d; but we do not therefore
credit the ploughmaker with the achievements of the ploughman. Neither
is society to take to itself praise because its members have made good
use of the protection which, in consideration of stipulated services on
their part, it has afforded them. Besides, whatever we inherit from
society, we inherit from a society of members no longer in being. Let
the dead come to life again, and it may then become us to examine their
claims upon our gratitude, but we need not meanwhile confound past and
present generations, nor our forefathers with our contemporaries. To the
mass of these latter, at any rate, we are none of us indebted for our
brains or our aptitudes of thought and feeling, and the circumstance of
our being joint sharers with them in patrimony bequeathed by a common
ancestry, affords no very obvious reason why our share of the
inheritance, together with whatever else we possess, should be at their
absolute disposal.

Thus it appears that in no one of the ways in which alone can
originate the obligations which must always precede or accompany
artificially-created rights, has that particular obligation arisen
without which it is impossible for society to obtain artificially the
right of preventing individuals from doing as they will with their own.
No sufficient pledge has been given by one side, no sufficient benefit
conferred by the other. Individuals never agreed to place their all at
the disposal of society; society never rendered to individuals any
services entitling it to claim such boundless gratitude. One service
which it invariably undertakes is that of protecting person and
property. This is its chief and primary duty, the fulfilment of which is
always the first object of its institution, often the only one it
acknowledges. But clearly it cannot by performance of a duty acquire the
right of doing the exact reverse of that duty. It cannot by protecting
acquire the right of molesting. It cannot by preventing person and
property from being meddled with, acquire in its corporate capacity the
right of itself meddling. Since then this right of meddling, this right
of disposing of what is exclusively some individual's own, otherwise
than the owner wishes, has not been acquired by society artificially, it
must, if it do actually belong to society, have been come by naturally;
and this accordingly is what Utilitarians really, though perhaps
unconsciously, assume, treating moreover this gratu