BOOK XI.
Of the Laws that form political Liberty, with regard to the Constitution.
CHAP. I.
A general Idea.
Book XI.
Chap. 1, & 2.I Make a distinction between the laws that form political liberty with regard to the constitution, and those by which it is formed in respect to the citizen. The former shall be the subject of this
book; the latter I shall examine in the next.
CHAP. II.
Different Significations given to the word Liberty.
THERE is no word that has admitted of more various significations, and has made more different impressions on human minds, than that of Liberty. Some have taken it for a facility of deposing a person on whom they had conferred a tyrannical authority; others for the power of chusing a person whom they are obliged to obey; others for the right of bearing arms, and of being thereby enabled to use violence; others in fine for the privilege of being governed by a native of their own country or by their own laws[1]. A certain
- ↑ I have copied, says Cicero, Scevola's edict, which permits the Greeks to terminate their differences among themselves according to their own laws; this makes diem consider themselves as a free people.
