Michael Murphy
Coleridge Bulletin New Seies 18, Winter 2001, (pp.16-24)
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Scholars have written most convincingly on the sources which make up Coleridge’s Pantisocracy. But each scholar tends to favour certain sources or traditions as the central ingredient of the emigration plan. A selective choice highlights the variety involved: Ian Wylie argues that Pantisocracy was modelled on ‘the early Christian communities of the first centuries’; Kelvin Everest views the scheme as ‘a means of escape from the hostility of anti-jacobin England’ (influenced by Hartley’s Unitarianism); J. A. Appleyard reads Pantisocracy in terms of the philosophical systems of Hartley, Priestley, and Godwin; Peter Kitson examines the influence of Harrington and Puritan utopias; Leonard Deen focuses on the influence of Godwin, the Bible, and Hartley; Robert Sayre notes the coexisting traditions of the French Revolution and Romantic Utopianism; Stuart Andrews identifies a utopianism that has its roots in the American Revolution; and E. Logan explores Coleridge’s use of American travel accounts.[2]
The process of reading Pantisocracy results in a critical canon of conflicting hypotheses. The above scholars considered as a ‘collective’ come closer to defining Coleridge’s use of sources than any of their single readings. Not only can we never fully account for the ‘silent’ influences which Coleridge fails to acknowledge, but it will be argued that his syncretic hermeneutic defies our scholarly attempts at closure or fixed meaning. By examining Coleridge’s eclectic use of source material, we find that he draws upon an expansive range of traditional and contemporary discourses. The process of overlapping and interfused traditions highlight the complex way in which source is permeated through the Pantisocratic discourse. Coleridge’s mosaic style of authorship points us towards an uncontrollably plural history which subverts the scholarly tendency to confine Pantisocracy to a coherent whole.
Intrinsic to the Pantisocratic ideal are ‘the principles of an abolition of Individual property’ (CL I: 96), or what Coleridge called ‘Aspheterism’ (CL I: 88). It is on the issue of property that we find Coleridge at his most radically daring: while he was culturally influenced by past and present discourses (the Bible, the Commonwealth writers, the Unitarians, and the social reformers of the day, who were driven by the momentum of the American and French
[17]
Revolutions) he departs from most of his contemporaries by denouncing the right and utility of property ownership. Coleridge therefore demonstrates that despite his highly eclectic use of source material, he retained a distinctive voice as a social reformer. And though Coleridge's most radical ideas on property were concentrated around the time of the Bristol lectures (1795), there is some evidence to suggest that he later had a sense of nostalgia for the anti-property stance that was fundamental to the Pantisocratic plan. When writing to Southey (25 Jan. 1800) about the "modes of Property", Coleridge argued that they "must be done away" (CL 1 564). He went on to blame the old anathemas of "priesthood & the too great Patronage of Government" for the unequal balance of proprietary relations. A year later (April 1801), in a letter to Tom Poole, Coleridge continued to promote the Pantisocratic idea that property was the corrupting force in the ruling classes:"Property is the bug bear–it stupifies the heads & hardens the hearts of our Counsellors & Chief Men!" (CL2 721). The following year in the Morning Post (21 Oct. 1802), Coleridge seemed to be fond of the idea that an integral Pantisocratic community was possible under certain proprietary conditions: "For instance, in the purely pastoral and agricultural districts of Switzerland, where there is no other property but that of land and cattle, and that property very nearly equalised" (EOT 1 370).
*
Continuing in the line of prominent Unitarians, such as Price, Priestley, Frend and Wakefield, Coleridge embraced the Commonwealth tradition which idealised the Mosaic model of government.[3] In the Bristol lectures (1795) he wrote of the ‘sages and patriots that being dead do yet speak to us, spirits of Milton, Locke, Sidney, Harrington! that still wander through your native country, giving wisdom and inspiring zeal!’ (LPR 290). Echoing Moses Lowman, Coleridge looked to the Mosaic republic as a model for social freedom and equity: ‘If we except the Spartan, the Jewish has been the only Republic that can consistently boast of Liberty and Equality’ (LPR 126).[4]
Coleridge’s ideas on republicanism and property are to a large part rooted in the biblical tradition which is continued through the Commonwealth writers and adopted by the reforming Unitarians. In the Bristol lectures Coleridge used scriptural arguments to attack the constitutional right of monarchy (LPR 154) and existing proprietary relations (LPR 226). The Jews were seen to make a fundamental mistake by choosing a monarchical constitution over a republican state: they rejected Christ in favour of a ‘splendid Monarch’ (LPR 154). Coleridge argued that this mistake was being perpetuated by the body politic of the 1790s. Coleridge went on to authenticate his idea of ‘Aspheterism’ by claiming that Christ forbade property ownership (LPR 226).
The task of identifying the most influential sources in Coleridge’s work is
[18]
made complex by the way in which tradition is absorbed, transfused, and continued in other traditions. Traditional sources come to Coleridge by way of assimilation and alteration: he consciously adopts a particular tradition which has an unconscious history. The point becomes apparent when Coleridge incorporates the travel literature of J. P. Brissot de Warville into his Bristol lectures.[5] Brissot was a Girondist who represented the politically moderate tradition of the French Revolution. He nevertheless was greatly influenced by the American Revolution, idealised the frontiersmen, and looked to the plains of Susquehanna to form a republican settlement. By using the work of Brissot, Coleridge was consequently embracing some vestige of both the American Revolutionary and French Girondist traditions. Pantisocracy was partly inspired by Brissot with respect to location, agricultural pursuits, the division of labour and leisure time.[6]
Further sources for Coleridge’s Pantisocracy are provided by Godwin, Hartley (via Priestley) and Priestley.[7] Lewis Patton and Peter Mann highlight the complex business of identifying prominent sources in a culture of overlapping traditions:
The problem of accurately identifying Coleridge’s obligations is made more difficult by the fact that, in some of the most relevant areas of thought, Priestley and Godwin possessed a common vocabulary derived from what was common in their intellectual milieu (Godwin too looked back to Hartley, for instance). It is possible to see only in context whether a concept such as ‘optimism’ or ‘illumination’ is being used by Coleridge with his own Christian or Priestleian associations, or whether he is publicly (or involuntarily) acknowledging a debt to Godwin. (LPR lxxiii—lxxiv)
Despite the problem of identifying specific personalities amidst the ‘common vocabulary’ of reformist literature, it is possible to demonstrate some clarity in Coleridge’s incorporative source material. Coleridge adopts an eclectic style of composition. He ‘cuts and pastes’ from materials at his disposal without adopting any particular tradition or author wholesale. The process of Coleridge’s selectiveness is apparent in his incorporation of Godwin’s ideas in Political Justice (1793): that the Government hampered the moral and intellectual progression of individuals in society, that the transformation of society was best achieved by passive means, that the abolishment of luxury,
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profit, and exploitative labour would render a more egalitarian society.[8]
In a letter to Southey (21 October 1794) Coleridge demonstrated his selectivity. He argued that ‘in the book of Pantisocracy I hope to have comprised all that is good in Godwin’ (CL I: 115). Utilising ‘all that was good’ meant that Coleridge had to necessarily reject certain principles of Godwin’s teachings: his atheism, his humanist perspective on property relations (Coleridge preferring the ‘abolition’ of property on biblical premises), and his ideas on the role of the family (Godwin rejected the necessity of familial affection as a means of engendering universal benevolence).[9]
Coleridge incorporated Hartley’s ideas to extricate himself from Godwinian thought. He used Hartley’s system of association, as set out in The Observations on Man (1749): a mental connection of ideas, feelings and sensations, caused by external objects which make lasting impressions on the brain.[10] Opposing Godwin, Coleridge argued that benevolent feelings were first developed by association within the family. Benevolent influences in the home could then be extended to immediate society, and more widely to the rest of humanity. Hartley’s system focused on the experiential development of the human mind. Working on the premise that people were ultimately conditioned by their psychological input, he argued that by modifying the mind’s influences the human race could progress towards moral and intellectual perfectibility.
Pantisocracy was to be a living embodiment of Hartley’s theoretics concerning the perfectibility of humanity. A wholesome environment and the nurturing or socialisation process was at the centre of the plan. The isolated Pantisocratic community would be less vulnerable to the harmful influences of society. The idea was to cultivate a habitual state of mind which would eventually spread from the pocket community to the rest of mankind. In a letter to Southey (13 July 1794) Coleridge saw Pantisocracy as part of a process which would eventually permeate mainstream society:
The ardour of private Attachments makes Philanthropy a necessary habit of the Soul. I love my Friend—such as he is, all mankind are or might be! The deduction is evident. Philanthropy (and indeed every other Virtue) is a thing of Concretion—Some home-born Feeling is the centre of
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the Ball, that, rolling on thro’ Life collects and assimilates every congenial Affection. (CL I: 86)
It was in the home that ‘Philanthropy’ was first seen to be cultivated as a ‘necessary habit of the Soul’. The integration of domestic philanthropy would then snowball into other spheres of life outside the home. The correct moral and educational nurturing of the children was seen to be of fundamental importance for the future progression of humanity. Coleridge argued that a young child might be delivered from ‘gross self-interest’ to ‘pure Benevolence’ (LPR 114) with the right influences. In a letter to Southey (23 Oct. 1794), Coleridge nevertheless showed concern that the older children of the other Pantisocrats might be too ‘deeply tinged with the prejudices and errors of Society’ to be reformed (CL I: 119).
Priestley also inspired Coleridge with regard to Pantisocracy. After his Birmingham house and laboratory were destroyed by a ‘church and king’ mob in the anti-jacobin riots of 1791, Priestley emigrated to the Susquehanna. In the ‘Sonnets on Eminent Characters’ (1794), Coleridge praised Priestley’s religious conviction and lamented the persecution (‘Vizir Riot rude’) which led to his emigration ‘o’er the Ocean swell’ (PW 81). Priestley idealised the Mosaic Commonwealth as a model for republican liberty. He argued that Jesus’ doctrines were the ‘most favourable to the liberty and equality of man’.[11]
The Pantisocratic plan is integrated with a great many sources, but Coleridge’s ‘voice’ is not obscured in the process. Coleridge provided a distinct analysis of proprietary affairs. He differed from many of his contemporary reformers, who all retained some allegiance to the right of property ownership: Priestley, Brissot, Rousseau, Godwin, Thelwall, Paine, Hardy.[12] The equal distribution of property and the liberalisation of property rights did not go far enough for Coleridge, he recommended the abolition of the conditions in which property relations were based (LPR 48).
Priestley argued for equal rights concerning land, but not for the elimination of private property and commerce. Priestley and his son in law, Thomas Cooper, were in the business of land speculation for capital gains. In 1791 Priestley used religious premises to support his entrepreneurial spirit. He claimed that ‘there never was any obligation on Christians to throw their goods into common’.[13] Coleridge directly opposed Priestley on this matter: ‘I have asserted that Jesus Christ forbids to his disciples all property—and teaches us that accumulation was incompatible with their Salvation!’ (LPR 226). In the Bristol lectures Coleridge protested vociferously against the commercial
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market, in which profit and property were viewed as sources of corruption.
Peter Kitson argues that Coleridge’s idea on property during the ‘Pantisocratic phrase’ was formed on different premises to ‘Godwin, Paine, Thelwall, or Priestley’.[14] Coleridge’s distinctiveness is seen to come about through his ‘Christian dissent’ and allegiance to the radicalism of the seventeenth century Commonwealth writers. Kitson makes a valid point by highlighting the importance of Christianity to Coleridge’s idea on property. In a letter to John Thelwall (13 May 1796) Coleridge stated that property ‘poisons every thing good’ and is ‘beyond doubt the Origin of all Evil’ (CL I: 214). In the Bristol Lectures Coleridge quoted from Acts (ii.44.45) and Matthew (19:20-4) to make his point:
‘And all that believed were together, & had all things in common—and sold their possessions & goods and parted them to all men, as every man had need.’
(LPR 229)
Then said Jesus unto his disciples: ‘It is easier for a Camel to go through the Eye of a Needle, than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God.’
(LPR 227)
The lectures argued that Christ’s mission was to establish ‘Universal Equality’ on earth (LPR 218). While one person ‘possesses more than another, Luxury, Envy, Rapine, Government & Priesthood will be the necessary consequence’, which stand to ‘prevent the Kingdom of God’ (LPR 227). Coleridge claimed that ‘the system of accumulation’ was responsible for some ‘nine-tenths’ of society’s ‘Vices and Miseries’ (LPR 127).
Working in the tradition of the Commonwealth writers, Coleridge used the Mosaic dispensation as a paradigm for his republican politics. The Jewish constitution was seen to be ‘founded on an original Contract’ between God and the Israelites (LPR 124). Moses was granted the responsibility to build ‘a federal Republic’ (LPR 125). The land was ‘equally divided among the People’ and usurious practices opposed. Coleridge sets out the economic conditions under the Mosaic constitution:
To this end interest for money was forbidden and an act of grace for the abolition of all debts passed every 6th year. Thus the lending of money was made unadvantageous and insecure—and where there were no Creditors there could be no Debtors. But as Abuses might gradually creep in, and as all Constitutions require to be frequently brought back to their first principles, on every 50th year a solemn Jubilee was appointed, in which all Lands were restored, and the Estate of every Family discharged from all incumbrances returned to the Family again. (LPR 125)[15]
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Coleridge draws attention to a stipulation in the Mosaic law which allowed for the common people to have their land replaced should abuses ‘creep in’ and seizure take place. Coleridge claimed that since all people were equal in the eyes of God, it was ‘unlawful to acknowledge any human superior’ by granting them a disproportionate allocation of property (LPR 126). God created the land for ‘the whole Nation’, in which no individual or group had the ‘absolute right to the soil’. It was therefore argued that ‘the Land is no one’s—the Produce belongs equally to all, who contribute their due proportion of Labour’. (LPR 127)
Scholars have highlighted the importance of James Harrington’s The Commonwealth of Oceana (1656) on Coleridge’s theory of property.[16] Harrington acknowledged a relationship between property and political power, in which the ruling classes had appropriated through hereditary rights. The Commonwealth of Oceana contested the restoration of the aristocracy and monarchy in the 1650s. The reallocation of resources would bring property and power under the authority of all the Commonwealth members. In the Bristol lectures Coleridge reiterated Harrington’s theme by claiming ‘Property is Power and equal Property equal Power’. He continued: ‘A Poor Man is necessarily more or less a Slave. Poverty is the Death of public Freedom—it virtually enslaves Individuals, and generates those Vices, which make necessary a dangerous concentration of power in the executive branch’ (LPR 126).
Harrington’s theory of property depended upon a system of independent freeholders. Commonwealth members were therefore entitled to obtain property through a freehold tenure. Coleridge departs from Harrington on this issue. Peter Kitson notes the difference between Harrington’s ‘independent freeholders’ and Coleridge’s emphasis on ‘common ownership’: ‘Believing that property rights were incompatible with liberty, and equality, Coleridge rejected the notion of an equal commonwealth based on independent proprietors in favour of one based on the common ownership of property’.[17]
Scholars have rightly noted the importance of biblical and Commonwealth premises in Coleridge’s theory of property. Coleridge nevertheless goes beyond Harrington’s idea of ‘independent freeholders’, demonstrating his ability to incorporate other political theories/traditions without unconditionally accepting their credo. The eclectic style of Coleridge’s authorship shows how he was able to share common ground with other reformers such as Godwin,
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Thelwall, Paine, and Priestley, but managed to substantiate a more radical idea of proprietary relations. Godwin, for example, lacked the clarity and force of Coleridge’s emphatic idea to abolish property ownership. In Political Justice Godwin argued ‘whatever then comes into my possession, without violence to any other man, or the institutions of Society, is my property’.[18] Godwin favoured the idea of a more equal distribution of societal resources without denying the right to property ownership.
Thelwall and Paine’s idea on property was coloured by the French National Assembly position: it was legitimate for a person to own property on the condition that it could be repossessed for the greater public need.[19] The state was therefore sanctioned to appropriate and redistribute property as need required. Coleridge’s distaste for commerce, profit and property was not shared by Priestley, who denied that the Bible legitimised a policy of ‘common ownership’.[20] When other prominent reformers were prepared to sanction a property-orientated society (based on equal rights to the access of resources) Coleridge argued for the abolishment of the ruling conditions on which property relations existed (LPR 48, 128, 226). Coleridge claimed that equal rights could not prevail under the existing constitutional sanction for proprietary relations (LPR 48). The ‘abolition of all individual Property’ was consequently viewed as the ‘only infallible Preventative’ against accumulation and ensuing inequality (LPR 128).
Coleridge’s distinct idea on property warns us against reading Pantisocracy as ultimately derived from any particular tradition. Tradition is diffused and integrated into the Pantisocratic plan in a way which is often manifest, sometimes concealed. Coleridge demonstrated a republicanism which was rooted in the discourses of the Bible (continued in the Commonwealth writers and the Unitarians), but we should not deny the momentum and sense of urgency which the French Revolution brought to his reformist agenda. Coleridge was inspired by prominent political analysts like Thelwall and Paine (who generally aspired to the French republican model), even though he contested their views on religion, and radicalised their position on property.
The broad reform movement spoke a common language in response to the social inequalities of the day. The Coleridgean discourse is immersed in the overlapping cultural traditions of its period. In a seemingly paradoxical way, Coleridge is both distinct and indistinguishable amidst the discursive cultural trends that prevail: he has a palpable ‘voice’ but is not unconnected from the cultural/material practises of his social milieu. The act of reading Pantisocracy in terms of a dominant tradition, fails to address the potentiality of ‘unacknowledged’ sources of inspiration. These sources can often be located in the materiality of the social realm.
The Pantisocratic plan, for example, provided an alternative system to
[24]
existing state of societal affairs. Without ignoring the incorporative use of traditional discourse, Pantisocracy was very much rooted in its own immediate history: a response to an increasing industrial, urban, and capitalistic culture. In the Bristol lectures Coleridge identified ‘commerce’ as a corrupting force in the ‘city’: it ‘is useless except to continue imposture and oppression’ (LPR 223—224). He argued that the new developing modes of capitalist production were engendering social deprivation: ‘Cities Drunkenness, Prostitution, Rapine, Beggary and Diseases—Can we walk the Streets of a City without observing them in all their most loathsome forms?’ (LPR 224). Commerce and industrialisation in the city were seen to cause ‘the debased offspring of Luxury and Want’ (LPR 225).
Coleridge responded to the perceived corruptions of his society with traditional reform and protest discourses. Lewis Patton and Peter Mann explain that to remedy ‘the problem of property’, Coleridge turned to ‘the New Testament and to those passages in it which had earlier inspired’ many groups from the seventeenth century (Anabaptists, Diggers, Levellers, Shakers and Quakers), who had either attempted to live communally in England, or had chosen a new life by emigrating to America.[21] Arguing for a more radical system of property relations than most renowned reformers, Coleridge’s innovative spirit is demonstrated in his efforts to find a new language. Referring to the word ‘aspheterized’, Coleridge writes to Southey (6 July 1794): ‘We really wanted such a word—instead of travelling along the circuitous, dusty, beaten high-Road of Diction you thus cut across the soft, green pathless Field of Novelty!’ (CL 1 84). The neologisms ‘pantisocracy’ (an egalitarian community) and ‘aspheterism’ (the abolishment of property) give testimony to Coleridge’s inventive challenge to the hierarchical conditions of his society.
Coleridge’s eclectic style of composition warns us against thinking in terms of an overriding tradition which underlies Pantisocracy, or from the clinical separation of one tradition from another. The process of isolating source material (as a means of identifying a Coleridgean dependency on one tradition over another) does not allow for ‘silent’ influences, nor for Coleridge’s absorption in the varied discourses and material practises of his immediate society. It is not a case of denying the importance of Coleridge’s debt to any identifiable tradition, but of acknowledging that no particular tradition can account for the complexity of Pantisocracy in the historical process. Coleridge’s use of tradition or source is fused in a way which confounds our attempts to read history ‘as it is’: in any absolute, unified, or ultimately concretised way. We therefore only ‘glimpse’ one of the many manifestations of Pantisocracy in the discursive process of history.
[1] I would like to thank Tim Fulford for helping me to realise the many ‘Coleridges’. I am also indebted to Carole Coates for her prolonged supervision.
[2] Ian Wylie, Young Coleridge and the Philosophers of Nature (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1989) 60; Kelvin Everest, Coleridge’s Secret Ministry: The Context of the Conversation Poems, 1795 p.1798 (Sussex and New York: Barnes and Noble, 1979) 74; J. A. Appleyard, Coleridge’s Philosophy of Literature: The Development of a Concept of Poetry, 1791 p.1819 (Massachusetts: Harvard Univ. press, 1965) 30 p.33; Peter Kitson, ‘Our Prophetic Harrington: Coleridge, Pantisocracy, and Puritan Utopias’, The Wordsworth Circle, 24 (1993): 97 p.102; L. W. Deen, ‘Coleridge and the Sources of Pantisocracy: Godwin, the Bible, and Hartley’, Boston University Studies in English, 5 (1961): 232 p.245; Robert Sayre, ‘The Young Coleridge: Romantic Utopianism and the French Revolution, Studies in Romanticism, 28 (1989): 397 p.415; Stuart Andrews, ‘Coleridge, Bristol and Revolution’, The Coleridge Bulletin, 7 (1996): 2 p.29; E. Logan, ‘Coleridge’s Scheme of Pantisocracy and American Travel Accounts’, PMLA, 45 (1930): 1069 p.1084.
[3] Coleridge gets access to the Commonwealth writer James Harrington (The Commonwealth of Oceana, 1656) through James Burgh’s Political Disquisitions (1774 p.5) and Moses Lowman’s A Dissertation on the Civil Government of the Hebrews (1740).
[4] See Moses Lowman, A Dissertation on the Civil Government of the Hebrews (London, 1740) 1.
[5] For Coleridge and travel accounts see Logan, 1069 p.1084; J. R. MacGillivray, ‘The Pantisocracy Scheme and its Immediate Background’, Studies in English by Members of the University of Toronto, (1931): 131 p.169. For Coleridge’s use of travel accounts in The Ancient Mariner see John Livingston Lowes, The Road to Xanadu: A Study in the Ways of the Imagination (London: Pan Books, 1978 [1927]).
[6] Tom Poole’s account of pantisocracy echoes Brissot’s planned emigration. See Mrs Henry Sandford, Thomas Poole and His Friends, vol. 1 (London: MacMillan, 1888), 97; J. p. Brissot de Warville, New Travels in The United States of America 1788, ed. Durrand Echeverria (Massachusetts: The Belknap Press of Harvard Univ. Press, 1964) 37 p.38.
[7] See Deen, 232 p.245; Appleyard, 30 p.33; Everest, 74 p.79. See also Nicholas Roe, The Politics of Nature: Wordsworth and Some Contemporaries (London: Hampshire and London, 1992) 51. Roe notes how pantisocracy ‘coincided with George Dyer’s idea of “mankind, as a family’’.’
[8] Compare Coleridge’s LPR 60 pp.1, 127, 223, 228, with Godwin’s An Enquiry Concerning Political Justice and Its Influence on Morals and Happiness (1793), ed. F. E. L. Priestley, 2 vols (Toronto: Univ. of Toronto Press, 1946), I: xxiv, I: 168, 1: 105, 1: 482. Coleridge may have been introduced to Godwin’s Political Justice by Southey. See George Whalley, ‘The Bristol Library Borrowings of Southey and Coleridge, 1793 p.8’, The Library, 5th series, 4 (1949): 117. Coleridge had probably read Political Justice by 21 Oct. 1794. See CL I: 115.
[9] See letters to Southey, CL I: 102 (11 Sept. 1794), CL I: 138 (17 Dec. 1794), in which Coleridge attacks Godwin’s Atheism. For Coleridge’s general argument against Godwin’s idea of benevolence see LPR 163 p.4. A later letter, CL 1:253 (13 Nov. 1796) suggests that Coleridge was planning to dispute Godwin’s idea of property with biblical reasoning.
[10] Lewis Patton and Peter Mann explain that ‘it has never been entirely clear how far Coleridge’s knowledge of Hartley’s system was gained from a first-hand reading, how far from Priestley’s expositions and elaborations’ (LPR lix). For examples of how the theory of association influences Coleridge’s ideas on benevolence and the importance of a suitable environment for the pantisocratic settlement, compare LPR 9, 12, 46, 114, 158, 164 with Hartley’s Observations on Man: His Frame, His Duty, and His Expectations (1749), 2 vols (Hildesheim: George Olms, 1967), I: 81, 484, 488, 494, II: 291 p.293, and Priestley’s, The Conclusion of the Late Dr. Hartley’s Observations on the Nature, Powers, and Expectations of Man, second edition (London, 1794) 2.
[11] Joseph Priestley, An Answer to Mr. Paine’s Age of Reason (London, 1795) 24.
[12] See Joseph Priestley, Letters to the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Occasioned by his Reflections on the Revolution in France ( London, 1791) 77; Brissot de Warville, 37 p.8; Jean-Jacques Rousseau, The Social Contract, ed. Maurice Cranston (Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1968) 66 p.68; William Godwin, 169; John Thelwall, The Rights of Nature, Against the Usurpations of Establishments, part 2 (London, 1796) 55; Thomas Paine,political Writings, ed. Bruce Kurlick (Cambridge and New York: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1989), 116; Thomas Hardy, Testaments of Radicalism: Memoirs of Working ClassPpoliticians, 1790 p.1885, ed. David Vincent (London: Europa Publications, 1977), 53.
[13] Quoted in Kitson, 101, footnote 5.
[14] Ibid; 98.
[15] Coleridge largely relies here on Moses Lowman’s A Dissertation on the Government of the Hebrews (1740). See Patton and Mann LPR 125, footnotes 1 p.3.
[16] See Kitson, 97 p.102; Nigel Leask, The Politics of Imagination in Coleridge’s Critical Thought (Hampshire and London: Macmillan, 1988), 29; Timothy Fulford, Landscape, Liberty, and Authority: Poetry, Criticism and Politics, From Thomson to Wordsworth (Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. press, 1996), 219 p.221; John Morrow, Coleridge’s Political Thought: Property, Morality and the Limits of Traditional Discourse (London: Macmillan, 1990) 29. See also J. D. Coates, ‘Coleridge’s Debt to Harrington: A Discussion of Zapolya’, Journal of The History of Ideas, 38 (1977): 501 p.8. Coates examines the later influence of Harrington outside the pantisocratic period.
[17] Kitson, 100. See also Morrow, 31. Morrow explains that ‘Christian egalitarianism necessitated the abandonment of the independent-property-holder myth that lay at the heart of Harrington’s discourse.’
[18] Godwin, I: 169.
[19] See Paine, 116.
[20] Priestley, quoted in Kitson, 101, footnote 5.
[21] See introduction to LPR lxxii. See also Leask, 37. Leask argues that Coleridge’s ideas are seen to be a ‘curious combination of Christian spirituality and ‘levelling’ radicalism’.