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1 Farthing Middlesex - T. Spence
| Issuer | Thomas Spence |
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| Year | |
| Type | Emergency coin |
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| Obverse description | Central field depicts Adam and Eve standing facing one another in the Garden of Eden, rendered in high relief in a neoclassical style; both figures are nude, set amid foliage and vegetation at their feet. The engraver's signature C. JAMES. F appears in the exergue below the ground line. A circular legend surrounds the central device, reading MAN OVER MAN HE MADE NOT LORD, expressing the radical egalitarian philosophy of the issuer Thomas Spence. |
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| Reverse script | Latin |
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| Additional information |
Thomas Spence issued his Middlesex farthings beginning in the 1790s as deliberate political provocations — he used the tokens to spread land reform propaganda at a time when his pamphlets had already landed him in prison. The British government's suspension of copper coinage production had created a genuine shortage, and radicals like Spence exploited the resulting token trade as a distribution mechanism for ideas the establishment would otherwise suppress.
Spence was arrested in 1794 under the suspension of Habeas Corpus.