3/3 HARVARD LAW REVIEW, rights of individuals. They are not mentioned in his discussion of the subject. He does, indeed, name certain other important individual rights besides those of life, personal freedom, and property, such as the right of petition, of securing justice in the courts, and of bearing arms; but he says that these serve princi- pally as networks or barriers to protect and maintain inviolate the three great and primary rights." In " Care's English Liberties," a collection of important English Charters which had a wide circulation in the American colonies, the fifth edition of which was published in Boston in 1721, we find the same classification of rights in the same terms, and in every case the term ** liberty " is explained to mean freedom of the person from restraint. For example, in his comment on the Habeas Corpus Act the author says: — There are three things which the law of England (which is a law of mercy) principally regards and taketh care of, viz., life, liberty, and estate. Next to a man's life the nearest thing that concerns him is freedom of his person ; for indeed, what is imprisonment but a kind of civil death? Therefore, saith Fortescue, cap. 42, the laws of England do, in all cases, favor liberty. The writ of Habeas Corpus is a remedy given by the common law, for such as were unlawfully^ detained in custody, to procure their liberty.-^ Chancellor Kent made precisely the same enumeration of funda- mental rights, with religious liberty added as a distinct and sepa- rate right ^ There is no suggestion of its being included in the clauses in question. Indeed, religious freedom is a modern idea, and may be regarded as one of the contributions of this country to civil Hberty. It was totally suppressed and unrecognized in England in the seventeenth century.^ In theory it does not exist in England to-day. Any person who publishes a denial of the truth of the Christian rehgion, or of the existence of God, commits a blasphemous libel, and is, on the existing law, liable to impris- onment. It matters not whether the terms of the publication are decent or otherwise. So, a denial of the truth of Christianity, or of the Scriptures, by any person who has been educated as a Christian in England, is a criminal offence, entailing severe punish- 1 Care's English Liberties (Ed. 1721), p. 185. 2 Kent's Corn's, vol. 2, chap. i. 8 Hume's History of England, vol. vi. 158, 165.
