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, Government and Sovereignty, on Liberty and Right,' and to which, therefore, 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 vitality-the leading subject of Western history2 and the characteristic stamp and feature of our race, our age, our own country and its calling. 1 In my Political Ethics. 2 I ask permission to draw the attention of the scholar to a subject which 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 well-chosen 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. As the whole race is called the Caucasian, shall we designate the group in question by the name of Cis-Caucasian? It is more important for the scholar of civilization to have a distinct name for the indicated group, than it was for the student of the natural history of our race to adopt the recently formal term of prognathous tribes, in order to group together all the tribes with projecting jaws. 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 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 life1 or the highest regions, betrays a misconception of human language, which itself is never absolute except in mathematics. It 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 1 Is it necessary to remind the reader of Dr. Johnson's definition of the Knife? or of the fact that the greater portion of all law business arises from the impossibility of giving absolute definitions for things that are not absolute themselves? A knife and a dagger are terms qufficiently clear in common life, but it has been found very difficult to define them, in many penal cases, when the law awards different punishments for wounds inflicted by the one or the other. 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 as it would go, to say: Civil liberty is the idea of liberty, which is untrammeled 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 it, and to know the threads which compose the valued texture. In a general way, it may here be stated as an explanationnot 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. We understand by civil liberty not only the absence of individual restraint, but liberty within the social system and political organ But what are these Who are civilized ism-a combination of principles and laws which acknowledge, protect, and favor the dignity of man. guarantees, these interests and rights? men? In what does that share consist? 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 wants it for himself alone. He 1 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 explained in a long palaver to Mr. Cruikshank. He begs the Queen of England to put a stop to the slave-trade everywhere else, and allow him to continue it." In another passage he says:- "The king begs the queen to make a law that no ships be allowed to has not elevated himself to the idea of granting to his fellows the same liberty which he claims for himself, and of desiring to be limited in his own power of trenching on the same liberty of others. This is one of the greatest ideas to which man can rise. In this mutual grant and check lies the essence of civil liberty, as we shall presently see more fully, and in it lies its dignity. It is a grave error to suppose that the best government is absolutism with a wise and noble despot at the head of the state. As to consequences it is even worse than absolutism with a tyrant at its head. The tyrant may lead to reflection and resistance; the wisdom and brilliancy, however, of the government of a great despot or dictator deceives and unfits the people for a better civil state. This is at least true with reference to all tribes not utterly lost in despotism, as the Asiatics are. The periods succeeding those of great and brilliant despots have always been calamitous. The noblest human work, nobler even than literature and science, is broad civil liberty, well secured and wisely handled. The highest ethical and social production of which man, with his inseparable moral, jural, æsthetic and religious attributes is capable, is the comprehensive and minutely organic self-government of a free people; and a people truly free at home, and dealing in fairness and justice with other nations, is the greatest, unfortunately also the rarest, subject offered in all the breadth and length of history. In the definitions of civil liberty which philosophers or pub trade at any place near his domains lower down the coast than Wydah, as by means of trading vessels the people are getting rich and resisting his authority. He hopes the queen will send him some good tower guns and blunderbusses, and plenty of them, to enable him to make war," (which means razzias, in order to carry off captives for the barracu, or slave market.) The claims of " undoubted sovereignty" and the "independent power" of kings, put forth by the Stuarts, by Louis XIV., and by all who looked upon kings, restricted in their power, as unworthy peers of the "real princes," must be classed under the same head with the aspirations of the principate of Dahomey, however they may differ in form. 1 I have dwelt on this subject at length in my Political Ethics. |