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

MURRAY N. ROTHBARD VS. THE PHILOSPHERS: UNPUBLISHED WRITINGS
88 ON HAYEK, MISES, STRAUSS, AND POLYANI
Thomas Bradbury, 34 who celebrated publicly at the death of
Queen Anne, and of Sylas Neville, who always feasted and
celebrated at the anniversary of the execution of Charles I,
and denounced that “dog, George III.” 35 And we are touched
to find that William Pitt the Elder, a fair-weather friend of
many of the true liberals, was snubbed by them for years for
“selling out” by accepting the title of Earl of Chatham. 36
And we also find that many leading literary figures of the
eighteenth century were quite close to the liberals, including
Jonathan Swift, Henry Fielding, William Hazlitt, and
James Boswell. 37
Locke justified rebelling against the government when the latter violated
the natural rights of individuals, the two authors maintained
that the government always tended to destroy individual rights rather
than protect them. According to Cato’s Letters, the history of
mankind was none other than the history of conflict between power
and freedom. Power, i.e., the state, was always ready to violate the
rights of its citizens and take away their freedom; therefore the state
should be reduced to the minimum and be constantly controlled. See
John Trenchard and Thomas Gordon, Cato’s Letters, in The English
Libertarian Heritage: From the Writings of John Trenchard and
Thomas Gordon in the Independent Whig and Cato’s Letters, ed.
David L. Jacobson (San Francisco, Calif.: Fox and Wilkes, 1994).
Gordon and Trenchard also published The Character of an Independent
Whig (London: J. Roberts, 1719–1720).
34Thomas Bradbury (1677–1759) congregationalist dissenter,
known for the polemic content of his political writings.
35Sylas Neville (1741–1840) kept a diary that is useful in understanding
the thought and politics of the republicans in the first
twenty years of the reign of George III. See The Diary of Sylas
Neville, 1767–1788.
36William Pitt (1708–1778) was a famous English statesman
and, from 1766, the first Earl of Chatham. He played a frontline
role in the Seven Years War (1756–63), which ensured the transformation
of England into an imperial power. He opposed the Treaty
of Paris (1763), which concluded the war.
37Jonathan Swift (1667–1745) was an Irish writer and politician,
first politically on the side of the Whigs and then of the Tories.
In reality, he was more of an Old Whig, defending traditional English
freedoms and rights although he feared democratic and egalitarian
offshoots. In Gulliver’s Travels (1726), he described the