1793: King Louis XVI of France guillotined in Paris. Thomas Paine's Rights of Man banned; Paine condemned in absentia (he is in France) for high treason. The British government, headed by Prime Minister Pitt, begins to arrest anyone publishing anything criticizing the government. William Godwin publishes Political Justice, a huge philosophical tract that argues Paine's case from a theoretical point of view. Godwin is not imprisoned largely because his book's price (forty times the price of Paine's) means it is not read by the wrong people. Wordsworth writes the "Letter to the Bishop of Llandaff," in which he declares himself "one of those odious people called democrats," but never publishes it (likely because he feared prosecution). 1793 also sees the passage of the Traitorous Correspondence Bill, which empowered the state to open and read the Royal Mail.…
