"Patron-Client Relationships in the Radical Enlightenment"

My paper examines Lord Shelburne's relationships to his intellectual protégés, 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as the radical Enlightenment) around himself, and what drew thinkers to him.Although patronage had been declared outdated in the middle of the eighteenth century by Samuel Johnson and Jean D'Alembert, and David Hume and Adam Smith misleadingly proclaimed that an independent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 protégés 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 André Morellet, Shelburne was connected to Helvétius, 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 demands of the Americans and French, amplified the sobriquets of "the Jesuit of Berkeley Square" and especially Malagrida, the unfortunate Italian Jesuit unjustly executed for treason in an attempt on the life of the Portuguese king Joseph in 1758.In a maladroit attempt to be affable, Oliver Goldsmith exclaimed to Shelburne:"what can make People call your Lordship Malagrida?For by what ever I have heard Malagrida was a very good sort of Man." 1 The greatest patrons of the eighteenth century attempted by means of patronage to repair poor reputations.Catherine the Great, after murdering her husband and then the heir Ivan to the Russian throne supported Voltaire and Diderot (both of whom suppressed the French ambassador's account of Catherine's assumption of power), as well as D'Alembert, Grimm, Galiani, Condorcet and the Bentham brothers.Mme de Pompadour, Mme de Tencin and Mme duDeffand, three of the most important sponsors of les lumi res, had racy and rather unsavoury pasts that were covered over by their sponsorship of arts and letters, and their protection of philosophes.An additional reason for patronizing philosophers was provided by Jean D'Alembert who accounted for "the patronage of the great" by his contention that they "are quite happy to be learned on condition that they can become so without trouble, and so wish to be able to judge a work of intelligence without hard study, in exchange for the benefits they promise to the author or for the friendship with which they think they honor him." 2 D'Alembert's account did not account for two of the three greatest patrons of the British Enlightenment; Baron Somers (who patronized Locke, Toland, Defoe and Tindal early in the century) and the 3 rd Duke of Argyll who patronized virtually everyone in the Scottish Enlightenment-even David Hume who

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