109
Hours after running away to sea, Robinson Crusoe was sorry he ever left home.
Against the advice of his affectionate father and the pleadings of his distraught mother, Robinson Crusoe, then eighteen, refused to study for the law and announced he would go to sea. This remained little more than a shapeless gesture of teenage rebellion for a year. Then one day a friend went to Hull for a trip up the coast to London in his father’s ship, and invited Robinson to come along for the ride.
Posted November 10 2023
110
A foreign tourist writes home with an account of a day in the life of a typical London gentleman.
John Macky published Travels Through England in 1714. It takes the form of letters supposedly written by a foreign tourist while in England, and sent home to his friend abroad. The preface declares frankly that Macky’s purpose is to help his reader appreciate an Englishman’s liberties under the benign King George I, in contrast to the wretched oppression on the Continent. Here, he describes a leisurely day in London.
Posted November 8 2023
111
Such was the reputation of the Prussian army in the days of the Frederick the Great that even foreigners wanted to join.
Frederick the Great ruled Prussia, in what is now northern Germany and Poland, from 1740 to 1786. He established Prussia as a serious force in European politics, and was justly proud of his troops. His army’s reputation attracted recruits from outside the country, and according to ‘Mr Addison’ (not the essayist of an earlier generation), this brought its own little embarrassments.
Posted November 7 2023
112
Richard Cobden wondered how the architects of the British Empire had the nerve to accuse Russia of imperialism.
In 1854, British feeling was running high against Russia. That March, Britain had sided with Turkey in the Crimean War of 1853-56, and anxious journalists and politicians pointed accusing fingers at Russia’s military manoeuvres around the Baltic and the Black Sea, scolding her for her greed and disrespect for her neighbours’ sovereignty. Richard Cobden wondered if there was something amiss with his hearing.
Posted October 17 2023
113
American journalist and poet WC Bryant numbered Richard Cobden MP among the world’s statesmen, not our politicians.
William Cullen Bryant was one of nineteenth-century America’s great men. For many years he served as editor of the New York Evening Post, and was a popular ‘fireside poet’. He was also active in politics, an opponent of slavery who threw his weight behind the election of Abraham Lincoln in 1860. His praise for England’s Richard Cobden, for an American edition of his writings, was quite an accolade.
Posted October 17 2023
114
Rowland Hill calculated that a lower, flatter rate of postage would not only make the public better off and better read, but increase the Revenue.
On May 1st, 1840, the Post Office introduced a new flat rate on letter postage, after years of high and complicated pricing. The idea for the Uniform Penny Post came to Rowland Hill, a former schoolmaster, from talking to his father about free-market economics. Both had noticed how the national tax revenue had jumped just when the Government had cut taxes and regulations on foreign trade.
Posted October 16 2023