FREE CITIES OF GERMANY, were cities which enjoyed sovereign rights within their own walls, independent representation in the Diet, and owned allegiance solely to the emperor.  Their internal government was sometimes democratic, sometimes the opposite.  Their peculiar privileges were obtained either by force of arms, by purchase, or by gift of the emperors, who found in them a convenient means of checking the power of their feudal lords.  Most of them lost their privileges in 1803, and since 1866 only Luebeck, Bremen, and Hamburg remain in the category of free cities.

FREE PORT, name given to a port at which ships of all nations may discharge or load cargo without payment of customs or other duties, save harbour dues.  They were created in various Continental countries during the Middle Ages for the purpose of stimulating trade, but Copenhagen and, in a restricted sense, Hamburg and Bremen are now the only free ports in Europe.  The system of bonded warehousing has superseded them.

FREE SOILERS, a political party which arose in the United States in 1848 to oppose slave-extension.  In 1856 their principles were adopted, and the party absorbed in the newly-formed Republican party.

FREE TRADE, the name given to the commercial policy of England, first elaborately set forth with cogent reasoning by Adam Smith in his “Wealth of Nations,” and of which the repeal of the Corn Laws in 1846 was the first step towards its adoption.  Strictly used, the term is applicable only to international or foreign trade, and signifies a policy of strict non-intervention in the free competition of foreign goods with home goods in the home markets.  Differential duties, artificial encouragements (e. g. bounties, drawbacks), to the home producer, all of which are characteristic of a protective system of trading, are withheld, the belief being entertained by free-traders that the industrial interests of a country are best served by permitting the capital to flow into those channels of trade into which the character and resources of the country naturally dispose it to do, and also by bringing the consumer as near as possible to the cheapest producer.  But it is not considered a violation of the Free Trade principles to impose a duty for revenue purposes on such imported articles as have no home competitor, e. g. tea.

FREEMAN, EDWARD AUGUSTUS, historian, born at Mitchley Abbey, Staffordshire; was a Fellow of Trinity College, Oxford; examiner in the School of Law and Modern History; in 1884 he was elected Regius Professor of Modern History at Oxford; most of his life was spent in country retirement at Somerleaze, varied by Continental travel; he is the author of many scholarly works ranging over the whole field of history, his fame, however, mainly resting on his great “History of the Norman Conquest” (1823-1892).