ABSTRACT
Robert Southey's description of Bristol, published in 1807 – in the pseudonymous guise of the Spanish tourist, Don Manuel Espriella – sets the scene of the early nineteenth-century commercial city. While Bristol is 'yielding its trade to bolder competitors', Southey is proud of the city's innate ability to generate wealth, in spite of its merchants' relaxed attitude to commercial profit. The basis of Southey's political diagnosis of society in terms of mastery/slavery can be found in the details we have of his early life in Bristol. The radical element of Southey's philosophy was that he did not simply argue for the assistance of the impoverished, but endeavoured to prick the consciences of those who occupied superior positions of wealth. Southey was at the height of his firebrand radicalism that had manifested itself at Westminster School – from which he was expelled for his anarchic views in the spring of 1792 – and Oxford.
