The economists do not say that a man may kill, sack, burn, and that society has only to be quiescent — laissez faire. They say that even in the absence of all law, society would resist such acts; and that consequently such resistance is a general law of humanity. They say that civil and penal laws must regulate, and not counteract, those general laws the existence of which they presuppose. There is a wide difference between a social organization founded on the general laws of human nature, and an artificial organization, invented, imagined — that takes no account of these laws, or repudiates and despises them — such an organization, in short, as many modern schools would impose upon us.
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