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Lessons to a Young Prince, on the Present Disposition in Europe to a General Revolution

1790-09 Subjects: Libel and slander, Politics and government Forms: Constitutions, Pamphlets Translation Status: Source-text English London URL

Contributions

Anonymous (David Williams): author
Henry Delahoy Symonds: publisher
Anonymous (James Ridgway): publisher

Related resources

has translation: Leçons au Prince de Galles, Sur la disposition actuelle de l'Europe à une Révolution générale: traduites de l'Anglois, sur la seconde Edition imprimée à Londres translation
has translation: Leçons à un jeune prince sur la disposition actuelle de l'Europe à une révolution générale translation

Summary (extracted citations)

"I have written a little Pamphlet as an antidote to the Poison which is here diffused by the Court, the Nobles & Clergy, who are alarmed at the Progress of Liberty" (letter from Williams to Brissot, 27 Sept 1790, in AN Ms. 446/AP6)

Held by

British Library

Notes

This satirical work, which appeared in September 1790, went through seven editions in a year. The first edition was anonymous.

From the 2nd edition onwards, it bore the pseudonym, 'Old Statesman', and included an overt rebuttal of Burke's 'Reflections' as the tenth lesson ('with the Addition of a Lesson on the Mode of Studying and Profiting by Reflections on the French Revolution, by the Right Honourable Edmund Burke'), with a further appendix after 1791. Editions were also published in Dublin: William Jones (1791), New York: Childs and Swaine (1791) and Philadelphia: Mathew Carey (1796).

While it was jointly published with Ridgway, only Symond's name was on the imprint [as H.D. Simmons]. They rarely shared the same imprint out of political prudence. If one was imprisoned for libel or sedition, the other would supervise his partner's business, and vice versa. An advertisement in The World (23 Sept 1790) reveals that it was also sold by Baldwin and Lewis.

Mixed review by John Gillies in the Monthly Review (4 March 1791), dismissing it as just "another Whig tract", despite its appeal for non-partisan consideration of alternative political constitutions and explicit disavowal of any party interest. Symonds at the time was closely associated with the Whig press.

Included five diagrams detailing the political constitutions of England, France and the United States in figurative form. These show the relative powers and linkage of class hierarchies in the 'Political Constitution of England by Alfred', the 'English Government at the Revolution', the 'English Government in 1790', the 'French Revolutionary State, and the 'New American Republic'. These diagrams were reproduced in the Bouche de Fer serial translation, and again, in Bonneville's 'L'esprit des religions' (1791).

See Peter Robinson, 'Henry Delahay Symonds and James Ridgway’s Conversion from Whig Pamphleteers to Doyens of the Radical Press, 1788–1793', in The Papers of the Bibliographical Society of America, vol.108, no.1 (March 2014), pp.61-90. Also Dybikowski, pp.316-17.