How Much Revolution Does a Guinea Buy?
And other lessons about saving democracy from the Radical Duke
As I sit down to write this, it’s still June 16. Today was a big day for me. My latest book launched: Radical Duke: How One Aristocrat — and the American Revolution — Transformed Britain. I’ll admit that writing a biography about an 18th century British aristocrat was not on my bingo card. But the project fell into my lap, and it’s been one of the most fun things I’ve ever had the chance to work on.
More than a decade ago, my research team discovered a mystery parchment Declaration of Independence in a small archive in southern England. We had to figure out who it belonged to and how it got there. The answer involves a British Duke and the radical writer Thomas Paine.
Charles Lennox, Third Duke of Richmond, great-grandson of Charles II via a mistress, was born in 1735, died in 1806, and had all the privilege of the age. Yet he became one of the great political reformers in his era.
The duke’s age-mate, King George III, little more than two years younger, came to the throne in 1760 determined to break the power of aristocratic Whig families like the Richmonds. The king’s early efforts to consolidate power triggered reactions, though, and not only from affronted elites but also from middle-class members of Parliament and working people who watched the king squeeze power out of the legislature. They kicked back with sharply worded anonymous newspaper essays as the king and his ministers converted the House of Commons into an appendage largely dependent on the government’s will. They railed against the government’s entanglement of Britain in foreign wars and the economic blows that fell on ordinary people as a result. This in turn led to the suppression of printers and writers. What voice the people had to criticize or counter royal power seemed to be being stripped away over the course of the 1760s.
The aristocrats of the day faced a choice — ally with the middle classes and working people to forge a popular politics capable of establishing a counterweight to the throne. Or mainly seek to defend aristocratic prerogative. Among the dozens of dukes, earls, marquesses, and other peers who populated the House of Lords, only the Duke of Richmond plunged fully into popular politics.
Richmond spotted rising talents outside of the aristocracy among workingmen like the legally trained Edmund Burke and the corset-maker Thomas Paine. He spurred on their radical writings — some of them even secret and seditious. Together they forged arguments against the corruption of a decaying monarchical system. They pounded the king for stripping people of their basic liberties. They conceived an agenda to restore balance to the constitution (the word they used even for their unwritten system of constitutional order) by recovering Parliament’s independence. A country steered by a legislature — with its synthesizing will — avoids domination by any one person. Only when Parliament could steer the nation would the people be free, and to be free was the natural right of all.
Richmond believed that two things were necessary to restore balance to the British constitution and secure basic liberties. The radicals had to fight corruption and achieve universal male suffrage (yes, there was a limit to his radicalism). During an intense period from 1768 to 1772, his network of radical protégés castigated the king in famous newspaper essays called the Junius Letters, and Richmond made parallel arguments in the House of Lords. Their polemics forced the collapse of the king’s government. Their final writings as Junius initiated the debate about expanding the right to vote.
By 1774, Paine had sailed to America, where he would make his most full-throated argument for American independence and revolution. Meanwhile Richmond remained in England and kept up the grassroots organizing. Three different factions of radicals had emerged with diverging ideas of where to take the challenge to the king. The radical Whig aristocrats wanted what they called “economical reform” — rooting out the corruption of the royal patronage system that put so many members of Parliament in the king’s pocket. The landed county gentleman wanted that plus a broadening of the suffrage to include more of their category of property holder. The city radicals in London and its suburbs wanted universal male suffrage and for elections for Parliament to happen every year, not every seven years, as was then the practice. Only Richmond had a foot in each camp. He knit the radicals together and also recruited younger men into the work.
One of the most important things he did was give his blessing, and financial support, to societies that formed to publish the ideas of the reformers and to spread them throughout England. First there was the Society of Gentlemen Supporters of the Bill of Rights in the 1760s. Then there were the Junius Letters into the 1770s. Then there was the Society for Constitutional Information in the 1780s. They churned out pamphlet after pamphlet laying out a vision for a politics that might move beyond autocratic monarchy.
Those societies made the philosophical and political case for popular sovereignty and educated the whole of England in their arguments, but they also formed community. The Society for Constitutional Information cost a guinea to join, or something around $100 now, and all paying members could attend committee meetings to debate what would be published. Later workingmen’s associations formed, modeled after the earlier middle-class ones. When the London Corresponding Society emerged, it charged only a shilling to join, and one penny a week after that.
Here at The Renovator, we are trying to build something similar: a community of people developing the ideas and plans of action to slay the demon of corruption and rescue a meaningful voice and vote for the American people. Not everyone believes in democracy anymore, and this is because in many ways democracy has not been working for people. Recuperating the cause of freedom and self-government in America requires rescuing democracy from its own deficiencies. This is what democracy renovation is about.
Signing on as a full member of The Renovator community with access to Renovator assemblies costs a little less than a guinea — at $60 per year. Like Richmond, Paine, and Burke, we are trying to lay down the foundation for an era of transformational change to renovate the rights of the people. Like the Society for Constitutional Information, The Renovator seeks to be not just a publication but a network that knits together different pieces of transformational thought. In addition to calling on our free subscribers to join as paying subscribers, we’re also giving out free full subscriptions to leaders of democracy renovation organizations and young democracy entrepreneurs. We are trying to build a cross-class coalition and weave together many streams of reform. We’re still small, but we’re growing. We’d love to grow with you.
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And what about that mystery Declaration we found?
The ceremonial parchment of the Declaration of Independence appears to have belonged to the Third Duke of Richmond and reached the archive via the office of his solicitor. The parchment is likely to have made its way from America to the duke as a gift via Thomas Paine. While we may never know exactly when the parchment changed hands, what we do know is that between them, Richmond and Paine contributed mightily to the transformation not only America but also Britain. Britain, without a revolution, would achieve a highly restrained constitutional monarchy and, albeit after decades, universal suffrage. We believe the United States too can once more find a path to defeating concentrations of power and recuperating the rights of the people.
When I give talks about democracy renovation, people often ask me what they can do. Well, the first thing you can do is fully join the Democracy Renovation community. Come on in and help us build a movement.
P.S. When the Duke joined societies such as the ones above, and others paid one guinea, he typically paid 10. In addition to our standard membership, we also have a category of Founding subscribers. The next 25 people who join at the Founder level of $300 per year will all receive a copy of Radical Duke signed by me.