History
Posts in The Copybook tagged ‘History’
Businessmen in Liverpool engaged George Stephenson to build one of his new-fangled railways.
The first purpose-built freight and passenger railway line linking two cities was opened in 1830, joining the port of Liverpool with the mills around Manchester. The social and economic impact was instant, bringing more real and tangible benefit to Britain’s common man than he had ever known before.
William Wilberforce told Parliament that the more his opponents slandered him, the more he was sure he was winning.
William Wilberforce, Britain’s leading anti-slavery campaigner, was accused of ‘fanaticism’ for his refusal to accept the prevailing customs of the day. But as he warned Parliament, such jibes only made him more determined to fight on.
Conspiracies and dynastic expectations swirled around James I’s daughter from the age of nine.
When King James VI of Scotland became King James I of England in 1603, he brought his family to London, including a seven-year-old daughter named Elizabeth. Just two years later, she was the unwitting focus of a traitorous plot to assassinate her father and put England back under the dominion of Continental Europe.
It started as an honest mistake, became a diplomatic standoff, and brought down an Empire.
In 680, English bishops gathered at Hatfield sent Pope Agatho a signed copy the Creed in which they declared their belief that the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father ‘and the Son’. They would have been horrified to learn that this little phrase was not in the original. Unfortunately, some at Rome had invested so much of their credibility in it that they were prepared to go to any lengths to save face — even if it meant bringing down the Empire.
John Stuart Mill reminds us that governments and the courts must never be allowed to criminalise matters of belief or opinion.
We often see those in power trying to use the courts to silence views they find objectionable, rather than tolerate them or engage with them. But Victorian philosopher John Stuart Mill recalled that many centuries ago, such supposedly high-minded legislation resulted in one of history’s worst miscarriages of justice – the execution of Socrates.