itself, as both Locke
and Burke agree, that any man should be "judge in his own case;" that
any man should, by an _ex post facto_ decision, determine the amount of
punishment due to his enemy, and proceed to inflict it upon him. Such a
course, indeed, so far from preventing offenses, would inevitably
promote them; instead of redressing injuries, would only add wrong to
wrong; and instead of introducing order, would only make confusion worse
confounded, and turn the moral world quite upside down.

On no ground, then, upon which the right to punish may be conceived to
rest, does it appear that it was ever possessed, or could ever have been
possessed, by the individual. And if the individual never possessed such
a right, it is clear that he has never transferred it to society. Hence,
this view of the origin of government, however plausible at first sight,
or however generally received, has no real foundation in the nature of
things. It is purely a creature of the imagination of theorists; one of
the phantoms of that manifold, monstrous, phantom deity called Liberty,
which has been so often invoked by the _pseudo_ philanthropists and
reckless reformers of the present day to subvert not only the law of
capital punishment, but also other institutions and laws which have
received the sanction of both God and man.

The simple truth is, that we are all bound by the law of nature and the
law of God to love our neighbor as ourselves. Hence it is the duty of
every man, in a state of nature, to do all in his power to protect the
rights and promote the interests of his fellow-men. It is the duty of
all men to consult together, and concert measures for the general good.
Right here it is, then, that the law of man, the constitution of civil
society, comes into contact with the law of God and rests upon it. Thus,
civil society arises, not from a surrender of individual rights, but
from a right originally possessed by all; nay, from a solemn duty
originally imposed upon all by God himself--a duty which must be
performed, whether the individual gives his consent or not. The very law
of nature itself requires, as we have seen, not only the punishment of
the offender, but also that he be punished acccording to a
pre-established law, and by the decision of an impartial tribunal. And
in the enactment of such law, as well as in the administration, the
collective wisdom of society, or its agents, moves in obedience to the
law of God, and not