Page:Harvard Law Review Volume 4.djvu/381

MEANING OF THE TERM '^LIBERTVr 3^5 THE TRUE MEANING OF THE TERM "LIBERTY" IN THOSE CLAUSES IN THE FEDERAL AND STATE CONSTITUTIONS WHICH PROTECT "LIFE, LIB- ERTY, AND PROPERTY." IF there is one truth which, more than another, should be con- stantly borne in mind by one whose object is to ascertain the true meaning of any part of the law of our American constitutions, it is that that law is not a manufacture, but a growth, and that it is, therefore, impossible thoroughly to comprehend its true scope and meaning, without at least some knowledge of its history and development. In this respect, English and American constitu- tional law differs widely from that of France, for example, which is substantially nothing more than an attempt to establish a system of government on entirely new and theoretical principles, artistic in form, but without any very deep basis in the history and habits of the .people. Such law, while it is the source and " garantie " of fundamental rights, is in no proper sense a conse- quence or generalization of rights existing independently, and if it should be aboHshed, the rights which it guarantees would dis- appear with it. The English Constitution, on the other hand, so far from being a work of modern art, a manufacture, is the result of centuries of bloodshed and strife, during which the " freemen " of England gradually secured their fundamental rights in the law courts, and established limitations of the regal power. In this view it is rather a result than a cause. It exists as a consequence or confirmation of the rights which it represents, and unless those Note. — This essay received the prize offered by the Harvard Law School Assc ciation to the graduating class of 1890. — Eds.