Book: Letters on England

Overview
Voltaire’s Letters on England (1733), also known as Letters Concerning the English Nation, distills the insights of his English exile into a set of epistolary essays that compare English institutions, ideas, and manners with those of France. Moving nimbly between religion, politics, science, commerce, and literature, he presents England as a laboratory where liberty and experiment have produced prosperity and intellectual vigor. The work’s comparative method doubles as social critique: by praising English practices, he exposes French absolutism, censorship, and religious intolerance. The result is a sparkling manifesto for Enlightenment values in the guise of a travel narrative.

Religious Toleration and Sectarian Diversity
The opening letters survey the diversity of English sects, beginning with the Quakers, whose plain worship and refusal of oaths he treats with amused respect. He contrasts the accommodations of the Church of England with the tenacity of Dissenters and underscores how pluralism, though messy, promotes civil peace. In the bustling Exchange, he observes, Jews, Christians, and Muslims trade together as if creed were irrelevant, reserving their disputes for the Sabbath. These vignettes sharpen his indictment of persecution: commerce and toleration reinforce each other, whereas enforced orthodoxy breeds hypocrisy and civil strife.

Science and the Experimental Spirit
Voltaire admires English science as the institutionalization of empirical humility. Francis Bacon is cast as the lawgiver of the experimental method; John Locke as the philosopher who grounded knowledge in experience rather than innate ideas; and Isaac Newton as the supreme exemplar, uniting mathematics and observation to explain light and gravitation. He delights in the Royal Society’s collaborative ethos and in the public honors given to Newton, whose tomb in Westminster Abbey embodies a national reverence for inquiry. Against this he sets the dogmatic systems of the Continent, especially scholastic remnants and Cartesian hypotheses, arguing that England’s method, test, measure, doubt, has yielded real power over nature.

Politics, Liberty, and Commerce
The English constitution appears as a balance of forces among Crown, Lords, and Commons, each constrained by law. Voltaire praises a press that, though not wholly free, is freer than France’s, and he links legal liberty to public credit and economic dynamism. He explains the workings of the Bank of England, the national debt, and the stock exchange, noting both the speculative excesses of “stock-jobbing” and the deeper achievement of a system that mobilizes wealth for national ends. Merchants, not courtiers, are the true pillars of the state, and social respect for trade underwrites both prosperity and independence of mind.

Medicine and Practical Innovation
A striking case study of English pragmatism is smallpox inoculation. Voltaire rehearses evidence of reduced mortality and credits the nation for adopting a practice introduced from abroad despite clerical resistance. The episode epitomizes his broader claim: useful innovations gain ground where opinion is free and institutions reward experiment rather than conformity.

Literature and Taste
On letters and the stage he is both admiring and critical. He extols the sublimity of Milton even as he faults irregularities by French classical standards. Shakespeare, to him, is a rough genius capable of overwhelming scenes and profound character, yet indifferent to decorum and rule. He praises the wit and polish of contemporary authors like Pope and appreciates the lively essay culture fostered by a free press. English literature, however unbound by the unities, possesses an energy and truth to nature that he urges the French to study without slavish imitation.

Style and Legacy
The letters are brisk, ironic, and strewn with anecdotes that make arguments feel like observations. Their implied contrast with France, on tolerance, method, and liberty, provoked scandal: the French edition was condemned and publicly burned in 1734, and Voltaire withdrew to Cirey. The work nonetheless became a cornerstone of the Enlightenment, spreading Anglophilia on the Continent and establishing a template for comparative social criticism that weds wit to reason.