Political Extracts
Posts in The Copybook tagged ‘Political Extracts’
Richard Cobden told his audience in the London Tavern that however much sabre-rattling was heard in St Petersburg, the average Russian was a man of peace.
In the opinion of Richard Cobden, the Rochdale MP, Emperor Nicholas I of Russia wasn’t a proper Russian. In his fondness for meddling in the affairs of other European countries he resembled the colonially-minded politicians of the West more than his fellow Russians, for whom the thought of being conscripted for military adventures beyond Holy Russia was abhorrent.
Two of the Victorian Age’s most distinguished historians locked horns over the question of whether historians should be nice.
In 1887, historian Mandell Creighton published the third volume of his monumental study of the Papacy. Fellow historian Lord Acton, a Roman Catholic troubled by the recent declaration of Papal Infallibility, criticised him for being too soft on the crimes of the Popes: the historian who easily excuses the tyrants of the past, he warned, may also hire himself out to excuse the tyrants of the present.
When the young Aga Khan visited London in 1898 he was presented to Queen Victoria, and found her cultural sensitivity deeply touching.
In February 1898 the Aga Khan, then twenty, left Bombay for Europe. After some days enjoying life on the French Riviera he travelled on to Paris and London, and there in the glorious and bewitching Imperial capital he was presented at Windsor Castle to Queen Victoria herself. It was an intimate affair: only himself, his friend the Duke of Connaught and the Empress, now approaching her eightieth birthday.
Fiery young attorney Thomas Erskine stood up in the House of Commons to denounce a bill aiming to silence critics of the Government.
In December 1795, the Seditious Assemblies Act was passed in Westminster. Aimed at snuffing out sympathy for the French Revolution, the Act banned critics of the King, the Constitution or even Government policy from airing their views in public without prior permission. William Belsham recorded that crusading lawyer Thomas Erskine, MP for Portsmouth, had reacted angrily at this travesty of English liberties.
Frédéric Bastiat made a tongue-in-cheek appeal to the French government, asking them to protect candlemakers from a cut-throat competitor.
In the 1840s, powerful lobbyists managed to get most European governments to pass legislation protecting their industries from being undercut by rivals. Frédéric Bastiat held this short-sighted indulgence up to ridicule, penning a tongue-in-cheek ‘Petition’ to the Chamber of Deputies in which French candlemakers begged them to crack down on a particularly glaring example of unfair competition.
Inspired by economists in Britain, Frédéric Bastiat explained to his own Government why their initiatives to boost the economy so often fail.
So long as it makes work for the working man to do, almost any initiative will have its champions. A superfluous rail upgrade, a local government vanity project, even burglary or a war, we are reconciled to them on the grounds that ultimately they create jobs and get the economy moving. Yet as Frédéric Bastiat explained back in 1850, the thought may be comforting but it isn’t really true.