5. Letter on The Eighteenth-Century Commonwealthman by Caroline Robbins

November 26, 1959

Mr. Kenneth S. Templeton

William Volker Fund

Dear Ken:

Caroline Robbins’s The Eighteenth-Century Commonwealthman, which you asked me to report upon when I saw you last in New York, is a monumental book.²⁵ (Its subtitle is “Studies in the Transmission, Development, and Circumstance of English Liberal Thought from the Restoration of Charles II until the War with the Thirteen Colonies.”) To students of the liberal tradition and its history (“liberal” in the old-fashioned sense of a believer in liberty), there has always been a great gap: what happened between the days of Locke and the Revolution of 1688, and the Wilkes agitation in the 1760s in Britain? How is it possible that, as it seems, the libertarian viewpoint completely died out after 1688, only to spring up, lively and almost full-grown, in the 1760s and 1770s? This conclusion seemed impossible, and yet no one knew anything about the great gap between the end of the seventeenth century and the last quarter of the eighteenth. It seemed as if no liberals existed during that entire period to bridge the gap.

Well, now Professor Caroline Robbins, sister of the economist Lionel Robbins and Professor at Bryn Mawr College, has filled in this gap in one of the most impressive feats of scholarship I have seen in a long while. For what Miss Robbins had to do was to plow almost totally virgin soil, in very obscure primary sources such as pamphlets, diaries, etc., of the period, there being virtually no secondary sources on the entire period. In her footnotes there are virtually no references after about 1800.

Caroline Robbins has unearthed the liberals of this whole epoch, and extensively traced the influences and interconnections. They are certainly not as great as Locke, whom she treats in the introductory chapter of the work, or the magnificent Price, whom she treats in a fascinating final chapter, but they are important enough, and they are all unearthed and given their role in the procession. In her packed pages will be found a discussion of the excellent magazine the Old Whig; of that grand old man of liberty, Thomas Hollis—the Pierre Goodrich of his era—who played a considerable role in fomenting the American Revolution by collecting and disseminating and reprinting libertarian books and pamphlets all over the world, especially in America.²⁶ His was perhaps the first “Liberty Library.” Here are found the various important “circles” of friends that helped to foster and carry on the liberal gospel in an era of ignorant stand-pattery.

In the early eighteenth century, the leader of the liberal group was one Robert Molesworth, resurrected from almost complete obscurity.²⁷ Molesworth’s own ideas weren’t particularly good, but he performed the important function of heading and nourishing a circle of friends and acquaintances who carried on the great tradition, albeit watered down a bit, of Locke and Sidney. Other interesting figures are James Foster, the Scot Dr. John Campbell, James Burgh, John Jackson, and John Lee.²⁸ Another grand “leader of the circle was the radical Anglican Archdeacon Blackburne.²⁹ Francis Hutcheson³⁰ is shown to have played a very important role, in England as well as Scotland, and is shown to be a far better libertarian than his pupil, Adam Smith. (Although there is a curious neglect of Hutcheson’s teacher, Gershom Carmichael.³¹) And later on, we see how these influences tie in with the later “radical” libertarians, such as Earl Stanhope, Major John Cartwright, John Jebb, Capel Lofft, and the great Richard Price.³²

We see the interesting and important roles played in maintaining and fostering the liberal tradition by the dissenters, by Yorkshiremen, by the Anglo-Irish seeking relaxation of English bonds, by Cambridge University and by the dissenting Academies of the West Country. We see the importance, in the early period, of Trenchard and Gordon, authors of the Cato letters.³³ And we find such intriguing characters as Thomas Bradbury,³⁴ who celebrated publicly at the death of Queen Anne, and of Sylas Neville, who always feasted and celebrated at the anniversary of the execution of Charles I, and denounced that “dog, George III.”³⁵ And we are touched to find that William Pitt the Elder, a fair-weather friend of many of the true liberals, was snubbed by them for years for “selling out” by accepting the title of Earl of Chatham.³⁶ And we also find that many leading literary figures of the eighteenth century were quite close to the liberals, including Jonathan Swift, Henry Fielding, William Hazlitt, and James Boswell.³⁷

There are a few difficulties with the book. Perhaps the main one is that Miss Robbins is sometimes wobbly about whom she should admit to the liberal pantheon, and that she lets in quite a few people who are not liberals even by a generous stretch of the imagination. Her standards are unfortunately not high enough, and this is particularly true in the chapter on Scotland, where she includes Robert Wallace, who was practically a communist, as well as quite unliberal people like Adam Ferguson.³⁸ She includes land communists like William Ogilvie³⁹ and Thomas Spence, and she is especially fond of a statist character like Thomas Pownall.⁴⁰ In short, while she is obviously extremely sympathetic with the liberal tradition and defends her subjects, she also praises extravagantly someone like Pownall, with his etatist, imperialist, and pro-bureaucratic biases, as someone somehow particularly in tune with the “realities” of modern life. And there are hints that she would not disfavor the egalitarianism of some nineteenth-century followers. Generally, however, she keeps a high average, and there are not many other bad apples than the ones I have just named. And she is devoted enough to her subjects not to be taken in by Edmund Burke.

Another problem is that the book makes difficult reading; the style leaves much to be desired, and it assumes a considerable knowledge of eighteenth-century political history on the part of the reader, who would otherwise be lost in a sea of allusions. However, it remains an absolutely indispensable and highly valuable reference work for anyone interested in the history of libertarian thought or in the intellectual history of the eighteenth century. I would very strongly recommend it for National Book Foundation distribution.

Cordially,
Murray