Last, all commonwealths have found it necessary to arm the magistrate with some powers, which individuals could not have conferred by a social compact, because they never possessed them. One of these is the power of life and death. No man's life is his own: it belongs to God alone. One cannot bargain away what is not his own. Besides, it is absurd to represent men as bargaining away this tremendous power for some smaller advantages and securities; because life is the most precious of all. "What shall a man accept in exchange for his life?" It is of no avail to say that the community is entitled, by the law of self-preservation, to assume this power; because, on this theory, there is no community as yet. There is only a number of independent integers, sovereignly treating with each other. The community cannot assume powers before it exists! It is, if possible, still more difficult to explain, on this theory, how political societies came by the power of capital punishment, against aliens who assail their members. But all governments hold aliens living among them, and invading enemies, subject to their capital penalties. How is this? The foreigner certainly has not assented to the social compact of this society; for he claims to be alien, and to owe no allegiance. His consent, the supposed fountain of all right over him, is utterly lacking. Once more, this theory draws a broad distinction between man's civil liberty as a subject of government, and his natural liberty. The latter it defines as _privilege to do whatever the man pleases_, within the limits of natural law as interpreted by himself. And his natural rights are just the same. Some of these he voluntarily surrenders to society, to secure the rest. All government, therefore, is not only of the nature of restraint; it is essentially _restraint upon one's rights_. The advocates of the theory distinctly represent government as of the nature of a natural evil and wrong, but adopted as an expedient against the worse evil, anarchy; and therefore the obligation to obey it has no higher source than expediency. But worse yet; if there is any such thing as intrinsic morality, government is an immoral restraint, for it is a _restraint upon rights_. Whatever good government may bring us, it is of that species which St. Paul reprobates, as "doing evil that good may come." The great Hobbes was therefore perfectly consistent, in teaching that there is no original morality in acts, and that there was at first no such thing as right, distinct from might. Morals are factitious distinctions invented under civil society for expediency. Let the thoughtful reader consider how this monstrous conclusion uproots all obligation, and order, and allegiance. No man can hold the theory of the origin of government in the social contract, unless he either holds, with Hobbes, this damnable error, or with some abolitionists, (who are thoroughly consistent here,) that _all government is immoral_.