the work which they did as legislators they would tear to pieces as men.
In other words, if we mean, by legislation, legislation which can be
permanently obeyed, the legislative sovereignty of democracies, which is
so commonly spoken of as supreme, is limited in every direction by
another power greater than itself; and this is the double power of
nature and of human nature. Just as all laws relating to the food which
men are to eat, and the drugs by which their maladies are to be cured,
must depend on the natural qualities of such and such physical
substances, so do the constitution and propensities of the concrete
human character limit legislation generally, and confine it within
certain channels.

This is what "X" and similar thinkers forget; and the nature of their
error is very pertinently illustrated by an observation of the English
jurist, Lord Coleridge, to which "X" solemnly refers, as corroborating
him in his own wisdom. "The same power," says Lord Coleridge, "which
prescribes rules for the possession of property can of course alter
them"; this power being the legislative body of whatever country may be
in question. It is easy to see the manner in which Lord Coleridge
reasons. Because, in any country, the formulation and enforcement of
laws have the will of the governing body as the proximate cause which
determines them, it seems to Lord Coleridge that, in this contemporary
will, the laws thus formulated and enforced have their ultimate cause
also. For example, according to him, the entire institution of property
in the State of New York is virtually a fresh creation of the voters
from year to year, and has nothing else behind it. But, in reality, all
this business of formulation and enforcement is a secondary process, not
a primary process at all. Lord Coleridge is simply inverting the actual
order of things. Half the existing "rules prescribed as to the
possession of property" have, for their ultimate object, the protection
of family life, the privacy of the private home, and the provision made
by parents for their children. But family life is not primarily the
creation of prescribed rules. It is the creation of instincts and
affections which have developed themselves in the course of ages.
Instead of the law creating family life, it is family life which has
gradually called into being--which has created and dictated--the rules
and sanctions protecting it. The same is the case with bequest,
marriage, and so