These groups began to find one another in the early 19th century. And the man who made it happen was a tall, young, red‐​haired radical newspaperman, Lars Johan Hierta. Hierta was a successful businessman, always fascinated by the latest technologies, and in the end he became one of the richest men in Sweden because of his business ventures. He was also a politician, always trying to build an opposition alliance in the parliament. But most important, in 1830 he founded Aftonbladet (the Evening Paper), the first modern Swedish newspaper, a bastion of Swedish laissez‐​faire liberalism and the first publication to attack not just abuses of power, but political power as such.

Hierta launched Aftonbladet with the last of his money–had it failed he would have been ruined. But it was a stunning success. The revolutionary Adlersparre was the first supporter and sponsor. It was the first Swedish newspaper to combine news and advertising, and as an evening paper, it could report on the news that arrived with the morning mail. Because of Hierta’s sense of humor, the paper was satirical and fun to read amidst all the serious criticism. In Aftonbladet, the growing middle class could read the first real “social reports” on how the country was doing: the destitution in rural areas, the horrible conditions in the crowded urban centers. But they could also read about the solutions–liberalization and industrialization. Aftonbladet pointed to more liberal countries as positive examples: Norway, England, France and the United States. On his wall, Hierta had a copy of Trumbull’s painting of the signing of the American Declaration of Independence–a declaration Hierta called “the most beautiful truth and foundation for a society”.

With his urban enlightenment‐​liberalism, Hierta became the voice for the emerging middle class. His first proposal in parliament–dealing with public drinking–says a lot about his worldview. At that time it was illegal to be drunk in public. Hierta thought that this was class legislation, since only the poor were ever caught by the police. He argued that being drunk shouldn’t be illegal as long as the drinker threatened no one’s life or property. Hierta’s political career was dedicated to extending that libertarian principle to new spheres. He believed in total freedom of speech, the general franchise, and equal rights for women. His basic principle was that no group should be allowed to “take money out of others’ pockets,” and he always tried to reign in government spending. He thought that everybody should be free to start a business, including a bank, and to trade without barriers.

This phrase about not taking money out of other people’s pockets was often repeated in liberal circles. Chydenius had a similar expression : No one should be allowed to stand on the shoulders of others. It summed up the liberal ideology’s central point–equality before the law, government should not take sides. All privileges that guaranteed or denied certain people a position or trade should be abolished. Everybody should have the same rights and should be treated the same. This also set a natural limit to the kind of government intervention they could accept. Anything that benefited a group at the expense of others was ruled out. The government should instead deal with the kinds of public goods that benefited the entire society. Law and order was something everybody agreed upon. Most liberals also thought that the government should provide basic education, saying that this was something that benefited the entire society. Some infrastructure was also included. Some liberals (though not Hierta’s radical liberals) supported a government‐​financed national railway system. But even those who did so said that this was only because it benefited the entire country; the local train routes that benefited particular regions or cities should be financed and built privately.

Hierta’s liberalism was founded on natural rights espoused by John Locke and the French and American revolutions, but he frequently combined this approach with utilitarian arguments from Jeremy Bentham and the classical economists. Authors who combined those two traditions, like the French economist Frédéric Bastiat and Richard Cobden and John Bright of the Manchester School, were especially popular with Hierta, and he introduced their ideas in Aftonbladet. Swedish liberalism is distinctive in that it brought together different traditions and ideas rather than following one line of thought all the way. (Some would argue that this is characteristic of the Swedish mentality.)

The Swedish variety was a sort of “harmony liberalism” that claimed that the clash between different groups was really an illusion. All groups and classes could make progress together as long as privileges were abolished and people were allowed to make a living and a profit only by serving one another in the free market. This was the political version of the Enlightenment idea of progress, and it got help from classical economics. When Adam Smith explained that it is not from the benevolence of the butcher that we expect cheap and good meat, but from his self‐​interest, it was more than an economic statement; it was a worldview, a way of saying that the butcher is not my enemy. If all trade were voluntary we wouldn’t enter any deal unless both parties expected to benefit. Together, we can make progress and improve the world.

Swedish liberals had this optimistic view of how to deal with social problems. The old safety nets of the guilds had only given security to a small group of people. When they were abolished, the liberals wanted to see self‐​help groups in which workers and families voluntarily organized education and savings for sickness, unemployment, and pension funds. That would not merely help people materially, but also develop a sense of responsibility and an ability to manage one’s own affairs.

Other opposition newspapers could be threatened or bought into silence, but the regime understood that Aftonbladet was something different, a potential leader of the formerly dispersed opposition forces. In the parliament farmers and merchants used arguments from Aftonbladet to push for reform. As a result, in 1835 the government used an old law from the last war to shut it down. But with the help of other individuals, Hierta had acquired permission to start more newspapers, so when Aftonbladet closed, he simply opened The New Aftonbladet. And when that was shut down, he created The Newer Aftonbladet. That was followed by The Fourth Aftonbladet, the fifth, the sixth, and so on.

The episode gave Aftonbladet a huge boost, and Hierta became a celebrity and a hero to many. The hard conservatives said that the only way to beat him was to strike down hard and outlaw new papers, but the government didn’t dare to do that in the light of Hierta’s popularity. After more than three years of cat‐​and‐​mouse games, Hierta threatened to publish a new paper if the present one was closed down. Fearing a violent reaction from the public, the government silently dropped the old law without even a decision in parliament. Freedom of the press was reinstated, and everybody could see that the government could be beaten.