Truth and justice are intuitive perceptions and feelings in every human soul, and conscience enforced their observance. Every human being, therefore, has his absolute liberty abridged, by notions of right and wrong, anterior to the formation of civil government. Practically, absolute liberty would be the harshest kind of tyranny, for it would immediately result in making the weak the slaves of the strong. Not only would the weak, therefore, be deprived of liberty, but of justice. Absolute liberty, therefore, as said before, immediately runs into despotism.
Natural liberty is freedom from restraint, except so far as is imposed by the laws of nature.
Every member of such a society is under certain restraints, and certain abridgments of absolute liberty. Thus, in the simplest and rudest stages of natural liberty, as put in practice among mankind, we see certain restraints upon absolute liberty, established by the laws or customs of the nation. But, in point of fact, other restraints are put upon the largest part of the community, for in such a state of society the weak are obliged, for the most part, to bow to the strong. If, indeed, the weak are protected from the strong, then the strong are restrained, and so far, natural or absolute liberty is abridged. If it is not thus abridged, if the weak are not protected from the strong, then they are the slaves of the strong.