social state, surrendered their original freedom, implies that they entered into such state voluntarily, does it not?"

"It does."

"Then they must have considered the social state preferable to that under which they had previously lived?"

"Necessarily."

"Why did it appear preferable?"

"Because it offered greater security."

"Greater security for what?"

"Greater security for life, for property, for the things that minister to happiness."

"Exactly. To get more happiness: that must have been the object. If they had expected to get more unhappiness, they would not have willingly made the change, would they?" "No."

"Does not happiness consist in the due satisfaction of all the desires? in the due exercise of all the faculties?"

"Yes."

"And this exercise of the faculties is impossible without freedom of action. The desires cannot be satisfied without liberty to pursue and use the objects of them."

"True."

"Now it is this freedom to exercise the faculties within specific limits, which we signify by the term ' rights,' is it not?" (Page 77.)

"It is."

"Well, then, summing up your answers, it seems that, by your hypothesis, man entered the social state voluntarily; which means that he entered it for the sake of obtaining greater happiness; which means that he entered it to obtain fuller exercise of his faculties; which means that he entered it to obtain security for such exercise; which means that he entered it for the guaranteeing of his ' rights.""

"Put your proposition in a more tangible form."

"Very good. If this is too abstract a statement for you, let us attempt a simpler one. You say that a state of political com

bination was preferred mainly because it afforded greater security for life and property than the isolated state, do you not?"

66

Certainly."

Are not a man's claims to his life and his property amongst what we term his rights; and moreover, the most important of them?"

"They are."

"Then to say that men formed themselves into communities to prevent the constant violation of their claims to life and property, is to say that they did it for the preservation of their rights?"

"It is."

"Wherefore, either way we find that the preservation of rights was the object sought."

"So it would seem."

"But your hypothesis is that men give up their rights on entering the social state?"

"Yes."

"See now how you contradict yourself. You assert that on becoming members of a society, men give up, what by your own showing they joined it the better to obtain!"

"Well, perhaps I ought not to have said that they 'give up' their rights, but that they place them in trust." "In whose trust?"

"In that of a government."

"A government, then, is a kind of agent employed by the members of a community, to take care of, and administer for their benefit, something given into its charge?"

"Exactly."

"And of course, like all other agents, exercises authority only at the will of those who appoint it-performs all that it is commissioned to do subject to their approval?"

"Just so."

"And the things committed to its charge still belong to the original owners. The title of the people to the rights they

have placed in trust continues valid: the people may demand from this agent the full benefit accruing from these rights; and may, if they please, resume possession of them?"

Not so."

"Not so! What, can they not reclaim their own?"

"No. Having once consigned their rights into the keeping of a legislature, they must be content with such use of them as that legislature permits."

And thus we arrive at the curious doctrine above referred to, that the members of a community having entrusted an estate (their rights) to the care of a steward (their government), thereby lose all proprietorship in such estate, and can have no benefit from it, except what their steward pleases to vouchsafe!

§ 6.

But it is needless to assault this theory of governmentomnipotence from without, for it is betrayed from within. It is self-destructive. It is disproved by its own innermost principle. The very witness called to testify of its truth lets out its falsity. For to what end is this attempted denial of rights? It is to the end of establishing the law of the greatest happiness to the greatest number-a law to carry out which government is said to exist-a law by whose dictates alone government ought to be guided-a law, therefore, of higher authority than government; antecedent to it-a law to which government must be subservient, subordinate. But what, when scrutinized, does this law of the greatest happiness to the greatest number resolve itself into? Why, into the ultrademocratic dogma-all men have equal rights to happiness (page 22). Wherefore it is to carry out the law—all men have equal rights to happiness, that government exists. And thus, even according to the opposition hypothesis, rights are the be-all and end-all of government; and rank above it, as the end above the means.

CHAPTER XIX.

THE RIGHT TO IGNORE THE STATE.

$ 1.

As a corollary to the proposition that all institutions must be subordinated to the law of equal freedom, we cannot choose but admit the right of the citizen to adopt a condition of voluntary outlawry. If every man has freedom to do all that he wills, provided he infringes not the equal freedom of any other man, then he is free to drop connection with the state to relinquish its protection, and to refuse paying towards its support. It is self-evident that in so behaving he in no way trenches upon the liberty of others; for his position is a passive one; and whilst passive he cannot become an aggressor. It is equally selfevident that he cannot be compelled to continue one of a political corporation, without a breach of the moral law, seeing that citizenship involves payment of taxes; and the taking away of a man's property against his will, is an infringement of his rights (p. 184). Government being simply an agent employed in common by a number of individuals to secure to them certain advantages, the very nature of the connection implies that it is for each to say whether he will employ such an agent or not. If any one of them determines to ignore this mutual-safety confederation, nothing can be said except that he loses all claim to its good offices, and exposes himself to the danger of maltreatment a thing he is quite at liberty to do if he likes. He cannot be coerced into political combination without a breach of the law of equal freedom; he can withdraw from it without committing any such breach; and he has therefore a right so to withdraw.

§ 2.

"No human laws are of any validity if contrary to the law of nature; and such of them as are valid derive all their force and all their authority mediately or immediately from this original." Thus writes Blackstone, to whom let all honour be given for having so far outseen the ideas of his time; and, indeed, we may say of our time. A good antidote, this, for those political superstitions which so widely prevail. A good check upon that sentiment of power-worship which still misleads us by magnifying the prerogatives of constitutional governments as it once did those of monarchs. Let men learn that a legislature is not "our God upon earth," though, by the authority they ascribe to it, and the things they expect from it, they would seem to think it is. Let them learn rather that it is an institution serving a purely temporary purpose, whose power, when not stolen, is at the best borrowed.

Nay, indeed, have we not seen (p. 13) that government is essentially immoral? Is it not the offspring of evil, bearing about it all the marks of its parentage? Does it not exist because crime exists? Is it not strong, or, as we say, despotic, when crime is great? Is there not more liberty, that is, less government, as crime diminishes? And must not government cease when crime ceases, for very lack of objects on which to perform its function? Not only does magisterial power exist because of evil, but it exists by evil. Violence is employed to maintain it; and all violence involves criminality. Soldiers, policemen, and gaolers; swords, batons, and fetters, are instruments for inflicting pain; and all infliction of pain is in the abstract wrong. The state employs evil weapons to subjugate evil, and is alike contaminated by the objects with which it deals, and the means by which it works. Morality cannot recognise it; for morality, being simply a statement of the perfect law, can give no countenance to anything growing out of, and living by, breaches of that law (Chap. I.). Where