CHAPTER X - On the solicitude of the State for security with respect to actions which directly relate to the agent only (Police laws)

Summary

In order to follow man, as we now must through all the complex and manifold relations which his life in society presents, it will be best to begin with considering the simplest of these, the case where man, though living in association with others, remains strictly within the limits of what belongs to himself, and engages in nothing that refers immediately to the rights of others. It is to this aspect of civil relations that the greater number of our so-called police, or preventive, laws are directed; since, however indefinite this expression may be, it still conveys to us the general and important idea, that these laws relate to the means of averting violations of the rights of others. Now they either restrict actions whose immediate consequences are likely to endanger the rights of others; or they impose limitations on those which usually lead ultimately to transgressions of the law; or, lastly, they may specify what is necessary for the preservation or exercise of the power of the State itself. I must here overlook the fact that those regulations which do not relate to security, but are directed to the positive welfare of the citizen, are most commonly classed under this heading; since it does not fall in with the system of classification I have adopted.