Robert Southey and the Language of Social Discipline

1998 ◽  
Vol 30 (4) ◽  
pp. 630-655 ◽  
Author(s):  
Philip Harling
Keyword(s):  
Child Labor ◽  
Popular Education ◽  
Public Works ◽  
Poor Laws ◽  
Savings Banks ◽  
Poet Laureate ◽  
Robert Southey ◽  
The Commons ◽  
Social Discipline ◽  
The Military

Robert Southey is probably still best remembered as a versifying turncoat, the most reactionary and least anthologized Lake poet. He owes this reputation to the reformers of his own day, who took it amiss when he renounced his youthful dreams of radical egalitarianism and appeared to exchange them for the £300 a year he made by scribbling Court-ordered odes as Poet Laureate. By the late 1810s, opposition M.P.s were scolding him on the Commons floor for urging the suppression of just the sort of republican sentiments that he himself had committed to paper in the 1790s. Byron memorably sent him up as an apostate hack:He had written praises of a regicide;He had written praises of all kings whatever;He had written for republics far and wide,And then against them bitterer than ever;He had sung against all battles, and againIn their high praise and glory; he had call'dReviewing “the ungentle craft,” and thenBecome as base a critic as e'er crawl'd–Fed, paid, and pamper'd by the very menBy whom his muse and morals had been maul'd:He had written much blank verse, and blanker prose,And more of both than anybody knows.Despite being the target of such devastating attack, Southey nevertheless has had plenty of defenders over the last century and a half. Most of them have stressed his consistent commitment to humanitarian interventionism. Cuthbert Southey established this far more positive critical tradition by stressing the reforms that his father had repeatedly advocated in print: reduction of child labor in factories; addition of Anglican churches and clergymen, especially in poor urban districts; public works schemes in times of distress; land allotments for poor laborers; cultivation of waste lands by paupers; reduction of the Bloody Code and of corporal punishment in the military, along with some of the more punitive measures enshrined in the poor laws and game laws; establishment of savings banks, emigration schemes, Protestant sisterhoods of charity, and, most importantly, a national system of Anglican, state-aided popular education.

THE LABOUR PARTY AND THE PARLIAMENTARY CAMPAIGN TO ABOLISH THE MILITARY DEATH PENALTY, 1919–1930

1999 ◽  
Vol 42 (1) ◽  
pp. 233-249 ◽  
Author(s):  
JOHN McHUGH
Keyword(s):  
Small Group ◽  
Death Penalty ◽  
Labour Party ◽  
Military Establishment ◽  
Labour Government ◽  
House Of Lords ◽  
The Face ◽  
The Commons ◽  
The Military

This is a study of a successful parliamentary campaign led throughout the 1920s by a small group of backbench Labour MPs aimed at abolishing the military death penalty for the offences of cowardice and desertion. It was sustained in the face of opposition from the military establishment, the Conservatives, and finally the House of Lords. The campaigners used the opportunity afforded by the requirement on government to pass, annually, an Army Bill, to challenge the military establishment's insistence that a capital penalty was essential to the maintenance of army discipline. Despite the unwillingness of the 1924 Labour government to confront the military on this issue, the reformers persevered, securing some minor, incremental reform before the coming of the second Labour government in 1929. The new government was prevailed upon by backbench pressure to authorize a free vote in the Commons which approved the abolition of the capital penalty for cowardice and desertion in the Army Act of 1930.

The first item in the first issue of The Liberal: Byron's The Vision of Judgement

2021 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Romantic Period ◽  
Poet Laureate ◽  
Robert Southey ◽  
Leigh Hunt

The Liberal is one of the most important journals of the Romantic period, the brainchild of Shelley, Leigh Hunt, and Byron. It was inevitable that Byron's poem, an attack on Robert Southey, the poet laureate, would be in the first issue. 7,000 copies were printed and 4,000 sold, enough to make the new journal a huge success.

The Internal Provinces of the Northern Spanish Empire

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Cecilia Sheridan-Prieto
Keyword(s):  
Native Americans ◽  
18Th Century ◽  
Atlantic Coast ◽  
Public Works ◽  
The North ◽  
British Colonization ◽  
Territorial Structure ◽  
Bourbon Reforms ◽  
Military Control ◽  
The Military

In New Spain, the 18th century was characterized by important political and administrative changes in imperial geopolicy that stemmed from the reforms introduced by Spain’s king, Charles III, which continued under the Bourbon monarchs. These so-called Bourbon Reforms sought to reduce the centralizing power of the viceroyalty’s governments, as well as that of the Royal Audiences in Spanish America. The British colonization of the Atlantic coast and the continued confrontation with Native Americans resulted in changes in New Spain’s territorial structure, especially the consolidating of the northern Provincias Internas (Internal Provinces). The project of structuring a political territory in the north originally emerged in 1751 with the aim of organizing the space into a General Command. The process began in 1776 with the appointment of José de Gálvez as the minister of the Indies. The first commanding general, Teodoro de Croix (1730–1792), who was given authorization to act independently of the viceroyalty, established the command by taking into his jurisdiction the provinces of Sonora, Sinaloa, the Californias, Nueva Vizcaya, New Mexico, Coahuila, and Tejas and, later, the New Kingdom of León and New Santander. In 1787, the Spanish government decided to modify the jurisdictions by creating provincial blocks: the Eastern Internal Provinces and the Western Internal Provinces. The jurisdiction that would experience a number of difficult changes that arose principally from the military control that began during the first years of colonization and lasted until the disappearance of viceregal power. The rest of the Spanish Empire’s territory, meanwhile, was organized into administrations ruled by a general governor or mayor who exercised powers of law, war, the treasury, public works, and the development of local economic efforts.

Unfinished Business: Public Works in Cuba, 1898-1902

1975 ◽  
Vol 31 (3) ◽  
pp. 335-359
Author(s):  
James H. Hitchman
Keyword(s):  
The United States ◽  
Public Works ◽  
Special Treatment ◽  
Spanish American ◽  
United States Military ◽  
Military Government ◽  
Unfinished Business ◽  
Spanish American War ◽  
The Subject ◽  
The Military

The United States Military Government built a significant amount of public works in Cuba after the Spanish-American War. Under the direction of the military governor, General Leonard Wood, a large proportion of the insular budget was expended on building roads, bridges, wharves, cleaning and paving streets, purifying water, extinguishing yellow fever, disposing of refuse, and establishing charitable institutions. Of the roughly $55 million expended by the Military Government, over $22 million was spent on varied public works. While the political, diplomatic, economic, legal and educational aspects of the Military Government of Cuba have been treated elsewhere, public works have merely been mentioned. The subject was considered so important by the Military Government and was so vital to Cuba that it warrants special treatment. A description of the conditions in Cuba and the subsequent public works program will indicate the value of the work in the efforts of the Cubans and Americans to build a lasting republic.

Autonomy will not be given, it must be created!

TERRITORIO ◽  
2011 ◽  
pp. 87-90
Author(s):  
Pulska Grupa
Keyword(s):  
Political Context ◽  
The State ◽  
The Self ◽  
Self Management ◽  
New Model ◽  
Island Area ◽  
The Commons ◽  
Abandoned Spaces ◽  
The Military

This text, by the Pulska Grupa group of activists, describes the socio-political and community conditions in Pola on the Adriactic coast of Croatia. Its objective is to grasp specific local transformations in a very broad geo-political context. The temporary reuse methods and projects initiated by associations, artists, architects and activists in some of the abandoned spaces in the huge military naval arsenal, such as the Casoni Vecchi fort, the Karlo Rojc barracks, the former sheds, the military warehouses and the buildings on the Katarina-Monumenti Island area are exemplary of a new model for the self-management of space, the ‘komunal'. Those of the Pulska Grupa use this term from Istrian dialect to mean ‘common land', belonging to the commons, not governed by the state and given to the community as land for experimenting with local activities, dreams and desires.

Slavery in Brazil as Described by Americans, 1822–1888

1961 ◽  
Vol 17 (3) ◽  
pp. 241-260 ◽  
Author(s):  
Manoel Cardozo
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Foreign Language ◽  
Life Span ◽  
English Language ◽  
Colonial Period ◽  
Anglo Saxon ◽  
Poet Laureate ◽  
Robert Southey ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Brazilian History

By the end of the nineteenth century the American public, if it had cared to enlarge upon its knowledge of the Empire of Brazil, could easily have done so without even the necessity of learning a foreign language. From 1822 to 1888, beginning with the independence of Brazil from Portugal and ending with the abolition of slavery— a period corresponding almost exactly with the life span of the Brazilian Empire—about twenty books on Brazil were published by Americans. These were obviously not the only books on the subject in the English language because Britishers wrote about Brazil too (indeed they wrote more about it than we did) and these books on Brazil were also available on this side of the Atlantic. The combined output of the two nations was, therefore, considerable, and the curiosity of the Anglo-Saxon mind which it for the most part reflected presented Brazil to the American reader under a great variety of aspects. There were the solid three volumes on the colonial period of Brazilian history by Robert Southey, the poet laureate of England who was much better as a historian, and the two-volume sequel by John Armitage, who was neither a historian nor a poet but a lover of liberty.

The Poor Law Report Reexamined

1964 ◽  
Vol 24 (2) ◽  
pp. 229-245 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mark Blaug
Keyword(s):  
Local Level ◽  
Inhibitory Effect ◽  
Point Of View ◽  
Public Works ◽  
Poor Law ◽  
Economic Point ◽  
Poor Laws ◽  
Unemployment Compensation ◽  
The Poor ◽  
Family Allowances

In an earlier article, I pleaded for a reappraisal of the Old Poor Law. Despite what all the books say, the evidence that we have does not suggest that the English Poor Law as it operated before its amendment in 1834 reduced the efficiency of agricultural workers, promoted population growth, lowered wages, depressed rents, destroyed yeomanry, and compounded the burden on ratepayers. Beyond this purely negative argument, I tried to show that the Old Poor Law was essentially a device for dealing with the problems of structural unemployment and substandard wages in the lagging rural sector of a rapidly growing but still underdeveloped economy. It constituted, so to speak, “a welfare state in miniature,” combining elements of wage-escalation, family allowances, unemployment compensation, and public works, all of which were administered and financed on a local level. Far from having an inhibitory effect, it probably contributed to economic expansion. At any rate, from the economic point of view, things were much the same after 1834 as before. The Poor Laws Amendment Act of 1834 marked a revolution in British social administration, but it left the structure of relief policy substantially unchanged.

Banking and Finance from the Revolution to the Civil War

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sharon Ann Murphy
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Civil War ◽  
Financial System ◽  
The United States ◽  
Savings Banks ◽  
Banking Institutions ◽  
New Nation ◽  
Civil War Era ◽  
The Military ◽  
The Revolution

In creating a new nation, the United States also had to create a financial system from scratch. During the period from the Revolution to the Civil War, the country experimented with numerous options. Although the Constitution deliberately banned the issuance of paper money by either Congress or the states, states indirectly reclaimed this power by incorporating state-chartered banks with the ability to print banknotes. These provided Americans with a medium of exchange to facilitate trade and an expansionary money supply to meet the economic needs of a growing nation. The federal government likewise entered into the world of money and finance with the incorporation of the First and Second Banks of the United States. Not only did critics challenge the constitutionality of these banks, but contemporaries likewise debated whether any banking institutions promoted the economic welfare of the nation or if they instead introduced unnecessary instability into the economy. These debates became particularly heated during moments of crisis. Periods of war, including the Revolutionary War, the War of 1812, and the Civil War, highlighted the necessity of a robust financial system to support the military effort, while periods of economic panic such as the Panic of 1819, the Panics of 1837 and 1839, and the Panic of 1857 drew attention to the weaknesses inherent in this decentralized, largely unregulated system. Whereas Andrew Jackson succeeded in destroying the Second Bank of the United States during the Bank War, state-chartered commercial banks, savings banks, and investment banks still multiplied rapidly throughout the period. Numerous states introduced regulations intended to control the worst excesses of these banks, but the most comprehensive legislation occurred with the federal government’s Civil War-era Banking Acts, which created the first uniform currency for the nation.

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