415
In 1840, the British Government declared war on the Chinese Empire over their harsh treatment of drug smugglers from Bengal.
The Opium Wars of 1839-42 and 1856-60 were a miserably low point in British history, as Jawaharlal Nehru makes painfully clear in this passage. Opium grown in India was smuggled into China by British merchants to feed the addiction of millions of Chinese, until the problem became so bad that the Chinese imperial government was obliged to step up efforts against the smugglers.
Picture: Rundle Burges Watson (1809-1860), via Wikimedia Commons. Public domain.. Source.
Posted June 12 2021
416
Seventeenth-century poet and statesman Edmund Waller reflects on the benefits of advancing years.
A great deal is made today of the advantages of youth in benefiting society. Edmund Waller, a poet who sat in the Commons for over fifty years, was no less impressed by the advantages of old age — which not only renew our usefulness for this world, but also ready us for a better one.
Picture: By Sir Anthony van Dyck (1599–1641), via wikimedia Commons. Licence: public domain.. Source.
Posted June 11 2021
417
Vice is a fact of life, wrote Pope, and God can even bring good out of it; but vice is never a virtue and in tackling vice together we make our society stronger.
In his Essay on Man, Alexander Pope has been reflecting on the part played in society by folly and vice. There is vice and virtue in every man, he says, and human life is like a canvas of blended light and shade: but if vice ought to excite pity and friendship rather than judgment and anger, that should not dupe us into thinking that society can survive if we turn vices into virtues, and virtue into a vice.
Picture: © Sailko, Wikimedia Commons. Licence: CC BY-SA 3.0.. Source.
Posted June 8 2021
418
The Pharisees conspire to put Jesus in a seemingly impossible situation, by inviting him to take sides in the bitter politics of Jew and Roman.
The event described here is recorded at the start of the eighth chapter of St John’s Gospel. Two questions have nagged commentators: why some very early New Testament manuscripts missed it out, and what it was that Jesus wrote in the sandy ground. Neither question has been answered to the satisfaction of everyone, but the story is one of the most universally beloved in the Gospels.
Picture: By Vasily Polenov (1844–1927), from the Russian Museum via Wikimedia Commons. Licence: Public domain.. Source.
Posted June 8 2021
419
Artist Benjamin Robert Haydon laments the passing of Lord Egremont, whose generosity and good judgment reached far beyond his support for struggling artists.
George Wyndham (1751-1837), 3rd Earl of Egremont, was one of Georgian England’s wealthiest and most philanthropic of men, a patron of the arts and of industry, a responsible farmer and animal breeder. After the Earl died on November 11th, 1837, artist Benjamin Robert Haydon turned to his diary and penned a glowing tribute to a man who had given support to him and many like him in lavish measure.
Picture: © Laura, Geograph. Licence: CC BY-SA 2.0.. Source.
Posted June 7 2021
420
A Wolf finds a series of reasons for making a meal of a little Lamb, but it turns out he did not really need them.
Jawaharlal Nehru, India’s first Prime Minister, appealed to this Fable as an illustration of the way that stronger nations bully weaker ones. Like the Wolf, they justify gobbling up their neighbours by saying they are simply defending themselves and their interests, but it is superior military and economic power, not right and wrong, that decides the outcome.
Picture: Jean-Baptiste Oudry (1686-1755), via Wikimedia Commons. Licence: Public domain.. Source.
Posted June 4 2021