Thomas Spence and the Rights of Man
Archibald C. Matteson, Jr.
[Reprinted from the Henry George News,
February, 1952]
You deserve to know Thomas Spence much better.
He occupies a high place in our fellowship. He thoroughly understood
the land problem and propounded its solution in terms which closely
paralleled those of Henry George. He did this, furthermore, with
dogged courage for forty years in the face of repeated and painful
rebuffs at the hands of hostile authorities. And through all his
difficulties, this lovable little guy never compromised, but faced his
punishment with a charming blend of gayety, uncommon sense and boyish
ebullience.
You should know something, first of his background.
In the first half of the 1700's, Scotch lairds and a captive church
were dispossessing crofters in considerable numbers; among them, the "Scotch-Irish"
who settled western Pennsylvania and Virginia. Led by a renegade
preacher named James Murray, a small colony moved to
Newcastle-on-Tyne, attracted by a variety of opportunities available
in this small but growing port. Spence's father, a net-maker, arrived
from Aberdeen in 1739. He was always poor but married twice, and
Thomas, born in 1750, arrived toward the end of a string of 19
children.
As a matter of course, the sons worked with their father and while
they worked one would read a passage from the Old Testament. In the
ensuing discussion, the origins of land titles, aristocracy and
poverty became clear to young Tom.
As soon as he was old enough, he became clerk to a smith, but under
James Murray's further tutelage he qualified as a teacher and opened a
school. Conscious of the "burr" in his Northern dialect,
Spence invented a phonetic alphabet to improve pronunciation. For the
rest of his life he promoted his system of spelling, and published
numerous works using it. However interesting, the Spencean orthography
must be treated briefly, for we are much more interested in his
efforts on behalf of justice.
In 1775 a Philosophical Society was organized in Newcastle, and
Murray and Spence were members On the evening of November 8, Spence
delivered a talk with the revealing title "On the Mode of
Administering the Landed Estate of the Nation as a Joint Stock
Property in Parochial Partnership by Dividing the Rent." The
parish, according to this plan, would take title to the land, collect
rent from the occupiers, and after setting aside funds for national,
county and local expenses, return the remainder in equal shares to
every inhabitant. There would be no taxes or tolls, and anyone could
live anywhere he chose.
Spence had the speech printed and sold in the streets; the society,
despite the objections of Murray, forthwith expelled the young
schoolmaster from its ranks. From then on, his standing in the
community deteriorated, and there ensued a period in his life about
which little is known, save that he was unhappy and difficult to get
along with. Thomas Bewick, the celebrated engraver and a life-long
friend, wrote that Spence "got a number of young men gathered
together and formed into a debating society {with] the purpose chiefly
of making converts to his opinion that property in land is everyone's
right." One night Bewick failed to defend him; the vote was
against him; and after losing a cudgeling match to Bewick, Spence "became
quite outrageous and acted very unfairly, which obliged me to give him
a severe beating." Another acquaintance, Francis Place, wrote
that he was "often heard to say that there was no scope for
ability in a provincial town, and that London was the only place where
a man of talent could display his powers.
Spence nevertheless continued to teach school and to publish booklets
for instruction, but his fortunes declined. He married, not very
happily, and the last record of his personal life in Newcastle was
about 1783, when he was running an employment exchange for servants.
Some time afterward, Spence turned up in London with his young son
William, and rented a booth in Chancery-Lane, where he sold saloup (a
drink made out of sugar, milk and sassafras) and pamphlets. He had
rewritten the 1775 speech as a long song of 31 four-line verses, to be
sung to the tune "Chevy Chase," and changed the title to "The
Rights of Man, in Verse." In December 1792 he was arrested by two
government agents who bought a copy of the song under the mistaken
impression that they were getting something by Thomas Paine. A few
days later they returned, Spence sold them Paine's Rights of Man,
Part II, and was forthwith thrown into jail, an experience that
was to be repeated many times.
The authorities, of course, were quite panicky at the time, for not
only were there many persons who openly admired the success of the
colonists in America in achieving independence, but there were lively
doings across the channel also. In consequence, recurrent states of
emergency were cited to justify suspensions of habeas corpus,
whereupon arrests in large numbers would follow.
Edmund Burke's reference to "the swinish multitude"
provided Spence with a title for his greatest publishing venture.
Between 1793 and 1796, he issued a weekly paper called "Pigs'
Meat; or, Lessons for the Swinish Multitude," consisting of
excerpts from many writings on liberty, attacks on despotism, and
frequent verse. These papers were later issued as complete volumes;
there were three in all, each with an engraved frontispiece by
Spence's son.
The frontispiece for Volume I depicts a well-fed missionary and three
graceful Indians. The missionary says: "God has enjoined you to
be Christians, to pay rent and tythes, and become a Civilized People."
One Indian replies: "If Rent we once consent to pay, Taxes next
you'll on us lay, And then our Freedom's poured away;" at which
the Indians chorus: "With the Beasts of the Wood We'll ramble for
Food, And live in wild deserts and Caves; And live poor as Job, On the
Skirts of the Globe, Before we'll consent to be Slaves, My Brave Boys,
Before We'll consent to be Slaves!"
The frontispiece for Volume II has two Indians gazing at an unhappy
donkey. One Indian says: "Behold the civilized Ass, Two pairs of
Panyers on his Back; the First with Rents a heavy mass; With Taxes
next his bones do crack." To which the donkey brays in response: "I'm
doomed to endless Toil and Care-I was an Ass to bear the first Pair."
While he was in jail in 1792, Spence's landlord evicted him from
Chancery Lane, and he later had a shop in a narrow passage called
Little Turnstile. He called it "The Hive of Liberty" and he
lived for a time mainly by making and selling tokens. In those days
the petty coinage of the realm was in bad condition, and although the
tokens were sold merely as pocket-pieces or mementoes, many of them
actually became media of exchange. Spence, however, was a demoralizing
influence in the token trade, because instead of selling them, he
persisted in showering them on passersby from an upstairs window. He
finally went broke, but must have enjoyed himself in the process.
One of his favorite tokens carried a hand-some pig, based on a Bewick
drawing, as an advertisement for "Pigs' Meat." On the other
side was the simple declaration: "Tho. Spence, Sir Tho. More,
Tho. Paine~Noted Advocates for the Rights of Man."
Before very long, however, Spence came to realize that his conception
of natural rights went very much further than did Paine's, and in 1796
he prefaced yet another edition of his speech (this time under the
title "The Meridian Sun of Liberty, for the Whole Rights of Man
Displayed") with a dialogue between Citizen Reader and Author in
which the following passages occur:
Reader: . . . After all that
Paine and others have taught us, do we not yet know the Rights of
Man?
[Do they not] consist in a fair, equal, and impartial
representation of the people in Parliament?
Author. No. Nobody ought to have right of suffrage or
representation in a society wherein they have no property . . .
especially such men as being afraid to look their rights in the
face, have disfranchised and alienated themselves by ... renouncing
all claim to the soil of their birth, and profess to be content with
the "Right of property in the fruits of their industry,
ingenuity, and good fortune"
You own that the landed interest are the legal proprietors of their
estates and . . . the legal possessors of the fountains of life; and
yet
you would abolish the right of primogeniture . prevent
the monopoly of farms . . . and thus -- and thus -- at your whim . .
. contrary to your own fundamental maxim of right and wrong.
If the Rights of Man be definable, as I believe they are, let them
be accurately defined, and then let them be sacred . . . Is it
necessary that our rights, like the rainbow, should always recede
from us as they advance . . . subject to this decree and tomorrow to
that, as it pleaseth a few of our leading demagogues . ..?
Reader. Are we then, because we have no land, to do nothing in nor
own defense against oppression?
Author. If you don't like the country ... pray leave it, You have
no more right to this country than to any other. While you allow the
justice of private property in land, you justify everything the
landed interest do . . . for the country is theirs. They act
infinitely more consistently in debarring such unprincipled
legislators from interfering among them, than you do in demanding
rights which are inexplicable. Noble architects, truly: who would
pull down before you know what to build.
This is not
establishing the immoveable Temple of Justice, but erecting the
wavering standard of Robbery.
At the end of the pamphlet, Spence repeats his bitter opinion of the
Friends of Liberty in these couplets:
Of kings and courtiers how the fools complain!
Nor blame their own inord'nate love of gain.
None think that while dire landlords they allow,
To kings and knaves they'll still be doomed to bow.
None think that each, by favoring the deceit,
Himself''s a foolish party to the cheat.
Few can be landlords; and these very few
Must, to succeed, their brothers all undo,
Yet each low wretch for Lordship fierce does burn,
And longs to act the tyrant in his turn!
Nor longs alone, but hopes, be/ore he dies,
To have his rents, and live on tears and sighs!
In February 1801, Spence published a pamphlet entitled "The
Restorer of Society to Its Natural State" in which he put forward
his plan in a series of letters to a citizen. He was arrested, and
convicted of uttering a seditious libel, fined and sentenced to a year
in prison. An account of the trial, containing the entire pamphlet and
Spence's defense which he conducted himself, was printed in his
phonetic orthography as "a Present of Respect to the worthy
People, who contributed to the Relief of Mr. Spence."
I found this little book extraordinarily appealing, and purloined a
rare original from the Boston Public Library long enough to have it
photographed and, with the assistance of Winnifred Farnum, reprinted
in a facsimile edition. (Single copies are available at $1.50)
Following his release from prison, Spence seems to have been a much
less stormy individual. His son had died about 1798, and a second
marriage had not proved successful, yet he is described as having "an
open and expressive countenance, great liveliness of temper, and
manners peculiarly affable and pleasing. In conversation he displayed
much mildness and humor, and was remarkably exempt from the sourness
of political dogmatism."
Indeed, Spence was no politician. "His up-right intentions have
never been disputed, and he was always more anxious for the extension
of what he considered useful truths, than for the establishment of his
influence at the head of a party." Instead, he undertook to
spread them simply by meeting with friends and having such a good time
that others would wish to join in. Convivial evenings with ale and
songs were their propaganda ("At the Sign of the Fleece, Little
Windmill St., the Free and Easy meets, every Tuesday evening, at 8
o'clock") and adherents were not lacking. Notable among these was
Thomas Evans. Even Southey, though he disapproved of Spence's stand,
complimented him upon his reasoning and his demeanor.
In all, there were well over a dozen songs, all set to popular tunes
of the day. The titles were often suggestive of the content, such as "An
Address to Posterity, warning them against the Landlord Judas,"
The Touchstone of Honesty" (tune: Lillibullero), "The Rights
of Man for Me" (tune: Maid of the Mill), "The In-efficacy of
the French Revolution" (tune: Malbrouck), and especially, "Hark
How the Trumpets Sound" (tune: God Save the King), which is
noteworthy for its three footnotes: one to Leviticus, ch. 25, one to
Isaiah, ch. 14, and the third consisting of a 167-word subordinate
clause containing the gist of the plan.
As the years rolled on, Spence continued to put forward his doctrine,
and to win friends for it. He had just started a new weekly, "The
Giant Killer," when he died suddenly in September 1814. He was
buried in a style which he would have liked. "His remains were
followed by a numerous throng of political admirers. Appropriate
medalions were distributed, and a pair of scales preceded the body,
indicative of the justice of his views."
He was survived by The Society of Spencean Philanthropists, devotedly
led by Thomas Evans. Indeed, when habeas corpus was next suspended, in
1817, this organization was cited as a sufficient reason. People were
transported to Australia for this sort of thing, and it is interesting
to speculate on the share of credit which is due Spence for the
development of the Australian land policy.
However that may be, my acquaintance with Thomas Spence, although
limited, has been extremely pleasant. I hope that many of you may also
enjoy getting to know this wonderful man.
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