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. And, such
being the case, I do not see how any limit whatever can be laid down
as to the extent to which, under some circumstances, the action of
Government may be rightfully carried.

Was our own Government wrong in suppressing Thuggee in India? If not,
would it be wrong in putting down any enthusiast who attempted to set
up the worship of Astarte in the Haymarket? Has the State no right to
put a stop to gross and open violations of common decency? And if
the State has, as I believe it has, a perfect right to do all these
things, are we not bound to admit, with Locke, that it may have a
right to interfere with "Popery" and "Atheism," if it be really true
that the practical consequences of such beliefs con be proved to
be injurious to civil society? The question where to draw the line
between those things with which the State ought, and those with which
it ought not, to interfere, then, is one which must be left to be
decided separately for each individual case. The difficulty which
meets the statesman is the same as that which meets us all in
individual life, in which our abstract rights are generally clear