Liberty and Prosperity
Posts in The Copybook tagged ‘Liberty and Prosperity’
French essayist Voltaire provoked the wrath of his government by explaining how England was superior to every European state including the Roman Empire.
François-Marie Arouet (1694-1778) spent the years 1726 to 1729 in England. In 1733, he published a series of essays under the name ‘Voltaire’ sharing his observations on English life, chiefly on matters of religion and politics. He had noticed that English people often tried to compare their country with ancient Rome, which he thought rather absurd, especially as in one respect England was much better.
The tighter the US Government’s stranglehold on dissent grew, the harder Daniel Webster fought for freedom of speech.
In 1814, the USA was still embroiled in the War of 1812 with Great Britain. Many citizens of east coast States were dismayed, holding that the war was wrecking the economy for no demonstrable gain. President James Madison’s pro-France hawks in Washington responded by trying to silence critics as traitors, but young Daniel Webster, recently elected to Congress as Member for New Hampshire, was defiant.
Edmund Burke told the House of Commons that the American colonies’ refusal to be dictated to by Westminster was the very spirit that had made the Empire great.
In 1766, Parliament truculently reasserted the right to tax and regulate Britain’s thirteen American colonies. The Americans were allowed no MPs in the Commons, but they had many friends, and barely a month before those first shots rang out in Lexington on April 19th, 1775, Edmund Burke warned the Government not to try to crush the manly English spirit that made Americans so independent.
John Bright told his Birmingham constituents that if Britain was indeed a great nation, it was because her public was contented and not because her empire was wide.
After John Bright MP criticised British imperial policy in India, saying it was too much about the glories of empire and too little about the condition of the people, a Calcutta newspaper scolded him and reminded him solemnly of the greatness of Rome. But Bright was unrepentant, and speaking to his constituents in Birmingham on October 29th, 1858, he brought his lesson closer to home.
John Bright asked the people of Birmingham to spread the word that a great nation, like any good citizen and neighbour, does not meddle officiously in the affairs of others.
In the 1850s, prevailing opinion in Europe was that peace and prosperity depended on the diplomacy and military interventions of a few exceptional ‘Great Powers’. John Bright MP, however, told his Birmingham constituents that nations had to observe the same humble morality as citizens do. No one likes domineering and meddlesome people, and history shows that there is always a reckoning eventually.
John Milton reminded Parliament that the Truth wasn’t what they and their fact-checkers in Stationers’ Hall made it.
In 1643, shortly after the Civil War with Charles I (r. 1625-1649) began, Parliament ordered a crackdown on what we would call fake news and disinformation, censoring and licensing political comment and telling the public only what Parliament thought it was good for us to know. John Milton, himself a Parliamentarian, felt obliged to publish an anguished protest at such cowardly behaviour.