er guardianship, and thus restrained
in what might be claimed as their rightful disposal of their own property.
This may be justified on the ground that, by persistent wastefulness, they
may throw upon the public the charge of their own support and that of
their families.

*Imprisonment* is, on the part of society, a measure, not of revenge, but
of self-defence. The design of this mode of punishment is, first, to
prevent the speedy repetition of the crime on the part of the person
punished; secondly, so to work, either upon his moral nature by
confinement, labor, and instruction, or at the worst, on his fears, by the
dread of repeated and longer restraint, that he may abstain from crime in
future; and lastly, to deter those who might otherwise be tempted to crime
from exposing themselves to its penal consequences. As regards the
prisoner, he has justly forfeited the right to liberty by employing it in
aggression on the rights of others.

As regards acts not in themselves wrong, the freedom of the individual is
rightfully restrained, when it would interfere with the health, comfort,
or lawful pursuits of his neighbors. Thus no man has the right, either
legal or moral, to establish, in an inhabited vicinage, a trade or
manufacture which confessedly poisons the air or the water in his
neighborhood; nor has one a moral right (even if there are technical
difficulties in the way of declaring his calling a nuisance), to annoy his
neighbors by an avocation grossly offensive or intolerably noisy. It is on
this ground alone that legislation with reference to the Lord's day can be
justified. Christians have no right to impose upon Jews, Pagans, or
infidels, entire cessation of labor, business, or recreation on Sunday,
and the attempt at coercive measures of this kind can only react to the
damage of the cause in which they are instituted. But if the majority of
the people believe it their duty to observe the first day of the week as a
day of rest and devotion, they have a right to be protected in its
observance by the suppression of such kinds, degrees, and displays of
labor and recreation as would essentially interfere with their employment
of the day for its sacred uses.

2. *The right to property* is an inevitable corollary from the right to
liberty; for this implies freedom to labor at one's will, and to what
purpose can a man labor, unless he can make the fruit of his labor his
own? All property, except land, has been create