Governments have hitherto been established, and have apologized for the
unseemly fact of their existence, from the necessity of establishing and
maintaining order; but order has never yet been maintained, revolutions
and violent outbreaks have never yet been ended, public peace and
harmony have never yet been secured, for the precise reason that the
organic, essential, and indestructible natures of the objects which it
was attempted to reduce to order have always been constricted and
infringed by every such attempt. Just in proportion as the effort is
less and less made to reduce men to order, just in that proportion they
become more orderly, as witness the difference in the state of society
in Austria and the United States. Plant an army of one hundred thousand
soldiers in New York, as at Paris, to preserve the peace, and we should
have a bloody revolution in a week; and be assured that the only remedy
for what little of turbulence remains among us, as compared with
European societies, will be found to be more liberty. When there remain
positively no external restrictions, there will be positively no
disturbance, provided always certain regulating principles of justice,
to which I shall advert presently, are accepted and enter into the
public mind, serving as substitutes for every species of repressive
laws.