distinctness) the assurance of legal freedom. Now this security is not of necessity disturbed by all such actions as impede a man in the free exercise of his powers, and in the full enjoyment of all that belongs to him, but only by those which do this unrightfully. This sense which we assign to the word, and the definition just adapted to express it, are not to be supposed arbitrarily chosen and appended. Both follow immediately from our previous conclusions; and it is only with this sense of the term security, that our former reasoning can find application. For it is only actual violations of right which require any other power to counteract them than that which every individual himself possesses; it is the prevention of such violations alone which is pure gain to true development, while every other manifestation of political enterprise throws nought but obstacles in its way; and, lastly, it is this State-duty alone which has its source in the infallible precepts of absolute necessity, while every other is based on the shifting ground of a utility, estimated according to weak and treacherous probabilities.
Those whose security is to be preserved are, on the one hand, all the citizens, in perfect legal equality, and, on the other, the State itself. The extent of this latter object, or the security of the State, is determined by the extent of the rights assigned to it, and through these by the nature and extent of its aims. As I have hitherto argued, it may not demand security for anything save the power entrusted to its hands, and the resources allotted to its disposal. Further, it should not, with a view to this security, restrict the citizen when, without violating any actual right (and hence, with the understanding that he is not bound to the State by any personal or temporary relation, as, for instance, in time of war), he would withdraw himself or his property from the political community. For the State organism is merely a subordinate means, to which man, the true end, is
