The Online Library of Liberty

Releases FY 2007-08 (16 titles)

These are the titles published by Liberty Fund during the fiscal year May 2007 to April 2008.

June 2007: Henry Home (Lord Kames), Sketches of the History of Man, 3 volumes. Written late in his life, this 3 volume work deals with the idea of human progress. Vol. 1 deals with progress in property law, commerce, the treatment of women, and luxury. Vol. 2 deals with the development of states, government, and taxation. Vol. 3 deals with the progress of science. [Order a copy from the online catalog].

July 2007: Francis Hutcheson, Philosophiae Moralis Institutio Compendiaria. This Liberty Fund publication of Philosophiae Moralis Institutio Compendiaria is a parallel edition of the English and Latin versions of a book designed by Hutcheson for use in the classroom. General Editor Knud Haakonssen remarks that “Hutcheson’s Institutio was written as a textbook for university students and it therefore covers a curriculum which has an institutional background static/in his own university, Glasgow. This was a curriculum crucially influenced by Hutcheson’s predecessor Gershom Carmichael, and at its center was modern natural jurisprudence as systematized by Grotius, Pufendorf, and others… . The Institutio is the first major [published] attempt by Hutcheson to deal with natural law on his own terms… . It therefore encapsulates the axis of natural law and Scottish Enlightenment ideas, which so many other thinkers, including Adam Smith, worked with in their different ways. It is of great significance that this work issued from the class in which Smith sat as a student.” [Order a copy from the online catalog].

September 2007: Thach, The Creation of the Presidency, 1775–1789: A Study in Constitutional History [Order a copy from the online catalog]. [Not available online]

September 2007: William Findley, Observations on “The Two Sons of Oil”: Containing a Vindication of the American Constitutions and Defending the Blessings of Religious Liberty and Toleration, against the Illiberal Strictures of the Rev. Samuel B. Wylie. Observations on “The Two Sons of Oil” was written in 1811 in response to the Reverend Samuel B. Wylie’s work, The Two Sons of Oil, which was published in 1803. In this work of radical Presbyterian theology, Wylie pointed out what he considered to be deficiencies in the constitutions of both Pennsylvania and the United States and declared them to be immoral. Findley’s response to Wylie’s criticisms in Observations showed that it was neither the purpose nor the design of the United States government to have a federal religion and a federal creed. In a broader sense the book is also a passionate defense of a civil government guided by moral principles that allow for essential freedoms. Findley’s defense of religious liberty and the American constitutions affords a grand window through which to view early American understanding about the relationship between politics and faith and why it is essential for both liberty and piety to resist any attempt to unite government and Church. [Order a copy from the online catalog].

October 2007: James Wilson, Collected Works of James Wilson, 2 volumes. This two-volume set brings together a collection of writings and speeches of James Wilson, one of only six signers of both the Declaration of Independence and the United States Constitution, and one of the most influential members of the federal Constitutional Convention in 1787. Wilson’s writings and speeches had a significant impact on the deliberations that produced the cornerstone documents of our democracy. Wilson’s signal contribution to the founding of our national government was his advocacy for both a strong national government and an open and democratic political system, a position that set him apart from both Alexander Hamilton and Thomas Jefferson. [Order a copy from the online catalog].

November 2007: David R. Henderson, The Concise Encyclopedia of Economics. The Library of Economics and Liberty carries the popular Concise Encyclopedia of Economics, edited by David R. Henderson. This highly acclaimed economics encyclopedia was first published in 1993 under the title The Fortune Encyclopedia of Economics. It features easy-to-read articles by over 140 top economists, including Nobel Prize winners, over 80 biographies of famous economists, and many tables and charts illustrating economics in action. [Order a copy from the online catalog].

November 2007: Jean Louis De Lolme, The Constitution of England; Or, An Account of the English Government. The Constitution of England is one of the most distinguished eighteenth-century treatises on English political liberty. In the vein of Charles Louis Montesquieu’s Spirit of the Laws (1748) and William Blackstone’s Commentaries on the Laws of England (1765–1769), De Lolme’s account of the English system of government exercised an extensive influence on political debate in Britain, on constitutional design in the United States during the Founding era, and on the growth of liberal political thought throughout the nineteenth century. [Order a copy from the online catalog].

December 2007: Charles H. McIlwain, Constitutionalism: Ancient and Modern. Constitutionalism: Ancient and Modern explores the very roots of liberty by examining the development of modern constitutionalism from its ancient and medieval origins. Derived from a series of lectures delivered by Charles Howard McIlwain at Cornell University in the 1938–39 academic year, these lectures provide a useful introduction to the development of modern constitutional forms. [Order a copy from the online catalog].

December 2007: A.V. Dicey, Lectures on the Relation between Law and Public Opinion in England during the Nineteenth Century. This volume brings together a series of lectures A. V. Dicey first gave at Harvard Law School on the influence of public opinion in England during the nineteenth century and its impact on legislation. It is an accessible attempt by an Edwardian liberal to make sense of recent British history. In our time, it helps define what it means to be an individualist or liberal. Dicey’s lectures were a reflection of the anxieties felt by turn-of-the-century Benthamite Liberals in the face of Socialist and New Liberal challenges. [Order a copy from the online catalog].

February 2008: Francis Hutcheson, The Meditations of the Emperor Marcus Aurelius Antoninus. This influential classical work offered a vision of a universe governed by a natural law that obliges us to love mankind and to govern our lives in accordance with the natural order of things. In their account of the life of the emperor, prefaced to their translation from the Greek, Hutcheson and Moor celebrated the Stoic ideal of an orderly universe governed by a benevolent God. They contrasted the serenity recommended and practiced by Marcus Aurelius with the divisive sectarianism then exhibited by their fellow Presbyterians in Scotland and elsewhere. They urged their readers and fellow citizens to set aside their narrow prejudices. [Order a copy from the online catalog].

February 2008: Abbé de Condillac, Commerce and Government: Considered in Their Mutual Relationship. This text covers such topics as value, money, agriculture, domestic and foreign trade, war, labor, interest rates, luxuries, and the various government policies that affect these subjects.The theme that unites these disparate subjects is liberty. As Condillac writes near the end of the work, the means to eradicate all the abuses and injustices of government is “to give trade full, complete and permanent freedom.” In their preface to the 1997 edition, Shelagh and Walter Eltis wrote, “English language readers … will find … that the case for competitive market economics has rarely been presented more powerfully.” [Order a copy from the online catalog].

Febraury 2008: Corwin, The “Higher Law” Background of American Constitutional Law [Order a copy from the online catalog]. [Not available online]

March 2008: Johann Gottlieb Heineccius, A Methodical System of Universal Law: or, The Laws of Nature and Nations [Order a copy from the online catalog].

March 2008: Alexander Hamilton, The Revolutionary Writings of Alexander Hamilton. This is a comprehensive collection of Hamilton’s early writings, from the period before and during the Revolutionary War, and includes The Continentalist, lettters by Publius, and Remarks on the Quebec Bill. [Order a copy from the online catalog].

March 2008: Ellis Sandoz (ed.), The Roots of Liberty: Magna Carta, Ancient Constitution, and the Anglo-American Tradition of Rule of Law. This 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].

April 2008: Anthony de Jasay, Social Contract, Free Ride: A Study of the Public Goods Problem [Order a copy from the online catalog].