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standard of conduct. Rules are all very well in their place as foundations for thoroughly optional special doings, and confined to the limited sphere of a circumscribed purpose, such as defining the structure of a game, the fun of which consists in seeing what can be done under specified limitations, and where the rule exists in the capacity of an assumed natural quality in an imaginary world which we can enter or leave at will; but as affecting doings in the real world, which are founded on facts that cannot be abrogated in that connection, they are wholly out of place. Our everyday affairs might just as well be regulated by the rules of cricket or draughts as by property or other law; it is only a matter of depending on the complications to which the peculiar limitations of the game give rise, for our material prosperity or adversity. As to the dread of penalty, everyone has to beware how he awakens resentment, but the question here is, will it wake on natural and reasonable, or on artificial and arbitrary grounds? If the latter, its moral value for arousing the morally dull to the fact that other people's feet ache when trodden on, is destroyed; especially when the aggrieved—directly or through sympathy—are forbidden to exercise their resentment, and instead of the aggriever being taught a lesson as between man and man, he is punished by strangers in the name of an impersonal power for breach of discipline; not for wronging others, for the law gives to all who can use the law to that purpose, the privilege of wronging others: but for doing a wrong, or for that matter a right, in a forbidden way. This brings us to the point: to judge the rights and wrongs of any case correctly and deal with it intelligently, it must be treated on its own circumstances, and not by conventionalities and codes; then, is this to be done by the parties consciously affected, or by officials endowed with the monopolistic privilege of doing so? To be governed signifies that someone else has the choice of your conduct and attitude towards others' conduct, and you have not.
"Oh! but," we are told, "if you did away with Government there would be a horrible state of things; the world would become one vast field of chaotic rapine and slaughter!" What else is it now? If, however,
