Aaaaarrh, matey. Have ye ever been… hanged?

Perhaps it’s a rude question. But I bring it up because October 20 marks the capture of “Calico Jack” by the Royal Navy back in 1720. And that’s a great name for a pirate.

It gets even better. His real name was John “Jack” Rackham, which will necessarily put Tintin fans in mind of “Rackham the Red”. And he designed the classic Jolly Roger though some sources say his had crossed swords rather than bones beneath the skull. And he was a pioneering feminist, having two females among his crew including his lover Anne Bonny who he apparently pinched from her husband which seems quite a modern thing to do although I gather such incidents were not unknown before 1963 and possibly he was glad to see her go. But I digress.

The point is, that’s some kind of pirate. And he enjoyed a career of mayhem and so forth lasting… um… two years. Or maybe a bit longer. He first turns up as quartermaster on a pirate ship called the Ranger in 1718, the same year he led a mutiny that voted their current captain Charles Vane a coward and put Rackham in his place.

I should note that on a rather unpiratical note Vane was not cut down like so much pork, cruelly marooned or tossed to the sharks. Instead he and those who’d voted for him were given a smaller ship, plus ammunition and supplies.

A year after deposing Vane, Rackham accepted a pardon from the governor of the Bahamas, settled down, bounced back up and started messing with Anne, whose husband brought her before the governor to be whipped. Rackham offered to buy her in a “divorce by purchase” which she refused as demeaningly similar to a cattle sale, so Rackham kept the money and they eloped semi-romantically on a stolen ship.

The next year Rackham was captured while drunk, taken to Jamaica, tried and hanged. Bonny and her female co-pirate Mary Read both claimed to be pregnant to try to avoid immediate execution, which sounds a touch old-fashioned, and Read died the next year probably of complications from childbirth while Bonny’s fate is unknown.

Most of the rest of Rackham’s associates were swiftly executed. And as for Vane, well, he was hanged in 1721. Which isn’t surprising because if you look into the career of most pirates, you find yourself reading a short story that ends with a, hmnnn, twist.

The point is, piracy isn’t romantic. You may get cool clothes, a cool nickname and an extra-cool flag. But you also get to dance the “yardarm jig” and that right smartly. And “Hemp necktie Jack” just doesn’t have the same insouciant charm.

“Mithridate, haranguant contre les Romains, leur reproche surtout les formalités de leur justice.”

Montesquieu L’Esprit Des Lois Livre dix-neuvième

Here’s a weird one. And not out of keeping with the series, you may say. But what I have in mind this time is the October 19, 1469 union of Ferdinand and Isabella that didn’t create modern Spain.

If you’re wondering why it should have been expected to, or thinking a list of historical events that did not create modern Spain would be unreasonably long, I should note there that Ferdinand was heir to the kingdom of Aragon and Isabella to that of Castille; she duly succeeded when her brother died in 1474 and he in 1479.

Now Aragon and Castille were not formally merged into a single political unit until Philip V in the very early 18th century, by which time the once-mighty Spanish empire was on the skids and Spain was headed for stagnant irrelevance on the margins of Europe. Which you’re probably wondering how it could happen if there was, as I and the lawyers maintain, no Spain. Except that’s not quite what I said.

I said it didn’t create modern Spain. And I say it’s weird because Spain did have protoparliaments at that time, the Cortes. Aragon had one and so did Castille. And you’d think the decentralized structure of the Spanish country-like thing would be ideally suited to their development as effective checks on the power of the monarch.

Instead they were basically swept aside. Ferdinand and Isabella decided to limit the power of the bourgeoisie and the nobles so they did, essentially turning the Cortes into rubber stamps except, for a while, on taxes, where they had some capacity to resist. And the result was a Spain that was somehow glittering yet hollow, apparently modern and dynamic yet fundamentally stagnant and ineffective.

How can this be?

Rest assured, English monarchs would have loved to break or disperse Parliament. But they never could. It was too deeply embedded in the national, social as well as political fabric. And a major reason why is that it included the common people. But we could get into a kind of logical circle here, asking why in England it was impossible to exclude the common people and getting the answer that they were too firmly included and vice versa. Which takes us back into the “Dark Ages” and the fact that self-government in the Anglosphere has very deep roots in Anglo-Saxon-Jute habits of self-government laid atop the remarkable and in many ways unique culture of Roman Britain.

It also reminds us that self-government is not easy or natural. In retrospect historians can easily explain the growing power of the English parliament as natural given the rise of the bourgeoisie or some such. They can also easily explain the shrinking power of European parliaments as natural given the rise of the national state or some such. What calls out for explanation, and appreciation, is the two processes running parallel but in opposite directions on the continent and in the UK.

“The economic problem is not one of allocating resources efficiently when everything is known and constant, but of learning how to allocate and reallocate resources in an uncertain and changing world.”

D.T. Armentano Antitrust Policy: The Case for Repeal

In my latest National Post commentary I congratulate the Liberals for appointing an Atlantic Canadian to the Atlantic Canadian spot on the Supreme Court. Even one who thinks the court should write laws instead of interpreting them.

So this is the anniversary of the Edict of Paris, the Frankish equivalent of Magna Carta. Which tells you basically that there is no Frankish or any other equivalent of Magna Carta.

For starters, you never heard of it. Nor had I. For another, we’re not sure what year it was issued; probably 614 unless it was 615. (Magna Carta was definitely 1215.) How we know it was Oct. 18, if we really are sure, is anyone’s guess. (Magna Carta was definitely June 15.) For a third, it was only in force briefly. (Only three articles of Magna Carta still are, and so much the worse for us, but it trumped statute law for centuries and was incorporated into it for hundreds of years more.) For a fourth, we only have one surviving manuscript, made more than a century later so it can’t have been that important. (True, we have only four original 1215 Magna Cartas, but dozens of later amended versions). For a fifth, it came from King Clothar II voluntarily, and made other people more subordinate to the king. (Magna Carta was wrenched from the claws of Bad King John and put a serious brake on his aspiration to unchecked royal power.) For a sixth, it didn’t protect the common people. (Magna Carta is often called an elite deal but the text, and the consequences, show how unreasonable and rigidly “progressive” this forced interpretation is.)

Apart from that, yeah, pretty similar. And what’s even more depressing is that France, atrociously misgoverned through most of its history, was a lot better governed than most places. It was more prosperous, more lawful, more respectful of individuals and more reasonable. I know, I know, it’s the place with Philip the Fair, Louis XIV, Robespierre and Napoleon. And I sometimes think it was mostly fear of English mockery that kept them from being far worse. But for all that, if you couldn’t live in the Anglosphere, in most periods of history from the fall of Rome on you’d seriously consider France.

The very phrase “Magna Carta of the Frankish nobility” shows just how far it was from Magna Carta itself, with its guarantees for “every free man”. And just how precious our heritage is given its scarcity.

“It is only when men become capable of displaying high-minded detachment and disregarding outward circumstance that we cannot help admiring their splendid and imposing qualities.”

Cicero

In my latest National Post column I argue that Donald Trump represents the Republican Party giving in to the modern mood.