1. As a corollary to the proposition that all institutions must be subordinated to the law of equal freedom, we cannot choose but admit the right of the citizen to adopt a condition of voluntary outlawry. If every man has freedom to do all that he wills, provided he infringes not the equal freedom of any other man, then he is free to drop connection with the State,—to relinquish its protection and to refuse paying toward its support. It is self-evident that in so behaving he in no way trenches upon the liberty of others; for his position is a passive one, and whilst passive he cannot become an aggressor. It is equally self-evident that he cannot be compelled to continue one of a political corporation without a breach of the moral law, seeing that citizenship involves payment of taxes; and the taking away of a man's property against his will is an infringement of his rights. Government being simply an agent employed in common by a number of individuals to secure to them certain advantages, the very nature of the connection implies that it is for each to say whether he will employ such an agent or not. If any one of them determines to ignore this mutual-safety confederation, nothing can be said except that he loses all claim to its good offices, and exposes himself to the dangler of
- ↑ From the first edition of "Social Statics," published in London in 1850. "When, after ten years, the first small edition was exhausted, the book was allowed to go out of print in England; but for some twenty-five years thereafter Spencer's publishers continued to supply the English market by Importing editions in sheets printed from the plates of Messrs. Appletons' American reprint. In 1899 Spencer published in both England and America a volume of excerpts from "Social Statics," in which the chapter here given, along with about half the remaining contents of the original work, did not appear.
