In this sense the
restraints on men, as well as their liberties, are to be reckoned among
their rights. But as the liberties and the restrictions vary with times
and circumstances, and admit of infinite modifications, they cannot be
settled upon any abstract rule; and nothing is so foolish as to discuss
them upon that principle.
The moment you abate anything from the full rights of men each to govern
himself, and suffer any artificial, positive limitation upon those
rights, from that moment the whole organization of government becomes a
consideration of convenience. This it is which makes the constitution of
a state, and the due distribution of its powers, a matter of the most
delicate and complicated skill. It requires a deep knowledge of human
nature and human necessities, and of the things which facilitate or
obstruct the various ends which are to be pursued by the mechanism of
civil institutions. The state is to have recruits to its strength and
remedies to its distempers. What is the use of discussing a man's
abstract right to food or medicine? The question is upon the method of
procuring and administering them. In that deliberation I shall always
advise to call in the aid of the farmer and the physician, rather than
the professor of metaphysics.
The science of constructing a commonwealth, or renovating it, or
reforming it, is, like every other experimental science, not to be
taught _a priori_.
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