The Leveller pamphleteer Richard Overton (16??-1664) defied the House of Lords from Newgate jail where he was incarcerated for refusing to recognize their right to question him without a warrant. To submit to their unjust demands he thought would be an infringement of his right to self-ownership:

Alexis de Tocqueville (1805-1859) believed that the natural form of government for a democratic people was one which was centralized, uniform and strong:

The English individualist political theorist Herbert Spencer (1820-1903) argues in Social Statics (1851) that people have a right to property on the grounds that it is a vital part of their human nature and that it would contradict the “law of equal freedom”:

The English economist and theologian Philip H. Wicksteed (1844-1927) turns Marx’s idea of the evils of the “cash nexus” on its head in his discussion of how the “economic nexus” brings together two groups who would not normally associate with each other very easily, if at all:

The Dutch legal philosopher Hugo Grotius (1583-1645) believed that human beings were by nature sociable creatures and that the purpose of natural rights, especially the right of property, was to enable them to live together in peace and prosperity:

The Commonwealthman Thomas Gordon (1692-1750) has some acute observations about human nature. He thinks most people are too credulous or accepting of political power, and that power has a tendency to expand at the expence of liberty:

The English moral philosopher William Paley (1743-1805) discussed the problems created by the communal ownership of property. He was aware of the incentive problem as well as this early formulation of the “tragedy of the commons”:

The English Catholic historian Lord Acton (1834-1902) believed that liberty emerged almost as an unintended by-product of the conflict between the Church and the monarchies of Europe for absolute authority over the course of nearly 400 years:

The French politician and liberal historian François Guizot (1787-1874) argued that what distinguished European civilization from others, and made it superior, was the fact that no one idea or institution was able to become dominant and this left it free to experiment with many alternatives:

The English radical individualist Herbert Spencer (1820-1903) thought that the prospects for liberty in late 19th century England and America were not good if people continued to believe that the general welfare could be improved by legislation and “wirepulling politicians”:

The German philosopher Immanuel Kant (1724-1804) argued that because the lives and property of a nation’s citizens were used in fighting a war they had the right to give their free consent via their political representatives to every separate declaration of war:

In an article he wrote in January 1847 the French free trade advocate Frédéric Bastiat (1801-1850) dreams he is appointed Prime Minister had outlines his plans to the King to drastically reduce taxes and slash government spending by 50 percent:

The American radical individualist Lysander Spooner (1808-1887) argued that a person could not exercise their “natural right to labor” unless they could also exercise their “natural right to make contracts” which more often than not was restricted by “arbitrary legislation”:

The 18th century German jurist Johann Gottlieb Heineccius (1681–1741) argues that because all “men” are by nature equal we should treat others as equally human and refrain from causing them any injury to the things they have have by nature or have acquired justly:

The French Renaissance essayist Michel de Montaigne (1533-1592) argues that it may be prudent not to criticise a “faulty prince” while he is alive but once he has died we owe it to ourselves and to posterity to expose their crimes and wickedness:

The Quaker William Penn (1644-1718) argued in 1679 for the recognition of three fundamental rights that all Englishmen have: the right to property, the right to share in the making of the laws, and the right to be judged by a jury of one’s peers:

The English radical William Cobbett (1763-1835) did not believe that the British taxpayer should bail out those who had lent money to the British government which had been so profligate in its spending during the wars against Napoleon:

While in prison possibly awaiting execution during the Terror, Condorcet wrote a history of the progress of humanity. In Epoch Nine he notes how the American Revolution influenced the French but explains why the French was more violent:

The English classical liberal historian Lord Acton (1834-1902) wrote a graphic description of the event which triggered the French Revolution on July 14, 1789 - the storming of the fortress and prison of the Bastille in Paris:

In his sly and underhand way the Dutch theologian and critic Desiderius Erasmus (1466-1536) pokes fun at the pretensions of kings and princes and those who believe in their superiority to other people in his work In Praise of Folly (1511):

John Adams (1735-1826) and Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826) both died on July 4, 1824 within hours of each other. In their last years they corresponded about the future of liberty and the role of revolution in bringing free societies into existence. We include here extracts from three letters which they wrote in August and September 1823 on this topic:

The Swiss political theorist Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712-1778) warned that there is a strong tendency for members of the government to usurp the sovereign power in order to pursue their own private interests, leading to tyranny:

The British Philosophic Radical John Wade (1788-1875) compiled detailed lists of all those who used the British state to get taxpayers money and legal privileges with the aim of so angering the British people that they would support the movement for reform:

The Scottish historian John Millar (1735-1801) noted that although it was not the intention of the nobles to promote the liberties of ordinary Englishman when they challenged King John in 1215, by defending their own liberties they created both a precedent and a vocabulary for arguing for liberty against the crown:

James Mill (1773-1836) identifies two groups in British society, namely “the ruling Few” who enjoy legal and economic privileges, and “the subject Many” who pay the taxes and submit to the regulations: