Hence, we find that government, both human and Divine, is a special necessity of man’s fallen condition, and coeval with the history of the race: that its legitimate object is to preserve him from that annihilation of his essential liberty of will which would inevitably follow if there were no government, and to secure him in the enjoyment of the highest amount of this liberty which his condition will allow: that to do this, various forms of civil government are admissible; and that the one best adapted to the condition of the people is the one that should be applied, and is the only strictly _free government_ for the people to whom it is appropriate. A democracy applied to minors or savages, in the midst of a civilized people, would be the most grinding of all oppressions. We have seen that the _means_ appropriate to government are suitable penalties addressed to our passions of hope and fear: that the only _right_ which a man has to exercise his inherent liberty--that is, the only right he has of self-control--is the authority to do that which, in itself, _is right_--not a right to do _wrong_: that the exclusive authority of government is to restrain man from doing _wrong_, and to protect and encourage him in doing _right_--restrain his _power_ to do wrong, not his power to do right--this it seeks to strengthen. We have seen that the rights of man in a state of minority--and the same of uncivilized men dwelling in a community of the civilized--are to the benefits of an absolute form of government; any other would be only a system of ruinous oppression to them: that at his maturity as a civilized man, he should be protected in the exercise of all the rights which naturally belong to a state of maturity, and also the enjoyment of all those rights which he has acquired by availing himself of the privileges afforded by his condition. Of his acquired rights, we see that on certain conditions he is entitled to social equality; and that on certain further conditions, he is entitled to the right of political sovereignty. Now, we ask, in what sense can it be said that legitimate government is a concession of some rights, in order to secure others? Certainly, in no good sense, seeing it only limits his power to do _wrong_, by laying him under suitable disabilities, and that it does this in order to secure both the power and the privilege of doing right. But by falsely assuming that government is a concession of rights, and that the government in which every citizen does not make a voluntary concession of the rights exercised by government is a cruel oppression, men fall upon conclusions which, when carried out, (and principles will tend to work out their results,) lead to agrarianism: that is, the destruction of all rights, by the annihilation of all civilization.