parish would send a delegate to a national assembly and every adult male would be a member of the militia.
Spence produced these ideas on paper in 1775, the year that the American colonies broke away, claiming that land which actually belonged to Britain was rightfully theirs. As long as Spence remained in a political backwater like Newcastle, there was little harm done, 2 but in 1792 he moved to London.
Now it was a different place and a different time and phrases like ânational assemblyâ had an alien and terrifying connotation. The Terror began in France that year and war was imminent. Cashing in on the latest bestseller Spence revamped his 1775 pamphlet with the title The Real Rights of Man . He sold Paineâs original alongside his own and let men take their choice.
Spence first operated out of a shop in Chancery Lane, but found himself arrested almost immediately for selling Paine. Accordingly, he kept on the move, hiring premises in High Holborn, Little Turnstile, Oxford Street and eventually selling from a barrow in the street. He also sold medallions embossed with the scales of justice and saloop, a cheap coffee made from sassafras or medicinal bark. Francis Place, living and working in his tailorshop-cum-lending-library also sold Spenceâs tracts and wrote of him:
He was not more than five feet high, very honest, simple, single-minded, who loved mankind and firmly believed that a time would come when men would be virtuous, wise and happy. He was unpractical in the ways of the world to an extent hardly imaginable.
Throughout the 1790s Spence continued to write and disseminate his tracts, the best known of which, between 1793 and 1796 was called Pigâs Meat or Lessons for the Swinish Multitude (Burkeâs phrase of 1790). Chalked slogans â âSpenceâs Systemâ â began to appear on Londonâs buildings and in December 1794 he was imprisoned in Newgate under the suspension ofhabeas corpus and once more in 1801 (this time for twelve months) for the release of the Restorer pamphlet which the government regarded as seditious. By now Spence had invented a Utopian state â âSpensoniaâ â in which not only his land reforms, but his idealized society with its own phonetic language 3 would be a reality. On 3 January 1795 Spence wrote to the Morning Chronicle complaining that over a three-year period he had been dragged four times from his door by law officers, three times hauled before grand juries, three times sent to prison and once indicted at the Bar. He put his case in writing â something Despard would never be allowed to do â âThe case of Thomas Spence, bookseller, who was committed for selling the second part of Paineâs Rights of Man â.
âSpenceâs just plan for everlasting peace and happiness, or in fact, the Millenniumâ was all rather idyllic and a tiny knot of supporters remained loyal to the strange little man until his death in 1814. Quite large crowds turned out for his funeral and the Jacobin medallions he made were distributed to everyone there.
The jury is still out on Thomas Spence. He could be regarded as a harmless crank, but in view of what happened two years after his death, this is probably too simplistic a view. It goes without saying that Spenceâs ideas, which many see today as forerunners of socialism propounded half a century before Karl Marx, ran totally counter to Britainâs ruling elite at the time and were regarded by them with a mixture of disbelief and horror. Even Spenceâs original pamphlet in 1775 led to his being disbarred from the Philosophical Society.
It did not help that he was likened to the French revolutionary François âGracchusâ Babeuf whose plot was discovered in 1796 and written up extensively in the New Annual Register . Babeuf was a hot-headed ex-servant who ruffled feathers from the time of the Revolution to his execution in 1797. His rallying
Spence produced these ideas on paper in 1775, the year that the American colonies broke away, claiming that land which actually belonged to Britain was rightfully theirs. As long as Spence remained in a political backwater like Newcastle, there was little harm done, 2 but in 1792 he moved to London.
Now it was a different place and a different time and phrases like ânational assemblyâ had an alien and terrifying connotation. The Terror began in France that year and war was imminent. Cashing in on the latest bestseller Spence revamped his 1775 pamphlet with the title The Real Rights of Man . He sold Paineâs original alongside his own and let men take their choice.
Spence first operated out of a shop in Chancery Lane, but found himself arrested almost immediately for selling Paine. Accordingly, he kept on the move, hiring premises in High Holborn, Little Turnstile, Oxford Street and eventually selling from a barrow in the street. He also sold medallions embossed with the scales of justice and saloop, a cheap coffee made from sassafras or medicinal bark. Francis Place, living and working in his tailorshop-cum-lending-library also sold Spenceâs tracts and wrote of him:
He was not more than five feet high, very honest, simple, single-minded, who loved mankind and firmly believed that a time would come when men would be virtuous, wise and happy. He was unpractical in the ways of the world to an extent hardly imaginable.
Throughout the 1790s Spence continued to write and disseminate his tracts, the best known of which, between 1793 and 1796 was called Pigâs Meat or Lessons for the Swinish Multitude (Burkeâs phrase of 1790). Chalked slogans â âSpenceâs Systemâ â began to appear on Londonâs buildings and in December 1794 he was imprisoned in Newgate under the suspension ofhabeas corpus and once more in 1801 (this time for twelve months) for the release of the Restorer pamphlet which the government regarded as seditious. By now Spence had invented a Utopian state â âSpensoniaâ â in which not only his land reforms, but his idealized society with its own phonetic language 3 would be a reality. On 3 January 1795 Spence wrote to the Morning Chronicle complaining that over a three-year period he had been dragged four times from his door by law officers, three times hauled before grand juries, three times sent to prison and once indicted at the Bar. He put his case in writing â something Despard would never be allowed to do â âThe case of Thomas Spence, bookseller, who was committed for selling the second part of Paineâs Rights of Man â.
âSpenceâs just plan for everlasting peace and happiness, or in fact, the Millenniumâ was all rather idyllic and a tiny knot of supporters remained loyal to the strange little man until his death in 1814. Quite large crowds turned out for his funeral and the Jacobin medallions he made were distributed to everyone there.
The jury is still out on Thomas Spence. He could be regarded as a harmless crank, but in view of what happened two years after his death, this is probably too simplistic a view. It goes without saying that Spenceâs ideas, which many see today as forerunners of socialism propounded half a century before Karl Marx, ran totally counter to Britainâs ruling elite at the time and were regarded by them with a mixture of disbelief and horror. Even Spenceâs original pamphlet in 1775 led to his being disbarred from the Philosophical Society.
It did not help that he was likened to the French revolutionary François âGracchusâ Babeuf whose plot was discovered in 1796 and written up extensively in the New Annual Register . Babeuf was a hot-headed ex-servant who ruffled feathers from the time of the Revolution to his execution in 1797. His rallying
Similar Books
