Table Of ContentTHE ANTI-JACOBINS, 1798-1800
The Anti-Jacobins
1798-1800
The Early Contributors to the
Anti-Jacobin Review
EMILY LORRAINE de MONTLUZIN
Professor of History
Francis Marion College, Florence, South Carolina
M
MACMILLAN
PRESS
© Emily Lorraine de Montluzin 1988
Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 1988 978-0-333-44137-4
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First published 1988
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British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
De Montluzin, Emily Lorraine
The Anti-Jacobins, 1798-1800; the early contributors
to the Anti·/acobin Review.
1. Anli-Jacobin Review and Mtlgtlzine
2. Pamphleteers - Greal Britain
Biography
I. Title
320'.05 PNSl30.A5
ISBN 978-1-349-19139-0 ISBN 978-1-349-19137-6 (eBook)
DOI 10.1007/978-1-349-19137-6
To E. de M. and the memory of R. de M.
Contents
Preface ix
List of Abbreviated Titles xi
Introduction 1
The Contributors 53
Anti-Jacobin Review and Magazine, volumes I-VI 165
Bibliographical Note 197
Index 202
vii
Preface
This study of the early contributors to the Anti-Jacobin Review grew
indirectly out of research for a doctoral dissertation at Duke
University, North Carolina, concerning the role played by several
late eighteenth-and early nineteenth-century British periodicals in
the conservative press's war of words against the French
Revolution. While engaged in my preliminary research, I was
repeatedly surprised to find that precious little material existed
concerning the Anti-Jacobin Review, one of the most militant
champions of the counter-revolutionary cause the age had
produced. In fact, grudging references of five or six lines in general
histories of the periodicals seemed to be the standard treatment
meted out to the Review, while many studies of the periodical press
omitted even that. Later, when I sat under the dome of the British
Library Reading Room, copying out the handwritten names of the
otherwise anonymous contributors of articles listed in the office
copy of the Anti-Jacobin, I speculated idly that something should be
done to make the list of Anti-Jacobin reviewers available in print to
students of the periodicals at large. That vague speculation
eventually matured into a more ambitious idea, namely, not only
to publish a complete cross-reference of articles and known
contributors to the Review but also to assemble biographical data
concerning the contributors themselves - seventy men who ran the
gamut from fame to near-total anonymity. More than most
publications a literary review is the sum of its parts, or, in this case,
the sum of the writers contributing articles to it. Only if light could
be shed on those writers themselves, with their individual
backgrounds, attitudes, and motivations, would it be possible, I felt,
to lift the Anti-Jacobin out of its undeserved obscurity and facilitate a
better appreciation of this important Church-and-King review in the
setting of late eighteenth-century counter-revolutionary thought.
The following volume is the result of that project.
In the researching and writing of any undertaking such as this,
great debts of gratitude are invariably incurred. I should like to
express my deep appreciation to the Francis Marion College
Foundation, whose generous subsidy helped make the publication
of this book possible, and to Thomas C. Stanton, William C. Moran,
and James A. Rogers at Francis Marion College for their enthusiastic
ix
x Preface
support of the project. Part of the initial research for this book was
undertaken with the aid of a travel grant from the Department of
History at Duke University in 1973. In addition I have been
privileged to receive grants on three occasions from the Faculty
Research Committee at Francis Marion College. I am most grateful
to the Department of Printed Books at the British Library, which
allowed me to make use of the office copy of the Anti-Jacobin Review,
and to the reference personnel at the various other libraries where
I gathered information concerning the Anti-Jacobin and its
contributors, particularly the staffs of the Library of Congress, the
Public Record Office, the Duke University Library, and the James A.
Rogers Library at Francis Marion College, with special thanks to
Neal A. Martin and Roger K. Hux at the last-named institution. I am
particularly grateful to Gayle T. Pendleton, who drew upon her
formidable knowledge of the press war between Church-and-King
and Radical pamphleteers in England in the 1790s and made many
incisive suggestions for improvements in the manuscript. I would
like to thank Mrs Jacob Kaplan and Patricia A. McDaniel for typing
the manuscript, and the editors of the Macmillan Press, especially
T. M. Farmiloe and Pauline Snelson, for their decisive support and
assistance. Finally I would like to express my special appreciation to
Lewis Patton and Charles R. Young of Duke University for their
valued suggestions, their ready advice, and their continued interest
and friendship.
E. L. de M.
List of Abbreviated Titles
Alumni Cantab. Alumni Cantabrigienses, edited by John Venn
and J. A. Venn, 10 vols (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1922-54)
Alumni axon. Alumni Oxonienses: The Members of the
University of Oxford, 1715-1886, edited by
Joseph Foster, 4 vols (London: Joseph
Foster [vols I and II] and Parker [vols III and
IV], 1887-8)
AJ Anti-Jacobin Review
BLGC British Library, General Catalogue of Printed
Books, 263 vols, photolithographic edn to
1955 (London: Trustees of the British
~useum, 1959-66)
DNB Dictionary of National Biography, 1st edn (1885-
1901)
English Catalogue The English Catalogue of Books (Including the
Original 'London' Catalogue) ... , 1801-
1836, edited by Robert Alexander Peddie
and Quintin Waddington (London:
Publishers' Circular, 1914)
GM Gentleman's Magazine
Index Eccles. Index Ecclesiasticus; or, Alphabetical Lists of all
Ecclesiastical Dignitaries in England and Wales
since the Reformation, edited by Joseph
Foster (Oxford: Parker, 1890)
Upcott, Biog. Dict. Upcott, William, A Biographical Dictionary of
the Living Authors of Great Britain and Ireland
(London: Henry Colburn, 1816)
Watt, Biblio. Brit. Watt, Robert, Bibliotheca Britannica, 2 vols
(Edinburgh: Archibald Constable, 1824)
xi
Introduction
In the closing days of 1800 one of the conductors of the Tory British
Critic paused in his duties for a last look back at the turbulent events
of the 1790s and the role he had played in that critical decade in
English history. 'At the time of gloom and apprehension: he wrote,
'when Faction and Impiety had grown insolent and menacing, and
those principles which our Church and Constitution support ...
had scarcely any public advocates; ... duty bid us quit our private
walk to do our utmost for the general cause.' The battle was not yet
won, however, and 'the season of gloom is not yet past! Britain, after
exhausting her strength to support the liberties of Europe ... [is still
menaced]. The storm lowers on every side; and the power that
wages war against all duties, human and divine, is daily gaining
strength by victories.' Britain's fate, said the writer, was in God's
hands. Meanwhile, 'our office is clearly marked. It is, to wield the
arms that we are competent to use, in defence of a pure church and
wisely ordered state.'l
The British Critic's analysis of the situation was eminently typical
of conservative2 thought in the 1790s, especially among the army of
thousands of Church-and-King defenders making up the counter
revolutionary, anti-Jacobin wing of the British periodical press. In
the first place, the writer portrayed the dangers threatening Britain
as the products of a grand conspiracy against Church and State. In
the second place, he cast the struggle in literary terms. Britain was
endangered by enemy principles even more than by enemy arms -
principles spread by the publication of seditious and corrupting
writings. Hence it was necessary for the defenders of political and
religious orthodoxy to take up their opponents' weapons and
mount a literary counter-attack. For many clergy and laymen of a
journalistic bent, 'wielding the arms that they were competent to
use' meant the creation or rededication of a powerful conservative
press - a press charged with the duties of circulating conservative
viewpoints on politics, religion, morality, and the social system,
encouraging and popularising those writers who supported those
principles, exposing those who did not, and keeping an Argus-eyed
watch over the literary renegades - the Paines and Priestleys, the
Wollstonecrafts and Godwins, the Ho1crofts and Kotzebues - that
the Tories feared so much. It was, as the British Critic succinctly put
1
