y 'an employer does
no wrong in making the use he does of his capital, if the same theory
would justify the employed in compelling him by law to make a different
use--if the labourers would in no way infringe the definition of justice
by taking the matter into their own hands and establishing by law any
modification of the rights of property which in their opinion would
increase the remuneration of their labour.'[8]

My reply to this and to the whole argument is the following. So long as
society continues to exist, society cannot divest itself of the primary
function for the discharge of which it was originally constituted.
Society, having come together in the first instance, tacitly pledged to
extend protection to each individual associate, cannot, without breach
of contract, withdraw that protection. It may, indeed, make any
impartial laws it pleases, and attach any penalty it pleases to
violation of any impartial law, but it cannot in equity, whatever it may
in practice, place any of its members outside the law; neither, most
certainly, even if its competence did extend thus far, could it go the
farther length of conferring on any one the right of doing wrong to an
outlaw. It may even be doubted whether, if an outlaw were to injure any
one still belonging to the society, any but the injured person himself
would be warranted in retaliating. The sole reason that I can perceive
why even he would is, that his rights had been infringed, and that
reparation was due to him for any damage sustained by him in
consequence, while, on the other hand, the aggressor had forfeited those
rights of his which might otherwise have forbidden the injured person
from taking the reparation due. But society had had none of its rights
infringed. By society no injury had been sustained. To society,
therefore, no reparation was due; and society, it seems to me, would
have no right to insist on exacting reparation not due to itself from
one whom it had forcibly extruded from its communion, and who,
therefore, was no longer amenable to its jurisdiction. Society might,
indeed, dissolve itself, proclaiming that 'every man for himself, and
God for all,' should thenceforward be the rule. But although it might
thus leave individual rights without other defence than that of the
owner, it could not annihilate individual rights. It might cancel the
right to mutual protection, but it could not, in place of that, create a
right of mutual molestation. One'