William Godwin - An Enquiry Concerning Political Justice

OXFORD WORLDS CLASSICS

AN ENQUIRY CONCERNING POLITICAL JUSTICE

WILLIAM GODWIN was born in 1756 in Wisbech, Cambridgeshire, one of only six of thirteen siblings to survive into adulthood. He declared a vocation to follow in his fathers footsteps as a dissenting minister and was educated with that objective from the age of 11. He practised his vocation for four years but found his convictions changing and he moved to London in 1783 to pursue a career as a writer. In the summer of 1791, following the onset of the French Revolution and the surge of public debate in Britain about France and reform at home, he wrote An Enquiry Concerning Political Justice (1793), a review of recent political philosophy that developed a powerful and systematic case for the progress of the human mind and the elimination of government. It established his reputation as a writer and philosopher, which he consolidated the following year with his best novel, Things As They Are; or, The Adventures of Caleb Williams. He became a central figure for literary and political circles and was closely associated with many who pressed for reform of the legislature and protested against the war with France. In 1797 he married the feminist writer Mary Wollstonecraft, who died after giving birth to a daughter (later Mary Shelley) a few months later. His reputation was tarnished by his candid memoir of Wollstonecraft, and at the end of the decade he was under fierce attack from the loyalist presses and former friends. He remarried in 1801 and founded a childrens bookshop and publisher with his wife, Mary Jane Clairmont. For twenty years he struggled to make the bookshop work, while also writing occasional novels and historical and literary studies. He was eventually declared bankrupt in 1825, which released him for a late surge of creativity. He was awarded a sinecure in 1833 by the Whig government and he died in March 1836.

MARK PHILP is Professor of History and Politics at the University of Warwick. He is the General Editor of the Collected Novels and Memoirs of William Godwin, 8 volumes (1992), and Political and Philosophical Writings of William Godwin, 7 volumes (1993), and co-editor of The Diary of William Godwin (Oxford Digital Library, 2010), .

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OXFORD WORLDS CLASSICS

WILLIAM GODWIN

Edited with an Introduction and Notes by

MARK PHILP

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Editorial material Mark Philp 2013

First published as an Oxford Worlds Classics paperback 2013

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I AM grateful to Ruth Turvey for her indispensable assistance in preparing the text, Judith Luna and OUP for taking on this edition, Richard Fisher at Cambridge for releasing me to take the more proselytizing route offered by Oxford Worlds Classics, and Laurien Berkeley and Bruno Currie for editorial and classical wisdom respectively. I also owe thanks for their help in the final stages of production to Jenni Crosskey and Peter Gibbs at the Press and to Mira Wolf-Bauwns who made the first assault on the index.

My thanks are also due to David OShaughnessy, Vickie Myers, James Grande, and Kathryn Barush, fellow labourers on the Godwin Diary project, ; to Jon Mee at Warwick University, Edward Pope in Oxford, and Bruce Barker-Benfield at the Bodleian Library; to Pamela Clemit, the editor of Godwins letters; and to the playwright Helen Edmundson, director Polly Teale, and the cast of Shared Experience, for bringing Godwin and his family to life for a new generation in Mary Shelley.

M.P.

IN July 1789, at the beginning of the French Revolution, Charles James Fox, the leader of the Whig opposition in Parliament, wrote to his friend Richard Fitzpatrick, who was setting out to France: It is not impossible but I may go too. How much the greatest Event it is that ever happened in the World! & how much the best. Fox was far from alone in his enthusiasm. Many welcomed the French Revolution as the dawning of a new age, promising an end to the traditional enmity between Britain and France. William Godwins An Enquiry Concerning Political Justice and its Influence on General Virtue and Happiness (1793) epitomized the philosophical optimism in Britain in response to events in France and gave it its most distinctive and original voice.

The enthusiasm for Frances Revolution, which followed hard on the heels of the American Revolution, quickly led to expectations in Britain that domestic reforms might counter the power of the Crown and ensure a proper representation of the people. Over the following three years these hopes met increasing opposition, both from William Pitts government and from a group of parliamentary Whigs who were concerned at the popular tenor of demands for change. The most outspoken of this group, Edmund Burke, set out his position in his