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manly rights, and instinct with the principle of an expansive life, accompany it. We belong to that race whose obvious task it is, among other proud and sacred tasks, to rear and spread civil liberty over vast regions in every part of the earth, on continent and isle. We belong to that tribe which alone has the word Self-Government. We belong to that nation whose great lot it is to be placed with the full inheritance of freedom on the freshest soil, in the noblest site, between Europe and Asia-a nation young, whose kindred countries, powerful in wealth, armies, and intellect, are old. It is a period when a peaceful migration of nations, similar in the weight of numbers to the warlike migration of the early middle ages, pours its crowd into the lap of our more favoured land, there to try, and at times to test to the utmost, our institutions-institutions which are our foundations and buttresses, as the law which they embody and organize is our sole and sovereign master.

These are the reasons why it is incumbent upon every American, again and again to present to his mind what his own liberty is, how he must guard and maintain it, and why, if he neglect it, he resembles the missionary that should proceed to convert the world without Bible or Prayer-book. These are the reasons why I feel called upon to write this work in addition to what I have given long ago in another place on the subjects of Justice, Law, the State, Liberty and Right, and to which, there fore, I must refer my reader for many preliminary particulars; and these, too, are the reasons why I ask for an attention corresponding to the sense of responsibility with which I approach the great theme of political vitalitythe leading subject of western history, and the charac3 In my Political Ethics.

4 I ask permission to draw the attention of the scholar to a subject which

teristic stamp and feature of our tribe, our age, our own country and its calling.

appears to me important. I have used the term Western History, yet it is so indistinct that I must explain what is meant by it. It ought not to be so. I mean by western history, the history of all historically active, non-Asiatic nations and tribes-the history of the Europeans and their descendants in other parts of the world. In the grouping and division of comprehensive subjects, clearness depends in a great measure upon the distinctness of wellchosen terms. Many students of civilization have probably felt with me the desirableness of a concise term, which should comprehend within the bounds of one word, capable of furnishing us with an acceptable adjective, the whole of the western Caucasian portion of mankind-the Europeans and all their descendants in whatever part of the world, in America, Australia, Africa, India, the Indian Archipelago, and the Pacific Islands. It is an idea which constantly recurs, and makes the necessity of a proper and brief term daily felt. Bacon said that "the wise question is half the science," and may we not add that a wise division and apt terminology is its completion? In my private papers I use the term Occidental, in a sufficiently natural contradistinction to Oriental. But Occidental, like Western, indicates geographical position; nor did I feel otherwise authorized to use it here. Europides would not be readily accepted either. Japhethian would comprehend more tribes than we wish to designate. That some term or other must soon be adopted seems to me clear, and I am ready to accept any expressive name, formed in the spirit and according to the taste of our language. The chemist and natural historian are not the only ones that stand in need of distinct names for their subjects, but they are less exacting than scholars.

CHAPTER II.

DEFINITIONS OF LIBERTY.

A DISTINGUISHED writer has said that every one desires liberty, but it is impossible to say what it is.' If he meant by liberty, civil liberty, and that it is impossible to give a definition of it, using the term definition in its strictest sense, he was right; but he was mistaken if he intended to say that we cannot state and explain what is meant by civil liberty in certain periods, by certain tribes, and that we cannot collect something general from these different views. Civil liberty does not fare worse in this respect than all other terms which designate the collective amount of different applications of the same principle, such as Fine Arts, Religion, Property, Republic. The definitions of all these terms imply the use of others variable in their nature. The time, however, is passed when, as in the age of the scholastic philosophy, it was believed that everything was strictly definable, and must be compressed within the narrow limits of an absolute definition before it could be entitled to the dignity of a thorough discussion. The hope of being able absolutely to define things that belong either to the commonest life or the highest regions, betrays inexperience, and proves a misconception of human language, which itself is never absolute except in mathematics. It

1 I believe this is said by M. de Chateaubriand in his Etudes Historiques ; but I quote from memory, and a hurried glance at the work has not brought again the passage under my eye.

misleads. Bacon, so illustrious as a thinker, has two dicta which it will be well for us to remember throughout this discussion. He says: "Generalities are barren, and the multiplicity of single facts present nothing but confusion. The middle principles alone are solid, orderly, and fruitful." And in another part of his immortal works he states, that" civil knowledge is of all others the most immersed in matter and the hardliest reduced to axioms." We may safely add, "And expressed in definitions." It would be easy, indeed, and correct as far it would go, to say: Civil liberty is the idea of liberty, which is untrammelled action, applied to the sphere of politics; but although this definition might be called "orderly," it would certainly neither be "solid" nor "fruitful," unless a long discussion should follow on what it means in reality and practice.

This does by no means, however, affect the importance of investigating the subject of civil liberty, and of clearly presenting to our minds what we mean by it, and of what elements it consists. Disorders of great public inconvenience, even bloodshed and political crimes, have often arisen from the fact that the two sacred words, Liberty and People, were freely and passionately used without a clear and definite meaning being attached to them. A people that loves liberty can do nothing better to promote the object of its love than deeply to study it, and in order to be able to do this, it is necessary to analyze and to know the threads which compose the valued texture.

In a general way, it may here be stated as an explanation-not offered as a definition-that when the term Civil Liberty is used, there is now always meant a high degree of mutually guaranteed protection against interference with the interests and rights, held dear and

important by large classes of civilized men, or by all the members of a state, together with an effectual share in the making and administration of the laws as the best apparatus to secure that protection, and constituting the most dignified government of men who are conscious of their rights and of the destiny of humanity. But what are these guarantees? these interests and rights? Who are civilized men? In what does that share consist? Which are the men that are conscious of their rights? What is the destiny of humanity? Who are the large classes?

I mean by civil liberty that liberty which plainly results from the application of the general idea of freedom to the civil state of man, that is, to his relations as a political being-a being obliged by his nature and destined by his Creator to live in society. Civil liberty is the result of man's twofold character, as an individual and social being, so soon as both are equally respected.;

All men desire freedom of action. We have this desire, in some degree, even in common with the animal, where it manifests itself at least as a desire for freedom of motion. The fiercest despot desires liberty as much. as the most ardent republican; indeed, the difficulty is that he desires it too much-selfishly, exclusively.' He

2 I believe that this has never been shown with greater and more truculent naïveté than by the present king of Dahomey, in the letter he wrote to the queen of England in 1852. Every case in which an idea, bad or good, is carried to a point of extreme consistency is worth being noted: I shall give, therefore, a part of it.

The British government had sent an agent to that king, with presents, and the direction to prevent him from further trade in slaves; and the king's answer contains the following passage :

"The king of Dahomey presents his compliments to the queen of England. The presents which she has sent him are very acceptable and are good to his face. When governor Winiett visited the king, the king told him that he must consult his people before he could give a final answer about the slave-trade. He cannot see that he and his people can do without it. It is from the slave-trade that he derives his principal revenue. This he has

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