An Enquiry Concerning Political Justice

Contents

1. Prefaces 16 min 13

   Godwin’s three prefaces frame the book’s history. The first (January 1793) presents it as an up-to-date treatise on politics, made necessary by the American and French revolutions, conceived in May 1791 and written in sixteen months. He traces his republicanism to Swift, the Latin historians and the French philosophers, admits that his view of government hardened as he wrote, and defies the loyalist campaign of prosecutions then under way. The second (October 1795) explains that four books and the last were largely rewritten and denies that the work is seditious. The brief advertisement of 1797 introduces the lightly revised third edition.

2. Summary of Principles 6 min 2

   Added in 1796, this numbered digest gives the book’s argument in brief: happiness is the object of morals; government, born of human vices, restricts independence and perpetuates injustice; justice means producing the greatest sum of happiness; reason regulates the feelings; knowledge can grow without limit, so institutions are perfectible; and great inequality of property is hostile to sound understanding.

3. I Of the Powers of Man Considered in His Social Capacity 3 h 1 min 51

   Book I argues that political institutions shape human character far more than is usually thought, and that their evils can be removed. Godwin surveys war, cruel punishment and despotism, then traces robbery and fraud to poverty, the display of wealth and laws made by the rich. He denies innate ideas and instincts: character comes from circumstances, education and above all government. Voluntary action follows opinion, so truth adequately communicated must prevail and man is perfectible, capable of endless improvement. Neither climate nor luxury bars freedom, and the history of language and writing shows the mind’s power of progress.

4. II Principles of Society 1 h 37 min 31

   Book II sets out the moral principles of society. Politics is part of morals, and justice means impartial treatment by worth and usefulness: one should save Fénelon rather than his valet, even if the valet is one’s father. We must do all the good we can and treat our property as a trust. Appendices reject suicide from despair and duelling. Men are equal enough that all government rests on opinion; virtue requires good intention and useful effect; there are no rights to do wrong, only a sphere of discretion, whose basis is the right of private judgement, which punishment violates.

5. III Principles of Government 1 h 38 min 41

   Book III asks what, if anything, gives government authority. Godwin dismisses force and divine right, then attacks the social contract: no one consents for posterity, acquiescence is not consent, and no one can approve a whole code of laws. Promises themselves are no foundation of morality and are, in themselves, an evil. Government is at best common deliberation about the use of force; society can declare law but not make it. Obedience is owed only from prudence, never reverence, and since government rests on ignorant confidence, the spread of knowledge will bring its “euthanasia”. Reform should therefore be gradual: “many reforms, but no revolutions”.

6. IV.1–6 Of the Operation of Opinion in Societies and Individuals (Chapters I–VI) 3 h 1 min 50

   These chapters ask how opinion should change society. Godwin rejects armed resistance except in extremity: a nation that understands its rights needs no force, and one that does not is unready for freedom. Revolutions breed new tyranny, suppress free enquiry and shed blood; political associations make a part stand for the whole and breed party spirit, while frank conversation spreads truth safely. Tyrannicide is condemned because conspiracy requires deceit. He then praises truth as the source of happiness, virtue and political improvement, argues that virtue depends on understanding, and makes perfect sincerity a central duty, with exceptions only for great and manifest evil.

7. IV.7–11 Of the Operation of Opinion in Societies and Individuals (Chapters VII–XI) 2 h 43 min 50

   Godwin argues that all human actions are necessary: mind, like matter, shows constant conjunctions, and free will is both incoherent and harmful, since it would make persuasion useless. Necessity leaves virtue as usefulness, makes punishment a mere tool, and calls for tranquillity rather than resentment. He sketches thought as the medium of bodily motion, holding that the mind has one idea at a time and always thinks. He defends disinterested benevolence against the self-love school, explaining it by habit turning means into ends, and closes with a hedonist account of good and evil, a scale of happiness, and a critique of optimism and of courting persecution.

8. V.1–13 Of Legislative and Executive Power (Chapters I–XIII) 2 h 56 min 58

   Book V turns to forms of government, treating government as an evil to be minimised. Godwin attacks monarchy through the corrupting education and private life of princes, the impossibility of a virtuous despot knowing his subjects' affairs, the dissimulation of courts and ministers, and the imposture and luxury that degrade subjects. Elective, limited and presidential monarchy fare no better: the fiction that the king can do no wrong destroys responsibility, and no single person should hold discretionary power. He then condemns hereditary distinction, aristocratic privilege and monopoly of wealth, entails and titles, and the aristocratic fear of educating the poor.

9. V.14–24 Of Legislative and Executive Power (Chapters XIV–XXIV) 2 h 30 min 53

   Godwin completes his review of forms of government by defending democracy as the least bad. Its faults come from the deception practised by monarchy and aristocracy, from which Athens itself was not free. Chapter XV attacks “political imposture”. Chapters XVI–XX, written in 1792, allow only defensive war and the defence of others' liberty, prefer militias to standing armies, condemn colonies and treaties, and praise open diplomacy. He rejects two houses of assembly and permanent national assemblies, and proposes small self-governing districts with juries. The section ends by foreseeing the dissolution of government itself.

10. VI Of Opinion Considered as a Subject of Political Institution 2 h 51 min 50

    Book VI denies that government should shape opinion. Godwin argues that collective authority is less wise than individuals, ineffective against settled manners, unnecessary, since truth like commerce thrives unaided, and harmful, since it fixes error. He applies this to established churches and the Thirty-Nine Articles, heresy laws, political tests and the French civic oath, oaths of office and evidence, and the laws of public and private libel. He also covers fixed constitutions, which he would reduce to a federation of self-legislating districts, national education, salaries, pensions and property qualifications, and decision by lot and secret ballot, preferring open vote.

11. VII Of Crimes and Punishments 2 h 36 min 60

    Book VII applies Godwin’s utilitarianism to crime and punishment. Since human actions are necessary, no one deserves to suffer; pain may be inflicted only to prevent future harm. Godwin examines the three purposes of punishment and rejects reformation by force and punishment for example, leaving restraint of the dangerous as the only defensible aim, and that only as a temporary expedient while large, complex states last. He condemns the death penalty, flogging, promiscuous jails and solitary confinement, prefers well-treated colonisation, argues that words should never be punished, proposes replacing law by reasoned judgement of each case, and attacks pardons as a lottery of death that breeds servility.

12. VIII.1–3 Of Property (Chapters I–III) 1 h 14 min 64

    Book VIII opens Godwin’s account of property, the “key-stone” of the work. Goods belong by justice to whoever will benefit most from them, so the world’s goods are a common stock. Godwin distinguishes property in what one needs, in the produce of one’s own labour, and in the labour of others, which he calls usurpation. Yet he defends existing property against force while opinion is unchanged, tolerates inheritance, and would abolish only feudal privileges. Chapter III lists the evils of inequality: dependence, the corruption of judgement, wasted intellect, crime and war, and a check on population. Malthus quoted these pages in 1798.

13. VIII.4–10 Of Property (Chapters IV–X) 2 h 11 min 85

    Godwin answers the standard objections to his system of equality. Human frailty, he says, will yield to instruction and to opinion, and an equality rooted in conviction will last. Idleness is no danger when half an hour's labour a day would supply necessaries and the love of distinction will survive the end of wealth. Luxury may have been a necessary stage, but it can now be dropped, and equality needs no regulation or common meals. An appendix rejects co-operation, cohabitation and indissoluble marriage. Population, he argues, finds its own level, and an appendix speculates that mind may master the body. Chapter X urges peaceful discussion, not revolution.