Analytical Review - Content and Political Leanings

Content and Political Leanings

The Analytical Review offered its readers access to a wide variety of works. In July 1789, when the Bastille fell, the Analytical reviewed The Rural Economy of Gloucestershire, Life of Thomas Chatterton, Transactions in Bengal, Military Operations on the Coromandel Coast, Poetry and Music of the Italian Opera, and Histoire Politique de la Revolution en France. The journal also laid provocative facts before the public to prompt them to think and, if necessary, to take action, although it claimed not to advocate one viewpoint over another. For example, when philosopher and statesman Edmund Burke issued his politically controversial Reflections on the Revolution in France (1790), the Analytical Review reviewed it extensively, as well as the many responses to it, such as Wollstonecraft's Vindication of the Rights of Men (1790), Vindiciae Gallicae (1791) by James Mackintosh, and Rights of Man (1791) by Thomas Paine. However, the majority of the excerpts that the reviewers chose to publish came from the rebuttals to Burke's work.

Consistent with Joseph Johnson's attitudes, the Analytical Review tended towards a "moderate radicalism", meaning that it opposed the Pitt administration and celebrated the general values of Paine's Rights of Man. It advocated a moderate reform of Parliament, emphasized the benefits of representative government, and outlined the protections afforded by a separation of powers. While the journal supported the ideals of the French Revolution and opposed Britain's war against France, it did not endorse the violent methods of some of the revolutionaries. Johnson continued his attempts to remain even-handed in political debates, arguing that factionalism in government was detrimental.

Helen Braithwaite, in her book on Johnson, argues that "by July 1798 ... the Analytical had become a deep thorn in the side of the government"; at Johnson's trial for seditious libel, an issue of the periodical was entered as evidence against him, demonstrating that the government did not view the journal as non-partisan. Derek Roper, in his survey of late-eighteenth-century periodicals, describes the Analytical as "more radical both in politics and in religion than any other journal". As he explains, however, "these sentiments were not always fully explicit, and might be conveyed through the tone and manner of a summary rather than paragraphs of criticism".

Many of the founding members of the Analytical Review were Unitarian and quite a few of its contributors were Dissenters, so contemporaries believed there to be a bias in the journal (most eighteenth-century journals were overtly partisan). Christie attempted to assuage these fears in his advertisement:

It has been insinuated that the Analytical review originated from a party, and is meant to serve their purposes. We give ourselves little trouble about such reports. The public will soon judge from the execution of our work, whether we are sincere or not in our professions of impartiality, and to them we appeal.

This sincere attitude seems to have largely prevailed in practice. Theophilus Lindsey, who had helped establish Unitarianism in Britain, wrote to the Reverend Newcome Cappe to express his displeasure at a review in the first issue of the Analytical, demonstrating that Unitarian theology was not being promulgated by the journal. Furthermore, Johnson chose as his theological reviewer, not a Dissenter as his friend Joseph Priestley urged, but Alexander Geddes, a talented Scot who had been ordained in Paris as a Roman Catholic priest. However, modern scholars have suggested that he did so not for religious reasons, but because Geddes lived in London and had close connections both to Wollstonecraft and Johnson's friend, Henry Fuseli.