The view of mobility and liberty in Hobbes is replicated two hundred years
later by William Blackstone, who argued that law is derived from a heady
mixture of God and physics. Th e most important principles of matter, he
argued, are the “laws of movement, to which all moveable bodies must conform.”44
Mobility, he argued, was an absolute right of man. Th e right to
personal liberty he defined as the power of “loco-movement” or the ability
of “changing situation, or removing one’s person to whatsoever place one’s
own inclination may direct; without imprisonment or restraint, unless by
due course of law.