5 - ‘Writ in Defence of the Rights of the People’: 1739–1741

Summary

When the first year's issues of the Champion were collected together and published in two volumes in 1741, the Dedication took the form of an open letter addressed ‘To the New Members’ of Parliament who had been returned in that year's general election. Assuming an uncompromisingly radical Whig position, and insinuating that ‘the very Air of St. S[tephe]n's C[hape]l is infectious, and that few, very few, have escap'd the Taint’, the Dedication was an outspoken denunciation of systematic bribery and corruption on the part of the ministry, and more particularly on the part of the Prime Minister himself:

ALL this has been done and suffer'd, Gentlemen, under the Influence of One Man: One Man, who, in open P[arliamen]t, has had the Modesty to avow, that he ought to be held a pitiful Fellow of a Minister, who would not dispence the Perquisities of Power, after his corrupt Example.

In conclusion, the Dedication drew the attention of new MPs to the Champion's endeavours to redeem the situation: ‘WRITINGS, Gentlemen, may serve to discover Leaks in the Common-wealth, but want Power to stop them; and, among a Variety of other Pieces, these two Volumes are put into your Hands, to shew how much has been hitherto said in vain’. What is especially interesting about the Dedication is the way in which, in what is quite clearly a call to concerted political action in the House of Commons, its author – presumably James Ralph – offered to position the Champion in ideological terms by referring to ‘the glorious Labours of the Sydney's, Hampden's, Lock's, Johnson's, Trenchard's, &c. [which] are too widely circulated, and too universally known to be withheld from the Knowledge and Admiration of remotest Ages’. ‘From them Liberty will be understood’, he went on, ‘and by them it will be defended till Time shall be no more’.

It is important to establish the Champion's political credentials with accuracy in any discussion of Fielding's contributions because its openly anti-ministerial stance has not been sufficiently emphasized even by those recent commentators who have been prepared to acknowledge that, from the outset, it was more of a political vehicle than used to be thought.