ABSTRACT
To determine the duty of the state by reverting to a supposed understanding entered into by the founders of society-a social contract-the people have already seen to be impracticable. But if men could have continued in the associated state only because on the average it insured their rights better than the previous one, then the insurance of their rights becomes the special duty which society in its corporate capacity has to perform towards individuals. That justice can be well administered only in proportion as men become just, is a fact too generally overlooked. Of course the efficiency of present and future systems of jurisprudence must be determined by the same influences. By dispersing that haze of political superstition through which the state and its appendages loom so large, the foregoing considerations suggest a somewhat startling question. Defensive warfare must therefore be tolerated as the least of two evils.
