POLITICS

Someone has said that if Shelley had not been a poet he would have been a politician. Certain it is that he gave to politics a great deal of thought and study. On January 26, 1819, Shelley wrote to Peacock: “I consider poetry very subordinate to political science, and, if I were well, certainly I would aspire to the latter, for I can conceive a great work embodying the discoveries of all ages, and harmonizing the contending creeds by which mankind have been ruled.”[82] Shelley was not one who

beheld the woe
In which mankind was bound, and deem’d that fate
Which made them abject, would preserve them so.

On the contrary, he firmly believed in man’s capacity to work out his own regeneration. His tuneful lyre was ever at the service of the Goddess of Freedom; and he took occasion often to pour forth music calculated to rouse the nations from their apathy.

Very many of Shelley’s views on political and social questions can be traced to Godwin’s Political Justice. Godwin doubts that one can be said to have a mind. It may still be convenient to use the word “mind,” but in fact what we know by that name is merely a chain of “ideas.” Since man’s mind is but an aggregate of ideas, man himself is capable of indefinite modification. Differences in men result wholly from differences of education. Feed a sinner on syllogisms and you can transform him into a saint. It is impossible for one to resist a clear exposition of the advantages of virtue. It follows, too, that we can easily abolish existing institutions and rearrange the whole structure of society on new principles infallibly correct. The force which is to spur us on to do this is reason. It is “omnipotent.”

Volney, Rousseau, Holbach, and the rest of this stamp, although condemning past systems of government, admitted that some form of government was necessary for the well-being of mankind. Godwin, on the other hand, denounced all government as “an institution of the most pernicious tendency.” There is only one power to which man should yield obedience and that is the decision of his own understanding. Conditions being such as they are, government may be required for a while to restrain and direct men, but as soon as men will learn to follow reason, government will disappear altogether.

Godwin taught that every voluntary action flows solely from the decision of one’s judgment. “Voluntary actions of men originate in all cases in their opinions,” i. e., in the state of their minds immediately previous to those actions. The nature of a man’s actions, therefore, depends on the nature of his opinions. If he has just and true opinions his actions will be good; if erroneous ones, his actions will be bad. But “sound reasoning and truth adequately communicated must be victorious over error.”[83] Man will always accept the truth if presented to him properly. It follows, then, that “reason and conviction appear to be the proper instruments for regulating the actions of mankind.” Man’s conduct should not conform to any other standard but reason. Obedience to law then is immoral, unless of course its mandates correspond to the decision of our own judgments. Shelley has the same idea

The man
Of virtuous soul commands not, nor obeys,
Power, like a devastating pestilence
Pollutes whate’er it touches; and obedience
Bane of all genius, virtue, freedom, truth,
Make slaves of men, and of the human frame
A mechanized automaton.[84]

Again and again he exclaims against kings and autocracy. His sonnet, “England in 1819,” is a terrible castigation of the Hanoverian Kings:

An old, mad, blind, despised and dying king;
Princes the dregs of their dull race, who flow
Through public scorn—mud from a muddy spring,
Rulers who neither see, nor feel, nor know,
But leech-like to their fainting country cling,
Till they drop blind in blood without a blow, etc., etc.To aid republicanism he espoused the cause of the unhappy Caroline of Brunswick and on her account wrote “A New National Anthem,” and the satirical piece, “Swellfoot the Tyrant.” In “Hellas” we find him advocating the cause of Greece, and it is believed that this poem moved his friend Byron to take up arms in defense of that country.

“A king,” writes Godwin, “is necessarily and unavoidably a despot in his heart.” With him the words “ruler” and “tyrant” are synonymous. A king from the very nature of his office cannot be anything but vicious. Shelley expresses his opinion of kings as follows:

The king, the wearer of a gilded chain
That binds his soul to abjectness, the fool
Whom courtiers nickname monarch, whilst a slave
Even to the basest appetites.[85]

One wonders at first why Shelley should have represented evil as an eagle in The Revolt of Islam. The reason for this becomes clear when one considers that the eagle is often called a king among birds and is used as a symbol for authority.

Shelley, however, did not believe in violent revolutions. In The Revolt of Islam, Irish pamphlets, &c., he advocates reformation without recourse to force. A change must take place; kings must be done away with, but not until the people are prepared for the change. “A pure republic,” he writes, “may be shown, by inferences the most obvious and irresistible, to be that system of social order the fittest to produce the happiness and promote the genuine eminence of man. Yet nothing can less consist with reason or afford smaller hopes of any beneficial issue than the plan which should abolish the regal and the aristocratical branches of our constitution, before the public mind, through many gradations of improvement, shall have arrived at the maturity which shall disregard these symbols of its childhood.”

Godwin and Shelley maintain that the state should make as little use as possible of coercion and violence. “Criminals should be pitied and reformed, not detested and punished.” The punishment of death is particularly obnoxious to them. Shelley argues against it in his essay on The Punishment of Death. He claims that the punishment of death defeats its own end. It is a triumphant exhibition of suffering virtue, which may inspire some with pity, admiration and sympathy. As a consequence it may incite them to emulate their works, especially the works of political agitators. Punishment of death, again, excites those emotions which are inimical to social order. It strengthens all the inhuman and unsocial impulses of man. The contempt of human life breeds ferocity of manners and contempt of social ties. Hence it is, Shelley believes, that those nations in which the penal code has been particularly mild have been distinguished from all others by the rarity of crime.

Neither should the citizens of a state use violence in putting down oppression. In his address to the Irish he tells them that violence and folly will serve only to delay emancipation. “Mildness, sobriety, and reason are the effectual methods of forwarding the ends of liberty and happiness.” Violence and falsehood will produce nothing but wretchedness and slavery and will make those who use them incapable of further exertion. Violence will immediately render their cause a bad one. Godwin likewise maintains that “force is an expedient the use of which is much to be deplored. It is contrary to the nature of intellect which cannot be improved but by conviction and persuasion. It corrupts the man that employs it and the man upon whom it is employed.”[86] In The Revolt of Islam Shelley says:

Oh wherefore should ill ever flow from ill,
And pain still keener pain forever breed?
We are all brethren—even the slaves who kill
For hire are men; and to avenge misdeed
On the misdoer doth but misery feed
With her own broken heart![87]

Godwin would reform society by means of education, so also would Shelley. They seem to differ though in their views with regard to the relations that exist between institutions and individuals. Godwin holds that tyrranical institutions must be abolished before men can become free. Shelley, on the contrary, says that the freedom and enlightenment of individuals should come first, and it is only when that is accomplished that tyrannical institutions will disappear. Godwin writes: “The only method according to which social improvements can be carried on is when the improvement of our institutions advances in a just proportion to the illumination of the public understanding.”[88] While Shelley writes in his address to the Irish people that reform “is founded on the reform of private men and without individual amendment it is vain and foolish to expect the amendment of a state or government.” Although Godwin says in the first book of Political Justice that it is futile to attempt to change morals without first changing our institutions, still, later on, he seems to forget this and to advocate the reform of individuals. “Make men wise,” he writes, “and by that very operation you make them free. Civil liberty follows as a consequence of this.”[89] Shelley, unlike Plato, would give to poets the first place in his plan for the reform of society. He calls them “the acknowledged legislators of the world.”[90]

Godwin’s principle of justice is that each should do to others all the good that is in his power. It is an impartial treatment of every man in matters that relate to his happiness—a treatment which is to be measured solely by a consideration of the properties of the receiver and the capacity of him who bestows. Everything should be so disposed—material comforts so distributed as to give the same amount of pleasure to all. Personal and private feelings such as gratitude and parental affection should be destroyed. A just man will consider the general good only. Hence if my father and a stranger who is of more benefit to society than my father are both in danger of death, I am bound to try to save the stranger first.[91] Shelley has something similar to this in his Essay on Christianity: “I love my country, I love the city in which I was born, my parents, my wife and the children of my care, and to these children, this woman, this nation, it is incumbent on me to do all the benefits in my power.... You ought to love all mankind, nay every individual of mankind. You ought not to love the individuals of your domestic circle less, but to love those who exist beyond it more.” Godwin says that one principle of justice is “to be no respecter of persons.”[92] In a letter to Miss Hitchener, October, 1811, Shelley writes: “I ... set myself up as no respecter of persons.” “The end of virtue,” says Godwin, “is to add to the sum of pleasurable sensation.” In the Essay on Christianity Shelley writes: “This and no other is justice: to consider under all circumstances and consequences of a particular case how the greatest quantity and purest quality of happiness will ensue from any action; this is to be just; and there is no other justice.” Godwin[93] attempts to tell how we can find out whether an action would be just or not. He warns us against measuring the morality of an action according to existing laws. We can determine its morality only by trying to estimate the amount of happiness or pain it will cause others. “One of the best practical rules of morality,” he writes, “is that of putting ourselves in the place of another.... It is by this means only that we can form an adequate idea of his pleasures and pains.”[94] Shelley expresses the same thought in his Defense of Poetry: “A man to be greatly good must imagine intensely and comprehensively; he must put himself in the place of another and many others; the pains and pleasures of his species must become his own.”

For Shelley laws are “obscure records of dark and barbarous echos,” “tomes of reasoned wrong glozed on by ignorance.”[95] Lawyers are those who, skilled to snare

The feet of justice in the toils of law
Stand, ready to oppress the weaker still.[96]

“Government,” he says, “cannot make a law, it can only pronounce that which was the law before its organization, viz.: the moral result of the imperishable relations of things;”[97] and in his Address to the Irish: “No act of a national representation can make anything wrong which was not wrong before: it cannot change virtue and truth.” All this is merely a repetition of Godwin’s principles. “Immutable reason,” he says, “is the true legislator, and her decrees it behooves us to investigate. The functions of society extend, not to the making, but the interpreting of law; it cannot decree, it can only declare that which the nature of things has already decreed.”[98]

Godwin was a communist rather than a socialist. Every kind of cooperation was repugnant to him. With regard to the distribution of wealth he taught that any given article belonged to him to whom it will give the greatest sum of benefit or pleasure. A loaf of bread, v. g., belongs to the man who needs it most. Shelley holds that if the properties of the aristocrats were resolved into their original stock, and if each earned his own living, each would be happy and contented, and crime and the temptation to crime would scarcely exist. “If two children,” he writes, “were placed together in a desert island and they found some scarce fruit, would not justice dictate an equal division? If this number is multiplied to any extent of which number is capable, if these children are men, families—is not justice capable of the same extension and multiplication? Is it not the same, are not its decrees invariable?”[99] Again in his Essay on Christianity: “With all those who are truly wise, there will be an entire community not only of thoughts and feelings but also of external possessions.” Both Shelley and Godwin put the rent-roll of lands in the same class as the pension-list which is supposed to be employed in the purchase of ministerial majorities.

It is a calculation of Godwin, says Shelley, “that all the conveniences of civilized life might be produced if society would divide the labor equally among its members, by each individual being employed in labor two hours during the day.”[100] Godwin says that the means of subsistence belong entirely to the owner. The fruits of labor belong to the laborer, but he is only the steward of them. He can consume only what he needs, and must preserve and dispense the rest for the benefit of others. In his Essay on Christianity, Shelley writes “every man in proportion to his virtue considers himself, with respect to the great community of mankind, as the steward and guardian of their interests in the property which he chances to possess.”[101] When Shelley proposed to share his income with Elizabeth Hitchener he said that he was not doing an act of generosity, but one of justice—“bare, simple justice.” Godwin says that new inventions and the refinements of luxury are inimical to the welfare of society. These mean more work for the poor while only the rich are benefited.[102] “The poor,” writes Shelley, “are set to labor—for what? Not the food for which they famish; not the blankets for want of which ... no; for the pride of power, for the miserable isolation of pride, for the false pleasures of the hundredth part of society.” Godwin says that the direct pleasure which luxuries give is very small. They are prized because of the love of distinction which is characteristic of every human mind. Fine bonnets and wealth would not be desired by a family living on a desert island. Why not let the acquisition of learning and the practice of virtue instead of wealth be the road to fame. Shelley writes—

And statesman boasts
Of wealth.... How vainly seek
The selfish for that happiness denied
To aught but virtue.[103]

Again: “the man who has fewest bodily wants approachest nearest to the Divine Nature. Satisfy these wants at the cheapest rates and expend the remaining energies of your nature in the attainment of virtue and knowledge.... Ye can spend no labor on mechanism consecrated to luxury and pride.”[104] “There is no wealth in the world,” says Godwin, “except this, the labor of man.”[105] Every new luxury is a new weight thrown on the shoulders of the laborer, for which they receive no benefit. In the Notes to Queen Mab, Shelley writes: “there is no real wealth but the labor of man.” “What is misnamed wealth,” writes Godwin, “is merely a power vested in certain individuals by the institutions of society to compel others to labor for their benefit.”[106] “Wealth,” says Shelley, “is a power usurped by the few to compel the many to labor for their benefit.”[107]

Shelley during his sojurn in Ireland, in the spring of 1813, published the Declaration of Rights. This pamphlet afterwards led to the arrest of his Irish servant, Daniel Hill, for distributing the same without authority. Many propositions of the Declaration of Rights bear considerable resemblance to some of the proposals of the Declaration of Rights adopted by the Constitutional Assembly of France in August, 1789.

No. 3 of Shelley’s Declaration reads as follows: “Government is devised for the security of rights. The rights of men are liberty and an equal participation in the commonage of nature.” Proposition No. 2 of the Constituent Assembly is: “The object of every political association is the conservation of the natural and imprescriptible rights of man. These rights are liberty, security, resistance to oppression.”

In No. 4 Shelley says: “As the benefit of the governed is, ought to be, the origin of government, no man can have any authority that does not expressly emanate from their will.” The corresponding constituent proposition is: “The principle of all authority resides essentially in the nation; no body, no individual can exercise any authority that does not expressly emanate from it.”

Compare Shelley’s No. 6 with Nos. 1 and 17. No. 6: “All have a right to an equal share in the benefits and burdens of the government. Any disabilities for opinions imply, by their very existence, barefaced tyranny on the side of the government, ignorant slavishness on the side of the governed.” No. 1 of the Assembly: “Men are born and remain free and equal. Social distinctions can only be founded on the common good.” No. 17: “Property being an inviolable and sacred right, no one can be deprived of it, unless public necessity evidently demands it, and then only on condition that indemnity be made.”

No. 7 of the Declaration resembles the constituent Nos. 8 and 9. Shelley says: “The rights of man in the present state of society are only to be secured by some degree of coercion to be exercised on their violator. The sufferer has a right that the degree of coercion employed be as light as possible.”

No. 8: “The law should establish only those punishments that are strictly and evidently necessary, &c.”

No. 9: “... all unnecessary severity should be repressed by law.”

Shelley’s No. 9 and the constituent No. 7 declare that no man has the right to resist the law.

No. 15 of the Declaration resembles No. 5 of the Constituent Assembly. No. 15: “Law cannot make what is in its nature virtuous or innocent to be criminal, any more than it can make what is criminal to be innocent. Government cannot make a law; it can only pronounce that which was the law before its organization, viz., the moral result of the imperishable relation of things.” No. 5: “Law has only the right to prohibit those actions which are injurious to society. Anything that is not forbidden by the law cannot be prevented, and no one can be constrained to do that which is not ordained by law.”

Shelley’s No. 21 is: “The government of a country ought to be perfectly indifferent to every opinion. Religious differences, the bloodiest and most rancorous of all, spring from partiality.” This corresponds to constituent No. 10: “No one should be disturbed on account of his opinions, even religious ones, provided their manifestation does not endanger the public order established by law.”

Finally compare Shelley’s No. 27 with constituent No. 6. No. 27: “No man has a right to be respected for any other possessions but those of virtue and talents. Titles are tinsel, power a corruptor, glory a bubble, and excessive wealth a libel on its possessor.” No. 6: “All citizens, being equal in the eyes of the law, are equally admissable to every dignity, position, and public employment according to their capacity, and without any other distinction but those of virtue and talents.”Shelley’s political views were somewhat modified by the influence of Leigh Hunt. The two friends probably met for the first time in January, 1814. Both were sensitive and of a retiring disposition, dwelling in a world of books and dreams. Hunt, like Shelley, advocated Catholic emancipation, freedom of the press, and reform of parliamentary representation. He differed from Shelley in this, that he was more practical, and had more faith than his friend in the advantages of such partial reforms as the abolition of child labor and of the slave trade, the reduction and equalization of taxes, and the education of the poor. Hunt advocated the reform of military discipline, while Shelley claimed that standing armies should be abolished altogether. Hunt carried on his attacks against the evils of the time in the pages of The Examiner, which everybody read in those days. In 1813 the Hunt brothers were fined and imprisoned for an offensive article on the Prince Regent which appeared in their paper. Shelley must have offered to pay this fine, as Hunt records in his autobiography that Shelley made him a princely offer. In December, 1816, the Shelleys, after their return from the continent, were the guests of Hunt at Hampstead and received his support and sympathy during the Chancery suit. Through Hunt, Shelley made the acquaintance of the Cockney circle, including Keats, Hazlitt, Reynolds, Novello, Brougham and Horace Smith. In return for all this Shelley gave freely of his money to Hunt.

One acquainted with the Englishman’s sense of honor may wonder at the unusual way Hunt and Godwin accepted money from Shelley and others. It must be remembered though that these men believed no man had exclusive ownership in superfluous wealth. They received what Shelley could spare as if they were taking what belonged to themselves.

Early in 1817 Shelley wrote A Proposal for Putting Reform to a Vote, a pamphlet which today in England would be considered conservative. It suggested that a meeting be held at the Crown and Anchor Tavern “to take into consideration the most effectual measures for ascertaining whether or no a reform in Parliament is the will of the majority of the individuals of the British nation.” It disclaimed any design of sanctioning the revolutionary schemes which were imputed to the friends of reform, and declares that its object is purely constitutional. The pamphlet advocates annual parliaments, but not universal suffrage. In it Shelley expresses himself in favor of retaining the regal and aristocratical branches of our constitution until the public mind “shall have arrived at the maturity that can disregard these symbols of its childhood.” “Political institutions,” he there writes, “are undoubtedly susceptible of such improvement as no rational person can consider possible as long as the present degraded condition to which the vital imperfections in the existing system of government has reduced the vast multitude of men shall subsist. The securest method of arriving at such beneficial innovations is to proceed gradually and with caution.”

In February, 1817, the Shelleys went to live at Marlow. There was much suffering among the lacemakers of that town and Shelley went continually among the unfortunate population, relieving the most pressing cases of distress to the best of his ability. He had a list of pensioners to whom he made a weekly allowance. One day he returned home without shoes, having given them away to a poor man.

On March 11, 1818, Shelley, accompanied by his family, quitted England, never again to return. In Italy, as in England, he continually changed his place of abode. During the year 1818 he wrote Lines Written among the Euganean Hills, Julian and Maddalo, and also began Prometheus Unbound. This last work was completed in Rome during the summer and fall of 1819. “The poem,” he says in the preface, “was chiefly written upon the mountainous ruins of the baths of Caracalla, among the flowery glades and thickets of odoriferous blossoming trees which are extended in everwinding labyrinths upon its immense platforms and dizzy arches suspended in the air.” Prometheus Unbound is considered by many to be Shelley’s most important work. Mr. J. A. Symonds declares that “a genuine liking for it may be reckoned the touchstone of a man’s capacity for understanding lyric poetry.” Mr. Rossetti waxes eloquent over “The immense scale and boundless scope of the conception; the marble majesty and extra-mundane passions of the personages; the sublimity of ethical aspiration; the radiance of ideal and poetic beauty which saturates every phase of the subject.”

Prometheus, according to W. Rossetti, is the mind of man. In his preface to the poem Shelley writes: “But Prometheus is, as it were, the type of the highest perfection of moral and intellectual nature impelled by the purest and truest motives to the best and noblest ends.” At the opening of the drama Prometheus is discovered bound to an icy precipice in the Indian Caucasus. He is kept there by the tyrant Jupiter, whom he helped to enthrone in place of Saturn. Mercury is sent to Prometheus and offers him freedom from torture on condition that he reveal the secret of averting the fall of Jupiter. This Prometheus refuses to do because it would seat the tyrant more securely on his throne. He is then left to the untender mercies of the Furies. These torture him by making him contemplate all the misery of the world and the futility of hoping for any release from it. They expose to view the wrecks of all the schemes ever advanced for the regeneration of society, and especially the hate, bloodshed, and misery which followed in the wake of the most promising of them all, the French Revolution. They remind him that Christ’s mission is a failure; that His followers are persecuted; and that Christianity has not lessened the deceit and selfishness of man. The anguish of Prometheus is mental rather than physical. He cries out to the Furies

Thy words are like a cloud of winged snakes,
And yet I pity those they torture not.

His hope and optimism, however, triumph over all; and the Furies vanish. A chorus of spirits come to console him and promise that he shall overcome Death. Prometheus feels, nevertheless, that all hope is vain without love. Conditions will remain as they are until Asia, the spirit of love in nature, will be freed. At the end of the first act one of the nymphs, Panthea, departs to seek Asia. She is found in a lovely vale and is described as a being of exquisite beauty, “whose footsteps pave the world with loveliness.” Panthea then conducted Asia to the cave of Demogorgon. This being has neither limb, nor form, nor outline; yet it is felt to be a living spirit. Asia asks it when will the destined hour arrive for the release of Prometheus. The answer is “Behold!” and just then the roof of the cave bursts asunder, and the chariots of the Hours are seen passing by. One of them stops and tells Asia that nightfall “will wrap heaven’s kingless throne in lasting night.” Asia is transformed before them. Misery gives place to love and joy. Another spirit with “dove-like eyes of hope” conducts Asia to the throne of Jupiter.

The third act presents the catastrophe. It opens with a long speech of Jupiter in which he exults over what he believes to be the approaching conquest of man’s soul. Little does he realize, however, that his fall is at hand. The car of the Hour arrives with Demogorgon. At this sight Jupiter is filled with terror and exclaims, “Awful shape, what art thou?” Demogorgon answers, “Eternity. Demand no direr name. Descend and follow me down the abyss.” The secret is now revealed. Jupiter has just married Thetis and the child of this union is to destroy his father. The curse is fulfilled; Jupiter falls into the abyss. Prometheus is then released by Hercules. Strength ministers to wisdom, courage, and long-suffering Love, as a slave to its master. Prometheus is united with Asia; mankind with love. The Golden Age has at last arrived. Henceforth there is to be no tyranny nor evil of any kind. Love is to be supreme and is to make all wise and happy. Man is released from bondage and is now free to do as reason directs.

The loathsome mask has fallen, the man remains,
Scepterless, free, uncircumscribed, but man
Equal, unclassed, tribeless, and nationless,
Exempt from awe, worship, degree, the king
Over himself; just, gentle, wise; but man,
Passionless? no, yet free from guilt or pain,
Which were, for his will made or suffered them,
Nor yet exempt, tho’ ruling them like slaves,
From chance, and death, and mutability,
The clogs of that which else might oversoar
The loftiest star of unascended heaven,
Pinnacled dim in the intense inane.

The drama should end here. The tyrant is overthrown and man is happy. In a note on the play Mrs. Shelley says that it originally had but three acts. Later on a fourth act was added, a sort of hymn of rejoicing over the fulfillment of the prophecies with regard to Prometheus. In it specters of the dead hours bear time to tomb in eternity. The spirits of the mind reappear and chant their hymns of praise and thanksgiving.

Prometheus represents mankind. He is oppressed by the very being, Jupiter, to whom he himself has given power. Jupiter must not be considered as the abstract power of moral evil. He represents those institutions, political and religious, which man himself has created. Jupiter’s downfall is brought about by his own offspring; man himself can overthrow tyranny. In the marriage of Jupiter and Thetis, Shelley seems to portray the overweening arrogance through which a political tyranny invests itself with the pomp of a false glory and which always precedes its downfall. The form of Demogorgon assumed by the child of this union undoubtedly means Revolution, that Revolution which follows the marriage of unrighteous power to arrogant display.[108] Demogorgon may be looked upon, too, as Reason; Asia, the Spirit of Love, comes in contact with Demogorgon, Reason, and moves it to action. The poet here means to image to us the profound truth, that it is only through contact with emotion that abstract thought can become roused to action and be a vital and dynamic power in the sphere of practical life. It is only after having met Demogorgon that the power of Asia is set free. If reason must be inspired by passion before it can prevail, “love on the other hand must become instinct with wisdom before it can be made manifest in that glory which shall save the world.”

After the interview with Demogorgon, Asia, love, is transfigured, “its rosy warmth pervades the whole creation, and its power is revealed triumphantly supreme. This is the act through which, in the secret mystery of creation, the redemption of Prometheus is achieved. Thus through a double process, destructive and constructive—by revolution and by love—is set free the human soul.”[109] Rossetti regards Prometheus as the anthropomorphic God, created by the mind of man, and tyrannizing over its creator; but surely, as Miss Scudder says, the myth is quite as much political as theological.Prometheus Unbound was fiercely attacked in the Quarterly, and Shelley, thinking that Southey was the author of the article, wrote to him about it. Southey answered him that he did not write the article in question, and at the same time read him a lecture on the necessity of giving up his evil principles. Shelley felt that he was being misjudged and wrongfully accused by one whom he could not suspect of ill-will, and this no doubt helped to keep him a radical, even if he were inclined at this time to become more conservative.

During 1819, meetings were held all over the country by the laboring classes to consider ways and means of bettering their condition. On August 16, 1819, a huge one was held at St. Peter’s Field, Manchester, with the view of urging parliamentary reform. The magistrates had previously declared that such a meeting would be illegal and the city authorities had made extensive preparations for the preservation of the peace. After an enormous crowd had gathered around the speakers, forty of the yeomanry cavalry attempted to make their way through the multitude to arrest the ringleaders. When it was found that they could not reach the platform a hasty order was given to three hundred hussars to disperse the crowd. They made a terrific charge, which resulted in the killing of six people and in the wounding of fifty or sixty others. The news of this affair roused in Shelley violent emotions of indignation and compassion. Writing to his publisher, Mr. Ollier, he thus comments on the affair: “The same day that your letter came, came the news of the Manchester work, and the torrent of my indignation has not yet done boiling in my veins. I wait anxiously to hear how the country will express its sense of this bloody, murderous oppression of its destroyers. Something must be done. What, yet, I know not.” He calls it “an infernal business” and says that it is but the distant thunders of the terrible storm which is fast approaching. “The tyrants here, as in the French Revolution, have first shed blood.”

The Manchester “massacre” inspired Shelley to write the Mask of Anarchy. Leigh Hunt was asked to print it in The Examiner, but he refused. “I did not insert it,” Hunt wrote, “because I thought that the public at large had not become sufficiently discerning to do justice to the sincerity and kind-heartedness of the spirit that walked in this flaming robe of verse.” In this poem Shelley is not so vague and indefinite as he is in Prometheus Unbound. He shows there that he has a grasp of the practical wants of men. “What art thou, Freedom?” Shelley asks, and he replies:

Thou art clothes, and fire, and food
For the trampled multitude—
No—in countries that are free
Such starvation cannot be
As in England now we see.

Even here Shelley exhorts his countrymen to seek reform through peaceful methods. He tells them to oppose meekness and resoluteness to violence and tyranny; and then the tyrants

will return with shame
To the place from which they came
And the blood thus shed will speak
In hot blushes on their cheek.

There is very little recorded concerning the relations that existed between Robert Owen (England’s first socialist of note) and Shelley. One of Owen’s biographers states that Shelley’s spirit appeared to Owen at a spiritualistic seance, and that Owen exclaimed, “Oh, there is my old friend, Shelley.” It is certain at any rate that Owen was a close friend of Godwin, and consequently had at least an indirect influence on Shelley. Queen Mab, moreover, was the gospel of the Owenites.

For Shelley’s later views we are indebted to his Philosophical View of Reform which Professor Dowden discusses in his volume Transcripts and Studies. Shelley wrote to Leigh Hunt on May 26, 1820, and enquired if he knew any bookseller who would publish an octavo volume, entitled a Philosophical View of Reform. The plan of the work was to include chapters on: (1) The sentiment of the necessity of change; (2) its causes and its objects; (3) practicability and necessity of change; (4) state of parties as regards it; (5) probable, possible, and desirable mode in which it should be effected. The work was never published, however, and it is said that the manuscript cannot now be found.[110]The treatise opens with a brief historical survey of the chief movements on behalf of freedom which have taken place since the beginning of the Christian era. He describes historical Christianity as a perversion of the utterances and actions of the great reformer of Nazareth. “The names borrowed from the life and opinions of Jesus Christ were employed as symbols of domination and imposture; and a system of liberality and equality, for such was the system preached by that great reformer, was perverted to support oppression.” He eulogizes the philosophers of the eighteenth century and sees in the Government of the United States the first fruits of their teaching. Two conditions are necessary to a perfect government: first, “that the will of the people should be represented as it is”; secondly, “that that will should be as wise and just as possible.” The former of these obtains in the United States; and, in so far as the people are represented, “America fulfills imperfectly and indirectly the last and most important condition of perfect government.”

He then condemns “the device of public credit” and the new aristocracy which arose with it. This new order has its basis in fraud, as the old had its basis in force. It includes attorneys, excisemen, directors, government pensioners, usurers, stock jobbers, with their dependents and descendants.

What are the reforms that he advocates? Today some of them would be considered too mild by even a conservative. He would abolish the national debt, the standing army, and tithes, due regard had to vested interests. He would grant complete freedom to thought and its expression, and make the dispensation of justice cheap, speedy and attainable by all.

A reform government should appoint tribunals to decide upon the claims of property holders. True, political institutions ought to defend every man in the retention of property acquired through labor, economy, skill, genius or any similar powers honorably and innocently exerted. “But there is another species of property which has its foundation in usurpation or imposture, or violence.” “Of this nature is the principal part of the property enjoyed by the aristocracy and the great fundholders.” “Claims to property of this kind should be compromised under the supervision of public tribunals.”From an abstract point of view, universal suffrage is just and desirable, but since it would lead to an attempt to abolish the monarchy and to civil war some other measure must be tried instead. Mr. Bentham and other writers have urged the admission of females to the right of suffrage. “This attempt,” Shelley writes, “seems somewhat immature.” The people should be better represented in the House of Commons than they are at present. He would allow the House of Lords to remain for the present to represent the aristocracy.

All reform should be based upon the principle of “the natural equality of man, not as regards property, but as regards rights.”

“Whether the reform, which is now inevitable, be gradual and moderate or violent and extreme depends largely on the action of the government.” If the government refuse to act, the nation will take the task of reformation into its own hands and the abolition of monarchy must inevitably follow. “No friend of mankind and of his country can desire that such a crisis should arrive.” “If reform shall be begun by the existing government, let us be contented with a limited beginning with any whatsoever opening. Nothing is more idle than to reject a limited benefit because we cannot without great sacrifices obtain an unlimited one.” “We shall demand more and more with firmness and moderation, never anticipating but never deferring the moment of successful opposition, so that the people may become capable of exercising the functions of sovereignty in proportion as they acquire the possession of it.”

The struggle between the oppressed and the oppressors will be merely nominal if the oppressed are enlightened and animated by a distinct and powerful apprehension of their object. “The minority perceive the approaches of the development of an irresistible force, by the influence of the public opinion of their weakness on those political forms, of which no government but an absolute despotism is devoid. They divest themselves of their usurped distinctions, and the public tranquillity is not disturbed by the revolution.” The true patriot, then, should endeavor to enlighten the nation and animate it with enthusiasm and confidence. He will endeavor to rally round one standard the divided friends of liberty, and make them forget the subordinate objects with regard to which they differ by appealing to that respecting which they are all agreed.

Shelley seems to think that revolutionary wars are seldom or never necessary. A vigilant spirit of opposition, together with a campaign of enlightenment, will usually suffice to bring about the desired reforms. It is better to gain what we demand by a process of negotiation which would occupy twenty years than to do anything which might tend towards civil war. “The last resort of resistance is undoubtedly insurrection.”

The work ends with a consideration of the nature and consequences of war. “War waged from whatever motive extinguishes the sentiment of reason and justice in the mind.”

Shelley, following Godwin and Condorcet, was a firm believer in the perfectibility of human nature. “By perfectible,” Godwin writes, “it is not meant that man is capable of being wrought to perfection. The idea of absolute perfection is scarcely within the grasp of human understanding.” “The wise man is satisfied with nothing. Finite things must be perpetually capable of increase and advancement; it would argue, therefore, extreme folly to rest in any given state of improvement and imagine we had attained our summit.”[111] In a letter to E. Hitchener, July 25, 1811, Shelley writes: “You say that equality is unattainable; so, will I observe is perfection; yet they both symbolize in their nature, they both demand that an unremitting tendency towards themselves should be made; and the nearer society approaches towards this point the happier it will be.”

The development of the race, they believe, has been along the following lines: Man emerged from the savage state under the attraction of pleasure and the repulsion of pain. Self-love, his only motive of action, made him at once social and industrious, led him to confound happiness with unregulated enjoyment, made him avaricious and violent, and caused the strong to oppress the weak and the weak to conspire against the strong. Slavery and corruption have consequently followed on the liberty and innocence of primitive times. But as man is perfectible this condition of things cannot last. The diffusion of knowledge together with the discoveries and inventions recently made, have already been productive of great progress. Humanity is now fairly started on a career of conquest; the emancipation of the mind is rapidly advancing. Soon morality itself will come to be rationally viewed; it will be universally acknowledged that there is only one law, that of nature; only one code, that of reason; only one throne, that of justice; and only one altar, that of concord.[112] Shelley had unbounded faith in human nature and believed that the downfall of tyranny must soon take place. He believed that the world would resolve itself into one large communistic family, where every man would be independent and free.

Godwin says that “there will be no war, no crime, no administration of justice, as it is called, and no government. Besides this there will be neither disease, anguish, melancholy or resentment.”[113] The sun of reason will of itself disperse all the mists of ignorance and the pestilential vapors of vice. It will bring out all the beauty and goodness of man. Love will be universal; everybody will seek the good of all. Earth, Shelley thinks, will soon become a garden of delight.

O Happy Earth, reality of Heaven
Of purest Spirits thou pure dwelling-place
Where care and sorrow, impotence and crime
Languor, disease, and ignorance dare not come.[114]