Alfred Cobban on Samuel Taylor Coleridge

“Less active a politician, but a deeper philosopher, Coleridge continually reminds us of Burke. If the mantle of the author of the Reflections descended on anyone it was on the former young Pantisocrat. The political philosophy of Coleridge is that of Burke modified and developed on all sides, and, we may claim, not altogether losing in value in the process.”

“It was a great revolution in ideas when Coleridge and his friends began to talk not about the rights of property but about its social duties, to criticize the economic operation of individualism from the point of view of the whole community, and to suggest that the State had sometimes the duty of interfering in economic matters and even of limiting unrestricted rights of property... The economists' doctrines, Coleridge concludes, are simply a cover for the self-interest of the rich, to be ignored whenever it suits their purpose.”

“His championship of the cause of factory children was an interesting result of his belief in the sanctity of individuality, and the right of the individual in a civilized community to a certain minimum standard of civilized existence. Making all allowances for the by no means idyllic conditions existing under the domestic system, it still remains true that the exploitation of child labour under the most appalling conditions is one of the darkest pages in the history of the industrial revolution. Coleridge says that he had been "an eye-witness of the direful effects", and that they had "weighed on his feelings from earliest manhood" ... Coleridge took an active part in the agitation on behalf of Peel's Factory Children Bill of 1818.”