the company promises to do;
what it is likely to do; and what are the rates of insurance. If he be
satisfied on all these points, he will become a member, pay his premium
for a year, and then hold the company to its contract. If the conduct of
the company prove unsatisfactory, he will let his policy expire at the
end of the year for which he has paid; will decline to pay any further
premiums, and either seek insurance elsewhere, or take his own risk
without any insurance. And as men act in the insurance of their ships
and dwellings, they would act in the insurance of their properties,
liberties and lives, in the political association, or government.

The political insurance company, or government, have no more right, in
nature or reason, to _assume_ a man's consent to be protected by them,
and to be taxed for that protection, when he has given no actual
consent, than a fire or marine insurance company have to assume a man's
consent to be protected by them, and to pay the premium, when his actual
consent has never been given. To take a man's property without his
consent is robbery; and to assume his consent, where no actual consent
is given, makes the taking none the less robbery. If it did, the
highwayman has the same right to assume a man's consent to part with his
purse, that any other man, or body of men, can have. And his assumption
would afford as much moral justification for his robbery as does a like
assumption, on the part of the government, for taking a man's property
without his consent. The government's pretence of protecting him, as an
equivalent for the taxation, affords no justification. It is for himself
to decide whether he desires such protection as the government offers
him. If he do not desire it, or do not bargain for it, the government
has no more right than any other insurance company to impose it upon
him, or make him pay for it.

Trial by the country, and no taxation without consent, were the two
pillars of English liberty, (when England had any liberty,) and the
first principles of the Common Law. They mutually sustain each other;
and neither can stand without the other. Without both, no people have
any guaranty for their freedom; with both, no people can be otherwise
than free.[118]

By what force, fraud, and conspiracy, on the part of kings, nobles, and
"a few wealthy freeholders," these pillars have been prostrated in
England, it is designed to show more fully in the next volume, if it
sh