Where is Freedom?

Extract

Very illusive is the thing we call Freedom or Liberty, presenting a variety of notions to the men and women who in every age pursue it. Lord Acton, concerned mainly with its political aspect, saw liberty as ‘the delicate fruit of a mature civilization,’ and declared that’ the most certain test of the real freedom of a country ‘was’ the amount of security enjoyed by minorities.’ (But then, as Creighton remarked, Acton demanded that history, as primarily ‘a branch of the moral sciences, should aim at proving the immutable righteousness of the ideas of modern liberalism —tolerance and the supremacy of conscience.’) Dr. Johnson argued that private liberty was the essential thing—‘Political liberty is good only so far as it produces private liberty.’ The later Johnsonian dictum: ‘we are all agreed as to our own liberty: we would have as much of it as we can get; but we are not agreed as to the liberty of others: for in proportion as we take, others must lose,’ still commands wide assent.

Misgovernment in one form or another provokes the passionate cry- for freedom; the perennial revolt that to achieve its end turns to revolution or is suppressed by force of arms. Misgovernment within—Remota justitia quid reg- na nisi magna Patrocinia? The Augustinian sentence expresses consciousness of robbery that must be stopped.

‘Freedom in the governed to complain of wrongs and readiness in rulers to redress them constitute the ideal of a free state,’ is the ideal free state of Erskine May, distinguished nineteenth century English constitutional lawyer.