CHAPTER VI.

NATIONAL INDEPENDENCE. PERSONAL LIBERTY.

1. It is impossible to imagine liberty in its fulness, if the people as a totality, the country, the nation, whatever name may be preferred, or its government, is not independent on foreign interference. The country must have what the Greeks called autonomy. This implies, that the country must have the right, and, of course, the power, of establishing that government which it considers best, without interference from without or pressure from above. No foreigner must dictate; no extra-governmental principle, no divine right or "principle of legitimacy" must act in the choice and foundation of the government; no claim superior to that of the people's, that is, national sovereignty must be allowed.' This independence or national self-government farther implies that, the civil government of free choice or free acquiescence being established, no influence from without, besides that of freely acknowledged justice, fairness, and morality, must be admitted. There must then be the requisite strength to resist when necessary. While

↑ Political Ethics, chapter on Sovereignty. VOL. I.-7

the author is setting down these remarks, the news is reaching us of the manly declaration made in the British commons, by the minister of foreign affairs, lord Palmerston, that the united calls of all the continental powers would be utterly insufficient to give up or to drive from the British territory those political exiles who have sought an asylum on English soil, and of the ready support given by the press to the spokesman of the nation. Even the French, so far as they are allowed at the present untoward conjunction to express themselves, applaud this declaration as a proof of British freedom. The Helvetic cantons, on the other hand, are forced to yield to the demands even of an Austrian government; and the worried republic of Switzerland, so far as this goes, cannot be said to be free. The history of the nineteenth century, but especially that of our own age, is full of instances of the interference with the autonomy of nations or states. Italy, Germany, especially Hessia, Spain, Hungary, furnish numerous instances. Cases may occur, indeed, in which foreign interference becomes imperative. All we can then say is, that the people's liberty so far is gone, and must be recovered. No one will maintain that interference with Turkish affairs at the present time is wrong in those powers who resist Russian influence in that quarter, but no one will say either that Turkey enjoys full autonomy. The very existence of Turkey depends upon foreign sufferance.

On the other hand, it must be remembered that this unstinted autonomy is greatly endangered at home by interfering with the domestic affairs of foreigners.

The opinion, therefore, urged by Washington, that we should keep ourselves aloof from foreign politics, is of far greater weight than those believe who take it merely with reference to foreign alliances and ensuing wars. The interference need not necessarily proceed from government. Petitions, affecting foreign public measures or institutions, and coming from large bodies, or even committees sent to express the approval of a foreign government, of which we have had a recent and most remarkable instance, are reprehensible on the same ground.

It is one of the reasons why a broadcast liberty and national development was so difficult in the middle ages, that the pope, in the times of his highest power, could interfere with the autonomy of states. I do not discuss here whether this was not salutary at times. Gregory the Seventh was a great, and, probably, a necessary man; but where civil liberty

2 The address and declaration of four thousand British merchants, presented in the month of April, 1853, to the emperor of the French, will forever remain a striking proof of British liberty; for in every other European country the government would have imprisoned every signer, if indeed the police had not nipped the petition in the bud; and it will also forever remain a testimony how far people can forget themselves and their national character when funds are believed to be endangered or capital is desired to be placed advantageously. But I have alluded to it in the text, as an instance, only, of popular interference with foreign governments, doubtless the most remarkable instance of the kind on record. Whether the whole proceeding was "not far short of high treason," as lord Campbell stigmatized it in the house of lords, may be left undecided. It certainly would have been treated as such during some periods of English history, and must be treated by all right-minded men of the present period as a most unworthy procedure.

is the object, as it is now with civilized nations, this medieval interference of the pope would be an abridgment of it, just as much as the Austrian influence in the States of the Church is an abridgment of their independence at present.

It is a remarkable feature in the history of England, that even in her most catholic times the people were more jealous of papal interference by legates or other means, than any other nation, unless we except the Germans, when their emperors were in open war with the popes. This was, however, transitory, while in England intercourse with the papal see was legally restricted and actually made penal.

2. Civil liberty requires firm guarantees of individual liberty, and among these there is none more important than the guarantee of personal liberty, or the great habeas corpus principle, and the prohibition of "general warrants" of arrest of persons.

The

To protect the individual against the interference with personal liberty by the power-holder is one of the elementary requisites of all freedom, and one of the most difficult problems to be solved in practical politics. If any one could doubt the difficulty, history would soon convince him of the fact. English and Americans safely guard themselves against illegal arrest; but a long and ardent struggle in England was necessary to obtain this simple element, and the ramparts around personal liberty, now happily existing, would soon be disregarded, should the people, by a real prava negligentia malorum, ever lose sight of this primary requisite.

The means by which Anglican liberty secures

personal liberty are threefold: the principle that every man's house is his castle, the prohibition of general warrants, and the habeas corpus act.

Every man's house is his castle. It is a principle evolved by the common law of the land itself, and is exhibited in a yet stronger light in the Latin version, which is, Domus sua enique est tutissimum refugium, and Nemo de domo sua extrahi debet, which led the great Chatham, when speaking on general warrants, to pronounce that passage with which now every English and American schoolboy has become familiar through his Reader. "Every man's house," he said, "is called his castle. Why? Because it is surrounded by a moat, or defended by a wall? No. It may be a straw-built `hut; the wind may whistle around it, the rain may enter it, but the king cannot."

Accordingly, no man's house can be forcibly opened, or he or his goods be carried away after it has thus been forced, except in cases of felony, and then the sheriff must be furnished with a warrant, and take great care lest he commit a trespass. This principle is jealously insisted upon. It has been but recently decided in England, that although a house may have been unlawfully erected on a common, and every injured commoner may pull it down, he is nevertheless not justified in doing so if there are actually people in it.

There have been nations, indeed, enjoying a high degree of liberty, without this law maxim; but the question in this place is even less about the decided advantages, arising to freemen from the existence of