Of this class of men Dr. Lewis well said: “They consider themselves born to control other men. They are ever inquiring, ‘What ought this man to do?’ and if that man refuses to do it, ‘How can we compel him?’ They proceed thus: ‘Resolved, That the righteous should govern the world. Resolved, That we are the righteous.’” In what language can I fitly designate a principle of action so impertinent and presumptious? Who can deny the moral “liberty” of his fellow creature, as an abstract proposition? Is not the moral equality, or independence of man one of his essential rights? Neither one, nor any number of persons, is warranted in saying to another of mature years, what the latter shall, or shall not do with his life for his own benefit. “He is most deeply interested in his own well-being; the interest which another person can have in it is trifling, compared with that which he himself has.” It is time for society to distinguish, sharply, between the province of morality and that of legislation. With the same end in view, perhaps, yet they should differ widely in extent. Admit that morals and the law have the same center, they have not the same circumference. There may be a moral guide to the conduct of an individual, through all the details of life, through all the relationships of society; but legislation cannot be this, and if it could, it ought not to exercise a continued and direct interference with the conduct of men. There are many acts useful to the community which the legislator ought never to command; so are there many hurtful acts, which he ought not to forbid. There is certainly a broad distinction between moral and legal rights. For instance, “a man has no moral right to hate his wife, but he has a perfect legal right to hate her. A man has no moral right to foreclose a mortgage on a sick widow’s home, and turn her and her children out in the snow, but he has a perfect legal right to do it. A man has no moral right to make a glutton of himself, destroy his usefulness, and thus throw his wife and children on the town, but he has a perfect legal right to do it.” A man has no moral right to drink rum, but he has a perfect legal right to do so. What actions, then, may be legally punished as offenses? “What a question,” I hear some one exclaim; “are not all men agreed upon it? Do you ask us to prove an acknowledged truth.” I answer in words of the great Jeremy Bentham: “Be it so. But on what is founded that agreement? Demand of each his reasons. You will find a strange diversity of interest and principles. You will find it not only among the people, but among philosophers.... The agreement which you see is founded only on prejudices; and these prejudices vary, according to the times and places, according to opinions and customs.... People have always said that such an action is an offense. Such is the guide of the multitude, and even of the legislator. But if usage has made innocent actions