religious part of the Reformation. This particular kind of personal freedom was claimed as a moral or natural right, and therefore as a moral necessity. It was not regarded as a means or expedient which, for the time being at any rate, would possibly be "useful" for the attainment of some public end, which, when attained, might appear to a majority to be for the "greatest good of the greatest number." This was not at all the frame of mind of the Reformers. Their claims and assertions were not the outcome of Machiavellian calculations regarding the future prosperity of the 'State," but were statements of the fact that each man in view of his Personal nature, had a relation to the Almighty which was direct and immediate, and that he had a natural right to the unmolested fruition of this relation. The rights which the Reformers demanded that the State should recognise and secure, were merely the liberty necessary to this new (or rather revived) development of Personality. That the prosperity of the State would ensue if it thus courageously and faithfully pursued the path of Right-(even though the expediency of that course was not presently evident)— such reformers as ever considered the matter do not appear to have doubted. The Reformers did not argue politically, but then neither did they argue theologically. They did not plead for the substitution of some other compulsory religion or church which should be more moral or more theologically correct. Had they done so the Reformation would not have stood for a great step in the moral progress of mankind; they contended, on the contrary, for liberty pure and simple; that is to say, they aimed at getting another right recognised-i.e. a new liberty was to be instituted to correspond to a new spiritual growth, and a new development of Personality. "Ungrateful Country, if thou ere forget The sons who for thy civil rights have bled! (Grave this within thy heart), if spiritual things Be lost thro' apathy, or scorn, or fear, Shalt thou thy humbler franchises support, However hardly won or justly dear ; What came from Heaven to Heaven by nature clings, WORDSWORTH The right to liberty of the Person is religious in origin, and is maintained by religion. It cannot be regarded as a matter of expediency or utility. Rights are not things which the State can either give or take away, it can only recognise and enforce them or refuse to do so. The State may refuse a moral right, and grant an immoral one, but the claim refused will remain a moral right, and that granted will not be a right at all. In the last phase of American legalised slavery, the whole of Western Christendom had come to realise that slavery was a violation of the natural right of the Person, and even in America, it was either resented as immoral, or defended on purely utilitarian grounds. The fact that the moral appeal in favour of abolition was rejected by the States immediately concerned, and that the non-moral or utilitarian argument against it was accepted by them, did not deprive the slave of his moral right, nor did it give a moral right to his owner. It is instructive in this connection to notice how moral and religious were the arguments and appeals of the abolitionists. Even the conspicuous misery of large numbers of slaves, while it did much to attract attention to the advantages of personal freedom, would have been quite powerless, apart from this supreme moral consideration, effectually to attack the pernicious cause of the misery. For without the inspiring and directing or constraining principle of the sanctity of the right of every individual man, humanitarian appeals tend to a forceless, unprincipled sentimentalism, always subject to collapse and violent reaction, and ready always to oppress some in order that others may be relieved. True, The State then cannot give the Person the right to liberty, nor can it deprive him of that right. True liberty is not a boon conferred on us by our fellow citizens, having its origin in sentimentality or utilitarianism, and withdrawable on a change in the mood or calculation of the ruling section; it is, as already insisted, the expression of our moral nature. even a State wholly given over to utilitarianism might allow numerous liberties to its citizens, but as it would not allow the "right" to liberty in general, or to any liberty in particular, the citizens, or sections of them, would hold their freedom on a most insecure tenure. Moreover the right to liberty not being allowed, liberties would be granted to which the recipients had no moral right—as the world rightly uses the term at present and withheld where, as present should say, such right emphatically existed. we at The effect of denying that personal right is the inspiration and constraining and directing force of the legislative activities of the ruling section of the Nation, is to leave the Nation and all the individuals composing it at the mercy of the doctrine that Might is Right,a doctrine to be modified, though hardly improved, by the introduction of an element of unprincipled sentimentality and hysterical humanitarianism. “UTILITY" OR "GOOD OF THE WHOLE" The State then, in all that it does or leaves undone, must consider first the rights of all persons within its borders, whether they belong to a large political section or a small one. Secure in the possession of a guiding principle, the State, when it comes to consider what is most "useful" to the attainment of the end it has in view, i.e. when it comes to the practical application of its principle, need have no fear of the disasters which must await a State which is purely empirical and utilitarian. Utilitarianism when set forth as a substitute for a definite moral principle is a most meaningless philosophy, for it lacks that definite direction in its search for the Good of the Whole, without which all such quest must end in the wildest empiricism or in following the line of least moral resistance. The doctrine of the Right of the Person provides at once a definite motive, a definite goal, and a definite method. Armed with the moral doctrine of Right, we shall know (what is otherwise by no means agreed upon) to what end a thing should be of "utility," and to whom it should be useful; for we shall have made up our minds that the coercive force of the ruling section can only be morally applied in the interest of true personal liberty; and secondly, that this liberty is not to be confined to the politically powerful, but is to be for all Persons equally. In the practical application of the principle, the opinion of the majority as to the best method under particular circumstances and in some particular connection, of guaranteeing universal freedom, must override that of the minority. But the majority in such case is overriding the minority as it were by accident, and in the interest of the equal liberty of the minority; and the liberty of the minority would be as much a part of the political purpose as that of the majority. The liberty of the minority be it observed, not the good of the minority; for that must be determined by the persons themselves, and not dictated to them by the political majority, which will invariably suffer from many human failings-besides that of ignorance. Mistakes in calculation will always be made under any system, and that which it was supposed was for the freedom of all, may turn out under actual experiment to make for the freedom of some and the oppression of others. But a nation nurtured on the doctrine that the citizen must be free, and free at all costs, will be disposed to rectify those errors in calculation which had given rise to oppression. The control, in the interests of freedom, of locomotion, exercised by the State over street traffic, is an instance of legislation in behalf of liberty. The free and equitable spirit in which that is done leaves nothing |