Page:Harvard Law Review Volume 4.djvu/401

385 MEANING OF THE TERM ''LIBERTY:' 385 Life is the gift of God, and the right to preserve it is the most sacred of the rights of man. Liberty is freedom from all restraints but such as are justly imposed by law. Property is everything which has an exchangeable value, and the right of property includes the right to dispose of it according to the will of the owner. Labor is property, and as such merits protection. It is rather peculiar that Mr. Justice Bradley, after approving Blackstone's enumeration and definitions of absolute rights, should state that the right to choose an occupation is a part of one's liberty as that term is used in the clauses in question, and imply that Blackstone classifies the right of Habeas Corpus under the right of personal liberty as a distinct part thereof.^ Blackstone's conception of the terms was more precise. The idea that one's labor is one's property is rather economic than legal, and indeed in another case a passage from Adam Smith's " Wealth of Nations " is the authority cited. It is, however, to be observed that the court, while it did not much discuss the clause in question here, apparently took a view of it very different from that of the dissenting judges. It decided that a State can, in certain cases, grant a monopoly to a corpora- tion. It asserted that this power is unrestrained by the thirteenth and fourteenth amendments, and that the privileges referred to in the latter are those of citizens of the United States as such. It clearly implied that the ordinary fundamental rights of all persons to hold property, to engage in trade, and all lawful occupations, are not among them. Finally it disposed of the life, Hberty, and property clause in the following summary fashion : — The argument has not been much pressed, in these cases, that the defendant's charter deprives the plaintiffs of their property without due process of law, or that it denies to them the equal protection of the law. The first of these paragraphs has been in the Constitution since the adoption of the fifth amendment as a restraint upon the Federal power. It is also to be found in some form of expression in the constitutions of nearly all the States. . . . And it is sufficient to say that under no construction of that provision that we have seen, or any that we deem admissible, can the restraint imposed by the State of Louisiana upon the exercise of their trade by the butchers of New Orleans be held to be a deprivation of property within the meaning of that provision. 1 The right to be brought before a magistrate and have one's case examined is not the right of personal liberty any more than the right to a trial by jury is the right of life It is simply " process of law."