He abdicates all right to be
his own governor. He inclusively, in a great measure, abandons the
right of self-defense, the first law of nature. Men cannot enjoy the
rights of an uncivil and of a civil state together. That he may obtain
justice, he gives up his right of determining what it is in points the
most essential to him. That he may secure some liberty, he makes a
surrender in trust of the whole of it.
Government is not made in virtue of natural rights, which may
and do exist in total independence of it, and exist in much greater
clearness and in a much greater degree of abstract perfection; but
their abstract perfection is their practical defect. By having a right
to everything they want everything. Government is a contrivance of
human wisdom to provide for human wants. Men have a right that these
wants should be provided for by this wisdom. Among these wants is to
be reckoned the want, out of civil society, of a sufficient
restraint upon their passions. Society requires not only that the
passions of individuals should be subjected, but that even in the mass
and body, as well as in the individuals, the inclinations of men
should frequently be thwarted, their will controlled, and their
passions brought into subjection. This can only be done by a power out
of themselves, and not, in the exercise of its function, subject to
that will and to those passions which it is its office to bridle and
subdue.
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