Voltaire's Letters on the English

In 1726 the young writer Voltaire, born François-Marie Arouet, quarreled with a powerful nobleman, was briefly jailed in the Bastille and then went to England. He stayed about two years and was impressed by what he saw. His Letters Concerning the English Nation, published in English in 1733 and in French in 1734, praised England's religious diversity, its Parliament's limits on royal power, its respect for merchants and its honoring of thinkers like Newton and Locke.

He famously observed that with one religion a country risks despotism, with two its people cut each other's throats, but with thirty they live in peace. The book was really an attack on France, comparing it unfavorably with its rival. The Parlement of Paris condemned the French edition to be burned, and Voltaire fled to the estate of Émilie du Châtelet at Cirey. Historians note that his picture of England was idealized, overlooking its own inequalities and restrictions on Catholics and dissenters.