The very word " servant " suggests slave by its de-
rivation. " It is familiar," says Mr. W. 0. Holmes in
his treatise on the Common Law, " that the status of
a servant maintains many marks of the time when he
was a slave. The liability of the master for his torts
is one instance."

We hear much of liberty in this country ; we boast
of it ; our historians laud it, and tell in impassioned
words by what manner of men and by what efforts and
self-sacrifices it was won; our philosophers write
treatises upon it, and our poets dedicate odes and
sonnets in its honour. Yet this much-glorified liberty,
valuable though it is, is liberty in the political sense
only ; and as, in the words of Hobbes, political liberty
is political power, the liberty we praise is the power
to participate in government, and the struggles by



THE PROGKESS OF THE "MASSES." 103



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which that power was gained were the struggles made
in removing the restraints that forbade men to grasp
it. Yet all this time liberty, in the fuller and truer
sense of the word — that is to say, liberty of the person
— was comparatively neglected. This liberty of the
person has been classed by philosophers and jurists
among " primordial " or " natural " rights. Yet from
the way in which it has been regarded one would
rather be inclined to say that, so far from being
" primordial," it was one of the last rights to be
granted to suffering humanity. It is a remarkable
thing how men have fought and suffered for political
liberty, while they have only lightly estimated
personal and individual liberty. The Athenians, who
commemorated in song Harinodius and Aristogeiton,
exhibited a callous indifference to the great slave
population bowed down beneath their yoke. Brutus,
in his love of political liberty, stayed not his hand
from the murder of Caesar, but raised not a finger to
relieye the numberless slaves that formed so large a
part of Eoman society. When Thrasea Pcetus opened
his veins, and as the blood flowed cried, "I pour a
libation to Jupiter the Deliverer," he had in his mind
the deliverer from political tyranny rather than the
deliverer from the tyranny of the slave-master. 