The development of European civilisation, Guizot concluded, was characterised by an irresistible advance towards the equality of conditions. As Guizot's narrative closes, however, his attention turned to England. What he had to say here merits quotation at length. "When we glance," Guizot wrote, "at the state of the free institutions of England at the end of the 16th century, we find first, fundamental rules and principles of liberty, of which neither the country, nor the legislature had ever lost sight; second, precedents, examples of liberty . . . sufficing to legalise and sustain the claims, and to support the defenders of liberty in any struggle against tyranny and despotism; third, special and local institutions, replete with germs of liberty; the jury, the right of assembling, of being armed . . . fourth, and last, the parliament and its power." Moreover, in this, Guizot wrote, the political condition of England showed itself to be "wholly different from that of the continent". There, by contrast, the principle of absolute royalty, be it in Spain or France, had aspired to create a universal monarchy. The state had taken a bureaucratic and tyrannical form. And this, Guizot believed, remained the case to his day. In short, England was the aberrant case.

This, one can only assume, would be music to the ears of Daniel Hannan. How We Invented Freedom & Why It Matters is an unabashed celebration of English exceptionalism. The irreducible elements of Western civilisation, Hannan proclaims, are the rule of law, personal liberty and representative government. The origins of all three, he believes, are to be found in Anglo-Saxon Britain. There, in what Hannan sees as the first multi-ethnic nation state, are located the roots of constitutional liberty, the common law, Habeas Corpus, free elections, contract and property      rights. 

Despite the imposition of the Norman yoke, all survived and, when reformulated in the form of documents such as the Magna Carta, they provided a lasting defence against arbitrary government. In doing so, according to Hannan, these Anglo-Saxon liberties served not only to build "the most successful system of government known to the human race" but also established "a unique political heritage".

This then is a Whig history, filled with patriotic pride in everything this small damp island has contributed to the story of freedom: our language, our ideals, and even our hymns, for, in Hannan's eyes, this story is inseparable from our Protestantism. Heroes abound — Æthelred the Unready, Simon de Montfort, John Hampden, Sir Edward Coke, but also the Levellers. Rather than being socialists, Hannan contends, the latter are better seen as "proto-libertarians", as "Euro-sceptic, tax-cutting, anti-state patriots".

Crucially, Hannan seeks to extend this story beyond the British Isles to what he terms the Anglosphere, "the community of free English-speaking peoples". Britain's war with the 13 American colonies therefore becomes the Second Anglosphere Civil War. The British Empire is described as a process of Anglo-globalisation. Who gets into the Anglosphere is something of a problem for Hannan — can India make it, for example? — but he is quite clear what Anglosphere culture stands for: "self-government, localism and the elevation of the individual over the state". It has no truck with common currencies or federal parliaments. Its ideal is a union of peoples and not of governments.

 

All too obviously, in Hannan's view, the Anglosphere is under threat, from the European Union with its "swollen class of consultants, contractors and rent-seekers", from the anti-British Barack Obama, from our own intellectual elite and "multiculturalist establishment", and from an increasingly centralised and expanding state. As Hannan points out, in 1900 a typical British household paid 8.5 per cent of its income in taxation: today that figure is around 46 per cent. Not only has the state machine outgrown the scrutiny of our democratically-elected representatives but the connection between taxation, legislation and representation has been broken.