Contents - ResearchSpace@Auckland - The University of Auckland

After this impressive rhetoric Wordsworth gets down to fine details on content. Instruction on‘manners’ and ‘morals’ figures prominently, as do representations of the ‘characters’ of thosedistinguished in the cause of liberty: Turgot, Milton, Sydney, Machiavel & Beccaria are mentioned,and these studies should, ‘as much as possible form a series exhibiting the advancement of the humanmind in moral knowledge’ (126). Towards the end of the letter he makes a point of commenting thathis work in the proposed Philanthropist ‘will relate rather to moral than natural knowledge’ (127-8). Itwill follow a philosophical method of enquiry based on Socratic principles rather than those ofscience.Several of these sentiments and opinions might be seen to have been inspired by Godwin’sPolitical Justice that Wordsworth had also been reading at the time. Godwin’s study appeared, at first,to have encapsulated his own idealism in a philosophical system that justified his own hopes andbeliefs. In ‘Of Justice’, Chapter II section II of the 1st edition Godwin had written:that the subject of the present enquiry is strictly speaking a department of the science ofmorals. Morality is the source from which its fundamental axioms must be drawn, and theywill be made somewhat clearer in the present instance, if we assume the term justice as ageneral appellation for all moral duty. 20Many of the sentiments voiced by Godwin reflect the ethical positions taken by those virtuousrepublicans mentioned by Wordsworth as distinguished in the cause of liberty. His concern to‘inculcate principles of government and forms of social order of one kind or another’ raises thequestion of how he would meld his own beliefs in the social principles of republicanism withGodwin’s negative appraisal of all forms of government.In the next letter to Matthews, Wordsworth expresses his strong views against the currentgovernment, who are ‘already so deeply advanced in iniquity that like Macbeth they cannot retreat’.But he makes it clear his own sentiments are not ‘radical’, and he also stresses that he is ‘far fromreprobating those whose sentiments on this point differ from my own’. He recognises that many wereforced to support the war for reasons of expediency and support the government because they fearanarchy, not because they agree with its policies. He has obviously moderated his more extremeposition by this time, taking into account a much broader, more reasonable perspective. He is nolonger thinking like an enthusiast, but more like a philosopher capable of seeing both sides of thequestion. His language is no longer that of a radical republican, its measured prose and its balancedopinions sound more like the author of Political Justice, and indeed Wordsworth was eager to go toLondon and meet and talk with Godwin at the first opportunity.In The Language of Politics, James Boulton provides a careful study of Godwin’s ‘politicallanguage’, with a special focus on his relationship to Burke. While Burke is concerned with thepragmatics of the immediate political situation in Britain, Boulton stresses that ‘Godwin wasconcerned with nothing less than the whole question of man’s moral nature, and hence the nature of20 Political and Philosophical Writings of William Godwin. Ed. Mark Philp. 3. 49.172