Autobiography
rejoined. I soon after attempted something considerably more ambitious.
The prosecutions of Richard Carlile and his wife and sister for
publications hostile to Christianity were then exciting much attention,
and nowhere more than among the people I frequented. Freedom of
discussion even in politics, much more in religion, was at that time far
from being, even in theory, the conceded point which it at least seems
to be now; and the holders of obnoxious opinions had to be always ready
to argue and re-argue for the liberty of expressing them. I wrote a
series of five letters, under the signature of Wickliffe, going over the
whole length and breadth of the question of free publication of all
opinions on religion, and offered them to the _Morning Chronicle_. Three
of them were published in January and February, 1823; the other two,
containing things too outspoken for that journal, never appeared at all.
But a paper which I wrote soon after on the same subject, _à propos_ of
a debate in the House of Commons, was inserted as a leading article; and
during the whole of this year, 1823, a considerable number of my
contributions were printed in the _Chronicle_ and _Traveller_: sometimes
notices of books, but oftener letters, commenting on some nonsense
talked in Parliament, or some defect of the law, or misdoings of the
magistracy or the courts of justice. In this last department the
_Chronicle_ was now rendering signal service. After the death of Mr.
Perry, the editorship and management of the paper had devolved on Mr.
John Black, long a reporter on its establishment; a man of most
extensive reading and information, great honesty and simplicity of mind;
a particular friend of my father, imbued with many of his and Bentham's
ideas, which he reproduced in his articles, among other valuable
thoughts, with great facility and skill. From this time the _Chronicle_
ceased to be the merely Whig organ it was before, and during the next
ten years became to a considerable extent a vehicle of the opinions of
the Utilitarian Radicals. This was mainly by what Black himself wrote,
with some assistance from Fonblanque, who first showed his eminent
qualities as a writer by articles and _jeux d'esprit_ in the
_Chronicle_. The defects of the law, and of the administration of
justice, were the subject on which that paper rendered most service to
improvement. Up to that time hardly a word had been said, except by
Bentham and my father, against that most peccant part of English
institutions and of their administration. It was the almost universal
creed of Englishmen, that the law of England, the judicature of England,
the unpaid magistracy of England, were models of excellence. I do not go
beyond the mark in saying, that after Bentham, who supplied the
principal materials, the greatest share of the merit of breaking down
this wretched superstition belongs to Black, as editor of the _Morning
Chronicle_. He kept up an incessant fire against it, exposing the
absurdities and vices of the law and the courts of justice, paid and
unpaid, until he forced some sense of them into people's minds. On many
other questions he became the organ of opinions much in advance of any
which had ever before found regular advocacy in the newspaper press.
Black was a frequent visitor of my father, and Mr. Grote used to say
that he always knew by the Monday morning's article whether Black had
been with my father on the Sunday. Black was one of the most influential
of the many channels through which my father's conversation and personal
influence made his opinions tell on the world; cooperating with the
effect of his writings in making him a power in the country such as it
has rarely been the lot of an individual in a private station to be,
through the mere force of intellect and character: and a power which was
often acting the most efficiently where it was least seen and suspected.
I have already noticed how much of what was done by Ricardo, Hume, and
Grote was the result, in part, of his prompting and persuasion. He was
the good genius by the side of Brougham in most of what he did for the
public, either on education, law reform, or any other subject. And his
influence flowed in minor streams too numerous to be specified. This
influence was now about to receive a great extension by the foundation
of the _Westminster Review_.
Contrary to what may have been supposed, my father was in no degree a
party to setting up the _Westminster Review_. The need of a Radical
organ to make head against the _Edinburgh_ and _Quarterly_ (then in the
period of their greatest reputation and influence) had been a topic of
conversation between him and Mr. Bentham many years earlier, and it had
been a part of their _Château en Espagne_ that my father should be the
editor; but the idea had never assumed any practical shape. In 1823,
however, Mr. Bentham determined to establish the _Review_ at his own
cost, and offered the editorship to my father, who declined it as
incompatible with his India House appointment. It was then entrusted to
Mr. (now Sir John) Bowring, at that time a merchant in the City. Mr.
Bowring had been for two or three years previous an assiduous frequenter
of Mr. Bentham, to whom he was recommended by many personal good
qualities, by an ardent admiration for Bentham, a zealous adoption of
many, though not all of his opinions, and, not least, by an extensive
acquaintanceship and correspondence with Liberals of all countries,
which seemed to qualify him for being a powerful agent in spreading
Bentham's fame and doctrines through all quarters of the world. My
father had seen little of Bowring, but knew enough of him to have formed
a strong opinion, that he was a man of an entirely different type from
what my father considered suitable for conducting a political and
philosophical Review: and he augured so ill of the enterprise that he
regretted it altogether, feeling persuaded not only that Mr. Bentham
would lose his money, but that discredit would probably be brought upon
Radical principles. He could not, however, desert Mr. Bentham, and he
consented to write an article for the first number. As it had been a
favourite portion of the scheme formerly talked of, that part of the
work should be devoted to reviewing the other Reviews, this article of
my father's was to be a general criticism of the _Edinburgh Review_ from
its commencement. Before writing it he made me read through all the
volumes of the _Review_, or as much of each as seemed of any importance
(which was not so arduous a task in 1823 as it would be now), and make
notes for him of the articles which I thought he would wish to examine,
either on account of their good or their bad qualities. This paper of my
father's was the chief cause of the sensation which the _Westminster
Review_ produced at its first appearance, and is, both in conception and
in execution, one of the most striking of all his writings. He began by
an analysis of the tendencies of periodical literature in general;
pointing out, that it cannot, like books, wait for success, but must
succeed immediately or not at all, and is hence almost certain to
profess and inculcate the opinions already held by the public to which
it addresses itself, instead of attempting to rectify or improve those
opinions. He next, to characterize the position of the _Edinburgh
Review_ as a political organ, entered into a complete analysis, from the
Radical point of view, of the British Constitution. He held up to notice
its thoroughly aristocratic character: the nomination of a majority of
the House of Commons by a few hundred families; the entire
identification of the more independent portion, the county members, with
the great landholders; the different classes whom this narrow oligarchy
was induced, for convenience, to admit to a share of power; and finally,
what he called its two props, the Church, and the legal profession. He
pointed out the natural tendency of an aristocratic body of this
composition, to group itself into two parties, one of them in possession
of the executive, the other endeavouring to supplant the former and
become the predominant section by the aid of public opinion, without any
essential sacrifice of the aristocratical predominance. He described the
course likely to be pursued, and the political ground occupied, by an
aristocratic party in opposition, coquetting with popular principles for
the sake of popular support. He showed how this idea was realized in the
conduct of the Whig party, and of the _Edinburgh Review_ as its chief
literary organ. He described, as their main characteristic, what he
termed "seesaw"; writing alternately on both sides of the question which
touched the power or interest of the governing classes; sometimes in
different articles, sometimes in different parts of the same article:
and illustrated his position by copious specimens. So formidable an
attack on the Whig party and policy had never before been made; nor had
so great a blow ever been struck, in this country, for Radicalism; nor
was there, I believe, any living person capable of writing that article
except my father.[2]
In the meantime the nascent _Review_ had formed a junction with another
project, of a purely literary periodical, to be edited by Mr. Henry
Southern, afterwards a diplomatist, then a literary man by profession.
The two editors agreed to unite their corps, and divide the editorship,
Bowring taking the political, Southern the literary department.
Southern's Review was to have been published by Longman, and that firm,
though part proprietors of the _Edinburgh_, were willing to be the
publishers of the new journal. But when all the arrangements had been
made, and the prospectuses sent out, the Longmans saw my father's attack
on the _Edinburgh_, and drew back. My father was now appealed to for his
interest with his own publisher, Baldwin, which was exerted with a
successful result. And so in April, 1824, amidst anything but hope on my
father's part, and that of most of those who afterwards aided in
carrying on the _Review_, the first number made its appearance.
That number was an agreeable surprise to most of us. The average of the
articles was of much better quality than had been expected. The literary
and artistic department had rested chiefly on Mr. Bingham, a barrister
(subsequently a police magistrate), who had been for some years a
frequenter of Bentham, was a friend of both the Austins, and had adopted
with great ardour Mr. Bentham's philosophical opinions. Partly from
accident, there were in the first number as many as five articles by
Bingham; and we were extremely pleased with them. I well remember the
mixed feeling I myself had about the _Review_; the joy of finding, what
we did not at all expect, that it was sufficiently good to be capable of
being made a creditable organ of those who held the opinions it
professed; and extreme vexation, since it was so good on the whole, at
what we thought the blemishes of it. When, however, in addition to our
generally favourable opinion of it, we learned that it had an
extraordinary large sale for a first number, and found that the
appearance of a Radical Review, with pretensions equal to those of the
established organs of parties, had excited much attention, there could
be no room for hesitation, and we all became eager in doing everything
we could to strengthen and improve it.
My father continued to write occasional articles. The _Quarterly Review_
received its exposure, as a sequel to that of the _Edinburgh_. Of his
other contributions, the most important were an attack on Southey's
_Book of the Church_, in the fifth number, and a political article in
the twelfth. Mr. Austin only contributed one paper, but one of great