Shelley’s England in 1819 and the true meaning of liberty

An old, mad, blind, despised, and dying King;

Princes, the dregs of their dull race, who flow

Through public scorn,—mud from a muddy spring;

Rulers who neither see nor feel nor know,

But leechlike to their fainting country cling

Till they drop, blind in blood, without a blow.

A people starved and stabbed in th’ untilled field;

An army, whom liberticide and prey

Makes as a two-edged sword to all who wield;

Golden and sanguine laws which tempt and slay;

Religion Christless, Godless—a book sealed;

A senate, Time’s worst statute, unrepealed—

Are graves from which a glorious Phantom may

Burst, to illumine our tempestuous day.

Shelley’s England in 1819 is one of the most bitter, vivid poems of political discontent. As the name would suggest, it was written just over two hundred years ago. But, with some minor alterations – “An old, mad blind, despised and dying King” becomes “A blond, mad, dying, and living man”, and “A senate, Time’s worst statute, unrepealed” becomes “A statue, Time’s still honour, now repealed” – it is easy to see how a modern-day Shelley might sonnet-ise about our current predicament.

Shelley wrote his poem six months after the Peterloo Massacre: in August 1819, armed yeomanry on horseback had charged into a crowd of 60,000 people in Manchester demanding a reform of Parliamentary representation. Following the massacre, the Manchester Observer was raided, and its editor arrested for publishing articles that named the event “The Peterloo Massacre” in an ironic reference to Waterloo. The government passed the “Six Acts” that banned “seditious meetings”, increased newspaper and stamp duties for radical presses, and toughened the punishment for those found to be writing “blasphemous and seditious libels”.

Other attempted uprisings followed: in Yorkshire, the West Riding Revolt, and in London, the Cato Street Conspiracy of 1820 – an elaborate attempt to assassinate the entire Cabinet. With swathes of the public calling for Parliamentary reform, driven by radicalism which stemmed from poor economic conditions after the Napoleonic war, Lord Liverpool’s government suspended liberty.

Whilst Shelley’s poem seems remarkably apt, writing from the UK– just swap “fainting country” for “feverish country” and “MPs” in place of “princes, the dregs of their dull race” – we should not give in to the temptation to compare our two eras too closely. Of late many articles have appeared reflecting on the death of liberalism: we’ve heard how “where the liberal mind is inquiring, the woke mind is dogmatic“, and “where the liberal mind is capable of humility, the woke mind is capable of none”. In nearly all commentaries, “woke” is analogous with “young”. The radical, spineless, violent, weak, angry, incapable “snowflake” generation is back at it…

And of course, the capacity to see “wokeness” as opposed to philosophical liberalism is all too easy to do: whilst the radicals of 1819 contributed to the founding of the Manchester Guardian in the wake of Peterloo, 23,000 people have this week signed a petition calling for The Guardian to be forcibly shut-down because it was initially funded by the profits of a cotton-merchant, an industry which depended on slavery.

And yet, to hail this moment of discontent and uprising as the “death of liberalism” is an overstatement; the more political commentators keep writing about it, the more you start to suspect that they might secretly desire it. In 1819, it was the government that suspended liberty, shut down newspapers, and killed radical protestors. In 2020, racist police brutality – as seen in the deaths of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor – is an issue which needs to be addressed. But, to see the radicals of 1819 as fighting for an early form of political liberalism and the radicals of 2020 as fighting against it with their “wokeness” is unfair. 2020’s protestors are not fighting against liberal democracy and the rule of law – in many ways they are campaigning for these key liberal tenets to be applied to all: why are black men and women more subject to police violence?

No articles written have truly argued that the protestors of 2020 are fighting against political liberalism, but that they challenge a philosophical ideal of liberal debate, inquiry and free speech. This argument is on stronger ground, but there is hope. Whilst the British government of 1819 assisted the brutal repression of free speech – Shelley’s most radical poems weren’t published until after his death – the UK government, at least, has been relaxed about it: in the midst of a pandemic, rightly or wrongly, provisions were made for mass protest. And perhaps the very existence of reams of articles on the death of liberalism is the best proof that it is an ideal still very much alive and kicking …