Free states and individual liberty
The second wave of the attack then follows at once. As soon as this confusion is uncovered, we can see that the basic claim made by the neo-roman theorists to the effect that you can only be free in a free state is simply a mistake. The extent of your freedom as a citizen depends on the extent to which you are left unconstrained by the coercive apparatus of the law from exercising your powers at will. Bus this means that what matters for civic liberty is not who makes the laws, but simply how many laws are made, and thus how many of your actions are in fact constrained. This in turn shows that there is no necessary connection between the preservation of individual liberty and the maintenance of any particular form of government. As Paley concludes, there is no reason in principle why ‘an absolute form of government’ might not leave you ‘no less free than the purest democracy’
The objection seems a not unnatural one; even