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Mark Crosby, The Voice of Flattery vs Sober Truth: William Godwin, Thomas Erskine and the 1792 Trial of Thomas Paine for Sedition, The Review of English Studies, Volume 62, Issue 253, February 2011, Pages 90–112, https://doi.org/10.1093/res/hgq092
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Abstract
On 18 December 1792, Thomas Paine was tried and convicted for seditious passages contained in the second part of Rights of Man (1792). Despite losing the case, Paine’s advocate, Thomas Erskine, was lauded in the popular print media by both loyalists and radicals for a four-hour speech that defended the liberty of the press. In the midst of this almost universal acclaim William Godwin offered an alternative view. In an undated and unfinished letter condemning Erskine for turning the jury against Paine, Godwin articulates critiques of oratory, sincerity and duty that appear in more developed forms in Enquiry Concerning Political Justice (1793), Caleb Williams (1794) and Considerations on Lord Grenville’s and Mr. Pitt’s Bills Concerning Treasonable and Seditious Practices (1795). This essay argues that the letter to Erskine should be considered as a testing ground for these critiques, a datum to trace the development of Godwin’s ideas on oratory in a legal context between Paine’s trial and the 1794 treason trials and, more broadly, as an early attempt to actualise his project for social and political reform.
