force of law. They might have said with equal correctness: Freeman is he who is directly subject to the emperor; slave, he who is subject to the emperor through an individual master. It settles nothing as to what we call liberty, as little as the other dictum of the civil law, which divides all men into freemen and slaves. The meaning of freeman, in this case, is nothing more than non-slave, while our word freeman, when we use it in connection with civil liberty, means not merely a negation of slavery, but the enjoyment of positive and high civil privileges and rights."

6

It is remarkable that an English writer of the last century, Dr. Price, makes the same simple division of slavery and liberty, although it leads him to very different results. According to him, liberty is selfdetermination or self-government, and every interruption of self-determination is slavery. This is so extravagant, that it is hardly worth our while to dwell on it. Civil liberty is liberty in a state of society, that is in a state of union with equals, consequently limitation of self-determination is one of the necessary characteristics of civil liberty. If this author did not mean that the terms he employed should be taken strictly, it would have been better to use such terms as might have been taken strictly.

4 Quod principi placuerit legis habet vigorem.-L. i. lib. i. tit. 4 Dig.

5 Summa divisio de jure personarum haec est, quod omnes homines aut liberi sunt aut servi.-Inst. i. 3.

6 Observations on the Nature of Civil Liberty, &c., by Richard Price, D. D., 3d ed. Lond. 1776.

Cicero says: Liberty is the power of living as thou willest." This does not apply to civil liberty.

If it was meant for political liberty, it would have been necessary to add: "So far as the same liberty of others does not limit your own living as you choose." But we always live in society, so that this definition can have a value only as a most general one, to serve as a starting-point, in order to explain liberty if applied to different spheres. Whether this was the probable intention of a practical Roman, I need not decide.

Libertas came to signify in the course of time, and in republican Rome, simply republican government, abolition of royalty.

The Greeks likewise gave the meaning of a distinct form of government to their word for liberty. Eleutheria, they said, is that polity in which all are in turn rulers and ruled. It is plain that there is an inkling of what we now call self-government in this adaptation of the word, but it does not designate liberty as we understand it. For, it may happen, and, indeed, it has happened repeatedly, that although the rulers and ruled change, those that are rulers are arbitrary and oppressive whenever their turn arrives; and no political state of things is more efficient in preparing the people to pass over into despotism, by a sudden turn, than this alternation of arbitrary rule. If this definition really defined civil liberty, it would have been enjoyed in a high degree

7 Quid est libertas? Potestas vivendi ut velis.-Cic. Parad. 5, 1, 34.

by those communities in the middle ages, in which constant changes of factions, and persecutions of the weaker parties were taking place. Athens, when she had sunk so low, that the lot decided the appointment to all important offices, would, at that very period, have been freest, while, in fact, her government had become plain democratic absolutism, one of the very worst of all governments, if, indeed, the term government can be properly used of that state of things which exhibits Athens after the times of Alexander, not like a bleeding and fallen hero, but rather like a dead body, on which birds and vermin make merry.

Not wholly dissimilar to this definition, is the one we find in the French Political Dictionary, a work published in 1848, by leading republicans, as this term was understood in France. It says, under the word liberty: "Liberty is equality, equality is liberty." If both were the same, it would be surprising that there should be two distinct words. Why were both terms used in the famous device, "Liberty, Equality, Fraternity," if the first two are synonymous, yet an epigrammatic brevity was evidently desired? Napoleon distinguished between the two very pointedly, when he said to Las Cases, that he gave to the Frenchmen all the circumstances allowed, namely, equality, and that his son, had he succeeded him, would have added liberty. The dictum of Napoleon is mentioned here merely to show, that he saw the difference between the two terms. Equality, of itself, without many other ele

ments, has no intrinsic connection with liberty. All may be equally degraded, equally slavish, or equally tyrannical. Equality is one of the pervading features of eastern despotism. A Turkish barber may be made vizier, far more easily than an American hairdresser can be made a commissioner of roads, in the United States, but there is not on that account more liberty in Turkey. Diversity is the law of life, absolute equality is that of stagnation and death.

A German author of a meritorious work begins it with this sentence: "Liberty-or Justice, for where there is justice there is liberty, and liberty is nothing else than justice-has by no means been enjoyed by the ancients, in a higher degree than by the moderns." Either the author means by justice something peculiar, which ought to be enjoyed by every one, and which is not generally understood by the term, in which case the whole sentence is nugatory, or it expresses a grave error, since it makes equivalents of two things which have received two different names, because they are distinct from one another. The two terms would not even be allowed to explain each other in a dictionary.

Liberty has not unfrequently been defined as consisting in the rule of the majority, or it has been said, where the people rule there is liberty. The rule of the majority, of itself, indicates the power of a cer

8 More has been said on this subject in Political Ethics, and we shall return to it at a later period.

9 Descriptions of the Grecian Polities, by F. W. Tittman, Leipsig, 1822.

tain body, but power is not liberty. Suppose the majority bid you drink hemlock, is there liberty for you? Or suppose the majority give away liberty, and establish a despot? We might say with greater truth, that where the minority is protected although the majority rule, there, probably, liberty exists. But in this latter case it is the protection, or in other words, rights beyond the reach of the majority which constitute liberty, not the power of the majority. There can be no doubt that the majority ruled in the French massacres of the Protestants; was there liberty in France on that account? All despotism, without a standing army, must be supported or acquiesced in, by the majority. It could not stand otherwise. If the definition be urged, that where the people rule there is liberty, we must ask at once, what people, and how rule? These intended definitions, therefore, do not define.

Other writers have said: "Civil liberty consists in the responsibility of the rulers to the ruled." It is obvious that this is an element of all civil liberty, but the question what responsibility is meant is an essential one, nor does this responsibility alone suffice by any means to establish civil liberty. The dey of Algiers used to be elected by the soldiery, who deposed him if he did not suit, but there was no liberty in Algiers, not even for the electing soldiery. The idea of the best government, repeatedly urged by a distinguished French publicist, Mr. Girardin, is, that all power should be centered in an elective chief magistrate, who by frequent election should be made