ISIL Freedom Network: Global > Online Books and Collections > Early Classical Liberalism

The Law
Source: The Looking Glass
Author: Frederic Bastiat
Country: United States

Bastiat's classic plea for sanity at a time when socialism and socialist ideas were taking over his native France. One of the most important libertarian documents ever written. Very applicable to modern America.

Defense of Usury
Source: Jeremy Bentham
Country: United States

Could there really have been a time when people thought it was immoral to charge interest?

On Liberty -- e-text
Source: OnLiberty.net
Author: John Stuart Mill
Country: United States

A nice HTML version of Mill's important essay. It is "the classic statement and defence of the view that governmental encroachment upon the freedom of individuals is almost never warranted. A genuinely civil society, he maintained, must always guarantee the civil liberty of its citizens -- their protection against interference by an abusive authority." (1859)

Representative Government
Source: Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University
Author: John Stuart Mill
City: Blacksburg, State: VA, Country: United States

Mill's famous essay on democracy.

The Man Versus the State
Source: McMaster University Dept. of Economics
Author: Herbert Spencer
City: Hamilton, Country: Canada

Go ahead, call it Social Darwinism!

On the Duty of Civil Disobedience
Source: Indiana University Bloomington
Author: Henry David Thoreau
City: Bloomington, State: IN, Country: United States

"I heartily accept the motto, 'That government is best which governs least'; and I should like to see it acted up to more rapidly and systematically." Thoreau jumps right to the point in this call to the sort of political action all-too-rarely taken.

The History of Freedom in Antiquity
Source: The Acton Institute
Author: Lord Acton
Country: United States

Famous address from 1877.

Second Treatise on Government
Source: Institute for American Liberty
Author: John Locke
Country: United States

Natural law! Property rights! Right of revolution! Constitutional, limited government! They're all here, and they were here first. (Sidney then stole them, Jefferson read Sidney, and it all wound up in the Declaration of Independence.)

Leviathan
Source: Virginia Tech
Author: Thomas Hobbes
Country: United States

Though best known for advocating absolute monarchy, Hobbes here makes some revolutionary arguments about the nature of social contracts and the purpose of government. Hobbes and Locke may be viewed as the peanut butter and jelly of Enlightenment political thought -- best when combined.

The Theory of Moral Sentiments
Source: McMaster University
Author: Adam Smith
Country: Canada

An Essay On the History of Civil Society
Source: McMaster University Dept. of Economics
Author: Adam Ferguson
Country: United States

Scottish Enlightenment thinker Ferguson is often credited with differentiating between political society and civil society. Read here "of the decline of nations" and "of corruption and political slavery." Notice how they come right on top of one another. Coincidence? We think not.

Our Enemy, The State
Source: Barefoot Bob
Author: Albert J. Nock
Country: United States

Albert J. Nock's classic work distinguishing what he considered "legitimate" limited government from the unrestrained power of the state. (1935)

Liberalism
Source: Ludwig von Mises Institute
Author: Ludwig von Mises
Country: United States

After intellectually demolishing socialism, Mises wrote this book in 1927 to propose the alternative of private property, personal freedom and limited government. (1927)

Liberalism
Source: F. A. Hayek
Country: United States

Online English-language edition of a book written in 1973 for the Italian Enciclopedia del Novicento.

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