8 RELIGION AND SCIENCE. 



against the State, but sundry minor claims likewise. Ages 

 ago, laws regulating dress and mode of living fell into dis- 

 use; and any attempt to revive them would prove the cur- 

 rent opinion to be, that such matters lie beyond the sphere 

 of legal control. For some centuries we have been asserting 

 in practice, and have now established in theory, the right of 

 every man to choose his own religious beliefs, instead of re- 

 ceiving such beliefs on State-authority. Within the last few 

 generations we have inaugurated complete liberty of speech, 

 in spite of all legislative attempts to suppress or limit it. 

 And still more recently we have claimed and finally ob- 

 tained under a few exceptional restrictions, freedom to trade 

 with whomsoever we please. Thus our political beliefs are 

 widely different from ancient ones, not only as to the proper 

 depositary of power to be exercised over a nation, but also 

 as to the extent of that power. 



Xot even here has the change ended. Besides the aver- 

 age opinions which we have just described as current among 

 ourselves, there exists a less widely-diffused opinion going 

 still further in the same direction. There are to be found 

 men who contend that the sphere of government should be 

 narrowed even more than it is in England. The modern 

 doctrine that the State exists for the benefit of citizens, 

 which has now in a great measure supplanted the ancient 

 doctrine that the citizens exist for the benefit of the State, 

 they would push to its logical results. They hold that the 

 freedom of the individual, limited only by the like freedom 

 of other individuals, is sacred ; and that the legislature can- 

 not equitably put further restrictions upon it, either by for- 

 bidding any actions which the law of equal freedom permits, 

 or taking away any property save that required to pay the 

 cost of enforcing this law itself. They assert that the sole 

 function of the State is the protection of persons against 

 each other, and against a foreign foe. They urge that as, 

 throughout civilization, the manifest tendency has been 

 continually to extend the liberties of the subject, and re- 



