upon the poor themselves-of the laws against papists and diffenters and amongst a people enamoured to excefs and jealous of their liberty, it seems a matter of surprise that this principle has been fo imperfectly attended to.

The degree of actual liberty always bearing, according to this account of it, a reversed proportion to the number and feverity of the reftrictions which are either useless, or the utility of which does not outweigh the evil of the reftraint; it follows that every nation poffeffes fome, no nation perfect liberty; that this liberty may be enjoyed under every form of government'; that it may be impaired indeed, or increased, but that it is neither gained, nor loft, nor recovered, by any fingle regulation, change, or event whatever; that, confequently, those popular phrases which speak of a free people, of a nation of flaves, which call one revolution the æra of liberty; or another the lofs of it; with many expreffions of a like abfolute form, are intelligible only in a comparative sense.

Hence alfo we are enabled to apprehend the distinction between perfonal and civil liberty. A citizen of the freeft republic in the world may be imprisoned for his crimes; and though his perfonal freedom be reftrained by bolts and fet

ters,

ters, fo long as his confinement is the effect of a beneficial public law, his civil liberty is invaded. If this inftance appear dubious, the following will be plainer. A paffenger from the Levant, who, upon his return to England, should be conveyed to a lazaretto by an order of quarantine, with whatever impatience he might defire his enlargement, and though he faw a guard placed at the door to oppofe his escape, or even ready to deftroy his life if he attempted it, would hardly accufe government of incroaching upon his civil freedom; nay, might, perhaps, be all the while congratulating himself that he had at length fet his foot again in a land of liberty. The manifeft expediency of the measure not only juftifies it, but reconciles the most odious confinement with the perfect poffeffion, and the loftieft notions of civil liberty. And if this be true of the coercion of a prison, that it is compatible with a state of civil freedom; it cannot with reafon be disputed of those more moderate constraints which 'the ordinary operation of government imposes upon the will of the individual. It is not the rigour, but the inexpediency of laws and acts of authority, which makes them tyrannical.

There is another idea of civil liberty, which, though

M 4

though neither fo fimple, nor fo accurate as the former, agrees better with the fignification, which the usage of common discourse, as well as the example of many refpectable writers upon the fubject, has affixed to the term. This idea places liberty in fecurity; making it to consist not merely in an actual exemption from the constraint of useless and noxious laws and acts of dominion, but in being free from the danger of having any fuch hereafter imposed or exercifed. Thus, fpeaking of the political state of modern Europe, we are accustomed to say of Sweden, that she hath loft her liberty by the revolution which lately took place in that country; and yet we are affured that the people continue to be governed by the fame laws as before, or by others which are wifer, milder, and more equitable. What then have they loft? They have loft the power and functions of their diet; the conftitution of their ftates and orders, whofe deliberation and concurrence were required in the formation and establishment of every public law; and thereby have parted with the security which they poffeffed against any attempts of the crown to harass its fubjects, by oppreffive and ufeless exertions of prerogative. The lofs of this fecurity we denominate the loss of liberty.

They

They have changed not their laws, but their legislature; not their enjoyment, but their fafety; not their present burthens, but their prospects of future grievances: and this we pronounce a change from the condition of freemen to that of flaves. In like manner, in our own country, the act of parliament, in the reign of Henry the Eighth, which gave to the king's proclamation the force of law, has properly been called a complete and formal furrender of the liberty of the nation; and would have been fo, although no proclamation were iffued in pursuance of these new powers, or none but what was recommended by the highest wisdom and utility. The fecurity was gone. Were it probable, that the welfare and accommodation of the people would be as ftudiously, and as providently, confulted in the edicts of a defpotic prince, as by the refolutions of a popular affembly, then would an abfolute form of government be no less free than the pureft democracy. The different degree of care and knowledge of the public interest which may reasonably be expected from the different form and compofition of the legiflature, constitutes the diftinction, in respect of liberty, as well between these two extremes, as

between

between all the intermediate modifications of

civil government.

The definitions which have been framed of civil liberty, and which have become the fubject of much unnecessary altercation, are most of them adapted to this idea. Thus one political writer makes the very effence of the fubject's liberty to confift in his being governed by no laws but those to which he hath actually confented; another is fatisfied with an indirect and virtual confent; another again places civil liberty in the feparation of the legislative and executive offices of government; another in the being governed by law, that is, by known, preconftituted, inflexible rules of action and adjudication ; a fifth in the exclufive right of the people to tax themselves by their own reprefentatives; a fixth in the freedom and purity of elections of reprefentatives; a feventh in the control which the democratic part of the conftitution poffeffes over the military establishment. Concerning which, and fome other fimilar accounts of civil liberty, it may be obferved, that they all labour under one inaccuracy, viz. that they describe not fo much liberty itself, as the fafeguards and preservatives of liberty: for example, a man's being governed by no laws, but

thofe