British History
Posts in The Copybook tagged ‘British History’
Even where freedom of speech and conscience are not curtailed by law, there is another kind of censorship that is just as destructive to progress.
In the 1850s, those who held opinions felt by Authority to be untrue, antisocial or extreme were still being frozen out of academic, political and commercial roles, not by law so much as by denying them preferments or a public platform. John Stuart Mill warned that such censorship would not silence dissent, but would nurture a generation so feeble-minded that progress itself would be slowed to a crawl.
John Stuart Mill set out three kinds of liberty essential to a truly free society: freedom of conscience, of tastes, and of association.
In his essay On Liberty, John Stuart Mill has been talking about the proper role of Government, arguing that the State authorities should not meddle in the lives of individual citizens. He now lays out three freedoms essential to any truly liberal society: those of thought, choice and association. Every man should have the freedom to go his own way in life, so long as he extends the same courtesy to his neighbours.
On July 4th, 1776, a group of American colonists gathered in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, to present delegates of the Thirteen Colonies with a historic document.
At a meeting in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, on July 4th, 1776, Thomas Jefferson and four colleagues presented to the Second Continental Congress a document setting out why the Thirteen American Colonies held themselves to be “absolved from all allegiance to the British crown”. It marked the birth of the United States of America, grudgingly recognised by King George III in 1783.
The day after the Great Fire of London finally burned itself out, John Evelyn walked through the charred streets.
In 1665, an epidemic of plague claimed some 70,000 lives in London alone. Then on September 2nd, 1666, fire broke out in Pudding Lane, and raged for five days. Casualties were low, but dozens of churches and civic buildings were destroyed, and over 13,000 houses went up in flames leaving some 80,000 Londoners homeless. On the 7th, John Evelyn went wandering among the ashes.
Sir Henry Craik had heard such glowing reports of Agra’s Taj Mahal, that he was afraid it might prove to be an anticlimax.
In 1907, Sir Henry Craik MP went on a tour of India. That December, he made his way south from New Delhi to Agra, where he marvelled at the sixteenth-century fort and the Pearl Mosque of Shah Jahan (r. 1628-58) before following the River Yamuna for a mile or so towards Shah Jahan’s legendary monument to his favourite wife, Mumtaz Mahal. Would it be all that report had made it?
Politicians who demand that everyone in the country unite behind their vision of society are standing in the way of real progress.
In the 1680s, many feared that after Charles II died his brother James would take England and Scotland into a European league of Roman Catholic kingdoms, led by Louis XIV of France. Algernon Sidney could not see how countries and peoples so diverse could possibly require the same laws, or how anyone would think such hidebound uniformity could lead to progress.