AN ACT FOR THE BETTER SECURING THE LIBERTY OF THE SUBJECT, REPORT OF THE FRENCH SENATORIAL COMMITTEE ON THE PETITIONS ON CIVIL LIBERTY AND SELF-GOVERNMENT. CHAPTER I. INTRODUCTORY. WE live at a period when it is the duty of reflecting men to ponder conscientiously these important questions: In what does civil liberty consist? How is it maintained? What are its means of self-diffusion, and under what forms do its chief dangers present themselves? Our age, marked by restless activity in almost all departments of knowledge, and by struggles and aspirations before unknown, is stamped by no characteristic more deeply than by a desire to establish or extend freedom in the political societies of mankind. At no previous period, ancient or modern, has this impulse been felt at once so strongly and by such extensive numbers. The love of civil liberty is so leading a motive in our times, that no man who does not understand what civil liberty is, has acquired that self-knowledge without which we do not know where we stand, and are supernumeraries or instinctive followers, rather than conscious, working members of our race, in our day and generation. The first half of our century has produced several hundred political constitutions, some few of substance and sterling worth, many transient like ephemeral beings, but all of them. testifying to the endeavors of our age, and plainly pointing out the high problem that must be solved; many of them leaving roots in despite of their short existence, which some day |