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Rightful liberty is unobstructed action according to our will within limits drawn around us by the equal rights of others. I do not add ‘within the limits of the law’, because law is often but the tyrant’s will, and always so when it violates the rights of the individual.
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Did you read De Toqueville’s ‘Democracy in America?’ He talks about a ‘Tyranny of the Majority.’ Sounds like that’s what you’re getting it?
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I have not yet had the pleasure of M. de Tocqueville’s volumes, yet the mischief he names is one I have long feared. A majority may wear the garments of law and still be a tyrant, if it tramples the equal rights of the few. It is precisely for that cause I draw the circle of liberty around the rights of others—not around the transient will of assemblies, however numerous or well-intentioned.
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Well said, my dear Jefferson. I have often observed that a body of men may be as absolute a tyrant as any prince—and the more dangerous for wearing the cloak of numbers. Experience keeps a dear school, yet fools will learn in no other; and if the majority will not mind the equal rights of their neighbors, they must be taught by the consequences. A republic is only as free as its least secure citizen.
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