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An Anglo-Irish Radical in the Late Georgian Metropolis: Peter Finnerty and the Politics of Contempt

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  26 August 2014

Abstract

This article focuses on the Irish-born metropolitan radical and parliamentary journalist Peter Finnerty, exploring, in particular, the distinctive nature of his political engagement. Chiefly remembered as a friend of William Hazlitt and an implacable opponent of Lord Castlereagh, Finnerty was an influential figure in his own right, who moved between a range of social and political spaces. Framing him as an unrepentant Irish radical, indifferent to the coercive power of authority, this article will examine Finnerty's involvement in a range of scandals, controversies, and causes célèbres, and will highlight the ways in which he succeeded, through enacting a contempt for authority, in subverting both the courtroom and Parliament itself.

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Copyright © The North American Conference on British Studies 2014 

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38 Another account, published in the Examiner in 1811, claimed that Finnerty had been “confined in a gaol-room sixteen feet by nine with fourteen other persons, some . . . convicted of capital offences.” Most likely influenced by Finnerty's own claims, this account does not tally with the irate missive, penned on 3 January 1798, in which the informer Francis Higgins complained that Sherriff Archer “sent to know if Finnerty was made easy and comfortable or had he any cause of complaint.” Examiner, 24 February 1811; Higgins to Cooke, 3 January 1798, in Bartlett, Revolutionary Dublin, 210.

39 For McCalman, “Castlereagh's supposed encouragement of brutal reprisals against the rebels of '98 . . . became Finnerty's idée fixe.” McCalman, “Erin go Bragh,” 178.

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89 Ibid.

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94 Ibid., 13 September 1809.

95 Ibid., 23 January 1810; Bew, Castlereagh, 247–56.

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98 [Anon.], Case of Peter Finnerty, 4, 22, 24.

99 Ibid., 30.

100 Ibid., 61.

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102 “Mr Brougham's Motion on the State of the Nation, 11 July 1817,” Parliamentary Debates, Commons, 1st ser., vol. 36 (1817), cols. 1416, 1417, 1420, 1444.

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123 Cobbett's Weekly Political Register, 3 April 1819. I am grateful to Carl Griffin for sharing this reference.

124 Hunt, Frederick Knight, The Fourth Estate: Contributions Towards a History of Newspapers, and of the Liberty of the Press, 2 vols. (London, 1850), 2:279Google Scholar.

125 Gordon, Personal Memoirs, 1:298–300.

126 Morning Chronicle, 15 May 1822.

127 Aspinall, A., Douglas, David Charles, and Smith, Ernest Anthony, eds., English Historical Documents, 1783–1832 (London, 1996), 382Google Scholar.

128 Epstein and Karr, “Playing at Revolution,” 496.

129 Thompson, “Ireland and the Irish in English Radicalism,” 132–33.