THE 



POPULAR SCIENCE 

 MONTHLY. 



JULY, 1889. 



WHAT IS CIVIL LIBERTY? 



By W. G. SUMNER, 



PROFESSOB OF POLITICAL AND SOCIAL SCIENCE IN YALE COLLEGE. 



IT might seem that liberty was one of the most trite and worn 

 of all subjects. It will be the aim of this paper to show that 

 liberty is the least well analyzed of all the important social concep- 

 tions, that it is the thing at stake in the most important current 

 controversies, and that it needs to be defended as much against 

 those who abuse it as against those who deride it. 



In the first place, I put together some citations which will, I 

 think, justify me in bringing this subject forward again : 



1. Rodbertus is the one of the recent socialists with whom it is 

 best worth while to deal, for he is the master of them all. He is 

 also best understood in his writings on Roman taxation, in which 

 his historical text and his social dogmas throw important light on 

 each other. He defines liberty to be a share in the power of the 

 state.* He then defines " free trade," in the following pages, so 

 as to make it cover all civil liberty, according to Anglo-American 

 institutions, and attributes to " free trade," in this sense, no less 

 harm than the destruction of civilization. It is amusing to notice 

 how this denunciation of free trade, which it would have been so 

 satisfactory for the opponents of free trade to quote, has been 

 fenced off and marked with the strongest kind of a danger-signal, 

 so that it is never quoted at all, because it is an assault on all mod- 

 ern liberalism as broad as the Pope's " Encyclical " of 1864. In 

 fact, this parallelism must be noted more than incidentally, for it 

 helps to show what I here have in view : that all forms of liberty 

 are solidaire with each other, and all forms of assault on liberty, as 

 well the revolutionist and socialistic as the extreme reactionary, are 



* 5 Hildebrand's " Jahrbiicher," 269. 

 vol. xxxv. — 19 



