Pedro, Otuzco, Huamachuco, Santiago de Chuco and Tuyabamba—all provincial capitals and important only through their mining interests, except San Pedro, which stands in the fertile district of the Jequetepeque. The population of Otuzco (35 m. N.E. of Trujillo) was estimated to be about 4000 in 1896, that of Huamachuco (65 m. N.E. of Trujillo) being perhaps slightly less.
LIBERTARIANISM (from Lat. libertas, freedom), in ethics, the doctrine which maintains the freedom of the will, as opposed to necessitarianism or determinism. It has been held in various forms. In its extreme form it maintains that the individual is absolutely free to chose this or that action indifferently (the liberum arbitrium indifferentiae), but most libertarians admit that acquired tendencies, environment and the like, exercise control in a greater or less degree.
LIBERTINES, the nickname, rather than the name, given to various political and social parties. It is futile to deduce the name from the Libertines of Acts vi. 9; these were “sons of freedmen,” for it is vain to make them citizens of an imaginary Libertum, or to substitute (with Beza) Libustines, in the sense of inhabitants of Libya. In a sense akin to the modern use of the term “libertine,” i.e. a person who sets the rules of morality, &c., at defiance, the word seems first to have been applied, as a stigma, to Anabaptists in the Low Countries (Mark Pattison, Essays, ii. 38). It has become especially attached to the liberal party in Geneva, opposed to Calvin and carrying on the tradition of the Liberators in that city; but the term was never applied to them till after Calvin’s death (F. W. Kampschulte, Johann Calvin). Calvin, who wrote against the “Libertins qui se nomment Spirituelz” (1545), never confused them with his political antagonists in Geneva, called Perrinistes from their leader Amadeo Perrin. The objects of Calvin’s polemic were the Anabaptists above mentioned, whose first obscure leader was Coppin of Lisle, followed by Quintin of Hennegau, by whom and his disciples, Bertram des Moulins and Claude Perseval, the principles of the sect were disseminated in France. Quintin was put to death as a heretic at Tournai in 1546. His most notable follower was Antoine Pocquet, a native of Enghien, Belgium, priest and almoner (1540–1549), afterwards pensioner of the queen of Navarre, who was a guest of Bucer at Strassburg (1543–1544) and died some time after 1560. Calvin (who had met Quintin in Paris) describes the doctrines he impugns as pantheistic and antinomian.
See Choisy in Herzog-Hauck’s Realencyklopädie (1902). (A. Go.*)
LIBERTINES, SYNAGOGUE OF THE, a section of the Hellenistic Jews who attacked Stephen (Acts vi. 9). The passage reads, τίνες τῶν ἐκ τῆς συναγωγῆς τῆς λεγομένης Λιβερτίνων, καὶ Κυρηναίων καὶ Ἀλεξανδρέων, καὶ τῶν ἀπὸ Κιλικίας καὶ Ἀσίας, and opinion is divided as to the number of synagogues here named. The probability is that there are three, corresponding to the geographical regions involved, (1) Rome and Italy, (2) N.E. Africa, (3) Asia Minor. In this case “the Synagogue of the Libertines” is the assembly of “the Freedmen” from Rome, descendants of the Jews enslaved by Pompey after his conquest of Judaea 63 B.C. If, however, we take Λιβερτίνων καὶ Κυρηναίων καὶ Ἀλεξανδρέων closely together, the first name must denote the people of some city or district. The obscure town Libertum (inferred from the title Episcopus Libertinensis in connexion with the synod of Carthage, A.D. 411) is less likely than the reading (Λιβύων or) Λιβυστίνων underlying certain Armenian versions and Syriac commentaries. The Greek towns lying west from Cyrene would naturally be called Libyan. In any case the interesting point is that these returned Jews, instead of being liberalized by their residence abroad, were more tenacious of Judaism and more bitter against Stephen than those who had never left Judaea.
LIBERTY (Lat. libertas, from liber, free), generally the state of freedom, especially opposed to subjection, imprisonment or slavery, or with such restricted or figurative meaning as the circumstances imply. The history of political liberty is in modern days identified practically with the progress of civilization. In a more particular sense, “a liberty” is the term for a franchise, a privilege or branch of the crown’s prerogative granted to a subject, as, for example, that of executing legal process; hence the district over which the privilege extends. Such liberties are exempt from the jurisdiction of the sheriff and have separate commissions of the peace, but for purposes of local government form part of the county in which they are situated. The exemption from the jurisdiction of the sheriff was recognized in England by the Sheriffs Act 1887, which provides that the sheriff of a county shall appoint a deputy at the expense of the lord of the liberty, such deputy to reside in or near the liberty. The deputy receives and opens in the sheriff’s name all writs, the return or execution of which belongs to the bailiff of the liberty, and issues to the bailiff the warrant required for the due execution of such writs. The bailiff then becomes liable for non-execution, mis-execution or insufficient return of any writs, and in the case of non-return of any writ, if the sheriff returns that he has delivered the writ to a bailiff of a liberty, the sheriff will be ordered to execute the writ notwithstanding the liberty, and must cause the bailiff to attend before the high court of justice and answer why he did not execute the writ.
In nautical phraseology various usages of the term are derived from its association with a sailor’s leave on shore, e.g. liberty-man, liberty-day, liberty-ticket.
A History of Modern Liberty, in eight volumes, of which the third appeared in 1906, has been written by James Mackinnon; see also Lord Acton’s lectures, and such works as J. S. Mill’s On Liberty and Sir John Seeley’s Introduction to Political Science.
LIBERTY PARTY, the first political party organized in the United States to oppose the spread and restrict the political power of slavery, and the lineal precursor of the Free Soil and Republican parties. It originated in the Old North-west. Its organization was preceded there by a long anti-slavery religious movement. James G. Birney (q.v.), to whom more than to any other man belongs the honour of founding and leading the party, began to define the political duties of so-called “abolitionists” about 1836; but for several years thereafter he, in common with other leaders, continued to disclaim all idea of forming a political party. In state and local campaigns, however, non-partisan political action was attempted through the questioning of Whig and Democratic candidates. The utter futility of seeking to obtain in this way any satisfactory concessions to anti-slavery sentiment was speedily and abundantly proved. There arose, consequently, a division in the American Anti-slavery Society between those who were led by W. L. Garrison (q.v.), and advocated political non-resistance—and, besides, had loaded down their anti-slavery views with a variety of religious and social vagaries, unpalatable to all but a small number—and those who were led by Birney, and advocated independent political action. The sentiment of the great majority of “abolitionists” was, by 1838, strongly for such action; and it was clearly sanctioned and implied in the constitution and declared principles of the Anti-slavery Society; but the capture of that organization by the Garrisonians, in a “packed” convention in 1830, made it unavailable as a party nucleus—even if it had not been already outgrown—and hastened a separate party organization. A convention of abolitionists at Warsaw, New York, in November 1839 had resolved that abolitionists were bound by every consideration of duty and expediency to organize an independent political party. Accordingly, the political abolitionists, in another convention at Albany, in April 1840, containing delegates from six states but not one from the North-west, launched the “Liberty Party,” and nominated Birney for the presidency. In the November election he received 7069 votes.[1]
The political “abolitionists” were abolitionists only as they were restrictionists: they wished to use the federal government to exclude (or abolish) slavery from the federal Territories and the District of Columbia, but they saw no opportunity to attack slavery in the states—i.e. to attack the institution per se; also
- ↑ Mr T. C. Smith estimates that probably not one in ten of even professed abolitionists supported Birney; only in Massachusetts did he receive as much as 1% of the total vote cast.
