Law of liberty

“ Our great country was forged in the fires of a revolution to overthrow the rule of a tyrant, by a free people who understood the fundamental truth that liberty is best secured when the state’s power is carefully limited. From the Declaration of Independence, to the Constitution, and through the Bill of Rights, our country and our people have always known the true, God-given nature of liberty and the ability of law to safeguard it against the state. ”

“ Everywhere the law reaches to the highest and reaches to the lowest, to protect all in their rights, and to restrain all from wrong; and over all hovers liberty,—that liberty for which our fathers fought and fell on this very spot, with her eye ever watchful, and her eagle wing ever wide outspread. ”

“ The truth is, that a government by law is or is not liberty, just as the laws are just or unjust; and as the body of the people do or do not participate in the power of making them. The learned Prelate seems to have thought otherwise, and therefore has given a definition of liberty, which might as well have been given of slavery. ”

“ That freedom is the sacred right of every man, whatever be his color, who has not forfeited it by some violation of municipal law, is a truth established by God himself, in the very creation of human beings. No time, no circumstance, no human power or policy can change the nature of this truth, nor repeal the fundamental laws of society, by which every man’s right to liberty is guarantied. ”

“ That no freeman ought to be taken, imprisoned, or disseized of his freehold, liberties, privileges, or franchises, or outlawed, or exiled, or in any manner destroyed, or deprived of his life, liberty, or property, but by the law of the land. ”

“ But it is clearly laid down as a fundamental principle of the all-pervasive common law, that rights given by the Creator are unalienable, [Pg 17] and that no human being, however emphatically he may declare, or will, or agree to the contrary, may by any possible act of any other human being or of any set of human beings, whether calling themselves a government or not, or by any possible means, deprive himself, or be deprived of the right of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness—these being necessarily incidental to the original right of equality. ”

“ Again, in any law upon this subject, ought not all the safeguards of liberty known in civilized and humane jurisprudence to be introduced, so that a free man be not, in any case, surrendered as a slave? ”

“ But that which is of great price, and can never be too costly, is to acquire liberty by means of good manners, by the custom of respecting the law and making it respected, by respecting the rights of others, and making them respected by all; to be just with all the world, and ashamed of every evil act. ”

“ The law ought to protect public and personal liberty against the oppression of those who govern.
10. No one ought to be accused, arrested, or detained except in the cases determined by law and according to the forms that it has prescribed. Any citizen summoned or seized by the authority of the law, ought to obey immediately; he makes himself guilty by resistance.
11. Any act done against man outside of the cases and without the forms that the law determines is arbitrary and tyrannical; the one against whom it may be intended to be executed by violence has the right to repel it by force. ”

“ It is no other than the instinctive effort of every people towards liberty. And what is liberty, whose name can make every heart beat, and which can agitate the world, but the union of all liberties, the liberty of conscience, of education, of association, of the press, of movement, of labor, and of exchange; in other words, the free exercise, for all, of all the inoffensive faculties ”

“ The Convention promulgated this great axiom: "The liberty of one citizen ends where the liberty of another citizen begins," which comprises in two lines the entire law of human society. ”

“ Where the governing power is dependent upon the governed, no abstract theory of individual liberty or what not, will long prevent the State from taking cognizance of apparent and remediable injustice. Doctrinaire political philosophers, painters of Utopias, peddlars of political panaceas, still have their own little nostrums for society, but the law has been built up, as has seemed right or expedient to the law makers of the time, as a series of arbitrary rules based upon experience, and defining the terms upon which people may best live in each other’s society. ”

“ To govern themselves by law, and secure therewith the largest liberty with the greatest security of individual rights and property, was their ideal of statecraft, and this idea, inseparable from the principles they laid down, must endure while the fabric lasts. ”

“ The FORCE of the people, or the popular will, in action and exerted, symbolized by the GAVEL, regulated and guided by and acting within the limits of LAW and ORDER, symbolized by the TWENTY-FOUR-INCH RULE, has for its fruit LIBERTY, EQUALITY, and FRATERNITY,—liberty regulated by law ”

“ So that, however it may be mistaken, the end of law is not to abolish or restrain, but to preserve and enlarge freedom: for in all the states of created beings capable of laws, where there is no law, there is no freedom: for liberty is, to be free from restraint and violence from others; ”

“ The government is a constitutional and hereditary monarchy, and the constitution guarantees to the citizens equality before the law, personal and religious liberty, freedom of the press, public instruction, and the abolition of confiscation and the penalty of death for political offenders. ”

“ Freedom then is not what Sir Robert Filmer tells us, Observations, A. 55. a liberty for every one to do what he lists, to live as he pleases, and not to be tied by any laws: but freedom of men under government is, to have a standing rule to live by, common to every one of that society, and made by the legislative power erected in it; a liberty to follow my own will in all things, where the rule prescribes not; and not to be subject to the inconstant, uncertain, unknown, arbitrary will of another man: as freedom of nature is, to be under no other restraint but the law of nature. ”

“ Civil liberty is the status of the man who is guaranteed by law and civil institutions the exclusive employment of all his own powers for his own welfare. ”

“ The shallow, as intimated, consider liberty a release from all law, from every constraint. ”

“ No, sir, our respect to the constitution has another origin, it is the fact that it has been made to be an impregnable bulwark of Liberty, and of the rights of man! The spirit of liberty which pervades it, is the only source of its dignity and of its moral authority. ”

“ In the nineteenth century, then, legal and political philosophers were agreed that the end of the legal order, the purpose of political organization and purpose of lawmaking, were to secure and maintain individual liberty. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Would you have me argue that man is entitled to liberty? that he is the rightful owner of his own body? You have already declared it. Must I argue the wrongfulness of slavery? Is that a question for Republicans? Is it to be settled by the rules of logic and argumentation, as a matter beset with great difficulty, involving a doubtful application of the principle of justice, hard to be understood? How should I look to-day, in the presence of Americans, dividing, and subdividing a discourse, to show that men have a natural right to freedom? ”

“ The Constitution is good, and great, and valuable, and to be held for ever sacred, because it secures to us what was the object of the Constitution. I love the Union and the Constitution, not for themselves, but for the great end for which they were created—to secure and perpetuate liberty; not the liberty of a class, superimposed upon the thraldom of groaning multitudes: not the liberty of a ruling race, cemented by the tears and blood of subject races, but human liberty, perfect liberty, common to the whole people of the United States and to their posterity. ”

“ When we are dealing with the Constitution of the United States, and more particularly with the great safeguards of the Bill of Rights, we are dealing with principles of liberty and justice 'so rooted in the traditions and conscience of our people as to be ranked as fundamental'-something without which 'a fair and enlightened system of justice would be impossible'. ”

“ We deal with fundamental rights and liberties, which, as already noted, can be contained or controlled only by discretely drawn legislation that preserves the "liberty" and regulates only those phases of the problem of compelling legislative concern. ”

“ Freedom and order, which are set up as political antitheses, are, on the contrary, in fact, synonymous, and the necessary consequences of legality. ‘The majesty of the law’ is an idea which upon the Continent is not yet comprehended, probably because people cannot realise to themselves a dead thing as the supreme power, and seek for personal power in government or people. ”

“ 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. ”

“ That, a bill of rights might be fit in a monarchy, where there were struggles between the crown and the people about prerogatives and privileges. But, here, the government is the government of the people; all its officers are their officers; and they can exercise no rights or powers, but such as the people commit to them. In such a case the silence of the constitution argues nothing. The trial by jury, the freedom of the press, and the liberty of conscience are not taken away, because they are not secured. ”

“ In one sense, indeed, sir, this is assuming an attitude of open resistance in favor of liberty. But what sort of liberty? The liberty of establishing their own opinions, in defiance of the opinions of all others; the liberty of judging and deciding exclusively themselves, in a matter in which others have as much right to judge and decide as they; the liberty of placing their own opinion above the judgment of all others, above the laws, and above the Constitution. This is their liberty, and this is the fair result of the proposition contended for by the honorable gentleman. ”

“ Our freedom is your freedom; our rights are your rights; our interest is your interest; nay, after all, our God is your God. Let us fight our battles of opinion civilly. But when you issue paper constitutions every day, and tell us that we must obey such and such an iniquitous law—a law revolting to our conscience, our reason, and every aspiration of freedom—we throw your paper constitution to the winds, and refuse to obey it. ”

“ 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? ”

“ That every freeman restrained of his liberty is entitled to a remedy, to inquire into the lawfulness thereof, and to remove the same, if unlawful, and that such remedy ought not to be denied nor delayed. ”