sanguinary pages of history have taught us that a kingless government is not, on that account alone, a republic, if the term republic is intended to comprehend the idea of self-government in any degree. France had as absolute and as stringently concentrated a government under her so-called republies, as under any of her kings. To classify governments, with reference to liberty, into monarchies and republics, is an error in principle. An Englishman who lives under a monarchy, for such certainly his royal republic is called, enjoys an amount of self-government and individual liberty far greater than the Athenian ever possessed or is established in any republic of South America.

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 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 elements, 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 hair-dresser can be made a commissioner of roads, but there is not on that account more liberty in Turkey.1 Diversity is the law of life; absolute equality is that of stagnation and death.2

A German author of a work of mark 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

1 Since the publication of the first edition of this work, an article on "Mohametanism in Western Asia," has appeared in the "Edinburgh Review," October, 1853, in which the Eastern equality as an ingredient of despotism is illustrated by many striking instances from different spheres of life. The writer, who is plainly master of his subject, from personal knowledge, it would appear, agrees with us that liberty is based on individuality. Indeed, it may be said that in a great degree it consists in essential protection of individuality, of personal rights. The present Emperor of the French felt this when he wrote his chapter, De la Liberté individuelle en Angleterre. He was then an exile and could perceive liberty.

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

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, simply 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 certain 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 despotism? It has been done again and again: Napoleon III. claims his crown by right of election by the overwhelming majority of Frenchmen, and perpetuates his government by universal suffrage, as he says. Granting, for the sake of argument that there was what we call a bona fide election, and that there is now existing an efficient universal suffrage, there is no man living who would vindicate liberty for present France. Even the imperial government periodically proclaims that it cannot yet establish liberty, because France is distracted by factions, by "different nations," as an imperial dignitary lately expressed it in an official speech.

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

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

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 responsible to the people-in fact, an elective despotism. Is there an American or Englishman living who would call such a political monstrosity freedom, even if the elected despot would allow himself to be voted upon a second time? This conception of civil liberty was the very one which Louis Napoleon published in his proclamation, issued after the coup d'état, and in which he tells the people that he leaves their fate in their own hands! Many Frenchmen voted for him and for these fundamental principles of a new government, but those who did so, voted for him for the very reason that they considered liberty dangerous and inadmissible. This definition, then, is peculiarly incorrect.

Again, it has been said, liberty is the power of doing all that we ought to be allowed to do. But who allows? What ought to be allowed? Even if these questions were answered, it would not define liberty. Is the imprisoned homicide free, although we allow him to do all that which he ought to be allowed to do? No despot, if not positively insane, would ask for more power. It is on the very ground that more freedom ought not to be allowed to the subject, for his own benefit and the welfare of the empire, that the greatest despots and even tyrants have asserted their power; nor does a father desire

more power over his child, but he does not pretend to confound parental power with the establishment of liberty.

Bodinns, whom every scholar of political science remembers with respect, said that true liberty consists in nothing else than the undisturbed enjoyment of one's goods and the absence of apprehension that wrong be done to the honor and the life of one's self, of one's wife and family. He who knows the times of French history when this jurist wrote his work on the republic, sees with compassion what led his mind to form this definition; nor is it denied that undisturbed enjoyment of property, as well as personal safety, constitute very important objects sought to be obtained by civil liberty; but it is the firmly-established guarantees of these enjoyments which constitute portions of civil liberty. Haroun Al Rashid may have allowed these enjoyments, but the Arabians had not civil liberty under him. It is very painful to observe that, in the middle of the nineteenth century, a writer could be reduced to declare before the Institute of France, in an elaborate essay, that this definition of liberty by Bodinns is the best ever given.2

Montesquieu says: "Philosophical liberty consists in the exercise of one's will, or at least (if we must speak of all systems) in the opinion according to which one exercises his will. Political liberty consists in the security, or at least in the opinion which one has of one's security." He continues: "This security is never more attacked than in public and private accusations. It is therefore upon the excellence of the criminal laws that chiefly the liberty of the citizen depends."4

1 De Republica, lib. xii. c. 6. I have mentioned in my Political Ethics that I studied, in the Congress library, the copy of Bodinns, which had belonged to President Jefferson, and in which many pencil marks and notes of the latter are found. It will interest many of my readers to hear that this relic has not perished in the fire which consumed the greater portion of the library.

2 Mr. Parry, Séances et Travaux de l'Acad. des Sciences Politiques et Morales, July, 1855.

3

3 Esprit des Lois, xii. 2; "Of the Liberty of the Citizen."

He goes on treating liberty in a similar manner; for instance, at the beginning of chapter iv. of the same work.