I have been fascinated by the eighteenth-century British radical Thomas Hollis ever since I came across his diary in the Houghton Library, America. It was very exciting, therefore, that one of my first projects at the National Portrait Gallery was helping with fundraising to buy a marble bust of Hollis by Joseph Wilton. If Hollis’s name isn’t familiar to you, it’s probably what he would have wanted: he preferred to be anonymous. Despite this reticence, the diary reveals a man who was tireless in attacking political corruption and defending civil liberties.
In a time when only property-owning men could vote, Hollis wanted to see power given to the people. He railed against the government’s hounding of John Wilkes, who had criticised ministers in the press, and poured out his hopes that William Pitt, Earl of Chatham, might usher in a new reforming age in British political life. His loss of faith in Pitt confirmed his opinion that all politicians were inevitably corrupt and it is unsurprising that he didn’t try to go into politics. Instead, he wrote articles, supported new authors and republished books by radical British thinkers from the period of the civil war.
Hollis is best known for his support for American independence. He made sure that American colonists’ voices were heard in the press and provided practical assistance in the form of money and books. Thomas Jefferson owned a copy of Hollis’s edition of Algernon Sidney’s Discourses Concerning Government and described it as ‘probably the best elementary book of the principles of government ... which has ever been published in any language.’
It’s this energy in promoting other writers, rather than just wanting his own voice to be heard, that makes Hollis so inspiring to me. He encouraged debate and even supported the rights of people whom he didn’t like, such as Wilkes. Reformers of every persuasion can find a lot to appreciate in his example.
By Clare Barlow, Assistant Curator 18th and 20th Centuries
Thomas Hollis by Joseph Wilton, 1760, purchased with help from the Memorial Fund, The Art Fund and the Portrait Fund, NPG 6946
John Wilkes by William Hogarth, published 16 May 1763, NPG D1362