Rationalism,according to them,meant simply an attack upon the traditional sanctions of morality.and it scarcely occurred to them to ask for any philosophical foundation of their creed.Wilberforce's book,A Practical View,attained an immense popularity,and is characteristic of the position.Wilberforce turns over the infidel to be confuted by Paley,whom he takes to be a conclusive reasoner.For himself he is content to show what needed little proof,that the so-called Christians of the day could act as if they had never heard of the New Testament.The Evangelical movement had in short no distinct relation to speculative movements.It took the old tradition for granted,and it need not here be further considered.
One other remark is suggested by the agitation against the slave-trade.
It set a precedent for agitation of a kind afterwards familiar.The committee appealed to the country,and got up petitions.Sound Tories complained of them in the early slave-trade debates,as attempts to dictate to parliament by democratic methods.Political agitators had formed associations,and found a convenient instrument in the 'county meetings,'which seems to have possessed a kind of indefinite legal character.(54)Such associations of course depend for the great part of their influence upon the press.The circulation of literature was one great object.Paine's Rights of Man was distributed by the revolutionary party,and Hannah More wrote popular tracts to persuade the poor that they had no grievances.It is said that two millions of her little tracts,'Village Politics by Will Chip,'the 'Shepherd of Salisbury Plain,'and so forth were circulated.The demand,indeed,showed rather the eagerness of the rich to get them read than the eagerness of the poor to read them.They failed to destroy Paine's influence,but they were successful enough to lead to the foundation of the Religious Tract Society.The attempt to influence the poor by cheap literature shows that these opinions were beginning to demand consideration.Cobbett and many others were soon to use the new weapon.Meanwhile the newspapers circulated among the higher.ranks were passing through a new phase,which must be noted.The great newspapers were gaining power.The Morning Chronicle was started by Woodfall in 1769,the Morning Post and Morning Herald by Dudley Bate in 1772and 1780,and the Times by Walter in 1788.The modern editor was to appear during the war.
Stoddart and Barnes of the Times,Perry and Black of the Morning ChrOnicle,were to become important politically.The revolutionary period marks the transition from the old-fashioned newspaper,carried on by a publisher and an author,to the modern newspaper,which represents a kind of separate organism,elaborately 'differentiated'and worked by a whole army of co-operating editors,correspondents,reporters,and contributors.Finally,one remark may be made.
The literary class in England was not generally opposed to the governing classes.The tone of Johnson's whole circle was conservative.In fact,since Harley's time,government had felt the need of support in the press,and politicians on both sides had their regular organs.The opposition might at any time become the government;and their supporters in the press,poor men who were only too dependent,had no motive for going beyond the doctrines of their principals.They might be bought by opponents,or they might be faithful to a patron.They did not form a band of outcasts,whose hand would be against every one.The libel law was severe enough,but there had been no licensing system since the early days of William and Mary.A man could publish what he chose at his own peril.When the current of popular feeling was anti-revolutionary,government might obtain a conviction,but even in the worst times there was a chance that juries might be restive.Editors had at times to go to prison,but even then the paper was not suppressed.
Cobbett,for example,continued to publish his Registrar during an imprisonment of two years (1810-12).Editors had very serious anxieties,but they could express with freedom any opinion which had the support of a party.English liberty was so far a reality that a very free discussion of the political problems of the day was permitted and practised.The English author,therefore,as such,had not the bitterness of a French man of letters,unless,indeed,he had the misfortune to be an uncompromising revolutionist.
V.THE FRENCH REVOLUTION
The English society which I have endeavoured to characterise was now to be thrown into the vortex of the revolutionary wars.The surpassing dramatic interest of the French Revolution has tended to obscure our perception of the continuity of even English history.It has been easy to ascribe to the contagion of French example political movements which were already beginning in England and which were modified rather than materially altered by our share in the great European convulsion.The impression made upon Englishmen by the French Revolution is,however,in the highest degree characteristic.