ss of its
legislation? Or, waiving this, is it not indisputable that the claim of
the State to the allegiance, involves the protection of the subject?
And, as all rights in one party impose a correlative duty upon another,
it follows that the right of the State to require the services of its
members, even to the jeopardizing of their lives in the common defence,
establishes a right in the people (not to be gainsaid by utilitarians
and economists) to public support when, from any cause, they may be
unable to support themselves."--(See note 2nd, in Addenda.)]

17. Now, I have pressed this upon you at more length than is needful or
proportioned to our present purposes of inquiry, because I would not for
the first time speak to you on this subject of political economy without
clearly stating what I believe to be its first grand principle. But its
bearing on the matter in hand is chiefly to prevent you from at once too
violently dissenting from me when what I may state to you as advisable
economy in art appears to imply too much restraint or interference with
the freedom of the patron or artist. We are a little apt, though on the
whole a prudent nation, to act too immediately on our impulses, even in
matters merely commercial; much more in those involving continual
appeals to our fancies. How far, therefore, the proposed systems or
restraints may be advisable, it is for you to judge; only I pray you not
to be offended with them merely because they _are_ systems and
restraints.

18. Do you at all recollect that interesting passage of Carlyle, in
which he compares, in this country and at this day, the understood and
commercial value of man and horse; and in which he wonders that the
horse, with its inferior brains and its awkward hoofiness, instead of
handiness, should be always worth so many tens or scores of pounds in
the market, while the man, so far from always commanding his price in
the market, would often be thought to confer a service on the community
by simply killing himself out of their way? Well, Carlyle does not
answer his own question, because he supposes we shall at once see the
answer. The value of the horse consists simply in the fact of your being
able to put a bridle on him. The value of the man consists precisely in
the same thing. If you can bridle him, or, which is better, if he can
bridle himself, he will be a valuable creature directly. Otherwise, in a
commercial point of view, his value is either no