Weekly national intelligencer. [volume] (Washington [D.C.]) 1841-1869, 1853-07-23
NATIONAL INTELLIGENCER.
NOTES ON NEW BOOKS.

haU
The common reader will pronoalce to-. to-. r-,ite
ia familiar to be made the theme OF inte' .esting
disouisition Most n"r,s as tne AUTH " Justly
1;eos rs.sVi'' Granted A. -. - ~ |
premises, Ere like to take Tor gran''e mat thsyy
know e. ,ach about it already LA will regari TINS
attempt sl further to pofarl1e nas';r :,
stantly and with such fluent aeeia.."OA ''
on the popular mind as IN the ngnest degIee su-
perercgatory and absurd. But we venture to enter
mild protest against any such summary dlsposl,,
ton Of Mr. WARMERS unpretending volume, and
question greatly whether many political Scion
among us would not if the truth were told, be COM
PEELED to confess, after candid perusal OF this
work. that he had been very perceptibly instructed
and enlightened concerning the liberties, social, po-
litical and religious, which it is the lot Of every
American to enjoy, without, however, always fully
approaching their nature or conditions It'll great
distinction and prerogative to be free born. An IN
spired apostle, when unjusty arraigned before the
mnion of imperial Rome, boasted of that freedom
as his birthright which the chiefcaptain had only
q obtained by great sum-" And yet there are
dangers incident to all inherited possessions The
wealth which laborious, proyident, and thrifty
father bequeaths to his sons is rarely found to per-
petuate in these his descendants the same virtues by
which it was originally won The conservative
element is never in the nature of things, so strong
as the acquisitiye And though, as Cicero asserts,
it is more disgraceful to lose the civil rights and i'm
munities we have once acquired than never to have
acquired them at all yet history teaches US that all
nations have at some period incurred the odum OF
this just rcproach and let it not be forgotten that
popular government has never permanently sue
ceeded in any country. The sons have squandered
the patrlmony which was left them by their sires.
1t is quite possible, therefore, that it may become
in this matter also to heed the injunction not to
be high-minded, but to fear
q w loo1,
our text, to discuss as briefly as possible few of
the old themes, which, however trite yet of the
last Importance, by Of their surprising prac-
teal interest to US as people for, author
remarks, the triumph Of popular government in our
country may, for aught we know, depend, under
God, well upon the freemanly intelligence of the
common mind as upon the purity and solidisy of our
principles, in themselves considered.
1t has long been the fashion of brilliant theorists
and OF sedate philosophers well to deduce the IL
berries of regulated life from those of untamed
ture, as if natures freedom were the greater and
that of political society the less. Burke in his
younger days. and Jean Jacques in his reveries the
Social Contract painted in gorgeous colors the hacyon
life Of of nature, though in retrospect they
fondy reverted the prmeYal age of Arcadan felicity
from which the nations had wandered in the march of
civilization Paey and Blackstone with their closer logic
also seek to convince that the liberty of freemen had
its origin in the curailment and modification of pre-
existent natural liberty portion of the primary stock
being voluntarily surrendered for the purposes of govern
ment, qua pro quo. We have long questioned the
logical accuracy of such augmentation. To minds
It's falacy is the that which ytates the pho-
sophy of Thos Brown, in all his metaphysical speculaons
concerning the relation between and effect Because
facts found sustain relation of pre-
cedence and sequence the the other no certain
proof that they essentially connected the
which conditonate the resulting phenomena. The fact
that civil liberty succeeds naurallbery, that natural
liberty theoretically precedes the liberty ORDER
affords solid ground which to predicate the
ton this order correlation phenomena point
Of historical Development essential dependence
Of the upon the other Such reasoning wholly ignores
the Of civil liberty and in tracing
ciden.s which ancied to accompany its genesis
trey dsregards the spirit which anmates and informs
it. 1t is part with that orangoutang theory Of few
lateearned ethonoogists according to whom the print
tive condition Of the savage one though the
savage we're himself the germ from which the civil
lized has been developed by theory
which should have found its way of the Sares
Of Horace into the profound philosophical twadde Of the
later Monboddos Of modern science.
The vaunted liberty Of state Of nature when closely
analysed, is found to be nonentity The restrictions
which hem in the free activity Of the savage greater
and which invest the life
of the social and civilized The range Of his power
is less the objects which it is exercised are fewer
The laws Of nature contraFene his individual wishes
leaving him chafe his body and soul in frc-
ton between his physical necessities and the scanty and
uncertain which untamed nature affords for their
qualification. And this leads conclude that IL
berry unrestrained and arbitrary is not human liberty
As Mr.. Warner justly Observes ait pure abstraction
no realized realize it, for it COMFORTS
neither with mortal frame terrestrial
dition. We made for it, capable of any thing
like it. Human liberty lies in the middle ground; il is
apower Of Acting not independently Of restraints but
under and in the midst Of them Whatever Visions
from what know Of ourselves that constituted
are and related and proportional faculties TO
the scene and work appointed for them, liberty is
esentdiy and necessarily mixed up with restraint with
much and various restraint both physical and moral in
the very doom Of the Creator" 1t is double bunder
therefore, TO deduce civil from natural liberty for in
the first place the liberty Of curailed by civil
hzation and, in the second place. is great
suppose the absence Of restraint all of the
of human freedom.
Mr. WARNER next proceeds consider Liberty in the
various applications by which all useful ends of 80
cety arenchieyed These separately treated under
the respective heads Of Liberty Of Place; Liberty Of
PleasureSeekng Liberty of Business Liberty of Con
science and Political Liberty. We compelled from
want OF space to omit oil notice Of the authors line Of
reasoning all these branches Of his general subject ex
cept the last though may say in passing that with
out subscribing all his o6 dca, have rarely
much good sense expressed topics which in most