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Lord Durham warned Westminster that colonial Canada must be run by elected MPs, not career bureaucrats.
In 1839, Lord Durham, Governor General of Canada, reported to Westminster on mounting civil unrest in Canada. He was expected to blame Anglo-French antagonism, but chose to highlight a system in which elected Parliaments were mere window-dressing, while real power lay with bureaucrats appointed by the Crown.
Posted May 1 2019
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Some wanted Britain on a path to being a thoroughly European nation, but William Monypenny wanted her at the world’s crossroads.
William Monypenny, a journalist with the Johannesburg ‘Star’ and the London ‘Times’, held that Britain had a responsibility to remain a country at the crossroads, aloof from the ideological extremism of her European neighbours, steadied and balanced by truly global ties of family, trade and culture.
Posted April 30 2019
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The fear that Russia might make an ally of Great Britain drove the would-be Emperor of Europe to extreme measures.
Napoleon Bonaparte’s retreat from Moscow in 1812 is one of the epic tales of history, and a generous one. It has given music Tchaikovsky’s unforgettable Overture, it has given rhetoric that stern officer ‘General Winter’, and it has given us all an object lesson in the deserts of excessive political ambition.
Posted April 27 2019
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Leopold Mozart was eager to win the hearts of the English, and thought he knew just the way to do it.
In 1763-64, Leopold Mozart spent fifteen months in England with his daughter Maria Anna (‘Nannerl’) and son Wolfgang, who turned nine during the visit. Leopold was much taken with King George III and Queen Charlotte, who treated the Mozarts like family, and he told his friend Johann Lorenz von Hagenauer, an Austrian businessman, that he was eager to win the affection of the English people too.
Posted April 26 2019
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French economist Jean-Baptiste Say recalls a time when an ounce of prevention might have saved many pounds of cure.
Jean-Baptiste Say was a French businessman and economist, an authority on Adam Smith and champion of free markets who in 1804 resigned in protest from Napoleon’s dirigiste government. He told the following story to show that ‘economy is inconsistent with disorder’.
Posted April 22 2019