ABSTRACT
Southey offers silhouettes of the Jacobin Muse from several angles. Canning’s Introduction first reveals that Issue No. I focused on ‘the animadversion of human laws upon human actions’. The quotation is pastiche, rather than specific parody, but it does point beyond Southey to William Godwin. Instinctive assumptions about criminal justice were being widely questioned. Retributive attitudes were waning against the utilitarian and humanitarian: Hutcheson, Beccaria, Mably and d’Holbach are reputable examples. Southey read Beccaria, but the main influence on his thought and early poetry, and the real target of Canning’s satire, is Godwin’s Political Justice (1793). ‘Animadversion’ is a favourite word in Godwin’s discussions of criminality and legislation. If Godwin is a good deal more sensible than Canning implies in this Introduction, the very reasonableness of Political Justice may be what worries the anti-jacobins. The first edition in particular arrives at extreme positions calmly and persuasively: ‘we cannot hesitate to conclude universally that law is an institution of the most pernicious tendency’. 1 The most effective way for the anti-jacobins to parody Godwin was through Southey.
