John Trenchard (1662-1723), one of the author's of Cato's Letters, warned in 1722 that a new war with Italy would allow "many princes (to) warm their hands at it, whilst their subjects will be burnt to death," and reward many jobbers and courtiers who stood to personally benefit from increased taxes and debt:

We find by woeful experience, that three shillings in the pound has not maintained the current expence of the government, but we have run still in debt. The money given for the Civil List has not defrayed that charge, but new and large sums have been given to pay off the arrears; which, it is said, are not yet paid off. New salaries and new pensions have been found necessary to satisfy the clamours of those who will never be satisfied; and the greater occasions which the courtiers have, and the greater necessities which they are in, the more will still be found necessary: for it is no news for artful men to engage their superiors in difficulties, and then to be paid largely for helping them out of them again.

[Other books on the 18thC Commonwealthmen.]

Recent Additions to the Forum (719 essays) (RSS).

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

• Anniversaries of Note for 2009 and 2010
• Essays on Science: Darwin's Historical Sketch on the Origin of Species (1859)
• Key Documents: The Putney Debates (1647)
• Essays on Political Theory: Puritanism & Liberty
• Essays on Law: Magna Carta in 17thC English Legal Thought

Recent Additions to the Library (1,136 items) (RSS).

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

• Böhm-Bawerk, The Postive Theory of Capital (1884)
• Charles Darwin, The Origin of Species (1859)
• Puritanism & Liberty: The Army Debates (1647-49)
• Lysander Spooner, Trial by Jury (1852)
• Lysander Spooner, Natural Law (1882)

• 700th Forum item: Tocqueville's Critique of Socialism (1848)
• 1,100th Library title: Blackstone's Commentaries on the Laws of England (1753)
• Summer 2006: 3rd edition of the Portable Library of Liberty DVD with 750 titles
• International Awards
• [Archive]

Create your own customised & annotated Reading Lists of OLL material for college courses and other purposes by signing up as an Editor. Here are some recent examples (User Guide & RSS - 55 items):

• Political Thought: Alexander Hamilton on Executive Power & Liberty
• Political Thought: Freedom & Power
• Economics: Shaftesbury, Mandeville, & Smith on Liberty, Virtue, & Prosperity
• Philosophy: Locke on Toleration
• Political Theory: Intro to the Political Thought of John Locke

The Roots of Liberty is a critical collection of essays on the origin and nature of the idea of liberty. The authors explore the development of English ideas of liberty and the relationship those ideas hold to modern conceptions of rule of law. The essays address early medieval developments, encompassing such seminal issues as the common-law mind of the sixteenth century under the Tudor monarchs, the struggle for power and authority between the Stuart kings and Parliament in the seventeenth century, and the role of the ancient constitution in the momentous legal and constitutional debate that occurred between the Glorious Revolution and the American Declaration of Independence.

[Order a copy from the online catalog]
[See other books on Magna Carta]

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)

Request a complimentary copy of the 2006 Edition of the Portable Library of Liberty DVD which contains 750 titles from the OLL in EBook PDF format and 25 hours of MP3 audio from the Intellectual Portrait Series: Conversations with Leading Classical Liberal Figures of Our Time.

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

The OLL has begun an ePub Pilot Project to explore the possibillites 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 following books and authors should be remembered this year for having reached a significant milestone:

• the quartercentenary of the birth of the English poet John Milton (1608-1674)
• the semiquincentennial of the publication of the Swiss jurist Emer de Vattel's The Law of Nations (1758)
• the bicentennial of the birth of the American legal scholar and abolitionist Lysander Spooner (1808-1887) (works to come soon)
• the bicentennial of the publication of James Mill's Commerce Defended (1808) and Thomas Clarkson's History of the Abolition of the Slave Trade (1808)
• the sesquicentenial of the deaths of the English women writers Harriet Taylor (1807-1858) and Jane Marcet (1769-1858)
• the sesquicentenial of the birth of the English journalist J.A. Hobson (1858-1940)
• the centennial of the birth of the philosopher H.B. Acton (1908-1974)

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).