 Now if we look back through Western civilization, we'll find that in the Middle Ages European culture was dominated by Folklore Laws derived from the early tribes of Europe and that folklore provided a very strong so as legal thinking in England that is finds its Compliment in the Anglo-Saxon roots of common law And in the Middle Ages you had a large number of You had a large number of legal systems that developed in the same evolutionary way as the Early Folklore and some of those would be things like law merchant Which were again an evolutionary legal system And in this medieval period you had a high degree of Free activity free movement great deal of development of international trade of Voluntary merchant courts applying law merchant was the era in which the universities developed in which Modern philosophy began its development based on the great Spanish Islamic philosophers and Who introduced Aristotelian thought into the West and this comes into conflict with the development of the modern state in each of the major cultural units of Western Europe and We find the outbreak of statism Emerging very strongly as a virulent disease By the end of the 13th century through the 11th 12th and 13th century Europe had experienced a vast increase in Culture and civilization vast increase in material civilization and it's important for us to realize how recent Even settled agricultural life is in man's Development not to mention how even more recent is man's existence in urban Civilizations and it's in this period of The high Middle Ages in which there is this great flourishing of urban civilizations a very good source on this is the works of the great Historian honoree Perrin whose Economic and social history of Europe in two volumes or his book on medieval cities or his book on Mohammed and Shalemain His book on democratic institutions in the low countries any of these books are eminently worth your reading to find out the first Stage of European civilization before statism arose and because There were certain especially free areas in Europe one was the area of champagne in northeastern France in which the immensely successful international fairs with their fair court and fair law were operative In which the products of the Mediterranean and especially Italy were sold in exchange for the raw materials from the underdeveloped part of the world That is the area of the north and Baltic Seas. So the great handsome merchants Whose activity spread from the German cities up to the great northern cantor of Bergen and From the salt marshes of the bit of Biscay to the City of Novgorod in Russia all of the great raw materials wool salt and especially fish were gathered by the Hansa merchants and in Flanders you found the great industrial development the production of these raw materials Into more finished products and then the sale of these To the merchants from Italy and the development of the great banking houses with their branches in Bruges the especially the Medici Bank the development of modern systems of Transfers of monies modern systems of organization of trade and this became the subject of aggrandizement by the Monarchs and especially the English and the French Monarchs at the end of the 13th century. They wanted to get control of this first of all the English the French King got control of champagne began imposing taxes and Immediately the Italian merchants moved from land to sea and began going to Southampton and to Bruges by the Atlantic route rather than overland and the fares of champagne disappeared Similarly the French and English kings each wanted to get control of Flanders in this they each were thwarted by the burgers of Flanders who were able to Totally unexpectedly destroy the flower of the chivalry of these countries and maintain their independence, but the result was constant conflict between France and England the French King and the English King Which eventually became the Hundred Years War and After a short time each King realized that they were in a position where they would need more money The previous system of warfare which was developed in the High Middle Ages in the 11th century Put great limits on the ability of governments to conduct wars Especially the peace of God and the truce of God and these set up long periods of time in which warfare was prohibited and Then during those periods when war was allowed It could only take place during parts of each week and So it made it very difficult for governments to carry on wars. It was very inefficient and So due to the peace of God and the truce of God Wars were very limited Had become almost a bit stylized people if they engaged in war at all would do so for ceremonial Purposes rather than actual Warfare purposes now this was being challenged very strongly at this particular point and what the Kings found was that they wanted to carry on war for long periods of time year after year and they didn't have the money to do so So Their first immediate reaction Which is something very unique for any government was that they repudiated their previous debts They immediately threw out the Italian bankers from whom they borrowed money and said too bad. We're not going to pay you The next year they found they couldn't borrow any money. This created a problem So they looked around for the next group to Contribute and that was the Jews and so Jewish merchants were found all their material goods confiscated And they were expelled from England and France and And finally The Knights Templars Who had previously been involved in the Crusades and when Islam? Reconquered Palestine. They moved back to Europe where they continued to do what they had also been doing Which was people would who were going to the Holy Land would deposit money in the castles the temples in Paris or in Barcelona or in London and a check would be given to them and when they got to Jerusalem They went to the headquarters of the Templars and the Templars would give them money For that receipt. So they became great centers of deposit They were military order. They had a high Standards and people were willing to deposit money with them and use them as a place of deposit and for transfer of money, so They they were immediately accused of of heresy they were burnt at the stake and the Properties and resources of the Templars were seized Having gotten to that point the governments Had to come up with some new way of getting resources and that was to try and get their own populations to contribute money and At this time it was very difficult. They were not as efficient means of collecting taxes, so they came up with the idea that what they would do is get the Merchants in each country to collect taxes for them and they would share The income and this was done By a process that's known as parliamentary democracy What they did was create polymints the estates general in France and the Parliament in England by bringing in France the third estate in to join the clergy and the Nobility and in England to create the House of Commons and then laws were passed that said foreign merchants couldn't bring in goods Only English or French merchants Could deal in goods for that country and that meant of course they could raise the price and That would involve certain kinds of of tariff and tax arrangements But also a higher price to the consumer beyond that which would be pocketed by the merchants And so you have the creation of a very strong obvious interest group in the House of Commons or in the third estate and at that time most of the members of these Bodies came from towns and cities if you look at the old unreformed House of Parliament it was in addition to two nights from each shire there were two Burgesses from each borough and they were immense number of boroughs along the especially the English Channel and These merchants and representing their own Group were the direct beneficiaries of the system. So you have a very strong system of taxation introduced With the result that you have a beginning of a decline in the economy in Europe, especially in England and France and This decline is further pushed by the black death in the middle of the 14th century, but the black death of Did touch on the parts of Europe and they did not have a similar decline for instance Italy and the Baltic Were great centers of economic growth at the same time that the statist regions were suffering from the effects of the special interest groups That are able to operate through the creation of the parliamentary system And so you have then Through the Parliament the creation of something very different than folklore namely Legislation and so you have the beginning of of legislation that reflects Varying degrees of special interest either of the king of the lords of the of the bishops of the merchants in the Parliament or the attorneys in the in the Parliament and And so you have a growth of New institutions Which are on the one hand funded by the new system of taxation and legislation behind it to try and undermine or overthrow the original law of Europe the folklore developed out of evolution and competitive Historical development now this system of Special interest legislation and of the taxation that's necessary to funded Continued to grow during the succeeding centuries and so we have from this early stage this first stage of Mercantilism with the earliest navigation acts and and Protective tariffs on the all the way through we have the growth of state institutions and These continue to grow until through the 18th century and What you have is a continuing struggle between the Original law of what of Western civilization and this alien product actually comes in through through the Arabs and through the Mediterranean from from and from Byzantium a lot of it as much I was originally in the Middle Ages modeled on the Byzantine Empire and All of this alien law is brought in Legislation and legislation system of legislation is brought into Europe and so throughout the centuries there is this conflict between the European tradition of folklore and custom and the common law and the alien system of legislation bureaucracy and taxation that accompanied it accompanied it and We can call that alien system very easily the mercantilist system and It reaches a new height in the beginning of at the end of the 17th and beginning of the 18th century because at that time After a long period of no particular strong rivalry or conflict England and France once again enter into a long period of conflict that actually lasts from the end of the 17th century until 1815 There were three major clusters of wars beginning of this end of the 17th beginning of the 18th century the middle of the 18th end of the 18th and early 19th century and these wars contribute again to major developments the first cluster of these wars Again leads to a crisis the government needs to raise money for a permanent army a standing army the crisis quite similar to the one at the end of the 13th century and so you have at this time the great debate on the standing army question the great liberals of the early 18th century writing their essays attacking the standing army and How is the standing army going to be paid for the? government goes to war and turns to the public and the public says your war enjoy it We're not going to pay any taxes on it so if you try to collect taxes, then we're going to throw you out of office and But if you leave us alone, we'll leave you alone as long as you're going to fight the war far away from us We're not going to be hurt by it directly Go about your business So the government has to think of some way of getting money and it tries to decide a new system and it decides if we can get people with money to lend money to the government that Guaranteed not by the government because no one would trust the government but guaranteed by merchants By people engaged in finance Then we'll be able to borrow money So we'll create a system called the national debt with a sinking fund that will give people a certain assurance And we'll reward the financiers who are willing to guarantee this with certain privileges which we'll call the Bank of England and So you have in order to finance these protracted wars what's called the public finance revolution creation of a system to support the armies by the creation of new public finance institutions Now this leads to a lot of New ideas new experiments Without going into a great deal of detail the end result was that in both England and France the attempts to finance To create a public finance revolution led to the collapse of the currency collapse of the financial system in each country in England it was called the South Sea bubble and in France it was called the Mississippi bubble and by 2020 both of these systems collapsed And this is one of the great moments in Western history the collapse of these of the public finance system the whole idea of public finance was shown to be without any foundation and as a result a new approach had to be developed and The people who brought that in were a remarkable group of people Leaders of the wake party led by Sir Robert Walpole including Henry Pellum the Duke of Newcastle who was Henry Pellum's brother and Philip York who became Earl of Hartwick the Lord Chancellor now in order to Pursue their policies They recognized that the first thing they need was the support of the public of the electorate And that meant a radical cut in taxes and they looked around and said what is the main thing absorbing taxes? It's the military and so the first thing that Walpole did was to turn to the new leader in France the Abbey the new Prime Minister in In France Abbey Fleury who became Cardinal Fleury had been the king's tutor he was a very elderly man and They agreed that what they needed was a permanent Policy of detente Walpole sent his brother to be the ambassador to France and England was able to radically cut its military forces and thus to radically cut its taxes and this was Crucial a crucial event in Western civilization because in the succeeding two decades the the low taxation In England provided the huge reservoir of savings the capital accumulation that made possible the industrial revolution And so this is a landmark Development so we see a very very important policy England at the time The weeks took great pleasure and great glory in contrasting the English system with the French system The Englishman said the only way to collect taxes is to have a large police force If we have a large police force, we will be Very much under the thumb of the government and even more taxes will be collected So we have to have a system that Minimizes the ability of government to collect taxes Therefore there won't be any police force and we'll be able to live a Good existence where instead of the government having the money that produces without the money so The system in England that existed was that there was no Means by which the central government could Through its own agents in force any law or regulation in England It was done through the justices of the peace in other words Parliament Which usually represented the same people would pass some law quite often They would pass a law saying let's have some regulation Because the government would ask them to pass the law, but they knew that when the Enforcement came about it would be enforced by their same type of person who didn't want government enforcement that is county government Both administration and courts were in the hands of the justices of the peace who were volunteer unpaid local Property owners and So they were an important barrier. They prevented the government from carrying out any of its important great policies that it might want to do in the way of regulation or tax collection and so England had the advantage of What we might call no government government There was nothing that the central government could really do if it was against the interests of Property owners and taxpayers and so obviously It was limited drastically in what it could do which is one of the great Situations in Western history. It's if we want to know why the Industrial Revolution occurred. That's one of the important reasons and so Given that situation England was on the threshold of great success now, unfortunately In the mid-century Replaced new people came in they again started Engaging in war with France England was quite successful in the wars In fact in the Seven Years War it totally defeated France and Spain everywhere at Concord Manila and Havana Canada the West Indies West Africa all the beginnings of the great power of England in India in Bengal It was a great success leaving England with the largest national debt in its history and that led immediately to what we had seen Last night. That is the American Revolution the attempt to finance to pay for this debt to try to impose in the colonies a System different from that that I've just described in England in other words the American colonies perhaps even more than England were a place where there was no government government and Therefore as soon as the government tried to impose taxes of bureaucracy it ran into immediate resistance These criminals as they were viewed by the colonists were thrown into the sea. They were caught and feathered They were driven out and the American Revolution was the consequence Another consequence of the public finance revolution and of course That's all detailed in Adam Smith's wealth of nations published in 1776 Smith is writing the wealth of nations as the whole process of mercantilism's ultimate Pressure on the colonies is exploding and he's trying to explain to the English Well, that's you shouldn't be having this whole system of government in bureaucracy government Pressure regulation special interest groups taxation etc etc trying to get them to focus on what the issues were and so What you have at this point From the mid 18th century is the growth of a major Force for bureaucracy for taxation for government intervention in other words this Earlier system of folklore which was being eroded constantly which at least in England and in the American colonies had been preserved to a larger degree than other parts of Europe Was facing a great challenge now this Challenge occurred All over in other words you have in France greater pressure Towards government Control government regulation you have that in many of parts of Germany you have it in Spain and Portugal you have it in in Italy you have it in Scandinavia the great coup d'etat by the Swedish King and the Ending of parliamentary Government in Sweden after the long period of rivalry between the caps and the hats in the Swedish Parliament and This occurred just before the American Revolution the coup d'etat of the Swedish King Against the Constitution of Sweden was widely read in America American saw this as Very similar to what the English were doing and it was because it was the same spirit of the growth of government bureaucracy the growth of absolutism the growth of a totally controlling bureaucracy and a huge tax system that goes with it and The American Revolution and the whole range of revolutionary activities that began in the mid 18th century the so-called Atlantic Revolution that spreads through Europe in America and also to a lesser degree in South America is The response against this growth of absolutism in England one of the great spokesman in addition to Adam Smith for the old system Was Edmund Burke and so you Edmund Burke's writings are a great source of critique of this new absolutism so if we look at this period we see emerging the great conflict between different points of view you have in this growth of bureaucracy the growth of absolutism and the growth of an ideology to support it a Conscious ideology to support the bureaucratic or absolutist state the emergence of modern conservatism and you have in conflict with it defending the Western more Western concepts of government that is the Western concept of no government government the classical liberals and so classical liberalism emerges Fully at the end of the 18th century with its roots of course back in the whole of Western philosophy to challenge in a conscious way this full-blown Defense of the state that is conservatism and so the Defenders of the state of course emerge most clearly in Germany It's in Germany that you find the greatest philosophers of this new absolutist state And of course many of them saying that Only through this total state can anyone be free that only by full power To the state does any individual have freedom you have this very peculiar Germanic concept of freedom coming only from total loss of liberty and This because because in at least in England conservatives were ashamed to fully defend the whole thing they There was still so much of the remnant of and strong institutions from the tradition Western Tradition that in England they were ashamed to fully express the the conservative view point so it's only in Germany that it gets its fullest flowering now you have then this conflict between the Conservative and liberal point of view With many writers not being totally Consistent and as Hayek has pointed out If you look at some of the late 18th century writers many of the liberals They were also Expressing strong support for a absolutist state sometimes they did it for tactical reasons that they thought Well, it'd be simpler to have an absolutist state then a myriad of other institutions that are Irregular and confused that they had a very Cartesian Mindset they wanted everything to be in a very perfect Symmetry and of course in order to defend their freedoms European peoples had built up a whole range of multiple Barriers and bulwarks against the government as Edmund Burke so well described it and so you find Many people who had classical liberal attitudes when it came to specific Policies actually advocated the opposite point of view and so you have in this period a great deal of confusion if you're looking for a kind of perfectly identifiable Perspectives on the writings that are being put forward and this Has a major effect because One of the most important of the writers in England was Jeremy Bentham who had many Theoretical ideas that were quite liberal and yet in practice had a whole range of extreme bureaucratic ideas and his followers in England were people that introduced a great deal of government intervention and Similarly in France you would have people somewhat similar to that especially the Jacobins Who created a tradition of strong government intervention? but at the beginning of the 19th century if you look at the conservatives and the classical liberals They're advocating a Number of things in opposition to each other strong opposition to each other and so first of all the Classical liberals are standing for a strong sense of What? People Deriving their views from someone like Edmund Burke would call the Great Republic that European peoples formed a single great cultural unit and that that progress Came from that cultural unit when it was free to pursue Material and cultural objectives and so they were great opponents of what they saw as a civil war Or civil wars between the European peoples that this one great cultural republic this great republic should not weaken itself and weaken the great Progress it had inherent in it by civil wars the diversion of civil wars diversion of resources, and so classical liberals stood for peace While the conservatives welcomed these wars because they claimed that this was the way to differentiate One state and its leaders from the neighboring state and its leaders and that this was part of conservatism to have this strong identity of hostility of rivalry of Warfare as a form of competition rather than the unheroic commercial competition so peace and war were big dividing lines as were Extreme nationalism a political nationalism versus a purely cultural nationalism the liberals were very strongly in favor of local customs and local cultures and a non-military nationalism They also of course wanted Pre-trade domestically and internationally while the other side wanted various kinds of protection in their in their activities and then the Liberals stood very strongly for civil liberties and this was Something that the conservatives were strongly against so you can see how this Line-up was occurring at this time at the early say at the end of the period of the great wars in 1815 now at this point in Time something very new emerged what you had emerging was What was where the foundations of modern socialism? the socialists Came first many of them had been associated with liberals in either either really or just happened to be because they had certain similarities and You have the emergence of ideas that yes Liberalism is all very good in theory, but it is not going to win Mass support it's not going to win the support of the mass of the population and they said Therefore even though it's very a very nice idea it has nothing to do with reality We must come up with something that's more attuned to what we think the masses want and they said First of all What we need and what the conservatives are offering and that anyone who wants to win the masses should do the same is to not Mealy or not even Stand in favor of religion That is especially the old religion which indeed the conservatives had just mangled in the late 18th century Just as at the period I mentioned at the end of the 13th century. There was a huge mangling of religion and the development of Strongly politicized churches again at the end of the 18th century you have in the various European countries mangling of religion and more total state control over religion and That's what the conservatives stood for they didn't stand for traditional Western Christianity They stood for state religions bureaucratic religious establishments, but the socialists said what the conservatives have that the liberals don't is myths We must the masses live not by truth and reason and self-interest But by the miasma of myths so we have to create new myths for the people We must Be funneled them even further with new myths And we must create new modern religions religions of humanity we must follow what wasn't carried through completely by the Jacobins when they tried to create religions of reason and She rubs peers religion of the supreme being and the Very active role that if you read the literature about the Jacobins the Jacobins concentrated on creating a whole new religion To try and win over the French people So the socialists in the same vein were trying to pick up new religions to impose on the people and they said yes The conservatives are right the people don't want industrial progress, and they don't want new material things First of all they want myths and they want the some sort of the color past so you have Emerging what had already been strong in the late 18th century and kind of nature worship the idea that and this maybe Connects back to the point I made very early that is that the We're human beings are only recently Very recently in front of time emerged from being forest hunters and gatherers Just being on farms is rather reason being in cities is Like yesterday, and so the socialists had an insight that perhaps that was behind the Restlessness of the masses as they thought they might be and that therefore we must look back to more primitive times and try to recreate the primitive times by Controlling and adjusting industrial development, and so there's this strong Primitivism or so in element in the thinking of the socialists that the one hand yes We want a certain amount of material goods, but more slowly more more within some Identifiable slow pattern of development not new Wealth and new material things occurring all over the place which seems in their view to be creating Disorientation and alienation and things of that sort and so you have this looking back as many of the 18th century Rationalists did to spot her and if we remember the Spartans The whole point of the spot in Constitution was to prevent any any kind of progress or development It was to keep people as primitive hunter warriors There was to be no culture Because there was to be no private property Without private property there could be no culture and so the Spartans wanting to keep as Really what it was was a warrior savage culture to try and keep that warrior savage culture But which many people admired because it seemed to be refined in the sense of simple you know drinking water and eating berries and nuts and Not wearing anything Made the Spartans seem very very admirable even though they Had no civilization no culture and no contribution to make in that area. They were just very similar to The American Indians up until the late 19th century. They just were ready to go out any time and and carry out slaughter so These attitudes of the socialists led them then to say we must pick and choose between the liberal and the Conservative we must create a middle ground that socialism will be the middle ground that will exclude to the extreme the conservative and the liberal That in any case the conservative Even though it all the conservatives hold power now what they stand for is too much Outside of what's actually happening in the world and they will really be forced Aside or assimilated by us and the conservatives felt I mean the socialists felt that the conservatives often were their most likely recruiting ground especially for leadership because they felt that they that what they had in opposition to the Liberals the strongest thing about socialism was it was hierarchical that it would impose Hierarchy and that that's what the masses wanted and so the liberals were viewed as outside of the major central issue of hierarchy and That the conservatives would be brought into the socialist system because the socialists were hierarchical the Socialists spoke in terms of peace and said that they recognized the necessity of That in a in a general program They saw civil liberties as something unimportant as a mere froth Representing something coming out of the great tradition of folklore something very unimportant and Rather than free trade Saw the importance of the role of government as the conservatives had in fiscal and Regulatory policies in order to funnel Any economic development that economic development couldn't be left to the anarchy of the market It needed constant attention so that it followed the right channels was quote socially useful and That it didn't go too fast and therefore alienate people make people upset make them give them anxiety whatever it is That was involved and that this then would lead to a very beautiful poetic world where people could all spend an hour Raising grain in an hour making cloth and hours writing poetry or whatever it is that might be possible And so you have emerging then and Finding in this in terms of the socialist the strongest expression in Marx's writing of a strong attempt to combine the conservative and the liberal position, but Not but sharing very much with the conservative most of the main issues seeing the folklore and the common law as totally to be excluded in and instead to have the legislative system which the conservatives had introduced to bring in the approaches of an absolutist bureaucracy and so the socialists felt that they Could much better implement the conservative program than the conservatives could do that the conservatives were out of touch with reality that their idea of hierarchy was based on blood and dissent Rather than on a meritocracy of a bureaucracy that the socialists stood for and so you have then in the 19th century the Constant retreat of the conservative position as an intellectual position with the then the battle between the socialist and the liberals becoming the dominant battle which continues to be the battle today and the those who stand for some approximation of the Western tradition of Folklore and the common law as In opposition to those who stand for legislation is the continuing battle that we have at the present time and the Socialists have had many advantages in the sense that they are Being clever to see that there were many more issues many more levels of issues than the Liberals tended to look at the liberals did not really fully challenge the conservatives or their successors in this case the socialists in at analysis of these more psychological and social Questions about alienation and primitivism and What they're about and I'd say that even today the liberals have not fully Attempted to figure out where that all fits in and why there are Tendencies for people to opt for a certain measure of primitivism return to pre-urban Pre-civilized society When given certain choices when when the question of economic growth is is put in opposition to some other types of policies, so The final point that I would make is that liberals need to examine and re-examine all of these issues many of which Liberals in other words, there's a whole bunch of issues that the Conservatives and and the socialists have raised and attempt to deal with which the liberals ignore because they think it's Irrelevant and yet at the least in terms of Intellectual views of the intellectuals and perhaps of many parts of the ordinary person those have some importance They seem to have some importance and they need to be examined. Thank you. Yes The More sort of part of the same question the partner a lot of the socialist Challenges and the answers in question really involved as much of a challenge or a response to the article as it is to the Well That was a good point, so I don't know that we I think that's part of the ongoing Discussions and So there's no answer other than that it was valuable to introduce Another aspect of the story Into the into the development and that what we need is a great deal or more a Raising of questions and then trying to find some answers to those questions in England surely the liberals are more allied with the socialists and The classical liberal the classical liberals are mainly in the Conservative Party at the moment well due to a number of things in the 19th century one of which was a Certain intellectual leadership of English liberalism by the bethomites who I don't view as classical liberals Who had the the utilitarians who brought in a great deal of government regulation and interventionism and so Those would be the the heirs of the modern Labour Party of the Fabians whereas the classical liberals in our sense eventually ended up as Providing a great deal of leadership in the Conservative Party in England because most of the conservatives didn't have any intellectual Armour to contribute to the situation you haven't mentioned the French Revolution well, I did in terms of the Jacobins and their their Their role, but I guess the reason I didn't is that there'd be so much to say about the French Revolution that it would Distract us from getting an overview of the situation Of course, all of these things have a great deal each one of them could be the subject of a great deal of Discussion, yes Could you say that the rise of the popularity of socialism is very much due to the fact that it addressed what most people saw in their data lies named the poverty the poverty that was made out of the system of a nation of the free market and The result of the moving into the cities Well, I would say that well, I would say that Before the Industrial Revolution people were much poorer than after the revolution Or during the Industrial Revolution, so what you're referring to is not so much and it's not absolute poverty, but some relative sense of less Rapid increase in Economic resources Commensurate with what they thought could be possible given the industrialization that occurred and so they felt a certain lag in their the increase of their of their wealth and that Often was blamed on the economic system when in fact a great deal of it had to do with Existing government regulations, especially tariffs or special interest legislations that often the ordinary public wasn't too aware of but In in most countries What you often found is Because of tariffs you would have Artificially large concentration of workers who then turn to some sort of union attitude and a Delayed Movement from the countryside into away from farms that caused a lot of the farmers to want to have protectionist Legislation so that they became socialists in fact and so you had And and due to the fact that usually electoral districts are drawn in such a way to favor rural voters So that in the 19th century the conservatives tried to keep the liberal majorities out of control of the government by the fact that the rural districts always had an over in other words as We say in America that the Congress represented more cows than people and The This may be the case in Europe today where the greatest beneficiary of the government intervention seems to be European cows Shown by the amount of care that they're given the amount of milk and dairy products and butter that cheese that's accumulated in Europe and the fact that the laws prohibit the number of cows a farmer can have so that he can give so much Personal attention to each cow Feel very very happy and produce lots of milk and cheese and butter and all of these other other things so if we look at At the way that districts are drawn. We see that that maybe there's more to this Saying that the cows are the best represented people in any any legislature But the I Think the general point that you're making is Not Really the the there's more to it than the points that you raised the there's much more involved especially that the conservatives kept the liberals out of power and Then when they did come into power it was so brief and the events Rush past them that then the socialists came along in other words the the Conservatives were able to delay things and also to create a certain favorable climate for the socialists because the conservatives kept wanting to subsidize the agricultural interests in other words if you look at England in America They're the two countries that least had a socialist movement in other words the in America and in England compared to any of the continental countries the Socialists are much less strong and much much less doctrinaire And the reason is that both countries Experienced an uninterrupted movement from the countryside into the cities the conservatives were defeated very early in America and in England were defeated by the anti-cornwall league and the repeal of the Cornwall's so that You didn't have a build-up of a strong agricultural Constituency for the conservatives to say well we need socialism for the countryside even though we don't want it for the city for the industrial area and then once you have somebody With that kind of legitimacy Advocating socialism if only for the countryside then people say well, why can't we have socialism everywhere? so in in Europe the the first socialists are really the conservatives the farmers advocates and America and England had the good fortune of Defeating the farmers interests Immediately and being able to proceed on and therefore that's why there's less of a socialist movement because there wasn't that intellectual hegemony for the idea of socialism which the European conservatives stood for and advocated throughout the 19th and early 20th centuries That my question is really catching on to two words. We said in the beginning that all this legislation and fine democracy were alien to Europe and You were hinted I think that it became from from from the Turks or what? Where did it come from and it doesn't bother me really all that much words alien or not if we had Concocted that ourselves in Europe. I don't really mind. Where do you think it comes? Well, it comes initially from the Byzantine Empire there's several efforts to try to buy by rulers in Europe to to mimic the great bureaucratic system of the Byzantine Empire and that's Not they're not able to do that. They the resistance from resistance is too strong then in addition from some of the Byzantine Customs finally do come in at the end of the 11th century because the same Normans who conquered England in 1066 also conquered Sicily at the same time and Sicily had been for two and a half centuries under a Islamic rule which was a successor to Byzantine rule so the Muslims of Sicily kept many of the Byzantine customs and and increased them and With the fact that the Normans made sometimes the same families were in England and in Sicily They were brought from Sicily to England. So England early on had certain bureaucratic innovations from the Byzantine Muslim world But they weren't able to crack the common law Hard shell of basic English life, but you did have some of these early bureaucratic administrative law measures brought in the whole system of Admiralty Law concepts comes from from Palermo the head of the Naval forces was L. Amaral and that name the admiral came into English Government but the Admiralty courts have always been outside the common law the idea being that the common law applied on the soil of England Admiralty court was something that had to do with Alien England had to do with the high seas and therefore could you could create these little surroundings of Alien legislation As long as it didn't intrude in England itself. It couldn't apply within England itself. So you have these bureaucratic Systems and customs being brought in but always kept Especially in England that Bay by the common law system which created this huge protection of the people from from government And is Byzantine is that not the same as Rome or since a Well, well, it means particularly the late Roman Empire from Constantine on that was headquartered in Constantinople. So it's the With which was essentially not the Rome of the Republic or the early Empire which maintained a pretense of republicanism, but Asian Asiatic sized Eastern Empire very much influenced by Persian Oriental despotism and a and a whole or Oriental Despot despotic system which then Became the Bureaucratic system of the Byzantine Empire. Well, I think at that point we need to end it