Page:John Adams - A Defence of the Constitutions of Government of the United States of America Vol. I. (1787).djvu/160

122 but by a fixed contitution of government, and tated laws, known and obeyed by all.—Mr. Turgot, indeed, cenures the "fality of the notion, o frequently repeated by almot all republican writers, 'that liberty conits in being ubject only to the laws;' as if a man could be free while oppreed by an unjut law. This would not be true, even if we could uppoe, that all laws were the work of an aembly of the whole nation; for certainly every individual has his rights, of which the nation cannot deprive him, except by violence, and an unlawful ue of the general power."

We often hear and read of free tates, a free people, a free nation, a free country, a free kingdom, and even of free republics; and we undertand, in general, what is intended, although every man may not be qualified to enter into philoophical diquiitions concerning the meaning of the word liberty, or to give a logical definition of it.

Our friend Dr. Price has ditinguihed very well, concerning phyical, moral, religious, and civil liberty: and has defined the lat to be "the power of a civil ociety to govern itelf, by its own dicretion, or by laws of its own making, by the majority, in a collective body, or by fair repreentation. In every free tate, every man is his own legilator. Legitimate government conits only in the dominion of equal laws, made with common conent, and not in the dominion of any men over other men."

Mr. Turgot, however, makes the doctor too great a compliment, at the expence of former Englih writers, when he repreents him as "the firt of his countrymen who have given a "jut