Harriet Martineau on Tariffs as Class Oppression (1861)

In a letter written in October 1861, the English author Harriet Martineau (1802-1876) argued that tariff protection not only harmed foreign workers but domestic American workers as well, by means of what she termed this "vicious aristrocratic principle":

I perceive you ground your disapprobation of the protective system on the injustice and unkindness to foreign peoples. This is a very strong and quite indisputable ground, but it is not the one I have at all had in view at this time, or wished to bring forward in discussing the matter in the “Standard” or elsewhere. I protest against the vicious aristocratic principle, and the rank oppression exercised over the American people at large, for the selfish interest of certain classes. It is true your shippers and merchants are concerned in and injured by every injury inflicted on foreign commerce; but it is a graver consideration to my mind that every workingman in the country is injured for the illicit benefit of wealthier classes. Popular ignorance alone can have permitted it thus long.

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Recent Additions to the Forum (720 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.]

• Key Documents: Pocket Guide to Political and Civic Rights
• 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

Recent Additions to the Library (1,137 items) (RSS).

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

• Malthus, Principles of Political Economy (1836)
• Voltaire, Works vol. VIII (Dramatic Works)
• Böhm-Bawerk, The Postive Theory of Capital (1884)
• Charles Darwin, The Origin of Species (1859)
• Puritanism & Liberty: The Army Debates (1647-49)

• 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
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• Law: Guide to Political Rights: English, American, French Tradition (1215-1830)
• Political Thought: Alexander Hamilton on Executive Power & Liberty
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• 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.

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

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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)

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