ch, under some circumstances, the action of
Government may be rightfully carried.

Was our own Government wrong in suppressing Thuggee in India? If not,
would it be wrong in putting down any enthusiast who attempted to set
up the worship of Astarte in the Haymarket? Has the State no right to
put a stop to gross and open violations of common decency? And if
the State has, as I believe it has, a perfect right to do all these
things, are we not bound to admit, with Locke, that it may have a
right to interfere with "Popery" and "Atheism," if it be really true
that the practical consequences of such beliefs con be proved to
be injurious to civil society? The question where to draw the line
between those things with which the State ought, and those with which
it ought not, to interfere, then, is one which must be left to be
decided separately for each individual case. The difficulty which
meets the statesman is the same as that which meets us all in
individual life, in which our abstract rights are generally clear
enough, though it is frequently extremely hard to say at what point it
is wise to cease our attempts to enforce them.

The notion that the social body should be organized in such a manner
as to advance the welfare of its members, is as old as political
thought; and the schemes of Plato, More, Robert Owen, St. Simon,
Comte, and the modern socialists, bear witness that, in every age, men
whose capacity is of no mean order, and whose desire to benefit
their fellows has rarely been excelled, have been strongly, nay,
enthusiastically, convinced that Government may attain its end--the
good of the people--by some more effectual process than the very
simple and easy one of putting its hands in its pockets, and letting
them alone.

It may be, that all the schemes of social organization which have
hitherto been propounded are impracticable follies. But if this be so,
the fact proves, not that the idea which underlies them is worthless,
but only that the science of politics is in a very rudimentary and
imperfect state. Politics, as a science, is not older than astronomy;
but though the subject-matter of the latter is vastly less complex
than that of the former, the theory of the moon's motions is not quite
settled yet.

Perhaps it may help us a little way towards getting clearer notions of
what the State may and what it may not do, if, assuming the truth of
Locke's maxim that "the end of Government is the good of mankind,