Surely there can be but one rule of right, if morality has an eternal foundation, and whoever sacrifices virtue, strictly so called, to present convenience, or whose duty is to act in such a manner, lives only for the passing day, and cannot be an accountable creature.
Mary Wollstonecraft, A Vindicaton of the Rights of Woman (1792).
The latest WikiLeaks exposure has now presented us with a fuller picture of our government than we had before. The trendy term for this, right now, is “the Deep State.” But we are talking, here, merely about the secret wing of the administrative state that has been building up for over a century, conceived by Progressives (scornful of the Constitution) and fed by Republicans and Democrats.
Here is a fairly thorough overview of what is in #Vault7 by a famous British YouTuber:
https://youtu.be/D6BdaoyJe-Q
Whoso remembers that, among quite simple phenomena, causes produce effects which are sometimes utterly at variance with anticipation, will see how frequently this must happen among complex phenomena. That a balloon is made to rise by the same force which makes a stone fall; that the melting of ice may be greatly retarded by wrapping the ice in a blanket; that the simplest way of setting potassium on fire is to throw it into the water; are truths which those who know only the outside aspect of things would regard as manifest falsehoods. And, if, when the factors are few and simple, the results may be so absolutely opposed to seeming probability, much more will they be often thus opposed when the factors are many and involved. The saying of the French respecting political events, that “it is always the unexpected which happens” — a saying which they have been abundantly re-illustrating of late — is one which legislators, and those who urge on schemes of legislation, should have ever in mind.
Herbert Spencer, “Specialized Administration,” The Fortnightly Review(December 1871).
On March 11, 1702, The Daily Courant, England’s first national daily newspaper, was published for the first time. It was a one-sheet, concentrated on foreign news, sans commentary. The reverse side sported advertising. It was produced by Elizabeth Mallet (1672–1706), a printer and bookseller who lived, and published the paper, next to the Kings Arms tavern at Fleet Bridge in London.
Mary Wollstonecraft, from Hints originally intended to have been placed in the second part of A Vindicaton of the Rights of Woman (1792).
I am more and more convinced, that poetry is the first effervescence of the imagination, and the forerunner of civilization.
On March 10, 1922, Mahatma Gandhi was arrested in India, tried for sedition, and sentenced to six years in prison, only to be released nearly two years later for an appendicitis operation.
March 9 marks the 1763 birthday of British pamphleteer and activist William Cobbett. Cobbett was known for his lifelong opposition to authority, and his later-in-life “radicalism,” which included his opposition to Britain’s protectionist Corn Laws, and his support for Catholic Emancipation. Cobbett died in 1835.
In 1776 on this date, Scottish philosopher Adam Smith first published An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, which became the first widely accepted landmark work in the field of economics. It was not the first general treatise on the subject, however; that designation almost certainly belongs to banker Richard Cantillon’s Essai sur la Nature du Commerce en Général, cited by Smith in his more famous book. It is also worth noting that Étienne Bonnot de Condillac’s systematic treatise, Le Commerce et le Gouvernement, also saw publication in 1776.
On March 9, 1862, the USS Monitor and CSS Virginia fought to a draw in the Battle of Hampton Roads, the first battle between two ironclad warships. The Virginia was built on the remains of the USS Merrimack, and the battle is often referred to as between “the Monitor and the Merrimack.”
When Edward I forbade all towns to harbour forestallers, and when Edward VI made it penal to buy grain for the purpose of selling it again, they were preventing the process by which consumption is adjusted to supply: they were doing all that could be done to insure alternations of abundance and starvation. Similarly with the many legislative attempts since made to regulate one branch or other of the food-industry, down to the corn-law sliding-scale of odious memory. For the marvellous efficiency of this organization we are indebted to private enterprise; while the derangements of it we owe to the positively-regulative action of the Government. Meanwhile, its negatively-regulative action, required to keep this organization in order, Government has not duly performed. A quick and costless remedy for breach of contract, when a trader sells, as the commodity asked for, what proves to be wholly or in part some other commodity, is still wanting.
Herbert Spencer, “Specialized Administration,” The Fortnightly Review(December 1871).
Don’t try to solve serious matters in the middle of the night.
Philip K. Dick, “What The Dead Men Say” (1964).
On March 8, 1775, “African Slavery In America,” the first known essay advocating the abolition of slavery in America, was published anonymously in the Pennsylvania Journal and the Weekly Advertiser. Thomas Paine (pictured) is believed to be the essay’s author.
The first anti-slavery society was formed in Philadelphia weeks after publication, and Paine was a founding member.
Exactly 120 years earlier, a court in Northampton County of the Virginia Colony ruled that John Casor, then working as an indentured servant to Robert Palmer, must be returned to Anthony Johnson as Johnson’s “lawful” slave for life. Ironically, Johnson was one of the original indentured servants brought to Jamestown, had completed his indenture to become a “free Negro” and the first African landowner in the colony. The case marked the first person of African descent to be legally-recognized as a lifelong slave in England‘s North American colonies. The first official chattel slave in English-speaking North America was of African descent, and was owned by a man also of African descent.
Centenary Dates:
The February Revolution began on February 23, 1917 (Old Style calendar: March 8 by modern reckoning), in Russia: Women calling for bread in Petrograd started riots, which spontaneously spread throughout the city.
On March 8, the United States Senate adopts the cloture rule in order to limit filibusters.