History
Posts in The Copybook tagged ‘History’
Good government is not about enforcing uniform order, but about maximising liberty among a particular people.
Edmund Burke, MP for Bristol, would have had little truck with European ‘harmonisation’. He argued that the job of any government is to judge sensitively, for a particular people, the smallest degree of restraint needed to keep their freedom fresh — in that country, and at that time — and then stop.
Edmund Burke told fellow MPs that the only way to unite the peoples of the Empire was for London to set them an enviable example.
Edmund Burke reminded the House of Commons that her enviable international influence did not depend on government bureacracy or complex trade deals or military might. It arose from Britain’s ‘unique selling point’, a love of liberty her colonies could find nowhere else.
Free trade brings to smaller nations all the advantages of empire without the disadvantages.
Adam Smith acknowledged that one advantage of empire was that goods and people could be readily moved internally, wherever they were needed. But he noted that you can get all that by each nation voluntarily adopting a policy of free trade.
David Hume encourages politicians to put away their distrust of other countries, and allow free trade to flourish.
Politicians waste years and squander billions thrashing out grudging trade deals in an atmosphere of mutual distrust. But back in the 1740s, Scottish philospher David Hume argued that if we wish to be prosperous ourselves we should welcome prosperity in our neighbours.
William Pitt the Elder berates Parliament for treating the public like know-nothings.
In June 1770, the Spanish invaded the Falkland Islands. The Government was inclined to sell the islanders out, and smooth over public outrage with words of assurance from King George III. But veteran statesman William Pitt ‘the Elder’, Earl of Chatham, warned them that such a patronising attitude risked losing public trust.
A survivor of the infamous massacre of Chios in 1821 goes to Marseilles, but discovers he has not entirely left the Turks behind.
In the 1850s, Britain was allied with Turkey against Russia. Charles Dickens said all the right things, but felt compelled to remind his British readers of a little recent Turkish history, the brutal massacre of Chios on March 31st, 1821, and then added this modest tale of revenge.