CHAPTER IX.

COMMUNION. LOCOMOTION, EMIGRATION.

6. THE freedom of communion is one of the most precious and necessary rights of the individual, and one of the indispensable elements of all advancing humanity—so much so, indeed, that it is one of those elements of liberty, which would have never been singled out, had not experience shown that it forms invariably one of the first objects of attack, when arbitrary power wishes to establish itself, and one of the first objects of conquest, when an unfree people declares itself free.

I have dwelt on the primordial right of communion in the Political Ethics at great length, and endeavored to show that the question is not whether free communion or a fettered press be conducive to more good, but that everything in the individual and in nations depends in a great measure upon communion, and that free communion is a pre-existing condition. The only question is, how to select the best government with it, and how best to shield it, unless, indeed, we were speaking of tribes in a state of tutelage, ruled over by some highly advanced nation.

In this place we only enumerate freedom of communion as one of the primary elements of civil liberty. It is an element of all civil liberty. No one can imagine himself free if his communion with his fellows is interrupted or submitted to surveillance; but it is the Anglican race which first established it on a large scale, broadly and nationally acknowledged.1

Free nations demand and guarantee free communion of speech, the right of assembling and publicly speaking, for it is communion of speech in this form which is peculiarly exposed

The first fair play was given to a free press in the Netherlands.

to abridgment or suppression by the public power; they guarantee the liberty of the press, and, lastly, the sacredness of epistolary communion.

It is a very striking fact that, although the Constitution of the United States distinctly declares that the government of the United States shall only have the power and authority positively granted in that instrument, so that, in a certain respect, it was unnecessary to say what the government should not have the right to do, still, in the very first article of the Additions and Amendments of the Constitution, congress is forbidden to make any "law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press, or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances."

The reader will keep in mind that the framers of our constitution went out of their way and preferred to appear inconsistent, rather than omit the enumeration of those important liberties, that of conscience, as it is generally called, that of communion, and of petitioning; and the reader will remember, moreover, that these rights were added as amendments. They must then have appeared very important to those who made our constitution, both on account of their intrinsic importance, and because so often attacked by the power-holders. Let the reader also remember that, if it be thus important to abridge the power of government to interfere with free communion, it is at least equally important that no person or number of men interfere, in any manner, with this sacred right. Oppression does not come from government or official bodies alone. The worst oppression is of a social character, or by a multitude.

The English have established the right of communion, as so many other precious rights by common law, by decisions, by struggles, by revolution. All the guarantee they have for the unstinted enjoyment of the right lies in the fact that the whole nation says with one accord, as it were: Let them try to take it away.

It is the same with our epistolary communion. The right

of freely corresponding is unquestionably one of the dearest as well as most necessary of civilized man; yet, our forefathers were so little acquainted with a police government, that no one thought of enumerating the sacredness of letters along with the freedom of speech and the liberty of the press. The liberty of correspondence stands between the two; free word, free letter, free print. The framers did not think of it, as the first law-makers of Rome are said to have omitted the punishment of parricide.

The sacredness of the letter appears the more important when it is considered that in almost all civilized countries the government is the carrier of letters and actually forbids any individual to carry sealed letters.' So soon as the letter, therefore, is dropped into the box, where, as it has just been stated, the government itself obliges the correspondent to deposit it, it is exclusively entrusted to the good faith and honorable dealing of government. If spies, informers, and mouchards are odious. to every freeman and gentleman, the prying into letters, carried on in France and other countries, with bureaucratic system, is tenfold so, for it strikes humanity in one of its vital points, and had the mail acquired as great an importance in the seventeenth century as in ours, as an agent of civilization, and had Charles I. threatened this agent as he invaded the right of personal liberty, the Petition of Right would have mentioned the sacredness of letters as surely, as it pointed out the billeting of soldiers, as one of the four great grievances of which the English would be freed, before they would grant any supplies to the government.2

1 The law of the United States prohibits any private person periodically and regularly to carry letters, and also to carry letters in mail ships. 2 The American states in which slavery exists, have not considered the laws or principles relating to letters to apply to public journals, when suspicion exists that they contain articles hostile to slavery. In some cases people have broken into the post-office and seized the obnoxious papers; in other cases the state legislature have decreed punishments for propagating abolition papers. Thus we read in the National Intelligencer, Washington, October 6, 1853, that "Mr. Herndon, postmaster at Glenville, informs the editor of the Religious Telescope, at Circleville, Ohio,

In all the late struggles for liberty on the continent of Europe, the sacredness of letters was insisted upon, not from abstract notions, but for the very practical reason that governments had been in the habit of disregarding it. Of course, they now do so again. The English parliament took umbrage, a few years ago, at the liberty a minister had taken of ordering the opening of letters of certain political exiles residing in England, and although he stated that it had been the habit of all administrations to order it under certain circumstances, he promised to abstain in future. In the United States there is no process or means known to us, not even by writ of a court, we believe, by which a letter could be extracted from the post-office, except by him to whom it is addressed; and, as to the executive unduly opening letters, it would be cause for instant impeachment.

Quite recently, in the month of April, 1853, it appeared in the prosecution of several persons of distinction at Paris, for giving wrong and injurious news to foreign papers, that their letters had not only been opened at the post-office, but that the originals had been kept back, and copies had been sent to the recipients, with a postcript, written by the government officer, for the purpose of fraudulently explaining the different handwriting. It stated that the correspondent had a sore hand. When the counsel for the accused said that the falsifying officer ought to be on the bench of the accused, the court justified the prefect of the police, on the ground of that having, according to the laws of Virginia, opened and inspected his papers, and found them to contain abolition sentiments, he has refused to deliver them as addressed, and has publicly burnt them in presence of a magistrate. It appears by his letter that the penalty for circulating such papers, is imprisonment in the penitentiary for not less than one, nor more than five years."

Such is the law, and its lawfulness, wisdom, and dignity must be judged of by the laws and principles by which other measures are judged; but it cannot be denied that a freeman feels himself circumscribed so far as he is denied to read what he chooses. If a government or a set of men were to forbid a man to read an atheistic paper, though he might be a fervent christian, his liberty would be undoubtedly circumscribed pro tanto.

That the seizure of English papers on the continent, is of frequent occurrence, is well known by every reader of the daily papers.

reasons of state." No commentary is necessary on such self-vilification of governments; but this may be added, that these outrages were committed even without a formal warrant from any one, but on the sole command of the police. Are we, then, wrong in calling such governments police governments? It is not from a desire to stigmatize these governments. It is on account of the prevailing principle, and the stigma is a natural consequence of this principle.'

1 In the decision of the appellate court in the same case we find this to be the chief argument, that government establishes post-offices, and cannot be expected to lend its hand to the promotion of mischief, by carrying letters of evil-doers. This is totally fallacious. Government does not establish post-offices, but society establishes them for itself, though it may be through government. The mail is no boon granted by government.

If it did, it is not a benefit done by a second party, as when A makes a present to B, but government is simply and purely an agent; and, what is more, the right of establishing post-offices is not an inherent attribute of government, such as the administration of justice or making war. Government merely becomes the public carrier, for the sake of general convenience. There are many private posts, and governments without government post-offices, for instance, the republic of Hamburg.

The opening of letters without proper warrant is a frightful perversion of power, and though government should be able to get at secret machinations, the secret of letters is a primordial condition. Government might, undoubtedly, know many useful things, if the sacredness of catholic confession were broken into; but that is considered a primordial and pre-political condition. So, many codes do not force a son to testify against a father; the family affection is considered a primordial condition. The very state of society, for which it is worth living, is invaded, if the correspondence is exposed to this sort of government burglary.

The argument is simply this. Man is destined to live in society, united by converse and intercommunion; this is a basis of humanity. If you open letters, you seriously invade this primary condition. Men are individuals, and social beings, destined for civilization and united progress. and the question is not whether they may be dispensed with, but how to govern with them. Governments too frequently act as though the government were the primary condition, and the remaining question only was, how much may be spared by government to be left for society or individuals. The opposite is the truth.

After this note had been published, the French court of cassation, "all chambers united," decided in the last resort, that in the case of Coëtlogon, Flandin, and others, no illegal act had been committed by the prefect of