Presentation for Leonard Liggio

Philadelphia Society, April 3, 1993

William F. Campbell

Louisiana State University

It is my great pleasure to be able to make a presentation to our outgoing President Leonard Liggio. Who else can make the living difference between a libertine and a libertarian so vivid? Who else has put the case for libertarianism so richly draped in historical gowns and religious garb instead of naked psychological abstractions? Who else could have complained that, "Human beings are sacrificed to abstractions--a holocaust of individuals is offered up to `the People.'"

Who else could remind us that the original impetus for free trade was not just simply improved living standards for the masses but a pacific vision of the world where war becomes unthinkable because of economic interdependence? "...the progress of civilization, the commercial tendency of the epoch, and the communication of the various peoples among themselves have multiplied and have given an infinite variety to the means of personal happiness. It follows that we ought to be more attached than the ancients to our individual independence...The purpose of the moderns is security in private enjoyment; and they give the name liberty to the guarantees accorded by the institutions to that enjoyment."

Who else could recognize that as Samuel Johnson put it, the purpose of life is to be essentially private, to be allowed to live happily at home, and in our day and age to be allowed to die at home? But at the same time could warn us that, "The danger is that we will be so absorbed in the enjoyment of our private independence and in the pursuit of our particular interests that we will renounce too easily our right of participation in political power."

Leonard has lived these words by participating in the public arena, not as a holder of political power, but as one who understands that it is ideas not vested interests which determine things in the long run. I am not free to divulge the source of this phrase in these surroundings, but it is the same person who stated the empirically non-testable proposition that in the long run we are all dead.

But at the same time who could better describe the U.S. Congress when it is operating without limits? "When no limits are set to the representative authority, the representatives of the people are not the defenders of liberty, but the candidates for tyranny. Moreover, once tyranny comes to be, it may well be the more hideous for the tyrants being more numerous....An assembly which can neither be suppressed nor restrained is, of all possible authorities, the blindest in its movements and the most incalculable in its results, even for the members who compose it. It plunges into excesses which, on a first view seem inconceivable. An ill-considered bustle about everything; an endless multiplicity of laws; the desire to gratify the passions of the popular party by self-abandonment to their pressure or even by encouraging them to press; the rancorous hatred inspired in it by the resistance which it meets or the disapproval which it senses; the flouting of national sentiments and the stubborn clinging to error; often enough the esprit de corps which gives strength but for usurpation only; the alternation of rashness and timidity, violence and feebleness, favouritism to one and distrust of all; the motivation by purely physical sensations, such as enthusiasm or panic; the absence of all moral responsibility, and the certitude of safety in numbers from either the reproach of cowardice or the dangers attending on rashness; such are the vices of assemblies when they are not confined within bounds which they cannot overstep."

Who else has carried out the great traditions of De Tocqueville and Acton in linking liberty and religious faith? Who could say, "Christianity has introduced moral and political liberty into the world." "If Christianity has been often despised, it is because men have not understood it. Lucian was incapable of understanding Homer; Voltaire has never understood the Bible."

Or who could better have described than Leonard the rise of the administrative state: "From a society ground to dust emerged centralization. Centralization has not arrived, as so many other no less dangerous doctrines, with bold arrogance and the authority of a principle; it has insinuated itself modestly, as a consequence, as a necessary evil. Indeed, where we have nothing but `individuals,' all matters which are not properly theirs are public affairs, affairs of the State....This is how we became an administered nation."

Coming from Louisiana always allows me an oddball comment or two, useful for introductions. Who else but Leonard Liggio could find the great threads of the French connection, indeed they might even be called the cords of French Liberalism, and show some of them to be friends of ordered liberty?

Now many of you may suspect by now that my quotes had a little cast of the antique about them. In fact all the passages read came from two pillars of the French tradition, prints of whom we are giving Leonard this morning, Benjamin Constant (1757-1830) and Royer-Collard (1763-1845). But I believe that they are all quotes which could have been written by Leonard himself. Leonard, we thank you for your firm but gentle guidance both of the Institute for Humane Studies and the Philadelphia Society.