Wk. 5 Primary Source Voltaire, Letters on the English (1733)

Question 1

Voltaire, Letters on the English (1733)

Answer 1

Voltaire, Letters on the English (1733) – Voltaire (1694-1778), a figure of the Enlightenment, advocating for the freedom of religion and speech that many historians see as central to Enlightenment thinking. In these letters Voltaire describes English government and society in the aftermath of a long period of political unrest and civil war, culminating in the Glorious Revolution of 1688.

What did Voltaire think of the English?

• He mocked them for comparing themselves to the Romans, noting the trivial nature of some things the English went to war for – usually related to religion.“[The Romans] did not draw their swords and set the world in a blaze merely to determine whether the flamen should wear his shirt over his robe, or his robe over his shirt, or whether the sacred chickens should eat and drink, or eat only, in order to take the augury. The English have hanged one another by law, and cut one another to pieces in pitched battles, for quarrels of as trifling nature.”
• But he praised the English for being able to rise up against their nobility and strife and come out with a result of liberty. “…a more essential difference between Rome and England, which gives the advantage entirely to the later: that the civil wars of Rome ended in slavery, and those of the English in liberty. The English are the only people upon earth who have been able to prescribe limits to the power of kings by resisting them.”

How were they different from the French and other Europeans?

• The English have been the only country able to put connstraints on their nobility.“The English are the only people upon earth who have been able to prescribe limits to the power of kings by resisting them; and who, by a series of struggles, have at last established that wise Government where the Prince is all powerful to do good, and, at the same time, is restrained from committing evil; where the nobles are great without insolence, though there are no vassals; and where the people share in the Government without confusion”
• While the English people were able to Sentance King Charles I to death, the French had multiple assasination attempts on their kings – 30 times to finally assasinate one.
• Unlike other Europeans, the English have found liberty through the shedding of their blood. “The English have doubtless purchased their liberties at a very high price, and waded through seas of blood to drown the idol of arbitrary power. Other nations have been involved in as great calamities, and have shed as much blood; but then the blood they split in defence of their liberties only enslaved them the more.”
  
  • “That which rises to a revolution in England is no more than a sedition in other countries. A city in Spain, in Barbary, or in Turkey, takes up arms in defence of its privileges, when immediately it is stormed by mercenary troops, it is punished by executioners, and the rest of the nation kiss the chains they are loaded with.”
• Unlike other Europeans, the English are not interested in conquest. “The English are not fired with the splendid folly of making conquests, but would only prevent their neighbours from conquering”

To what extent was this the result of the Glorious Revolution and the struggle between King and Parliament?

• ?

Other Notes:

• Voltaire notes the great power and utility of the merchants and the uselessness of the nobility who look down upon the merchants.