After 20 years of work, Edward Gibbon finally completed his history of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire in 1776. The final paragraph of that monumental work reads as follows:
In Chapter II “Of the Individual Man, and the Highest Ends of his Existence” William von Humboldt explains the connection between liberty and a variety of situations, and their connection to the flourishing of the individual:
In Chapter III of the first volume of his magesterial history of the decline of Rome, Edward Gibbon reflects upon the Constitution of the Roman Empire in the Age of the Antonines:
In Chapter VIII “On Taxes” on page 152, David Ricardo reflects on the impact of taxation and concludes:
Less well known than the official version of the Declaration of Independence of the American colonies is Thomas Jefferson’s first draft where Jeffeson makes the following points about slavery:
Central to Herbert Spencer’s sociology of the state was the distinction between what he called militant types of society and industrial types of society. In the latter type of society he observed that administration by the state is either non-existent or extremely decentralized, as the following quote shows:
Central to Herbert Spencer’s sociology of the state was the distinction between what he called “militant” types of society and “industrial” types of society. In the former type of society he observed a close link between militant activities and economic protectionism as the following quote shows:
In a lecture given in 1898, the great American sociologist William Graham Sumner pondered the long term economic and constitutional consequences of the war against Spain:
The personification of Peace visits Earth and sees with dismay how war ravages human societies. This is, of course, a thinly veiled critique by Erasmus of Europe in the early 16th century:
With the return of spring the memories of Petrarch’s beloved Laura awaken a new pang in him:
John Stuart Mill, the great 19th century English classical liberal, began his book on The Subjection of Women with the following unequivocal statement:
Montesquieu argues that the military expansion of Rome led to its inevitable decline by introducing corruption and the transferring of the loyalty of its citizen soldiers from the city of Rome to their generals:
In a pamphlet structured like a speech given before Parliament, the great English poet John Milton gave one of the most stirring defences of a free press ever penned:
John Milton draws upon classical authorities and Christian writers to support his argument that the people have the right and duty to rise up in rebellion and overthrow a tyrant:
John Locke begins his advice to a Gentleman on the importance of reading with the following thoughts:
In his discussion of the division of labor, Adam Smith argues that the propensity to truck, barter, and exchange is part of human nature:
In a collection of brilliant essays ranging over a number of disciplines, David Hume reflects on the key aspect of the state - why people obey:
A few years after the defeat of Napoleon, the English radical individualist Thomas Hodgskin toured northern Germany where he observed the economic, political, and social condition of the people:
On the first anniversary of the public launch of the Online Library of Liberty, we took a look back at another anniversary. In this case, an oration given in Boston 1802 by William Emerson, the father of Ralph Waldo Emerson, on the anniversary of the American Declaration of Independence:
In a youthful essay, which may or may not be satirical, Edmund Burke criticizes all forms of government intervention, or what he calls “artificial society”:
In Act II Scene II of Joseph Addison’s play, Decius, the Ambassador from Caesar, asks Cato what it would take for Cato to be Caesar’s “friend” as Caesar began using his military successes to pave the way to his political conquest of Rome:
In a chapter entitled “Why Great Men Are Not Chosen Presidents” in his book The American Commonwealth, Viscount James Bryce explores this question at some length:
In a discourse about the dangers to liberty of standing armies, Andrew Fletcher makes an interesting point about how easily deluded people can become about the gradual loss of traditional liberties:
In the first part called “Of Man” in his great work of political philosophy Leviathan, Thomas Hobbes explores the nature of speech and imagination, reason and science, virtue and manners, in an effort to establish the foundation of his theory of the laws of nature. Concerning science and reason he concludes:
Auberon Herbert argues in this essay written in 1894 that the true nature of government is the exercise of coercion and, once the veneer of elections and parliamentary oratory is stripped away, its purer essence is revealed: