LIBERTY. By A Banker.

Otago Witness, Issue 2263, 15 July 1897, Page 60

LIBERTY. By A Banker.

11 Give me liberty, or give me death," exclaimed a great orator, passionately pleading for his oppressed countrymen. And what is this " liberty " which i 3 looked upon as being so dear — even as dear as life itself? Addison defines it as "freedom, as opposed to slavery"; Milton as " exemption from tyranny." For without liberty some say that life were nob worth living — existence would he one long wearing drudgery, with no ray of sunshine to cheer, no distant hops towards which to press, but one long vista of dark, continuing gloom, unenlivened by any transient gleam of gladness, or any, even the remotest, expectation of relief. And in a sense all this may be true, for in mankind has been implanted that inherent love of liberty which has gradually raised him through the agea, by slow degrees, and by means of many a death struggle and many a toilsome contest, to the high pinnacle j of freedom to which all the civilised world has now attained. In the earlier history of the world liberty, in the sense in which we regard [ it, was a thing unknown. Whole nations were held under slavery ; a conquered empire was carried away captive — men, women, and children — and from the highest to the lowest were forced to do the will of their captors, without fee or reward save a bare sustenance. It is stated that in Attica alone, 317 b c , there were 400,000 slaves. And one Roman, Caeciliuß Isidorus, left to his heir 4116 slaves 12 B.C. But » few years aftar this date a mighty blow was delivered against this cruel and merciless incubus which shook it to its core ; for He appeared whose mission wa3 to proclaim liberty to the captives and the setting loose them that were bound. And from that day, as the beneficent doctrines which He taught became gradually adopted by the entire civilised world, so the baneful and brutish usage of slavery — that hateful enormity which had so long hovered like a hideous ghoul over this fair carth — has been banished for all lime, and condemned to a perpetual and well-merited extension. And to England, this land of the free, belongs the high honour of initiating the noble example of setting the captive free, "good Queen Bass," that grand ruler to whom old England owes so much, having the distinction of being the first monarch who is recorded as having taken any active steps in that direction. And the work began in her glorious reign continued to gather strength, until in 1833 the nation , voted the magnificent sum of £20,000,000 sterj liug (a sum which represented far greater value then than now; in order to set free every slave — man, woman, and child — throughout the entire British Empire, so that now, wherever the British flag waves, that flag which tve are too apt to forget is a symbol of the cross of Christ. Slaves caunot breathe ; if their lun^s BeiJeive our air, that moment they are free ; They touch our country and their shackles fall. Even liberty, however, can be carried too far, and when unrestrained by law will degenerate into license, vhich latter speedily develops into anarchy, and where anarchy reigns civilisation with all it 3 results ib destroyed, the work of centuries is annihilated, man loses all his finer qualities, every one is solely for himself, and if he cannot gain possession of his neighbour's property ha destroys it, he in his turn meeting the same fate from his fellow, until, unless the arm of the law is sufficiently strong to put down the devastating anarchy, general ruin and death must inevitably ensue (c.f., the French Commune). It is not therefore intended, in the moral gorercment of the world, that man

should have unrestrained liberty ; bat, on the contrary, he is so constituted that the higheab state of contentment and his fcrneat welfare and wellbaing are only to ba attained where freedom is subject to law, and where liberty, that heaven-born aspiration of mankind, *is not suffered to degenerate into license. Bat there is another form of liberty which unhappily so many of us will not accept, preferring a bondago infinitely more cruel than any slavery which man ha? the power of inflicting, because the latter is bub for time. The former, however, is a bondage which will be continued in the great hereafter, grinding down it 3 victims with the pang* of a self-accusing re* morse, a remorse which must be terribly intensified by the knowledge that the bondage under - which they are held was accepted voluntarily. That bondage is sin. Let us therefore stand fast in the liberty wherewith Christ has made us free, | then shall we not bz entangled again in that terrible yoke of bondage. But so overwhelmingly powerful is that yoke that no man on this earbh is able to put it from him by his own unaided effort. Happily, however, Divine aid is always available for any who will ask ib, and not only may the record against us be blotted out and obliterated in virtue of the atonement made for all who will but accept it, but we can be rescued for an etarnity from that bitter and galling bondage which has enthralled and enslaved, and gripped firm in its lethal and deadly grasp, such 'multitudes of the human race.