Godwin expresses his opinion of merchants as follows: “There is no being on the face of the earth with a heart more thoroughly purged from every remnant of the weakness of benevolence and sympathy.”[30]
And Shelley writes:
Commerce! beneath whose poison-breathing shade
No solitary virtue dares to spring.
Shelley says that soldiers—
... are the hired bravos who defend
The tyrant’s throne—the bullies of his fear:
These are the sinks and channels of worst vice,
The refuse of society, the dregs
Of all that is most vile, etc.
His note on this passage was taken bodily from Essay V of Godwin’s Enquirer. With regard to clergymen, Shelley expresses his opinion thus:
Then grave and hoary-headed hypocrites
Without a hope, a passion, or a love
Who, through a life of luxury and lies
Have crept by flattery to the seats of power
Support the system whence their honors flow
Godwin’s verdict is not so severe. “Clergymen,” he says, “are timid in enquiry, prejudiced in opinion, cold, formal, the slave of what other men may think of them, rude, dictatorial, impatient of contradiction, harsh in their censures, and illiberal in their judgments.”
Queen Mab then is a fierce diatribe against existing institutions. It contains very little constructive philosophy. What value has it for mankind? Does it serve any purpose apart from giving pleasure to the aesthetic faculties? It assuredly does. It awakens the social conscience. The first step for the sinner on the road to conversion is to try to realize the sinful state of his soul. The same is true of a nation in need of reform. Unless its shortcomings are vividly brought home to it, reformation will never take place. To do this was and still is the work of Queen Mab. It laid bare the weaknesses of State and Church; it engendered the spirit of compassion and thus paved the way for reform.