The British Constitution
Posts in The Copybook tagged ‘The British Constitution’
A nation with its own laws and a strong sense of shared cultural identity makes good economic sense.
Adam Smith argues that preferring to live in a sovereign nation, with a strong sense of shared cultural identity and well-drafted, homemade laws, is not a matter of prejudice. It is a matter of sound economic reasoning, for every country of the world.
Nineteenth-century Britain had busy industrial cities and a prosperous middle class, but no MPs to represent them.
The Industrial Revolution changed the face of Britain. It depopulated the countryside, spawned crowded cities, and gave real economic power to an ever-growing middle class. At last, Parliament realised that it had to represent these people to Government, and the Great Reform Act was passed.
Some people are not more equal than others, nor are they entitled to more life and liberty.
English philosopher John Locke is one of the most influential political thinkers in British history, whose ideas profoundly influenced the American Declaration of Independence. Here, he states his belief that freedom belongs to every man equally.
Good government is not about enforcing uniform order, but about maximising liberty among a particular people.
Edmund Burke, MP for Bristol, would have had little truck with European ‘harmonisation’. He argued that the job of any government is to judge sensitively, for a particular people, the smallest degree of restraint needed to keep their freedom fresh — in that country, and at that time — and then stop.
Queen Victoria assured her subjects that there were no second-class citizens in her eyes.
After the Indian Mutiny in 1857, some Indians were concerned that Britain intended to force them to convert to Christianity. However, Victoria reassured them that (in contrast to some Indian religions and laws) forcible conversion and ‘second-class citizen’ are both concepts alien to the British constitution.
In a Christmas broadcast in 1940, actor Leslie Howard explained why British sovereignty was worth fighting for.
In a radio broadcast just before Christmas in 1940, British actor Leslie Howard spoke movingly of the remarkable and indeed unique character of his country, built on individual liberty and democratic government, and contrasted it with the ‘new European order’.