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binations of its citizens for legitimate purposes; the right of private defense being transferred, except in emergency, to the more potent and equable agency. In order to fulfill this great trust, the government must defend itself. Its officers must be protected in the discharge of their legitimate functions against violence or intimidation. It must prevent the high crimes of regicide and treason, must resist the insurrection of a disaffected minority, or the aggression of a foreign power. As an individual personality it is bound to preserve its integrity and efficiency by vigorous self-defense. It is clear that a State, as a faithful trustee, is bound, first, to preserve its own existence, and secondly, to restrain, to resist, and, if need be, to destroy whatsoever and whomsoever assails its authority or attacks the interests committed to its charge. Self-preservation, and the preservation of all that is intrusted to it, are moral obligations of every State.

§ 138. Therein is the ultimate ground that justifies legal punishment. It is discovered in the obligation to exert protective defense of rights. All legal penalties are set for the defense of rights. They inflict pain on the law-breaker, are a painful interference in his liberty, warranted by the principle of defense. They deter him from repetition of the offense, and they deter observers from like misconduct, thus defending the rights involved. Practically imperfect as it is, no other means is known by which to effect defense against offense, except this of inflicting pain on offenders in proportion to the gravity of their misdeeds. The punishment, as to kind and degree, is determined by what is past and cannot be reinstated; its purpose is to determine what is future, and is deterrent, preventive of further or like trespass. Thus the sufficient, rational, and only righteous ground of legal penalty is the protective defense of rights.

The principle applies to the divine government of the

world. The natural sanctions of universal moral law are the typical antecedents of the artificial sanctions of civil law, and go far in an explanation of the righteousness of pain.1 The sovereign Deity has rights on which men trespass as well as on the rights of his subjects. He defends these and his authority by the appointed natural pains attending disorder, and by special penalties affixed to special offenses. Sin is essentially trespass on Deity, and the punishment of sin is self-defense, and the defense of all under his protection. To have any other gods before him is high treason.2

Deterrent defense is disciplinary. This gives title to houses of correction or reformatories set especially for reclaiming youthful offenders, and to penitentiaries where felons do penance, rendering them penitent, leading to reformation. So imprisonment generally, and also fines are disciplinary, not only of the offender, but of the observer, and even capital punishment has this salutary effect on society. Thus the law is a schoolmaster, a pedagogue, leading to higher life. But this, with the State, is not its original, nor its avowed, nor indeed its ultimate purpose, but is an accessory. The State is not an educational, but a protective institution, and reformation is not the end, but a means of preventing trespass. Its enacted sanctions, among which are no rewards, are not incentive, but deterrent. Indeed, in the last analysis, any and every warranted interference in liberty is a defense against trespass, or, no interference in a person's liberty has 1 See supra, § 54.

2 That the purpose of civil punishment is deterrent, is the common doctrine of jurists. It is here carried one step further back to the ultimate ground of a right and duty in defense of trust. The Church has always very generally held that the only legitimate end of civil punishment is the .prevention of crime. The doctrine merges justice into benevolence. It is because God has a view to the welfare of his rational creatures, that he visits sin and moral disorder with punishment. Leibnitz defines justice to be benevolence guided by wisdom; and Tertullian says: "Omne hoc justitiæ opus procuratio bonitatis est.'

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ever a warrant save in defense against trespass. In the domestic sphere parents punish to chasten. Chastisement is punishment intended to benefit the sufferer. It is often and rightly inflicted with no wider or further view; but this whip of love means more, and the chastening has its only complete justification in forestalling the trespasses of perhaps a remote future. Our Father, in the abundance of his love, chastens his children, not only that the erring may turn and live, but. more largely that all who might suffer from the persisting error may be spared the harm, and loss, and sorrow.

§ 139. The right of a government to suppress mob turbulence or riots of any kind, is obviously the right and duty to defend domestic tranquillity; and to quell an insurrection against magisterial authority, is clearly to exercise the right and duty of self-defense. The inverse right of revolution has the same basis. The ends of the State being the defense of rights and the promotion of the common welfare, “when any government shall be found inadequate or contrary to these purposes, a majority of the community hath an indubitable, inalienable, and indefeasible right to reform, alter, or abolish it, in such manner as shall be judged most conducive to the public weal."1 Evidently, if a government be continuously oppressive to the body of the people, their original and sacred right of self-defense justifies them in subverting it, and substituting one that promises better things.2

1 Virginia Bill of Rights, § 3. Cf. American Declaration of Independence. Unjust laws, such as are not intolerably oppressive, of which examples continually abound, ought, until repealed, to be obeyed by all concerned, from respect for the dignity and integrity of the State. In such case it is duty patiently to suffer injustice.

2 In usage of the terms, the distinction between revolution and rebellion is not always clear. Generally, if a revolt succeed, it is called respectfully a revolution; if it fail, it is stigmatized as a rebellion; the justice of the cause being disregarded in favor of the historical result. Treason or rebellion against righteous civil authority, is rankest offense, "Whoever lays

War has no other justification.

A war of conquest is

plainly the crimes of murder, arson, robbery, and the rest of the foul catalogue, many times multiplied. On the other hand, a defensive war, provided all other honorable means of rectification have failed, is thoroughly righteous. That a State repel vi et armis the encroachment, the aggression, the trespass of another, is a moral obligation of highest order. A brave and conscientious people, possessing civic rights inherited to be fostered and transmitted, maintains them, even against overwhelming numbers and resources, and does not surrender, but dies in defending its trusts, warring until resistance becomes madness. Defense may fire the first gun, may invade the enemy's territory, may sweep his commerce from the sea, thus to conquer immunity and peace; but, to be justified, all proceedings must originally and continuously be intentional and essential defense. This is so clearly recognized by civilized States in modern times that, whenever war between them occurs, each party loudly claims to be acting on the defensive, thus seeking to justify its action in its own eyes, and in the eyes of the rest of mankind.

§ 140. Geographic, climatic, and other conditions determine that there shall be many States. Differences of race, language, religion, tradition, the genius and general culture of the people, further determine different forms of government, as monarchies, republics, democracies. These, the world over, have both common and conflicting interests, and are otherwise more or less intimately related. Their relations are adjusted by resident ambassadors and consuls, and by occasional diplomatic correspondence, forming and performing treaties of commerce, and of alliance, fixing boundaries,

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violent hands upon the State, assails the conditions of all moral life, and therefore the crime is regarded as the greatest.' - TRENDELENBURG, quoted by Mulford, The Nation, p. 16.

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and regulating minor matters. The trend of civilization has long been towards a brotherhood of peoples, and the enterprise of the nineteenth century has so vastly increased the facilities of intercommunication, by multiplying roads of rapid transit, by tunneling Alpine barriers, by devising a swift and safe crossing of seas, by weaving over the globe a network of electric wires and submarine cables, that civic isolation has now almost entirely disappeared, and the nations are fusing and welding together. This intimate intercourse and manifold. relation is subject to the one universal moral law of trespass not. There is no other obligation in

all the comity of nations.1

1 In the foregoing discussion it sufficiently appears that the sole purpose of the State is the welfare of its constituents. It is in no sense a philanthropic institution. The United States, for example, and the several States, in their manifold functions, are for the benefit of their own people, and not for the good of France, or Spain, or Mexico, or Canada, or any country or people not within their territorial limits. No government has a right to do charity outside its own jurisdiction, or to legislate for or to govern an alien people. A man may charitably give away money which is his own, but governments, federal, state, municipal, have no money except that obtained by taxation. Its possession and disbursement is a trust of the people whose agents they are, to be exercised only within sharply defined constitutional limitations which make no provision for philanthropy. To use it for other purposes than the welfare of the taxpayers, to use it to relieve oppressions or sufferings of remote or adjacent peoples, is illegitimate, a departure from right and duty, and liable to the grossest abuses.

It is sometimes alleged that it is the right and duty of our government so to intervene in foreign affairs as to extend the area of civil liberty, to save others from misgovernment, to prevent persecution, and to establish the true religion. But what is liberty, right government, true religion? We may determine these questions for ourselves, but we are not required nor authorized to determine them for others. No State is bound to incur cost or danger in the interest of others, this being detrimental to its own interest and that of its subjects, but rather therefore is it bound to abstain rigorously from all unnecessary interference in foreign affairs. The exercise of wide philanthropy, and the propagation of our high civilization, of our free institutions, of our cherished religion, belong exclusively to voluntary associations organized for the purpose, and more especially to the Christian Church,

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