DENCE ; ARREST ; BAIL ; TRIAL ; HABEAS COR PUS ; DE HoMINE HEPLEGIANDO.
Irresponsible superiority, whether of one or of many, is necessarily antagonistic to freedom in others. Yet freedom rests on law, and law on the supreme power of some state. The possession of this power involves a liberty of action; but its possession by a body of persons, each one of whom must submit to the will of the not in itself a guarantee of the freedom of any one individual among them. Still, the more equally this power is distributed among those who are thus individually subject, the more their individual liberty of action in the exercise of this power approximates to a legal right,—though one beyond any inci dent to civil freedom as above defined,—and its possession may be said to constitute polit ical freedom, so far as that may be ascribed to private persons which is more properly ascribed to communities. In proportion as this right is extended to the individual mem bers of a community, it becomes a guarantee of civil freedom, by making a delegation of the power of the whole body to a representa tive government possible and even necessary, which government may be limited in its ac tion by customary or written law. Thus, the
political liberties of private persons and their civil freedom become intimately con nected; though political and civil freedom are not necessarily coexistent. 1 Sharsw. Bla. Com. 6, n., 127, n.
Political freedom is to be studied in the public law of constitutional states and in England and America, particularly in those provisions in the bills of rights which af fect the subject more in his relations to wards the government than in his relations towards other private persons. See LIBERTY. The terms freedom and liberty are words differing in origin (German and Latin) ; but they are, in use, too nearly synonymous to be distinguished in legal definition. See LIB ERTY ; Lieber, Civ. Lib. etc. 37, n.