"The real rights of man". Thomas Spence, Paine and Chartism

A deep engagement with Spence’s ideas can be found in the Chartist movement. In its drive for radical parliamentary reform, we can see the working out of Paineite thinking. And in Chartism’s impulse towards agrarian reform, we can see the working out of Spencean thinking. Uncritical deference to Paine’s memory has often obscured the contribution of others among his contemporaries to radical political thought. In the field of agrarian ideas, it was Spence not Paine whose influence was the more decisive. This is evident even in the writings of Paine’s indefatigable disciple Richard Carlile. Four elements underpinned all Chartist thinking on landed property and they also encapsulated the essence of Spence’s ideas. 1] A fundamental belief that smallholder cultivation maximised the productivity of the soil. 2] Hostility to large holdings of landed property, irrespective of their legal form. 3] A suspicion of central government as a potential owner or manager of the national estate. 4] Land holding was part of a broader assault upon the citadel of economic and political power. This article will now briefly consider each in turn.