arther progress, is engaged to establish
political society, in order to administer justice, without which
there can be no peace among them, nor safety, nor mutual
intercourse. We are therefore to look upon all the vast apparatus
of our government, as having ultimately no other object or purpose
but the distribution of justice, or, in other words, the support of
the twelve judges. Kings and parliaments, fleets and armies,
officers of the court and revenue, ambassadors, ministers and privy
councillors, are all subordinate in the end to this part of
administration. Even the clergy, as their duty leads them to
inculcate morality, may justly be thought, so far as regards this
world, to have no other useful object of their institution."--(III.
37.)

The police theory of government has never been stated more tersely:
and, if there were only one state in the world; and if we could be
certain by intuition, or by the aid of revelation, that it is wrong for
society, as a corporate body, to do anything for the improvement of its
members and, thereby, indirectly support the twelve judges, no objection
could be raised to it.

Unfortunately the existence of rival or inimical nations furnishes
"kings and parliaments, fleets and armies," with a good deal of
occupation beyond the support of the twelve judges; and, though the
proposition that the State has no business to meddle with anything but
the administration of justice, seems sometimes to be regarded as an
axiom, it can hardly be said to be intuitively certain, inasmuch as a
great many people absolutely repudiate it; while, as yet, the attempt to
give it the authority of a revelation has not been made.

As Hume says with profound truth in the fourth essay, _On the First
Principles of Government_:--

"As force is always on the side of the governed, the governors have
nothing to support them but opinion. It is, therefore, on opinion
only that government is founded; and this maxim extends to the most
despotic and most military governments, as well as to the most free
and the most popular."--(III. 31.)

But if the whole fabric of social organisation rests on opinion, it may
surely be fairly argued that, in the interests of self-preservation, if
for no better reason, society has a right to see that the means of
forming just opinions are placed within the reach of every one of its
members; and, ther