That is a tolerably distinct idea.
But what is Order? Sometimes it means more, sometimes less, but hardly
ever the whole of what human society needs except improvement.
In its narrowest acceptation Order means Obedience. A government
is said to preserve order if it succeeds in getting itself obeyed. But
there are different degrees of obedience, and it is not every degree
that is commendable. Only an unmitigated despotism demands that the
individual citizen shall obey unconditionally every mandate of persons
in authority. We must at least limit the definition to such mandates
as are general and issued in the deliberate form of laws. Order,
thus understood, expresses, doubtless, an indispensable attribute of
government. Those who are unable to make their ordinances obeyed,
cannot be said to govern. But though a necessary condition, this is
not the object of government. That it should make itself obeyed is
requisite, in order that it may accomplish some other purpose. We
are still to seek what is this other purpose, which government ought
to fulfil, abstractedly from the idea of improvement, and which has to
be fulfilled in every society, whether stationary or progressive.
In a sense somewhat more enlarged, Order means the preservation of
peace by the cessation of private violence. Order is said to exist
where the people of the country have, as a general rule, ceased to
prosecute their quarrels by private force, and acquired the habit of
referring the decision of their disputes and the redress of their
injuries to the public authorities.
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