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Show 16 LIBERTY AND SLAVERY. is both by -turns, and neither long, but runs through its Protean changes, according to the exigencies of the flowing discourse of the learned author. Surely such inconsistency, so glaring and so portentous, and all exhibited on one and the same page, is no evidence that the genius of the great commentator was as steady and profound as it was elegant and classical. The source of this vacillation is obvious. With Locke, be defines natural liberty to be a power of acting as one thinks fit, within the limit• preBcribed by the law of nature; but be soon loses sight of this all-important limitation, from which natural liberty derives its form and beauty. Hence it becomes in his mind a power to act as one pleases, without the restr~tint or control of any law whatever, either human or divine. The sovereign will and pleasure of the individual becomes the only rule of conduct, and lawless anarchy the condition which it legitimates. Thus, having loosed the bonds and marred the beauty of natural liberty, he was prepared to see it, now become so "wild and savage," offered up as a sacrifice on the altar of civil liberty. This, too, was the great fundamental error of Hobbes. What Blackstone thus did through inadvertency, was knowingly and designedly NATURE OF OIVIL LIDll.l\T\". 17 done by the philosopher of Malmcsbnry. In a state of nature, says he, all men have a right to do as they please. Each individual may set up a right to all things, and consequently to the same ·things. In other words, in such a state there is no law, except that of force. The strong arm of power is the supreme arbiter of all things. Robbery and outrage and murder are as lawful as their opposites. That is to say, there is no such thing as a law of nature; and consequently all things are, in a state of nature, - equally allowable. Thus it was that liobbcs delighted to legitimate the horrors of a state of nature, as it is called, in order that mankind might, without a feeling of indignation or regret, see the wild and ferocious liberty of such a state sacrificed to despotic power. Thus it was that he_ endeavoured to recommend the "Leviathan," by contrasting it with the huger monster called Natural Liberty. This view of the state of nature, l:)y which all law and the great Fountain of all law arc shut out of the world, was perfectly agreeable to the atheistical philosophy of Hobbes. From one who bad extinguished the light of nature, and given dominion to the powers of darkness, no better could have been expecteu; but is it not ll •• |