‘On the Causes of the Late Disturbance’

This chapter presents the lecture 'on the Causes of the Late Disturbances’, by John Thelwall. In the lecture, Thelwall illustrates that Violence is the twin brother of Ignorance; and that both are engendered by Misery, and nurtured by Corruption. The lecture sought to lay the blame for any violence and tumult to have plagued Britain in recent years at the corrupt and unrepresentative polity and the widespread poverty it has facilitated rather than at the reform movement. In making this argument, Thelwall invokes the authority of Francis Bacon and the example of the irate loyalist mob that burnt down the property of Joseph Priestly.