658 POLITICAL INSTITUTIONS. 



immense against agreement for any other public end. And 

 in the absence of such agreement, there must arise resistance 

 by the dissentients to the costs and administrative restraints 

 required for achieving such other end. There must be dis 

 satisfaction and opposition on the part of the minority from 

 whom certain returns of their labours are taken, not for 

 fulfilling their own desires, but for fulfilling the desires of 

 others. There must be an inequality of treatment which 

 does not consist with the regime, of voluntary cooperation 

 fully carried out. 



At the same time that the employment of political agencies 

 for other ends than that of maintaining equitable relations 

 among citizens, will meet with egoistic resistance from a 

 minority who do not desire such other ends, it will also meet 

 with altruistic resistance from the rest. In other words, 

 the altruism of the rest will prevent them from achieving 

 such further ends for their own satisfaction, at the cost of 

 dissatisfaction to those who do not agree with them. To one 

 who is ruled by a predominant sentiment of justice, the 

 thought of profiting in any way, direct or indirect, at the 

 expense of another, is repugnant; and in a community of 

 such, none will desire to achieve by public agency at the cost 

 of all, benefits which, a part do not participate in, or do not 

 wish for. Given in all citizens a quick sense of equity, and 

 it must happen, for example, that while those who have no 

 children will protest against the taking away of their pro 

 perty to educate the children of others, the others will no 

 less protest against having the education of their children 

 partially paid for by forced exactions from the childless, 

 from the unmarried, and from those whose means are in 

 many cases less than their own. So that the eventual limi 

 tation of State-action to the fundamental one described, is 

 insured by a simultaneous increase of opposition to other 

 actions and a decrease of desire for them. 



580. The restricted sphere for political institutions thus 



