"Patron-Client Relationships in the Radical Enlightenment" - eScholarship

Patron-Client Relationships in the Radical Enlightenment Edward Andrew Political Science University of Toronto Abstract My paper examines Lord Shelburne’s relationships to his intellectual proteges, particularly Jeremy Bentham. I propose to analyze the reasons Shelburne drew thinkers (who have often been described as the radical Enlightenment) around himself, and what drew thinkers to him. Although patronage had been declared outdated in the middle of the eighteenth century by Samuel Johnson and Jean D’Alembert, and David Hume and Adam Smith misleadingly proclaimed that an independent existence was possible in the intellectual marketplace of a democratic print culture, most of the important writers (including Johnson, D’Alembert, Hume and Smith) of the eighteenth century received royal or aristocratic patronage. Indeed, patronage seems incompatible with the central motif of Enlightenment –independent thought or intellectual autonomy. However, if England could be said to have had an Enlightenment comparable to that in Scotland, France of America, it was largely composed of proteges of Lord Shelburne. The subject of my paper is Lord Shelburne’s relationship to those he patronized, namely, Bentham, Price. Priestley, Smith, Franklin, Blackstone, William Jones the Orientalist, and Maurice Morgan, the emancipator of slaves. Also, through his patronage of Andre Morellet, Shelburne was connected to Helvetius, D’Holbach, Turgot and other philosophes, as well as their patronnes, such as Mme du Deffand, Mme de Boufflers and Mme Geoffrin. Shelburne arranged for Condorcet to be translated into English and Bentham into French. Because of his French connections, as well as his conciliatory position with respect to the Americans, George III chose him as first minister in 1782 in the attempt to come to terms with both the Americans and the French. Although Shelburne’s poor reputation predated his term as first minister, began with the youthful and ambitious participation in the cabinet of “the great commoner”, William Pitt who became the Earl of Chatham’s in1766, his attempt to secure peace, despite the conflicting

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