Close to the Revolution - James Watt Jr
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In March 1792 James Watt Jr arrived in Paris on business for the textile merchants Thomas and Richard Walker. The city was in the grip of the French Revolution, with mistrust of King Louis XVI growing. Watt Jr supported the revolutionaries, believing they were creating a better system. “Only the guilty and traitors… have anything to fear,” he wrote to his father. “…the justice of the people will be revered and acknowledged.”
Left: Portrait of James Watt Jr, by an unknown artist |
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Even the September massacres of imprisoned aristocrats and royal sympathisers did not shake his faith “I am filled with involuntary horror at the scenes which pass before me… but at the same time I allow the absolute necessity of them.” His enthusiasm for revolution was seen as so dangerous in England that the politician Edmund Burke was moved to condemn Watt Jr and his companion Thomas Cooper. On his return from his European travels, however, he settled into a successful career in the Soho engine business. But his time in France was never entirely forgotten. When he died in 1848, the poet Wordsworth, who had met him in Paris, remembered “…I was only a spectator, while Mr Watt took an active part in that great event…”
Above: Coins struck by Matthew Boulton
to mark Louis XVI's execustion |
| Right: Account of books bought by James Watt Jrin Paris for Joseph Priestly,including revolutionary works, 1792 |
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