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The Pamphlet Collection of Sir Robert Stout: Volume 74

II

II.

The second characteristic of Liberalism is Liberty. Here we may parenthetically observe that the two words Liberalism and page 4 Liberty are etymologically identical, both being derived from the Latin word Liber, or free. A Liberal, therefore, means a free man and Liberty freedom. They are twin-children of the same parent age.

Liberalism claims for every one the utmost liberty compatible with the equal liberty of all others. It affirms that human beings have an indefeasible right to liberty. It denies that any person or class of persons is entitled to trespass on the liberty of any other person or class of persons. It denies that even the omnipotent majority, however great, are justified in taking away the liberty of the minority, however small. It proclaims liberty to the nation, so the different ranks and classes into which the nation is necessarily divided, and to the individual unit.

Consider what Liberals have done for the British nation. Great and glorious are the victories by sea and land which our national history records. There are other victories, though not on field or flood, equally great and glorious, which our historic Liberals have won. To them we are indebted for the overthrow of monarchical despotism in the seventeenth century, for the passing of the Habeas Corpus Act, for an independent judiciary, for trial by jury, for the Bill of Rights, and for many other victories over injustice and tyranny. As time would fail me to recount them all, I will give, as samples, a few of the victories Liberalism has won during my lifetime. In 1825, there was the repeal of the tyrannical laws which forbade combinations of workmen—a glorious victory for the working classes. In 1827, there was the Catholic Emancipation. In 1832 there was the great Reform Act, extending the Parliamentary franchise to the £10-householders. In 1837, there was the abolition of slavery throughout the British dominions. In 1846, the victory of Free Trade was won by Cobden and Bright. In 1867, household suffrage was granted to dwellers in town, and in 1884, to dwellers in the country. In short, it is to the Liberals, who never forgot the Conservative constitution of the nation, that we owe the rights and liberties of the subject and the political institutions which are their guarantees and shrines.

Consider also what Liberalism has done for the different ranks and classes into which civilised communities are divided, and divided for their good. Modern civilisation is the heir and successor of feudal civilisation. Feudalism passed away, but it left behind it various relics of its laws and customs and institutions, such as monarchical and aristocratic despotism, special privileges of nobles and upper page 5 classes, and the serf-like subordination of the masses of the people. Liberalism has for ages been waging an enlightened war against autocracy and despotism, against sectional and class privileges. Equal freedom and equal justice is the faith it ever seeks to embody in works. It repudiates with scorn the old feudal idea that one man is born noble and another ignoble—that the upper thousands are meritorious and the lower millions base and dishonourable. True Liberalism has always held that, if there is much evil, there is also much good in man. It believes in the infinite value of human personality. It takes its stand on the worth and dignity of human nature, whether that nature belongs to the nobleman or to the manual labourer. Its essence found admirable expression in the words of Burns:

"The rank is but the guinea's stamp,

The man's the gowd for a' that."

In feudal times, when our kings were all despotic, the noble Liberals of those times waited on King John, and compelled him to sign the Magna Charta. In later times, the nobles oppressed the masses beneath them; but Liberalism stepped forth and snatched from the oppressors their excessive powers and privileges, and defended the middle and lower classes. And in times still later, when the middle classes were preponderant and were thought to be abusing their preponderance, the Liberals secured the household franchise for the protection and independence of the humblest. While doing all this—while stripping kings of their despotism, and snatching from aristocracies their unjust privileges and prerogatives—the historic Liberals have ever contended that there must be a grading or gradation in such a diversified society as ours—that there must be a stratification of the population into higher and middle and lower and other classes or strata.

It must be obvious to every person possessed of even the commonest sense that there is no resemblance between the true historic Liberalism and the new Liberalism of our Government. The new Liberals have never been the defenders or advocates of liberty. On the contrary, they have been its opponents, stealing the name of Liberal, but degrading the reality. Ever since they came into office, they have been passing laws after laws, and all of a restrictive character. They have been curtailing the freedom of different trades and employments. They have been continually interfering, restrictively and oppressively, with almost all kinds of business page 6 followed in the colony—agricultural and mining and manufacturing and commercial.