"Society has the right to prescribe the terms, upon the expressed or
implied agreement to comply with which a person may reside within
its limits."
ANSWER. This principle I utterly deny. All that Society has a right
to demand is peaceful submission to its exactions:--_consent_ they
have neither the power nor the right to exact or to imply. Twenty
men live on a lone island. Nineteen set up a government and say,
every man who lives there shall worship idols. The twentieth submits
to all their laws, but refuses to commit idolatry. Have they the
_right_ to say, "Do so, or quit;" or, to say, "If you stay, we
will consider you as impliedly worshipping idols?" Doubtless they
have the _power_, but the majority have no _rights_, except those
which justice sanctions. Will the objector show me the justice of
his principle? I was born here. I ask no man's permission to remain.
All that any man or body of men have a right to infer from my
staying here, is that, in doing this _innocent act_, I think, that on
the whole, I am effecting more good than harm. Lawyers say, I cannot
find this right laid down in the books. That will not trouble me.
Some old play has a character in it who never ties his neckcloth
without a warrant from Mr. Justice Overdo. I claim no relationship
to that very scrupulous individual.