A form of control, clearly embodying the idea of government, and at the same time conferring absolute freedom, is a solecism. If men would uniformly govern themselves aright by their own wills, there could be no necessity for government, or room for its exercise, at least in the sense in which we now understand the term. A government adapted to such a people, I allow, might be without the element of physical control, so indispensable in human governments. It would be (compared to human) a modification of government--if government it might be called--for which our language supplies no term. We cannot conceive it to be appropriate to any intelligences this side of the “spirits of just men made perfect in heaven.” These, we conceive, are sufficiently intelligent to understand clearly and correctly all the duties appertaining to the various relations they sustain, and so perfected in moral feeling as to fulfil these duties from the impulses of their own _spontaneous volitions_. Government, as it may be understood and applied to such intelligences, must be essentially different from that which is appropriate to beings of arbitrary volition; and who, therefore, should be held to accountability in the exercise of their freedom by the most rigid restrictions from penal sanctions. To these latter a government that did not embody the _principle of_ slavery would be no government at all. Authoritative control, with its correlative, (according to the more general classification given,) is the abstract principle of slavery. But a state of freedom is the opposite of a state of slavery. The abstract principle of a state of freedom or liberty is, therefore, the opposite to that of slavery. Hence _self-control_ is the abstract principle of freedom, as its opposite--_control by another_--is the principle of slavery.