At this time the French Revolution was raging, and the mental churning which it occasioned had its effect upon sounder minds than his. Godwin soon became intimate with Tom Paine and others of like opinions. Wherever political heresy and schism was talked, there Godwin was to be found. He stood for everything which was "advanced" in thought and conduct; he joined the school which was to write God with a small g. All the radical visionaries in London were attracted to him, and he to them. He thought and dreamed and talked, and finally grew to feel the need of a larger audience. The result was "An Enquiry Concerning Political Justice," a book which created a tremendous sensation in its day. It seemed the one thing needed to bring political dissent and dissatisfaction to a head.
Much was wrong at the time, much is still wrong, and doubtless reformers of Godwin's type do a certain amount of good. They call attention to abuses, and eventually the world sets about to remedy them. A "movement" is in the air; it centres in some man who voices and directs it. For the moment the man and the movement seem to be one. Ultimately the movement becomes diffused, its character changes; frequently the man originally identified with it is forgotten--so it was with Godwin.
"Political Justice" was published in 1793. In it Godwin fell foul of everything. He assailed all forms of government. The common idea that blood is thicker than water, is wrong: all men are brothers; one should do for a stranger as for a brother. The distribution of property is absurd. A man's needs are to be taken as the standard of what he should receive. He that needs most is to be given most--by whom, Godwin did not say.
Marriage is a law and the worst of all laws: it is an affair of property, and like property must be abolished. The intercourse of the sexes is to be like any other species of friendship. If two men happen to feel a preference for the same woman, let them both enjoy her conversation and be wise enough to consider sexual intercourse "a very trivial object indeed."
I have a copy of "Political Justice," before me, with Tom Paine's signature on the title-page. What a whirlwind all this once created, especially with the young! Its author became one of the most-talked-of men of his time, and Godwin's estimate of himself could not have been higher than that his disciples set upon him. Compared with him, "Paine was nowhere and Burke a flashy sophist." He gloried in the reputation his book gave him, and he profited by it to the extent of a thousand pounds; to him it was a fortune.