property grows--is by government itself, in the shape
of taxation for objects not necessary for the common defence and general
welfare. Men have a right not only to be well governed, but to be
cheaply governed--as cheaply as is consistent with the due maintenance
of that security, for which society was formed and government
instituted. This, the sole legitimate end and object of law, is never to
be lost sight of--security to men in the free enjoyment and development
of their capacities for happiness--SECURITY--nothing less--but nothing
more. To compel men to contribute of the earnings or accumulations of
industry, their own or inherited, to objects beyond this, not within the
legitimate sphere of legislation, to appropriate the money in the public
treasury to such objects, is a perversion and abuse of the powers of
government, little if anything short of legalized robbery. What is the
true province of legislation, ought to be better understood. It is worth
while to remark, that in every new and amended State constitution, the
bill of rights spreads over a larger space; new as well as more
stringent restrictions are placed upon legislation. There is no danger
of this being carried too far; as Chancellor Kent appears to have
apprehended that it might be. There is not much danger of erring upon
the side of too little law. The world is notoriously too much governed.
Legislators almost invariably aim at accomplishing too much.
Representative democracies, so far from being exempt from this vice, are
from their nature peculiarly liable to it. Annual legislatures--with
generally two-thirds new members every year--increase the evil. The
members fall into the common mistake, that their commission is to act,
not to decide in the first place whether action is necessary. They would
be blamed and ridiculed, if they adjourned without doing something
important. Hence the annual volumes of our Acts of Assembly are
fearfully growing in bulk. It is not merely of the extent of local
legislation, the vast multiplication of charters for every imaginable
purpose, or of the constantly recurring tampering with the most general
subjects of interest, finance, revenue, banking, education, pauperism,
&c., that there is reason to complain; but scarce a session of one of
our legislatures passes without rash and ill-considered alterations in
the civil code, vitally affecting private rights and relations. Such
laws are frequently urged by men, having cau