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DAVID HART'S WEBPAGE

 

The Classical Liberal Tradition
Quotations about Liberty and Power

[Created: 13 August, 2024]
[Updated: 22 August, 2024]

Introduction

I compiled this collection of 600 quotations about liberty and power over a 14 year period 2004-2018 for the Liberty Fund's Online Library of Liberty of which I was the founding Director. It was designed to show the range of thinking about the 30 or so topics listed below, as well as to provide an entry point to the full text in order to allow the reader to explore the topic more deeply. This list is of the titles of the quotes only. To read the full quotation and my comments follow the link provided back to the OLL website.

The OLL has broken the links back to the specific paragraph where the quotation is located. The link still takes you eventually to the whole text. From there you will have to navigate to the quote yourself. Sorry!

Guides to the Classical Liberal Tradition

This Guide is part of a collection of material relating to the history and theory of classical liberal/libertarian thought:

  1. a series of lectures and blog posts on The Classical Liberal Tradition: A 400 Year History of People, Ideas, and Movements for Reform
  2. The Great Books of Liberty: the large Guillaumin Collection in an "enhanced" HTML format and a citation tool for scholars (nearly 200 titles); and my personal favourites
  3. a collection of 600 Quotations about Liberty and Power from some of the key works in the Classical Liberal tradition. This collection of shorter pieces is organised into 30 topics. Each quotation has a brief commentary.
  4. The Classical Liberal Tradition: A Reader on Individual, Economic, and Political Liberty with a 100 or so chapter-length items to date. Each extract is accompanied by an introduction.
  5. articles from The Encyclopedia of Libertarianism (2008) organised thematically
  6. a collection of 25 key documents in the history of the evolution of our individual, political, and economic rights: On Limiting the Power of the State: A Collection of Petitions, Charters, Decrees, and Declarations of Rights and Liberties (1215-1848)

 

 

Table of Contents

  1. Class
  2. Colonies, Slavery & Abolition
  3. Economics
  4. Education
  5. Food & Drink
  6. Free Trade
  7. Freedom of Speech
  8. Justice
  9. Law
  10. Liberty
  11. Literature & Music
  12. Money & Banking
  13. Natural Rights
  14. Odds & Ends
  15. Origin of Government
  16. Parties & Elections
  17. Philosophy
  18. Politics & Liberty
  19. Presidents, Kings, Tyrants, & Despots
  20. Property Rights
  21. Religion & Toleration
  22. Revolution
  23. Rhetoric of Liberty
  24. Science
  25. Socialism & Interventionism
  26. Society
  27. Sport and Liberty
  28. Taxation
  29. The State
  30. War & Peace
  31. Women’s Rights

 

 

Topic 1: Class↩

  1. John C. Calhoun notes that taxation divides the community into two great antagonistic classes, those who pay the taxes and those who benefit from them (1850) [OLL website]
  2. John Stuart Mill discusses the origins of the state whereby the “productive class” seeks protection from one “member of the predatory class” in order to gain some security of property (1848) [OLL website]
  3. Richard Cobden outlines his strategy of encouraging more people to acquire land and thus the right to vote in order to defeat the “landed oligarchy” who ruled England and imposed the “iniquity” of the Corn Laws (1845) [OLL website]
  4. James Madison on the “sagacious and monied few” who are able to “harvest” the benefits of government regulations (1787) [OLL website]
  5. Bentham on how “the ins” and “the outs” lie to the people in order to get into power (1843) [OLL website]
  6. James Mill on the “sinister interests” of those who wield political power (1825) [OLL website]
  7. Molinari on the elites who benefited from the State of War (1899) [OLL website]
  8. James Mill on the ruling Few and the subject Many (1835) [OLL website]
  9. William Cobbett on the dangers posed by the “Paper Aristocracy” (1804) [OLL website]
  10. Herbert Spencer observes that class structures emerge in societies as a result of war and violence (1882) [OLL website]
  11. Jeremy Bentham argued that the ruling elite benefits from corruption, waste, and war (1827) [OLL website]
  12. Adam Smith on why people obey and defer to their rulers (1759) [OLL website]
  13. Algernon Sidney on how the absolute state treats its people like cattle (1698) [OLL website]
  14. Adam Smith on the dangers of faction and privilege seeking (1759) [OLL website]
  15. Yves Guyot warns that a new ruling class of managers and officials will emerge in the supposedly “classless” socialist society of the future (1908) [OLL website]
  16. James Bryce on the autocratic oligarchy which controls the party machine in the American democratic system (1921) [OLL website]
  17. Jeremy Bentham on how the interests of the many (the people) are always sacrificed to the interests of the few (the sinister interests) (1823) [OLL website]
  18. Adam Smith thinks many candidates for high political office act as if they are above the law (1759) [OLL website]
  19. William Graham Sumner on the political corruption which is “jobbery” (1884) [OLL website]

 

 

Topic 2: Colonies, Slavery & Abolition↩

  1. Less well known is Thomas Jefferson’s First Draft of the Declaration of Independence in which he denounced the slave trade as an “execrable Commerce” and slavery itself as a “cruel war against nature itself” (1776) [OLL website]
  2. Adam Smith notes that colonial governments might exercise relative freedom in the metropolis but impose tyranny in the distant provinces (1776) [OLL website]
  3. John Millar argues that as a society becomes wealthier domestic freedom increases, even to the point where slavery is thought to be pernicious and economically inefficient (1771) [OLL website]
  4. J.B. Say argues that colonial slave labor is really quite profitable for the slave owners at the expense of the slaves and the home consumers (1817) [OLL website]
  5. Jean-Baptiste Say argues that home-consumers bear the brunt of the cost of maintaining overseas colonies and that they also help support the lavish lifestyles of the planter and merchant classes (1817) [OLL website]
  6. Thomas Clarkson on the “glorious” victory of the abolition of the slave trade in England (1808) [OLL website]
  7. Jeremy Bentham relates a number of “abominations” to the French National Convention urging them to emancipate their colonies (1793) [OLL website]
  8. John Stuart Mill on the “atrocities” committed by Governor Eyre and his troops in putting down the Jamaica rebellion (1866) [OLL website]
  9. Harriet Martineau on the institution of slavery, “restless slaves”, and the Bill of Rights (1838) [OLL website]
  10. Sir William Blackstone declares unequivocally that slavery is “repugnant to reason, and the principles of natural law” and that it has no place in English law (1753) [OLL website]
  11. Emerson on the right of self-ownership of slaves to themselves and to their labor (1863) [OLL website]
  12. Frederick Douglass makes a New Year’s resolution to gain his freedom from slavery (1836) [OLL website]
  13. John Stuart Mill on “the sacred right of insurrection” (1862) [OLL website]
  14. Tocqueville on Centralised Government in Canada and Decentralised Government in America (1856) [OLL website]
  15. Benjamin Franklin on making the transition from slavery to civil liberty (1789) [OLL website]
  16. Mises on wealth creation and stopping the spirit of predatory militarism (1949) [OLL website]

 

 

Topic 3: Economics↩

  1. Adam Smith on the natural ordering Tendency of Free Markets, or what he called the “Invisible Hand” (1776) [OLL website]
  2. Voltaire on the Benefits which Trade and Economic Abundance bring to People living in the Present Age (1736) [OLL website]
  3. Adam Smith argued that the “propensity to truck, barter, and exchange” was inherent in human nature and gave rise to things such as the division of labour (1776) [OLL website]
  4. Bernard Mandeville uses a fable about bees to show how prosperity and good order comes about through spontaneous order (1705) [OLL website]
  5. Bernard Mandeville concludes his fable of the bees with a moral homily on the virtues of peace, hard work, and diligence (1705) [OLL website]
  6. Montesquieu thought that commerce improves manners and cures “the most destructive prejudices” (1748) [OLL website]
  7. Forrest McDonald argues that the Founding Fathers envisaged a new economic order based upon Lockean notions of private property and the creation of the largest contiguous area of free trade in the world (2006) [OLL website]
  8. Adam Ferguson observed that social structures of all kinds were “the result of human action, but not the execution of any human design” (1782) [OLL website]
  9. Lord Macaulay writes a devastating review of Southey’s Colloquies in which the Poet Laureate’s ignorance of the real condition of the working class in England is exposed (1830) [OLL website]
  10. Ludwig von Mises argues that the division of labor and human cooperation are the two sides of the same coin and are not antagonistic to each other (1949) [OLL website]
  11. Jean-Baptiste Say argues that there is a world of difference between private consumption and public consumption; an increase in the latter does nothing to increase public wealth (1803) [OLL website]
  12. Frank Taussig argues for the reverse of a common misconception about the relationship between high wages and the use of machinery (1915) [OLL website]
  13. Kirzner defines economics as the reconciliation of conflicting ends given the existence of inescapable scarcity (1960) [OLL website]
  14. Wicksteed on the subjective theory of value and on opportunity costs (1910) [OLL website]
  15. Bentham on the proper role of government: “Be Quiet” and “Stand out of my sunshine” (1843) [OLL website]
  16. Bastiat asks the fundamental question of political economy: what should be the size of the state? (1850) [OLL website]
  17. Mises on the interconnection between economic and political freedom (1949) [OLL website]
  18. Adam Smith on the greater productivity brought about by the division of labor and technological innovation (1760s) [OLL website]
  19. Bastiat on the state vs. laissez-faire (1848) [OLL website]
  20. Spencer on spontaneous order produced by “the beneficent working of social forces” (1879) [OLL website]
  21. Alexander Pope on how private “self love” can lead to the public good (1732) [OLL website]
  22. Bastiat on trade as a the mutual exchange of “a service for another service” (1848) [OLL website]
  23. Bentham on the liberty of contracts and lending money at interest (1787) [OLL website]
  24. Horace Say on “I, Pin” and the international division of labor (1852) [OLL website]
  25. Ludwig Lachmann and the free market as a leveling process in the distribution of wealth (1956) [OLL website]
  26. James Buchanan on “process” and the market order (1982) [OLL website]
  27. Destutt de Tracy on the damage which government debt and the class which lives off loans to the state cause the industrious classes (1817) [OLL website]
  28. Paul Heyne on THE economic way of thinking (1995) [OLL website]
  29. Lao Tzu and the Tao of laissez-faire (6thC BC) [OLL website]
  30. Adam Smith debunks that idea that when it comes to public debt “we owe it to ourselves” (1776) [OLL website]
  31. Spooner on the “natural right to labor” and to acquire all one honestly can (1846) [OLL website]
  32. Philip Wicksteed’s positive vision of the “cash nexus” (1910) [OLL website]
  33. Philip Wicksteed on how impersonal economic relations help others (1910) [OLL website]
  34. Destutt de Tracy on the mutually beneficial nature of exchange (1817) [OLL website]
  35. Arthur Seldon on the problem of “who guards us from the guardians”? (1990) [OLL website]
  36. Destutt de Tracy on society as “nothing but a succession of exchanges” (1817) [OLL website]
  37. Anthony de Jasay on the free rider problem (2008) [OLL website]
  38. Mises on the consumer as the “captain” of the economic ship (1944) [OLL website]
  39. Lysander Spooner on why government monopolies like the post office are inherently inefficient (1844) [OLL website]
  40. Bernard Mandeville on the social cooperation which is required to produce a piece of scarlet cloth (1723) [OLL website]
  41. James Mill’s formulation of “Say’s Law” (1808) [OLL website]
  42. William Graham Sumner on the industrial system as an example of social co-operation (c. 1900) [OLL website]
  43. Philip Wicksteed on “non-tuism” in economic relations (1910) [OLL website]
  44. Robert Molesworth on the benefits of open borders and free immigration (1705) [OLL website]

 

 

Topic 4: Education↩

  1. Adam Smith on the rigorous education of young Fitzmaurice (1759) [OLL website]
  2. John Locke tells a “gentleman” how important reading and thinking is to a man of his station whose “proper calling” should be the service of his country (late 1600s) [OLL website]
  3. Forrest McDonald discusses the reading habits of colonial Americans and concludes that their thinking about politics and their shared values was based upon their wide reading, especially of history (1978) [OLL website]
  4. The ex-slave Frederick Douglass reveals that reading speeches by English politicians produced in him a deep love of liberty and hatred of oppression (1882) [OLL website]
  5. Adam Smith on compulsory attendance in the classroom (1776) [OLL website]

 

 

Topic 5: Food & Drink↩

  1. Adam Smith on how Government Regulation and Taxes might drive a Man to Drink (1766) [OLL website]
  2. Erasmus argues that Philosophizing is all very well but there is also a need for there to be a Philosopher of the Kitchen (1518) [OLL website]
  3. As if in answer to Erasmus’ prayer, Spencer does become a Philosopher of the Kitchen arguing that “if there is a wrong in respect of the taking of food (and drink) there must also be a right” (1897) [OLL website]
  4. David Hume examines the pride of the turkey (and other creatures) (1739) [OLL website]
  5. Herbert Spencer on the pitfalls of arguing with friends at the dinner table (1897) [OLL website]
  6. Lysander Spooner on the idea that laws against “vice” (victimless crimes) are unjust (1875) [OLL website]
  7. Bastiat, the 1830 Revolution, and the Spilling of Wine not Blood (1830) [OLL website]
  8. Benjamin Franklin on killing and cooking a turkey with electricity (1748) [OLL website]
  9. William Graham Sumner on how “society” helps the drunkard in the gutter (1883) [OLL website]

 

 

Topic 6: Free Trade↩

  1. Jane Haldimand Marcet, in a popular tale written for ordinary readers, shows the benefits to workers of foreign trade, especially at Christmas time (1833) [OLL website]
  2. Harriet Martineau condemns tariffs as a “vicious aristocratic principle” designed to harm the ordinary working man and woman (1861) [OLL website]
  3. Adam Smith argues that retaliation in a trade war can sometimes force the offending country to lower its tariffs, but more often than not the reverse happens (1776) [OLL website]
  4. John Ramsay McCulloch argues that smuggling is “wholly the result of vicious commercial and financial legislation” and that it could be ended immediately by abolishing this legislation (1899) [OLL website]
  5. Condy Raguet argues that governments cannot create wealth by means of legislation and that individuals are better judges of the best way to use their capital and labor than governments (1835) [OLL website]
  6. Yves Guyot accuses all those who seek Protection from foreign competition of being “Socialists” (1893) [OLL website]
  7. William Grampp shows how closely connected Richard Cobden’s desire for free trade was to his desire for peace (1960) [OLL website]
  8. Bastiat on the spirit of free trade as a reform of the mind itself (1847) [OLL website]
  9. Richard Cobden’s “I have a dream” speech about a world in which free trade is the governing principle (1846) [OLL website]
  10. Frédéric Bastiat on the most universally useful freedom, namely to work and to trade (1847) [OLL website]
  11. Adam Smith on how “furious monopolists” will fight to the bitter end to keep their privileges (1776) [OLL website]
  12. Guyot on the protectionist tyranny (1906) [OLL website]
  13. The 9th Day of Christmas: Condy Raguet on the anti-Christian character of protection and the need for peace on earth (1832) [OLL website]
  14. The 12th Day of Christmas: Frank Chodorov on free trade as the harbinger of goodwill among men and peace on earth (1940) [OLL website]
  15. Henry George on a “free trade America” as the real city set on a hill (1886) [OLL website]
  16. John Taylor on how a republic can “fleece its citizens” just as well as a monarchy (1822) [OLL website]
  17. Adam Smith on the “liberal system” of free trade (1776) [OLL website]
  18. Cobden on the folly of using government force to “protect commerce” (1836) [OLL website]
  19. Henry George on how trade sanctions hurt domestic consumers (1886) [OLL website]
  20. Lord Kames argued that neither the King nor Parliament had the right to grant monopolies because they harmed the interests of the people (1778) [OLL website]
  21. The right to free trade under Magna Carta (1215) [OLL website]
  22. David Hume on how the prosperity of one’s neighbors increases one’s own prosperity (1777) [OLL website]
  23. Jean-Baptiste Say regards regulations which favor producers as a form of political privilege at the expence of the community (1803) [OLL website]
  24. Nicholas Barbon on the mutual benefits of free trade even in luxury goods (“wants of the mind”) (1690) [OLL website]
  25. Mises on how the “boon” of a tariff privilege is soon dissipated (1949) [OLL website]
  26. William Fox on the hypocrisy of those who do not want to be dependent on foreign trade (1844) [OLL website]
  27. Henry George on the scramble to get government favors known as trade “protection” (1886) [OLL website]
  28. Frédéric Bastiat’s theory of plunder (1850) [OLL website]
  29. William Graham Sumner on free trade as another aspect of individual liberty (1888) [OLL website]
  30. Molinari calls the idea of using tariffs to promote a nation’s economy “a monstrosity” (1852) [OLL website]
  31. Richard Cobden on how free trade would unite mankind in the bonds of peace (1850) [OLL website]

 

 

Topic 7: Freedom Of Speech↩

  1. John Milton gave a speech before Parliament defending the right of freedom of speech in which he likened the government censors to an “oligarchy” and free speech to a “flowery crop of knowledge” (1644) [OLL website]
  2. John Milton opposed censorship for many reasons but one thought sticks in the mind, that “he who destroys a good book, kills reason itself” (1644) [OLL website]
  3. Thomas efferson’s preference for “newspapers without government” over “government without newspapers” (1787) [OLL website]
  4. Benjamin Constant and the Freedom of the Press (1815) [OLL website]
  5. John Milton on the tyranny of government licensed printing (1644) [OLL website]
  6. Spinoza on being master of one’s own thoughts (1670) [OLL website]
  7. The Earl of Shaftesbury on the value of good conversations for questioning everything (1709) [OLL website]
  8. Benedict de Spinoza on the natural right every person has to think and speak on any subject they choose (1670) [OLL website]
  9. Elisha Williams on the unalienable right every person has to think and judge for themselves (1744) [OLL website]

 

 

Topic 8: Justice↩

  1. Cicero urges the Senate to apply the laws equally in order to protect the reputation of Rome and to provide justice for the victims of a corrupt magistrate (1stC BC) [OLL website]
  2. Lysander Spooner spells out his theory of “mine and thine”, or the science of natural law and justice, which alone can ensure that mankind lives in peace (1882) [OLL website]
  3. St. Augustine states that kingdoms without justice are mere robberies, and robberies are like small kingdoms; but large Empires are piracy writ large (5th C) [OLL website]
  4. Pascal and the absurd notion that the principles of justice vary across state borders (1669) [OLL website]
  5. James Mackintosh on the relationship between justice and utility (1791) [OLL website]
  6. Adam Smith on the legitimacy of using force to ensure justice (1759) [OLL website]
  7. Adam Smith on the illegitimacy of using force to promote beneficence (1759) [OLL website]
  8. Jean Barbeyrac on the need to disobey unjust laws (1715) [OLL website]

 

 

Topic 9: Law↩

  1. Sir Edward Coke defends British Liberties and the Idea of Habeas Corpus in the Petition of Right before Parliament (1628) [OLL website]
  2. Bruno Leoni on the different Ways in which Needs can be satisfied, either voluntarily through the Market or coercively through the State (1963) [OLL website]
  3. Adam Smith argues that the Habeas Corpus Act is a great security against the tyranny of the king (1763) [OLL website]
  4. J.S. Mill in a speech before parliament denounced the suspension of Habeas Corpus and the use of flogging in Ireland, saying that those who ordered this “deserved flogging as much as any of those who were flogged by his orders” (1866) [OLL website]
  5. John Locke on the idea that “wherever law ends, tyranny begins” (1689) [OLL website]
  6. The legal historian Hazeltine wrote in an essay commemorating the 700th anniversary of Magna Carta that the American colonists regarded Magna Carta as the “bulwark of their rights as Englishmen” (1917) [OLL website]
  7. Bruno Leoni notes the strong connection between economic freedom and decentralized legal decision-making (1961) [OLL website]
  8. John Adams argues that the British Empire is not a “true” empire but a form of a “republic” where the rule of law operates (1763) [OLL website]
  9. The IVth Amendment to the American Constitution states that the people shall be secure in their persons against unreasonable searches and seizures and that no warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause (1788) [OLL website]
  10. John Adams predicts a glorious future for America under the new constitution and is in “reverence and awe” at its future prospects (1787) [OLL website]
  11. Sir William Blackstone provides a strong defence of personal liberty and concludes that to “secretly hurry” a man to prison is a “dangerous engine of arbitrary government” (1753) [OLL website]
  12. Cesare Beccaria says that torture is cruel and barbaric and a violation of the principle that no one should be punished until proven guilty in a court of law; in other words it is the “right of power” (1764) [OLL website]
  13. Lysander Spooner on Jury Nullification as the “palladium of liberty” against the tyranny of government (1852) [OLL website]
  14. Lysander Spooner states the importance of the 9th Amendment to the American Constitution which protects the natural rights of the people not enumerated in the 1st 8 Amendments (1886) [OLL website]
  15. Sir Edward Coke explains one of the key sections of Magna Carta on English liberties (1642) [OLL website]
  16. Algernon Sidney on the need for the law to be “deaf, inexorable, inflexible” and not subject to the arbitrary will of the ruler (1698) [OLL website]
  17. Pollock on “our lady” the common law and her devoted servants (1911) [OLL website]
  18. Tiedeman states that the police powers under the constitution are strictly limited to enforcing the maxim: “use your own property in such a manner as not to injure that of another” (1886) [OLL website]
  19. Algernon Sidney argues that a law that is not just is not a law (1683) [OLL website]
  20. Plucknett on the Renaissance state’s “war against the idea of law” (1956) [OLL website]
  21. Plucknett contrasts the flexibility and adaptability of customary law with the rigidity and remoteness of state legislation (1956) [OLL website]
  22. Jasay on the superiority of “spontaneous conventions” over “legal frameworks” (2007) [OLL website]
  23. James Wilson argues that it is the people, not the prince, who is superior in matters of legal sovereignty (1790) [OLL website]
  24. Tiedeman on the victimless crime of vagrancy (1900) [OLL website]
  25. Montesquieu and law as a fishing net (1720) [OLL website]
  26. Sir Edward Coke declares that your house is your “Castle and Fortress” (1604) [OLL website]
  27. Frédéric Bastiat asks what came first, property or law? (1850) [OLL website]
  28. Herbert Spencer on the superiority of private enterprise over State activity (1853) [OLL website]
  29. James Mackintosh on how constitutions grow and are not made (1799) [OLL website]
  30. Under Magna Carta the King cannot imprison a freeman without being convicted by a trial of his peers (1215) [OLL website]
  31. The Leveller John Lilburne argues from prison that the King and the Magistrate must obey the law like everyone else (1648) [OLL website]
  32. Thomas Aquinas on why the law should not punish imperfect men for practising vices which do not harm others (1274) [OLL website]

 

 

Topic 10: Liberty↩

  1. Simeon Howard on liberty as the opposition to “external force and constraint” (1773) [OLL website]
  2. Madison on “Parchment Barriers” and the defence of liberty I (1788) [OLL website]
  3. Alexis de Tocqueville on the true love of liberty (1856) [OLL website]
  4. Immanuel Kant on the natural right to seek happiness in one’s own way (1791) [OLL website]
  5. John Millar on liberty as an unintended consequence of a struggle between tyrants (1787) [OLL website]
  6. Bastiat’s has a utopian dream of drastically reducing the size of the French state (1847) [OLL website]
  7. Herbert Spencer on the prospects for liberty (1882) [OLL website]
  8. Guizot on how intellectual and political diversity and competition created a unique European civilization (1828) [OLL website]
  9. Richard Overton argues that to submit to the unjust rule by another is to violate one’s right of self ownership (1646) [OLL website]
  10. Magna Carta guaranteed the freemen of the kingdom their liberties forever (1215) [OLL website]
  11. Mises on liberalism and the battle of ideas (1927) [OLL website]
  12. Jacques Maritain on the dynamism of freedom (1938) [OLL website]
  13. Edmund Burke on liberty as “social” not “individual” liberty (1789) [OLL website]
  14. Liberty in the French Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen (1789) [OLL website]
  15. Guizot on man’s unquenchable desire for liberty and free political institutions (1820-22) [OLL website]
  16. Richard Price on giving thanks for the principles of the Revolution of 1688 (1789) [OLL website]
  17. De Lolme on Liberty as equality under the laws (1784) [OLL website]
  18. Madame de Staël on how liberty is ancient and despotism is modern (1818) [OLL website]
  19. The Levellers’ Declaration of Independence (March 1647) [OLL website]
  20. Joseph Priestley on the presumption of liberty (1771) [OLL website]

 

 

Topic 11: Literature & Music↩

  1. Shakespeare farewells his lover in a Sonnet using many mercantile and legal metaphors (1609) [OLL website]
  2. During the American Revolution Thomas Paine penned a patriotic song called “Hail Great Republic” which is to be sung to the tune of Rule Britannia (of course!) (1776) [OLL website]
  3. In Joseph Addison’s play Cato Cato is asked what it would take for him to be Caesar’s “friend” - his answer is that Caesar would have to first “disband his legions” and then “restore the commonwealth to liberty” (1713) [OLL website]
  4. With the return of spring the memories of Petrarch’s beloved Laura awaken a new pang in him (late 14thC) [OLL website]
  5. John Milton in Paradise Regained has Christ deplore the “false glory” which comes from military conquest and the despoiling of nations in battle (1671) [OLL website]
  6. Aeschylus has Prometheus denounce the lord of heaven for unjustly punishing him for giving mankind the gift of fire (5thC BC) [OLL website]
  7. In Shakespeare’s Henry V the soldier Williams confronts the king by saying that “few die well that die in a battle” and that “a heavy reckoning” awaits the king that led them to it (1598) [OLL website]
  8. In Shakespeare’s Henry V the king is too easily persuaded by his advisors that the English economy will continue to function smoothly, like obedient little honey-bees in their hive, while he is away with his armies conquering France (1598) [OLL website]
  9. In Shakespeare’s The Tempest Caliban complains about the way the European lord Prospero taught him language and science then enslaved him and dispossessed him of the island on which he was born (1611) [OLL website]
  10. In Percy Shelley’s poem Liberty liberty is compared to a force of nature sweeping the globe, where “tyrants and slaves are like shadows of night” which will disappear in “the van of the morning light” (1824) [OLL website]
  11. In Measure for Measure Shakespeare has Isabella denounce the Duke’s deputy for being corrupted by power, “it is excellent To have a giant’s strength, but it is tyrannous To use it like a giant” (1623) [OLL website]
  12. Shakespeare in Pericles on how the rich and powerful are like whales who eat up the harding working “little fish” (1608) [OLL website]
  13. Percy Bysshe Shelley on the new Constitution of Naples which he hoped would be “as a mirror to make … blind slaves see” (1820) [OLL website]
  14. J.S. Bach and Martin Luther on how God (the “feste Burg”) helps us gain our freedom (1730) [OLL website]
  15. Shakespeare has King Henry IV reflect on the reasons for invading the Holy Land, namely to distract people from domestic civil war and to “march all one way” under his banner (1597) [OLL website]
  16. Confucius edited this collection of poems which contains a poem about “Yellow Birds” who ravenously eat the crops of the local people, thus alienating them completely (520 BC) [OLL website]
  17. Augustin Thierry relates the heroic tale of the Kentishmen who defeat William the Conqueror and so are able to keep their ancient laws and liberties (1856) [OLL website]
  18. Voltaire in Candide says that “tending one’s own garden” is not only a private activity but also productive (1759) [OLL website]
  19. Beethoven’s hero Florestan in the opera Fidelio laments the loss of his liberty for speaking the truth to power (1805) [OLL website]
  20. On Achilles’ new shield Vulcan depicts the two different types of cities which humans can build on earth; one based on peace and the rule of law; the other based on war, killing, and pillage (900 BC) [OLL website]
  21. Thierry on the need for songs about our lost liberties which will act as a barrier to encroaching power (1845) [OLL website]
  22. Bach asks God “when will I die”? (1700) [OLL website]
  23. Shakespeare on sweet love remembered (1609) [OLL website]
  24. Milton on Eve’s discovery of the benefits of the division of labor in the Garden of Eden (1667) [OLL website]
  25. Gustave de Beaumont and Irish liberty (1839) [OLL website]

 

 

Topic 12: Money & Banking↩

  1. Friedrich Hayek rediscovers the importance of Henry Thornton’s early 19th century work on “paper credit” and its role in financing the British Empire (1802) [OLL website]
  2. Henry Vaughan argues that it is the voluntary and “universal concurrence of mankind”, not the laws, which makes money acceptable as a medium of exchange (1675) [OLL website]
  3. Tom Paine on the “Decline and Fall of the English System of Finance” (1796) [OLL website]
  4. Ludwig von Mises shows the inevitability of economic slumps after a period of credit expansion (1951) [OLL website]
  5. Ludwig von Mises identifies the source of the disruption of the world monetary order as the failed policies of governments and their central banks (1934) [OLL website]
  6. Thomas Jefferson in a letter to John Taylor condemns the system of banking as “a blot” on the constitution, as corrupt, and that long-term government debt was “swindling” future generations (1816) [OLL website]
  7. Ludwig von Mises lays out five fundamental truths of monetary expansion (1949) [OLL website]
  8. Ludwig von Mises argues that sound money is an instrument for the protection of civil liberties and a means of limiting government power (1912) [OLL website]
  9. Mises on the gold standard as the symbol of international peace and prosperity (1949) [OLL website]
  10. Bagehot on Government, the banking system, and moral hazard (1873) [OLL website]
  11. Mises on classical liberalism and the gold standard (1928) [OLL website]
  12. Bagehot on the monopoly central bank (1873) [OLL website]
  13. David Ricardo on the “mere increase of money” (1809) [OLL website]
  14. The 11th Day of Christmas: Mises on the gold standard and peace on earth (1934) [OLL website]
  15. William Cobbett opposes the government bail-out at taxpayer expence of those who lent money to the state (1815) [OLL website]
  16. Mises on the State Theory of Money (1912) [OLL website]
  17. William Leggett on the separation of bank and state (1837) [OLL website]
  18. Nassau Senior on how the universal acceptance of gold and silver currency creates a world economy (1830) [OLL website]

 

 

Topic 13: Natural Rights↩

  1. Herbert Spencer concludes from his principle of equal freedom that individuals have the Right to Ignore the State (1851) [OLL website]
  2. Sir William Blackstone differentiates between “absolute rights” of individuals (natural rights which exist prior to the state) and social rights (contractural rights which evolve later) (1753) [OLL website]
  3. Richard Overton shoots An Arrow against all Tyrants from the prison of Newgate into the prerogative bowels of the arbitrary House of Lords and all other usurpers and tyrants whatsoever (1646):[OLL website]
  4. John Locke on “perfect freedom” in the state of nature (1689) [OLL website]
  5. Heineccius argues that no man should be deprived of anything which he has received by nature, or has justly acquired (1738) [OLL website]
  6. John Lilburne on one’s duty to respect “the Right, Due, and Propriety of all the Sons of Adam, as men” (1646) [OLL website]
  7. James Wilson asks if man exists for the sake of government, or is government instituted for the sake of man? (1791) [OLL website]
  8. John Locke on the rights to life, liberty, and property of ourselves and others (1689) [OLL website]
  9. The State of California issued its own Bill of Rights in 1849 with a strong defence of property rights (1849) [OLL website]
  10. Denis Diderot argues that the laws must be based upon natural rights and be made for all and not for one (1755) [OLL website]
  11. Jeremy Bentham on rights as a creation of the state alone (1831) [OLL website]
  12. Benjamin Constant on the difference between rights and utility (1815) [OLL website]
  13. Francis Hutcheson on the difference between “perfect” and “imperfect” rights (1725) [OLL website]
  14. Epictetus on one’s inner freedom that is immune to external coercion (c. 100 CE) [OLL website]
  15. Thomas Jefferson on whether the American Constitution is binding on those who were not born at the time it was signed and agreed to (1789) [OLL website]
  16. Gershom Carmichael on the idea that civil power is founded on the consent of those against whom it is exercised (1724) [OLL website]
  17. Herbert Spencer on the right of political and economic “dissenters” to have their different beliefs and practices respected by the state (1842) [OLL website]

 

 

Topic 14: Odds & Ends↩

  1. Frederick Millar is upset that especially at Christmas time the bad effects of the letter-carrying monopoly of the Post Office are felt by the public (1891) [OLL website]
  2. Ambroise Clément draws the distinction between two different kinds of charity: true voluntary charity and coerced government “charity” which is really a tax (1852) [OLL website]
  3. Edward Gibbon reveals the reasons why he wrote on the decline of the Roman Empire, “the greatest, perhaps, and most awful scene in the history of mankind” (1776) [OLL website]
  4. The Earl of Shaftesbury states that civility and politeness is a consequence of liberty by which “we polish one another, and rub off our Corners and rough Sides” (1709) [OLL website]
  5. Edward Robertson points out the bureaucratic blundering and inefficiency of the Postal Monopoly during the Christmas rush period (1891) [OLL website]
  6. Emerson on selecting the right gift to give at Christmas and New Year (1844) [OLL website]
  7. Adam Smith on the ridiculousness of romantic love (1759) [OLL website]

 

 

Topic 15: Origin Of Government↩

  1. David Hume argued that Individual Liberty emerged slowly out of the “violent system of government” which had earlier prevailed in Europe (1778) [OLL website]
  2. David Hume ponders why the many can be governed so easily by the few and concludes that both force and opinion play a role (1777) [OLL website]
  3. Herbert Spencer makes a distinction between the “militant type of society” based upon violence and the “industrial type of society” based upon peaceful economic activity (1882) [OLL website]
  4. Frédéric Bastiat, while pondering the nature of war, concluded that society had always been divided into two classes - those who engaged in productive work and those who lived off their backs (1850) [OLL website]
  5. Tom Paine asks how it is that established governments came into being, his answer, is "banditti of ruffians" seized control and turned themselves into monarchs (1792) [OLL website]
  6. Franz Oppenheimer argues that there are two fundamentally opposed ways of acquiring wealth: the “political means” through coercion, and the “economic means” through peaceful trade (1922) [OLL website]
  7. David Hume on the origin of government in warfare, and the “perpetual struggle” between Liberty and Power (1777) [OLL website]
  8. Étienne de la Boétie provides one of the earliest and clearest explanations of why the suffering majority obeys the minority who rule over them; it is an example of voluntary servitude (1576) [OLL website]
  9. Sidney argues that a People’s liberty is a gift of nature and exists prior to any government (1683) [OLL website]
  10. James Otis on the right of the people to alter their government (1764) [OLL website]
  11. William Paley dismisses as a fiction the idea that there ever was a binding contract by which citizens consented to be ruled by their government (1785) [OLL website]

 

 

Topic 16: Parties & Elections↩

  1. Auberon Herbert discusses the “essence of government” when the veneer of elections are stripped away (1894) [OLL website]
  2. James Bryce tries to explain to a European audience why “great men” are no longer elected to America’s highest public office (1888) [OLL website]
  3. Lance Banning argues that within a decade of the creation of the US Constitution the nation was engaged in a bitter battle over the soul of the American Republic (2004) [OLL website]
  4. Herbert Spencer takes “philosophical politicians” to task for claiming that government promotes the “public good” when in fact they are seeking “party aggrandisement” (1843) [OLL website]
  5. Bruno Leoni argues that expressing one’s economic choice as a consumer in a free market is quite different from making a political choice by means of voting (1961) [OLL website]
  6. Bruno Leoni points out that elections are seriously flawed because majority rule is incompatible with individual freedom of choice (1961) [OLL website]
  7. James Madison on the dangers of elections resulting in overbearing majorities who respect neither justice nor individual rights, Federalist 10 (1788) [OLL website]
  8. Gustave de Molinari argues that political parties are like “actual armies” who are trained to seize power and reward their supporters with jobs and special privileges (1904) [OLL website]
  9. Captain John Clarke asserts the right of all men to vote in the formation of a new constitution by right of the property they have in themselves (1647) [OLL website]
  10. Spencer on voting in elections as a screen behind which the wirepullers turn the sovereign people into a puppet (1882) [OLL website]
  11. Bruce Smith on the misconceived and harmful legislation produced by voting as an inevitable though temporary case of “measles” (1887) [OLL website]
  12. Spencer on voting as a poor instrument for protecting our rights to life, liberty, and property (1879) [OLL website]
  13. Thomas Gordon on how the “Spirit of Party” substitutes party principles for moral principles, thus making it possible for the worst to get on top (1744) [OLL website]
  14. Bastiat on the scramble for political office (1848) [OLL website]
  15. Cobden reminds the Liberals in Parliament that the motto of their party is “Economy, Retrenchment, and Reform!” (1862) [OLL website]
  16. James Bryce on the Party Primaries and Conventions in the American political system (1888) [OLL website]
  17. John Trenchard on the real nature of political parties (1721) [OLL website]
  18. James Mill on Who are to watch the watchmen? (1835) [OLL website]
  19. Auberon Herbert warns that the use of force is like a wild and dangerous beast which can easily get out of our control (1906) [OLL website]

 

 

Topic 17: Philosophy↩

  1. Jean Barbeyrac on the Virtues which all free Men should have (1718) [OLL website]
  2. Voltaire lampooned the excessively optimistic Leibnitzian philosophers in his philosophic tale Candide by exposing his characters to one disaster after another, like a tsunami in Lisbon, to show that this was not “the best of all possible worlds”[OLL website]
  3. Thomas Hobbes sings a hymn of praise for Reason as “the pace”, scientific knowledge is “the way”, and the benefit of mankind is “the end” (1651) [OLL website]
  4. Wilhelm von Humboldt argued that freedom was the “Grand and Indispensable Condition” for individual flourishing (1792) [OLL website]
  5. Aristotle insists that man is either a political animal (the natural state) or an outcast like a “bird which flies alone” (4thC BC) [OLL website]
  6. Plato believed that great souls and creative talents produce “offspring” which can be enjoyed by others: wisdom, virtue, poetry, art, temperance, justice, and the law (340s BC) [OLL website]
  7. Marcus Aurelius on using reason to live one’s life “straight and right” (170) [OLL website]
  8. Francis Hutcheson’s early formulation of the principle of “the greatest Happiness for the greatest Numbers” (1726) [OLL website]
  9. Cicero on being true to one’s own nature while respecting the common nature of others (c. 50 BCE) [OLL website]

 

 

Topic 18: Politics & Liberty↩

  1. George Washington on the Difference between Commercial and Political Relations with other Countries (1796) [OLL website]
  2. Richard Price on the true Nature of Love of One’s Country (1789) [OLL website]
  3. Adam Smith on the Dangers of sacrificing one’s Liberty for the supposed benefits of the “lordly servitude of a court” (1759) [OLL website]
  4. Bernhard Knollenberg on the Belief of many colonial Americans that Liberty was lost because the Leaders of the People had failed in their Duty (2003) [OLL website]
  5. Andrew Fletcher believed that too many people were deceived by the “ancient terms and outwards forms” of their government but had in fact lost their ancient liberties (1698) [OLL website]
  6. William Emerson, in his oration to commemorate the Declaration of Independence, reminded his listeners of the “unconquerable sense of liberty” which Americans had (1802) [OLL website]
  7. The Australian radical liberal Bruce Smith lays down some very strict rules which should govern the actions of any legislator (1887) [OLL website]
  8. J.S. Mill was convinced he was living in a time when he would experience an explosion of classical liberal reform because “the spirit of the age” had dramatically changed (1831) [OLL website]
  9. Edward Gibbon wonders if Europe will avoid the same fate as the Roman Empire, collapse brought on as a result of prosperity, corruption, and military conquest (1776) [OLL website]
  10. Montesquieu was fascinated by the liberty which was enjoyed in England, which he attributed to security of person and the rule of law (1748) [OLL website]
  11. Catharine Macaulay supported the French Revolution because there were sound "public choice" reasons for not vesting supreme power in the hands of one’s social or economic "betters" (1790) [OLL website]
  12. Condorcet writes about the inevitability of the spread of liberty and prosperity while he was in prison awaiting execution by the Jacobins (1796) [OLL website]
  13. Augustin Thierry laments that the steady growth of liberty in France had been disrupted by the cataclysm of the French Revolution (1859) [OLL website]
  14. Viscount Bryce reflects on how modern nation states which achieved their own freedom through struggle are not sympathetic to the similar struggles of other repressed peoples (1901) [OLL website]
  15. James Madison on the mischievous effects of mutable government in The Federalist no. 62 (1788) [OLL website]
  16. James Madison on the need for the “separation of powers” because “men are not angels,” Federalist 51 (1788) [OLL website]
  17. Mercy Otis Warren asks why people are so willing to obey the government and answers that it is supineness, fear of resisting, and the long habit of obedience (1805) [OLL website]
  18. John Stuart Mill on the need for limited government and political rights to prevent the “king of the vultures” and his “minor harpies” in the government from preying on the people (1859) [OLL website]
  19. Edward Gibbon called the loss of independence and excessive obedience the “secret poison” which corrupted the Roman Empire (1776) [OLL website]
  20. Benjamin Constant distinguished between the Liberty of the Ancients (“the complete subjection of the individual to the authority of the community”) and that of the Moderns (“where individual rights and commerce are respected”) (1816) [OLL website]
  21. John Adams thought he could see arbitrary power emerging in the American colonies and urged his countrymen to “nip it in the bud” before they lost all their liberties (1774) [OLL website]
  22. Samuel Smiles on how an idle, thriftless, or drunken man can, and should, improve himself through self-help and not by means of the state (1859).[OLL website]
  23. The Abbé de Mably argues with John Adams about the dangers of a “commercial elite” seizing control of the new Republic and using it to their own advantage (1785) [OLL website]
  24. Lord Acton on the destruction of the liberal Girondin group and the suicide of Condorcet during the French Revolution (1910) [OLL website]
  25. Georg Jellinek argues that Lafayette was one of the driving forces behind the French Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen (1789) [OLL website]
  26. The State of New York declares that the people may “reassume” their delegated powers at any time they choose (1788) [OLL website]
  27. Shaftesbury on the need for liberty to promote the liberal arts (1712) [OLL website]
  28. Bastiat on the fact that even in revolution there is an indestructible principle of order in the human heart (1848) [OLL website]
  29. Bastiat on the need for urgent political and economic reform (1848) [OLL website]
  30. Bastiat on the many freedoms that make up liberty (1848) [OLL website]
  31. Tocqueville on the spirit of association (1835) [OLL website]
  32. Jefferson on the right to change one’s government (1776) [OLL website]
  33. Spooner on the “knaves,” the “dupes,” and “do-nothings” among government supporters (1870) [OLL website]
  34. Ferguson on the flourishing of man’s intellectual powers in a commercial society (1767) [OLL website]
  35. Socrates as the “gadfly” of the state (4thC BC) [OLL website]
  36. Leggett on the tendency of the government to become “the universal dispenser of good and evil” (1834) [OLL website]
  37. Benjamin Constant on why the oppressed often prefer their chains to liberty (1815) [OLL website]
  38. Germaine de Staël on the indestructible love of liberty (1818) [OLL website]
  39. David Hume believes we should assume all men are self-interested knaves when it comes to politics (1777) [OLL website]
  40. Tocqueville on centralization as the natural form of government for democracies (1835) [OLL website]
  41. Gouverneur Morris on the proper balance between commerce, private property, and political liberty (1776) [OLL website]
  42. George Grote on the difficulty of public opinion alone in curbing the misuse of power by “the sinister interests” (1821) [OLL website]
  43. Herbert Spencer on “the seen” and “the unseen” consequences of the actions of politicians (1884) [OLL website]
  44. Guizot on liberty and reason (1851) [OLL website]
  45. Diderot on the nature of political authority (1751) [OLL website]
  46. Charles Murray on the pursuit of happiness (1988) [OLL website]

 

 

Topic 19: Presidents, Kings, Tyrants, & Despots↩

  1. Thomas Gordon compares the Greatness of Spartacus with that of Julius Caesar (1721) [OLL website]
  2. Algernon Sidney’s Motto was that his Hand (i.e. his pen) was an Enemy to all Tyrants (1660) [OLL website]
  3. Thomas Gordon believes that bigoted Princes are subject to the “blind control” of other “Directors and Masters” who work behind the scenes (1737) [OLL website]
  4. James Bryce believed that the Founders intended that the American President would be “a reduced and improved copy of the English king” (1885) [OLL website]
  5. Vicesimus Knox tries to persuade an English nobleman that some did not come into the world with “saddles on their backs and bridles in their mouths” and some others like him came “ready booted and spurred to ride the rest to death” (1793) [OLL website]
  6. John Milton believes men live under a “double tyranny” within (the tyranny of custom and passions) which makes them blind to the tyranny of government without (1649) [OLL website]
  7. Montesquieu states that the Roman Empire fell because the costs of its military expansion introduced corruption and the loyalty of its soldiers was transferred from the City to its generals (1734) [OLL website]
  8. Edward Gibbon believed that unless public liberty was defended by “intrepid and vigilant guardians” any constitution would degenerate into despotism (1776) [OLL website]
  9. Adam Ferguson notes that “implicit submission to any leader, or the uncontrouled exercise of any power” leads to a form of military government and ultimately despotism (1767) [OLL website]
  10. John Milton laments the case of a people who won their liberty “in the field” but who then foolishly “ran their necks again into the yoke” of tyranny (1660) [OLL website]
  11. Thomas Jefferson opposed vehemently the Alien and Sedition Laws of 1798 which granted the President enormous powers showing that the government had become a tyranny which desired to govern with "a rod of iron" (1798) [OLL website]
  12. Benjamin Constant argued that mediocre men, when they acquired power, became “more envious, more obstinate, more immoderate, and more convulsive” than men with talent (1815) [OLL website]
  13. After the restoration of the monarchy in 1660 John Milton was concerned with both how the triumphalist monarchists would treat the English people and how the disheartened English people would face their descendants (1660) [OLL website]
  14. George Washington warns the nation in his Farewell Address, that love of power will tend to create a real despotism in America unless proper checks and balances are maintained to limit government power (1796) [OLL website]
  15. Plato warns of the people’s protector who, once having tasted blood, turns into a wolf and a tyrant (340s BC) [OLL website]
  16. George Washington warns that the knee jerk reaction of citizens to problems is to seek a solution in the creation of a “new monarch”(1786) [OLL website]
  17. Thucydides on political intrigue in the divided city of Corcyra caused by the “desire to rule” (5thC BC) [OLL website]
  18. Thomas Hodgskin wonders how despotism comes to a country and concludes that the “first step” taken towards despotism gives it the power to take a second and a third - hence it must be stopped in its tracks at the very first sign (1813) [OLL website]
  19. Edward Gibbon gloomily observed that in a unified empire like the Roman there was nowhere to escape, whereas with a multiplicity of states there were always gaps and interstices to hide in (1776) [OLL website]
  20. Lord Acton writes to Bishop Creighton that the same moral standards should be applied to all men, political and religious leaders included, especially since “Power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely” (1887) [OLL website]
  21. Althusius argues that a political leader is bound by his oath of office which, if violated, requires his removal (1614) [OLL website]
  22. Macaulay argues that politicians are less interested in the economic value of public works to the citizens than they are in their own reputation, embezzlement and “jobs for the boys” (1830) [OLL website]
  23. Lao Tzu discusses how “the great sages” (or wise advisors) protect the interests of the prince and thus “prove to be but guardians in the interest of the great thieves” (600 BC) [OLL website]
  24. Jefferson feared that it would only be a matter of time before the American system of government degenerated into a form of “elective despotism” (1785) [OLL website]
  25. Livy on the irrecoverable loss of liberty under the Roman Empire (10 AD) [OLL website]
  26. Jefferson on how Congress misuses the inter-state commerce and general welfare clauses to promote the centralization of power (1825) [OLL website]
  27. Madame de Staël argues that Napoleon was able to create a tyrannical government by pandering to men’s interests, corrupting public opinion, and waging constant war (1817) [OLL website]
  28. Cicero on the need for politicians to place the interests of those they represent ahead of their own private interests (1st century BC) [OLL website]
  29. Cato denounces generals like Julius Caesar who use success on the battlefield as a stepping stone to political power (1710) [OLL website]
  30. Milton argues that a Monarchy wants the people to be prosperous only so it can better fleece them (1660) [OLL website]
  31. Tocqueville on the form of despotism the government would assume in democratic America (1840) [OLL website]
  32. Jefferson’s list of objections to the British Empire in his first draft of the Declaration of Independence (1776) [OLL website]
  33. Milton on the ease with which tyrants find their academic defenders (1651) [OLL website]
  34. Paine on the idea that the law is king (1776) [OLL website]
  35. Thomas Paine on the absurdity of an hereditary monarchy (1791) [OLL website]
  36. John Adams on how absolute power intoxicates those who excercise that power (1814) [OLL website]
  37. Madame de Staël on the tyrant Napoleon (1818) [OLL website]
  38. Tocqueville on the “New Despotism” (1837) [OLL website]
  39. Viscount Bryce on how the President in wartime becomes “a sort of dictator” (1888) [OLL website]
  40. James Madison on “Parchment Barriers” and the defence of liberty II (1788) [OLL website]
  41. Shaftesbury opposes the nonresisting test bill before the House of Lords as a step towards “absolute and arbitrary” government (1675) [OLL website]
  42. Rousseau on the natural tendency of governments to degenerate into tyranny (1762) [OLL website]
  43. Erasmus on the “Folly” of upsetting conventional opinion by pointing out the sins of kings and princes (1511) [OLL website]
  44. Montaigne argues that is right and proper for a people to speak ill of a “faulty prince” after his death (1580) [OLL website]
  45. Thomas Gordon asks whether tyranny is worse than anarchy (1728) [OLL website]
  46. Leonard Read on Ludwig von Mises as the economic dictator of the U.S. (1971) [OLL website]
  47. Pufendorf on the danger of rulers confusing their own self-interest with that of the State (1695) [OLL website]
  48. Michel Chevalier on two kinds of political power in America, the Caesars and the Commissioners (1835) [OLL website]
  49. La Boétie argues that tyranny will collapse if enough people refuse to cooperate and withdraw their moral support to it (1576) [OLL website]
  50. Henry Parker on Parliament’s role in limiting the power of Kings (1642) [OLL website]
  51. Shakespeare on the ruler who has “the power to hurt and will do none” (1609) [OLL website]
  52. Thomas Gordon on how people are frightened into giving up their liberties (1722) [OLL website]
  53. John Lilburne shows defiance to the tyrants who would force him to pay tythes to the Church (1648) [OLL website]
  54. Algernon Sidney on not unquestioningly “rendering unto Caesar the things which are Caesar’s” before checking to see if they legitimately belong to Caesar (1689) [OLL website]

 

 

Topic 20: Property Rights↩

  1. John Taylor on how a “sound freedom of property” can destroy the threat to Liberty posed by “an adoration of military fame” and oppressive governments (1820) [OLL website]
  2. Wolowski and Levasseur argue that Property is “the fruit of human liberty” and that Violence and Conquest have done much to disturb this natural order (1884) [OLL website]
  3. J.S. Mill’s great principle was that “over himself, over his own body and mind, the individual is sovereign” (1859) [OLL website]
  4. J.B. Say on the self-evident nature of property rights which is nevertheless violated by the state in taxation and slavery (1817) [OLL website]
  5. Thomas Hodgskin argues for a Lockean notion of the right to property (“natural”) and against the Benthamite notion that property rights are created by the state (“artificial”) (1832) [OLL website]
  6. Lord Kames states that the “hoarding appetite” is part of human nature and that it is the foundation of our notion of property rights (1779) [OLL website]
  7. Sir William Blackstone argues that occupancy of previously unowned land creates a natural right to that property which excludes others from it (1753) [OLL website]
  8. James Mill on the natural disposition to accumulate property (1808).[OLL website]
  9. William Wollaston on crimes against person or property as contradictions of fundamental truths (1722) [OLL website]
  10. Gaius states that according to natural reason the first occupier of any previously unowned property becomes the just owner (2nd Century) [OLL website]
  11. Auberon Herbert on compulsory taxation as the “citadel” of state power (1885) [OLL website]
  12. Molinari defends the right to property against the socialists who want to overthrow it, and the conservatives who defend it poorly (1849) [OLL website]
  13. Auberon Herbert on the “magic of private property” (1897) [OLL website]
  14. J.B. Say on a person’s property right in their own “industrious faculties” (1819) [OLL website]
  15. Percy Shelley on the two types of property (1820(a)
  16. McCulloch argues that the right to property extends to “the faculties of (one’s) mind and the powers of (one’s) body” (1864) [OLL website]
  17. William Penn on property as one of the three fundamental rights all men have (1679) [OLL website]
  18. William Paley on the tragedy of the commons (1785) [OLL website]
  19. Hugo Grotius on the natural sociability of humans (1625) [OLL website]
  20. Herbert Spencer on human nature and the right to property (1851) [OLL website]
  21. Wolowski on property as a sacred right which is an emanation from man’s very being (1863) [OLL website]
  22. David Ricardo on how “insecure tenure” of property rights harms the poor (1824) [OLL website]
  23. David Hume on property as a convention which gradually emerges from society (1739) [OLL website]
  24. Thomas Hodgskin on the futility of politicians tinkering with bad laws when the whole political system needed to be changed (1832) [OLL website]

 

 

Topic 21: Religion & Toleration↩

  1. The Psalmist laments that he lives in a Society which “hateth peace” and cries out “I am for peace: but when I speak they are for war” (1000 BC) [OLL website]
  2. The Prophet Isaiah urges the people to “beat their swords into plowshares” and learn war no more (700s BC) [OLL website]
  3. Samuel warns his people that if they desire a King they will inevitably have conscription, requisitioning of their property, and taxation (7th century BC) [OLL website]
  4. Voltaire notes that where Commerce and Toleration predominate, a Multiplicity of Faiths can live together in Peace and Happiness (1764) [OLL website]
  5. Voltaire argued that religious intolerance was against the law of nature and was worse than the “right of the tiger” (1763) [OLL website]
  6. Pierre Bayle begins his defence of religious toleration with this appeal that the light of nature, or Reason, should be used to settle religious differences and not coercion (1708) [OLL website]
  7. In Ecclesiastes there is the call to plant, to love, to live, and to work and then to enjoy the fruits of all one’s labors (3rdC BC) [OLL website]
  8. William Findlay wants to maintain the separation of church and state and therefore sees no role for the “ecclesiastical branch” in government (1812) [OLL website]
  9. Job rightly wants to know why he, “the just upright man is laughed to scorn” while robbers prosper (6thC BC) [OLL website]
  10. John Locke believed that the magistrate should not punish sin but only violations of natural rights and public peace (1689) [OLL website]
  11. St. John, private property, and the Parable of the Wolf and the Good Shepherd (2ndC AD) [OLL website]
  12. David Hume argues that “love of liberty” in some individuals often attracts the religious inquisitor to persecute them and thereby drive society into a state of “ignorance, corruption, and bondage” (1757) [OLL website]
  13. Noah Webster on the resilience of common religious practices in the face of attempts by the state to radically change them (1794) [OLL website]
  14. The 5th Day of Christmas: Samuel Cooper on the Articles of Confederation and peace on earth (1780) [OLL website]
  15. The 6th Day of Christmas: Vicesimus Knox on the Christian religion and peace on earth (1793) [OLL website]
  16. Lord Acton argues that civil liberty arose out of the conflict between the power of the Church and the Monarchy (1877) [OLL website]
  17. William Walwyn wittily argues against state enforced religious conformity (1646) [OLL website]
  18. Spinoza on the dangers of using superstition to hoodwink the people (1670) [OLL website]
  19. John Locke on the separation of Church and Magistrate (1689) [OLL website]
  20. John Stuart Mill on the “religion of humanity” (c. 1858) [OLL website]
  21. William Leggett argues that Thanksgiving Day is no business of the government (1836) [OLL website]
  22. Thomas Gordon warns about the dangers of a politicised Religion which tries to rule this world (1720) [OLL website]

 

 

Topic 22: Revolution↩

  1. Tocqueville on the 1848 Revolution in Paris (1851) [OLL website]
  2. Adam Smith on social change and “the man of system” (1759) [OLL website]
  3. Adams and Jefferson reflect on the Revolution and the future of liberty (1823) [OLL website]
  4. Lord Acton on the storming of “the instrument and the emblem of tyranny” in Paris, the Bastille, on July 14, 1789 (1910) [OLL website]
  5. Condorcet on why the French revolution was more violent than the American (1794) [OLL website]
  6. Benjamin Franklin on the trade off between essential liberty and temporary safety (1775) [OLL website]
  7. Jefferson warns about the rise of an “Anglo-Monarchio-Aristocratic party” in America (1797) [OLL website]
  8. Tom Paine on the “birthday of a new world” (1776) [OLL website]

 

 

Topic 23: Rhetoric of Liberty↩

  1. Macaulay wittily denounces a tyrannical priest as being an intermediate grub between sycophant and oppressor (1837) [OLL website]
  2. John Lilburne rails against his unjust imprisonment (1646) [OLL website]
  3. John Thelwall on political sheep shearing (1795) [OLL website]
  4. John Taylor and the rhetoric of liberty and tyranny (1814) [OLL website]
  5. Auberon Herbert’s aim is to destroy the love of power and the desire to use force against others (1897) [OLL website]
  6. Molinari on mankind’s never-ending struggle for liberty (1849) [OLL website]

 

 

Topic 24: Science↩

  1. Adam Smith on the “Wonder, Surprise, and Admiration” one feels when contemplating the physical World (1795) [OLL website]
  2. Charles Darwin on life as a spontaneous order which emerged by the operation of natural laws (1859) [OLL website]
  3. Voltaire laments the destruction of Lisbon in an earthquake and criticises the philosophers who thought that “all’s well with the world” and the religious who thought it was “God’s will” (1755) [OLL website]

 

 

Topic 25: Socialism & Interventionism↩

  1. Ludwig von Mises argues that monopolies are the direct result of government intervention and not the product of any inherent tendency within the capitalist system (1949) [OLL website]
  2. Nassau Senior objected to any government regulation of factories which meant that a horde of inspectors would interfere with the organization of production (1837) [OLL website]
  3. Alexis de Tocqueville stood up in the Constituent Assembly to criticize socialism as a violation of human nature, property rights, and individual liberty (1848) [OLL website]
  4. Ludwig von Mises on the impossibility of rational economic planning under Socialism (1922) [OLL website]
  5. Yves Guyot on the violence and lawlessness inherent in socialism (1910) [OLL website]
  6. Sumner criticizes the competing vested interests and the role of legislators in the “new democratic State” (1887) [OLL website]
  7. Mill on the dangers of the state turning men into “docile instruments” of its will (1859) [OLL website]
  8. Mises and the Emergence of Etatism in Germany (1944) [OLL website]
  9. Mises on how price controls lead to socialism (1944) [OLL website]
  10. Molinari appeals to socialists to join him in marching down “the broad, well-trodden highway of liberty” (1848) [OLL website]
  11. John Strachey on why Socialism harms the poor instead of helping them (1894) [OLL website]
  12. Mises on “interventionism” as a third way between the free market and socialism (1930) [OLL website]
  13. Mises states that it is the division of labor which makes man truly “social” or “communal” (1922) [OLL website]
  14. Karl Marx on the necessary task the “bourgeoisie” was doing in putting an end to “feudal and patriarchal relations” (1848) [OLL website]
  15. Eugen von Böhm-Bawerk argues that Marx ignored the fact that the same amount of labor time should be rewarded differently depending upon where along the structure of production it took place (1898) [OLL website]
  16. Frédéric Bastiat argues that socialism hides its true plunderous nature under a facade of nice sounding words like “fraternity” and “equality” (1850) [OLL website]
  17. Bastiat criticizes the socialists of wanting to be the “Great Mechanic” who would run the “social machine” in which ordinary people were merely so many lifeless cogs and wheels (1848) [OLL website]

 

 

Topic 26: Society↩

  1. Herbert Spencer on customs which are the result of human action but not of deliberate design (1876) [OLL website]
  2. Herbert Spencer on the idea that society is a spontaneous growth and not artificially put together (1860) [OLL website]

 

 

Topic 27: Sport And Liberty↩

  1. Herbert Spencer worries that the violence and brutalities of football will make it that much harder to create a society in which individual rights will be mutually respected (1879) [OLL website]
  2. Frederick Pollock argues that a violent assault on the football field is not an actionable tort because it is part of the activities of a voluntarily agreed to association of adults (1895) [OLL website]
  3. Nisbet on how violent, contact sports like football redirect people’s energies away from war (1988) [OLL website]
  4. The Earl of Shaftesbury relates the story of an unscrupulous glazier who gives the rowdy town youths a football so they will smash windows in the street and thus drum up business (1737) [OLL website]
  5. John Hobson argues that sport plays an important part in British imperialism for all classes and that the “spirit of adventure” is now played out in the colonies (1902) [OLL website]
  6. Macaulay and Bunyan on the evils of swearing and playing hockey on Sunday (1830) [OLL website]
  7. Mises on human action, predicting the future, and who will win the World Cup Football tournament (1966) [OLL website]

 

 

Topic 28: Taxation↩

  1. Thomas Jefferson boasts about having reduced the size of government and eliminated a number of “vexatious” taxes (1805) [OLL website]
  2. Thomas Hodgskin noted in his journey through the northern German states that the burden of heavy taxation was no better than it had been under the conqueror Napoleon (1820) [OLL website]
  3. David Ricardo considered taxation to be a “great evil” which hindered the accumulation of productive capital and reduced consumption (1817) [OLL website]
  4. Frank Chodorov argues that taxation is an act of coercion and if pushed to its logical limits will result in Socialism (1946) [OLL website]
  5. William Graham Sumner reminds us never to forget the “Forgotten Man”, the ordinary working man and woman who pays the taxes and suffers under government regulation (1883) [OLL website]
  6. Jefferson tells Congress that since tax revenues are increasing faster than population then taxes on all manner of items can be “dispensed with” (i.e. abolished) (1801) [OLL website]
  7. Alexander Hamilton denounces the British for imposing “oppressive taxes” on the colonists which amount to tyranny, a form of slavery, and vassalage to the Empire (1774) [OLL website]
  8. Adam Smith claims that exorbitant taxes imposed without consent of the governed constitute legitimate grounds for the people to resist their rulers (1763) [OLL website]
  9. Thomas Paine responded to one of Burke’s critiques of the French Revolution by cynically arguing that wars are sometimes started in order to increase taxation (“the harvest of war”) (1791) [OLL website]
  10. Lysander Spooner argues that according to the traditional English common law, taxation would not be upheld because no explicit consent was given by individuals to be taxed (1852) [OLL website]
  11. Knox on how the people during wartime are cowered into submission and pay their taxes “without a murmur” (1795) [OLL website]
  12. Mises on the public sector as “tax eaters” who “feast” on the assets of the ordinary tax payer (1953) [OLL website]
  13. Luke, Taxes, and the Birth of Jesus (85) [OLL website]
  14. Adam Smith on how governments learn from each other the best way of draining money from the pockets of the people (1776) [OLL website]
  15. Sven Forkbeard and new Yuletide Taxes (11thC) [OLL website]
  16. Jefferson on Taxes and the General Welfare (1791) [OLL website]
  17. Adam Smith on the need for “peace, easy taxes, and a tolerable administration of justice” (1755) [OLL website]
  18. Under Magna Carta the King cannot impose taxes without the approval of the “common counsel” of the kingdom (1215) [OLL website]
  19. William Cobbett denounces the destruction of liberty during and after the Napoleonic Wars (1817) [OLL website]

 

 

Topic 29: The State↩

  1. Edmund Burke asks a key question of political theory: quis custodiet ipsos custodes? (how is one to be defended against the very guardians who have been appointed to guard us?) (1756) [OLL website]
  2. Frédéric Bastiat and the state as “la grande fiction à travers laquelle Tout Le Monde s'efforce de vivre aux dépens de Tout Le Monde (1848) [OLL website]
  3. Frédéric Bastiat on the state as the great fiction by which everyone seeks to live at the expense of everyone else (1848) [OLL website]
  4. Lysander Spooner on the difference between a government and a highwayman (1870) [OLL website]
  5. Sumner on the legalization of robbery by the State (1883) [OLL website]
  6. Hippolyte Taine on how the modern bureaucratic state destroys spontaneous and fruitful private cooperation (1890) [OLL website]
  7. Nassau Senior argues that government is based upon extortion (1854) [OLL website]
  8. Thomas Macaulay argues that “the main end” of government is the protection of persons and property (1839) [OLL website]
  9. Benjamin Franklin on the “superstructure” of Good Government (1736) [OLL website]
  10. James Buchanan on chaining Leviathan (1975) [OLL website]
  11. Mises on the worship of the state or statolatry (1944) [OLL website]
  12. John Wade exposes the system of political corruption in England (1835) [OLL website]
  13. Thomas Gordon on the nature of power to expand (1721) [OLL website]
  14. Anthony de Jasay asks whether states should be invented if they did not already exist (1985) [OLL website]
  15. Tocqueville on the absence of government in America (1835) [OLL website]
  16. Anthony de Jasay on the proliferation of predators and parasites in the modern state (1998) [OLL website]
  17. Bastiat’s Malthusian theory of the growth of the state (1847) [OLL website]
  18. Franz Oppenheimer on the origin of the state in conquest and subjection by one group over another (1907) [OLL website]
  19. Herbert Spencer notes that traditionally the growth in government revenue has come about because of war (1882) [OLL website]
  20. Guizot on the legitimacy of state power and its limits (1851) [OLL website]
  21. Michel Montaigne on the danger of becoming accustomed to state power (1580) [OLL website]
  22. Tocqueville warns how administrative despotism might come to a democracy like America (1840) [OLL website]
  23. Algernon Sidney on de facto vs. de jure political power (1698) [OLL website]
  24. William Graham Sumner on the “do-nothing” state vs. ”the meddling” state (1888) [OLL website]
  25. Robert Filmer thought that the idea of the “consent of the governed” would inevitably lead to anarchy (1680) [OLL website]
  26. William Godwin on the need to simplify and reduce the power of the state (1793) [OLL website]

 

 

Topic 30: War & Peace↩

  1. Bernard Mandeville on how the Hardships and Fatigues of War bear most heavily on the “working slaving People” (1732) [OLL website]
  2. Hugo Grotius on sparing Civilian Property from Destruction in Time of War (1625) [OLL website]
  3. Adam Smith on the Sympathy one feels for those Vanquished in a battle rather than for the Victors (1762) [OLL website]
  4. Robert Nisbet on the Shock the Founding Fathers would feel if they could see the current size of the Military Establishment and the National Government (1988) [OLL website]
  5. Thomas Hodgskin on the Suffering of those who had been Impressed or Conscripted into the despotism of the British Navy (1813) [OLL website]
  6. Ludwig von Mises laments the passing of the Age of Limited Warfare and the coming of Mass Destruction in the Age of Statism and Conquest (1949) [OLL website]
  7. Erasmus has the personification of Peace come down to earth to see with dismay how war ravages human societies (1521) [OLL website]
  8. William Graham Sumner denounced America’s war against Spain and thought that “war, debt, taxation, diplomacy, a grand governmental system, pomp, glory, a big army and navy, lavish expenditures, political jobbery” would result in imperialsm (1898) [OLL website]
  9. Herbert Spencer argued that in a militant type of society the state would become more centralised and administrative, as compulsory education clearly showed (1882) [OLL website]
  10. Hugo Grotius discusses the just causes of going to war, especially the idea that the capacity to wage war must be matched by the intent to do so (1625) [OLL website]
  11. Hugo Grotius states that in an unjust war any acts of hostility done in that war are “unjust in themselves” (1625) [OLL website]
  12. Thomas Gordon gives a long list of ridiculous and frivolous reasons why kings and tyrants have started wars which have led only to the enslavement and destruction of their own people (1737) [OLL website]
  13. John Jay in the Federalist Papers discussed why nations go to war and concluded that it was not for justice but “whenever they have a prospect of getting any thing by it” (1787) [OLL website]
  14. J.M. Keynes reflected on that “happy age” of international commerce and freedom of travel that was destroyed by the cataclysm of the First World War (1920) [OLL website]
  15. A.V. Dicey noted that a key change in public thinking during the 19thC was the move away from the early close association between “peace and retrenchment” in the size of the government (1905) [OLL website]
  16. St. Thomas Aquinas discusses the three conditions for a just war (1265-74) [OLL website]
  17. James Madison argues that the constitution places war-making powers squarely with the legislative branch; for the president to have these powers is the “the true nurse of executive aggrandizement” (1793) [OLL website]
  18. Thomas Gordon on standing armies as a power which is inconsistent with liberty (1722) [OLL website]
  19. James Madison on the need for the people to declare war and for each generation, not future generations, to bear the costs of the wars they fight (1792) [OLL website]
  20. Adam Smith observes that the true costs of war remain hidden from the taxpayers because they are sheltered in the metropole far from the fighting and instead of increasing taxes the government pays for the war by increasing the national debt (1776) [OLL website]
  21. John Trenchard identifies who will benefit from any new war “got up” in Italy: princes, courtiers, jobbers, and pensioners, but definitely not the ordinary taxpayer (1722) [OLL website]
  22. Alexander Hamilton warns of the danger to civil society and liberty from a standing army since “the military state becomes elevated above the civil” (1787) [OLL website]
  23. Daniel Webster thunders that the introduction of conscription would be a violation of the constitution, an affront to individual liberty, and an act of unrivaled despotism (1814) [OLL website]
  24. Thomas Jefferson on the Draft as “the last of all oppressions” (1777) [OLL website]
  25. Madison argued that war is the major way by which the executive office increases its power, patronage, and taxing power (1793) [OLL website]
  26. Milton warns Parliament’s general Fairfax that justice must break free from violence if “endless war” is to be avoided (1648) [OLL website]
  27. Vicesimus Knox on how the aristocracy and the “spirit of despotism” use the commemoration of the war dead for their own aims (1795) [OLL website]
  28. John Jay on the pretended as well as the just causes of war (1787) [OLL website]
  29. Trenchard on the dangers posed by a standing army (1698) [OLL website]
  30. Sumner and the Conquest of the United States by Spain (1898) [OLL website]
  31. Grotius on Moderation in Despoiling the Country of one’s Enemies (1625) [OLL website]
  32. The Duke of Burgundy asks the Kings of France and England why “gentle peace” should not be allowed to return France to its former prosperity (1599) [OLL website]
  33. James Mill likens the expence and economic stagnation brought about by war to a “pestilential wind” which ravages the country (1808) [OLL website]
  34. Cobden urges the British Parliament not to be the “Don Quixotes of Europe” using military force to right the wrongs of the world (1854) [OLL website]
  35. Cobden on the principle of non-intervention in the affairs of other countries (1859) [OLL website]
  36. The City of War and the City of Peace on Achilles’ new shield (900 BC) [OLL website]
  37. Cobden on the complicity of the British people in supporting war (1852) [OLL website]
  38. Cobden argues that the British Empire will inevitably suffer retribution for its violence and injustice (1853) [OLL website]
  39. John Bright on war as all the horrors, atrocities, crimes, and sufferings of which human nature on this globe is capable (1853) [OLL website]
  40. James Madison on the necessity of separating the power of “the sword from the purse” (1793) [OLL website]
  41. John Bright calls British foreign policy “a gigantic system of (welfare) for the aristocracy” (1858) [OLL website]
  42. The evangelist Luke “on earth peace, good will toward men” (1st century) [OLL website]
  43. The 1st Day of Christmas: Jan Huss’ Christmas letters and his call for peace on earth (1412) [OLL website]
  44. The 2nd Day of Christmas: Petrarch on the mercenary wars in Italy and the need for peace on earth (1344) [OLL website]
  45. The 3rd Day of Christmas: Erasmus stands against war and for peace on earth (16th century) [OLL website]
  46. The 4th Day of Christmas: Dante Alighieri on human perfectibility and peace on earth (1559) [OLL website]
  47. The 7th Day of Christmas: Madison on “the most noble of all ambitions” which a government can have, of promoting peace on earth (1816) [OLL website]
  48. The 8th Day of Christmas: Jefferson on the inevitability of revolution in England only after which there will be peace on earth (1817) [OLL website]
  49. The 10th Day of Christmas: Richard Cobden on public opinion and peace on earth (c. 1865) [OLL website]
  50. Kant believed that citizens must give their free consent via their representatives to every separate declaration of war (1790) [OLL website]
  51. Herbert Spencer on the State’s cultivation of “the religion of enmity” to justify its actions (1884) [OLL website]
  52. Richard Price on how the “domestic enemies” of liberty have been more powerful and more successful than foreign enemies (1789) [OLL website]
  53. John Bright denounces the power of the war party in England (1878) [OLL website]
  54. Benjamin Constant on the dangers to liberty posed by the military spirit (1815) [OLL website]
  55. William Graham Sumner on the racism which lies behind Imperialism (1898) [OLL website]
  56. Lysistrata’s clever plan to end the war between Athens and Sparta (411 BC) [OLL website]
  57. Mises on cosmopolitan cooperation and peace (1927) [OLL website]
  58. Bastiat on disbanding the standing army and replacing it with local militias (1847) [OLL website]

 

 

Topic 31: Women's Rights↩

  1. J.S. Mill denounced the legal subjection of women as “wrong in itself” and as “one of the chief hindrances to human improvement” (1869) [OLL website]
  2. Mary Wollstonecraft believes that women are no more naturally subservient than men and nobody, male or female, values freedom unless they have had to struggle to attain it (1792) [OLL website]
  3. J.S. Mill spoke in Parliament in favour of granting women the right to vote, to have “a voice in determining who shall be their rulers” (1866) [OLL website]
  4. J.S. Mill in The Subjection of Women argued that every form of oppression seems perfectly natural to those who live under it (1869) [OLL website]
  5. John Stuart Mill uses an analogy with the removal of protective duties and bounties in trade to urge a similar “Free Trade” between the sexes (1869) [OLL website]
  6. Harriet Taylor wants to see “freedom and admissibility” in all areas of human activity replace the system of “privilege and exclusion” (1847) [OLL website]
  7. J.S. Mill on the wife as the “actual bondservant of her husband” in the 19th century (1869) [OLL website]
  8. Mary Wollstonecraft likens the situation of soldiers under a tyrant king to women under a tyrant husband (1792) [OLL website]
  9. Mary Wollstonecraft’s “I have a dream” speech from 1792 [OLL website]