LIBERTINES, SYNAGOGUE OF THE, a section of the Hellenistic Jews who
attacked Stephen (Acts vi. 9). The passage reads, [Greek: tines tôn êk
tês sunagôgês tês legomenês Libertinôn, kai Kurênaiôn kai Alexandreôn,
kai tôn apo Kilikias kai Asias], 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 [Greek: Libertinôn kai Kurênaiôn kai Alexandreôn]
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 ([Greek: Libuôn] or) [Greek: Libustinôn]
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 they declared
there should be "absolute and unqualified division of the General
Government from slavery"--which implied an amendment of the
constitution. They proposed to use ordinary moral and political means to
attain their ends--not, like the Garrisonians, to abstain from voting,
or favour the dissolution of the Union.
After 1840 the attempt began in earnest to organize the Liberty Party
thoroughly, and unite all anti-slavery men. The North-west, where "there
was, after 1840, very little known of Garrison and his methods" (T. C.
Smith), was the most promising field, but though the contest of state
and local campaigns gave morale to the party, it made scant political
gains (in 1843 it cast hardly 10% of the total vote); it could not
convince the people that slavery should be made the paramount question
in politics. In 1844, however, the Texas question gave slavery precisely
this pre-eminence in the presidential campaign. Until then, neither
Whigs nor Democrats had regarded the Liberty Party seriously; now,
however, each party charged that the Liberty movement was corruptly
auxiliary to the other. As the campaign progressed, the Whigs
alternately abused the Liberty men and made frantic appeals for their
support. But the Liberty men were strongly opposed to Clay personally;
and even if his equivocal campaign letters (see CLAY, HENRY) had not
left exceedingly small ground for belief that he would resist the
annexation of Texas, still the Liberty men were not such as to admit
that an end justifies the means; therefore they again nominated Birney.
He received 62,263 votes[2]--many more than enough in New York to have
carried that state and the presidency for Clay, had they been thrown to
his support. The Whigs, therefore, blamed the Liberty Party for
Democratic success and the annexation of Texas; but--quite apart from
the issue of political ethics--it is almost certain that though Clay's
chances were injured by the Liberty ticket, they were injured much more
outside the Liberty ranks, by his own quibbles.[3] After 1844 the
Liberty Party made little progress. Its leaders were never very strong
as politicians, and its ablest organizer, Birney, was about this time
compelled by an accident to abandon public life. Moreover, the election
of 1844 was in a way fatal to the party; for it seemed to prove that
though "abolition" was not the party programme, still its antecedents
and personnel were too radical to unite the North; and above all it
could not, after 1844, draw the disaffected Whigs, for though their
party was steadily moving toward anti-slavery their dislike of the
Liberty Party effectually prevented union. Indeed, no party of one idea
could hope to satisfy men who had been Whigs or Democrats. At the same
time, anti-slavery Whigs and Democrats were segregating in state
politics, and the issue of excluding slavery from the new territory
acquired from Mexico afforded a golden opportunity to unite all
anti-slavery men on the principle of the Wilmot Proviso (1846). The
Liberty Party reached its greatest strength (casting 74,017 votes) in
the state elections of 1846. Thereafter, though growing somewhat in New
England, it rapidly became ineffective in the rest of the North. Many,
including Birney, thought it should cease to be an isolated party of one
idea--striving for mere balance of power between Whigs and Democrats,
welcoming small concessions from them, almost dependent upon them. Some
wished to revivify it by making it a party of general reform. One result
was the secession and formation of the Liberty League, which in 1847
nominated Gerrit Smith for the presidency. No adequate effort was made
to take advantage of the disintegration of other parties. In October
1847, at Buffalo, was held the third and last national convention. John
P. Hale--whose election to the United States Senate had justified the
first successful union of Liberty men with other anti-slavery men in
state politics--was nominated for the presidency. But the nomination by
the Democrats of Lewis Cass shattered the Democratic organization in New
York and the North-west; and when the Whigs nominated General Taylor,
adopted a non-committal platform, and showed hostility to the Wilmot
Proviso, the way was cleared for a union of all anti-slavery men. The
Liberty Party, abandoning therefore its independent nominations, joined
in the first convention and nominations of the Free Soil Party (q.v.),
thereby practically losing its identity, although it continued until
after the organization of the Republican Party to maintain something of
a semi-independent organization. The Liberty Party has the unique honour
among third-parties in the United States of seeing its principles
rapidly adopted and realized.
See T. C. Smith, _History of the Liberty and Free Soil Parties in the
Northwest_ (Harvard University Historical Studies, New York, 1897),
and lives and writings of all the public men mentioned above; also of
G. W. Julian, J. R. Giddings and S. P. Chase.
LIBITINA, an old Roman goddess of funerals. She had a sanctuary in a
sacred grove (perhaps on the Esquiline), where, by an ordinance of
Servius Tullius, a piece of money (_lucar Libitinae_) was deposited
whenever a death took place. Here the undertakers (_libitinarii_), who
carried out all funeral arrangements by contract, had their offices, and
everything necessary was kept for sale or hire; here all deaths were
registered for statistical purposes. The word _Libitina_ then came to be
used for the business of an undertaker, funeral requisites, and (in the
poets) for death itself. By later antiquarians Libitina was sometimes
identified with Persephone, but more commonly (partly or completely)
with Venus Lubentia or Lubentina, an Italian goddess of gardens. The
similarity of name and the fact that Venus Lubentia had a sanctuary in
the grove of Libitina favoured this idea. Further, Plutarch (_Quaest.
Rom._ 23) mentions a small statue at Delphi of Aphrodite Epitymbia (A.
of tombs = Venus Libitina), to which the spirits of the dead were
summoned. The inconsistency of selling funeral requisites in the temple
of Libitina, seeing that she is identified with Venus, is explained by
him as indicating that one and the same goddess presides over birth and
death; or the association of such things with the goddess of love and
pleasure is intended to show that death is not a calamity, but rather a
consummation to be desired. Libitina may, however, have been originally
an earth goddess, connected with luxuriant nature and the enjoyments of
life (cf. _lub-et_, _lib-ido_); then, all such deities being connected
with the underworld, she also became the goddess of death, and that side
of her character predominated in the later conceptions.
See Plutarch, _Numa_, 12; Dion. Halic. iv. 15; Festus xvi., s.v.
"Rustica Vinalia"; Juvenal xii. 121, with Mayor's note; G. Wissowa in
Roscher's _Lexicon der Mythologie_, s.v.