William Cobbett On Freedom

FREEDOM is not an empty sound; it is not an abstract idea; it is not a thing that nobody can feel. It means, and it means nothing else, the full and quiet enjoyment of your own property. If you have not this; if this be not well secured to you, you may call yourself what you will, but you are a slave.

— WIlliam Cobbett, A History of the Protestant Reformation in England and Ireland