of
mankind_

By the two great leaders of opposite schools, Locke and Burke, it is
contended that when we enter into society the natural rights of
self-defense is surrendered to the government. If any natural right,
then, be limited or abridged by the laws of society, we may suppose the
right of self-defense to be so; for this is the instance which is always
selected to illustrate and confirm the reality of such a surrender of
our natural liberty. It has, indeed, become a sort of maxim, that when
we put on the bonds of civil society, we give up the natural right of
self-defense.

But what does this maxim mean? Does it mean that we transfer the right
to repel force by force? If so, the proposition is not true; for this
right is as fully possessed by every individual after he has entered
into society as it could have been in a state of nature. If he is
assailed, or threatened with immediate personal danger, the law of the
land does not require him to wait upon the strong but slow arm of
government for protection. On the contrary, it permits him to protect
himself, to repel force by force, in so far as this may be necessary to
guard against injury to himself; and the law of nature allows no more.
Indeed, if there be any difference, the law of the land allows a man to
go further in the defense of self than he is permitted to go by the law
of God. Hence, in this sense, the maxim under consideration is not true;
and no man's natural liberty is abridged by the State.

Does this maxim mean, then, that in a state of nature every man has a
right to redress his own wrongs by the _subsequent_ punishment of the
offender, which right the citizen has transferred to the government? It
is clear that this must be the meaning, if it have any correct meaning
at all. But neither in this sense is the maxim or proposition true. The
right to punish an offender must rest upon the one or the other of two
grounds: either upon the ground that the offender deserves punishment,
or that his punishment is necessary to prevent similar offenses. Now,
upon neither of these grounds has any man, even in a state of nature,
the right to punish an offense committed against himself.

First, he has no right to punish such an offense on the ground that it
deserves punishment. No man has, or ever had, the right to wield the
awful attribute of retributive justice; that is, to inflict so much pain
for so much guilt or moral turpitude. This is the prerogative of