Clay Lane

The Copy Book

A Library of History and Literature in English

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373

The Duties of Government

John Bright told his Birmingham constituents that if Britain was indeed a great nation, it was because her public was contented and not because her empire was wide.

After John Bright MP criticised British imperial policy in India, saying it was too much about the glories of empire and too little about the condition of the people, a Calcutta newspaper scolded him and reminded him solemnly of the greatness of Rome. But Bright was unrepentant, and speaking to his constituents in Birmingham on October 29th, 1858, he brought his lesson closer to home.

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Picture: By Helen Allingham (1848-1926), via Wikimedia Commons. Licence: Public domain.. Source.

374

International Intermeddling

John Bright asked the people of Birmingham to spread the word that a great nation, like any good citizen and neighbour, does not meddle officiously in the affairs of others.

In the 1850s, prevailing opinion in Europe was that peace and prosperity depended on the diplomacy and military interventions of a few exceptional ‘Great Powers’. John Bright MP, however, told his Birmingham constituents that nations had to observe the same humble morality as citizens do. No one likes domineering and meddlesome people, and history shows that there is always a reckoning eventually.

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Picture: By Henri Jannin (1816-?), via Wikimedia Commons. Licence: Public domain.. Source.

375

The Foolish Emperor

Emperor Julian cast off his Christian upbringing to gain the favour of Rome’s pagan gods, but in the heat of battle they deserted him.

Roman Emperor Flavius Claudius Iulianus (r. 361-363) earned his nickname ‘Julian the Apostate’ by trying to stamp out the Christian Church in which he had been brought up, while transferring its charitable activities to the State. He failed in both, and his military campaign in Persia was no more successful. Theodoret, Bishop of Cyrus, believed his death illustrated Julian’s weakness of mind and character.

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Picture: © Romeneverfell, Wikimedia Commons. Licence: CC BY-SA 4.0.. Source.

376

Truth By Statute?

John Milton reminded Parliament that the Truth wasn’t what they and their fact-checkers in Stationers’ Hall made it.

In 1643, shortly after the Civil War with Charles I (r. 1625-1649) began, Parliament ordered a crackdown on what we would call fake news and disinformation, censoring and licensing political comment and telling the public only what Parliament thought it was good for us to know. John Milton, himself a Parliamentarian, felt obliged to publish an anguished protest at such cowardly behaviour.

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Picture: By Charles West Cope (1811–1890), via Wikimedia Commons. Licence: Public domain.. Source.

377

Zenana Mission

Hannah Mullens describes her battle to reach out to wealthy Indian ladies with nothing to do, nothing to think about and nowhere to go.

From the 1850s, Calcutta-born Hannah Mullens (1826–1861) travelled all over India trying to bring literacy, self-respect and spiritual consolation into the dreary leisure of zenanas, the cloistered women’s quarters of well-to-do Indian families. The following account is taken from a letter she wrote from Nagercoil on India’s southernmost tip, then in the Kingdom of Travancore.

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Picture: © T. L. Thompson, Wikimedia Commons. Licence: CC BY-SA 2.0.. Source.

378

Something Rotten in the State of Denmark

When Ambassador Molesworth criticised the government of Christian V, the Danish king cried ‘off with his head!’.

Christian V, King of Denmark and Norway from 1670 to 1699, was a great admirer of the ‘Sun King’ Louis XIV of France, and sought to emulate the glory of Louis’s court, his ‘divine right of kings’ and his absolute power of government. Over here, though, Parliament had thrown out James II in 1688 for doing the same, and his replacement William III gathered that in England no one was beyond criticism.

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Picture: By an anonymous artist, via Wikimedia Commons. Licence: Public domain.. Source.