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The Political Ideas of the English Agrarians, 1775–1815*
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 07 November 2014
Extract
There is a famous admonition in Edmund Burke's Reflections on the Revolution in France: “Because half a dozen grasshoppers under a fern make the field ring with their importunate chink, whilst thousands of great cattle, reposed beneath the shadow of the British oak, chew the cud and are silent, pray do not imagine that those who make the noise are the only inhabitants of the field; that, of course, they are many in number; or that, after all, they are other than the little, shrivelled, meagre, hopping, though loud and troublesome, insects of the hour.” Thomas Spence, William Ogilvie, and Thomas Paine, whom I have chosen to call the English agrarians and with whose ideas this paper is concerned, were among those whom Burke dismissed in this manner. I believe he did them less than justice. It is true that while Paine has achieved a stature considerably greater than that of “an insect of the hour,” Spence and Ogilvie remain names–unknown names at that–on a crowded roster of minor political thinkers; and in presuming to advance their status, I bear in mind the comment of a reviewer who has referred to the interest “shown in the words and speeches of millenarian pamphleteers, who are often bloated into veritable Platos or premature Marxes.” I hope to avoid the pitfall of exaggeration. Yet I am convinced they merit more attention than they have hitherto received if only because they, alone among their contemporaries, recognized the outstanding social and economic problem of their time and made it the starting-point of their speculation.
- Type
- Research Article
- Information
- Canadian Journal of Economics and Political Science/Revue canadienne de economiques et science politique , Volume 18 , Issue 3 , August 1952 , pp. 287 - 302
- Copyright
- Copyright © Canadian Political Science Association 1952
Footnotes
*
This paper was presented at the annual meeting of the Canadian Political Science Association in Quebec, June 4, 1952.
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