The Life and Literary Pursuits of Allen Davenport

Malcolm Chase

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2019
• Print ISBN:
  9781138337411
• eBook ISBN:
  9780429808913
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: World History
• Index: History

First published in 1994, this volume features an autobiography of Allen Davenport, a key figure linking Chartism with the French Revolution, along with some of his selected works. Davenport was an important propagandist for agrarian reform, a critical follower of Robert Owen, one of the first male supporters of the feminist causes and birth control and a leading member of the revolutionary underground movement in Regency London. He was a prolific author, political journalist and poet. His autobiography, published in 1845, has long been presumed lost - historians have had to make do with tantalising fragments from contemporary reviews. When a copy was found in Nashville in 1982 it was immediately recognised as a unique source of information about nineteenth-century popular politics. This volume reprints the complete text with editorial apparatus and supplemented by a careful selection of Davenport's other writing by Dr Malcolm Chase. The Life and Literary Pursuits of Allen Davenport thus gives a unique insight into the cultural and political life of England in the crowded years between Peterloo and Chartism.

A Further Selection from the Works of Allen Davenport

Davenport added selections of his work to both the Life and The English Institutions. Those accompanying the autobiography are reprinted above with the original text as the author intended. In the following compilation The English Institutions is included, along with the additional material intended by the author: ‘Pictoria; or the Origin of Painting’; ‘The King of the Barricades’; ‘The Midnight Dream’ (accompanied by a dedicatory note to Thomas Cooper); and ‘The Showman’.

Twelve further works selected by the editor have been added, and the whole sequence placed in chronological order, to give a genuinely representative selection of Davenport’s poetry and political journalism across the four decades of his career as a writer.

‘The Devil Out-Devilled’, from Sherwin’s Weekly Political Register, 29 August 1818.

It has long been asserted the old one, the DEVIL,

Is the father of vice, and the cause of all evil;

But PU make it appear to both wicked and sainted,

There are men still more black than the DEVIL is painted.

The devil, NAPOLEON, once haunted our shore,

He’s banished, and now we’re worse off than before;

For thousand’s of DEVILS sprang up in his stead,

From the tail of the Nation, right up to its head;

There are DEVILS in every rank of the state,

AU ages, all sizes, both little and great; -

At COURT, - in the SENATE, - and if you will search,

Very many there are to be found in the CHURCH!

There are devil informers, each a devilish spy,

And some that sell boroughs, and others that buy,

Some feed on large pensions they do not deserve,

While other poor devils are ready to starve! -

There are DEVILS trained up in all parts of the Nation,

Then sent up to town to perform legislation;

Where sessions are held in that great PANDEMONIUM*,

Where every last action receives an “encomium”.

For SATAN himself never gained more applause,

Then that ruffian set who suspended our laws;

Though the world he betrayed, as in record we find,

’Twas left to these DEVILS to torture mankind;

Who INNOCENCE punish, then pass a decree,

To indemnify DEVILS, and let them go free,

Then rail not against SATAN, the champion of evil,

The base BOROUGH-MONGERS have out-done the DEVIL!

A.D.

* House of Borough-mongers

From Sberwin’s Weekly Political Register 19 September 1818

TO THE EDITOR OF THE POLITICAL REGISTER.

SIR,

In the last letter I addressed you I endeavoured to defend the working classes against their idle and insolent oppressors; or figuratively speaking, to defend the active and industrious bees, against the indolent and worthless drones that disgrace the great hive of society. In the present letter I will endeavour to point out the extreme ignorance of the borough-mongers in the choice of the means they make use of, in order to defend their plunder, and to arrest that crisis, which no human hand will be able to prevent. It is not necessary for me to explain in what manner the little bees dispose of their drones; it will be sufficient to say, that if they find them guilty of idleness, or robbery, they put them to death without any ceremony; and the reason why our tyrants tremble when they see a crowd, and entrench themselves behind phalanxes of mercenary bayonets is, the consciousness that their conduct justifies the revolt of the People; and that they consequently deserve death at the hand of every free-man. So powerfully does fear operate on their minds, that they betray their alarm at the most trifling circumstance; no sooner do they receive information that the People are about to assemble, no matter for what purpose, but they order their soldiers under arms, construct moveable batteries, load the cannon, and make every preparation, the same as if the whole metropolis was about to be taken by storm. In the mean time the whole hireling press is put in request to cheer up another portion of the People by telling them that they have nothing to fear, since they have a vigilant magistracy, active subordinates, and a loyal soldiery! Mark this, a loyal soldiery! Well may Mr. Hunt hold this up to ridicule in Palace Yard. Oh, the blabbing fools, this was making a plain confession that loyalty is only to be found with the soldiers and the borough-mongers. But this was not all, previous to the meeting in Palace Yard, and indeed previous to every meeting of the People, the Editor of the “News” makes it his business to persuade the People not to assemble together on any account, for that it is very probable that Mr. Hunt, or some of his connections, holds communications with the Government, and if that should not be the case, the Government will be sure to send spies and informers to the meetings, in order to stir up rioting, and thereby prevent reform instead of hastening it. Thus does this overwise editor aid the Government with all the means in his power, by trying to make the People have the same dread of spies and informers, as the children of our forefathers had of ghosts and goblins. D—n the spies and informers, I was going to say; I do not know any body that cares any thing about them, save this sage editor, but he I suppose quiets his children by telling them that Oliver or Castles are Canning! Thousands of the People, however, in spite of all these newspaper denunciations, and all the military preparations described above, repaired to Palace Yard, and there dispassionately discussed, and unanimously passed a Remonstrance to the Prince Regent, and then with the greatest good-nature (in imitation of our brave soldiers and sailors before they engage a foreign foe) gave three hearty cheers, and marched off, with their brave champion at their head, with the greatest regularity to the Secretary of State’s office, there deposited their Remonstrance to the Regent, and then retired in the best possible order to their respective homes. Probably the Editor of the News may call all those People spies and informers, for they certainly went to see and hear all that they could, and when they had so done, they themselves went to Lord Sidmouth, and delivered a written account of their object into the hand of his Lordship to convey to our most gracious Prince Regent. But to return to the vigilant magistracy, and the loyal soldiery, though it is not on the magistracy that the borough-mongers and their tools depend; oh, no! it is on the army, and the paper money, that their whole system depends; short sighted and forgetful mortals! Have they then forgot that the French army (and a braver army never existed) shouted “vive Ie Roi” and “vive Napoleon” in the same breath! and perhaps in less than two years time will shout “vive la republique:” have they forgot, too, how much they praised that part of the Saxon army who violated their oaths, deserted their King, and in the same moment discharged their cannon upon their own countrymen? And why might not what have happened, happen again? And are they so blind that they cannot perceive that the People have it in their power to destroy the paper bubble whenever they choose? “Ah!” exclaim the borough-tyrants, “but a French army and an English army are quite different things, the French were never much to be depended upon, having too much levity in their manners; but the Engl...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• Editor’s Introduction
• The Life and Literary Pursuits of Allen Davenport
• Editorial Afterword
• A Further Selection from the Works of Allen Davenport
• Further Reading and Bibliography of Secondary Literature
• Index