John Bellers: His Life, Times and Writings (review)

Book Reviews Edited by Edwin B. Bronner John Bellers: His Life, Times and Writings. Edited by George Clarke. London and New York: Routledge & Kegan Paul [1987]. vii, 293 pp. $55.00. The subtitle of this volume on the Quaker philanthropist John Bellers (1654-1725) is rather misleading. With only eight pages devoted to Bellers's life and eight to his times, the 260 pages given over to his writings provide the core of the book. We must be grateful, though, to George Clarke for this carefully prepared collection of all Bellers's extant writings. It supersedes A. Ruth Fry's edition, published in 1935 and long out of print. Bellers divided his time between business as a London cloth merchant and his numerous Quaker concerns. Marrying into a Gloucestershire (Quaker) gentry family, he ended his life as a country squire. As George Clarke writes (p. 16), "Bellers was . . . filled with . . . reforming zeal. . . . Without exception his writings underline the essential unity between religious belief and earthly duty ." In the twenty pamphlets he composed between 1695 and 1724 he proved himself a pioneer in many aspects of social policy as well as political reform. His achievement led Karl Marx in Das Kapital to describe Bellers as "a veritable phenomenon in the history of political economy." True, with their terse style and frequent repetitions, his works do not always make easy reading. But the author's passionate sincerity and concern for social justice are impressive. Bellers, moreover, as became a man of business, often entered into considerable detail in expounding his proposals. For all his idealism, he had his feet firmly placed on the ground. In Bellers's view, the welfare of the whole people—and not of one particular class of citizens—should be of primary importance in state and society. Economic activity was to aim, above all, at promoting this. But that was not how most of the world then saw things. "I often [have] thought of the misery of the poor of this nation," he wrote, "and at the same time have reckoned them the treasure of it, the labour of the poor being the mines of the rich, and beyond all that Spain is master of" (p. 49). He strove, therefore, throughout his life to find a way to raise the general standard of living, to abolish poverty, and eliminate unemployment. To this end he proposed the establishment of what he called "colleges of industry," conceiving these not as "workhouses" but as models of cooperative industrial enterprise. The colleges became his "lifelong dream" (p. 42) and it is chiefly on their account that he is remembered today. But Bellers was active in pressing for a number of other reforms. For instance , he urged free education of the poor and in particular the setting up of trade schools for pauper children. He also advocated a national health service . He called for prison reform as well as for the abolition of capital punishment—in an age when few, even among Quakers, supported this. He summoned "the criminals in prison" to "consider the nobility of your nature, being of the same species with other men, and therefore capable by a thorough reformation to become saints on earth, and as angels in heaven to reign with our Saviour there" (p. 277). Bellers concerned himself, too, with the relief of refugees, in this case Huguenots and other continental Protestants. Finally, we may mention his interest in promoting world peace. His pamphlet Some Reasonsfor an European State (1710) continues in the Quaker internationalist tradition started by William Penn a few years earlier. Soon forgotten, Bellers's works however became the centre of increasing attention with the emergence of the socialist movement in the nineteenth cen- Book Reviews115 tury. Bellers had not sought the abolition of class distinctions; he saw the rich as stewards of their wealth answerable to God for its proper use. But to the European left he appeared as a forerunner of their ideas. He is, so far as I know, the only Quaker to whom a Soviet scholar has devoted an entire monograph. Now, thanks to George Clarke and his publishers, Bellers's contribution to social thought is easily accessible to all of...