|
|
Article: Lord Mansfield and the culture of improvement.(Law)
- Article from:
- Quadrant
- Article date:
- October 1, 2008
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 2008 Quadrant Magazine Company, Inc. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
|
THE MULTIPLE national enlightenments of eighteenth-century Europe had common themes which justify the continued use of the term the Enlightenment". I will concentrate on one such theme and illustrate it with one man's achievement.
The theme is the culture of improvement: the widespread conviction that by the application of reason, things can be done better. One of the great achievements of the Enlightenment was the inculcation of a belief that no individual, nor society at large, was doomed by God or by nature or by fate to continue to do things the way they had always been done.
I distinguish an "improver" from a "reformer". As Senator Roscoe Conkling, ...