BR TO W.W. NORTON & COMPANY, INC. / WARDER NORTON, 31 JAN. 1933
BRACERS 47061. TLS. Norton papers, Columbia U.
Proofread by A. Duncan

47, Emperor’s Gate,
S.W.7.
31st January 19331

Dear Warder,

Many thanks for your letter of January 17th. Do you really thank that it will be possible to get the book published in February if the manuscript is delivered at Christmas? I should have thought March would be the earliest, but I have unlimited confidence in your technical capacities, and if you say February, I will believe you.

I am very grateful about the “March of Democracy”, which has duly arrived. On a cursory inspection, it seems to give me just what I want for a preliminary survey.

I have done the first section of my book, consisting of about 18,000 words, on the principle of legitimacy, which covers the reactionary governmental politics of Europe down to 1848.

My next section will deal with laissez-faire at the same period, and will give all the early thought connected with industrialism in England. I will begin roughly as follows: “Napoleon had been defeated by the snows of Russia and the children of England. The part of the former could be acknowledged, since it could be attributed to God; the part of the latter remained unacknowledged.” This introduces the subject of child labour, and raises at once the problem as to why the keenest opponents of slavery were entirely indifferent to the horrors of the factory system.

My third section will deal with democracy, starting in America, going to England in 1832, and to the rest of Europe in the movements that led up to the revolutions of 1848. From ’48 to ’71 is the period of democratic nationalism; from ’71 to 1914 is the period of industrial nationalism. The hero of the former is Mazzini; of the latter, Bismarck. It is during the last period that economic units become national; the rise of Standard Oil, for example, at the beginning of this period, marks it off from the cut-throat competition of Vanderbilt and J. Gould in the sixties.

As for titles, I am still unable to think of one which would be attractive to the American public. The subject is “Political Principles in the 19th Century”, or, if you like, “The Birth, Marriage, and Death of Liberalism” (it married nationalism, which treated it as the female spider treats the male).

As you will see, there are three sections dealing with the world before ’48, giving respectively the governmental, industrial, and democratic systems of ideas. I shall tell in each section as much of actual events as is necessary to make clear the way in which the ideas operated. I do not think that so clear a distinction is possible in later periods, since government, industry, and democracy ceased to be separate. But I have not yet thought out in detail the subdivisions after 1848.

I am very glad to hear that you and Polly are coming to Europe in the summer. I do not know whether I shall be in Cornwall, but wherever I am, I shall hope to see you.

Yours sincerely,
Bertrand Russell.

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