Irish Philosophy

#IrishPhilosophy and the #SouthSeaBubble

#JohnToland lost all his money. He'd been so broke he'd had to use his patron #RobertMolesworth's name as a guarantor to invest.
https://www.dib.ie/biography/toland-john-a8584

Perhaps this & his own losses (plus his Old Whig principles) led #RobertMolesworth to call for the "contrivers...of the villanous South-Sea scheme" to be treated as those who killed their fathers in Ancient Rome: "tied in like manner in sacks, and thrown into the Thames.”
https://www.econlib.org/book-chapters/chapter-ch-2-the-south-sea-bubble/

Toland, John | Dictionary of Irish Biography

Dec 12, 2022 at 3:09pmWeb
Show threadIrish PhilosophyDec 12, 2022

#IrishPhilosophy and the #SouthSeaBubble (2)

Molesworth (along with other Irish members at Westminster such as #ThomasBrodrick and #JohnTrenchard) took a lead in pursuing those responsible for the South Sea Bubble fraud.

Trenchard went further, writing "Cato's Letters" with #ThomasGordon, which called for "liberty, accountability, and checks upon the wealthy interests who manipulated government for their own ends." These were very influential in America.

https://www.mtsu.edu/first-amendment/article/857/cato-s-letters

Cato's Letters

The First Amendment drew language from Cato's Letters, which endorsed free speech and said that people must be able to "petition for redress" their government.

Show threadIrish PhilosophyDec 12, 2022

#IrishPhilosophy and the #SouthSeaBubble (3)

Molesworth was credited with involvement writing some of "Cato's Letters" but this was denied by Gordon.

https://www.dib.ie/biography/molesworth-robert-a5861

It's interesting that the event that ruined Toland and enraged Molesworth resulted in a work that combined "Machiavelli’s republicanism, John Locke’s liberalism, and Algernon Sidney’s anti-authoritarian populism".

They lost money but the republican project they'd both worked for was moved forward.

Molesworth, Robert | Dictionary of Irish Biography