The pretence of the lawmakers, that they are promoting the "public _good_," by violating individual "_rights_," is just as false and absurd as is the pretence that they are protecting "public _rights_" by violating "private rights." Sir, the greatest "public _good_," of which any coercive power, calling itself a government, or by any other name, is capable, is the protection of each and every individual in the quiet and peaceful enjoyment and exercise of _all_ his own natural, inherent, inalienable, _individual_ "rights." This is a "good" that comes home to each and every individual, of whom "the public" is composed. It is also a "good," which each and every one of these individuals, composing "the public," can appreciate. It is a "good," for the loss of which governments can make no compensation whatever. _It is a universal and impartial "good,"_ of the highest importance to each and every human being; and not any such vague, false, and criminal thing as the lawmakers--when violating private rights--tell us they are trying to accomplish, under the name of "the public good." It is also the only "equal and exact justice," which you, or anybody else, are capable of securing, or have any occasion to secure, to any human being. Let but this "equal and exact justice" be secured "to all men," and they will then be abundantly able to take care of themselves, and secure their own highest "good." Or if any one should ever chance to need anything more than this, he may safely trust to the voluntary kindness of his fellow men to supply it. It is one of those things not easily accounted for, that men who would scorn to do an injustice to a fellow man, in a private transaction,--who would scorn to usurp any arbitrary dominion over him, or his property,--who would be in the highest degree indignant, if charged with any private injustice,--and who, at a moment's warning, would take their lives in their hands, to defend their own rights, and redress their own wrongs,--will, the moment they become members of what they call a government, assume that they are absolved from all principles and all obligations that were imperative upon them, as individuals; will assume that they are invested with a right of arbitrary and irresponsible dominion over other men, and other men's property. Yet they are doing this continually. And all the laws they _make_ are based upon the assumption that they have now become invested with rights that are more than human, and that those, on whom their laws are to operate, have lost even their human rights. They seem to be utterly blind to the fact, that the only reason there can be for their existence as a government, is that they may protect those very "rights," which they before scrupulously respected, but which they now unscrupulously trample upon. SECTION VI.