William Godwins Attack on the Law :: European Europe History

William Godwin's Attack on the Law Laws: We know what they are, and what they are worth! They are spider webs for the rich and mighty, steel chains for the poor and weak, fishing nets in the hands of government. - Proudhon1 On the surface, William Godwin's Caleb Williams (1794) is merely an entertaining murder mystery and detective story. The tale of an unfortunate servant who learns the truth of his master's past and flees for fear of his life, it has thrilled generations of readers. However, Godwin designed the work "to answer a purpose more general and important than immediately appears on the face of it."2 Written immediately after the publication of Godwin's first and most famous work, Enquiry Concerning Political Justice (1793), Caleb Williams serves as a vehicle for Godwin to introduce his philosophy to the general public. The issue he addresses in the novel is that of "things as they are... While one party pleads for reformation and change, the other extols in the warmest terms the existing constitution of society."3 There can be no mistaking Godwin's position. He uses Caleb Williams to launch a full-scale attack against things as they are and "the modes of despotism by which man destroys his own kind - principally through prisons, law, and wealth."4 The law plays a particularly important role in the novel. It affects almost every major character, always aiding the oppression of the weak by the mighty and serving as a tool of tyranny. Godwin's opinion of the law is as interesting as it is extreme. His goal is to force the reader to "conclude universally that law is an institution of the most pernicious tendency," as he argues in his Political Justice.5 In his attack on the law, he makes use of common criticisms of the law from the late eighteenth century that were more often used as a call for its reform than for its abolition. In addition to these, however, he introduces arguments that successful reform is impossible and that the law by its very nature will inevitably serve as a tool of injustic e, tyranny, and oppression. Godwin's attacks on the law occur continuously throughout Caleb Williams, as its complex plot slowly evolves. The first victim of the law is the tenant farmer Hawkins, whose pride leads him imprudently to offend his landlord, Mr. Tyrrel. When Tyrrel orders him to abandon his farm, Hawkins's pride again gets the best of him and he refuses: "I have got a lease of my farm, and I shall not quit it o'thaten.