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into Christian civilization, and is seen wherever the Bible is carried.

Now what we call Anglican liberty, are the guarantees which our tribe has elaborated, as guarantees of those rights which experience has shown to be most exposed to the danger of attack by the strongest power in the state, namely, the executive, or as most important to a frame of government which will be least liable to generate these dangers, and also most important to the essential yet weaker branches of government. It consists in the civil guarantees of those principles which are most favourable to a manly individual independence, and ungrudged enjoyment of individual humanity; and those guarantees which insure the people, meaning the totality of the individuals as a unit, or the nation, against being driven from the pursuit of those high aims which have been assigned to it by Providence as a nation, or as a united people. Where the one or the other is omitted, or exclusively pursued, there is no full liberty. If the word people be taken as never meaning anything else than a unit, a widely extended and vigorous action of that unit may exist indeed-blinding ambition may be enjoyed, but it is no liberty; if, on the other hand, the term people is never taken in any other sense than a mere term of brevity, and for the impossible enumeration of all individuals, without inherent connexion, the consequence must be a sejunctive egotism, which loses the very power of protecting the individual rights and liberties.

These guarantees, then, as we acknowledge them in the period of civil development in which we live, and as far as they are common to the whole Anglican tribe, and, if of a more general character, are still inseparably interwoven with what is peculiar to the tribe, we call Anglican liberty. These guarantees and checks I now proceed to enumerate.

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 extragovernmental 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 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

'Political Ethics, chapter on Sovereignty.

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 in

2

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 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

2 The address and declaration of four thousand British merchants, presented in the month of April, 1853, to the emperor of the French, will for ever 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 for ever 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.

than the guarantee of personal liberty, or the great

habeas corpus principle, and the prohibition of " warrants" of arrest of

of arrest of persons.

general

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. The 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

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