Читать книгу An Account of Denmark - Robert Molesworth - Страница 11

An Account of Denmark was recorded in the Stationer’s Register on December 16, 1693, to publisher Timothy Goodwin. Subsequently, Daniel Poplar was threatened with prosecution for licensing the work. David Hayton has discovered evidence that throws important light on the scribal circulation of the text in the winter of 1693. John Stanley noted in correspondence with Robert Harley (at that time the driving force of the Country interest) that he possessed a copy of the work to which Molesworth was keen to restrict access. “Importuned by some of his friends,” Molesworth judged that it was best to coordinate publication with the new Parliamentary session in early October.⁶⁹

After publication, although the Account was admired by many Whigs, the reputation of the work was tarnished by the king of Denmark’s formal complaint to the Privy Council.⁷⁰ Nevertheless (or perhaps because of this), demand was such that Goodwin, his first edition possibly selling some one thousand per week, produced a third edition in March 1694. A second “foxed” edition was also produced by unknown persons. It is estimated that some six thousand copies were sold at this early stage. Continental editions followed almost immediately, with Dutch clandestine versions in French produced under the imprints (fictitious and not) of Pieter Rabus, Adrian Braakman, and Pierre Marteau. Certainly the work remained available for purchase. The exiled Thomas Johnson in the book-shop familiarly named the Libraire Anglois, Pooten in the Hague, offered copies in the 1700s alongside other classics of the Whig and republican canon such as Buchanan, Ludlow, Spinoza, Locke, Tyrrell, and Sidney. The work was a best-seller, outperforming contemporary works by Locke and others and receiving reviews in English and continental literary journals such as Journal de Hambourg (1695) and Histoire des ouvrages des scavans (1694). A fragment of the preface was also published in 1713.⁷¹ As the Bibliographical Descriptions indicate, the work reached some twenty-two editions in the eighteenth century. Records of book ownership suggest it was widely owned in the British Isles and North America.

The semiofficial response of the Danish government was coordinated by Skeel from April 1694. The complaint that William III should have the book burned and the author executed met with a frosty response: “That I cannot do but, if you please, I will tell him what you say, and he shall put it into the next edition of his book.”⁷² A number of profoundly hostile English-language works, notably William King’s Animadversions on a pretended account of Denmark (1694), disputed Molesworth’s reports of “habitual slavery” as “due obedience to supreme powers.”⁷³ Evidence of the capacity of the work to provoke debate is confirmed by the fact that it was later cited in the House of Commons by a member of Parliament critical of William III’s use of the veto.⁷⁴

Molesworth completed his translation of Hotman’s Francogallia sometime in 1705; it was first published in 1711 by Timothy Goodwin, without the original editorial preface, which was regarded as too incendiary for the times. Subsequently, the complete edition was published in 1721 by another publisher, Edward Valentine, this time with additional material from Pierre Bayle’s biographical account of Hotman. The preface—later known under the title The Principles of a Real Whig —became a clarion call for the commonwealth tradition in the eighteenth century. Editions of both the Account and Francogallia were available throughout the century. Booksellers’ advertisements in newspapers indicate that the two volumes were usually sold for common binding, or for binding together in one volume. (The publication of new editions of the Account prompted notice of the translation of Hotman’s French work, as the flurry of monthly ads in the London Evening Post between January 1758 and 1761 indicates.)

Evidence of the persisting relevance of the edition can be found in an item in the Gazetteer and London Daily Advertiser of March 13, 1764, responding to defenses of royal prerogative; the author of that “ill designed piece is either a madman, or an arrant Tory, i.e., a villain willingly ready to metamorphose himself into a low petty fawning cur to any ignorant weak king, as soon as such a one shall sit on the throne.” Extracting passages from chapter 15 of Francogallia, which suggested monarchs were secondary to the “whole politic body,” the article continued to recommend “the serious reading not only of the Francogallia, but also of the other most valuable performances of that rare patriot, the real nobleman, Lord Molesworth.” Men like him, “the immortal Whigs,” had begun and completed “the preservation and defence of the natural and social rights of Great Britain,” which were a durable model of how to engage with “tyrannical oppression.”⁷⁵ Newspaper comments in 1788 and 1793 reinforced this persisting afterlife in commending the lessons of Francogallia to the cause of “publick liberty” in France.⁷⁶

The edition of Hotman’s work was translated from a combination of the first edition and the 1576 Latin edition. Between the publication of the 1705 and 1721 editions, Molesworth included supplementary material from the original (chapter 19, “concerning the most important affairs of religion”).⁷⁷ This latter edition saw the expansion of the “preface” from one that made brief remarks about the defense of liberty to the full-blown articulation of “real Whig” ideology.

Indeed, in the interval between the two versions the precise context for the work altered considerably. The 1711 edition had been published under the rule of a queen (which accounts for the judicious remarks made by Molesworth, who was critical of Hotman’s hostile tone in the chapter concerning the rule of queens). The book was also made public at a time when Louis XIV’s military power threatened the security of the Protestant succession (it may well have been calculated to appeal to audiences involved in the complex diplomatic context of the end of the War of the Spanish Succession).

Molesworth also included (in both editions) a biographical portrait of Hotman drawn almost exclusively from Pierre Bayle’s Historical Dictionary. This account reworked the complex ballet between main text and footnotes in Bayle’s original into a seamless celebration of Hotman’s dedication to the principles of constitutional liberty and erudition. Interestingly, Molesworth decided to exclude the material Bayle composed related to Hotman’s theological commitments, preferring to represent his contributions as predominantly civil in idiom.

While complete editions of Francogallia were subsequently republished after 1738, the afterlife of the preface to the volume was even more complex. Large fragments were published in John Ker’s memoirs.⁷⁸ A full transcription was included in the Wilkesite monthly pamphlet The Political Register, produced by John Almon (later successfully prosecuted for publishing Junius’s letters) in April 1768. The issue was subsequently reprinted in collected volumes of the same work. Almon, under the sobriquet “an independent Whig,” was later to publish works by Paine, Wilkes, and others. Indeed, it seems likely that he also published an unacknowledged history of Denmark based on Molesworth’s work. A list of books and pamphlets printed in 1768 notes “this day are published” An Account of Denmark. Antient and Modern, which was meant to contain “its history from Swain the first Christian King to the present time.” Ornamented with a print of the contemporary king and queen, it was priced at “3s. sewed.”⁷⁹ Demand was such that John Almon certainly produced a new printing of Francogallia in the winter of 1771–72.⁸⁰

Even more significantly, an edition of the preface was produced by the “real Whig” London Association in 1775 (sold at 3d each or fifty copies for 8 shillings), dedicated to the “protesting peers, the uncorrupted minority in the House of Commons, the patriotic Freeholders of Middlesex.” Indeed the preface was suitable for “every true, free Englishman, in the British Empire, who is willing and ready to maintain a steady opposition to the introduction of Popery and Slavery into these realms.”⁸¹ Thomas Hollis had displayed sympathy for American attempts to preserve the traditions of English liberty and indeed circulated copies of works like James Otis’s Rights of the British colonists asserted and proved. Closely allied with Wilkes and printers like Almon, groups of like-minded common-wealthmen gathered in London clubs like the Honest Whigs, the Bill of Rights Society, and the Constitutional Society to mobilize civic support for America among the common councilmen and aldermen.

Published in the early autumn of 1775, Molesworth’s preface was offered to a new readership as a radical defense of the revolutionary military resistance of the colonies at Lexington and Concord against arbitrary power. The London Association, formed in the summer of 1775 at the Globe Tavern from a group of the capital’s more radical tradesmen and artisans, was, as a hostile contemporary noted, “principally intended to recommend and abett in this country the Rebellion which now exists in America.”⁸² Produced by men with connections to both John Wilkes and Thomas Hollis, the publication explicitly connected the traditions of 1689 with the political values inscribed in Molesworth’s preface: promotion of a frequent and independent parliament, regulations against bribery and corrupt office holding, pro-trade taxation policy, anti–standing army, and pro–citizen militia. The 1775 republication chimed with the ambitions of the colonies in promoting “Constitutional Freedom and National Happiness.” As the London Association’s attached circular letter made clear, “arbitrary” behavior by ministers had “openly violated and endeavoured to subvert our excellent constitution.” The ambition was to encourage similar associations for “reciprocal communication.” To this end the London Association in partnership with the bookseller John Williams, and following Hollis’s model, offered a range of other works, “[including] in a few days will be published, elegantly printed, HOTOMAN’s FRANCO-GALLIA, translated by the late Lord Molesworth.” On this list were many works of Wilkes and others defending popular rights of petitioning, popular sovereignty, and civic freedom.⁸³ The London Association also sponsored the colonialists’ Declaration . . . setting forth the causes and necessity of taking up Arms (1775) “for the noble purpose of opposing the Inroads of Tyranny.”⁸⁴

The London Association used the newspapers to promote an ideology based almost exclusively on Molesworth’s preface. The September 14 edition of the London Evening News, noting the forthcoming publication of Molesworth’s preface, recommended it to the “public” as encapsulating “those genuine principles of a real Whig which actuate the London Association, and are the solid groundwork of all their resolutions.” Reading Molesworth would restore the constitution and “save a sinking nation.” To complement this invocation of the real Whig legacy, the London Association had duplicate copies published of an account of the reading habits of a Whig Shrewsbury brass-metal worker of the 1730s. As it described how the unnamed worthy, persecuted by Tories, found solace and “rapture” in frequent reading of Molesworth’s works, the distinction between those who approved of encroachments on the constitution and those who maintained the “people’s prerogative” was ever persistent. The nomenclature of Cavaliers and Roundheads, High Church and Low, Court and Country was more generally recorded as Whig and Tory. Too many were deluded by “a numerous herd of prostitute writers” into an unthinking dependency, but underneath, “the majority of people are naturally OLD WHIGS.” Now was the time to abandon neutrality by reading Molesworth’s preface. As the item concluded, “I wish every man in the nation would condescend to read it.”⁸⁵

Evidence that Molesworth was a sensitive and thoughtful witness of contemporary society is found in the economic reflections and recommendations of the final text included in this collection: Some considerations for the promoting of agriculture, and employing the poor, published in Dublin in 1723. Surviving correspondence reveals Molesworth to have been a keen observer of natural and agricultural life. His letters are littered with repeated discussions of a variety of agricultural matters: the stocking of fishponds was evidently a particular interest.⁸⁶ The arguments developed in the Considerations drew from his skill and abilities in the world of estate management and domestic economy. He turned this practical experience into a thoughtful discussion of the role the state could assume in developing a more productive economy and social policy. As with the Account of Denmark, Molesworth understood that there was a connection between material circumstances, public institutions, and political values.

Undertaking a comparative analysis of landownership, leases, and tithing practices in Ireland and England, Molesworth turned his own experience of managing estates into an instrument for the cultivation of a better civic community. Following Harringtonian commonplaces, Molesworth emphasized the role of landownership as the platform for virtuous public service. A prerequisite for membership in the House of Commons should be the possession of “Estates in the Kingdom.” Such properties should not be “fleeting ones, which may be sent beyond Sea by Bills of Exchange by every Pacquet-Boat, but fix’d and permanent.” Those merchants, bankers, and “money’d men” ambitious of senatorial position “should have also a competent, visible Land Estate.” Disagreeing with the contemporary argument that moneyed status was preferable to having estates encumbered with debts and mortgages, he suggested that those with estates would have the same interest as the rest of the country when it came to “publick Taxes, Gains and Losses.”⁸⁷

Despite this apparent conservatism, Molesworth’s broader vision of economic life was active. He was, for example, in favor of a general naturalization as a device to increase the population and stimulate trade. Expanding the number of workmen in any town would enable the community to thrive. As a consequence, “the greater will be the Demand of the Manufacture, and the Vent to foreign Parts, and the quicker Circulation of the Coin.”⁸⁸ Decrying the restrictive practices of many town corporations where commerce was entangled in complex bylaws, Molesworth argued that new unincorporated villages were “more liberal” in their regulatory structures and by consequence deserved parliamentary representation. Such “better peopled” (i.e., more populous) and “more industrious” places were preferable to wastes and deserts like Old Sarum.⁸⁹

Benefiting “the public” was the criterion for economic and fiscal policy. Potentially, “Parliamentary Credit” could promote “all publick Buildings and Highways, the making all Rivers Navigable that are capable of it, employing the Poor, suppressing Idlers, restraining Monopolies upon Trade, maintaining the liberty of the Press, the just paying and encouraging of all in the publick Service.”⁹⁰ Far from decrying the burdens of taxation to support such government initiatives (especially in the costly business of continental war), Molesworth insisted that “no true Englishman will grudge to pay Taxes whilst he has a Penny in his Purse.” Since the cost of government was managed in a frugal manner, a citizen who “sees the Publick Money well laid out for the great Ends for which ’tis given” would contribute according to his abilities.⁹¹ Notwithstanding Molesworth’s commitment to the virtues of landed property and its political culture, he was appreciative of the possibilities of an industrious nation.

Molesworth’s extensive correspondence reveals a predisposition to value the political function of a landed aristocracy combined with an appreciation of the contributions of commerce and industry. Molesworth spent most of his life in pursuit of financial security for his extensive family. His hope that government office would bring with it secure income was repeatedly disappointed. His sons feared that their interest was compromised by the fierce paternal reputation for “true noble Roman courage that neither rewards nor threatenings can change.”⁹² This pursuit of security and independence ironically drove Molesworth into an unwise decision to invest in South Sea stock, which resulted only in further debt. A frugal man (drawing only £25 per month “for all expenses relating to myself in England”), he regretted the folly of his speculative investment in South Sea stock. The £2000 he invested was borrowed in the vain hope that the stock would “further rise, and in order to cheat some other buyer, fancying that it would not die in my hands.”⁹³ That the price fell two days after he had purchased the stock, as he lamented, served him right. Molesworth’s daughter had dabbled, too, in the hope of securing a fortune to relieve her family from uncomfortable dependence on the court. The prospect of “imaginary riches” had tempted, it seems, many in the Molesworth connection.⁹⁴

The best remedy for the current crisis was “improvement” of trade. Daniel Poultney put it most succinctly when he insisted that “we must put a stop to all sort of gaming in stocks, encourage trade and manufacture, industry and frugality.”⁹⁵ Molesworth’s management of his own domestic economy reflected these values. The “sheet anchor” was his Irish estate, where he and his wife had undertaken virtuous “projects in good husbandry.”⁹⁶ Late in life he wrote in some considerable pique against the charge that he had been extravagant in matters of estate improvement in Yorkshire. The rumor that thousands of pounds had been spent was spread about by “envious fools.” As he explained, “I never exceed above 150 l. per annum, whatever you may hear to the contrary.” He admitted he had spent a considerable amount on digging a canal, but that had profited him by £300. He continued, “There is neither bench, statue, fountain of stone, stairs, urn or flower-pot here as yet, so that you may judge that mere grass, trees and hedges cannot cost much.”⁹⁷ The evidence of his correspondence with his wife, sons, and daughters suggests that Molesworth was a landowner with a keen eye to opportunity and development of his agrarian resources. This is supported by Finola O’Kane’s brilliant study of his architectural and gardening projects, which were underpinned by his enduring concern with the rental potential of the estates in Yorkshire and Ireland.⁹⁸ The decision to adjust the nature of property titles from freehold to twenty-one-year leases marked (according to his son) “a way of improvement, which it never was before.” In the same instance, he encouraged the trade in Philipstown by collaboration with two “master manufacturers” (who happened, much to the disgust of the local cleric, to be Quakers). One of these, John Pym, employed the poor to spin his wool “to the great satisfaction of all the country and increase of the market.”⁹⁹ Even toward the end of his life, Molesworth had a vision for how estate improvement could pay off the family’s debts: “the selling of woods, the setting out of St. Patrick’s well land, the Alnage revenue, and the improvement of Philipstown and Swords are groundworks to raise a new estate from.”¹⁰⁰

Attentiveness to the potential of new rentals was matched by meticulous attention to detail over the rights and privileges of his estates. Neighbors who threatened to enclose his land, tenants who took advantage of mowing allowances, and people who exploited short-term rental rates for their private advantage and at damage to the integrity of the land, were all dealt with in no uncertain terms in order, as Molesworth put it, to “vindicate our right.”¹⁰¹ This dedication to the integrity of the estates was not simple personal advantage. Good management of tenancies (set at a reasonable price) benefited both landlord and tenant: severe measures had beneficial effects. Replacement of “unimproving idle people” by “better tenants” made the land more productive. Molesworth did not take the fixing of his rents lightly. Having researched the historical fluctuation of costs over four decades, he was aware of the range of options. He was also profoundly aware that his relationship with individual tenants necessarily involved their dependence on him. In one instance Molesworth was explicit in this regard. He was, he explained to his wife, quite against giving his “tenants at will” parchment copies of their leases: “they are so already at their own will, and it is but just they should be so at ours.” The point in refusing a material copy of the leases was not to turn out or raise the rents upon good tenants, but to “keep them in awe and hinder them from destroying our estate.” Here is an insight into the forms of dependence that Harrington theorized in his account of empire following the balance of property.¹⁰²

Molesworth, too, theorized his experience and applied its lessons to the decay of gentlemanly cultivation in Ireland. Echoing both Cicero and Harrington, he stated that it was fundamental to his convictions that “Agriculture is not only a Science, but the most useful one to Mankind.”¹⁰³ The ablest statesmen, philosophers, and poets had devoted considerable effort to elucidating the best principles of agricultural practice, “knowing it to be that whereon the Life and well-being of the Community depends.”¹⁰⁴ Fundamental to his project was the need for honest and “improving” tenants who would enable the gentry to undertake two sorts of cultivation: of the soil and of their minds. Good tenants would allow gentlemen the leisure to improve their “natural Parts” by reading; the counterexample was the experience of the Irish gentry who were forced (in order to avoid the destruction of their estates by bad tenants) to “manage their own Lands, and turn their own Husband-men.” Such low employment and mean company meant that the gentry “degenerate by degrees; the best Education of many of their Sons, reaching no higher, than to know how to make the most of a Piece of Land.” As Molesworth made very explicit, this relationship with the land was no training ground for republican virtue. Understanding “the Business of Parliament, the Duty owing to ones Country, and the Value of Publick Liberty” was not cultivated “under such a cramp’d, and low Education.” Such gentry would become “narrow Spirited, covetous and ungenteel.”¹⁰⁵

One remedy was to create “schools for husbandry” in each county to teach the best principles of agricultural conduct and good manners. Thriving and industrious farmers would produce more food and thereby alleviate the poverty of the nation. Reform of agricultural practices that had been distorted by religious sentiment (in particular by tithes and saints’ days) would create further benefit. Such scarcely disguised anticlericalism was mixed with economic principle when Molesworth declared, “I wish all the Saints Days were let slip, with all my Heart, and that People might be left at liberty to keep open Shop, plow, sow, reap and follow their lawful Trades on those Days; they would serve God better, and their Country and private Families, than now they do.”¹⁰⁶

Molesworth, then, had an intimate understanding of the politics and economics of his relationship with the land, his tenants, and the status they conferred. He did, upon occasion, even turn his hand to the plough (something no self-respecting Roman senator would have considered). He was able to calculate the potential financial benefits of renegotiating rentals, but also to consider mortgaging his lands for ready cash in order to ensure that his son’s embassy in Turin was a success.

Molesworth was a man who certainly took enormous delight and pride in the application of opificio to his estates: the correspondence is teeming with references to specific arboreal projects, agrarian developments, and piscatorial undertakings. He was clearly an expert across a range of horticultural and natural knowledge, and the pride he took in improvement is evident in his remarks about developments on the Yorkshire estate of Edlington: “all the coarse, rough, unimproved land is taken in and under fine grass of tillage, a deal of new closes and hedging and building, and repairs, and planting the town street full of new industrious tenants, the commons taken in and turned to the best profitable land.”¹⁰⁷ Here the language of improvement, industry, and profit illustrates the core values of a republican understanding of the function of landed property. Constantly anxious about the need for money to support his sons in their careers, Molesworth bemoaned that “all our care and industry cannot set us at ease in the world.” Despite these moments of despair, he continued, if somewhat compulsively, to plan improvements that would secure and advance the common benefit.¹⁰⁸

Justin Champion