Page:Uncivil Liberty.djvu/4

4 in the number of nobles taken into royal confidence. But despotism makes the will of monarchy its ultimate appeal, while liberty, accepting as final nothing this side of natural right, defers to popular reason, and is served or cheated, by that democratic king, the average man, the majority. In that marvel to monarchs, a State without a king, all citizens are nobles in so far as they incarnate equity. Hence our fathers, according to their luck, derived just powers of government from consent of the governed; and, to be as good as they, we must be enough better to apply the democratic idea impartially.

In determining essential right we settle woman's rights, for the greater includes the less; every political or reformatory convention is the reappearance of government, through imperfect mediums, the people, from its primary source, natural equity. The subtle law which regulates movements of sovereign particles of the body politic, the cardinal principle of civil liberty allows every one to do what she or he will, provided they invade not the equal right of every other one to do the same. Out of this come freedom of thought, expression and movement; the right of association, habeas corpus, trial by jury, all the safeguards which experience has thrown up around dissent, to withstand invasion, and enable right to give law to instructive fact. Parties, majorities, state, church—all institutions are despotisms when in conflict with incarnate truth. Legitimate civil authority may be traced to one of two origins: 1st, Enlightened reason, natural equity. 2d, Positive legislation. Since the latter is void unless it enact the former, law can have but one true source, abstract right, God's will about it. Hence government, not less than liberty, must justify its existence, and opponents of impartial suffrage should be classed as tyrants until proved innocent. That this is a correct view some competent exponents of thought, in different ages, may be cited to witness. Socrates: "Whatever inconvenience ensue, nothing is to be preferred before justice." New Testament: "Whether it be right to hearken unto you, more than unto God, judge ye; . . . . . . . the law is fulfilled in one word, love thy neighbor as thyself." Cicero: "If nature does not ratify law all virtues lose their sway." Bacon: "There are in nature certain fountains of justice, whence all civil laws are derived but as streams." Shakespeare: "In love the heavens themselves do guide the state." Hampden: "What is unjust is not law, and what is not law ought not to be obeyed." Blackstone: "No human laws are of any validity if contrary to the law of nature; and such of them as are valid derive all their force and authority from this original." Kant: "Act so that the immediate motive of your will may become a universal rule for all intelligent beings." Hallam: "God forbid that we should submit our liberties to a jury of antiquaries," Carlyle: "One strong thing I find here below, the just thing, the true thing; if the thing is unjust, thou hast not succeeded." Spooner: "No one can know what the written law is until he knows what it ought to be." Emerson: "Law is only memorandum; absolute right is the first governor." Lieber: "The forbearing use of power is a sure attribute of a gentleman." The right to rule first claimed by brute force, then by good will, charity, finally rests in liberty, delegated trust, consent. If principal or representative goes wrong, integrity dissents, bides its time and wins, though the true king be in a dungeon, and a culprit on the throne. The world will settle down into a community of peoples when abstract right is obeyed as supreme interpersonal, interstate, inter-National law, and the clearest self-interest.