FREEDOM : NOT MUCH SO FAR
By ROSE MACAULAY
Be free !
The beasts are chartered. Neither age nor force Canquell the love of freedom in a horse. NO, indeed. Nor, one might' add, in anyone else. Cowper was right thus far, though seriously wrong in believing beasts to be chartered. They are not even chartered libertines. It takes human beings to be chartered, and no charters have secured us, so far, much liberty. Indeed, charters, more often than not, sign liberty away, bind us in a yet closer bondage _than before.
But really, what is liberty ? One feels inclined to say, as the infant Nelson about fear, I never saw it." No human creature, in any age or land, has indeed seen Very much of it, though the nntraMmelied horse, pawing his native pastures, may gallop with the mountain nymph on his back. Or so we imagine ; thoUgh possibly, did we know equine society more intimately, we should -perceive the horse tied and bound by obligations, by social services and taboos, by public opinion and base Jaws ; he may be almost as enslaved, for all we know, as that wretched drudging insect whom someone has inaptly called " the-libertine ant." Are even the fishes that tipple in the deep as free. as we land creatures, envy- ing them their watery range; believe ? Of this, too, I feel that we knoWlittle. • • Let us leave these animals, and concentrate on human liberty. One certain thing about this exquisitely agree- able commodity is that everyone has always desired it for himself, and no one for others, for we know that liberty in our neighbours might be misused to our hurt. The consequence of this attitude is that very little of it has ever got about: We have spent the ages of human history in forging ever stronger shackles on human behaviour ; very properly, human behaviour being what it so unfortunately and usually is. A free, a lawless population would be, after all, so very inconvenient. Its members would be for ever annoying one another, With words, blows and thefts. 'We should scarcely 'dare to leave our homes, did men roam the streets as free as we suppose wild horses 'to • roam. (Wild'. What a peculiar adjective for one race of animals to apply to those members of another which do not chance to be Owned by them !) We desire freedom .only for ourselves, Who would use it" • so well. For ourSelvek a pleasant anarchy would be acceptable ; for others,. any archy is preferable to this-;• the'very word-anarchy; or chieflessness, has come to signify a revolting disorder and confusion. Give other -people' monarchy, oligarchy; ' liierarehy, patriarchy, Matriarchy, buretineracy; aristoeracy, auto- cracy, democracy, theocracy, any other archy or ocracy, lint not anarchy, or they will go about doing as they please, and that simply would not do for human beings,- however horses may manage. l• 'Liberty so quickly, in other people, expands into some- thing we call. license. The world must • not become Liberty Hall, the home .of puffed and reckless libertines. We should each of •us,-individually, ]ike"to be Puffed and reckless libertines, moving freely among obedient subjects 4' some wise and firm ruler who forbade thein to incon- venience us. But instead we are nearly all of us subjects and serfs • ourselveS ; we are enslaved, embonded, let, hindered, kept in on .every side. It is all very well for WOrdsworth to cry, grandiloquently; " We must be or free or die, who speak the tongue that Shakespeare-. spake " ; but, whatever tongue we speak, we shall not 10 free, though die we .must. Only. here and there some fortunate, cunning, and, as a rule, extremely.. ill-bred. man succeeds in obtaining relative freedom for himself, bludgeoning his way into a position where he makes and alters laws at his pleasure, and sees that his subjects obey him. Even so, he is not really free : the govem- ments of other countries oppose his will when it gets it1 their way, and even his subjects soon get rid of him, if they chance to be a people who resent what they call tyranny, though, if presiding over meeker races, he may get a good run for his money.
There have alWays been tivijat least two—odd dela= sions about freedom. Most races have believed it to be a peculiar taste of their own, and that no other race enjoys it so much as they do. The British have alway'S believed this of themselves. Being British, I am tempted to believe it too. Sometimes, thus tempted, I fall, and have to remind myself of school fagging, of our meek, if grumbling, obedience to police regulations and redundant laws. Yet, reading history, I am persuaded that cont.. parative freedom of the subject (that contradiction terms) has been a British aim ; that we have resisted many shackles endured by other nations ; that we have had more freedom of the Press, of religion, of constitu, tion, than most other peoples. But 1 do not know that; we have beaten the Dutch ; even Milton, that greik libertarian, admired the free spirit and behaviour of the Dutch. And we are far surpassed by the French in i matter of unwillingness to have our money taken from its, by the State, a most important part of freedom.
The other great illusion about.freedom is that to desire it is noble, that "They that fight for freedom undertake The noblest cause mankind can have at stake."
Weil, freedom is infinitely agreeable ; being let alone to do as one likes is the end of every man's desire ; but why noble ? The horse may be a noble animal (or not i. some horses arc pretty mean), but if he is, it is because lie works so hard for us, whom' he could easily subdue with hooves and teeth, not because he wishes, like the rest of us (including. the skunk and the rat),' to be free. Thd fact is that the appetite for freedom is universal. Tht very thought of any curtailment' of 'such. small liberty a%I we have enrages as nothing else does. Hom? angry Nfld. get with the red tapery, the ludicrous passportery, that hinders us in our peregrinations about this our globe! With what indignation we read of those savage laws that crib, cabin and confine the people of less fortunate race's' than our own ! How, when some book is ktippressedi by the law for indelicacy, we rise up and protest, the most high-minded and intelligent men and women diseoverini and proclaiming in it merits which they would never haVel„ discerned had the law not assaulted the liberty of the Press, had they not felt impelled to admonish some magistrate. how unacceptable to Gdd (as Milton, who kneW what God cannot accept, puts it) his testy mood of prohibiting is !'• Yes : we hate prohibition, but have its ugly fad always with us ; we love freedom, that sweet nymph, but too rarely see more of her than' her fleeting Shadow:i• The question that seems of importance is,' shall we see; more or less of her than before, in that curtained future'.', where our destinies lurk, grimly shrouded, in wait For my part, I would as soon toss a penny- on-it as •guess:..
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