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46 his continual intercourse with his fellow-citizens, and the equality of his condition with theirs, his interest must be closely connected with their advantage or disadvantage, and hence with the circumstances of their respective positions. The end moreover which he designs to attain is already prepared and anticipated in the present, and therefore produces beneficial results. But the grounds on which the State acts are ideas and principles, which often deceive the correctest calculations; and if the reasons be drawn from considerations of its private capacity, it may be observed that this is too often questionable, where the welfare and security of the citizen are concerned, and further, that the capacity of the citizens is never equal in the same degree. Even granting this double personality, it is then no longer the State which acts; and the very nature of such reasoning forbids its application.

The points of view from which these last considerations are suggested, and from which indeed our whole argument proceeds, have no other object than simply man's power, as such, and his internal development. Such reasoning would be justly chargeable with onesidedness if it wholly disregarded the conditions which must exist in order that that power may operate at all. And while mentioning this, we must not overlook the question that naturally arises in this place, viz. whether those very things from which we would withdraw the operation of State solicitude, could ever flourish without it and of themselves. We might here pass before us in successive review, the different kinds of handicraft, agriculture, industry, commerce, and all those distinct departments we have hitherto considered in common, and could bring in the aid of technical knowledge to exhibit the evils and advantages derivable in each case from unhindered freedom, and the abandonment of men to themselves. But, while the want of such technical insight