Civil liberty

“ Even as I write, however, I find in a leading review a new definition of civil liberty. Civil liberty the writer declares to be “the result of the restraint exercised by the sovereign people on the more powerful individuals and classes of the community, preventing them from availing themselves of the excess of their power to the detriment of the other classes.” You notice here the use of the words “sovereign people” to designate a class of the population, not the nation as a political and civil whole. Wherever “people” is used in such a sense, there is always fallacy. ”

“ I have already defined civil liberty; by equality, we should understand, not that the degrees of power and riches are to be absolutely identical for everybody; but that power shall never be great enough for violence, and shall always be exercised by virtue of rank and law ”

“ I am very sensible, that civil government, as it actually exists in the world, by no means answers to the account I have given of it.—Instead of being an institution for guarding the weak against the strong, we find it an institution which makes the strong yet stronger, and gives them a systematical power of oppressing. Instead of promoting virtue and restraining vice, encouraging free enquiry, establishing Liberty, and protecting alike all peaceable persons in the enjoyment of their civil and religious rights ”

“ Without all doubt, it is the choice of the people that makes civil governors.—The people are the spring of all civil power, and they have a right to modify it as they please.
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Mankind being naturally equal according to the foregoing explanation, civil government, in its genuine intention, is an institution for maintaining that equality, by defending it against the encroachments of violence and tyranny. All the subordinations and distinctions in society previous to its establishment, it leaves as it found them, only confirming and protecting them. ”

“ Whatever Means, therefore, are most effectual in curbing and subduing the selfish Desires of Man, are the most effectual Means of regulating his Actions, and establishing civil Liberty on its most permanent Foundations. ”

“ In other nations, where the first principles of the civil union are maintained in vigour; where the people live under the government of laws, and not the will of man; where the spirit of liberty pervades all ranks and orders of the state; where every individual holds himself bound, at the hazard of his life, to defend the constitution framed by his ancestors; where, without being guilty of an impious crime, no man dares to violate the rights of the whole community; in such a state, the national eloquence will be prompt, bold, and animated. ”

“ We may now, then, advance a step in our conception of civil liberty. It is the status in which we find the true adjustment of rights between classes and individuals. Historically, the conception of civil liberty has been constantly changing. The notion of rights changes from one generation to another and the conception of civil liberty changes with it. ”

“ This is strictly true of communities as well as of individuals.—Civil Liberty (it should be remembered) must be enjoyed as a right derived from the Author of nature only, or it cannot be the blessing which merits this name. If there is any human power which is considered as giving it, on which it depends, and which can invade or recall it at pleasure, it changes its nature, and becomes a species of slavery.
But to return—The force superseding self-government in a state, or the power destroying its Liberty, is of two kinds. It may be either a power without itself, or a power within itself. ”

“ Civil liberty, on the other hand, is purely social, and is a very delicate and varying adjustment of rights and duties in the succeeding stages of man’s institutional development, which has risen and fallen in the past as that equilibrium has been disturbed. ”

“ On this and similar occasions, not to dwell on your steadfast adherence to those more general principles of civil liberty, which are equally important in every age and country,—on such occasions the fundamental principles peculiar to our system of government have always had in you a decided advocate, ever ready to develop and illustrate their nature and operation, and to enforce the obligations which they impose. ”

“ Now the laws which encourage and increase virtue, are the fixed laws of general and impartial liberty; laws, which being the rule of every man's actions, and the measures of every man's power, make honesty and equity their interest. Where liberty is thoroughly established, and its laws equally executed, every man will find his account in doing as he would be done unto, and no man will take from another what he would not part with himself: Honour and advantage will follow the upright, punishment overtake the oppressor. ”

“ Any man who shall go into that State can speak and write as much as he pleases against a popular form of government, freedom of suffrage, trial by jury, and against any or all of the institutions just named; he may decry civil liberty, and assert the divine right of kings, and still he does nothing criminal ”

“ Liberty, therefore, is too imperfectly defined when it is said to be “a Government by Laws, and not by Men.” If the laws are made by one man, or a junto of men in a state, and not by COMMON CONSENT, a government by them does not differ from Slavery. ”

“ The time has certainly come when the people of the United States must understand and must apply those great rules of civil liberty which have been arrived at by the self-devoted efforts of thought and action of their ancestors during seven hundred years of struggle against arbitrary power. ”

“ A deep and solemn feeling of religion, and an attachment to, and an understanding of, the principles of civil liberty, far in advance of the age in which they lived, suggested to most of them the idea of seeking a new home and founding new institutions in the western world. ”

“ Free governments are the only governments which are consistent with the natural equality of mankind. This is a principle which, in my opinion, has been assumed, with the greatest reason, by some of the best writers on government. But the meaning of it is not, that all the subordinations in human life owe their existence to the institution of civil government. ”

“ Here too was 11 reared the standard of civil liberty, and an example set, which may teach to the nations of the old world, that as people are really the source of power, government should be confided to them. ”

“ It is government by the will of rapacious individuals, in opposition to the will [13] of the community, made known and declared in the laws. A free state, at the same time that it is free itself, makes all its members free, by excluding licentiousness, and guarding their persons and property and good name against insult. It is the end of all just government, at the same time that it secures the liberty of the public against foreign injury, to secure the liberty of the individual against private injury. ”

“ That compact, brief and general, may be regarded as the foundation of civil and religious liberty in the Western World, and was the first instrument of civil government ever subscribed as the act of the whole people. ”

“ All citizens, without distinction, are eligible for public offices. The natural, civil, and religious liberty of men, and their absolute independence of all authority save that of the law, forbid any inquiries into their opinions, speeches, and writings, as long as they do not disturb order, or interfere with the rights of others. ”

“ The question with all liberal enquirers ought to be, not what jurisdiction over them Precedents, Statutes, and Charters give, but what reason and equity, and the rights of humanity give.—This is, in truth, a question which no kingdom has ever before had occasion to agitate. ”

“ The subject of this Essay is not the so-called Liberty of the Will, so unfortunately opposed to the misnamed doctrine of Philosophical Necessity; but Civil, or Social Liberty: the nature and limits of the power which can be legitimately exercised by society over the individual. A question seldom stated, and hardly ever discussed, in general terms, but which profoundly influences the practical controversies of the age by its latent presence, and is likely soon to make itself recognised as the vital question of the future. ”

“ 'tis the grand enemy of truth and peace, and all the ordinances of God are bent against it. But there is a civil, a moral, a federal liberty which is the proper end and object of authority; it is a liberty for that only which is just and good: for this liberty you are to stand with the hazard of your very lives and whatsoever crosses it is not authority, but a distemper thereof. This liberty is maintained in a way of subjection to authority; ”

“ Your Representatives will appeal to the energy of the present and future generations to renew their claim both to National Independence, and the Rights of Civil and Religious Liberty. For these Rights they now appeal to the reason and the justice of all civilized Nations. ”

“ In this sense, it must be owned, that liberty is the perfection of civil society; but still authority must be acknowledged essential to its very existence: and in those contests which so often take place between the one and the other, the latter may, on that account, challenge the preference. Unless perhaps one may say (and it may be said with some reason) ”

“ In short it is the greatest absurdity to suppose it in the power of one or any number of men at the entering into society, to renounce their essential natural rights, or the means of preserving those rights when the great end of civil government from the very nature of its institution is for the support, protection and defence of those very rights: the principal of which as is before observed, are life liberty and property. ”

“ Let us declare him subject to our control, and divest him by force, if need be, of every human right, deny to him all right of liberty and property, and finish the task by trampling to the dust his social as well as his political rights. ”

“ An intermediate body set up between the subjects and the Sovereign, to secure their mutual correspondence, charged with the execution of the laws and the maintenance of liberty, both civil and political. ”

“ WHO ARE CITIZENS? But who are citizens? Why, those who possess and enjoy, or who have the right to acquire and enjoy, an equality of political and civil privileges. Only certain classes of men possess these rights. These certain classes having possessed themselves of the machinery of the Government, tread upon the Constitution and spit upon the declarations of the Supreme Court. ”

“ This doctrine is deeply impressed in the genius of our common law, which informs us, by unquestionable maxims, that no man is worthy to hold the reins of administration who cannot maintain the national justice, the chief object of which is certainly, personal protection. 'Cessa regnare, si non vis judicare,' Cease to reign, if you will not do justice, and the reason of this is plain from another maxim, 'Vita Reipublicæ, pax—et animus libertas—et corpus, leges,' peace is the life—and liberty the soul—and the laws the body of the commonwealth. ”

“ In other words, you, my Democratic friends, in the name of liberty asserted the right of one man, under State law, to deprive another man of his freedom; in the name of democracy you asserted the right of one class of people under State law to rule despotically over another class; in the name of self-government you asserted the right of the States to exclude a large portion, sometimes even amounting to a majority of their population, from all participation in self-government. ”

“ According to the philosophy of the Revolution, every man, every community, every state and every nation is bound to enforce, and cause to be enforced, this law of nature and of nations, which prevents the voluntary or involuntary alienation by any man, any community, any state or any nation of his or its rights of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. ”

“ In the opposite class of moral beings, we have placed an equality of civil rights, freedom of religion, and of inquiry, division of power, national influence or sovereignty, knowledge, uncorrupted representation, and actual responsibility. This enumeration of a few individuals used to explain our reasoning, and not as including entire classes. ”

“ If this be true, and no intelligent man would deny it, how deeply interesting becomes the inquiry whether the citizens of this State are sufficiently enlightened to know and value their own rights, to discern and to provide against the invasions of them, to distinguish between oppression and the necessary exercise of lawful authority, to discriminate the spirit of liberty from that of licentiousness—to cherish the one and to avoid the other. ”

“ Shall we not rather take the place to which we are entitled, as the leaders, rather than the followers, in the customs of society, turn back the tide of aristocratic inroads, and carry through the whole, not only of civil and political but of social and domestic life, the true principles of democratic freedom and equality? ”

“ It is said to conflict with the sense of justice, and to violate the fundamental principle of all free communities, that the members of such communities have equal rights to life, liberty, and personal security. ”

“ Among these requisites, unalterable by changing conditions of society, are individual liberty, freedom of labor, of human development, rights of conscience, equality of the States, distribution of political powers into independent executive, legislative and judicial departments, and a careful restriction of those powers to public uses only, the healthy action of concurrent majorities, a careful safe-guarding that the power which makes the laws and the power which applies them shall not be in the same hands, and local self-government. ”

“ Show me that age and country where the rights and liberties of the people were placed on the sole chance of their rulers being good men, without a consequent loss of liberty! I say that the loss of that dearest privilege has ever followed, with absolute certainty, every such mad attempt. ”