It is continually living beyond its means, it increases in proportion to its means, and draws its support solely, from the substance of the people.

Woe to the people who are incapable of limiting the sphere of action of the State.
Liberty, private activity, riches, well-being, independence, dignity, depend upon this.
There is one circumstance which must be noticed: Chief among the services which we ask of the State is _security_.

That it may guarantee this to us it must control a force capable of overcoming all individual or collective domestic or foreign forces which might endanger it.
Combined with that fatal disposition among men to live at the expense of each other, which we have before noticed, this fact suggests a danger patent to all.
You will accordingly observe on what an immense scale spoliation, by the abuses and excesses of the government, has been practiced.
If one should ask what service has been rendered the public, and what return has been made therefor, by such governments as Assyria, Babylon, Egypt, Rome, Persia, Turkey, China, Russia, England, Spain and France, he would be astonished at the enormous disparity.
At last representative government was invented, and, _a priori_, one might have believed that the disorder would have ceased as if by enchantment.
The principle of these governments is this: "The people themselves, by their representatives, shall decide as to the nature and extent of the public service and the remuneration for those services." The tendency to appropriate the property of another, and the desire to defend one's own, are thus brought in contact.

One might suppose that the latter would overcome the former.

Assuredly I am convinced that the latter will finally prevail, but we must concede that thus far it has not.
Why?
For a very simple reason.