Encountering Political Texts at the National Library of Scotland 1: An Appetiser

The National Library of Scotland. Image by Rachel Hammersley

Next week the exhibition 'Encountering Political Texts' opens at the National Library of Scotland (NLS). This is the second exhibition related to the 'Experiencing Political Texts' project (an account of the first, which was held at Newcastle University's Philip Robinson Library last summer, can be found here). It is also our final Experiencing Political Texts event. Though the general themes are similar to those in the Newcastle exhibition, the focus of each cabinet and the items on display are different. Next month's blog will offer a full account of the exhibition, this month I provide a quick taster, discussing what are perhaps my favourite items in the exhibition - the volumes produced by Thomas Hollis.

I have discussed Hollis in previous blogs, and so will not repeat those details here. Instead I will focus on the volumes in the NLS collection, some of which feature in our exhibition. These volumes originally formed part of the Advocates Library of Edinburgh. This was a law library that was officially opened in 1689. From 1710 it became a legal deposit library, meaning that it received a copy of every book published in the United Kingdom. Between 1752 and 1757 the Keeper of the Advocates Library was the philosopher and historian David Hume. In 1925 the National Library of Scotland was created by an Act of Parliament

Hollis made donations to the Advocates Library at various points during the 1760s and 1770s, at a time when he was also sending books to Oxbridge college libraries and to public and university libraries in Europe and North America. Many of the NLS Hollis volumes include a dedication, written in Hollis's hand. Though the messages vary slightly from copy to copy the basic formula is this:

Henry Neville, Plato Redivivus, or a dialogue concerning government (London, 1763). National Library of Scotland: ([Ad]. 7/1.8). Image credit: National Library of Scotland.

An Englishman, a lover of liberty, citizen of the world, is desirous of having the

honor to present this to the Advocate's Library at Edinburgh.

Henry Neville, Plato Redivivus, or a dialogue concerning government (London, 1763). National Library of Scotland: ([Ad]. 7/1.8). Reproduced here under a Creative Commons License with permission from the Library

Most of the Hollis volumes at the NLS are bound in red Morocco with symbols added to the cover in gold tooling and stamped in black ink on the inside pages. They were the work of John Matthewman, who was Hollis's main bookbinder until around 1769 when he absconded due to a debt.

Henry Neville, Plato Redivivus, or a dialogue concerning government (London, 1763). National Library of Scotland: ([Ad]. 7/1.8). Image credit: National Library of Scotland.

Among the volumes sent to the Advocates Library were several works from the commonwealth tradition. These include Henry Neville's Plato Redivivus, which had first appeared in 1681 at the time of the Exclusion Crisis. It sought to apply the principles set out by Neville's friend James Harrington in The Commonwealth of Oceana (1656) to the very different political situation of the 1680s. The work was republished by Andrew Millar in 1763. Hollis seems to have been quick to call for a second edition since an entry in Hollis's diary for 15 November the following year records a conversation Hollis had with Millar in which he 'Engaged him to reprint, that master-work intitled "Plato Redivivus. Or a Dialogue concerning Government", written by Harry Neville the friend of James Harrington, and like him ingeneous.' (The Diary of Thomas Hollis V from 1759 to 1770 transcribed from the original manuscript in the Houghton Library Harvard University, ed. W. H. Bond. Cambridge, Mass., 1996. 15 November 1764). The dedication in the Neville volume is a little fuller than the basic version reproduced above, with Hollis declaring himself a lover not merely of liberty but also of 'the Principles of the Revolution & the Protestant Succession in the House of Hanover'. The tools on the cover of this volume are a cockerel on the front and an owl on the back, with a Pilius (liberty cap) on the spine. The cockerel symbolises alertness or vigilance, the owl - wisdom, and the Pilius - liberty. Inside the volume is a stamp depicting Athena (the Greek goddess of wisdom) and one of Britannia (NLS: [Ad].7/1.8).

Also in the collection, though not in an original Hollis binding and probably not donated by Hollis himself, is a copy of Algernon Sidney's, Discourses Concerning Government. First published in 1698 by John Toland, the volume was reprinted several times during the eighteenth century with additional material being added each time. The copy in the NLS is a 1772 reprint of the 1763 edition printed by Andrew Millar that was edited by Hollis and which marked the high point of the work in terms of size, incorporating a biography of Sidney, additional works by him, and letters taken from the Sidney papers. This version includes an Advertisement signed by J. Robertson and dated 21 October 1771, which explains that various corrections (not previously picked up) had been made regarding the names old English names and places. The volume also includes the famous engraving of Sidney that Hollis commissioned from Giovanni Cipriani in which Sidney is dressed in armour and enclosed within a laurel wreath. Below that image, and repeated on the title page and later in the work, is a small Pilius, highlighting Sidney's commitment to liberty.

John Milton, The Life of John Milton (London, 1761). National Library of Scotland, Dav.1.2.10. Image credit: National Library of Scotland.

As well as publishing the first version of Sidney's Discourses, Toland had also published the works of John Milton in 1698. To accompany this, he wrote and printed The Life of John Milton which was then reprinted by Millar in 1761. This was another of the works that Hollis sent to the Advocates Library in the 1760s. It is particularly interesting because it has not one but three gold tools on both the front and the back. On the front is Athena with a branch on one side of her and a feather on the other. On the back the cockerel, Britannia, and the owl. The proliferation of gold tooling perhaps reflects the particularly high esteem in which Hollis held Milton. Hollis referred to Milton as 'divine' and 'incomparable'. And as well as collecting and disseminating Milton's works, Hollis had a picture of him in his apartment and even managed, in 1760, to purchase 'a bed which once belonged to John Milton, and on which he died'. This he sent as a present to the poet Mark Akenside, suggesting that if 'having slept in that bed' Akenside should be prompted 'to write an ode to the memory of John Milton, and the assertors of British liberty' it would be sufficient recompense for Hollis's expense (Memoirs of Thomas Hollis. London, 1780, pp. 93, 104, 112).

Following J. G. A. Pocock, a sharp distinction has tended to be drawn between the commonwealth writers (including Milton, Sidney and Neville) and John Locke. Now much questioned, this distinction also does not appear to have existed for Hollis who felt quite able to celebrate Locke as well as Milton. Several copies of Locke's works appear among the Hollis volumes in the NLS. One of these (a copy of the 1764 edition of Two Treatises of Government produced by Millar) resembles the commonwealth works in depicting Athena on the front and the Pilius on the back (with stamps of a Harp and Britannia on the fly leaves). Another emphasises the association of Locke's works with liberty by repeatedly using the Pilius image (NLS: [Ac].4/1.7).

Finally, several of the volumes donated by Hollis to the Advocates Library focus on religious rather than political matters, including several by the clergyman and religious controversialist Francis Blackburne (1705-1787). Born, like Hollis himself, in Yorkshire, Blackburne lived most of his life in Richmond. Though he became a clergyman in the Church of England, Blackburne subsequently refused to subscribe again to the Thirty-nine Articles, the defining statement of the doctrines and practices of that Church. His best known work The Confessional (which Hollis had persuaded him to publish and to which he gave his commendation 'Ut Spargum' - that we may scatter them) engaged with the history of the Church of England and the controversies over subscription. It was a text that prompted a fierce pamphlet exchange, allegedly amounting to ten volumes worth of material (B. W. Young, 'Blackburne, Francis', Oxford Dictionary of National Biography). The presentation copy of The Confessional that Hollis gave to the Advocates Library bears a stamp of Athena inside the front cover and one of an owl in the back. The front bears a gold tool of Caduceus or staff of Hermes, a symbol of peace and rebirth, and the back a gold-tooled branch with leaves (NLS: Nha.Misc.32).

Francis Blackburne, Considerations on the present state of the controversy between the Protestants and Papists of Great Britain and Ireland (London, 1768). National Library of Scotland: Nha.Misc.31. Image credit: National Library of Scotland.

Hollis also presented a copy of Blackburne's Considerations on the present state of the controversy between the Protestants and Papists of Great Britain and Ireland (1768) which, like the Milton volume, bears more than one emblem on the front and back covers. In the centre of the front cover is a gold-tooled Britannia, with a cockerel placed in the bottom left corner. The back depicts Athena centrally with an owl bottom right. The spine features the Caduceus (Nha.Misc.31).

Though he remained within the Church of England, Blackburne had close family connections to Theophilus Lindsey and John Disney who were involved in the establishment of Unitarianism, suggesting a link to Hollis's own Dissenting position. Moreover, just as Hollis devoted his life to preserving the memory of great thinkers of the past and present, so Blackburne played a crucial role in preserving the memory of Hollis himself. Following his friend's death, Blackburne produced a two-volume account of Hollis's life, which has been described as a 'memorial to Hollis's radical tradition' (Young, 'Blackburne, Francis', ODNB).

A number of the Hollis volumes described in this blogpost will be on display at the 'Encountering Political Texts' exhibition at the National Library of Scotland between Friday 8th December 2023 and Saturday 20th April 2024.

Experiencing Political Texts: Workshop 1s

The week commencing 5th September 2022 was politically eventful in the UK, with a change between Monday and Friday not just of Prime Minister but also of monarch. In the midst of this political upheaval we held the first Experiencing Political Texts workshop, on the theme 'Genre and Form in Early Modern Political Thought'. Twelve rich and stimulating papers were delivered, disrupted only slightly by a gas leak just before our final panel which prompted an evacuation of the building.

In his paper on ceremonial writings from the civil war period, Niall Allsopp emphasised the importance of thinking about the key terms of the project and the complexity of their meanings. Inspired by this prompt, the reflections that follow are organised around the three words of our network's title, taken in reverse order.

The 1777 print edition of the Traité des trois imposteurs. Taken from Wikimedia Commons.

Collectively, the speakers adopted a broad understanding of what we mean by the term 'text'. Many spoke about written sources (both manuscript and print) but a significant number incorporated into their discussion non-textual forms such as images, artefacts, and even landscapes. Martin Dzelzainis made an explicit case for images to be understood - and read - as texts. Noting that paintings were cited as a casus belli by the English in their conflict with the Dutch in the 1670s, Dzelzainis showed how the rhetorical technique of citing inartificial proofs could encompass visual as well as written sources, and highlighted the difficulties visual propaganda materials presented for those who were charged with refuting them in print.

The title page to the 1698 edition of Sidney’s Discourses, edited by John Toland and printed by John Darby. Note the description of Sidney which highlights his aristocratic credentials and royal connections.

Other papers addressed the malleability of texts and the fact that a single 'text' might change its identity over time. In her paper on clandestine literature, Delphine Doucet explained that the text of the Traité des trois imposteurs was not stable. New chapters were added over time so that different versions of the text vary in length and content. In addition, from 1719 when the first printed version of the text was published, print and manuscript versions circulated alongside each other. The other text discussed by Delphine, Jean Bodin's Colloquium heptapolomeres, was more stable, but here too paratextual additions (such as an index) influenced the way in which particular copies were read. I made a similar observation in my own paper about how the paratextual material added to editions of English republican texts produced by John Toland and Thomas Hollis shaped how those works were interpreted. For example, Toland's emphasis on the monarchical and aristocratic connections of the original authors served to make works published under the English commonwealth applicable to the circumstances of English society following the Glorious Revolution. It was not only full texts that were 'recycled' in later editions, but also extracts, anecdotes, and even jokes. It was interesting to note that Daniel Isaac Eaton, who has come to my attention because of his tendency to republish extracts from radical political texts in his periodical Politics for the People, is also known to Tim Somers as regards his reprinting of radical jokes.

Various papers highlighted the fluidity of boundaries between texts and the interplay between different kinds of text. Gaby Mahlberg presented John Toland's Anglia Libera as a patchwork sewn from a range of radical texts, thereby emphasising the importance of intertextuality within the republican canon. She argued that readers of the German translation will have read the work differently from their English counterparts owing to the fact that they will have been unaware of the sources on which Toland was drawing. Tim Somers's paper reminded us of the fluid nature of the boundary between textual and oral culture. Jest books not only recorded jokes that had been heard - thereby reflecting a move from the oral to the textual - but might also operate as collections of jokes to be retold - thereby facilitating a shift back from textual to oral form. In his paper on Thomas Spence, Tom Whitfield noted that Spence's first move as a political actor also involved a shift from the oral to the textual, with the lecture that he delivered to the Newcastle Philosophical Society in 1775 being printed for sale and circulation (a move that sparked condemnation). But Spence took this crossing of boundaries much further. The Land Plan he had set out in his lecture made the move from prose to verse, and was abstracted in slogans which he stamped onto tokens and chalked onto walls. The relationship between Spence's pamphlets and his tokens was particularly complex. The tokens were used to advertise his Land Plan and whet the appetite of readers for his printed works, but as Tom indicated as a form of coinage they could also be handed in at Spence's shop in exchange for a pamphlet.

An example of one of Thomas Spence’s tokens. This is a halfpenny token thought to be from 1790. Reproduced from https://onlinecoin.club The observes depicts an ass carrying a heavy burden with the slogans ‘RENTS’ and ‘TAXS’. The ass was commonly used to represent labouring people as in Sermons to Asses by Spence’s friend John Murray. On the reverse are listed the names of three Thomas’s: Spence; More; and Paine - all said to be advocates for the rights of man.

The focus of our project is primarily on early modern political texts, but some of the papers served to remind us that there is value in adopting a broad and flexible definition of the term 'political'. Two papers in particular focused on genres that we would not immediately think of in these terms: Tim's paper on jest books and Harriet Palin's paper on religious catechisms. Tim pointed out that, while we often think of political jokes as graphic or literary satire aimed at challenging authority, jest books are primarily concerned with mirth and diversion. Yet Tim made a strong case for them still having a political role to play, showing how jests were used by defeated royalists during the civil wars to identify themselves and solidify their position, and by eighteenth-century Whigs to ridicule what they saw as the immoral behaviour of their opponents. Meanwhile, Harriet showed how catechisms were aimed at persuasion and could be read as a calls to action. In this regard I was struck by the parallel between republican treatises that were designed to generate active citizens whose behaviour would strengthen the common good, and Protestant catechisms aimed at creating active believers whose actions would strengthen both their own faith and their religious communities. Moreover, in both cases there is a tension between giving agency to people and directing this towards specific ends.

Sir Richard Fanshawe by William Faithorne, 1667. National Portrait Gallery NPG D22736. Reproduced under a Creative Commons Licence.

The question of what we mean by 'political' texts was approached from a different angle in Max Skönsberg's paper, in which he introduced the Subscription Library project that he has been working on alongside Mark Towsey and others. Max's analysis of borrowing records has revealed that theoretical works of politics like Thomas Hobbes's Leviathan and John Locke's Two Treatises were not particularly popular with the members of subscription libraries. Nor were parliamentary documents and debates borrowed frequently by readers. Yet, we should not assume from this that the members of these libraries were uninterested in politics. Among the works borrowed most frequently were histories, including David Hume's History of England (borrowed from Bristol's Library 180 times between 1773 and 1784) and William Robertson's History of Charles V (borrowed 131 times in the same period). While adopting the historical form, these works were overtly political and Mark's paper on readers' manuscript adaptations of Hume's History made clear that readers read them for their own political purposes. This idea of history as an explicitly political genre was reiterated in Tiago Sousa Garcia's paper on Richard Fanshawe's translation of the Portuguese classic the Lusiad. Tiago introduced us to the seventeenth-century debate about whether works like Lucan's Civil Wars and the Lusiad should be viewed as epic poetry or history and highlighted the different connotations associated with each genre.

The title page of the French translation of Algernon Sidney’s Discourses Concerning Government produced by P. A. Samson. Source http://gallica.bnf.fr Bibliothèque national de France.

Finally, there is the question of what we mean by 'experiencing' political texts? By using this word we are indicating an interest not simply in passive reading, but rather in more active engagement. The question of how this is achieved was the subject of several papers, with speakers reflecting on how humour, rhetoric, the blending of fact and fiction, and other literary devices were used to engage readers. Myriam-Isabelle Ducrocq's paper on eighteenth-century French translations of English republican texts highlighted a further strategy: the deployment of emotion. She described how the French translator of Algernon Sidney's Discourses concerning Government added to the translation a letter Sidney had written to a friend in which he explained why he had decided to remain in exile rather than returning to England. The letter drew an emotional connection between Sidney's experience of exile and that of the translator himself (a Huguenot refugee then living in the Dutch Republic) and via him to his Huguenot readers. By reminding his readers that they shared the emotional experience of exile with Sidney, the translator provided an incentive for them to engage with his work, and directed their approach to it. Of course, engaging emotions was not always viewed positively. Part of the objection to epic poetry, in the seventeenth-century debate described by Tiago, was precisely its tendency to do this.

The experience of reading a particular text might also vary depending on its format. As I noted in my paper, the editions of Sidney's Discourses published by John Toland, Thomas Hollis, and Daniel Eaton were very different from each other. They were directed at different audiences, had different purposes, and created distinct reading experiences. Similarly as Gaby and Myriam-Isabelle demonstrated, the experience of reading a text in translation is often different from reading the original. In the case of Toland's Anglia Libera, the title of the German version was truncated and the dedication cut. The papers by Max and Mark revealed that the reading experience might also be different when accessing a library copy of a work as opposed to reading one's own copy. Library members could not always control when they were able to access a particular book and might even have to read a multi-volume work in reverse order. While we know that readers added annotations to library copies, they might nevertheless have felt more inhibited about doing so. They were, therefore, more likely to produce their own separate notes on a work (of the kind Mark presented to us) rather than scribbling in the margins. Even the same physical text might be experienced differently by different audiences, as Tom made clear in his discussion of Spence's tokens. Tom argued that Spence adjusted the price depending on the purchaser: selling them at a high price to collectors, but throwing them into the street to be picked up by poor Londoners for free. For some, the tokens were therefore a collectible item to be catalogued, stored, and cherished, but for London's poor they were an abstract of Spence's radical programme and an invitation to discover more.

Finally, Niall raised the interesting point about the relationship between readers and spectators. The ceremonial works Niall is studying were designed to make readers feel like spectators and to create an imagined community. Drawing on Stephen Shapin's notion of virtual witnessing as applied to scientific experiments, Niall argued that ceremonial writings could therefore be used to affirm the authority of the magistrate(s) involved. This idea remains relevant today. Over the last few weeks those of us living in the UK have found ourselves drawn (willingly or unwillingly) into virtual witnessing in the ceremonials associated with a royal funeral.

We will pick up many of these issues at our next workshop in York in late February 2023. I only hope that the political situation that week will be less eventful.

Parliamentary Corruption

The present House of Commons in session. Image from Wikimedia Commons.

During the last month there has been much talk in the UK news about sleaze or political corruption. On 3 November MPs voted by a narrow majority to reform the rules on parliamentary lobbying. This was widely seen as a means of saving Owen Paterson, the Tory MP for North Shropshire, from a 30-day suspension from Parliament after he had been accused of using his position as an MP to benefit two companies for which he worked. It was only the furore this provoked among the press and the public that led Boris Johnson to execute a U-turn, announcing a fresh debate on Paterson's suspension and a willingness to gain cross-party support for the reform of the disciplinary procedure for MPs. While Paterson has subsequently resigned as an MP, this case brought to the surface questionable behaviour by other members of the House of Commons. On 10 November Sir Geoffrey Cox came under scrutiny for the legal work that he carries out alongside his parliamentary responsibilities - including for the British Virgin Islands. Not only had Cox made an agreement to vote by proxy while carrying out work in the Caribbean, but it was also alleged that he had held meetings relating to his legal role from his office in Parliament. The former was within the rules, the latter was not. In response the health secretary Sajid Javid defended the right of MPs to have second jobs, but also made clear that they should not be using Commons' facilities for extra-parliamentary work and insisted that they ought to be devoting the vast majority of their time to their constituents.

Of course parliamentary corruption is nothing new. In the eighteenth century there was concern, particularly among those who called themselves commonwealthmen, about the dangers posed by corrupt MPs, those whose commitment to the public good was called into question because they were subject to other influences. Then, however, the main source of this corruption was not second jobs (most MPs were 'gentlemen' who did not 'work') but rather the monarch and his or her ministers who sought to influence the decisions of the House by putting their own creatures (known as placemen) into the Commons or by offering pensions to those who held office. Yet, despite the difference in the source of the corruption, its significance remains the same.

Portrait of John Toland. Taken from Wikimedia Commons.

In the context of the 1698 election campaign, the commonwealthman John Toland produced a short pamphlet entitled The Danger of Mercenary Parliaments. There he argued that a House of Commons filled with officers and court pensioners was a threat to English liberties, pointing out that such a House could not fulfil its role within the constitution. Is it possible, he asked, that 'our Grievances can be redrest, that are committed by Persons from whom there is no higher Power to appeal?' Can there be 'any hope of Justice where the Malefactors are the Judges?' Will the public accounts be 'faithfully inspected by those who embezzle our mony to their own use?' (John Toland, The Danger of Mercenary Parliaments. London, 1698, p. 2). The answers, Toland insisted, were obvious. Indeed he went so far as to suggest that 'all the Calamities and Distractions under which the whole Nation at present groans' were due to 'that bare-fac'd and openly avow'd Corruption, which, like a universal Leprosy, has so notoriously infected and overspread both our Court and Parliament.' (Toland, Danger of Mercenary Parliaments, p. 3).

The only solution, Toland insisted, was to choose MPs who would act according to 'no other motives but the real and true Interest of his Majesty and his Dominions; a Parliament that will fall unanimously upon publick Business, and be free from those petty Factions and personal Piques which in the late Session so shamefully obstructed and delay'd the most importance Service of the Commonwealth.' This required all MPs to be 'subject to the Laws, and to some Power on Earth that may call them to account for their misbehaviours, that they may not be their own judges' (Toland, Danger of Mercenary Parliaments, p. 6). It was, therefore, up to the electors in the forthcoming election to disappoint the 'unreasonable and exorbitant hopes' of those corrupt MPs 'and to spew them out as detestable Members of the Commonwealth; not only as unfit to be trusted with their Liberties, but as unworthy to breath in the air of a Free Government' (Toland, Danger of Mercenary Parliaments, p. 7). Toland was clear that the fact that elections were now held every three years helped in this regard, providing electors with frequent opportunities to hold their MPs to account. Today, of course, general elections are less frequent, meaning that the point made in defence of Geoffrey Cox - that his constituents could vote him out if they were unhappy with his behaviour - does not feel like an adequate solution.

However, Toland's optimism that the problem would be resolved at the forthcoming election was misplaced. More than forty years later, in the context of yet another election campaign, the Scottish writer John Campbell again expressed concern that individual MPs were being diverted by bribes, posts, and pensions and were attached to private interests rather than to the public good. Without banishing corruption, he insisted, 'the Nation never can be out of Trouble, never free from Danger' (John Campbell, Liberty and Right. London, 1747, p. 45).

Campbell recognised that simply relying on electors to make sensible choices was not enough. He therefore proposed two further remedies. First, he called for MPs to be paid a salary (so that they would not be vulnerable to offers of money from elsewhere). Clearly this is no solution to the problems of parliamentary corruption today, since MPs already earn a substantial salary and yet some still have second jobs - though perhaps we should be challenging their right to do so. Surely a job that brings a salary of £81,932 per year (more than 3 times the UK average) is a full-time job that requires the complete attention of the person holding it.

The House of Commons in session in the eighteenth century. Image from Wikimedia Commons

In addition, Campbell linked the corruption of Parliament to the fact that MPs could continue to sit 'one Parliament after another' taking for 'themselves the principal Honours, Places, and Posts of the Country; while Men of Equal, or more extensive Abilities, remain unimploy'd'. (Campbell, Liberty and Right, p. 60). Against this practice he insisted that corruption could only be banished and the public interest secured by frequent and periodic changes to the representative body. In a proposal that clearly owed much to James Harrington's ideas, Campbell insisted that each year one third of the MPs in the House of Commons should be removed and replaced, with those retiring required to spend at least three years out of office before being eligible for re-election.

Not for the first time I am led by current events to think that we have something to learn from the writers of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries who recognised that in order to secure good government in the public interest it is necessary to have robust systems of accountability. Without these, many will resort to acting in their own rather than the public interest. As Toland and Campbell realised, even those in Parliament must be forced to live under the laws that they make and must not be allowed to act as judges in their own case. How disappointing that, even after three hundred years, we still do not seem to have learned this lesson.

Translating Cultures: Ideas and Materiality in Europe, c.1500-1800

Courtesy of the pandemic, during October I 'attended' two conferences in two different countries (the United States and Germany) without leaving my study. While I have attended various virtual conferences over the last eighteen months, these were the first hybrid events to which I have been invited. There is, of course, much that is good about this shift - not least the fact that reducing our international travel is better for the environment and that events that include a virtual dimension are more accessible for those with caring responsibilities. The fact that we have all been forced to get to grips with online platforms such as Zoom during the pandemic means these events tended to work more effectively and run more smoothly than the occasional attempt at hybrid events I attended in the past. Nevertheless there are, of course, trade-offs. In one sense it is good that I could attend these events while still fulfilling my duties as a teacher, Director of Research for my School, and a mother. But whereas when one attends a conference in person other duties recede into the background for a couple of days, this time I had to intersperse listening to conference papers with other activities, including transporting my daughter to football training and holding office hours with students, making it difficult to immerse myself fully in the topic of the conference. As Adam Smith would have recognised, there is a cost involved in switching from one activity to another.

Nonetheless both conferences provided much food for thought. In this blogpost, I will comment on just one of them: the latest in a series of workshops led by Thomas Munck and Gaby Mahlberg, and held at the Herzog August Bibliothek in Wolfenbüttel Germany, involving a group of European scholars interested in cultural translation. Since this was the fourth time we have met as a group it was very much a case of pulling together strands of thought that we have been working on for a while, with a view to producing a joint publication. All the same, the papers generated some new ideas for me.

Ironically, given how long we have been thinking about cultural translation, one observation I had was about the limits of what we can know. This was brought directly to our attention by Thomas Munck in his paper: 'Untranslatable, unsellable, unreadable? Obstacles, delays and failures in cultural translation in print in early modern Europe'. Thomas's starting point was why some authors and works are not translated despite exploring potentially interesting and relevant topics. As an example he highlighted the case of the Scandinavian thinker Anders Chydenius, who wrote on popular eighteenth-century topics such as population decline, free trade, and freedom of the press, but whose works were not translated from Swedish into other European languages. Thomas identified various reasons why works do not get translated: what is written could be difficult to convey in another language; there might be conceptual barriers to translation - in that the ideas expressed may be considered out of bounds in other contexts; the works might be deemed boring and therefore unsellable; or there could be fears that they would be censored either pre- or post-publication. In addition, other members of the group noted that the existence of Latin editions can be seen to render a translation unnecessary. The difficulty for us as historians of the early modern period is in determining what the reason or reasons were in any particular case. Other papers brought up specific examples of this. Gaby Mahlberg noted that there is evidence that both a French and a Latin translation of John Toland's Anglia Libera were planned, but there are no extant copies - meaning either that the translations did not materialise or that no copies survive. We do not know which is the case, even less why. In his paper on the French translations of Thomas Hobbes's works, Luc Borot raised several related questions: why some works by Hobbes were translated but not others; why parts of some works were translated but not the whole work; and why some translations flourished while others floundered. Even, as in the case of Hobbes, where extensive correspondence between author and translator exists, we can often do little more than speculate on the whys and wherefores.

Paul Rycaut, after Sir Peter Lely c.1679-80. National Portrait Gallery NPG 1874. Reproduced under a creative commons licence.

While there is a lot that we do not know, there is also a great deal that translations can reveal, not least about the preoccupations of the translator, printer or their audience. Ann Thomson's fascinating paper on translations of works about the Ottoman Empire highlighted several examples of translations being used for purposes that were different from - and sometimes even at odds with - the intentions of the original work and its author. One such example is the seventeenth-century French translation of Paul Rycaut's work The Present State of the Ottoman Empire. His account was designed to highlight the benevolent nature of the rule of the Stuarts in England - and at the same time to condemn the rule of the Puritans during the 1650s as being more like oriental despotism. The references to the Stuarts were, however, cut from the French translations and instead the 1677 version used Rycaut's book as a vehicle for discussing the situation of Protestants in France. Similarly, Luisa Simonutti's paper shed light on the manuscript translation of the Doctrina Mahumet which is held among John Locke's papers in Oxford and clearly contributed to discussions about toleration among his circle.

‘Carte de Tendre’ from Madeleine de Scudéry’s novel Clélie. Reproduced from Wikimedia Commons.

Another adaptation between source text and translation was explored in Amelia Mills's excellent paper on Aphra Behn's translation of Paul Tallemant's Le Voyage de l'Isle d'Amour. Tallemant's work drew inspiration from Madeleine de Scudéry's 'Carte de Tendre', which appeared in her book Clélie, a Roman History; and Amelia showed us a beautiful copy of the original 'Carte de Tendre' (which survives in the Herzog August Bibliothek). The map was designed to demonstrate how suitors could find their way into the affections of women by travelling to one of three destinations: Tendre sur reconnaissance, Tendre sur inclination or Tendre sur estime. Tallemant reinvented Scudéry's map shifting the destination from tendre to amour - with its more erotic overtones embodying a male rather than a female perspective. In her translation of Tallemant's text, Aphra Behn moved the focus back to a female-centred vision and to the intellectual meeting of minds that had been behind Scudéry's original. As Amelia demonstrated, this was reflected in the translation of particular words with, for example, the French word 'plaisir' not rendered as the obvious English equivalent 'pleasure' but rather the less emotionally charged 'content(ment)'. In doing so, Amelia argued, Behn was very deliberately looking back to the decade of Scudéry and her circle, and suggesting that there was much that English women of the 1680s might learn from them.

In Behn's case the shift of tone and emphasis came largely through the translation of particular terms, but in many other cases it came instead through paratextual material. Alessia Castagnino talked in her paper about the translations of the Abbé Noël Pluche's work Le Spectacle de la Nature. She noted that the Spanish translation incorporated footnotes which were deliberately used to emphasise the work of Spanish scientists and to highlight the important contribution of the Jesuits to the advancement of global knowledge.

Footnotes were also used to shift the focus of James Porter's Observations on the Religion, Law, Government and Manners, of the Turks, which was discussed in Ann Thomson's paper. She noted that the edition of the French translation produced by the Société Typographique de Neuchâtel added a wealth of footnotes which developed the themes of toleration and the condemnation of prejudice and superstition. Thus a translation of a work that was originally intended to offer a balanced - even sympathetic - account of the Ottoman Empire, was used by the STN as a means of attacking Catholic intolerance. Another example of a printer influencing the reading of a work through the addition of paratextual material was noted in the presentations given by Mark Somos and his team, who are working on the Grotius census. As Ed Jones Corredera reminded us, the important series of works on republics published by Elsevier in the seventeenth century included often quite elaborate frontispieces that were the work of the printer rather than the author or translator, allowing the printer to stamp their own message on the text.

The interest of members of the group in the material form of the text also extended to how translations were laid out on the page. Many translations (including some of those discussed above) included additional notes. The 1677 French translation of Rycaut's The Present State of the Ottoman Empire went a step further in having such extensive notes that they had to be added at the end under the heading 'Remarques Curieuses', so as to avoid clogging up the page. This was not always a concern for translators, however. Asaph Ben-Tov mentioned Thomas Erpenius's Historia Josephi, which included both the original Arabic text and not one but two Latin translations all on the same page - a literal interlinear translation and a more Latinate rendering in the margin. As Johann Camman's handwritten comments on his copy of the text make clear, the work was used by Camman as a language-learning tool rather than for its substantive content. This was not unusual in the case of bilingual versions - Alessia Castagnino suggested that the same was true of the bilingual (French and Italian) edition of Pluche's Le Spectacle de la Nature.

Early modern translations, then, served a variety of purposes. The publication arising from the Wolfenbüttel workshops will explore many of these, and I look forward to seeing it come to fruition. At the same time, I am sorry that this means that there are currently no more trips to the beautiful Herzog August Bibliothek scheduled in my diary.

Experiencing Political Texts 6: Materiality

We currently find ourselves on a cusp with regard to the materiality of texts. Print copies are still common, but digital editions and open access publishing are on the rise. Yet, for now, the conventions of print tend to provide the framework for digital editions with an emphasis on recreating the look and experience of reading a printed book (for example with 'Turning the Pages' technology) rather than exploring the new possibilities that digital editions might offer.

Despite his experimental use of genre and the blending of fact and fiction, the physical format of Yanis Varoufakis's book Another Now, which I have discussed in previous blogposts in this series, is relatively conventional. It is available in hardback, paperback, as an audio download, and in e-book form with the last of these merely comprising a digital version of the print copy. However, Varoufakis does acknowledge potential innovations in future in his description of what happens when the narrator Yango Varo first opens Iris's diary:

Two red arrows filled my vision as my hybrid-reality contact lenses detected audio-visual content in the diary and kicked in. Instinctively I gestured to switch off my haptic interface and slammed the book shut. Costa had explicitly instructed me to set up the dampening field device before opening the diary. Chastened by my failure to do so, I went to fetch it. Only once the device was on the desk, humming away reassuringly, was I able to delve into Iris's memories in that rarest of conditions - privacy. (Yanis Varoufakis, Another Now: Dispatches from an Alternative Present. London: Bodley Head, 2019, p. 5).

Title page of Toland and Darby’s edition of The Oceana of James Harrington. Reproduced from the copy at the Robinson Library Newcastle University, BRAD 321 07-TP. I am grateful to the Library staff for allowing me to reproduce the work here.

I have already touched on the materiality of early modern texts in previous blogposts (January 2021, September 2020), but there is more to explore. One area of interest is the way in which the material or physical form of a text was deliberately designed to engage a specific audience. During the eighteenth century the English republican works first published during the mid-seventeenth century were directed, in successive waves, at different audiences and the physical format of those editions varied accordingly. 

Many of the original English republican texts published during the mid to late seventeenth century had been relatively small, cheap editions. When John Toland and John Darby decided to reprint these works at the turn of the eighteenth century, they deliberately reproduced them as lavish folio editions. We know from personal correspondence that they took care to use high quality paper and the title pages often include words in red type, which was more expensive. The size and quality of these volumes makes clear that they were aimed at a high-status audience - particularly members of the political elite. They were destined for their own private libraries or those used by them. While in one sense this was exclusionary - putting these works (and the ideas contained within them) beyond the means of ordinary citizens - there was a positive reason for doing so. Toland and Darby were keen to make clear that, although these texts had been published in the midst of the chaos of the civil war and interregnum, they remained of interest - and of relevance to those in government - even after the restoration of 1660. These works were not mere ephemera, but were of lasting significance and continued relevance in the eighteenth century even though England was no longer ruled as a republic.

Binding of Thomas Hollis’s edition of Harrington’s works. From Houghton Library, Harvard University. HOU GEN *EC65.H2381 656c (B) Lobby IV.2.18. I am grateful to the Houghton Library for giving me permission to reproduce this and to Dr Mark Somos for his assistance.

Thomas Hollis was aware of Toland's publishing campaign and built his own on its foundations. He republished many of the same texts, and again did so in the form of lavish folio volumes with expensive bindings. Hollis commissioned the Italian engraver Giovanni Cipriani to produce portraits of the authors to preface the volumes and to design little emblems that could be embossed onto the front as a key to the nature of the work inside. However, Hollis's dissemination strategy was aimed less at the private libraries of the elite and instead at institutional libraries - public libraries such as those established in cities like Leiden in the United Provinces and Bern in Switzerland, but also the libraries of educational establishments such as Christ's College Cambridge and, most famously, Harvard in the United States. This suggests that Hollis's target audience was less the current political elite than that of the future. His aim was to educate the next generation - especially in America where, from the 1760s, a crisis was brewing.

The American Revolution, when it came, had a significant impact on both sides of the Atlantic. The slogan 'no taxation without representation' flagged up political inequalities in Britain and provided fuel for the incipient reform movement. To further the cause of reform, the Society for Constitutional Information (SCI) was established in 1774. Its main mode of operation was to print cheap copies of political texts which were disseminated freely. In particular, members of the SCI believed it necessary to educate the people on the nature of the British constitution. As the Address to the Public, published in 1780, explained

John Jebb, one of the founder members of the Society for Constitutional Information. Portrait by Charles Knight, 1782. National Portrait Gallery NPG D10782. Reproduced under a Creative Commons Licence.

As every Englishman has an equal inheritance in this Liberty; and in those Laws and that Constitution which have been provided for its defence; it is therefore necessary that every Englishman should know what the Constitution IS; when it is SAFE; and when ENDANGERED (An Address to the public, from the Society for Constitutional Information. London, 1780, p. 1).

The Society focused on printing works that contributed towards this mission, stating that:

To diffuse this knowledge universally throughout the realm, to circulate it through every village and hamlet, and even to introduce it into the humble dwelling of the cottager, is the wish and hope of this Society.

Consequently, the SCI disseminated works such as Obidiah Hulme's Historical Essay on the English Constitution, but also extracts from older works that spoke to these issues. Yet, as the statement of intent makes clear, the Society aimed to disseminate political works not simply among an elite, as their predecessors had done, but throughout the population. This, it was believed, was the best means of awakening people to their rights and thereby furthering the case for the reform of Parliament.

The SCI continued to function into the 1790s and was, therefore, well placed to capitalise on further calls for reform sparked by the outbreak of the Revolution in France in 1789. In this febrile atmosphere, others took up the cause of educating the ordinary people about their rights by making available to them important political texts from past and present.

Spence token advertising Pig’s Meat. Reproduced from Wikimedia Commons.

In 1793 the Newcastle-born radical Thomas Spence published the first issue of a weekly publication entitled Pig's Meat; or, Lessons for the Swinish Multitude, which printed extracts from political texts including from works that had been republished by Toland and Darby or Hollis. The title was a reference to Edmund Burke's derisory comment in Reflections on the Revolution in France which referred to the ordinary people as swine. Spence's publication cost just 1 penny, making it affordable even for those who were relatively poor, and as he explained on the title page, his aim was 'To promote among the Labouring Part of Mankind proper Ideas of their Situation, of their Importance, and of their Rights. AND TO CONVINCE THEM That their Forlorn Condition has not been entirely overlooked and forgotten, nor their just Cause unpleased, neither by their Maker nor by the best and most enlightened of Men in all Ages.' Alongside his Pig's Meat publications, Spence engaged in other means of spreading political ideas including writing works of his own and producing and disseminating tokens.

What is the relevance of all this? First, it reminds us that it is not just the content of political works that matters, but also the form in which they are printed, and the way they are disseminated and read. Literary critics like George Bornstein, inspired by Jean Genet and Jerome McGann, have been making this point for some time. But it has yet to fully penetrate the historical investigation of political texts. Secondly, the attempt by authors, editors and reformers to reach ever wider sections of the population during the course of the eighteenth century is striking. It reveals the importance of politics to eighteenth-century British society and the firm belief (at least on the part of some) that political education could and would bring political reform. Is there, I wonder, the same appetite for political knowledge today? What kind of publications would best attract twenty-first century audiences? And what kinds of reform might they propose?

Myths Concerning Republicanism 4: Republican Government and Commercial Society

Justin Champion delivering the first annual Christopher Hill memorial lecture at the National Civil War Centre, Newark, November 2018.

This month's blogpost, the latest in a series I have written on the myths surrounding republican government, is dedicated to the memory of the inspirational historian Justin Champion, who died last month, and whose research has fed directly into my thinking on this issue - and so many others.

The recent Covid-19 pandemic has raised important questions regarding the role of the state - particularly in times of crisis. In the UK, government intervention has been crucial in the form of the furloughing scheme and in providing cash injections to support small and medium sized businesses. At the same time, the high death rate in this country and the difficulties faced by the NHS have been blamed on decades of underfunding. On a broader scale it is self-evident that at a time when there is a high demand for Personal Protective Equipment and coronavirus testing kits in countries across the world, a market economy will operate in the interests of the richest and most powerful countries at the expense of poorer ones, bringing increased risks for their citizens and for the world.

This therefore seems a good moment to pay attention to another 'myth' relating to republicanism: that it either has little to say about twenty-first century economic matters or that it offers an unrealistic approach to economics that is antagonistic towards the market - regarding it, in Gerald Gaus's words, as 'inherently unfree and immoral' (quoted in Richard Dagger, 'Neo-republicanism and the civic economy', Politics, Philosophy and Economics 5:2, 2006: 158). In the same vein Gordon Wood, the historian of revolutionary America, has described republicanism as 'essentially anti-capitalistic' (Gordon S. Wood, The Creation of the American Republic, 1776-1787. Chapel Hill, 1969, p. 418). This attitude has led some to conclude that republicanism can have no place in the politics of the twenty-first century.

However, this is open to serious question. As is the case with many of these modern myths, its roots are to be found deep in history - or perhaps more accurately in historiography. In 1975 the great intellectual historian John Pocock produced a groundbreaking book The Machiavellian Moment, which traced the journey of republican ideas from the ancient world, via Renaissance Italy and early modern England, to their zenith in revolutionary America. Pocock paid particular attention to how those ideas faired in late seventeenth- and early eighteenth-century Britain, highlighting the inevitable tension between the republican emphasis on virtue and the rise of commerce, and presenting republican authors as antagonistic to the new commercial society that was emerging around them. This fed into a wider argument about an incompatibility between liberalism and republicanism that was central to Pocock's book.

The Ponte Vecchio which spans the Arno river in Florence and has been the location for shops since the thirteenth century. Image by Rachel Hammersley.

While the distinction between liberalism and republicanism was challenged from the outset, the notion of republican virtue as inherently at odds with commercial society and a market economy proved more persistent. Nonetheless, recent research has begun to reveal it too to be a false dichotomy.

In a 2001 article Mark Jurdjevic took issue with Pocock's account of Renaissance Italy, arguing that Florentine civic humanism (the underpinning of the republican arguments of that time) was in fact the ideology of an 'ascendant merchant class'. He went on to suggest that commerce and private wealth were not a threat to the republic, but rather were crucial to its survival (Mark Jurdjevic, 'Virtue, Commerce, and the Enduring Florentine Republican Moment: Reintegrating Italy into the Atlantic Republican Debate', Journal of the History of Ideas, 62:4, 2001: 721-43).

The dedicatory letter at the beginning of John Toland’s edition of The Oceana and Other Works of James Harrington (London, 1737), one of the texts cited in Justin Champion’s article. Here Toland celebrates the wealth and riches of London, which he attributes to English liberty, and likens Harrington’s constitution to that of the Bank of England. Copy author’s own.

Jurdjevic's conclusion chimes with the findings of Steve Pincus on seventeenth-century England, which at that time was already experiencing an expansion of trade. Pocock had focused on figures like James Harrington and John Milton who were hostile to commercial culture. Yet, as Pincus shows, there were plenty of supporters of commonwealth government prepared to defend the new commercial society (Steve Pincus, 'Neither Machiavellian Moment nor Possessive Individualism: Commercial Society and the Defenders of the English Commonwealth', The American Historical Review, 103:3, 1998: 705-36). The author of The Grand Concernments of England, for example, declared that 'trade is the very life and spirits of a common-wealth' (Anon., The Grand Concernments of England Ensured... London, 1659, p. 32).

Justin Champion has gone even further, drawing on little known published writings and unpublished manuscripts produced by John Toland and Robert Molesworth to show that these eighteenth-century 'commonwealthsmen' had a more subtle and sophisticated attitude to commerce than they have been given credit for. While they were certainly worried about the corruption that might be introduced by speculation, paper stocks, and credit, they drew an important distinction between schemes in which these mechanisms served only private interests and those that operated for the benefit of the public. While they condemned the former, they accepted that the latter could perform an important function in a well-organised republican state (Justin Champion, '"Mysterious politicks": land, credit and Commonwealth political economy, 1656-1722' in Money and Political Economy in the Enlightenment, ed. Daniel Carey. Oxford: Voltaire Foundation, 2014, pp. 117-62).

Thomas Paine, copy by Auguste Millière after an engraving by William Sharp, after George Romney, c.1876, based on a work of 1792. Reproduced under a creative commons license from the collection of the National Portrait Gallery, NPG 897.

Could that notion of an economy operating in the interests of the public good, rather than in private interests, provide the basis for a republican political economy in the twenty-first century? The political philosopher Richard Dagger certainly thinks so. In a 2006 article he sketched out the key features of a neo-republican economy where the market would be preserved but be directed towards the service of the public good. This would require that certain values be allowed to trump the unfettered operation of the market. Efficiency in the production and distribution of goods and services would certainly be valued, but the interests and well-being of citizens would be deemed more important. For example, there would be constraints on managerial decision-making and institutional guarantees for workers to be able to contest managerial directives. Similarly, the market would be curbed to secure the protection and flourishing of communities, which might mean giving careful consideration to the impact of economic decisions on the environment or on particular groups within society. Dagger also proposes several mechanisms designed to secure greater financial equality and a better redistribution of wealth among citizens. These include a robust inheritance tax, a progressive consumption tax, and a minimum level of financial support for all citizens to help make financial security - and therefore self-government - possible for all, regardless of background. Options for the delivery of this financial support could include a basic income, of the kind advocated recently by the economist Guy Standing, or a basic capital grant, an idea originally proposed by the eighteenth-century revolutionary Thomas Paine in The Rights of Man.

If Dagger is right then perhaps it would be possible to build on republican arguments of the past to develop an economic system in which the market can be directed towards advancing the public good. The current crisis provides an incentive for us to do so, and perhaps also the opportunity.

Algernon Sidney's Discourses Concerning Government: The Journey of a Text from Manuscript to Translation

Covid-19 has disrupted everything, including academic conferences, workshops and seminars. In the light of the necessary postponement of this year’s Translating Cultures workshop in Wolfenbüttel, Germany, I have chosen to suspend my series on Myths Concerning Republican Government for one month more in order to offer a brief account of the paper I would have given at that workshop, which reflects the new project that I am currently in the process of developing.

Scholarship on translation inevitably focuses on words. How are specific terms translated? How accurately does a translation convey the meaning and sentiment of a work? But what about the form in which those words are presented: what role does the genre that is used or the physical appearance of a text play in conveying meaning, indicating audience, and determining purpose; and what happens when a translation appears in a different form from the original? These are questions I had begun to ponder during previous Wolfenbüttel workshops.

Algernon Sidney, after Justus van Egmont, based on a work of 1663. National Portrait Gallery NPG 568. Reproduced thanks to a Creative Commons license.

For my contribution to our postponed third workshop I plan to explore these issues using Algernon Sidney's Discourses Concerning Government as a case study. Though an important seventeenth-century work with a long afterlife in England and abroad, the original 'text' was simply a collection of manuscript sheets found on Sidney's desk when he was arrested, in May 1683, for his alleged involvement in the Rye House Plot. In its journey from Sidney's desk to the French Revolution, where it generated particular interest, Discourses Concerning Government was transformed multiple times through the interventions of various collaborators.

The first stage of this was its publication as a physical book in 1698 by the editor John Toland and printer John Darby. In 1762, Thomas Hollis published a new edition in his 'Library of Liberty' and, a further thirty years on, Daniel Eaton followed suit with his own edition. Over the same period The Discourses established a French presence. Toland's edition was reviewed in the Huguenot periodical Nouvelles de la République des Lettres in 1699. Soon after, a French translation was produced by a Huguenot refugee Pierre-August Samson. It too was reviewed in Huguenot periodicals as well as being reprinted in 1755 and 1794. In 1789 Sidney's ideas were drawn to the attention of a wider French audience via Lettre de félicitation de milord Sidney aux Parisiens et à la nation françoise. Exploring the different stages of this text's journey, and changes in its form that occurred in the process, reveals interesting evidence about the relationship between the form and content of texts and translations.

The frontispiece to Toland and Darby’s 1698 edition of Sidney’s text. I am grateful to Gaby Mahlberg for providing me with this image.

First, the physical form of a text - its size, the quality of the paper, the sophistication of the frontispiece - offers indications as to its audience, purpose, and significance. Here there is a marked contrast between the different versions of The Discourses. The Toland and Hollis editions are large lavish volumes intended for the private libraries of the rich (Toland) or major university and public libraries (Hollis). Hollis went so far as to bind the works in his Library of Liberty in red leather and to emboss them with symbols of liberty such as the bonnet rouge. By contrast Daniel Eaton's edition was more modest, being part of a scheme by the London Corresponding Society to make available cheap versions of key political texts. In fact, Eaton not only published Sidney's text in full, but also included excerpts in his weekly periodical Politics for the People. The French translations too were generally smaller than Toland's original, perhaps reflecting the humble and transient lifestyle of Huguenots at the time.

Secondly, it is interesting to observe the connections these editors and translators saw between texts. Toland was largely responsible for the creation of a canon of English republican works and he deliberately associated Sidney's Discourses (written in the 1680s) with works produced during the English Revolution, emphasising their common themes. His 1704 reprint of the Discourses explicitly alerted readers to the fact that John Milton's, Edmund Ludlow's and James Harrington's works could also be found in Derby's shop. Similarly, Hollis's Library of Liberty set Sidney's text alongside works by Milton, Ludlow, Andrew Marvell and Marchamont Nedham; and the common binding used physical resemblance to reinforce the ideological connection. In sending collections of works to particular institutions Hollis was also able, as Mark Somos demonstrated to us last year, to use marginalia to create a trail of republican writings and to influence how they were read.

Pierre-August Samson’s 1702 French translation of Sidney’s Discourses. With thanks to Gaby Mahlberg for providing the image.

Thirdly there is the question of genre. Knowledge of Sidney in France came initially via the reviews in periodicals. Here, then, The Discourses was associated with Huguenot concerns - in particular Protestantism and resistance to absolute monarchy. How did this affect French readings of Sidney's text? And what about Lettre de félicitation de milord Sidney. This was not a translation, but a short work pretending that Sidney had returned from the dead to counsel the French. Presenting Sidney's ideas in the form of a letter addressed to the revolutionaries allowed those ideas to be targeted at their concerns. Content and form, then, are inextricably bound together. To fully understand the one - we must also pay close attention to the other.

The Inspiration Behind Oceana: 2. Hobbes

Thomas Hobbes, after John Michael Wright, oil on canvas, based on a work of c.1669-70. National Portrait Gallery, NPG 106. Reproduced under a creative commons license.

Machiavelli was not the only controversial political thinker to have left his mark on The Commonwealth of Oceana. Harrington was also much influenced by Thomas Hobbes. This blogpost will briefly explore Hobbes's influence on the title and structure of Harrington's works. Next month's post will examine Harrington's debt to Hobbes as regards the substance of his argument and his methodological approach.

The precise relationship between Hobbes and Harrington was the subject of speculation in their own time. At first glance they would appear to be on opposite sides of the political divide: the defender of monarchy versus the proponent of commonwealth government. Yet observers saw connections between their ideas. Harrington's critic, Matthew Wren, commented: 'I will not conceal the pleasure I have taken in observing that though Mr. Harrington professes a great Enmity to Mr. Hobs his politiques ... notwithstanding he holds a correspondence with him, and does silently swallow down such Notion as Mr. Hobs hath chewed for him.' ([Matthew Wren], Considerations on Mr Harrington's Common-wealth of Oceana, p. 41). Harrington replied by acknowledging his debt, at least on certain matters:

It is true, I have opposed the Politicks of Mr. Hobbs, to shew him what he taught me, with as much disdain as he opposed those of the greatest Authors, in whose wholesome Fame and Doctrine the good of Mankind being concern'd; my Conscience bears me witnesse, that I have done my duty: Nevertheless in most other things I firmly believe that Mr. Hobbs is, and will in future Ages be accounted, the best Writer, at this day, in the World. (James Harrington, The Prerogative of Popular Government, I, p. 36).

In general, commentary has focused on the second part of this quotation, and in particular on the idea that while Harrington disagreed with Hobbes on political matters, their views on religion were remarkably similar with both insisting that the church should be firmly under state control and treating the political usefulness of religion as more important than its truth. Yet the first part of the quotation - Harrington's claim that he has 'opposed the Politicks of Mr. Hobbs, to shew him what he taught me' - also suggests agreement on certain fundamentals in their political ideas. Harrington often seems to be writing in response to Hobbes, using his ideas as a springboard, so that even where Harrington departs from Hobbes he often uses Hobbesian language and concepts, applying them to different ends.

Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan (London, 1651). Reproduced with permission from the Robinson Library, University of Newcastle. Special Collections, Bainbrigg (BAI 1651 HOB). With thanks to Sam Petty.

This connection is hinted at in the titles of their works. Hobbes called his major work of 1651, Leviathan, alluding to the sea monster described in the Book of Job, the chief characteristic of which was that it could not be constrained by any human power. For Hobbes this was a useful metaphor for his conception of the state. Though it was constituted by the population and designed to secure peace and security, it could not be overthrown by any individual or group among them. Harrington's decision to call his work The Commonwealth of Oceana can be read as a response to Hobbes. Most commentators have seen Harrington's adoption of the term 'commonwealth' as a reflection of his republicanism. Yet he may also have been alluding to Hobbes's own use of that term. On his opening page, Hobbes described the Leviathan as a 'COMMON-WEALTH, or  STATE, (in latine CIVITAS)' (Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan, ed. Richard Tuck, Cambridge, 1991, p. 9). Similarly, 'Oceana' may not only have referred to England being an island nation. The ocean was the medium in which the Leviathan lives and which, to some extent, restricts and determines its movements and actions. While it may not be constrained by human power, there are other limits on it. It cannot, for example, suddenly start living on land, but must conform to the laws of nature. This fits with aspects of Harrington's argument that will be explored in next month's blogpost.

Not only is there a parallel between the titles adopted by these authors, but connections can also be drawn between the structure and form of their works. The frontispiece to Hobbes's text embodies its entire argument. The Leviathan appears at the top of the image rising up out of the sea. In his right hand he holds a sword - the symbol of civil power - and in his left he holds a crozier - the symbol of ecclesiastical power. This literally reflects Hobbes's argument that both powers should be held by the state. The bottom half of the frontispiece is divided into three columns. The left hand one, beneath the sword, depicts various aspects of the state's temporal power. That on the right, beneath the crozier, depicts aspects of ecclesiastical power. Two of Harrington's works refer in different ways to this frontispiece. 

The Prerogative of Popular Government appeared in 1658. It is the work from which Harrington's comment on his debt to Hobbes, quoted above, comes; and it is the work in which Harrington engages most directly with Hobbes's ideas. Given this, it is perhaps not surprising that the structure of the work can be read as echoing the frontispiece to Leviathan. The work is divided into two books. The first, like Hobbes's left hand column, deals with political or civil affairs. The second corresponds to his right hand column in focusing on religious or ecclesiastical matters. And, just like Hobbes's frontispiece, together they make a complete whole. However, while echoing Hobbes's structure, the thrust of Harrington's argument is at odds with that of Hobbes. Where Hobbes had insisted that civil and ecclesiastical powers should be held by a unified state, Harrington argues that both should be organised democratically. Moreover, Harrington cleverly uses Hobbes's arguments to make this point. The second book of The Prerogative defends Hobbes's account of the early church, which emphasised the importance of election by the people in the process of ordaining ministers, against the objections of the Anglican cleric Henry Hammond. What Harrington appears to be saying is that if Hobbes is right in his interpretation of the early church and on the need for civil and ecclesiastical powers to be held in the same hands, then the people should hold both. This, then, is the 'prerogative of popular government'.

‘The Manner and Use of the Ballot’, taken from The Oceana and other works of James Harrington, ed. John Toland (London, 1737). Private copy. Image by Rachel Hammersley.

The second work that refers to the frontispiece of Leviathan is The Use and Manner of the Ballot, a broadsheet which appeared in 1658/9. Recent research has revealed Hobbes's interest in the use of the visual form to spark the imagination. It has shown how seriously Hobbes took the frontispiece to Leviathan; and has opened up various ways in which that image drew on novel visual techniques to convey the complex relationship between the people, the state, and its functions. Harrington was equally concerned with the problem of conveying complex political ideas in an accessible form and he too experimented with visual images to address this issue. From as early as 1656, Harrington had been concerned that the complex balloting procedure in Oceana was difficult for his readers to comprehend. By the beginning of 1659 this had become a major issue. This was because, as he explained in Brief Directions published just a few months earlier, the use of the ballot was difficult to convey in written form. It would, he believed, be much easier for an audience to understand if they were able to experience it in practice. While this was not immediately possible, presenting the ballot in visual form offered an intermediate solution. The Use and Manner of the Ballot consisted of a detailed annotated illustration of the ballot which was accompanied by a commentary describing the balloting process. As Harrington explained at the beginning of the commentary: 'I shall endeavour by this figure to demonstrate the manner of the Venetian ballot (a thing as difficult in discourse or writing, as facile in practice)'. Though the image remained static, Harrington clearly believed that it would allow his audience to envisage how the ballot would operate, thereby convincing them that what might seem on paper like a complex and cumbersome process could be performed quickly and efficiently. (For an animation of this image produced in conjunction with my colleagues at Animating Texts at Newcastle University see: https://research.ncl.ac.uk/atnu/projects/earlymodernballot/#d.en.870683)

Frontispiece from The Oceana and other works of James Harrington. Image by Rachel Hammersley

While this was the only image that Harrington produced, it was not the only one to be associated with his writings. When John Toland produced an edition of Harrington's works at the end of the seventeenth century, he prefaced it with an elaborate frontispiece, which cost him £30 of his own money. Just like the frontispiece to Leviathan, Toland's image embodied the argument of Harrington's works (as interpreted by Toland) in visual form. It could, therefore, be read as a final response to Hobbes.

The Materiality of Manuscripts and Early Printed Books

The author’s copy of Oliver Lawson' Dick’s Penguin edition of Aubrey’s Brief Lives. Image by Rachel Hammersley.

Justinian Pagitt, whose 'Memorandum Book' I discussed last month, was not the only one of James Harrington's friends to refer to him in an extant manuscript. John Aubrey's Brief Lives, the original manuscript of which is held in the Bodleian Library in Oxford, has long been acknowledged as one of the most important and reliable seventeenth-century sources of information on Harrington's life. It gained popular notoriety in the second half of the twentieth century thanks to the Penguin edition by Oliver Lawson Dick, and has recently come to prominence again due to Ruth Scurr's wonderful reworking of the material into a quasi-autobiography: John Aubrey: My Own Life. I have discussed Aubrey's Brief Lives as a form of intellectual biography in a previous post.  Yet despite my familiarity with the work, I was not prepared for the impact that seeing the original manuscript for the first time would exert upon me.

The work is a manuscript in the true sense, with erasures, additions, and corrections scattered across its pages. Like Pagitt's 'Memorandum Book' it is prefaced by a list of contents to make locating specific entries easier, and most pages are structured with a wide left-hand margin where additional material could be added. Despite this, in the Harrington entry Aubrey clearly found he had allowed himself insufficient room for what he wanted to say. He ends up adjusting the size of his writing to fit the available space, squeezing tiny vertical notes into the margin, and even pasting in a small additional page of information topped by a pointing finger symbol. The text is also interspersed with illustrations. Most of these are small and crude, such as the sketches of the heraldic shields of his subjects and the drawing in the entry on Harrington of the unusually shaped table that was used during Rota Club meetings to allow the proprietor of Miles's Coffee House to deliver coffee to the participants without disturbing their discussions. Occasionally, however, more detailed images are included, such as the watercolour sketch of Verulum House in the entry on Sir Francis Bacon, which comes complete with a fancy title scroll. All of this may sound chaotic and haphazard, but it results in a manuscript that is simultaneously a provisional 'working' copy and yet a thing of beauty in its unfinished state. Unfortunately I do not have permission to include any images from the manuscript here, but some sense of it can be gained by viewing the entry on William Shakespeare which is displayed on the Folger Library's Shakespeare Documented site.

Portrait of John Aubrey by Michael Vandergucht, after William Faithorne, 1719. National Portrait Gallery, NPG D30214. Reproduced under a Creative Commons License.

As with Pagitt's 'Memorandum Book', the Aubrey manuscript presents to us not just the official, public 'Aubrey' but also the private man. Of course, part of Aubrey's point in the work is to save for posterity ephemeral details about the appearance, habits, and thoughts of his subjects. Yet the work as a whole also does this for Aubrey himself. The frequent inclusion of birth diagrams, for example, remind us that this is a man who believed in astrology. And the entries reveal an author with a voracious appetite for gossip.

Some of this is, of course, evident from the published versions of the work, but there can be no doubt that much is lost in the transformation of a working manuscript into printed form. My friend Professor Phyllis Weliver of Saint Louis University demonstrates this very effectively in a YouTube video she has made in conjunction with Cambridge University Library in which she reveals the additional information that can be gleaned from the manuscript version of Alfred Lord Tennyson's poem 'In Memorium', which is held in the Wren Library at Trinity College, Cambridge.

It is not only in the transformation from manuscript to print that crucial information about a work can be lost, but also in the shift from earlier to modern print editions or - more commonly now - that from print to digital form. In my work on Harrington I have come across several examples of this phenomenon.

One of the arguments of my forthcoming book is that Harrington took very seriously not just the substantive content of his major work The Commonwealth of Oceana, but also its form, style and presentation. Yet key details of his careful presentation are not always reflected either in print editions or even digital renditions of his works. Harrington very deliberately used at least three distinct typefaces to distinguish different elements of this multilayered work. He used gothic type for the thirty constitutional articles or orders that form the core of the 'Model of the Commonwealth of Oceana' section. In doing so he set those orders apart (almost as a text within a text) thereby drawing attention to their similarity to other constitutional models of the time such as the Leveller Agreements of the People or the 'The Instrument of Government' - the constitution by which the nation was then ruled. The use specifically of gothic type can also be seen as giving them a stamp of authority, since it was most commonly used at the time for the Bible and other religious texts. By contrast, the commentary on the orders is in normal roman type, making the authorial voice that it represents the 'norm' of the work as a whole. Finally, the speeches by members of Harrington's 'Council of Legislators' generally appear either in larger or more broadly spaced roman type so that they too can be distinguished from both the orders and the authorial commentary. While these distinct typefaces would seem integral to both the structure and argument of Harrington's text, they were not accurately reproduced by John Pocock in his 1977 Cambridge edition of The Political Works of James Harrington. While the digital versions of Harrington's Oceana available via Early English Books Online fare better in this regard, the use of red type for particular elements of the title page is lost because the digitised editions are in black and white.

Frontispiece from The Oceana and Other Works of James Harrington, ed. John Toland (London, 1737). Private copy. Image by Rachel Hammersley.

Along with typefaces, illustrations are often lost in the transition to modern print or digital editions. Most modern editions of Harrington's works make reference to, and use of, John Toland's 1700 edition. Yet none of those editions reproduce the amazing frontispiece produced by Toland that prefaces and effectively embodies the argument of Harrington's text. While not original to Harrington's works, this image is so illuminating of them that there is a strong case for it to be viewed alongside them, yet to do so one must either find an original copy of Toland's edition or view the digital reproduction of it available via Eighteenth Century Collections Online. It is no doubt for this reason that it is only with the pioneering work of Justin Champion in the early twenty-first century that the symbolism and meaning of that image has been subjected to proper analysis.

Finally, it is important to remember that distinct copies of an original manuscript or printed text might reveal information not conveyed by them all. This might include marginal comments added by the author or a later owner of the book or manuscript; additional material added or 'tipped' into the work; or information that can be gleaned about the way it was classified, read, or used as a result of how, or with which other works, it was bound. Harrington, in his 'Epistle to the Reader' lamented that the first printed edition of Oceana was not as polished as he would have liked. The fact that the work had been dispersed between three presses for printing, among other difficulties, had resulted in multiple typographical errors, and he urged the reader to use the three pages of errata that he supplied to correct their own copy. I see this instruction to the reader as reflective of Harrington's desire to encourage active engagement with his work and the ideas it contained. It is, therefore, of significance that at least one reader appears to have taken heed of Harrington's call. In a version of the text held at the Alexander Turnbull Library in Wellington, New Zealand, the errata have been incorporated into the text itself. In some places the error has been scratched out:

Extract from a copy of the John Streater version of James Harrington, The Commonwealth of Oceana (London, 1656). Reproduced courtesy of the Alexander Turnbull Library, with particular thanks to Anthony Tedeschi.

Elsewhere a handwritten correction has been made in the margin, and in other places places a small strip of paper with the correct word printed on it has been pasted over the error: 

Extract from a copy of the John Streater version of James Harrington, The Commonwealth of Oceana (London, 1656), Reproduced courtesy of the Alexander Turnbull Library, with particular thanks to Anthony Tedeschi.

This serves to remind us that books were physical objects that were engaged with in a variety of ways by their owners and readers. 

As I have discovered in my research on Harrington, engaging with original copies of both manuscripts and printed books, and paying attention not just to their content but also to their physical form and materiality, can greatly enrich our understanding of the intentions of their authors as well as of whether or not they achieved their aims.

Republics v Monarchies

The Scottish National Party recently brought the question of the Monarchy back onto the political agenda by voting at their 2017 party conference in favour of cutting public funding for the Royal Family. Delegates supported overwhelmingly a motion calling for the repeal of the Sovereign Grant Act of 2011. While the vote will not bring immediate political change, since Westminster retains control of the Sovereign Grant, the vote has drawn attention once again to the alleged republicanism at the heart of the SNP and the idea that an independent Scotland might choose to replace the Queen as head of state. Such suggestions always produce strong views on both sides, usually labelled 'republican' and 'monarchist'.

On the surface, at least, the distinction between republics and monarchies is a crucial feature of our modern political landscape. Yet the history of these two constitutional forms is far more complex than this simple dichotomy would suggest. Indeed, according to one historical definition, Britain is and has long been a republic, whereas on the basis of another neither France nor the United States of America is worthy of that term. Monarchists and republicans alike might, therefore, benefit from a deeper understanding of the history of these political concepts.

Bust of Cicero. I am grateful to Katie East for providing the image.

The concept of republican government, in both theory and practice, dates back at least to ancient Rome. It was explored in a number of Roman texts, not least those of Marcus Tullius Cicero who was both a politician and a political thinker. In his De re publica Cicero did not define a republic or commonwealth in opposition to kingship, but instead argued 'that a commonwealth (that is the concern of the people) then truly exists when its affairs are conducted well and justly, whether by a single king, or by a few aristocrats, or by the people as a whole'. (Cicero, On the Commonwealth, ed. James. E. G. Zetzel Cambridge, 1999,  p. 59). The key distinction here, then, is between rule that serves the public interest and that which serves private interests. So, on Cicero's account, a monarchy, if properly organised and directed towards the public good, could be a kind of republic. That same idea was still being voiced as late as the mid-eighteenth century, when the Genevan-born political theorist Jean-Jacques Rousseau wrote in his Social Contract:

I therefore call Republic any State ruled by laws, whatever be the form of administration: for then the public interest alone governs, and the public thing counts for something. Every legitimate government is republican.

The accompanying footnote might appear self-contradictory, if Cicero's position is not borne in mind:

Statue of Jean-Jacques Rousseau outside the Pantheon in Paris. Image by Rachel Hammersley.

By this word I understand not only an Aristocracy or a Democracy, but in general any government guided by the general will, which is the law. To be legitimate, the Government must be not confused with the Sovereign, but be its minister. Then monarchy itself is a republic. (Jean-Jacques Rousseau, The Social Contract, ed. Victor Gourevitch, Cambridge, 1997, p. 67)

   But while the Ciceronian understanding of a republic survived well into the eighteenth century, from the late fifteenth century onwards a second understanding was developing. This saw monarchy not as one form of republican government, but as its direct opposite. Several historians have recently traced the development of this tradition of republican thought, emphasising its debt to the writings of Italian Renaissance thinkers as well as to a tradition of Jewish Biblical scholarship that offered a distinctive take on the Israelites' plea to God in I Samuel 8 that they be given a king like other nations.

By the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries there were certainly those who saw republican government as requiring the destruction of monarchy. The English Civil War of the 1640s prompted some parliamentarians to attack not simply Charles I, or even just tyrants, but all kings. Marchamont Nedham was one of several figures who challenged the very distinction between kings and tyrants: 'Had they [the English] but once tasted the sweets of peace and liberty both together, they would soon be of the opinion of Herodotus and Demosthenes that there is no difference between king and tyrant and become as zealous as the ancient Romans were in defence of their freedom.' (Marchamont Nedham, The Case of the Commonwealth of England Stated, ed. Philip A. Knachel, Charlottesville, 1969, pp. 127-8). This view had practical import too. The 'Act Abolishing the Office of King', which was passed on 17 March 1649, declared the office of king to be 'unnecessary, burdensome, and dangerous to the liberty, safety, and public interest of the people' and the ensuing 'Act Declaring England to be a Commonwealth and Free State', which was passed in May 1649, insisted that this government was to be 'without any King or House of Lords'.

John Milton, by unknown artist, National Portrait Gallery, NPG4222. Reproduced under a creative commons license.

Yet even this does not present the full complexity of the concept, since those who agreed that republicanism was, by definition, anti-monarchical, could nevertheless disagree over precisely what institutional form should replace the office of king. Most significant was the distinction between those who insisted merely on the absence of a monarch, and those who outlawed any form of single-person rule. Thus a third definition of republic required that the government was not headed by a single figure, but by a group or council. As John Milton asserted in The Readie and Easy Way to Establish a Free Commonwealth: 'I doubt not but all ingenuous and knowing men will easily agree with me, that a free Commonwealth without single person or house of lords, is by far the best government, if it can be had.' (John Milton, The Readie and Easy Way, in Selected Prose, ed. C. A. Parties, Harmondsworth, p. 338). Milton's formulation ruled out both monarchy (as in the reign of Charles I) and a Protectorate (as under Oliver Cromwell).

Moreover, the English revolutionaries had attempted to institute such a form a decade earlier. When Charles I was executed on 30 January 1649 he was replaced not by another single person, but rather by the Rump Parliament, which ruled together with its Council of State, until April 1653. Yet as its short life - and the rise of Oliver Cromwell - would suggest, experiments involving a purely conciliar government have often proved unsuccessful in practice. The experiments in France in the 1790s with the Committee of Public Safety, and later the Directory, further confirmed this conclusion.

Evidently, it is the second definition of a republic outlined above that is most common today, so that a republican wishes to abolish the Monarchy. According to the first definition, that of Cicero, modern Britain could, despite having a Queen as head of state, be counted as a republic so long as government decisions were made in the public interest. Indeed, there were those in the eighteenth century who made precisely that argument. In 1700, the controversial political thinker and activist John Toland declared that 'if a Commonwealth be a Government of Laws enacted for the Common good of all the People' and if they had some means to consent to those laws 'Then it is undeniably manifest that the English Government is already a Commonwealth, the most free and best constituted in all the world.' (John Toland, The Oceana and Other Works of James Harrington, London, 1737, p. vii-viii). According to the third definition, by contrast, which requires that a single person must not be given considerable power, neither France nor the United States of America (both of which have a President), would be deemed worthy of that label.

Viewed historically, 'monarchy', is no easier to define than 'republic'. We can see this if we consider precisely what features make a monarch. Hereditary rule might be thought of as one key element, but this does not hold in the case of the early-modern Polish monarchy, which was elective. We might, then, say that a monarch generally holds his or her position for life. This would work for the Polish system, but it was also true of the Doge of Venice during the same period, and yet most people would argue that the Doge was the head of a republic rather than being a monarch.  Instead of thinking about the nature of the position, then, we might consider the extent of the power wielded. But this seems no more satisfactory as a basis for distinguishing monarchies from republics, since from the late eighteenth century to the present the President of the United States of America has tended to wield far greater powers than the English monarch. While part of the problem here is that the modern British Monarchy is in some ways a misnomer, since our Queen is a hereditary figurehead rather than a power-wielding head of government, even in the late eighteenth century George Washington already enjoyed greater powers in certain respects than George III. (For an interesting exploration of the royal tendencies in the American system see Eric Nelson, The Royalist Revolution, Cambridge Massachusetts, 2014).

John Lilburne, England's New Chains Discovered, London, 1649. http://oll.libertyfund.org/pages/leveller-tracts-6. 18.10.17. Taken from the Online Library of Liberty [http://oll.liberty.org] hosted by Liberty Fund, Inc.

This is not to say that important differences between what are conventionally labelled as monarchies and republics do not exist. The expenditure of public money on the Royal Family and the upkeep of royal palaces has always been one of the stronger arguments in the British republican arsenal (though of course presidential systems and legislative assemblies also incur costs). But we must also be careful not to assume that all our political problems can be solved by establishing a republic. It did not take long even for those seventeenth-century English revolutionaries who had called for an end to the monarchy to realise that many problems remained in its wake. Perhaps the best illustration of this is the fact that, less than a month after the regicide, the Leveller leader John Lilburne published a pamphlet which he entitled England's New Chains Discovered.