John Locke

[Louis Proyect <lnp3@xxxxxxxxx>]

Jack Weatherford, "Indian Givers":

The original investors of the Hudson's Bay Company numbered nineteen.
This included Anthony Ashley Cooper, Earl of Shaftsbury. Shaftsbury
had served as chancellor of the Exchequer and as a member of the
Privy Council, and he also invested heavily in both the Royal African
Company and the Royal Fisheries Company. In 1663 he served as one of
the lord proprietors of the Carolinas, and the two rivers that empty
into Charleston Bay received his name as the Ashley and the Cooper
rivers. Throughout all of this he worked on various schemes of social
improvement. This interest led him to employ as his secretary the
philosopher John Locke, who managed to write his Essay Concerning
Human Understanding while attending to the details of his employer's
slave investments and writing the socially innovative constitution
for the new Carolina colony.

These companies operated on the fringes of the law, performing feats
and implementing politics that the king desired but could not
officially sanction in his role as monarch. The companies then became
the agents to kill innocent Celtic peasants in Ireland or Scotland,
sell Indians and Africans into slavery, and raid Spanish treasure
ships from America. The king saved money by not having to pay for
such activities, and he still reaped a substantial part of the
profits.

--
Louis Proyect, lnp3@xxxxxxxxx on 03/02/2002

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