William James Linton - Political Education and Activism

Political Education and Activism

For years he had concerned himself with the social and European political problems of the time, and was now actively engaged in the republican propaganda. In 1844 he took a prominent part in exposing the violation by the English post office of Mazzini's correspondence. This led to a friendship with the Italian revolutionist, and Linton threw himself with ardor into European politics. He carried the first congratulatory address of English workmen to the French Provisional Government in 1848. He edited a twopenny weekly paper, The Cause of the People, published in the Isle of Man, and he wrote political verses for the Dublin Nation, signed "Spartacus." He helped to found the "International League" of patriots, and, in 1850, with GH Lewes and Thornton Leigh Hunt, started The Leader, an organ which, however, did not satisfy his advanced republicanism, and from which he soon withdrew.

The same year he wrote a series of articles propounding the views of Mazzini in The Red Republican. In 1852 he took up his residence at Brantwood, which afterward he sold to John Ruskin, and from there issued The English Republic, first in the form of weekly tracts and afterward as a monthly magazine "a useful exponent of republican principles, a faithful record ef republican progress throughout the world; an organ of propagandism and a medium of communication for the active republicans in England." Most of the paper, which never paid its way and was abandoned in 1855, was written by himself.

In 1852 he also printed for private circulation an anonymous volume of poems entitled The Plaint of Freedom. After the failure of his paper he returned to his proper work of wood-engraving. In 1857 his wife died, and in the following year he married Eliza Lynn (afterward known as Mrs Lynn Linton) and returned to London. In 1864 he retired to Brantwood, his wife remaining in London.