Welcome to the Online Library of Liberty

The OLL brings books and ideas together so they can converse with each other and with you. We’ve gathered together collections of texts from historical movements and about big ideas that have changed the world to make it easier to allow our texts to “talk” to each other.

Featured Titles

The Complete Works of Geoffrey Chaucer, vol. 4 (The Canterbury Tales)

Geoffrey Chaucer (author)

The late 19th century Skeat edition with copious scholarly notes and a good introduction to the text. The Tales are in their original Middle English.

The Coal Question

William Stanley Jevons (author)

A warning that Britain would face rising costs for coal as other nations industrialized and that this would have a deep impact on the British economy and way of life.

The History of British India, 6 vols. (1826)

James Mill (author)

James Mill’s History is a work of Benthamite “philosophical history” from which the reader is supposed to draw lessons about human nature, reason and religion, and the deleterious impact of commercial monopolies like the East India…

The Law (revised LF ed.)

Frédéric Bastiat (author)

This is a revised edition of Liberty Fund’s translation of Bastiat’s famous essay on The State which was one of the last things he wrote before he died in 1850.

The Reading Room

The OLL blog explores the fascinating, vital, and often surprising texts and people that fill our library. Come talk in our library!

OLL’s March Birthday: Maimonides (30 March 1135 [?] – 12 December 1204)

March’s OLL birthday essay is in honor of the great Jewish rabbi, legal scholar, philosopher, community leader, and physician Moses ben Maimon, better known by the Hellenized version of his name, Maimonides.  In Hebrew he is often called “Rambam,” an abbreviation of “Our Rabbi Moses, son of…
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Liberty Matters

The OLL brings people together to debate and discuss important texts and big ideas about liberty.

Jefferson in Time: Perspectives through His Eyes

Thomas Jefferson was born April 13, 1743 and died on July 4th, 1826. During his 83 years Jefferson saw and brought about dramatic changes in law, slavery, and religious toleration. His efforts were imperfect but he did, throughout his life, attempt to live up to his ideals.
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Food & Drink

Chagrined a little that we have been hitherto able to produce nothing in this way of use to mankind; and the hot weather coming on, when the electrical experiments are not so agreeable, it is proposed to put an end to them for this…

Benjamin Franklin

Socialism & Interventionism

The moving parts are men, that is, beings capable of learning, reflecting, reasoning, of making errors and of correcting them, and consequently of making the mechanism itself better or worse. They are capable of pain and pleasure,…

Frédéric Bastiat

Taxation

Under the auspices of tyranny the life of the subject is often sported with, and the fruits of his daily toil are consumed in oppressive taxes, that serve to gratify the ambition, avarice, and lusts of his superiors. Every court…

Alexander Hamilton

References and Guides

Goodrich Seminar Room

In the Goodrich Seminar Room in the Lilly Library at Wabash College, Crawfordsville, Indiana the limestone walls are engraved with the names of the political and legal documents and authors which Pierre Goodrich, the founder of Liberty Fund, believed had most contributed to our understanding of…
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Mahabharata

 

Source: Translator's Epilogue to the Maha-bharata, The Ramayana and the Mahabharata condensed into English Verse by Romesh C. Dutt (London: J.M. Dent, 1917).

TRANSLATOR’S EPILOGUE

 

ANCIENT India, like ancient Greece, boasts of two great Epics. One of them, the Maha-bharata,

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Montaigne: A Sketch

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Montaigne

Source: Life and Letters of Montaigne with Notes and Index, vol. 10, trans. Charles Cotton, revised by William Carew Hazlett (New York: Edwin C. Hill, 1910).

  SKETCH OF THE LIFE OF MONTAIGNE BY WILLIAM CAREW HAZLETT

 

THE AUTHOR of the Essays was born, as…

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Chronology: The Life and Work of Edmund Burke

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Edmund Burke Collections: Political Theory

Related Links in the Goodrich Seminar Room:

Edmund Burke

Source: Introduction to Select Works of Edmund Burke. A New Imprint of the Payne Edition. Foreword and Biographical Note by Francis Canavan (Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, 1999).…

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Rousseau and Hume: Contrasting Views of Liberty

This is a Reading List based upon a Liberty Fund Conference on “Contrasting Views of Liberty in Hume and Rousseau.”

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Homer's Iliad: Liberty and Responsibility

This is a Reading List based upon a Liberty Fund Conference on “Liberty and Responsibility in Homer’s Iliad.”

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1776: Paine, Common Sense (Pamphlet)

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Collections: The American Revolution and Constitution Thomas Paine

Source: Thomas Paine, The Writings of Thomas Paine, Collected and Edited by Moncure Daniel Conway (New York: G.P. Putnam’s Sons, 1894). Vol. 1.

 

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1798: Alien and Sedition Acts

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Collections: The American Revolution and Constitution

Source: The American Republic: Primary Sources, ed. Bruce Frohnen (Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, 2002).

 

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David Ricardo

This is a collection of key extracts by, and essays and study guides about David Ricardo (1772-1823).

See also the following works:

Works in the OLL by David Ricardo (1772-1823) Timeline: The Life of David Ricardo (1772-1823) Bibliography: Economics and Ideology: Aspects of the Post-Ricardian…

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James Mill

This is a collection of key extracts by, and essays and study guides about James Mill

See also the following works:

Exploring Ideas: James Mill on Writing his Critical History of India Reading List: Mill-Macaulay Debate on Government Liberty Matters: James Mill on Liberty and Governance…

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The Intellectual Portrait Series: A Conversation with Jacques Barzun

One of our most distinguished contemporary cultural historians, Jacques Barzun reflects on his long academic career and the movement of ideas he helped to shape through his seminal writings on liberal education in America.

Watch the video version on our YouTube channel.

Below are some prompts for…
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On Being a Conservative Philosopher: Tensions in the Work of Michael Oakeshott

Michael Oakeshott has often been considered to be a conservative philosopher.  This essay will explore what that might mean and highlight some of the tensions between conservatism and philosophy in Oakeshott’s writings.*

October 3, 2024

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