What government owes to society, and all it owes, is the impartial administration of equal and just laws. This produces security of life, of liberty, and of property. It has become a favorite maxim, that it is the duty of government to promote the happiness of the people. The phrase may be interpreted so as to mean well, but it is a very inaccurate and unhappy one. It is the inalienable right of men to pursue their _own_ happiness; each man under such restraints of law as will leave every other man equally free to do the same. The true and only true object of government is to secure this right. The happiness of the people is the happiness of the individuals who compose the mass. Speaking now with reference to those objects only, which human laws can reach and influence, he is the happy man, who sees his condition in life constantly and gradually, though it may be slowly, improving. Let government keep its hands off--do nothing in the way of creating the subject-matter of speculation--and things naturally fall into this channel. There will be some speculators, as there will be some gamblers; but they will be few. The stock market is filled with fancies, which the government has manufactured and continues to manufacture to order. It is the duty of government to encourage the accumulation of the savings of industry. The best way to do so is to guard the strong box from the invasion of others, and not itself to invade it. Property has an especial claim to protection against the government itself. The power of taxation in the legislature is in fact a part of the _eminent domain_; a power that must necessarily be reposed in the discretion of every government to furnish the means of its own existence. One grievous invasion of property--and of course ultimately of labor, from whose accumulations all property grows--is by government itself, in the shape of taxation for objects not necessary for the common defence and general welfare. Men have a right not only to be well governed, but to be cheaply governed--as cheaply as is consistent with the due maintenance of that security, for which society was formed and government instituted. This, the sole legitimate end and object of law, is never to be lost sight of--security to men in the free enjoyment and development of their capacities for happiness--SECURITY--nothing less--but nothing more. To compel men to contribute of the earnings or accumulations of industry, their own or inherited, to objects beyond this, not within the legitimate sphere of legislation, to appropriate the money in the public treasury to such objects, is a perversion and abuse of the powers of government, little if anything short of legalized robbery. What is the true province of legislation, ought to be better understood. It is worth while to remark, that in every new and amended State constitution, the bill of rights spreads over a larger space; new as well as more stringent restrictions are placed upon legislation.