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           Der Teufel is German for the Devil
                             A d v e r t i s e m e n t
     Means of book banning or suppressing a book vary. Thomas
Paine’s Rights of Man was outlawed, and booksellers who sold
that book were arrested. The head of government, Mr. Pitt, argued
that such a measure was not necessary with Godwin’s Enquiry
Concerning Political Justice. In effect, Mr. Pitt said, the publisher
had already done much to prevent the book from being read by most
people. Its price, he pointed out, was prohibitively high for all but the
wealthy. This shows that Mr. Pitt understood the advantage in avoiding
unnecessary bans of books, which would draw attention to them.
Yet, it also shows how little Mr. Pitt understood the people he
governed. Poor people pooled funds, purchased copies of Godwin’s
book, and read it aloud to one another. In the north of the country,
a great many unauthorized copies were printed and sold cheaply.
Before Mr. Pitt knew what had happened, everyone  was talking
about Godwin’s ideas.
     Godwin proposes that we look closely at the machinery of
society so that we can discover its defects and work to remedy
them. In 1793, however, France was undergoing violent revolution.
To some it seemed that the violence across the channel had begun
with the kind of wide ranging discussion in which Godwin engaged.
Even though Godwin’s Political Justice clearly shows violent
revolution to be counterproductive, it was argued that such
discussion would lead to violence nevertheless. Godwin’s
expectations of what was possible were thought to be unrealistic.
He had declined to involve himself in any political party or
association,  even when it would have meant significant advance-
ment in his career. What did he know about the political process?
But such a question was not a strong enough method of turning
people away from Godwin’s proposal, at a time when it seemed to
represent a dangerous, if well-intended, enterprise. So it was that
virtually every conceivable suspicion was used to cause Godwin’s
name to be associated with violence and evil. H. C. Robinson
recalled that, whenever some especially nasty inhumanity took
place, a certain minister would express the view that he had thought
only William Godwin to be capable of committing such an awful
crime.
     The Montgolfier brothers produced balloons, both
hot air and hydrogen. The guest’s family’s link with the
Montgolfiers may have figured in Shelley’s choice of
her storyteller’s name.        [kitchen door]
                                               28 [To a Candid World Menu]
               To a Candid World, Copyright 1998,   Thomas Wolfsehr