My reply to this and to the whole argument is the following. So long as society continues to exist, society cannot divest itself of the primary function for the discharge of which it was originally constituted. Society, having come together in the first instance, tacitly pledged to extend protection to each individual associate, cannot, without breach of contract, withdraw that protection. It may, indeed, make any impartial laws it pleases, and attach any penalty it pleases to violation of any impartial law, but it cannot in equity, whatever it may in practice, place any of its members outside the law; neither, most certainly, even if its competence did extend thus far, could it go the farther length of conferring on any one the right of doing wrong to an outlaw. It may even be doubted whether, if an outlaw were to injure any one still belonging to the society, any but the injured person himself would be warranted in retaliating. The sole reason that I can perceive why even he would is, that his rights had been infringed, and that reparation was due to him for any damage sustained by him in consequence, while, on the other hand, the aggressor had forfeited those rights of his which might otherwise have forbidden the injured person from taking the reparation due. But society had had none of its rights infringed. By society no injury had been sustained. To society, therefore, no reparation was due; and society, it seems to me, would have no right to insist on exacting reparation not due to itself from one whom it had forcibly extruded from its communion, and who, therefore, was no longer amenable to its jurisdiction. Society might, indeed, dissolve itself, proclaiming that 'every man for himself, and God for all,' should thenceforward be the rule. But although it might thus leave individual rights without other defence than that of the owner, it could not annihilate individual rights. It might cancel the right to mutual protection, but it could not, in place of that, create a right of mutual molestation. One's own person and property would still be as much one's own as before, and whoever outraged either would not be the less a wrong doer because society permitted his wrong doing to remain unpunished. In all ethical investigations it is impossible to guard too watchfully against the smallest approach to confusion of might with right.