Nottingham Chartism, Nottingham Workers’ In Revolt During The Nineteenth Century. By Peter Wyncoll. Illustrated. Wrappers. 60pp. Nottingham Trades Council, 1966. 3/6. 

When I first read this work in manuscript about a year or so ago I thought then that it merited publication, indeed, it was hoped that the TPS could undertake this, alas for such a hope the financial position of the Society did not allow it. The Nottingham Trades Council have now stepped in and underwritten the cost of publication, a fitting gesture as the Chartist Movement was strongly working class in character. 

Peter Wyncoll commences his work by drawing attention to the social and economic conditions of the period, in setting Chartism in its historical setting he does not fail to stress its historic roots; his points for example about Luddism are refreshingly clear of the bias shown against that movement by even Socialist historians – and some politicians. The people who constituted the Chartist Movement came from several backgrounds, “superior craftsmen”, as the author terms them, Northern textile operatives and workers employed in “domestic outwork” (framework knitters). Wyncoll holds that the link between the three groups was the first group, and that many of these had some theoretical knowledge and were motivated by factors other than the immediate needs of the time. They were conversant with the works of Paine and Cobbett, one, James Sweet, a Nottingham bookseller (or as the author calls him later, newsagent) and barber being an “embryo early Socialist” and taking the chair year after year at dinners honouring “the great English Socialist Tom Paine”. 

Chartism as its well attended gatherings testify, was a mass movement. Yet I question the author’s contention that its main theme,. historically, “was the attempt to create a cohesive sense of class unity”. That it created a sense of unity in that it produced a collective identity of interests is possibly true but only in a mass sense for a limited period. However, factionalism was ever present and as the Chartists had no clear But policy, as Wyncoll points out, and as there existed no Socialist Party, the working class found its loyalties divided. Thus the loose unity brought about by Chartism fragmented all too easily, as 1848 demonstrated. On the other hand the author shows that Chartism did not fizzle out like a damp squib, it carried on but with an increasingly mute voice, we may find Lenin’s observation that Chartism was “The first broad truly mass and politically organised proletarian revolutionary movement” questionable on historical grounds, yet it certainly shows a great deal more perception than demonstrated by a number of English historians past and present. 

The booklet goes into detail about the many battles fought between various groups as well as indicating the splits in the Chartist Movement itself. The leading characters in the local drama are given flesh and blood by Mr.Wyncoll. These individuals were a mixed bag and in the case of several Chartists one cannot help but think that they let down those who put so much faith in them, Fergus O’Conner, the leading Chartist, after his election as a Member of Parliament, went out of his way to assure society of his respectability; he was, according to an Address to voters after his election, for the altar and for the Throne. He was not willing to wage a “battle against wealth which is fairly and honourably accumulated…” 

Peter Wyncoll concludes his valuable study by demonstrating from recently discovered correspondence that a group of working class militants “directly descended from the Chartists” were active in Nottingham and had direct contact with Karl Marx. The outcome of this was the establishment of a Nottingham Section of the International Working Men’s , Association. The leaders of the International in Nottingham had Wyncoll. writes, “learned the lessons of Luddism and Chartism well…” 

With its accompanying illustrations and five Appendices the booklet is well worth the modest sum asked. It is a mine of valuable information culled from many obscure sources. Some readers may object to the bias shown to the Chartists by the author and speak of the need for objective treatment. Yet if a bias is present it in no way detracts from the value of the work, this, as the author clearly states, is not a “King history” but is concerned with the bitter struggles of ordinary men and women. If the author is in favour of one side his bias is justified and honourable. 

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Men like G.R. Blaydon are rare – one of the reasons why he was one of our Vice-Presidents. He was first associated with Thomas Paine’s birthplace, Thetford, when he became a pupil at the same Boys’ Grammar School there, where Paine had studied. In 1890 he started work as a junior in the office of the Town Clerk, and went on to serve Thetford for the rest of his long life, becoming Town Clerk in 1923 a post he held until 1950 and a Freeman in 1940. 

After his retirement in 1950, he was elected Mayor for the year 1951, the Festival of Britain, helping to organise among other civic activities the events that commemorated Thomas Paine, the man he was wont to call “Thetford’s greatest son.” On this he collaborated with my father, Adrian Brunel, and a warm friendship developed between them, for they often wrote to each other, exchanging information about Paine. Mr. Blaydon was an expert on local history, being also an Associate of the Royal Historical Society. In the correspondence appear notes on many fascinating topics of interest to students of Paine what may have happened to Paine’s bones, whether Paine was a Freemason, and details of the Rev. William Knowles, the Grammar School usher who considerably influenced Paine’s early life. 

Mr. Blaydon was the author of A Short History of Thetford Grammar School,in which he showed it to be one of the oldest schools in Britain he traced the names of the headmasters as far back as 1144. He remembered Moncure Conway visiting Thetford and inspecting the Register of Freemen, where he discovered that Paine’s father’s surname ended with an “e”. Conway remarked that the discovery alone was worth a visit to Thetford, as it dispelled the idea spread by Paine’s enemies that he had added the “e” to his supposed surname, Pain, for social reasons. 

My own correspondence with Mr. Blaydon, too, is full of the valuable information that he always gave with great courtesy, even when in his last years he was not always in the best of health. But my most vivid impression of him is a visual one: a fine, tall man, glowing with pride and happiness a few minutes after one of our other Vice-Presidents, Joseph Lewis, had concluded the unveiling ceremony of Sir Charles Wheeler’s statue of Paine in June 1964. It was only when he told me that he was so happy to have lived long enough to see the day, when Thetford had honoured Paine in the way it should, that I realised that this was not a young man I was talking to. 

He was not just a person with an historian’s interest, for he sincerely believed that Paine should be given his rightful place in history, and he struggled many years to achieve just such an event as we had been witnessing that would honour Paine and Thetford alike.

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IN the midst of the controversy over Silas Deane’s negotiations with the French government, the most sensational political scandal of the American Revolution, Thomas Paine brought forth several satirical pieces in verse and prose under a new pseudonym, Comus. Deane had been accused by his fellow commissioner Arthur Lee of using his official position for person- al gain. Although Congress instituted various official investigations, Deane’s case was virtually tried in the newspapers, and Paine as Common Sense served as public prosecutor. 

For a year after Deane’s appeal to the public for vindication in December, 1778, the newspapers carried literally hundreds of letters and essays supporting or attacking him. The controversy grew to comprise not only Deane’s foreign negotiations, but all forms of war profiteering, real and alleged. Paine, at the outset became Deane’s most vociferous accuser and, in turn, the butt of retaliatory attacks by the Deane supporters. By adopting a new pseudonym, Comus, Paine was enabled to proliferate his offensives to attack his enemies openly and soberly under his customary pseudonym, Common Sense, and to ridicule them under one that was unknown. In this way, he was sure to get a sympathetic hearing from those who were indifferent or even antagonistic to his reputation, as well as from those who habitually followed his lead. Common Sense and Comus sound somewhat alike, and it is not strange that Paine should have thought of Comus as an alternative pen name. Also, he was aware of the classical association of Comus with fun and revelry, for he consistently reserved this pseudonym for works of satire and burlesque. 

From a belletristic standpoint, one of the most interesting works in Paine’s entire career is an essay signed Comus in the Pennsylvania Packet (March 16,1779) in which Paine ridicules the prose style of two literary Congressmen in the Deane camp, William Henry Drayton of South Carolina, and Gouverneur Morris of New York. 

Before discussing the content of this essay, however, it is necessary to show that Comus was actually Thomas Paine. First of all, Paine used the pseudonym Comus at another stage of his career – on his return to America after his ten-year sojourn in France as member of the French Convention, as journalist and amateur diplomat. On August 23,1804, he published in the Philadelphia Aurora a burlesque of Federalist eulogies of Alexander Hamilton under the title “Nonsense from New York.” This was signed Comus. In two extant personal letters to publishers Paine admits authorship, Writing to Elisha Babcock, publisher of the Hartford American Mercury, August 27,1804, he refers to “a piece of mine signed Comus and entitled Nonsense from New York, “. and writing to William Duane, publisher of the Aurora, September 19, 1804, he complains, “In the last piece I sent you signed Comus, you abridged some of the expressions.” 

Identification of the Revolutionary satire on the style of Drayton and Morris is almost as precise, although it comes from one of Paine’s enemies rather than Paine himself. Four months after the essay by Comus, an anonymous poem appeared in another newspaper (Pennsylvania Evening Post, July 16,1779), abusing Paine for his defense of the Lees against Silas Deane: 

HAIL mighty Thomas! In whose works are seen 

A mangled Morris and distorted Deane; 

Whose splendid periods flash for Lees defense, 

Replete with every thing but common sense. 

Both of Paine’s pseudonyms are introduced, the notorious Common Sense and the unknown Comus: 

In pity tell, by what exalted name 

Thou would’st be damned to eternal fame. 

Shall Common Sense, or Conus greet thine ear 

A piddling poet, or puft pamphleteer. 

And the identification is completed by an allusion to the particular essay ridiculing literary style: 

And Eager to traduce the worthiest men, 

Despite the energy of Drayton’s pen. 

This couplet could hardly refer to anything but the essay in question, for Drayton, unlike Morris, remained relatively untouched by personal controversy, he was not a prolific writer, and condemnation of an opponent’s literary style was a rare weapon in Revolutionary polemics. It is scarcely conceivable that there existed another take-off by Paine or anyone else on Drayton’s writing.

Paine’s main affair was with Morris, a personal enemy, and he probably included Drayton in his squib only because Drayton served with Morris on many committees of Congress and also belonged to the Deane faction. Both Drayton and Morris had recently composed answers to British proclamations, Drayton a pamphlet reply to a speech of George 111, and Morris a newspaper reply to a speech by Governor George Johnstone, recently sent to America as a joint commissioner to treat with the colonies. His title of governor was one of courtesy, presumably applied because he had once been appointed governor of West Florida. 

Paine described the productions of George 111 and Drayton as “a dead match of dulness to dulness,” but otherwise limited his satire to a single sentence in Drayton’s pamphlet and to its physical appearance: “ornamented like an ale-house-keeper’s sign, with the letters W.H.D.” Paine felt that the terms in which Drayton opened his address to the King were ludicrous: “Your royal voice to your Parliament on the 27th of November last, has at length, reached the ears of freemen on the western shore of the Atlantic.” Paine exposed the absurdity of referring to the passage of the King’s voice across the Atlantic to the ears of America, a journey which had required nine days but should have taken only four hours, according to Paine’s estimate of the velocity of sound. 

Paine dismissed Drayton with the N.B., “The Devil backs the King of England, and S. Deane backs W.H.D. because he has good ‘ears,’ and they are not ‘shut.” This is a reference to Deane’s plaint at the outset of his cause celebre that the ears of Congress had been shut against him. 

Two years before writing this criticism of Drayton’s rhetoric, Paine in his Crisis No.3 had publicly praised one of Drayton’s other works, his charge to the grand jury for the district of Charleston in April, 1776. Paine said that it was written “in an elegant masterly manner” and described it along with the address of the convention of New York as”pieces, in my humble opinion, of the first rank in America,” one of the rare passages in Paine’s works in which he pays tribute to a fellow author. His approbation is understandable, however, for Drayton in his charge had not only supported the principles of Paine’s Common Sense, but had also warmly praised the work. 

Paine was in a sense repaying a debt. Later, when he found Drayton associated with his opponents, the Deane faction, Paine changed his opinion of his literary style. 

In turning to Gouverneur Morris, Paine opened up the full force of his satire. He was affected to forget Morris’ surname and spelled his given name as “Governeer.” Since Morris had written against Governor Johnstone, Paine was able to deride the mighty contention between Governor and the Governor. Johnstone in his speech had declared that “the maxim of dying in the last ditch was his principle,” and Morris had undertaken to ridicule the application of the maxim to the American war. Paine, without saying anything in Johnstone’s favour, sought to reduce Morris’ literary achievement to pretentious flummery.

Since Paine’s essay is fundamentally an analysis of literary humor, one may logically raise the question, why, in the midst of the rancorous controversy over Silas Deane during which Paine wrote at least thirty or forty disputatious pieces for the newspapers, did he take time to write at length on a purely literary subject? There is a measure of truth in the explanation which Paine himself offered to account for the vigor of his satire on the works of rival authors: “not only because such gasconade productions take away from that character of modern and serious fortitude which America has hitherto supported, and that without even giving wit in its place; but because they have a tendency to introduce a false taste among youth, who are too apt to be catched by the extravagance of a figure without considering its justness.” It may seem inconsistent for Paine to be supporting “modern and serious fortitude” in a work devoted exclusively to burlesque. Also, a large proportion of Paine’s other work, both during the Revolution and after, consists of unrelieved satire. It may be that he recognized a distinction between subjects of national importance and others of merely local or individual significance and considered that only the latter could be treated in a comic or frivolous vein. 

Paine may also have singled out Drayton and Morris because they were joint authors of a Congressional report, Observations on the American Revolution, which Paine disapproved of because it slighted the importance of the military action at the very beginning of the war. Four days after his Comus essay, Paine published a serious condemnation of the material, in this report, which he signed with his usual pseudonym, Common Sense. 

Paine used still other pseudonyms in addition to Comus and Common Sense. An opponent in the Pennsylvania Evening Post (January 7, 1777) described him as a”voluminous author,” appearing to the public “in three characters” a “Proteus of a being, who can not only change his shape and appearance, but can divide and subdivide his own identity.” According to this critic, the maneuvering of Paine, a “self-created multitude of an author,” resembled the tactics of General Burgoyne, who allegedly changed his ground when he could not maintain a post. 

At first glance, it may seem surprising that Paine’s contemporaries should have been aware of his identity as Comus, but that the circumstance should not have been registered in literary history until the twentieth century is still more surprising. Actually, this can easily be accounted for. Even before the end of the Revolution Paine spoke of collecting and publishing his literary works, and the project remained in his mind throughout his life, but he was never able to carry it out. And even had he made the attempt, it probably would have been difficult after his return from France to reassemble the newspapers of the Revolutionary decade in which his multitudinous essays had appeared. No collection of his miscellaneous works appeared during his lifetime, and that which appeared after his death, and on which all subsequent editions are based, was composed largely on the authority of one of Paine’s later acquaintances in New York. In addition to the Comus pieces, there are scores of Paine’s newspaper essays which have never been collected or identified in print. Paine did not even supervise a complete edition of his Crisis papers. The version which appears in editions of his works was not assembled by Paine himself, and even to this day there are various doubts about which of his writings he intended to represent as No.10. 

The Crisis, of course, had ineffably greater influence than the Comus piece satirizing Drayton and Morris, but the latter gives us a new insight into the human side of Revolutionary polemics and reveals that Paine had formulated conscious aesthetic principles for his writings.

References 

1. The relationship of the international aspects of the Deane affair to local Philadelphia profiteering is discussed in A.0.Aldridge, Man of Reason: The Life of Thomas Paine (London, 1960), 64-77.
2. Richard Gimbel, “New Political Writings by Thomas Paine,” Yale University Library Gazette, XXX (January, 1956), 98.
3. Typescript in Thomas Paine Historical Association from Gable Sale, New York, No.544, Feb.14,1924. 
4. I have been unable to find any other traces of Drayton’s pamphlet. He wrote a similar one in the previous year: The Genuine Spirit of Tyranny, exemplified In the Conduct of the Commissioners, Sent by the King of Great-Britain…. (Poughkeepsie (1778) (Evans: 15784(a))).
5. Pennsylvania Packet, Mar. 11, 1779. 
6. Ibid., Dec. 5, 1778.
7. Ibid., Mar. 20, 1779. 
8. For circumstances of the communication of Paine’s manuscripts, see H.T. Meserole, “W.T.Sherwin: A Little-Known Paine Biographer,” Papers of the Bibliographical Society of America, XLIX (1955), 271-272. The exchange described by Meserole led to the publication of Richard Carlile’s The Political and Miscellaneous Works of Thomas Paine (London, 1819 (1820)). 

Reprinted from The Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography, LXXXV.No.1. (1961).

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From time to time long forgotten but interesting bibliographical material relative to Thomas Paine comes to light. Such material may offer us nothing new about Paine himself but it often serves to indicate the high regard for his memory his supporters had. 

One such item recently came my way, it is a bound collection of a freethought journal entitled Half-Hours with the Freethinkers. This periodical, of which each issue was devoted to a particular individual, first appeared as a fortnightly on October 1st.,1856 and ran for 24 issues, the last being published on September 15th.,1857. On September 1st., 1864 another series commenced publication but this time as a weekly, it continued for 24 issues, the last appearing on February 9th.,1865. The number of pages per issue varied greatly and in an Editorial Preface to the 1st.issue, 1st. Series, it was noted that sufficient would be published to provide a complete volume. 

Such was certainly true for two specially printed title pages in the bound collection have on them the words 3rd Edition and the date 1868. It thus appears that unsold back numbers of both series were bound up and sold with a special title page. It also appears that some issues must have sold out before the 3rd collected edition appeared for a number have in place of the date of publication, which is in between two lines under the title, the legend “Second Edition” 

All issues of the 2nd.Series were printed by Watts & Co. of 17 Johnson’s Court, Fleet Street, London E.C. The printing history of the 1st. Series on the other hand is rather more varied, No.1. bears no printer’s imprint nor does a publisher’s name and address appear, features common to all issues of both Series. No.2. carries the name and address under the text on the last page of John Watts,147,Fleet Street as printer while the next three issues are printed by Kenny, Heathcock Court, 414, Strand, W.C. The next two issues bear no imprint and then Kenny reappears, the four issues after this have no imprint and it is issue 13 before John Watts turns up as printer, a job he keeps until No. 22 which is printed by Kenny. Watts then returns once again to complete the 1st Series. 

Half-Hours is an interesting and very scarce journal; to students of Thomas Paine it is of interest to note that No. 8. The 1st Series is devoted to him and was written by J. Watts, one of the three editors of the Series, the others being ‘Iconoclast’ (Charles Bradlaugh) and A. Collins. Collins is not listed as an editor in the 2nd.Series, it is also one of the issues that ran to a 2nd.edition. 

Journals of the type we have been discussing form an interesting subject about which little research has been done and one thinks that if the subject was explored in detail the results of such research would be well worth publishing. For the record it is perhaps well if we by way of conclusion give a list of the individuals covered in the series: (1st Series) Des Cartes, Volney, Lord Bolingbrook, Shelley, Voltaire, Anthony Collins, Spinosa, Paine, Shaftesbury, Miraubaud, Hume, Hobbes, Priestley, Tindal, Condorcet, Epicurus, D’Arusmont, Toland, Zeno, Helvetius, Blount, Barker, Taylor, Burnet (2nd. Series), Sir W. Hamilton, Lücretius, Rev. Baden Powell, Socrates, Holyoake, Bunsen, Lyell, Lord Herbert of Cherbury, Colenso, Strauss, Martineau, Buckle, George Combe, Darwin, G.H.Lewes, Theodore Parker, Carlyle, Frederick the Great, Fox, Humboldt, Heine, Owen, Emma Martin & Charles Southwell.

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