Freehold

“ The people desire the privileges inseparably annexed, since Magna Charta, to the freehold which they have by descent or obtain as the fruits of their industry. They call for no man's estate; they desire not to be dispossessed of their own. ”

“ A freehold, though it be but in ice and snow, will make the owner pleased in the possession, and stout in the defence of it.... I consider myself as one who give my consent to every law which passes.... A free-holder is but one remove from a legislator, and for that reason ought to stand up in the defence of those laws which are in some degree of his own making." [619]
These are all English feelings, made up of calculation and pride, energetic and austere; and this portrait is capped by that of the married man:
"Nothing is more gratifying to the mind of man than power or dominion ”

“ At least for the main purposes of Domesday Book the free man is a man who holds land freely. Let us observe what is said of the men who have been holding manors. The formula will vary somewhat from county to county, but we shall often find four phrases used as equivalent, ‘X tenuit et liber homo fuit,’ ‘X tenuit ut liber homo,’ ‘X tenuit et cum terra sua liber fuit,’ ‘X tenuit libere [139] .’ But this freeholding implies a high degree of freedom, freedom of a kind that would have shocked the lawyers of a later age. ”

“ However, sir, I am not less a friend to the freeholders than those who propose the exception in their favour, but, in my opinion, the great interest of the freeholders is the preservation of their freeholds, which can only be secured by a vigorous exertion of the power of the nation, in the war which is now declared against the Spaniards. ”

“ The changes improved the efficiency of justice and served to accommodate it to the changing circumstances of the social system.
"No man by force of arms, malice or menacing shall disturb anyone in making free election [of sheriffs, coroners, conservators of the peace by freeholders of the county] ."
"No city, borough, town, nor man shall be amerced without reasonable cause and according to the severity of his trespass. That is, every freeman saving his freehold, a merchant saving his merchandise, a villein saving his wainage [implements of agriculture] , and that by his peers." ”

“ You boast of the freedom of your constitution and your laws; you have proclaimed, in the Declaration of Independence, "that all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights — that amongst these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness;" and yet you have slaves in your country. The enemies of your government, and the legitimates of Europe, point to your inconsistencies, and blazon your supposed defects. ”

“ And this system exists here in this country of your's, which boasts itself the asylum of the oppressed, the home of freedom, the one place in all the world where all men may find enfranchisement from all thraldoms of mind, soul, or body—the land elect of liberty. ”

“ I now address you on a question the most vitally connected with the liberty and well-being of every man within the limits of the British Empire—which being decided one way, he may be a freeman; which being decided the other, he must be a slave. ”

“ We declare that [14] all slaves that shall enter our kingdom, by land or by sea, shall be free; and further order, that every one born a slave in our dominions shall be considered as free from the very instant of his birth, and that he shall neither be sold nor bought. ”

“ Now at last, by the death of slavery, will the republic begin to live. For what is life without liberty? Stretching from ocean to ocean,—teeming with population, bountiful in resources of all kinds, and thrice-happy in universal enfranchisement, it will be more than conqueror. ”

“ Communities of slaveholding braggarts, setting at defiance the laws of nature and nature's God, restoring slavery where it had been extinguished, and vainly dreaming to make it eternal; forming, in the sacred name of liberty, constitutions of government interdicting to the legislative authority itself that most blessed of human powers, the power of giving liberty to the slave! ”

“ Thus the seeds of freedom have emanated from the tree of our liberties. They fill the air. They are wafted to every part of the habitable globe. And even in the barren sands of tyranny they are destined to take root. The tree of liberty will spring up every where, and nations shall recline in its shade. ”

“ In other words, does such a man retain his liberty? As he is borne away by force, and against [Pg 405] prayers, and tears, and struggles, does he remain free? Can a man be adjudged a slave; held, coerced, beaten as a slave; with all his powers and faculties of body and mind subdued and controlled as a slave’s, and yet possess or retain liberty? If such a proceeding does not deprive a man of his freedom, by what means can he be deprived of it? ”

“ A freeman may be suddenly arrested, and dragged into court, and on certain papers being read against him, which he never saw nor heard of before, he may be ordered into the custody of officers, and hurried to a returnless distance from wife, children, and friends, reduced to the direst form of bondage the world ever knew, and at the expense of the very government which he has been taxed to support, and which in turn was bound to protect him. ”

“ Assuming that we ourselves are the impartial judge for whom we seek, let us begin by comparing the individual and State, and ask first of all, whether the State is likely to be free or enslaved—Will there not be a little freedom and a great deal of slavery? ”

“ Is not law and civil order, rather, so much their work, that it still forms the foundation of our own? Was there not complete protection for property, even though it consisted for the most part of slaves? ”

“ Since our Redeemer, Creator of all creatures, deigned to put on human form, in order by His divine grace to break the bonds of the servitude by which we were held as captives, that He might restore us to our ancient liberty, it is fitting and advantageous that those whom Nature has made free, and whom the law of nations has made subject to the yoke of servitude, should be restored, by enfranchisement, to that liberty in which they were born. ”

“ While I desire to do every thing which may protect the rights of property which are guarantied to citizens of the slave states, I cannot consent to sacrifice the rights of liberty which belong to the citizens of the free states. ”

“ And how many thousands have worn out their days in vassalage and slavery, because laws have been made contrary to the requisitions of the great law of reason! But whenever the minds of the people are illuminated, and the clouds of darkness, ignorance and superstition are dispelled, the spirit of liberty breaks forth like the sun in its meridian splendor. ”

“ The first condition of a State, and the first essential characteristic of our idea of it, as stated above, is this: That Freemen must at first become subject to the will and superintendence of other Freemen. Freemen, I say, in opposition to Slaves: and by Freemen I mean those to whose own skill and judgment it is left to provide the means of subsistence for themselves and their families; who are accordingly sovereign heads of families, and even continue to be so after their submission to a foreign will which has other purposes in view. ”

“ Individuals and families, associations and dependencies were so much material that the sovereign power consumed for its own purposes. What the slave was in the hands of his master, the citizen was in the hands of the community. ”

“ We are literally scourged beyond the beneficent range of both authorities—human and divine. We plead for our rights, in the name of the immortal declaration of independence, and of the written constitution of government, and we are answered with imprecations and curses. ”

“ Be aware, therefore, that, together with this property, you will receive absolute power over the liberty and person of the being who now possesses it. That being must become your domestic slave; be governed, in every particular, by your caprice.
Happily for you, though fully invested with this power, the degree and mode in which it will be exercised will depend upon yourself..... You may either totally forbear the exercise, or employ it only for the benefit of your slave. ”

“ If the government secure him in the enjoyment of these rights, and of all which necessarily attaches to them, he is essentially free. The kind of government, as a hereditary monarchy, or a democratic republic, does not, of itself, determine the actual freedom of its subjects. ”

“ These privileges were fixed laws, by which the trade and industry of the citizens were encouraged, and their lives and properties ascertained and protected, and no longer subjected to the laws of mere will and pleasure: And therefore, while these free cities, enjoying their own liberties and laws, flourished under them, the provinces were miserably harrassed, pillaged, dispeopled, and impoverished, and the inhabitants exhausted, starved, butchered, and carried away captive. ”

“ Yes, I said; and loyal citizens are insultingly termed by her “slaves” who hug their chains, and men of naught; she would have subjects who are like rulers, and rulers who are like subjects: these are men after her own heart, whom she praises and honors both in private and public. Now, in such a State, can liberty have any limit? ”

“ It is simply, —Shall the course of the Republic be so directed as to subserve the interests of aristocracy or of democracy? Shall our Territories be occupied by lord and serf, or by intelligent freemen?—by laborers who are owned, or by men who own themselves? ”

“ Were a nation, therefore, given to be moulded by a sovereign, as the clay is put into the hands of the potter, this project of bestowing liberty on a people who are actually servile, is, perhaps, of all others the most difficult, and requires most to be executed in silence, and with the deepest reserve. ”

“ From all this it appears, then, that in getting property we do not get liberty, in the sense of absence of constraint and opportunity to do as we please. We have only changed the form of our constraint. Tired of barbarism and its limitations, we take civilization at its price. ”

“ Not seeing, then, that freedom as in countries where it is a common blessing, and as broad and general as the air, may be united with much abject misery, with all the exterior of servitude, liberty looks among them like something that is more noble and liberal. ”

“ The Liber homo, or FREEMAN, has existed in this country from the earliest periods, as well as of authentic as of traditionary history, entitled to that station in society as one of his constitutional rights, as being descended from free parents in contradistinction to 'villains,' which should be borne in remembrance, because the term 'FREEMAN' has been, in modern times, perverted from its constitutional signification without any statutable authority. ”

“ Doubt not but that the day is at hand on which, with the annihilation of despotism and your now degraded condition, you will rise to the rank of a free nation, to which your geographical position and the course of events naturally call you. ”

“ I do not stop to exhibit the elective franchise as essential to the security of the freedman, without which he will be the prey of Slavery in some new form, and cannot rise to the stature of manhood. In opening this debate I presented the argument fully. Suffice it to say that Emancipation will fail in beneficence, if you do not assure to the former slave all the rights of the citizen. ”

“ If we adopt that meaning of the word "free," which is consistent with freedom—that meaning which is consistent with natural right—the meaning given to it by the Articles of Confederation, by the then existing state constitutions, by the colonial charters, and by the English law ever since our ancestors enjoyed the name of freemen, all these difficulties, inconsistencies, contradictions and absurdities, that must otherwise arise, vanish. ”

“ It is often very difficult for great lovers of power, and great lovers of liberty, neither of whom may have been used to the study of law in any of its branches, to see the difference between subordination, absolute slavery, and subjection on the one side, and liberty, independence, and licentiousness on the other. ”