Lost in Transmission

England, 1791

I

Dear Patriot, 

I am writing to you because I understand we share certain sympathies. I have important news concerning our cause. 

You must know that for our own safety, I cannot know who you are, nor can you know who I am. This letter has found its way to you thanks to a mutual friend who is keen that our ideas disseminate. 

After you have read this letter and considered its portents you are to do the following, as I have done: 

You are to write a similar letter for another Patriot, conveying to them the aforementioned news and its implications for our cause.

You are to enclose that letter in a blank envelope, and leave it where our friend has told you. You will not know the name or address of the recipient; all of this will be taken care of by a runner who may be trusted.

In this way, our ideas are conveyed from one Patriot to another in an invisible chain; should one link be ‘compromised’, our enemies will not be able to find the others. 

Pay careful heed to the following information, for you must convey it to the next link. 

We have had word from our revolutionary fellows in France - some much-needed ideological fuel for our own movement which I fear is losing its spark. I am afraid I cannot furnish you with the full extent of the information we have been sent. Some of it has been confiscated elsewhere in our network (you now understand our need for discretion), and the rest I cannot yet divulge; suffice to say it is an assortment of supportive wisdom - historical literature, biblical apocrypha, philosophical fragments, and so forth. Given that I do not know you, I’m afraid I cannot be sure that you would interpret it correctly. 

I have therefore taken the liberty of omitting certain excerpts, save for a piece of advice from the Marquis de Condorcet himself, who tells us this: 

“Any sort of monarchy is a threat to freedom. Leave not to providence that which you have the power to change yourself; go forth and pursue freedom from domination, become guardians of the Enlightenment and let progress resume her rights.”

M. Condorcet’s meaning is clear. Our movement is on the right course, and a revolution is not only possible but the only way of re-ordering society. Monsieur’s reference to ‘progress’ is particularly tantalising. Let me, then, propose how society should be ordered to maximise progress:

The problem with our current government is that it doesn’t think. After the revolution, then, our new society should be modelled on intellectualism. The ‘guardians of the Enlightenment’ which M. Condorcet mentions should be academics such as myself, and we should treat those low men in our order (there are many of them) with suspicion. I assure you that this is not out of thirst for power; rather it is the natural order for the most efficient organisation of society. 

To think merely about the day-to-day aspects of government, about survival, about putting one foot in front of the other - such is the preserve of livestock. It leads to dronish, sleepy and stupid indifference, that lazy negligence which enchains men in the exact paths of their forefathers, without enquiry, without ambition. Thus, our revolutionary government should focus only on academic study and experimentation until perfect conditions are reached.

It is this which I would like you to pass on to the next link. And remember: for now, your task is to convey what I have said, and nothing more. The time for further action will come later, but for now we must gather our strength and await the sign from our friend; if we are going to stab Caesar, we need to be holding a knife and not a wooden spoon. 

Please destroy this letter once you have fully understood its contents. 

Regards, 

Patriot 

~

II

Dear Patriot, 

You must forgive the curtness and unfamiliarity of my introduction, but I have been instructed by another member of our movement to convey important news to you (veritably exciting news, may I add!). 

I assure you that although this letter has found its way from my hand to yours, your identity remains entirely unknown to me, although doubtless you share the same enlightened sympathies as my good self. 

Dear fellow, although we are sworn to secrecy, I cannot help but resent total anonymity. I will therefore divulge a little of myself; I am a poet, a member of that class which you might call gentry, and I live in the countryside. If only I could send you some of my verse! Or perhaps you have heard of me already… I am very well known in Dimchurch. 

Oh, dear friend, how I struggle against our current conditions! Our government has lost sight of itself! Like a great, ambling oaf, it is running down a hill and thinks only about its next step. It cannot stop and consider whether this is the correct path, nor can it remember how and when it began to spiral out of control, when it became corrupted by greed.

But alas, I digress. Please forgive me. Foolish poet! To the news which I have been instructed to share with you: recently I was furnished with certain information by an awfully stern gentleman in a letter similar to the one I now convey to you. Although I do not know who he is, I was pleased to see that he was of sound mind. Indeed, it is testament to the strength and spirit of our revolutionary hearts that our ideas elicit so little disagreement amongst ourselves.

I was told that we have received word from our noble brothers and sisters in France! Not least from that great and wise eminence M. Condorcet himself, who seeks to give us inspiration. 

He says: “Any kind of monarchy is a threat to freedom. Do not leave to providence that which you have the power to change yourself; you should go and pursue freedom from domination, become guardians of the Enlightenment and let progress resume her natural rights.”

My precursor wanted me to point out that not only do we seem to be on the right track, but also that our revolutionary government should be an intellectual one, as Condorcet seems to imply. I agree to a large extent.

If our new government fails to consider the higher planes of existence such as philosophy, history and so forth, our new society will become as greedy and corrupt as our current rulership. Indeed, thinking about the earthly stink of work, money and infrastructure is quite alien to my mind, given that it is so frequently pondering much higher matters.

I only disagree on one small point: we should not lose sight of our passions and foibles. Humans are passionate individuals, and our government should not focus purely on academic matters, in a relentless pursuit of maximum efficiency and progress. Is there not room for literature, for reverence of noble deeds, tales and myths in our new government? 

Perhaps then, our new government should not be so detached and aloof from fellow humans as my precursor has suggested. Perhaps even, given that we are human and that the lower aspects of existence are as necessary as they are boring, we should not entirely neglect them. Maybe some lower members of our order could be granted minor positions in the new government to deal with that kind of thing. 

I trust you will agree with all I have said, Patriot. I came up with these conclusions whilst contemplating alone, surrounded by nature, away from all human contact and experience. This seems to me the best method of devising how to rule over people. 

You should now write up your own letter, passing on what I have said to the next link. You will not know who the recipient is - a bothersome precaution, to be sure, but one which nonetheless ensures our safety. How I wish I could get to know you more! I trust the time will come in due course. 

Leave your letter in a blank envelope and in a location which I believe our mutual friend has told you about, and fortitude will take care of the rest. 

Vive la révolution! 

My warmest and best wishes

Patriot

P.S. Lamentably, you must destroy this letter and the noble words within - for our own safety!

~

III

Dear Patriot

Our revolutionary fire continues to burn. I have received a letter from another Patriot, who has asked me to convey some news to you concerning our cause. You cannot see that letter (as I have burned it), nor can you know who sent it (I myself do not know). Still, I will pass on the information to the best of my ability. My only wish is that the time for us to move out of this shadowy communication will come soon. 

Allow me to first reassure you of my convictions: I am the daughter of a naval captain. My father is a talented man, who has been denied promotion more times than I care to count by those preening aristocrats. I, too, am denied the kind of ascension and society due to a lady of my position, simply because my family’s wealth is earned rather than inherited. 

Not that I care, mind you. I don’t suppose I would enjoy the company of those born-to-rule, pink-cheeked sticks of celery prancing around in their gilt panelled halls. If brains were gunpowder, they wouldn’t have enough to blow their powdered wigs off. 

As for the important information: our comrades in France have sent us some wisdom, to keep the revolutionary fire burning within our movement. I do wish we received more tangible assistance from across the channel, but alas we must take what we get. It was gratifying, at least, to hear from the Marquis de Condorcet, whose support for female suffrage and abolition I find most compelling. 

M. Condorcet says: “Any kind of tyranny is a threat to freedom. As humans, you have the power to change things for yourself; you should go and pursue freedom from domination, become guardians of the Enlightenment and let nature resume her rights.”

(Please allow for a few minor inaccuracies; I mistakenly burned the letter I received before I had copied the quote in full. Still, I believe I have represented the general sentiment adequately.)

The gentleman who sent me the letter containing this information seemed to share our general belief in change, although I have to say he struck me as the sort of man who does little else with his time besides frolicking about with a butterfly net, writing verse. 

Still, I agreed for the most part with his ideas, and it is reassuring for our movement that clearly we share much common ground. As M. Condorcet suggests, we should pay great attention to ‘grand ideas’ of the Enlightenment, and those wise philosophers of the revolution in France. We should similarly not lose sight of history or literature - from all of these things, we gain perspective, wisdom, and above all, ideological fervour, all of which will be crucial in informing our next steps once we overthrow this aimless government. 

However, this should also be tempered by the practical aspects of government (economics, agriculture, militarism). My predecessor did reluctantly suggest that such things deserve a small place in our new leadership. 

I would go further and argue that these people should have a more active role in our new government. Like the National Assembly across the channel, we should be informed equally by intellectuals and persons of practice. A government which separates its thinkers from its workers will have its thinking done by the idle and its functions performed by ignorants. Experience will be as necessary as ideology in our new government, and we should plan accordingly. 

My revolutionary friend, your next task is to digest the contents of this letter, destroy it, and then pass on the information to the next link. I believe we have a mutual friend who has already told you what to do. 

Sincerely,

Patriot

~

IV

Dear Patriot

This wasn’t my idea. If you ask me, this revolution of ours needs a cup of buttered toddy and a swift boot up the backside, but perhaps that’s why I never managed to negotiate the upper echelons. 

You’re probably wondering who I am. Well, God gave you a pair of eyes and you can see for yourself that I’m using our codename, so it shouldn’t be past your wits to comprehend the situation. 

I have been asked to send you some news, although I wouldn’t get your hopes up. As I said to Gerald my husband, I’m as revolutionary as the next man - give me a flag and a blunderbuss and I’ll be at the barricades before the drop of a copper - but I can’t see much point in all these whispered words and secret letters. 

The news is that our friends across the channel have sent us some words to consider. Gerald My husband is one for words; I always tell him ‘words are all very good, but what about the unrestricted export of cotton?’ (To my mind a far bigger boon than Enlightenment philosophy). He’s a man of business, my husband, you see. (Very high up in the harpsichord society, too.) But he lacks the guts to commit to open revolution. If he ran at a pigeon, it wouldn’t fly away. I always say to him, if those cooing protectionist windbags in the government were out of the way, we’d be flogging our wares across the world like nobody’s business. He usually comes around. 

But I digress, you must forgive me. As a lady of high economic standing, you understand talking is my forte. Only yersterday, I was chinwagging over a cup of chocolate with the inventor of the ball bearing. 

Anyhow, one Monsieur de Condorcet (he’s yet to click here in Newton Pickett) has told us: “Tyranny is a threat to freedom. As humans, you have the power to change things for yourself; you should go and pursue freedom from domination, become guardians of the Enlightenment and let nature resume her rights.”

From what I gather, our order has been discussing the meaning of this statement, although what they’ve been saying I don’t know. Reassuringly, the lady who sent me my own letter seems to be of sound mind and morals. She recognises the need for practical government. It’s no use sitting around thinking all day; our new society needs to be full of men of business like Gerald my husband, who can generate money and make sure our new government survives. Action is far more important than intellectualism. Some of those academics spend so much time in their own heads, they couldn’t find their backside with both hands. 

I do agree with my precursor in that having a quick look at history and so forth is useful. But it shouldn’t have as prominent a role as she suggests. There should be a little organisation - an academy, perhaps - to discuss it. But most of the government should be done by men of action. They can listen to the scholars from time to time. 

Anyway, I best be off. I suspect our mutual friend has told you what to do next, so I suggest you go and busy yourself with that. 

Regards, 

Patriot

~

V

Dear Patriot

I have been asked to convey some news to you in that insufferable cloak and dagger style of which our mutual friend seems so keen. Let’s just get this over with, shall we? 

Although our friends in France have yet to send anything in the way of arms, powder, money or soldiers, they are very eager to send words, words which I am now meant to convey to you. One Monsieur de Marie Jean Antoine Nicolas de CaritatCondorcet has sent us some ‘wisdom’. 

He says: “Any kind of tyranny is a threat to freedom. You have the power to change things now; go and pursue freedom from domination, become agents of the Enlightenment and let nature resume her rights.”

Frankly, I do not see the point in these vacuous platitudes. The time for action is now. The ‘tyranny’ which our ponderous French friend speaks of must refer not to the tyranny of any monarchy; rather, it must be the tyranny of ideas, how our cause can barely take a step forward without first pondering “But what does it mean to step?” “Is stepping a construct of the ancien régime?” 

It reassures me at least that my predecessor - the ‘link’ before me who sent me this information - seems to see sense. This person - as much as they were a prattling nuisance - is correct in suggesting that men of practice and experience belong in government, far more so than these fairies who have yet to do a day’s work besides thinking through their pointless thought experiments. 

Our French friends cannot agree amongst themselves who is the most rational - Rousseau, Diderot, they are all the same to me. Descartes lounges around and wonders “Am I dreaming? Am I asleep?” Well, he may as well be, because he’s doing nothing else. 

I started out as a firebrand philosopher - my conclusion after a while was that it was all quite pointless. It won’t decapitate the government, it won’t manage our economy, it won’t keep our men supplied, it won’t put food on our tables. 

Do as you will with this information. I make no apologies for speaking my mind about the problems we face. However difficult our master makes it for us, we are nonetheless conversing with one another. If we cannot express our opinion freely amongst ourselves, our cause is in an even worse position than I imagined. 

Our English revolution must begin soon. I will go if nobody else will.

Regards,

John Cooper