en it imposes on me its theology or philosophy;

* when it prescribes for me, or interdicts, a cult;

* when it assumes to regulate my ways and habits,

* when it assumes to limit my labor or expenditure,

* when it assumes to direct the education of my children,

* when it assumes to fix the prices of my wares or the rate of my wages.

For then, to enforce its commands and prohibitions, it enacts light or
serious penalties against the recalcitrant, all the way from political
or civil incapacity to fines, imprisonment, exile and the guillotine.
In other words, the money I do not owe it, and of which it robs me, pays
for the persecution which it inflicts upon me; I am reduced to paying
out of my own purse the wages of my inquisitors, my jailer and my
executioner. A more glaring oppression could not be imagined!--Let us
watch out for the encroachments of the State and not allow it to become
anything more than a watch-dog. Whilst the teeth and nails of other
guests in the household have been losing their sharpness, its fangs have
become formidable; it is now colossal and it alone still keeps up the
practice of fighting. Let us supply it with nourishment against wolves;
but never let it touch peaceable folks around the table. Appetite grows
by eating; it would soon become a wolf itself, and the most ravenous
wolf inside the fold. The important thing is to keep a chain around its
neck and confine it within its own enclosure.

IV. The state is tempted to encroach.

The state is tempted to encroach.--Precedents and reasons
for its pretensions.

Let us go around the fold, which is an extensive one, and, through its
extensions, reach into almost every nook of private life.--Each private
domain, indeed, physical or moral, offers temptations for its neighbors
to trespass on it, and, to keep this intact, demands the superior
intervention of a third party. To acquire, to possess, to sell, to give,
to bequeath, to contract between husband and wife, father, mother or
child, between master or domestic, employer or employee, each act
and each situation, involves rights limited by contiguous and adverse
rights, and it is the State which sets up the boundary between them.
Not that it creates this boundary; but, that this may be recognized, it
draws the line and therefore enacts civil laws which it applies through
its courts and gendarmes in such a way as to secure to each individual
what belongs to him. The State