ract place and abstract body
for which we should be proud and thankful; in other words, that
it is not a right in any sense, but only a concession. Mr.
President, I do not hold my liberties by any such tenure. On the
contrary, I believe that whenever you establish that doctrine,
whenever you crystalize that idea in the public mind of this
country, you ring the death-knell of American liberties. You take
from each, what is perhaps the highest safeguard of all, the
conviction that there are rights of men embracing their liberty
in society, and substitute a skepticism on all matters of
personal freedom and popular liberties which will lay them open
to be overthrown whenever society shall become sufficiently
corrupted by partyism or whenever constitutional majorities shall
become sufficiently exasperated by opposition.

Mr. President, so important, yea, so crucial, so to speak, do I
deem this position, that I trust I may be pardoned by the Senate
if I refer to the abstract grounds, the invincible agreement upon
which I deem it to rest. I do this the more readily because in my
belief the metaphysical always controls ultimately the practical
in all the affairs of life. Now, what are abstract rights? And
are there any intrinsic necessary conditions that go to
constitute liberty in society? I believe that there are, and that
those conditions are as determinable as the liberties they
protect. The foundation upon which all free government rests, and
out of which all natural rights flow as from a common center, has
been well stated by Mr. Herbert Spencer in a late work on "Social
Statics," to be "the liberty of each limited by the like liberty
of all." As the fundamental truth originating and yet
circumscribing the validity of laws and constitutions, it can not
be stated in a simpler form. As the rule in conformity with which
society must be organized, and which distinguishes where the
rightful subordination terminates, and where tyranny, whether of
majorities or minorities, begins, it can not be too much
commended. "Every man has freedom to do all that he wills,
provided he infringes not the equal freedom of any other man," is
stated as the law of just social relationships, and in it the
rights of individual liberty of thought, of speech, of action,