William Godwin, in his novel Caleb Williams, portrays a corrupt English society and government in which political, economic, legal and extra-legal power is abused by those with that power in oppressing those with little or no power. As Smith and Smith write, as much as the book might succeed on an artistic level, it is also "clothed political theory in flesh" (Smith and Smith 22) in terms of its indictment of public and private corruption in general, and corruption in the legal system specifically. Accordingly, this study will show how the novel reflects the author's dissatisfaction with the legal system and the administration of justice in the England of the late eighteenth century.
Godwin argues in another work that one of the major functions of government is "the suppression of injustice against individuals within the community" (Smith and Smith 25). This novel is a passionate indictment of the government of England for failing to fulfill that obligation to protect the individual, and for, in fact, abusing its power to expose individuals to that very injustice. However, Godwin was hardly arguing that government could or should be perfected to right its own wrongs as portrayed fictionally in this book. To the contrary, he believed that government by its very nature was corrupt. He saw government as a "great obstacle" to the development of the individual, especially the rational part of man which Godwin held in such high regard. Godwin saw government "as a necessary instrument to keep the individual 'spheres of discretion' from collision," but he also believed that government "ought to atrophy as its use becomes less obligatory" (Smith and Smith 37) and as man;s individual and communal reason develops. If government is left to its own devices, in other words, the kind of judicial abuses portrayed in Caleb Williams will simply grow more severe. In that sense, Godwin was indicting not only the specific government of which he wrot...