6 See above, Southey's mention of the " vacant house"for thethird lecture. 7 To Dyer [late Feb 1795]: CL I 152. 8 C Rev ser 2 xm (1795) 455.

Editors' Introduction

xxxiii

lecture was reprinted as the "Introductory Address" of Condones ad Populum, or, Addresses to the People, which was published on 3 December 1795. The second lecture delivered in February, and perhaps part of the third, appeared under the title " On the Present War", though in the Preface Coleridge calls the Condones "two addresses ". In later life he was to refer to these early political lectures as the first of his "Lay-sermons".1

SOUTHEY'S HISTORICAL LECTURES The year 1795 saw the association of Coleridge and Southey draw to its closest stage. Perhaps by now they had lost some of the exuberance of the previous year, when they met in Oxford, each then stalled and perplexed, finding in each other a source of vaulting hope that centred in their pantisocratic dreams. But now was a time for action, and that was stimulating, too. Their collaboration seemed to contain the promise of the sort of fulfilment actually achieved two years later by Coleridge and Wordsworth, when it appeared almost as if the achievement of each owed more to the powers of the other. Southey certainly was possessed by this feeling when he wrote in early February: "Coleridge is writing at the same table; our names are written in the book of destiny, on the same page."2 After Coleridge was " obliged to discontinue" his political lectures, Southey gave a course of historical lectures " unconnected with—at least not immediately relative to—the politics of the Day",3 of which Coleridge "wrote one half in Quantity" .4 Cottle prints the prospectus of Southey's twelve lectures from "the Origin and Progress of Society" to "the American War". They were due to be given on Tuesdays and Fridays, beginning on Saturday, 14 March 1795,5 on which day an advertisement for them appeared in Felix Farley's Bristol Journal. They began on time, for Southey wrote to his brother Tom on 21 March that he had already given three. "Public speaking is awkward at first, but three lectures have accustomed me to it."6 He mentioned also that they had moral and political implications. " I am giving a course of historical lectures at Bristol teaching what is right by showing what is wrong; my company of course is sought 1

LS (1817) ixn. RS to Bedford 8 Feb 1795: S Life (CS) ι 231. 3 C to Dyer 10 Mar 1795: CL ι 155. 2

c

4 C to RS 13 Nov 1795: CL ι 172. Prospectus in Bodl. MS Autogr. b. 7. f 9. 6 S Letters (Curry) ι 93. 5

RCL

xxxiv Lectures 1795: On Politics and Religion by all who love good Republicans and odd characters."1 No doubt with Coleridge's experience of February in mind, he believed he might be required to publish them. "Tis possible that I may be called upon to publish my historical lectures; this I shall be unwilling to do, as they are only splendid declamation."2 The series should have ended on 21 April, but the fourth lecture, "On the Rise, Progress and Decline of the Roman Empire", which, according to Cottle, Coleridge had requested from Southey as a sub­ ject "to which he had devoted much attention",3 was postponed when the lecturer failed to turn up. Southey subsequently gave the lecture himself. Coleridge's defection here presumably lay behind Southey's later charges of indolence. According to Cottle, Southey's irritation boiled over during an expedition to Tintern Abbey im­ mediately after the missed lecture. The party, which included the two Fricker sisters, Edith and Sara, returned early to Bristol to allow Southey to prepare the postponed lecture. The series should then have finished on Friday, 24 April, instead of the twenty-first as planned. However, in a letter to Tom Southey of 9 May, Southey says quite explicitly, though possibly mistakenly, that he has given thirteen lectures, affirming at the same time their radical political character. "My Lectures are finished and that very quickly. I gave thirteen—and said bolder truths than any other Man in this country has yet ventured. Speaking of my friend Tom I cried O Paine! hireless Priest of Liberty! unbought teacher of the poor! Chearing to me is the reflection that my heart hath ever acknowledged—that my tongue hath proudly proclaimed—the truth and Divinity of thy Doctrines!" 4 If in fact he gave thirteen, then the series should have finished on Tuesday, 28 April. The record of Southey's borrowings from the Bristol Library suggests that the eleventh and twelfth lec­ tures, as given in the prospectus, were delivered later than planned (which would have been on 21 and 24 April, allowing for the supposed cancellation and later delivery of Lecture 4).5 Having given all his S Letters (Curry) ι 92. Ibid ι 93. His son says, "Of these lectures I can find no trace among my father's papers." S Life (CS) ι 235. 3 Cottle E Rec ι 38. 4 S Letters (Curry) 193-4. See above, ρ xxxii, Southey's later claim that C wrote a "flaming panegyric" to Paine, which RS delivered in a lecture. 5 On 27 Apr C and RS took out the second and third volumes of Macfar1

2

lane's History of the Reign of George the Third (3 vols 1770-94), returning them 12 May. Bristol LB 120. The eleventh lecture included the "History of Europe to the American War"; the subject of the twelfth was "The Ameri­ can War". For both of these subjects Macfarlane would have been essential. These lectures, then, may have been given 28 Apr and 1 May.

Editors' Introduction

XXXV

lectures, Southey turned without delay to the rewriting of Joan of Arc, which occupied him until about 10 August.1 As far as we know, he gave no other lectures at this time. Southey's lectures have never been published, although the first subject of his Lecture 6, "Manners and Irruptions of the Northern Nations", was printed in part under the title "Historical Sketch of the Manners and Religion of the Ancient Germans, introductory to a Sketch of the Manners, Religion, and Politics of present Germany", in the third number of The Watchman.2 Whereas in his own lectures, Coleridge claimed, Southey contributed only " a very few pages... And such Pages! I would not have suffered them to have stood in a Lecture of your's", to Southey's lectures Coleridge "dedicated my whole mind & heart—and wrote one half in Quantity—; but in Quality, you must be conscious, that all the Tug of Brain was mine: and that your Share was little more than Transcription".3 Unless he felt he had a strong claim to Lecture 6, it seems unlikely that Coleridge would have printed it in The Watchman, without acknow­ ledgment to Southey, at a time when he and Southey were estranged.

LECTURES ON REVEALED RELIGION So far three lectures by Coleridge have been accounted for. We must now turn to the "Six Lectures on Revealed Religion, its Corruptions, and its Political Views " for which Cottle provides a prospectus but no dates4 and which Coleridge in his Preface to Condones says followed: "The two following Addresses were delivered in the month of February, 1795, and were followed by six others in defence of natural and revealed Religion".5 Unlike his earlier political lectures, these theological lectures were presented under the patronage of several Bristol citizens, including the Reverend and Mrs John Prior Estlin, Mr Morgan (a wine shipper) and his wife, and the three Cottle brothers, Amos, Joseph, and Robert (Joseph was the publisher), and their father.6 The lectures, "intended for two classes of men, Chris­ tians and Infidels", were probably given on Tuesday and Friday evenings in the Card Room of the Assembly Coffeehouse on the 1 George Whalley "Coleridge, Southey and 'Joan of Arc'" NtScQ cxcix (1954) 67-9. 2 Watchman (CC) 89-92; see 89 η 1 for RS's claim to the essay. 3 To RS (who was best qualified to

refute such a claim if inaccurate) 13 Nov 1795: CL ι 172. 4 E Rec ι 27-8. 5 Condones (1795) [3]; below, ρ 27. 6 HNC MS Table Talk (3), in VCL.

xxxvi

Lectures 1795: On Politics and Religion

Quay.1 The evidence of the Bristol Library register of borrowings suggests that the lectures were given in the second half of May and early June. Cudworth's True Intellectual System was taken out on Friday, 15 May, and Maclaurin's Account of Sir Isaac Newton's Philosophical Discoveries on Monday, 18 May.2 Both of these works entered into Lecture 1, either in the form of quotation or more in­ directly but still recognisably, which suggests that the first lecture was given on Tuesday, 19 May. The fact that Lecture 1 offers a com­ paratively well-prepared and full account3 of the advertised topic suggests perhaps that Coleridge spent more than the week-end of 15-17 May and Monday, 18 May, in putting it together. It could have been done, however.4 A limiting date for their conclusion is provided by Coleridge's Lecture on the Slave-Trade. This was adver­ tised for, and delivered on, 16 June. If delivered within these con­ jectural dates, the Lectures on Revealed Religion were delivered twice weekly, probably on Tuesdays and Fridays like Southey's historical series of March-April. Reference to the Bristol Library register can help towards a more precise, though still tentative, dating of the series. In what is presented as Lecture 4 in this edition Coleridge incorporated some material (verbal borrowings and matters of fact) from the first volume of Michaelis's Introduction to the New Testament. He borrowed this from the library on 1 June (returning it on 11 June) and at the same time took out Paley's View of the Evidences of Christianity, which also entered verbally into the same lecture.5 This part of the lectures, then, could have been delivered as early as the next day, Tuesday, 2 June, or on Friday, 5 June. From an advertisement in the Bristol Mercury of 1 June, we know that Lecture 4 was announced for eight o'clock the following evening. Lectures 5 and 6 would then have been given between 5 and 12 June. With the return of the Michaelis work to the library on 11 June, any pattern of borrowing and known read­ ing parallel to the subject-matter of the Lectures on Revealed Re­ ligion comes to an end. For a time at least Coleridge seems to have had some intention 1 E Rec ι 27; advertisement of Lecture 4 in the Bristol Mercury 1 Jun 1795. The Assembly Coffeehouse was one of the principal coffeehouses in Bristol: The New History.. .of... Bristol (Bristol 1794) 91. 2 Bristol LB 120, 121. 3 See below, ρ 86. 4 C worked speedily: two books

used in preparing his Lecture on the Slave-Trade, Clarkson's Essay on the Impolicy of the African Slave Trade and Wadstrom's Essay on Colonization, were borrowed only the day before that lecture was delivered; and see below, the library evidence for Lecture 4 of the Lectures on Revealed Religion. 5 BristolLB 121.

Editors'1 Introduction

xxxvii

of preparing these lectures for publication, as he had already done with his early political lectures. In late March 1796, when he was engaged with The Watchman, he said: "I find, that the Watchman comes more easy to me—so that I shall begin about my Christian Lectures—".1 In fact, even as early as 1796 it would have been difficult for him to have published them without much revision, for his ideas were shifting constantly from the end of 1795 onwards. By March 1796, for example, the Priestleian optimism that had supported the buoyant tone of the Lectures on Revealed Religion and coloured many of the ideas in them had suffered some check from his ex­ periences during the last six months or so.2 The idea of a critical treatise on Godwin's Political Justice increasingly occupied his mind from 1796 to 1799, and although this would undoubtedly have made use of the material gathered together in the lectures, the lectures themselves were evidently put on one side. They remained in Coleridge's possession, however. The fact that he re-read them later in life3 indicates that the manuscript was probably in his library at Highgate and so passed into the hands of Dr and Mrs Gillman, with whom he lived, and from them to their granddaughter, Mrs Lucy E. Watson. On the first page of his transcript of the manuscript Ε. H. Coleridge noted: " The MSS were placed in my hands by Mrs Watson, the granddaughter of James Gillman." The holograph manuscript of the lectures, however, has disappeared; the lectures exist only in Ε. H. Coleridge's transcript.4 LECTURES ON THE SLAVE-TRADE, THE HAIR-POWDER TAX, AND THE CORN LAWS In the long accusing letter reviewing their association together that Coleridge sent to Southey on 13 November 1795, shortly before Southey was due to leave for Portugal, Coleridge asserted that he had delivered altogether eleven lectures.5 With the three political lectures of February and the six Lectures on Revealed Religion of May-June, we are left to account for two other lectures. One is well authenti­ cated—the Lecture on the Slave-Trade, which was delivered, accord­ ing to a newspaper advertisement, "by particular desire", at the Assembly Coffeehouse on the Quay on 16 June. It was printed in condensed and revised form in the fourth number of The Watchman,6 ι To Poole 30 Mar 1796: CL ι 195. 2 See the letter to the Rev John Edwards 20 Mar 1796: CL 1192. 3 See below, ρ 178 η 1.

See below, pp 76-9. s CL χ 172. 6 See Watchman (CC) 130-40.

4

xxxviii

Lectures 1795: On Politics and Religion

and also exists in an incomplete transcript by Ε. H. Coleridge that substantiates Coleridge's assertion, in the above letter to Southey, that Southey's contributions to Coleridge's lectures were pages he "would not have suffered...to have stood in a Lecture of your's ".1 Coleridge, writes The Observer, "has delivered many Lectures here, one of which (on the Slave-trade) is a proof of the detestation in which he holds that infamous traffic". He then continues—unfortunately for our purposes—"As all his lectures are about to be published, it would be useless to treat of them in this place. The Public, I will dare to predict, will be highly gratified in them."2 One lecture is unaccounted for. Cottle mentions a Lecture on the Hair-Powder Tax, "in which his audience were kept in good feeling by the happy union of wit, humour, and argument", but again fails to give a date.3 The tax was imposed on 6 May and was reported in the Bristol newspapers a few days later. If the Lectures on Revealed Religion were being prepared from 15 May onwards, as Coleridge's library borrowings suggest, the hair-powder lecture may have pre­ ceded them and been given some time in the week beginning Sunday, 10 May. However, the hair-powder tax was satirised in newspapers and prints as early as March, when Pitt proposed it in the budget of 1795, and for many months thereafter the "swinish multitude" (democrats with unpowdered hair, labelled with Burke's unfortunate remark) and the "guinea pigs" (aristocrats who would pay a guinea for a licence to wear hair powder) were the subjects of jest and caricature.4 Tom Poole, who always wore his hair unpowdered, may have given some impetus to Coleridge's lecture.5 According to Cottle, Coleridge later repeated the lecture as a sermon in Bath, "with the exception of its humourous appendages".6 Cottle also speaks of another twice-told lecture—a Lecture on the Corn Laws delivered first in Bristol at the Assembly Room and repeated as a sermon at Bath, "which 'Corn Laws', he laboured to show, were cruelty to the poor, and the alone cause of the prevailing sufferings, and popular discontent".7 The "Letter from Liberty to 1 CL ι 172. See below, pp 239-43 and nn; Southey's contributions were passages copied from books. 2 The Observer pp 14—15. 3 E Reel 20. 4 See, among others, the descriptions of One of the Swinish Multitude (pub 6 Mar), Leaving Off Powder (pub 10 Mar), and Favorite Guinea Pigs Going to Market (pub 27 Jul) in M. D.

George Catalogue of Political and Per­ sonal Satires.. .in the British Museum πι (1942) 162, 163, 187. 5 See Poole ι 131n. « ERec 1182-3. 7 Ibid ι 181. In 1791 the landed in­ terest had succeeded in repealing Burke's Corn Law of 1773 and raising the protective tariff on imported corn. Instead of a nominal tariff on imports

Editors'1 Introduction

xxxix

her Dear Friend Famine", which precedes the "Introductory Address" of the Condones, could conceivably come from such a lecture—and Cottle has Coleridge "amusing" his audience by recit­ ing it "at one of his lectures".1 It could also have been part of the second or third political lecture given in February (the price of wheat in that month stood at the high rate of 58 shillings a quarter, rising to the famine price of 108 shillings in August).2 There is, however, no evidence apart from Cottle's that it ever was part of a lecture. Putting lectures into print has always been common practice. As already noted, Coleridge's first two lectures, with possibly part of a third and with some material from the Lectures on Revealed Re­ ligion, became Condones. If a lecture has not been published, one has sometimes a fairly reliable indicator as to whether it was actually ever delivered. When Coleridge's ventures in 1796 put a heavy pre­ mium on matter for the press, was that lecture reused as an essay? Southey's lecture on the Germans from his historical series (in which Coleridge had a large share) was used in the third number of The Watchman, and the Lecture on the Slave-Trade in the fourth number. If, as Cottle thought, Coleridge gave a lecture on the hair-powder tax, it was perhaps not printed because its author considered it trivial or ephemeral (the reviewer of A Moral and Political Lecture in the Critical Review had called for a statement of Coleridge's "prin­ ciples" in a "form sufficiently scientific and determinate"). The references to the hair-powder tax in The Watchman evince no special preparation and are much the sorts of things to be found in the daily press of the period. Subject-matter deriving from a possible lecture on the Corn Laws (except for the Letter from Liberty to Famine) would be hard to trace, for the subject is interrelated with the whole question of scarcity, grain monopolies, and the like. Coleridge's reuse of material involves two contending forces in his nature: his responwhen corn reached the top price of 48i. a quarter, as under Burke's law, the top price was raised to 54.?. a quarter. There was a moderate tariff on im­ ported corn when the price reached 54-50,?. a quarter, and a prohibitive duty below 50.s. The war diminished the supply of foreign corn, and prices fluctuated with the English weather. In July 1795 a quartern loaf of bread cost a shilling—an eighth to a tenth of the average journeyman's weekly wages.

ι E Rec ι 22. 2 Earl Stanhope Life of the Right Honourable William Pitt (rev ed 1879 3 vols) π 113. If the Corn Laws had been the subject of C's second or third lecture in February, it would have been even more pertinent redelivered as a sermon later in the year, after the disastrously cold summer killed the wheat harvest and brought nearfamine to the labouring class in towns and cities.

xl

Lectures 1795: On Politics and Religion

siveness, leading him to impromptu and to rashness; and his contemplativeness, leading him to hesitation and revision and carefully wrought effects, which (and it was real labour) he might use again and again. LECTURES ON THE ENGLISH REBELLION AND THE FRENCH REVOLUTION In addition to the series on natural and revealed religion, Coleridge intended giving another subscription series of six lectures on a " com­ parative view" of the French Revolution and the English Revolution of the seventeenth century. No advertisement for them in the Bristol press has been found, but a printed prospectus was preserved among Poole's papers, with an autograph invitation to dinner in verse from Coleridge to Poole on the back.1 The lectures were to be given once a week, Tuesday evenings, again at the Assembly Coffeehouse, be­ ginning 23 June. The germ of the idea for the lectures may have grown from Coleridge's contributions to and interest in Southey's historical lectures, which, said Cottle, "were numerously attended, and their composition was greatly admired".2 Among the subjects Coleridge proposed to treat were "The Liberty of the Press" (Lec­ ture 2), "Characters of Charles the First, and Louis the Sixteenth" (Lecture 4), and "On Revolution in general" (Lecture 6).3 There is good reason to believe that these lectures were not de­ livered. First, there is a significant change in the pattern of Coleridge's reading in the summer of 1795 in as far as it is reflected in his borrow­ ings from the Bristol Library after 16 June, the date of his Lecture on the Slave-Trade. He took out only Edwards's History.. .of the British Colonies in the West Indies and Chatterton's Rowley Poems (1794), in which his Monody on the Death of Chatterton was first published. Although we must use the library register with caution as an indication of what Coleridge was reading at any time (he had the facilities of Cottle's bookshop), the exclusion during June and July of political and historical works dealing with the English and French Revolutions does not suggest the strenuous reading that would be required of him. Second, there are no surviving references to the lectures by Coleridge himself. If they were not given, there may have been various obstacles: ι BM Add MS 35343 f 71; the verse invitation has been printed in CL1296. There is another copy of the prospectus in the Berg Collection of NYPL.

ι EReci

37. For the complete prospectus see below, pp 255-6. 3

Editors' Introduction

xli

Coleridge depended on subscriptions, and financial support may not have been forthcoming; the Bristol authorities may have had enough of his lectures for the moment and have spoken words of warning to the proprietor of the Assembly Coffeehouse. Another reason why they were not given could have been that the poet took precedence for the time being over the lecturer; he was preparing copy for his first volume of poems, to be published the following year as Poems on Various Subjects (the Monody grew from 107 lines in the Rowley Poems to 143 lines in his own volume). In addition, cooling friend­ ship may have robbed him of Southey's aid, so necessary in an his­ torical series. Conflict came to a head in early August 1795 over Southey's inclination to adopt the law as a profession, or even the Church, and over differences in their attitudes to pantisocracy. But trouble between the two had been brewing in fact since Coleridge's return to Bristol in the previous January. By mid-1795 Southey had abandoned any real intention of putting the pantisocratic community of goods into practice, even on the farm in Wales. Coleridge, on the other hand, had unequivocally and publicly reaffirmed his belief, on Christian grounds, in the ideal of common property and his abhor­ rence of private ownership; this must have brought the whole prob­ lem of pantisocracy, and the relations between himself and Southey, to a critical point. It is easy to understand Coleridge's and Southey's attraction for each other: binding them together in their common interests were the dazzling brilliance of Coleridge's mind and the austere strength of Southey's character. "Farewell, sturdy Republican!" Coleridge said in his first letter to Southey,1 attributing to him the ideal virtue of the "enlightened and unluxurious ancients".2 In his next letter he praises Southey's "confirmed Habits of strict Morality" and his "stern Simplicity of Republican Wants".3 In practice his efforts sometimes went into holding Southey to this ideal, as when he said: "I am delighted to feel you superior to me in Genius as in Virtue".4 "Genius" perhaps is flattery, but Coleridge needed to look up to Southey's superiority in virtue, even when that virtue fell short of perfection. "Your undeviating Simplicity of Rectitude has made you too rapid in decision".5 In a letter to George Dyer, an awareness of defect may lurk among the praises Coleridge heaped upon Southey: "His Genius and acquirements are uncommonly great—yet they ι 6 Jul [1794]: CL ι 84. 2 See below, ρ 317. 3 To RS 13 Jul [1794]: CL ι 85.

t To RS 18 Sept [1794]: CL 1104. s χ0 RS 19 Sept [1794]: CL ι 106. See also CNI 1815 and n.

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Lectures 1795: On Politics and Religion

bear no proportion to his moral Excellence—He is truly a man of perpendicular Virtue—a downright upright RepublicanVl Friendship had a special meaning for Coleridge: "The ardour of private Attachments makes Philanthropy a necessary habit of the Soul. I love my Friend—such as he is, all mankind are or might be!"2 In the end Southey failed him. He abandoned pantisocracy and went off to Portugal at the expense of a well-to-do uncle, thus proving to Coleridge that Southey's panoply of virtue had one chink—selfinterest, or what to Coleridge was the same thing, an excess of prudence. It was lucky that he could transfer his admiration to another friend, Tom Poole, who not only had Southey's uprightness but was disinter­ ested. The collapse of the friendship with Southey produced, along with disillusionment, an unexpected result. In Coleridge's mind he, the weaker vessel, had become the stronger, the one more dedicated to principle. His giant, Southey, had dwindled to a pigmy, and by con­ trast he had gained in stature.3 This access of self-confidence doubt­ less nerved him for his strenuous public duties of late 1795 and early 1796. SUMMER TO AUTUMN 1795 One of the bonds between Southey and Coleridge had been their sense of estrangement from their families, families with uncongenial ambitions for them. Southey was able to compromise; Coleridge was not. Coleridge's quarrel with his family and his difficult relationship with his brother George over his political and religious opinions were deeply disturbing. Later in life he wrote that he had been driven towards some personal association with radical figures and " demo­ crats " partly by the uncomprehending hostility and bigotry of his family in the face of his Unitarianism and revolutionary sympathies: .. .tho' they never ceased to talk of my Youth as a proof of the falsehood of my opinions they never introduced it as an extenuation of the error To such Bigotry what was an enthusiastic young man likely to oppose? They abhorred my person, I abhorred their actions: they set up the long howl of Hydrophoby at my principles, & I repayed their Hatred & Terror by the bitterness of Contempt. Who then remained to listen to me? to be kind to me? to be my friends—to look at me with kindness, to shake my hand with kindness, to open the door, & spread the hospitable board, & to let me feel that I was a man well-loved—me, who from my childhood 1

[Late Feb 1795]: CL 1 152-3. To RS 13 Jul [1794]: CL 1 86. These two sentences supply a background to Coleridge's and Southey's Bristol lectures. More than a decade 2

later The Friend was to be the title of Coleridge's work intended to inculcate "principles" in mankind. 3 Cf C to RS 13 Nov 1795: CL1166.

Editors' Introduction

xliii

have had no avarice, no ambition—whose very vanity in my vainest moments was nyths of it the desire, & delight, & necessity of loving & being beloved?—These offices of Love the Democrats only performed to me; my own family, bigots from Ignorance, remained wilfully ignorant from Bigotry. What wonder then, if in the heat of grateful affection & the un­ guarded Desire of sympathizing with these who so kindly sympathized with me, I too often deviated from my own Principles?1 Beneath the surface of Coleridge's active public life in 1795 lay deep preferences for domestic retirement and seclusion and for the simple satisfactions and pieties of family life. "Domestic Happiness", he wrote to Southey in August 1795, "is the greatest of things sub­ lunary. ..".2 It has several times been noted that Adelaide's Song in The Fall of Robespierre expressed some of his deeper feelings.3 The Song was also published separately under the title Domestic Peace. In it memory, love, honour, domestic peace, holiness, joy are all associated with retirement and private life and placed in opposition to both "sceptr'd state" and the "rebel's noisy hate". Although conven­ tional in language, the Song successfully evokes a mood of nostalgic longing for the "cottag'd vale" remote from the political violence that the play dramatises, and looks forward to those later poems, such as Frost at Midnight and This Lime-Tree Bower, in which the longed-for contentments are achieved. During the middle and latter part of the summer of 1795 Coleridge had the prospect of the private life of a poet before him. He was courting Sara, though at times absent-mindedly if we may accept the evidence of his Lines in the Manner of Spenser, where he apologises for forgetting an early-morning meeting. Though his relations with Southey had soured, he spent much time in adding to and correcting Joan of Arc and Southey's other poems ("Our Muses had not quarrelled").4 He was writing poems for his own volume for which he had contracted with Cottle. He speaks of "re-composing" his lectures,5 meaning possibly the revision of the political lectures as Condones or of the Lectures on Revealed Religion. About 20 August he took a lease on a cottage at Clevedon where he and Sara were to live. There he established residence on his marriage on 4 October and lived the idyll he describes in The Molian Harp and Reflections on Having Left a Place of Retirement. The title of the latter poem 1 To Sir George and LadyBeaumont 1 Oct 1803: CL π 1000. 2 CL 1158. 3 PW (EHC) π 501-2. See Carl R. Woodring Politics in the Poetry of

Coleridge (Madison, Wis. 1961) 197-8; Geoffrey Carnall Robert Southey and His Age (1960) 31. 4 T0 RS 13 Nov 1795: CL 1167. 5 Ibid 172.

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Lectures 1795: On Politics and Religion

reminds one that he did leave before long; but before dwelling on that one must consider the political events then in progress. The Government's failure to find incriminating evidence in the seized papers of the reformers arraigned in the State Trials of 1794 and the consequent acquittal of the prisoners lifted the spirits of the Opposition. But the Government was in earnest, as was shown by its renewal of the Habeas Corpus Suspension Act in February 1795. The ministry, being disturbed by the widespread discontent over the scarcity in 1795 and the threat of famine, sought for stronger ways of suppressing political dissent. An opportunity came on 29 October, when a mob attacked the King on his way to open Parliament. This outrage was connected by the Government with an immense gather­ ing held a few days before by the London Corresponding Society in the fields near Copenhagen House, Islington. No disorder took place there, but the crowd listened to eloquent denunciations of the war against France and appeals for reform by Thelwall, Frend, and others. The first move of the Government after the attack on the King was a Royal Proclamation on 4 November, directed against seditious assemblies and the circulation of treasonable papers. This move was followed, two days later, by the introduction into the Lords, by Lord Grenville, of a bill against treasonable practices; on the same day in the Commons Pitt introduced a motion to bring in a bill against seditious meetings. Grenville's bill dispensed with the old requirement that treason consist of overt acts; under his bill, treason could be a variety of things including "inciting the people to hatred or contempt of his Majesty", printing, writing, or malicious speaking with the intent to do harm to the King. Pitt's bill forbade meetings of fifty or more without the consent of a magistrate, who should be empowered to disperse meetings at his discretion. While under dis­ cussion these bills provoked much popular feeling, and petitions, many more against than for them, poured into Parliament. On 10 November the Whig Club met to protest the abrogation of the right of free speech and assembly, and the London Corresponding Society did likewise. There was, in short, a great stir. Everyone who felt a leaning toward public affairs wished, naturally, to have his say. Remote from the centre of controversy as he was, Coleridge could hardly fail to respond when liberty was in danger. Though he was still charmed by his life at Clevedon, he was beginning to discover its limitations. Books were hard to get, his friends were at a distance, and he found that Sara complained when he went to see them and stayed overnight; perhaps, too, he felt the restlessness that sometimes

Editors' Introduction

xlv

urges the honeymooner to resume his bachelor habits. The public outcry against the Two Bills affected him mightily, and he felt im­ pelled to join in it. Was it right, While my unnumber'd brethren toil'd and bled, That I should dream away the entrusted hours On rose-leaf beds, pampering the coward heart With feelings all too delicate for use?1

Bristol shared the national excitement, and by mid-November Coleridge was on hand to lend the support of his eloquence, since his efforts in the spring had made him a leader among the liberals. Azariah Pinney wrote to Wordsworth (26 November): In Bristol a meeting was convened, to send his Majesty a congratulatory message on his late escape—after that was carried, Coleridge, Coates, and some others, rose, to vote for an amendment; but the Mayor declaring that the meeting was solely for the purpose of framing an address to his Majesty, refused to hear of the amendment. A great noise, in consequence, ensued, but Coleridge's party were at length compelled to give up the point—Dr. Beddoes, the following day, published a pamphlet... to explain the nature of the Two Bills now pending in Parliament, and recommending the Citizens to meet and frame a Petition, to shew their disapprobation of the measures likely to be adopted by Government—Dr. Fox, and others, requested of the Mayor the use of the Guildhall, as a proper place to assemble, which was granted—Dr. Fox took the chair and read the Peti­ tion, (which I think you will agree was a very proper one,) and closed with an admonitory speech, recommending peace and good order—the whole was carried with greatest decorum and propriety—Coates was about de­ livering a very inflammatory harangue, but was called to order by the chair —I can assure you the most undivided unanimity prevailed; it did credit to thosewho had the conducting of it—Dr. Beddoes is no Orator, but spoke to the purpose—Coleridge voted that the Petition might be carried into the House by Mr. Fox, and Mr. Sheridan, but willingly acceded to Beddoes's opposition, who thought it would command greater attention by being presented by our Members.2

In the more detailed account in the London Star of the two meetings of 17 and 20 November in Bristol Guildhall, the correspondent, carried away by Coleridge's eloquence, has this to say: ".. .in a tone of voice, and with that sweetness of emphasis which would have fascinated the attention even of a Robespierre; Mr. Coleridge began the most elegant, the most pathetic, and the most sublime Address 1 Reflections on Having Left a Place of Retirement lines 44-8: PW (EHC) ι

107.

2 Pinney Papers, in Bristol University Library.

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Lectures 1795: On Politics and Religion

that was ever heard, perhaps, within the walls of that building."1 A compliment indeed when one remembers that Burke, when MP for Bristol, was accustomed to speaking there!2 To follow the progress of this petition, John, Lord Sheffield, Gib­ bon's friend and one of the members for Bristol, was asked to present it in spite of his Toryism. If a reluctant choice, he was also a reluctant agent; the Morning Chronicle for 24 November reports that, when Lord Sheffield presented a petition from Bristol against the Two Bills, "Mr. Sheridan remarked, that the Petition seemed to have fallen into improper hands, for the Noble Lord had not made any observa­ tion upon it, nor had he mentioned by how many persons it was signed, though Mr. Sheridan understood it was signed by no less than four thousands Sheridan later added, in an exchange with Sheffield, that "he had received a letter from a gentleman at Bristol, who was apprehensive that the Noble Lord would not make it known to be the general sense of the inhabitants of Bristol, and did therefore wish that it should be stated to the House. The Petition was drawn up and signed in due form, and the signatures were those of the most respectable persons in that city". THE TWO BILLS: THE PLOT DISCOVERED AND THE ANSWER TO FOX The paucity of dates and particulars in the records of Coleridge's life in this year 1795 continues to the end. We know that he spoke at the two Guildhall meetings of 17 and 20 November and that on 26 No­ vember, "in the Great Room at the Pelican Inn, Thomas Street", he gave the lecture against the Two Bills that was to form the basis of The Plot Discovered. Condones ad Populum, the revision of the February lectures, was advertised for sale on 3 December (its preface was dated 16 November). The publication date of The Plot Dis1 For the full report in the Star, see below, App Bi, pp 359-64. 2 Some thought of his predecessor would hardly escape C in this con­ nexion. Le Grice, describing under­ graduate evenings in C's rooms in Jesus College, Cambridge, two or three years before, says: "What little sup­ pers, or sizings, as they were called, have I enjoyed; when Aeschylus, and Plato, and Thucydides were pushed aside, with a pile of lexicons, &c., to discuss the pamphlets of the day. Ever

and anon, a pamphlet issued from the pen of Burke. There was no need of having the book before us. Coleridge had read it in the morning, and in the evening he would repeat whole pages verbatim. Pamphlets swarmed from the press. Coleridge had read them all; and in the evening, with our negus, we had them viva voce gloriously." C. V. Le Grice "College Reminiscences of Mr. Coleridge" G Mag N.S. II (Dec 1834) 606.

Editors'1 Introduction

xlvii

covered is not known. It contains matter from early December, and the date on the wrapper, 28 November, may be Coleridge's recollec­ tion of the date of delivery (really 26 November). A presentation copy to a Mrs Richardson, now in the Harvard University Library, is dated in Coleridge's hand 10 December, so publication may have been then or several days earlier.1 Coleridge's Answer to "A Letter to Edward Long Fox, M.D." is undated, but the letter to which it was a reply was dated 11 December. As Coleridge speaks of his answer being a speedy one, it may have appeared within a week, possibly by 18 December or even earlier.2 By this time Coleridge must already have begun preparations for The Watchman. Reviewing Coleridge's lecture and publications of the late autumn in more detail, we note that the day before his Lecture on the Two Bills he borrowed from the Bristol Library James Burgh's Political Disquisitions. He was to make much use of this work both in the lecture and in The Plot Discovered. Possibly he had known of Burgh before, for Political Disquisitions was a popular Whig sourcebook. The Bristol Library records show, for example, that in the period 1773-84 it was borrowed thirty-eight times.3 Coleridge spoke most gratefully of it in The Plot Discovered, yet no later reference to it in his writings has been found. As far as the manuscript fragment of the lecture is concerned, he leaned on Burgh to the exclusion of other authorities, and almost of any original contribution of his own. The fragment, it is true, deals with the Convention Bill, which laid restric­ tions on freedom of speech, a special bailiwick of Burgh's. The first 1 The Two Bills became the Two Acts on 18 Dec. For an argument that PD was published after that date— that the date of 28 Nov on the wrapper was a subterfuge to evade possible prosecution under the Acts—see Lucyle Werkmeister "Coleridge's The Plot Discovered: Some Facts and a Specu­ lation" M Phil LVI (1959) 254-63. But the speculation on such a late date would seem to be ended on the evidence of C's presentation copy to Mrs Richardson; see also below, ρ 278. The original date of publication would, in any event, have been no defence—and C continued to promote sales of the pamphlet well into 1796. The danger to the expression of free speech as far as pamphlets were concerned is em­ phasised by a handbill announcing a

speech by Thelwall on Lord Grenville's Bill; it ended: "BRITONS, whowish for Information, be expeditious; for a Fortnight hence it may be High Trea­ son to sell a Political Pamphlet." 2 The first edition of Beddoes's Word in Defence of the Bill of Rights, approximately the same length as C's Answer, dated 17 Nov on its last page, was advertised for sale in the Bristol Gazette two days later, 19 Nov. (Cf above, ρ xlv, a passage from Pinney's letter to Wordsworth.) If A. W.'s Letter was published 13 Dec (two days after it was written), C's Answer could have appeared as early as 15 Dec. 3 Paul Kaufman Borrowings from the Bristol Library 1773-1784 (Biblio­ graphical Society of Virginia, Char­ lottesville 1960) 59.

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part of The Plot Discovered, concerned with the new Treason Bill, shows little indebtedness to Burgh.1 That Burgh's influence on Coleridge, momentarily so great, should have been transient is owing, perhaps, to Burgh's being a compiler rather than a thinker. His purpose was to provide an arsenal of weapons to needy orators. Burgh could not conceive of there being too many quotations if they but tended to support Whig doctrine. His mode of thought, however, in venerating precedent, differed from Coleridge's. Though at times his speculations carried him into the future and into innovation, they rested upon the customs and wisdom of the past. Coleridge might have applied to him his descrip­ tion of J. P. Estlin: he " hath not the catenating Faculty—he wants the silk thread that ought to run [through the Pearl-chain of Ratio­ cination ".2 It was not precedents but the ideas implicit in the modes of the past that occupied Coleridge's mind somewhat at this time and increasingly in the future. An anonymous "A. W." issued A Letter to Edward Long Fox,M.D., dated 11 December 1795, which purports to be an attack upon Dr Fox for misleading the Bristolians and inflaming their political passions.3 Fox is also taxed with personal eccentricities, namely riding in a sulky and delving into animal magnetism. The burden of the attack, however, is directed really against Dr Beddoes, though not by name. His A Word in Defence of the Bill of Rights Against Gagging Bills is cited once but actually quoted several times. A casual reader might suppose that Fox was the author. Coleridge it was who re­ sponded to this attack, in An Answer to "A Letter to Edward Long Fox, M.D.". Coleridge does not allude to A. W.'s covert censure of Beddoes; instead he defends Fox's use of the sulky, an unsociable but economical vehicle, suitable for a busy doctor, and his in­ vestigations into animal magnetism, a subject in which Coleridge himself later took keen interest. Naturally he also upheld Dr Fox's behaviour as chairman of the meeting in which the protest against the Two Bills was adopted, a meeting in which Coleridge had spoken. 1 Cottle writes: ".. .he consolidated two other of his lectures, and published them under the title of 'The Plot Discovered'." E Rec ι 20. There is no other evidence for the "two" lectures, and the Bristol Gazette advertisement of 26 Nov announces "an Address... on the Two Bills now pending in Parliament". PD does divide into two

sections, each perhaps of lecture length; the first eighteen pages of the fifty-twopage pamphlet are on the Treason Bill, whereas from page 19 Coleridge speaks of the Convention Bill, beginning to use the ms fragment of his lecture on ρ 21 and heavily relying on Burgh, 2 CL ι 193. 3 See below, App B 4, pp 385-91.

Editors' Introduction

xlix

Curiously, Coleridge defended Fox against a charge that A. W.'had not made, that Dr Fox had behaved badly in the bridge riots of 1793.1 In A. W.'s Letter Coleridge had been glanced at but not named. "The Citizens of Bristol", A. W. hoped, "have more spirit and pru­ dence than to suffer a few factious Aliens to scatter among them the seeds of discord and sedition".2 Coleridge briskly accepted the chal­ lenge as meant for himself, presumably the leading "Alien". He in fact gloried in not being a Bristolian, for " recollecting that there was not virtue enough in [Bristol] to tear the cloak of authority from the limbs of murder, I should blush for my birth-place".3 He likewise noticed A. W.'s taunt that the factious group plumed themselves on their mental superiority. We do indeed, replied Coleridge. Though much of the Answer is concerned with personal polemics, the main thrust of its force is toward a general view, and Coleridge contrives to look beyond Bristol to the national and even the European scene. COLERIDGE AND POLITICAL ASSOCIATIONS At some point in the controversy over the Two Bills a change came over the contestants, though no relaxation of the struggle took place. In spite of the strength of the Opposition, which mustered far more signatures to petitions and a greater volume of protest than did the Government, it seemed probable that the Government, with its great majorities in Parliament, would surely prevail. The Opposition nevertheless did not yield, but rather began to see the contest in a longer perspective. The Bills might pass but they also might, if at the next election the ministry's majority were seriously diminished, be repealed in response to a popular demand. It was now a question of maintaining pressure and keeping up the fight. On 8 December 1795 the Morning Chronicle printed the advertise­ ment: "Westminster Forum, Panton-street, in the Haymarket. This society will be opened, with the following Question, this evening 'Are not the most probable means left of saving the Country from 1 This disturbance arose when the toll-bridge commissioners sought to extend their privilege of collecting tolls beyond the stipulated time, that is, when enough had been collected to re­ tire the bonds. This charge, at any rate, was made by a popular opposition party, who broke down the toll barriers. The commissioners, supported

d

by the town authorities, called in the militia, and a series of riots ensued, in which many lives were lost. Dr Fox had sought to resolve the quarrel, but had been rebuffed by the authorities, who, however, in the end abandoned their cause. 2 Below, ρ 389. 3 Below, ρ 329. RCL

1

Lectures 1795: On Politics and Religion

the Despotism of the Minister—an immediate Junction of the Whig Interest and the Corresponding Society?' 8 o'clock.—6d." An alli­ ance of this sort meant that a parliamentary group would formally combine with a proletarian group, something unknown in British practice or certainly a rarity. The foot of the masses would be in the door of the House of Commons. It would mean, too, the recognition in semi-official fashion of a political association. Such organisations were known in classical times and were condemned by Plutarch's Lycurgus, who perhaps influenced Rousseau to oppose them. Burgh, in his Political Disquisitions, had favoured a Grand National Association for the preservation of the Constitution. Coleridge, among others, gave close attention to Burgh at this time and must have pondered deeply the moral acceptability of such groups. Some persons normally repelled by them felt, at this juncture, that an association formed for a specific purpose, and that alone, was justi­ fiable. British caution is in evidence here. Burgh, with his leisurely voluminousness, cites from his usual fund of precedent a long history of associations in England, but as a regular mode of action the popular association dated only from the Wilkite agitations of the 1770's and the movement for parliamentary reform.1 Unanimity in this matter was not to be found among the reformers themselves. Indeed, two of their greatest figures were now to clash when Godwin decided to attack associations and all popular agita­ tion. In view of Coleridge's expressed distaste for him and also in view of the low estate to which his follies brought him in later years, it is of some moment that the Godwin of the 1790's be visualised. Three times within a few years he had brought off coups of signifi­ cance and brilliance: in 1793 he had published An Enquiry Concerning Political Justice, which, to those who take the trouble to read it (and it is very readable), still conveys something of the excitement it caused;2 he had then turned surprisingly to the novel, and in Caleb Williams (1794) had given for the first time in English fiction a living picture of what it meant to be poor and a victim of the enmity of society; and he had intervened, during the State Trials of 1794, with a pamphlet only less decisive than Burke's great work on the French Revolution. He was now to contribute the most celebrated pamphlet 1 See Sir Thomas Erskine May The Constitutional History of England ed Francis Holland (3 vols 1912) π 21. 2 In his Reminiscences (ch 3) Crabb Robinson summed up one effect Political J u s t i c e h a d o n h i s m i n d :

".. .it made me feel more generously. I had never before, nor, I am afraid, have I ever since felt so strongly the duty of not living to one's self, but of having for one's sole object the good of the community." CRD 118.

Editors'1 Introduction

Ii

on the Two Bills. He attempted to bring the controversy into balance and by impartial examination to compose the quarrel. The attempt shows at once his greatness and his naivete. It did not occur to him, since so great is truth, that his disciple would resent public chastise­ ment for supposed offences against it. A collision resulted between the leading theorist of reform, Godwin, and the leading spokesman of reform, Thelwall. The Morning Chronicle of 21 November adver­ tised Considerations on Lord Grenville's and Mr. Pitt's Bills, concern­ ing Treasonable and Seditious Practices and Unlawful Assemblies "By a Lover of Order". Before reprobating the Two Bills, as he did most severely, Godwin (his authorship was no secret) took sharp issue with the London Corresponding Society and with Thelwall's lectures. Of the latter, with true Godwinian rigour, he observed, "It is not, for the most part, in crowded audiences, that truth is successfully in­ vestigated, and principles of science luminously conceived", and censured political lectures delivered by "an impatient and headlong reformer". Instead, he said, sounding at times strangely like Burke, reform must be carried on "by slow, almost insensible steps, and by just degrees. The public mind must first be enlightened.... There must be a consent of wills, that no minister and no monopolist would be frantic enough to withstand". With respect to the London Corresponding Society, he expressed alarm at the "collecting of immense multitudes of men particularly when there have been no persons of eminence, distinction, and importance in the country, that have mixed with them, and been ready to temper their efforts. We had a specimen of what might be the sequel of such collecting, in the riots introduced by Lord George Gordon and the Protestant Association in the year 1780".1 In his Political Justice Godwin had already inveighed against asso­ ciations, as his index adequately shows: associations " substitute the part for the whole; are attended by party spirit; with passionate declamation; with cabal; with contentious disputes; with restless­ ness; with tumult". However, he cautiously admitted exceptions: " But when the crisis arrives [the wise man] will not be induced by the irregularities of the friends of equality, to remain neutral, but will endeavour to forward her reign". So the dispute resolves itself into a question of what constitutes a crisis and when. Burgh had said that as long as England lived under an unreformed Parliament a crisis existed, and Coleridge at the moment was steeped in Burgh. Ordi­ narily Coleridge would have shared Godwin's fear of associations, 1

[Godwin] Considerations pp 14,17.

Iii

Lectures 1795: On Politics and Religion

but he had already committed himself fully to the view that a crisis did in fact exist and that the constitution was in peril. Coleridge never belonged to the London Corresponding Society or to any of the other "patriotic" societies, such as the Friends of the People or the Society for Constitutional Information. No evidence has been found that societies in 1795 were at all active in Bristol. In London an association was presently formed that he supported, if he did not join it, and this was the one formed at the end of 1795 by the Whig Club. This society played a prominent part from time to time in late-eighteenth-century politics and was the unofficial voice of the Whig Party. On 18 December, the day the Two Bills were signed into law, the Whig Club in a meeting proposed to form an association whose sole purpose would be to seek the repeal of the measures. This specific and limited goal engaged the support of many who otherwise would not have found it acceptable. Coleridge's miscellany, The Watchman, was founded largely to support this movement, as its prospectus makes clear.1 Lists for the enrolment of members of the association were kept during the winter of 1795-6. By February, how­ ever it, was apparent that increasing fear of the French and of Jacobinism at home had fatally undercut the popular support, and the association was quietly abandoned. The failure of the causes he had fostered in his Bristol lectures— that is, opposition to the war and to the domestic policies of the Pitt government—dampened Coleridge's zeal for politics. Next spring came the failure of The Watchman. At one point he expressed aver­ sion to "politicians and politics—a set of men and a kind of study which I deem highly unfavourable to all Christian graces".2 Instead, " Bishop Taylor, Old Baxter, David Hartley & the Bishop of Cloyne are my men".3 These are all religious men, not a politician in the lot. Never again did politics absorb him as in 1795; but neither did he ever for a moment feel indifference to politics. Good as he was as a political agitator and orator, he tended to shift his emphasis to a study of the foundations of government and to concentrate on the "permanent". 1 "It's chief objects are to co-operate (1) with the WHIG CLUB in procuring a repeal of Lord Grenville's and Mr. Pitt's bills, now passed into laws, and (2) with the PATRIOTIC SOCIETIES, for obtaining a Right of SuiTrage general and frequent." Watchman (CC) 5. 2 To Charles Lloyd, Sr, 15 Oct 1796: CL ι 240. 3 To Poole 1 Nov 1796: CL ι 245.

George Whalley suggests that probably the reference to "Old Baxter" is not to Richard Baxter, the author of Saints' Rest and Reliquiae, but to Andrew Baxter (1686-1750), author of Evidences of Reason in Proof of the Immortality of the Soul, posthumously published in 1779. For C's acquaintance with his work see below, pp 114—15 η2.

Editors' Introduction

Iiii

II SIX LECTURES ON REVEALED RELIGION, ITS CORRUPTIONS AND POLITICAL VIEWS PETER MANN

NUMBER of motives lay behind the composition of the Lectures

A

on Revealed Religion, or Theological Lectures.1 The hope of making at least a little money was certainly one; but more important, perhaps, in the early months of 1795 was Coleridge's need to put in order his intellectual life as he had put in order his personal life by returning to Bristol in January 1795 and accepting his responsibilities there. The attempt to clarify his ideas and beliefs and to adopt a more positive and coherent point of view in politics and religion was the outcome of his reaction against the disorder in his life during 1793 and 1794 at Cambridge and in London. His continual emphasis upon "principles" in his Bristol period sprang in part from a recog­ nition of his own need of them. The instability in his own tempera­ ment and attitudes must have been made more apparent to him by the example of Southey's "downright uprightness" and probity of character. The search for principles was in part at least a search for stability within himself. "Principles", moreover, were necessary to anyone who, like Coleridge, wished to meet vigorously and actively the challenge of contemporary events in England and Europe. Clear principles alone about man and his nature permitted an understanding of the com­ plexities and conflicts of the age; principles provided their possessor with a perspective on human history that allowed him to evaluate contemporary reality and to see the true significance of events. It is not accidental that both Coleridge and Southey lectured, or intended lecturing, on historical subjects in 1795 and that both intended to review the past in order to throw light upon the present state of postrevolutionary Europe. The Lectures on Revealed Religion constituted a sustained and comprehensive attempt on Coleridge's part to "find himself".

1

See above, pp xxxv-xxxvii.

Iiv

Lectures 1795: On Politics and Religion COLERIDGE'S PERSONAL PHILOSOPHY

The manuscript we possess of the Lectures on Revealed Religion is an incomplete transcript of lectures that were written in haste and with more concern for rhetorical force and effectiveness than for polished composition, and in places left in note form for elaboration during delivery. Yet, in spite of the imperfections in thought and expression that one would expect in these circumstances, the Lectures on Revealed Religion are an achievement of considerable interest in relation to the rest of Coleridge's work and to the intellectual history of English romanticism, which is both augmented and seen as more complicated by their survival. His use of Cudworth's True Intellectual System reveals further his early connexions with seventeenth-century Platonism; politically the lectures look back, through his reading of Moses Lowman, to Algernon Sidney and Harrington and thus estab­ lish an interesting new connexion between early romanticism and the republican thinkers and political theorists of the seventeenth century as well as the Commonwealthmen, or Old Whigs, of the eighteenth century; they show more fully the nature of his Unitarianism and his relationship with both the politics and the theology of contemporary Dissent; his attitude to Godwin and his philosophy is clarified and shown in a new light; and above all, perhaps, the lectures confirm and substantiate the overriding importance to Coleridge of Hartley's philosophy in Observations on Man in the development of his own ideas and beliefs. Although the intellectual ramifications and connexions of the lectures are many and various, they are not without coherence or a controlling sense of purpose. They show many signs of being the out­ come of an attempt by Coleridge to create a personal philosophy in which his views about religion, politics, morality, and the nature of man as an individual and as a social being could be drawn together and related. This comprehensive exposition of his early beliefs is not without its peculiar confusions and contradictions and is certainly uneven in the quality of its argument and rhetoric, but it constitutes, nevertheless, a unique personal document in the history of ideas and beliefs at a time when English romantic poets and writers were re­ sponding positively and vigorously to the challenge of contemporary events. The Lectures on Revealed Religion, inescapably political themselves, usefully supplement the political lectures that he gave in February 1795. They make possible a fuller understanding of his early political attitudes as well as throw fresh light on the wider

Editors' Introduction

Iv

implications of the relationship between the romantic writer and society. They provide evidence of even greater interest about the nature and depth of his religious feelings at this time. Some symptoms of immaturity and inexperience are inevitably to be found in these lectures as in his other writings of this period, and the element of condescension or the tendency to explain away his early beliefs (the pantisocratic dream, or his attachment to the mechanistic psychology of Hartley, for instance) in much of his later criticism and autobiography is understandable. It is possible to see why one of his modern admirers should exclaim that "the enthu­ siasms of this period were largely froth upon his mind's surface";1 yet the judgment, if understandable, is certainly misleading and even inconsistent with a common-sense view of Coleridge's development as a thinker. Could the later powerful critique of eighteenth-century associationism have had its origins in or been brought into existence by a merely frothy interest in Hartley? Coleridge himself later showed a serious, almost obsessive concern with this part of his past, and there is much in his early and later writing that confirms its traumatic impact and continuing influence upon his intellectual career.2 Most notably, the lectures reveal how deeply important to him at this time was his attachment to the Christian revelation. That his political, philosophical, and moral ideas were dependent upon his belief in the "system of Jesus" is a fact that goes far towards ex­ plaining his attitude to a number of the most important contemporary issues. His acceptance of the morality of Jesus and his tendency to see in Christ the ideal type of the virtuous reformer and lover of humanity affected his attitude to Godwin and Paine and to the radi­ cal movement in general, including the dissenting reformers such as Priestley, Price, and Gilbert Wakefield. The kind of Christian and moral emphasis we find in his beliefs in 1795 distinguishes him in an important way from Southey and from Wordsworth at this time and is one that deserves to be taken seriously. If it is possible to see the conservative in the early radical, this is largely owing to the role his religious feelings and beliefs played in the formation of his political attitudes. The impulse to deliver these lectures on natural and revealed re­ ligion, and on the true political principles of Christianity, sprang to a great extent from his repugnance to the atheism and infidelity of some of the leading figures in extreme radical circles whom he had 1 Basil Willey Nineteenth Century Studies (1949) 7.

2

Cf, for example, Friend (CC) 1224.

Ivi

Lectures 1795: On Politics and Religion

met in 1794 or earlier—notably Godwin, Thomas Holcroft, and John Thelwall—and with whom he had been misleadingly identified. His early antipathy to Godwin personally and to what he had heard or read of Godwin's ideas was great enough to make him explore more deeply the nature of his own beliefs and his reasons for holding them. This probing, in turn, lay behind his discussion in the lectures of the rational and historical evidence in favour of revealed religion and his rehearsal of traditional as well as more novel arguments against atheism and infidelity. The tone of the lectures is one of vigorous defence and counterattack; they assume a challenge to the truth and relevance to life of the Christian faith and attempt to refute it.1 Most eighteenth-century accounts of the "evidences of Chris­ tianity" were defensive responses to deism, and much of Coleridge's own argument and language derives from the literature of the deist controversies or from works that were its end-products, such as Priestley's Discourses on the Evidence of Revealed Religion (1794) and Thomas Balguy's Divine Benevolence Asserted (1781). In the 1790's, however, in Coleridge's eyes, the danger to true Christianity came from two sources, first from the alliance of radicalism with atheism or infidelity, particularly in the works of Godwin and Paine, second from the alliance of the Established Church with wealth and privilege. Doctrinal justifications of inequality and poverty such as Paley's Reasons for Contentment (1793), which Coleridge responded to with contempt—"Themes to debauch Boys' minds on the miseries of rich men & comforts of Poverty "2—were a common topic for churchmen. Bishop Watson expressed his belief that "this unequal distribution of property is a great spur to industry and frugality in the lower classes... and habits of industry and frugality bring with them modesty, humility, temperance.. .so many virtues.. .".3 Such senti­ ments offered by the leaders of "official" Christianity no less than the atheism and scepticism flourishing in radical circles disturbed 1 Cf the Prospectus: "These Lec­ tures are intended for two Classes of Men, Christians and Infidels/to the former, that they may be able to give a reason for the hope that is in them— to the latter that they may not deter­ mine against Christianity from argu­ ments applicable to its' Corruptions only." 2 CN ι 75. 3 Richard Watson A Sermon

Preached before the Stewards of the Westminster Dispensary.. .April 1785 (1793) 5. Cf also: "[It is not] within the competence of Government, taken as Government, or even of the rich, as rich, to supply to the poor, those necessaries which it has pleased the Divine Providence for a while to with­ hold from them." Edmund Burke Thoughts and Details on Scarcity (1795) 32.

Editors' Introduction

Ivii

and split Coleridge's loyalties and pushed him towards a personal philosophy in which he could maintain and harmonise his religious and his political beliefs in the form of a Christianised radicalism that looked back for its justification to the supposed "communism" and uncorrupted faith of the early Christian societies. That Christ was a "reformer" was a common theme in the reform literature of the 1790's, but Coleridge was alone in drawing upon the latent political philosophy in the New Testament and in the Old in so extreme a way.1 His development towards an individual point of view was ac­ celerated by his unwillingness to accept the political aims of the Dissenters. Although a Priestleian Unitarian with many personal connexions with dissenting reformers, he could not remain satisfied with the political ambitions and perspectives of the "politics of dissent", which he regarded as self-centredly concerned with the social and religious rights of Dissenters and overcomplacent about the injustice suffered by the class below them.2 To Coleridge such a characteristic statement as Priestley's to the effect that "all trade and commerce, all buying and selling, is wrong, unless it be to the advantage of both parties"3 could have appeared no more than a grotesque evasion of Christ's specific commands and the whole spirit of his moral teaching. "Jesus Christ forbids to his disciples all property—and teaches us that accumulation was incompatible with their Salvation."4 Though repeatedly pressed to do so,5 Coleridge refused to commit himself to any organised section of the reform movement. In spite of his connexions with radical and reformist figures in Bristol and London and his active support of the campaign against Pitt's ministry and the war with France, his position was essentially an individual one that tended, inevitably perhaps, to be both eccentric and difficult to maintain. When the first public lecture Coleridge had delivered in Bristol appeared in print in the spring of 1795, the anonymous reviewer in the April issue of the Critical Review deprecated the absence of those "principles" of thought and conduct which Coleridge frequently re­ ferred to but never actually defined. "We think it rather defective in point of precision.... We also think our young political lecturer ι See especially Lect 6, pp 226-9 be­ low; Lect 2, pp 126—8 below. 2 Cf MPL 11-12; below, ρ 11. 3 Institutes of Natural and Revealed

Religion pt ι ch 2 sec 3 § 5 (2nd ed 2 vols Birmingham 1782) ι 111. 4 Below, ρ 226. 5 See below, pp lxv, lxxx.

Iviii

Lectures 1795: On Politics and Religion

leaves his auditors abruptly, and that he has not stated, in a form sufficiently scientific and determinate, those principles to which, as he expresses it, he now proceeds as the most important point. We confess we were looking for something further One or two more lectures might give a fulness to the whole, and be very useful."1 The Lectures on Revealed Religion go a long way towards setting forth his principles by drawing together into a single point of view his Unitarian and other Christian beliefs, elements of the philosophies of Hartley and Priestley, and social and moral ideas derived from the New Testament. The intellectual and moral resources that sus­ tained Coleridge's humanitarian protest are revealed in them with some comprehensiveness as are also his inconsistencies and naiveties in thought and feeling. The latter are not without their own interest, because they, as much as what was shrewd and realistic and positive in his early thinking, formed the point of departure for the achieve­ ments of his maturity and left their mark upon them. COLERIDGE AND HARTLEY AND PRIESTLEY There is no lack of evidence for Coleridge's veneration of David Hartley, the "great master of Christian Philosophy",2 described in Religious Musings as he of mortal kind Wisest, he first who marked the ideal tribes Up the fine fibres through the sentient brain.3 In the course of defending his unorthodox opinions to his brother George in November 1794, Coleridge declared that he had made " an intense study of Locke, Hartley and others who have written most wisely on the Nature of Man,"4 and to Southey he affirmed his attachment not only to Hartley, but implicitly to Priestley and his "materialism" as it was described in Disquisitions Relating to Matter and Spirit (1777).5 I am a compleat Necessitarian—and understand the subject as well almost as Hartley himself—but I go farther than Hartley and believe the cor­ poreality of thought—namely, that it is motion—.6 ι C Rev XIiI (1795) 455. 2 To Poole 24 Sept 1796: CL ι 236. 3 Lines 368-70: PfK(EHC) 1123. 4 CL ι 126 (6 Nov 1794). 5 The editions of 1777 and 1782 were in the sales lists of the Green and GilIman libraries, which received many

of Coleridge's own books. The twovolume edition of 1782 included the volume on "philosophical necessity", and it is this edition that is cited in the notes. 6 To RS c 11 Dec 1794: CL ι 137.

Editors' Introduction

Iix

There is enough in the ideas and language of the early poetry, especially Religious Musings, to substantiate these claims to a knowl­ edge and understanding of Hartley, and the subject has been well explored, though not without some explaining away of Coleridge's youthful enthusiasm. The extent of Coleridge's preoccupation with the theory of association up to 1817 and later suggests a more serious and personal early involvement in Hartley's work than critics have been willing to recognise, though it must seem at the least unlikely that the later protracted scrutiny of Hartleianism and powerful progress beyond it could have originated in a concern that had been merely "youthful" or in some sense intellectually immature. A considerable part of the interest of the Lectures on Revealed Religion lies in the further valuable evidence they provide of the kind of impression made upon him by his reading of Hartley up to 1795 and of the critical role that work played in his intellectual development from the beginning. It has never been entirely clear how far Coleridge's knowledge of Hartley's system was gained from a first-hand reading, how far from Priestley's expositions and elaborations. The latter's Hartley's Theory of the Human Mind was readily accessible, and it is unlikely, given Coleridge's admiration for Priestley and his movement in Unitarian circles, that he did not acquaint himself with the work. The text of the lectures, however, shows several signs of a first-hand knowledge of Observations on Man in the edition of 1791 by Hermann Pistorius, whose notes and commentary on Hartley's text occupy the last of its three volumes. It is difficult now to overemphasise the importance of Hartley's system to Coleridge during the formative years 1794-6. The doctrines of necessity and of the association of ideas together constituted the greatest single influence upon his thinking and had repercussions, as the Lectures on Revealed Religion make clear, upon many of his political as well as his religious attitudes. That in a serious, if possibly misguided and naive, way Coleridge also attempted to live by what he took in the way of intellectual principles from Hartley and Priestley is a relevant fact for the understanding of his early career. To perceive this and to assent to it as an abstract proposition—is easy— but it requires the most wakeful attentions of the most reflective minds in all moments to bring it into practice—It is not enough that we have once swallowed it—The Heart should have fed upon the truth, as Insects on a Leaf—till it be tinged with the colour, and shew it's food in every the minutest fibre.1 ι To RS 21 Oct [1794]: CLI 115

Ix

Lectures 1795: On Politics and Religion

It was this willingness to absorb rather than merely assent to the principles he gained from Hartley and Priestley that eventually helped to expose their inadequacy to him as viable philosophies of man, but for several of his most formative years they provided the foundations of his first attempt at a personal synthesis of religion, politics, and philosophy. The appeal of the Hartleian philosophy was no doubt bound up with the attractive inclusiveness of outlook promised by the full title of Hartley's work: Observations on Man, His Frame, His Duty, and His Expectations. To a young man anxious for "principles" and a coherent view of life Hartley's system introduced law, order, and intelligibility into men's ideas and feelings, into their private and social lives, and into human history as a whole. It removed the ele­ ment of " chance " from life, which was the atheist's and materialist's only alternative hypothesis as to the nature and origin of things. It is arguable that in his Observations on Man Hartley defended the Chris­ tianity "of which his scientific theory had destroyed the intellectual foundations",1 but, from the first appearance of the work to the time of Paley, Hartley's system of psychology seemed a valuable additional weapon in the intellectual contest with disbelief,2 and Priestley in particular was most persistent in attempting to exploit Hartley's theory of mind in the defence of Christianity.3 Coleridge's defence of the divinity of Moses' mission, in Lecture 2,4 and of the divinity of Christ's mission, in Lecture 3,5 his discussion of the origin of evil, in Lecture I,6 and of the origin and growth of the moral and social feelings,7 were to a considerable degree affected by his knowledge of the theories of association and philosophical necessity gained from his reading in Hartley and Priestley. It has been possible to argue in the past that the specific psychology or basic mechanism of associationism (in its Hartleian form) had little direct influence upon Coleridge's ideas and that it was less attractive and important to him than some of the theory's implications and apparent corollaries, human perfectibility, progressiveness, optimism, and the like.8 In the Lectures on Revealed Religion, however, it is the specific psychological mechanism that is important for clinching the arguments in favour of miracles and for putting revealed religion, 1 J. H. Muirhead Coleridge as Philosopher (1930) 42. 2 Cf A View of the Evidences of Christianity (2nd ed 2 vols 1794) ι 39. 3 See below, ρ 160 η 1. 4 Below, pp 124-35, esp 135 η 2.

5

Below, pp 160-3. 6 Below, pp 103-9. 7 Below, pp 113-16, 162-3. 8 Cf J. A. Appleyard Coleridge's Philosophy of Literature (Cambridge, Mass. 1965) 35-8.

Editors'' Introduction

Ixi

along with its suitably reformed moral and social principles, upon an unshakably scientific foundation. He was far from finding the notion of a mental mechanism repugnant, since it was precisely the element of determinism in Hartley's explanation that seemed to give an attractively final validity to the psychological proof of Christianity from human nature. Hartleian ideas enter into the texture of his thinking throughout the lectures, informing his political no less than his religious and moral beliefs. Hartleian theory provided a psycho­ logical account and justification of "benevolence" by showing how the necessary workings of the associational mechanism inevitably transformed self-interest into a disinterested benevolence towards others and converted love of self into love of one's family and friends and thence in widening circles to love of mankind.1 Since the wider social sympathies were extensions of the individual's private and domestic sympathies, Hartley's theories had political implications, not at all precisely drawn by Hartley himself, but capable of being exploited in the political situation of the 1790's; they played a significant role in Coleridge's opposition to Godwin's social and moral philosophy and in consequence affected his relationship with the radical wing of the reform movement.2 Indeed, Hartley's ideas were relevant to Coleridge's thinking at so many points in 1795 that any further progress in his political, religious, and philosophical beliefs was necessarily dependent upon, and necessarily led him back to, a reconsideration of the principles in Observations on Man. It was not until 1801 that he felt able to announce to Poole that he had " overthrown the doctrine of Association, as taught by Hartley, and with it all the irreligious metaphysics of modern Infidels—especially, the doctrine of Necessity."3 In Religious Musings Priestley is celebrated as "patriot, and saint, and sage";4 patriot on account of his efforts for civil liberty and re­ form, saint for his works in defence of revealed religion and a Christianity cleansed of its corruptions, sage for his discoveries in science and philosophy. Yet it is still difficult to provide a reliably inclusive list of his works that Coleridge had actually read or re­ ferred to by the end of 1795. The Lectures on Revealed Religion are helpful in throwing further light on his reading and understanding of Priestley, and they definitely confirm a reading of some works, An 1

Cf below, pp 162-3 and nn. See below, pp Ixix-lxx. 3 To Poole [16 Mar 1801]: CL Ii 706. 4 Line 371: PW (EHC) ι 123. Coleridge's sonnet to Priestley, with 2

its wealth of political and religious implications, appeared in the M Chron 11 Dec 1794. See Carl R. Woodring Politics in the Poetry of Coleridge (Madison, Wis. 1961) 98-100.

Ixii

Lectures 1795: On Politics and Religion

History of the Corruptions of Christianity (2 vols Birmingham 1782), for example, and An History of Early Opinions Concerning Jesus Christ (4 vols Birmingham 1786); a reading of others seems highly probable.1 There are many indications in the text of an extensive and indeed thorough study of Priestley's ideas. The ambitious inclusiveness of subject-matter of the lectures, too, perhaps emulates Priest­ ley's breadth of intellectual interest and his synthesis of Christian beliefs and his philosophical ideas. In a letter to Southey of November 1795 Coleridge admitted how much "the pious confidence of Optimism" had been a part of his habitual thinking and even his daily conversation during the previous year. However wickedly you might act, God would make it ULTIMATELY the best I could find twenty Parallel passages in the Lectures—indeed such expressions applied to bad actions had become a habit of my Conversation.2 The pious confidence of optimism is not lacking in the matter and manner of the Lectures on Revealed Religion.3 If Coleridge's lan­ guage and the conduct of his argument seem at times facile, this characteristic is to be found in Priestley too, whose formulations of his optimist doctrine are as superficial and simplicist as they are pious. Priestley's optimism about man's social and intellectual future, how­ ever, reads more realistically and less abstractly than his theological justifications of the existence of evil. Coleridge no doubt found congenial his often declared confidence in the possibility of human progress and his belief in the creative potentialities of the human race. These are important themes in Priestley's Essay on the First Principles of Government of 1768, which one may expect Coleridge to have read.4 In recent history, Priestley declares, the improvement in human affairs has been undeniable and he has no doubt that it will continue, if men apply themselves to the task with confidence in their own powers. Let us not doubt, but that every generation in posterity will be as much superior to us in political, and in all kinds of knowledge, and that they will be able to improve upon the best civil and religious institutions that we can prescribe for them Let us make this great and desirable work easier to them than it has been to us.5 Theological optimism was given a new lease of life by the political radicalism of the 1780's and 1790's, from which it acquired a more 1 2 3

See below, ρ 105 η 1, ρ 108 η 1. To RS [13] Nov 1795: CL ι 168. See below, esp pp 103-9, 104 η 1.

See below, ρ 105 η 1. P 187. The tone and content of pp 1-8 are also particularly relevant. 4

5

Editors' Introduction

lxiii

explicit political meaning and relevance. At the same time, the American Revolution and the developing conflict and violence of the revolution in France and its consequences for Europe pushed the notion towards an extreme and apocalyptic form in the millenarial optimism of Priestley and Price and of the young Coleridge of Religious Musings. In 1795 the intellectual and, as it were, emotional inadequacies of optimism were concealed from Coleridge, as these lectures make clear, by the support it gave to his political and moral beliefs. The system of optimism in Hartley and Priestley seems actually to imply a quietist and conservative view of the world rather than a reformist one, and Coleridge's Lectures on Revealed Religion reflect in a more acute form the difficulty of holding simultaneously the theological view that all evil is ultimately an obscure good1 and the view that social and moral evils are dependent upon circumstances and are consequently remediable. In the course of his lectures Coleridge moves from one view to the other, according to whether the context of his remarks is theological (defending Christianity against infidels and atheists, as in Lecture 1), or political (attacking property and inequality as sources of human misery, as in Lecture 6).2 Although these ambivalences tend to confirm rather than diminish the importance of optimism to Coleridge in 1795, his debt to Priestley was not simply that of one who had embraced as his personal philosophy some of Priestley's philosophical and religious principles. His allegiance to Priestley made possible his rejection of Godwinism as a philosophy, with far-reaching effects upon his beliefs and actions. Some of the leading ideas in Political Justice that Coleridge found most attractive were also to be found in Priestley's philosophy and consequently in a form more congenial to his Christian and moral principles. The doctrine of "necessity", the perfectibility of man, virtue as a habit, the subordination of individual to public good, "disinterestedness", vice as the product of circumstances, were all ideas that could be formulated and interpreted in Priestleian terms, a possibility that conveniently relieved Coleridge of any real need to subscribe to them, as Southey did, and Wordsworth, in their Godwinian form. Some of the problems of determining the degree and kind of influence that Godwin exerted upon Coleridge are touched upon later in this Introduction, but for the moment it may be sug­ gested that Coleridge's political and moral ideas and attitudes were significantly affected by the fact that Priestley's philosophy offered a 1

See below, pp 103-9.

2 See below, ρ 107 η 1. For Priestley see esp pp 108-9 and nn.

Ixiv

Lectures 1795: On Politics and Religion

readily accessible alternative justification for some of the important principles in Political Justice. He was consequently free to adopt an almost wholly critical attitude to the work itself and to Godwin's influence, once he had extracted what was useful to him in its argu­ ments against property, commerce, and "luxury"; and even this aspect of Godwin's work is referred to in the Lectures on Revealed Religion as having been antedated and made superfluous by the social and moral teaching of Christ.1 Even in the case of Priestley, however, Coleridge had some im­ portant reservations and differences of opinion. Much as he accepted from Priestley's theology and philosophy, he was divided from him and from the "politics of dissent" in general on the issue of private property and the moral legitimacy of commerce and the system of manufacturing. Priestley believed in equality of rights but not in equality in private property, far less in the abolition of it. The suggestion that he might accompany the pantisocrats was no more than the absurdity of a moment.2 Equality in goods he thought impracticable and unnecessary and of course an idea contrary to the spirit of commerce. In 1791 he had expressly repudiated the Biblical argument for common goods, which in the Lectures on Revealed Religion underlies Coleridge's whole treatment of social and moral problems. There never was any obligation on christians... to throw their goods into common. Whatever was done of this kind, appears from the history of Ananias and Sapphira, to have been perfectly voluntary, and could not have been universal.. ..3 1

See below, pp 162-5, 225-9. Cf C's letter to RS [1 Sept 1794]: CL ι 98. During the early 1790's Priestley had hastened to acquire con­ siderable holdings in French Govern­ ment bonds in the expectation that they would yield as satisfactorily as similar investments in American funds, which in some cases, he noted, had risen by as much as thirty per cent per annum; his opposition to British foreign policy and his hopes for peace with France were not unconnected with these currency dealings. It was at this time too that Priestley became associated, primarily through his son Joseph, with various enterprises speculating in the virgin lands of America (including the Susquehanna region), to such an extent 2

that more than 700,000 acres had been acquired before the crash came in 1796. Thomas Cooper's Some Information Respecting America (1794), which attracted the attention of the pantiso­ crats, was designed to advertise the area. See Mary C. Park "Joseph Priest­ ley and the Problem of Pantisocracy" Proceedings of the Delaware County Institute of Science xi (1947) 1-60; W. H. Chaloner "Dr. Joseph Priestley, John Wilkinson and the French Revo­ lution, 1798-1802" RHS Trans (5th Series) vm (1958) 21^40. 3 Letters to the Right Honourable Edmund Burke Occasioned by His Re­ flections on the Revolution in France (2nd ed Birmingham 1791) 77.

Editors'1 Introduction

Ixv

The selfish narrowness of political ambition that Coleridge attributes in A Moral and Political Lecture to the "third class among the friends of Freedom" could well apply to the dissenting politicians and their espousal of reform, and his reference to "acts that persecute by exclusion" (the Test and Corporation Acts) suggests that this in part is what he intended. They pursue the interests of Freedom steadily, but with narrow and selfcentering views: they anticipate with exultation the abolition of priviledged orders, and of acts that persecute by exclusion from the right of citizen­ ship— Whatever is above them they are most willing to drag down; but alas! they use not the pulley! Whatever tends to improve and elevate the ranks of our poorer brethren, they regard with suspicious jealousy, as the dreams of the visionary... ι Coleridge's critical account in these lectures of the "friends of Free­ dom" and their political ideas draws attention to the independence of his political position in 1795. It is certainly a mistake to include him, without important reservations, in the dissenting movement for reform of the 1790's. There seems little doubt that his detachment from the organisations and societies within the reformist movement was both deliberate policy and a consequence of his political and moral principles. His philosophical principles, too, were not entirely irrelevant even here. The pious formulas of optimism and necessity and the view of reality as "progressive" and part of a universal "process"2 could readily foster a lofty attitude to contemporary events and reinforce moral scruples against joining any of the political associations and societies for reform, though he was several times pressed to do so in late 1794 and 1795.3 In A Moral and Political Lec­ ture the " small but glorious band " of true patriots are described as having a quite Olympian perspective on reality, made possible by their grasp of the laws of necessity. Accustomed to regard all the affairs of man as a process, they never hurry and they never pause; theirs is not that twilight of political knowledge which gives us just light enough to place one foot before the other; as they advance, the scene still opens upon them, and they press right onward with a vast and various landscape of existence around them. Calmness and energy mark all their actions He whose mind is habitually imprest with them soars above the present state of humanity, and may be justly said to dwell in the presence of the most high. Regarding every event even as he that ordains it, evil vanishes from before him, and he views with naked eye the eternal form of universal beauty.4 1 2

See below, ρ 11. See below, ρ 109 η 1. e

3 C to Sir George and Lady Beau­ mont 1 Oct 1803: CL π 1001. 4 See below, pp 12-13.

RCL

Ixvi

Lectures 1795: On Politics and Religion

It is not such a large step from the tone and outlook of this to his disillusioned affirmation of 1796 that "local and temporary Politics are my aversion—they narrow the understanding, they narrow the heart, they fret the temper".1 Much of the contents of his first, third, and fourth lectures reveals his debt to Priestley's writings on the "evidences" of Christianity. The relationship between his own text and various books by Priestley has been documented in the notes, but in fact his use of such works as Discourses on the Evidence of Revealed Religion (1794) has few features of great interest. His sources of this kind were convenient quarries for material of a factual and informative nature, to which he could turn during the composition of his lectures. The same may be said of his use of Paley's View of the Evidences of Christianity and Michaelis's Introduction to the New Testament, to which he referred several times during the preparation of Lecture 4. Subsequently he perceived the inadequacy of Priestley's method of defending Chris­ tianity by means of conventional "proofs", logical "demonstra­ tions", internal and external evidences, and the like; such arguments were ultimately a delusion, a form of what he came to call "pseudorationalism".2 His dissatisfaction with Priestley's teaching began not with his Unitarianism, though even here he apparently had some reservations,3 nor with his views on specific doctrines, such as atone­ ment or the validity of prayer, but with the system of optimism. The Lectures on Revealed Religion show sufficient vigour of thought and expression and more than enough responsiveness to life to suggest that he could not long have remained content with dry and abstract complacencies of Priestley on the themes of evil and suffering. Al­ though he wrote to Thelwall in April 1796 that he was a "Necessi­ tarian" and an "Optimist",4 his faith had been shaken a few weeks earlier by observing the pregnancy pains of Sara, which had seemed to him to be "inexplicable in the system of optimism".5 By 1799 his disenchantment with the doctrine of necessity was virtually complete. On hearing of the death of Berkeley Coleridge, he wrote: That God works by general laws are to me words without meaning or worse than meaningless—Ignorance and Imbecillity, and Limitation must wish in generals—What and who are these horrible shadows necessity and general law, to which God himself must offer sacrifices—hecatombs of 1 To John Prior Estlin 4 Jul [1796]: CL ι 222. 2 See below, ρ 186 η 1. 3 See below, ρ 200 η 4, ρ 204 η 1.

4 CL ι 205. 5 To the Rev John Edwards 20 Mar 1796: CL ι 192.

Editors'' Introduction

lxvii

Sacrifices?—I feel a deep conviction that these shadows exist not I con­ fess that the more I think, the more I am discontented with the doctrines of Priestly.1 COLERIDGE AND GODWINISM The Lectures on Revealed Religion allow us to understand more clearly than before Coleridge's attitude to Godwin and his Political Justice of 1793. It has already been suggested that his relationship with Godwin and Godwinism affected his attitude to the whole radical movement that had come into existence in the 1790's and had important consequences for all his social and political thinking. There is much evidence for believing that Godwin was the real opponent in Coleridge's mind during the inception and preparation of the lectures and that it is a mistake to include him in that small intellectual and literate circle who welcomed Godwin's book or could be called Godwinians. On the contrary, the lectures constitute a considered Christian alternative to Godwin's atheistic radicalism and were in part the outcome of his discussions with Godwin and with his follower Thomas Holcroft, in December 1794. His response to Godwin personally and to Godwin's ideas is the key to much of his social and religious thinking in 1795 and continued to affect it for long afterwards. A sense of personal and intellectual rivalry with Godwin appears in one of Coleridge's letters of September 1794. "Godwin thinks himself inclined to Atheism—acknowleges there are arguments for Deity, he cannot answer—but not so many, as against his Existence—He is writing a book about it. I set him at Defiance —tho' if he convinces me, I will acknowlege it in a letter in the Newspapers."2 In his first public lecture in Bristol Coleridge had been less than definite about the nature of the moral and political reforms that he thought most necessary in contemporary society and the means of achieving them. The point had been publicly made by a reviewer of A Moral and Political Lecture in the Critical Review for April 1795.3 The lecture as delivered may have been more open and explicit, but the printed version certainly leaves much to the reader's imagination, intentionally perhaps, and at the time must have been open to mis­ interpretation. Coleridge observes that "our object is to destroy ι To Mrs C 8 Apr 1799: CL ι 482. 2 To RS [11 Sept 1794]: CL ι 102. Godwin subsequently acknowledged that he had been converted to theism

by the efforts of Coleridge. C. Kegan Paul William Godwin (2 vols 1876) I 357-8. 3 See above, pp Ivii-lviii.

Ixviii

Lectures 1795: On Politics and Religion

pernicious systems, not their misguided adherents" and "the evil must cease when the cause is removed",1 but he is vague about the nature of the "cause" and the "pernicious systems". In the Lectures on Revealed Religion, however, he makes it clear that it is the system of privately owned property and the institutions built upon it that must be "removed" and "destroyed" if inequality, injustice, and all the other evils of society are to be done away with. It is possible to find the main inspiration here in the account of property given in Book VIIi of Godwin's Political Justice, and this work also seems to lie behind such themes in Coleridge's lectures as that vice is the pro­ duct of circumstances, that government is a source of more evil than good, and that the necessary revolution in human society will be bloodless, non-violent, and the consequence of the progressive in­ tellectual and moral conversion of the bulk of the people, including the oppressors themselves. Nevertheless, it is easy to overemphasise Coleridge's dependence upon the ideas and attitudes of Godwin. It is, indeed, uncertain how much first-hand knowledge of Political Justice Coleridge had, as distinct from impressions he would pick up from Southey and from people in the radical circles in which he moved in Cambridge, Lon­ don, and Bristol. His letter to Southey of 21 October 1794 claims a close acquaintance with the work,2 but it is difficult to find early corroborative evidence of this. However, in spite of his sonnet in praise of Godwin, it is clear from his letters of the period that he had strong reservations about many of the ideas in Political Justice and was deeply opposed to others. In the Lectures on Revealed Religion, however, his opposition is complete and unqualified. He was much distressed by the thought that Godwin's disciples, or radicals infected with Godwinian ideas, could be capturing the leadership of the people. Holcroft, for example, whom he had met in 1794, played a leading role in the activities of the London Corresponding Society and had been indicted for high treason and imprisoned in October 1794. He had only recently been released without a trial when Coleridge first met him in December and took an instant dislike to him on personal and intellectual grounds.3 It was the power of such men and their influence on the masses that claimed Coleridge's fear­ ful attention from the moment of his first personal contact with them. The Lectures on Revealed Religion make plain how deep and cru1 2

MPL (1795) 18; below, pp 18-19. CL ι 115.

3

c to RS 17 Dec 1794: CL1138-9.

Editors Introduction

Ixix

cial was the conflict between those ideas and principles which Coleridge had obtained from Hartley and Priestley and from his re-reading of the NewTestament and those whose source or inspira­ tion was in Political Justice and in the works of the other chief radical figure of the age, Tom Paine. From early 1795 onwards, Coleridge's objections, Christian, moral, and philosophical, to some of Godwin's fundamental theses led him to seek alternative authorities or justifi­ cations for such views as he continued to share with him. Even in 1794 there is a strong critical note in his references to God­ win. After his first meeting with Godwin and Holcroft, Coleridge recorded with evident satisfaction the manifest superiority in argu­ ment of Richard Porson, the classical scholar, Unitarian Christian, and favourer of reform. My God! to hear Porson crush Godwin, Holcroft &c—They absolutely tremble before him!1

But as early as July 1794 the intellectual basis of his later opposition to Godwinism may be found in a letter to Southey. Although his mode of expression is condensed and elliptical, it is still possible to see that the ideas and assumptions in the passage look forward to those in the anti-Godwin paragraphs in the Lectures on Revealed Religion and also to the later extensive criticism of Godwinism in the sermon of 1799.2 The ardour of private Attachments makes Philanthropy a necessary habit of the Soul. I love my Friend—such as he is, all mankind are or might bel The deduction is evident—. Philanthropy (and indeed every other Virtue) is a thing of Concretion—Some home-born Feeling is the center of the Ball, that, rolling on thro' Life collects and assimilates every congenial Affection. These thoughts the latter part of your letter suggested.3

This looks as if it could be a reply to some Godwinian utterances by Southey about the supremacy of general benevolence over private attachment and the need for "disinterestedness" in one's moral and social feelings. Coleridge's characteristic insistence on the " concrete " nature of our moral and social feelings may be opposed to the im­ personal abstractness of Godwin's conception of "benevolence", virtue, justice, and the like. The notion that "philanthropy" (that is, an active concern for one's fellow-men) begins in the immediate personal circle of the individual, among his family and friends, is 1 To RS 17 Dec 1794: CL 1138. 2 BM Add MS 35343 ff 36-64; discussed by John Colmer in "An Un-

published Sermon by S. T. Coleridge" N&Q ccra (1958) 150-2. 3 To RS 13 Jul [1794]: CL ι 86.

Ixx

Lectures 1795: On Politics and Religion

elaborated in the lectures into a more considered criticism of Godwinism as a political philosophy. Behind his remarks lies Hartley's theory of mind in Observations on Man, and it is at this point that Hartley's psychology enters most deeply and clearly into Coleridge's political thinking.1 According to Hartley, the domestic feelings are the origin and basis of the social feelings, of the love of one's country, of mankind, and ultimately of the love of God. The laws of the asso­ ciation of ideas make this progressive extension of the private feelings to the public feelings a necessary fact of human nature and of the growth of the individual. This was the basis for his criticism in Lecture 3 that Godwinism "builds without a foundation", "proposes an end without establishing the means" and shows a " total ignorance of that obvious Fact in human nature", that "in virtue and in know­ ledge we must be infants and be nourished with milk in order that we may be men and eat strong meat".2 Men develop from asocial childhood into moral and social adulthood. Coleridge is led to the view, on philosophical and psychological grounds (derived initially from Hartley), that "general benevolence" is not only unlikely, but is really impossible without "private attachments", that is, without that network of living relationships with specific individuals which nourishes the wider social feelings and our sense of personal re­ sponsibility and love for common humanity. It is the inescapable psychological facts of individual growth, as scientifically explained by Hartley, that Godwin's system ignores, in Coleridge's view, and this misconception of human nature provokes his opposition not only to what he sees as Godwin's facile comments on gratitude, benevolence, marriage, and sexual relationships, but to his moral and political philosophy. It is true, as John Colmer points out, that Coleridge's moral disapproval of Godwin was intensified by what he heard, by way of rumour and gossip, of Godwin's private life; and there is perhaps too much patronising talk in the lectures, and elsewhere, of the "pride", sensuality, and limited capacity for happiness, wisdom, and benevolence of the atheists and also of those "Friends of civil Freedom"3 who, like Godwin, were of an atheistic or sceptical cast of mind. But even in 1794, before he had met God­ win at all, Coleridge's resistance to much in his philosophy was more than merely personal in origin. By the time of the composition of the Lectures on Revealed Religion his distaste for Godwin's view had adopted a specifically Christian form. In Lecture 3 Christ is said to 1 2

See below, pp 162-5, 351-3. Below, ρ 164.

3 See below, ρ 164.

Editors' Introduction

lxxi

have a surer grasp of human nature, and consequently of political principles, than Godwin. Jesus knew our Nature—and that expands like the circles of a Lake—the Love of our Friends, parents, and neighbours lead[s] us to the love of our Country to the love of all Mankind. The intensity of private attachment encourages, not prevents, universal philanthropy.1 This opposition of Jesus to Godwin reappears in Coleridge's later reference to the proposed book on Godwin's philosophy, presumably a reworking of the ideas and material in the lectures. "In my book on Godwin I compare the two Systems—his & Jesus's—".2 In November 1796 Coleridge had already told Thelwall that his work would appear shortly and would deal with the problem of property from an antiGodwin, religious point of view. The origin of Property & the mode of removing it's evils—form the last Chapter of my Axiswer to Godwin, which will appear now in a few weeks —We run on the same ground, but we drive different Horses. I am daily more and more a religionist—you, of course, more & more otherwise.3 A letter to Benjamin Flower of Il December 1796 asserts that his book on Godwin will demonstrate the " absurdities and wickedness of his System" and the superiority of that of Christ.4 There is in short a remarkable consistency from 1794 onwards in Coleridge's response to the challenge presented by Godwin's work and to the influence Coleridge saw it gaining in extreme radical circles. That he was dazzled by the notoriety of Godwin is doubtless true, and Godwin's calm indifference to public hostility may have served as an example and an inspiration to Coleridge in his own opposition to authority (whether represented by the government, his college, or his family). Some sense of gratitude lies behind the sonnet to Godwin, but it is otherwise a conventional piece of work, revealing little or nothing about his real feelings towards its subject. In contrast, the passage on "philanthropy" in the letter to Southey of 13 July 1794, quoted above, contains the nucleus of his argument against Godwin and is expressed with notable conviction and with some forceful appropriateness in its basic imagery. When Coleridge wrote to Southey on 21 October 1794, he men­ tioned his projected work on pantisocracy and said he hoped "to have comprised [in it] all that is good in Godwin", adding, "I think not so highly of him as you do".5 What was "good in Godwin" in ι Below, ρ 163. 2 ToThelwall 31 Dec1796: CIi293. 3 CL ι 253.

* CL ι 267. 5 CL 1115.

Ixxii

Lectures 1795: On Politics and Religion

Coleridge's eyes in 1794 was possibly Godwin's analysis of the role of property in society, his criticism of "luxury" and superfluities, his belief that the social institutions built upon the system of unequal property produced all other evils, political, moral, and intellectual, and his advocacy of social and moral change by non-violent progres­ sive "illumination". But his antipathy to Godwin personally and to his views on religion and morality drove him to seek an alternative Christian justification for and form of expression of what he found sympathetic in Godwin's philosophy. No doubt Godwin (and Rousseau) stimulated his appreciation of the evils of property and inequality, but for a solution to the problem of property he turned to the New Testament and to those passages in it which had earlier inspired Anabaptists, Diggers, and Levellers and which were to be used in the nineteenth century by the Christian Socialists. And all that believed were together, & had all things in common.1

Coleridge was no doubt aware how provocative he was being when he declared in Lecture 6 that "this part of the Christian Doctrine... is indeed almost the whole of it",2 but there is every reason to believe that it expressed his serious feelings. The abolition, not merely the equalising, of private property was the only Christian and conse­ quently radical solution. " While I possess anything exclusively mine, the selfish Passions will have full play, and our Hearts will never learn that great Truth that the good of the Whole [is the good of each individual]."3 Although by early 1796 he had abandoned the ideal of common ownership,4 he still maintained that Christ's teaching was egalitarian in character and directly applicable to contemporary politics. Thelwall, in the course of his correspondence with Coleridge during 1796, had asserted the irrelevance of Christianity to the con­ temporary movement for social reform, to which Coleridge replied with an account of his own Christian radical position. It certainly teaches in the most explicit terms the rights of Man, his right to Wisdom, his right to an equal share in all the blessings of Nature; it commands it's disciples to go every where, & every where to preach these rights; it commands them never to use the arm of flesh, to be perfectly non-resistant; yet to hold the promulgation of Truth to be a Law above Law, and in the performance of this office to defy "Wickedness in high places," and cheerfully to endure ignominy, & wretchedness, & torments, & death, rather than intermit the performance of it; yet while enduring ignominy, & wretchedness, & torments & death to feel nothing but Below, ρ 229; cf Acts 2. 44. Below, ρ 229. 3 Below, ρ 228. 1

2

4 See the comment on Babeuf's doctrines in Watchman No 8 (27 Apr 1796): CC ρ 288.

Editors' Introduction

lxxiii

sorrow, and pity, and love for those who inflicted them; wishing their Oppressors to be altogether such as they, "excepting these bonds."—Here is truth in theory; and in practice a union of energetic action, and more energetic Suffering. For activity amuses; but he, who can endure calmly, must possess the seeds of true Greatness These doubtless are morals for all the Lovers of Mankind, who wish to act as well as speculate.. .1

Although the emphasis in this passage is upon the equal distribution rather than the ownership of property and wealth, there is little that is not similar to the moral and social principles of 1795; there is a fundamental continuity of outlook. What has been removed is any possibility of mistaking Coleridge's moral and social point of view for that of Godwinism or with the kind of radicalism inspired by Paine. Though several of his ideas have parallels in Godwin's philo­ sophy (equality of rights and conditions, non-violence, the utterance of truth, passive resistance), Coleridge's phraseology by 1796 has been cleansed of Godwinian verbalisms and associations. There is no question of denying or underestimating the impact of Godwinism upon Coleridge and the attractiveness to him of some of its leading ideas, but from the beginning there is more than sufficient evidence of a persistent attempt to Christianise what he found attrac­ tive in the principles of Godwin (and also Paine).2 One consequence of this is a certain ambiguity in some of Coleridge's utterances. What at times seems purely Godwinian in his Bristol lectures need not be really so (he may be recalling Priestley in fact), or what seems to be a Godwinian formula or turn of phrase may have been under­ stood by Coleridge in a quite Christian and personal way, but capable of misleading his audience, readers, or critics.3 The problem of accurately identifying Coleridge's obligations is made more diffi­ cult by the fact that, in some of the most relevant areas of thought, Priestley and Godwin possessed a common vocabulary derived from what was common in their intellectual milieu (Godwin too looked back to Hartley, for instance). It is possible to see only in context whether a concept such as "optimism" or "illumination" is being 1

To Thelwall 17 Dec [1796]: CL ι

282. 2 Cf his attempt to convert the Godwinian Southey. " Southey is Christianizing apace". C to Dyer [late Feb 1795]: CL 1153. 3 John Colmer has pointed out how, in general, Coleridge took few precautions to prevent himself from being misunderstood. Colmer Coleridge ρ 13. The irony implicit in his position as a

Christian radical was pleasingly clear to him. Cf: "The Law, the Prophets, and the Gospel teach a series of doctrines so nearly bordering on some recent unpopular tenets, that it requires all the acuteness of beneficed interpreters to spiritualize them away into an harmless no-meaning." An Answer to "A Letter to Edward Long Fox", below, ρ 327.

Ixxiv

Lectures 1795: On Politics and Religion

used by Coleridge with his own Christian or Priestleian associations, or whether he is publicly (or involuntarily) acknowledging a debt to Godwin. The Lectures on Revealed Religion suggest that, though there is some overlapping of his own beliefs and Godwin's, the authority for those beliefs is not to be found in Godwin, but that he is striving for a language and for definitions that will exclude God­ win. This is perhaps particularly the case in a passage in A Moral and Political Lecture of 1795 frequently cited in confirmation of his acceptance of Godwinian ideas, where he refers to "that small but glorious band, whom we may truly distinguish by the name of think­ ing and disinterested Patriots". These are the men who have encouraged the sympathetic passions till they have become irresistable habits, and made their duty a necessary part of their self interest.... Accustomed to regard all the affairs of man as a process, they never hurry and they never pause; theirs is not that twilight of political knowledge which gives us just light enough to place one foot before the other; as they advance, the scene opens upon them, and they press right onward with a vast and various landscape of existence around them Believing that vice originates not in the man, but in the surround­ ing circumstances; not in the heart, but in the understanding; he is hopeless concerning no one— [He] looks forward to.. .that glorious period when Justice shall have established the universal fraternity of Love. These soul ennobling views bestow the virtues which they anticipate. He whose mind is habitually imprest with them soars above the present state of humanity, and may be justly said to dwell in the presence of the most high. Regarding every event even as he that ordains it, evil vanishes from before him, and he views with naked eye the eternal form of universal beauty.1 The " small but glorious band ", whose character is delineated here, have affinities with that "unresisting yet deeply principled Minority" of reformers referred to in Lecture 6 of the Lectures on Revealed Religion. Universal Equality is the object of the Mess[iah]'s mission not to be pro­ cured by the tumultuous uprising of an indignant multitude but this final result of an unresisting yet deeply principled Minority, which gradually absorbing kindred minds shall at last become the whole.2 The "glorious band "in A Moral and Political Lecture show some of the characteristic beliefs and attitudes of Godwinian enthusiasts or disciples of Godwin and are generally taken to be such.3 The refer1

See below, pp 12-13. Below, ρ 218. 3 Cf Colmer Coleridge ρ 11: "Al­ though Godwin is not mentioned by name, Coleridge's message to his audi­ ence that attended his first lecture was 2

that the true patriot must believe in the principles that were promulgated in Political Justice." Cf also Appleyard Coleridge's Philosophy of Literature 30-1.

Editors Introduction

Ixxv

ences to "Justice" and to vice as the product of circumstances are reminiscent of Political Justice, and it is arguable that the notion of a "deeply principled Minority" capable of transforming society also looks back to the same work. It is unlikely, however, that in either of these passages Coleridge had Godwin in mind or intended any conscious allusion to his work. In A Moral and Political Lecture the description of the band of patriots is replete with Coleridge's unique blend of the language and ideas of Hartley and of Priestley and is thoroughly un-Godwinian in tone. To anyone familiar with the moral and political writings of Priestley, Coleridge's panegyric offers many echoes and reminiscences of Priestley's accounts of necessity, per­ fectibility, optimism, and of his Christian millenarial expectations of a "universal fraternity of Love".1 Some characteristic ideas of Hartley's also are discernible in Coleridge's reference in this context to "self interest", "habits", and "duty". The "glorious band" and the "principled Minority" seem to be close in spirit not to Holcroft and the Godwinians, but to "the elect of Heaven" in Religious Mus­ ings who, viewing "all visible things | As steps, that upward to their Father's throne | Lead gradual", co-operate with the universal pro­ cess towards redemption and the triumph of social justice.2 When, in the last weeks of 1795, Coleridge came to revise A Moral and Political Lecture before republishing as the "Introductory Address" of the Condones, he left substantially intact the whole passage about the "small but glorious band" precisely because it was not and had never been conceived as a "panegyric in favour of Godwinism".3 There was no real inconsistency in Coleridge's attitude to Godwin during his Bristol period, and, on the evidence of all his lectures and of his letters, it is unlikely that he ever advocated or believed in a political and moral solution to the problems of contemporary life that could be intelligibly called " Godwinian". There was conse­ quently little that he later felt the need to retract, except, significantly, the severity of his early criticism of Godwin as a person. Godwin's principles had not affected him as they had Wordsworth, like a 1 See esp First Principles of Govern­ ment (1768) 1-9. Priestley's views on the millennium appear in his Conclu­ sion to Hartley's Observations (1794), and in his sermon published as On the Present State of Europe (1794) (possibly reviewed by Coleridge in the February issue of C Rev: CN ι 50n). 2 Cf lines 45-93: PW (EHC) ι 11113.

3 Colmer Coleridge ρ 14. The main changes were: "benevolence.. .virtue" omitted; "Convinced" for "Believ­ ing";" would remove"for "removes"; "Regarding.. .beauty" also omitted, because of its extravagant expression, perhaps, rather than any loss of con­ fidence in its sentiments (which appear in a less presumptuous form in the preceding sentence).

Ixxvi

Lectures 1795: On Politics and Religion

" strong disease ", nor had he been infatuated with them like Southey: "The frequent and careful study of Godwin was of essential service—• I read and all but worshipped. I have since seen his fundamental error."1 Who then are the "deeply principled Minority", the "small but glorious band", if they are not disciples or followers of Godwin? What are the principles they have absorbed so deeply? Surely they are those who accept the truths of revealed religion; who accept Christ's morality, the practical implications of which are social equality and community of goods; whose benevolent social feelings are an exten­ sion of their domestic and family feelings; whose own private life is morally blameless; who have gained their "principles" from a deep reading of those who (like Locke, Hartley, and Priestley) have "written most wisely on the Nature of Man";2 who regard life as a "process"3 leading by necessity to man's ultimate happiness, perfec­ tion, and the "universal fraternity of Love"; whose place is among the poor; whose message to the poor is contained in the gospel, where the "Balm of healing Knowledge"4 is to be found in its most pure form; who plead for the poor, not to them; who see "justice" only as a prelude to "love". Coleridge's small band and the deeply principled minority are as unlike Godwin and his followers as could be. Where Godwinism has entered into his ideas, it is in so Christian­ ised a form that the original inspiration has become irrelevant. Similarly, Godwin's conception of reform by "universal illumina­ tion" may lie behind Coleridge's idea of a "deeply principled Minority" which would gradually absorb the whole of society, but it is expressed in a primitive Christian form and in a Christian con­ text. Its associations and implications refer the reader back to the Apostles and the early Christian communities, and Coleridge's imagery is drawn from the Biblical parables and the organic processes of nature. The " principles " of his minority are compared in Lecture 6 to the "very little leaven which a woman took and hid in three measures of Meal till the whole was leavened", and to "seeds which at length rise to great Trees"; a "cold unfavourable season" may retard their growth, but it cannot prevent it.5 Coleridge's language here is very different from the abstract language of political rights, 1 Letter to Grosvenor Charles Bedford 1 Oct 1795; Bodl MS Eng. misc. c. 22 f 163, quoted in Ge®ffrey Carnall Robert Southey and His Age (1960) 37. Cf also S Letters (Curry) ι 79, 86. 2 C to George Coleridge 6 Nov 1794:

CL 1126. 3 See below, pp 108-9, 109 η 1. 4 Below, ρ 162. 5 See below, ρ 229 and η 2. Cf also "the Balm of healing Knowledge" in Lect 3, below, ρ 162.

Editors'1 Introduction

lxxvii

justice, and so on to be found in contemporary radical literature. It testifies to a point of view that was essentially religious before it was political. Yet Coleridge's response to Godwin's work was one of the most important single factors in his early political thinking. Political Jus­ tice did not so much nourish his radicalism as push it in another direction by force of reaction. Most, if not all, of the attractive ideas in Godwin's work were capable of being formulated in Christian (and often Priestleian) terms, or, as Coleridge said uncompromisingly in Lecture 3," whatever is just in it, is more forcibly recommended in the Gospel and whatever is new is absurd ".1 In his projected work on Godwin this was to be one of the controlling ideas. My answer to Godwin will be a six shilling Octavo; and is designed to shew not only the absurdities and wickedness of his System, but to detect what appear to me the defects of all the systems of morality before & since Christ, & to shew that wherein they have been right, they have exactly coincided with the Gospel, and that each has erred exactly where & in pro­ portion as, he has deviated from that perfect canon. My last Chapter will attack the credulity, superstition, calumnies, and hypocrisy of the present race of Infidels.2

Coleridge's attitude to Paine was more complex than his attitude to Godwin, but his tone, in the Lectures on Revealed Religion and in his letters, is generally critical and for much the same moral and religious reasons. It seems likely that in the opening passage of Lecture 3 he had expressed some admiration for the rhetorical and political effectiveness of Paine's attacks on the English constitution.3 His admiration for Paine as a political writer, however, was qualified and ultimately overborne by his contempt for Paine's deism, theological ineptitude in the Age of Reason, and also, one must suppose, for Paine's acceptance of the system of commerce and manufacturing and for his political tactics in appealing directly to the people. Coleridge's complex and critical feelings about Godwin, Paine, Holcroft, Thelwall, and other radical figures, the majority of whom were "infidels" of some sort, made it additionally difficult for him to sustain a strong and consistent attitude during the 1790's, when events in France, combined with repression and reaction at home, made political agitation difficult, dangerous, and dispiriting. In addition, his distrust of the political methods of Below, ρ 164. To Flower [11 Dec 1796]: CL ι 267-8. 3 See below, ρ 149 and η 1. Southey 1

2

claimed to have praised Paine to much effect in his historical lectures; see above, ρ xxxiv.

Ixxviii

Lectures 1795: On Politics and Religion

the Corresponding Societies and similar radical organisations (appealing to the people, not for them) necessarily isolated him to some extent from the most important active forces for reform and impelled him towards his own highly personal solution to the social and moral problems of the age.1 On two issues particularly, Coleridge's moral and religious principles in the Lectures on Re­ vealed Religion decisively separated him from Godwin and Paine. Both men presuppose that the common people are still, in spite of all their disadvantages, susceptible to reason and argument and capable of acting responsibly in order to gain their legitimate moral and political ends. Coleridge saw, on the other hand, a population so essentially demoralised and rendered dissolute and ignorant by their circumstances (and kept so by their induced depravity) that it was neither desirable nor possible to bring them actively into the political process as agents of genuine national reform. His distrust of appeals to the people rested upon his distrust of the people themselves, collec­ tively considered, in spite of his manifest and genuine popular sym­ pathies. Hence in Religions Musings the poor are enjoined to await the approaching millennium for relief from their miseries.2 Another significant difference of principle and political tactics with Paine is not unconnected with the substance of the previous paragraph. The final emphasis in the Lectures on Revealed Religion is placed not upon political organisations and societies as the road to reform, but upon the moral and religious reform of men as individuals. Let us exert over our own hearts a virtuous despotism, and lead our own Passions in triumph, and then we shall want neither Monarch nor General. If we would have no Nero without, we must place a Ccesar within us, and that Csesar must be Religion!3

This position is consonant with his acceptance of Hartley's psy­ chology, which can be seen as sustaining still further his Christian moral and social beliefs. Associationism found the original centre of the social and moral feelings in the individual consciousness and thus by implication located the origin of social change in the individual 1 Cf: "I was a sharer in the general vortex, though my little world described the path of its revolution in an orbit of its own." Friend (CC) ι 223. 2 Cf Lect 6, pp 221-2 below; Sermon, ρ 353 below; Religious Musings lines 277-86: P W (EHC) 1119. See C's comments to Poole: "You have been

often unwisely fretful with me when I have pressed upon you their depravity, —Without religious joys, and religious terrors nothing can be expected from the inferior Classes in society...", Letter of 8 Apr 1799: CL ι 480. 3 Below, ρ 229.

Editors' Introduction

lxxix

too, and the agency of change in persons rather than parties, associa­ tions, and the like.1 Coleridge later affirmed that on this point his principles had always been essentially different from those of the democrats and Jacobins: "They were Christian, for they demanded the direct reformation & voluntary act of each Individual prior to any change in his outward circumstances.. .".2 The Lectures on Revealed Religion allow one to see how deeply rooted Coleridge's religious and moral feelings were in 1795 and how they would necessarily bring him into conflict, intellectually and morally, with the extreme radical movement and lead him to a point of view that was different from that of such "friends of liberty" as Paine, Thelwall, and Holcroft, as well as from that of more moderate proponents of reform, such as Priestley and the Dissenters.3 Our picture of his early Christian radicalism is both filled in and compli­ cated by the Lectures on Revealed Religion; at the same time they force us to see it rather differently. The fundamental emphases in his religious and political thinking that the lectures reveal suggest that his early work could be more accurately and justly seen as an intellec­ tual reaction against the philosophy of the revolution, sharing the moral and social concern of the revolution, certainly, but resisting some of its most important controlling ideas about the individual, society, and religion as they appeared, at least, in the work of Godwin and Paine.4 By reason of his Christian, moral, and philosophical principles, which he attempted to clarify and justify in his lectures, Coleridge found himself in a state of "insulation" (to use his own expressive word) from the democratic movement and its ideas.5 His later intellectual progress can be seen not simply as an apostasising rejection of his ideas of 1795, but as a more profound exploration and development of them. It is possible to see a substantial element of truth in his later aggrieved denials of the charges of youthful Jaco­ binism that pursued him for a large part of his life. Although there is often something not entirely pleasing in the tone and manner of his self-defence in The Friend or Biographia Literaria, in his private correspondence such retrospective glances at his Bristol opinions 1 Cf above, pp lx, lxix-lxxi; below, pp 162-3 and ηη, ρ 352. 2 To SirGeorge and Lady Beaumont 1 Oct 1803: CL n 999. 3 Cf above, pp lxviii-lxix. 4 Cf his symptomatic dismissal of the belief (held by Godwin and others)

that in the nature of things there can be only one "best mode of social existence", and this must be universally valid. Below, ρ 139 and η 4. 5 Letter to Sir George and Lady Beaumont 1 Oct 1803: CL n 1001.

Ixxx

Lectures 1795: On Politics and Religion

seem closer to the facts than the accusations of his detractors.1 To Sir George Beaumont he affirmed that he had only "unconsciously" assisted the democrats and that his own feelings and attitudes had been in fact very different from theirs. I have been extremely affected by the death of young Emmett—just 24! —at that age.. .1 was retiring from Politics, disgusted beyond measure by the manners & morals of the Democrats, & fully awake to the inconsistency of my practice with my speculative Principles.... Like him, I was un­ consciously yet actively aiding & abetting the Plans, that I abhorred, & the men, who were more, far more unlike me, in every respect, in education, habits, principles & feelings, than the most anathematized Aristocrat among my opponents.2

He was fervently thankful that his principles in 1795 had prevented him from publicly allying himself with such men as Holcroft and Thelwall and believed that it was that which had saved both himself and Southey from arrest during that year and 1796. Fortunately for me, the Government, I suppose, knew that both Southey & I were utterly unconnected with any party or club or society—(& this praise I must take to myself, that I disclaimed all these Societies, these Imperia in Imperio, these Ascarides in the Bowels of the State, subsisting on the weakness & diseasedness, & having for their final Object the Death of that State, whose Life had been their Birth & growth, & continued to be their sole nourishment—. All such Societies, under whatever name, I abhorred as wicked Conspiracies—and to this principle I adhered immoveably, simply because it was a principle, & this at a time when the Danger attached to the opposite mode of conduct would have been the most seducing Temptation to it—at a time when in rejecting these secret associations, often as I was urged to become a member now of this & now of that, I felt just as a religious young officer may be supposed to feel, who full of courage dares refuse a challenge,.... This insulation of myself & Southey, I suppose, the Ministers knew /knew that we were Boys: or rather, perhaps, Southey was at Lisbon, & I at Stowey, sick of Politics, & sick of Democrats & Democracy, before the Ministers had ever heard of u s . . . 3

Though such independence can bring its own perils, intellectual and moral, Coleridge's "insulation" not only saved him, perhaps, from arrest but inspired and accelerated his progress towards an indepen­ dent and original view in politics.

1

Cf above, pp lxv-lxvi, lxviii-lxix. 2 Letter of 1 Oct 1803: CL η 999, 1002. Robert Emmet (1778-1803), Irish patriot and rebel, an educated and sensitive man, was hanged for his

part in the attempt to seize Dublin and proclaim a republic during the "rising" of 1803. 3 Ibid 1001.

A MORAL AND POLITICAL LECTURE

RCL

DATE AND PLACE OF DELIVERY . Precise dates and place unknown. In a

letter to Dyer of late February 1795 Coleridge writes: "Written at one sitting between the hours of twelve at night and the Breakfast Time of the day, on which it was delivered..." (CL ι 152). Writing forty-one years later to Cottle, 5 March 1836, Southey said that this first lecture was given in January in the Corn Market (S Letters—Curry—π 448). Cottle says that it was given in the Plume of Feathers in Wine Street (E Rec ι 20). The anonymous "Q", a former Bristolian writing in 1819, placed the first lec­ ture "in a room over the corn-market" in the beginning of 1795 (M Mag XLVNI—Oct 1819—204). Probable date and place: late January or early February 1795, in the schoolroom of the Corn Market in Bristol. See above, Introduction, pp xxvii-xxx. PUBLICATION . In the letter to Dyer quoted above, Coleridge wrote: "The first Lecture I was obliged to publish, it having been confidently asserted that there was Treason in it The reasons which compelled me to publish it forbad me to correct it..." (CL1152). The imprint on the titlepage reads: "Bristol: Printed by George Routh, in Corn-Street. Price, six-pence." The pamphlet was probably published soon after the lecture, in early February. CRITICAL REACTIONS. A Moral and Political Lecture was reviewed in C Rev N.S. XIII (Apr 1795) 455: ".. .This little composition is the produc­ tion of a young man who possesses a poetical imagination. It is spirited, and often brilliant; and the sentiments manly and generous. Though, with one or two exceptions, we admire the style of this little work, we think it rather defective in point of precision; and, instead of saying we have shown the necessity of forming some fixed and determinate principles of action, he should have said, we have represented certain characters. We also think our young political lecturer leaves his auditors abruptly, and that he has not stated, in a form sufficiently scientific and determinate, those principles to which, as he expresses it, he now proceeds as the most important point. We confess we were looking for something further, and little thought that we were actually come to the Finis...." TEXT. A Moral and Political Lecture (Bristol [1795]). Cottle (E Rec Ι 21-2)

quotes a passage from the lecture, copied, he says, from C's manuscript "as delivered, not from his 'Conciones ad Populum' as printed, where it will be found in contracted state". The quotation has no variants of con­ sequence and differs from MPL by its omissions; the address as it reap­ peared in Condones is an expanded, not a contracted, form of MPL. In the subsequent textual notes to MPL, passages not carried over into Con­ dones are noted as well as variant words and phrases (punctuation and capitalisation changes being ignored unless part of the variants); passages added to Condones are indicated in the textual notes to that work. L. P.

2. A Moral and Political Lecture. Title-page, from a copy in the British Museum.

A MORAL AND POLITICAL

LECTURE DELIVERED AT

BRISTOL BY

S. T. COLERIDGE of Jesus College, Cambridge

To calm and guide The swelling democratic tide; To watch the state's uncertain frame; To baffle Faction's partial aim; But chiefly with determin'd zeal To quell the servile Band that kneel To Freedom's jealous foes; And Iash that Monster, who is daily found Expert and bold our country's peace to wound, Yet dreads to handle arms, nor manly counsel knows.

AKENSIDE 1

1 Mark Akenside To the Right Honourable Francis Earl of Hunting­ ton st ν 2: Odes bk ι Ode xviii: Poems (1772) 302-3 (var). Among other changes, C adds italics, alters "banish'd" to "jealous", capitalises "Monster" (who is Pitt), and supplies the verb "lash". C's admiration for Akenside, apparent as early as 1794 (see PW—EHC—ι 69-70), is shown in Condones (below, ρ 53), The Watch­

man (CC pp 29-30, 103 η 3), and Poems (1796), in which he used a quotation from The Pleasures of Imagination as a motto to Religious Musings. See also his defence of Aken­ side and "metaphysical" poetry in a letter to John Thelwall of 13 May 1796 (CL ι 215). For additional references to Akenside see CN ι 123 and n. See also below, ρ 13; LRR, ρ 94 and η 3.

ADVERTISEMENT They, who in these days ofjealousy and Party rage dare publicly explain the Principles of Freedom, must expect to have their Intentions mis­ represented, and to be entitled like the Apostles of Jesus, "stirrers up of the People, and men accused of Sedition."1 The following Lecture is therefore printed as it was delivered, the Author choosing that it should be published with all the inaccuracies and inelegant colloquial­ isms of an hasty composition, rather than that he should be the Object of possible Calumny as one who had rashly uttered sentiments which he afterwards timidly qualified.2

1 An adaptation of passages from Acts 17. 33, 21. 27, and 24. 5. 2 "The first Lecture I was obliged to publish, it having been confidently asserted that there was Treason in it. Written at one sitting between the hours of twelve at night and the Break­

fast Time of the day, on which it was delivered, believe me that no literary Vanity prompted me to the printing of it—The reasons which compelled me to publish it forbad me to correct it". C to George Dyer [late Feb 1795]: CL ι 152.

A MORAL AND POLITICAL LECTURE

W

HEN the Wind is fair and the Planks of the Vessel sound, we

may safely trust every thing to the management of professional "Mariners;1 but6 in a Tempest and on board a crazy Bark, all must contribute their Quota of Exertion. The Stripling is not exempted from it by his Youth, nor the Passenger by his Inexperience. Even so in the present agitations of the public mind, every one ought to consider his intellectual faculties as in a state of immediate requisi­ tion. All may benefit Society in some degree. The exigences of the Times do not permit us to stay for the maturest years, lest the oppor­ tunity be lost, while we are waiting for an increase of power. Omit­ ting therefore the disgusting Egotisms of an affected Humility,2 we shall briefly explain the design, and possible benefit, of the proposed political disquisitions/ Companies resembling the present will from a variety of circum­ stances consist chiefly of the zealous Advocates for Freedom. It will be therefore our endeavour, not so much to excite the torpid, as to regulate the feelings of the ardent: and above all, to evince the necessity of bottoming on fixed Principles,3 that so we may not be the unstable Patriots of Passion or Accident, or hurried away by names of which we have not sifted the meaning, and by tenets of which we have not examined the consequences. The Times are trying :4 and in a-b Mariners: 1 An apt image with which to open an address to Bristolians. One wonders if C, from the windows of the schoolroom above the Corn Market, where he was probably speaking, could see the ships in the harbour only a few streets away. 2 C was interested in the ways in which egotism attempts in vain, and needlessly, to veil itself. See The Watchman (CC) 56 and η 2; see also Poems (1796) [v]-ix: PW (EHC) Ii 1135-6. 3 Cf".. .opinion.. .bottomed upon

[omitted]

solid principles of law and policy", Edmund Burke Reflections on the Revolution in France (5th ed 1790) 37. C has already begun his quest for the "Permanent". See CL πι 352, iv838. Cfthe subtitle of The Friend: "A Series of Essays... to AidintheFormationof Fixed Principles in Politics, Morals, and Religion": Friend (CC) ι 1. 4 A phrase reminiscent of Thomas Paine: "These are the times that try men's souls: The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis,

6

A Moral and Political Lecture

order to be prepared against their difficulties, we should have acquired a prompt facility of adverting in all our doubts to some grand and comprehensive Truth. In a deep and strong Soil must that Blessing" fix its Roots, the height of which, like that of the Tree in Daniel, is to " reach to Heaven, and the Sight of it to the ends of all the Earth."1 The Example of France is indeed a "Warning to Britain."2 A nation wading to their Rights through Blood, and marking the track of Freedom by Devastation! Yet let us not embattle our Feelings against our Reason. Let us not indulge our malignant Passions under the mask of Humanity. Instead of railing with infuriate declamation against these excesses, we shall be more profitably employed in de­ veloping the sources of them. French Freedom is the Beacon, that6 while it cguides usd to Equality should shew us the Dangers, that throng the road. The annals of the French Revolution have recorded in Letters of Blood, that the Knowledge of the Few cannot counteract the Ignorance of the Many; that the Light of Philosophy, when it is confined to a small Minority, points out the Possessors as the Vic­ tims, rather than the Illuminators, of the Multitude.3 The Patriots of France either hastened into the dangerous and gigantic Error of making certain Evil the means of contingent Good, or were sacrificed by the Mob, with whose prejudices and ferocity their unbending Virtue forbade them to assimilate. Like Sampson, the People were strong—like Sampson, the People were blind. Those two massy Pillars of Oppression's Temple, Monarchy and Aristocracy With horrible convulsion to and fro They tugg'd, they shook—till down they came and drew The whole Roof after them with burst of Thunder a

Tree

b

which

shrink from the service of his country; but he that stands it NOW, deserves the love and thanks of man and woman". The opening sentence of The Crisis No 1 (1776). 1 Dan 4. 11 (var). The rooted-tree image C was later (1801) to apply to WW in contrast to himself: CN ι 926. See also BL (1907) π 128-9. 2 Arthur Young (1741-1820) wrote The Example of France, a Warning to Britain (1793). Later, 27 Mar 1800, C said of him: "Formerly agasp for re­ form, he now raves against all refor­

c~d

guides

mation, as dogs contract the hydro­ phobia from excessive thirst". Review of Young's The Question of Scarcity Plainly Stated (1800) in M Post: EOT Ii 395. 3 The present passage is C's first explicit public comment on the French Revolution. Its aims he endorses; its violence he deplores, believing that the truth can prevail only through the agency of "general illumination" (see The Watchman—CC ρ 9), and the main purpose of the Bristol lectures is to support this position.

A Moral and Political Lecture

7

Upon the heads of all who sat beneath, Lords, Ladies, Captains, Counsellors, and Priests, Their choice Nobility! SAM. AGON.* MLLTO N. There was not a Tyrant in Europe, that" did not tremble on his Throne. Freedom herself heard the Crash aghast—6yet shall she not have heard it unbenefited, if haply the Horrors of that Day shall have made other nations timely wise—if a great people shall from hence become adequately illuminated for a Revolution bloodless, like Poland's, but not, like Poland's assassinated by the foul Treason of Tyrants against Liberty/2 Revolutions are sudden to the unthinking only. Political Distur­ bances happen not without their warning Harbingers. Strange Rumblings and confused Noises still precede these earthquakes and hurricanes of the moral World. rfIn the eventful years previous to a Revolution, the Philosopher as he passes up and down the walks of Life, examines* with an anxious eye the motives and ^manners, that characterise those who seem destined to be the Actors in it. To delineate with a free hand the different Classes of our present* Oppositionists to "Things as they Aare,"3—may' be a delicate, but a who b-c [omitted] process of Revolution in France has been dreadful, and should incite us to examine f-8 manners of those, whose conduct and opinions seem calculated to forward a similar event in our own country. The are," are divided into many and different classes. To delineate them with an unflattering accuracy may d~e The

1 Samson Agonistes lines 1649-54 (var). 2 In Mar 1794 Poland rose in in­ surrection against Prussia and Russia, which had partitioned the country for the second time a year earlier. Kos­ ciusko became commander of the Polish national forces, with temporary dictatorial powers. By the end of the following month, all of what remained of Poland was controlled by the in­ surrectionary government, intensely nationalistic in spirit but not given to Jacobin excesses. By summer, how­ ever, Russo-Prussian forces, superior in men and equipment to the Polish forces (largely peasant troops), began to counterattack. In Oct Kosciusko's army was destroyed in battle with the Russians, and he was wounded and taken prisoner. General Suvorov occu­ pied Warsaw, and the King of Poland appealed to Catherine the Great for

mercy for his nation. On 3 Jan 1795 Russia and Austria reached an agree­ ment to partition Poland between them, with nothing to go to Prussia, which was intent on making peace with France. However, the "Tyrants against Liberty"—Catherine of Russia, Francis n of Austria, and Frederick William of Prussia—finally partitioned Poland among them eight months after C's speech, in Oct 1795. In 1794 C had addressed a sonnet to the heroic Kos­ ciusko : see PW (EHC) ι 82-3. 3 Cf Things as They Are; or, The Adventures of Caleb Williams by Wil­ liam Godwin (3 vols 1794). The motto on the title-page reads: Amidst the woods the leopard knows his kind; The tyger preys not on the tyger brood: Man only is the common foe of man. Cf also "The sole inquiry worthy of

A Moral and Political Lecture

8

it is a necessary Task—in order that we may enlighten, or at least beware of, the misguided men who have "enlisted themselves6 under the banners of Freedomc from no Principles or fromd bad ones— whether they be those,c" Who extol things vulgar"—and-' admire they know not what, And know not whom, but as one leads the other—1 or whether those, Whose end is private Hate, not help to Freedom, her way to Virtue adverse and turbulent.*2

sIn

The first Class among the professed Friends of Liberty is composed of Men, who unaccustomed to the labor of thorough Investigation and not particularly oppressed by the Burthen of State, are yet im­ pelled by their feelings to disapprove of its grosser depravities, and prepared to give an indolent Vote in favor of Reform. Their sensi­ bilities unbraced by the co-operation of fixed principles, they offer no sacrifices to the divinity of active Virtue. Their political Opinions depend with weather-cock uncertainty on the winds of Rumor, that blow from France. On the report of French Victories they blaze into Republicanism, at a tale of French Excesses they darken into Aristo­ crats;3 and seek for shelter among those despicable adherents to Fraud and Tyranny, who ironically style themselves Constitution­ alists.4 These dough-baked Patriots5 'may not however be without a~b enlisted c Liberty, s-h Adverse and turbulent when she would lead To Virtue.

man is, What are the best means of in­ creasing his happiness? To discover these we must see things as they are, speak of them as they are, and suffer each other to shew how we individually suppose they may become better." Thomas Holcroft A Letter to the Rt. Hon. William Windham, on the Intem­ perance and Dangerous Tendency of His Public Conduct (1795) 26-7. 1 Milton Paradise Regained m lines 52-3. 2 An adaptation of two passages from Milton Samson Agonistes lines 1265-6, 1039-40. See PW (JDC) 473. 3 Among "Friends of Freedom" Aristocrat was a party title, denoting those who supported the established

d with

e~f who *~a are not however useless.

order. "Hence arose those two odious appellations of Aristocrat and Demo­ crat. The former, bestowed on those who opposed all changes in the con­ stitution; the latter, on those who de­ manded these, together with an im­ mediate peace with France, and an acknowledgment of the French repub­ lic." Annual Register for 1794 (2nd ed 1809) 179-80. 4 The group who shared Montes­ quieu's admiration for the English Constitution and whose views were voiced, among others, by Jean-Louis Delolme, Adam Ferguson, and above all Edmund Burke. The Burkean Con­ stitutionalists were conservatives who "working after the pattern of na-

A Moral and Political Lecture

9

their use.a This Oscillation of political ^Opinion, while it retardsc the Day of Revolution, mayd operate as a preventative6 to its Excesses. Indecision^ of Character, though the effect of Timidity, is almost always associated with benevolence.1 Wilder Features characterize the second Class. Sufficiently pos­ sessed of natural Sense to despise the Priest, and of natural Feeling to hate the Oppressor, they listen only to the inflammatory harangues of some mad-headed Enthusiast, and imbibe from them Poison, not Food, Rage not Liberty. Unillumined by Philosophy and stimulated to a lust of Revenge by aggravated wrongs, they would make the Altar of Freedom stream with blood, while the grass grew in the desolated Halls of Justice. These men are the rude Materials from which a detestable Minister manufactures Conspiracies. Among these men he sends a brood of sly political Monsters, in the character of sanguinary Demagogues, and like Satan of Old, "The Tempter ere the Accuser"2 ensnares a few into Treason, that he may alarm the whole into Slavery.3 He, who has dark purposes to serve, must use dark means—Light would discover, reason would expose him: He must endeavour to shut out both—or if this prove impracticable, make them appear frightful by giving them frightful Names: For farther than Names the Vulgar enquire not. Religion and Reason b-c

d and it will opinion will retard f Indecisiveness

ture.. .receive.. .hold.. .transmit our government and our privileges, in the same manner in which we enjoy and transmit our property and our lives". Burke Reflections on the Revolution in France (1790) 48. They opposed the innovations of the French Constitution to the ancient fabric of the British, and held out the British Constitution, as Fox put it (see below, ρ 268 η 3), "to a wondering world as a model of human perfection". 5 The OED defines "dough-baked" as "imperfect, badly finished; deficient, esp. in intellect or sense; feeble, 'soft' ", citing, among examples going back to the sixteenth century, C's use in The Friend (a revision of the above). C referred to "dough-baked Democrats of Fortune" in a letter to Godwin of 13 Oct 1800: CL ι 636. ι David Hartley associates modera­ tion but not indecision of character (a

e

preventive

C fault, self-acknowledged) with be­ nevolence. Observations on Man, His Frame, His Duty, and His Expectations ed H. A. Pistorius (3 vols 1791) Ii 216-17. 2 Milton Paradise Lost iv line 10. 3 The reformers charged that the government used spies to urge on their suspects to intemperate actions that otherwise would not have been com­ mitted. Certainly the employment of spies was extensive, and they figured in many trials. See Philip Anthony Brown The French Revolution in English His­ tory (1918) 116, 122, 136-8, 171. C's "detestable Minister" is Pitt. Cf Sheridan's speech of 5 Jan 1795 on his motion to repeal the Habeas Corpus Suspension Act: "It [the charge of sedition] is supported by a system of spies and informers.... Where it does not find sedition, it creates it." Pari Hist XXXi 1067.

10

A Moral and Political Lecture

are but poor Substitutes for "Church and Constitution;" and the sable-vested Instigators of the Birmingham Riots1 well knew, that a Syllogism could not disarm a drunken Incendiary of his Firebrand, or a demonstration helmet2 a Philosopher's Head against a Brickbat. But in the principles, which this Apostate has, by his emissaries, sown among a few blind zealots for Freedom, he has digged a pit into which he himself may perhaps be doomed to fall.3 We contemplate those principles with horror. Yet they possess a kind of wild Justice4 well calculated to spread them among the grossly ignorant. To unen­ lightened minds, there are terrible charms in the idea of Retribution, however savagely it be inculcated. The Groans of the Oppressors make fearful yet pleasant music to the ear of him, whose mind is darkness, and into whose soul the iron has entered. This class, at present, is comparatively small—Yet soon to form an overwhelming majority, unless great and immediate efforts are used to lessen the intolerable grievances of our poorer brethren, and infuse into their sorely wounded hearts the healing qualities of know­ ledge. For can we wonder that men should want humanity, who want all the circumstances of life that humanize? Can we wonder that with the ignorance of Brutes they should unite their ferocity? peace and comfort be with these! But let us shudder to hear from men of dissimilar opportunities sentiments of similar revengefulness. The purifying alchemy of Education may transmute the fierceness of an ignorant man into virtuous energy—but what remedy shall we apply to him, whom Plenty has not softened, whom Knowledge has not taught Benevolence? This is one among the many fatal effects which result from the want of fixed principles. Convinced that vice is error,5 1 The "Church and King" rioters of Birmingham, who burned the houses of Dissenters, were encouraged by the Anglican clergy, C implies. "Sablevested" accords with his usual prac­ tice of using the pejorative "black" to indicate the established clergy, e.g. Religious Musings lines 329-30: "For she hath fallen | On whose black front was written Mystery". PW (EHC) ι 121. In Birmingham in Jan 1796 C with great reluctance (and later with regrets) was overpersuaded into preaching in a black gown. Letter to Josiah Wade [2 Feb 1796]: C L i l 80. See also Carl R. Woodring Politics in the Poetry of Coleridge (Madison, Wis. 1961) 58 and The Watchman (CC) 53.

2 "Helmet" as a verb is apparently a nonce-word. 3 A pun on Pitt's name and a quo­ tation from Eccles 10.8: "He that diggeth a pit shall fall into it". Cf a pun in a letter: "I cannot set a trap, but I should vastly like to make a Pittfall." [Early Apr 1797?]: CL ι 322. 4 "Revenge is a kind of wild justice". Bacon Essays No 4 "Of Revenge": see Works (1740) m 305. 5 Cf "All vice is nothing more than error and mistake reduced into prac­ tice, and adopted as the principle of our conduct." Godwin Λη Enquiry Con­ cerning Political Justice bk ι ch 4 (2 vols 1793) ι 31.

A Moral and Political Lecture

11

we shall entertain sentiments of Pity for the vicious, not of Indigna­ tion—and even with respect to that bad man, to whom we have before alluded, altho' we are now groaning beneath the burthen of his mis­ conduct, we shall harbour no sentiments of revenge; but rather condole with him that his chaotic Iniquities have exhibited such a complication of Extravagance, Inconsistency, and rashness, as may alarm him with apprehensions of approaching lunacy!1 There are a third class among the friends of Freedom who possess not the wavering character of the first description, nor the ferocity last delineated. They pursue the interests of Freedom steadily, but with narrow and self-centering views: they anticipate with exultation the abolition of priviledged orders, and of acts that persecute by exclusion from the right of citizenship :2 they are prepared to join in digging up the rubbish of mouldering establishments and stripping off the taudry pageantry of Governments. Whatever is above them they are most willing to drag down; but "alas! they use not the pulley! Whatever tends to improve and6 elevate the ranks of our poorer brethren, they regard with suspicious jealousy, as the dreams of the visionary; as if there were any thing in the superiority of Lord to Gentleman, so mortifying in the barrier, so fatal to happiness in the consequences, as the more real distinction of master and servant, of rich man and of poor. Wherein am I made worse by my ennobled neighbour? do the childish titles of aristocracy detract from my domestic comforts, or prevent my intellectual acquisitions?3 but those institutions of society which should condemn me to the necessity of twelve hours daily toil, would make my soul a slave, and sink the rational being in the mere animal. It is a mockery of our fellow *-b every proposed alteration, that would 1

Even the determined and limited charity of this view of Pitt C found difficult to maintain. The sonnet to Pitt, deceptively called To Mercy, published in the M Chron Dec 1794 and repub­ lished in The Watchman, was very harsh, so much so that C privately made apology for it. See his letter to Thelwall 13 Nov 1796: CL ι 254. For the poem, see PW (EHC) ι 93. 2 The Test Act (1673) and the Corporation Act (1661), both passed in the reign of Charles n. The first re­ quired persons holding office under the crown to take oaths of allegiance and supremacy, receive the sacrament

according to the rites of the Church of England, and subscribe to the declara­ tion against transubstantiation; the second required officers of corpora­ tions to take the sacrament according to the rites of the Church of England and to take oaths of supremacy, allegiance, and non-resistance. The Test Act was directed against Roman Catholics, but both acts were intended to destroy the power of Dissenters. They were repealed in 1828. 3 Godwin, in Political Justice bk ν ch 12, had concluded that titles tended to obscure virtue and to gild vice.

12

A Moral and Political Lecture

creatures' wrongs to call them equal in rights, when by the bitter compulsion of their wants we make them inferior to us in all that can soften the heart, or dignify the understanding. Let us not say that this is the work of time—that it is impracticable at present, unless we each in our individual capacities do strenuously and perseveringly endeavour to diffuse among our domestics those comforts and that illumination which far beyond all political ordinances are the true equalizers of men. aBut of the propriety and utility of holding up the distant mark of attainable perfection, we shall enter more fully to­ wards the close of this address;1 we4 turn with pleasure to the con­ templation of that small but glorious band, whom we may truly dis­ tinguish by the name of thinking and disinterested Patriots.2 These are the men who have encouraged the sympathetic passions till they have become irresistable habits, and made their duty a necessary part of their self interest, by the long continued cultivation of that moral taste which derives our most exquisite pleasures from the contempla­ tion of possible perfection, and proportionate pain from the percep­ tion of existing depravation. Accustomed to regard all the affairs of man as a process, they never hurry and they never pause;3 theirs is not that twilight of political knowledge which gives us just light enough to place one foot before the other; as they advance, the scene still opens upon them, and they press right onward with a vast and various landscape of existence around them. Calmness and energy mark all their cactions, benevolence is the silken thread that runs through the pearl chain of all their virtues. Believing1* that vice origi­ nates not in the man, but in the surrounding circumstances;4 not in the heart, but in the understanding; he is hopeless concerning no one—to correct a vice or generate a virtuous conduct he pollutes not his hands with the scourge of coercion; but by endeavouring to alter the circumstances removes,e or by strengthening the intellect disarms, the temptation. The unhappy children of vice and folly, whose tem­ pers are adverse to their own happiness as well as to the happiness of a-b We 1

c-d actions. Convinced

A promise not fulfilled. C deleted this remark when he revised the speech for Condones (see below, ρ 40), yet he did fulfil the promise elsewhere within its pages; see the passage on the "perfectness of future Men" (below, ρ 44). 2 Cf the character of "the Elect" in Religious Musings lines 45-104 (written in the period Dec 1794-Mar 1796):

e

would remove

PW (EHC) 1111-13. 3 In a footnote to a letter to Thelwall of 17 Dec 1796 C quotes this passage as a definition of "patience", adding: "In his not possessing this virtue, all the horrible excesses of Robespierre did, I believe, originate". CL ι 283n. 4 Agreeing with Pistorius; cf Hartley Observations on Man hi 631-2.

A Moral and Political Lecture

13

others, will at times awaken a natural pang; but he looks forward with gladdened heart to that glorious period when Justice shall have established the universal fraternity of Love. These soul ennobling views bestow the virtues which they anticipate. He whose mind is habitually imprest with them soars above the present state of humanity, and may be justly said to dwell in the presence of the most high. "Regarding every event even as he that ordains it, evil vanishes from before him, and he views with naked eye the eternal form of universal beauty.1 Say why was Man so eminently raised Amid the vast creation—why ordain'd Thro' life and death to dart his piercing eye, With thoughts beyond the limits of his frame, But that the Omnipotent might send him forth In sight of mortal and immortal powers, As on a boundless theatre, to run The great career of Justice—to exalt His generous aim to all diviner deeds, To chase each partial purpose from his breast And thro' the tossing tide of chance and pain To hold his course unfaltering? else why burns In mortal bosoms this unquenched hope That breathes from day to day sublimer things And mocks possession?62 would the forms Of servile custom cramp the patriots power, Would sordid policies, the barbarous growth Of ignorance and rapine bow him down To tame pursuits, to Indolence and Fear? Lo he appeals to Nature, to the winds And rolling waves, the suns unwearied course, The elements and seasons—all declare For what the Eternal Maker has ordain'd The powers of Man: we feel within ourselves His energy divine: he tells the heart He meant, he made us to behold and love What he beholds and loves, the general orb Of Life and Being—to be great like him, Beneficent and active. AKENSIDE. 3 a~b

[omitted]

ι See below, ρ 105 and η 3. Akenside The Pleasures of Imagination (first version) ι lines 151—69 (var), C omitting line 161, part of line 163, 2

lines 164-5,and part of line 166: Poems (1772) 17-18. 3 Ibid in lines 615-29 (var): Poems (1772) 100-1.

14

A Moral and Political Lecture

0On such a plan has a Gerald formed his intellect.4 Withering in the sickly and tainted gales of a prison, his healthful soul looks down from the citadel of his integrity on his impotent persecutors. I saw him in the foul and naked room of a jail1—his cheek was sallow with confinement—his body was emaciated, yet his eye spoke the in­ vincible purposes of his soul, and 'his voice** still sounded with rap­ ture the successes of freemen, forgetful of his own lingering martyr­ dom! Such too were the illustrious Triumvirate* whom as a Greek

* MUIR, PALMER , and MARGAROT. 2 a~b

1

Such is Joseph Gerald!

Joseph Gerrald (1763-96), the son of a West Indian planter, was educated in England under Dr Samuel Parr. After an interval in America, during which he practised law in Pennsyl­ vania, he returned to England and soon became active in parliamentary refoim. In 1793 he went as delegate from the London Corresponding Society to the British Convention at Edinburgh (which was held to find means to obtain universal suffrage and annual parliaments) and was arrested there on a charge of sedition. Released on bail, he was urged by friends to flee, but he insisted on standing trial and was sentenced in Mar 1794 to fourteen years' transportation. He spent about a year in Newgate prison in London, where prisoners in the state side were fairly comfortably accom­ modated and provided for and where their friends could visit them from 8 A.M. to 9 P.M. and even dine with them. In May 1795 he was shipped to Botany Bay, where he died in Mar 1796. In the Norton Perkins copy of Con­ dones in the Harvard University Library (a copy given by C to his friends the Morgans), C crossed out this passage and added a footnote: "Written by Southey. I never saw these men S. T. Coleridge." (See below, ρ 41 η 2.) When Southey went to London to search for Coleridge, who had not returned to Bristol and Sara Fricker as expected, he called on Gerrald and the publisher James Ridgway, both of whom were in Newgate. Southey's prospective brother-in-law,

c~d

he

Robert Lovell, on a visit to London had placed the manuscript of Southey's Wat Tyler in Ridgway's hands the previous October. "Went to Gerald, to Ridgeway concerning Wat Tyler", Southey wrote to his fiancee, Edith Fricker [12 Jan 1795]. "I am to send them more sedition to make a 2 shilling pamphlet. They will print it [Wat] im­ mediately, give me 12 copies and allow me a sum proportionate to the sale if it sells well. All the risk is their own." S Letters (Curry) ι 91. "They" were Ridgway and another radical publisher, also in Newgate, Henry D. Symonds. The subsequent fate of the play—its publication finally in 1817—does not concern us here, but the letter does give credence to C's annotation in Con­ dones. Forpossibleinfluences of Gerrald upon C see below, ρ 222 η 4. 2 Thomas Muir (1765-98) was a Scottish lawyer who for his efforts in favour of parliamentary reform was arrested on a charge of sedition in Jan 1793. While awaiting trial, he went to France—it is said, to urge clemency for Louis XVI—but after several months he returned to Edinburgh, was tried on 30 Aug, and sentenced to fourteen years' transportation. Sent to Botany Bay, he was ultimately rescued by an American vessel and after various adventures reached France, where he died shortly. Thomas Fysshe Palmer (1747-1802), whose family were gentry, after being educated at Eton and Cambridge be­ came an Anglican priest. Under Priestley's influence he joined the Uni-

A Moral and Political Lecture

15

Poet expresses it, it's not lawful for bad men even to praise.1 I will not say that I have abused your patience in thus indulging my feelings in "these strains* of unheard gratitude to men,c who may seem to justify God in the creation of man. It is with pleasure that I am per­ mitted to recite a yet unpublished tribute to their merit, the produc­ tion of da manc who has sacrificed all the energies of his heart and head—a splendid oifering on the altar of Liberty.

a~b strains

c those

tarians and had various congregations in Scotland. Being involved with par­ liamentary reformers, he was tried in Sept 1793 for sedition and sentenced to seven years' transportation. His "crime" had been to revise and modify the proofs of a pamphlet written by a Friend of Freedom. After completing his sentence, he died on his way home. Maurice Margarot was "a French­ man who had come to London after an obscure career in Cornwall; not a pure or heroic character, but audacious and fertile". Brown The French Revolution in English History (1918) 101. With Gerrald he went to the British Conven­ tion in Edinburgh as a delegate from the London Corresponding Society in 1793 and suffered the same fate as Gerrald. He fell into disfavour with his associates, and was the only one of them who ever reached Britain again. He returned for a visit to Edinburgh and found all his judges "and all his jurors either dead or not to be found, except one, to whom he gave a supper. But by this time the juryman had be­ come a whig and the convict a tory. He died in 1815." Lord Cockburn An Examination of the Trials for Sedition Which Have Hitherto Occurred in Scot­ land (2 vols Edinburgh 1888) π 33. Gerrald, Muir, Palmer, and Margarot were the most celebrated de­ fendants in the sedition trials held in Edinburgh during 1793 and 1794. The judges, among them the notorious

d-e one

Lord Braxfield ("Bring me the pri­ soners, and I will find you the law"), made little or no pretence of disin­ terestedness and imposed sentences of from seven to fourteen years' trans­ portation. Muir's and Palmer's con­ victions actually brought on a parlia­ mentary review, but Pitt's supporters quashed the enquiry on a strictly party vote. In 1844 the Martyrs' Monument on Calton Hill in Edinburgh was dedi­ cated to the memory of these men. 1 Not traced. C's esteem for two of the four patriots referred to here soon suffered a decline. Defending himself to Thelwall for having attacked the morals of the Godwinian school in "Modern Patriotism" (Watchman— CC-98-100), he said: "I have been informed by a West-Indian (a Re­ publican) [William Gilbert?] that to his knowlege Gerald left a Wife there to starve—and I well know that he was prone to intoxication, & an Whoremonger. I saw myself a letter from Gerald to one of his FRIENDS, couched in terms of the most abhorred Ob­ scenity, & advising a marriage with an old woman on account of her money ". CL ι 215 (13 May 1796). And later when Thelwall reproached him for scandal-mongering, he replied: "My vice is of the opposite class—a preci­ pitance in praise—witness my Pane­ gyric on Gerald &that black gentleman, Margarot—in the Conciones." CL ι 221 (22 June 1796).

16

A Moral and Political Lecture TO THE EXILED PATRIOTS ι Martyrs of Freedom—ye who firmly good Stept forth the champions in her glorious cause, Ye who against Corruption nobly stood For Justice, Liberty, and equal Laws.2 Ye who have urged the cause of man so well Whilst proud Oppression's torrent swept along, Ye who so firmly stood, so nobly fell, Accept one ardent Briton's grateful song. For shall Oppression vainly think by Fear To quench the fearless energy of mind? And glorying in your fall, exult it here As tho' no honest heart were left behind? Thinks the proud tyrant by the pliant law The timid jury and the judge unjust, To strike the soul of Liberty with awe, And scare the friends of Freedom from their trust?

1 A poem by Southey written, ac­ cording to David B. Comer in, in the spring of 1794 for inclusion in Daniel Isaac Eaton's Politics for the People·, he further informs me that it was in­ cluded in Southey's works only in the Galignani edition (Paris 1829). It is found on ρ 698 among the "Sup­ pressed Poems". The unknown editor must formerly have been intimate with Southey but was now disaffected, for, besides assisting in the piracy of his works (of which Southey complained; see 5" Letters—Curry—π 335), he pub­ lished a piece of radicalism that Southey would have been loath to see in print. The editor also published as Southey's (p 714) the poem by William Crowe called Verses to Have Been Addressed toHis Grace the Duke of Port­ land (see below, ρ 66). Since Southey possessed a ms of this poem, he may have been the one who first brought it to C's attention. A longer extract appears in The Watchman: see Watchman (CC) 179-80. A ms copy of To the Exiled Patriots in sixteen stanzas, once owned by the Rev John Horseman, a college acquaintance of Southey's, is in the

Duke University Library (William Smith Papers). A comparison with the present text shows verbal changes and the omission of stanzas 3,4, 5, 6,7, and 16. C refers to the poem in his letters to Southey of 21 Oct and 11 Dec 1794: CL1116,135. Horseman's copy of To the Exiled Patriots is signed " Caius Gracchus Southey" and is dated "The sixth day of the first decade of the fourth month of the third year of the french republic, one and indivisible." A pencilled note adds: "Dec. 26, 1794." 2 Cf the lines below an engraving of Muir by John Kay (1742-1826) made in 1793 (Kay, miniaturist and printseller of Edinburgh, executed like­ nesses of many of the principals of the Edinburgh trials, as indeed he did of almost all famous Edinburghers): Illustrious Martyr in the glorious cause Of truth, of freedom, and of equal laws. M. D. George Catalogue of Political and Personal Satires...in the British Museum vn (1942) 47.

A Moral and Political Lecture

17

As easy might the Despots' empty pride The onward course of rushing ocean stay; As easy might his jealous caution hide From mortal eyes the orb of general day. For Uke that general orb's eternal flame Glows the mild force of Virtue's constant light; Tho' clouded by Misfortune, still the same, For ever constant and for ever bright. Not till eternal chaos shall that light Before Oppression's fury fade away; Not till the sun himself be lost in night; Not till the frame of Nature shall decay. Go then secure, in steady virtue go, Nor heed the peril of the stormy seas— Nor heed the felon's name, the outcast's woe; Contempt and pain, and sorrow and disease. Tho' cankering cares corrode the sinking frame, Tho' sickness rankle in the sallow breast; Tho' Death were quenching fast the vital flame, Think but for what ye suffer, and be blest. So shall your great examples fire each soul, So in each free-born breast for ever dwell, Till Man shall rise above the unjust controul— Stand where ye stood, and triumph where ye fell. aTo

accomplish the great object in which we are anxiously engaged to place Liberty on her seat with bloodless hands, we have shewn the necessity of forming some fixed and determinate principles of action to which the familiarized mind may at all times advert.6 cWe now proceed to that most important point, namely, to shew what those principles must be. In times of tumult firmness and consistency are peculiarly needful, because the passions and prejudice of mankind are then more powerfully excited: we have shewn in the example of France that to its want of general information, its miseries and its horrors may be attributed/ We have reason to ''believe that a revolu­ tion in other parts of Europe % noth far distant. Oppression is a-b But if we hope to instruct others, we should familiarize our own minds to some fixed and determinate principles of action. c~d [omitted] e conjecture that throughout e~h it may not be all

~f

18

A Moral and Political Lecture

grievous—the oppressed feel and complain." 6Let us profit by the example of others; devastation has marked the course of most revolutions, and the timid assertors of Freedom equally with its clamorous enemies, have so closely associated the ideas, that they are unable to contemplate the one, disunited from the other. The evil is great, but it may be averted—it has been a general, but it is not therefore a necessary consequence. In order to avert it, we should teach ourselves and others habitually to consider, that truth wields no weapon, but that of investigation, wef should be cautious how we indulge even the feelings of virtuous indignation. Indignation is the handsome brother of Anger and Hatred1—rfBenevolence alone be­ seems the Philosopher. Let us not grasp even Despotism with too abrupt a hand, lest like the envenomed insect of Peru,* it infect with its poison, the hand that removes it harshly. Let us beware that we continue not the evils of ''tyranny, when the monster shall be driven from the earth/ Its temple is founded on the ruins of mankind. Like the fane? of Tescalipoca the Mexican ADeity; it is erected with' human skulls and cemented with human blood,3—let us beware that we be not transported into revenge while we are levelling the loath­ some ^pile with the ground,lest when we erect the temple' of Free­ dom we but vary the stile of architecture, not change the materials. mOur object is to destroy pernicious systems not their misguided adherents. Philosophy imputes not the great evil to the corrupted but * The COYA , an insect of so thin a skin, that on being incautiously touched, it bursts, and of so subtle a poison that it is immediately absorbed into the body, and proves fatal.2 a are restless. b~c We The Temple of Despotism, like that «-/ [In the HUL copy of MPL, in a faint hand, possibly C's, is an alteration that conjecturally reads: "Despotism, when its name shall be no more heard."] 1 edifice m~a Deity, is built of Pile; [omitted]

1 Cf C's rebuke to Southey on 29 Dec 1794: ".. .you feel Indignation at Weakness—Now Indignation is the handsome Brotherof Anger & Hatred". CL ι 145. 2 For this "remarkable insect... shaped like a spider [but] less than a bug" see Antonio de Ulloa A Voyage to South-America bk VL ch 3 (2 vols 1758) ι 358-9. C's simile is not quite accurate: according to Ulloa, the in­ sect can be squeezed in the hand with, usually, no dire results, owing to cal­ luses in the palm preventing the venom from being absorbed.

3 In The Friend (1818) C gives the substance of this passage and says in a note: "To the best of my recollection, these were Mr. Southey's words in the year 1794." Friend (CC) ι 223 and n. Southey read of the human sacrifices to the Aztec god Tezcatlipoca in F. S. Clavijero (or Clavigero) The History of Mexico tr Charles Cullen (2 vols 1787) ι 264-7, 300-1, a book he borrowed from the Bristol Library 18-23 Sept 1794 and from which he took excerpts. Bristol LB 118; SCB iv 144-5. See also below, LRR, ρ 142 and η 4.

A Moral and Political Lecture

19

to the system which presents the temptation to corruption. The evil must cease when the cause is removed, and the courtier who is enabled by State Machinations to embroil or enslave a nation when levelled to the standard of men will be impotent of evil, as he is now unconscious of good. Humane from principle, not fear, the disciple of liberty shrinks not from his duty. He will not court persecution by the ill-timed obtrusion of Truth, still less will he seek to avoid it by concealment or dereliction. J. H. Tooke on the morning of his trial wrote to a fellow sufferer in these words "Nothing will so much serve the cause of freedom as our acquittal, except our execution."1 He meant I presume to imply that whatever contributes to increase discussion must accelerate the progress of liberty. Let activity and perseverance and moderation supply the want of numbers. Con­ vinced of the justice of our principles, let neither scorn nor oppression prevent us from disseminating them. By the gradual deposition of time, error has been piled upon error and prejudice on prejudice, till few men are tall enough to look over them, and they whose intellects surpass the common stature, and who describe the green vales and pleasant prospects beyond them, will be thought to have created images in vacancy and be honoured with the name of madman; but It is the motive strong the conscience pure That bids us firmly act or meek endure: 'Tis this will shield us when the storm beats hard Content tho' poor had we no other guard! BOWLES." 2 F I N I S m (p.18)-a [omitted] 1 John Home Tooke (1736-1812), variously a parson, an amateur phil­ ologist, a politician, and man about town, was arrested in May 1794 on a charge of high treason because of his activity in the Constitutional Society, a group promoting parliamentary re­ form. Eleven other persons were charged with high treason for similar reasons, including Thelwall, Holcroft, and Thomas Hardy. Hardy was tried first and acquitted on 5 Nov, Tooke was tried next and acquitted on 22 Nov, and after Thelwall's acquittal the other prosecutions were dropped. The quotation above may be C's re­ collection of a passage from Holcroft A Narrative of Facts, Relating to a

Prosecution for High Treason.. .(1795) 87:" Conversing with Mr. HorneTooke on the morning of our arraignment, he told me that the best thing our pro­ secutors could have done, for the cause of freedom, was that which they had done; imprison and indict us; except the still better thing which they had yet to do; namely, to hang us." 2 The concluding lines of William Lisle Bowles Verses to the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, on His Re­ flections on the Revolution in France lines 165-8 (var): Sonnets, with Other Poems (1794) 117-18 (Bowles in a foot­ note to the last line cites "Milton"). Bowles's first line (165) reads: "'Tis the unshaken mind, the conscience pure".

CONCIONES AD POPULUM

DATE AND PLACE OF DELIVERY . In the Preface to this work Coleridge

writes: "The two following addresses were delivered in the month of February, 1795..." and at the end of the second address, ρ 68, appears "February, 1795." In his letter to Dyer of late February 1795 Coleridge writes: "Since I have been in Bristol I have endeavored to disseminate Truth by three political Lectures..." (CL ι 152). Southey in 1836 agrees with the number: "... in January 1795... S. T. C. gave his first and second lectures in the Corn Market and his third at a vacant house somewhere near Castle Green" (S Letters—Curry—π 448). Cottle places the first two lectures in the Plume of Feathers in Wine Street (E Rec ι 20). The first address in Condones, "Introductory Address", is an expansion of A Moral and Political Lecture. The second, "On the Present War", is presumably a revised form of either the second or the third lecture, or possibly a com­ bination of both. See above, Introduction, pp xxxii-xxxiii. Probable date and place of both lectures: late January-February 1795 in the schoolroom of the Corn Market. If " On the Present War" derives from the third lecture, it would have been given in February in the vacant house near Castle Green (Coleridge seems to corroborate the vacant house in his letter to Dyer quoted above, ".. .in the last Lecture the Genus infimum were scarcely restrained from attacking the house in which the' damn'd Jacobine was jawing away' "). PUBLICATION . The Preface is dated Clevedon, 16 November 1795. It is

Coleridge's only work dated from there and must have been completed near the end of his stay at the house he had leased on 20 August and to which he brought his bride on 4 October. He speaks of "the re-composing of my Lectures" during the summer of 1795 (to RS 13 Nov: CL1172) and no doubt was busy revising them just before publication. Condones was published on 3 December, when the following advertisement appeared in the Bristol Gazette and Public Advertiser: (Printed on Superfine Wove-Paper and hot-pressed) This Day is Published, And may be had at Reed's Bookseller, Wine-Street, Conciones ad Populum, By S. T. Coleridge, Or, Two Addresses to the People. The first on the Characters of Professed Friends of Freedom, —The Second, on the present War. Price Eighteen-Pence. Coleridge published a revised version of the "Introductory Address" in The Friend (1818); see Friend (CC) ι 326-38. Sara Coleridge reprinted Condones in her Essays on His Own Times (1850) ι 1-55. An annotated copy of Condones, the only one thus far to come to light, which Coleridge presented to his friends the Morgans, is now in the Harvard University Library, Norton Perkins Collection. An inscription pasted in on the front end-paper reads, in C's hand: "Mrs and Mrs Morgan from the author, their obliged and grateful friend. S. T. Coleridge". This copy seems to be the one Coleridge used in preparing the first lecture for reprinting in The Friend. Of the two sets of alterations, one in light pencil and one in ink, those in pencil are mainly deletions, the same deletions made in The Friend,

e.g.: "and seek.. .Constitutionalists" (below, pp 37-8), "Thesemen.. .to fall" (below, ρ 38), "Convinced that vice.. .lunacy" (below, ρ 39), the passage on Gerrald with Southey's poem (below, pp 41-3), "There are three ranks.. .Dress" (below, ρ 43), the quotation from and comment on Brissot (below, pp 47-8), "Yet rejected.. .happen" (p 48). Other anno­ tations are given in the footnotes below. CRITICAL REACTIONS. Almost twin publications (about a week apart),

Condones and The Plot Discovered were advertised together and usually reviewed together. The first reviews appeared promptly in January 1796. The A Rev (xxm 90-1) gave Condones a little more than a page largely of summary but prefaced by the remark that they were "eloquent harangues on interesting political topics" and commending Coleridge's "philanthro­ pic spirit" and "superiour talents". This praise was tempered by a re­ proof: "While we see much to admire in these addresses, we are sorry sometimes to remark a degree of vehemence in language, rather adapted to irritate than enlighten." The M Rev for January (xix 80-1) was briefer and cooler: the addresses were "replete with violent antiministerial declamation, but not vulgar. His fearless idea is, that 'truth should be spoken at all times, but more es­ pecially at those times when to speak truth was dangerous.' " It should be noted that in this journal's vocabulary "antiministerial" is not a word of dispraise, but the orthodox Whiggery the journal supported tolerated nothing approaching radicalism or violence. The friendly C Rev (N.S. XVI 216) noticed Condones in February, observ­ ing first that "Of the former of these [addresses] we have had occasion to speak before, and we spoke in terms of approbation." (The reviewer may have noticed that Coleridge in his revision of MPL had heeded his advice. See above, ρ 2; below, ρ 45.) After quoting the final paragraph, it con­ cluded: "Mr. Coleridge possesses ingenuity and good sense. We would advise him to study correctness, and to guard against the swell in composition." In June the B Critic (vn 682-3), warm for Church and King, which had seen no merit in PD, saw none in this. It commented in sarcastic vein on Coleridge's "elegance", his "tender and compassionate anxiety for the welfare of mankind", and went on to censure his attempt to "ascribe the murders of Robespierre, and all the horrors acted in France, to the obsti­ nate hostility of this country. When shall we cease to see this nonsense repeated, which the best informed even of our French enemies have again and again contradicted?" Of the critical opinions of Coleridge's friends few comments survive except that of Lamb: "Your Conciones ad populum are the most eloquent politics that ever came in my way." LL13 (27 May 1796). In June he wrote again: "You did not tell me whether I was to include the Condones ad Populum in my remarks on your poems. They are not unfrequently sub­ lime, and I think you could not do better than to turn 'em into verse,—if you have nothing else to do." LL ι 20. We do not have Coleridge's reply to this extraordinary proposal, though it might be said that The Destiny of Nations and the Ode on the Departing Year versify some parts of Condones. Hazlitt did not share Lamb's enthusiasm for Condones. Writers speak poorly, he observed; speakers write poorly. Printed speeches are

flat. "Burke's and Windham's form an exception: Mr. Coleridge's Con­ dones ad Populum do not, any more than Mr. Thelwall's Tribune." H Works XQ 265. TEXT. Condones ad Populum ([Bristol] 1795). The corrections listed in the "Errata" on ρ 69 have, with one exception—see below, ρ 70 and η 2— been incorporated into the text. Textual notes indicate those passages added to MPL. L. P.

3. Condones ad Populum.

Title-page, from a copy in the British Museum.

CONCIONES A D POPULUM OR

ADDRESSES TO THE

PEOPLE 1

C could well have translated his title "Sermons to the People", for he had undoubtedly listened to many a clerum at Cambridge—concio ad clerum being a Latin sermon preached on cer­ tain occasions. See Adam Wall Art Account of the Different Ceremonies Observed in the Senate House of the University of Cambridge (Cambridge 1798) 2, 61, etc. In later years C thought of Condones as "the first of my 'Lay-sermons' ". LS (1817) ix n. His title suggests the religious tone that pervades the work. As the Gutch Memorandum Book shows, he was contemplating a concio ad clerum of his own, for one of his projected works was "An Address to the Clergy against the two Bills". CNi 174 (26). Pasted on the front end-paper in the Norton Perkins copy of Condones, be­

low the inscription to the Morgans, is the following note in C's hand: Except the two or three passages in­ volving the doctrine of Phil. Necessity & Unitarianism I see little or nothing in these outbursts of my youthful Zeal to retract, & with exception of some flame-colored Epithets applied to Per­ sons, as Mr Pitt & others,or rather to Personifications (for such they really were to me) as little to regret. Qualis ab initio, εστησε [As he was from the beginning, he hath stood] EXTHZE =S. T. C. July, 1820. For C on the "Punic Greek" at the end of this note, see PW (EHC) ι 453 and a letter of 1802, CL π 867.

NOv οδν άτεχνώς ήκω παρεσκευασμένος Βοαν, ύποκρούειν, λοιδορεΐν τούς ρήτορας, Έάν τις αλλο πλήν περί ειρήνης λέγη. ARIST. ACHARN. 37. 1

1 Aristophanes The Acharnians lines 37-9. Tr Benjamin Bickley Rogers (LCL 1960) 9: "So here I'm waiting,

thoroughly prepared | To riot, wrangle, interrupt the speakers | Whene'er they speak of anything but Peace."

PREFACE HE two following addresses were delivered in the month February,

T

1795, and were followed by six others in defence of natural and revealed Religion.1 There is "a time to keep silence" saith King Solomon;—but when I proceeded to the first Verse of the fourth Chapter of the Ecclesiastes, "and considered all the oppressions that are done under the Sun, and behold the Tears of such as were op­ pressed, and they had no comforter; and on the side of the oppres­ sors there was power"2—I concluded, that this was not the "time to keep silence."—For Truth should be spoken at all times, but more especially at those times, when to speak Truth is dangerous. Clevedon, November 16th, 17951

1 See headnote above; also Intro­ duction, above, pp xxv-xxxvii. The Lectures on Revealed Religion are printed below, pp 89-229. 2 Eccles 3. 7, 4. 1 (var). 3 After his marriage to Sara Fricker on 4 Oct 1795, C took his bride to a cottage in Clevedon, Somerset, until

the end of the year, before moving back to Bristol. But he was in and out of Bristol during that time, especially for the meetings of 17 and 20 Nov and for his lecture on the Two Bills of 26 Nov. In fact, the date 16 Nov suggests his arrival in Bristol with the completed ms of Condones.

A LETTER FROM LIBERTY TO HER DEAR FRIEND FAMINE 1 DEAR FAMINE,

Y

ou will doubtless be surprized at receiving a petitionary Letter from a perfect Stranger. But Fas est vel ab hoste.2 All whom I once supposed my unalterable friends, 1 have found unable or un­ willing to assist me. I first applied to GRATITUDE, entreating her to whisper into the ear of Majesty, that it was I, who had placed his forefathers on the throne of Great Britain3—She told me, that she had frequently made the attempt, but as frequently had been baffled by FLATTERY : and that I might not doubt the truth of her apology, 1 Cottle writes of C "amusing" his audiences by reciting this letter (E Rec 122). It is unlikely that they would have been amused: in Feb, when C gave his first political lectures, the price of pro­ visions in general and wheat in particu­ lar was high; crop failures, unseason­ able cold, diminished imports, and dwindling supplies by Aug turned 1795 into a near-famine year. In June in Birmingham, owing to the deamess of provisions a mob 1000 strong stormed a flour mill and bakehouse, plundering it for bread. Soldiers were rushed in to quell the riot. Similar riots occurred in other cities and towns, wherever larger numbers of able-bodied men were forced to apply for poor relief. Aristocrats met the threat of famine differently: "I have left off powder, and forbid pies and puddings out of patriotism", wrote Lady Bessborough in July to Lord Granville Leveson Gower. Lord Granville Leveson Gower: Private Correspondence ed Castalia, Countess Granville (2 vols 1916) 1113. By Aug wheat sold for 108.v. a quarter (almost double the price of the pre­ vious Feb, which itself was extra­ ordinarily high). Among the cries that

assailed the King when attacked on the way to open Parliament on 29 Oct was "Bread! Bread!" It had been a cry heard in Paris. 2 Ovid Metamorphoses 4.428. Tr Frank Justus Miller (LCL 1956) 1209: " 'Tis proper [to learn] even from an enemy". Cf The Cabinet "By a Society of Gentlemen" (Norwich 1795) in 17 ("On the Suspension of the Habeas Corpus Act"):"...the minister of this country, in this as wellas in every thing else, seems to have adopted as a favourite maxim, Fas est ab hoste doceri; it behoves him to beware lest the people also in their vengeance adopt the same." Liberty addressed herself to Prudence "and earnestly besought her to plead my cause to the ministers; to urge the distresses of the lower order, and my fears lest so distrest they should forget their obedi­ ence" (see below, ρ 30). 3 Members of the parliamentary opposition and the reformers of the 1790's frequently reminded George πι, a sturdy upholder of the royal preroga­ tive, that originally it was the Whigs and Whig principles that had placed the House of Hanover on the throne.

30

Condones ad Populum

she led me (as the Spirit did the prophet Ezekiel) " to the Door of the COURT, and I went in, and saw—and behold! every form of creeping TJiings"11 was however somewhat consoled, when I heard that RELIGION was high in favour there, and possessed great in­ fluence. I myself had been her faithful servant, and always found her my best protectress: her service being indeed perfect Freedom.2 Accordingly in full confidence of success I entered her mansion—but alas! instead of my kind Mistress, horror-struck I beheld "a painted patched-up old Harlot."3 She was arrayed in purple and scarlet colour, and decked with gold and precious stones and pearls, and upon her Forehead was written "MYSTERY."4 I shriek'd, for I knew her to be the Dry-nurse of that detested Imp, Despotism. I next addressed myself to PRUDENCE—and earnestly besought her to plead my cause to the ministers; to urge the distresses of the lower order, and my fears lestsodistrest they should forget their obedience. For the prophet Isaiah had informed me "that it shall come to pass, that when the People shall be hungry, they shall fret themselves and curse the King."5 The grave matron heard me—and shaking her head learnedly replied, "Quos Deus vult perdere, dementat."6 Again I besought her to speak to the rich men of the nation, concerning ministers of whom it might soon become illegal even to complain— of long and ruinous wars—and whether they must not bear the damage. All this (quoth PRUDENCE) I have repeatedly urged; but a sly Impostor has usurped my name, and struck such a panic of 1 Ezek 8. 7, 8. 10. Book of Common Prayer: Morn­ ing Prayer, A Collect for Peace. 3 Perhaps a common expression, with scriptural echoes of Jezebel. Cf also Joel Barlow, likening aristocracy to " a decayed prostitute, whom paint­ ing and patching will no longer embellish". Advice to the Privileged Orders, Part Two (1795) 14. 4 Cf Rev 17. 3-5. A mystery, as here used, signifies priestly designs to en­ hance the power of the Church by enslaving the understanding of the people. The doctrine of the Trinity was an example. A "state-mystery" is the same principle applied to politics. The aversion with which the word "mystery" was held by a Rational Dis­ senter is shown in an obituary notice by John Aikin in of the respected Dr William Enfield: "Despising super­ 2

stition, and fearing enthusiasm, he held as of inferior value every thing in religion which could not ally itself with morality, and condescend to human uses. His theological system was purged of every mysterious or unintelligible proposition: it included nothing which appeared to him irreconcilable with sound philosophy, and the most ra­ tional opinions concerning the divine nature and perfections." Quoted in Betsy Rodgers Georgian Chronicle. Mrs Barbauld and Her Family (1958) 42. See also below, LRR, ρ 89 η 1; PD, ρ 285. 5 Isa 8. 21 (var). 6 On the sources of this proverb, once attributed to Euripides, see Boswell Life of Johnson ed G. B. Hill re­ vised L. F. Powell (6 vols Oxford 1934-50) iv 181 and η 3. Tr: "Whom God will destroy he drives mad".

A Letter from Liberty

31

Property,1 as hath steeled the heart of the wealthy and palsied their intellects. Lastly, I applied to CONSCIENCE. She informed me, that she was indeed a perfect ventriloquist and could throw her voice into any place she liked; but that she was seldom attended to, unless when she appeared to speak out of the Pocket.2 Thus baffled and friendless, I was about to depart, and stood a fearful lingerer on the Isle, which I had so dearly loved—when tidings were brought me of your approach. I found myself impelled by a power superior to me to build my last hopes on you.—Liberty, the MOTHER of PLENTY, calls Famine to her aid. O FAMINE, most eloquent Goddess! plead thou my cause. I meantime will pray fer­ vently that Heaven may unseal the ears of its vicegerents, so that they may listen to your first pleadings, while yet your voice is faint and distant, and your counsels peaceable.— I remain Your distrest Suppliant, Dover Cliffsi LIBERTY

1 I cannot find an earlier use of this phrase. It was often used later by C and others. Crabb Robinson quotes C using it in 1811. CJiBi 22. Cf also-EOT

Ii 329 (1800). 2C was a compulsive punster, 3 Liberty is poised on Dover Cliffs, looking toward France.

INTRODUCTORY ADDRESS 1 Άεί γάρ της Ελευθερίας έφίεμαι- πολλά δέ έν και τοις φιλελευΟέροις μισητά, άντελεύθερα.2

W

HEN the Wind is fair and the Planks of the Vessel sound, we

may safely trust every thing to the management of professional Mariners: in a Tempest and on board a crazy Bark, all must contri­ bute their Quota of Exertion.3 The Striphng is not exempted from it by his Youth, nor the Passenger by his Inexperience. Even so, in the present agitations of the public mind, every one ought to consider his intellectual faculties as in a state of immediate requisition. All may benefit Society in some degree. The exigences of the Times do not permit us to stay for the maturest years, lest the opportunity be lost, while we are waiting for an increase of power. Companies resembling the present will, from a variety of circum­ stances, consist chiefly of the zealous Advocates for Freedom. It will therefore be our endeavour, not so much to excite the torpid, as to regulate the feelings of the ardent; and above all, to evince the necessity of bottoming on fixed Principles,4 that so we may not be the unstable Patriots of Passion or Accident, nor hurried away by names of which we have not sifted the meaning, and by tenets of which we have not examined the consequences. The Times are trying;5 and in order to be prepared against their difficulties, we should have acquired a prompt facility of adverting in all our doubts to some grand and comprehensive Truth. In a deep and strong Soil must that Tree fix its Roots, the height of which, is to "reach to Heaven, and the Sight of it to the ends of all the Earth."6 The Example of France is indeed a "Warning to Britain."7 A Nation wading to their Rights through Blood, and marking the track 1 Cf MPL, above, pp 5-19; also The Friend (CC) ι 326-38. 2 Source untraced. Tr The Friend (1818): "For I am always a lover of Liberty; but in those who would appropriate the Title, I find too many points destructive of Liberty and hate-

3

ful to her genuine advocates." Friend (CC) ι 326 3 See above, MPL, ρ 5 n 1. 4 See above, MPL, ρ 5 n 3. 5 See above, MPL, ρ 5 n 4. 6 See above, MPL, ρ 6 n 1. 7 See above, MPL, ρ 6 n 2. 33

RCL

34

Condones ad Populum

of Freedom by Devastation! Yet let us not embattle our Feelings against our Reason. Let us not indulge our malignant Passions under the mask of Humanity. Instead of railing with infuriate declamation against these excesses, we shall be more profitably employed in developing the sources of them. French Freedom is the Beacon, which while it guides to Equality, should shew us the Dangers that throng the road. The Annals of the French Revolution have recorded in Letters of Blood, that the Knowledge of the Few cannot counteract the Ignor­ ance of the Many; that the Light of Philosophy, when it is confined to a small Minority, points out the Possessors as the Victims, rather than the Illuminators, of the Multitude.1 The Patriots of Franceeither hastened into the dangerous and gigantic Error of making certain Evil the means of contingent Good, or were sacrificed by the Mob, with whose prejudices and ferocity their unbending Virtue forbade them to assimilate. Like Sampson, the People were strong—like Sampson, the People were blind. Those two massy Pillars of Oppres­ sion's Temple, the Monarchy and Aristocracy, With horrible Convulsion to and fro They tugg'd, they shook—till down they came and drew The whole Roof after them with burst of Thunder Upon the heads of all who sat beneath, Lords, Ladies, Captains, Counsellors, and Priests, Their choice Nobility! ,, _ J 2 MILTON.

SAM. AGON.

There was not a Tyrant in Europe, who did not tremble on his Throne. Freedom herself heard the Crash aghast!— "The Girondists, who were the first republicans in power, were men of enlarged views and great literary attainments; but they seem to have been deficient in that vigour and daring activity, which cir­ cumstances made necessary. Men of genius are rarely either prompt in action or consistent in general conduct: their early habits have been those of contemplative indolence; and the day-dreams, with which they have been accustomed to amuse their solitude, adapt them for splendid speculation, not temperate and practicable coun­ sels.3 Brissot, the leader of the Gironde party, is entitled to the a-b (p 36) added

See above, MPL, ρ 6 η 3. 2 See above, MPL, ρ 7 η 1. 3 TheGirondists, especially Brissot, were closely in accord with the views of the English liberals; see Poolel 11213 and n. One gets the impression that 1

in the present passage C has one eye upon himself. Cf TT 24 Jun 1827: "Hamlet'scharacteristheprevalenceof the abstracting and generalizing habit over the practical—I have a smack of Hamlet myself, if I may say so."

Introductory Address

35

character of a virtuous man, and an eloquent speaker; but he was rather a sublime visionary, than a quick-eyed politician; and his excellences equally with his faults rendered him unfit for the helm, in the stormy hour of Revolution.1 Robespierre, who displaced him, possessed a glowing ardor that still remembered the end, and a cool ferocity that never either overlooked, or scrupled, the means.2 What that end was, is not known: that it was a wicked one, has by no means been proved. I rather think, that the distant prospect, to which he was travelling, appeared to him grand and beautiful; but that he fixed his eye on it with such intense eagerness as to neglect the foul­ ness of the road. If however his first intentions were pure, his subse­ quent enormities yield us a melancholy proof, that it is not the character of the possessor which directs the power, but the power which shapes and depraves the character of the possessor.3 In Robes­ pierre, its influence was assisted by the properties of his disposition. —Enthusiasm, even in the gentlest temper, will frequently generate sensations of an unkindly order. If we clearly perceive any one thing to be of vast and infinite importance to ourselves and all mankind, our first feelings impel us to turn with angry contempt from those, who doubt and oppose it. The ardor of undisciplined benevolence seduces us into malignity: and whenever our hearts are warm, and our objects great and excellent, intolerance is the sin that does most easily beset us.4 But this enthusiasm in Robespierre was blended with gloom, and suspiciousness, and inordinate vanity. His dark imagination was still brooding over supposed plots against freedom —to prevent tyranny he became a Tyrant—and having realized the evils which he suspected, a wild and dreadful Tyrant.—Those Ioudtongued adulators, the mob, overpowered the lone-whispered de­ nunciations of conscience—he despotized in all the pomp of Patriot­ ism, and masqueraded on the bloody stage of Revolution, a Caligula with the cap of Liberty on his head. It has been affirmed, and I believe with truth, that the system of 1 Jean-Pierre (or Jacques-Pierre) Brissot (1754-93) assumed the name Brissot de Warville and was the author of republican pamphlets. Along with many others of the Girondist party he fell victim to the guillotine in Oct 1793. See below, pp 47-8. 2 The previous autumn (1794) C had published The Fall of Robespierre, written jointly with Southey; its tenor is well disclosed in the present charac-

ter-sketch of the Incorruptible, Maximilien de Robespierre (1758-94). Cf CN ι 56. See also above, ρ 12 η 3. 3 Cf "...power long continued is too apt to corrupt the disposition of the possessor". The Trial of Joseph Gerrald (Edinburgh 1794) 192. 4 Heb 12. 1 (var). See a letter of 17 Dec 1796, in which C applies his remark about "undisciplined Benevolence" to TheIwaIl: CL ι 284.

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Condones ad Populum

Terrorism by suspending the struggles of contrariant Factions com­ municated an energy to the operations of the Republic, which had been hitherto unknown, and without which it could not have been preserved. The system depended for its existence on the general sense of its necessity, and when it had answered its end, it was soon de­ stroyed by the same power that had given it birth—popular opinion. It must not however be disguised, that at all times, but more especially when the public feelings are wavy and tumultuous, artful Demagogues may create this opinion: and they, who are inclined to tolerate evil as the means of contingent good, should reflect, that if the excesses of terrorism gave to the Republic that efficiency and repulsive force which its circumstances made necessary, they likewise afforded to the hostile Courts the most powerful support, and excited that indigna­ tion and horror, which every where precipitated the subject into the designs of the ruler. Nor let it be forgotten, that these excesses per­ petuated the war in La Vendee and made it more terrible,1 both by the accession of numerous partizans, who had fled from the persecu­ tion of Robespierre, and by inspiring the Chouans2 with fresh fury, and an unsubmitting spirit of revenge and desperation.6 Revolutions are sudden to the unthinking only. Political Distur­ bances happen not without their warning Harbingers. Strange Rumblings and confused Noises still precede these earthquakes and hurricanes of the moral World. The process of Revolution in France has been dreadful, and should incite us to examine with an anxious eye the motives and manners of those, whose conduct and opinions a (p 34)-6 added 1

The peasants of the country dis­ tricts south of the Loire, feudal in habit and intensely religious, resisted conscription into the republican army and, spurred by their priests, rose in revolt in Feb 1793. These peasant armies, soon to be led by royalists, achieved initial successes before they were butchered in Dec of the same year. Instead of pacifying the Vendeans, the Jacobin government in Paris sent an army of "infernal columns" into the Vendee to carry out reprisals and executions. This merely goaded the Vendeans to further resistance and prolonged the war until mid-Feb 1795, when a peace, granting them freedom of worship and protection of property, was finally signed. In June, from Eng­

land, the Comte d'Artois (brother of Louis xvi) led an expedition of emi­ gres to Quiberon, where it was intended to join Vendean forces gathered by Charette and Stofflet. French forces wiped out the emigres, the Comte d'Artois cowardly hesitated before disembarking and then returning to England, and within a few months Charette and Stofflet were both cap­ tured and executed. 2 Breton rebels who joined the Vendeans in insurrection and carried out guerrilla warfare—with assassinations, robberies, and acts of terrorism— against the revolutionary government. They were subjugated after the dis­ astrous outcome of the Quiberon expedition.

Introductory Address

37

seem calculated to forward a similar event in our own country. The oppositionists to "things as they are,"1 are divided into many and different classes. To delineate them with an unflattering accuracy may be a delicate, but it is a necessary Task, in order that we may enlighten, or at least beware of, the misguided Men who have enlisted under the banners of Liberty, from no principles or with bad ones: whether they be those, who admire they know not what, And know not whom, but as one leads the other: or whether those, Whose end is private Hate, not help to Freedom, Adverse and turbulent when she would lead To Virtue.2 "The majority of Democrats appear to me to have attained that portion of knowledge in politics, which Infidels possess in religion.3 I would by no means be supposed to imply, that the objections of both are equally unfounded, but that they both attribute to the system which they reject, all the evils existing under it; and that both contemplating truth and justice "in the nakedness of abstraction,"4 condemn constitutions and dispensations without having sufficiently examined the natures, circumstances, and capacities of their recipients.6 The first Class among the professed Friends of Liberty is composed of Men, who unaccustomed to the labour of thorough investigation, and not particularly oppressed by the Burthen of State, are yet im­ pelled by their feelings to disapprove of its grosser depravities, and prepared to give an indolent Vote in favour of Reform. Their sensibilities unbraced by the co-operation of fixed Principles, they offer no sacrifices to the divinity of active Virtue. Their political Opinions depend with weather-cock uncertainty on the winds of rumour, that blow from France. On the report of French victories they blaze into Republicanism, at a tale of French excesses they darken into Aristocrats;5 and seek for shelter among those despic­ able adherents to fraud and tyranny, who ironically style themselves a~b

See above, MPL, ρ 7 η 3. See above, ρ 8 and nn 1, 2. C has further altered the last line of the second quotation from Milton's Sam­ son Agonistes. 3 C defines his own status in the following analysis of the four classes of democrats: the first three classes are 1

2

added

flawed, and he obviously aspires to the fourth, to "that small but glorious band". 4 Cf Edmund Burke Reflections on the Revolution in France (1790) 7: ".. .in all the nakedness and solitude of metaphysical abstraction". 5 See above, MPL, ρ 8 η 3.

38

Condones ad Populum

Constitutionalists.—1 These dough-baked Patriots2 are not however useless. This oscillation of political opinion will retard the day of Revolution, and it will operate as a preventive to its excesses. Indecisiveness of character, though the effect of timidity, is almost always associated with benevolence.3 Wilder features characterize the second class. Sufficiently possessed of natural sense to despise the Priest, and of natural feeling to hate the Oppressor, they listen only to the inflammatory harangues of some mad-headed Enthusiast, and imbibe from them Poison, not Food; Rage, not Liberty. Unillumined by Philosophy, and stimu­ lated to a lust of revenge by aggravated wrongs, they would make the Altar of Freedom stream with blood, while the grass grew in the desolated halls of Justice. These men are the rude materials from which a detestable Minister manufactures conspiracies. Among these men he sends a brood of sly political monsters, in the character of sanguinary Demagogues, and like Satan of old, "the Tempter ere the Accuser," 4 ensnares a few into Treason, that he may alarm the whole into Slavery.5 He, who has dark purposes to serve," must use dark means—light would discover, reason would expose him: he must endeavour to shut out both—or if this prove impracticable, make them appear frightful by giving them frightful names: for farther than Names the Vulgar enquire not. Religion and Reason are but poor substitutes for "Church and Constitution;" and the sablevested6 Instigators of the Birmingham riots7 well knew, that a Syllogism could not disarm a drunken Incendiary of his Firebrand, or a Demonstration helmet8 a Philosopher's head against a Brickbat. But in the principles, which this Apostate has, by his emissaries, sown among a few blind zealots for Freedom, he has digged a pit into which he himself may perhaps be doomed to fall.9 We contemplate those principles with horror. Yet they possess a kind of wild Justice10 well calculated to spread them among the grossly ignorant. To un­ enlightened minds, there are terrible charms in the idea of Retribu­ tion, however savagely it be inculcated. The Groans of the Oppres­ sors make fearful yet pleasant music to the ear of him, whose mind is darkness, and into whose soul the iron has entered. See above, MPL, ρ 8 η 4. See above, MPL, ρ 9 η 5. 3 See above, MPL, ρ 9 η 1. 4 See above, MPL, ρ 9 η 2. 5 See above, MPL, ρ 9 η 3. 6 In the Norton Perkins copy of Condones C deletes "sable-vested". 1

2

(This is part of a passage already lightly pencilled for deletion.) 7 See above, MPL, ρ 10 η 1. 8 See above, MPL, ρ 10 η 2. 9 See above, MPL, ρ 10 η 3. 10 See above, MPL, ρ 10 η 4.

Introductory Address

39

This class, at present, is comparatively small—Yet soon to form an overwhelming majority, unless great and immediate efforts are used to lessen the intolerable grievances of our poorer brethren, and infuse into their sorely wounded hearts the healing qualities of knowledge. For can we wonder that men should want humanity, who want all the circumstances of life that humanize? Can we wonder that with the ignorance of Brutes they should unite their ferocity? peace and comfort be with these! But let us shudder to hear from Men of dissimilar opportunities sentiments of similar revengefulness. The purifying alchemy of Education may transmute the fierceness of an ignorant man into virtuous energy—but what remedy shall we apply to him, whom Plenty has not softened, whom Knowledge has not taught Benevolence? This is one among the many fatal effects which result from the want of fixed principles. Convinced that vice is error,1 we shall entertain sentiments of Pity for the vicious, not of Indignation—and even with respect to that bad Man, to whom we have before alluded, altho' we are now groaning beneath the burthen of his misconduct, we shall harbour no sentiments of Revenge; but rather condole with him that his chaotic Iniquities have exhibited such a complication of extravagance, inconsistency, and rashness as may alarm him with apprehensions of approaching lunacy!2 There are a third class among the friends of Freedom, who possess not the wavering character of the first description, nor the ferocity last delineated. They pursue the interests of Freedom steadily, but with narrow and self-centering views: they anticipate with exultation the abolition of privileged orders, and of Acts that persecute by exclusion from the right of citizenship.3 They are prepared to join in digging up the rubbish of mouldering Establishments, and stripping off the tawdry pageantry of Governments. Whatever is above them they are most willing to drag down; but every proposed alteration, that would elevate the ranks of our poorer brethren, they regard with suspicious jealousy, as the dreams of the visionary; as if there were any thing in the superiority of Lord to Gentleman, so mortifying in the barrier, so fatal to happiness in the consequences, as the more real distinction of master and servant, of rich man and of poor. Wherein am I made worse by my ennobled neighbour? Do the child­ ish titles of Aristocracy detract from my domestic comforts, or prevent my intellectual acquisitions?4 But those institutions of Society which should condemn me to the necessity of twelve hours daily toil, 1 2

See above, MPL, ρ 10 η 5. See above, MPL, ρ 11 η 1.

3 See above, MPL, ρ 11 η 2. See above, MPL, ρ 11 η 3.

4

40

Condones ad Populum

would make my soul a slave, and sink the rational being in the mere animal. It is a mockery of our fellow creatures' wrongs to call them equal in rights, when by the bitter compulsion of their wants we make them inferior to us in all that can soften the heart, or dignify the understanding. Let us not say that this is the work of time—that it is impracticable at present, unless we each in our individual capa­ cities do strenuously and perseveringly endeavour to diffuse among our domestics those comforts and that illumination which far beyond all political ordinances are the true equalizers of men. We turn with pleasure to the contemplation of that small but glorious band, whom we may truly distinguish by the name of think­ ing and disinterested Patriots.1 These are the men who have en­ couraged the sympathetic passions till they have become irresistible habits, and made their duty a necessary part of their self-interest, by the long-continued cultivation of that moral taste which derives our most exquisite pleasures from the contemplation of possible perfec­ tion, and proportionate pain from the perception of existing deprava­ tion. Accustomed to regard all the affairs of man as a process, they never hurry and they never pause.2 Theirs is not that twilight of political knowledge which gives us just light enough to place one foot before the other; as they advance the scene still opens upon them, and they press right onward with a vast and various landscape of existence around them. Calmness and energy mark all their actions. Convinced that vice originates not in the man, but in the surrounding circumstances;3 not in the heart, but in the understanding; he is hopeless concerning no one—to correct a vice or generate a virtuous conduct he pollutes not his hands with the scourge of coercion; but by endeavouring to alter the circumstances would remove, or by strengthening the intellect, disarms, the temptation. The unhappy children of vice and folly, whose tempers are adverse to their own happiness as well as to the happiness of others, will at times awaken a natural pang; but he looks forward with gladdened heart to that glorious period when Justice shall have established the universal fraternity of Love. These soul-ennobling views bestow the virtues which they anticipate. He whose mind is habitually imprest with them soars above the present state of humanity, and may be justly said to dwell in the presence of the Most High. would the forms Of servile custom cramp the Patriot's power? 1 2

See above, MPL, ρ 12 η 2. See above, MPL, ρ 12 η 3.

3 See above, MPL, ρ 12 η 4.

Introductory Address

41

Would sordid policies, the barbarous growth Of ignorance and rapine, bow him down To tame pursuits, to Indolence and Fear? Lo! he appeals to Nature, to the winds And rolling waves, the sun's unwearied course, The elements and seasons—all declare For what the Eternal Maker has ordain'd The powers of Man: we feel within ourselves His energy divine: he tells the heart He meant, he made us to behold and love What he beholds and loves, the general orb Of Life and Being—to be great like him, Beneficent and active. 1 AKENSIDE.

!2 Withering

Such is Joseph Gerald in the sickly and tainted gales of a prison, his healthful soul looks down from the citadel of his integrity on his impotent persecutors. I saw him in the foul and naked room of a jail—his cheek was sallow with confinement—his body was emaciated; yet his eye spoke the invincible purposes of his soul, and he still sounded with rapture the successes of Freemen, forgetful of his own lingering martyrdom! Such too were the illustrious Trium­ virate* whom as a Greek Poet expresses it, it's not lawful for bad men even to praise.41 will not say that I have abused your patience in thus indulging my feelings in strains of unheard gratitude to those who may seem to justify God in the creation of man. It is with pleasure that I am permitted to recite a yet unpublished tribute to their merit., the production of one who has sacrificed all the energies of his heart and head, a splendid offering on the altar of Liberty. TO THE EXILED PATRIOTS 5 MARTYRS of FREEDOM —ye who firmly good

Stept forth the Champions in her glorious cause, Ye who against Corruption nobly stood For Justice, Liberty, and equal Laws.6 * MUIR, PALMER , and MARGAROT. 3

See above, MPL, ρ 13 η 2. In the Norton Perkins copy of Condones this paragraph and the first page of the following poem were marked in ink by C for deletion (the passage and the entire poem had already been lightly deleted in pencil). C placed a footnote symbol in the mar­ gin beside "I saw him..with the 1

2

following footnote: "Written by Southey. I never saw these men S. T. Coleridge". See above, MPL, ρ 14 η 1. 3 See above, MPL, ρ 14 η 2. 4 See above, MPL, ρ 15 η 1. 5 See above, MPL, ρ 16 η 1. EHC: unto with 1 Lowman in ch 3 passim computes the acreage, population, and distribu­ tion of land. C's figures are drawn from ρ 39: "According to the mean Compu­ tation, the Contents in Acres will be fourteen millions nine hundred and seventy-six thousand. This Quantity of Land will divide to six hundred thousand Men, above twenty-one Acres and an half in Property, with a Remainder of one million nine hundred and seventy-six thousand Acres for the aforesaidpublickUses Inthelargest Calculation, the Contents in Acres will be nineteen millions and two hundred thousand; which will divide to each Man twenty-five Acres in Property, and will leave four millions of Acres for publick Uses.. 2 Lowman 46: "In order to preserve as near as possible the same Balance,

not only between the Tribes, but be­ tween the Heads of Families, and the Families of the same Tribes, it was further provided, that every Man's Possession should be unalienable." 3 Ibid: "The Wisdom of this Con­ stitution had provided for a Release of all Debts and Servitudes every seventh Year, that the Hebrew Nation might not moulder away from so great a Number of free Subjects, and be lost to the Publick in the Condition of Slaves. It was moreover provided, by the Law of Jubilee, which was every fiftieth Year, that then all Lands should be restor'd, and the Estate of every Family, being discharged from all In­ cumbrances, should return to the Family again." Lowman then quotes Lev 25.10, 23.

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Lectures on Revealed Religion

unobserved. Liberty was proclaimed through the whole nation—the whole nation were informed by divine authority that it was unlawful to acknowledge any human superior. Every Hebrew was thus the Subject of God alone. Nor was an end proposed without means established.1 The Lands were restored. Property is Power and equal Property equal Power. A Poor Man is necessarily more or less a Slave. Poverty is the Death of public Freedom—it virtually enslaves Individuals, and generates those Vices, which make necessary a dangerous concentration of power in the executive branch.2 If we except the Spartan, the Jewish has been the only Republic that can consistently boast of Liberty and Equality. Another effect of this general Restitution was that Error while it was thus prevented from becoming subversive of the state, ceased likewise to be necessarily ruinous to the Individual. The fall from Plenty and Independence into Want & Servitude by the irresistible conviction which it carries with it, will generally make a man seriously repent him of the Evil of his Ways. The Jubilee might restore him to his possessions, and to his social attachments at least, he had the comfort, that his children would not be ruined for their Parents' Follies. In the present state of Society 1 One of C's objections to Godwin's Political Justice in Lect 3 (below, ρ 164) is that it "proposes an end without establishing the means". 2 This is a condensed and politically more forceful version of Lowman's analysis of the relationship between property and political power: "Pro­ perty is the natural Foundation of Power, and so of Authority; hence the natural Foundation of every Govern­ ment is laid in the Distribution of the Lands or Territory belonging to it, to the several Members of it. If the Prince is Proprietor of the Lands, as in some Eastern Governments, such Prince will be absolute; for all who hold the Lands, holding them of the Prince, and injoying them at his Will and Pleasure, are so subject to his Will, that they are in a condition of Slaves, not of free Subjects. If the Property is divided among a few Men, the rest holding of them, and under them as Vassals, the Power and Authority of Government will be in the hands of those few Men, as a Nobility, whatever Authority may be lodged in the hands of one or more

Persons, for the sake of Unity in Counsel and Action; but if the Pro­ perty be generally divided near equally among all the Members of the Society, the true Power and Authority of such Government will naturally be in all the Members of that Society, whatever Form of Union they may have, for the better Direction of the whole as a political Body." Civil Government 33-4. The argument here is substantially that of James Harrington (1611-77), the republican propagandist and political theorist, whose ideas in The Common­ wealth of Oceana are reflected at many points in Lowman's Civil Government (e.g. militia 40-1, debts 46, legislature 127, rota 58-9, agrarian law 46-7, supreme court 67-8). It is unlikely that C had first-hand knowledge of Har­ rington's ideas by 1795, but his later political thinking was much affected by his reading of Harrington's work. By 1800 at the latest he possessed the 1700 ed of Oceana by John Toland (16701722). See CN ι 639-62, 934n, and a letter to Basil Montagu 21 Sept 1802: CL π 870.

Lecture 2

127

when a man has wasted his fortunes, his repentance will seldom prove of any temporal service—but by the more humane ordinances of Moses the Child of Frailty was not suffered to despair. The same cause would likewise lessen the temptation to take advantage of the misfortunes of another—The Hope of aggrandising their Family, which is so frequently the motive to Injustice, was nipped in the Bud —and where Ambition and other selfish Influences do not powerfully counteract, the Sympathies of our Nature lead us to Benevolence. Hence such a spirit of Fraternity might be gradually produced by the expectation, as almost to supersede the actual execution of the Law. The most solemn Part of the Precept remains unconsidered. ["]The Land shall not be sold, for the Land is mine, saith the Lord, and ye are strangers and sojourners with me.f"]1 There is nothing more pernicious than the notion that any one possesses an absolute right to the Soil, which he appropriates2—to the system of accumulation which flows from this supposed right we are indebted for nine-tenths of our Vices and Miseries. The Land is no one's—the Produce belongs equally to all, who contribute their due proportion of Labour.3 1 Lev 25. 23: "The land shall not be sold for ever: for the land is mine; for ye are strangers and sojourners with me." The most relevant works in the background to C's comments on property at this point are Rousseau's Discours sur Vorigine et Ies fondamens de I'inegalite parmi Ies hommes (Am­ sterdam 1755), tr 1762 as A Discourse upon the Origin and Foundation of the Inequality among Mankind, esp pt 2, and Godwin's Political Justice, with the contents of which he was clearly familiar. Neither supports C, however, on the fundamental point of common ownership as the solution to the evils of property. Common ownership, col­ lective labour, and equal division of the produce among the producers are, however, some of the important pro­ positions of Robert Wallace (16971771) in Various Prospects of Mankind, Nature, and Providence (1761), and it is difficult not to believe that this im­ portant and influential work has directly or indirectly affected C's poli­ tical and moral ideas in his pantisocratic period. For C's viewson property and equality, see below, Lect 6 passim and notes.

2 Lowman says that each Hebrew held his land directly from God: "To make this Foundation of the Hebrew Government solid and lasting, the Wisdom of Jehovah their Lawgiver de­ clared, as two essential Laws of the Constitution, that the Territory should be equally divided. So that the whole six hundred thousand should each have a full Property, in an equal Part of it; and that every Man should hold his Estate as a Free-hold in chief, im­ mediately from God himself, as of his Crown, without any other Tenure of Service or Vassalage to any great Men whatsoever, as intermediate Lords; and that this Tenure should be unalienable, or that these Estates thus originally settled should never after be alienated from the Family, but were to descend by an indefeasible Entail in perpetual Succession." Civil Govern­ ment 41. 3 Cf Godwin Political Justice π 791: "Justice directs that each man... should contribute to the cultivation of the common harvest, of which each man consumes a share." Cf also Re­ ligious Musings lines 342-3: "Raised from the common earth by common

128

Lectures on Revealed Religion

Nature seems to say to us, I have invited you to sojourn with me awhile I have prepared you a bountiful Feast, but he is ungrateful and a thief who takes what he cannot use and hides what his Brethren want." An abolition of all individual Property is perhaps the only infallible Preventative against accumulation, but the Jews were too ignorant a people, too deeply leavened with the Vices of ^Egypt to be capable of so exalted a state of Society—every other mode was adopted by Divine Wisdom—Property was equalized—Debts periodically liquidated—Estates rendered unalienable1—of the pro­ duce of their Estates they were ordered to set apart two Tithes in­ dependent of that for the Levites, the first to be spent in rejoicings at Jerusalem, the second at home in acts of hospitality. ["]At the end of three years, ["] says the Law, ["]thou shalt bring forth all the Tithe of thine increase the same year, and thou shalt lay it up within thy gates—and the stranger and the Fatherless and the Widow, shall come and eat and be satisfied·!"]2 The Israelites were comparatively children and selfishness is a Vice to which men are particularly suba

EHC wrote and cancelled: "Every other mode was adopted by Divine Wisdom—but the Jews were too ignorant a people, too leavened with the Vices of i£gypt, to be capable of so exalted a state of society" (cf following sentence)

toil [ Enjoy the equal produce". PW (EHC) 1122. Cf Wallace Various Pros­ pects 46: "That there should be no private property. That every one should work for the public, and be supported by the public. That all should be on a level, and that the fruits of every one's labour should be common for the confortable subsistance of all the members of the society. And, lastly, that every one should be obliged to do something, yet none should be burdened with severe labour." 1 The equalisation, as opposed to the abolition, of private property is an inherently unstable form of social organisation (cf Lect 6, below, ρ 228). The stability of the Jewish state, how­ ever, was ensured by the basic laws of its Constitution. Cf Lowman 236-7: "The very Foundation of the Hebrew Constitution, was an equal Division of the Land, the Continuance of which was secured by a fundamental Law, which made that Division perpetual, as no Estate could be alienated or pass from one Tribe or Family to another. The Laws had further provided, that

no Interest could be made of Money; so that had a Man never so much Money he could make no Profit of it, either by Purchase or Interest. All Places of Power, whether in their Courts of Justice, or Commands in their Armies, were not Places of Profit too, at least of so very small Profit as to be worth next to nothing at all; and these very Places were moreover, if of any Eminency, so fixed to Heads of Families and Princes of Tribes, that all Ambition of canvassing for them must be very much prevented, by striking in great measure at the very Root of such Ambitions in taking away the common and usual Occasions of them; for the Constitution had made the Places in that Government rather Places of Burthen than of Profit.... What room was there for restless and ambitious Spirits, to form Parties or Factions... for their own private Advantage, when there was so little Power, so little Profit to be got.. 2 Deut 14. 28-9 (var). C omits the Levite.

Lecture 2

129

ject when children and in old age, which is second childhood—the quantity of Property to be thus hospitably scattered abroad is positively defined by the Law, and this Coercion may seem unfavor­ able to the benevolent Principle. But in untutored minds Regulations are necessary to virtuous Habits—and then our Habits supersede the necessity of Regulations. Thus every Hebrew possessed an estate of 25 acres, equal to 80£ a year with us1—and the whole nation was obliged to hold themselves ready to appear in arms when legally summoned.2 But as they were surrounded by Enemies, a constant Militia became necessary to prevent surprises. Two thousand were therefore sent from each Tribe every month—forming an army of 24,000 men—this rapid Rotation preserved the people in a state of discipline while it prevented the possibility of military Despotism. This body of 24000 men were likewise the Representative, and as it were the Congress of the Hebrew Nation—and possessed all the legislative Powers which existed in the Jewish Constitution.3 To these were added a Senate of 70 Elders, who possessed the privilege of advising this Congress4—and above these was the Judge or Stateholder, whose chief Prerogative it was to preside in this assembly and to be their general officer.5 So carefully was it provided that every 1 Lowman 40: "...a Provision of above sixteen, or twenty-one or twenty-five Acres of Land in Property to each Person, would enable them with all the Advantages of that Countiy and Climate, to live as well as Men can do in ours upon an Estate of forty, fifty, or sixty Pounds a Year, of their own." 2 Ibid 51: "The Hebrew Constitu­ tion had provided no standing Army for national Defence, but had rather made it impracticable; yet the whole Nation being obliged to appear in Arms when legally summoned, the whole Nation was as a standing Army." 3 Ibid 58-9: "In the times of David we find, that twenty-four thousand Men attended in their Courses every Month. This Number consisted likely of two thousand of eachTribe Such a Rotation made the Military Service very easy to the whole Nation, which was so necessary to the Safety of the whole. Twenty-four thousand a Month, out of six hundred thousand subject to

9

Military Service, obliged each Person to actual Duty but one Month in two Years, except on extraordinary occa­ sions; and yet it afforded a sufficient Guard of Defence against any sudden Invasion, or Attempts to disturb the Peace of the Nation. It has been further observed, that this Rotation of the Militia was at the same time a Rotation of the Representative of the Hebrew Nation, as well as a standingGuard— This Assembly, when called together by David, is styled the Congregation, the known Word to signify an Assem­ bly of the whole Nation, or of its Representative." Lowman adds that "this Assembly confirmed as by Authority of Parliament, or as the Representatives of the People, two of the highest Acts of Government, the Settlement of the Crown, and of the High-Priesthood." Ibid 60. 4 Ibid ch 9 ("Of the Senate of Israel"), esp 166-71. 5 Ibid ch 10 COf the JUDGE") passim, 177-90. RCL

130

Lectures on Revealed Religion

Freeman in the State should by rotation exercise that power the possession of which constitutes the security of Freedom. But lest even this power might be abused, and that every measure which would affect the whole," when any point of more than common importance was proposed, the twelve Tribes met and enacted it personally.1 But it may be necessary to make an Observation, that there were no proper legislative powers lodged anywhere in the Constitution—for even the whole Nation had no authority vested in them either to re­ peal laws in being, or to make new Laws. The Laws of the Nation had proceeded miraculously from God—none might add to or dimin­ ish aught from them2 The Laws of Moses were fully adequate for the regulation of a People among whom Land had been equalized, and each one of whom was to be an agriculturist—and Commerce and Manufactures which might have made a more complex Code necessary were either expressly forbidden by the Law, or at least clearly contradictory to the Spirit of it, as tending to introduce the accumulative System.3 There were however many things in the due observation and execution of the Laws relating the different Interests of Tribes, in which it was frequently deemed expedient to proceed upon national authority4 War and Peace with neighbouring Nations5 and the elec­ tion of Judges and afterwards of Kings6 were among the powers in which it was necessary to act by authority of the whole people. Moses, it should seem had received no divine Revelation of that great a

1

insert "should have the consent of all"?

Lowman 130-2. 2 Ibid 127-8: "But before we pro­ ceed to Particulars, it may serve much to prevent Mistakes in this Inquiry, to make one previous Observation, that there were no proper legislative Powers lodged any where in this Constitution; for these States-General, whether con­ sidered each of them separately, or all of them with mutual and joint Consent, had no Authority vested in them either to repeal Laws in being, or to make new Laws. The Laws of this Nation were the Laws of Jehovah.... Jehovah was the only Lawgiver.. 3 In Lect 6 (below, ρ 228) C affirms that "an Equalization of Property... is impracticable" and that even "if it were practicable, it would answer no end, for this Equalisation could not continue for a year". Presumably the

Jewish system of equal ownership, however, was practicable (for a time at least) because the law ensured aperiodic redistribution of alienated property and the liquidation of all debts. Cf Lowman 236, quoted above, ρ 128 η 1. 4 Lowman 129: "Yet still, there were many things in the due Observa­ tion and Execution of these Laws re­ lating to the common Interests of the whole People, concerning which the Laws had made no particular Provi­ sion, or given particular Directions. In such cases it was necessary the Hebrew Nation should have a national Au­ thority, both in taking Advice and in executing what should be resolved upon, as the common Concern of the whole People." 5 Ibid 135, 144-5. 6 Ibid 143^4.

Lecture 2

131

Mystery recently delivered by an English Statesman1 that Power was for the People not from the People,2 and that whether Murders and Famine are to be hazarded by a national War is a point more advantageously discussed by a few Place-men than by the unbribed many, unbribed, yet deeply interested.3 The whole Jewish Nation were kept constantly officered by men elected among themselves, so as to be in constant readiness for actual military service on any sud­ den emergency4—these officers in time of quiet performed the duties of Justices of the Peace and Arbiters5—In this Constitution men were neither inveigled into Slaughter nor dragged away6—When a war was 1 Cf Windham, secretary at war, in the debate of 5 Jan 1795 on Sheridan's motion to repeal the Habeas Corpus Suspension Act: "Is it, I ask, a culp­ able degree of aristocracy, to deny the competence of the lower orders of society in questions of peace and war? .. .It is the remote and complicated objects of war that form the justifica­ tion of the measure, and neither the ability nor information of the poor enable them to be fit judges of these subjects." Pari Reg XL 122-3. Bishop Horsley was to restate this more succinctly later in the year: see the opening of PD, below, ρ 285. 2 Cf C's distinction of "Govern­ ment by the people, Government over the people, and Government with the people" in PD (below, pp 306-7). Although the Jewish Constitution byC's definition would qualify as "Govern­ ment by the people", it is not men­ tioned in PD at the appropriate place (cf below, ρ 306). Cf Cooper Some In­ formation 53: "The government is the government oft he people, and for the people." For C's later modification of this formula see The Friend (1809-10): ".. .it is the duty of the enlightened Philanthropist to plead for the poor and ignorant, not to them ". Friend(CC) π 137. 3 A reference to Paley's arguments in favour of indirect representation, political patronage, and the representa­ tion of "interests" rather than indi­ viduals. Cf Principles of Moral and Political Philosophy (2 vols 1794) Ii 211-13, 217-33. In the course of an

attack on the English Constitution in Lect 6 (below, pp 220-3), Paley is re­ ferred to as the "reverend Moralist" who has justified the role of "secret Influence" in the processes of govern­ ment. For this and other references to Paley by C, see below, ρ 222 η 1. 4 Lowman Civil Government 71-2. 5 Ibid 72-3. 6 Reports of high war casualties and increasing popular hostility to a stand­ ing army led to intensified recruiting in 1794-5 and to methods of doubtful morality and legality. C noticed pieces of beef and lamb hung up as induce­ ments outside a Bristol recruitingoffice (CN ι 42, and Condones, above, ρ 69). Crimping provoked much resentment among the common people, particularly the use of prostitutes or "gallows bitches" to entice men into recruiting-houses (often brothels, public-houses, or private houses next to them), where they could be forcibly " enlisted ". The widespread and widely reported attacks on London crimpinghouses in August 1794 were provoked by the death of a young man, George Howe, who jumped from the garret window of a recruiting-house belong­ ing to the East India Company, where he had been taken and his hands tied behind his back to prevent his escape. A Reg (1794) Chronicle pp 24-5, G Mag Lxrv pt 2 (1794) 721-3. An anticrimping pamphlet (in the form of a one-act play), The Crimps, or the Death of Poor Howe (1794) by Η. M. Saunders, recorded the popular resist­ ance to enlisting (the "knowing

132

Lectures on Revealed Religion

waged, it was the concurring Vote of the Nation—and what all had enacted all cheerfully bound themselves to execute. Some exceptions however were allowed—and many reasons might be legally urged for exemption from military service.1 What! methinks I hear a modern Captain exclaim. Were the fellows exempted from it blind so that they could not see to march? or deaf so that they could not hear the word of command? or crippled and not able to handle their arms? Or were they such as were worth money and so could buy themselves out?2 Ah no! far other reasons were valid in the Mosaic Law, a law so often represented as harsh and bloody. The common feelings of men were consulted, and a total Absence of natural sensibilities was not held a necessary proof of Courage. ["]What man is there that hath built a new house and hath not dedicated [it]—let him go and return to his house lest he die in the Battle and another dedicate it. And what man is he that hath planted a vineyard and hath not yet eaten of it—let him also go and return to his house, lest he die in the battle and another man eat of it. And what man is there that hath betrothed a Wife and hath not taken her, let him go and return to his house, lest he die in battle and another man take her. When a man hath taken a new Wife, he shall not go out to War neither shall he be charged with any Business, but he shall be free at home one year.["]3 So perfectly voluntary was the performance of Military Duties that even if any man had the Courage to profess himself a Coward, he was excused by it from attendance. ["]What man is there that is fearful and faint-hearted, let him go and return to his house lest his Brethren's Heart fail as well as his own heart.["]4 In this manner with some small variations the Jewish Government lasted till the days of Samuel, when seduced by the splendor of monarchical Courts around them the people of Israel petitioned for a King. Samuel felt deep anguish and much displeasure and prayed unto the Lord because that the people asked for a king. But the Lord said unto Samuel, " Hearken bastards" are now suspicious of all enticements, the recruiting-officer com­ plains, ρ 2) as well as the common belief that magistrates were disinclined to prevent illegal methods of raising men. In Howe's case the offenders escaped punishment. 1 Lowman 52-3. The "modern Captain" does not appear in Lowman's account. 2 Attempts on the part of C's family to buy him out of the army early in

1794 must have come to nothing, for

he was eventually discharged on 10 Apr 1794 on grounds of "insanity". A Capt Hopkinson was the officer most immediately concerned with negotiat­ ing C's discharge. Cf Vera Watson "Coleridge's Army Experience" Eng­ lish IX (Summer 1953) 171-5; CL175-7. 3 Deut 20. 5-7 (var), 24. 5. 4 Deut 20. 8 (var). Lowman adds (p 53) that those excused had to per­ form non-combatant duties.

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unto the voice of the people in all that they say unto thee—for they have not rejected thee but have rejected me, that I should not reign over them. Howbeit hearken unto their voice & shew them the man­ ner of the king that shall reign over them."1 Their crime was the foulest of which human nature is capable—they were weary of in­ dependence, and their punishment was the heaviest. They had their Request granted. The description of a king by divine authority, which immediately" has been considered as applicable to despotic Monar­ chies only, but this is a gross mistake.2 The Jewish Kings never were arbitrary, and in truth, possessed little more power than the Judges a

1

read "immediately follows" ?

1 Sam 8. 7,9 (var). C probably in­ tended to quote the remainder of the passage; see Lect 1 (above, ρ 118). The "crime" of the Jews in requesting a monarchical form of government, God's evident disapproval of their act, and its political implications con­ stituted an important and recurrent theme in seventeenth- and eighteenthcentury republican (and other) writing. Lowman does not deal with the Jewish kings, since he is concerned to display the Hebrew Constitution only in its original purity and not in its later corrupt forms (pp 179-80). For some works within C's horizon of reading cf Warburton Divine Legation bk ν sec 3 passim (n 553-68), where this episode in Jewish history is discussed in terms similar to C's. Priestley's In­ stitutes is politically close to C's point of view in its disapproval of the Jews for abandoning a form of "free and equal government.. .so exceedingly favourable to liberty, virtue, and do­ mestic happiness", a trio of values closely associated in C's mind. Insti­ tutes pt 2 ch 4 sec 1 (2 vols 2nd ed Birmingham 1782) ι 369-70 (Rutt π 156-7). A reference nearer to C, how­ ever, is Paine Common Sense sec 2 ("Of monarchy and hereditary succes­ sion") passim, where it is argued at length that the divine disapproval of the monarchical form of government is clearly revealed in the history of the Jews. The passage from 1 Sam 8 is quoted in full. C quotes from the first paragraph of Common Sense in Con­ dones; see above, ρ 61 and η 1. Paine

makes the same political point about the Jewish petition for a king in Letter Addressed to the Addressers 13-15 (a work to which C indirectly refers in Lect 3; see below, ρ 149 η 1) and again, though more briefly, in his Introduc­ tion to Rights of Man pt II (1792) 5: "This certainly is not the condition that Heaven intended for man; and if this be monarchy, well might monarchy be reckoned among the sins of the Jews." For C's reading of Common Sense, see also below, ρ 219 η 3. 2 C is referring to 1 Sam 8. 11-18, the passage immediately following 1 Sam 8. 7,9, which he has just quoted. Cf "And he said, This will be the manner of the king that shall reign over you: He will take your sons, and appoint them for himself, and for his chariots, and to be his horsemen; and some shall run before his chariots. And he will appoint him captains over fifties; and will set them to ear his ground, and to reap his harvest, and to make his instruments of war, and instruments of his chariots—And he will take the tenth of your seed— He will take the tenth of your sheep: and ye shall be his servants. And ye shall cry out in that day because of your king which ye shall have chosen you; and the LORD will not hear you in that day." 1 Sam 8. 11-18. At this point in his lecture C probably intended to quote the whole of this passage, the first words of which appear among the rough notes at the end of Lecture 1 (see above, ρ 118).

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whom they succeeded1—nor do the practices mentioned in Samuel characterize arbitrary measures. The Kings possessed the power of making War and Peace which the Judges had not, and they kept a Court while the former chief magistrates lived like private Citizens. With these differences we may easily explain the texts to prophesy the greater frequency, pomp, and expensiveness of Wars which would uniformly attend a kingly Government. Firstly" the employment of free-born Citizens in the preparing of vain Splendor and unnecessary Luxuries—by the envying of which the People would endeavour to accumulate property that they might enjoy the like—and so by Avarice in some and Profusion in many introduce Poverty into the State and with it every vice that debases human nature—for all Vices arise immediately or remotely from political inequality. Secondly in order to maintain this civil list Taxes would become necessary, which were altogether unknown except in the article of religious Establish­ ment2 and lastly, that instead of all being equal and the servants of God only, they should now call a man no better than themselves by the names of Lord and Sovereign, and by this prostitution of the Almighty's Titles prepare themselves more and more for Idolatry. Such if candidly examined will be found the fair Interpretation of this famous Passage,3 which I have dwelt upon as it is one strong proof among very many others, that the Dispensations of God have always warned Man against the least Diminution of civil Freedom. The Israelites however listened not to Samuel and afterwards severely repented of it so that there was among them this figurative Remark. A cockatrice is a Dragon with a Crown on his head, and hatched by a Viper on a Cock's Egg. The Viper was the Symbol of Ingratitude among them and a Cock's Egg of Credulity.4 a

1

EHC: Secondly

Lowman argues this at several points in ch 10 ("Of the JUDGE"). 2 In the form of an annual tithe for the support of the Levites. Lowman ch 6 passim, pp 81-124. 3 1 Sam 8, 11-18. 4 Cf a letter to RS 6 Jul [1794]: "—The Cockatrice is a foul Dragon with a crown on it's head. The Eastern Nations believe it to be hatched by a Viper on a Cock's Egg. Southey— Dost thou not see Wisdom in her Com Vest of Allegory? The Cockatrice is emblematic of Monarchy—a monster generated by Ingratitude on Absurdity.

When Serpents sting, the only Remedy is—to kill the Serpent, and besmear the Wound with the Fat. Would you desire better Sympathy?—". CL ι 84. Cf also The Fall of Robespierre act II lines 264-7: "Is it for this we wage eternal war | Against the tyrant horde of murderers, | The crowned cocka­ trices whose foul venom | Infects all Europe?" PW (EHC) Ii 510. C was well advised not to repeat his regicide allegory in public in full. In Feb 1794 Daniel Eaton had been tried for a libel on the King published in his radical paper Hogs' Wash. "It consisted in a

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Thus, I trust, the Wisdom and Benevolence of the civil Govern­ ment of the Jews as established by a Moses has been sufficiently proved—and to a man who accurately contemplates the power of the human mind in different circumstances this alone would be a miracle sufficient to prove the divinity of his Legation.1 For the Jews seem to have been grossly ignorant of every thing, and disposed to the grossest Idolatry. And though Moses is said to have been learned in all the learning of the ^Egyptians, yet the ^Egyptians' Government was an absolute Monarchy—and the people never admitted into any share of the Government. So that where Moses in that infant state of the World could have gained the model of so perfect a Government I cannot conceive, unless we allow [it] to have come from God.2 report of an extremely risky parable, delivered by Thelwall at a debating society some months before, in which a game-cock 'with ermine-spotted breast,' 'a haughty sanguinary tyrant of the farmyard,' 'meaning our said Lord the King,' was decapitated by the teller of the story. Eaton was lucky to escape, but he seems to have had a friendly jury." Brown The French Revolution in English History 123-4. 1 C reconsidered on many occasions the Mosaic law and civil constitution of the Hebrews. The following extract from some later ms notes (in VCL, watermark 1804) is particularly rele­ vant at this point: "QUERE. In what way do the Assertors of the Divinity of Moses's Mission, and thesuperlative prophetic gift of the Legislator, who is declared to have excelled all preceding and all the following Prophets in perfection and extent of Foreknowlege, account for the Omission, in the constitutional Code framed by him, of so important articles, as the Succession of Leaders or First Magistrates—the mode of election—whether as in the Roman Empire, by each Chief ap­ pointed [1 for appointing] his Successor during his Lifetime or by Will; or by the People—& out of what class—and under the condition of what qualifica­ tions, &c. Moses appointed Joshua: how happened it, that Joshua neither appointed nor proposed any Successor; but left the Tribes to that frightful

anarchy which induced a real dark Age or period of Barbarism—so that even in David's time, so great was the Declension from the Mosaic Period in all the arts of Civilization that the Artists employed must all be procured from Tyre—while under Moses they abounded. Was it to impress on the Nation experimental conviction of the suicidal character of Idolatry, and the absolute dependence of a Hebrew State on the sole worship of Jehovah and on the strict Observation of the Mosaic Ritual? But, alas! it produced this effect most imperfectly—After two reigns, David's & Solomon's, from which the latter part of Solomon's must be subtracted, ten of the Tribes fell off, into Idolatry at all times, & transgression of the Second Command­ ment, & too often, as far as the majority of the Israelites were con­ cerned into Polytheism and the breach of the first Commandment—It is un­ deniable, that no after revelation either thro' the Priesthood or from the Schools of the Prophets, obtained that confident Faith or was regarded as of the same permanent and universal Obligation, as the Laws and political Ordinances given from Mount Sinai and in the Wilderness—". VCL MS F.2.11 f lv. 2 Thispassagecondensestothepoint of obscurity an eighteenth-century ar­ gument against the deists. Warburton asserted that the "learning" of Moses

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Lectures on Revealed Religion

The chief objection to the Mosaic Dispensation arises from the establishment of Priests and Tythes.1 But it may be answered that referred to in Acts 7. 22 consisted in the "civil and political wisdom" of the Egyptians and not merely in their "Speculative and Mechanic Arts and Sciences", as commonly supposed. In spite of the prestige in the ancient world of Egyptian political thought and institutions, Moses constructed a state on principles "directly opposite to all the Principles of Egyptian Wis­ dom" and vastly superior to them. "It was the civil Policy of Egypt to prefer an hereditary despotic Monarchy to all other Forms of Government. Moses, on the contrary, erects a Theocracy on the free Choice of the People", thus encountering "the strongest Prejudices of his People; who were violently carried away to all the Customs and Superstitions of Egypt". The su­ periority of Moses' political wisdom and his surprising practical success in these circumstances point to the fact of divine assistance. Divine Legation π 343-7. The same argument is used by Priestley to explain the belief of the Jews in one God at a time when they were surrounded by polytheistic na­ tions. "If we consider the state of the world in the time of Moses, it must appear in the highest degree incredible, that he should have attained ideas con­ cerning God, and a Providence, so in­ finitely superior to those that were to be found in any of the neighbouring nations, even the most learned and polished. Where could he have learned the truly sublime and rational idea of one God, and the purity of his worship, when all other nations were addicted to idolatry, and the most horrid vices... ? This great difference cannot be ac­ counted for but by supposing that the Jews were taught of God...". Dis­ courses Discourse vi (1794) 131-2 (Rutt xv 253-4). In Discourse ν Priestley says that the fact of divine intervention in the history of the Jews is obvious to anyone "who attends to the principles of human nature" (p 120), a phrase that recalls C's assertion that the

divinity of Moses' legation must be clear to anyone "who accurately con­ templates the power of the human mind in different circumstances". Implicit in these comments on "human nature" and the "human mind" is a reference to Hartley's theory of association; both Priestley and C thought it provided irrefutable evidence in favour of re­ vealed religion. See Lect 3 (below, ρ 160 η 1). Moses is also referred to in a note­ book entry of 1795: "The Character of Moses an argument in favor of his divine Legation—". CN150. This may well refer (as CN ι 50n suggests) to a review (possibly written by C himself) of Priestley's Discourses in C Rev Jan 1795, in which "it is suggested that' the Character of Moses appears...to be in some respects undervalued', that Moses' character is in fact an argu­ ment in favour of his divine legation, and that he was not imposed on by tricks and magic". CN ι 50n. Priest­ ley's argument, however, hinges chiefly on the fact that Moses was imposed upon in this way. He mentions his meekness, piety, and obvious sincerity as evidence in favour of Moses' divine mission, but says also that he "seems to have been imposed upon by the tricks of the magicians, who imitated his miracles" (p 64) and was in general credulous, lacking in courage, sagacity, enterprise, eloquence, ambition, mar­ tial skill, and "every natural requisite for such an undertaking as the emanci­ pation of his countrymen" (p 63). His success notwithstanding these personal disadvantages is the most weighty evidence in favour of divine assistance. 1 In the following discussion of priests, tithes, and the Levites Cfollows Lowman Civil Government ch 6 passim. The work by John Selden (1584-1654) referred to later in this passage is his History of Tythes (1618), Lowman's chief authority on the subject. Cf esp Lowman 118-22.

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before the Art of Printing was discovered, when knowledge was vastly more difficult of attainment than it is at present, it became necessary that a number of men should be set apart whose business it might be to acquire such knowledge—that otherwise they could not be Teachers, and that to a People so wavering, so" grossly prejudiced, so darkly ignorant as the Jews were, Teachers were absolutely neces­ sary to prevent them from Idolatry. To preserve one nation free from Idolatry in order that it might be a safe receptacle for the precursive Evidences of Christianity, was the principal design of the Mosaic Dispensation. Now what means could have been contrived better adapted for this purpose than by scattering one Tribe among all the rest, and making these depend for their Bread on the general Obser­ vance of the worship of the one true God. And with regard to the Tythes it should be remembered that the Children of Levi were a thirteenth Tribe, and on the division of the Land might have claimed a thirteenth Share, but this they voluntarily gave up, and the other Tribes in lieu of it gave them the Tythe of the Produce, which Selden who has examined the Subject with vast Learning and uncom­ mon Impartiality determines to be no more than they would have possessed as equal Inheritors. Besides this, these Levites were the Lawyers as well as the Priests of the Country, and as they received no Fees and their Temple Duty was sufficiently burdensome, we may be well assured that they differed very greatly from the Lawyers of the present Day inasmuch as it was their Interest to make up Quarrels and prevent lawsuits to the utmost of their Power. The Levites there­ fore were Teachers in order to keep the People free from Idolatry, and they were directly appointed by Moses.1 If therefore the estab­ lished Clergy of Christendom wish to rest their claim to Tythes on the divine command, they must shew that the nation is likely to fall into Idolatry without them, and that they were appointed by Christ. Now as to the first of these I suppose no immediate Danger is apprehended at least, whatever Idolatry there may be among us, it is all orthodox. And as to their appointment by Christ, the very name is no where applied to Christians in the new Testament except in one Text—and there it is said, Ye shall be all Priests—in the same sense as it is elsewhere—Ye shall be all Kings,2 and, I suppose, if we were all Priests and all Kings, it would be all one as if there were no Priest " EHC: to 1

The following passage interestingly anticipates the account of the Levites and C's idea of a "clerisy" most fully

developed in C&S (1830). 2 CfExod 19. 6, Rev 1. 6, 1 Pet 2. 5 and 9.

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and no King. And even though this Interpretation of the text should be rejected, yet it will be still inapplicable to the present Clergy inasmuch as it says, Ye shall be all Priests after the order of Melchisedek,1 that is—of Peace and Love—which how the fierce advo­ cates of War can be, is a mystery which I very reverently lodge among the rest of the Church Lumber.2 Deacon was a man elected to distri­ bute the superfluities of the richer among the poorer Christians—and as to Bishop, the literal Translation of the Greek Word is—Overseer •—both that and the Deaconship were civil offices. The most sensible however of the Protestant Clergy rest their right to the Tythes solely on the Law of the Land. And this is a very strong Argument—although levelled at the Purse rather than the Under­ standing.3 It would indeed be quite as rational though not altogether so legal for a man to call on you with a volume of Poems and insist on your buying them because he was the favoured of Apollo and on your desiring some proof of it, should thrust in your Face the King's Letters Patent appointing him Poet Laureate.4 As the Government interest themselves so warmly in the state of our souls as to make us pay for spiritual Drugs however little we may imagine ourselves in want of them it may surprize that it does [not] extend its loving care to the state of our Health and provide an established order of wellbeneficed Physicians—and to the state of our landed Property, and heap fat Pluralists on an establishment of Attorneys.3 Though per­ haps it may fairly be° said for the present forms of Government in Europe, that they provide full employment for all the professions by the pestilent Luxuries which they encourage, and by the Poverty and " EHC: (be) 1

Ps 110. 4 (var). Cf Lect 6, below, ρ 221; also Condones, above, pp 66-8. 3 In a letter of 11 Dec 1794 Robert Lovell informed Thomas Holcroft that the necessity of paying tithes was one of the serious objections to Southey's proposal to establish pantisocracy in Wales. Cf The Life of Thomas Holcroft continued by Hazlitt and ed E. Colby (2 vols 1925) π 84. 4 Poet Laureate from 1790 was Henry James Pye (1745-1813), a com­ mon butt. For Pye's political odes and C's Ode on the Departing Year, see Woodring Politics in the Poetry of Coleridge 174-7. 2

5 This piece of irony is an elabora­ tion of an idea of Priestley's, who argued that it was unreasonable to be­ lieve that religion could be imposed on men by the civil government. "With much more reason might the state interfere in directing what medicines should be administered to the mem­ bers of the state, and who should administer them; because it might be said, that the strength of the state de­ pends upon the health and vigour of the citizens." Letters to the Philoso­ phers and Politicians of France on the Subject of Religion (1793) 43 (Rutt XXi 104-5).

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consequent Vices, with which their ruinous and expensive Schemes inoculate their subjects—Yes! all hands are full!from the Archbishop who pens the proclamation for the better observance of the Sabbath to the Chaplain who attends the poor Sabbath-breaker at the Gal­ lows—from the Crown Lawyer to Jack Ketch and from the Jack Ketch to the Anatomist! O Death! here are thy stings! O Grave! here are thy Victories!1 The second Objection against the Mosaic Dispensation—from the multiplicity and trifling minuteness of the Ceremonial Law, concern­ ing which an Infidel Writer has ventured to say, that to affirm any of them to proceed from the true God would be equally absurd and blasphemous!2 Assertions run fast, but Proofs too often lag lamely far behind them. What is wisdom and what folly, is determinable only by circumstances and the fitness of the means to answer the end. The circumstances of the Mosaic Dispensation were these—To shew the great power of God and by the immediate consequences [of] their frequent apostacy from him to shew the hateful Effects of Idolatry the Jewswere chosen above all others—a people of a stupid and earthy imagination and blindly addicted to idolatrous Rites from the splendid Ceremonies and sensual Pleasures which attended them. Such were the circumstances—to preserve this nation free from Idolatry, that there might be publickly acknowledged such a series of Prophecies as to us of later ages is a necessary part of the proof of Christianity.3 To suppose the Jews susceptible of a Religion as pure and spiritual as the Christian is to convert the Effect into the Cause— it would be scarcely less irrational than if a Politician should affirm the American Constitution perfectly well adapted for the Turks or Russians.4 A preparatory Religion implies Imperfection for if it had ι Cf 1 Cor 15. 55. 2 Cf Lowman Civil Government 3: "Some [critics] have fallen with un­ common Severity both on the religious and political Constitutions of Moses, and endeavoured to represent them not only as unwise and unequal, but as most unjust, tyrannical, and cruel. These Constitutions are said to be 'a Refinement on the Superstition of Egypt·, and that to suppose or affirm any of them of the true God, must be equally absurd and blasphemous'." Lowman's footnote locates the source of his quotation in The Moral Philoso­ pher (4 vols 1737-41) π 135, a work by

the deist Thomas Morgan. Lowman's Civil Government was one of many re­ plies to this once-celebrated work. 3 Cf above, pp 115-16. 4 This Burke-like comment reveals a significant difference of opinion with Godwin, who believed that there must be "one best mode of social existence", deducible from the nature of man and consequently applicable to all coun­ tries. Political Justice ι 237. Cf also: "Truth is in reality single and uniform. There must in the nature of things be one best form of government, which all intellects, sufficiently roused from the slumber of savage ignorance, will be

140

Lectures on Revealed Religion

been perfect, why should it have been superseded? All that rests on the Advocate of Revealed Religion is to shew that these Imperfec­ tions answered some good end at the time either immediately or by the prevention of something worse.1 The Jews were established by Moses in a lovely Climate & that time a most fertile soil—the Land was equally divided—and the Toil necessary for the cultivation of it could not employ one fifth of their Time—but they were ignorant and could not therefore fill it up by literary occupation—they were fond of novelty—and would therefore have applied their idleness to the pursuit of the alluring Ceremonies of Idle Worship—Was it not then benevolent to prevent as much as possible the vice by removing the Temptation? By giving the Jews a splendid religious Establishment applied to the true God—and adopting the more innocent of the idolatrous ceremonies while those that led to Vices were severely interdicted? One of the chief and most influencing Principle[s] of Idolatry was a Persuasion that the temporal Blessings of Life, Health, Length of Days, fruitful Seasons, Victory in Wars, and such advan­ tages were to be expected and sought for as the Gifts of some inferior & subordinate Beings, who were supposed to be the Guardians of irresistably incited to approve.. ..Truth cannot be so variable, as to change its nature by crossing an arm of the sea, a petty brook or an ideal line, and be­ come falshood. On the contrary it is at all times and in all places the same." Ibid χ 181-2. Also: "We pretend that truth fit to be practiced in one country, nay, truths which we confess to be eternally right, are not fit to be prac­ ticed in another." Ibid η 880. Godwin argued against what he calls the notion of "the local propriety of different forms of government". Ibid 1184. 1 Some later ms notes (see above, ρ 135 η 1) return to this question of the "imperfections" of the Mosaic Laws and the reason for them. Cf "Methinks, a Christian Divine might find example [and] full authority in the writings of the Apostle Paul, in the Ep. to the Galatians and to the Romans, for adducing this and other correlative points in proof of an intended Im­ perfection in the Mosaic Law—in proof, that its' excellence is to be tried by its fitness for its' ultimate purpose—

and that this purpose was not the lasting existence or Unity and Wellbeing of the Jewish State) but the gradual Diffusion of the Doctrine of One God, the increasing conviction of the transcendent importance of this Truth, and the preparation of the World, Pagan as well as, no more than, the Jews, for the World Religion, or the Religion of Mankind purified from all accidental, local, and political Alloy— and that all these ends were answered completely by the inconstancy, Dis­ cord, and Apostacy of the Jews—while the progressive Prosperity and endur­ ing Unity of an Abrahamitic Kingdom would have been a serious Obstacle. It was from their Captivity and the ensuing deeper affection for the faith of their Country and their fore-fathers (for when the storm nips keen & blows furious, we cling to the cloak), that the Jews themselves first felt the whole Truth of their Religion, so as to become incapable of Relapsing." VCL MS F.2.11 f 2.

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Mortal Men;1 this therefore independent of the arguments in the first Lecture was a sufficient Reason for promising all these as the effect of Obedience to the one true God—Whatever you would vainly expect from Astoreth, you may safely ask for from Jehovah.2 Again we know that our inward feelings are greatly increased and [made] more permanent as well as more vivid by frequent outward and visible expressions of them. Now every Age has its peculiar Language. And Sacrifice unspotted and selected with laborious minuteness of examination was the ordinary Symbol (in the early ages) of dependence and gratitude and love.3 This Language there­ fore which the surrounding Nations impiously addressed to wood and stone, the Jews were ordered to pay to the unimaged Creator of all Things. The same arguments that justify the adoption of the more innocent Ceremonies of the Gentile World, may be adduced in favor of the severity of prohibitions in seemingly trifling circumstances. There were many ceremonies such as marring the corners of the Beard etc that were properly and truly the peculiar Language of Idolatry. He therefore who used [it] might be properly punished not for the crime done but the crime signified. In Deuteronomy we find the Law that ["]a Woman shalt not wear a man's garment, neither a man put on a Woman's garments—for all that do so are an abomination to 1 Cf Lowman Civil Government 21-2: "One of the chief and most in­ fluencing Principles of Idolatry, was a false Persuasion that the temporal Blessings of Life, Health, Length of Days, fruitful Seasons, Victory in Wars, and such Advantages, were to be ex­ pected and sought for as the Gifts of some inferior and subordinate Beings, as Guardians of mortal Men Thus Men came not only to lose the true Knowledge of the one, only God, and of his immediate Providence, and that all these Blessings could therefore come from him alone, who was best pleased and best worshipped by Virtue, Good­ ness, Righteousness and true Holiness; but they became necessarily vicious and corrupt in Practice, as well as Principle." 2 Cf ibid 10-11: "The true Sense then of this solemn Transaction, be­ tween God and the Hebrew Nation, which may be called the original Con­ tract of the Hebrew Government, is to this purpose: If the Hebrews would

voluntarily consent to receive Jehovah their Lord and King, to keep his Covenant and Law, to honour and worship him as the one true God, in opposition to all Idolatry.. .he would govern the Hebrew Nation by peculiar Laws of his particular Appointment, and bless it with a more immediate and particular Protection; he would secure to them the invaluable Privileges of the true Religion, together with Liberty, Peace, and Prosperity, as a favoured People above all other Na­ tions. It is for very wise Reasons you may observe, that temporal Blessings and Evils are made so much use of in this Constitution, for these were the common and prevailing Inticements to Idolatry; but by thus taking them into the Hebrew Constitution, as Rewards to Obedience and Punishments of Dis­ obedience, they become Motives to true Religion, instead of Encouragements to Idolatry." 3 Cf Lect 5, below, pp 203-4.

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the Lord.f"]1 To us this might seem an action which the most rigid Censurer might content himself with calling ridiculous but in truth it alludes to an idolatrous custom, that men ought to stand before the Star of Venus in the flowered garments of Women, and Women were to put on the armour of men before the Star of Mars.2 For the same Reason Witchcraft was punished with Death, not [because] the mumbling of nonsense is anything deeply criminal in its own nature, but because all who practiced it confessed themselves Idolaters, and held an agency superior to Jehovah—actions directly subversive of the great end and design of the Jewish Establishment. But what (it may be asked) was this Idolatry might it not have been tolerated as many ridiculous Systems are among us. Is it a sufficient Reason for extirpating a nation, that they chose [...]" to play the fool.3 They who affect to consider Idolatry as one of the harmless Absurdities shew a strange ignorance of History and Antiquities—• Between the Rites of the Inhabitants of Canaan, and the Mexican rites as existing at the time of the Spanish conquests·—a very con­ siderable similarity is observable. In the Empire of Mexico, the very lowest accounts rate the annual number of human sacrifices at 20,000 —and the majority of Historians at a number incredibly great. We might suspect exaggeration but for that melancholy fact of theTemple built with human Skulls and dedicated to Tescalipoca.4 We become a

1

EHC leaves space sufficient for several words

Deut 22. 5 (var). 2 Cf Lowman Civil Government 19: "For the same Reasons we can easily understand the Wisdom of appointing by Law, that the Woman shall not wear that which appertaineth unto a Man, neither shall a Man put on a Woman's Garment; for all that do so are Abomi­ nation unto the Lord thy God; when it was an idolatrous Constitution of their Neighbours, as Maimon found it in a magick Book, That Men ought to stand before the Star of Venus in the flowered Garments of Women; and Women were to put on the Armour of Men before the Star of Mars." 3 A reference to the destruction of the Canaanites, which C justifies at length later in this passage. Deist critics frequently referred to the ex­ termination of the Canaanites in order to discredit the God of revealed reli­ gion. Priestley noted that "Some of

the most plausible objections that have yet been made to the system of revela­ tion above-mentioned affect the Jewish religion only. It is said to represent the divine conduct in such a light, as is in­ consistent with his known attributes of justice and goodness, particularly his express order to destroy all the in­ habitants of Canaan, without sparing even innocent children...". Institutes (1782) Ii 18 (Rutt π 198). In his defence of the massacre C draws mostly upon Lowman's Civil Government (esppp 2330, 220-33), but some similarities in tone and expression suggest some read­ ing of Priestley's Institutes. 4 The material on the Mexican rites was drawn largely from Clavigero's History of Mexico tr Charles Cullen (see above, ρ 18 η 3). See ι 281-2 for the number of skulls and ι 264-7, 300-1 for the temple of Tezcatlipoca. Southey borrowed the work from the

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143

that which we believe our Gods to be. Atheism is a blessing compared with that state of mind in which men expect the blessings of Life not from the God of Purity and Love by being pure and benevolent; but from Jupiter the lustful Leader of the mythologic Banditti, from Mercury a thief; Bacchus a Drunkard, and Venus a harlot.1 I here mention only the mildest superstitions, and such as took place among the most civilized of the gentile World. Father of Mercies! how sunk indeed must be thy creature[s] when the Temples of Religion float with human blood and murder, and unnatural Lusts are made rites of Piety! But the Canaanites were especially abominable—It was a common and meritorious rite of Religion among them to burn their children as sacrifices to Moloch.2 We shiver at these—but we sicken with intense loathing at the horrible pollutions and unspeakable lasciviousness that pervade and almost constitute the rest of their Religion! Such Idolatry cannot be tolerated, it is not consistent with the peace of Society,3 you might as well BristolLibrary 18-23Sept 1794{Bristol LB 118) and referred to it in his notes to Joan of Arc (1796), a poem to which C contributed considerable passages. The temple of skulls is used as an image of despotism in MPL; see above, ρ 18. The "skull-pil'd Temple" ap­ peared also in the 1796 version of Religious Musings, but was displaced to a footnote in the versions of 1797 and 1803. See PW (EHC) ι 114n. A notebook entry suggests that C may have been reading Clavigero in 1800; see CN ι 629 and n. 1 Cf Lowman Civil Government 22: "Thus Men came not only to lose the true Knowledge of the one, only God, and of his immediate Providence, and that all these Blessings could therefore come from him alone, who was best pleased and best worshipped by Virtue, Goodness, Righteousness and true Holiness; but they became necessarily vicious and corrupt in Practice, as well as Principle. They came to think they were not to expect the Blessings of Life from the Favour of the one true God, a Being himself of infinite Purity, Righteousness, and Goodness, by rev­ erencing and by imitating him; but from the Favour of a Jupiter, who with all his fine Titles is represented in his

History, to have been as intemperate as lustful, and as wicked as any the worst of Men; or from a Mercury, a Patron of Thieves and Robbers; or from a Bacchus, the God of Intem­ perance and Drunkenness; or from a Venus, the Patroness of all manner of Uncleanness, and Debauchery." 2 Cf ibid 23-4: "The Phalli, and the Mylli, known religious Rites in the Worship of Bacchus, Osiris, and Ceres, were such obscene Ceremonies, that Modesty forbids to explain them. It may be sufficient to mention the known Custom of Virgins before Marriage, sacrificing their Chastity to the Honour of Venus Idolatry had introduced another most cruel Custom of human Sacrifices.... They offered Men for Sacrifices, and brought young Children to the Altars, at an Age that usually moves the Compassion of an Enemy. ...Among the Canaanites, it was a known Custom to offer their Children to Moloch...". See also Lev 18.21 and 2 Kings 23. 10. 3 Cf ibid 27: "Idolatry, you see then, appears in the natural Fruits of it, not only an Error of the Understand­ ing, not at all a matter of harmless Speculation, but a Fountain of very dangerous Immoralities, which led

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tolerate a Band of armed Bedlamites because they do not know themselves to be wrong—No Conscience or pretence of Conscience can make Murder and the crime that may not be named, innocent.1 How can such minds be convinced of their Errors? By philosophical arguments? or even by Miracles? No! not even by Miracles! The mind-annihilated Canaanite would have answered. Ah! I'll worship your God, but my own is as great—Moloch and Astoreth are they that make me work wonders in battle. The only mode of meliorating idolatrous Nations seems to be that adopted by Providence. To choose out one Nation, and make them by repeated Miracles waver­ ing Believers in his Unity—While these remained faithful, to make them all powerful in Battle and the means of extirpating the tribes most enormous in their Idolatry. When they fell off and adopted the rites of the surrounding nations to render them weak and contempt­ ible to those whom with miraculous success they had so recently subdued! And on their return to God again to renew their arms in Battle! This is the only reasoning which these Idolaters were capable of understanding. Surely, they said—This is indeed a great God, our Gods shrink before him in Fight—Thus, tho' probably they would not elevate their minds to the belief or conception of the divine Unity and Perfections, yet from a principle of Fear they would omit the detestable ceremonies which, it appeared, were most hateful to this great and terrible God, resolving to hazard the anger of the inferior Deities rather than his consuming Vengeance. From the operation of these and similar causes, I doubt not, more human Lives were saved by the amelioration of Superstition, than were lost by the destruction of the Canaanites—so that even by this, the secondary end of the Mosaic Dispensation, its extirpating Spirit might be justiMen naturally and even with the En­ couragements of Religion, into In­ temperance, Uncleanness, Murders, and many Vices, inconsistent with the Prosperity and Peace of Society, as well as with the Happiness of private Per­ sons." The same point is made in similar language on pp 232-3, quoted in the next note. 1 Cf ibid 27: "No Man sure, can reasonably account it Injustice in a Government to punish Sodomy, Bes­ tiality, or the frequent Murder of inno­ cent Children, what pretences soever Men should make to Conscience or

Religion, in vindication of them." Cf also pp 232-3: "It should be finally observ'd, that Idolatry is not an harm­ less Speculation, it is not consistent with thePeace of Society, no Conscience or Pretence to Conscience can make Principles of Intemperance, Unclean­ ness, Sins against Nature and Murder innocent, such Principles must disturb civil Society; and from what has been observ'd before, concerning the great Mischiefs of Idolatry, it was not only just but becoming the Wisdom and Goodness of God to put a stop [to] it."

Lecture 2

145

fied. But if we join to this its primary view, and consider the necessity on the account of Christianity for preserving [the] Israelites them­ selves, I trust that in the course of these Lectures I shall be able to prove the final End so vast and benevolent as to justify any means that were necessary to it. In this view the devastations of the Hebrews were highly useful as rousing against them the deeply-rooted abhorrence of the surrounding Nations, and thus exciting national antipathy—I might add too that the Belief of one God and his Per­ fections were necessary to preserve them a Free State since the Superstitionsthatsurrounded [them] disposed the mind to imbecillity and unmanly Terrors—which would soon bring in political Slavery, whereas they who accustomed themselves to contemplate the infinite Love of the true Deity, that by the comparison they do so dwarf the giant sons of Earth as to become incapable of not yielding Obedience to God by Rebellion to Tyrants—1 1 By "giant sons" C means the Biblical giants of the old world hostile to God and man but eventually sub­ dued by the divine power. Cf Gen 6. 4, Num 13. 33, Job 26. 5. Cf also Paradise Lost ι 775-81: "So thick the aerie crowd I Swarm'd and were straitn'd; till the Signal giv'n, [ Behold a won­ der! they but now who seemd | In big­ ness to surpass Earths Giant Sons | Now less than smallest Dwarfs, in narrow room | Throng numberless, like that Pigmean Race | Beyond the Indian Mount.,.". The political sig­ nificance of thisimage in Lect 2appears more clearly in The Watchman No 7: "It [the American Revolution] has not taught English Ministers that a war against a nation of patriots must be as unsuccessful and calamitous, as it is iniquitous and abominable; that re­ bellion to tyrants is obedience to God; and that they therefore who struggle for freedom fight beneath the banners of omnipotence!" Watchman (CC) 241-2. Other instances of the giant/ dwarf image are frequent in C's writing. Cf CN ι 30 and n; Religious Musings lines 59-63: PW (EHC) ι 111 ("Their's too celestial courage, inly armed— | Dwarfing Earth's giant brood, what time they muse | On their great Father, great beyond compare! | And marching onwards view high o'er IO

their heads | His waving banners of Omnipotence"); Verses Addressed to J. Home Tooke lines 15-16; PW (EHC) ι 151; CLi 145, to RS c 29 Dec 1794; P Lects (1949) 364-5 (Lect 12). The phrase "rebellion to tyrants is obedience to God" is attributed to Benjamin Franklin in Watchman (CC) 241 η 1. More significantly it appears in A Convention the Only Means of Saving Us from Ruin (1793), the revo­ lutionary pamphlet by Joseph Gerrald, which C had seen by the time he came to prepare Lecture 6 (see below, ρ 222 and η 4). The following extract (p 59) reveals the insurrectionary tendency of the phrase and its associations with the principles of the French revolutionists: "Thus has France declared the people, not only the judges of their rights, but the avengers of their wrongs. She has legalized resistance [in her constitu­ tion]. The voice of truth, speaking through the sacred organ of her consti­ tution, has publickly proclaimed to a listening world, THAT REBEL­ LION TO TYRANTS IS OBE­ DIENCE TO GOD." Gerrald was transported to Botany Bay in May 1795, the month in which C's lecture was delivered. For Gerrald, see also MPL, above, ρ 14 and η 1, and Condones, above, ρ 41 and η 2. RCL

LECTURE 3

DATE AND PLACE OF DELIVERY . Probably, either Tuesday, 26 May, or Friday, 29 May 1795, at the Assembly Coffeehouse on the Quay, Bristol. PROSPECTUS . "Of the third Lecture Concerning the Time of the appearance of Christ—The internal Evidences of Christianity. The external Evidences." TEXT . VCL MS Theological Lectures if 93-112. EHC's preliminary note

(f 92) reads: " ? Lecture III or part of Lecture III. (Certainly before Lect. IV. V. VI.)" Since C refers to " the present Lecture" and to the fourth, fifth, and sixth lectures as still to come, this one must be, as EHC suggests, Lecture 3 or part of it. In the course of it C takes up the advertised but deferred topic of Lecture 2 ("The Sects of Philosophy.. .to the Birth of Jesus") and combines his treatment of it with the advertised subject of Lecture 3 (" Concerning the Time of the appearance of Christ"). In EHC's transcript Lectures 3 and 4 of the present edition appear in the reverse order, with the suggestion by EHC that they both are, or are parts of, Lecture 3. It seems likely from C's account of his lecturing intentions in both "lectures" that EHC is mistaken. In what is presented here as Lecture 4, C writes that he has already lectured on "the state of the World before the coming of Jesus Christ" (below, ρ 189), but in EHC's transcript C's treatment of this topic actually appears after this reminder. Moreover, what EHC refers to as "Probably Lecture III" (f 67; see below, ρ 168) seems to agree in content more with Lecture 4 as advertised than with Lecture 3. Consequently, EHC's order of presentation at this point has been reversed and the material presented here as Lectures 3 and 4. BACKGROUND OF READING . The followingfive works have affected, directly

or indirectly, C's ideas and lines of argument in this lecture. (1) Hartley Observations, already referred to in connexion with Lectures 1 and 2. (2) Priestley Discourses, also referred to in connexion with Lectures 1 and 2, and (3) his History of the Corruptions of Christianity, cited in a note to Lecture 1. The publication of this occasioned the once-celebrated con­ troversy between Priestley and Samuel Horsley, to whom C ironically refers in Lecture 5 as the "Goliath" of the Anglican Church for his attacks on Dissenters. (4) Paley Evidences, cited in a note to Lecture 1. William Paley (1743-1805) was one of the last and most representative of those later eighteenth-century apologists who offered the reader "proofs", historical "evidences", "demonstrations", and the like, of the truth of Christianity, in later life referred to by Coleridge as "Pseudo-rationalists" (CN11187). C borrowed the first volume of Paley's Evidences (2 vols 1782) from the Bristol Library 1-11 Jun 1795. Bristol LB 121. (5) Godwin Political Justice. Other relevant but less significant works are specified in the footnotes. P. M.

LECTURE 3 [Prophecies as Christian evidence—the state of the world at the birth of Christ—miraculous superiority of Christ's teaching and character—his patriotism—his doctrines contrasted with those of the "friends of freedom"] [ . . . ] " d o g m a t i c Ignorance. H a d his political writings resembled his theological the British Constitution might have scorned the puny Assailant—the fort would have seemed strong contrasted with the Impotence of the Besieger, and Thomas Paine had been pensioned for having written a Panegyric when he intended a Satire.1 A prophet among the Jews was one who had received communica" EHC indicates a hiatus by a row of carets; probably only a paragraph or two has been lost 1 It seems clear that in the missing part of the ms C had been criticising the theological weaknesses of The Age of Reason pt χ (1794), in which Paine had vigorously reasserted familiar deist arguments against revealed religion and the Bible. The reference to his "political writings" is primarily to Rights of Man pt π (1792), in which Paine discussed critically the "merits" of the British Constitution. The "sa­ tire" that might have been taken for a panegyric if Paine's politics had been as atrocious as his theology is almost certainly Letter Addressed to the Addressers, which included an ironic defence of the Constitution and some sharp satire on a Government peer, Lord Grenville, and on Lord Stormont (a member of the Opposition), whose speeches extravagantly praising the Constitution had been reported in the M Chron of 1 Feb 1792. Paine's pamphlet was considered at the time to be the most dangerous of all his works, with its call for a revolutionary transfer of power to the "Nation", the forma­ tion of a National Convention without

property qualifications, and its bitter criticism of both Government and Opposition. C's apparently favourable allusion to it here in 1795 is of con­ siderable interest. A further point of interest to C in the Letter was Paine's incidental reference to the crime of the Jews in demanding a monarchical form of government and their consequent miseries. Paine quotes in full the rele­ vant passages from 1 Sam 8 ("This will be the manner of the king that will reign over you") that C used to make the same political point in Lect 2. Withcharacteristic irony Paine calls for the passage to be expunged from the Bible as libelling the Constitution. Paine had already used the same scrip­ tural argument against monarchy in Common Sense (see above, ρ 133 η 1). In 1798 C referred to Paine's "de­ votional Rants in the Age of Reason" (a letter to Mrs C 3 Oct: CL1425), and earlier had affirmed that the confuta­ tion of his ideas on revealed religion was "no difficult matter" (a letter to Flower 1 Apr 1796: CL 1197).

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tion from the Deity.1 These communications consisted sometimes of Admonitions and moral Precepts, but more frequently contained annunciations of future Events.2 To determine whether these annun­ ciations were accidental guesses, or imparted Rays of the divine Foreknowledge we must again adopt that mode of reasoning by which we proved the existence of an intelligent First Cause, namely the astonishing fitness of one thing to another not in single and solitary instances which might be attributed to the effects of Chance, but in the combination and Procession of all Nature.3 And as to the ignorant and unobserving many parts of Animals and of the Universe seem useless or pernicious, in which the Zoologist and Astronomer find the most admirable aptitudes for the most beneficial purposes. So what to the eye of Thomas Paine appears a chaos of Unintelligibles Sir Isaac Newton and John Locke and David Hartley discover to be miraculous Order, and Wisdom more than human.4 And again as 1 The context suggests that C's account of prophecy was intended partly as a reply to The Age of Reason pt i, where Paine had asserted that "the word prophet, to which later times have affixed a new idea, was the Bible word for poet, and the word prophesy­ ing meant the art of making poetry. It also meant the art of playing poetry to a tune upon any instrument of music" (ed by Eaton London 1794 ρ 14). The arguments for Christianity based upon the fulfilment of prophecies therefore rested upon a misapprehension. "It is altogether unnecessary, after this, to offer any observations upon what those men, stiled prophets, have written.... The original meaning of the word has been mistaken, and consequently all the inferences that have been drawn from those books, the devotional re­ spect that has been paid to them, and the laboured commentaries that have been written upon them, under that mistaken meaning, are not worth dis­ puting about" (p 15). It seems likely that it is these, and similar assertions, that C has in mind when he refers to Paine's "dogmatic Ignorance". Paine had several times expressed in print his ignorance of the classical languages and of Hebrew, believing that the in­ consistencies and contradictions in the Bible were obvious enough to the

reader even in translation. Cf above, ρ 133 and η 1. 2 The first two sentences of this paragraph are a reminiscence of Priestley Letters to a Philosophical Un­ believer; in Answer to Mr. Paine's Age of Reason (1795) esp ρ 69: "Prophets, in the scripture sense of the word, were men to whom God communicated whatever he intended to be delivered to others. Some of these communica­ tions were moral admonitions, but others were distinct, unequivocal annunciations of future events, to take place, either very soon or at distant periods." Priestley's reply to Paine was published as one pamphlet with A Continuation of the Letters to the Philosophers and Politicians of France on the Subject of Religion, the joint title-page bearing the date 1795. He quotes extensively (pp 66-8) Paine's comments on prophets and prophesy­ ing, using a London 1795 ed of The Age of Reason. 3 For "process", see also Lect 1, above, ρ 109 and nn 1-2. 4 For a possible source of this mis­ understanding of Paine, who accepted the argument from design, see The Age of Reason ρ 27: "Do we want to con­ template [God's] wisdom? We see it in the unchangeable order by which the incomprehensible Whole is governed."

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151

from the evident and vast predominance of Good in the natural World, the wise infer that all apparent Discord is but Harmony not understood,1 so if we can prove the fitness0 of most of the Events to the Annuntiations the subordinate Difficulties we must necessarily refer not to the deficiency of the Annuntiations, but to our limited Nature as Percipients. And this Argument is more particularly applicable to Prophecies which exist by Procession, and consequently must be obscure in proportion to the distance, and become clear as they approach the Time of their Completion.2 Prophecies are a

EHC; fitnesses

Although the word "incomprehen­ sible" appears elsewhere in the work, Paine was far from finding the creation a "chaos of Unintelligibles". He re­ marks that the finite mind of man can never completely comprehend the in­ finite works of God and he contrasts the inevitable and real mystery of life and creation with the false mysteries and obscurities of revealed religion. In Lect 1, C himself stresses man's neces­ sary ignorance (see above, pp 93-4 and p94n 3). For another possible reference to The Age of Reason, see below, ρ 343 and η 4. For C's attitude to Newton cf above, ρ 93 η3, IOOn 1,114 η 2. Locke does not figure prominently in C's early writing, though in a letter to his brother George (6 Nov 1794) C refers to his "diligent, I may say, an intense study of Locke, Hartley and others who have written most wisely on the Nature of Man". CL ι 126. His im­ portant discussion of Locke's philo­ sophy is to be found in the four letters to Josiah Wedgwood of 1801 (see CL π 677-8). For C, Hartley was for long "the great Master of Christian Philo­ sophy" (letter to Flower 2 Nov 1796: CL ι 247), "the great and excellent Dr. Hartley" {Watchman—CC 198), a phrase borrowed from Priestley, and one of the "three great Metaphysicians which this Country has produced", the others being Berkeley and Joseph Butler (letter to Wedgwood [Feb 1801]: CL π 703). 1 CF Pope An Essay on Man I lines 291-2:

All Discord, Harmony, not under­ stood; All partial Evil, universal Good... On Priestley's "optimism", see above, pp 104-9 and ρ 104 η 1. 2 The idea of prophecy as a means of progressive revelation is increasingly met with in the later eighteenth century and especially in Priestleian circles. It developed originally in response to deist charges of falsification and forgery in the Biblical evidence, charges that were forcefully restated by Paine in The Age of Reason. Paine asserted what C is here at pains to refute, that the prophecies were so vague in ex­ pression as to apply to any subsequent events remotely similar to those pro­ phesied; apparent coincidences of prophecy and fact were mere accidents or lucky guesses. Against this criticism it could be argued that those prophecies which were now in process of being fulfilled and those yet to be fulfilled were more reliable evidence for the truth of Christianity than those whose past fulfilment had been recorded only in the Scriptures, since in the case of the former there was no possibility of documentary fraud. Hugh Farmer A Dissertation on Miracles (1771) 553-4 offers a representative expression of this argument close to that of C: "There are other instances of super­ natural knowledge, the predictions of future events, which are designed to carry conviction in some distant period. The distances between the de­ livery of the prophecies and their

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necessary to Revealed Religion as perpetual Testimonies. At the first Promulgation of a divine Mission Miracles are its best and only Tests. But the full force of such preter-natural Evidence can operate on the Eyewitnesses only. Their influence gradually decreases and becomes more and more" faint and then the Accomplishment of predicted Events is substituted and discovers to us the truth of the Revealed Doctrines to us by a sufficient though not so overpowering a Light. So often when yet the Sun is high in heaven we may observe the Moon like a thin white cloud, pale faint and shadowy; but when the sun sets, and the Night comes on, it acquires a gradual increase of Splendor till at length it reigns the presiding Luminary, and the Traveller journeys onward through the illumined Darkness unindangered and rejoicing. The prophecies of the Scriptures may be distributed in three Classes—those which were fulfilled before or at the Time of our Saviour[,] those which have been fulfilled since his Death, and those which even now are fulfilling and unfulfilled—and it is a peculiar excellence of the prophetic Writings, that they prove their own authenticity, inasmuch as the most remarkable and striking of the a

EHC: (more)

accomplishment may be very different: some prophecies may receive a speedy completion; others may be gradually accomplishing through many succeed­ ing ages, to the very end of time; and hereby furnish evidence to the world through all these different periods. Such prophecies are a standing and perpetual evidence of the mission of a prophet; always lying open to the view and examination of the world.... And the evidence arising from them, instead of being diminished [as in the case of the miracles], will be increased by their distance from the time of their delivery, as the events foretold successively hap­ pen." C's account of the prophecies is echoed in Estlin's Evidences; cf ρ 39, where the "completion of prophecies" is referred to as "a ground of evidence which I doubt not will every day receive accessions of strength". Estlin was Unitarian minister in Lewin's-Mead Chapel, Bristol, where his work was first made public as a sermon delivered on 25 Dec 1795. C may have had a

hand in the writing of Estlin's pamph­ let, which was intended as a reply to Paine's Age of Reason (CN ι 88n). Estlin refers his readers to Thomas Newton's Dissertations on the Pro­ phecies (1754) and to Observations on the History and Evidences of the Resur­ rection of Jesus Christ (1785), by Gil­ bert West, whose comments on pro­ phecy offer close parallels to those of C and Estlin. (For Newton's Disserta­ tions, see below, ρ 163 η 1.) West's Observations, which had gone through many editions since its publication in 1747, was most likely known to C. It was strongly recommended by Priestley and was included in A Collection of Theological Tracts (6 vols Cambridge 1785) compiled by Richard Watson for the use of Cambridge undergraduates. Cf also Hartley Observations π 150: "...the prophetical evidences are manifestly of an increasing nature, and so may compensate for a decrease in the historical ones."

Lecture 3

153

predicted Events took place very many Centuries after the lowest period, which the most shameless Infidel has ever assigned for their supposed Forgery. Of these three Classes we shall elucidate the first in the present Lecture—the second will be introduced in the fourth and fifth Lec­ tures, and the third class of those fulfilling or yet unfulfilled we shall find occasion to mention in the sixth and last Lecture. The prophecies that relate to the state of the nations which bor­ dered on the Jews or were any way connected with them are numerous and the remarkable Coincidence of the Facts with the prophecies must strike all who are deeply versed in Oriental History. But as of these it may be asserted (although without a shadow of proof and probability) that they were written after the events foretold" we shall dwell more particularly on those prophecies that relate to the Messiah—since it is well known and allowed by all parties that not only the prophesies but that the Jewish Commentaries on them were written anterior to the Birth of Jesus. And these Commentaries ex­ pound the passages as prophetic of Events not then come to pass, and apply them to the future Messiah. In the 52nd and 53rd Chapter of Isaiah the exaltation of Jesus to the high rank of the Messiah, the power granted to him, his sufferings, Death, and glorification are described with a minuteness and peculiarity of circumstances which has baffled the attempt of every Infidel, who has yet endeavoured to fabricate a different Interpretation. The passage is well known yet as it is in some parts falsely rendered in our Translation, I shall repeat it as collected from later and more accurate Versions.1 "Behold, my servant shall prosper. He shall be raised aloft and very highly exalted. As many as were astonished at him, to such a degree was his Coun­ tenance disfigured, more than that of man, and his Form more than the Sons of Men, so shall he sprinkle many nations. Before him shall Kings shut their mouths. For what was not before declared to them