It was at that
time they first entered into the _exercise_ of their natural, individual
rights. Neither our Declaration, nor our Constitution created a single
right; they merely recognized certain rights as in existence. They
recognized those rights as human rights,--as inalienable rights,--as
rights existing by virtue of common humanity. Natural rights never
change, but the power to perceive these natural rights does change, and
various nations have had their own standard.
Three names, said to be the sweetest the world ever knew, are mother,
home, and heaven. There is one still sweeter--one for which men have
given up mother and home, and for which they have almost sacrificed the
hope of heaven; that word is LIBERTY.
When the fires of liberty began to creep through Europe in the middle
ages, at a time when hereditary monarchs and the catholic church ruled
the world, men placed its safeguards in municipal corporations. The idea
of municipal corporations descended from Rome to the rest of Europe, and
"free cities" became the germ of personal freedom. But a new world was
needed for the great experiment of individual freedom. Macauley calls
government an experimental science and therefore a progressive science;
history shows this to be true.
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