Liberty cap

“ Is this tame relinquishment of rights worthy of freemen? Is it worthy of that manly fortitude that ought to characterize republicans? It is said eight states have adopted this plan. I declare that if twelve states and a half had adopted it, I would, with manly firmness, and in spite of an erring world, reject it. You are not to inquire how your trade may be increased, nor how you are to become a great and powerful people, but how your liberties can be secured; for liberty ought to be the direct end of your government. ”

“ Again and again in the repeated confirmations of the Great Charter, in the Petition of Rights, in the Habeas Corpus Act, in the Bill of Rights, in the Massachusetts Body of Liberties, in the Virginia Bill of Rights, and, finally, in the immortal Declaration of 1776—in all the great utterances of striving for broader freedom which have marked the development of modern liberty, sounds the same dominant note of insistence upon the inalienable right of individual manhood under government but independent of government, and, if need be, against government, to life and liberty. ”

“ What is liberty? The power of governing yourselves. If you adopt this Constitution, have you this power? No: you give it into the hands of a set of men who live one thousand miles distant from you. Let the people but once trust their liberties out of their own hands, and what will be the consequence? First, a haughty, imperious aristocracy; and ultimately, a tyrannical monarchy. No people on earth are, at this day, so free as the people of America. All other nations are, more or less, in a state of slavery. They owe their constitutions partly to chance, and partly to the sword ”

“ It was the hopes of our people to have their trade on a respectable footing. But it never entered into my head that we should quit liberty, and throw ourselves into the hands of an energetic government. Do you want men to be more free, or less free, than they are? Gentlemen have been called upon to show the causes of this measure. ”

“ The right was conceded to the present United States at the close of a successful revolution, to form a constitution for themselves; and the loyalists, with their descendents and others now peopling this portion of America, are entitled to the same liberty without the shedding of blood — more they do not ask; less they ought not to have. ”

“ From an address put forth by the colonists of Liberia to the free people of color of the United States, we make a few extracts:
"The first consideration which caused our voluntary removal to this country, and the object which we still regard with the deepest concern, is liberty — liberty in the sober, simple, but complete sense of the word; not a licentious liberty, nor a liberty without government, or which should place us without the restraint of salutary laws; but that liberty of speech and conscience which distinguishes the free enfranchised citizens of a free state. ”

“ But I believe that faithful adherence to the specific guarantees in the Bill of Rights insures a more permanent protection of individual liberty than that which can be afforded by the nebulous standards stated by the majority. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Here, then, are twelve reasons which are popularly urged in all parts of the country, as conclusive against the right of a man to himself. If they are valid, in any instance, what becomes of the Declaration of Independence? On what ground can the revolutionary war, can any struggle for liberty, be justified? ”

“ Is it not likely to be true that the moral tone of the republic —our estimation of constitutional liberty—will be lessened by the creation of a body of civilized people over whom our flag waves as an emblem of power only? ”

“ How can a people who glory in a Declaration of Independence which broke the slumbers of a world declare that men united in defense of liberty, property, and the pursuit of happiness are "traitors"? Is it henceforth to be a dictum of humanity that man may no more take up arms in defense of rights, liberty, and property? ”

“ Thus this important affair, in which there has been so glorious an exertion of public virtue and spirit, has been brought to a public issue, by which the force of law, so obstinately persisted in, to the prejudice of the national commerce, for the sake of the principle on which it is founded, (a right of taxing the Americans without their consent,) has been effectually broken, and the foundation of American liberty more deeply laid than ever. ”

“ England held us in 1775, as she holds many of her provinces now—by their own consent, but not otherwise. That consent can be perpetual only by the recognition of the principles of freedom and equality. The cause of liberty raises up friends and advocates everywhere. None of its martyrs ever die unwept, unhonored or unsung. The human heart has never been truer to any principle than to that of liberty. It is not in America alone that the cause of freedom excites sympathy and enlists support. ”

“ With one voice, however, the whole nation called for a constitution, to establish equal rights, as the foundation of freedom; and to guard against the depredations of favourites, whether they attacked person or property. So that the liberty of the press, and the abolition of lettres de cachet, were, in general, the articles that followed the positive injunction of confining the right of taxation to the representative body of the nation. ”

“ We have seen, therefore, that so long as property is confined to the product of men's toil, all is well. The freedom of a savage life which exposed every man to being robbed by every other man is what we call license. The freedom, on the contrary, under the institution of property which secures to men the product of their toil, we may call liberty—liberty being freedom secured by law. ”

“ Such events under both forms of government, may be rare, but history proves that they are possible. If liberty consists in cutting off heads, the United States are as free as any other countries, but not more free than some; if in not transferring property by unnecessary taxation and exclusive privileges, they are less free than when they were provinces, and have nothing to boast of when compared with some other countries. ”

“ In this decree you authorize the entire Republic to adopt the same measures, for your decree ratifies those which have just been brought to your knowledge. If everywhere the same measures be taken, the Republic is saved. No longer shall be treated as agitators and anarchists those ardent friends of liberty by whom the nation was set in motion, but we shall hear: "Honor to the agitators who turn the vigor of the people against its enemies!" When the temple of liberty shall have been established, the people may be trusted to decorate it. ”

“ Up to this moment nothing has been successfully invented to curb supreme power except what are called intermediary bodies or privileges. Is it, then, of a new nobility you would speak when you allude to institutions? But such remedies — are they not worse than the disease? For the absolute power of a monarch takes only our liberty, while the institution of privileged classes robs us at the same time of our liberty and our equality. ”

“ In laying the foundation of their governments, destined hereafter to control the happiness of innumerable multitudes, Congress has omitted the Great Ordinance of Freedom, first moved by Jefferson, and consecrated by the experience of the Northwestern Territory: thus rejecting those principles of Human Liberty which are enunciated in our Declaration of Independence, which are essential to every Bill of Rights, and without which a Republic is a name and nothing more. ”

“ The stamp of Cartesian clearness is upon it, but without the logic, the precision, the thoroughness of French thought. There is no indication in it that Liberty is the goal, and not the starting-point, that it is a faculty to be acquired, not a capital to invest, or that it depends on the union of innumerable conditions, which embrace the entire life of man. Therefore it is justly arraigned by those who say that it is defective, and that its defects have been a peril and a snare.
It was right that the attempt should be made; for the extinction of privilege involved a declaration of rights. ”

“ Considering the far-reaching consequences that resulted from the granting of Magna Charta,—the securing of constitutional liberty as an inheritance for the English-speaking race in all parts of the world,—it must always be considered the most important concession that a freedom-loving people ever wrung from a tyrannical sovereign. ”

“ It has no other claim to be thought important. Yet while we have been praising our bills of rights and bulwarks of liberty, commerce in the United States has been bringing power after power, battalion after battalion, to bear upon the integrity of spirit of the individual man. Here is a situation which no legislation can meet. Civil liberty has been submerged in the boss system. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Her hot young soul struck for the true principle of liberty, which is the recognition of one's right to live one's own life unvexed of privilege under whatever guise or disguise, and to subscribe to no laws which are not designed to secure that end. ”

“ But this very helplessness of the people had forced their rulers to pretend that they were not helpless, and that the certainty of a sturdy and unconquerable popular resistance forbade any trifling with Magna Carta or the Petition of Rights or the authority of parliament. Now the reality behind this fiction was the divine sense that liberty is a need vital to human growth. ”

“ There is, on the contrary, no instance on record of an extensive and well- established republic being changed into an aristocracy. The tendencies of all such governments in their decline is to monarchy, and the antagonist principle to liberty there is the spirit of faction—a spirit which assumes the character and in times of great excitement imposes itself upon the people as the genuine spirit of freedom, and, like the false Christs whose coming was foretold by the Savior, seeks to, and were it possible would, impose upon the true and most faithful disciples of liberty. ”

“ Liberty itself will find in such a government, with powers properly distributed and adjusted, its surest guardian. It is, indeed, little else than a name, where the government is too feeble to withstand the enterprises of faction, to confine each member of the society within the limits prescribed by the laws, and to maintain all in the secure and tranquil enjoyment of the rights of person and property. ”

“ When the fiery tongue of the Revolution blazed into the undying speech of liberty, Madison, Mason, Patrick Henry, and Edmund Randolph uttered their declaration that like a sunbeam has been written upon every page of the nation's history: “All men are by nature equally free and have inherent rights—namely, the enjoyment of life and liberty, with the means of acquiring and possessing property and pursuing and obtaining happiness and safety.” ”

“ Your committee, believing that the freeborn sons of America are worthy to enjoy the liberty which their fathers purchased at the price of much blood and treasure, and seeing by the measures adopted by Great Britain, a course commenced and persisted in, which might lead to a loss of national character and independence, feel no hesitation in advising resistance by force, in which the Americans of the present day will prove to the enemy and the world, that we have not only inherited that liberty which our fathers gave us, but also the will and power to maintain it. ”

“ The errour of parchment liberty, has made liberty the creature of parchment. A government, good or bad, can easily take away that liberty by charters, which was created by charters. Before the idea of deriving liberty from charter or compact became fashionable, the evils produced by bad governments were temporary; now, slavery, as liberty condescended to be, is created by charters, to as to perpetuate these evils, and to hem in the efforts of patriotism so narrowly, as to destroy the effect of virtue in office. ”

“ Private men, indeed, might be allowed the exercise of Liberty; as they might also under the most despotic government, but it would be an indulgence [11] or connivance derived from the spirit of the times, or from an accidental mildness in the administration. And, rather than be governed in such a manner, it would perhaps be better to be governed by the will of one man without any representation: For a representation so degenerated could answer no other end than to mislead and deceive, by disguising slavery, and keeping up a form of Liberty when the reality was lost. ”

“ That the constitution of the United States, ordained to form a more perfect Union, to establish justice, and secure the blessings of liberty, expressly denies to the general government all power to deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law ”