holder does not make his slaves work
by force, but by agreement. And yet it is true. There is a contract
between the two which, if it were written out, would run in these
terms:--"I undertake to feed, clothe, house, and not to kill, flog,
or otherwise maltreat you, Quashie, if you perform a certain amount of
work." Quashie, seeing no better terms to be had, accepts the bargain,
and goes to work accordingly. A highwayman who garottes me, and then
clears out my pockets, robs me by force in the strict sense of the
words; but if he puts a pistol to my head and demands my money or
my life, and I, preferring the latter, hand over my purse, we have
virtually made a contract, and I perform one of the terms of that
contract. If, nevertheless, the highwayman subsequently shoots me,
everybody will see that, in addition to the crimes of murder and
theft, he has been guilty of a breach of contract.

A despotic Government, therefore, though often a mere combination
of slaveholding and highway robbery, nevertheless implies a contract
between governor and governed, with voluntary submission on the part
of the latter; and _a fortiori_, all other forms of government are in
like case.

Now a contract between any two men implies a restriction of the
freedom of each in certain particulars. The highwayman gives up his
freedom to shoot me, on condition of my giving up my freedom to do
as I like with my money: I give up my freedom to kill Quashie, on
condition of Quashie's giving up his freedom to be idle. And the
essence and foundation of every social organization, whether simple
or complex, is the fact that each member of the society voluntarily
renounces his freedom in certain directions, in return for the
advantages which he expects from association with the other members
of that society. Nor are constitutions, laws, or manners, in ultimate
analysis, anything but so many expressed or implied contracts between
the members of a society to do this, or abstain from that.

It appears to me that this feature constitutes the difference
between the social and the physiological organism. Among the higher
physiological organisms, there is none which is developed by the
conjunction of a number of primitively independent existences into
a complex whole. The process of social organization appears to be
comparable, not so much to the process of organic development, as
to the synthesis of the chemist, by which independent elements are
gradually built