“Warm zeal and cool judgement”: The cheap repository and English charity, 1794-1800

Abstract

In 1794, English philanthropist Hannah More spearheaded a venture to produce short tracts promoting morality and religion among readers ―the Cheap Repository. The predominant historiographical approach has been to examine the interaction of the Repository with the popular print marketplace. Historians such as Susan Pedersen emphasize that the tracts were intended to supplant subversive forms of popular literature, such as Thomas Paine’s Rights of Man , chapbooks, and broadsides. They argue that the Cheap Repository was an attempt at “top-down” reformation; elite writers sought to suppress the turbulence and political participation of the poor. This paper takes an alternate approach. The tracts are charitable texts which addressed middling and gentry readers as much as (or even more than) they did the poor. The Repository did not isolate labouring people and their print culture as the sole threats to the stability of England, nor did it engage solely in “top-down” moralizing. This essay shows how the Repository lays blame on the charitable practices of state poor relief and rich beneficiaries ―as well as the poor― for encouraging immorality and unrest. The Cheap Repository seeks to reform the meaning and practice of charity amongst all members of English society.