CHAPTER IX.
After having now completed the more important and difficult portions of the present inquiry, and approached nearer to the solution of the great problem which it involves, it becomes necessary to review its progress up to this point, and endeavour to sum up its results.
Firstly, then, we have seen sufficient reasons for withdrawing the exercise of State solicitude from all such objects as do not immediately relate to the external or internal security of its citizens. In the second place, this same security has been represented as the real object of political activity; and, lastly, it has been agreed, that no efforts are allowable for the promotion of this object which are designed to operate on the morals and character of the nation itself, or to impart or counteract in them any definite direction. To a certain extent, therefore, the question as to the proper limits of State agency appears to be already fully solved, seeing that the sphere of this agency is confined to the preservation of security; and as to the means available for that purpose, still more narrowly restricted to those which do not interfere, for State ends, with the development of national character, or, rather, do not mould and fashion it with a view to those ends. For although, it is true, this definition is so far purely negative, yet that which remains after this abstraction of different departments of solicitude
