British History
Posts in The Copybook tagged ‘British History’
Chinese merchant Lien Chi tells a colleague that English liberties have little to do with elections, taxes and regulations.
In a fictional ‘letter’, supposedly by Chinese merchant Lien Chi, Oliver Goldsmith argued that England felt more free than other countries because minor transgressions were winked at until they become too great for safety. On the Continent they maybe had simpler laws and more democracy, but they also had more meddlesome, self-righteous and prying governments.
John Adams, the second President of the USA, told army officers in Massachusetts that the Constitution he had helped to draw up could not guarantee them liberty.
On October 11th, 1798, President John Adams told officers of a Massachusetts militia brigade that the United States’ historic Constitution (which he had helped to write) was never about centralised Power. Unlike politicians over in Europe, he said, he would not promise to conjure up order out of a selfish, thoughtless and pleasure-seeking society.
When Horatio Nelson stepped aboard HMS Victory in September 1805, the great Admiral knew he had every reason to stay on dry land.
At dawn on Sunday 15th September, 1805, Admiral Horatio Lord Nelson gave the order for his flagship HMS Victory to weigh anchor. Never had Nelson’s duty to go to sea been greater; never had his reasons to stay ashore been stronger. His diary recorded his feelings on the previous Friday night, as his chaise rattled towards towards Portsmouth, and again in the moments before the Battle of Trafalgar.
On a visit to England in 1782, young German author Karl Philipp Moritz was very excited about riding on an English stage.
In 1782 young German writer Karl Philipp Moritz took a vacation in England. He had certainly earned it. Moritz had worked his way out of hardship by repeatedly reinventing himself as a hatter, a poet, a journalist, a theologian and most recently as a teacher. Later, he would become a professor at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Berlin. Here he describes a trip to Richmond, on the way to Derbyshire.
A contributor to the ‘Annual Review’ shared a flurry of facts about the new Liverpool and Manchester Railway, showing what a blessing it already was.
In 1832, The Annual Register carried a short notice of the benefits that had accrued from the opening of the Liverpool and Manchester Railway in September 1830. It showed in dramatic but plain figures how the scheme’s investors had done very well not only for themselves but for everyone else too.
When Robert Southey called for a fairer and greener economy, Thomas Macaulay warned that only politicians and bureaucrats would thank him.
There is nothing new in calling for high taxes to subsidise a fairer, greener economy. Poet Robert Southey did it in 1829, dreaming of a de-industrialised England of apple-cheeked labourers, charming cottages and smiling prosperity. Macaulay dubbed it ‘rose-bushes and poor-rates, rather than steam-engines and independence,’ and reminded him what State-funded projects too often look like.