Context
The first pamphlet under consideration, The Law of Parliament in the Present Situation of Great Britain Considered, was published by J. Debrett at the start of December 1788, prior to the parliamentary debates on the Regency question, and went into a second edition early the following year. Though the English Short Title Catalogue does not make an authorship attribution, nor record any other copies attributed to Godwin, his authorship is suggested by an anonymous contemporary manuscript ascription, "By Mr. Godwin," on the copy held in the University of Durham Routh Collection.[1] This attribution is strongly supported by evidence in Godwin's unpublished diary, where, according to his customary practice of recording the publication of his own works, he noted, "Law of Parliament published," on 1 December 1788.[2] The second pamphlet, Reflexions on the Consequences of His Majesty's Recovery from His Late Indisposition. In a Letter to the People of England, published by G. G. J. and J. Robinson, Godwin's then employers, was internally dated 16 February 1789, the day of the debate on the Regency Bill in the House of Lords (Derry 187), but did not appear until around a month later.[3] Again, no authorship attribution is made in ESTC, but a copy of
Reflexions
in the Routh Collection bears a manuscript ascription to Godwin in
the same hand as that of
Law.
[4] However, in this case there is insufficient external evidence to support a definite attribution to Godwin. In a diary entry for 25 February 1789, he noted, "Write to the P. of E."—an abbreviation consonant with other contractions used elsewhere—but there is no entry for 16 February, nor for most other days in that month, and he did not mention publication of
Reflexions.
[5] The apparent discrepancy in the date of composition may be explained by the fact that
Reflexions was overtaken by the events it sought to influence. Written in response to news of the king's partial recovery from 10 to 14 February, it warned of the dangers of an immediate restoration of royal authority; but the announcement on 26 February of the "entire cessation" of the king's illness, followed by his speedy resumption of full powers, made such an argument redundant (Macalpine and Hunter 81, 86). In addition, the month-long delay in publication of
Reflexions may account for Godwin's omission to record the date in his diary. Yet these explanations for the lack of firm external evidence for Godwin's authorship of
Reflexions remain conjectural.
Nevertheless, a reading of Law and Reflexions supports the view that Godwin wrote both of them. The style of both pamphlets is adapted according to the different occasions and audiences for which they were intended. Law, written in the interval between the meeting of Parliament on 20 November at which the king's indisposition was announced, and its reconvening on 4 December to discuss the establishment of a Regency, appears to have been designed to influence the debate among the Whigs concerning the best means of achieving government office (Derry 50, Mitchell 122-126). Accordingly, it is written in a measured, logical style, for the most part, and includes detailed discussion of historical precedents. Reflexions, as indicated by its subtitle, "In a Letter to the People of England," was addressed to a much wider audience, the politically aware, middle section of society which had a voice in public affairs, and its style is more informal and personal, though it too includes much historical analysis. Despite these stylistic differences, there are obvious parallels of theme and technique between the two pamphlets in question and Godwin's known works from 1783 to 1791, which include political journalism, historical writing, and occasional pamphlets in support of the Foxite Whig cause.[6] For example, the authorial stance of philosophical impartiality found in both pamphlets is characteristic of Godwin's early political writings, in which, in keeping with his Dissenting upbringing and education, he sought to forge an identity as an independent social and political commentator who had "nothing to do with administrations" (Law 53). Again, the method of both pamphlets is to provide a mixture of historical analysis and discussion of abstract principles, closely resembling the pattern of Godwin's writings in the second half of the decade. Typical of Godwin, too, is the claim to give equal attention to both sides of the question, while employing
rhetorical devices to whip up the fears of readers—notably, the invocation of the spectre of civil disturbance—and win their assent to his arguments. Finally, the pamphlets share with Godwin's writings an emphasis on "awaken[ing] the true principles of understanding in others" (
Reflexions 60) rather than specifying firm conclusions. Such resemblances to Godwin's known works, while not providing conclusive evidence, reinforce the likelihood that he was the author of both pamphlets.
In order to confirm Godwin as the author of the first pamphlet and establish him as the author of the second, it was decided to employ additional computer-assisted methods of textual analysis. In reviewing the options, some consideration was initially given to the cusum technique, which has been widely used in cases of literary attribution and in British courts of law; but this method was not adopted because its reliability has been questioned from a variety of angles.[7] Instead it was decided that the breadth of techniques used by forensic linguists would allow the most thorough investigation of the texts in question, and that those of a computational forensic linguist in particular would allow the processing of an appropriately large range of textual material. A forensic linguist is normally engaged where a trial, appeal, or disciplinary procedure requires an opinion on the authenticity or authorship of short texts, or on whether there is supportable evidence of plagiarism in a text. David Woolls is a computational forensic linguist who builds and uses computer programs as additional means to this end. These programs allow large numbers of texts of any length to be analyzed very rapidly once they are in electronic form. The data provided by such an investigation can then be used in forming an opinion. These programs are designed to work with whole texts or discrete chapters, as in this study. The branch of forensic linguistics represented here always treats the individual and collective measurements as indicative, rather than attributive, the emphasis being on the textual evidence which causes the plotting of the data points in graphical form to show a particular pattern, if any such pattern emerges. This textual emphasis enables us to discuss our findings in terms of literary style as well as usage.
