Coleridge’s Philanthropy:
Poverty, Dissenting Radicalism, and the Language of Benevolence [1]
Kaz Oishi
Coleridge Bulletin, New Series, No 15, Spring 2000,
pp. 56-70)
_______________________________________________________________________
1
On the 17th of
November, 1795, some citizens of
“A
Gentleman…has spoken of his love of Peace, and of his abhorrence of the society
of JESUS, who propagated principles diametrically opposite to the doctrines of
Jesus; but in what page of his blessed gospel did that Gentleman learn, that the way to procure peace was by the Sword."
Surely not in that passage “If a man
smite thee on the one cheek, thou shalt turn the other also.” (361)
To Coleridge, a war under the name
of Jesus was an absurd ‘blasphemy’, as he wrote in ‘Religious Musings’ (l.
191). It contradicted not only the words of Christ, but his spirit and deeds of
charity as described in the Gospel. Coleridge’s concern was with the state of
the poor, whose lives were most at stake in the war-strained economy: ‘a PENNY
taken from the pocket of a poor man might deprive him of a dinner’ (LPR, 361). Pacifism and philanthropy
were of a kind in Coleridge’s early political
discourse.
[57]
Coleridge’s
early pacifism was a reverberation of the anti-war campaign carried out by
radical Dissenters. As indicated in the title of J. H. William’s tract, War the Stumbling-block of a Christian; Or,
the Absurdity of Defending Religion by the Sword (1795), the war appeared
to them as an abjuration of Christian belief.[4] Coleridge’s
underlying ideas, however, were not confined to the framework of Unitarian
doctrines: preaching the Gospel to improve morality among the poor was a
cross-denominational phenomenon in the late eighteenth century. Dissenters in
general and even some Anglican clergymen were awakened by the importance of
their evangelical duties. Coleridge reflected their mounting enthusiasm for
Christian missions:
Go,
preach the Gospel to the Poor. The disciples of Christ were commanded to
proclaim good Tidings to All Men; but their zeal was directed more particularly
to the Poor, because being oppressed they wanted comfort, being ignorant they
wanted knowledge, and being simple in lowliness they were likely to receive the
Gospel and preserve it in purity. (LPR,
195)
Despite
Coleridge’s public persona as a Unitarian radical, the zeal with which he
proclaimed ‘Preach the Gospel to the Poor’, more resembles that of the
Methodist John Wesley, who had, after all, started his long Evangelical career
by preaching to the distressed labourers of Bristol in 1739. In Wesleyean
Methodists, Coleridge saw one of the essential qualities of a philanthropist,
who, he wrote, ‘should be personally among
the Poor, and teach them their Duties’
(LPR 43).[5] By adding ‘the
views of the Philosopher’ as another essential qualification for a
philanthropist (ibid.), Coleridge narrowly preserved an alliance with Rational Dissenters,
who admitted the importance of religious enthusiasm and yet insisted on
‘disciplining’ it within the boundary of reason.[6]
Coleridge’s involvement with Dissenting
radicalism has been much discussed, but little attention has been paid to these
philanthropic concerns as seen in his discourse on poverty. Philanthropy would
continue to be an important theme throughout Coleridge’s life, and if we are to
understand what happened to his radicalism, we need to examine the background
and ramifications of his philanthropic ideas which supported and survived his
radical career. Carl Woodring suggested in 1961 that Coleridge’s ‘Unitarian
religion and his republicanism united in aims and language of sympathy, pity,
[58]
and universal
fraternity’.[7] There certainly
was a link between republicanism and Unitarianism, and, as John Morrow and
Peter Kitson respectively show, Coleridge derived his radical rhetoric from the
critiques of property and government in the tradition of ‘civic humanism’ as
well as from the Commonwealthean discourses of seventeenth- and
eighteenth-century Nonconformists.[8] Nicholas Roe,
with impeccable detail, substantiates the Unitarian matrix which served to
shape Coleridge’s early discourse, and goes further to point out the
significant influence which Coleridge received from George Dyer’s idea of
benevolence.[9] Coleridge’s
philanthropic ideas, however, need a more careful examination. During the
1790s, the language of ‘benevolence’ and discourses on poverty underwent a
process of conflict and interactive transfiguration.[10] This historical
context gave Coleridge’s writings some ambiguous elements which had their
ideological roots neither in republicanism nor in the ‘enlightened’ religion of
the Unitarians. As the Critical Review noted
accurately on his Moral and Political
Lecture in 1795, Coleridge’s radical discourse was ‘rather defective in
point of precision’: we hear him talking about principles, but he suddenly
disappears before he shows us ‘some fixed and determinate principles of action’.[11]
Nor would it be correct to assume that
Coleridge’s early Unitarian faith was simply a virulent infection, or in his
words, ‘ebullitions of youthful disputatiousness’ (CL, 1: 125), cured gradually and notably as he progressed towards
Anglican Trinitarianism. The continued seriousness of Coleridge’s attitude
towards the poor, as we see in Lay
Sermons, belies such a negative view. In 1816 he described his former
Unitarian beliefs with self-contempt as ‘psilanthropism’,
the assertion of Christ’s mere humanity; but he added that he could never
recollect those earlier days ‘with either shame or regret’, for he had been
‘most sincere, most disinterested!’[12] If he had
followed Unitarians in denying the divinity of Christ, it was because he had
viewed Jesus as an ‘inspired Philanthropist’ (LPR, 248), a man of charity inspirited by the omnipotent
benevolence of God. What is most characteristic of Coleridge is not the
incompleteness of his action or discourse, but the heterogeneity of his
philosophy resulting from what Thomas McFarland calls ‘reticulation’—an attempt
to establish as many interconnections as possible between different
[59]
modes of
activity, literary, theological, metaphysical, and, I would like to add,
‘political’.[13]
In what follows, I argue that philanthropy
was the key concept which linked Coleridge with the radical religion of
Unitarians; but I hope to show at the same time that the heterodoxy of his
philosophical ideas inevitably caused his gradual defection from their
politico-religious principles, with which he sought to harmonise his language.
By philanthropy, I do not mean the practice of charity, but rather the
attitudes and ideas with which Coleridge and Rational Dissenters alike pursued
an ideal vision of human welfare. Coleridge himself rarely used the term, but a
study of his philanthropic ideas will help us understand how his reticulated
philosophy eventually caused the disintegration of his radical persona.
2
Coleridge was
initiated into Unitarianism at
We
can detect a personal reason for Coleridge’s precipitous enthralment with
Unitarianism. Coleridge at
[60]
Jesus and the ‘Holiness in the
Gospel’, his ‘Reason’ was inclined towards the ‘subtlety of Argument’ in the
work of Enlightenment authors, such as Voltaire and Helvetius (78). Before his involvement
with Dissenting radicalism, he had no means to solve the inner discord of his
sensibility, intellect, and religious faith. Hence his existential crisis.
After his miserable escapade in a dragoon regiment, he confessed to his brother
that ‘Scepticism had mildewed my hope in the Saviour’: with all his faith in
‘the Truth of revealed Religion’, he found himself ‘still farther from a steady
Faith’ (65). He was desperately in need of ‘True and active Faith’ and of the
‘Comforter’ who would console his weakened soul (65). Unitarian radicalism
apparently supplied this ‘active faith’. In the spring of 1796, Coleridge was
still trying to hold on to the ‘active faith’ of the Unitarians:
I
therefore go, and join head, heart, and hand,
Active
and firm, to fight the bloodless fight
Of
science, freedom, and the truth in Christ.
(‘Reflections on having left a place of retirement’,
ll. 60-2)
This passage is,
in effect, a manifesto of Unitarian radicalism, upholding an enlightened,
unsentimental ‘practical piety’ towards a Divine Being, who operates the law of
necessity towards the progress of civilisation.[19] Coleridge’s
emotional piety could not, however, keep up with this hard-headed, ‘active’
faith very long.
It
was Southey who guided Coleridge from the state of ‘religious twilight’ into
the daylight of radical politics. Coleridge’s letters suddenly and explicitly
became charged with political ambition after his first acquaintance with
Southey in the summer of 1794. Even though Southey himself was not a Unitarian,
his pro-Dissenting views and puritanical moral uprightness awakened Coleridge’s
socio-political consciousness to reassess the political implications of his
religion and to find a model in the radical faith of Unitarians.
Coleridge’s concern with philanthropy was
developed initially in the course of his correspondence with Southey. In his
first letter to Southey, written on his walking tour with Joseph Huck,
Coleridge toasted ‘Republicanism’ and regretfully told how harshly his
companion was repelled by a beggar who poked her nose into their dinner table
at an inn; ‘it is impertinent &
obtrusive—I am a Gentleman’ (CL,
1: 83): Coleridge took Huck’s ‘unfeeling Remarks’ to illustrate the vicious
influence of the ‘lingering Remains of Aristocracy’ upon charitable, humane
feelings (84). He was convinced of the urgent necessity of ‘aspheterisation’,
equalisation of ‘the Bounties of Nature’ (84), which, he believed, would not
only eradicate destitution from society, but also attain ‘a moral Sameness’ (163). For Southey, aspheterisation was
[61]
associated with
the republican virtue of fraternity, as he told his friend Bedford in a solemn
manner: ‘when thou hast once seen the aspheterizing system realized, thou wilt
gladly fraternize with us’.[20] This was the
principle which the two poets attempted to install at the centre of their
Pantisocracy project. Though the scheme was later to suffer from the
misunderstanding of principles between them, it initiated Coleridge’s political
career as a philanthropist.[21] Whilst Southey
depended on Godwin and Rousseau for a theoretical basis for ‘aspheterisation’,
Coleridge derived his utopian vision mainly from the principles of primitive
Christian communism, as indicated by Jesus’s admonishment: Jesus ‘forbids to
his disciples all property—and teaches us that accumulation is incompatible
with their Salvation’ (LPR, 226).[22] Just as the
sight of a hunger-bitten girl inspired Wordsworth towards republican ideals,[23] the encounter
with a beggar thus invoked for Coleridge the vision of a poverty-free society.
The reality of social evils converted him into a philanthropist with ample
political imagination.
Southey
and Coleridge continued their epistolary discussion in search of an ideal
virtue which would serve to attain social and moral amelioration. Probably
Southey was the first to direct attention to the eighteenth-century idea of
benevolence. In his reply to Southey, while touching on the catastrophe of
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 in the centre of the Ball, that,
rolling on thro’ Life collects and assimilates every congenial Affection. (CL,
1: 86)
The word
‘philanthropy’ here has more strongly religious, and politically complicated
implications than the eighteenth-century ‘benevolence’. In an intense
philosophical debate concerning benevolence during the eighteenth century,
Hutcheson’s optimistic belief in the human capacity for universal benevolence
was discredited by Hume, Adam Smith and a number of others,
[62]
who advocated
private affection as the primary virtue in human society.[24] In the above
passage, Coleridge took a middle-ground position which located affection at the
centre of benevolence, and yet accepted the possibility of universal love. His
benevolence, however, was modelled fundamentally on the Biblical notion of the
love of neighbour. And in order to expand affection into the love of mankind,
he relied on Hartley’s theory, which suggests various means by which a man can
develop his sympathetic affections into ‘pure disinterested Benevolence’
through the system of association.[25] By thus
reconciling private love with universal benevolence, Coleridge could be led to
accept the rationalised Unitarian belief in God’s ‘strong controlling Love’,
without suppressing his poetic sensibility (‘Religious Musings’, l. 58).
Moreover, the term ‘philanthropy’, which
originally meant ‘love of mankind’ and often ‘an action for public good’, became
an active political virtue during this period, referring specifically to the
principles of general enlightenment and amelioration leading up to universal
happiness. With their strong belief in human reason, Rational Dissenters tended
to remove sentimental elements from the eighteenth-century notion of
benevolence.[26] For Mary
Wollstonecraft, ‘natural affection’ was not ‘pampered sensibility’, but ‘rational affections’ cultivated only by
‘reason’.[27] And Price upheld
universal benevolence as ‘a just and rational principle of action’ which would
aim disinterestedly at the general happiness of human society through a reform
of established political institutions.[28] The virtue of
benevolence was thus restructured into a new active virtue of ‘universal
benevolence’, which C.B. Jones terms as ‘radical sensibility’.[29]
This active sensibility provided the
basis of all the philanthropic visions of radical Dissenters. It involved both
sympathy towards the poor and a reform of human institutions; the civil
discrimination Dissenters faced and their hostility to the Established Church
inevitably evoked their sympathy towards those who were equally repressed by a
seemingly inequitable government. Their view of poverty as a sign of
misgovernment stood against the conciliatory view of destitution as a blessed
state of sinlessness, as in Paley’s Reasons
of Contentment and in Hannah More’s Village
Politics, which were disseminated by John Reeves’ Association as apologies
of the Establishment. In The Complaints
of the Poor People in England (1793), Dyer made some innovative suggestions
to ameliorate the plight of the poor, and continued in
[63]
his 1795 tract to
put forward his definition of ‘a philanthropist’ as an ‘independent Being’
whose ‘benevolence’ involves ‘moral persuasion’ and ‘rational conviction’.[30] He even
expressed the extreme view that theological opinions were not essential for
producing ‘the milk of philanthropy’ in human mind.[31] While attacking
an unreflecting kind of ‘charity’, Godwin also argued that ‘philanthropy’
should consist principally in ‘a change of sentiments and dispositions’ among
the whole members of a society.[32] To the Anti-Jacobin, this visionary,
theoretically-oriented philanthropy appeared as absurd and impracticable. The review
therefore called Paine ‘the philanthropist’ with a tone of mockery, and
caricatured both Jacobins and reformers as a ‘Friend of Humanity’
contemptuously kicking out a squalid knife-grinder who would not understand his
‘Republican enthusiasm and universal philanthropy’. [33]
Coleridge
shared a critical awareness of the increasing national distress with
Unitarians, such as Priestley, Gilbert Wakefield, and William Roscoe, who
demanded immediate peace for the sake of national welfare, upholding the supremacy
of Christian universal love over the Establishment’s anti-Jacobinism. Though
his facetious essay ‘On Fasts’ provoked even Dissenters, Coleridge generally
assimilated the rhetoric of these eloquent radical pacifists in his discourse
on poverty:
But
alas! the storm which they raise, falls heaviest on the unprotected Innocent:
and the Cottage of the poor Man is stripped of every Comfort, before the
Oppressors, who send forth the mandate of Death, are amerced in one Luxury or
one Vice. (LPR, 65)
Coleridge’s
language is what
Coleridge’s
definition of philanthropy, however, contradicted radical philanthropy. It not
only refused to rationalise the eighteenth-century virtue of benevolence, but
also it remained both politically and religiously less radical than it is
alleged to be. For Coleridge, universal benevolence was to be ‘begotten and
rendered permanent by social and domestic affections’ (LPR, 46). ‘Jesus knew our Nature’, he wrote, ‘and that expands like
the circles of a Lake—the Love of our Friends, parents and neighbours lead[s]
us to the love of our Country to the love of all Mankind’ (163). He drew on a
passage in the
[64]
Bible in order to describe how a
Christian is led from brotherly kindness ‘to the height of disinterested
Virtue’ and of moral perfection (CL,
1. 283; 2 Peter, 1: 5-7). Human love thus expands towards the ideal sphere of
divine goodness and secures infinite happiness in the love of God through the
process of self-annihilation:
All
self-annihilated it shall make
God
its Identity: God all in all!
We
and our Father one! (‘Religious
Musings’, ll. 43-5)
The sense of a universal unity
‘fraternizes’ men and ‘constitutes / Our charities and bearings’, and it is
Christ’s ‘sacred sympathy’ that elevates a self towards the ‘whole one self’,
‘Oblivious of its own, / Yet all of all possessing’ (ll. 129-30, 153-4, 156-7).
And Coleridge sought to attain true ‘Faith’ through this self-immersion in
God’s divine love, even though he knew that he could not reach the ultimate
vision of ‘Truth’ (ll. 157, 396).
The pantheistic notion of God’s love as
immanent was shared by Priestley and other Unitarians, but Coleridge adapted it
in his own way. In a draft of a sermon which he gave for Joshua Toulmin at
[65]
‘Self’ as
absorbed in ‘the absolute I AM’ (BL,
1: 283).
3
Coleridgean philanthropy became most
distinct from radical philanthropy when these ideas were translated into
practical matters. Provoked by Thelwall’s scorn of religion, he set out to
convince him of the remarkable effects of Christian religion on the ethical
improvement of delinquent paupers: ‘to preach morals to the virtuous is not
quite so requisite, as to preach them to the vicious’, because the foremost
object of religion is ‘to heal the broken-hearted, and give wisdom to the Poor
Man’ (CL, 1: 282). His
‘psilanthropist’ faith in Jesus as the ‘inspired Philanthropist’ formed itself
in Coleridge’s discourse as an evangelical imperative:
“Go, preach the Gospel to the Poor.” By its Simplicity
it will meet their comprehension, by its Benevolence soften their affections,
by its Precepts it will direct their conduct, by the vastness of its Motives
ensure their obedience. (LPR, 44)
The
evangelicalism in this message contravenes the anti-governmental principles of
radical philanthropy. Encouragement of obedient habits through emotional and
material relief would serve the purpose and effect of philanthropy as conducted
by Wesley, or as disseminated through Hannah More’s tracts. And Coleridge may
have seen no disagreement between himself and More, when he agreed to Southey’s
original plan to dedicate The Fall of
Robespierre to her.[37]
Coleridge’s involvement in the
Abolitionist movement further illustrates his non-sectarian concern with
philanthropic actions. The slave trade had been an imminent public issue for
some years before his arrival at
[66]
the exotic
luxuries ‘unattainable by the poor and labouring part of Society’ (LPR, 237). Bleeding slaves were torn
from the breast of domestic affections, whilst
Coleridge’s
philanthropy was also free from partisan interests in its encouragement of
private charity. His stress on spontaneous sympathy implied an approval of voluntary
charity, but he rejected the traditional view of alms-giving as a means of
salvation. Nor did he endorse either the heartless, ‘law-forced’ charity
administered by the Poor Laws (‘Religious Musings’, l. 288) or the sentimental
almsgiving intended to relieve one’s own pain at the sight of paupers. In the
fifth issue of The Watchman,
Coleridge highly recommended Count Rumford’s Essays, Political, Economical, and Philosophical (1796), which
testified to the fact that voluntary charity prevented the desperate poor in
Coleridge’s encouragement of alms-giving
is to be contrasted with Unitarian philanthropy, which traditionally emphasises
‘head’ rather than ‘heart’.[40] With their
emphasis on individual moral capacities and with their animosity towards the
Establishment, Unitarian radicals tended to refuse indiscriminate alms-giving
and at the same time opposed the Poor-Law relief, on the grounds that both of
these systems had been undermining the spirits of independence and industry
among paupers. Dyer attacked the ‘philanthropy that attends public charities’
for being ‘selfishness in disguise’.[41] Price set a high
value on self-dependence and industry of the poor rather than on charities.[42] While admitting
some merits of paternalism, Priestley argued that a spirit of commerce could
co-operate with the principles of Christianity: he thus protected the interests
of his Unitarian congregations, who consisted mainly of wealthy middle classes
engaged in trade and industry.[43] Coleridgean
philanthropy collided with the interests of Unitarians, who were later to ally
[67]
with Benthamite
utilitarians and promote political economy. It was probably to this
calculating, ‘cold beneficence’ of Rational Dissent as well as of the
law-regulated relief, that Coleridge referred in ‘Reflections on having left a
place of retirement’ (l. 54). After admiring the arduous philanthropy of John
Howard, the prison reformer, he wrote:
And
he that works me good with unmoved face,
Does
it but half: he chills me while he aids,
My
benefactor, not my brother man!
(‘Reflections’, ll. 51-3)
Self-dependence and industry could not
be seen as commendable virtues by the immensely dependent poetic genius.
Coleridge’s ideal was charity rising impulsively and spontaneously from within
in harmony with divine benevolence.
Wordsworth also regarded alms-giving as
the most effective and natural mode of relief.[44] In 1798, he
represented the beneficent power of sympathy in the figure of an old silent
beggar, but it was through Coleridge that Wordsworth learnt of the Hartleyan
psychological process through which sympathy might be transformed into habitual
benevolence:
Where’er the aged Beggar takes his rounds,
The mild necessity of use compels
To acts of love; and habit does the work
Of
reason, yet prepares that after joy
Which
reason cherishes. And thus the soul,
By
that sweet taste of pleasure unpursued
Doth
find itself insensibly disposed
To
virtue and true goodness. (‘Old Cumberland Beggar’, ll. 90-7)
The Beggar functions not just as the
centripetal axis of ‘sympathy’ in a community, but as the incarnation of ‘the
benignant law of heaven’ (l. 160) with which the villagers harmonise themselves
through charity. In parallel with the Coleridgean dynamism between human love
and omnipotent God, this Worthworthian genial correspondence between human
sympathy and benevolent Nature was designed to counteract both the Poor-Law
administration and the rigorous rationalism of Unitarian philanthropy.
Even
in the mid-1790s, a new mode of language was required to represent the Romantic
philanthropy in contrast to other types of philanthropy, radical, utilitarian,
and bureaucratic. Emphasis on natural sympathy endowed the Romantic poets with
the imaginative power to arrest the inner sufferings of the distressed, which
elucidated Coleridge’s ‘gospel’ to
[68]
the poor in contrast with the
abstract argument of Rational Dissent. In his ‘Ode to the Departing Year’
(1796), Coleridge acutely perceived the ‘toil of death’ that would agonise a
soldier on the war-field (l. 112). Such empathy towards war victims adds a
humane note to his anti-war discourse. In ‘Destiny of Nations’ (1796), he
vividly represented calamities through the eyes of the charitable Jesus-like
heroine. In The Watchman, he drew on
Southey’s passage in Joan of Arc (1796)
to illustrate the ‘untold misery’ of inarticulate casualties:
…At
her cottage door
The
wretched one shall sit, and with dim eye
Gaze
o’er the plain, where, on his parting steps,
Her
last look hung. Nor ever shall she know
Her
husband dead, but tortured with vain hope
Gaze
on—then heartsick turn to her poor babe,
And
weep it fatherless! (Watchman, 45)
The passage bears
a striking resemblance to Margaret’s grief in Wordsworth’s Ruined Cottage (1797-98) and shares a pathos with another anti-war
narrative of his, Salisbury Plain,
originally written in 1793-94. This exemplifies what T. W. Laqueur terms the
‘humanitarian narrative’ which relies on details of affliction ‘as the sign of
truth’, demanding ‘Christian mercy’ and ameliorative actions as a moral
imperative.[45] With Southey and
Wordsworth, Coleridge aimed to create a new type of discourse which dealt with
the sufferings of the poor in a way that would appeal to the reader’s sentiment
and imagination and would motivate them towards personal acts of kindness.[46] These Romantic
poets looked at the problem of poverty ‘from within’, whilst Unitarians and
utilitarians strove to solve it from ‘without’.[47]
Coleridge’s
sympathetic imagination, in particular, was deepened by his own inner
existential problem. In ‘Effusion XXXV’, an early version of ‘The Aeolian
Harp’, he presents a kind of hortus
classicus in which strings of sentiments and thoughts are animated by the
‘one intellectual Breeze’ towards ‘Th’INCOMPREHENSIBLE’ (ll. 39, 51), but he
cannot help intimating his inner anxiety when he ‘inly feels’ the healing power
of God (l. 52):
Who
with his saving mercies healed me,
A
sinful and most miserable man
Wilder’d
and dark. (ll. 53-5)
The later image of Coleridge in
dejection is already perceptible. The sudden darkening of the Edenic vision
reveals the crucial dichotomy from which
[69]
Coleridge’s philanthropy suffered
between vision and action, religion and politics, poetry and radicalism. The
morbid, somewhat pathetic, yet potentially sublime piety characterises the
basis of Coleridge’s philanthropy—a philanthropy which relieves and cures
afflictions from within while aspiring after the ideal unity with benevolent
God through poetic discourse. And it was this piety and philanthropy that
Coleridge reconstructed in 1798 in the figure of the agonised Ancient Mariner,
who is redeemed from the state of life-in-death when he blesses the water
snakes ‘unaware’ (‘The Rime of the Ancyent Marinere’, l. 279). The ‘spring of
love’ gushing spontaneously from the heart is the essence of Coleridgean
philanthropy: it is a self-annihilating ‘sacred sympathy’ absorbed in the love
of God which not only provides the basis of personal charity, but also redeems
the anguished soul from purgatorial suffering. At
4
Coleridge’s philanthropy certainly
exemplifies a Romantic Ideology which replaces history with poetic visions, but
it does not imply his withdrawal from politics. He pursued with Unitarian
radicals the vision of universal happiness in harmony with God’s omnipotent
benevolence; but his special emphasis on spontaneous affection distinguished
his philanthropy from the rationalised philanthropy of Dissenting radicals. His
own inner affliction and anxieties restrained him from such devotion to
rationality: his sympathy was naturally directed towards the afflicted hearts
of the destitute. With Wordsworth’s poems, Coleridgean philanthropy constituted
what is to be called ‘Romantic philanthropy’, stressing the importance of human
affection and social sympathy in an imaginative discourse on poverty,
especially in opposition both to the radical mode of social reform and to the
bureaucratic mode of public relief.
Towards the end of the 1790s, Romantic
philanthropy was confronted by its most formidable enemies, Malthusianism and
Benthamite utilitarianism, both of which encouraged the virtues of industry and
self-dependence within the framework of political economy and were therefore
accepted largely by Unitarians in the early nineteenth century. The two groups
combined forces to promote a laissez-faire economy, whilst providing the
rationale for the Poor Law Amendment of 1834, which sought to confine paupers
as social nuisance within the workhouse. Coleridge reacted fiercely against
Malthus’s
[70]
unsympathetic
attitude towards the poor as soon as his essay on population came out.[48] Wordsworth also expressed
a fervent objection to the new Poor Law in the Postscript to Yarrow Revisited (1835). While
envisaging personal charity as the most effective Christian charity, Coleridge
continuously stood against the demoralised philanthropy of political economists
which derived its economic principles primarily from Adam Smith in pursuit of
the material wealth of the nation. For Coleridge, it was ‘well-being’, rather
than ‘wealth’, that counted most in human welfare, as he attempted to clarify
in such works as Lay Sermons and On the Constitution of the State and the
Church. Coleridge’s dissension from the radical politics cannot simply be
reduced into a ‘disenchanted conservatism’.[49] Nor did his
ideal philanthropy lie in the system of eighteenth-century paternalism; it
sought to solve modern social problems upon religiously and politically more
comprehensive principles. Coleridge’s discourse during the 1790s had
philanthropy as its central theme, encompassing the entire spheres of politics,
philosophy, religion and poetry. His language of benevolence remained heterodox
in the context of Dissenting radicalism.
[1]
I would like to thank Dr.
[2] The Star, 17 November 1795, as quoted in S. T. Coleridge, Lectures 1795: On Politics and Religion, eds. Lewis Patton and Peter Mann (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1971) 361, hereafter cited as LPR with page number(s) in parentheses.
[3] See Coleridge’s criticism of the Duke of Portland’s defence of the French war as a necessary measure to preserve ‘the Christian Religion’, in a note to line 159 of ‘Religious Musings’, Samuel Taylor Coleridge: The Complete Poems, ed. William Keach (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1997) 475-76. References to Coleridge’s poems are hereafter based on this edition.
[4]
J. E. Cookson examines the
historical significance of Unitarians’ anti-war movement in Friends of Peace: Anti-War Liberalism in
[5] Coleridge admired Methodists’ success in inculcating sobriety and industry among the poor. The Watchman, ed. Lewis Patton (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1970) 13, hereafter cited as W. Coleridge’s positive view of Wesley’s Evangelical Revival is emphasised by Frederick Gill, The Romantic Movement and Methodism: A Study of English Romanticism and the Evangelical Revival (London: Epworth Press, 1937) 161-63. Though generally ambivalent about Methodism, Southey also quotes Wesley’s words of philanthropic fervour in his The Life of Wesley and the Rise and Progress of Methodism (London: Frederick Warne, 1889): ‘I love the poor. . . . If I might choose, I should still, as I have done, preach the gospel to the poor’ (261-2).
[6] Jon Mee shows that Coleridge and rational Dissenters were equally obsessed with anxieties about the kind of religious enthusiasm invoked by Richard Brothers and Richard Lee, in ‘Anxieties of Enthusiasm: Coleridge, Prophecy, and Popular Politics in the 1790s’, Huntington Library Quarterly 60 (1998): 196-97.
[7] Carl Woodring, Politics in the Poetry of Coleridge (Madison: Univ. of Wisconsin Press, 1961) 14.
[8] John Morrow, Coleridge’s Political Thought: Property, Morality and the Limits of Traditional Discourse (London: Macmillan, 1990) 19-31. P. J. Kitson, ‘“The electric fluid of truth”: The Ideology of the Commonwealthsman in Coleridge’s The Plot Discovered’, in P. J. Kitson and T. N. Corns (eds.), Coleridge and the Armoury of the Human Mind: Essays on his Prose Writings (London: Frank Cass, 1991) 36-62.
[9] Nicholas Roe, Wordsworth and Coleridge: The Radical Years (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1988) Chapt.3: The Politics of Nature: Wordsworth and Some Contemporaries (Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1992) 27-30. G. M. Ditchfield examines Rational Dissenters’ philanthropy from a historical viewpoint in his recent article, but Coleridge is significantly excluded from his discussion. ‘English Rational Dissent and Philanthropy, c.1760-c.1810’, Hugh Cunningham and Joanna Innes (eds.), Charity, Philanthropy and Reform: From the 1690s to 1850 (Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1998) 193-207.
[10] For general political implications of rhetoric and language during this period, I am indebted to Olivia Smith, The Language of Politics, 1790-1818 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1984).
[11] The Critical Review, 13 (1795): 455.
[12] Biographia Literaria: or Biographical Sketches of My Literary Life and Opinions, eds. James Engell and W. J. Bate, 2vols. (Princeton: Princeton U.P., 1984) 1: 180, hereafter cited as BL with volume and page numbers in parentheses.
[13] Thomas McFarland, Coleridge and the Pantheist Tradition (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1969) xl.
[14] Roe, Radical Years, 84-110.
[15] The Collected Letters of Samuel Taylor Coleridge, ed. E. L. Griggs, 6vols. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1956-69) 1: 20, hereafter cited as CL with volume and page numbers in parentheses.
[16]
Henry Gunning, Reminiscences of the University, Town, and
Country of
[17]
Willam Frend, Peace and
[18] Frend, 47-8.
[19] For the characteristics of Unitarian rational piety, see R. K. Webb, ‘Practical Piety’, in Knud Haakonsen (ed.), Enlightenment and Religion: Rational Dissent in Eighteenth-Century Britain (Cambridge: Cambridge U.P., 1996) 287-311.
[20] Robert Southey, New Letters, ed. Kenneth Curry, 2vols. (New York: Columbia U.P., 1965) 1: 62.
[21]
For Coleridge’s political and
poetical critique of Southey, see L. D. Pratt, ‘The Literary Career of Robert
Southey 1794-1800’, 2 parts, D.Phil Thesis,
[22]
The emigration of Priestley
weighed heavily in Coleridge’s mind. The exiled Unitarian minister at this time
had an optimistic vision of ‘a large settlement for the friends of liberty’ in
[23] The Prelude (1805), Bk. 9, ll. 511-34, The Oxford Authors: William Wordsworth, ed. Stephen Gill (Oxford: Oxford U.P., 1984). Wordsworth’s poems are hereafter cited from this edition.
[24] For this philosophical debate and its influence on the radical literature of the 1790s, see Evan Radcliffe, ‘Revolutionary Writing, Moral Philosophy, and Universal Benevolence in the Eighteenth Century’, History of Ideas, 54 (1993): 221-40.
[25]
David Hartley, Observations on Man, His Frame, His Duty,
and His Expectations, 2vols. (
[26]
Sentimental benevolence
provided the moral basis for impulsive almsgiving, as described in Mackenzie’s The Man of Feeling and Sterne’s Sentimental Journey. See Janet Todd, Sensibility: An Introduction (London:
Methuen, 1986) Chapt.6; John Mullan, Sentiment
and Sensibility: The Language of Feeling in the Eighteenth Century (Oxford:
Clarendon Press, 1988) 118-22, 190-94; G. J. Barker-Benfield, The Culture of Sensibility: Sex and Society
in Eighteenth-Century
[27]
Mary Wollstonecraft, A Vindication of the Rights of Men (
[28]
Richard Price, A Discourse on the Love of our Country (
[29] C. B. Jones, Radical Sensibility: Literature and Ideas in the 1790s (London: Routledge,1993). See also Radcliffe, 233-40.
[30]
George Dyer, A Dissertation on the Theory and Practice of
Benevolence (
[31] Dyer, Dissertation, 19.
[32] Enquiry concerning Political Justice and its Influence on Modern Morals and Happiness, 2vols. (1793; Spelsbury: Woodstock Books, 1992) 1:202, 2: 798. For Godwin’s associations with Rational Dissent, see Mark Philp’s detailed study Godwin’s Political Justice (London: Duckworth, 1986) Part 1.
[33] The Anti-Jacobin, Vol.1 of Parodies of the Romantic Age, ed. Graeme Stones (London: Pickering and Chatto, 1999) 22, 49.
[34]
Gilbert Wakefield, The Spirit of Christianity, Compared with
the Spirit of the Times in
[35] Joshua
Toulmin, Appendix to Practical Efficacy
of the Unitarian Doctrine Considered (
[36]
See also W, 18; CL, 1:102. For the
intellectual milieu of Coleridge’s criticism of Godwin, see
[37]
Robert Southey, The Life and Correspondence of the late
Robert Southey, ed. C. C. Southey, 6vols. (
[38]
James Baum locates Coleridge
in the context of the Abolitionist movement in
[39]
For a critical re-assessment
of Southey’s abolitionist discourse as expressing a new racism under the guise
of Christian universalism, see Alan Richardson, ‘Darkness Visible? Race and
Representation in
[40] W. G. Tarrant, ‘The Spirit of Unitarian Philanthropy’, in J. E Carpenter (ed), Freedom and Truth: Modern Views of Unitarian Christianity,.. (London: Lindsey Press, 1925) 283-328.
[41] Dyer, Complaints, 64.
[42] See D. O. Thomas, ‘Francis Maseres, Richard Price, and the Industrious Poor’, Enlightenment and Dissent, 4 (1985): 65-82.
[43] Margaret Canovan emphasizes the ambiguity of Priestley’s idea on charity, ‘Paternalistic Liberalism: Joseph Priestley on Rank and Inequality’, Enlightenment and Dissent 2 (1983): 23-37.
[44]
See ‘The Ruined Cottage’, ll.153-60,
for what Wordsworth saw as the vicious influence of public relief upon
agricultural labourers. Garry
[45] Thomas Laqueur ‘Bodies, Details, and the Humanitarian Narrative’, in Lynn Hunt (ed.), The New Cultural History (Berkeley: Univ. of California Press, 1989) 177-78.
[46] In Wordsworth’s case, see Roe, Politics, 32.
[47] I borrowed J. S. Mill’s comparative description of Coleridge and Bentham in his essay on ‘Coleridge’ in Utilitarianism and Other Essays, J. S. Mill and Jeremy Bentham, ed. Alan Ryan (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1987) 177.
[48]
Coleridge provided marginal
notes for Southey’s unfavourable review of Malthus’s book for the Annual Review (1803). See Coleridge’s Marginalia, Vol.3, eds. H. J. Jackson
and George Whalley (London: Routledge, 1992) 805-09, and The
Notebooks of Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Vol.1, ed. Katherine Coburn (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1957)
1832. According to Thomas Allsop, one of the reasons Coleridge deserted the
Unitarian sect was the readiness with which the majority of Unitarians accepted
Malthus’s thesis. Letters, Conversatins
and Recollections of S. T. Coleridge, 2vols. (
[49] E. P. Thompson, ‘Disenchantment or Default? A Lay Sermon’, reprinted in The Romantics: England in a Revolutionary Age (Woodbridge: Merlin Press, 1997) 33-74.