Cantillon's Essay

A new translation, by the Mises Institute. You might enjoy seeing page one:

I took a screenshot of the pdf. It looks like I chopped off the bottom, but that's all the info on the page, except for the page number.

I have an idea for a book.

I'm not going to give the whole thing away, but it ties together at least three things I've managed to sustain an interest in for at least a few years. The only hint I'll give you is that reading Sea Venture qualifies as doing background research. Or perhaps I should say that Sea Venture's a popular history that gets me in the mood to dig a little deeper into the area and era that will serve as the setting.

I've already discovered that my main character isn't even unlikely. I've never run across anyone with the guy's exact history, but similar people were there.

I have another reason for not telling you too much about it: as soon as I promise to do something, I lose all interest in doing it. Particularly if it means going out of my way at all. But that's why this idea might be one I can handle, it's built up out of things that I do/study/think about all the time.

I'll need help with the dialog, though. Nobody talks like me...when I do talk. I don't think I've met many people who talk less.

Three Men in the State of Nature

I'm reading Kieran Doherty's latest and, sadly, probably last, book, Sea Venture, he tells a tale of three men who, one way or another, were left on the uninhabited islands of Bermuda awaiting the arrival of other Englishmen. Their names were Christopher Carter, Edward Waters and Edward Chard. This is from Chapter 13, which is called "Our Hoped and Desired Ilands":

When they were not busy tending their crops, hunting hogs or birds, fishing in the shallows of the harbor, or keeping watch, they often went exploring, rowing a small boat...to nearby islands, where they walked the shore, looking for pearls or Spanish coins or other valuables that might have washed ashore from some stricken and long-lost vessel. On one such trip, as the three men wandered along the beach just above the high-water mark, they spied a man-sized grayish white chunk of material wedged in the rocks that fronted the beach. As soon as the three men--all mariners--spotted the mass, they immediately recognized it as ambergris, a naturally occurring substance that is created in the intestines of sperm whales and found floating on the sea or cast ashore on beaches. They would have known, too, that the roughly 180-pound chunk of ambergris, along with a few other smaller chunks, were worth a not-so-small fortune in England, where the substance was used in the manufacture of perfume.

While Chard would later claim he was the first to spot the ambergris, all three immediately laid claim to it and, no doubt, set to dancing and shouting gleefully on the beach, imagining themselves living the good life in London town or perhaps sailing the seas as the owners of their own ships. Of course, reality soon set in. They must have wondered how on earth could they possible [sic] get a chunk of ambergris--a chunk described in a letter as "a piece...as big as the body of giant [with] the head and arms...wanting"--off the Bermudas and to England, where they could sell it and pocket the proceeds. How could they keep it out of the hands of the adventurers of the Virginia Company who would, if they knew of its existence, claim it as their own?

The first thing the three men did was hide it, perhaps in one of the many caves that mark the Bermudas. Then they began to argue. Chard claimed the bulk of the ambergris belonged to him since he had discovered it. Waters and Carter, not surprisingly, disagreed. The Three argued, then fought, for the better part of two years. At one point, while fishing together in their little boat, they started bickering and the bickering escalated into open combat. They had at each other with fists and teeth and oars and anything else they could use as weapons. Snarling and bloody, they fell overboard, where they kept fighting until, exhausted, they dragged themselves ashore. Things were so bad that a dog that had remained on the island with the three sailors...waded into the middle of a particularly noisy fracas, biting Waters in a apparent attempt to make them stop. Eventually, Chard and Waters were prepared to fight to the death with swords or pistols rather than share the ambergris. Carter, though, was determined to avoid bloodshed and not happy at all at the thought of spending years--perhaps the rest of his life--along in the Bermudas with no company other than the dog. He hid the weapons so that an uneasy peace settled over the little camp on Smith's Island.

There's your sample of Doherty's lively writing style. Now we have to revert to my lesser skills.

Later, despairing the non-appearance any English ships, the men got together to build their own boat, in which to ride the Gulf Stream to Newfoundland, but the effort turned out to be unnecessary, as the Virginia Company finally got around to relieving them.

I think its a real life illustration of the development of morality under Natural Law, and why we really don't need to fear the messiness of life to the degree that we do. And it adds some credence to Crusoe Economics, though with no whitewashing of the dangers.

No anarchist doubts that the State of Nature has its dangers, they just doubt that The State is better. Actually, I doubt it. They flat out deny it.

My Daughter thought I needed a day off so she barfed at school

It took me an hour and a half to line up someone to cover for me, then I went and got her and we spent the rest of the midday reading the climax and denouement of Harry Potter and The Half-Blood Prince.

It looks like my fears about how she would take it were unfounded. I think I took it harder. You want a spoiler? Lily, James, Cedric, Sirius and Dumbledore share the most important of fates. I get into my fiction, and I've discovered that it shows when I'm reading aloud to someone. My voice breaks when the writer speaks of bravery and loyalty (to an obviously honorable person).

Anyone looking for voice talent? I find that I sound a lot like Sean Connery after I've been reading aloud for little while.

Of course, upon finishing the book I immediately offered my thoughts on how the next book(s) would go, which may have mitigated the apparent tragedy somewhat.

I've been reading the Harry Potter series to my daughter lately.

Exciting, funny, well-written, all that junk... It's really easy to just keep on going. She's been late to bed quite a few nights because of it.

She gets a lot more out of it than you'd think, since she kind of wanders off to play while I'm reading. She's pretty much memorized the stories. When we they refer back to something in a previous book, and I can't think of the episode, I'll ask her and she'll remind me what happened there.

She bounces around, fluttering her hands during the battles and scenes of evil villainy and treachery and laughs uproariously at the jokes. The other night she was moaning indignantly at Harry as he screamed at Dumbledore and trashed his office.

That was almost at the end of Book Five. I've read ahead and... Well, no. That would be a spoiler. I wonder if Book Six might not be a bit too intense for a little girl. The enemy is growing stronger and more vile. The only reason Harry was able to handle him in the early books was because Voldemort was handicapped by his lack of a body.

Now he has his body and his followers back and the War is on. And we're beginning to lose people we've come to care about.

I guess we'll keep going, but I'm not sure...
.....
We went to Rosie's Parent/Teacher Conference last night. She's kickin' butt in school. The teacher said she reads and does math very well. He showed us some tests she took in which she was the only one to get a perfect score.

She doesn't do as well in the Math speed quizzes, but, well, she's kind of given to taking her time at things.

Anyway, all this reading seems to be paying off.

For Shame

I am ashamed to admit that I haven't read, though I own, the appropriate essays by Burke and Acton on Whiggism.