Where Liberty Exists

Pacific Press Publishing Association · Mountain View, California · Aug 20, 1912

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 39, No. 32.

Where Liberty Exists

THE following paragraph from Prof. Francis Lieber, on "Civil Government and Self-Government," is worthy of more than a mere passing reading. It very clearly sets forth the true principles involved in the question of majority rule.

"Liberty has not unfrequently been defined as consisting in the rule of the majority; or, it has been said, where the people rule, there is liberty. The rule of the majority, of itself, indicates the power of a certain body; but power is not liberty. Suppose the majority bid you drink hemlock, is there liberty for you? Or suppose the majority give away liberty and establish a despot. We might say, with greater truth, that where the minority is protected, altho the majority rule, then, probably, liberty exists. But in this latter case it is the protection, or in other words, rights beyond the reach of the majority, which constitute liberty,—not the power of the majority. There can be no doubt that the majority ruled in the French massacres of the Protestants; was there liberty in France on that account? All despotism, without a standing army, must be supported or acquiesced in, by the majority. It could not stand otherwise."