Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Introduction
- Chronology
- Bibliographical note
- Biographical notes
- A note on the texts
- Britain's Happiness, and the Proper Improvement of it
- Two Tracts on Civil Liberty, the War with America, and the Debts and Finances of the Kingdom
- General Introduction
- Observations on the Nature of Civil Liberty, the Principles of Government, and the Justice and Policy of the War with America
- Additional Observations on the Nature and Value of Civil Liberty, and the War with America
- A Fast Sermon (1781)
- Observations on the Importance of the American Revolution and the Means of making it a Benefit to the World
- The Evidence for a Future Period of Improvement in the State of Mankind
- A Discourse on the Love of our Country
- Index
- CAMBRIDGE TEXTS IN THE HISTORY OF POLITICAL THOUGHT
Additional Observations on the Nature and Value of Civil Liberty, and the War with America
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 June 2012
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Introduction
- Chronology
- Bibliographical note
- Biographical notes
- A note on the texts
- Britain's Happiness, and the Proper Improvement of it
- Two Tracts on Civil Liberty, the War with America, and the Debts and Finances of the Kingdom
- General Introduction
- Observations on the Nature of Civil Liberty, the Principles of Government, and the Justice and Policy of the War with America
- Additional Observations on the Nature and Value of Civil Liberty, and the War with America
- A Fast Sermon (1781)
- Observations on the Importance of the American Revolution and the Means of making it a Benefit to the World
- The Evidence for a Future Period of Improvement in the State of Mankind
- A Discourse on the Love of our Country
- Index
- CAMBRIDGE TEXTS IN THE HISTORY OF POLITICAL THOUGHT
Summary
Sect. I
Of the Nature of Civil Liberty, and the Essentials of a Free Government
With respect to Liberty in general there are two questions to be considered:
First, what it is? and secondly, how far it is of value? There is no difficulty in answering the first of these questions. To be free, is ‘to be able to act or forbear acting, as we think best’ or ‘to be masters of our own resolutions and conduct’. It may be pretended that it is not desirable to be thus free, but, without doubt, this it is to be free, and this is what all mean when they say of themselves or others that they are free.
I have observed that all the different kinds of liberty run up into the general idea of self-government. The liberty of men as agents is that power of self-determination which all agents, as such, possess. Their liberty as moral agents is their power of self-government in their moral conduct. Their liberty as religious agents is their power of selfgovernment in religion. And their liberty as members of communities associated for the purposes of civil government is their power of selfgovernment in all their civil concerns. It is liberty in the last of these views of it that is the subject of my present enquiry, and it may, in other words, be defined to be ‘the power of a state to govern itself by its own will’.
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- Price: Political Writings , pp. 76 - 100Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 1992