Although both lives have been well chronicled (albeit separately), I hope there may be merit in a short selective account of the most salient features of the common radical ground shared by the two great writers, and its inspiration, a comparison that has attracted scant attention.
Dr Richard Price was a man of many parts: preacher, moral philosopher, commentator on actuarial and public finance, and ardent campaigner for civil liberties. This essay focuses, for the most part, on his latter activities. One of the most influential radical thinkers of his day, though now little known beyond historians.
Richard Price, Dd., Fsa: Champion Of Civil Liberty Read Post »
Anyone who looks at William Hone’s life in the round will discover some failings, notably a lack of a consistent sense of direction. His radical period was short lived, and he had neither the literary genius of Thomas Paine nor Henry Hunt’s rapacity to rouse an audience.
Even today there will be many readers who find radical views unacceptable. But I ask them to reflect that these advocates of change began the struggle for human rights, the freedom of speech, for the Enlightenment, for the inclusive franchise, for universal education and for our parliamentary democracy.
![“Reason against unreason” a 1882 illustration by Joseph Keppler and Adolph Schwarzmann shows the “Light of Reason”, containing bust portraits of “Johannes Kepler, I. Kant, Thomas Paine, Jefferson, B. de Spinoza, Franklin, Voltaire, E.H. Haeckel, Tyndall, Huxley, [and] Darwin”, beaming against a large umbrella labeled “Bigotry, Supernaturalism, [and] Fanaticism” – Library of Congress](https://thomaspaine.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/Reason-against-unreason.jpg)
Those of a radical persuasion are unlikely to have missed the reference in Richard Dawkins’ new book The God Delusion. Dawkins points to the epithets hurled at ‘poor Tom Paine: Judas, reptile, hog, mad dog, souse, louse, archbeast, brute, liar and of course infidel’.
