Excerpt from On British Freedom Shakespeare, it is clear that our appetite for personal freedom - I am throughout using the term per sonal freedom in contradistinction to political - was not less keen than that of our neighbours. Erasmus, when he came to this country, was charmed by the prevailing freedom of manners. Wherefore, it seems reasonable to attribute the change to Puritanism. And so profound a change it was, that all those English-speaking communities which since the middle of the seventeenth century have overspread the world - the United States of North America and the British colonies - have taken, as ducks to water, to a peculiar brand of genteel servitude which passes under the name of anglo-saxon civilization. Indeed, the young com munities are more servile than the mother country even for in England there is an ancient tradition still to wage unequal war in defence of human rights and elementary amenities. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.