Let us see what this thing is that we prize so highly. Let us see if we are paying any too high a price for our object--if it is worth a million lives and a countless treasure. What is _the Nation_?
There used to be a theory of 'the Social Compact.' It was a prominent theory in the French Revolution, It was vastly older, however, than that event. It was originally a theory of the Epicureans. Ovid has something to say about it. Horace advocates it. It has not perished. It exists in a fragmentary way in some books taught in colleges. It has more or less of a hold still on many minds. This theory teaches that the natural state of man is a state of warfare, an isolated savagery, where each man's hand is against his neighbor, each lord and master for himself, with no rights except what force gives him, and no possessions except what he can hold by force. This natural state, however, was found to be a very uncomfortable state, and so men contrive to get out of it as soon as possible. For this purpose they form a 'social compact.' They come together, and agree to give up some of their natural rights to a settled government, on condition that government protect them in the others. That is to say, naturally they have the right to steal all they can lay their hands on, to rob, plunder, murder, and commit adultery, if they have the power, and, generally, to live like a pack of amiable tiger cats; but that these pleasant and amusing natural rights they consent to give up, on condition they are relieved from the trouble of guarding others. Just such babblement as that you can read in very learned books, and stuff like that has actually been taught in colleges, and nobody was sent to the lunatic asylum! That is the theory of the 'Social Compact.' That is the way, according to that theory, that nations are made.
It is enough to say of this old heathen dream, that there never was such a state of savage brutalism known since man was man. All men are born under some law, some government, some controlling authority. As long as fathers and mothers are necessary, in the economy of nature, to a man's getting into the world at all, it is very hard for him to escape law and control when he comes. I was never asked whether I would be a citizen of the United States, whether it was my high will to come into 'the Social Compact' existing here. Neither were you. No man ever was. Just fancy the United States solemnly asking all the infants born this year, 'if they are willing to join the social compact and behave themselves in the country as respectable babies should!