Thomas Attwood: The Biography of a Radical

David R. Schweitzer is a British and European History lecturer at the
University of Guelph.

This biography of Thomas Attwood (1783–1856) takes the usual
chronological approach, describing Attwood’s life from his early days
as a Tory Birmingham banker, to his middle years as a reformer, through
his metamorphosis into a radical, and finally to his latter years as a
disappointed, broken man. This scholarly study of the life of a
co-founder of the Birmingham Political Union draws heavily on various
collections of Attwood papers. There are a few minor points the reader
might find distracting. The author’s avowed purpose is to rescue his
subject from the fringes of history, to which he has been consigned by
historians who have accepted Attwood’s own verdict—that his life was
a failure. However, while Moss refuses to accept Attwood’s
self-denigration at face value, he makes numerous references to
Attwood’s failure to succeed in his causes (mainly regarding currency
reform). He often points out that Attwood seemed unable to see political
matters in an objective light, a shortcoming that resulted in the
failure of his parliamentary career.

Attwood had the reputation of being a bore because of his unrelenting
preoccupation with the theory of money supply. The structure of this
study engenders, to some extent, the feelings his colleagues must have
had: the first third of the book deals with his economic theories in
great detail. There is, of course, justification for this elaboration,
but many of the points could have been summarized, rendering the subject
a little less pedantic to the nonspecialist.

My only other quibble involves the lack of information about
Attwood’s personal or family life. Some details are woven into the
study, but the picture we get of Attwood somehow seems lopsided. We are
told he was a family man, but details other than those concerning his
economic and political interests seem curiously absent from what is
presented as a full biography and not strictly a political study.
Nonetheless, this work is a much-needed addition to the corpus of works
on nineteenth-century reformers.