True, there is an universal understanding that individuals shall be subject to any laws, whether wise or foolish, provided only they be of equal and impartial operation, which may be enacted by a numerical majority of the community to which the individuals belong; and in this manner individuals may become bound by any number of miscellaneous pledges, society acquiring simultaneously the right to hold individuals to the performance of those pledges. Thus, if by the vote of an unimpeachably representative House of Commons it were declared to be for the general good, and agreed to accordingly, that every one should be vaccinated or circumcised, it would be incumbent on every one to submit quietly to vaccination or circumcision, however deleterious the operation might be deemed by some. Or if, improving upon a hypothetical suggestion of Mr. Mill, a parliament elected by constituencies in which the labouring-class element greatly predominated, should prospectively forbid the accumulation by any individual of property beyond a specified amount, then, though the almost certain consequence would be that the prescribed limit of accumulation would not be exceeded, still if it were exceeded, the accumulator could not justly complain when the surplus was forfeited according to law. Yet even thus the obligations or duties created will correspond exactly with the pledges given; none will be incurred except such as have been imposed by special legislation--nor even those, unless the legislation have been impartial. A law requiring people to pay poor's-rates would not suffice as a pretext for requiring them to pay education rates likewise. Neither if, instead of passing the prospective law just now supposed, a governing majority which had previously always permitted the indefinite accumulation of wealth, were retrospectively to decree the forfeiture of all past accumulations beyond a defined amount, would individuals be morally bound to submit to such a decree if they could contrive to evade it, any more than sexquipedalians would be bound to lay their heads on the block in obedience to a law directing everybody six feet high to be decapitated. All such partial legislation would be tyrannical, and circumstances must be very peculiar indeed to make submission to tyranny a duty. But of all conceivable legislation, none could possibly be more partial, or therefore more tyrannical, than such as should give to society a general power of dealing at its pleasure with its associates, and of arbitrarily subjecting separate classes or individuals to exceptional treatment. Even, therefore, if a law to such monstrous effect were enacted, it could have no morally binding force. It would be no one's duty to acquiesce in it.