The Primacy of Liberty (Juliana Geran Pilon, 11/16/22, Law & Liberty)

[A]ccording to Gertrude Himmelfarb in The Roads to Modernity,] The British, French, and American Enlightenments, "took a form very different from that of its counterpart on the continent." For while the Scots like Adam Smith and David Hume acknowledged that reason is common to all human beings, it was the virtues of benevolence and sympathy "which, the British believed, naturally, instinctively, habitually bound people to each other. They did not deny reason; they were by no means irrationalists. But they gave reason a secondary, instrumental role." Or as she put it elsewhere, "[w]here the British idea of compassion lent itself to a variety of practical, meliorative policies to relieve social problems, the French appeal to reason could be satisfied with nothing less than the 'regeneration' of man." Whereas the French were engaging in Platonic republic-building, the practical Brits were working with humans as they were, not as they might be.

This was even more true of the Scots. For while they agreed with Locke regarding the centrality of the individual in political life, the universality of rights, and the need to protect the rule of law against illegitimate government power, no matter how putatively well-intentioned, they put greater faith in common sense. Ultimately, the combined Anglo-Saxon contribution to the American experience exceeded that of the French. Had it been otherwise, wrote Himmelfarb, "Americans could have injected into their Revolution a larger utopian mission, rather than the pragmatic, cautious temper conspicuous in The Federalist and the Constitution." A great admirer of Lord Acton, she agreed with his view of the American revolutionist as the true liberal. He is someone who "stakes his life, his fortune, the existence of his family," wrote Lord Acton, "not to resist the intolerable reality of oppression, but the remote possibility of wrong, of diminished freedom." The American Constitution was unique in being both democratic and liberal: "It was democracy in its highest perfection, armed and vigilant, less against aristocracy and monarchy than against its own weakness and excess.... It resembled no other known democracy, for it respected freedom, authority, and law."

Lord Acton had disdained the French revolutionaries whose notorious "passion for equality made vain the hope of freedom." He advocated semantic vigilance. For "[i]f hostile interests have wrought much injury," he wrote in The History of Freedom in Antiquity, "false ideas [about liberty] have wrought still more." Lord Acton was prepared to offer a proper definition: "By liberty I mean the assurance that every man shall be protected in doing his duty against the influence of authority and majorities, custom and opinion." Ideally, such an assurance should be provided to every human being, unqualifiedly. A just state will do that; but whether that assurance is effective depends on prudent statecraft. Going one step beyond Aristotle, Lord Acton offered an objective criterion: "The most certain test by which we judge whether a country is really free is the amount of security enjoyed by minorities."

Foremost among those minorities are the Jews, whom Lord Acton praised for their moral and political acumen. He credited "the Chosen People [with providing] the first illustrations of a federated government, held together not on physical force, but on a voluntary covenant. The principle was carried out not only in each tribe, but in every group of at least 120 families; and there was neither privilege of rank nor inequality before the law." Their example, alongside the American experiment, thus offers a useful lesson. "[T]he parallel lines on which all freedom has been won," wrote Acton, are clear: "the doctrine of national tradition and the doctrine of the higher law; the principle that a constitution grows from a root, by process of development, and not of essential change; and the principle that all political authority must be tested and reformed according to a code which was not made by man."