please_;" and
then concludes, that in order to "secure some liberty," we make "a
surrender in trust of the whole of it."[139] Thus the natural rights of
mankind are first caricatured, and then sacrificed.

If there be no God, if there be no difference between right and wrong,
if there be no moral law in the universe, then indeed would men possess
a natural right to do mischief or to act as they please. Then indeed
should we be fettered by no law in a state of nature, and liberty
therein would be coextensive with power. Right would give place to
might, and the least restraint, even from the best laws, would impair
our natural freedom. But we subscribe to no such philosophy. That
learned authors, that distinguished jurists, that celebrated
philosophers, that pious divines, should thus deliberately include the
enjoyment of our natural rights and the indulgence of our evil passions
in one and the same definition of liberty, is, it seems to us, matter of
the most profound astonishment and regret. It is to confound the source
of all tyranny with the fountain of all freedom. It is to put darkness
for light, and light for darkness. And it is to inflame the minds of men
with the idea that they are struggling and contending for liberty, when,
in reality, they may be only struggling and contending for the
gratification of their malignant passions. Such an offense against all
clear thinking, such an outrage against all sound political ethics,
becomes the more amazing when we reflect on the greatness of the authors
by whom it is committed, and the stupendous magnitude of the interests
involved in their discussions.

Should we, then, exhibit the fundamental law of society, and the natural
liberty of mankind, as antagonistic principles? Is not this the way to
prepare the human mind, at all times so passionately, not to say so
madly, fond of freedom, for a repetition of those tremendous conflicts
and struggles beneath which the foundations of society have so often
trembled, and some of its best institutions been laid in the dust? In
one word, is it not high time to raise the inquiry, Whether there be, in
reality, any such opposition as is usually supposed to exist between the
law of the land and the natural rights of mankind? Whether such
opposition be real or imaginary? Whether it exists in the nature of
things, or only in the imagination of political theorists?

Sec. III. _No good law ever limits or abridges the natural liberty