475
A pretty young milkmaid plans just a little bit too far ahead.
‘Don’t count your chickens before they’re hatched’ is a proverbial warning not to plan too far ahead. In this little fable, our daydreaming country milkmaid goes some way beyond counting unhatched chicks.
Picture: © Otwarte Klatki, Wikimedia Commons. Licence: CC BY-SA 2.0.. Source.
Posted March 11 2021
476
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.
Picture: © Evelyn Simak, Geograph. Licence: CC BY-SA 2.0.. Source.
Posted March 9 2021
477
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.
Picture: © Oast House Archive, Geograph. Licence: CC BY-SA 2.0.. Source.
Posted March 9 2021
478
On a visit to an English parish church, American author Washington Irving was treated to an eye-opening contrast between Georgian society’s Old Money and her New.
In 1815, Washington Irving came over to England from the United States of America in a vain effort to rescue the family’s transatlantic trading business, a casualty of the War of 1812. Eager to get the measure of his new neighbours, he attended church one Sunday in an English village, and what he saw confirmed a theory he had been nursing for some time.
Picture: © Kevin Gordon, Geograph. Licence: CC BY-SA 2.0.. Source.
Posted March 8 2021
479
After winning the English crown at the Battle of Hastings, William of Normandy ensured everyone understood what kind of man their new King was.
Edward Freeman — Liberal politician, Balkan nationalist, and Regius Professor of Modern History at Oxford — was a man of vigorous (and at times objectionable) opinions, but in the following passage he puts that passion to good use. He casts an eye for us upon the aftermath of the Battle of Hastings in 1066, the day when William of Normandy seized the English crown from Harold Godwinson.
Picture: © Antonio Borrillo, Wikimedia Commons. Licence: CC-BY-SA 3.0.. Source.
Posted March 4 2021
480
Educational reformer Emily Davies argued that Victorian women had more to offer society than a purely ornamental erudition.
Many social ills, wrote pioneering suffragist Emily Davies, have their origins in a lack of imagination, that gift of empathy which smooths away much of the roughness of our common life. There was more to be gained from letting a woman use her imagination as an MP, than from teaching her quadratic equations merely so she can shine more brightly at a dinner-party.
Picture: From the LSE Women’s Library Collection, via Wikimedia Commons. Licence: Public domain.. Source.
Posted March 4 2021