In an essay which John Stuart Mill wrote in 1831 at the age of 26, he confidently announces that “the spirit of the age” in which he lived would bring about revolutionary changes because men had suddenly “insisted on being governed in a new way”:
2006 was the 90th anniversary of two of the bloodiest battles of the First World War, Verdun and the Somme. John Maynard Keynes reminds us of the classical liberal world which was destroyed by that war:
We continue to explore the great treasures which are hidden away in the 33 volume collection of the Collected Works of John Stuart Mill. In 1866, Mill gave a speech in the House of Commons denouncing the English mode of governing Ireland. The occasion was a bill granting the Chief Governor of Ireland the power to suspend habeus corpus, that is “to Apprehend and Detain … Such Persons as He or They Shall Suspect of Conspiring against Her Majesty’s Person and Government.”:
In the Preface to his anthology of writings by the Federalists (the “friends of order”) and the Jeffersonian Republicans (the “friends of liberty”) the late Lance Banning noted that it was a struggle over concepts that are at the core of the American political tradition: popular self-governance, federalism, constitutionalism, and liberty:
Montesquieu, like many writers in the 18th century, thought that commerce would have more than just economic benefits for societies. It would also improve morals.
In a lengthy discussion of the composition and behavior of representative assemblies, Benjamin Constant has this to say about mediocrity (pp. 329-30):
In chapter 19 of the last work he ever completed, Frédéric Bastiat pondered on the nature of war and who benefits from it. He concluded that society is divided into two groups: those who live off the productive activity of others and the vast bulk of the people who engage in productive activities:
In a series of Federalist Papers, John Jay explores how a national government in America might deal with the problems of war and peace:
In the Introductory section of his great work On Liberty, John Stuart Mill states clearly the limits to state power over the liberty of the individual:
Thomas Jefferson opposed vehemently the Alien and Sedition Laws of 1798 which granted the President enormous powers to restrict the activities of supporters of the French Revolution in the United States. Jefferson kept his authorship of the opposing Kentucky Resolutions a secret until 1821. In the 8th resolution Jefferson asserts that the US government had become a tyranny which desired to govern with “a rod of iron”:
Central to Shaftesbury’s idea of liberty is the notion of the free interchange of ideas, even if some of those ideas grate against those of others (p. 42, last paragraph of Section I):
In an extended critique of The Federalist, the pre-Civil War Southern political philosopher John C. Calhoun argued that any system of taxation inevitably divided citizens into two antagonistic groups - the net tax payers and the net tax consumers:
Thomas Gordon is best known as one of the authors of Cato’s Letters, a severe critique of the political corruption and wars of the British Empire which very much influenced the American colonists. In his lengthy “Discourses on Tacitus” he concludes a section on the Follies of Conquering with the following:
In his Lectures on Jurisprudence, Adam Smith notes the importance of the law of habeas corpus in protecting the liberty of subjects against oppression by the king:
2005 was the 300th anniversary of the publication of the poem “The Grumbling Hive” which began Bernard Mandeville’s exploration of the idea that the pursuit of selfish goals by individuals, within the confines of the free market, could produce beneficial public benefits. This Moral concludes the poem:
In a speech in favor of the impeachment of a corrupt magistrate, Caius Verres, Cicero urges the Senate to apply the laws equally in order to protect the reputation of Rome and to provide justice for his victims:
Prometheus has become a symbol of resistance to injustice and the deprivation of liberty. In the words of the Greek playwright Aeschylus, Prometheus defies the gods thusly:
In John Milton’s great poem Christ and Satan argue about the nature of greatness and glory. Christ makes the following points about the true nature of glory:
Mary Wollstonecraft begins Chapter 4 on “Observations on the State of the Degradation to which Woman is reduced by various Causes” with the following observation:
After having fought for individual liberty in the English Revolution, the English poet John Milton was appalled that oppressive monarchy would be returned in 1660:
In SECTION VI. “Of the Progress and Termination of Despotism” of his pioneering work of “philosophical history,” Adam Ferguson reflects on how free and prosperous nations might step-by-step degenerate into despotism:
Hugo Grotius attempted to codify the historical, moral, and legal grounds for justly waging war against an enemy. Here are his thoughts on acts committed in an unjust war:
Hugo Grotius attempted to codify the historical, moral, and legal grounds for justly waging war against an enemy. Here are his thoughts on waging war against a perceived threat:
In 1714 the poem “The Grumbling Hive” was published, which began Bernard Mandeville’s exploration of the idea that the pursuit of selfish goals by individuals, within the confines of the free market, could produce beneficial public benefits:
Even in 1887 there were classical liberals, like the Australian barrister Bruce Smith, who lamented the fact that state intervention was on the increase and that legislators had little regard for individual liberty. Here is his list of principles which all legislators should keep in mind: