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993 TLS September 9-15 1988 BDSXORY
Ouestions for the orthodox
William Thomas
VALERIE CHANCELLOR
ThePoIitical Life of Joseph Hume, 1777-1855
184pp. Bennett Lodge. ?16.95.
09511960 0 6.
DUDLEY MILES
Francis Place 1771-1854: The life of a remarkable radical
303pp. Brighton: Harvester/New York:! Martin?s Press. ?40.
0710812256
EMILY LORRAINE <ie MONTLUZIN The Anti-Jacobins 1798-1800: The early contributors to the ?Anti-Jacobin Review?
212pp. Mar-millaifgpQ Sfl
0333441370
For a long time the radical politicians gf the eighteenth and early nineteenth century used to be presented as forerunners of socialism. Figures like John Wilkes, Home Tooke, Francis Place and William Cobbett figured in a gallery of ?great democrats?, prophets of the labour movement, what they did or aspired to do for the working classes being the criterion of their inclusion. Such disagreement as there was between the pious historiographers of labour centred on the nature of the founding fathers? zeal for change, whether they were for violence and revolution or legality and gradualism. On the whole the gradualists have had the better of the argument, even the most popular exponent of the revolutionary approach, E. P. Thompson, cloaking his views in such generous indignation and picturesque example as to thrill the sort of reader who would not revolutionize a rabbit.
But now all that populist euphoria, which at least dallied with the idea of revolutionary violence, seems to have subsided. Old causes have lost their appeal: the language of class seems to have less resonance than that of gender or of race. A generation bored to tears by being told that the Chartists were the spearhead of the working class is now asking why they were not more vocal on votes for women. Students familiar with the doctrine that Peter-
she
ness
place in politics and even a certain rueful admiration from his political allies. But he never led i i party and never held high office. There is a wealth of contemporary comment on him, some of which Chancellor uses, but one fault does not want to admit is Hume?s obtuse-Yet there is much evidence of this.
Byron?s friend Hobhouse once wrote that it was better to have to deal with Hume as an enemy than as a friend. ?As he cared little for invectives against himself, he was not aware of the effects which his own intemperate talk might produce on others. Not only was his language coarse and absurdly inaccurate, but his intellect was obtuse to a degree seldom, if ever, found in a man who had been busily employed his whole life in affairs of the utmost importance. ? Hobhouse had in mind the Greek Loan affair of 1826, in which Hume helped to raise money in London for the Greek cause, but sold his shares when the stock fell in value, only to demand his share of the premium when they recovered. The sum he claimed was ?54, which, says Chancellor weakly, ?does not sound like massive profiteering?. The point however is that men engaged publicly in helping struggling peoples to be free should not be found lining their pockets at all.
The book is full of half-hearted excuses of this sort. Hume was ?less than open? about his West Indian interests when he opposed slave emancipation. He was also very interested ?in the provision of military uniforms while he seems [sic] to have had connections with their manufacture?. But these interests (so much at odds with the public persona of reformer and critic of government expenditure) are never closely investigated. It is on the whole a bumbling book, its lack of sequential argument and clear narrative matched by elementary errors of grammar, punctuation and spelling.
Dudley Miles has produced the first life of Place since Graham Wallas?s of 1898. Place?s father kept a sponging house, or private prison, and though he was a drunken bully, he did ensure that his son had some formal education. Francis, however, acquired his toughness and self-reliance on the streets of London. He also learned the commercial value of straight
some of the middle-class radicals of the Ben-thamic cast did. This would involve taking Place seriously as a thinker, or at least as a publicist of other men?s views; analysing, for instance, how the ideas he took from his first mentor Godwin were reconciled with his acceptance of Malthus?s population theory; or again, looking at his reception of Ricardo in the light of his agitation for the repeal of the legislation against trade unions. Thematerialis there in abundance and there is no lack of secondary studies to guide the newcomer. But it needs not just a wary eye for Place?s self-contradictions, but also an imaginative sympathy for his aims. Miles keeps reminding us of the inconsistencies, but he does,, not succeed in presenting a plausible, rounded portrait. He seems to have no taste for abstract argument and in defending some controversial aspect of his hero?s career tends to be both timid and clumsy. Instead of narrowing the focus for a closer look, he widens it to divert attention to something else. So his treatment of Place?s work for trade unions is muted, but the fact that Place was the first Malthusian to advocate contraception is given great prominence. Wallas hardly mentioned this part of Place?s work: hereitis givenawhole chapter grandly called ?Founding the Birth Control Movement?.
There is an enormous amount of work in Miles?s book, much useful quotation and a comprehensive bibliography, but the problem with Place is that he left so much material on every aspect of his life that the student is liable to be too tired by the bulk and too worn down by the humourless, literal-minded, inexhaustibly complacent personality which infuses it to have much energy left for other materials offering a more balanced view. Miles is too respectful of his subject, too fond of echoing Place?s opinions, too little aware of other political views in the period to offer any striking novelty in interpretation. At most he offers a
shift of attention. Even the publishers are confused about the book?s theme. Dust-jackets for books on early nineteenth-century radicalism often make use of the grosser cartoons of Gillray or Cruikshank. This one reproduces R. B. Martineau?s ?The Last Day in the Old Hous_e?, showing a wealthy family drinking a toast in a panelled chamber decorated with ancient armour - the very antithesis of all Place aspired to.
Emily de Montluzin?s study of the contributors to the Anti-Jacobin Review is a model of modest and efficient scholarship. She writes beautifully, a single paragraph conveying a more vivid sense of what was at stake in the political conflicts of the 1790s than whole chapters of Miles or Chancellor. Quoting a blood-curdling French Jacobin oath, she comments that it is no wonder that, for the propertied classes in Britain, ?Jacobinism behaved like a sort of Grendel on the loose, smashing the mead halls^and gobbling up the thegns?. Historians of radicalism don?t command that sort of literary range these days. Much of what we know of the great anonymous nineteenth-century reviews we owe to American scholarship, as the monumental Wellesley Index shows. The Anti-Jacobin was not a great periodical, but it was a forerunner of the Quarterly, to which it bequeathed its conception of a literary police, devoted to keeping the country free of revolutionary principles. It is often supposed that the radical movement of the 1790s was driven underground by government repression playing on nationalist alarm at the French threat. The Tory reaction is seldom allowed to be anything to do with argument or persuasion. Any study that tells us exactly who wrote for the anti-Jacobin press is therefore to be welcomed, and this one, by providing a lucid introduction, as well as a series of fascinating biographical notes, sets a very high standard indeed.
For our Richtfu? King
Bruce Lenman
less well since her brand of arch-gentility went out of fashion. She and all the others produced