But a free government returns to the people all that it receives from them. From the masses there converges, through a thousand channels, to the central government, both the elements of national strength, viz., authority to act, and the means of carrying out this authority, that is, money and military service--the body, of which the popular will and authority is the soul. The people declare their will that such and such individuals shall be clothed with, and represent their united power, and act for them in this representative capacity. The persons thus chosen, and who constitute the government or central head, with its subordinate agencies, declare from this central position of authority with which they have been invested by the people, that such and such things are necessary for the welfare and orderly activity of the people, and in the name, and with the cooeperation of the people, they _will_ to carry these measures out. Thus life, energy, power, from the people, flow from all points to the government, to the centre; and from the government it flows back again to the people as _order_, as the force that arranges, methodizes, harmonizes, and regulates the outflow of the popular energies in all the departments of human activity. It clears the channels of national industry of all obstacles. By its legislative, judicial, and executive functions, it establishes, on the one hand, common methods of action among multitudes having common interests and aims, and thus obviates clashing and confusion; and, on the other, it punishes those who would interfere with and obstruct or destroy this order. The government is the concentrated will and intelligence of the people, directed to the wise guidance of the national life--directed to the harmonizing of the diversified activity and industry of the nation, to the opening of all possible channels for that activity, and to the removal of everything that would obstruct and counteract the nation's utmost development and progress. In this way, a free government exhibits, as far as human imperfection admits, the union of the two great principles, _liberty_ and _order_. The people are free to think, talk, write, and act as they see fit; but since there can be no liberty, but only license, or lawlessness, without order--without beneficent methods, symmetrical forms and arrangements, _in which_ that liberty can be enjoyed by individuals and communities, without conflicting with other individuals and communities, parts of the same free whole--therefore government is created by the people to prescribe and maintain this order, essential to this common liberty; an order which is the _form_, or _forms_, under which both individuals and communities shall act, singly or in concert, in the countless relations in which the members of the same community or nation come into contact with each other.