Nature and Artifice

by David Stack

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 among others, his life provides a paradigm for understanding the evolution of radicalism from Waterloo through to the Second Reform Act. This study of Hodgskin seeks to recover him from his marginalisation and miscasting 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; building on this argument, he emphasises the continuity and consistency in Hodgskin's thought and career.