Locke has furnished us with such a formula, in the noblest, and at the
same time briefest, statement of the purpose of Government known to
me:--
"THE END OF GOVERNMENT IS THE GOOD OF MANKIND."[1]
[Footnote 1: "Of Civil Government," Sec. 229.]
But the good of mankind is not a something which is absolute and
fixed for all men, whatever their capacities or state of civilization.
Doubtless it is possible to imagine a true "Civitas Dei," in which
every man's moral faculty shall be such as leads him to control all
those desires which run counter to the good of mankind, and to cherish
only those which conduce to the welfare of society; and in which every
man's native intellect shall be sufficiently strong, and his culture
sufficiently extensive, to enable him to know what he ought to do and
to seek after. And, in that blessed State, police will be as much a
superfluity as every other kind of government.
But the eye of man has not beheld that State, and is not likely to
behold it for some time to come. What we do see, in fact, is that
States are made up of a considerable number of the ignorant and
foolish, a small proportion of genuine knaves, and a sprinkling of
capable and honest men, by whose efforts the former are kept in a
reasonable state of guidance, and the latter of repression.
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