The American free trader Condy Raguet began a series of articles in the Philadelphia paper Banner of the Constitution in 1829 in which he listed the basic principles of free trade and its benefits to consumers:

That individuals are better judges of the most advantageous mode of employing their labour and capital, than governments—
That wealth cannot be created by the mere enactment of laws—
That commerce is an exchange of equivalents not merely beneficial to one of the parties which carries it on, but to both, by enabling each to exchange with the other, those products which it can furnish upon the most favourable terms—
That commerce must be reciprocal, and consequently, that when one nation restricts its trade with another, and says, “I will not buy,” she declares in the same words, “I will not sell.”
That as far as foreign nations refuse to take our productions, they ipso facto, and without requiring any laws on our part to enforce a retaliation, absolutely deprive us of the power to take their productions—
That it is an error, to suppose that free trade is only advantageous when adopted by all nations, and that the interests of a country are to be promoted by counter restrictions.

[Other books on Free Trade.]

[Image at left is one of Holbein's illustrations to Erasmus' In Praise of Folly (1511) - two people discussing the issues of the day.]

• Images of Liberty: William the Conqueror and the Kentishmen
• Essays on History: Thierry on Conquest, Class, and the Theory of History
• Biographies: Thierry, Augustin (1795-1856)
• Timeline: Life and Work of Ludwig von Mises (1881-1973)
• Essays on Mises: Major Translated Writings
• Chronology: The Life and Work of Ludwig von Mises
• Bibliographies: Frank A. Fetter
• Bibliographies: Germaine de Staël
• Essays on History: Staël and the French Revolution
• Essays on Economics: Say on Markets

Recent Additions to the Library (1,159 items) (RSS).

[Image at left is one of Holbein's illustrations to Erasmus' In Praise of Folly (1511) - a scholar reading.]

• Augustin Thierry, History of the Conquest of England by the Normans, 2 vols. (1856)
• Lysander Spooner, No Treason. No. II. The Constitution (1867)
• Germaine de Staël, Considerations on the French Revolution (1818)
• J.R. McCulloch, Treatises and Essays (1853)
• Lysander Spooner, The Unconstitutionality of Slavery, Parts 1 & 2 (1860)
• Dugald Stewart, Lectures on Political Economy (1855)
• The Rule of St. Benedict (1931)
• Acton, Historical Essays (1909)
• Mises, Planning for Freedom (1952)
• Gibbon, Autobiography (1795)

• March 2009: 5th Anniversary of OLL website
• January 2009: 4th edition of the Portable Library of Liberty DVD
• 700th Forum item: Tocqueville's Critique of Socialism (1848)
• 1,100th Library title: Blackstone's Commentaries on the Laws of England (1753)
• International Awards
• [Archive]

Create your own customized & annotated Reading Lists of OLL material for college courses and other purposes by signing up as an Editor. See the User Guide & subscribe to the RSS. Here are the most recent ones:

• Economics: 19thC French Political Economy: Clément, Molinari, Faucher, Garnier, Say family, Coquelin, Baudrillart, Passy, Courcelle-Seneuil, Bastiat et al. 
• Economics: An Introduction to the Major Writings of Ludwig von Mises
• Interdisciplinary: Essays by Murray Rothbard
• Political Thought: The Federalist Papers: America's Political Classic

Other examples:

• Economics: Intro to Pre-Smithian Economics
• History: Democratic Citizenship
• Interdisciplinary: The Great Books Reading Group
• Law: Guide to Political Rights: English, American, French Tradition (1215-1830)
• Literature: Liberty and Sovereignty in Four Shakespeare Plays
• Philosophy: Ethics Reading List
• Political Thought: Mill On Liberty and The Subjection of Women
• Religion: The Rise of Christianity and Islam in Gibbon’s Decline and Fall
• War & Peace: Liberty and Peace in the Life and Works of Richard Cobden

Considerations on the Principal Events of the French Revolutin (1818) is considered Germaine de Staël (1766-1817)’s magnum opus and sheds renewed light on the familiar figures and events of the French Revolution, among them, the financier and statesman Jacques Necker, her father. Editor Aurelian Craiutu states that Considerations explores “the prerequisites of liberty, constitutionalism and rule of law, the necessary limits on power, the relation between social order and political order, the dependence of liberty on morality and religion, and the question of the institutional foundations of a free regime.”

[Order a copy from the online catalog]
[See other works on the French Revolution]
[Debate on the French Revolution]

Among Liberty Fund’s activities is the publication of new, authoritative editions of classic works which explore some aspect of the interrelationship of liberty and responsibility in individual life, society, governance, or economics. Liberty Fund books are beautifully produced, adhere to rigorous standards of scholarship, and can be found in many personal and academic libraries around the world.

[Books can be purchased by using our online digital catalog
[Download the latest Liberty Fund Books Catalog] 

• Quotations about Liberty and Power
• Portable Library of Liberty
• Recent Additions to the Forum
• Recent Additions to the Library
• Obituary
• Anniversaries of Note in 2009
• Milestones in the History of the Site
• User Created Reading Lists
• Multi-Award Winning Site
• New Liberty Fund Book
• The Current LF Books Catalog
• Audio Online Library of Liberty
• ePub Pilot Project
• MARC Records
• Other Resources in the OLL
• About the OLL Site
• Other Liberty Fund Sites

Request a complimentary copy of the 2009 Edition of the Portable Library of Liberty DVD which contains over 900 titles from the OLL in EBook PDF format and 36 hours of MP3 audio from the Intellectual Portrait Series: Conversations with Leading Classical Liberal Figures of Our Time and the lecture series The Legacy of Friedrich Hayek.

Please include your snail mail (i.e. postal) address with your request.

We are sad to note the passing in March of Ronald Max Hartwell who was one of the greatest economic historians of the industrial revolution. Beginning his career in a small town in country New South Wales, Australia he later moved to Oxford University where he spent his academic life at Nuffield College. Hartwell challenged the Marxist orthodoxy which argued that the Industrial Revolution was largely a disaster for the working class. On the contrary, Hartwell urged, it lead to the greatest expansion of wealth for ordinary people that the world has ever seen. He was interviewed by Patrick O'Brien in one of Liberty Fund's Intellectual Portrait Series in 2000. A DVD of this interview can be purchased, the audio track is available online in various formats, or one can listen online here:

The following institutions, books and authors should be remembered this year for having reached a significant milestone. [More on the terminology used.]

The Online Library of Liberty celebrates the quinquennial of its launch in March 2004. [See more Milestones in its history.]

Anniversaries of the publication of important books [More about finding Books]:

• the quartercentennial of the publication of the English poet and playwright Shakespeare's Sonnets (1609)
• the semiquincentennial of the publication of the Scottish moral philosopher and economist Adam Smith's Theory of Moral Sentiments (1759) and the French philosophe Voltaire's Candide (1759)
• the sesquicentennial of the publication of the English naturalist Charles Darwin's Origin of Species (1859)
• the sesquicentenial of the publication of the English philosopher and economist J.S. Mill's On Liberty (1859) and the English writer Samuel Smiles' Self-Help (1859)

Anniversaries of the births and deaths of important people [More about finding People]:

• the quincentennial of the birth of the Swiss reformation theologian John Calvin (1509-1564)
• the tricentennial of the birth of the French social theorist Abbé de Mably (1709-1785)
• the semiquincentennial of the birth of the English feminist writer Mary Wollstonecraft (1759-1797)
• the bicentennial of the death of the English radical writer Thomas Paine (1737-1809)
• the bicentennial of the birth of the English naturalist Charles Darwin (1809-1882)
• the sesquicentenial of the birth of the American economist Frank Taussig (1859-1940), and the deaths of the English writer Lord Macaulay (1800-1859) and the French social theorist Alexis de Tocqueville (1805-1859)

The OLL has won a number of international awards for its outstanding collection of online material in the humanities and social sciences:

• National Endowment for the Humanities -  "Best of the Humanities on the Web" Awards (2006)
• British Arts & Humanities Research Council -  "Editor's Choice" Award (2007)
• International Political Science Association - one of the top 300 websites for political science (2007)

The OLL has a number of its titles in audio format to listen to on a portable player, such as an iPod, and to assist the vision impaired in using some of the resources on the website. Beginning with the Intellectual Portrait Series and the The Legacy of Hayek we have expanded our program in 2009 to include an audio version of the weekly Quotations about Liberty and Power and a pilot project to explore whole audio book versions of some of our titles. Read about our program, listen to our books, and tell us about your experiences in using them.

The OLL has begun an ePub Pilot Project to explore the possibilites of this open format for publishing and reading ebooks on portable devices. Download our files and tell us about your experiences in using them.

All new titles added to the Online Library of Liberty include a MARC Record (as of October, 2007). These Marc Records are part of a collection known as the Online Library of Liberty Series at WorldCat. Our MARC records can be downloaded from the book's table of contents page or from this page.

We have identified and replaced some corrupted MARC records in our batch files.

The OLL contains many resources to use in teaching and learning about Liberty.

[Image at left: the title page to the 1901 edition of Hugo Grotius' The Law of War and Peace (1625)]

The OLL contains many other resources to assist the reader in learning about liberty and repsonsibility:

• bibliographies and biographies
• essays on key figures and subject areas
• Goodrich Seminar Room - our vision of the great books and great authors
• Images of Liberty
• Key Documents of Liberty
• Timelines of the life and work of key figures
• Schools of Thought
• Topics and Debates
• Major Scholarly Collections: the Glasgow Edition of the Works of Adam Smith, the University of Toronto Press edition of the Works of J.S. Mill, the Sraffa edition of the Works of David Ricardo, the Natural Law and Enlightenment Series
• Other Collections: Banned Books, Classics of Liberty, Liberty Fund books
• MP3 audio: The Intellectual Portrait Series, the Legacy of Friedrich Hayek

The Online Library of Liberty (OLL) is a project of Liberty Fund, Inc., a private, non-profit educational foundation based in Indianapolis, Indiana. The aim of the OLL is to provide thousands of titles about individual liberty, limited constitutional government, and the free market, free of charge to the public, for educational purposes. [Above is our "amagi" logo - the earliest written expression of the word "freedom".]

The OLL is divided into two parts: The Forum which contains educational material about the books and authors (see the User Guide), and The Library which contains classic books about liberty (see the User Guide).

Liberty Fund's main website hosts an extensive online book catalog where the books published by Liberty Fund can be purchased.

Liberty Fund also has a website devoted entirely to economics, The Library of Economics and Liberty (Econlib). It contains classic economic books, an online encyclopedia of economics, articles discussing current economic topics, a moderated blog (Econlog) where economic issues are discussed, and a collection of podcasts (EconTalk).