Nature and Artifice: The Life and Thought of Thomas Hodgskin, 1787-1869

Thomas Hodgskin was one of the most significant thinkers of nineteenth-century radicalism. An active writer for over fifty years and an associate of Bentham and James Mill amongst others, his life provides a paradigm for understanding the evolution of radicalism from Waterloo to the Second Reform Act. This study rescues him from his marginalisation and mis-casting as an ‘early English socialist’: far from being a socialist, many of his views seem to mark him out as a forerunner of New Right or neo-liberal ideology. Drawing on a range of new sources and reassessing Hodgskin’s life and work, Dr Stack argues that the crux of Hodgskin’s thought was the essentially theological distinction he drew between nature and artifice. Throughout, he makes plain the centrality of providentialism to nineteenth-century radicalism. Dr DAVID STACKteaches in the Department of History at Queen Mary and Westfield College at the University of London.