Extracts from Literature
Posts in The Copybook tagged ‘Extracts from Literature’
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.
John Buchan’s dashing adventurer Sandy Arbuthnot didn’t think much of foreign policy after the Great War.
John Buchan was not only a writer of entertaining adventure tales, but a Governor General of Canada and a first-rate military historian. Here, he gives his take on the break-up of the Ottoman Empire after the Great War through his dashing hero Sandy Arbuthnot.
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.
The Victorian practice of hanging sugared nuts on a Christmas tree was bursting with Biblical symbolism.
Victorian Christmas celebrations included hanging nuts, typically sugared almonds, on the tree. This symbolic gesture goes back to a Christian interpretation of a passage from Numbers, which was known in England as long ago as the 10th century.
A professional journalist and author recognises that he has met his match
Bombay-born Rudyard Kipling’s first job was as a journalist in what was then the Indian city of Lahore. Kipling grasped the importance of sending his ‘honest serving-men’ out on duty in the search for accurate reports, but even the most investigative of journalists has to recognise that in certain company, he is a mere amateur.