1.10.2009

"As liberty consists only in being subject to no man's will, and nothing denotes a slave but dependence on the will of another; if there be no other law in a kingdom than the will of a prince, there is no such thing as liberty." -Algernon Sidney, Discourses Concerning Government.

John Milton, in The Tenure of Kings and Magistrates:

"And surely they that shall boast, as we doe, to be a free Nation, and not have in themselves the power to remove, or to abolish any government supreme, or
subordinat, with the government it self upon urgent causes, may please their fancy with a ridiculous and painted freedom, fit to coz'n babies; but are indeed under tyranny and servitude; as wanting that power, which is the root and sourse of all liberty, to dispose and oeconomize in the Land which God hath giv'n them, as Maisters of Family in their own house and free inheritance. Without which natural and essential power of a free Nation, though bearing high their heads, they can in due esteem be thought no better than slaves and vassals born, to the tenure and occupation of another inheriting Lord. Whose government, though not illegal, or intolerable, hangs over them as a Lordly scourge, not as a free government; and therefore to be abrogated."

Historian Quentin Skinner, Liberty Before Liberalism:

"If and only if you live under such a self-governing system will your rulers be deprived of any discretionary powers of coercion, and in consequence deprived of any tyrannical capacity to reduce you and your fellow-citizens to a condition of dependence on their goodwill, and hence to the status of slaves."

"As Sidney makes clear, it is the mere possibility of your being subjected with impunity to arbitrary coercion, not the fact of your being coerced, that takes away your liberty and reduces you to the condition of a slave."