interest was ever discussed, but only some political interest.

Now, on the other hand, amongst ourselves, every question, that is
large enough to engage public interest, though it should begin as
a mere comparison of strength with strength, almost immediately
travels forward into a comparison of right with rights, or of duty
with duty. A mere fiscal question of restraint upon importation
from this or that particular quarter, passes into a question of
colonial rights. Arrangements of convenience for the management
of the pauper, or the debtor, or the criminal, or the war-captive,
become the occasions of profound investigations into the rights
of persons occupying those relations. Sanatory ordinances for the
protection of public health; such as quarantine, fever hospitals,
draining, vaccination, &c., connect themselves, in the earliest
stages of their discussion, with the general consideration of the
duties which the state owes to its subjects. If education is to
be promoted by public counsels, every step of the inquiry applies
itself to the consideration of the knowledge to be communicated,
and of the limits within which any section of religious partisanship
can be safely authorized to interfere. If coercion, beyond the
warrant of the ordinary law, is to be applied as a remedy for local
outrages, a tumult of opinions arises instantly, as to the original
causes of the evil, as to the sufficiency of the subsisting laws
to meet its pressure, and as to the modes of connecting enlarged
powers in the magistrate with the _minimum_ of offence to the
general rights of the subject.

Everywhere, in short, some question of duty and responsibility
arises to face us in any the smallest public interest that _can_
become the subject of public opinion. Questions, in fact, that fall