Essay series: The Freeholder

Overview
Joseph Addison’s The Freeholder (1715–1716) is a short-run periodical of fifty-five essays that defends the Protestant Succession and the constitutional settlement in the tense months following the 1715 Jacobite rebellion. Written in the familiar Addisonian manner, urbane, witty, and didactic, the series addresses national politics through the voice of a “freeholder,” a country gentleman whose property and independence symbolize the stake ordinary Englishmen hold in the mixed constitution of King, Lords, and Commons.

Historical Moment and Aim
Launched in December 1715 and concluding in mid-1716, the series answers a moment of crisis: a new Hanoverian king on the throne, the rebellion still fresh in memory, and party animosities inflamed. Addison’s aim is to steady opinion, rally moderate Whigs, and reassure wavering Tories that allegiance to George I is allegiance to law and liberty rather than to faction. He writes to inoculate readers against Jacobite appeals, especially the veneer of chivalry and religion that cloaked the cause of the Pretender, by translating abstract constitutional principles into the moral common sense of the shire.

Voice and Method
The persona of the freeholder is crucial. Neither courtly intriguer nor pamphleteering zealot, he is a landed voter who values order, property, and neighborhood peace. Through letters, dialogues, coffee-house scenes, and light satire, Addison disarms partisanship with humor: the “high-flying” divine, the fox-hunting squire, the tavern politician, and the fashionable talker are all gently exhibited. Allegory and classical precedent lend dignity to argument, while domestic and provincial vignettes make it intelligible to readers outside Westminster.

Core Political Arguments
At the series’ center is a defense of constitutional monarchy regulated by Parliament and law. The freeholder extols the English balance of powers as the surest safeguard of liberty and property, contrasting it with the arbitrary rule that would follow a Stuart restoration. He insists that an army under civil control is not a threat to freedom but an instrument to secure it against rebellion; the true danger is a lawless force raised in defiance of Parliament. He elevates the freeholder’s franchise as a public trust: property anchors independence, and independent electors are the bulwark of the constitution. Throughout, he urges clemency toward the deluded rank and file of the rebellion, combined with firmness toward leaders, framing justice as a means to reconciliation rather than revenge.

Religion and Toleration
Addison treats religion as the conscience of the polity but resists its abuse by faction. He criticizes the doctrine of passive obedience when it is marshaled to sanctify rebellion against a legal sovereign, and he satirizes the spiritual glamour with which Jacobitism cloaked its politics. At the same time, he argues for Protestant unity and practical toleration, valuing those dissenting Protestants who support the civil settlement and warning against clerical zeal that breeds persecution or sedition.

Parties, Manners, and Nation
The series tempers party feeling rather than abolishing it. Addison distinguishes between honest Tories attached to Church and country and Jacobites who would unmake the Revolution settlement. He exposes the vanities by which parties recruit, fashion, toasts, clubbable bravado, so that readers may resist the contagion of zeal. Broader national themes run through the papers: the advantages of the Union, the prosperity of trade, the identity of Britain as a Protestant, commercial, and lawful nation whose liberties are secured by property and participation.

Style and Legacy
The Freeholder shows Addison’s gift for making political principle agreeable. Its tone is confident without triumphalism, didactic without pedantry, patriotic without bluster. By translating Whig constitutionalism into the language of manners and the experience of the counties, the series helped normalize the Hanoverian settlement and instruct a new electorate in the duties of freeholders, citizens whose votes and virtues were to keep the balance of the constitution steady in the wake of rebellion.