A MONK'S VIEW OF WOMENS' RIGHTS

LEWIS (MATTHEW GREGORY, 1775-1818, author of the 'Monk') FINE AUTOGRAPH LETTER SIGNED, to Sir Henry Petty, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, suggesting two new taxes to him, namely on 'All Men employed in professions, which might be equally well filled by Women' and 'upon the sale of all 'works of Imagination', including Novels, Romances, Poems and Plays...[with] a particular exception in favour of those Poets, whose works are of service to the cause of Morality and Knowledge, such as Shakespeare, Milton, Cowper...', 4 pages, octavo, small brown stain on verso of second leaf, possibly from a seal, Barnes, Monday, no day, month or year [but 1806-1807, when Petty was Chancellor]

'...At the risque of being thought very absurd, I cannot resist my inclination to recommend two objects of taxation to your consideration, and thus add my name to the List of those, with whose impracticable speculations [as I am told] your breakfast table is daily inundated. Now I make no doubt, that you expect to read a string of bad jokes; but I assure you, that I am perfectly serious...'

'...If ever there were luxuries, these ['works of Imagination'] merit the name, and in my opinion deserve to rank as the drams of Literature -- the cause of real Literature would gain by the suppression of so much fanciful trash as yearly issues from the Press...to qualify the outcry which perhaps might be raised by the Admirers of Wit and Genius, Novels &c which had past through several Editions...might pay a mitigated tax, and as the Authors and original Proprietors of the works of Fielding &c are mostly dead, the Persons who now receive the whole profit of the sale [the Book-sellers] have paid nothing in many instances themselves for the copy-right...As to Novels &c I protest, I do not know a single Production of the kind, which deserves to escape the tax on account of any benefit, which its perusal can possibly do to the Morals of the Community...'

'...a premium to be paid to Government by every Tradesman who took a Man as an Apprentice to such trades, and also an annual duty to be paid according to the number of Men employed in each Haberdasher's Shop...it is highly to be wished in a military point of view, that we could employ our Men in manly occupations; not to mention the abominable injustice of their supplying the place of Women, when the Latter have so few means of gaining an honest livelihood...'

'Monk' Lewis's liberal attitude towards slaves and his efforts to improve their lot both on his own West Indian property and in general, with his friend Wilberforce, are well documented. The recipient of Lewis's taxation proposals, Sir Henry Petty, later third Marquess of Lansdowne, was likewise instrumental with Wilberforce in the suppression of the slave trade. Lewis's liberal attitude towards women, reflected in this letter by his proposal that men working in their place should be taxed, is less well known.

No publication of this letter has been traced.

£1,500