"Only half of his subject": Johnson's The False Alarm and the Wilkesite Movement

'Only half of his subject": Johnson's The False Alarm and the Wilkesite Movement Bryraj Singh Hostos Community College of the City University of New York I like Dr. Johnson's political pamphlets better than any other parts of his works. . . . though he sees only half of his subject and that not in a very philosophical manner. S.T. Coleridge, Table Talk, 16 August 1833. (Complete Works 6:476) A well-known paradox about Samuel Johnson is that though quick to rebel, naturally skeptical, and resentful of authority, he often offered in his writings and public dealings a stout defense of subordination, obedience, and discipline. This is as true of his religious life as of his views on social conduct and morality or of his thoughts on politics. His Prayers and Meditations offer a moving and even terrifying picture of an intensely tortured man conscious of having failed to discipline himself in God's will. But many of his pronouncements on the religious life, or the spectacle that Boswell records of Johnson examining his servant Francis Barber's religious life and exhorting him to faith (2: 359) show how anxious Johnson was in his public dealings to assert faith rather than doubt, and not let any hint of his own dark fears escape. Similarly, in matters of conduct his first reaction was often one of hostility. Talking about advice in Rambler 87 he says, "Advice, as it always gives a temporary appearance of superiority, can never be very grateful. . . . Vanity is so frequently the apparent motive of advice, that we, for the most part, summon our powers to oppose it. . . . [M]any would contentedly suffer the consequences of their own mistakes, rather than the insolence of him" who gives good advice (2: 95). Yet he says at the end of the essay, though not without some difficulty , that we should not reject the advice of whosoever can furnish us arms in our fight against pride, obstinacy, and folly. It is the same with Johnson's politics. In private he could be irreverent toward authority and express shocking, even seditious sentiments such as "George the First was a robber, George the Second a fool, and George the Third is an idiot" (Hill 2: 466). Yet in larger companies he always spoke respectfully of his sovereign, and in lite False Alarm defended George III as being above party politics and as the first king since Charles II to deserve public affection. Several of 45 46Rocky Mountain Review his public utterances on politics are, in fact, characterized by a desire to uphold the absolute nature of authority. Johnson's belief in political absolutism — in Taxation no Tyranny he declares that "all government is ultimately and essentially absolute " (Political Writings 422) — has sometimes been seen as derived from his religious views: just as God is absolute, so also is the sovereign in matters of politics and law. But as Donald Greene has shown, Johnson 's views on politics do not derive from his views on religion (245). Johnson did not believe either that the State was God-given or that its conduct was or should necessarily be based on religious principles (Greene 246). He thought that the theory of the divine right of kings was "all stuff" (Political Writings xxx), and in The False Alarm and Taxation no Tyranny justified the actions of government because they were necessary or expedient, not because they were in consonance with Christian morality. His political absolutism has also been linked to his Tory sympathies. It is true he was a Tory, and Tories upheld the notion of monarchical sovereignty as against the supremacy of Parliament. But Greene has also cautioned us that the word Tory should be properly understood when applied to eighteenth-century contexts. By and large the word was reserved for the smaller landowners and the squirearchy whose representatives in Parliament upheld the landed interest by supporting export subsidies on corn, opposed free trade, and, though suspicious of the government of the day, usually voted with it because of their belief that to support the Ministry was to support the king. These Tories are to be distinguished from the Whigs who believed in mercantilism and trade...