Thomas SpenceBase of the Reformers Memorial, Kensal Green Cemetery, showing Spence's name
Thomas Spence (2 July [O.S. 21 June] 1750 – 8 September 1814) was an EnglishRadical[1] and advocate of thecommon ownership of land and a democratic equality of the sexes. Spence was one of the leading revolutionaries of the late 18th and early 19th centuries. He was born in poverty and died the same way, after long periods of imprisonment, in 1814.
Born in 1750 to a Presbyterian family,[2] Spence later left Newcastle for London in 1787.[1] He kept a book-stall inHigh Holborn. In 1794, with other members of theLondon Corresponding Society, he spent seven months inNewgate Gaol on a charge of high treason,[3] and in 1801 he was sentenced to twelve months' imprisonment for seditiouslibel. He died in London on 8 September 1814.[4]
Defaced 1813 threeshillings coin promoting Spence's Plan. Added text reads: "NO LANDLORDS / YOU FOOLS / SPENCE'S PLAN / FOREVER".
The threatenedenclosure of thecommon land known asTown Moor in Newcastle in 1771 appears to have been key to Spence's interest inthe land question and journey towards ultra-radicalism. His scheme was not for landnationalization but for the establishment of self-contained parochial communities, in which rent paid to theparish (wherein the absolute ownership of the land was vested) should be the only tax of any kind.[4] His ideas and thinking on the subject were shaped by a variety of economic thinkers, including his friendCharles Hall.
At the centre of Spence's work was his plan, which argued for:
The end of aristocracy and landlords;
All land should bepublicly owned by 'democratic parishes', which should be largely self-governing;
Rents of land in parishes to be shared equally amongst parishioners, as a form ofsocial dividend;
Universal suffrage (includingfemale suffrage) at both parish level and through a system of deputies elected by parishes to a national senate;
A 'social guarantee' extended to provide income for those unable to work;
The 'rights of infants' [children] to be free from abuse and poverty.
Spence may have been the first Englishman to speak of 'the rights of man'. The following recollection, composed in the third person, was written by Spence while he was in prison in London in 1794 on a charge of high treason. Spence was, he wrote,
the first, who as far as he knows, made use of the phrase "RIGHTS OF MAN", which was on the following remarkable occasion: A man who had been a farmer, and also a miner, and who had been ill-used by his landlords, dug a cave for himself by the seaside, at Marsdon Rocks, between Shields and Sunderland, about the year 1780, and the singularity of such a habitation, exciting the curiosity of many to pay him a visit; our author was one of that number. Exulting in the idea of a human being, who had bravely emancipated himself from the iron fangs of aristocracy, to live free from impost, he wrote extempore with chaulk above the fire place of this free man, the following lines:
Ye landlords vile, whose man's peace mar,
Come levy rents here if you can;
Your stewards and lawyers I defy,
And live with all the RIGHTS OF MAN
This is in reference to the story of "Jack the Blaster" atMarsden Grotto.
He used the term "rights of man" in 1776 and then in a lecture given in 1793.[5]
Spence was a self-taught radical with a deep regard for education as a means to liberation. He pioneered a phonetic script and pronunciation system designed to allow people to learn reading and pronunciation at the same time. He believed that if the correct pronunciation was visible in the spelling, everyone would pronounce English correctly, and the class distinctions carried by language would cease. This, he imagined, would bring a time of equality, peace and plenty: the millennium. He publishedthe first English dictionary with pronunciations (1775) and made phonetic versions of many of his pamphlets.
Spence publishedThe Rights of Infants in 1797 as a response toThomas Paine'sAgrarian Justice. In this essay Spence proposes the introduction of anunconditional basic income (UBI) to all members of the community. His proposal is the oldest known UBI proposal. Such allowance would be financed through thesocialization of land and the benefits of the rents received by each municipality. Everyone’s property would be taxed to ensure that no one had to go without anything.
^"The main body of this pamphlet is a reworking of Thomas Spence's lecture Property in Land Everyone's Right first published in Newcastle in 1775, eighteen years earlier." "The Rights of Man, as exhibited in a Lecture read at the Philosophical Society in Newcastle" (1793)https://www.marxists.org/history/england/britdem/people/spence/rights_of_man/rights.htm#lecture. accessed April 24, 2025
^See also A. Davenport,Life, Writings and Principles of Thomas Spence (Wakelin, London 1836)(Google).
^McCalum, Ian (1993).Radical Underworld: Prophets, Revolutionaries, and Pornographers in London, 1795–1840. Oxford: Oxford University Press. pp. 23–24, 110.ISBN9780198122869.
T. Evans,A Brief Sketch of the Life of Mr. Thomas Spence, Author of the Spencean System of Agrarian Fellowship or Partnership in Land (Author, Manchester 1821).
E. Mackenzie, 'Memoir of Thomas Spence', inA Descriptive and Historical Account of the Town and County of Newcastle Upon Tyne, including the Borough of Gateshead (Mackenzie and Dent, Newcastle Upon Tyne 1827), I,pp. 399-402 (Google).
T.M. Parssinen, "Thomas Spence and the Spenceans: A Study of Revolutionary Utopianism in the England of George III" (unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, Brandeis University, 1968).
This article incorporates text from a publication now in thepublic domain: Chisholm, Hugh, ed. (1911). "Spence, Thomas".Encyclopædia Britannica. Vol. 25 (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press. p. 634.