fellows, the answer of this school is: because they have voluntarily bargained to do so in entering the social compact; and they receive a _quid pro quo_ for their accession to it. Such is the theory of the origin of government, from which the natural injustice of slavery is deduced. For, obviously, if man's obligation to civil society originates in the voluntary social contract of independent integers, none can be rightfully held to a compulsory obedience, which enters into all servitude, both domestic and political. [Footnote 90: Notwithstanding Locke's amiable and pious spirit, the history of philosophic opinion has shown that he is but a disguised follower of the philosopher of Malmesbury. His psychology is but a system of sensationalism, and his ethics lead to the denial of original moral distinctions. Locke is chargeable with the germs of all the mischievous and atheistical doctrines developed by Hume in Great Britain, and Cordillac in France.] Some liberal writers, as Blackstone, and the great Swiss publicist, _Burlemaqui_, are too sensible not to see that this scheme is false to the facts of the case. But they still hold, that although individual men never, in fact, existed in the independent insulation supposed, and did not actually pass into a state of society by a formal social contract, yet such a transaction must be assumed as the implied and virtual source of political power and civic obligation. To us it appears, that if the contracting never occurred in fact, but is only a theoretical fiction, it is no basis for any thing, and no source of practical rights and duties. Civil society is a universal fact; and its existence must be grounded in something actual. We object, then, to this dream of a social contract preceded by a native state of individual independence, that it is false to the facts of the case. Human beings never rightfully existed, for one moment, in this state, out of which they are supposed to have passed by their own option. God never gave them such independency. Their responsibility to him, and to the civil society under which He has placed them, is as _native_ as they are, being ordained by God to exist from the first. Men do not choose civic obligation, but are born to it, just as the child to his filial obligation. And the simple, conclusive proof is, that if any man were to claim this native option to assume or to decline civic obligations, (in the latter case relinquishing also their advantages,) there is not a government on earth, not the most liberal, that would not laugh his claim to scorn, and at once compel his allegiance. The very assumption of what this theory calls man's normal state, and the very attempt to exercise the option which, as it babbles, originated civil society, would constitute a man an outlaw, the radical enemy of civic society, and would give it a natural right, that of self-preservation, to destroy him. The scheme is not only fictitious, but absurd.