Category Archives: History
Historical Analysis
I’ve just managed to finally get around to reading Lesley Riddoch’s Blossom and already the first chapter has has got me gripped. It brings to mind the brilliant conclusion of Tom Paine’s The Rights of Man…
Some gentleman have affected to call the principles, upon which this work and the former part of The Rights of Man are founded, “a new-fangled doctrine.” The question is not whether these principles are new or old, but whether they are right or wrong. Suppose the former, I will show their effect by a figure easily understood.
It is now towards the middle of February. Were I to take a turn into the country, the trees would present a leafless, wintery appearance. As people are apt to pluck twigs as they go along, I perhaps might do the same, and by chance might observe that a single bud on that twig has begun to swell. I should reason very unnaturally, or rather not reason at all, to suppose this was the only bud in England which had this appearance. Instead of deciding this, I should instantly conclude that the same appearance was beginning or about to begin everywhere; and though the vegetable sleep will continue longer on some trees and plants than on others, and though some of them may not blossom for two or three years, all will be in leaf in the summer, except those which are rotten. What pace the political summer may keep with the natural, no human foresight can determine. It is, however, not difficult to perceive that the spring is begun.
Thought for the day 2
Thought for the day
…it is evident that the greatest forces that can be brought into the field of revolutions are reason and common interest. Where these can have the opportunity of acting, opposition dies with fear or crumbles away by conviction. It is a great standing which they have now universally obtained; and we may hereafter hope to see revolutions, or changes in governments, produced with the same quiet operation by which any measure, determinable by reason and discussion is accomplished.
Thomas Paine, The Rights of Man Part II(1792)
Another Scotland 