This power [of the state] operating externally protects society against its enemies; its function in its internal operation is to ensure the enforcement of law, that is of custom, and, so long as it confines itself to its true province, to make still more clear those boundary lines of individual action the observance of which is the supreme guaranty of Liberty. Any law which has an effect beyond that of maintaining these lines, is by so much an encroachment upon just liberty, and as that liberty is the choicest of blessings so that encroachment is the worst of woes; and whether it is made by the decree of an absolute monarch or by the regular enactment of the legislature of a democratic government, is, alike in either case, what we denominate by the word Tyranny.
-James Coolidge Carter ( Law: Its Origin, Growth and Function)
(H/T: Cafe Hayek)
