groups, ought not to have complete liberty of action in matters which
are of equal concern to foreign nations. Liberty demands
self-government, but not the right to interfere with others. The
greatest degree of liberty is not secured by anarchy. The
reconciliation of liberty with government is a difficult problem, but
it is one which any political theory must face.

The essence of government is the use of force in accordance with law
to secure certain ends which the holders of power consider desirable.
The coercion of an individual or a group by force is always in itself
more or less harmful. But if there were no government, the result
would not be an absence of force in men's relations to each other; it
would merely be the exercise of force by those who had strong
predatory instincts, necessitating either slavery or a perpetual
readiness to repel force with force on the part of those whose
instincts were less violent. This is the state of affairs at present
in international relations, owing to the fact that no international
government exists. The results of anarchy between states should
suffice to persuade us that anarchism has no solution to offer for the
evils of the world.

There is probably one purpose, and only one, for which the use of
force by a government is beneficent, and that is to diminish the total
amount of force used m the world. It is clear, for example, that the
legal prohibition of murder diminishes the total amount of violence in
the world. And no one would maintain that parents should have
unlimited freedom to ill-treat their children. So long as some men
wish to do violence to others, there cannot be complete liberty, for
either the wish to do violence must be restrained, or the victims must
be left to suffer. For this reason, although individuals and