Freedom of the City

“ THE HOME OF THE FREE There is a city which vaunts itself because in its laws oppression and injustice are not; where the popular shibboleth is freedom; whence liberty throughout all the land hath of old been proclaimed; where the proudest boast writ upon its monuments is of the sublime quality of its justice. ”

“ Should the General raise his left hand as he has raised his right it would point to a quarter of the city that forms a haven for the oppressed and suppressed of foreign lands. In the cause of national or personal freedom they have found a refuge here, and the patriot who made it for them sits his steed, overlooking their district, while he listens through his left ear to vaudeville that caricatures the posterity of his protégés. ”

“ But in the course of time the cities freed themselves from the jurisdiction of their lord and separated themselves from the surrounding territory. They acquired a set of laws for their government, and jurisdiction over themselves. The citizens of each city became a commune possessing a number of rights, among them the right to have a market, freedom from tolls, the election of their own officials, judges, etc., the right to levy their own taxes, to coin money, to fortify their city, etc. In a word, each city freed itself from the government of its lord and got the right to govern itself. ”

“ And that the same form of surety be observed of strangers to be admitted into the freedom in the husting, if they be of any certain mistery or trade. And if they are not of some certain mistery, then that they be not admitted into the freedom without the assent of the commonalty. And that they who have been taken into the freedom of the city (since we undertook the government of the realm) contrary to the forms prescribed, and they who have gone contrary to their oath in this behalf, 39or contrary to the state of the city, and are thereof lawfully convicted, lose the freedom of the said city. ”

“ The city does not deceive itself into supposing that that great building is a unit from which the police are to keep out and the civic authority to be excluded, but it says: "These are public highways, and light is needed in them, and control by the authority of the city." ”

“ Throughout her bounds, in the city or on the open plain, in the forest or in the village, under the tropic or in the frozen zone, her subjects shall find Justice and Freedom as the liberal air, so that enfranchised thus, and the unfettered use of all his faculties secured, each may fulfil his being's supreme law. ”

“ Whoever becomes the ruler of a city that is accustomed to freedom and does not destroy it can expect to be destroyed by it, for it can always find a pretext for rebellion in the name of its former freedom and age-old customs, which are never forgotten despite the passage of time or any benefits it has received. ”

“ The same principle holds with the republics developing at the close of the middle age, in Italy, in the towns of the Hanseatic League and elsewhere. Always the freedom achieved was for a city, a group or a class, never for all the people. ”

“ While townsmen were forced at every turn to discover and justify the limits of their privileges, or while controversies raged among them as to how the government of the community should be carried on, there was no lack of political teaching; and all questions “touching the great commonalty of the city” for whose liberties they had fought and whose constitution they had shaped, stirred loyal citizens to a genuine patriotism. ”

“ The rights of municipalities have been conceded from the first dawn of constitutional liberty indeed municipal freedom may be said to be the first step in the onward progress of the race toward the full recognition of its rights. ”

“ In this sense the city state was a community of free men. Considered collectively its citizens owned no master. They governed themselves, subject only to principles and rules of life descending from antiquity and owing their force to the spontaneous allegiance of successive generations. ”

“ It is evident, then, that all those governments which have a common good in view are rightly established and strictly just, but those who have in view only the good of the rulers are all founded on wrong principles, and are widely different from what a government ought to be, for they are tyranny over slaves, whereas a city is a community of freemen. ”

“ With a tradition for public spirit, it may drop Butler and its runaway bankers, brokers, and brewers, and pushing aside the scruples of the hundreds of men down in blue book, and red book, and church register, who are lying hidden behind the statutes of limitations, the city may restore good government. ”

“ The tribunes' protective authority, the right of appeal to the people, the resolutions of the plebs made binding on the patricians, the suppression of our rights and privileges under the pretext of making the laws equal for all - these things we have submitted to, and do submit to. What term is there to be to our dissensions? When shall we ever be allowed to have a united City, when will this ever be our common fatherland? We who have lost, show more calmness and evenness of temper than you who have won. Is it not enough that you have made us fear you? ”

“ In this rapid and original survey the true proportions of civic history in our national life are boldly drawn; and the burghers and shopkeepers of the towns, long neglected and despised, take their place in the distinguished ranks of those by whom our freedom has been won by their sturdy battle against oppression, leading the way in the growth and elevation of the English people, and carrying across the ages of tyranny the full tradition of liberty. ”

“ The social democracy demands, therefore, as for the state so for the municipality, universal, equal, free and direct suffrage, complete privilege and equalization, as for the citizen of the state so for the inhabitant of the city—a free community in a free state. ”

“ For first, who sees not that Anarchy is equally opposite to all the forenam'd Formes? For that word signifies that there is no Government at all, that is, not any City. But how is it possible that no City should be the species of a City? ”

“ These things are absolutely necessary, so to speak, in every state; for a city is a number of people not accidentally met together, but with a purpose of ensuring to themselves sufficient independency and self-protection ”

“ The sense of order, of ease, of dignity and courtesy, is continually fostered and flattered in the great Imperial City, which, notwithstanding its petty faults of local government, is still the freest and noblest town the globe has ever borne. ”

“ But to a burgher of the middle ages the care and protection of the State were dim and shadowy compared with the duties and responsibilities thrown on the townspeople themselves. For in the beginnings of municipal life the affairs of the borough great and small, its prosperity, its safety, its freedom from crime, the gaiety and variety of its life, the regulation of its trade, were the business of the citizens alone. ”

“ The rise and the long continuance in so small a country of so many cities, having their own laws, constitution, separate history, and independent existence, can only be explained by the fact that in their early growth they were protected, each by the mountains which surrounded it, so effectually, and the love of liberty in this time was developed to such an extent, that no single city was able to establish its dominion over the others. ”

“ For although the word liberty, may in large, and ample letters be written over the gates of any City whatsoever, yet is it not meant the Subjects, but the Cities liberty, neither can that word with better Right be inscribed on a City which is governed. ”

“ Since only a twenty-fifth part of the nation lived in cities, the greater power of the scattered provincial population seemed natural; but when now a third of the nation prefers city life, and especially the more intelligent, more educated, and wealthy third, the limitations to independent municipal rights become an obstacle to culture. ”

“ The spirit of independence and freedom, kept alive in our town meetings here, and in our local self-government, has come down to us through those old town guilds and the boroughs of England. It is to the towns of England and not to the country that we owe much of our liberty to-day. ”

“ A free City, situated among Nations, none of whom should find it their Interest to attack her Liberties, but all, on the contrary, think a Duty to themselves to defend them, when attacked by others. A Republic, in a word, which not only had nothing to tempt the Ambition of its Neighbours, but might reasonably depend upon their Assistance in case of Necessity. ”

“ But that which holds true in a City, that must be supposed to be true in a man, or an assembly of men, who have the Supreme Authority, for they make a City, which hath no being but by their Supreme Power. ”

“ For a city or a people to be truly free they must have the secure right, without economic, political or police pressure, to make their own choice and to live their own lives. ”

“ It was the delusion that in a city which surrounded the Cradle of American Liberty, which had listened to the most eloquent appeals in favor of human rights, and in which the most progressive features of American civilization are most successfully cultivated, that in such a city, I say, every educated man would appreciate the great agencies of progress and social order, to which we owe our moral and intellectual development and prosperity and power among the nations of the world. ”

“ Whence it is plain, that the city is not tied to the civil laws; for the civil laws are the laws of the city, by which, if she were engaged, she should be engaged to herself. Neither can the city be obliged to her citizen; because, if he will, he can free her from her obligation; and he will, as oft as she wills; for the will of every citizen is in all things comprehended in the will of the city; the city therefore is free when she pleaseth, that is, she is now actually free. ”

“ The rapacity which instigated these descriptions of men had little check, while they saw themselves upheld even by some governors of provinces. In this grade, which ought ever to be the protectors of the rights of the people, there were some who were total strangers to all ideas of equity, freedom, or urbanity. ”

“ This city, which he loved so well and which he builded, stands, in its fair proportions, the peer of any on the earth in good and equitable government, the prosperous home of happy, cultured freemen, as a type of what he wished his neighbors and his fellow-countrymen might strive to make themselves in contrast with their fellow men; worthy to stand among the bravest and the best. ”

“ It is therefore manifest, that in every city there is some one man, or council, or court, who by right hath as great a power over each single citizen, as each man hath over himself considered out of that civil state; that is, supreme and absolute, to be limited only by the strength and forces of the city itself, and by nothing else in the world. ”

“ He stood self-confessed as having for years printed daily gross libels on citizens, officials, and community, as part of the tactics of a few outside men to prevent a free city from doing with its own means in its own affairs that which an overwhelming public opinion, and the legislative, executive, and judicial authorities, and its present antagonists themselves, had all sustained its right to do. ”

“ The licence of the cities dominates country life and country thought. The city minority rules the majority in the country, and it is in the country that the reaction will begin.
[Pg 74]
JOHN MARSHALL (Second Message)
Many of the smaller nations, instead of being content with their liberty, have thrown it away for the licence that always goes with land grabbing. For a nation is nothing more than an individual with a certain amount of collective ambition. ”

“ Either cities must have home rule, including the local police power, with the right to regulate amusements and resorts and even vices according to the will of the people in that city, whatever the rural view may be, or some authority other than the mayor, and far wiser and nobler than any mayor I ever knew or heard of, must be raised up by the state [248] in whom may be united the powers and functions of a beadle, a censor, and a dictator. I have not the slightest idea where one so wise and pure is to be found, but doubtless there are plenty who do, if their modesty would permit them to speak. ”

“ On the other hand communities which surrendered without offering an obstinate resistance were usually allowed to retain their personal freedom and private property, and their chief town was left in the enjoyment of its territory and civil rights ”

“ This genuine movement of freedom may be a real emancipation. If it should reach the metropolis, what a relief it might bring to thousands who are, under a high sense of duty, struggling to advance the intellectual life. ”

“ Each community in fact had full liberty to order its own political experiment. In the matter of choosing their fellow burgesses, of framing their own society and fixing the limits of its growth, the citizens knew no law and recognized no authority beyond their own, [322] and enjoyed herein a measure of independence unknown in continental countries where a powerful feudal system still barred every road to freedom. ”

“ Municipal home rule, if it were permitted to cover all these things, would be another name for local chaos. The relations between a city and the surrounding country are so intimate, and each depends so much upon the other, that no rigid line of separation between local and general interests can be drawn. ”