475
Even where freedom of speech and conscience are not curtailed by law, there is another kind of censorship that is just as destructive to progress.
In the 1850s, those who held opinions felt by Authority to be untrue, antisocial or extreme were still being frozen out of academic, political and commercial roles, not by law so much as by denying them preferments or a public platform. John Stuart Mill warned that such censorship would not silence dissent, but would nurture a generation so feeble-minded that progress itself would be slowed to a crawl.
Posted February 10 2021
476
John Stuart Mill set out three kinds of liberty essential to a truly free society: freedom of conscience, of tastes, and of association.
In his essay On Liberty, John Stuart Mill has been talking about the proper role of Government, arguing that the State authorities should not meddle in the lives of individual citizens. He now lays out three freedoms essential to any truly liberal society: those of thought, choice and association. Every man should have the freedom to go his own way in life, so long as he extends the same courtesy to his neighbours.
Posted February 10 2021
477
Two years into America’s Civil War, cotton workers in Manchester defied current opinion among politicians and the press, and pledged their support to the Union.
Two years into the American Civil War (1861-65) many in England believed that economic self-interest may yet lie with the South. Nevertheless, the day before Lincoln’s historic declaration of emancipation on January 1st, 1863, cotton workers defied an urgent editorial in the Guardian and met at Manchester’s Free Trade Hall to approve a message of support for the Union.
Posted February 9 2021
478
A rowdy but good-humoured crowd gathered in St Peter’s Fields, Manchester, to protest against electoral malpractice and Government cronyism.
As the Nineteenth Century opened, workers in England’s rapidly growing industrial centres were driving national prosperity. But they had few MPs to represent them, electoral malpractice was rife and most of them were not allowed to vote anyway. The feeling that Government was a hostile enemy from whom neither justice nor sympathy could be expected was only confirmed in August 1819.
Posted February 9 2021
479
In replying to a letter of support from Manchester’s cotton workers, US President Lincoln showed how deeply touched he had been.
Washington’s embargoes on cotton from the American South during the Civil War (1861-1865) hit the British cotton industry hard. Nonetheless, on New Year’s Eve, 1862, the day before the historic Emancipation Proclamation took effect, workers defied scare-mongering politicians and journalists to gather in Manchester’s Free Trade Hall, and pledge their support to Abraham Lincoln. On January 19th, he replied.
Posted February 9 2021
480
On July 4th, 1776, a group of American colonists gathered in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, to present delegates of the Thirteen Colonies with a historic document.
At a meeting in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, on July 4th, 1776, Thomas Jefferson and four colleagues presented to the Second Continental Congress a document setting out why the Thirteen American Colonies held themselves to be “absolved from all allegiance to the British crown”. It marked the birth of the United States of America, grudgingly recognised by King George III in 1783.
Posted February 8 2021