Murray N. Rothbard vs. the Philosophers - Ludwig von Mises Institute

REVIEWS AND COMMENTS BY MURRAY N. ROTHBARD 83
the old-fashioned sense of a believer in liberty), there has
always been a great gap: what happened between the days of
Locke and the Revolution of 1688, and the Wilkes agitation
in the l760s in Britain? How is it possible that, as it seems,
the libertarian viewpoint completely died out after 1688,
only to spring up, lively and almost full-grown, in the 1760s
and 1770s? This conclusion seemed impossible, and yet no
one knew anything about the great gap between the end of
the seventeenth century and the last quarter of the eighteenth.
It seemed as if no liberals existed during that entire
period to bridge the gap.
Well, now Professor Caroline Robbins, sister of the economist
Lionel Robbins and Professor at Bryn Mawr College,
has filled in this gap in one of the most impressive feats of
scholarship I have seen in a long while. For what Miss Robbins
had to do was to plow almost totally virgin soil, in very
obscure primary sources such as pamphlets, diaries, etc., of
the period, there being virtually no secondary sources on the
entire period. In her footnotes there are virtually no references
after about 1800.
Caroline Robbins has unearthed the liberals of this whole
epoch, and extensively traced the influences and interconnections.
They are certainly not as great as Locke, whom she
treats in the introductory chapter of the work, or the magnificent
Price, whom she treats in a fascinating final chapter,
but they are important enough, and they are all unearthed
and given their role in the procession. In her packed pages
will be found a discussion of the excellent magazine the Old
Whig; of that grand old man of liberty, Thomas Hollis—the
Pierre Goodrich of his era—who played a considerable role
in fomenting the American Revolution by collecting and disseminating
and reprinting libertarian books and pamphlets
all over the world, especially in America. 26 His was perhaps
26 Thomas Hollis (1720–1774) made a fundamental contribution
to the recovery of the republican tradition in the seventeenth century.
A great reader and freethinker, he devoted himself to the republication
of the works of Harrington, Milton, Nedham, Sidney, and
Locke.