A False Tree of Liberty: Human Rights in Radical Thought

282 Pages·2020·25.971 MB·English

by  Susan Marks

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A FALSE TREE OF LIBERTY
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iii
A FALSE TREE
OF LIBERTY
HUMAN RIGHTS IN
RADICAL THOUGHT
SUSAN MARKS
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© Susan Marks 2019
The moral rights of the author have been asserted
First Edition published in 2019
Impression: 1
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v
for Philip
vii
now dream
of that sweet
equal republic
where the juniper
talks to the oak,
the thistle,
the bandaged elm,
and the jolly jolly chestnut.
from: Tom Paulin, ‘The Book of Juniper’
in Liberty Tree (London: Faber & Faber Ltd, 1983)
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Acknowledgements
An early inspiration for this book came from Noel Thompson’s The Real
Rights of Man.1 It was from Thompson that I first learned of the ‘false tree of
liberty’.2 In learning more, I profited from the scholarship of many authors,
but perhaps especially Alastair Bonnett and Malcolm Chase.
I want to acknowledge the enormous importance for my understanding
of the issues I discuss in this book of work by Peter Linebaugh and James
Holstun. Footnotes are supposed to convey influence, but what I have learned
from their writing goes well beyond that which any footnote could capture.
Huge thanks go to my former student Victoria Adelmant for invaluable
help in preparing the text for publication. I look forward to reading her
books one day. I am immensely grateful to Matt Craven and Tor Krever, who
generously read and commented on the manuscript. I also wish to record my
thanks for the unstinting support of Rosemary Marzio and Guy Marks.
Philip Green inhabits a very different world from the one in which I have
made my professional home, but it has been my extraordinarily good fortune
that he has dwelled with me here, encouraging, listening, discussing, reading,
commenting, rallying and affirming. This book is dedicated to him with love
and deep gratitude.
1. Noel Thompson, The Real Rights of Man: Political Economies for the Working Class 1775– 1850
(London: Pluto Press, 1998).
2. See chap. 9 below.
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Illustrations
1. Thomas Gainsborough, Mr and Mrs Andrews, portrait, (c. 1750),
incamerastock / Alamy Stock Photo 9
2. Thomas Gainsborough, The Cottage Door, Cincinnati Art Museum,
(c. 1778), The Artchives / Alamy Stock Photo 10
3. The Diggers of Warwickshire to all other Diggers © The British Library
Board, Harley MS 787/ 11 61
4. James Gillray, Smelling out a rat, Chronicle / Alamy Stock Photo 100
5. Tom Paine’s Nightly Pest, published by Hannah Humphrey in 1792
(hand- coloured etching), Gillray, James (1757- 1815) / Courtesy of
the Warden and Scholars of New College, Oxford / Bridgeman Images 111
6. Byron, Frederick George, Contrasted Opinions of Paine’s Pamphlet
1791 © Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge 117
7. The Republican attack. James Gillray 1795. Art Collection 2 / Alamy
Stock Photo 126
8. Copenhagen House published by H. Humphrey, 1795 (print), Gillray,
James (1757- 1815) / London Metropolitan Archives, City of London
/ Bridgeman Images 143
9. Thomas Spence, cat token, 1796. ©The Trustees of the British
Museum. All rights reserved 178
Thomas Spence, token, 1795. © The Trustees of the British Museum.
All rights reserved 179
10. Philip Dawe, The Bostonians Paying the Excise- Man, or Tarring &
Feathering, 1774, Pictorial Press Ltd / Alamy Stock Photo 213
11. A foreign tree, subitarius Engraving, Musée de la Révolution française.
Inv. MRF 1988.72.2, © Coll. Musée de la Révolution française /
Domaine de Vizille 228
British tree of true Liberty, stabilissimus Engraving, Musée de la
Révolution française. Inv. MRF 1988.72.1, © Coll. Musée de la
Révolution française / Domaine de Vizille 229
xvi
xiv Illustrations
12. REUTERS, An opposition supporter with pieces of bread taped onto
his head shouts slogans during anti- government protest in Sanaa
3 February 2011 242
13. New path after autumn shower, Newcastle Town Moor, October 2004.
Jacky Longstaff 247
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1
 Introduction
‘And live with all the rights of man’
Who was the first person to use the English phrase ‘the rights of man’?
Thomas Spence, a little remembered but once notable figure on the London
radical scene of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, claims that
it was him.1 The occasion was a visit which Spence made one day around
1780 to a man and woman who were living in a cave opposite Marsden
Rock — an outcrop off the north-e astern coast of England.2 Marsden Rock
is near Newcastle upon Tyne, which is where Spence was born and where he
lived until his move to London some years later.
According to Spence, the man and woman had been ‘ill- used by [their]
landlords’.3 Spence does not go into detail, but whatever happened, we may
guess that it involved eviction, perhaps repeated evictions, after which the
couple had got fed up and decided to make a home for themselves in this cave.
As the cave was quite small when they first found it, the man, who was a re-
tired miner and has since been identified as one Jack Bates, had enlarged it by
blasting the rock with explosives, in the process earning the nickname which
Spence uses to refer to him: ‘Jack the Blaster’. Spence gives us to understand
that Jack the Blaster’s unusual dwelling had become something of a tourist
1. See Alastair Bonnett, ‘The Other Rights of Man: The Revolutionary Plan of Thomas Spence’,
History Today 57(9) (2007) 42, 44– 45.
2. Marsden Rock is a column of rock or ‘stack’ lying just out to sea at Marsden in South Shields.
3. Quoted in Alastair Bonnett, ‘The Other Rights of Man: The Revolutionary Plan of Thomas
Spence’, History Today 57(9) (2007) 42, 44.
A False Tree of Liberty. Susan Marks, Oxford University Press (2019). © Susan Marks.
DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780199675456.003.0001