SOURCE: "Radicalism in Joel Barlow's The Conspiracy of Kings (1792)," in Deism, Masonry, and the Enlightenment: Essays Honoring Alfred Owen Aldridge, edited by J. A. Leo Lemay, University of Delaware Press, 1987, pp. 137-57.

In the following essay, Mulford discusses the themes of Barlow's Conspiracy of Kings in the context of his relationship to eighteenth- and nineteenth-century radical thought, particularly the notion that "the people had the power to reinvent their world."

In his 6 March 1792 letter to William Hayley, Joel Barlow promised, "I shall send you the little mad poem when printed." He fulfilled the promise on 5 April, enclosing with his letter copies of The Conspiracy of Kings for both

Hayley and James Stanier Clarke. Humorously he cautioned, "If you can find a secret corner in your house, to hide it from the view of your visiters, it may be no injury to your reputation. but it must...