Government is the whole society in action. No people was ever known to exist for any definite period without government. Sometimes, it is true, _the form_ has been the result of implied understandings among the people--as when “there was no judge in Israel:” at others, a master-spirit has assumed the reins, and been deferred to by common consent; and at others, it has been modified by formal processes--such as conventions and constitutions. Be this, however, as it may, government has always existed. Legislators did not make it. They have had much to do in modifying, directing, and often in corrupting the form; but nothing to do in originating government, in any proper sense of the term. It sprang spontaneously from the common sense of mankind. An agent indispensable to self-preservation was certainly coeval with the race. In its true generic sense, that is, in a sense equally applicable to all forms, government is _control_ by the authority of God and the people. God, in his word, declares the authority of the magistrate to be his ordinance; and this accords with the intuitive belief and feeling of necessity of all mankind: not that either approves in all cases of the _form_ which government assumes, but that the generic principle, in all cases, has the sanction of each. The legitimate object of government is to secure to the people the highest amount of freedom which their moral condition and relative circumstances will admit. The means which it employs to effect this object, are, 1. Suitable penalties, addressed to their hopes and fears, to lay them under such restraints as to the indulgence of their appetites, propensities, and passions, as thereby to prevent them from operating as a bar to the free exercise of their intellectual and moral powers in pursuit of the _essential_ good; and, 2. The security which it offers to every man, in the exercise of the higher powers of his nature, that he may do it without restraint from the passions of men; or, in other words, to guarantee to every man the free exercise of his essential power to do good. That both the object of government, and the means which it employs, are correctly stated, will not be disputed. All men concur in these views. They underlie all our opinions and reasonings on the subject of civil government. But in assenting to this much, (and how can it be avoided?) may we not stand committed to much more than many theoretical politicians are aware? Let us trace the logical inferences which arise from the principles discussed.