Thomas Spence And His Pamphlet “The Rights Of Man”

Abstract

This article is devoted to the social and political heritage of the English radical Thomas Spence (1750–1814), who had a significant influence on the development of popular radicalism and the labor movement in England from the second half of the 18th century to the period of early Chartism. Spence’s political doctrine is considered through examples from his various works, but particular attention is paid to a lecture that gained wide popularity under the title “Human Rights.” In it, Spence for the first time summed up his political program, which can be reduced to the following thesis: if natural law represents an equal opportunity for everyone to take all that nature gives, then the land must also be the common property of the people living on it. To implement this principle, Spence proposed to transfer all land ownership to the management of parishes, which were to provide their members with land and oversee a fair distribution of income from the leasing of land.

References

Alston, R. C. A Bibliography of the English Language from the Invention of Printing to the Year 1800, Vol. I: English Grammars Written in English. Leeds: E.J. Arnold and Son, 1965.
Ashraf, P. M. The Life and Times of Thomas Spence. Newcastle: Frank Graham, 1983.
Beal, J. C. English Pronunciation in the Eighteenth Century. Thomas Spence’s Grand Repository of the English Language. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1999.
Bindman, D. The Shadow of the Guillotine: Britain and the French Revolution. London: British Museum Publications, 1989.
Bonnet, A. Left in the Past: Radicalism and the Politics of Nostalgia. New York: The Continuum International Publishing Group, 2010.
Claeys, G., and Sargent, L. T. The Utopia Reader. 2nd ed. New York: New York University Press, 2017.
Dickinson, H. The Political Works of Thomas Spence. Newcastle Upon Tyne: Avero, 1982.
Duthille, R. Thomas Spence on Women’s Rights: A Vindication. Pessac: Presses Universitaires de Bordeaux, 2014.
Horsley, P. M. Eighteenth-Century Newcastle. Newcastle: Oriel Press, 1971.
Kirk, J.; Noble, A., and Brown, M. United Islands? The Languages of Resistance. New York: Taylor and Francis, 2012.
Marangos, O. “Thomas Paine (1737–1809) and Thomas Spence (1750–1814) on Land Ownership, Land Taxes and the Provision of Citizen’s Dividend,” International Journal of Social Economics, Vol. 35, No. 5, 2008, pp. 313–325.
Marangos, O., and King, J. E. “Two Arguments for Basic Income: Thomas Paine (1737–1809) and Thomas Spence (1750–1814),” History of Economic Ideas, Vol. 14, No. 1, 2006, pp. 55–71.
McCalman, I. Radical Underworld: Prophets, Revolutionaries and Pornographers in London, 1795–1840. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988.
Mee, J. Print, Publicity, and the Popular Radicalism in the 1790s. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2016.
Robinson, R. Thomas Bewick: His Life and Times. Newcastle: Printed for
R. Robinson, 1887. Rudkin, O. D. Thomas Spence and His Connections. New York: A.M. Kelley, 1927. Shields, A. F. Thomas Spence and the English Language: MA Dissertation. Newcastle: University of Newcastle, 1973. Thompson, E. P. The Making of the English Working Class. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1980.
Waters, A. W. The Trial of Thomas Spence in 1801. Leamington Spa: Courier Press, 1917.