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Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER VI LIBERTY The late Lord Acton, most learned among the Englishmen of his generation, proposed to himself in his youth the writing of a History of Liberty from the earliest times to our own. The book remained unwritten not merely because the subject was vast, but also because his own learning was so wide and multifarious that he knew he would have been overcome by the temptation to endless digressions and profuse citations. Even the analysis of the conception of Liberty and the examination of the various meanings which the term has borne at different times and in different countries would need a treatise. No one seems to have undertaken the task. All that can be attempted here is to distinguish between some of the senses in which the word has been used and to indicate how they bear on one another. Many questions arise. What is the relation between Liberty and Democracy ? Does the former prescribe the latter ? Does the latter guarantee the former? Is Liberty a Positive or a merely Negative conception ? Is it an End in itself, or a means to an End greater than itself? But to explain the various senses which the word has borne let us look for a moment at the history of the conception. The first struggles for Liberty were against arbitrary power and unjust laws. The ordinary Greek citizen of the sixth century B.c. was not free when oppressed by an oligarchy or a tyrant, who took his property or put him to death in defiance of old usage and common justice. To him Liberty meant equal laws for all ? lowo/ua ? or what we should call a recognition of civil rights, securing exemption from the exercise of arbitrary power. The barons and prelates of England who extorted Magna Charta from the king complained of his tyrannical action contrary to the old customsof the nation, ...
| ISBN-13 | 9780217025140 |
|---|---|
| ISBN-10 | 0217025145 |
| Weight | 1.19 Pounds |
| Dimensions | 9.00 x 6.00 x 0.82 In |
| List Price | $17.59 |
| Format | Paperback |
|---|---|
| Pages | 368 pages |
| Publisher | |
| Published On | 2009-08-01 |
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