“... by Oakeshott; on the contrary, despite Leviathan’s famous reference to the ‘silence of the laws’, it was a comprehensive unitary framework within which all private organisations other than the family were seen as latently subversive of the body politic, and were thus permitted to exist only on sufferance from the sovereign. Between the 1890s and ...”

“... Right. In an age of global conglomerates, Leadbeater argues, there is no need for antitrust laws because the invisible hand of the market will brush aside all cartels. He rightly notes the difficulty of extracting money from the plutocracy, but then recommends making up the shortfall by regressive taxation, rather than the one charge the rich can’t ...”

“... of the procedure. In England the subject took off when it was enthusiastically sponsored by Dr John Elliotson of University College London. He welcomed it not only as an extraordinary new therapy, but as something that could throw light on psychology and pathology, even on the very nature of the vital principle. Mesmer’s claim that there was a magnetic ...”

“... an obligation, to question not only practices abroad, such as genital mutilation and religious laws permitting marital rape, but also certain habits at home, ‘emotions and desires that are inauthentic in the sense of being inimical to self-development, self-expression and rational autonomy’. There is nothing sacrosanct about any culture or religion’s ...”

“... the street: ‘There goes the man that writ a book that neither he nor anyone else understands.’ John Locke, then a political refugee in the Netherlands, simply couldn’t master the mathematics, though this didn’t stop him reviewing the book in the Dutch press. He was glad to be reassured by a local expert that he could take the sums and proofs on ...”

“... speak for the Australian electorate? The impasse proved too much for the governor-general, Sir John Kerr. Although his authority was constitutionally questionable, Kerr broke the stalemate by ousting Whitlam, dissolving both houses of parliament, and calling a new election. The shock waves from this (ab)use of the royal prerogative continue to reverberate ...”

“... root out immorality and ungodliness. As Puritan after Puritan remarked, there was no shortage of laws against wickedness, only of a readiness to implement them. The Major-Generals were intended to work with, not to replace, the local machineries of justice, which in some cases were galvanised, if only briefly, into action – to the pleasure of the ...”

“... of Cape Town and Table Mountain. Among those who have bought houses here are Earl Spencer, Elton John and Michael Douglas, but the oddity is that, while you might assume, as you drive through its wonderful avenues, that Constantia’s residents are nothing if not respectable, you’d be dead wrong, because not only did Mark set himself up in palatial style ...”

“... another five years, despite continuing tensions over loan repayments and the warning of its boss, John Hope Simpson, a former Indian Civil Service official, that the ‘unpleasant duty’ of debt collection and mass evictions would ‘probably lead to revolution’. Yet the League continued to roll out unpopular debt-led development projects. In the early ...”

“... a machine powered by the soul, and the mysteries of birth were no longer mysteries but physical laws that might be understood if a woman’s parts could be isolated, identified, diagrammed. Birth figures once depicted only soft flesh, but now paid close attention to the pelvis, the tailbone. How did it all fit together? How did a foetus rotate within the ...”

“... continued ever since. Perhaps the most serious accusations were levelled by the British journalist John Cornwell, whose book Hitler’s Pope, published in 1999, in effect painted Pius XII as a Nazi sympathiser. Decades before his election as pope on 2 March 1939, Eugenio Pacelli had served as papal nuncio to Bavaria, and in this capacity had witnessed the ...”

“... of Georgia and South Carolina who goes to the Coast of Africa, and in defiance of the most sacred laws of humanity tears away his fellow creatures from their dearest connections and damns them to the most cruel bondages, shall have more votes in a Government instituted for protection of the rights of mankind, than the Citizen of Pennsylvania or New Jersey who ...”

“... death. By contrast, Bodichon’s successful campaign for the reform of married women’s property laws took a mere 28 years.William’s image as a gentleman of great virtue cost him dearly. From 1819, crises crowded in on the neglected family businesses, forcing him to sell his property and paintings. Benjamin was determined not to make the same mistake. He ...”

“... but probably also to distance himself from an episode of family humiliation: in Joseph Knight v. John Wedderburn, an enslaved man had successfully sued his owner, James Wedderburn’s brother, winning his freedom and forming a precedent that made life difficult for slave owners in Scotland. Andrew Colvile wrote to Bell’s claiming that his father had ...”

“... Revolution, France was admired – or feared – as a source of liberal and progressive ideas. John Stuart Mill hailed the revolution as evidence that ‘democracy’ could become ‘the creed of the nation’. As late as 1914, France was Europe’s most advanced liberal democracy. Unlike in Britain, all men in France could vote, and had been able to do so ...”