Liberty and Prosperity
Posts in The Copybook tagged ‘Liberty and Prosperity’
Edmund Burke begged the clergy of England to give us all a break from the twenty-four-hour news cycle.
On November 4th, 1789, not yet five months into the French Revolution, Dr Richard Price delivered a sermon at the Presbyterian Chapel in Old Jewry entitled ‘On the Love of Our Country’, in which he called upon all patriotic Englishmen to support the French rebels as a matter of Christian duty. Writing to a French correspondent, Edmund Burke complained that it was grossly inappropriate.
Edmund Burke would not congratulate the French revolutionaries on their ‘liberty’ until he knew what they would do with it.
In 1789, the French Parliament relieved King Louis XVI of his constitutional privileges, and amidst chaotic scenes proclaimed that henceforth ‘liberty, equality and fraternity’ would define their Government. Some believed that France was becoming more like England, and that Louis would be retained to add, like England’s George III, regal pomp to a liberal democracy. Edmund Burke wasn’t convinced.
Edmund Burke tore into the directors of the East India Company, accusing them of doing less for the country than India’s mediaeval conquerors.
In 1783, Edmund Burke urged the House of Commons to strip the East India Company of its administration of India, arguing that the Mughal Emperors and other foreign conquerors had done more for the people than the Company seemed likely to do. His blistering attack on the Company’s record repays reading, as it applies just as well to modern aid programmes, interventions and regime changes.
Britain’s first qualified female doctor, Elizabeth Garrett Anderson, had a message for the first women to study for London University’s degree in medicine.
On October 1st, 1877, Dr Elizabeth Garrett Anderson gave the Inaugural Address at the London School of Medicine for Women, which she had helped to establish three years earlier. Only the previous year, the UK Medical Act had allowed the country’s medical authorities to license women as doctors for the first time, and it is difficult to think of better advice to anyone hoping to bring about important social change.
It should never be labelled ‘dangerous’ to subject Government policy to calm and honest criticism.
IN 1792, the Libel Act gave the jury, not the judge, the right to decide who was guilty of libel. It was soon put to the test, when the Government charged The Morning Chronicle with libel for reproducing the Society for Political Information’s scathing critique of William Pitt’s policies. The jury acquitted the defendants, vindicating the Society’s feisty defence of free speech, reproduced below.
Sydney Smith warned ordinary Americans that encouraging the hawks in Washington would cost them more than blood.
In 1820, Sydney Smith interrupted his review of a recent book on the US economy to reflect on the price of military adventure. America had clashed with Britain in the War of 1812, and some in Washington were eager to renew hostilities against their old colonial master. Smith urged ‘brother Jonathan’ (the ordinary American, counterpart to John Bull) to think hard about what it would mean.