Diacritica 25-2_Filosofia.indb - cehum - Universidade do Minho

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GEORGINA ABREU
ways. Th is discussion became political and it thus transcended the limits of
middle-class ideas of domesticity.
Th e method was the rhetoric of melodrama. Th e appeal to the sentiments
of the people in defence of a lonely and persecuted woman who was
Queen of England, accused and friendless, accounted for the success of the
radical press version of the Queen Caroline aff air. Cobbett emphasised that
it was a ‘distinguishing characteristic of the people of this country, to sympathise
with the oppressed and to lend assistance to the weak in their struggles
with the strong’ (PR, vol. xxxvii: 422). Wooler made the same point in
the BD of 14 June, when the ‘Black Dwarf ’ commented on the enthusiastic
popular reception of the Queen by asking: ‘is it not better to applaud a
defenceless woman than to persecute her?’ (BD, vol. iv: 800).
Th e extensive and massive mobilisation of public opinion changed
the face of popular radicalism itself by making it more ‘popular’, and even
populist. [11] Th e populist dimension was most prominent in the production
of ephemeral print forms such as handbills, songs, advertisements, and
satirical prints, but it was also present in the less ephemeral periodicals of
the radical press. Th e BD, for example published on 5 July, the day of the
introduction of the Bill of Pains and Penalties in the House of Lords, William
Benbow’s highly infl amed handbill ‘Proposal to Murder the Queen!’
(BD, vol. v: 27). On 12 July, Jane Carlile published the satirical print ‘Arrival
of the Wretches’, reporting the arrival at Dover, on the 7 th , of seven Italian
witnesses against the Queen (BMC [12] 13758).
Th is extensive mobilisation of the labouring classes and even the middle-classes
showed that public opinion was competing ever more with Parliament
as the voice of the people, the more so as Parliament was viewed
by large sections of the population as a corrupt body that did not fulfi l its
representational goal. Public opinion consisted of the people discussing
matters of public interest openly and fairly. Th is was one of the ways in
which the radical appropriation of the Caroline aff air contributed to the
democratisation of the public sphere. It placed print culture at the vanguard
of radical political struggle.
Th is meant that ‘physical force’ strategies were gradually giving way to
strategies where words and images were the main political tools. Cobbett
vehemently refused that the reading of his PR or of any other radical writ-
11 Th e populist character is especially noted in the production of ultra-radical publishers and
authors, such as William Benbow and Allen Davenport.
12 Abbreviation of Catalogue of Political and Personal Satires Preserved in the Department of Prints
and Drawings in the British Museum, (George, M.D., 1952).
Diacritica 25-2_Filosofia.indb 168 05-01-2012 09:38:28