FREEDOM. The condition of one to whom the law attributes the single individual right of personal liberty, limited only, in the domestic relations, by powers of control which are associated with duties of protec tion. See HUSBAND AND WIFE ; PARENT AND CHILD; GUARDIAN AND WARD; MASTER AND 'APPRENTICE.
2. This right becomes subject to judicial deter mination when the law requires the public custody of the person as a means of vindicating the rights of others. The security of the liberty of the in dividual and of the rights of others is ,gradnated by the intrinsic equity of the law, in purpose and 'application. The means of protecting this liberty of the individual without hazarding the freedom of others must be sought in the provisions of the remedial and penal law.
3. Independently of forfeiture of personal liberty under such laws and of its limitations in the do =esti° relations, freedom, in this sense, is a statue which is invariable under all legal systems. It is the subject of judicial determination when a con dition incompatible with the possession of personal liberty is alleged against one who claims freedom 'as his statue. A community wherein law should be recognized, and wherein nevertheless this status should not be enjoyed by any private person, is in conceivable; and, wherever its possession is thus controverted, the judicial question arises of the per sonal extent of the law which attributes liberty to free persons. The law may attribute it to every natural person, and thereby preclude the recognition of any condition inconsistent with its possession. This universal extent of the law of free condition will operate in the international as well as in the internal private law of the state. In most European countries the right of one, under the law of a foreign country, to control the person of another who by such law had been his slave or bondman is not repognized under that international rule for the allowance of the effect of a foreign law which is called comity, the law of those countries attributes personal liberty as a right to every na tural person. 1 Hurd, Law of Freedom and Bond age, i0 116, 308.
4. In other countries the power of the master under a foreign law is recognized in specified cases by statute or treaty, while an otherwise universal attribution of personal liberty precludes every other recognition of a condition of bondage. On
this principle, in some of the United States, an obligation to render personal service or labor, and the corresponding right of the person to whom it is due, existing under the law of other states, are not enforced except in cases of claim within art. 4, see. 2, fp of the constitution of the United States. 18 Pick. Mass., 196 ; 20 N.•Y.!562. • 5. Legal' rights are the effects of civil society. No legal condition is the reservation of a state of nature anterior to civil society,. Freedom, as here understood, is the effect of law, not a pre-existing natural element. It is, therefore, not necessarily attributed to all persons within any one jurisdie• tion. But personal liberty, even though not attri buted universally, may be juridically regarded as a right accordant with the nature of man in so ciety; and the effect of this doctrine will appear in a legal presumption in favour of free condition, which will throw the burden of proof always on him who denies it. This presumption obtained in the law of Rome (XII Tab. T. vi. 5; Dig. lib. 40, tit. 5, 1. 53; lib. 43, tit. 29, s. 3, 1. 9 ; lib. 50, tit. 17. 11. 20, 22) even when slavery was derived from the jue gentium, or that law which was found to be re solved by the general reason of mankind. I Hurd, Law of Freedom, 157.
6. In English law, this presumption in favor of liberty has always been recognized, not only in the penal and remedial law, but in applying the law of condition, at a time when involuntary aervitudp was lawful. Fortescue, 'cc. 42, c. 47; Coke, Litt. fel. 124 b; Wood, Inst. c. 1, 5. In the slave holding states of the Union, a presumption against the freedom of persons of negro descent has arisen or been declared by statute. Cooper, Justin. 1 Dev. No. C. 336; 8 Ga. 157; 5 Hoist. INT. J.275. In interpreting manumission clauses in wills, the rule 'differs in the states according to their prevailing policy. Cobb, Law of Slay. 298.