of society to deal at its discretion with the persons or effects of individuals, it must be incumbent on individuals to permit themselves and whatever is theirs to be so dealt with. Have, then, individuals incurred any such obligation? No obligation, be it remembered, can arise, except through some antecedent act of one or other or both of the parties concerned. Either a pledge of some sort must have been given or a benefit of some sort must have been received. Now undoubtedly there are no limits to the extent to which society and its individual members might have reciprocally pledged themselves. It might have been stipulated by their articles of association that society at large should do its utmost for the welfare of each of its members, and that each of its members should do his utmost for the welfare of society at large. But it is certain, either that no such compact ever was made, or that, if made, it has always been systematically set at nought. Society has never made much pretence of troubling itself about the welfare of individuals, except in certain specified particulars; so that, even if individuals had, on condition of being treated with reciprocal solicitude, accepted the obligation of attending to the welfare of society in other than the same particulars, that conditional obligation would from the commencement have been null and void. The one thing which society invariably pledges itself to do is to protect person and property, and by implication to enforce performance of contracts; and the two things which individual associates in turn pledge themselves to do are to abstain from molesting each other's persons and property, and to assist society in protecting both. In so abstaining and so assisting consist all those 'many acts and the still greater number of forbearances, the perpetual practice of which by all is,' as Mr. Mill says, 'universally deemed to be so necessary to the general well-being, that people must be held to it compulsorily, either by law or by social pressure.'[7] Under one or other of these two heads may be ranged everything that individuals owe to society in return for the mere protection which they receive from it.