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    Our Heritage of Liberty - its Origin, its Achievement, its Crisis
    Our Heritage of Liberty - its Origin, its Achievement, its Crisis
    Our Heritage of Liberty - its Origin, its Achievement, its Crisis
    Ebook80 pages1 hour

    Our Heritage of Liberty - its Origin, its Achievement, its Crisis

    By Stephen Leacock

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    About this ebook

    This volume contains Stephen Leacock's 1942 wartime treatise, "Our Heritage of Liberty - Its Origin, Its Achievement, Its Crisis". This fascinating and thought-provoking text will appeal to those with an interest in war-inspired literature, and it would make for a worthy addition to collections of related works. The chapters of this volume include: "Britain and America", "The Good and the Bad Old Times", "The March of Progress", "Liberty in the Ancient World, "The Shadow of the Dark and Middle Ages", "National States", "The Growth of Popular Rights", and more. Stephen P. H Butler Leacock (1869 - 1944) was a Canadian writer, humourist, and teacher. He was amongst the most widely read English-speaking authors in the world during the early twentieth century, and is best remembered for his humourous novels. We are republishing this vintage book now in an affordable, modern edition - complete with a specially commissioned new biography of the author.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherRead Books Ltd.
    Release dateJun 8, 2015
    ISBN9781473375567
    Our Heritage of Liberty - its Origin, its Achievement, its Crisis
    Author

    Stephen Leacock

    Award-winning Canadian humorist and writer Stephen Leacock (1869-1944) was the author of more than 50 literary works, and between 1915 and 1925 was the most popular humorist in the English-speaking world. Leacock’s fictional works include classics like Sunshine Sketches of a Little Town, Arcadian Adventures with the Idle Rich, and Literary Lapses. In addition to his humor writings, Leacock was an accomplished political theorist, publishing such works as Elements of Political Science and My Discovery of the West: A Discussion of East and West in Canada, for which he won the Governor General's Award for writing in 1937. Leacock’s life continues to be commemorated through the awarding of the Leacock Medal for Humour and with an annual literary festival in his hometown of Orillia, Ontario.

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      Book preview

      Our Heritage of Liberty - its Origin, its Achievement, its Crisis - Stephen Leacock

      OUR HERITAGE OF LIBERTY -

      Its Origin, Its Achievement, Its Crisis

      A Book For War Time

      by

      Stephen Leacock

      Copyright © 2013 Read Books Ltd.

      This book is copyright and may not be

      reproduced or copied in any way without

      the express permission of the publisher in writing

      British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data

      A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

      Contents

      Stephen Leacock

      Britain And America

      The Good And The Bad Old Times

      The March Of Progress

      Liberty In The Ancient World

      The Shadow Of The Dark And Middle Ages

      National States

      The Growth Of Popular Rights

      Reaction Of America On Europe

      Natural Liberty And Jean Jacques Rousseau

      Age Of Enlightenment

      The Rights Of Man And Of The Citizen

      The New Light Burns Dim

      The Great Peace And Industrial Revolution

      Enter Political Economy

      John Stuart Mill

      Anarchism And Wool-Gathering

      The Vision Of Socialism

      National Liberty And Unity

      The United States United

      Individual Liberty And Mass Industry

      Stephen Leacock

      Stephen Butler Leacock was born at Swanmore, Hampshire, England in 1869. His family emigrated to Canada in 1876 and settled on a farm near the village of Sutton, Ontario. Leacock enrolled at the University of Toronto in 1887, studying modern and classical languages and literature and graduating in 1891with a Bachelor of Arts degree.

      During the 1890s, Leacock had some success as a humorist, publishing articles in magazines such as Truth, Life, and Toronto’s Grip magazine. In 1899, he enrolled in graduate studies at the University of Chicago, and during his third year accepted the position of special lecturer in political science and history with McGill University in Montreal, Quebec.

      In 1903, Leacock completed his dissertation The Doctrine of Laissez-faire and received his Ph.D. magna cum laude. He became a full-time assistant professor with McGill and began public lecturing, primarily about the British Empire. His first book, Elements of Political Science (1906) was a landmark work which became a standard university textbook for the next two decades. Leacock was appointed full-time professor at McGill in 1908.

      Leacock published Literary Lapses – a compendium of his previously published writings – in 1910. It sold well and saw Leacock become one of the most popular authors in the English-speaking world. The book was followed by Nonsense Novels (1911) and his satirical masterpiece, Sunshine Sketches of a Little Town (1912). Over the next thirty years, Leacock produced a string of well-received works, including The Unsolved Riddle of Social Justice (1920), Humour: Its Theory and Technique (1935), Canada: Foundations of Its Future (1941) and Canada and the Sea (1944).

      In 1921, Leacock was a founding member of the Canadian Authors’ Association. He retired from McGill in 1936, and a year later his book My Discovery of the West: A Discussion of East and West in Canada won the Governor General’s Award. Leacock was diagnosed with throat cancer and died in 1944, aged 74. Since his death, the Stephen Leacock Medal for Humour for the best humorous book by a Canadian author.

      BRITAIN AND AMERICA

      Liberty is fighting for its life. In the present struggle the whole effort of Britain and America is the preservation of the liberty of free men, under the democratic government of free nations. The whole war effort directed against us aims to impose autocracy and to enforce submission. As between these two things there can be no choice and no compromise. One must go under. If we believe that right beats wrong, we cannot doubt which will survive. But in the hour of trial it is necessary to renew our faith.

      Of late years, both in Britain and America, we had come to value our liberty too little. We were forgetting the long struggle through which it had come to us, and the price paid. We had begun to take too much for granted. In England Mr John Bull, grown a little heavy and inactive, still kept repeating, An Englishman’s house is his castle. When people interrupted him and protested, But, Mr Bull, this man hasn’t any house, he would answer testily, Quite so, quite so, we are taking that up in Parliament—in fact in a week or two it will go into committee and after that it will go... and then he paused for he knew very well where it would go.

      So, too, with John Bull’s relative, Uncle Sam, over in America. He kept on saying, Yes, sir, the price of liberty is eternal vigilance. Then he yawned and took a look around and didn’t feel so sure about the vigilance. What were these slums, these millions of workers without work, these share-croppers, these miners’ cabins, these dust-blown farms? I must look into it, he said, after the baseball season, right after it, or after I get back from Miami!

      Yet in spite of this lapse towards forgetfulness, till just a short time ago this almost world-wide freedom seemed to be a permanent achievement and advance of humanity. Then came the war. The shadow of force and tyranny has fallen over a great part of Europe. Liberty is here derided, there trampled under foot, and everywhere in danger. Human kindliness is replaced by cruelties unknown for centuries.

      It is proper therefore for us to look back, for renewed inspiration and sustained courage, over the ground that has been traversed. We need to read again the story of the long struggle by which liberty seemed achieved. We need to examine again the ideals and the principles on which free government was established in Britain and America. We need perhaps to ask what were the shortcomings, how much there was still incomplete and unaccomplished, to what extent our freedom, while established in the letter, nevertheless failed in the spirit. It is the purpose of this survey to undertake

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