“It is very rare for kings so to control themselves that their will never disagrees with what is just and right; or for them to have been endowed with such great keenness and prudence, that each knows how much is enough. Therefore, men’s fault or failing causes it to be safer and more bearable for a number to exercise government, so that they may help one another, teach and admonish one another; and, if one asserts himself unfairly, there may be a number of censors and masters to restrain his willfulness.”
These words are so republican-sounding that an Englishman must have written them, if we are to take to heart Daniel Hannan’s argument in Inventing Freedom: How the English-Speaking Peoples Made the Modern World.
The problem: An Englishman didn’t write them.
Hannan’s thesis is that the political principles that made England and America so great—principles of individual liberty, limited and representative government, and the rule of law—evolved from the dank peat of medieval England after the Angles and Saxons invaded the island. These principles were developed and refined through England’s struggles against autocratic kings, Hannan says, culminating in the Glorious Revolution of 1689 and the American Revolution of 1776, and resulting in the spread of an English-speaking empire across the globe.
“Elected parliaments, habeas corpus, free contract, equality before the law, open markets, an unrestricted press, the right to proselytize for any religion, jury trials: these … are specific products of a political ideology developed in the language in which you are reading these words,” Hannan writes.
