How Well Do You Know Libertarian History?

1. John Locke’s professional training was as:
a. a theologian
b. an astronomer
c. a physician
d. a chemist

2. Which of the following works was NOT published in 1776?
a. Vindication of the Rights of Woman, by Mary Wollstonecraft
b. Fragment on Government, by Jeremy Bentham
c. Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, Vol 1, by Edward Gibbon
d. The Wealth of Nations, by Adam Smith

3. The complete title of the Wealth of Nations is:
a. An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations
b. A Treatise on the Wealth of Nations
c. The Wealth of Nations: A Treatise on Political Economy
d. An Inquiry into the Principles of the Wealth of Nations

4. What job did Thomas Paine and Sam Adams both hold before they became famous?
a. brewer
b. silversmith
c. printer
d. tax collector

5. What did John Milton advocate in “Areopagitica”?
a. equal rights for Catholics and atheists
b. free trade
c. abolition of licensing laws for the press
d. sexual freedom

6. Who published the first response to Edmund Burke’s Reflections on the Revolution in France?
a. Richard Price
b. Thomas Paine
c. Mary Wollstonecraft
d. Joseph Priestley

7. The first people to call themselves “economists” were:
a. Aristotelians in the 16th century School of Salamanca
b. the radical Jacksonian “loco focos”
c. 19th century followers of Adam Smith
d. 18th century Physiocrats

8. Jefferson’s original draft of the Declaration of Independence condemned:
a. the slave trade
b. all taxes
c. laws against usury
d. paper currency

9. What famous anarchist also wrote Adventures of Caleb Williams and other novels?
a. Lysander Spooner
b. Benjamin Tucker
c. William Godwin
d. A. J. Nock

10. Which of the following breaks off and ends in mid-​sentence?
a. No Treason #1, by Lysander Spooner
b. Notes on the State of Virginia, by Thomas Jefferson
c. First Treatise of Government, by John Locke
d. Agrarian Justice, by Thomas Paine

11. William Leggett and other Jacksonian libertarians got the name “Loco Foco” from:
a. a brand of matches
b. the accusation that they were political lunatics
c. a corrupted Latin derivation for “friends of liberty”
d. the name of a popular beer that they drank during meetings

12. After the American Revolution, which of the following condemned George Washington as a military incompetent who almost lost the war?
a. Sam Adams
b. Thomas Jefferson
c. Thomas Paine
d. John Adams

13. Who, in the hope of financing the libertarian movement, devised a system to beat roulette and then traveled to Monaco, where he/​she lost all of his/​her money?
a. Emma Goldman
b. Benjamin Tucker
c. Lysander Spooner
d. Leonard Read

14. How many times does the expression “invisible hand” appear in the Wealth of Nations?
a. never
b. 1
c. 4
d. 9

15. Who wrote the final draft of the U.S. Constitution?
a. Gouverneur Morris
b. Alexander Hamilton
c. George Mason
d. Roger Sherman

16. Who called the State “the coldest of all cold monsters” and said that it “bites with stolen teeth”?
a. Schopenhauer
b. Nietzsche
c. Bastiat
d. Spooner

17. Thomas Paine said he opposed capital punishment except in the case of:
a. tyrants
b. sovereigns who start wars
c. legislators who implement a system of paper currency
d. rapists

18. Who said, “I swear, this book almost killed me.”
a. Herbert Spencer
b. Adam Smith
c. Ludwig von Mises
d. Montesquieu

19. Who coined the term “marginal utility”?
a. W.S. Jevons
b. Carl Menger
c. Friedrich Wieser
d. J.S. Mill

20. Which future president was wounded at the Battle of Trenton?
a. George Washington
b. John Adams
c. James Madison
d. James Monroe

21. Who married the daughter of William Godwin and Mary Wollstonecraft?
a. John Keats
b. William Wordsworth
c. Percy Bysshe Shelley
d. Samuel Taylor Coleridge

22. Mary Wollstonecraft and William Godwin first met:
a. at a London rally supporting the French Revolution
b. at the theater
c. at a dinner party where Thomas Paine was the guest of honor
d. when Mary showed up, unannounced and uninvited, at William’s house

23. When William Godwin first met Mary Wollstonecraft, he thought:
a. she was the most intelligent woman he had ever met
b. she was beautiful
c. she talked too much
d. she dressed too much like a man

24. Who gave a speech in the House of Commons that criticized the severe punishment meted out to homosexuals?
a. Edmund Burke
b. Richard Cobden
c. John Bright
d. John Wilkes

25. Who wrote a defense of atheism under the pseudonym “Phillip Beauchamp”?
a. J.S. Mill
b. Jeremy Bentham
c. Herbert Spencer
d. Percy Shelley

26.Who was a primary target of the Comstock Law?
a. Moses Harmon
b. Benjamin Tucker
c. William Lloyd Garrison
d. Stephen Pearl Andrews

27. Who condemned orchestras as a type of collectivism?
a. James Mill
b. William Godwin
c. Jeremy Bentham
d. Benjamin Constant

28. A popular toast in the American colonies was “To Wilkes and 45!” What did the number “45” refer to?
a. the 45 charges of sedition against the British government that John Wilkes had successfully defeated over a period of ten years.
b. the margin of 45 votes in Middlesex that won John Wilkes his first seat in Parliament.
c. issue #45 of the “North Briton,” in which John Wilkes accused the Prime Minister of having an affair with the Queen Mother.
d. 1745, the year that John Wilkes was born

29. What woman did J.S. Mill credit for originating many of the ideas and arguments in On Liberty?
a. Harriet Taylor
b. Harriet Martineau
c. George Sand
d. Francis Wright

30. John Locke fled to Holland:
a. after being implicated in a plot to assassinate the King
b. because he faced prosecution for his radical political writings
c. to escape religious persecution
d. to escape debtor’s prison

^{Answers: 1c, 2a, 3a, 4d, 5c, 6c, 7d, 8a, 9c, 10c, 11a, 12c, 13b, 14b, 15a, 16b, 17c, 18d, 19c, 20d, 21c, 22c, 23c, 24a, 25b, 26a, 27b, 28c, 29a, 30a}