Now if you have a bicycle and some full-grown, strong, brutal man were to come into your yard, take your bicycle, and start away with it, what would you do? You might protest. You might beg him not to take your property, but this would probably do no good. A thief does not stop when he is asked to by the owner of the property he is stealing, nor is a thief influenced by the fact that his act is wrong. In fact doing wrong is the business of a thief.
So there being many strong people in the world and many weak people, many wise people, and many simple people, the full grown and the children, and many, many people who are not guided by rules of right or morality or justice, you can see how necessary it is that someone shall provide rules and regulations under which the weak, the simple, and the young may be protected from the strong, the brutal, and the wicked who would deprive their neighbors of their rights or their property, simply because they had the power to do it. This is what the government does.
There have been times in the world, hundreds and thousands of years, during which the strong governed the weak, made the weak their slaves, took from the weak the earnings of their toil; but our government exists for the very purpose of restraining the strong and protecting the weak, so that their rights are equal. Every man is free and no man is a slave.
Therefore always keep in mind that the purpose of government is to protect the people of all classes and ages so that, so far as possible, all may be equal in their right to do the things they want to do, own the things they want to own so far as they are able to produce or procure them, think the things they want to think, and speak the things they want to speak. In other words, _government is to protect our freedom against the wrongs of others_.
Now we must not have the notion in our mind that the government has anything to do with who shall work, or who shall play, or who shall idle. Occupations in life are not selected by the government. Each person determines this for himself. That is one of the privileges which we have in a free country, to select our own occupations; and as you go through life you will find that what appear to be the higher or better occupations are usually earned by industry, faithfulness, and honesty.(10)