'A Political Dictionary Explaining the True Meaning of Words' by Charles Pigott by Robert Rix

Author:Robert Rix [Rix, Robert]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780754636908
Barnesnoble:
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
Published: 2004-06-01T00:00:00+00:00

FINIS.

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Notes

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Sidney’s Works are now complete.

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Vide Mr. Montague’s speech on Mr. Hamson’s motion for appropriating a part of certain pensions and sinecure places to particular purposes.—Morning Post, Wednesday, April 9th, 1794.

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Earl Moira’s expeditian to the coast of France.

Annotations

p. 1

Absurdity. Mr. Pitt’s surplus fund: After taking office in 1784, Pitt introduced a number of new taxes by which he created an annual surplus of income over expenditure. In May 1786, he introduced the so-called Sinking Fund, which was used to alleviate the national debt accumulating since the American War. New capital was raised as the Government paid in £1 million each year for the Fund’s commissioners to buy up Government stock. With the outbreak of war in 1793, however, the scheme had become an ‘absurdity’, as the Government was now forced to borrow money at high rates of interest to give to the Fund’s commissioners so that they could redeem the debt at a much lower rate.

his Majesty’s civil-list: The Civil List Act of 1698 gave the king an allowance to cover the costs of the areas that were counted to be under his command. At the end of the eighteenth century, this not only included the uphold of his property and household, but also civil government departments, legal offices, pensions and sinecures, as well as home and foreign secret service (for an exhaustive list; see Sainty, ‘Introduction’).

to restore … in France: When Britain joined the Coalition against France with other European kingdoms in 1793, the Government was keen to emphasize that it was to protect British interests of safety, trade and the BALANCE OF POWER – not to revenge or restore the Bourbon royal family to the French throne. The signals were, however, mixed. When Toulon was captured from the French (see ADVANTAGE), the British Government issued a statement of 29 October 1793 in which it was proclaimed that the port was held in trust for the return of a French ‘hereditary Monarchy’ (PH 30, col. 1060) – but with no specification of what kind this should be.

Abuse. privileged orders: The various aristocracy, nobility and gentry taken in contempt by the radicals. See, for example, Joel Barlow, Advice to the Privileged Orders, in the Several States of Europe, Resulting from the Necessity and Propriety of a general Revolution in the Principle of Government (1793–95). Part II was printed and sold by Pigott’s publisher, Daniel Isaac Eaton.

Adam. Supporters of King and Government used examples from British history as well as the Bible to prove that the model of constitutional monarchy was justified by tradition and divinely sanctioned, whereas opponents used other chapters in the same sources to claim that kings were a corruption of historical liberties. In Rights of Man, Paine charged Burke with having ‘set up a sort of political Adam, in whom all posterity are bound for ever’ (p. 94). Pigott’s idea that Adam in Genesis was the only ‘man of his time’ is related to Paine’s attempt to trump the many ‘historical’ arguments by tracing the history

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