The lessons

Late last night I had one of those curious, even alarming experiences when, reading a fine work of history, quite suddenly you chance upon a passage that would seem an almost exact description of current attitudes had it not been written more than fifty years ago and in relation to events that took place nearly 120 years earlier. In her masterpiece, The Great Hunger, Cecil Woodham-Smith looked closely at the chilling human catastrophe of the Irish famine of 1845–46, and (among other things) the underlying causes, character, and consequences of the misery. If—purely for the prevention of widespread starvation in Ireland—Prime Minister Sir Robert Peel’s correct and brave decision in the autumn of 1845 to repeal the protectionist Corn Laws had not created such a damaging political firestorm in England, it would now be far better understood, and it might have had a slim chance of working. Yet, as Woodham-Smith put it:

His purchase of Indian corn proved the decisive factor in relieving the distress of 1845–46 [albeit far too little, too late], but the subsequent value to Ireland of Peel’s boldness, independence and strength of mind was unfortunately outweighed by his belief in an economic theory which almost every politician of the day, Whig or Tory, held with religious fervor.

This theory, usually termed laissez faire, let people do as they think best, insisted that in the economic sphere individuals should be allowed to pursue their own interests and asserted that the Government should interfere as little as possible. Not only were the rights of property sacred; private enterprise was revered and respected and given almost complete liberty, and on this theory, which incidentally gave the employer and the landlord freedom to exploit his fellow men, the prosperity of nineteenth-century England had unquestionably been based.

The influence of laissez faire on the treatment of Ireland during the famine is impossible to exaggerate. Almost without exception the high officials and politicians responsible for Ireland were fervent believers in non-interference by Government, and the behavior of the British authorities only becomes explicable when their fanatical belief in private enterprise and their suspicions of any action which might be considered Government intervention are borne in mind.

The loss of the potato crop was therefore to be made good, without Government interference, by the operations of private enterprise and private firms, using the normal channels of commerce. The Government was not to appear in food markets as a buyer, there was to be “no disturbance of the ordinary course of trade” and “no complaints from private traders” on account of Government competition.

See what I mean? Woodham-Smith was writing in a modern Britain that had seen the immediate and obvious benefits of the introduction of the National Health Service, comprehensive unemployment benefits and better old-age pensions, improved public housing, and the alleviation of poverty in the industrial north and elsewhere such that everyone could by then at least own a pair of shoes. Almost incredibly this was not the case before World War II. Today, however, as we drag ourselves out of the worst recession in living memory, certainly the worst since the Great Depression, could Cecil Woodham-Smith ever have imagined that essentially the same principles of laissez faire going hand-in-hand with deep suspicion of central government, that she described in relation to the disastrous English policy towards Ireland in the mid-1840s, would be so constantly, consistently, and stupidly enunciated by both political sides through the current general election campaign, in which the bogus hold-all term “middle class” is whenever possible snatched up like a precious jewel from the dustbin, more often than not as a convenient way of roundly ignoring the plight of America’s hopelessly impoverished working class, and armies of the destitute unemployed? That there should even be a debate about the timid character of the federal government’s regulation of the American banks, for example—those unbelievably ordinary utilities that have gradually been allowed to spin out of control so that they still not only possess the power to exploit in the short term, but also to obliterate, whole industries simply by mistake, not even ill-judgment, although that too is a terrible problem, and have moreover the sheer nerve by implication hotly to defend their right to exercise that judgment badly by taking unsustainable risks—raises the question whether our politicians, economists, and policy-makers have learned, or even have the capacity to learn, anything at all from the economic disasters of the past two centuries. It is almost too depressing for words, but I suppose you could argue that there is in this at least a tangible benefit to be gained from the careful study of history.

Robbo

Another mind-boggling discovery while sorting through old papers. When in May 1984, aged nineteen, I wrote this undergraduate essay for the late and much lamented Ian Robertson, who at that time was serving as chairman of the Department of History in the University of Melbourne, he paid what strikes me today as the astounding compliment of returning it with comments that more or less amount to another essay, in his elegant trademark penciled longhand. Who in universities these days has the time or energy to follow suit? My purpose in transcribing it here is neither to boast nor to preen, but rather to wonder at the seriousness with which Robbo engaged with each and all of his no doubt rather callow students—and surely at the expense of his own research. His book Tyranny Under the Mantle of St Peter: Pope Paul II and Bologna took him decades to finish, but fortunately he got there with just a little time to spare.

An impressively thoughtful and sensitive discussion. You do well to set Aeneas/Pius’s writings in the context of “humanist” culture, and your idea of “maturation” helps you to identify strands of consistency in Aeneas’s concerns. In this latter connection, I think you might have reinforced your points about his concern at the “chaotic dissent and contention” in the Council by more use of his correspondence from the Council before the writing of the De Gestis—the concern is continuously present from the mid-1430s. In noting his concern at the predominance of the lower clergy, you might also have noted the many direct statements which evince a “clericalist” concept of the Council. In discussing Aeneas’ “maturation,” too, you might perhaps have explored the idea that it was determined above all by developing practical awareness, to which theoretical formulation was “posterior”: the practical political dimensions of the situations in which he was involved deserve discussion. Again, you might perhaps have given more explicit attention to the question of Aeneas’ “careerism.” Finally, whilst your discussion of Aeneas/Pius is well-developed, your response to the more generally interpretative second part of the question remained rather under-developed. Nonetheless, a very satisfying essay. R

Thank you, dear Robbo. The fact that I have not one iota of a recollection of what Aeneas Sylvius Piccolomini, the future Pope Pius II, did or said at the Council of Basle (or in fact at any time) is slightly creepy, and actually I am having some trouble remembering when and why the council happened at all. Still, I suppose the mystery of higher education is how quickly and completely the subject matter evaporates when life carries you in completely different directions through later decades. What is also amazing is how comparatively complex and sophisticated that course for undergraduates evidently was. I do recall that in his elegantly drafted lectures Robbo dragged us into a veritable thicket of debates, many of them highly complex and theologically obscure, that swirled throughout Europe in the period following the Great Schism of the western church, but he managed to make the general councils of the church themselves fascinating and frightening and fun. For me this was the perfect follow-up to my wonderful classes with Geoff Smith towards the end of my time at Melbourne Grammar School, in which we contemplated the sex lives of the condottieri, the sinister methods of the Council of Ten, the banking practices of Florentine agents in London, Paris, and Antwerp, the power of the Arte di Calimala, among many other issues. Now those have stayed with me.