All this is as much as to say that, when a man has voluntarily "come into society," and has "surrendered" to society "his original and natural right of coercing" the fulfilment of his contracts, and when he has done this in the confidence that society will fulfil its pledge to "give him a more safe and more certain coercion" than he was capable of himself, "society" may then turn around to him, and say: We acknowledge that you have a natural right to make your own contracts. We acknowledge that your contracts have "an intrinsic obligation." We acknowledge that you had "an original and natural right" to coerce the fulfilment of them. We acknowledge that it was solely in consideration of our pledge to you, that we would give you a more safe and more certain coercion than you were capable of yourself, that you "surrendered" to us your right to coerce a fulfilment of them. And we acknowledge that, _according to our pledge_, you have now a right to require of us that we coerce a fulfilment of them. But after you had "surrendered" to us your own right of coercion, we took a different view of the pledge we had given you; and concluded that it would be "mischievous" to allow you to make such contracts. We therefore "prohibited" your making them. And having prohibited the making of them, we cannot now admit that they have any "obligation." We must therefore decline to enforce the fulfilment of them. And we warn you that, if you attempt to enforce them, by virtue of your own "original and natural right of coercion," we shall be obliged to consider your act a breach of "the general peace," and punish you accordingly. We are sorry that you have lost your property, but "society" must judge as to what contracts are, and what are not, "mischievous." We can therefore give you no redress. Nor can we suffer you to enforce your own rights, or redress your own wrongs. Such is Marshall's theory of the way in which "society" got possession of all men's "original and natural right" to make their own contracts, and enforce the fulfilment of them; and of the way in which "society" now justifies itself in prohibiting all contracts, though "intrinsically obligatory," which it may choose to consider "mischievous." And he asserts that, in this way, "society" has acquired "_an unquestionable right_" to cheat men out of all their "original and natural right" to make their own contracts, and enforce the fulfilment of them.