and exercised a free power of decision. Wherever such is not the case, coercion is as unjust in principle as it is pernicious in its effects. On the one hand, also, the deliberation as regards the future can never be perfectly just and complete; and on the other, there are many obligations contracted, of a nature to impose such fetters on liberty, as prove serious hindrances to the man's complete development. Hence there devolves a second duty on the State—to refuse the support of the law to such engagements as are contrary to right, and to take all necessary precautions (consistent with the security of property) to prevent a moment's want of reflection from entailing such restrictions on a man as to retard or prevent his own perfect development. It comes within the province of juridical theories, to detail all that is necessary for the validity of contracts or engagements. It only remains for me to observe, with regard to their objects, that a State, to which (according to our former principles) nothing beyond the solicitude for security is allowed, may not regard any other objects as exceptional save those which are already shown to be such by general considerations of right, or by the solicitude for security. Of this class we may notice the following cases, as being the most remarkable:—1. When the party promising cannot transfer any right of coercion without making himself a tool for the designs of others—as, for example, in every contract which ends in the slavery of the person contracting; 2. Where the party promising has no power to grant what is promised, according to its very nature—as is the case, for instance, in all matters of feeling or belief; 3. When the promise in itself, or in its implied consequences, is either incompatible with, or dangerous to, the rights of others, in which case the principles established in our last chapter are here also strictly applicable. Now the difference between these cases is this, that in the first
