# Der Lutheraner_St. Louis Missouri_1855 02 13_S99
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

99

principles are repugnant to him, who bring in such laws as he abhors, in short, who, though only by one more, rule those 101 as a minority according to their own will. Fine liberty, you poor Paul! To have 102, or perhaps a couple of millions of kings, according as the majorities happen to fall; in the end you long to get out of such many-headed rule and back to your old fatherland, where you had at least only one king or prince.

Oh pshaw! cries Boor Politicus, you are a grumbler; the will of the majority must rule, it cannot be otherwise. I reply: gently, I too know that among civilized nations the will of the majority more or less rules; only I maintain that political liberty does not consist in such rule of the majority.

Says Friedlieb Flatterer: my dear fellow, the people is noble, high-hearted, honest, the majority of it will not rule tyrannically over the minority, but will preserve its rights as its own. — Do you think so? Your opinion is refuted by the history of the world. In the Republic of Rome, shortly before the birth of our Lord Christ, the majority had become so base, vulgar and cowardly that it left the government to him who gave it bread and public amusements for nothing. At the time of the French Revolution, at the end of the last century, the (active) majority of the French people was "like a swarm of bees gone mad, which swarmed about Robespierre as about its queen" and stung to death everyone who still thought in any way of right, or became suspected of thinking of right. The greatest part of a majority may be well-meaning, and yet be led completely astray. The essence of political liberty does not lie in this, that the will of the majority of the people is done.

But from Friedlieb's mouth we just now heard a little word, this: "right," and a saying of "preserving rights." Right and liberty must at least be near relations, for the special rights of a community one is wont also to call liberties, e.g. the liberties (that is, the special rights) of the University of Halle or of the cabinetmakers' profession in Nuremberg. Perhaps we shall notice what political liberty is if we ask and learn what "right" really is.

The right of individual men, as of whole communities of men, corporations, nations, is all that which secures and guarantees that they can fulfil and carry out their calling, office and service. But you have a twofold calling, a heavenly, that you are a member of the holy Christian church, a fellow citizen with the saints and of the household of God, and an earthly, that you are a member of a people and citizen of a country and as such perform certain labors. By definite ordinances and laws it is guaranteed to you, or you are secured therein, that you fulfil your heavenly calling; you can, e.g., unhindered join a congregation whose confession agrees with the Holy Scripture; whoever would disturb or hinder you and the congregation to which you belong, so that you could not hold divine service for your edification, would be punished by the magistracy; the congregation with which you are united may possess property for church and school like a single person or citizen of the country: these and other guarantees and securities, through which you are protected in the fulfilment of your heavenly calling, are your rights or, if you have whole congregations in view, rights of the Christian congregations. As concerns your earthly calling, your right consists, e.g., in the guarantee that you can perform your office in the family without anyone hindering you therein: so if anyone wished to alienate your child from you, he would be hindered therein or punished for it; and the child removed from you in some such way would be brought back to you. Another part of your earthly calling is given you with your business, and with it again other rights; thus the farmer is secured against his neighbor ploughing away part of his field, the craftsman, that his customer cheats him of payment, the merchant, that swindlers counterfeit his bills of exchange, the judge, that those he has punished avenge themselves on him for his sentences, the scholar, that his books are pirated: all called in a word rights. Your calling, that you are citizen of a country or of a city and stand under the government of a magistracy, or perhaps hold a magisterial office yourself, includes other rights. Not only individual men, but also societies, companies for the execution of important works, commercial firms, railroad companies receive protection and furtherance for their undertakings; these are their rights. In short, where calling and office are, there are rights, as manifold as the kinds of human calling themselves — they are protection and guarantee for the unhindered labor in the heavenly and earthly calling.

Right and duty hang together in the closest manner. You have rights with your calling, your neighbor with his; while he may not infringe on your right, it is not permitted you either to infringe on his; let him respect yours, you his; if you have the right of a householder, respect the right of the servants; if you are a farmer, see to it that your cattle do not get into your neighbor's Indian corn; if you are a craftsman, do not draw away the customers of your neighbor, the craftsman; if you claim the protection of the government as your right, then pay your taxes, that the magistracy may uphold protection: what your neighbors, fellow citizens, country may claim as their rights, that is your duty to render them, naturally so far as it concerns you. If you have rights, you have also duties.

The rights and duties of the citizens of a state are determined by the laws, that is by regulations in which the right of the individual citizens, as of whole communities of citizens (corporations), is established and the conduct of all among and toward one another is regulated accordingly. Note here a distinction. There are laws which state the principles according to which in a state right is to be apportioned to the individual citizen and to the civic bodies; the compilation of these principles is called the fundamental law or the constitution of a state. From this are then distinguished the laws which determine the individual rights of citizens and civic bodies according to their various kinds of calling. Thus freedom of trade, that is, that every inhabitant may carry on an honorable business of his choice in the place that pleases him, is a provision of the constitution and in particular of the compilation of the fundamental rights of the United States (the bill of rights); but that, among other things, in the streets of this or that city (like Baltimore or Philadelphia) no slaughterhouses may be erected, is one of those laws which grant a right to [illegible] corporations, in the latter case to certain inhabitants of a city, and impose upon others, in the latter case the butchers, a duty which does not hold for the whole country. Some states, as formerly the German Empire before 1356, later Prussia, Austria, etc. before 1848, have precise legal provisions for their individual citizens and corporations, but no constitutions, since then the government must form for itself the principles of its action, but so that it is bound thereby to the existing law of the land, etc., and may not act in contradiction to the same. Other states, as namely the United States themselves, have a constitution, but the derivation of the rights of the individual members of the state, corporations, civic bodies, citizens, etc., from the fundamental laws of that constitution they leave to the continuing labor of Congress, of the legislative assemblies, of the courts, so that gradually, as the arising need requires it, the individual rights of individuals come to be fixed and recorded.

But no, cries my dear reader, whither are you really going? You promised us to show what political liberty is, and have shown us first what right is, namely guarantee and security that a man or a community of men can fulfil their calling in all its parts; second, what duty is, namely that one respects the other's right; third, what law is, namely determination or establishment of the rights and duties of the citizens and civic bodies of a state. What then is political liberty? — I answer with a counter-question: How would you, dear reader, name the political condition of your nation or state, if therein full guarantee were given to you and your fellow citizens all together that you could fulfil your calling, each one his own, you all your common calling, on every side? Would you perhaps call such a condition political bondage? — I think that would be a condition of political liberty. This is the