s a mind to. There never has been any man, from the primitive
barbarian up to a Humboldt or a Darwin, who could do as he had a mind
to. The "Bohemian" who determines to realize some sort of liberty of
this kind accomplishes his purpose only by sacrificing most of the
rights and turning his back on most of the duties of a civilized man,
while filching as much as he can of the advantages of living in a
civilized state. Moreover, liberty is not a metaphysical or sentimental
thing at all. It is positive, practical, and actual. It is produced and
maintained by law and institutions, and is, therefore, concrete and
historical. Sometimes we speak distinctively of civil liberty; but if
there be any liberty other than civil liberty--that is, liberty under
law--it is a mere fiction of the schoolmen, which they may be left to
discuss.

Even as I write, however, I find in a leading review the following
definition of liberty: Civil liberty is "the result of the restraint
exercised by the sovereign people on the more powerful individuals and
classes of the community, preventing them from availing themselves of
the excess of their power to the detriment of the other classes." This
definition lays the foundation for the result which it is apparently
desired to reach, that "a government by the people can in no case
become a paternal government, since its law-makers are its mandatories
and servants carrying out its will, and not its fathers or its
masters." Here we have the most mischievous fallacy under the general
topic which I am discussing distinctly formulated. In the definition of
liberty it will be noticed that liberty is construed as the act of the
sovereign people against somebody who must, of course, be
differentiated from the sovereign people. Whenever "people" is used in
this sense for anything less than the total population, man, woman,
child, and baby, and whenever the great dogmas which contain the word
"people" are construed under the limited definition of "people," there
is always fallacy.

History is only a tiresome repetition of one story. Persons and classes
have sought to win possession of the power of the State in order to
live luxuriously out of the earnings of others. Autocracies,
aristocracies, theocracies, and all other organizations for holding
political power, have exhibited only the same line of action. It is the
extreme of political error to say that if political power is only taken
away from generals, nobl