LIBERTY, EQUALITY, FRATERNITY. For nearly a century, these three words have been accepted as embodying the creed of those who maintain the rightful supremacy of the numerical majority; and they have been sounded as the watchword of that formidable movement known on the continent of Europe as "the Revolution," of which the object is to assert this supremacy by overturning the existing fabric bf society. When con trasted with the democratic of antiquity, the only novelty which the modern sym bol exhibits consists in the proclamation of "equality;" for "liberty," in the widest sense—meaning therehy the ultimate extension of political power to the whole body of the citizens—has been the object of the most enlightened politicians of all ages; whilst the protest in favor of " fraternity" is a mere sentimental commonplace, about the spec ulative soundness of which there never was any real difference of opinions.
The first state document of importance in which the doctrine of equality is set forth is the American declaration of independence of July 4, 1776. This celebrated docu ment proceeds thus: " We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness," etc. This, as we have said, was in 1776. But as a speculative opinion, the doctrine of equality had been pro claimed by Hobbes more than a century before, and from his time down to the period at which it thus received practical recognition. it had never been lost sight of by the class of speculators to which Hobbes belonged. Under different forms and from various points of view, it had been reasserted by Spinosa, Rousseau, Helvetii's, arid ultimately by the class of political declaimers whose works were simultaneous with the American, and immediately preceded the French revolution.
Hobbes was bolder than his followers, and by assuming a premise which, had it been true, would certainly have justified his conclusion, saved his logic, though lie did not secure a very stable foundation for his law. He asserted that men are not only born, but continue in essentials very nearly equal. "Nature," he said, "has made little odds among,* men of mature age as to strength and knowledge." Rousseau, on the other hand, feeling that subjective and objective experience would at once repudiate such an assumption, admitted the existence of inequalities in maturity, and scarcely ven tured to deny them even at birth, but ascribed them mainly to education, and to other dis torting and deranging principles iu human nafure and human society,which it is the object of law and government to counteract. A third class of reasoners, whilst admitting the fact of inequality, and not condemning it as abnormal in the case of individuals, asserted that the argument in support of social and political equality is sufficiently founded on the generic equality of mankind—on the proposition, viz., that all men are equally men. They forgot, or found it convenient to ignore, that the argument of their opponents rested on the proposition, that all men are not equal men; and consequently would not have been in the slightest degree affected even by the admission of the generic equality for which they contended. To this last class belongs prof. Ahrens, whose work on natural
law has been used as the text-book in the Eeole de Droit in Paris. But all these writers agree in maintaining tne inalienable connection between equality and liberty; and in asserting that the realization of the latter must of necessity be in proportion to the com pleteness with which the former is realized. In Great Britain, hitherto, the opposite creed has prevailed. Experience, both subjective and objective, has led to conclusion that, in point of fact, men come into the world and continue during the whole course of their earthly sojourn to be extremely unequal in strength, intelligence, virtue, and worth, It is on this assumption that the whole fabric of our liberties rests. So far from believ ing liberty to involve the fictitious recognition of an equality which does not exist, or the creation of an equality which is contrary to nature, we hold it to necessitate the recognition of the inequalities which nature has established, and which God as the author of nature has decreed. Nay, further, we conceive its perfection to be in direct propor tion to the completeness with which these inequalities are recognized, and their conse quences, in the shape of property, social position, and the like, arc vindicated by the political machinery of the state. Society, in our view of thd matter, is an organic structure, is cosmic, just in so far as it recognizes these inequalities; and begins to be inorganic, chaotic, the moment that it ignores them. In like manner, the political, which is the mirror of the social organization of the state, performs its appropriate function only when and in so far as it truly reflects the inequalities which society has recognized and sanctioned. it must neither add to nor take from the facts which society presents to it. To each it must assign his own, and nothing but his own; and his own politically is the place which society has already.conceded to him. These views, which in a somewhat irregular manner have tilwas been recognized and acted upon in Eng land, have been thought out and systematized within these last few years by IN1r. Mill and the class of politicians to whom in future the title of progressive conservatives will probably be applied. By no writer, perhaps, has the true doctrine been stated with greater force than by John Adams, the friend and successor of Washington, and second president of the United States. The following passage is selected from many to the like effect in the recent edition of his works by his grandson, Charles Francis Adams: "That all men are born to equal rights, is true. Every being has a right to his own as clear, as moral, as sacred, as any other being has. This is as indubitable as a moral government in the universe. But to teach that all men are born with equal powers and faculties, to equal influence in society, to equal property and advantages through life, is as gross a fraud, as glaring an imposition on the credulity of the people, as ever was practiced by monks, hy Druids, by Brahmans, by priests of the immortal Lama, or by the self-styled philosophers of the French revolntion. For honor's sake, Mr. Taylor, for truth and virtue's sake, let American philosophers and politicians despise it."—(Vol.
vi. p. 454.) •