condition of infancy or anarchy, or are spendthrift. The
Chancellor or Justiciar, whether a person, a state, or a nation, must
possess the qualities and attributes of a Chancellor and Justiciar,
and proceed as a Chancellor and Justiciar. Otherwise the attempt to
create an involuntary agency for the suitor is nugatory. The fact that
a person who is an infant, or _non compos_, or spendthrift, has an
involuntary agency created for him by the Chancellor, does not
destroy, or in any way affect, the juridical personality of such
person, or his political equality with other persons; and, by parity
of reasoning, the fact that a community which would otherwise be
recognized as having free statehood and political personality and
equality with other free states, has an involuntary government
appointed for it by a Justiciar State, on account of its being in a
weak or infantile condition, or on account of its being anarchic or
spendthrift, can not destroy or in any way affect its free
statehood,--or, what is the same thing, its political personality,--or
its equality with other free states.

A further meaning apparently is that the first object of all
government is to do justice, and the second object to do the will of
the governed. A government which recognizes itself as deriving its
just powers from the consent of the governed, is bound to do justice
in such manner as will conform to the just public sentiment of the
governed. It is in no case bound to execute the will of the governed,
much less the will of the majority, unless that will conforms to
justice in the particular case. Nor can it do an unjust act and plead
in justification the consent of the governed, for the consent of the
governed to an unjust act is void by the law of nature and of nations.
This principle was often appealed to by the Americans, notably in the
final manifesto of 1778, as an answer to the British claim that the
Americans were bound by the restrictive Acts of Parliament on account
of their acquiescence in them. They said that an attempted consent to
an unjust act of government was a nugatory act, an unjust act of
government being itself nugatory, and deserving obedience only from
motives of policy.

This doctrine that government is the doing of justice according to
public sentiment is, of course, utterly opposed to the doctrine that
government is the will of the majority. If government is the doing of
justice according to public sentiment, government