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Essays on Government, Jurisprudence, Liberty of the Press, and Law of Nations. Written for the Supplement to the Encyclopædia Britannica

Essays on Government, Jurisprudence, Liberty of the Press, and Law of Nations is a scholarly compilation that explores various aspects of governance, legal theory, and international law. The essays were intended to supplement the Encyclopædia Britannica, a comprehensive reference work of its time. The book addresses topics such as the structure and function of government, the principles of jurisprudence, the importance of press freedom, and the laws that govern nations' interactions. more

Author

James Mill
James Mill

James Mill was a British economist known for his contributions to classical political economy and liberalism. His work 'Principles of Political Economy' had a profound impact on later economists. more

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“If nature had produced spontaneously all the objects which we desire, and in sufficient abundance for the desires of all, there would have been no source of dispute or of injury among men; nor would any man have possessed the means of ever acquiring authority over another.”

“Whenever the powers of government are placed in any hands other than those of the community, whether those of one man, of a few, or of several, those principles of human nature which imply that government is at all necessary, imply that those persons will make use of them to defeat the very end for which government exists.”

“Daring ideas are like chessmen moved forward; they may be beaten, but they may start a winning game.”

“Unlike liberalism, with its fundamental belief in the long-range power of ideas, conservatism is bound by the stock of ideas inherited at a given time. And since it does not really believe in the power of argument, its last resort is generally a claim to superior wisdom, based on some self-arrogated superior quality.”

“There is perhaps no single factor contributing so much to people's frequent reluctance to let the market work as their inability to conceive how some necessary balance, between demand and supply, between exports and imports, or the like, will be brought about without deliberate control. The conservative feels safe and content only if he is assured that some higher wisdom watches and supervises change, only if he knows that some authority is charged with keeping the change "orderly.”

“To combat depression by a forced credit expansion is to attempt to cure the evil by the very means which brought it about; because we are suffering from a misdirection of production, we want to create further misdirection -- a procedure which can only lead to a much more severe crisis as soon as the credit expansion comes to an end.”