e impartial
execution of equal laws, to secure unto all the people in
general, and to every one of his subjects in particular, the
just possession of those things belonging to this life.

"... The whole jurisdiction of the magistrate reaches only
to these civil concernments.... All civil power, right,
and dominion, is bounded and confined to the only care of
promoting these things."

Elsewhere in the same "Letter," Locke lays down the proposition that
if the magistrate understand washing a child "to be profitable to the
curing or preventing any disease that children are subject unto, and
esteem the matter weighty enough to be taken care of by a law, in that
case he may order it to be done."

Locke seems to differ most widely from Hobbes by his strong advocacy
of a certain measure of toleration in religious matters. But the
reason why the civil magistrate ought to leave religion alone is,
according to Locke, simply this, that "true and saving religion
consists in the inward persuasion of the mind." And since "such is the
nature of the understanding that it cannot be compelled to the belief
of anything by outward force," it is absurd to attempt to make men
religious by compulsion. I cannot discover that Locke fathers the pet
doctrine of modern Liberalism, that the toleration of error is a good
thing in itself, and to be reckoned among the cardinal virtues; on
the contrary, in this very "Letter on Toleration" he states in the
clearest language that "No opinion contrary to human society, or to
those moral rules which are necessary to the preservation of civil
society, are to be tolerated by the magistrate." And the practical
corollary which he draws from this proposition is that there ought to
be no toleration for either Papists or Atheists.

After Locke's time the negative view of the functions of Government
gradually grew in strength, until it obtained systematic and able
expression in Wilhelm von Humboldt's "Ideen,"[1] the essence of which
is the denial that the State has a right to be anything more than
chief policeman. And, of late years, the belief in the efficacy of
doing nothing, thus formulated, has acquired considerable popularity
for several reasons. In the first place, men's speculative convictions
have become less and less real; their tolerance is large because their
belief is small; they know that the State had better leave things
alone unless it has a clear knowledge about the