History of Civilization in England, Vol. 1 of 3

by Henry Thomas Buckle

[938] In 1793, Roscoe writes: ‘Every man is called on to be a spy upon his brother.’ Life of Roscoe, vol. i. p. 127. Compare Fox's statement (Parl. Hist. vol. xxx. p. 21), that what government had done was, ‘to erect every man, not merely into an inquisitor, but into a judge, a spy, an informer,—to set father against father, brother against brother; and in this way you expect to maintain the tranquillity of the country.’ See also vol. xxx. p. 1529; and a remarkable passage, in Coleridge's Biog. Lit. (vol. i. p. 192), on the extent of ‘secret defamation,’ in and after 1793. For further evidence of this horrible state of society, see Mem. of Holcroft, vol. ii. pp. 150, 151; Stephens's Mem. of Horne Tooke, vol. ii. pp. 115, 116.

[939] There was even considerable difficulty in finding a printer for Tooke's great philological work, The Diversions of Purley. See Stephens's Mem. of Tooke, vol. ii. pp. 345–348. In 1798, Fox wrote to Cartwright (Life of Cartwright, vol. i. p. 248): ‘The decision against Wakefield's publisher appears to me decisive against the liberty of the press; and, indeed, after it, one can hardly conceive how any prudent tradesman can venture to publish anything that can, in any way, be disagreeable to the ministers.’

[940] Those who opposed the slave-trade were called jacobins, and ‘enemies to the ministers;’ and the celebrated Dr. Currie was pronounced to be a jacobin, and an ‘enemy to his country,’ because he remonstrated against the shameful manner in which the English government, in 1800, allowed the French prisoners to be treated. Life of Currie, vol. i. pp. 330, 332; Life of Wilberforce, vol. i. pp. 342–344, vol. ii. pp. 18, 133; Parl. Hist. vol. xxx. p. 654, vol. xxxi. p. 467, vol. xxxiii. p. 1387, vol. xxxiv. pp. 1119, 1485.

[941] Life of Cartwright, vol. i. p. 209; Hunt's Hist. of Newspapers, vol. ii. p. 104; Belsham's Hist. vol. ix. p. 227; Adolphus's Hist. vol. vi. p. 264; Annual Register for 1795, pp. 156, 160; Stephens's Mem. of Tooke, vol. ii. p. 118; Life of Currie, vol. i. p. 172; Campbell's Chancellors, vol. vi. p. 316, vol. vii. p. 316; Life of Wilberforce, vol. iv. pp. 369, 377; Parl. Hist. vol. xxxi. pp. 543, 667, 668, 1067, vol. xxxii. pp. 296, 302, 366, 367, 374, 664, vol. xxxv. pp. 1538, 1540; Holcroft's Memoirs, vol. ii. p. 190.

[942] In addition to the passages referred to in the preceding note; compare Hutton's Life of Himself, p. 209, with Campbell's Chancellors, vol. vi. p. 441, vol. vii. p. 104, and Adolphus's Hist. of George III. vol. vi. p. 45. In 1798, Caldwell wrote to Sir James Smith (Correspondence of Sir J. E. Smith, vol. ii. p. 143): ‘The power of the crown is become irresistible. The new scheme of inquisition into every man's private circumstances is beyond any attempt I have ever heard of under Louis XIV.’

[943] In 1794, Fox said, in his speech on the habeas-corpus suspension bill: ‘Every man who talked freely, every man who detested, as he did from his heart, this war, might be, and would be, in the hands and at the mercy of ministers. Living under such a government, and being subject to insurrection, comparing the two evils, he confessed, he thought the evil they were pretending to remedy, was less than the one they were going to inflict by the remedy itself.’ Parl. Hist. vol. xxxi. p. 509. In 1800, Lord Holland stated, in the House of Lords, that, of ‘the seven years of the war, the habeas-corpus act had been suspended five; and, of the multitudes who had been imprisoned in virtue of that suspension, few had been brought to trial, and only one convicted.’ vol. xxxiv. pp. 1486. See also vol. xxxv. pp. 609, 610. On the effect of the suspension of the habeas-corpus act upon literature, see Life of Currie, vol. i. p. 506.

[944] See decisive evidence of this, in Porter's Progress of the Nation, vol. ii. pp. 283–285; and, on the enormous increase of expense and taxation, see Pellew's Life of Sidmouth, vol. i. p. 358, vol. ii. p. 47.

[945] A careful observer of what was going on late in the eighteenth century, expresses what, early in the nineteenth century, was becoming the conviction of most men of plain, sound understanding, who had no interest in the existing corruption: ‘Immoderate taxation, the result of the unnecessary wars of the reign of George III., is the cause of our embarrassments; and that immoderate taxation has been occasioned by the House of Commons being composed of men not interested to protect the property of the people.’—Nicholl's Recollections, vol. i. p. 213.

[946] Bishop Horsley, the great champion of the existing state of things, said in the House of Lords, in 1795, that he ‘did not know what the mass of the people in any country had to do with the laws, but to obey them.’ Cooke's Hist. of Party, vol. iii. p. 435. Compare Godwin on Population, p. 569.

[947] Lord Cockburn (Life of Jeffrey, 1852, vol. i. pp. 67, 68) says: ‘If there was any principle that was reverenced as indisputable by almost the whole adherents of the party in power sixty, or even fifty, or perhaps even forty years ago, it was that the ignorance of the people was necessary for their obedience to the law.’ One argument was, ‘that to extend instruction, would be to multiply the crime of forgery!’ Porter's Progress of the Nation, vol. iii. p. 205.