ABSTRACT
The possibility of political speech requires some concept of equality. That is why the battle for free speech in England was inseparable from the discourse of merit and equality. The “Free Thinkers” employed Chinese texts to promote meritocratic standards and to redefine political corruption in an English context. Samuel Johnson, who had read the Han documents on political speech, compared them favorably to English practice during the 30s making reference to the “happiness of the people” as a standard for good government. Lord Chesterfield and the Free Thinkers also referenced these documents liberally. The next section traces the visualization of political concepts in English prints from the seventeenth through the mid-eighteenth centuries, making occasional reference to comparable images in China. As in China, the trend is from allegory to metaphor and finally reportage. The rest of the chapter examines the change in attitude toward China in mid-century, when China defined “a battleground for different conceptions of political authority within the Enlightenment.” Montesquieu and Voltaire were among the most conspicuous figures in this debate. Both men made extensive use of Chinese texts, but Montesquieu did not generally acknowledge his adaptations of Chinese sources. Rather he attacked China’s meritocracy in defense of aristocratic privilege, while Voltaire employed his cosmopolitan view of human liberty to critique the English aristocracy.
