The Best of the OLL No. 70: David Hume, “Idea of a Perfect Commonwealth” (1777) (Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, 2016).

This is part of “The OLL Reader: An Anthology of the Best of the OLL” which is a collection of some of the most important material in the OLL. A thematic list with links to HTML versions of the texts is available here. In this pamphlet Spooner presents his theory of natural law and natural rights which is the foundation of his political and legal theories. it was planned to be the first part of a longer work but he never completed it.

This is part of “The OLL Reader: An Anthology of the Best of the OLL” which is a collection of some of the most important material in the OLL. A thematic list with links to HTML versions of the texts is available here. David Hume’s ideal form of government was not known in any detail until the posthumous appearance of the essay “Idea of a Perfect Commonwealth” in 1777. In it he draws up an elaborate scheme for a “perfect commonwealth” for which he borrows aspects of James Harrington’s Commonwealth of Oceana (1656) and Oliver Cromwell’s Commonwealth (1653-59) during the English Revolution. His other model included the United Provinces of the Netherlands.

Three Lectures on the Cost of Obtaining Money and on some effects of Private and Government Paper Money (London: John Murray, 1830).

Senior gave these lectures at the University of Oxford in Trinity Term 1829. The Third Lecture is on “Some Effects of Government Paper Money” and deals with a number of historical episodes of hyper inflation.

The Collected Liberty Matters Forums for 2015: Nos. 13-19, ed. David M. Hart and Sheldon Richman (Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, 2016).

This volume is a collection of the “Liberty Matters” online discussion forums which took place during 2015. There are seven which cover the following topics: Richard Cobden: Ideas and Strategies in Organizing the Free-Trade Movement in Britain; On the Spread of (Classical) Liberal Ideas; Assessing Böhm-Bawerk’s Contribution to Economics after a Hundred Years; Magna Carta after 800 Years: From liber homo to modern freedom; Reassessing the Political Economy of John Stuart Mill; Anthony de Jasay and the Political Economy of the State; and Montesquieu on Liberty and Sumptuary Law. The Forums are also available individually in HTML and a variety of ebook formats.

In June 2015 we celebrate the 800th anniversary of the signing of one of the key legal documents in English political history, the “Great Charter” (Magna Carta). When a group of disgruntled Barons forced King John to sign a document in June 1215 at Runnymede near Windsor, listing his political and legal powers (and thus explicitly limiting himself to those defined powers) little did they realise that they would begin a tradition of thinking about the “rights of Englishmen” which would echo down the centuries to our present day. In this Liberty Matters discussion we have invited four leading historians to explain what Magna Carta was, why it has appealed to so many people over the years, the impact it has had on the development of Anglo-American legal and political institutions, and its relevance for us today. The Lead Essay is by Justin Champion, Professor of the History of Early Modern Ideas at Royal Holloway, University of London; with comments by Richard Helmholz, the Ruth Wyatt Rosenson Distinguished Service Professor of Law at the University of Chicago; Nicholas Vincent, Professor of Medieval History at the University of East Anglia; and David Womersley, the Thomas Warton Professor of English Literature at the University of Oxford. See the Archive of "Liberty Matters".

Henry C. Clark, Liberty Matters: Montesquieu on Liberty and Sumptuary Law (Nov. 2015) (Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, 2015).

Hartmut Kliemt, Liberty Matters: Anthony de Jasay and the Political Economy of the State (Sept. 2015) (Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, 2015).