January 15 "The Rights of Free-born Englishmen"

John Locke

John Milton (1644): “ever famous, and foremost in the achievements of liberty”

Henry Care, English Liberties (1682): compared England to other nations, including France, Spain, and Turkey; declared “the meer Will of the Prince is Law; his Word takes off any Man’s Head, imposes Taxes, seizes any Man’s Estate, when, how, and as often as he lists; and if one be accused, or but so much as suspected of any Crime, he may either presently execute him, or banish, or imprison him at pleasure.” Only in England were :the Lives and Fortunes” of the people not subject to the “Will (or rather Lusts)’ of ‘Arbitrary’ tyrants; described the ‘Constitution of our English govt” as “the best in the World”

Henry Fielding, A Charge Delivered to the Grand Jury (1749):  Britons were the “free masters of ourselves and our possessions, as far as the known laws of our country will admit”; “liable to no punishment, no confinement, no loss, but what those laws subject us to”

John Brown, An Estimate of the Manners and Principles of the Times (1758): “the Spirit of Liberty has produced more full and compleat effects in our own Country, than in any known Nation that ever was upon Earth”

capitalism = an economic system in which most of the means of production are privately owned and production is guided and income distributed largely through the operation of markets

commercial capitalism = rational investment of money in commercial enterprises for the purpose of increasing profits