Milton’s Map of Liberty

Abstract

Chapter 5 turns to Milton’s exploration of custom as it informs Britain’s ancient territories of civic liberty in A Maske Presented at Ludlow Castle (1637/45). Milton’s poetic map of the uneasy lands around the Welsh border juxtaposes competing visions of the land as massive or minuscule with rival definitions of its character as a Crown holding or a distinct nation. Like the pocket cartography it physically resembles, the poet’s publication is a rebus that argues on both lexical and image-based levels for a British government whose magistrates serve as temperate and virtuous representatives of the commons, acting in relative autonomy within the polity.

‘Our American Aristotle’

“…134 The Irish historian W. E. H. Lecky, a conservative Whig, remarked that 'few things are more curious to observe in the extreme radical speculation of our times than the revival of beliefs which had been supposed to have been long since finally exploded -the aspirations to customs belonging to early and rudimentary 'Our American Aristotle': Henry George's Gilded Age stages of society'. 135 The idea of common ownership of the soil, he observed, was common to 'barbarous or semi-barbarous stages of national development' and typical of 'archaic types of thought and custom'. 136 'Jefferson had already anticipated these writers', sneered Lecky, and had long been proven wrong by the course of history.…”

“…135 The idea of common ownership of the soil, he observed, was common to 'barbarous or semi-barbarous stages of national development' and typical of 'archaic types of thought and custom'. 136 'Jefferson had already anticipated these writers', sneered Lecky, and had long been proven wrong by the course of history. 137 In other respects, however, Lecky's analysis was an example of the more prosaic and familiar conservative criticisms of George: The 'great popularity and influence' of Progress and Poverty was due primarily to the author's 'eminent literary skill' rather than the ideas contained therein; 138 labour and capital had been so long intertwined with land that the idea of separating them was both impossible and morally unjustifiable; 139 and finally, that to deny the absolute and complete ownership of land by an individual was to negate all forms of possession, leaving the French, Lecky thought, with as much right to the land of England as the English.…”

“…136 'Jefferson had already anticipated these writers', sneered Lecky, and had long been proven wrong by the course of history. 137 In other respects, however, Lecky's analysis was an example of the more prosaic and familiar conservative criticisms of George: The 'great popularity and influence' of Progress and Poverty was due primarily to the author's 'eminent literary skill' rather than the ideas contained therein; 138 labour and capital had been so long intertwined with land that the idea of separating them was both impossible and morally unjustifiable; 139 and finally, that to deny the absolute and complete ownership of land by an individual was to negate all forms of possession, leaving the French, Lecky thought, with as much right to the land of England as the English. 140 Naturally, sitting comfortably and barely hidden beneath most of these uninspired defences of the status quo was a haughty moralism, one that regularly compelled conservative critics to remind their readers that poverty was ultimately a personal moral failure.…”

“…137 In other respects, however, Lecky's analysis was an example of the more prosaic and familiar conservative criticisms of George: The 'great popularity and influence' of Progress and Poverty was due primarily to the author's 'eminent literary skill' rather than the ideas contained therein; 138 labour and capital had been so long intertwined with land that the idea of separating them was both impossible and morally unjustifiable; 139 and finally, that to deny the absolute and complete ownership of land by an individual was to negate all forms of possession, leaving the French, Lecky thought, with as much right to the land of England as the English. 140 Naturally, sitting comfortably and barely hidden beneath most of these uninspired defences of the status quo was a haughty moralism, one that regularly compelled conservative critics to remind their readers that poverty was ultimately a personal moral failure. The economists Alfred Marshall and George Basil Dixwell both easily slipped from disinterested financial analysis to a discussion of moral weakness, suggesting that lack of thrift rather than land monopoly was the primary cause of poverty and that 'much vice, crime, ignorance, and brutality [are] the cause of poverty, instead of being caused by poverty, as Mr George assumes'.…”