ABSTRACT
This chapter explores the nature of John Thelwall's contribution to what might be termed the political economy of English Jacobinism. Thelwall's best-known public oration was staged on 26 October 1795 at the giant open-air meeting at Copenhagen Fields to protest against war, the high price of bread and the absence of effective political representation. For Thelwall the deep cause of the crisis lay in the absence of political representation, and the solution was to be sought in 'a loud, a fervid, and resolute remonstrance with our rulers'. At the heart of Thelwall's political economy lay a critique of the war-making, tax-gathering state. Taxes supported armies of placemen and pensioners, wars prevented the peoples of the world from engaging in peaceful commerce and communication and thus realizing their shared interests against national states and aristocracies. Thelwall upheld 'the fair, the just, and rational system of commerce against 'the system of mad havock and extermination' that was Pitt's war policy.
