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LIBERTY, POVERTY AND CHARITY IN THE POLITICAL ECONOMY OF JOSIAH TUCKER AND JOSEPH BUTLER

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  30 October 2017

PETER XAVIER PRICE*
Affiliation:
Sussex Centre for Intellectual History, University of Sussex E-mail: pxprice20@gmail.com

Abstract

Josiah Tucker, who was the Anglican dean of Gloucester from 1758 until his death in 1799, is best known today as a controversialist, a political economist and a lesser contemporary of Adam Smith. Little attention has been paid, however, to the important relationship between his religious writings and his wider economic thought. This article addresses this lack of attention in two ways: first by demonstrating the link between Tucker's conception of civil and religious liberty and his “science” of political economy, and second by drawing sustained attention to his economic adaptation and reformulation of the moral philosophy of Bishop Joseph Butler, Tucker's ecclesiastical mentor from 1739 to 1752. Emphasizing Butler and Tucker's views on the traditional Christian virtue of charity, and the moral duty of the rich towards the poor, the article suggests that both clergymen were proponents of a sociability-based, neo-Stoic conception of human nature, which was not only compatible with, but also dependent upon, the established Anglican Church and state and the predominantly Whig commercial order. In consequence, Tucker's political economy was premised on the unavoidability of social subordination and economic inequality as necessary hallmarks of modern commercial society. Accordingly, the article closes with a brief discussion of Tucker's “Butlerian” assessment and rejection of the “anti-social” doctrine of individual natural rights, associated with the popular radicalism of the American and French Revolutions in the latter half of the eighteenth century.

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Articles
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2017 

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Footnotes

The present author is indebted to Iain McDaniel, Norman Vance, A. M. C. Waterman, Richard Whatmore, the late Donald Winch, Brian W. Young, and the three anonymous referees and editors of Modern Intellectual History, especially Tracie M. Matysik, for reading and providing helpful comments on various—often inchoate—drafts of this paper. Certain of its aspects was delivered at the John W. Kluge Center, Library of Congress, Washington, DC, June 2013.

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31 Tucker, Essay, 67.

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47 Butler, Fifteen Sermons 1729, 139. Contrariwise, for Butler self-love was in fact a duty commanded by Christ himself, as asserted in Waterman, Political Economy and Christian Theology, 110. This is in reference to Sermons XI and XII: “Upon the Love of our Neighbour.”

48 Butler, Fifteen Sermons 1726, 139–40; Fifteen Sermons 1729, 140.

49 Butler, Fifteen Sermons 1726, 171; Fifteen Sermons 1729, 171.

50 Butler, Fifteen Sermons 1729, xvii, original emphasis. Lavery, Cf. Jonathan, “Reflection and Exhortation in Butler's Sermons: Practical Deliberation, Psychological Health and the Philosophical Sermon,” European Legacy 10/4 (2005), 329–48CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

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53 For the Anglican “organicist conception of the state” as the theological and philosophical harbinger of eighteenth-century British political economy see Waterman, Political Economy and Christian Theology, 32–9, 41–6.

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57 Butler, Fifteen Sermons 1726, 229–30; Fifteen Sermons 1729, 235–6.

58 Tucker, Elements, 6, 7 (“A Preliminary Discourse, Setting Forth the natural Disposition, or instinctive Inclination of Mankind towards Commerce”).

59 Ibid., 8.

60 Ibid., 6, 8. For further discussion see Peter Xavier Price, “Self-Love and Sociability: The ‘Rudiments of Commerce’ in the State of Nature,” Global Intellectual History (forthcoming).

61 Tucker, Elements, 8.

62 This is stated implicitly, e.g., in Tucker, Josiah, Four Tracts, Together with Two Sermons, on Political and Commercial Subjects (Gloucester, 1774), 41Google Scholar; and explicitly in Tucker, A Brief and Dispassionate View of the Difficulties Attending the Trinitarian, Arian and Socinian Systems (Gloucester, 1776). In the latter, Tucker bases his defence of orthodox Trinitarianism on Butler's anti-Lockean “Of personal Identity” argument, which was appended to Joseph Butler, The Analogy of Religion, Natural and Revealed (London, 1736), 301–8.

63 Tucker, Instructions for Travellers, 6.

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70 Butler, A Sermon Preached . . . for the Relief of Sick and Diseased Persons (London, 1748) (henceforth Infirmary), 5.

71 Hanley, “The Eighteenth-Century Context of Sympathy,” 185.

72 E.g. Valenze, Deborah, “Charity, Custom, and Humanity: Changing Attitudes towards the Poor in Eighteenth-Century England,” in Garnett, J. and Matthew, C., eds., Revival and Religion since 1700: Essays for John Walsh (London, 1993), 5978Google Scholar; Tomkins, Alannah, The Experience of Urban Poverty 1723–82: Parish, Charity and Credit (Manchester, 2006)Google Scholar.

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76 Entitled A Sermon Preached before the Incorporated Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts (London, 1739) (henceforth SPG), and A Sermon Preached . . . on Thursday May the 9th, 1745 (London, 1745) (henceforth Charity Schools).

77 Tennant, Bob, Corporate Holiness: Pulpit Preaching and the Church of England Missionary Societies, 1760–1870 (Oxford, 2013), 26, 63–5CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Tennant does not refer to Butler's “theory of ethics as circles of benevolence” in explicitly Stoic terms. However, the similarities between this explanation and Butler's incorporation of Stoic oikeiosis, as discussed above, are unambiguous.

78 Butler, Infirmary, 4.

79 Ibid., 12.

80 Ibid., 23, 24.

81 For relevant discussion of the transition from seventeenth-century aristocratic society to eighteenth-century commercial society see Miller, “Hercules at the Crossroads.”

82 Butler, Infirmary, 5.

83 Butler, SPG, 12, 14.

84 Tennant, Butler's Philosophy and Ministry, 147, 149, 154.

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86 Butler, Charity Schools, 8.

87 Tucker, Josiah, A Sermon Preached in the Parish-Church of Christ-Church . . . the Yearly Meeting of the . . . Charity Schools . . . To which is annexed, An Account of the Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge (London, 1766) (henceforth SPCK), 5.Google Scholar

88 Ibid., 7. Tucker is referring to London here, but he may just as well be speaking of any number of “proto-industrial” cities across eighteenth-century Britain.

89 Tucker, Essay, 53–8. This proposal is repeated in greater detail in Josiah Tucker, The Manifold Causes of the Increase of the Poor Distinctly Set Forth (Gloucester, 1760), 12–16.

90 Bernard de Mandeville, An Essay on Charity and Charity-Schools, in Mandeville, Fable of the Bees, 2nd edn (London, 1723), 285–370.

91 Butler, Martyrdom, 6. Cf. Tennant, Butler's Philosophy and Ministry, 159.

92 Tucker, Josiah, Expediency of a Law for the Naturalization of Foreign Protestants: . . . Part II . . . Containing Important Queries relating to Commerce . . . and the Principles of the Christian Religion, 2nd edn (London, 1753) (henceforth NFP II), ix.Google Scholar

93 Tucker, SPCK, 25.

94 Ibid., 18.

95 Tucker, Four Tracts . . . Two Sermons, 67. As Tucker elsewhere puts it, this was tantamount to a “Plan of good Œconomy,” ensuring economic progress from “Generation to Generation throughout an almost endless Progression and Variety.” Tucker, Seventeen Sermons, 156–8.

96 Tucker, NFP II, 10.

97 Tucker, Seventeen Sermons, 19. Lovejoy, Cf. Arthur O., The Great Chain of Being (Cambridge, MA, 1936)Google Scholar; Viner, Role of Providence in the Social Order, 90–95.

98 Tucker, SPCK, 18–20, 24–5; cf. Tucker, Essay, 34.

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100 For the “great age of comparative study in political economy” as “the archetypal science of reform, premised on the unavoidability of commercial society as an element of human progress, and encompassing in consequence international relations as the correlate of domestic reform,” see Whatmore, “Burke on Political Economy,” 81, 83. Cf. Emma Rothschild, “Global Commerce and the Question of Sovereignty in the Eighteenth-Century Provinces,” Modern Intellectual History 1/1 (2004), 3–25.

101 E.g. Winch, Riches and Poverty, 57–89; Dew, Ben, “Political Economy and the Problem of the Plebs in Eighteenth-Century Britain,” History Compass 5/4 (2007), 1214–35CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

102 Oslington, Cf. Paul, “Anglican Social Thought and the Shaping of Political Economy in Britain: Joseph Butler, Josiah Tucker, William Paley and Edmund Burke,” History of Economics Review 67/1 (2017), 2645Google Scholar. Oslington broadly agrees with this article regarding the relationship between Butler and Tucker's Anglican providentialism and their political economy. He remains unconvinced, however, by the present author's “characterisation of this framework as neo-Stoic, in contrast to the Augustinian–Epicurean framework of Mandeville and Hobbes.” Ibid., 40 n. 4.

103 Nieli, “Commercial Society and Christian Virtue,” esp. 581–4. Christian objections to wealth creation are articulated in such scriptural passages as Matthew 11:26: “Ye cannot serve God and Mammon,” or 1 Timothy 11:10: “For the love of money is the root of all evil.”

104 Quoted in Shelton, Dean Tucker and Eighteenth-Century Economic and Political Thought, 165.

105 Cf. Waterman, Political Economy and Christian Theology, 109–12.

106 Donald Winch, “Adam Smith's ‘Enduring Particular Result’: A Political and Cosmopolitan Perspective,” in Hont and Ignatieff, Wealth and Virtue, 253–70, at 265.

107 See, e.g., in immediate contextual and clerical proximity to Tucker, John “Estimate” Brown, An Estimate of the Manners and Principles of the Times (London, 1757). For wider Continental contexts and surveys see also Istvan Hont, “Free Trade and the Economic Limits to National Politics: Neo-Machiavellian Political Economy Reconsidered,” in Hont, Jealousy of Trade, 185–266; Sonenscher, Michael, Before the Deluge: Public Debt, Inequality, and the Intellectual Origins of the French Revolution (Princeton, 2007), esp. 121, 41–66Google Scholar; McDaniel, Iain, “Jean-Louis Delolme and the Political Science of the English Empire,” Historical Journal 55/1 (2012), 2144CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

108 Butler, A Sermon Preached before the House of Lords . . . June 11, 1747 (London, 1747), 25–6.

109 Tucker, Elements, 81, 88.

110 Pocock, J. G. A., “Josiah Tucker on Burke, Locke and Price: A Study in the Varieties of Eighteenth-Century Conservatism,” in Pocock, Virtue, Commerce, and History, 157–91. For a broad survey see also Haakonssen, Knud, ed., Enlightenment and Religion: Rational Dissent in Eighteenth-Century (Cambridge, 1996)Google Scholar.

111 Tucker, A Letter to Edmund Burke, Esq., Member of Parliament for Bristol . . . in Answer to his Printed Speech (Gloucester, 1775), 18–20; Tucker, Four Letters on Important National Subjects, Addressed to the Right Honourable the Earl of Shelburne, 2nd edn (London, 1783), 18, 20, 23.

112 Tucker, Four Letters on Important National Subjects, 23. Cf. Whatmore, Richard, “Shelburne and Perpetual Peace: Small States, Commerce, and International Relations within the Bowood Circle,” in Aston, Nigel and Orr, Clarissa Campbell, eds., An Enlightenment Statesman in Whig Britain: Lord Shelburne in Context, 1737–1805 (Woodbridge, 2011), 249–73Google Scholar.

113 See note 85 above.

114 Tucker, Josiah, An Apology for the Present Church of England, As by Law Established (Gloucester, 1772), 14Google Scholar. This is similar to Hume's analysis, summarized by Haakonssen, Natural Law and Moral Philosophy, 124 (emphases added), “that in a free constitution political differences could not be about the constitution; they had to be within the constitution.”

115 Tucker, Josiah, A Treatise Concerning Civil Government (Gloucester, 1781), 22, 23, 40Google Scholar.

116 Tucker, Letter to Burke, 12.

117 Tucker, Seventeen Sermons, 139–41. At 26 Tucker labels this the “divine Oeconomy.” Elsewhere he likens it to his “Plan of Christian Liberty.” Tucker, An Apology for the Present Church of England, 54.

118 Here Tucker was referring to his and Butler's frequent turns about the gardens of Bristol Cathedral during the 1740s, when, on one occasion, Butler remarked that it must be possible for “whole Communities and public Bodies [to] be seized with Fits of Insanity, as well as Individuals.” See Stephens, Alexander, Public Characters of 1798–9, 2nd edn (London, 1799), 171Google Scholar.

119 Tucker, Josiah, Cui Bono? Or, an Enquiry, What Benefits can Arise . . . from the Greatest Victories, or Successes, in the Present War? . . . Addressed to Monsieur Necker, 3rd edn (Gloucester, 1781), 32, 80–83, 137Google Scholar.

120 “Tucker to Mrs Jones, 12 Jan 1783,” Gentleman's Magazine 19 (1840), 19–20.

121 Connor, R. D. W., “Josiah Tucker or Cassandra Picks the Pocket of Mars,” World Affairs 103/2 (1940), 7990Google Scholar.

122 Tucker to William Seward, 29 Oct. 1790, BL Add. MSS. 5419.

123 Tucker, Essay, 66.