d judge, as they had made him a good
councilor. Not all people, it is true, are attracted by the efficient
mind; and Mr. Hutchinson in the course of years had made enemies, among
whom were many who still thought of him as the man chiefly responsible
for the abolition, some eleven years before, of what was probably the
most vicious system of currency known to colonial America. Nevertheless,
in the days before the passing of the Stamp Act, Mr. Hutchinson was
commonly well thought of, both for character and ability, and might
still without offense be mentioned as a useful and honored public
servant.

Mr. Hutchinson did not, at any time in his life, regard himself as
an Enemy of the Human Race, or of America, or even of liberty rightly
considered. Perhaps he had not the fine enthusiasm for the Human Race
that Herder or Jean Jacques Rousseau had; but at least he wished it
well; and to America, the country in which he was born and educated and
in which he had always lived, he was profoundly attached. Of America he
was as proud as a cultivated and unbigoted man well could be, extremely
jealous of her good name abroad and prompt to stand, in any way that was
appropriate and customary, in defense of her rights and liberties. To
rights and liberties in general, and to those of America in particular,
he had given long and careful thought. It was perhaps characteristic
of his practical mind to distinguish the word liberty from the various
things which it might conceivably represent, and to think that of these
various things some were worth more than others, what any of them was
worth being a relative matter depending largely upon circumstances.
Speaking generally, liberty in the abstract, apart from particular and
known conditions, was only a phrase, a brassy tinkle in Mr. Hutchinson's
ear, meaning nothing unless it meant mere absence of all constraint.
The liberty which Mr. Hutchinson prized was not the same as freedom from
constraint. Not liberty in this sense, or in any sense, but the welfare
of a people neatly ordered for them by good government, was what he took
to be the chief end of politics; and from this conception it followed
that "in a remove from a state of nature to the most perfect state of
government there must be a great restraint of natural liberty."

The limitations proper to be placed upon natural liberty could scarcely
be determined by abstract speculation or with mathematical precision,
but would obviously var