HEAD OFFICE, MONTREAL, AUGUST 1949

OUR LIBERTIES

W E are inclined to avoid serious thought aboutfreedom--as we do other fundamentals oflife -- until it is threatened. In view of what

we see happening in the world today it is high timeto ask: what is liberty? can we keep it? what shall wedo to make sure we do keep it?

Doctrines our grandfathers held to be simple state-ments of fact are challenged in many quarters. Institu-tions painfully built up and guarded through centuriesof struggle have been overthrown. The problem ofkeeping our liberties involves the whole of civilization.

The idea of freedom seems simple, the kind of thingwe take for granted, and yet it bristles with difficulties.Most of us might be inclined to define liberty as beingallowed to do what we want to do, to live withoutpersecution, to work and earn a decent standard ofliving.

When we go farther, however, and think of the kindsof freedom, we run into complications, because civil,personal and political liberties are different in them-selves and they sometimes interfere with one another.

Here is a list of the essential human liberties prepar-ed by a committee of the American Law Institute, onwhich Canada had a representative: Freedom ofreligion, opinion, speech, assembly, and association;Freedom from wrongful interference, arbitrary deten-tion, and retroactive laws; Rights to fair trial, property,education, work, food, housing, social security, equalprotection and participation in government.

The nature and the extent of these freedoms in anynation are influenced by its heritage of moral standards,its legal tradition, and the social structure it has builtup. Every nation, and every generation, has to hammerout for itself the special pattern that will fulfil itsideals within the limitations of its environment.

It may appear foolish to ask: "Who Wants Freedom?"But when one looks around the world it is not difficultto find whole nations whose people seemingly do notwant it enough to stand up effectively for it; and evenin Canada there is evidence that not everyone ismilitantly free. So much is this true that men of thought

and goodwill are worried about the ease with whichpeople in still free countries swing toward the dic-tatorship of the state.

There are some who, for another reason, do notwant liberty. They don’t like the freedom it givesothers to behave in a different way from them. An oxmay love his yoke, and consider the deer in theforest a stray and vagrant creature.

Kinds oJ Freedom

The freedoms that are necessary in a democracyseem to divide themselves into four major kinds:Natural liberty, national liberty, political liberty andcivil liberty. These headings cover the individual’sright to do as he chooses, the nation’s right to standas a sovereign power, the right of popular or repre-sentative government, and the rights and privilegescreated and protected by the state for its subjects.

The basic right, of course, is the right to live fully.Our human personalities clamour for expression andexpansion, for recognition of our dignity as men andwomen, for the opportunity to realize all we believewe are capable of being and doing.

Imagine a graph showing the degrees of libertyenjoyed by various people. It starts near the base atthe left, rises in a sharp curve, and descends to meetthe base at the right. First on our graph are the prim-itive societies such as the one described by C. S.Forester in his novel of last year, The Sky and theForest. They are marked by anarchy, magic, and cut-throat existence. Higher on the curve we come upona society made up of hundreds of small competinggroups, with low social stability. Examples are theHoly Roman Empire and the Italian City States.Highest on our scale is the society characterized bylarge, integrated groups which represent significantinterests and values. Examples of states tending toapproach this peak are Great Britain, the UnitedStates of America and Sweden.

Starting to decline on our curve toward the right wefind countries which have allowed power to concen-trate in the hands of classes, and it doesn’t matterwhether these classes are aristocratic, bourgeois,

military, proletarian, ecclesiastic or bureaucratic. Atthe lowest point of our curve is the totalitarian state,which has destroyed all independent groups andsmothered a11 individual opinion.

Practical Freedom

Chief difficulty with so many who proclaim freedomsand rights is that they rely upon high-sounding pro-clamations and fine phrases. Liberty is lost whilethey talk soporifically about it.

The habit of substituting emotion for thinking indealing with most of the important concerns of ourlives leads us into abstract speculation about a subjectwhich must be concrete and real if it is to exist. Wecannot long remain free if we envisage liberty merelyas a state of human happiness, divorced from thethousand realities which go to make it up.

The men of the Renaissance demanded freedom tostudy classic literature and to escape the obscurantismof the age. At the time of the Reformation, libertymeant the right of private interpretation instead of lifeunder edicts. The English Revolution was out forimmunities of subjects in opposition to the power ofthe king. In Nineteenth Century England it meant freetrade instead of a government-favoured monopoly.In every instance, a battle for freedom was caused bya real issue.

In some cases, of course, the struggle for libertywent too far. We recall Madame Roland, passing theStatue of Liberty in Paris on her way to executionexclaiming: "Ah, Liberty! what crimes are committedin thy name!" Nothing makes so much mischief as theassumption by some people and some nations thatwhat they think is good for them must be good for, andshould be imposed upon, everyone else.

Like truth, freedom is a matter of reconciling andcombining opposites, and it takes a broad and impar-tim mind to make the adjustment with an approachto correctness. The world is exercised today to find acommon denominator for those who wave a red flagand shout about the rights of man, those who wave aUnion Jack and sing "Britons Never ShaU Be Slaves,"and those who salute the Stars and Stripes as theemblem of Democracy.

There is conflict in individual liberties, too. Theright of free speech does not carry with it a licence toslander; freedom of religion does not effect a completerelease from civic responsibility; liberty of the persondoes not imply the abolition of prisons. In fact, free-dom along certain lines always implies restrictionsalong other lines.

Freedom’s Duties

"A free man is as jealous of his responsibilities as heis of his liberties." This was said by Dr. F. Cyril James,Principal and Vice-Chancellor of McGill University,when he addressed the American Academy of Politicaland Social Science last year. It is a profound truth,whose universal acceptance would settle all the tem-poral disputes, difficulties and heartaches that troublethe world today.

It is not a new truth, but one lost sight of withcalamitous results. When the Declaration of Rightswas before the French National Assembly, at the timeof the French Revolution, one of the members remark-ed that if a Declaration oJ Rights was published itshould be accompanied by a Declaration of Duties.His voice was lost in the popular babel.

There is no liberty save in responsibility. The manwho is not responsible for something in the way of acontribution to human welfare is not behaving as afree man should. There are things which it is his dutyto do, and he may rightfully be made responsible tosociety if he does not do them.

Only a highly evolved man takes the broad view thatprotection of civil rights begins with respect for therights of others. To be free means that a man concedesto others their right to differ from him, and is not tooeasily shocked or scandalized when tastes differ. Heholds his own convictions rather tentatively, remem-bering that he may be wrong. He is speciaUy carefulabout beliefs which assign duties and obligations toothers, because when he demands their consent andaction he trespasses on their freedom. In fact, thatsociety is most free in which people have learned thelesson of minding their own business.

Tolerance is Essential

Friendly tolerance is far more effective in buildingfreedom within a state than are all the laws everenacted. A really tolerant people will allow the widestpossible private liberty, relying upon the commonsense of responsible individuals, the force of publicdisapproval, and the usages of custom and conventionto restrain excesses.

There are broad values in tolerance. Rememberingalways that there are two sides to every case has prac-tical usefulness as well as idealistic virtue. The greatestorator save one of antiquity said that he always studiedhis adversary’s case with as great, if not with stillgreater, carefulness than his own.

Little-minded men are opinionated. The ignorantman always believes he is right; the educated manseldom is sure that he has all the truth.

Every man who aspires to true freedom will keep inmind three precepts without which there can be noeffective liberty: What we believe is not necessarilytrue; what we like is not necessarily good; all questionsare open.

What is the Trend?

Let’s look at what freedom meant in the past andwhat is being done to preserve and extend it today.

The western nations groped their way toward free-dom over the centuries, by revolution and evolution,emphasizing always the civil and political rightsnecessary to the freedom of the individual.

The English followed a logical development. KingAlfred ordered that history should be truly set down:

thus, law by law, the right of the folk to safe-conductin their life and work, and to justice at the hands oftheir rulers, is asserted and re-asserted.

In the course of centuries there came into being anew freedom, compounded of this step by step marchof the English, the rugged, individual and belligerentfreedom of the Scotsman, the emotional, minor-keyillogical liberty of the Irishman. It is no wonder thatCanadians, inheritors of it all, find it difficult to putinto a short sentence an answer to the question: "Whatis Freedom?"

There were obstacles to be overcome, and aftereach obstacle a long stride forward. King John madethe mistake of ignoring rights which had becomecustomary for his most powerful subjects. When thebarons and the leading clergy revolted in 1215 andforced the King to sign Magna Charta, the GreatCharter of Liberties, such a stride was taken. Thatformal denial of the absolute power of the king left noroom for doubt as to its meaning: No freeman shallbe imprisoned or outlawed except by lawful judgmentof his equals; we will sell to no man, we will not denyto any man, either justice or right.

The specific freedoms of the Great Charter weremore to the British liking than the abstractions of theFrench "Rights of Man." The British did not talk of"equality" but put into specific words the law of dutiesand rights which tended to make men equal.

Freedom in Canada

Some lovers of freedom were puzzled and annoyedwhen Canada abstained from approving the Declara-tion of Human Rights adopted by the Social Com-mittee of the United Nations.

The explanation was simple. It is the very extent ofour liberties that makes it impracticable for the Cana-dian Government to subscribe to the charter of rights.Both provincial and dominion governments approvethe freedoms, but protection and development of themmust be carried on within the framework of our con-stitution, which assigns to each government its duties.Neither a province nor the federated provinces mayinfringe the rights of the other.

It seems worthwhile to quote a paragraph from anarticle by Hugh MacLennan, author of BarometerRising, Two Solitudes, and The Precipice. This article,which appeared in Foreign Affairs of April 1949,should be read by every Canadian from school pupilto elder statesman. Mr. MacLennan said:

"This country, which once was Britain’s seniorDominion and now stands on her own, has acquired apurely feminine capacity for sustaining within hernature contradictions so difficult to reconcile that mostsocieties possessing them would be torn by periodicrevolutions. Canada has acquired the good woman’shatred of quarrels, the good woman’s readiness tomake endless compromises for the sake of peacewithin the home, the good woman’s knowledge that

although her husband can knock her down if hechooses, she will be able to make him ashamed ofhimself if such an idea begins to form in his mind.Canada also possesses the hard rock which is in thecore of every good woman’s soul; any threat to herbasic values calls up a reluctant but implacable resis-tance."

Mr. MacLennan goes on to describe how, after thefall of Quebec, the British Government passed thefamous Quebec Act, "the most liberal political docu-ment enacted by a conqueror up to that time." Itguaranteed the French-Canadians freedom of religion,the right to preserve their own language in the courtsand to teach it in the schools, as well as the right tocontinue the use and practice of the French civil law.

Respect for and observance of rights and freedomsdepends to a large extent upon the convictions, char-acter and spirit of the people. Even the most liberal-seeming bill of rights may become twisted in theminds and hands of an illiberal and inept generation.It is a tribute to the love of the Canadian people forfreedom, and to their tolerance and fairness, that lifehas gone its tranquil way in this country, with progressand rising standards of living marching hand in handwith the utmost personal liberty.

The United Nations

The United Nations has expanded the idea of free-dom into a whole galaxy of ideals. Alas! it is one thingto have ideals and another to find the means to fulfilthe promises implied in the ideals. There was amoment in 1940 that was one of the great moments inhistory. It was the moment when Britain suggestedthat France unite with her and that they become onepeople, under law. Churchill proposed it, but it slippedaway in the welter ot events. How different might bethe state of Europe today if only the French p. eople hadbeen united enough to set up strong men m govern-ment to seize the most brightly burning torch of freealliance ever proferred by one nation to another.

The Charter of the United Nations provides anotheropportunity. In noble phrases it commits its members"to promote human rights and fundamental freedoms."But how is this to be brought about? The most hopefulcourse seems to lie in international agreements dealingwith relations between the nations.

If the United Nations can set up machinery for theinternational protection of human freedom and rights,it will have justified the hope of men and womeneverywhere, because observance of liberty betweennations will draw the attention of governments andpeople to conditions within their borders, and a forcewill be exerted upon domestic legislation tending topromote human rights and fundamental freedoms.

Following publication of the United Nations Charterthere developed a wide demand for specific plans togive its eloquent language significance. The HumanRights Commission drew up the Universal DeclarationoJ Human Rights, which was passed by the GeneralAssembly of the United Nations on December 10th,

1948. It is made up of 30 articles, setting forth acommon standard of achievement for all peoples andall nations. Copies are available free from me CanadianCitizenship Council, 46 Elgin Street, Ottawa, and theUnited Nations Association in Canada, 163 LaurierAvenue, W., Ottawa.

The Alternatives

The alternatives we face are freedom or non-freedom.We can have mankind dedicated to realization of thebest cultural values, upholding human dignity, dis-charging individual responsibility, assuring judicialimpartiality, and preferring the persuasion of toleranceto the compulsion of force. Or we can have menmoulded and shaped by the dictates of a supremeleader or a gang controlling the resources of a state;men so disciplined and directed from the cradle upthat they automatically obey a word of command,however obnoxious it may be.

Whatever soft language may be used in explainingtheir codes, we can have no faith whatever m thehonesty of persons professing belief in human rightsand at the same time subscribing to the doctrines ofMarx, dictatorship, revolution and the one-partysystem of government.

Such a form of government is demeaning to humandignity. It asserts that "economics determines allhuman life"--a proposition to which even clevermen may give offhand approval- but in doing so itsucceeds simply in saying that men are moved to act,not on a basis of principles or any standard of moral-ity, but by their material wants. It assumes that man isnot interested in freedom, knowledge or religion, butonly in a full stomach. It inhibits the free play of thespirit of inquiry, places blinders on the mind. It darenot allow deep philosophical thought or accuratehistorical analysis, because these would show up thebarrenness and futility of the leader’s notions.

Freedom or Dependency

Progressive development under freedom is a far cryfrom the tendency of dictators to make citizensdependent on the state. To expect success or happi-ness out of dependency is to fly in the face of history.

Plutarch, who analysed the lives of leading Greeksand Romans in the first century, declared: "The firstdestroyer of the liberties of a people is he who firstgave them bounties and largess." Referring. to Athensabout the time of Socrates, an historian writes: "Moreand more the state became a charitable institution, thechief object of which should be to provide for eachcitizen the most comfortable and the easiest life andthe most entertainment possible." Half a century laterevery national policy was abandoned, and only materialinterests were promoted. They had bread and circuses,bounties, bonuses, doles and pensions: but it was easyfor Philip of Macedon to overrun them, secure thesurrender of their political independence, and reducethem to vassals. For a modern example, look at Russia.

The duty imposed upon government in a free societyis not to take care of citizens, but to make it possible

for the citizens to take care of themselves. Every manin a free society is a proprietor, and draws on thecapital as he earns the right.

Are We DriJting?

The approach of dictatorship in the life of a freepeople has always been stealthy. Government spendingseems to promise economic prosperity, and the futurelooks bright. Under this hypnotic influence of some-thing for nothing, masses of people lose sight of thefact that this is the process by which other free peopleslost their liberty.

The price of liberty is not only eternal vigilance butunceasing work. We are careless about making ourprinciples known, about making sure they are kept inmind by governments, about seeing that every last oneof them is observed on every occasion. Liberty mustbe struggled for, achieved and jealously guarded evenin the homes of its friends. The maintenance of libertyhas to be fought for every day afresh, lest the lazyacceptance of some particular imposition give atoehold to some party that will end up by imposing ageneral tyranny.

Some of the greatest tragedies in history tell of theremorse of those peoples who did not realize the valueof human freedom and personal liberty until theserights had been snatched away or stealthily removed;then it was too late to defend them. They were peoplewho shrugged their shoulders and were silent in theface of injustice to their neighbours in the next house,the next-door country, or another continent.

To Keep Our Freedom

What is it that makes men free in society? Notwealth, nor civic position, nor dominion government,nor business power, but knowledge intelligentlyapplied. We need to be continuously educated andre-educated. Educated in the fundamentals of essentialfreedom, and re-educated to keep us up-to-date in achanging world.

John Milton has lived and written, John Locke hassaid his say for liberty, and John Stuart Mill has out-lined the principles of freedom in imperishable words.Why are not the Areopagitica and the essays onToleration and Liberty known by every High Schoolstudent? These are the fundamental principles onwhich our boasted liberty rests, as true today as ever.

Our democratic machinery may be old and wornand, as Western Canadians say of temporary machinejobs, held together with hay-wire here and there. Weknow that it is not perfect. But we also know that itoffers a fuller, freer, happier life to our people thanany totalitarian nation has ever offered, and is worthpreserving.

What we need today is a live knowledge of what isgoing on in government, not only in Canada but inother countries, and a crusading constitutional spiritfrom one end of the country to the other.

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