DISCOURSE BEFORE THE Ilitekary societies Ii Hamilton College, CI.INTON, JULY 27, 1847. BY LEONARD BACON, PASroil OF THE FIRST CHURCH, IN NEW HAVEN, CONN. " ■ ^ J ROBERTS, SHERMAN & COLSTOX,.rRlNTERS. 5' ^"ila'P^ ifc^m'»b cL^M^^m DISCOURSE, BEFORE THE LITEEARY SOCIETIES HAMILTON COLLEGE, ClilNTOnt, JVI.Y 37, 1847. BY LEONARD BACON, PASTOR OF THE FIRST CHURCH, IN NEW HAVEN, CONN. UTICA : ROBERTS, SHERMAN & COLSTON PRINTERS. 1848. • Hamilton Collegk, September 28, 1847. Rev. Dr. Bacon : Sir — The members of the Union and Phoenix Societies, through the undersigned, tender you their thanks for the able and instructive Address which you deUvered before them, at their last Anniversaries, and request a copy of the same, for publication. Yours, with respect, J. C. MILLER, H. G. MILLER, Corresponding Committee of Union Society. Ne-w Haven, January 30, 1848. Messrs. J. C. Miller, H. G. Miller, Corresponding Committee, 4'C. Gentlemen — After this long delay, I redeem the promise which I made on the reception of your request for a copy of my discourse. It was in sadness that I appeared at your Commencement Anniversaries ; for every thing in the occasion kept before me the thought of my own dear eldest son, who was just completing, with high honor, his course at Yale, but whose academic laurels had been won, as I feai-ed, only to adorn the brow of disease and death. From the time I met you, it was for months my chief employ- ment to attend his slow but constant progress to the grave. And since I laid him there, hoping to meet him where the Saviour whom he trusted shall wipe away all tears, it has been hard for me, oppressed not only with sorrow, but for a time with illness, to attempt the performance of my promise to you. I would even have asked you to excuse me, but a renewed intimation that you and your associates were still expecting the publication of the discourse, left me no alternative. With this apology, accept my thanks for your kindness and your patience. Eespectfully, yours, &c., LEONARD BACON. DISCOURSE I know not how I can better perform the service to which I have been invited, than by attempting to define and illustrate the true idea of civil liberty. The nature of the occasion, the character and objects of these acade- mic societies, and the respect due to the learned, the thoughtful, and the earnest, who honor the occasion with their presence, induce me to believe that an unadorned, but perhaps not entirely uninstructive disquisition on some grave theme like that which I have announced, will be at once more suitable and more acceptable than any thing else which I could offer. But does not every body know already what civil liberty is ? And especially in this country, where we have so long enjoyed it in its highest perfection, does not every citizen understand well enough what it is that he enjoys, what it is that he boasts of ? What need then of attempting to define and illustrate the idea of civil hberty? The question is a fair one, and the answer to it will form a suitable introduction to the disquisition upon which I propose to enter. A man may know, in some vague sense, what liberty is, — he may be free, and may know that he is free, — he may be a member of a free commonwealth, and know that all his fellow citizens are free ; and yet he may not be able to tell what he knows, or to define his idea of liberty even in his own mind. That kind of knowledge may answer well enough for his ordinary purposes, and it may be that he never suffers any practical inconvenience for the want of a more definite and exact conception. But when, assuming that liberty is an inalienable right of human nature — as undoubtedly it is — we begin to reason about il, and to construct from that and other similar axioms, rules and principles of legislation and a system of pohtical philosophy ; when we begin to use the idea of man's rightful liberty as an element in propositions and arguments ; then we need a clear and accurate definition of liberty, lest, in the use of terms the meaning of which has not been fixed by the analysis of the ideas they stand for, we impose upon ourselves and others, and lose our common sense in some labyrinth of sophistry. Men always knew the air well enough to breathe it and to enjoy it. They could always distinguish between air and water well enough to be convinced of the necessity of keeping in the one and out of the other. From the earliest ages they have known what air is, well enough to spread a sail and to make a bellows. But for theoretical and philosophical purposes, something is needed more exact and discriminating than this gross kind of knowledge. What is air — the air which we breathe — the air which supports the floating clouds and the flight of birds — the air which now whispers in the tree-tops and now breaks the ocean into waves ? The natural philosopher defines it by calling it " an elastic fluid ;" and for him, inasmuch as he has only to consider its mechanical properties, its laws of motion and resistance, this is a sufficient defini- tion. The chemist however, finds that, for the purposes of his science, this is no definition at all, for it does not distinguish the air we breathe from other elastic fluids. He therefore subjects this elastic fluid to analysis ; he detects the elements of which it is composed, and their proportionate qualities ; he ascertains by exact observation the action and reaction between it and other substances, organized and unorganized, with which it comes in con- tact ; and so he forms, at last, a full and precise idea of what air is. And that idea, once formed and fixed, has a thousand momentous applications, both to the practical arts and to theoretical inquiries on other subjects. To understand what air is, helps us to understand a thousand things besides. It helps us to understand what fire is, or the process of combustion. It throws light upon the whole subject of the winds, the clouds and the weather. It explains what breath is and the connection of breath with animal life. It gives hints and starting points for the iUustration of vegetable life, and of mutual dependencies, before unsuspected, between the animal and vegetable realms of organized nature. Admitting then that every man knows, in some vague sense, what liberty is, just as every man knows what the air is which he breathes, and which fans him with its breezes, — it is not idle or superfluous to analyze and define the true idea of civil liberty. The man who thinks he knows what civil liberty is because he has it and enjoys it, and who does know what it is in a sense which suffices for his ordinary uses, if he will scrutinize rigidly the idea in his own mind of that liberty which is the inalienable right of human nature — if he will subject it to analysis, till he has ascertained all that belongs to it, and excluded from his conception all that does not truly belong to it — may find, in the end, that he understands better the whole theory of the rights and duties which belong to men as members of civil society. In entering upon the proposed inquiry, 1 assume, not that we do not know what liberty is, but that in a most important sense we do know. We all aflSrm that hberty is an inalienable right of man, not as American or as English, or as of any particular race or complexion, but as man. I am to inquire what we mean by this axiom, for surely we do not speak thus without some meaning, and by proper attention and analysis we may be able to tell what our meaning is. If we do not know what liberty is, then surely the axiom in question, which lies at the basis of all our politics, is to us mere nonsense. We begin then with the very obvious but important remark, that the liberty of which we speak — the liberty which belongs to man, of right, inalienably, is a liberty to be affirmed of man, not as living in a supposed " state of nature," but as Hving in society, and as sustaining those relations of mutual dependence and mutual duty which society involves. When we speak of liberty as a right, we do not mean by liberty that mere exemption from restraint, which belongs to the wild savage in his forest haunts, or to the shipwrecked Robinson Crusoe on his desert isle. The loneliness of a human being w^hom there is none to govern or restrain, and upon whom there rests no responsibihty towards any fellow man, is not what we mean by liberty. The wildness of the Australian or Marquesan savage — that perfect exemption from restraint which to men of a Typee moral sense seems so much better than civilization — ^is not what we mean by liberty. Liberty, in our conception of it as a right, implies society, 9 with those relations between man and man, and those various and complicated mutual dependencies and duties, which society involves ; and liberty in society implies government with authority to regulate, and with power to protect, and therefore with power to coerce. To those who have never taken the trouble to analyze their own thoughts and to ascertain in their own minds the meaning of the words they use, it may seem paradoxical to affirm that the liberty which is man's inalienable right, instead of being in any sense limited or impaired by the existence of society and government, implies both. Yet such is the fact, inasmuch as both society and government are indispensable to the existence of liberty as a right actually enjoyed. Where there is no government, there is really no liberty ; for without government every man is at the mercy of any other man who happens to be stronger than he is, or of any number of men, each weaker than he is, who may happen to think that it is for their interest to combine against him. All that is said, so often, about men's voluntarily giving up a portion of their natural liberty when they enter into society, involves an entire misconception of what liberty is, and of what rights are, and of the origin and basis of government. The theory which assumes that in a state of nature, man is a lonely savage — in other words that absolute isolation and the lowest barbarism are the original, appropriate, normal condition of his being ; and that man civilized, man sus- taining social relations and responsibilities, and enjoying rights and protection under civil government, is man in an artificial and abnormal condition — the theory which repre- sents men as entering into society by a voluntary relin- quishment of their natural liberty, and as instituting social 10 rights and social duties by voluntary mutual concessions — that theory, often as it has been made the basis of sys- tems of political philosophy, is not a paradox merely, but something much worse than a paradox, an absolute false- hood ; and every body knows it to be such. Man enters into society, just as he enters into existence, not by any act or consent of his own, but by the will of his Creator. He is created for society ; his nature is adapted to it, and demands it as the eye demands light, or as the lungs demand air. He begins his existence a member of society, under the protection and the power of government. The affections, the duties, and the rights, by which man is connected with man in society, are as much an essential part of human nature, as the relation of the individual bee to the hive is a part of the nature of the bee. A ship- wrecked sailor on some desert strand alone, is no more man in his natural condition than another sailor who has had both his legs shot off in a battle, and who trundles himself about the streets in a little cart which he moves by push- ing with his hands, is a man in his natural condition. The nature of man is not complete in the solitary individual. You might as well exhibit the nature of a pair of shears by taking them separately and forgetting that neither half is any thing without the other. The husband and the wife, the parent and the child, the citizen and the fellow- citizen, the subject and the state, are all supplementary to each other ; and the nature of man is not known till it is seen developed and active in these and other like relations. The individual man disjoined from the relations which constitute society, is man only in part, as a man without eyes, or a man without hands is man only in part — man accidentally incomplete. That liberty then which belongs 11 to man as man, being an inalienable right of human nature, is not the accidental and unnatural liberty of a savage or solitary condition, but is a liberty to be enjoyed in society and under the protection of government. So far from being the opposite of society, or of government, true liberty is nothing else than the condition of man in a healthy state of society, under the protection of a gov- ernment which answers the legitimate purposes of govern- ment. Having thus taken one step towards defining the true idea of liberty, by showing that liberty is not to be con- ceived of as if liberty and society, or liberty and. govern- ment, were opposite terms, we proceed to another position. Liberty, considered as a right in society, that is civil liberty, is simply and always the opposite of slavery, and is to be defined accordingly. Slavery is government by the right of conquest. A slave is one whose natural and legitimate " libert}^ has been cloven down" in some "dis- astrous battle." He is one who having been vanquished in war has been spared instead of being killed, and has been thus brought under subjection to the will and power of the captor. Liberty, on the other hand, is the state of one who has not been, by this or some similar process, reduced to slavery, or who having been once enslaved has recovered, in some way, his natural position in society. In some countries society consists, to a greater or less extent, of those who at some period, remote or recent, were conquered in w^ar, and thus reduced to a state of servitude more or less absolute according to the will or the power of the conquerors, and who are still governed by the mere right of conquest — the right of the captor over the captive. In other countries, classes once enslaved 12 by conquest, have been in various degrees partially eman- cipated by the slow progress of society, or by the neces- sities and emergencies that have from time to time compelled the decendants of the conquerors to concede something to the conquered. Other countries there are where the process of emancipation has been completed, and those who were once enslaved have at last, by the progressive amelioration of their condition, been delivered from every relic of their servitude. And in some coun- tries specially favored, society has always consisted exclu- sively of those who never were enslaved. Thus under some governments we see the absolute slavery of millions. Under other governments we see liberty in its highest development. In some countries we see a modified slavery gradually passing into liberty. And in others we see the most ostentatious liberty of one class, side by side with the oppression of another class under an unmitigated slavery. As we realize what health is only by our expe- rience and observation of sickness, so we form a distinct conception of liberty only by comparing it with slavery. Had there been in this world no apostacy of man from God — had there been from the beginning no sin, no injus- tice, no war, and thus no slavery, — there would have been no knowledge of what liberty is, and therefore, though the thing would have existed in absolute perfection, it would never have had a name. Liberty is the condi- tion in society of one who either never has been or has ceased to be a slave. Taking this definition, then, of liberty, let us expand it by unfolding some of the particulars which it includes. What is liberty as the opposite of slavery ? I. Liberty consists in being governed by fixed and 13 known laws, and not by the mere will and caprice of the ruling power. The slave, in the simplest, primitive, unmitigated form of slavery, knows only one law ; and that is the necessity of compliance with the master's will. He exists not for himself; for his person, his very exist- ence has been seized as a prey — not for his wife and children ; for they, if he has any in the land of his capti- vity, have no right in him, and are themselves the chattels of another — not for his country ; for he has none, he lost his country when he lost his liberty. Not only all his rights, but all the rights of others in him, are swallowed up in the right of the captor to the captive. The theory of the relation is that his will is to be simply and abso- lutely subject to all the caprices and changes of his master's will — that his movements are to be directed by his master's volitions. As the dog is obedient not to law but to the master's word — as the horse is obedient not to rules which his own understanding perceives and which his own judgment applies, but to the spur and the bit — as the ox in his toil knows nothing of law, but only yields to the power of habit and to the goad and the word that bids him move or stand — so the slave in the lowest form of slavery, and while his hard lot has been as yet unmiti- gated, is governed not at all by a fixed law which he understands beforehand and which appeals to the complex emotions and affections of his moral nature, but by simple will — the variable, capricious will of the power that holds him. The first element, then, in our conception of liberty, is that the freeman is governed by law instead of being governed by will. This is the first thing in our own con- sciousness of the liberty in which we glory. We have 14 not to ask what any body's will is in regard to our actions. We have only to inquire what the law is. Nor need we ask in vain. The law is not locked up in the breast, nor is it dependent on the impulses, of the ruling power ; it is a fixed rule, known and read of all men ; and whenever the law is changed, the change is applicable not to any thing past, but only to the future. This is our liberty. We are under a government not of will but of law ; we have only to ask what the law is and to conform ourselves to it, and we are safe in our persons, safe in our homes, and safe in our possessions. It is not so every where and with all men. In Turkey, for example, and more especially as Turkey was a few years ago, all men save one are slaves. All are governed not by fixed and known rules of conduct, but, to an almost unlimited extent, by the mere will of those above them. The sovereign of the empire has supreme control over the property, the persons and the lives of all his subjects. He delegates his power to his servants at his will, and they in their various provinces dispense justice or injustice as it happens, and rob or kill as they please, till he does with them as he pleases ; and then they kiss the bow-string which he sends them, and yield their necks, without a murmur, to be strangled, that their accumulated robberies may pass into his coffers. For another example, look at the government of Rome — I speak of the Rome that now is, the provinces in Italy that are under the secular and civil jurisdiction of the Pope — rather let me say, with honor to that illustrious reformer the reigning Pontiff, I speak of Rome as it was a few months ago, when it had the sad pre-eminence of being the worst governed state in Christendom. Under that government, before the reform- 15 ation ROW in progress, no man knew what the law was ; for superior to all written or published law, there was a sovereign will which could make the law just what it pleased. By a few strokes of the pen, forwarded to a tribunal, his Holiness, or more properly, his Holiness' Secretary of State, could annihilate the statute without even taking the trouble to give notice to those whose pos- sessions or whose persons were to be affected by the change. There it has often happened "that when an advocate was relying on particular articles of law as the basis of the right of his case — even in the third court of appeal — he was obliged to hear that those articles were no longer in force."* We will take one more illustration of what it is to be governed not by law but by will. I will show you an actual instance of the working of that kind of government. It occurred a few years ago in that part of Italy which is included in the Austrian empire. A man whom I have since been permitted to count among my friends, but who was then living in Milan, his native city, — a lawyer in the practice of his profession — a man of the highest intellectual and moral character — was thrown into prison under a charge of conspiracy against the government. That there had been a conspiracy, there was no question ; but that he had any thing to do with it, there was no shadow of proof There was really no ground of suspicion against him, aside from those liberal principles which he was known to entertain, and that high Roman spirit combined with integrity and force of char- acter, which made the government jealous of him. So complete was the failure of evidence against him, that on *We8tmin8ter Review, Dec. 1845. 16 his trial before the appropriate court he was acquitted. But one acquittal was not enough. The case was carried up by appeal to a higher court, and upon his acquittal there to a higher, till there was no higher court to try him, and in every court he had been acquitted. And what then ? You will take it for granted that he was set at liberty of course. You are ready to ask whether he did not receive some indemnity, or at least some acknowl- edgment, for the eighteen months of solitary confinement which he had suffered in a cold, damp dungeon, and the effects of which upon his strong, gigantic frame he will carry with him to his grave. No — nothing of all this. After the latest acquittal, by the highest of the courts whose simple duty it was to apply and pronounce the law according to the facts, there remained, in the person of the Emperor, a sovereign power above the law — a power to punish at discretion — a power that could punish not only before conviction but after acquittal — a power that need give no reason for its acts — a power which could say, " Sic volo, sic jubeo, stat pro ratione voluntas ; " — and by that power the alternative was offered him, either to suffer a further imprisonment for a long term of years (the length of which I can not now remember) or to be banished to America. He was not slow in making up his choice. His answer was that he had no desire to live any longer under such a government as that; and when, a few weeks afterwards, he emerged from his imprison- ment by being landed from an Austrian vessel, upon one of the wharves of New York, the first door which he entered was the door of the court before which, in due form, he took the first steps towards becoming — what he 17 now is, a naturEilized American citizen — a citizen under a government not of will but of law. These illustrations of what slavery is, help us to the definite conception of what liberty is. He who is under the government of fixed known law, and not under the government of will or caprice, is so far in the enjoyment of that liberty which is the inalienable right of all men. II. But government by law is not the only element in our idea of perfect freedom. The laws themselves, though fixed and known, and administered exactly to the letter, may be an invasion of man's inalienable right to liberty. Pursuing our inquiry, then, in this point of view, we see that in order to the existence of a true and complete liberty, the laws that govern all must represent not power merely, but right or justice. No man is free, who is governed by laws against which his moral nature revolts, and which his reason and conscience pronounce to be essentially unrighteous. The law does not create the difference between good and evil. Where that difference is not, law is a grand impertinence. The only duty of law in society is to maintain the right, and to repress the wrong ; and those whom it governs must be able to see the right which it upholds, and the wrong which it represses, or else they are governed not as freemen but as slaves. In other words, a complete liberty implies that the laws by which the freeman is governed, are such as can, in some way and to some extent at least, commend themselves to his sense of right. If the law represents to him nothing more than the poiuer from which it proceeds, — if no justice, recognized as justice by those whom it governs, gives it sanctity — it is felt to be oppression. There must be then a relation of harmony between the 18 laws of a people and their moral sentiments ; in other words their laws must be adapted to their character as a people ; or they are not free. The laws of a free people must needs be, not something extrinsic, imposed as from above, and enforced by mere power ; — they must be the product of that people's common life, the expression of their common mind. Thus it is, that when the laws of one people are suddenly extended over another people, the working of those laws, however satisfactory they were at home, and however beneficent they may become in the lapse of time, after they have moulded the habits and sentiments of the people into conformity with themselves, is at first mischievous, irritating, and oppressive, sometimes even to cruelty. Thus also a conquered nation, if it can stipulate with its conquerors for any thing — whatever it may be obhged to give up — will stipulate for its own ancient laws. Therefore it is, that the wider the domain over which laws are to extend, and the greater the variety of communities and kindreds to be governed by them, the more general must they be in their provisions, and the more limited the range of matters which they attempt to regulate, or they will be resented as invasions of liberty. An illustration of the necessity of this principle, and of the oppression involved in departing from it, is now in progress, on a gigantic scale, before the world. The Emperor of Russia is attempting to force all the tribes and races of his vast empire into a compact national unity. Whatever is law at St. Petersburg, is to be law, without regard to the various habits and moral sentiments of various communities, wherever the double-headed eagle upon the banners of the Czar can enforce obedience. Poland especially is to have no laws and therefore no 19 nationality of her own. The Pole is to be henceforth not only a subject of the Russian throne, but himself a Rus- sian — robbed of the very name which has come dovv^n to him and his kindred from their heroic ancestry — crushed into identity with the race from which his mind revolts, in the hereditary and complicated antipathy of old religious discords, and of centuries of mutual wrong and fighting. Such a policy, though there may be nothing of malice in it, and though it may have no other aim than to promote the solidity and to secure the permanency of the empire, defeats itself; for it irritates and exasperates the subject nations, by treating them as slaves. The wisdom of great empires, spreading through various climes, and over communities of various interests and habits and moral sympathies, — is to avoid oppression by giving to each community, as far as may be, its local laws adapted to its own social and moral wants, and to bind those various communities together by their allegiance to a common head and by the security and strength which result from the aggregation of their power under a common sway. Thus it was, to some extent, in the great Roman empire of old. Though the Roman law was every where para- mount, and though justice was every where administered by Roman magistrates in the name of Rome, the policy of Rome towards those whom she brought under her yoke — the policy, which, instead of impairing the thoroughness of her conquests or the grandeur of her dominion, bound the subject nations more submissively to her sway — was a policy which recognized, and to a great extent protected the separate nationality of each conquered people, by allowing them still to enjoy so much of their own ancient laws as seemed to be consistent with their relation to the 20 empire. So it is now with the empire of Britain, as it extends itself by colonies or by conquests. Each British colony is permitted to have its own local legislation ; and as it grows up, it forms a character of its own which finds expression in its laws. And through the vast and still extending realms of British India, each conquered race finds itself governed still by its own ancient laws, and counts itself therefore not yet so much enslaved as it might be. The strength of the British empire — the quiet- ness with which so many colonies and provinces and conquered realms, all round the world, repose beneath the scepter of their island queen — may be referred, in no small measure, to the extent in which this principle has been regarded. And the disquiet of Ireland, still restless after six centuries of agitation and oppression, may be ascribed, in the same measure, to the fact that there this principle has been so greatly disregarded. It is this principle, which constitutes the glory and se- curity of our own liberty in this American Union. Our federal constitution, in every thing so admirable — in every thing so clearly and wonderfully marked with the impress of the Divine Providence that gave it — leaves all the most important functions of government in the hands of the separate States, and binds the States together, chiefly by their allegiance to a common power, which is to maintain and protect those common interests of theirs, which can not be provided for so well by local legislation. The care of morals, the administration of justice, the provision for public instruction, the security of life and person and property — all those functions of government that touch the citizen most closely and on which his welfare most directly depends ; belong not to the Union but to each particular 2i State. Thus in each State, the people have such laws, and only such, as are demanded by their sense of right, and are in harmony with their degree of moral culture ; and this is, to the people of each State, an essential ele- ment of the liberty which belongs to them, not as States merely, but as citizens. Vermont has laws to suit her own Green Mountain clime, and to express and satisfy the moral sentiments of her own homogeneous New England population. In Texas, on the other hand, at a distance of full sixteen degrees of latitude, and more than twenty degrees of longitude, and with a population whose man- ners and habits and whose relations among themselves are as unlike those of the Vermonters on their pastoral hills, as the climate of the one with its bracing rigors, its snow- clad winters, its brief and sudden summers, is unlike the languid and almost tropical air that hangs over the dark perennial luxuriance of the other, — they can have laws to suit their own social exigencies and their own sense of justice ; and as their moral sentiments and habits suffer change, their laws will be changed accordingly. This, so far, is one element, or at least one necessary condition of liberty. But if the laws of Vermont were forced upon Texas, or if Texas as she now is should give laws to Ver- mont, there would be neither hberty nor union. As sepa- rate and distant States, if each State keeps within its proper sphere, they can coexist with other States in one great federal union ; but as parts of one great State under the same laws, they could not be ruled at all, but with the iron rod of power. The dissolution of our Union, if it ever takes place, will take place as the result of consoli- dation and of the consequent loss of liberty. If at some future day the centripetal attraction of the federal govern- 22 ment shall have finally overcome that centrifugal force which constitutes and upholds the States in their sover- eignty and mutual independence — if the time shall come when Maine and Florida, Texas and Oregon, Connecticut and Cahfornia, instead of having, as separate States, each its own laws, adapted to its own social system and in harmony with its own moral sentiments, shall all receive one code of laws from Washington, then it will be found that those laws represent to the feeling of the people in all those distant regions, not right but power; and then liberty having perished in consolidation, the Union will perish with the liberty which it once protected. Let us learn, then, to give due honor to those statesmen, whether of the South or of the North, whether of one great national party or another, whether Democrats of 1798, or Federahsts of 1812, or Nullificationists of 1830 — who have been the champions of " State rights." What- ever of error may have impaired the testimony of one or of another ; whatever of faction or of pique may have mingled with the patriotism of one great name or of another ; let us honor their assertion and advocacy of this great conservative principle. The hope of our freedom, the hope of the Union itself, in which our freedom finds its safety and its power, the hope of the world, so far as the world's destiny is involved in ours, depends upon the permanency of the States, the fidelity with which the separate States perform their separate duties, the affection with which the people cling to the several States that shelter them, and the progress of the States in the con- sciousness of their rights and duties as States, and in all those institutions and improvements that can complete or adorn the civilization of repubhcs. 23 III. The idea of liberty includes another element, which might perhaps, by a strict logical analysis, be iden- tified with that upon which we have just been insisting. It will be convenient, however, to regard it with a more distinct consideration. In order to the purest and highest civil liberty, the community, and the individual members of the community, must be governed by such laws only as are necessary to the common welfare. Whatever restraints or exactions by force of law are necessary to justice, or necessary to the security of individuals or to the order and safety of the State, — these restraints and exactions, instead of impairing liberty, are its protection ; they are liberty itself. But if the laws put any unnecessary restraint upon the actions of the individual ; if they undertake to do what, though desirable in itself, can be better done by some other kind of influence ; if they invade the province of taste and fashion, and attempt to regulate dress and style of living, so long as dress and style of living do not outrage decency and good morals j if they invade the province of argument, and attempt to prescribe what the people shall believe, and what inferences they shall draw from premises ; if they invade the province of trade, and attempt to fix the price of labor or of any other commo- dity; if they invade the province of religion and the church, and attempt to decide what God hath said, and when and where and how he hath spoken, and what wor- ship and service men shall render to their Maker, — they contravene the true idea of liberty. Such errors in legis- lation are incident to human blindness groping after truth, before it has yet grasped and handled the principles of things ; such errors have affected the laws and the his- tory of all nations hitherto ; such errors affected the early m legislation of our fathers ; and it may be that some rem- nant of such errors affects our legislation — wise as we think ourselves — even at this day. The truest and purest liberty exists, other things being equal, where there are the fewest laws beyond what are really necessary to jus- tice and to the life and safety of the State. Not to transcend too far the limits prescribed by the occasion, I will only suggest two thoughts which seem necessary to a just exposition of the subject, and then re- lieve your patience. The first of these thoughts is — and it may be taken as an inference from all that has been said in this discourse — that liberty does not consist, as many seem to think, es- sentially and exclusively in the form of government. Under any form of government, there may be oppression. There may be democracies — there have been — as oppres- sive against minorities and individuals as any monarchy can be. When democracy degenerates into the sover- eignty of the mob, rising above all law and acting its own capricious pleasure, the mob itself, frightened at its own atrocities, will speedily take shelter under the shadow o( a throne. Yet the form of government is of unspeakable moment in respect to the existence and permanence of civil liberty. That form is best which, in its arrangements and balances, affords the best security for freedom. Monarchy gives no such security. The monarch will naturally give laws for the benefit of himself, his children and his favorites. Aristocracy is, if possible, still worse. It legislates and governs not for the people but for classes of the people, and first and supremely for its own class. It is more hos- tile than monarchy itself to that equality of individuals 25 before the law, without which there is no justice, and therefore no freedom. There is no security for civil liberty without a wide distribution of political power ; a distribution so wide that those who hold that power can never consider themselves as having an interest distinct from the interest of the whole people. The wider that distribution, then, the better will it be for the liberty of every individual, provided only that the masses of the people have that measure of intelligence and manliness which will guard them, or rather which will qualify them to guard themselves, against the arts of demagogues seek- ing to govern and to legislate for their own emolument and not for the common welfare. It should be remembered that the distribution of politi- cal power— in other words, the extension or limitation of the right of suffrage — is not an end, but a means. The right of suffrage, whether in many hands or in few, is not liberty, but is only the arrangement by which liberty is to be secured and guarded. Every man has a natural and inalienable right to liberty, but no man has a natural or inalienable right to political power. No man has any right to such power, if the power in his hands is likely to be dangerous to himself or the state. It is not essential to civil liberty that women be invested with the right of suf- frage. It is not essential to civil liberty that the right of suffrage be conferred on young men over eighteen and under twenty-one years of age ; much less that it be con- ferred on children. Civil liberty does not consist at all in the limitation or extension of the right of suffrage, nor in any other particular arrangement for the exercise of politi- cal power. Where every individual lives under the over- shadowing presence of steady, wise, impartial law ; where 20 the law is the expression not of power only, but of the sense of right in the common mind of the people ; in brief, where every man is protected in his life, in his person, in his property, in his good name, and in the exercise of his intellectual and moral nature as a creature of God ; there, whatever the form of government, is civil liberty. How plain is it then — and this is the last of the sug- gestions which I propose to offer — that there is no effectual security for liberty without a capacity for self-government on the part of the people. Liberty is justice — steady, impartial justice in legislation and in the entire administra- tion of the government. This, as we have seen, may exist, accidentally and temporarily, even under the forms of des- potism ; but it can exist no where steadily, and perma- nently, and as the settled order of the state from age to age, unless the people are qualified for the high function of self-government. We have a signal illustration of this, in the sad and fatal experiment at civil liberty which has been made with- in the last thirty years beyond our southern border. Mex- ico was at once the oldest and the richest of all the coun- tries of this western hemisphere. Her history, as a civi- lized state, runs back ages before the discovery of America by Europe. In a seemingly auspicious hour, she dissolved the bonds which connected her with Spain, expelled the old intruders who assumed to rule her by the right of con- quest, and began her career as an independent nation among the nations of Christendom. In her trustful admi- ration of the land of Washington, she borrowed her consti- tution in all its details from ours, and established, or thought she established, a federal repubUcan system. And how has she succeeded ? Tossed and torn by revolution 27 upon revolution ; retrograding constantly towards barbar- ism ; subject to a military despotism, in which the power is ever passing from the hands of one chief to those of another, and under which nothing is done at any time for justice or the common welfare ; she has permitted herself at last to be drawn into ruinous collision with the colos- sal power to which these Anglo-Norman States have grown, in less than two generations, from a physical weak- ness far below what hers now is. Let us take heed. If our people, as a people, become incapable of self-government ; if our teeming and accumu- lating population is permitted to outgrow those moral and religious influences by which the general character is form- ed to manliness and thoughtfulness ; if popular ignorance is permitted to spread over masses and wide districts with its Egyptian darkness ; if the people are to be seized with the frenzied lust of conquest and empire ; if the character- istic policy of our government becomes military, and the people fall in love with military glory ; if the profligate maxims by which the governments of the Old World have robbed and plundered the helpless nations for so many ages, are to become, by popular acclaim, the political and international moraUty of our republic, then our history will exhibit in due time, and none can tell how soon, another illustration of the impotency of a mere constitution, or of any arrangement and distribution of political power, for the permanent security of civil liberty. God, in his patience, favors us thus far. Think of his interpositions. How recently did he save us, not by any wisdom or caution of ours, from a collision with that kin- dred empire, our most legitimate ally in the great mission of diffusing Christian civilization and true freedom over 28 the world ! — a collision that would have shaken the earth with its thunders, and stained the ocean ..with the blood of fratricide. God, in his patience, favors us. Think of his long-suffering. Our armies are ravaging a neighbor na- tion, but no invader comes to overwhelm our homes with rapine and our cities with conflagration, to turn our hills into altars of human sacrifice, and to make our rivers red with slaughter. God, in his patience, favors us. Let us take heed lest he smite us in his wrath, when his patience fails to lead us to repentance. LIBRARY OF CONGRESS lllllllllllllllllllllllllilllllllillll iiiiijiiiiiiiin 029 911 034 5 \