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The Director’s Favourites

This is a list of some of my favourite books which are in the Online Library of Liberty. I hope you will find them interesting and thought provoking. Let me know what you think of them.

David Hart

Director of the Online Library of Liberty

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  1: 1. Desiderius Erasmus, The Complaint of Peace [1521]

  

  Desiderius Erasmus (1466-1536) was a central figure in the Reformation in more than one way. He was a central player in the movement to reform the Christian religion particularly in editing and publishing an important bi-lingual edition of the bible which was the most textually accurate of its day. he was also “central” in that he was not as radical or outspoken as Martin Luther on one side, nor as conservative and opposed to change as the Catholic Church on the other side.

  I like this book because in is written in his typical fluent and witty style and has an important message. In it, the personification of Peace comes to earth and berates mankind for the folly and criminality of war. A timeless message in my view. Note that this edition was published in the US in 1917 just as it was about to enter “the war to end all wars.”

  Here is a passage near the beginning of the book:

  Now, if I, whose name is Peace, am a personage glorified by the united praise of God and man, as the fountain, the parent, the nurse, the patroness, the guardian of every blessing which either heaven or earth can bestow; if without me nothing is flourishing, nothing safe, nothing pure or holy, nothing pleasant to mortals, or grateful to the Supreme Being; if, on the contrary, war is one vast ocean, rushing on mankind, of all the united plagues and pestilences in nature; if, at its deadly approach, every blossom of happiness is instantly blasted, every thing that was improving gradually degenerates and dwindles away to nothing, every thing that was firmly supported totters on its foundation, every thing that was formed for long duration comes to a speedy end, and every thing that was sweet by nature is turned into bitterness; if war is so unhallowed that it becomes the deadliest bane of piety and religion; if there is nothing more calamitous to mortals, and more detestable to heaven, I ask, how in the name of God, can I believe those beings to be rational creatures; how can I believe them to be otherwise than stark mad; who, with such a waste of treasure, with so ardent a zeal, with so great an effort, with so many arts, so much anxiety, and so much danger, endeavour to drive me away from them, and purchase endless misery and mischief at a price so high?

  Desiderius Erasmus, The Complaint of Peace. Translated from the Querela Pacis (A.D. 1521) of Erasmus (Chicago: Open Court, 1917).

  Accessed from oll.libertyfund.org/title/87 on 2008-01-25

  The text is in the public domain.

  ---

  PUBLISHERS’ PREFACE.

  THIS translation of the Querela Pacis of Erasmus is reprinted from a rare old English version. It is probably the 1802 reprint of the translation made by T. Paynell but published anonymously. We are indebted to Mr. C. K. Ogden, editor of the Cambridge Magazine, for calling our attention to this quaint and timely publication and for furnishing the typewritten copy.

  THE COMPLAINT OF PEACE.
  (Peace speaks in her own person.)

  THOUGH I certainly deserve no ill treatment from mortals, yet if the insults and repulses I receive were attended with any advantage to them, I would content myself with lamenting in silence my own unmerited indignities and man’s injustice. But since, in driving me away from them, they remove the source of all human blessings, and let in a deluge of calamities on themselves, I am more inclined to bewail their misfortune, than complain of ill usage to myself; and I am reduced to the necessity of weeping over and commiserating those whom I wished to view rather as objects of indignation than of pity.

  For though rudely to reject one who loves them as I do, may appear to be savage cruelty; to feel an aversion for one who has deserved so well of them, base ingratitude; to trample on one who has nursed and fostered them with all a parent’s care, an unnatural want of filial affection; yet voluntarily to renounce so many and so great advantages as I always bring in my train, to go in quest of evils infinite in number and shocking in nature, how can I account for such perverse conduct, but by attributing it to downright madness? We may be angry with the wicked, but we can only pity the insane. What can I do but weep over them? And I weep over them the more bitterly, because they weep not for themselves. No part of their misfortune is more deplorable than their insensibility to it. It is one great step to convalescence to know the extent and inveteracy of a disease.

  Now, if I, whose name is Peace, am a personage glorified by the united praise of God and man, as the fountain, the parent, the nurse, the patroness, the guardian of every blessing which either heaven or earth can bestow; if without me nothing is flourishing, nothing safe, nothing pure or holy, nothing pleasant to mortals, or grateful to the Supreme Being; if, on the contrary, war is one vast ocean, rushing on mankind, of all the united plagues and pestilences in nature; if, at its deadly approach, every blossom of happiness is instantly blasted, every thing that was improving gradually degenerates and dwindles away to nothing, every thing that was firmly supported totters on its foundation, every thing that was formed for long duration comes to a speedy end, and every thing that was sweet by nature is turned into bitterness; if war is so unhallowed that it becomes the deadliest bane of piety and religion; if there is nothing more calamitous to mortals, and more detestable to heaven, I ask, how in the name of God, can I believe those beings to be rational creatures; how can I believe them to be otherwise than stark mad; who, with such a waste of treasure, with so ardent a zeal, with so great an effort, with so many arts, so much anxiety, and so much danger, endeavour to drive me away from them, and purchase endless misery and mischief at a price so high?

  If they were wild beasts who thus despised and rejected me, I could bear it more patiently; because I should impute the affront to nature, who had implanted in them so savage a disposition. If I were an object of hatred to dumb creatures, I could overlook their ignorance, because the powers of mind necessary to perceive my excellence have been denied to them. But it is a circumstance equally shameful and marvellous, that though nature has formed one animal, and one alone, with powers of reason, and a mind participating of divinity; one animal, and one alone, capable of sentimental affection and social union; I can find admission among the wildest of wild beasts, and the most brutal of brutes, sooner than with this one animal; the rational, immortal animal called man.

  Among the celestial bodies that are revolving over our heads, though the motions are not the same, and though the force is not equal, yet they move, and ever have moved, without clashing, and in perfect harmony. The very elements themselves, though repugnant in their nature, yet, by a happy equilibrium, preserve eternal peace; and amid the discordancy of their constituent principles, cherish, by a friendly intercourse and coalition, an uninterrupted concord.

  In living bodies, how all the various limbs harmonize, and mutually combine, for common defence against injury! What can be more heterogeneous, and unlike, than the body and the soul? and yet with what strong bonds nature has united them, is evident from the pang of separation. As life itself is nothing else but the concordant union of body and soul, so is health the harmonious cooperation of all the parts and functions of the body.

  Animals destitute of reason live with their own kind in a state of social amity. Elephants herd together; sheep and swine feed in flocks; cranes and crows take their flight in troops; storks have their public meetings to consult previously to their emigration, and feed their parents when unable to feed themselves; dolphins defend each other by mutual assistance; and everybody knows, that both ants and bees have respectively established by general agreement, a little friendly community.

  But I need dwell no longer on animals, which, though they want reason, are evidently furnished with sense. In trees and plants one may trace the vestiges of amity and love. Many of them are barren, unless the male plant is placed on their vicinity. The vine embraces the elm, and other plants cling to the vine. So that things which have no powers of sense to perceive any thing else, seem strongly to feel the advantages of union.

  But plants, though they have not powers of perception, yet, as they have life, certainly approach very nearly to those things which are endowed with sentient faculties. What then is so completely insensible as stony substance? yet even in this, there appears to be a desire of union. Thus the loadstone attracts iron to it, and holds it fast in its embrace, when so attracted. Indeed, the attraction of cohesion, as a law of love, takes place throughout all inanimate nature.

  I need not repeat, that the most savage of the savage tribes in the forest, live among each other in amity. Lions show no fierceness to the lion race. The boar does not brandish his deadly tooth against his brother boar. The lynx lives in peace with the lynx. The serpent shews no venom in his intercourse with his fellow serpent; and the loving kindness of wolf to wolf is proverbial.

  But I will add a circumstance still more marvellous. The accursed spirits, by whom the concord between heaven and human beings was originally interrupted, and to this day continues interrupted, hold union with one another, and preserve their usurped power, such as it is, by unanimity!1

  Yet man to man, whom, of all created beings, concord would most become, and who stands most in need of it, neither nature, so powerful and irresistible in every thing else, can reconcile; neither human compacts unite; neither the great advantages which would evidently arise from unanimity combine, nor the actual feeling and experience of the dreadful evils of discord cordially endear. To all men the human form is the same, the sound made by the organs of utterance similar; and while other species of animals differ from each other chiefly in the shape of their bodies, to men alone is given a reasoning power, which is indeed common to all men, yet in a manner so exclusive, that it is not at the same time common to any other living creature. To this distinguished being is also given the power of speech, the most conciliating instrument of social connection and cordial love.

  Throughout the whole race of men are sown by nature the seeds of virtue, and of every excellent quality. From nature man receives a mild and gentle disposition, so prone to reciprocal benevolence that he delights to be loved for the pleasure of being loved, without any view to interest; and feels a satisfaction in doing good, without a wish or prospect of remuneration. This disposition to do disinterested good, is natural to man, unless in a few instances, where, corrupted by depraved desires, which operate like the drugs of Circe’s cup, the human being has degenerated to the brute. Hence even the common people, in the ordinary language of daily conversation, denominate whatever is connected with mutual good will, humane; so that the word humanity no longer describes man’s nature, merely in a physical sense; but signifies humane manners, or a behaviour, worthy the nature of man, acting his proper part in civil society.

  Tears also are a distinctive mark fixed by nature, and appropriated to her favourite, man. They are a proof of placability, a forgiving temper; so that if any trifling offence be given or taken, if a little cloud of ill humour darken the sunshine, there soon falls a gentle shower of tears, and the cloud melts into a sweet serenity.

  Thus it appears, in what various ways nature has taught man her first great lesson of love and union. Nor was she content to allure the benevolence by the pleasurable sensations attending it; nor did she think she has done enough, when she rendered friendship pleasant; and therefore she determined to make it necessary. For this purpose, she so distributed among various men different endowments of the mind and the body, that no individual should be so completely furnished with all of them, but that he should want the occasional assistance of the lowest orders, and even of those who are most moderately furnished with ability. Nor did she give the same talents either in kind or in degree to all, evidently meaning that the inequality of her gifts should be ultimately equalized by a reciprocal interchange of good offices and mutual assistance. Thus, in different countries, she has caused different commodities to be produced, that expediency itself might introduce commercial intercourse.

  She furnished other animals with appropriate arms or weapons for defence or offence, but man alone she produced unarmed, and in a state of perfect imbecillity, that he might find his safety in association and alliance with his fellow-creatures. It was necessity which led to the formation of communities; it was necessity which led communities to league with each other, that, by the union of their force, they might repel the incursion either of wild beasts or banditti. So that there is nothing in the whole circle of human affairs, which is entirely sufficient of itself for self-maintenance, or self-defence.

  In the very commencement of life, the human race had been extinct, unless conjugal union had continued the race. With difficulty could man be born into the world, or as soon as born would he die, leaving life at the very threshold of existence, unless the friendly hand of the careful matron, and the affectionate assiduities of the nurse, lent their aid to the helpless babe. To preserve the poor infant, Nature has given the fond mother the tenderest attachment to it, so that she loves it even before she sees it.

  Nature, on the other hand, has given the children a strong affection for the parent, that they may become supports, in their turn, to the imbecillity of declining age; and that thus filial piety may remunerate (after the manner of the stork) to the second childhood of decrepitude, the tender cares experienced in infancy from parental love. Nature has also rendered the bonds both of kindred and affinity strong; a similarity of natural disposition, inclinations, studies, nay of external form, becomes a very powerful cause of attachment; and there is a secret sympathy of minds, a wonderful lure to mutual affection, which the ancients, unable to account for, attributed, in their admiration of it, to the tutelar genius, or the guardian angel.

  By such and so many plain indications of her meaning has Nature taught mankind to seek peace, and ensure it. She invites them to it by various allurements, she draws them to it by gentle violence, she compels them to it by the strong arm of necessity. After all, then, what infernal being, all-powerful in mischief, bursting every bond of nature asunder, fills the human bosom with an insatiable rage for war? If familiarity with the sight had not first destroyed all surprise at it, and custom, soon afterwards, blunted the sense of its evil, who could be prevailed upon to believe that those wretched beings are possessed of rational souls, the intellects and feelings of human creatures, who contend, with all the rage of furies, in everlasting feuds, and litigations, ending in murder! Robbery, blood, butchery, desolation, confound, without distinction, every thing sacred and profane. The most hallowed treaties, mutually confirmed by the strongest sanctions, cannot stop the enraged parties from rushing on to mutual destruction, whenever passion or mistaken interest urges them to the irrational decision of the battle.

  Though there were no other motive to preserve peace, one would imagine that the common name of man might be sufficient to secure concord between all who claim it. But be it granted that Nature has no effect on men as men, (though we have seen that Nature rules as she ought to do in the brute creation), yet, must not Christ therefore avail with christians? Be it granted that the suggestions of nature have no effect with a rational being, (though we see them have great weight even on inanimate things without sense) yet, as the suggestions of the christian religion are far more excellent than those of nature, why does not the christian religion persuade those who profess it, of a truth which it recommends above all others, that is, the expediency and necessity of peace on earth, and good-will towards men; or at least, why does it fail of effectually dissuading from the unnatural, and more than brutal, madness of waging war?

  When I, whose name is Peace, do but hear the word Man pronounced, I eagerly run to him as to a being created purposely for me, and confidently promising myself, that with him I may live for ever in uninterrupted tranquillity; but when I also hear the title of Christian added to the name of Man, I fly with additional speed, hoping that with christians I may build an adamantine throne, and establish an everlasting empire.

  But here also, with shame and sorrow, I am compelled to declare the result. Among Christians, the courts of justice, the palaces of princes, the senate-houses, and the churches, resound with the voice of strife, more loudly than was ever heard among nations who knew not Christ. Insomuch that though the multitude of wrangling advocates always constituted a great part of the world’s misfortune, yet even this number is nothing compared with the successive inundation of suitors always at law.

  I behold a city enclosed with walls. Hope springs in my bosom that men, christian men, must live in concord here, if any where, surrounded, as they are, by the same ramparts, governed by the same laws, embarked, as it were, in the same bottom, in the voyage of life, and therefore exposed to one common danger. But, ill-fated as I am, here also I find all happiness vitiated by dissension, that I can scarcely discover a single tenement in which I can take up my residence for the space of a few days only, unmolested.

  But I leave the common people, who are tossed about, like the waves, by the winds of passion. I enter the courts of kings as into a harbour, from the storm of folly. Here, say I to myself, here must be a place for Peace to lodge in. These personages are wiser than the vulgar; they are the minds of the commonalty, the eyes of the people. They claim also to be the vicegerents of Him who was the teacher of charity, the Prince of Peace, from whom I come with letters of recommendation, addressed, indeed, in general, to all men, but more particularly to such as these.

  Appearances, on my entrance into the palace, promise well. I see men saluting each other with the blandest, softest, gentlest expressions of respect and love; I see them shaking hands, and embracing with the most ardent professions of esteem; I see them dining together, and enjoying convivial pleasures in high glee and jollity; I see every outward sign of the kindest offices and humanity; but sorry am I to add, that I do not see the least symptom of sincere friendship. It is all paint and varnish. Every thing is corrupted by open faction, or by secret grudges and animosities. In one word, so far am I from finding in the palaces of princes a habitation for Peace, that in them I discover all the embryos, seminal principles, and sources of all the wars that ever cursed mankind, and desolated the universe.

  Unfortunate as I am in my researches for a place to rest in, whither shall I next repair? I failed among kings, it is true; but perhaps the epithet great belongs to kings, rather than good, wise, or learned; and perhaps they are more under the influence of caprice and passion than of sound and sober discretion. I will repair to the learned world. It is said, learning makes the man; philosophy, something more than man; and theology exalts man to the divine nature. Harassed as I am with the research, I shall surely find among these a safe retreat to rest my head in undisturbed repose.

  Here also I find war of another kind, less bloody indeed, but not less furious. Scholar wages war with scholar; and, as if truth could be changed by change of place, some opinions must never pass over the sea, some never can surmount the Alps, and others do not even cross the Rhine; nay, in the same university, the rhetorician is at variance with the logician, and the theologist with the lawyer. In the same kind of profession, the scotist contends with the thomist, the nominalist with the realist, the platonic with the peripatetic; insomuch that they agree not in the minutest points, and often are at daggers drawing de lana caprina, till the warmth of disputation advances from argument to abusive language, and from abusive language to fisty-cuffs; and, if they do not proceed to use real swords and spears, they stab one another with pens dipt in the venom of malice; they tear one another with biting libels, and dart the deadly arrows of their tongues against their opponent’s reputation.

  So often disappointed, whither shall I repair? Whither, but to the houses of religion? Religion! that anchor in the storm of life? The profession of religion is indeed common to all christians; but they who come recommended to us under the appellation of priests, profess it in a more peculiar manner, by the name they bear, the service they perform, and the ceremonies they observe.

  When I take a view of them at a distance, every outward and visible sign makes me conclude, that among them, at least, I shall certainly find a safe asylum. I like the looks of their white surplices; for white is my own favourite colour. I see figures of the cross about them, all symbolical of peace. I hear them all calling one another by the pleasant name of brother, a mark of extraordinary good-will and charity; I hear them salute each other with the words, “Peace be unto you”: apparently happy in an address so ominous of joy. I see a community of all things; I see them incorporated in a regular society, with the same place of worship, the same rules, and the same daily congregation. Who can avoid being confidently certain that here, if no where else in the world, a habitation will be found for peace?

  O, shame to tell! there is scarcely one man in these religious societies that is on good terms with his own bishop; though even this might be passed over as a trifling matter, if they were not torn to pieces by party disputes among each other. Where is the priest to be found, who has not a dispute with some other priest? Paul thinks it an insufferable enormity that a christian should go to law with a christian; and shall a priest contend with a priest, a bishop with a bishop? But perhaps it may be offered as an apology for these men, that, by long intercourse with men of the world, and by possessing such things as the world chiefly values, they have gradually adopted the manners of the world, even in the retreat of the church and the cloister. To themselves I leave them to strive about that property, which they claim by prescription.

  There remains one order of the clergy, who are so tied to religion by vows that, if they were inclined, they could no more shake it off, than the tortoise can get rid of the shell which he carries on his back, like a house. I should hope, if I had not been so often disappointed, that, among these persons, coming in the name of peace, I should gain a welcome reception. However, that I may leave no stone unturned, I go and try whether I may be allowed to fix my residence here. Do you wish to know the result of the experiment? I never received a ruder repulse. What indeed could I expect, where religion herself seems to be at war with religion. There are just as many parties as there are fraternities. The dominicans disagree with the minorites, the benedictines with the bernardines; so many modes of worship, so various the rites and ceremonies; they cannot agree in any particular; every one likes his own, and therefore damns all others. Nay, the same fraternity is rent into parties; the observantes inveigh against the coletae; both unite in their hatred of a third sort, which, though it derives its name from a convent, yet, in no article, can come to an amicable convention.

  By this time, as you may imagine, despairing of almost every place, I formed a wish that I might be permitted to seek a quiet retreat in the obscurity of some little inconsiderable monastery. With reluctance I must declare, what I wish were untrue, that I have not yet been able to find one which is not corrupted and spoiled by intestine jars and animosities. I blush to relate on what childish, flimsy causes, old men, venerable for their grey beards and their gowns, and in their own opinions not only deeply learned, but holy, involve themselves in endless strife.

  I now cherished a pleasing hope that I might find a place in private, domestic life, amid the apparent happiness of conjugal and family endearment. It was surely reasonable to expect it from such promising circumstances, as an equal partnership founded on the choice of the heart, in the same house, the same fortune, the same bed, the same progeny; add to this, the mysterious union by which two become virtually one. But here also Eris, the goddess of discord, had insinuated herself, and had torn asunder the strongest bands of conjugal attachment, by disagreement in temper; and yet, in the domestic circle, I could much sooner have found a place than among the professed religious, notwithstanding their fine titles, their splendid dresses, images, crucifixes, and their various ceremonies, all which hold out the idea of perfect charity, the very bonds of peace.

  At length I felt a wish that I might find a snug and secure dwelling-place in the bosom, at least, of some one man. But here also I failed. One and the same man is at war with himself. Reason wages war with the passions; one passion with another passion. Duty calls one way, and inclination another. Lust, anger, avarice, ambition, are all up in arms, each pursuing its own purposes, and warmly engaged in the battle.

  Such then and so fierce, ought not men to blush at the appellation of christians, differing, as they do essentially, from the peculiar and distinguishing excellence of Christ? Consider the whole of his life; what is it, but one lesson of concord and mutual love? What do his precepts, what do his parables inculcate, but peace and charity? Did that excellent prophet Isaiah, when he foretold the coming of Christ as an universal reconciler, represent him as an earthly lord, a satrap, a grandee, or courtier? Did he announce him as a mighty conqueror, a burner of villages, a destroyer of towns, as one who was to triumph over the slaughter and misery of wretched mortals? No. How then did he announce him? As the Prince of Peace. The prophet, intending to describe him as the most excellent of all the princes that ever came into the world, drew the title of that superior excellence, from what is itself the most excellent of all things, Peace. Nor is it to be wondered, that Isaiah, an inspired prophet, viewed Peace in this light, when Silius Italicus, a heathen poet, has written my character in these words:

  • • . . . . . . . . Pax optima rerum
    • Quas homini natura dedit . . . . . . . . . .
  • • No boon that nature ever gave to man,
    • May be compared with peace.

  The mystic minstrel, the sweet psalmist, has also sung:

  “In Salem (a place of peace) is his tabernacle.” Not in tents, not in camps, did this prince, mighty to save, fix his residence; but in Salem, the city of peace. He is, indeed, the Prince of Peace; peace is his dear delight, and war his abomination.

  Again, the prophet Isaiah calls the work of righteousness, peace; meaning the same thing with Paul, (who was himself converted from the turbulent Saul, to a preacher of peace) when preferring charity to all other gifts of the secret spirit of God, he thundered in the ears of the Corinthians my eulogium, with an eloquence which arose from the fine feelings of his bosom, animated by grace, and warm with benevolence. Why may I not glory in having been celebrated by one so celebrated himself, as this great apostle? In another place he calls Christ the God of Peace; and in a third, the Peace of God; plainly indicating, that these two characters so naturally coalesce, that Peace cannot come where God is not; and that where Peace is not, God cannot come.

  In the sacred volumes we find the holy ministers of God called messengers of peace; from which it is obvious to conclude, whose ministers those men must be, who are the messengers of war. Hear this, ye mighty warriors and mark under whose banners ye fight;—they are those of that accursed being who first sowed strife between man and his maker. To this first fatal strife are to be ascribed all the woes that mortal man is doomed to feel.

  It is frivolous to argue, as some do, that God is called, in the mysterious volumes, the God of hosts, and the God of vengeance. There is a great difference between the God of the Jews and the God of the Christians, notwithstanding God, in his own essence, is one and the same. But if we must still retain the ancient jewish titles of God, let God be called the God of hosts, while, by the word hosts, is understood, the phalanx of divine graces, by whose energy good men are enabled to route and destroy the vices, those deadliest enemies of human felicity. Let him still be styled God of vengeance, provided you understand it to be vengeance on those sins which rob us of repose. In like manner, the examples of bloody slaughter with which the jewish histories are stuffed, should be used, not as incentives to the butchery of our fellow-creatures, but to the utter extermination of all bad passions, hostile to our virtue and happiness, from the territory of our own bosoms.

  To proceed, however, as I had begun, with scriptural passages in favour of peace. Whenever they mean to describe perfect happiness, they always denote it by the name of peace; as Isaiah, “My people shall repose in the beauty of peace”; so also, “Peace upon Israel.” Again, Isaiah expresses a rapturous admiration of them who bring glad tidings of peace. Whoever of the sacred writers announces Christ, announces peace on earth. Whoever proclaims war, proclaims him who is as unlike Christ as it is possible to be—the grand destroyer.

  What induced the Son of God to come down from heaven to earth, but a gracious desire to reconcile the world to his Father? to cement the hearts of men by mutual and indissoluble love? and lastly, to reconcile man to himself and bid him be at peace with his own bosom? For my sake, then, he was sent on this gracious embassy; it was my business which he condescended to transact; and therefore he appointed Solomon to be a type of himself; the very name Solomon signifying a peace-maker. Great and illustrious as King David is represented; yet, because he was a king who delighted in war, and because he was polluted with human gore, he was not permitted to build the house of the Lord, he was not worthy to be made the type of Christ.

  Now then, warrior, halt and consider; if wars, undertaken and carried on at the command of the Deity, (as was the case in David’s wars) pollute and render a man unholy, what will be the effect of wars of ambition, wars of revenge, and wars of furious anger? If the blood of heathens defiled the pious king who shed it, what will be the effect on christian kings, of so copious an effusion of the blood of christians, caused solely by royal revenge?

  I do beseech your christian majesty, (if you are a christian in any thing besides your title) to contemplate the model of him who is your sovereign; observe how he entered upon his reign, how he conducted it, how he departed from this world, and learn to reign from his example. You will find that the very first object of your heart should be, to preserve your country in a state of peace.

  At the nativity of Christ did the angels sound the clarion of war? The horrid din might have been addressed to the ears of Jews, for they were allowed to wage war. Such auspices were well enough adapted to those who thought it lawful to hate their enemies; but to the pacific race of future christians, the angels of peace sounded a far different note. Did they blow the shrill trumpet? Did they promise triumphs and trophies of victory? Far from it. What then did they announce? Peace and good will, in conformity with the predictions of the prophets; and they announced them not to those who breathe war and bloodshed, who delight in the instruments of destruction, but to those whose hearts are inclined to concord.

  Let me cover their malice with what cloke they please; it is certain, that if they did not delight in war, they would not be constantly engaged in its conflicts.

  But as for Christ, what else did he teach and inculcate, but peace? He addressed those whom he loved, with the auspicious words of peace: Peace be with you, he repeatedly says; and prescribes this form of salutation, as alone worthy of the christian character. And the apostles, duly mindful of his precept and example, preface their epistles with a wish for peace to those whom they love. He who wishes health to his friend, wishes a most desirable blessing; but he who wishes him peace, wishes him the summit of human felicity.

  As Christ had recommended peace during the whole of his life, mark with what anxiety he enforces it at the approach of his dissolution. Love one another, says he; as I have loved you, so love one another; and again, my peace I give unto you, my peace I leave you. Do you observe the legacy he leaves to those whom he loves? Is it a pompous retinue, a large estate, or empire? Nothing of this kind. What is it then? peace he giveth, his peace he leaveth; peace, not only with our near connexions, but with enemies and strangers!

  I wish you to consider with me, what it was which he besought of his Father in his last prayer, at the last supper, when death was at hand. It was a remarkable prayer for one who knew that he should obtain whatever he requested. Father, says he, keep them in thy name, that they may be one, like as we are! Observe, I beseech you, what a wonderful union Christ requires in his followers; he does not pray that they may be of one mind, but that they may be one; nor does he mention this union in a vague manner, but says, “That they may be one, as we are,” who are one and the same in a most perfect, yet unspeakable and inexplicable manner. He indicates at the same time, that mortals can obtain salvation, or immortality, by no other means than the preservation of peace among themselves, during the whole of this transitory life.

  Moreover, as the kings of this world usually distinguish their subjects by some mark by which they may be known from others, especially in war, Christ has distinguished his subjects by the badge of mutual charity. By this, says he, shall all men know that you are my disciples; not if you wear this or that uniform, not if you eat this or that kind of food, not if you fast on this or that occasion, not if you say such or such a portion of the psalms; but if you love one another, and that not in the common way, but, as I have loved you. The precepts of philosophers are innumerable, the laws of Moses are various, as well as the edicts of princes; but one commandment, says he, I give you, and it is, love one another.

  When he prescribed a form of prayer to his disciples, did he not admonish us, in a wonderful manner, in the very beginning of it, concerning the unanimity which christians are bound to preserve? Our Father! says he. It is the prayer of one; yet it is the common request of all. All then are one house, one family, depending upon one Father; and how can it possibly be allowed that, in such circumstances, they should be tearing each other to pieces in never-ceasing wars?

  How can you say our Father, addressing the universal parent, while you are thrusting the sharp steel into the bowels of your brother? for such you confess him to be by this very prayer, “Our Father.”

  As Christ wished the sentiments of philanthropy, or universal concord, to be fixed deeply in the hearts of all his followers, by what a variety of emblems, parables, and precepts, has he inculcated the love of peace! He calls himself a shepherd, and his followers his sheep. And, let me ask, did you ever see sheep fighting in earnest with their fellow sheep, so as either to injure limbs, or destroy life? or, what greater harm can the wolves do, if the flock thus tear each other in pieces?

  When Christ calls himself the vine, and his disciples the branches, what else did he mean to express, but the most perfect union between him and them, and between themselves? It would be a prodigy, indeed, if a branch were to contend with a branch of the same tree; and, is it less a prodigy, that a christian fights with a christian?

  If there be anything sacred to christians, surely that ought to be deemed singularly sacred, and to sink deeply into their hearts, which Christ delivered to them in his last dying commands; when he was, as it were, making his will and testament, and recommending to his sons those things which he wished might never fall into oblivion. And what is it which, on this solemn occasion, he teaches, commands, prescribes, entreats; but that they should preserve inviolate, mutual good-will, or charity? And what means the communion of the holy bread and wine, but a renewed sanction of indissoluble amity? As Christ knew that Peace could not be preserved, where men were struggling for office, for glory, for riches, for revenge, he roots out from the hearts of his disciples all passions which lead to these things; he forbids them absolutely and without exception, to resist evil; he commands them to do good to those who use them ill, and to pray for those who curse them. And, after this, shall kings presume to think themselves christians, who, on the slightest injury embroil the world in war?

  He commands that the man who would be the chief among the people, should be their servant; nor endeavour to outdo others in any thing else but in being better than they, and in doing more good to his fellow-mortals. Then are not certain persons claiming to be chiefs, ashamed, for the sake of making some paltry addition to the outskirts of their domains, (already too large) to set the world in a flame?

  He teaches you to live after the manner of the birds of the air, and the lilies of the field; trusting to Providence. He forbids your solicitude to extend to the morrow. He wishes you to depend entirely on God. He excludes all rich men, who trust in riches, from the kingdom of heaven. And yet are there crowned miscreants, who, for the sake of a poor pittance of money, perhaps, after all, not due to them, will not hesitate to spill torrents of human blood in the field of battle? Indeed, in these very times, the recovery of a sum of money appears to be a very good cause of a just and necessary war!

  Christ seems to have had in view this tendency in men to contend for trifles, when he bids his disciples to learn of him to be meek and lowly, and to lay aside all dispositions to revenge. When he orders them to leave their gift at the altar, nor to offer it before they are reconciled to their brother, does he not plainly insinuate, that unanimity is to be preferred to any thing else; and that no oblation on the altar is acceptable to God, unless it is presented by me? God refused the Jewish offering, a goat perhaps, or a sheep, because it was offered by those who were at variance with each other; and shall christians, at the very time they are endeavouring to cut each other’s throats in the field of battle, dare to make an oblation at the holy communion of the Lord’s supper? When he condescended to compare himself to a hen gathering her chickens under her wing, what a beautiful and expressive picture did he delineate of christian unity? He gathers his chickens under his wing; and shall christians, his professed followers, dare to act the part of hawks or kites?

  Of a similar tendency is the comparison of himself to a cornerstone, at once supporting and uniting the two walls which rest upon it; and how then can it be reconcilable to the profession of christians, that those who call themselves his vicars or vicegerents, should excite the whole world to arms, and set kingdom against kingdom? They profess, as kings of christian countries, that he is their great sovereign and reconciler; and yet they cannot be reconciled to each other by any arguments drawn from christianity. He reconciled Pilate and Herod; and yet his own followers will not be reconciled by his intervention. He chides Peter, though half a Jew, who drew a sword in his defence when his life was in immediate danger, and orders him to put it up into its scabbard; and yet christians keep the sword constantly drawn, and are ever ready to use it on their brother christians, on the most trifling provocation. Could he wish himself, or his cause to be defended by a sword, who, with his dying breath, prayed for his murderers?

  Every page of the christian scriptures, whether you read those parts of the Old Testament which have a reference to christianity, or the New, speaks of little else but peace and concord; and yet the whole life of the greater portion of christians is employed in nothing so much as the concerns of war. It is really more than brutal ferocity which can neither be broken in, nor mitigated in its violence, by so many concurrent circumstances. It were best to lay aside the name of christian at once; or else to give proof of the doctrine of Christ, by its only criterion, brotherly love. How long shall your lives contradict your profession and appellation? You may mark your houses, your vestments, and your churches, with the cross, as much as you please; but Christ will recognize no other badge, than that which he himself prescribed, love of one another.

  Men gathered together formerly for the purposes of devotion, saw him ascending into heaven; they that are now gathered together for the same purpose, are ordered to expect the descent of the Holy Ghost: he has promised to be always with those that are for such purposes gathered together; so that none can ever reasonably think to find him in the field of battle. With respect to the spirit of fire that descended on the apostles, what is it but charity? Nothing is more common property than fire. Without any loss, fire is lighted by fire. Would you be convinced that this spirit is the parent of concord? Mark the result of it. There was, says he, among them one heart and one soul. Withdraw the breath or spirit from the body, and immediately the fine contexture of its parts is totally destroyed. In like manner, withdraw peace, and the whole mysterious union with heaven, which forms the divine life, is at once dissolved. Divines tell us, that the heavenly spirit is infused into our hearts by the sacrament. If they tell us true, where is that peculiar effect of this spirit in those who take the sacrament, the one heart and the one soul? But if they tell us only an amusing story, why is such honour paid to useless things? So much I have ventured to say, not for the sake of detracting from the sanctity of the sacrament, but that christians may blush to find their manners correspond so little with their solemn profession.

  What is meant by denominating the whole body of christian people, the church, but that it should admonish them that they are united, and ought therefore to be unanimous? Now, what possible agreement can there be between camps and a church? A church implies union and association; camps, disunion and discord. If you say you belong to the church, what can you have to do with the operations of war? If you say you do not belong to the church what have you to do with Christ?

  But if you are all of the same house; if you all acknowledge the same head and master of the family; if you all militate under the same captain; if you all receive the same largesses, and are maintained by the same pay; if you are all in pursuit of the same great prize, why these tumults and disorders in your march? You see among those unnatural and cruel comrades, who advance in troops to perform the work of human butchery for hire, perfect concord maintained, because they are led on under the same standards; and shall not so many pacific circumstances unite the hearts of those whose bloodless warfare is to promote piety and peace? Do so many sacraments avail nothing in producing unanimity?

  Baptism is common to you all; by means of this you are born again to Christ; you are cutt off from the world, and become ingrafted members of the body of Christ. Now what can conduce so much to unity and identity, as to be made members of one and the same body? From this incorporation with Christ, the petty distinctions of bond and free, greek and barbarian, male and female, cease to separate mankind; and all are one in Christ, who brings them all, whatever their local and physical diversities may be, to unity and identity of heart and disposition.

  Among the scythians, they have a ceremony of drinking a drop of each other’s blood out of a cup, as a cement of friendship; after which, those who have partaken of it will hesitate at no hardship in the service of each other, and will meet death itself with alacrity, in mutual defence. Shall heathens then deem that concord inviolable, which a participation of a draught at the same table has sanctioned; and shall not christians be kept in love and charity by that heavenly bread, and that mystic cup, which Christ himself ordained, in which they every day communicate, constantly repeating, with the most solemn rites, the holy feast of love? If Christ meant nothing by this institution why is it kept up among christians to this day, with so many ceremonies? If he meant the most serious and important benefit to mankind, then why is it slightly regarded by you, as if it were a farce, or a mere scenic exhibition? Does any man presume to go to that table, the symbol of love; does any one presume to approach the feast of peace, who, at the same moment, meditates war against christians, and is preparing to destroy those whom Christ died to save, to spill the blood of those for whom Christ shed his own!

  Hearts unfeeling as the flint! In many particulars you are united by nature and necessity; yet in life and action, where you may freely choose your conduct, you are rent asunder by unaccountable dissension and strife! By the law of nature, you are all born into the world, of a woman; by the law of necessity, you all wax old and feeble, and then sink into the grave. You are all sprung from the same first parent; you have all the same divine author of your religion; you are all redeemed by the same blood, initiated in the same holy rites, nourished in your spiritual growth by the same sacraments; and whatever advantage flows from all these combined, flows from the same fountain, and flows equally to all. You have all the same church, and all look for the same reward.

  That heavenly Jerusalem, for which every true christian pants, derives its name from the beatific vision of peace, of which the church, in the mean time, is a typical representation. And how happens it, that the church itself differs so widely from its holy examples? Has nature availed nothing in her various instructions and lessons of love? Has Christ availed nothing, with all his mysteries, all his precepts, all his symbols of peace?

  Adversity, or evil, if not good, will cause bad men to cling together; but neither adversity nor prosperity, neither good nor evil, will effect a perfect coalition among christians. Let us turn our attention to the adverse side, the evils of life, and see if they produce any effect in urging christians to unite for mutual comfort and protection.

  What is more brittle than the life of man? Supposing it unbroken by casualties, how short its natural duration! How liable to disease; how exposed to momentary accidents! Yet, though the natural and inevitable evils are more and greater than can be borne with patience, man, fool as he is, brings the greatest and worst calamities upon his own head. Though condemned to feel the effects of his folly, yet so blind is he that he cannot see it. Headlong he goes with an impetuosity so precipitate as to burst and tear asunder every tie of nature, every bond of Christ. To arms he rushes at all times and in all places; no bounds to his fury, no end to his destructive vengeance. Together they engage, nation with nation, city with city, king with king; and to gratify the folly or greedy ambition of two poor puny mortals, who shortly shall die by nature, like insects of a summer’s day, all human affairs are disarranged, and whirled in confusion. I will pass over the sad tragedy of war, acted on the bloody stage of the world in times long past.

  Let us only take a retrospect of the last ten years. In what part of the world, during that short space, have there not been bloody battles both by sea and land? What country in which the earth has not been fertilized with the blood of christians shed by christians? What river or sea that has not been discoloured with purple tide of human gore? Yes, I am ashamed to declare, that christians fight more savagely than jews, than heathens, than the beasts of the field? The warlike spirit which the jews displayed towards aliens, christians are bound to display against their vices; but, on the contrary, they chuse to be at peace with their vices, and at war with their fellow-creatures. And yet, as an apology for the jews, it must be said, that they were led to war, in a particular case, by divine command, for the purpose of divine Providence; while the christians (remove but the poor flimsy veil of false pretexts, and judge according to real truth) you will find hurried into the crooked path of ambition by anger, the very worst counsellor, and allured to shed blood by an insatiable avarice of gold. The jews waged war with foreign nations; while the christians are, with the Turks, at peace, and, with one another, at war!

  As to the heathen despots, it is true, the thirst of glory goaded them to battle; but yet even they conquered fierce and barbarous nations to civilize them; insomuch, that it was often an advantage to be conquered, the conquerors endeavouring to render every service in their power to the people whom they had subdued. They took pains to render their victories as little bloody as possible, that the conqueror might be rewarded with a more honourable renown, and that the clemency of the victor might afford consolation to the vanquished. But I blush to record, upon how infamously frivolous causes the world has been rouzed to arms by christian kings. One of them has found, or forged, an obsolete musty parchment, on which he makes a claim to a neighbouring territory. As if it signified a straw to mankind, thus called upon to shed blood, who is the person, or what the family of the ruling prince, whoever he be, provided he governs in such a manner as to consult and promote public felicity.

  Another alleges that some punctilio, in a treaty of a hundred articles, has been infringed or neglected. A third owes a neighbouring king a secret grudge, on a private account, because he has married some princess whom he intended to be his consort, or uttered some sarcasm that reflects upon his royal person and character.

  And, what is the basest and most flagitious conduct of all, there are crowned heads, who, with the mean cunning that ever characterizes the despot, contrive (because they find their own power weakened by the people’s union, and strengthened by their division) to excite war without any substantial reason for a rupture; merely to break the national union at home, and pillage the oppressed people with impunity. There are infernal agents enough, who fatten on the plunder of the people, and have little to do in state affairs during the time of peace, who easily manage to bring about the wished-for rupture, and embroil an unoffending people in a war with an unoffending neighbour. Nothing but a fury of hell could instil such venom into the bosom of a christian.

  Cruelty of despotism like this, in the hearts of kings pretending to christianity, was never equalled by Dionysius, Mezentius, Phalaris, the most infamous tyrants of antiquity! Degraded wretches! Brutes, not men! Great only by the abuse of greatness! Fools in every thing but the art of doing mischief! unanimous in nothing but in defrauding and oppressing the public! Yet, wretches, brutes, and fools as they are, they are called christians, and have the impudence to go with a face of piety to church, and dare even to kneel at the altar. Pests of mankind, worthy to be transported out of civil society, and carried with convicts to the remotest islands, in exile for life.

  If it be true that christians are members of one body, how happens it that every christian does not sympathize and rejoice in every other christian’s welfare? Now, however, it seems to be cause enough to commence a just and necessary war, that a neighbouring land is in a more prosperous, flourishing, or free condition, than your own. For, if you can but prevail upon yourselves to speak the real truth, what, I ask, has excited, and what continues at this very day to excite, so many combined powers against the kingdom of France, unless it be, that it is the finest and most flourishing country in Europe? Nowhere is there a more extensive territory; nowhere a more august public council; nowhere greater unanimity, and, on all these accounts united, nowhere greater power . . . .1

  God made man unarmed. But anger and revenge have mended the work of God, and furnished his hands with weapons invented in hell. Christians attack christians with engines of destruction, fabricated by the devil. A cannon! a mortar! no human being could have devised them originally; they must have been suggested by the evil one. Nature, indeed, has armed lions with teeth and claws, and bulls with horns; but who ever saw them go in bodies to use their arms for mutual destruction? What man ever saw so small a number as even ten lions congregated to fight ten bulls, and drawn up in battle array? But how often have twenty thousand christians met an equal number on the same plain, all prepared to shoot each other, through the heart, or to plunge the sword or bayonet through each other’s bowels. So little account do they make of hurting their brethren, that they have not the smallest scruple to spill every drop of blood in their bodies. Beasts of the forest; your contests are at least excusable, and sometimes amiable; ye fight only when driven to madness by hunger, or to defend your young ones; but as for those who call themselves your lords, (men and christians) the faintest shadow of an affront is sufficient to involve them in all the horrors of premeditated war.

  If the lower orders of the people were to act in this manner, some apology might be found in their supposed ignorance; if very young men were to act in this manner, the inexperience of youth might be pleaded in extenuation; if the poor laity only were concerned, the frailty of the agents might lessen the atrocity of the action: but the very reverse of this is the truth. The seeds of war are chiefly sown by those very people whose wisdom and moderation, characteristic of their rank and station, ought to compose and assuage the impetuous passions of the people.

  The people, the ignoble vulgar, despised as they are, are the very persons who originally raise great and fair cities to their proud eminence; who conduct the commercial business of them entirely; and, by their excellent management, fill them with opulence. Into these cities, after they are raised and enriched by plebeians, creep the satraps and grandees, like so many drones into a hive; pilfer what was earned by others’ industry; and thus, what was accumulated by the labour of the many, is dissipated by the profligacy of the few; what was built by plebeians on upright foundations, is leveled to the ground by cruelty and royal patrician injustice.

  If the military transactions of old time are not worth remembrance, let him who can bear the loathsome employ, only call to mind the wars of the last twelve years; let him attentively consider the causes of them all, and he will find them all to have been undertaken for the sake of kings; all of them carried on with infinite detriment to the people; while, in most instances, the people had not the smallest conern either in their origin or their issue.

  Then, as to young men being chiefly concerned in this mischief of exciting war; so far from it, that you hide your grey hairs with a helmet; canitiem galea premitis; and you deem it an honour to the hoary head of a christian, to encourage, or even take an active part in war, though the heathen poet, Ovid, says, “turpe senex miles;” that an old man, a warrior! is a loathsome object. Ovid’s countrymen would have considered a fighting-man, or one that set others to fight, at seventy years old, a blood-thirsty dotard, with one foot in his grave, a monster of wickedness and folly.

  As to the laity only being concerned, it is so far from true, that priests, whom God, under the severe and sanguinary dispensation of Moses, forbade to be polluted with blood, do not blush; that christian divines and preachers, the guides of our lives, do not blush; that professors of the purest divinity do not blush; that neither bishops, cardinals, nor Christ’s own vicars, blush, to become the instigators, the very fire-brands of war, against which Christ, from whom they all pretend to derive the only authority they can have, expressed his utter detestation.

  What possible consistency can there be between a mitre and a helmet, a pastoral staff and a sabre? between the volume of the gospel and a shield and buckler? How can it be consistent to salute the people with the words, “peace be with you,” and, at the same time, to be exciting the whole world to bloody war! with the lips to speak peace, and with the hand, and every power of action, to be urging on havoc? Dare you describe Christ as a reconciler, a Prince of Peace, and yet palliate or commend war, with the same tongue; which in truth, is nothing less than to sound the trumpet before Christ and Satan at the same time? Do you presume, reverend sir, with your hood and surplice on, to stimulate the simple, inoffensive people to war, when they come to church, expecting to hear from your mouth the gospel of peace? Are you not apprehensive, lest what was said by those who announced the coming of Christ, “how beautiful are the feet of him that bringeth glad tidings of peace; who bringeth tidings of good, who bringeth tidings of salvation!” should be reversed, and addressed to you in this manner: “how foul is the tongue of priests; exhorting to war, inciting to evil, and urging men to destruction.” Think of the incongruous idea, a bloody priest!

  Among the old Romans, who retained something of true piety in the midst of heathenism, whoever entered on the office of pontifex maximus, or high priest, was obliged to swear that he would keep his hands unstained with blood; and that, if he were provoked, or even hurt by any aggressor, he would not avenge the injury. Titus Vespasian, a heathen emperor, kept the oath religiously, and is highly commended for it by a heathen writer. But among christians, as if shame had fled from earth, clergymen, solemnly consecrated to God, are often among the first to inflame the minds, both of king and people, to blood and devastation. They convert the sweet accents of the gospel to the trumpet of Mars; and, forgetting the dignity of their profession, run about making proselytes to their opinion, ready to do or suffer any thing, so long as they can but succeed in kindling the flames of war.

  Kings who perhaps might otherwise have kept quiet, are set on fire by those very men, who ought, if they acted in character, to cool the ardour of warring potentates by their official and sacred authority. Nay, what is more monstrous still, clergymen actually wage war in person, and with a view to obtain shares in prizes or preferments; things, which the philosophers among the heathens held in contempt; and the contempt of which is the peculiar and appropriate distinction of men who profess to follow the apostles.

  A very few years ago, when the world, labouring under a deadly fever, was running headlong to arms, the gospel trumpeters blew a blast from the pulpit, and inflamed the wretched kings of Europe to a paroxysm, running as they were fast enough of themselves into a state of downright insanity. Among the english, the clergy fulminated from the pulpit against the french; and among the french, against the english. They all united in instigating to war. Not one man among the clery exhorted to peace; or, at least, not above one or two, whose lives would perhaps be in danger, if I were even now to name them.

  The right reverend fathers in God, the holy bishops, forgetting their personal and professional dignity, were continually running to and fro, like the evil-one, adding virulence to the public disease of the world, by their mischievous officiousness; instigating, on one hand, Julius the pope, and, on the other, the surrounding kings, to push on the war with vigour; as if both pope and kings were not mad enough without their inflammatory suggestions. In the mean time, the fathers in God failed not to call their bloodthirsty rage, a zeal for law, order, and religion.

  To forward their sanguinary purposes, they wrest the laws of heaven to a constructive meaning never meant, they misinterpret the writings of good men, they misquote and misrepresent the sacred scripture, I do not say, with the most barefaced impudence only, but the most blasphemous impiety. Nay, matters are come to such a pass, that it is deemed foolish and wicked to open one’s mouth against war, or to venture a syllable in praise of peace; the constant theme of Christ’s eulogy. He is thought to be ill affected to the king, and even to pay but little regard to the people’s interest, who recommends what is of all things in the world the most salutary, to both king and people, or dissuades from that which, without any exception, is the most destructive.

  In addition to all this, chaplains follow the army to the field of battle; bishops preside in the camp, and, abandoning their churches, enlist in the service of Bellona. The war multiplies priests, bishops, and cardinals, among whom, to be a camp legate is deemed an honourable preferment, and worthy the successors of the apostles. It is therefore the less wonderful that priests should breathe the spirit of Mars, to whom Mars gives ecclesiastical rank, together with loaves and fishes.

  It is a circumstance which renders the evil less capable of remedy, that the clergy cover over this most irreligious conduct with the cloke of religion. The colours in the regiments, (consecrated by ministers of peace!) bear the figure of the cross painted upon them. The unfeeling mercenary soldier, hired by a few pieces of paltry coin, to do the work of man-butcher, carries before him the standard of the cross; and that very figure becomes the symbol of war, which alone ought to teach every one that looks at it, that war ought to be utterly abolished. What hast thou to do with the cross of Christ on thy banners, thou blood-stained soldier? With such a disposition as thine; with deeds like thine, of robbery and murder, thy proper standard would be a dragon, a tiger, or a wolf!

  That cross is the standard of him who conquered, not by fighting, but by dying; who came, not to destroy men’s lives, but to save them. It is a standard, the very sight of which might teach you what sort of enemies you have to war against, if you are a christian, and how you may be sure to gain the victory.

  I see you, while the standard of salvation is in one hand, rushing on with a sword in the other, to the murder of your brother; and, under the banner of the cross, destroying the life of one who to the cross owes his salvation. Even from the holy sacrament itself, (for it is sometimes, at the same hour, administered in opposite camps) in which is signified the complete union of all christians, the warriors, who have just received it, run instantly to arms, and endeavour to plunge the dreadful steel into each other’s vitals. Of a scene thus infernal, and fit only for the eyes of accursed spirits, who delight in mischief and misery, the pious warriors would make Christ the spectator, if it could be supposed that he would be present at it.

  The absurdest circumstance of all those respecting the use of the cross as a standard is, that you see it glittering and waving high in air in both the contending armies at once. Divine service is also performed to the same Christ in both armies at the same time. What a shocking sight? Lo! crosses dashing against crosses, and Christ on this side firing bullets at Christ on the other; cross against cross, and Christ against Christ. The banner of the cross, significant of the christian profession, is used on each side, to strike terror into the opposite enemy. How dare they, on this occasion, to attack what, on all others, they adore? Because they are unworthy to bear the true cross at all, and rather deserve to be themselves crucified.

  Let us now imagine we hear a soldier, among these fighting christians, saying the Lord’s prayer. “Our Father,” says he; O hardened wretch! can you call him father, when you are just going to cut your brother’s throat? “Hallowed be thy name:” how can the name of God be more impiously unhallowed, than by mutual bloody murder among you, his sons? “Thy kingdom come:” do you pray for the coming of his kingdom, while you are endeavouring to establish an earthly despotism, by spilling the blood of God’s sons and subjects? “Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven:” his will in heaven, is for peace, but you are now meditating war. Dare you to say to your Father in heaven “Give us this day our daily bread;” when you are going, the next minute perhaps, to burn up your brother’s corn-fields; and had rather lose the benefit of them yourself, than suffer him to enjoy them unmolested? With what face can you say, “Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive them that trespass against us,” when, so far from forgiving your own brother, you are going, with all the haste you can, to murder him in cold blood, for an alleged trespass that, after all, is but imaginary. Do you presume to deprecate the danger of temptation, who, not without great danger to yourself, are doing all you can to force your brother into danger? Do you deserve to be delivered from evil, that is, from the evil being, to whose impulse you submit yourself, and by whose spirit you are now guided, in contriving the greatest possible evil to your brother?

  Plato somewhere says, that when grecians war with grecians, (notwithstanding they were separate and independent dynasties) it is not a war, but an insurrection. He would not consider them as a separate people, because they were united in name and by vicinity. And yet the christians will call it a war, and a just and necessary war too, which, on the most trifling occasion, with such soldiery and such weapons, one people professing christianity, wages war with another people holding exactly the same creed, and professing the same christianity.

  The laws of some heathen nations ordained, that he who should stain his sword with a brother’s blood, should be sewed up in a sack, and thrown into the common sewer. Now they are no less strongly united as brothers whom Christ has fraternized, than those who are related by consanguinity. And yet, in war, there is a reward instead of punishment for murdering a brother. Wretched is the alternative forced upon us by war. He who conquers is a murderer of his brother; and he who is conquered, dies equally guilty of fratricide, because he did his best to commit it.

  After all this unchristian cruelty, and all this inconsistency, the christian warriors execrate the Turks as a tribe of unbelievers, strangers to Christ; just as if, while they act in this manner, they were christians themselves; or as if there could be a more agreeable sight to the turks than to behold the christians running each other through the body with the bayonet. The turks, say the christians, sacrifice to the devil; but, as there can be no victim so acceptable to the devil as a christian sacrificed by a christian, are not you, my good christian, sacrificing to the devil as much as the turk? Indeed, the evil one has in this case the pleasure of two victims at a time, since he who sacrifices is no less his victim than he who is sacrificed by the hand of a christian and the sword of war. If any one favours the turks, and wishes to be on good terms with the devil, let him offer up such victims as these.

  But I am well aware of the excuse which men, ever ingenious in devising mischief to themselves as well as others, offer in extenuation of their conduct in going to war. They allege, that they are compelled to it; that they are dragged against their will to war. I answer them, deal fairly; pull off the mask; throw away all false colours; consult your own heart, and you will find that anger, ambition, and folly are the compulsory force that has dragged you to war, and not any necessity; unless indeed you call the insatiable cravings of a covetous mind, necessity.

  Reserve your outside pretences to deceive the thoughtless vulgar. God is not mocked with paint and varnish. Solemn days and forms of fasting, prayer, and thanksgiving, are appointed. Loud petitions are offered up to heaven for peace. The priests and the people roar out as vociferously as they can “give peace in our time, O Lord! We beseech thee to hear us, O Lord.” Might not the Lord very justly answer and say, “why mock ye me, ye hypocrites? You fast and pray that I would avert a calamity which you have brought upon your own heads. You are deprecating an evil, of which yourselves are the authors.”

  Now, if every possible offence, every little occurrence not exactly to one’s mind, is to excite a war, what is there in human affairs that will not furnish an occasion of deadly strife? In the tenderest connections of domestic life, and between the most affectionate husbands and wives, there is always some fault to be connived at, some omission or commission to be mutually forgiven, some occasion for reciprocal forbearance; unless you assert that it would be better to cut asunder, on the first dispute, all ties of affection.

  Suppose some differences, like those of conjugal life, to happen between neighbouring princes, why should they immediately draw the sword, and proceed to the last sad extremities? There are laws, there are sagacious men, there are worthy clergymen, there are right reverend bishops, by whose salutary advice all disagreements might be reconciled, and all disturbance checked at its origin. Why do kings not make these, instead of the sword, their umpires? Even if the arbitrators were unjust, which is not likely, when removed from all undue influence, the disagreeing parties would come off with less injury than if they had recourse to arms; to the irrational and doubtful decision of war.

  There is scarcely any peace so unjust, but it is preferable, upon the whole, to the justest war. Sit down, before you draw the sword, weigh every article, omit none, and compute the expence of blood as well as treasure which war requires, and the evils which it of necessity brings with it; and then see at the bottom of the account whether, after the greatest success, there is likely to be a balance in your favour.

  The authority of the Roman pontiff is allowed to be paramount and decisive. Kings themselves allow it. And yet when nations, when kings are violently engaged in the most unnatural wars for years together, where is then the paramount and decisive authority of the pontiff, where then the power said to be second to none but Christ in heaven? On this occasion, if on any, this high power would be exerted, if the high pontiffs themselves were not slaves themselves to the same vile passions as the wretched kings and deluded people.

  The pontiff summons to war. He is obeyed. He summons to peace; why is he not obeyed as readily? If men, as they profess, really do prefer peace, and are reluctantly dragged to war, why do they obey pope Julius with so much alacrity when he calls them to war, and yield no obedience to pope Leo, when he invites them to concord and peace? If the authority of the Roman pontiff be really divine, surely it ought then to avail most when it prescribes that conduct which Christ taught as the only proper conduct. It is fair to conclude, that those whom Julius has authority enough to excite to a most destructive war, and whom Leo, a really religious pontiff,1 cannot allure, by the most cogent arguments, to christian love and charity, are serving (I express myself tenderly of them) under the cloke of serving the church, nothing else but their own vile and selfish passions.

  If you are in your heart weary of war, I will tell you how you may avoid it, and preserve a cordial and general amity.

  Firm and permanent peace is not to be secured by marrying one royal family to another, nor by treaties and alliances made between such deceitful and imperfect creatures as men; for, from these very family connections, treaties, and alliances, we see wars chiefly originate. No; the fountains from which the streams of this evil flow, must be cleansed. It is from the corrupt passions of the human heart that the tumults of war arise. While each king obeys the impulse of his passions, the commonwealth, the community, suffers; and at the same time, the poor slave to his passions is frustrated in his private and selfish purposes.

  Let kings then grow wise; wise for the people, not for themselves only; and let them be truly wise, in the proper sense of the word, not merely cunning, but really wise; so as to place their majesty, their felicity, their wealth, and their splendor in such things, and such only, as render them personally great, personally superior to those whom the fortune of birth has ranked, in a civil sense, below them. Let them acquire those amiable dispositions towards the commonwealth, the great body of the people, which a father feels for his family. Let a king think himself great in proportion as his people are good; let him estimate his own happiness by the happiness of those whom he governs; let him deem himself glorious in proportion as his subjects are free; rich, if the public are rich; and flourishing, if he can but keep the community flourishing, in consequence of uninterrupted peace.

  Such should be our king, if we wish to establish a firm and lasting peace; and let the noblemen and magistrates imitate the king, rendered by these means worthy of imitation. Let the public good be the rule of their conduct; and so will they ultimately promote most effectually even their own private advantage.

  Now, will a king of such a disposition as I have described, be easily prevailed upon to extort money from his own people to put it into the pockets of foreign mercenaries and alien subsidiaries? Will he reduce his own people to distress, perhaps even for bread, in order to fill the coffers of military despots and commanders? Will he be lavish of blood, as well as treasure, (neither of them his own) and expose the lives, as well as expend the property, of his people? No. I think he will know better.

  Let him exercise his power as far as he pleases, within those bounds which he will always see clearly, when he remembers that he is a man governing men, a free man at the head of free men, a christian presiding over a nation of christians. In return for his good behaviour, let the people pay him just so much reverence, and yield him just so many privileges and prerogatives as for the public good, and no more. A good king will require no more; and as to the unreasonable desires of a bad king, the people should unite to check and repel them. Let there be on both sides a due regard paid to private happiness. Let the greatest share of honour be ever paid, not to warlike kings, (the world has sorely suffered for its folly in giving them glory) but to kings who entirely reject the war system, and by their understanding and counsels, not by force and arms, restore to bleeding human nature the blessings of concord and repose. Let him be called a great king, not who is continually augmenting his army, and providing military stores and engines of destruction, but who exerts every effort of his mind, and uses every advantage of his situation, to render armies, stores, and engines of destruction totally unnecessary. Truly glorious as is such an attempt; not one, in the long catalogue of kings and princes that has “strutted and fretted his hour upon the stage,” every conceived the thought in his heart, except the emperor Dioclesian.

  But if, after all, it is not possible that a war should be avoided, let it be so conducted, that the severest of its calamities may fall upon the heads of those who gave the occasion. Yet kings, instead of suffering at all by it, wage war in perfect consistency with their personal safety. The great men grow rich upon it. The largest part of the evil falls upon landholders, husbandmen, tradesmen, manufacturers, whom, perhaps the war does not in the least concern, and who never furnished the slightest cause for a national rupture.

  In what consists the wisdom of a king, if he does not take these things into consideration? In what consists the gracious goodness, the tender feeling of a king, if he thinks such things beneath his notice?

  Some method should be discovered to keep kings from shifting their thrones and dominions, and going from one dynasty to another, because innovations in matters of this kind always create disturbance, and disturbance produces war. This may easily be managed, if the children of kings are provided for, or established somewhere within their father’s own dominions; or if it should appear expedient to connect them with neighbouring crowned heads, let all hope of succession be entirely cut off at the time when a marriage, or any other mode of connection with foreign courts, is negotiated. Nor let any king be allowed to sell or alienate in any manner the least portion of his dominions, as if free states were his private property. I say free states, for all states are free that have kings, properly so called, to govern them. States that are not free, are not under kings, whatever they may be called, but despots. By the intermarriage of kings and their progeny, and the rights of succession which thence arise, a man born in the bogs of Ireland may come to reign in the East Indies; and another who was a king in Syria, may all of a sudden start up an Italian prince. Thus it may happen that neither country shall have a king, while he abandons his former dominions, and is not acknowledged by his newly acquired ones; being a perfect stranger, born in another world, for any thing they know to the contrary. And in the mean time, while he is reducing, subduing and exhausting part of his dominions, he is impoverishing and exhausting the other. He sometimes loses both, while he is endeavouring to grasp both, and most likely is not fit to govern either. Let kings once settle among themselves, how much and how far each ought to govern, and then let no marriage connection among them either extend or contract; let no treaty alter the limits once ascertained. Thus every one will endeavour to improve his allotted portion to the utmost of his power. All his efforts will be concentrated on one country, and he will endeavour to transmit it to his posterity in a rich and flourishing condition. The result will be, that when every one minds his own, all will thrive. Therefore let kings be attached to each other, not by political intermarriages, artificial and factitious ties, but by pure and sincere friendship; and above all, by a zeal similar and common to the whole tribe to promote the solid, substantial happiness of human nature. And let the king’s successor be either he who is most nearly related to him, or he who shall be judged fittest for the momentous office, by the suffrages of the people. Let the other great men rest satisfied with being numbered among the honourable nobility. It is the duty of a king to enter into no party cabals, to know nothing of private passions or partialities, but to esteem all men and measures solely as they have a reference and tendency to the good of the public. Moreover, let the king avoid travelling into foreign countries, let him never wish to pass the boundaries of his own dominions; but let him shew that he approves a proverbial saying, sanctioned by the wisdom of ages, frons occipitio prior est:1 by which was intimated, that nothing goes on well when conducted by secondaries and mercenaries only, and in the absence of the principal.

  Let him be persuaded that the best method of enriching and improving his realm, is not by taking from the territory of others, but by meliorating the condition of his own. When the expediency of war is discussed, let him not listen to the counsels of young ministers, who are pleased with the false glory of war, without considering its calamities, of which, from their age, it is impossible that they should have had personal experience. Neither let him consult those who have an interest in disturbing the public tranquillity and who are fed and fattened by the sufferings of the people. Let him take the advice of old men, whose integrity has been long tried, and who have shewn that they have an unfeigned attachment to their country. Nor let him, to gratify the passions or sinister views of one or two violent or artful men, rashly enter on a war; for war, once engaged in, cannot be put an end to at discretion. A measure the most dangerous to the existence of a state as a war must be, should not be entered into by a king, by a minister, by a junto of ambitious avaricious, or revengeful men, but by the full and unanimous consent of the whole people.

  The causes of war are to be cut up root and branch, on their first and slightest appearance. Many real injuries and insults must be connived at. Men must not be too zealous about a phantom called national glory; often inconsistent with individual happiness. Gentle behaviour on one side, will tend to secure it on the other; but the insolence of a haughty minister may give unpardonable offence, and be dearly paid for by the sufferings of the nation over which he domineers.

  There are occasions when, if peace can be had in no other way, it must be purchased. It can scarcely be purchased too dearly, if you take into the account how much treasure you must inevitably expend in war; and what is of infinitely greater consequence than treasure, how many of the people’s lives you save by peace. Though the cost be great, yet war would certainly cost you more; besides, (what is above all price) the blood of men, the blood of your own fellow-citizens and subjects, whose lives you are bound, by every tie of duty, to preserve, instead of lavishing away in prosecuting schemes of false policy, and cruel, selfish, villainous ambition. Only form a fair estimate of the quantity of mischief and misery of every kind and degree which you escape, and the sum of happiness you preserve in all the walks of private life, among all the tender relations of parents, husbands, children, among those whose poverty alone makes them soldiers, the wretched instruments of involuntary bloodshed; form but this estimate, and you will never repent the highest price you can pay for peace.

  While the king does his duty as the guardian and preserver, instead of the destroyer, of the people committed to his charge, let the right reverend the bishops do their duty likewise. Let the priests be priests indeed; preachers of peace and goodwill, and not the instigators of war, for the sake of pleasing a corrupt minister, in whose hands are livings, stalls, and mitres; let the whole body of the clergy remember the truly evangelical duties of their profession, and let the grave professors of theology in our universities, or wherever else they teach divinity, remember to teach nothing as men-pleasers unworthy of Christ. Let all the clergy, however they may differ in rank, order, sect, or persuasion, unite to cry down war, and discountenance it through the nation, by zealously and faithfully arraigning it from the pulpit. In the public functions of their several churches, in their private conversation and intercourse with the laity, let them be constantly employed in the christian, benevolent, humane work of preaching, recommending, and inculcating, peace. If, after all their efforts, the clergy cannot prevent the breaking out of war, let them never give it the slightest approbation, directly or indirectly, let them never give countenance to it by their presence at its silly parade or bloody proceedings, let them never pay the smallest respect to any great patron or prime minister, or courtier, who is the author or adviser of a state of affairs so contrary to their holy profession, and to every duty and principle of the christian religion, as is a state of war.

  Let the clergy agree to refuse burial in consecrated ground to all who are slain in battle.1 If there be any good men among the slain, and certainly there are very few, they will not lose the reward of christians in heaven, because they had not what is called christian burial. But the worthless, of whom the majority of warriors consists, will have one cause of that silly vanity and self-liking which attends and recommends their profession more than any thing else, entirely removed, when sepulchral honours are denied, after all the glory of being knocked on the head in battle, in the noble endeavour to kill a fellow-creature.

  I am speaking all along of those wars which christians wage with christians, on trifling and unjustifiable occasions. I think very differently of wars, bona fide, just and necessary, such as are, in a strict sense of those words, purely defensive, such as with an honest and affectionate zeal for the country, repel the violence of invaders, and, at the hazard of life, preserve the public tranquillity.

  But in the present state of things, the clergy (for of their conduct I proceed to speak) so far from acting as servants of Christ, in the manner I have recommended, do not hesitate to hang up flags, standards, banners, and other trophies of war, brought from the field of carnage, as ornaments of churches and great cathedrals. These trophies shall be all stained and smeared with the blood of men, for whom Christ shed his most precious blood, and shall be hung in the aisles of the churches, among the tombs and images of apostles and martyrs, as if in future it were to be reckoned a mark of sanctity not to suffer martyrdom, but to inflict it; not to lay down one’s life for the truth, but to take away the life of others for worldly purposes of vanity and avarice. It would be quite sufficient if the bloody rags were hung up in some corner of the Exchange or kept, as curiosities in a chest or closet, out of sight; disgraceful monuments they are of human depravity. The church, which ought to be kept perfectly pure, and emblematic of the purest of religions, should not be defiled with any thing stained with the blood of man, shed by the hand of man alienated, as is clear by the very act, both from Christ and from nature.

  But you argue in defence of this indecent practice of hanging up flags or colours, as they are called, in churches, that the ancients used to deposit the monuments of their victories in the temples of their gods. It is true, but what were their gods but demons, delighting in blood and impurity? not the God, who is of purer eyes than to behold iniquity. Never let priests, dedicated to a God like this, have any thing to do with war, unless it is to put an end to it, and promote love and reconciliation. If the clergy were but unanimous in such sentiments, if they would inculcate them every where, there is no doubt, notwithstanding the great power of the secular arm, that their authority, personal and professional, would have a preponderance, against the influence of courts and ministers of state, and thus prevent war, the calamity of human nature.

  But if there is a fatal propensity in the human heart to war, if the dreadful disease is interwoven with the constitution of man, so that it cannot abstain from war, why is not vent given to the virulence in exertions against the common enemy of christianity, the unbelieving Turk? Yet—even here let me pause—is not the Turk a man—a brother? Then it were far better to allure him by gentle, kind, and friendly treatment, by exhibiting the beauty of our christian religion in the innocence of our lives, than by attacking him with the drawn sword, as if he were a savage brute, without a heart to feel, or a reasoning faculty to be persuaded. Nevertheless, if we must of necessity go to war, as I said before, it is certainly a less evil to contend with an infidel, than that christians should mutually harass and destroy their own fraternity. If charity will not cement their hearts, certainly one common enemy may unite their hands, and though this may not be a cordial unity, yet it will be better than a real rupture.

  Upon the whole it must be said, that the first and most important step towards peace, is sincerely to desire it. They who once love peace in their hearts, will eagerly seize every opportunity of establishing or recovering it. All obstacles to it they will despise or remove, all hardships and difficulties they will bear with patience, so long as they keep this one great blessing (including as it does so many others) whole and entire. On the contrary, men, in our times, go out of their way to seek occasions of war; and whatever makes for peace, they run down in their sophistical speeches, or even basely conceal from the public; but whatever tends to promote their favourite war system, they industriously exaggerate and inflame, not scrupling to propagate lies of the most mischievous kind, false or garbled intelligence, and the grossest misrepresentation of the enemy. I am ashamed to relate what real and dreadful tragedies in real life, they found on these vile despicable trifles, from how small an ember they blow up a flame and set the world on fire. Then they summon before them the whole catalogue of supposed injuries received, and each party views its own grievance with a glass that magnifies beyond all bounds; but as for benefits received, they all fall into the profoundest oblivion as soon as received; so that upon the whole, an impartial observer would swear that great men love war for its own sake, with their hearts and souls, provided their own persons are safe.

  After all the pretences thrown out, and the artifices used, to irritate the vulgar, there often lurks (as the true cause of wars) in the bosom of kings, some private, mean, and selfish motive, which is to force their subjects to take up weapons to kill one another, at the word of command, and as they wish to evince their loyalty. But, instead of a private and selfish object, there ought to be an object, in which not only the public, that is, not only one single community, but in which man, human nature, is deeply interested to justify the voluntary commencement of a war.

  But when kings can find no cause of this kind, as indeed they seldom can, then they set their wits to work to invent some fictitious but plausible occasion for a rupture. They will make use of the names of foreign countries, artfully rendered odious to the people, in order to feed the popular odium, till it becomes ripe for war, and thirsts for the blood of the outlandish nation, whose very name is rendered a cause of hostility. This weakness and folly of the very lowest classes of the people, the grandees increase by artful insinuations, watchwords, and nicknames, cunningly thrown out in debates, pamphlets, and journals. Certain of the clergy, whose interest it is to cooperate with the grandees in any unchristian work, join, with great effect, aided by religion, in a pious imposition on the poor. Thus, for instance, an Englishman they say, is the natural enemy of a Frenchman, because he is a Frenchman. A man born on this side the river Tweed must hate a Scotchman, because he is a Scotchman. A German naturally disagrees with a Frank, a Spaniard with both. O villainous depravity! The name of a place or region, in itself a circumstance of indifference, shall be enough to dissever your hearts more widely than the distance of place, your persons! A name is nothing, but there are many circumstances, very important realities, which ought to endear and unite men of different nations. As an Englishman, you bear ill-will to a Frenchman. Why not rather, as a man to a man, do you not bear him good-will? Why not as a christian to a christian? How happens it, that such a frivolous thing as a name avails more with you than the tender ties of nature, the strong bonds of christianity? Place, local distance, separates the persons of men, but not their minds. Hearts can gravitate to each other through intervening seas and mountains. The river Rhine once separated the Frenchman from the German, but it was beyond its power to separate the christian from the christian. The Pyrenean mountains divide the Spaniards from the French, but they break not that invisible bond which holds them together in defiance of all partition, the communion of the church. A little gut of a sea divides the English from the French; but if the whole Atlantic ocean rolled between them, it could not disjoin them as men united by nature; and, while they mutually retain the christian religion, still more indissolubly cemented by grace.

  The Apostle Paul expresses his indignation, that christians, separating into sects, should say, “I am of Apollos; I am of Cephas; I am of Paul:” nor would he suffer the unnatural distinction of a name to parcel out Christ, who is one with all his members, and who has formed all into one inviolable whole. And shall we think the common name of a native country cause sufficient why one race of men should hunt down another race of men, even to extermination; should engage them with each other in a bellum ad internecionem; a war, to cut off, on one side or the other, man, woman and child, and leave not a tongue to tell the tale?

  The hostile distinction of different nations as natural enemies, because they are separated by place, and diversified by name, is not enough to satisfy some among the blood-thirsty wretches who delight in war. Such is the depravity of their minds, that they seek occasions of difference where none is afforded either by nature or institution. They would divide France against itself, in verbal and nominal distinctions of the inhabitants; a country which is not divided by seas, or by mountains, and is indeed one and indivisible, however artful men may endeavour to cause divisions in it by distinctions merely nominal. Thus some of the French they will denominate Germans, lest the circumstance of identity of name should produce that unanimity which they diabolically wish to interrupt.

  Now, if, in courts of judicature, the judge will not admit of suits which are frivolous and vexatious; if he will not admit of all sorts of evidence, especially that which arises from a personal pique and resentment, how happens it that, in a business of far more consequence to human nature even than courts of judicature, in an affair the most odious and abominable, such as the promoting discord among human creatures and whole neighbouring nations, causes the most frivolous and vexatious are freely admitted as competent and valid. Let the lovers of discord, and the promoters of bloodshed between nations, divided only by a name and a channel, rather reflect, that this world, the whole of the planet called earth, is the common country of all who live and breathe upon it, if the title of one’s country is allowed to be a sufficient reason for unity among fellow-countrymen; and let them also remember, that all men, however distinguished by political or accidental causes, are sprung from the same parents, if consanguinity and affinity are allowed to be available to concord and peace. If the church also is a subdivision of this one great universal family, a family of itself consisting of all who belong to that church, and if the being of the same family necessarily connects all the members in a common interest and a common regard for each other, then the opposers must be ingenious in their malice, if they can deny, that all who are of the same church, the grand catholic church of all christendom, must also have a common interest, a common regard for each other, and therefore be united in love.

  In private life, you bear with some things in a brother-in-law which you bear with only because he is a brother-in-law; and will you bear with nothing in him who by the tie of the same religion is also a brother? You pardon many little offences on account of nearness of kindred, and will you pardon nothing on account of an affinity founded in religion? Yet, there is no doubt but that the closest possible tie among all the christian brotherhood, is confraternity in Christ.

  Why are you always fixing your attention upon the sore place, where the insult of injury received from a fellow-creature festers and rankles? If you seek peace and ensue it, as you ought to do, you will rather say to yourself, “he hurt me in this instance, it is true; but in other instances he has often served or gratified me, and in this one he was perhaps incited to momentary wrong by passion, mistake, or by another’s impulse.” As, in the poet Homer, the persons who seek to effect a reconciliation between Agamemnon and Achilles, throw all the blame of their quarrel on the Goddess Atè; so in real life, offences that cannot be excused consistently with strict veracity, should, good-naturedly, be imputed to ill-fortune, or, if you please, to a man’s evil-genius; that the resentment may be transferred from men to those imaginary beings, who can bear the load, however great, without the slightest inconvenience.

  Why should men shew more sagacity in creating misery, than in securing and increasing the comforts of life? Why should they be more quicksighted in finding evil than good? All men of sense weigh, consider, and use great circumspection, before they enter upon any private business of momentous consequence. And yet they throw themselves headlong into war, with their eyes shut; notwithstanding war is that kind of evil which, when once admitted, cannot be excluded again at will; but usually, from a little one, becomes a very great one; from a single one, multiplies into a complication; from an unbloody contest, changes to carnage, and at last rises to a storm, which does not overwhelm merely one or two, and those the chief instigators to the mischief, but all the unoffending people also; confounding the innocent with the guilty.

  If the poor people, of the very lowest order, are too thoughtless to consider these things, it can be no excuse for the king and the nobles, whose indispensable duty it is to consider them well; and it is the particular business of the clergy to enforce these pacific opinions with every argument which ingenuity and learning can derive from reason and religion; to enforce them, I say, and inculcate them on the minds of both the great, vulgar, and the small; “instantly, in season, and out of season”; whether they “will bear, or whether they will forbear.” Something will at last stick, if it is incessantly applied; and, therefore, let the pulpits and conversation of the clergy teach the bland doctrines of peace and love everywhere and always.

  Mortal man! (for so I address thee, even on a throne) dost thou exult at hearing the rumour of an ensuing war? Check thy joy for a moment, and examine, accurately, the nature and consequences of peace, and the nature and consequences of war; what blessings follow in the train of peace, and what curses march in the rear of war; and then form a true and solid judgment, whether it can ever be expedient to exchange peace for war? It it is a goodly and beautiful sight to behold a country flourishing in the highest prosperity; its cities well built, its lands well cultivated, the best of laws well executed; arts, sciences, and learning, those honourable employments of the human mind, encouraged; men’s morals virtuous and honest; then may it please your Majesty to lay your hand on your heart, and let your conscience whisper to you, “All this happiness I must disturb or destroy, if I engage in this meditated war.” On the other hand, if you ever beheld the ruin of cities, villages burnt, churches battered down, fields laid desolate, and, if the sight could wring a tear of pity from thine eye, then, Sire, remember that these are the blasted fruits of accursed war! If you think it a great inconvenience to be obliged to admit an inundation of hired soldiers into your realms, to feed and clothe them at the expence of your subjects, to be very submissive to them, meanly to court their favour, in order to keep them in good humour, well affected, and loyal; and, after all, to trust (which is unavoidable in these circumstances) your own person and your safety to the discretion of such a rabble; recollect, that such is the condition of a state of warfare, and that these evils, great as they are, become necessary, when you have made yourself their slave, in order to enslave or destroy an imaginary enemy.

  If you detest robbery and pillage, remember these are among the duties of war; and that, to learn how to commit them adroitly, is a part of military discipline. Do you shudder at the idea of murder? You cannot require to be told, that to commit it with dispatch, and by wholesale, constitutes the celebrated art of war. If murder were not learned by this art, how could a man, who would shudder to kill one individual, even when provoked, go, in cold blood, and cut the throats of many for a little paltry pay, and under no better authority than a commission from a mortal as weak, wicked and wretched as himself, who does not perhaps know even his person, and would not care if both his body and soul were annihilated? If there cannot be a greater misfortune to the commonwealth, than a general neglect and disobedience of the laws, let it be considered as a certain truth, that the voice of law, divine or human, is never heard amid the clangor of arms, and the din of battle. If you deem debauchery, rape, incest, and crimes of still greater turpitude than these, foul disgraces to human nature, depend upon it that war leads to all of them, in their most aggravated atrocity. If impiety, or a total neglect of religion, is the source of all villany, be assured that religion is always overwhelmed in the storms of war. If you think that the very worst possible condition of society, when the worst of men possess the greatest share of power, you may take it as an infallible observation, that the wickedest, most unprincipled, and most unfeeling wretches bear the greatest sway in a state of war; and that such as would come to the gallows in time of peace, are men of prime use and energy in the operations of a siege or a battle. For, who can lead the troops through secret ways more skilfully than an experienced robber, who has spent an apprenticeship to the art among thieves? Who will pull down a house, or rob a church, more dexterously than one who has been trained to burglary and sacrilege? Who will plunge his bayonet into the enemy’s heart, or rip up his bowels with more facility of execution, than a practised assassin, or thorough-paced cut-throat by profession? Who is better qualified to set fire to a village, or a city, or a ship, than a notorious incendiary? Who will brave the hardships and perils of the sea better than a pirate long used to rob, sink, and destroy merchant vessels inoffensively traversing the great waters? In short, if you would form an adequate idea of the villany of war, only observe by whom it is carried into actual execution.

  If nothing can be a more desirable object to a pious king, than the safety and welfare of those who are committed to his charge, then, consistently with this object, war must of necessity be held in the greatest conceivable abhorrence. If it is the happiness of a king to govern the happy, he cannot but delight in peace. If a good king wishes for nothing so much as to have his people good, like himself, he must detest war, as the foul sink of sin as well as misery. If he has sense and liberality enough to consider his subjects’ riches, the best and truest opulence he can himself possess, then let him shun war by all possible means; because, though it should turn out ever so fortunate, it certainly diminishes every body’s property, and expends that which was earned by honest, honourable, and useful employments, on certain savage butchers of the human race. Let him also consider again and again, that every man is apt to flatter himself that his own cause is a good one; that every man is pleased with his own schemes and purposes; and that every measure appears to a man agitated with passion the most equitable, though it is the most unjust, the most imprudent, and the most fallacious in the issue. But, suppose the cause the justest in the world, the event the most prosperous, yet take into the account all the damages of war, of every kind and degree, and weigh them in the balance with all the advantages of victory, and you will find the most brilliant success not worth the trouble.

  Seldom can a conquest be gained without the effusion of blood. Therefore, in the midst of the rejoicings, illuminations, acclamations, and all the tumult of joy, excited by knaves among fools, it must occur to a king with a feeling heart that he has embrued hands, hitherto unspotted, in the pollution of human gore. Add to this circumstance, distressing to every humane heart, the injury done to the morals of the people, and the general good order and discipline of the state, and you will find this a loss which neither money, nor territory, nor glory, can compensate. You have exhausted your treasury, you have fleeced your people, you have loaded peaceable good subjects with unnecessary burdens, and you have encouraged the wicked unprincipled adventurers in acts of rapine and violence; and, after all, even when the war is put an end to, the bad consequences of the war still remain, not to be removed by the most splendid victory. The taste for science, arts, and letters, languishes a long while. Trade and commerce continue shackled and impeded. Though you should be able to block up the enemy, yet, in doing it, you, in fact, block up yourself and your own people; for neither you nor they dare enter the neighbouring nation, which, before the war, was open to egress and regress; while peace, by opening an universal intercourse among mankind, renders, in some measure, all the neighbouring dynasties one common country.

  Consider what mighty matters you have done by thus boldly rushing into war. Your own hereditary dominions can scarcely be called your own. The possession is rendered insecure, being constantly exposed to hostile invasion. In order to demolish a poor little town, how much artillery, how much camp-equipage, and all other military apparatus, do you find requisite? You must build a sort of temporary town, in order to overthrow a real one; and, for less money than the whole business of destruction costs you, you might build another town by the side of that you are going to level in the dust, where human beings might enjoy, if you would let them, the comforts of that life which God has been pleased to bestow in peace and plenty. In order to prevent the enemy from going out of the gates of his own town, you are obliged to sleep for months out of yours in a tent of the open air, and continue in a state of transportation and exile from your own home. You might build new walls for less than it costs you to batter down the old ones with your cannon-balls, and all the expensive contrivances formed for the hellish purposes of marring and demolishing the works of human industry. In this cursory computation of your expence, (for that I am chiefly considering, and the gain that accures from victory) I do not reckon the vast sums that stick to the fingers of commissioners, contractors, generals, admirals, and captains, which is certainly a great part of the whole.

  If you could bring all these articles into a fair and honest calculation, I will painfully suffer myself to be every where driven from you mortals as I am, unless it should appear that you might have purchased peace, without a drop of blood, at a tenth part of the expenditure. But you think it would be mean and humiliating, inconsistent with your own and your nation’s honour, to put up with the slightest injury: now I can assure you, that there is no stronger proof of a poor spirit, a narrow, cowardly, and unkingly heart, than revenge; especially as a king does not risk his own person in taking it, but employs the money of the people and the courage of the poor. You think it inconsistent with your august majesty, and that it would be departing from your royal dignity, to recede one inch from your strict right in favour of a neighbouring king, though related to you by consanguinity or marriage, and perhaps one who has formerly rendered you beneficial services. Poor strutting mortal! how much more effectually do you let down your august majesty and royal dignity when you are obliged to sacrifice with oblations of gold to foreign and barbarous mercenaries, to the lowest dregs, the most profligate wretches on the face of the earth; when, with the most abject adulation, and in the meanest form of a petitioner, you send ambassadors or commissioners to the vilest and most mischievous nations around, to ask them to receive your subsidies; trusting your august majesty’s life, and the property and political existence of your people, to the good faith of allies, who appear to have no regard to the most sacred engagements, and are no less inclined to violate justice than humanity.

  If the preservation of peace is attended with the necessity of submitting to some circumstances rather disadvantageous, and perhaps unjust, do not say to yourself, that you incur such a loss by resolving on peace instead of war, but that you purchase the inestimable benefit of peace at such a price. You could not get it cheaper; but the consolation is that it cannot be bought too dearly. Yet methinks a royal objector says, “I would very willingly give up such and such points if I were a private man, and the things in question were my own property; but I am a king, and, whether I like it or not, am under the necessity of acting, as I do, for the public.”

  For the public, says your majesty? Let me tell you, “that king will not easily be induced to enter on a war, who has no regard but for the public.” On the contrary, we see that almost all the real causes of wars are things which have no reference at all to the welfare of the public. Is your object to claim and gain possession of this or that part of another’s territory, what is that to the welfare of the people? Do you desire to take royal revenge on a crowned head in your vicinity, who has presumed to refuse your daughter in marriage, or repudiated her after marriage; what is that to the welfare of the people? How is it, in the smallest degree, a business of the state, the community at large? If you mean really to support your august majesty and royal dignity, the only way is, to support the character of a good, just, and wise man, by taking all these things into your most serious consideration, and acting accordingly.

  Which of you modern kings ever extended his empire so widely, or governed with so much majesty and dignity, as Augustus Caesar? But he, in all his glory, was desirous of relinquishing his power, if the people could have found any prince to preside over them with more advantage to the commonwealth. The saying of a certain emperor of antiquity, is justly celebrated by the best writers; “perish, said he, my sons and heirs, if any other successor can be found more likely than any of them to consult the happiness of the people.” These two emperors, not being christians, are called impious, heathenish men, by christians; by those who would go to war, in defence of law, order, and religion; and yet such benevolent dispositions did these impious, heathen emperors display towards promoting the welfare of the people, the happiness of man in society! In the meantime, christian emperors consider a whole christian people as a swinish multitude, as so little worthy of their regard, that they would set the world on fire, without consulting the people, to revenge the disappointment of their own selfish desires or to secure their full gratification.

  Still I hear certain potentates captiously exclaiming, that it does not signify arguing, and that they could not be personally safe if they did not repel by fire and sword the power of ill-designing men, who, not having the fear of God before their eyes, might even attack, with success, their own august majesty. How happens it, I ask them in return, that among all the Roman emperors, Antonius Pius and Antonius the philosopher were the only ones that were never attacked? From these two instances it appears, that no kings sit more firmly on their thrones, than they who shew that they are ready at any time to quit them, when their resignation appears likely to benefit the public; and that their power is a trust resumable at will, reposed in them by the people for the good of the people, and not to gratify their own pride or avarice, by lavishing away other men’s blood and money.

  May it please your most christian majesties! if nothing will move you, if neither the feelings of nature, the reflections of conscience, nor the actual pressure of calamity; at least, let the reproach of the christian profession (for which you pretend to be so zealous) bring you back to long relinquished christian unanimity.

  May it please you, who would go to war in defence of religion, as well as of law and order, to consider how small a portion of the terraqueous globe is occupied by christians. And this portion, small as it is, constitutes what is called in the scriptures, a city situated on a holy mountain, to be constantly reverenced, and preserved inviolate, both by God and man.

  But what must we suppose a nation of atheists, (if any such there be) or of unbelievers in Christ, think and say? what reproaches must they vomit out against Christ, when they see his professed followers cutting one another in pieces, from more trifling causes than the heathens; with greater cruelty than atheists, and with more destructive instruments of mutual murder than pagans could ever find in their hearts to use, or in their understanding to contrive.

  Whose invention was a cannon? Was it not the invention of the meek, lowly, merciful followers of Jesus Christ, whose law was love, and whose last legacy to his disciples and the world, peace? The cannon was the contrivance of christians; and to add to their infamy, it is usual to mark the names of the apostles and to engrave the images of saints upon the great guns. Cruel mockery of Christ, and of human misery! Paul, the constant teacher and preacher of peace, gives a name to a piece of artillery, and is thus made to hurl a deadly ball at the head of a christian; The church militant with a vengeance!

  If we are so anxious, as we pretend, to support religion, law, and order, and particularly to convert an unbelieving nation to christianity, let us first prove ourselves to be sincere followers of Christ. Will the nation to whom we intend the favour of conversion to christianity by fire and sword, believe that we ourselves are christians, when they see, what is too evident to be denied, that no people on earth quarrel and fight, one among another, more savagely than we christians; though Christ, the founder of the very religion which we mean to propagate among them, declared his utter detestation of all contention, and particularly of war?

  A great heathen poet expresses his admiration, that among heathens, whom we pity for their ignorance, though there is a time when men have enough of the sweetest enjoyments of life, as of sleep, of food, of wine, of the dance, and the melody of music, yet that they seem never to have enough of the miseries of war. What he said of the heathens, his contemporaries and countrymen, is strictly true among those to whom the very name of war, the very word, (as signifying a thing disgraceful to human nature) ought to be held in utter abomination.

  Rome, ancient Rome, mad as she was with martial rage, and intoxicated with the vanity of military glory, yet sometimes shut the temple of her Janus. How then happens it, that among you, ye christian kings and people, no recess, no holiday, no vacations, no rest is allowed in the work of war? With what face should you dare to recommend the christian religion to an unbelieving nation, as the religion of peace, when you yourselves are never at peace, but engaged in bitter quarrels and hostilities among each other, without the least intermission? What encouragement must it give the common enemy to see you thus divided. Divide and conquer, is a maxim; and no victory is easier than that over men turn to pieces by internal dissension. Would you, as a nation of christians, be formidable to those who have renounced, or never knew, christianity? To be formidable, be united.

  Why should you, wretched mortals, of your own accord, poison the pleasure, embitter all the enjoyment of this present life, and at the same time cut yourselves off from all chance of future felicity? Few and evil are the days of man, numberless the unavoidable calamities of human life; but a great part of the misery may be alleviated by love and friendship; while, by mutual kind offices all men afford each other, in difficulties that are surmountable, assistance, and, under distress that admits no remedy, consolation. The good that falls to man’s lot will be sweeter in its enjoyment and more extensive in its effects, by concord; while every man considers every other man as a friend, imparts as a share of his possessions where he can; and, where he cannot, makes him a partaker of his good-humour and good-will.

  How frivolous! what childish trifles! and how soon will they perish like yourselves! about which you make such disturbance; and, to obtain which, you deal death and desolation round the land. Death! you have no occasion for swords and muskets to accelerate it. Poor insects of a summer’s day! death hovers over all of you, in act to strike, with unerring dart, the king in all his glory, at the head of his armies, as suddenly as the labourer in the field and the manufactory. What a tumult is excited by an animalcule, with a crown on his head! a being who will soon vanish, like the smoke into the air, and leave not a vestige of its existence. At the very portal of your palace, at the entrance of your military pavilion, lo! the brink of eternity! Why then will you fret and fume about shadows, phantoms, air-drawn objects of a waking dream, as if this life were endless, and there were time enough in it to be wantonly mad and miserable.

  O wretched men! ye who will not believe in the future happiness of the good, or who dare not hope it for yourselves under that description. Most unreasonable, as well as miserable, if you think that the road to the blissful country of Heaven lies through the field of battle and the walks of war! The very bliss of Heaven itself is but an undescribable union of beatified minds; to take place when that shall be fully accomplished, which Christ earnestly prayed for to his heavenly Father, desiring that christians might be as intimately and mysteriously united to each other, as he is with the Father. How can you ever be fit for this perfect union, unless you meditate upon it in the interval, and endeavour with your utmost efforts to attain it? As the transition would be too sudden and violent, from a foul and filthy glutton to an angel of light; so would it be, from a bloody warrior to the company of martyrs, and those who have kept themselves unspotted from the world, unstained with human gore.

  Enough, and more than enough, of christian blood, enough of human blood, has been already spilt; enough have you acted the part of madmen to your mutual destruction; enough have you sacrificed to the evil spirits of hell; long enough have you been acting a tragedy for the entertainment of unbelievers. I pray you, after so long and sad experience of the evils of war, (submitted to by the principal sufferers a great while ago too patiently) repent, and be wise.

  Let the folly that is past be imputed, if you will, to the destinies, to any thing you please. Let the christians vote, what the heathens sometimes voted, an entire amnesty of all past errors and misfortunes; but, for the time to come, apply yourselves, one and all, to the preservation and perpetuation of peace. Bind up discord, not with hempen bands liable to be broken or untwisted, but with chains of steel and adamant, never to be burst asunder, till time shall be no more.

  Kings! to you I make my first appeal. On your nod, such is the constitution of human affairs, the happiness of mortals is made to depend. You assume to be the images and representatives of Christ, your sovereign. Then, as you wish men to hear your voice shew the example of obedience, and hear the voice of your Sovereign Lord, commanding you, upon your duty, to seek peace and abolish war. Be persuaded that the world, wearied with its long continued calamities, demands this, and has a right to insist on your immediate compliance.

  Priests! to you I appeal as consecrated to the God of Love and Mercy. On your conscience I require you to promote, with all the zeal of your hearts and abilities of your minds, that which you know is most agreeable to God; and to explode, discountenance, and repel, with equal ardour and activity, what you know in your hearts he abhors.

  Preachers of all denominations! to you I appeal. Preach the gospel of peace. Let the doctrines of peace and good-will for ever resound in the ears of the people.

  Bishops, and all who are pre-eminent in ecclesiastical dignity! I call upon you, that the high authority and influence which you possess over the minds of both kings and people, may be exerted to bind upon their hearts, with bonds indissoluble, the sacred obligations to peace.

  Dukes, lords, grandees, placemen, and magistrates, of every description! I appeal to you, that your hearty good-will may co-operate in the work of peace, with the wisdom of kings, and the piety of priests.

  I appeal to all who call themselves christians! I urge them, as they would manifest their sincerity, and preserve their consistency, to unite with one heart and one soul, in the abolition of war, and the establishment of perpetual and universal peace.

  Here, and in this instance, shew the world, how much can be effected by the union of the multitude, the mass of the people, against the despotism of the few and the powerful.

  Hither let all ranks and orders, equally zealous and intent in the glorious cause, bring and unite all their wisdom and abilities. Let eternal concord connect those whom Nature has connected in many points, and Christ in all. Let all act with equal zeal in accomplishing a purpose which will contribute equally to the happiness of all. Hither every circumstance invites you to co-operate; in the first place, the natural feelings of man’s heart, the spontaneous dictates of common humanity; and, in the next, the author and disposer of all human happiness, Christ. The innumerable blessings of peace, and the unutterable miseries of war, I have already endeavoured to describe. Hither also the inclinations of kings themselves, in our times, (the favourable influence of God’s grace impelling their minds to concord) seem to invite. Behold! the mild and pacific1 Leo, acting the part of Christ’s true vicar, has lifted up the signal of peace, and exhorted all men to flock to its standard. If then you are true sheep, follow your shepherd. If you are true sons, listen to the voice of your Father. Hither likewise Francis, king of France and the most christian king, not in title only, summons you. He disdains not to purchase peace; nor does he regard his own pomp and external dignity, so long as he can promote and preserve the public tranquillity. He has shewn that the true splendor of royalty, the real majesty of a king, consists in an endeavour to deserve well of the human race, to promote the happiness of individuals, and not to involve them in misery and destruction, in a wild quixotic pursuit of glory. Hither also you are called by the renowned Charles the fifth, a young man of a disposition naturally good, and happily not yet corrupted. Caesar Maximilian appears to have no objection to peace, nor does Henry, the famous king of England, refuse his concurrence.

  As to the people; in all these countries the greater part of the people certainly detest war, and most devoutly wish for peace. A very few of them, indeed, whose unnatural happiness depends upon the public misery, may wish for war; but be it yours to decide, whether it is equitable or not, that the unprincipled selfishness of such wretches should have more weight than the anxious wishes of all good men united. You plainly see, that hitherto nothing has been effectually done towards permanent peace by treaties, no good end answered by royal intermarriages, neither by violence, nor by revenge. Now then it is time to pursue different measures; to try the experiment, what a placable disposition, and a mutual desire to do acts of friendship and kindness, can accomplish in promoting national amity. It is the nature of wars, that one should sow the seeds of another; it is the nature of revenge to produce reciprocal revenge. Now then, on the contrary, let kindness generate kindness, one good turn become productive of another; and let him be considered as the most kingly character, the greatest and best potentate, who is ready to concede the most from his own strict right, and to sacrifice all exclusive privilege to the happiness of the people.

  What has been done by mere human policy, and for temporal purposes only, has not yet succeeded; but Christ will give success to those pious designs, which shall appear to be undertaken under his auspices and by his authority. He will be present and propitious, and favour those who favour that state of human affairs, which he himself evidently appeared, while on earth, so remarkably, decidedly to promote.

  Let the public good overcome all private and selfish regards of every kind and degree; though in truth, even private and selfish regards, and every man’s own interest, will be best promoted by the preservation of peace. Kings will find, that to reign is a more glorious thing than ever it has been, when they reign by the mild authority of law, and not by arms and violence. The nobility will find their dignity greater in itself, and established on more reasonable, and therefore more permanent principles. The clergy will enjoy their ease with less interruption. The people will possess tranquillity with greater plenty, and plenty with greater tranquillity, than they yet have ever known. The christian profession will become respectable to the enemies of the cross. Finally, every man will become dear and pleasing to every other man; all will be beloved by all! and, what is still more desirable, beloved also by Christ; to become acceptable to whom is the highest felicity of human nature.

  FINIS.

  [1 ]Thus Milton:

  • “O shame to men! Devil with devil damned
  • Firm concord holds; men only disagree.”

  [1 ]A few lines are here omitted, because, though descriptive of France in the days of Erasmus, they now bear but little resemblance to it.

  [1 ]Erasmus was mistaken in Leo’s character.

  [1 ]Erasmus, whose good sense led him to delight in proverbs, thus explains his proverb in his Adagio. “Priscis agricolis celebratum adagium; quo significavit antiquitas rectius geri negotium, ubi praesens hae testes adest is cujus agitur negotium.” The English proverb corresponding with it is rather too familiar for the occasion. The Latin may be thus translated: “The foreside sees more than the backside.” Cato and Pliny use the proverb.
  
  “Id nulli magis obferandum quam principi; si modo principis animum gerat, non praedonis, hoc est si publicum negotium cordi habet. At hodie fere episcopi et reges omnia alienis manibus, alienis auribus atque oculis agunt, neque quicquam minus ad se pertinere putant quam rempublicam, aut privatis suisque distenti, aut voluptatibus occupati.” This proverb deserves to be regarded by nobody more than a king; if he has the dispositions of a king, and not of a public plunderer, that is, if he has the public interest at heart. But now-a-days, bishops and kings transact all the proper business of their functions by other people’s hands, ears, and eyes; nor do they think themselves concerned in any thing less, than in the care of the public good, being entirely occupied with pursuing their own private and selfish ends, or engaged in the pleasures of fashionable life and company.—Erasmus.

  [1 ]The words of Erasmus are “Satis sit in bello caesis, in profano sepulchrum dare.” Here he goes too far; but it is in his benevolent design to prevent any being slain in battle in future.

  [1 ]Erasmus was much mistaken in Leo and other potentates of his time. But it was necessary, for personal safety, to pay such compliments. Besides, that praise which they did not deserve was a severe reproach, and might stimulate them to endeavour to deserve it.

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  2: 2. John Locke, The Two Treatises of Civil Government (1689, Hollis ed. 1764)

  The Two Treatises of Government by John Locke (1632-1704) is an excellent example of a text that has acquired multiple layers of meaning and significance through the passage of time. It was originally written as part of debate against Sir Robert Filmer over the relative power of the monarch (divine right of kings) vis-a-vis the authonomy and sovereignty of the individual. It helped justify the Glorious Revolution’s overthrow of the Stuart monarchy and the creation of a constitutional monarchy under William of Orange in 1688-89. Locke’s book had a second life during the 18th century with its influence over the 18th century commonwealthmen who were waging their own battle against empire and high taxation in the mid-18th century. Thomas Hollis was a radical bookseller who sold and published Locke and other authors in the American colonies on the eve of the revolution. His 1764 edition of Locke was a part of the library of many “founding fathers” and his postcard-sized illustrations like this one of Locke were also very popular.

  

  I like this edition of Locke because it encapsulates ideas which influenced two important revolutions in the English-speaking world. I’m sure the founding fathers of the American revolution read with interest the following passage in Locke about the dissolution of government:

  1. In these and the like cases, when the government is dissolved, the people are at liberty to provide for themselves, by erecting a new legislative, differing from the other, by the change of persons, or form, or both, as they shall find it most for their safety and good: for the society can never, by the fault of another, lose the native and original right it has to preserve itself, which can only be done by a settled legislative, and a fair and impartial execution of the laws made by it. But the state of mankind is not so miserable that they are not capable of using this remedy, till it be too late to look for any. To tell people they may provide for themselves, by erecting a new legislative, when by oppression, artifice, or being delivered over to a foreign power, their old one is gone, is only to tell them, they may expect relief when it is too late, and the evil is past cure. This is in effect no more than to bid them first be slaves, and then to take care of their liberty; and when their chains are on, tell them, they may act like freemen. This, if barely so, is rather mockery than relief; and men can never be secure from tyranny, if there be no means to escape it till they are perfectly under it: and therefore it is, that they have not only a right to get out of it, but to prevent it.

  John Locke, Two Treatises of Government, ed. Thomas Hollis (London: A. Millar et al., 1764).

  Accessed from oll.libertyfund.org/title/222 on 2008-01-25

  The text is in the public domain.

  ---

  

  IOHN LOCKE

  The present Edition of this Book has not only been collated with the first three Editions, which were published during the Author’s Life, but also has the Advantage of his last Corrections and Improvements, from a Copy delivered by him to Mr. Peter Coste, communicated to the Editor, and now lodged in Christ College, Cambridge.

  TWO TREATISES OF GOVERNMENT. IN THE FORMER THE FALSE PRINCIPLES AND FOUNDATION OF SIR ROBERT FILMER AND HIS FOLLOWERS ARE DETECTED AND OVERTHROWN.

  THE LATTER IS AN ESSAY CONCERNING THE TRUE ORIGINAL EXTENT AND END OF CIVIL GOVERNMENT.

  PREFACE

  Reader, thou hast here the beginning and end of a discourse concerning government; what fate has otherwise disposed of the papers that should have filled up the middle, and were more than all the rest, it is not worth while to tell thee. These, which remain, I hope are sufficient to establish the throne of our great restorer, our present King William; to make good his title, in the consent of the people, which being the only one of all lawful governments, he has more fully and clearly, than any prince in Christendom; and to justify to the world the people of England, whose love of their just and natural rights, with their resolution to preserve them, saved the nation when it was on the very brink of slavery and ruin. If these papers have that evidence, I slatter myself is to be found in them, there will be no great miss of those which are lost, and my reader may be satisfied without them: for I imagine, I shall have neither the time, nor inclination to repeat my pains, and fill up the wanting part of my answer, by tracing Sir Robert again, through all the windings and obscurities, which are to be met with in the several branches of his wonderful system. The king, and body of the nation, have since so throughly confuted his Hypothesis, that I suppose no body hereafter will have either the confidence to appear against our common safety, and be again an advocate for slavery; or the weakness to be deceived with contradictions dressed up in a popular stile, and well-turned periods: for if any one will be at the pains, himself, in those parts, which are here untouched, to strip Sir Robert’s discourses of the flourish of doubtful expressions, and endeavour to reduce his words to direct, positive, intelligible propositions, and then compare them one with another, he will quickly be satisfied, there was never so much glib nonsense put together in well-sounding English. If he think it not worth while to examine his works all thro’, let him make an experiment in that part, where he treats of usurpation; and let him try, whether he can, with all his skill, make Sir Robert intelligible, and consistent with himself, or common sense. I should not speak so plainly of a gentleman, long since past answering, had not the pulpit, of late years, publicly owned his doctrine, and made it the current divinity of the times. It is necessary those men, who taking on them to be teachers, have so dangerously misled others, should be openly shewed of what authority this their Patriarch is, whom they have so blindly followed, that so they may either retract what upon so ill grounds they have vented, and cannot be maintained; or else justify those principles which they preached up for gospel; though they had no better an author than an English courtier: for I should not have writ against Sir Robert, or taken the pains to shew his mistakes, inconsistencies, and want of (what he so much boasts of, and pretends wholly to build on) scripture-proofs, were there not men amongst us, who, by crying up his books, and espousing his doctrine, save me from the reproach of writing against a dead adversary. They have been so zealous in this point, that, if I have done him any wrong, I cannot hope they should spare me. I wish, where they have done the truth and the public wrong, they would be as ready to redress it, and allow its just weight to this reflection, viz. that there cannot be done a greater mischief to prince and people, than the propagating wrong notions concerning government; that so at last all times might not have reason to complain of the Drum Ecclesiastic. If any one, concerned really for truth, undertake the confutation of my Hypothesis, I promise him either to recant my mistake, upon fair conviction; or to answer his difficulties. But he must remember two things.

  First, That cavilling here and there, at some expression, or little incident of my discourse, is not an answer to my book.

  Secondly, That I shall not take railing for arguments, nor think either of these worth my notice, though I shall always look on myself as bound to give satisfacton to any one, who shall appear to be conscientiously scrupulous in the point, and shall shew any just grounds for his scruples.

  I have nothing more, but to advertise the reader, that Observations stands for Observations on Hobbs, Milton, &c. and that a bare quotation of pages always means pages of his Patriarcha, Edition 1680.

  OF GOVERNMENT

  BOOK I

  Chap. I.

  §. 1.

  Slavery is so vile and miserable an estate of man, and so directly opposite to the generous temper and courage of our nation; that it is hardly to be conceived, that an Englishman, much less a gentleman, should plead for it. And truly I should have taken Sir Robert Filmer’s Patriarcha, as any other treatise, which would persuade all men, that they are slaves, and ought to be so, for such another exercise of wit, as was his who writ the encomium of Nero; rather than for a serious discourse meant in earnest, had not the gravity of the title and epistle, the picture in the front of the book, and the applause that followed it, required me to believe, that the author and publisher were both in earnest. I therefore took it into my hands with all the expectation, and read it through with all the attention due to a treatise that made such a noise at its coming abroad, and cannot but confess my self mightily surprised, that in a book, which was to provide chains for all mankind, I should find nothing but a rope of sand, useful perhaps to such, whose skill and business it is to raise a dust, and would blind the people, the better to mislead them; but in truth not of any force to draw those into bondage, who have their eyes open, and so much sense about them, as to consider, that chains are but an ill wearing, how much care soever hath been taken to file and polish them.

  §. 2.

  If any one think I take too much liberty in speaking so freely of a man, who is the great champion of absolute power, and the idol of those who worship it; I beseech him to make this small allowance for once, to one, who, even after the reading of Sir Robert’s book, cannot but think himself, as the laws allow him, a freeman: and I know no fault it is to do so, unless any one better skilled in the fate of it, than I, should have it revealed to him, that this treatise, which has lain dormant so long, was, when it appeared in the world, to carry, by strength of its arguments, all liberty out of it; and that from thenceforth our author’s short model was to be the pattern in the mount, and the perfect standard of politics for the future. His system lies in a little compass, it is no more but this,

  • That all government is absolute monarchy.
  • And the ground he builds on, is this,
  • That no man is born free.

  §. 3.

  In this last age a generation of men has sprung up amongst us, that would flatter princes with an opinion, that they have a divine right to absolute power, let the laws by which they are constituted, and are to govern, and the conditions under which they enter upon their authority, be what they will, and their engagements to observe them never so well ratified by solemn oaths and promises. To make way for this doctrine, they have denied mankind a right to natural freedom; whereby they have not only, as much as in them lies, exposed all subjects to the utmost misery of tyranny and oppression, but have also unsettled the titles, and shaken the thrones of princes: (for they too, by these mens system, except only one, are all born slaves, and by divine right are subjects to Adam’s right heir;) as if they had designed to make war upon all government, and subvert the very foundations of human society, to serve their present turn.

  §. 4.

  However we must believe them upon their own bare words, when they tell us, we are all born slaves, and we must continue so, there is no remedy for it; life and thraldom we enter’d into together, and can never be quit of the one, till we part with the other. Scripture or reason I am sure do not any where say so, notwithstanding the noise of divine right, as if divine authority hath subjected us to the unlimited will of another. An admirable state of mankind, and that which they have not had wit enough to find out till this latter age. For, however Sir Robert Filmer seems to condemn the novelty of the contrary opinion, Patr. p. 3. yet I believe it will be hard for him to find any other age, or country of the world, but this, which has asserted monarchy to be jure divino. And he confesses, Patr. p. 4. That Heyward, Blackwood, Barclay, and others, that have bravely vindicated the right of kings in most points, never thought of this, but with one consent admitted the natural liberty and equality of mankind.

  §. 5.

  By whom this doctrine came at first to be broached, and brought in fashion amongst us, and what sad effects it gave rise to, I leave to historians to relate, or to the memory of those, who were contemporaries with Sibthorp and Manwering, to recollect. My business at present is only to consider what Sir Robert Filmer, who is allowed to have carried this argument farthest, and is supposed to have brought it to perfection, has said in it; for from him every one, who would be as fashionable as French was at court, has learned, and runs away with this short system of politics, viz. Men are not born free, and therefore could never have the liberty to choose either governors, or forms of government. Princes have their power absolute, and by divine right; for slaves could never have a right to compact or consent. Adam was an absolute monarch, and so are all princes ever since.

  CHAP. II.
  Of Paternal and Regal Power.

  §. 6.

  SIR Robert Filmer’s great position is, that men are not naturally free. This is the foundation on which his absolute monarchy stands, and from which it erects itself to an height, that its power is above every power, caput inter nubila, so high above all earthly and human things, that thought can scarce reach it; that promises and oaths, which tye the infinite Deity, cannot confine it. But if this foundation fails, all his fabric falls with it, and governments must be left again to the old way of being made by contrivance, and the consent of men (Άνϧϛωπίνη ϰτίσιϛ) making use of their reason to unite together into society. To prove this grand position of his, he tells us, p. 12. Menare born in subjection to their parents, and therefore cannot be free. And this authority of parents, he calls royal authority, p. 12, 14. Fatherly authority, right of fatherhood, p. 12, 20. One would have thought he would, in the beginning of such a work as this, on which was to depend the authority of princes, and the obedience of subjects, have told us expresly, what that fatherly authority is, have defined it, though not limited it, because in some other treatises of his he tells us, it is unlimited, and* unlimitable; he should at least have given us such an account of it, that we might have had an entire notion of this fatherhood, or fatherly authority, whenever it came in our way in his writings: this I expected to have found in the first chapter of his Patriarcha. But instead thereof, having, 1. en passant, made his obeysance to the arcana imperii, p. 5. 2. made his compliment to the rights and liberties of this, or any other nation, p. 6. which he is going presently to null and destroy; and, 3. made his leg to those learned men, who did not see so far into the matter as himself, p. 7. he comes to fall on Bellarmine, p. 8. and, by a victory over him, establishes his fatherly authority beyond any question. Bellarmine being routed by his own confession, p. 11. the day is clear got, and there is no more need of any forces: for having done that, I observe not that he states the question, or rallies up any arguments to make good his opinion, but rather tells us the story, as he thinks fit, of this strange kind of domineering phantom, called the fatherhood, which whoever could catch, presently got empire, and unlimited absolute power. He assures us how this fatherhood began in Adam, continued its course, and kept the world in order all the time of the patriarchs till the flood, got out of the ark with Noah and his sons, made and supported all the kings of the earth till the captivity of the Israelites in Egypt, and then the poor fatherhood was under hatches, till God, by giving the Israelites kings, re-established the ancient and prime right of the lineal succession in paternal government. This is his business from p. 12. to 19. And then obviating an objection, and clearing a difficulty or two with one half reason, p. 23. to confirm the natural right of regal power, he ends the first chapter. I hope it is no injury to call an half quotation an half reason; for God says, Honour thy father and mother; but our author contents himself with half, leaves out thymother quite, as little serviceable to his purpose. But of that more in another place.

  §. 7.

  I do not think our author so little skilled in the way of writing discourses of this nature, nor so careless of the point in hand, that he by over-sight commits the fault, that he himself, in his Anarchy of a mixed Monarchy, p. 239. objects to Mr. Hunton in these words: Where first I charge the author, that he hath not given us any definition, or description of monarchy in general; for by the rules of method he should have first defined. And by the like rule of method Sir Robert should have told us, what his fatherhood or fatherly authority is, before he had told us, in whom it was to be found, and talked so much of it. But perhaps Sir Robert found, that this fatherly authority, this power of fathers, and of kings, for he makes them both the same, p. 24. would make a very odd and frightful figure, and very disagreeing with what either children imagine of their parents, or subjects of their kings, if he should have given us the whole draught together in that gigantic form, he had painted it in his own fancy; and therefore, like a wary physician, when he would have his patient swallow some harsh or corrosive liquor, he mingles it with a large quantity of that which may dilute it; that the scattered parts may go down with less feeling, and cause less aversion.

  §. 8.

  Let us then endeavour to find what account he gives us of this fatherly authority, as it lies scattered in the several parts of his writings. And first, as it was vested in Adam, he says, Not only Adam, but the succeeding patriarchs, had, by right of fatherhood, royal authority over their children, p. 12. This lordship which Adam by command had over the whole world, and by right descending from him the patriarchs did enjoy, was as large and ample as the absolute dominion of any monarch, which hath been since the creation, p. 13. Dominion of life and death, making war, and concluding peace, p. 13. Adam and the patriarchs had absolute power of life and death, p. 35. Kings, in the right of parents, succeed to the exercise of supreme jurisdiction, p. 19. As kingly power is by the law of God, so it hath no inferior law to limit it; Adam was lord of all, p. 40. The father of a family governs by no other law, than by his own will, p. 78. The superiority of princes is above laws, p. 79. The unlimited jurisdiction of kings is so amply described by Samuel, p. 80. Kings are above the laws, p. 93. And to this purpose see a great deal more which our author delivers in Bodin’s words: It is certain, that all laws, privileges, and grants of princes, have no force, but during their life; if they be not ratified by the express consent, or by sufferance of the prince following, especially privileges, Observations, p. 279. The reason why laws have been also made by kings, was this; when kings were either busied with wars, or distracted with public cares, so that every private man could not have access to their persons, to learn their wills and pleasure, then were laws of necessity invented, that so every particular subject might find his prince’s pleasure decyphered unto him in the tables of his laws, p. 92. In a monarchy, the king must by necessity be above the laws, p. 100. A perfect kingdom is that, wherein the king rules all things according to his own will, p. 100. Neither common nor statute laws are, or can be, any diminution of that general power, which kings have over their people by right of fatherhood, p. 115. Adam was the father, king, and lord over his family; a son, a subject, and a servant or slave, were one and the same thing at first. The father had power to dispose or sell his children or servants; whence we find, that the first reckoning up of goods in scripture, the man-servant and the maid-servant, are numbred among the possessions and substance of the owner, as other goods were, Observations, Pref. God also hath given to the father a right or liberty, to alien his power over his children to any other; whence we find the sale and gift of children to have much been in use in the beginning of the world, when men had their servants for a possession and an inheritance, as well as other goods; whereupon we find the power of castrating and making eunuchs much in use in old times, Observations,p. 155. Law is nothing else but the will of him that hath the power of the supreme father, Observations, p. 223. It was God’s ordinance that the supremacy should be unlimited in Adam, and as large as all the acts of his will; and as in him so in all others that have supreme power, Observations, p. 245.

  §. 9.

  I have been fain to trouble my reader with these several quotations in our author’s own words, that in them might be seen his own description of his fatherly authority, as it lies scattered up and down in his writings, which he supposes was first vested in Adam, and by right belongs to all princes ever since. This fatherly authority then, or right of fatherhood, in our author’s sense, is a divine unalterable right of sovereignty, whereby a father or a prince hath an absolute, arbitrary, unlimited, and unlimitable power over the lives, liberties, and estates of his children and subjects; so that he may take or alienate their estates, sell, castrate, or use their persons as he pleases, they being all his slaves, and he lord or proprietor of every thing, and his unbounded will their law.

  §. 10.

  Our author having placed such a mighty power in Adam, and upon that supposition sounded all government, and all power of princes, it is reasonable to expect, that he should have proved this with arguments clear and evident, suitable to the weightiness of the cause; that since men had nothing else left them, they might in slavery have such undeniable proofs of its necessity, that their consciences might be convinced, and oblige them to submit peaceably to that absolute dominion, which their governors had a right to exercise over them. Without this, what good could our author do, or pretend to do, by erecting such an unlimited power, but flatter the natural vanity and ambition of men, too apt of itself to grow and encrease with the possession of any power? and by persuading those, who, by the consent of their fellowmen, are advanced to great, but limited, degrees of it, that by that part which is given them, they have a right to all, that was not so; and therefore may do what they please, because they have authority to do more than others, and so tempt them to do what is neither for their own, nor the good of those under their care; whereby great mischiefs cannot but follow.

  §. 11.

  The sovereignty of Adam, being that on which, as a sure basis, our author builds his mighty absolute monarchy, I expected, that in his Patriarcha, this his main supposition would have been proved, and established with all that evidence of arguments, that such a fundamental tenet required; and that this, on which the great stress of the business depends, would have been made out with reasons sufficient to justify the confidence with which it was assumed. But in all that treatise, I could find very little tending that way; the thing is there so taken for granted, without proof, that I could scarce believe myself, when, upon attentive reading that treatise, I found there so mighty a structure raised upon the bare supposition of this foundation: for it is scarce credible, that in a discourse, where he pretends to confute the erroneous principle of man’s natural freedom, he should do it by a bare supposition of Adam’s authority, without offering any proof for that authority. Indeed he confidently says, that Adam had royal authority, p. 12, and 13. Absolute lordship and dominion of life and death, p. 13. An universal monarchy, p. 33. Absolute power of life and death, p. 35. He is very frequent in such assertions; but, what is strange, in all his whole Patriarcha I find not one pretence of a reason to establish this his great foundation of government; not any thing that looks like an argument, but these words: To confirm this natural right of regal power, we find in the Decalogue, that the law which enjoyns obedience to kings, is delivered in the terms, Honour thy father, as if all power were originally in the father. And why may I not add as well, that in the Decalogue, the law that enjoyns obedience to queens, is delivered in the terms of Honour thy mother, as if all power were originally in the mother? The argument, as Sir Robert puts it, will hold as well for one as the other: but of this, more in its due place.

  §. 12.

  All that I take notice of here, is, that this is all our author says in this first, or any of the following chapters, to prove the absolute power of Adam, which is his great principle: and yet, as if he had there settled it upon sure demonstration, he begins his second chapter with these words, By conferring these proofs and reasons, drawn from the authority of the scripture. Where those proofs and reasons for Adam’s sovereignty are, bating that of Honour thy father, above mentioned, I confess, I cannot find; unless what he says, p. 11. In these words we have an evident confession, viz. of Bellarmine, that creation made man prince of his posterity, must be taken for proofs and reasons drawn from scripture, or for any sort of proof at all: though from thence by a new way of inference, in the words immediately following, he concludes, the royal authority of Adam sufficiently settled in him.

  §. 13.

  If he has in that chapter, or any where in the whole treatise, given any other proofs of Adam’s royal authority, other than by often repeating it, which, among some men, goes for argument, I desire any body for him to shew me the place and page, that I may be convinced of my mistake, and acknowledge my oversight. If no such arguments are to be found, I beseech those men, who have so much cried up this book, to consider, whether they do not give the world cause to suspect, that it is not the force of reason and argument, that makes them for absolute monarchy, but some other by interest, and therefore are resolved to applaud any author, that writes in favour of this doctrine, whether he support it with reason or no. But I hope they do not expect, that rational and indifferent men should be brought over to their opinion, because this their great doctor of it, in a discourse made on purpose, to set up the absolute monarchical power of Adam, in opposition to the natural freedom of mankind, has said so little to prove it, from whence it is rather naturally to be concluded, that there is little to be said.

  §. 14.

  But that I might omit no care to inform myself in our author’s full sense, I consulted his Observations on Aristotle, Hobbes, &c. to see whether in disputing with others he made use of any arguments for this his darling tenet of Adam’s sovereignty; since in his treatise of the Natural Power of Kings, he hath been so sparing of them. In his Observations on Mr. Hobbes’s Leviathan, I think he has put, in short, all those arguments for it together, which in his writings I find him any where to make use of: his words are these: If God created only Adam, and of a piece of him made the woman, and if by generationfrom them two, as parts of them, all mankind be propagated: if also God gave to Adam not only the dominion over the woman and the children that should issue from them, but also over all the earth to subdue it, and over all the creatures on it, so that as long as Adam lived, no man could claim or enjoy any thing but by donation, assignation or permission from him, I wonder, &c. Observations, 165. Here we have the sum of all his arguments, for Adam’s sovereignty and against natural freedom, which I find up and down in his other treatises: and they are these following; God’s creation of Adam, the dominion he gave him over Eve, and the dominion he had as father over his children: all which I shall particularly consider.

  CHAP. III.
  Of Adam’s Title to Sovereignty by Creation.

  §. 15.

  SIR Robert, in his preface to his Observations on Aristotle’s politics, tells us, A natural freedom of mankind cannot be supposed without the denial of the creation of Adam: but how Adam’s being created, which was nothing but his receiving a being immediately from omnipotence and the hand of God, gave Adam a sovereignty over any thing, I cannot see, nor consequently understand, how a supposition of natural freedom isa denial of Adam’s creation, and would be glad any body else (since our author did not vouchsafe us the favour) would make it out for him: for I find no difficulty to suppose the freedom of mankind, though I have always believed the creation of Adam. He was created, or began to exist, by God’s immediate power, without the intervention of parents or the pre-existence of any of the same species to beget him, when it pleased God he should; and so did the lion, the king of beasts, before him, by the same creating power of God: and if bare existence by that power, and in that way, will give dominion, without any more ado, our author, by this argument, will make the lion have as good a title to it, as he, and certainly the antienter. No! for Adam had his title by the appointment of God, says our author in another place. Then bare creation gave him not dominion, and one might have supposed mankind free without the denying the creation of Adam, since it was God’s appointment made him monarch.

  §. 16.

  But let us see, how he puts his creation and this appointment together. By the appointment of God, says Sir Robert, as soon as Adam was created, he was monarch of the world, though he had no subjects; for though there could not be actual government till there were subjects, yet by the right of nature it was due to Adam to be governor of his posterity:though not in act, yet at least in habit, Adam was a king from his creation. I wish he had told us here, what he meant by God’s appointment: for whatsoever providence orders, or the law of nature directs, or positive revelation declares, may be said to be by God’s appointment: but I suppose it cannot be meant here in the first sense, i. e. by providence; because that would be to say no more, but that as soon as Adam was created he was de facto monarch, because by right of nature it was due to Adam, to be governor of his posterity. But he could not de facto be by providence constituted the governor of the world, at a time when there was actually no government, no subjects to be governed, which our author here confesses. Monarch of the world is also differently used by our author; for sometimes he means by it a proprietor of all the world exclusive of the rest of mankind, and thus he does in the same page of his preface before cited: Adam, says he, being commanded to multiply and people the earth, and to subdue it, and having dominion given him over all creatures, was thereby the monarch of the whole world; none of his posterity had any right to possess any thing but by his grant or permission, or by succession from him. 2. Let us understand then by monarch proprietor of the world, and by appointment God’s actual donation, and revealed positive grant made to Adam, i. Gen. 28. as we see Sir Robert himself does in this parallel place, and then his argument will stand thus, by the positive grant of God: as soon as Adam was created, he was proprietor of the world, because by the right of nature it was due to Adam to be governor of his posterity. In which way of arguing there are two manifest falsehoods. First, It is false, that God made that grant to Adam, as soon as he was created, since, tho’ it stands in the text immediately after his creation, yet it is plain it could not be spoken to Adam, till after Eve was made and brought to him: and how then could he be monarch by appointment as soon as created, especially since he calls, if I mistake not, that which God says to Eve, iii. Gen. 16, the original grant of government, which not being till after the fall, when Adam was somewhat, at least in time, and very much distant in condition, from his creation, I cannot see, how our author can say in this sense, that by God’s appointment, as soon as Adam was created, he was monarch of the world. Secondly, were it true that God’s actual donation appointed Adam monarch of the world as soon as he was created, yet the reason here given for it would not prove it; but it would always be a false inference, that God, by a positive donation, appointed Adam monarch of the world, because by right of nature it was due to Adam to be governor of his posterity: for having given him the right of government by nature, there was no need of a positive donation; at least it will never be a proof of such a donation.

  §. 17.

  On the other side the matter will not be much mended, if we understand by God’s appointment the law of nature, (though it be a pretty harsh expression for it in this place) and by monarch of the world, sovereign ruler of mankind: for then the sentence under consideration must run thus: By the law of nature, as soon as Adam was created he was governor of mankind, for by right of nature it was due to Adam to be governor of his posterity; which amounts to this, he was governor by right of nature, because he was governor by right of nature: but supposing we should grant, that a man is by nature governor of his children, Adam could not hereby be monarch as soon as created: for this right of nature being founded in his being their father, how Adam could have a natural right to be governor, before he was a father, when by being a father only he had that right, is, methinks, hard to conceive, unless he will have him to be a father before he was a father, and to have a title before he had it.

  §. 18.

  To this foreseen objection, our author answers very logically, he was governor in habit, and not in act: a very pretty way of being a governor without government, a father without children, and a king without subjects. And thus Sir Robert was an author before he writ his book; not in act it is true, but in habit; for when he had once published it, it was due to him by the right of nature, to be an author, as much as it was to Adam to be governor of his children, when he had begot them: and if to be such a monarch of the world, an absolute monarch in habit, but not in act, will serve the turn, I should not much envy it to any of Sir Robert’s friends, that he thought fit graciously to bestow it upon, though even this of act and habit, if it signified any thing but our author’s skill in distinctions, be not to his purpose in this place. For the question is not here about Adam’s actual exercise of government, but actually having a title to be governor. Government, says our author, was due to Adam by the right of nature: what is this right of nature? A right fathers have over their children by begetting them; generatione jus acquiritur parentibus in liberos, says our author out of Grotius, Observations, 223. The right then follows the begetting as arising from it; so that, according to this way of reasoning or distinguishing of our author, Adam, as soon as he was created, had a title only in habit, and not in act, which in plain English is, he had actually no title at all.

  §. 19.

  To speak less learnedly, and more intelligibly, one may say of Adam, he was in a possibility of being governor, since it was possible he might beget children, and thereby acquire that right of nature, be it what it will, to govern them, that accrues from thence: but what connection has this with Adam’s creation, to make him say, that as soon as he was created, he was monarch of the world? for it may be as well said of Noah, that as soon as he was born, he was monarch of the world, since he was in possibility (which in our author’s sense is enough to make a monarch, a monarch in habit,) to outlive all mankind, but his own posterity. What such necessary connection there is betwixt Adam’s creation and his right to government, so that a natural freedom of mankind cannot be supposed without the denial of the creation of Adam, I confess for my part I do not see; nor how those words, by the appointment, &c. Observations, 254. how ever explained, can be put together, to make any tolerable sense, at least to establish this position, with which they end, viz. Adam was a king from his creation; a king, says our author, not in act, but in habit, i. e. actually no king at all.

  §. 20.

  I fear I have tired my reader’s patience, by dwelling longer on this passage, than the weightiness of any argument in it seems to require: but I have unavoidably been engaged in it by our author’s way of writing, who, hudling several suppositions together, and that in doubtful and general terms, makes such a medly and confusion, that it is impossible to shew his mistakes, without examining the several senses wherein his words may be taken, and without seeing how, in any of these various meanings, they will consist together, and have any truth in them: for in this present passage before us, how can any one argue against this position of his, that Adam was a king from his creation, unless one examine, whether the words, from his creation, be to be taken, as they may, for the time of the commencement of his government, as the foregoing words import, as soon as he was created he was monarch; or, for the cause of it, as he says, p. 11. creation made man prince of his posterity? how farther can one judge of the truth of his being thus king, till one has examined whether king be to be taken, as the words in the beginning of this passage would persuade, on supposition of his private dominion, which was, by God’s positive grant, monarch of the world by appointment; or king on supposition of his fatherly power over his off-spring, which was by nature, due by the right of nature; whether, I say, king be to be taken in both, or one only of these two senses, or in neither of them, but only this, that creation made him prince, in a way different from both the other? For though this assertion, that Adam was king from his creation, be true in no sense, yet it stands here as an evident conclusion drawn from the preceding words, though in truth it be but a bare assertion joined to other assertions of the same kind, which confidently put together in words of undetermined and dubious meaning, look like a sort of arguing, when there is indeed neither proof nor connection: a way very familiar with our author: of which having given the reader a taste here, I shall, as much as the argument will permit me, avoid touching on hereafter; and should not have done it here, were it not to let the world see, how incoherences in matter, and suppositions without proofs put handsomely together in good words and a plausible stile, are apt to pass for strong reason and good sense, till they come to be looked into with attention.

  CHAP. IV.
  Of Adam’s Title to Sovereignty by Donation, Gen. i. 28.

  §. 21.

  HAVING at last got through the foregoing passage, where we have been so long detained, not by the force of arguments and opposition, but the intricacy of the words, and the doubtfulness of the meaning; let us go on to his next argument, for Adam’s sovereignty. Our author tells us in the words of Mr. Selden, that Adam by donation from God, Gen. i. 28. was made the general lord of all things, not without such a private dominion to himself, as without his grant did exclude his children. This determination of Mr. Selden, says our author, isconsonant to the history of the Bible, and natural reason, Observations, 210. And in his Pref. to his Observations on Aristotle, he says thus, The first government in the world was monarchical in the father of all flesh, Adam being commanded to multiply and people the earth, and to subdue it, and having dominion given him over all creatures, was thereby the monarch of the whole world: none of his posterity had any right to possess any thing, but by his grant or permission, or by succession from him: The earth, saith the Psalmist, hath he given to the children of men, which shew the title comes from fatherhood.

  §. 22.

  Before I examine this argument, and the text on which it is founded, it is necessary to desire the reader to observe, that our author, according to his usual method, begins in one sense, and concludes in another; he begins here with Adam’s propriety, or private dominion, by donation; and his conclusion is, which shew the title comes from fatherhood.

  §. 23.

  But let us see the argument. The words of the text are these; and God blessed them, and God said unto them, be fruitful and multiply, and replenish the earth and subdue it, and have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over every living thing that moveth upon the earth, i. Gen. 28. from whence our author concludes, that Adam, having here dominion given him over all creatures, was thereby the monarch of thewhole world: whereby must be meant, that either this grant of God gave Adam property, or as our author calls it, private dominion over the earth, and all inferior or irrational creatures, and so consequently that he was thereby monarch; or 2dly, that it gave him rule and dominion over all earthly creatures whatsoever, and thereby over his children; and so he was monarch: for, as Mr. Selden has properly worded it, Adam was made general lord of all things, one may very clearly understand him, that he means nothing to be granted to Adam here but property, and therefore he says not one word of Adam’s monarchy. But our author says, Adam was hereby monarch of the world, which, properly speaking, signifies sovereign ruler of all the men in the world; and so Adam, by this grant, must be constituted such a ruler. If our author means otherwise, he might with much clearness have said, that Adam was hereby proprietor of the whole world. But he begs your pardon in that point: clear distinct speaking not serving every where to his purpose, you must not expect it in him, as in Mr. Selden, or other such writers.

  §. 24.

  In opposition therefore to our author’s doctrine, that Adam was monarch of the whole world, founded on this place, I shall shew,

  1. That by this grant, i. Gen. 28. God gave no immediate power to Adam over men, over his children, over those of his own species; and so he was not made ruler, or monarch, by this charter.

  2. That by this grant God gave him not private dominion over the inferior creatures, but right in common with all mankind; so neither was he monarch, upon the account of the property here given him.

  §. 25.

  1. That this donation, i. Gen. 28. gave Adam no power over men, will appear if we consider the words of it: for since all positive grants convey no more than the express words they are made in will carry, let us see which of them here will comprehend mankind, or Adam’s posterity; and those, I imagine, if any, must be these, every living thing that moveth: the words in Hebrew are, השמרה היה i. e. Bestiam Reptantem, of which words the scripture itself is the best interpreter: God having created the fishes and fowls the 5th day, the beginning of the 6th, he creates the irrational inhabitants of the dry land, which, v. 24. are described in these words, let the earth bring forth the living creature after his kind; cattle and creeping things, and beasts of the earth, after his kind, and, v. 2. and God made the beasts of the earth after his kind, and cattle after their kind, and every thing that creepeth on the earth after his kind: here, in the creation of the brute inhabitants of the earth, he first speaks of them all under one general name, of living creatures, and then afterwards divides them into three ranks, 1. Cattle, or such creatures as were or might be tame, and so be the private possession of particular men; 2. היח which, ver. 24, and 25. in our Bible, is translated beasts, and by the Septuagint θηϛία, wild beasts, and is the same word, that here in our text, ver. 28. where we have this great charter to Adam, is translated living thing, and is also the same word used, Gen. ix. 2. where this grant is renewed to Noah, and there likewise translated beast. 3. The third rank were the creeping animals, which ver. 24, and 25. are comprised under the word, השמרח, the same that is used here, ver. 28. and is translated moving, but in the former verses creeping, and by the Septuagint in all these places, ἑρπετἀ, or reptils; from whence it appears, that the words which we translate here in God’s donation, ver.28. living creatures moving, are the same, which in the history of the creation, ver. 24, 25. signify two ranks of terrestrial creatures, viz. wild beasts and reptils, and are so understood by the Septuagint.

  §. 26.

  When God had made the irrational animals of the world, divided into three kinds, from the places of their habitation, viz. fishes of the sea, fowls of the air, and living creatures of the earth, and these again into cattle, wild beasts, and reptils, he considers of making man, and the dominion he should have over the terrestrial world, ver. 26. and then he reckons up the inhabitants of these three kingdoms, but in the terrestrial leaves out the second rank היח or wild beasts: but here, ver. 28. where he actually exercises this design, and gives him this dominion, the text mentions the fishes of the sea, and fowls of the air, and the terrestrial creatures in the words that signify the wild beasts and reptils, though translated living thing that moveth, leaving out cattle. In both which places, though the word that signifies wild beasts be omitted in one, and that which signifies cattle in the other, yet, since God certainly executed in one place, what he declares he designed in the other, we cannot but understand the same in both places, and have here only an account, how the terrestrial irrational animals, which were already created and reckoned up at their creation, in three distinct ranks of cattle, wild beasts, and reptils, were here, ver. 28. actually put under the dominion of man, as they were designed, ver. 26. nor do these words contain in them the least appearance of any thing that can be wrested to signify God’s giving to one man dominion over another, to Adam over his posterity.

  §. 27.

  And this further appears from Gen. ix. 2. where God renewing this charter to Noah and his sons, he gives them dominion over the fowls of the air, and the fishes of the sea, and the terrestrial creatures, expressed by היח and שמרר wild beasts and reptils, the same words that in the text before us, i. Gen. 28. are translated every moving thing, that moveth on the earth, which by no means can comprehend man, the grant being made to Noah and his sons, all the men then living, and not to one part of men over another: which is yet more evident from the very next words, ver. 3. where God gives every שמר every moving thing, the very words used, ch. i. 28. to them for food. By all which it is plain that God’s donation to Adam, ch. i. 28. and his designation, ver. 26. and his grant again to Noah and his sons, refer to and contain in them neither more nor less than the works of the creation the 5th day, and the beginning of the 6th, as they are set down from the 20th to 26th ver. inclusively of the 1st ch. and so comprehend all the species of irrational animals of the terraqueous globe, tho’ all the words, whereby they are expressed in the history of their creation, are no where used in any of the following grants, but some of them omitted in one, and some in another. From whence I think it is past all doubt, that man cannot be comprehended in this grant, nor any dominion over those of his own species be conveyed to Adam. All the terrestrial irrational creatures are enumerated at their creation, ver. 25. under the names beasts of the earth, cattle and creeping things; but man, being not then created, was not contained under any of those names; and therefore, whether we understand the Hebrew words right or no, they cannot be supposed to comprehend man, in the very same history, and the very next verses following, especially since that Hebrew word שמר which, if any in this donation to Adam, ch. i. 28. must comprehend man, is so plainly used in contradistinction to him, as Gen. vi. 20. vii. 14, 21, 23. Gen. viii. 17, 19. And if God made all mankind slaves to Adam and his heirs by giving Adam dominion over every living thing that moveth on the earth, ch. i. 28. as our author would have it, methinks Sir Robert should have carried his monarchical power one step higher, and satisfied the world, that princes might eat their subjects too, since God gave as full power to Noah and his heirs, ch. ix. 2. to eat every living thing that moveth, as he did to Adam to have dominion over them, the Hebrew words in both places being the same.

  §. 28.

  David, who might be supposed to understand the donation of God in this text, and the right of kings too, as well as our author in his comment on this place, as the learned and judicious Ainsworth calls it, in the 8th Psalm, finds here no such charter of monarchical power, his words are, Thou hast made him, i. e. man, the Son of man, a little lower than the angels; thou madest him to have dominion over the works of thy hands; thou hast put allthings under his feet, all sheep and oxen, and the beasts of the field, and the fowls of the air, and fish of the sea, and whatsover passeth thro’ the paths of the sea. In which words, if any one can find out, that there is meant any monarchical power of one man over another, but only the dominion of the whole species of mankind, over the inferior species of creatures, he may, for aught I know, deserve to be one of Sir Robert’s monarchs in habit, for the rareness of the discovery. And by this time, I hope it is evident, that he that gave dominion over every living thing that moveth on the earth, gave Adam no monarchical power over those of his own species, which will yet appear more fully in the next thing I am to shew.

  §. 29.

  2. Whatever God gave by the words of this grant, i. Gen. 28. it was not to Adam in particular, exclusive of all other men: whatever dominion he had thereby, it was not a private dominion, but a dominion in common with the rest of mankind. That this donation was not made in particular to Adam, appears evidently from the words of the text, it being made to more than one; for it was spoken in the plural number, God blessed them, and said unto them, Have dominion. God says unto Adam and Eve, Have dominion; thereby, says our author, Adam was monarch of the world: but the grant being to them, i. e. spoke to Eve also, as many interpreters think with reason, that these words were not spoken till Adam had his wife, must not she thereby be lady, as well as he lord of the world? If it be said, that Eve was subjected to Adam, it seems she was not so subjected to him, as to hinder her dominion over the creatures, or property in them: for shall we say that God ever made a joint grant to two, and one only was to have the benefit of it?

  §. 30.

  But perhaps it will be said, Eve was not made till afterward: grant it so, what advantage will our author get by it? The text will be only the more directly against him, and shew that God, in this donation, gave the world to mankind in common, and not to Adam in particular. The word them in the text must include the species of man, for it is certain them can by no means signify Adam alone. In the 26th verse, where God declares his intention to give this dominion, it is plain he meant, that he would make a species of creatures, that should have dominion over the other species of this terrestrial globe: the words are, And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness, and let them have dominion over the fish, &c. They then were to have dominion. Who? even those who were to have the image of God, the individuals of that species of man, that he was going to make; for that them should signify Adam singly, exclusive of the rest that should be in the world with him, is against both scripture and all reason: and it cannot possibly be made sense, if man in the former part of the verse do not signify the same with them in the latter; only man there, as is usual, is taken for the species, and them the individuals of that species: and we have a reason in the very text. God makes him in his own image, after his own likeness; makes him an intellectual creature, and so capable of dominion: for wherein soever else the image of God consisted, the intellectual nature was certainly a part of it, and belonged to the whole species, and enabled them to have dominion over the inferior creatures; and therefore David says in the 8th Psalm above cited, Thou hast made him little lower than the angels, thou hast made him to have dominion. It is not of Adam king David speaks here, for verse 4. it is plain, it is of man, and the son of man, of the species of mankind.

  §. 31.

  And that this grant spoken to Adam was made to him, and the whole species of man, is clear from our author’s own proof out of the Psalmist. The earth, faith the Psalmist, hath he given to the children of men; which shews the title comes from fatherhood. These are Sir Robert’s words in the preface before cited, and a strange inference it is he makes; God hath given the earth to the children of men, ergo the title comes from fatherhood. It is pity the propriety of the Hebrew tongue had not used fathers of men, instead of children of men, to express mankind: then indeed our author might have had the countenance of the sound of the words, to have placed the title in the fatherhood. But to conclude, that the fatherhood had the right to the earth, because God gave it to the children of men, is a way of arguing peculiar to our author: and a man must have a great mind to go contrary to the sound as well as sense of the words, before he could light on it. But the sense is yet harder, and more remote from our author’s purpose: for as it stands in his preface, it is to prove Adam’s being monarch, and his reasoning is thus, God gave the earth to the children of men, ergo Adam was monarch of the world. I defy any man to make a more pleasant conclusion than this, which cannot be excused from the most obvious absurdity, till it can be shewn, that by children of men, he who had no father, Adam alone is signified; but whatever our author does, the scripture speaks not nonsense.

  §. 32.

  To maintain this property and private dominion of Adam, our author labours in the following page to destroy the community granted to Noah and his sons, in that parallel place, ix. Gen. 1, 2, 3. and he endeavours to do it two ways.

  1. Sir Robert would persuade us against the express words of the scripture, that what was here granted to Noah, was not granted to his sons in common with him. His words are, As for the general community between Noah and his sons, which Mr. Selden will have to be granted to them, ix. Gen. 2. the text doth not warrant it. What warrant our author would have, when the plain express words of scripture, not capable of another meaning, will not satisfy him, who pretends to build wholly on scripture, is not easy to imagine. The text says, God blessed Noah and his sons, and said unto them, i. e. as our author would have it, unto him: for, faith he, although the sons are there mentioned with Noah in the blessing, yet it may best be understood, with a subordination or benediction in succession, Observations, 211. That indeed is best, for our author to be understood, which best serves to his purpose; but that truly may best be understood by any body else, which best agrees with the plain construction of the words, and arises from the obvious meaning of the place; and then with subordination and in succession, will not be best understood, in a grant of God, where he himself put them not, nor mentions any such limitation. But yet, our author has reasons, why it may best be understood so. The blessing, says he in the following words, might truly be fulfilled, if the sons, either under or after their father, enjoyed a private dominion, Observations, 211. which is to say, that a grant, whose express words give a joint title in present (for the text says, into your hands they are delivered) may best be understood with a subordination or in succession; because it is possible, that in subordination, or in succession, it may be enjoyed. Which is all one as to say, that a grant of any thing in present possession may best be understood of reversion; because it is possible one may live to enjoy it in reversion. If the grant be indeed to a father and to his sons after him, who is so kind as to let his children enjoy it presently in common with him, one may truly say, as to the event one will be as good as the other; but it can never be true, that what the express words grant in possession, and in common, may best be understood, to be in reversion. The sum of all his reasoning amounts to this: God did not give to the sons of Noah the world in common with their father, because it was possible they might enjoy it under, or after him. A very good sort of argument against an express text of scripture: but God must not be believed, though he speaks it himself, when he says he does any thing, which will not consist with Sir Robert’s hypothesis.

  §. 33.

  For it is plain, however he would exclude them, that part of this benediction, as he would have it in succession, must needs be meant to the sons, and not to Noah himself at all: Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth, says God, in this blessing. This part of the benediction, as appears by the sequel, concerned not Noah himself at all; for we read not of any children he had after the flood; and in the following chapter, where his posterity is reckoned up, there is no mention of any; and so this benediction in succession was not to take place till 350 years after: and to save our author’s imaginary monarchy, the peopling of the world must be deferred 350 years; for this part of the benediction cannot be understood with subordination, unless our author will say, that they must ask leave of their father Noah to lie with their wives. But in this one point our author is constant to himself in all his discourses, he takes great care there should be monarchs in the world, but very little that there should be people; and indeed his way of government is not the way to people the world: for how much absolute monarchy helps to fulfil this great and primary blessing of God Almighty, Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth, which contains in it the improvement too of arts and sciences, and the conveniences of life, may be seen in those large and rich countries which are happy under the Turkish government, where are not now to be found one third, nay in many, if not most parts of them one thirtieth, perhaps I might say not one hundredth of the people, that were formerly, as will easily appear to any one, who will compare the accounts we have of it at this time, with antient history. But this by the by.

  §. 34.

  The other parts of this benediction, or grant, are so expressed, that they must needs be understood to belong equally to them all; as much to Noah’s sons as to Noah himself, and not to his sons with a subordination, or in succession. The fear of you, and the dread of you, says God, shall be upon every beast, &c. Will any body but our author say, that the creatures feared and stood in awe of Noah only, and not of his sons without his leave, or till after his death? And the following words, into your hands they are delivered, are they to be understood as our author says, if your father please, or they shall be delivered into your hands hereafter? If this be to argue from scripture, I know not what may not be proved by it; and I can scarce see how much this differs from that fiction and fansie, or how much a surer foundation it will prove, than the opinions of philosophers and poets, which our author so much condemns in his preface.

  §. 35.

  But our author goes on to prove, that it may best be understood with a subordination, or a benediction in succession; for, says he, it is not probable that the private dominion which God gave to Adam, and by his donation, assignation, or cession to his children, was abrogated, and a community of all things instituted between Noah and his sons——Noah was left the sole heir of the world; why should it be thoughtthat God would disinberit him of his birth-right, and make him of all men in the world the only tenant in common with his children? Observations, 211.

  §. 36.

  The prejudices of our own ill-grounded opinions, however by us called probable, cannot authorise us to understand scripture contrary to the direct and plain meaning of the words. I grant, it is not probable, that Adam’s private dominion was here abrogated: because it is more than improbable, (for it will never be proved) that ever Adam had any such private dominion: and since parallel places of scripture are most probable to make us know how they may be best understood, there needs but the comparing this blessing here to Noah and his sons after the flood, with that to Adam after the creation, i. Gen. 28. to assure any one that God gave Adam no such private dominion. It is probable, I confess, that Noah should have the same title, the same property and dominion after the flood, that Adam had before it: but since private dominion cannot consist with the blessing and grant God gave to him and his sons in common, it is a sufficient reason to conclude, that Adam had none, especially since in the donation made to him, there are no words that express it, or do in the least favour it; and then let my reader judge whether it may best be understood, when in the one place there is not one word for it, not to say what has been above proved, that the text itself proves the contrary; and in the other, the words and sense are directly against it.

  §. 37.

  But our author says, Noah was the sole heir of the world; why should it be thought that God would disinherit him of his birth-right? Heir, indeed, in England, signifies the eldest son, who is by the law of England to have all his father’s land; but where God ever appointed any such heir of the world, our author would have done well to have shewed us; and how God disinherited him of his birth-right, or what harm was done him if God gave his sons a right to make use of a part of the earth for the support of themselves and families, when the whole was not only more than Noah himself, but infinitely more than they all could make use of, and the possessions of one could not at all prejudice, or, as to any use, streighten that of the other.

  §. 38.

  Our author probably foreseeing he might not be very successful in persuading people out of their senses, and, say what he could, men would be apt to believe the plain words of scripture, and think, as they saw, that the grant was spoken to Noah and his sons jointly; he endeavours to insinuate, as if this grant to Noah conveyed no property, no dominion; because, subduing the earth and dominion over the creatures are therein omitted, nor the earth once named. And therefore, says he, there is a considerabledifference between these two texts; the first blessing gave Adam a dominion over the earth and all creatures; the latter allows Noah liberty to use the living creatures for food: here is no alteration or diminishing of his title to a property of all things, but an enlargement only of his commons, Observations, 211. So that in our author’s sense, all that was said here to Noah and his sons, gave them no dominion, no property, but only enlarged the commons; their commons, I should say, since God says, to you are they given, though our author says his; for as for Noah’s sons, they, it seems, by Sir Robert’s appointment, during their father’s life-time, were to keep fasting days.

  §. 39.

  Any one but our author would be mightily suspected to be blinded with prejudice, that in all this blessing to Noah and his sons, could see nothing but only an enlargement of commons: for as to dominion, which our author thinks omitted, the fear of you, and the dread of you, says God, shall be upon every beast, which I suppose expresses the dominion, or superiority was designed man over the living creatures, as fully as may be; for in that fear and dread seems chiefly to consist what was given to Adam over the inferior animals; who, as absolute a monarch as he was, could not make bold with a lark or rabbet to satisfy his hunger, and had the herbs but in common with the beasts, as is plain from i Gen. 2, 9, and 30. In the next place, it is manifest that in this blessing to Noah and his sons, property is not only given in clear words, but in a larger extent than it was to Adam. Into your hands they are given, says God to Noah and his sons; which words, if they give not property, nay, property in possession, it will be hard to find words that can; since there is not a way to express a man’s being possessed of any thing more natural, nor more certain, than to say, it is delivered into his hands. And ver. 3. to shew, that they had then given them the utmost property man is capable of, which is to have a right to destroy any thing by using it; Every moving thing that liveth, saith God, shall be meat for you; which was not allowed to Adam in his charter. This our author calls, a liberty of using them for food, and only an enlargement of commons, but no alteration of property, Observations, 211. What other property man can have in the creatures, but the liberty of using them, is hard to be understood: so that if the first blessing, as our author says, gave Adam dominion over the creatures, and the blessing to Noah and his sons, gave them such a liberty to use them, as Adam had not; it must needs give them something that Adam with all his sovereignty wanted, something that one would be apt to take for a greater property; for certainly he has no absolute dominion over even the brutal part of the creatures; and the property he has in them is very narrow and scanty, who cannot make that use of them, which is permitted to another. Should any one who is absolute lord of a country, have bidden our author subdue the earth, and given him dominion over the creatures in it, but not have permitted him to have taken a kid or a lamb out of the flock, to satisfy his hunger, I guess, he would scarce have thought himself lord or proprietor of that land, or the cattle on it; but would have found the difference between having dominion, which a shepherd may have, and having full property as an owner. So that, had it been his own case, Sir Robert, I believe, would have thought here was an alteration, nay, an enlarging of property; and that Noah and his children had by this grant, not only property given them, but such a property given them in the creatures, as Adam had not: For however, in respect of one another, men may be allowed to have propriety in their distinct portions of the creatures; yet in respect of God the maker of heaven and earth, who is sole lord and proprietor of the whole world, man’s propriety in the creatures is nothing but that liberty to use them, which God has permitted; and so man’s property may be altered and enlarged, as we see it was here, after the flood, when other uses of them are allowed, which before were not. From all which I suppose it is clear, that neither Adam, nor Noah, had any private dominion, any property in the creatures, exclusive of his posterity, as they should successively grow up into need of them, and come to be able to make use of them.

  §. 40.

  Thus we have examined our author’s argument for Adam’s monarchy, founded on the blessing pronounced, i. Gen. 28. Wherein I think it is impossible for any sober reader, to find any other but the setting of mankind above the other kinds of creatures, in this habitable earth of ours. It is nothing but the giving to man, the whole species of man, as the chief inhabitant, who is the image of his Maker, the dominion over the other creatures. This lies so obvious in the plain words, that any one, but our author, would have thought it necessary to have shewn, how these words, that seemed to say the quite contrary, gave Adam monarchical absolute power over other men, or the sole property in all the creatures; and methinks in a business of this moment, and that whereon he builds all that follows, he should have done something more than barely cite words, which apparently make against him; for I confess, I cannot see any thing in them, tending to Adam’s monarchy, or private dominion, but quite the contrary. And I the less deplore the dulness of my apprehension herein, since I find the apostle seems to have as little notion of any such private dominion of Adam as I, when he says, God gives us all things richly to enjoy, which he could not do, if it were all given away already, to Monarch Adam, and the monarchs his heirs and successors. To conclude, this text is so far from proving Adam sole proprietor, that, on the contrary, it is a confirmation of the original community of all things amongst the sons of men, which appearing from this donation of God, as well as other places of scripture, the sovereignty of Adam, built upon his private dominion, must fall, not having any foundation to support it.

  §. 41.

  But yet, if after all, any one will needs have it so, that by this donation of God, Adam was made sole proprietor of the whole earth, what will this be to his sovereignty? and how will it appear, that propriety in land gives a man power over the life of another? or how will the possession even of the whole earth, give any one a sovereign arbitrary authority over the persons of men? The most specious thing to be said, is, that he that is proprietor of the whole world, may deny all the rest of mankind food, and so at his pleasure starve them, if they will not acknowledge his sovereignty, and obey his will. If this were true, it would be a good argument to prove, that there never was any such property, that God never gave any such private dominion; since it is more reasonable to think, that God, who bid mankind increase and multiply, should rather himself give them all a right to make use of the food and raiment, and other conveniences of life, the materials whereof he had so plentifully provided for them; than to make them depend upon the will of a man for their subsistence, who should have power to destroy them all when he pleased, and who, being no better than other men, was in succession likelier, by want and the dependence of a scanty fortune, to tie them to hard service, than by liberal allowance of the conveniences of life to promote the great design of God, increase and multiply: he that doubts this, let him look into the absolute monarchies of the world, and see what becomes of the conveniences of life, and the multitudes of people.

  §. 42.

  But we know God hath not left one man so to the mercy of another, that he may starve him if he please: God the Lord and Father of all has given no one of his children such a property in his peculiar portion of the things of this world, but that he has given his needy brother a right to the surplusage of his goods; so that it cannot justly be denied him, when his pressing wants call for it: and therefore no man could ever have a just power over the life of another by right of property in land or possessions; since it would always be a sin, in any man of estate, to let his brother perish for want of affording him relief out of his plenty. As justice gives every man a title to the product of his honest industry, and the fair acquisitions of his ancestors descended to him; so charity gives every man a title to so much out of another’s plenty, as will keep him from extreme want, where he has no means to subsist otherwise: and a man can no more justly make use of another’s necessity, to force him to become his vassal, by with-holding that relief, God requires him to afford to the wants of his brother, than he that has more strength can seize upon a weaker, master him to his obedience, and with a dagger at his throat offer him death or slavery.

  §. 43.

  Should any one make so perverse an use of God’s blessings poured on him with a liberal hand; should any one be cruel and uncharitable to that extremity, yet all this would not prove that propriety in land, even in this case, gave any authority over the persons of men, but only that compact might; since the authority of the rich proprietor, and the subjection of the needy beggar, began not from the possession of the Lord, but the confent of the poor man, who preferred being his subject to starving. And the man he thus submits to, can pretend to no more power over him, than he has consented to, upon compact. Upon this ground a man’s having his stores filled in a time of scarcity, having money in his pocket, being in a vessel at sea, being able to swim, &c. may as well be the foundation of rule and dominion, as being possessor of all the land in the world; any of these being sufficient to enable me to save a man’s life, who would perish if such assistance were denied him; and any thing, by this rule, that may be an oocasion of working upon another’s necessity, to save his life, or any thing dear to him, at the rate of his freedom, may be made a foundation of sovereignty, as well as property. From all which it is clear, that though God should have given Adam private dominion, yet that private dominion could give him no sovereignty; but we have already sufficiently proved, that God gave him no private dominion.

  CHAP. V.
  Of Adam’s Title to Sovereignty by the Subjection of Eve.

  §. 44.

  THE next place of scripture we find our author builds his monarchy of Adam on, is iii. Gen. 26. And thy defire shall be to thy husband, and he shall rule over thee. Here we have (says he) the original grant of government, from whence he concludes, in the following part of the page, Observations, 244. That the supreme power is settled in the fatherhood, and limited to one kind of government, that is, to monarchy. For let his premises be what they will, this is always the conclusion; let rule, in any text, be but once named, and presently absolute monarchy is by divine right established. If any one will but carefully read our author’s own reasoning from these words, Observations, 244. and consider, among other things, the line and posterity of Adam, as he there brings them in, he will find some difficulty to make sense of what he says; but we will allow this at present to his peculiar way of writing, and consider the force of the text in hand. The words are the curse of God upon the woman, for having been the first and forwardest in the disobedience; and if we will consider the occasion of what God says here to our first parents, that he was denouncing judgment, and declaring his wrath against them both, for their disobedience, we cannot suppose that this was the time, wherein God was granting Adam prerogatives and privileges, investing him with dignity and authority, elevating him to dominion and monarchy: for though, as a helper in the temptation, Eve was laid below him, and so he had accidentally a superiority over her, for her greater punishment; yet he too had his share in the fall, as well as the sin, and was laid lower, as may be seen in the following verses; and it would be hard to imagine, that God, in the same breath, should make him universal monarch over all mankind, and a day-labourer for his life; turn him out of paradise to till the ground, ver. 23. and at the same time advance him to a throne, and all the privileges and ease of absolute power.

  §. 45.

  This was not a time, when Adam could expect any favours, any grant of privileges, from his offended Maker. If this be the original grant of government, as our author tells us, and Adam was now made monarch, whatever Sir Robert would have him, it is plain, God made him but a very poor monarch, such an one, as our author himself would have counted it no great privilege to be. God sets him to work for his living, and seems rather to give him a spade into his hand, to subdue the earth, than a sceptre to rule over its inhabitants. In the sweat of thy face thou shalt eat thy bread, says God to him, ver. 19. This was unavoidable, may it perhaps be answered, because he was yet without subjects, and had nobody to work for him; but afterwards, living as he did above 900 years, he might have people enough, whom he might command, to work for him; no, says God, not only whilst thou art without other help, save thy wife, but as long as thou livest, shalt thou live by thy labour, In the sweat of thy face, shalt thou eat thy bread, till thou return unto the ground, for out of it wast thou taken, for dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return, v. 19. It will perhaps be answered again in favour of our author, that these words are not spoken personally to Adam, but in him, as their representative, to all mankind, this being a curse upon mankind, because of the fall.

  §. 46.

  God, I believe, speaks differently from men, because he speaks with more truth, more certainty: but when he vouchsafes to speak to men, I do not think he speaks differently from them, in crossing the rules of language in use amongst them: this would not be to condescend to their capacities, when he humbles himself to speak to them, but to lose his design in speaking what, thus spoken, they could not understand. And yet thus must we think of God, if the interpretations of scripture, necessary to maintain our author’s doctrine, must be received for good: for by the ordinary rules of language, it will be very hard to understand what God says, if what he speaks here, in the singular number, to Adam, must be understood to be spoken to all mankind, and what he says in the plural number, i. Gen. 26, and 28. must be understood of Adam alone, exclusive of all others, and what he says to Noah and his sons jointly, must be understood to be meant to Noah alone, Gen. ix.

  §. 47.

  Farther it is to be noted, that these words here of iii. Gen. 16. which our author calls the original grant of government, were not spoken to Adam, neither indeed was there any grant in them made to Adam, but a punishment laid upon Eve: and if we will take them as they were directed in particular to her, or in her, as their representative, to all other women, they will at most concern the female sex only, and import no more, but that subjection they should ordinarily be in to their husbands: but there is here no more law to oblige a woman to such a subjection, if the circumstances either of her condition, or contract with her husband, should exempt her from it, than there is, that she should bring forth her children in sorrow and pain, if there could be found a remedy for it, which is also a part of the same curse upon her: for the whole verse runs thus, Unto the woman he said, I will greatly multiply thy sorrow and thy conception; in sorrow thou shalt bring forth children, and thy desire shall be to thy husband, and he shall rule over thee. It would, I think, have been a hard matter for any body, but our author, to have found out a grant of monarchical government to Adam in these words, which were neither spoke to, nor of him: neither will any one, I suppose, by these words, think the weaker sex, as by a law, so subjected to the curse contained in them, that it is their duty not to endeavour to avoid it. And will any one say, that Eve, or any other woman, sinned, if she were brought to bed without those multiplied pains God threatens her here with? or that either of our queens, Mary or Elizabeth, had they married any of their subjects, had been by this text put into a political subjection to him? or that he thereby should have had monarchical rule over her? God, in this text, gives not, that I see, any authority to Adam over Eve, or to men over their wives, but only foretels what should be the woman’s lot, how by his providence he would order it so, that she should be subject to her husband, as we see that generally the laws of mankind and customs of nations have ordered it so; and there is, I grant, a foundation in nature for it.

  §. 48.

  Thus when God says of Jacob and Esau, that the elder should serve the younger, xxv. Gen. 23. no body supposes that God hereby made Jacob Esau’s sovereign, but foretold what should de facto come to pass.

  But if these words here spoke to Eve must needs be understood as a law to bind her and all other women to subjection, it can be no other subjection than what every wife owes her husband; and then if this be the original grant of government and the foundation of monarchical power, there will be as many monarchs as there are husbands: if therefore these words give any power to Adam, it can be only a conjugal power, not political; the power that every husband hath to order the things of private concernment in his family, as proprietor of the goods and land there, and to have his will take place before that of his wife in all things of their common concernment; but not a political power of life and death over her, much less over any body else.

  §. 49.

  This I am sure: if our author will have this text to be a grant, the original grantof government, political government, he ought to have proved it by some better arguments than by barely saying, that thy desire shall be unto thy husband, was a law whereby Eve, and all that should come of her, were subjected to the absolute monarchical power of Adam and his heirs. Thy desire shall be to thy husband, is too doubtful an expression, of whose signification interpreters are not agreed, to build so confidently on, and in a matter of such moment, and so great and general concernment: but our author, according to his way of writing, having once named the text, concludes presently without any more ado, that the meaning is as he would have it. Let the words rule and subject be but found in the text or margent, and it immediately signifies the duty of a subject to his prince; the relation is changed, and though God says husband, Sir Robert will have it king; Adam has presently absolute monarchical power over Eve, and not only over Eve, but all that should come of her, though the scripture says not a word of it, nor our author a word to prove it. But Adam must for all that be an absolute monarch, and so down to the end of the chapter. And here I leave my reader to consider, whether my bare saying, without offering any reasons to evince it, that this text gave not Adam that absolute monarchical power, our author supposes, be not as sufficient to destroy that power, as his bare assertion is to establish it, since the text mentions neither prince nor people, speaks nothing of absolute or monarchical power, but the subjection of Eve to Adam, a wife to her husband. And he that would trace our author so all through, would make a short and sufficient answer to the greatest part of the grounds he proceeds on, and abundantly consute them by barely denying; it being a sufficient answer to assertions without proof, to deny them without giving a reason. And therefore should I have said nothing but barely denied, that by this text the supreme power was settled and founded by God himself, in the fatherhood, limited to monarchy, and that to Adam’s person and heirs, all which our author notably concludes from these words, as may be seen in the same page, Observations, 244. it had been a sufficient answer: should I have desired any sober man only to have read the text, and considered to whom, and on what occasion it was spoken, he would no doubt have wondered how our author found out monarchical absolute power in it, had he not had an exceeding good faculty to find it himself, where he could not shew it others. And thus we have examined the two places of scripture, all that I remember our author brings to prove Adam’s sovereignty, that supremacy, which he says, it was God’s ordinance should be unlimited in Adam, and as large as all the acts of his will, Observations, 254. viz. i. Gen. 28. and iii. Gen. 16. one whereof signifies only the subjection of the inferior ranks of creatures to mankind, and the other the subjection that is due from a wife to her husband, both far enough from that which subjects owe the governors of political societies.

  CHAP. VI.
  Of Adam’s Title to Sovereignty by Fatherhood.

  §. 50.

  THERE is one thing more, and then I think I have given you all that our author brings for proof of Adam’s sovereignty, and that is a supposition of a natural right of dominion over his children, by being their father: and this title of fatherhood he is so pleased with, that you will find it brought in almost in every page; particularly he says, not only Adam, but the succeeding patriarchs had by right of fatherhood royal authority over their children, p. 12. And in the same page, this subjection of children being the fountain of all regal authority, &c. This being, as one would think by his so frequent mentioning it, the main basis of all his frame, we may well expect clear and evident reason for it, since he lays it down as a position necessary to his purpose, that every man that is born is so far from being free, that by his very birth he becomes a subject of him thatbegets him, Observations, 156. so that Adam being the only man created, and all ever since being begotten, no body has been born free. If we ask how Adam comes by this power over his children, he tells us here it is by begetting them: and so again, Observations, 223. this natural dominion of Adam, says he, may be proved out of Grotius himself, who teacheth, that generatione jus acquiritur parentibus in liberos. And indeed the act of begetting being that which makes a man a father, his right of a father over his children can naturally arise from nothing else.

  §. 51.

  Grotius tells us not here how far this jus in liberos, this power of parents over their children extends; but our author, always very clear in the point, assures us, it is supreme power, and like that of absolute monarchs over their slaves, absolute power of life and death. He that should demand of him, how, or for what reason it is, that begetting a child gives the father such an absolute power over him, will find him answer nothing: we are to take his word for this, as well as several other things; and by that the laws of nature and the constitutions of government must stand or fall. Had he been an absolute monarch, this way of talking might have suited well enough; proratione voluntas might have been of force in his mouth; but in the way of proof or argument is very unbecoming, and will little advantage his plea for absolute monarchy. Sir Robert has too much lessened a subject’s authority to leave himself the hopes of establishing any thing by his bare saying it; one slave’s opinion without proof is not of weight enough to dispose of the liberty and fortunes of all mankind. If all men are not, as I think they are, naturally equal, I am sure all slaves are; and then I may without presumption oppose my single opinion to his; and be confident that my saying, that begetting of children makes them not slaves to their fathers, as certainly sets all mankind free, as his affirming the contrary makes them all slaves. But that this position, which is the foundation of all their doctrine, who would have monarchy to be jure divino, may have all fair play, let us hear what reasons others give for it, since our author offers none.

  §. 52.

  The argument, I have heard others make use of, to prove that fathers, by begetting them, come by an absolute power over their children, is this; that fathers have a power over the lives of their children, because they give them life and being, which is the only proof it is capable of: since there can be no reason, why naturally one man should have any claim or pretence of right over that in another, which was never his, which he bestowed not, but was received from the bounty of another. 1. I answer, that every one who gives another any thing, has not always thereby a right to take it away again. But 2. They who say the father gives life to his children, are so dazzled with the thoughts of monarchy, that they do not, as they ought, remember God, who is the author and giver of life: it is in him alone we live, move, and have our being. How can he be thought to give life to another, that knows not wherein his own life consists? Philosophers are at a loss about it after their most diligent enquiries; and anatomists, after their whole lives and studies spent in dissections, and diligent examining the bodies of men, confess their ignorance in the structure and use of many parts of man’s body, and in that operation wherein life consists in the whole. And doth the rude plough-man, or the more ignorant voluptuary, frame or fashion such an admirable engine as this is, and then put life and sense into it? Can any man say, he formed the parts that are necessary to the life of his child? or can he suppose himself to give the life, and yet not know what subject is fit to receive it, nor what actions or organs are necessary for its reception or preservation?

  §. 53.

  To give life to that which has yet no being, is to frame and make a living creature, fashion the parts, and mould and suit them to their uses, and having proportioned and fitted them together, to put into them a living soul. He that could do this, might indeed have some pretence to destroy his own workmanship. But is there any one so bold, that dares thus far arrogate to himself the incomprehensible works of the almighty? Who alone did at first, and continues still to make a living soul, he alone can breathe in the breath of life. If any one thinks himself an artist at this, let him number up the parts of his child’s body which he hath made, tell me their uses and operations, and when the living and rational soul began to inhabit this curious structure, when sense began, and how this engine, which he has framed, thinks and reasons: if he made it, let him, when it is out of order, mend it, at least tell wherein the defects lie. Shall he that made the eye not see? says the Psalmist, Psalm xciv. 9. See these men’s vanities! the structure of that one part is sufficient to convince us of an all-wise contriver, and he has so visible a claim to us as his workmanship, that one of the ordinary appellations of God in scripture is, God our Maker, and the Lord our Maker. And therefore though our author, for the magnifying his fatherhood, be pleased to say, Observations, 159. That even the power which God himself exerciseth over mankind is by right of fatherhood, yet this fatherhood is such an one as utterly excludes all pretence of title in earthly parents; for he is king, because he is indeed maker of us all, which no parents can pretend to be of their children.

  §. 54.

  But had men skill and power to make their children, it is not so slight a piece of workmanship, that it can be imagined, they could make them without designing it. What father of a thousand, when he begets a child, thinks farther than the satisfying his present appetite? God in his infinite wisdom has put strong defires of copulation into the constitution of men, thereby to continue the race of mankind, which he doth most commonly without the intention, and often against the consent and will of the begetter. And indeed those who desire and design children, are but the occasions of their being, and when they design and wish to beget them, do little more towards their making, than Deucalion and his wife in the fable did towards the making of mankind, by throwing pebbles over their heads.

  §. 55.

  But grant that the parents made their children, gave them life and being, and that hence there followed an absolute power. This would give the father but a joint dominion with the mother over them: for no body can deny but that the woman hath an equal share, if not the greater, as nourishing the child a long time in her own body out of her own substance: there it is fashioned, and from her it receives the materials and principles of its constitution: and it is so hard to imagine the rational soul should presently inhabit the yet unformed embrio, as soon as the father has done his part in the act of generation, that if it must be supposed to derive any thing from the parents, it must certainly owe most to the mother. But be that as it will, the mother cannot be denied an equal share in begetting of the child, and so the absolute authority of the father will not arise from hence. Our author indeed is of another mind; for he says, We know that God at the creation gave the sovereignty to the man over the woman, as being the nobler and principal agent in generation, Observations, 172. I remember not this in my Bible; and when the place is brought where God at the creation gave the sovereignty to man over the woman, and that for this reason, because he is the nobler and principal agent in generation, it will be time enough to consider, and answer it. But it is no new thing for our author to tell us his own fancies for certain and divine truths, tho’ there be often a great deal of difference between his and divine revelations; for God in the scripture says, his father and his mother that begot him.

  §. 56.

  They who alledge the practice of mankind, for exposing or selling their children, as a proof of their power over them, are with Sir Robert happy arguers; and cannot but recommend their opinion, by founding it on the most shameful action, and most unnatural murder, human nature is capable of. The dens of lions and nurseries of wolves know no such cruelty as this: these savage inhabitants of the desert obey God and nature in being tender and careful of their off-spring: they will hunt, watch, fight, and almost starve for the preservation of their young; never part with them; never forsake them, till they are able to shift for themselves. And is it the privilege of man alone to act more contrary to nature than the wild and most untamed part of the creation? doth God forbid us under the severest penalty, that of death, to take away the life of any man, a stranger, and upon provocation? and does he permit us to destroy those, he has given us the charge and care of; and by the dictates of nature and reason, as well as his revealed command, requires us to preserve? He has in all the parts of the creation taken a peculiar care to propagate and continue the several species of creatures, and makes the individuals act so strongly to this end, that they sometimes neglect their own private good for it, and seem to forget that general rule, which nature teaches all things, of self-preservation; and the preservation of their young, as the strongest principle in them, over-rules the constitution of their particular natures. Thus we see, when their young stand in need of it, the timorous become valiant, the fierce and savage kind, and the ravenous tender and liberal.

  §. 57.

  But if the example of what hath been done, be the rule of what ought to be, history would have furnished our author with instances of this absolute fatherly power in its height and perfection, and he might have shewed us in Peru, people that begot children on purpose to fatten and eat them. The story is so remarkable, that I cannot but set it down in the author’s words. “In some provinces, says he, they were so liquorish after man’s flesh, that they would not have the patience to stay till the breath was out of the body, but would suck the blood as it ran from the wounds of the dying man; they had public shambles of man’s flesh, and their madness herein was to that degree, that they spared not their own children, which they had begot on strangers taken in war: for they made their captives their mistresses, and choicely nourished the children they had by them, till about thirteen years old they butchered and eat them; and they served the mothers after the same fashion, when they grew past child bearing, and ceased to bring them any more roasters,” Garcilasso de la Vega hist. des Yncas de Peru, l. i. c. 12.

  §. 58.

  Thus far can the busy mind of man carry him to a brutality below the level of beasts, when he quits his reason, which places him almost equal to angels. Nor can it be otherwise in a creature, whose thoughts are more than the sands, and wider than the ocean, where fancy and passion must needs run him into strange courses, if reason, which is his only star and compass, be not that he steers by. The imagination is always restless, and suggests variety of thoughts, and the will, reason being laid aside, is ready for every extravagant project; and in this state, he that goes farthest out of the way, is thought fittest to lead, and is sure of most followers: and when fashion hath once established what folly or craft began, custom makes it sacred, and it will be thought impudence, or madness, to contradict or question it. He that will impartially survey the nations of the world, will find so much of their religions, governments and manners, brought in and continued amongst them by these means, that he will have but little reverence for the practices which are in use and credit amongst men; and will have reason to think, that the woods and forests, where the irrational untaught inhabitants keep right by following nature, are fitter to give us rules, than cities and palaces, where those that call themselves civil and rational, go out of their way, by the authority of example. If precedents are sufficient to establish a rule in this case, our author might have found in holy writ children sacrificed by their parents, and this amongst the people of God themselves: the Psalmist tells us, Psal. cvi. 38. They shed innocent blood, even the blood of their sons and of their daughters, whom they sacrificed unto the idols of Canaan. But God judged not of this by our author’s rule, nor allowed of the authority of practice against his righteous law; but as it follows there, the land was polluted with blood; therefore was the wrath of the Lord kindled against his people, insomuch that he abborred his own inheritance. The killing of their children, though it were fashionable, was charged on them as innocent blood, and so had in the account of God the guilt of murder, as the offering them to idols had the guilt of idolatry.

  §. 59.

  Be it then, as Sir Robert says, that anciently it was usual for men to sell and castrate their children, Observations, 155. Let it be, that they exposed them; add to it, if you please, for this is still greater power, that they begat them for their tables, to fat and eat them: if this proves a right to do so, we may, by the same argument, justify adultery, incest and sodomy, for there are examples of these too, both ancient and modern; sins, which I suppose have their principal aggravation from this, that they cross the main intention of nature, which willeth the increase of mankind, and the continuation of the species in the highest perfection, and the distinction of families, with the security of the marriage bed, as necessary thereunto.

  §. 60.

  In confirmation of this natural authority of the father, our author brings a lame proof from the positive command of God in scripture: his words are, To confirm the natural right of regal power, we find in the Decalogue, that the law which enjoins obedience to kings, is delivered in the terms, Honour thy father, p. 23. Whereas many confess, that government only in the abstract, is the ordinance of God, they are not able to prove any such ordinance in the scripture, but only in the fatherly power; and therefore we find the commandment, that enjoins obedience to superiors, given in the terms, Honour thy father; so that not only the power and right of government, but the form of the power governing, and the person having the power, are all the ordinances of God. The first father had not only simply power, but power monarchical, as he was father immediately from God, Observations, 254. To the same purpose, the same law is cited by our author in several other places, and just after the same fashion; that is, and mother, as apochryphal words, are always left out; a great argument of our author’s ingenuity, and the goodness of his cause, which required in its defender zeal to a degree of warmth, able to warp the sacred rule of the word of God, to make it comply with his present occasion; a way of proceeding not unusual to those, who embrace not truths because reason and revelation offer them, but espouse tenets and parties for ends different from truth, and then resolve at any rate to defend them; and so do with the words and sense of authors, they would fit to their purpose, just as Procrustes did with his guests, lop or stretch them, as may best fit them to the size of their notions: and they always prove like those so served, deformed, lame, and useless.

  §. 61.

  For had our author set down this command without garbling, as God gave it, and joined mother to father, every reader would have seen, that it had made directly against him; and that it was so far from establishing the monarchical power of the father, that it set up the mother equal with him, and enjoined nothing but what was due in common, to both father and mother: for that is the constant tenor of the scripture, Honour thy father and thy mother, Exod. xx. He that smiteth his father or mother, shall surely be put to death, xxi. 15. He that curseth his father or mother, shall surely be put to death, ver. 17. Repeated Lev. xx. 9. and by our Saviour, Matth. xv. 4. Ye shall fear every man his mother and his father, Lev. xix. 3. If a man have a rebellious son, which will not obey the voice of his father, or the voice of his mother; then shall his father and his mother lay hold on him, and say, This our son is stubbornand rebellious, he will not obey our voice, Deut. xxi. 18, 19, 20, 21. Cunsed be he that setteth light by his father or his mother, xxviii. 16. My son, hear the instructions of thy father, and forsake not the law of thy mother, are the words of Solomon, a king who was not ignorant of what belonged to him as a father or a king; and yet he joins father and mother together, in all the instructions he gives children quite thro’ his book of Proverbs. Woe unto him, that sayeth unto his father, What begettest thou, or to the woman, What hast thou brought forth? Isa. xi. ver. 10. In thee have they set light by father or mother, Ezek. xxviii. 2. And it shall come to pass, that when any shall yet prophesy, then his father and his mother that begat him, shall say unto him, Thou shalt not live, and his father and his mother that begat him, shall thrust him through when he prophesieth, Zech. xiii. 3. Here not the father only, but the father and mother jointly, had power in this case of life and death. Thus ran the law of the Old Testament, and in the New they are likewise joined, in the obedience of their children, Eph. vi. 1. The rule is, Children, obey your parents; and I do not remember, that I any where read, Children, obey your father, and no more: the scripture joins mother too in that homage, which is due from children; and had there been any text, where the honour or obedience of children had been directed to the father alone, it is not likely that our author, who pretends to build all upon scripture, would have omitted it: nay, the scripture makes the authority of father and mother, in respect of those they have begot, so equal, that in some places it neglects even the priority of order, which is thought due to the father, and the mother is put first, as Lev. xix. 3. from which so constantly joining father and mother together, as is found quite through the scripture, we may conclude that the honour they have a title to from their children, is one common right belonging so equally to them both, that neither can claim it wholly, neither can be excluded.

  §. 62.

  One would wonder then how our author infers from the 5th commandment, that all power was originally in the father; how he finds monarchical power of government settled and fixed by the commandment, Honour thy father and thy mother. If all the honour due by the commandment, be it what it will, be the only right of the father, because he, as our author says, has the sovereignty over the woman, as being the nobler and principler agent in generation, why did God afterwards all along join the mother with him, to share in his honour? can the father, by this sovereignty of his, discharge the child from paying this honour to his mother? The scripture gave no such licence to the Jews, and yet there were often breaches wide enough betwixt husband and wife, even to divorce and separation: and, I think, no body will say a child may with-hold honour from his mother, or, as the scripture terms it, set light by her, though his father should command him to do so; no more than the mother could dispense with him for neglecting to honour his father: whereby it is plain, that this command of God gives the father no sovereignty, no supremacy.

  §. 63.

  I agree with our author that the title to this honour is vested in the parents by nature, and is a right which accrues to them by their having begotten their children, and God by many positive declarations has confirmed it to them: I also allow our author’s rule, that in grants and gifts, that have their original from God and nature, as the power of the father, (let me add and mother, for whom God hath joined together, let no man put asunder) no inferior power of men can limit, nor make any law of prescription against them, Observations, 158. so that the mother having, by this law of God, a right to honour from her children, which is not subject to the will of her husband, we see this absolute monarchical power of the father can neither be founded on it, nor consist with it; and he has a power very far from monarchical, very far from that absoluteness our author contends for, when another has over his subjects the same power he hath, and by the same title: and therefore he cannot forbear saying himself that he cannot see how any man’s children can be free from subjection to their parents, p. 12. which, in common speech, I think, signifies mother as well as father, or if parents here signifies only father, it is the first time I ever yet knew it to do so, and by such an use of words one may say any thing.

  §. 64.

  By our author’s doctrine, the father having absolute jurisdiction over his children, has also the same over their issue; and the consequence is good, were it true, that the father had such a power: and yet I ask our author whether the grandfather, by his sovereignty, could discharge the grandchild from paying to his father the honour due to him by the 5th commandment. If the grandfather hath, by right of fatherhood, sole sovereign power in him, and that obedience which is due to the supreme magistrate, be commanded in these words, Honour thy father, it is certain the grandfather might dispense with the grandson’s honouring his father, which since it is evident in common sense he cannot, it follows from hence, that Honour thy father and mother, cannot mean an absolute subjection to a sovereign power, but something else. The right therefore which parents have by nature, and which is confirmed to them by the 5th commandment, cannot be that political dominion, which our author would derive from it: for that being in every civil society supreme somewhere, can discharge any subject from any political obedience to any one of his fellow subjects. But what law of the magistrate can give a child liberty, not to honour his father and mother? It is an eternal law, annexed purely to the relation of parents and children, and so contains nothing of the magistrate’s power in it, nor is subjected to it.

  §. 65.

  Our author says, God hath given to a father a right or liberty to alien his power over his children to any other, Observations, 155. I doubt whether he can alien wholly the right of honour that is due from them: but be that as it will, this I am sure, he cannot alien, and retain the same power. If therefore the magistrate’s sovereignty be, as our author would have it, nothing but the authority of a supreme father, p. 23. it is unavoidable, that if the magistrate hath all this paternal right, as he must have if fatherhood be the fountain of all authority; then the subjects, though fathers, can have no power over their children, no right to honour from them: for it cannot be all in another’s hands, and a part remain with the parents. So that, according to our author’s own doctrine, Honour thy father and mother cannot possibly be understood of political subjection and obedience; since the laws both in the Old and New Testament, that commanded children to honour and obey their parents, were given to such, whose fathers were under civil government, and fellow subjects with them in political societies; and to have bid them honour and obey their parents, in our author’s sense, had been to bid them be subjects to those who had no title to it; the right to obedience from subjects, being all vested in another; and instead of teaching obedience, this had been to foment sedition, by setting up powers that were not. If therefore this command, Honour thy father and mother, concern political dominion, it directly overthrows our author’s monarchy; since it being to be paid by every child to his father, even in society, every father must necessarily have political dominion, and there will be as many sovereigns as there are fathers: besides that the mother too hath her title, which destroys the sovereignty of one supreme monarch. But if Honour thy father and mother mean something distinct from political power, as necessarily it must, it is besides our author’s business, and serves nothing to his purpose.

  §. 66.

  The law that enjoins obedience to kings is delivered, says our author, in the terms, Honour thy father, as if all power were originally in the father, Observations, 254: and that law is also delivered, say I, in the terms, Honour thy mother, as if all power were originally in the mother. I appeal whether the argument be not as good on one side as the other, father and mother being joined all along in the Old and New Testament where-ever honour or obedience is injoined children. Again our author tells us, Observations, 254. that this command, Honour thy father, gives the right to govern, and makes the form of government monarchical. To which I answer, that if by Honour thy father be meant obedience to the political power of the magistrate, it concerns not any duty we owe to our natural fathers, who are subjects; because they, by our author’s doctrine, are divested of all that power, it being placed wholly in the prince, and so being equally subjects and slaves with their children, can have no right, by that title, to any such honour or obedience, as contains in it political subjection: if Honour thy father and mother signifies the duty we owe our natural parents, as by our Saviour’s interpretation, Matth. xv. 4. and all the other mentioned places, it is plain it does, then it cannot concern political obedience, but a duty that is owing to persons, who have no title to sovereignty, nor any political authority as magistrates over subjects. For the person of a private father, and a title to obedience, due to the supreme magistrate, are things inconsistent; and therefore this command, which must necessarily comprehend the persons of our natural fathers, must mean a duty we owe them distinct from our obedience to the magistrate, and from which the most absolute power of princes cannot absolve us. What this duty is, we shall in its due place examine.

  §. 67.

  And thus we have at last got thro’ all, that in our author looks like an argument for that absolute unlimited sovereignty described, sect. 8. which he supposes in Adam; so that mankind ever since have been all born slaves, without any title to freedom. But if creation, which gave nothing but a being, made not Adam prince of his posterity: if Adam, Gen. i. 28. was not constituted lord of mankind, nor had a private dominion given him exclusive of his children, but only a right and power over the earth, and inferiour creatures in common with the children of men; if also Gen. iii. 16. God gave not any political power to Adam over his wife and children, but only subjected Eve to Adam, as a punishment, or foretold the subjection of the weaker sex, in the ordering the common concernments of their families, but gave not thereby to Adam, as to the husband, power of life and death, which necessarily belongs to the magistrate: if fathers by begetting their children acquire no such power ove them; and if the command, Honour thy father and mother, give it not, but only enjoins a duty owing to parents equally, whether subjects or not, and to the mother as well as the father; if all this be so, as I think, by what has been said, is very evident; then man has a natural freedom, notwithstanding all our author confidently says to the contrary; since all that share in the same common nature, faculties and powers, are in nature equal, and ought to partake in the same common rights and privileges, till the manifest appointment of God, who is Lord over all, blessed for ever, can be produced to shew any particular person’s supremacy; or a man’s own consent subjects him to a superiour. This is so plain, that our author confesses, that Sir John Hayward, Blackwood and Barclay, the great vindicators of the right of kings, could not deny it, but admit with one consent the natural liberty and equality of mankind, for a truth unquestionable. And our author hath been so far from producing any thing, that may make good his great position, that Adam was absolute monarch, and so men are not naturally free, that even his own proofs make against him; so that to use his own way of arguing, the first erroneous principle failing, the whole fabric of this vast engine of absolute power and tyranny drops down of itself, and there needs no more to be said in answer to all that he builds upon so false and frail a foundation.

  §. 68.

  But to save others the pains, were there any need, he is not sparing himself to shew, by his own contradictions, the weakness of his own doctrine. Adam’s absolute and sole dominion is that, which he is every where full of, and all along builds on, and yet he tells us, p. 12. that as Adam was lard of his children, so his children under him had a command and power over their own children. The unlimited and undivided sovereignty of Adam’s fatherhood, by our author’s computation, stood but a little while, only during the first generation, but as soon as he had grand-children, Sir Robert could give but a very ill account of it. Adam, as father of his children, faith he, hath an absolute, unlimited royal power over them, and by virtue thereof over those that they begot, and so to all generations; and yet his children, viz. Cain and Seth, have a paternal power over their children at the same time; so that they are at the same time absolute lords, and yet vassals and slaves; Adam has all the authority, as grand-father of the people, and they have a part of it as fathers of a part of them: he is absolute over them and their posterity, by having begotten them, and yet they are absolute over their children by the same title. No, says our author, Adam’s children under him had power over their own children, but still with subordination to the first parent. A good distinction that sounds well, and it is pity it signifies nothing, nor can be reconciled with our author’s words. I readily grant, that supposing Adam’s absolute power over his posterity, any of his children might have from him a delegated, and so a subordinate power over a part, or all the rest: but that cannot be the power our author speaks of here; it is not a power by grant and commission, but the natural paternal power he supposes a father to have over his children. For 1. he says, As Adam was lord of his children, so his children under him had a power over their own children: they were then lords over their own children after the same manner, and by the same title, that Adam was, i. e. by right of generation, by right of fatherhood. 2. It is plain he means the natural power of fathers, because he limits it to be only over their own children; a delegated power has no such limitation, as only over their own children, it might be over others, as well as their own children. 3. If it were a delegated power, it must appear in scripture; but there is no ground in scripture to affirm, that Adam’s children had any other power over theirs, than what they naturally had as fathers.

  §. 69.

  But that he means here paternal power, and no other, is past doubt, from the inference he makes in these words immediately following, I see not then how the children of Adam, or of any man else, can be free from subjection to their parents. Whereby it appears that the power on one side, and the subjection on the other, our author here speaks of, is that natural power and subjection between parents and children: for that which every man’s children owed, could be no other; and that our author always affirms to be absolute and unlimited. This natural power of parents over their children, Adam had over his posterity, says our author; and this power of parents over their children, his children had over theirs in his life-time, says our author also; so that Adam, by a natural right of father, had an absolute unlimited power over all his posterity, and at the same time his children had by the same right absolute unlimited power over theirs. Here then are two absolute unlimited powers existing together, which I would have any body reconcile one to another, or to common sense. For the salvo he has put in of subordination, makes it more absurd: to have one absolute, unlimited, nay unlimitable power in subordination to another, is so manifest a contradiction, that nothing can be more. Adam is absolute prince with the unlimited authority of fatherhood over all his posterity; all his posterity are then absolutely his subjects; and, as our author says, his slaves, children, and grand-children, are equally in this state of subjection and slavery; and yet, says our author, the children of Adam have paternal, i. e. absolute unlimited power over their own children: Which in plain English is, they are slaves and absolute princes at the same time, and in the same government; and one part of the subjects have an absolute unlimited power over the other by the natural right of parentage.

  §. 70.

  If any one will suppose, in favour of our author, that he here meant, that parents, who are in subjection themselves to the absolute authority of their father, have yet some power over their children; I confess he is something nearer the truth: but he will not at all hereby help our author: for he no where speaking of the paternal power, but as an absolute unlimited authority, cannot be supposed to understand any thing else here, unless he himself had limited it, and shewed how far it reached. And that he means here paternal authority in that large extent, is plain from the immediate following words; This subjection of children being, says he, the foundation of all regal authority, p. 12. the subjection then that in the former line, he says, every man is in to his parents, and consequently what Adam’s grand-children were in to their parents, was that which was the fountain of all regal authority, i. e. according to our author, absolute unlimitable authority. And thus Adam’s children had regal authority over their children, whilst they themselves were subjects to their father, and fellow-subjects with their children. But let him mean as he pleases, it is plain he allows Adam’s children to have paternal power, p. 12. as also all other fathers to have paternal powerover their children, Observations, 156. From whence one of these two things will necessarily follow, that either Adam’s children, even in his life-time, had, and so all other fathers have, as he phrases it, p. 12. by right of fatherhood, royal authority over their children, or else, that Adam, by right of fatherhood, had not royal authority. For it cannot be but that paternal power does, or does not, give royal authority to them that have it: if it does not, then Adam could not be sovereign by this title, nor any body else; and then there is an end of all our author’s politics at once: if it does give royal authority, then every one that has paternal power has royal authority; and then, by our author’s patriarchal government, there will be as many kings as there are fathers.

  §. 71.

  And thus what a monarchy he hath set up, let him and his disciples consider. Princes certainly will have great reason to thank him for these new politics, which set up as many absolute kings in every country as there are fathers of children. And yet who can blame our author for it, it lying unavoidably in the way of one discoursing upon our author’s principles? For having placed an absolute power in fathers by right of begetting, he could not easily resolve how much of this power belonged to a son over the children he had begotten; and so it fell out to be a very hard matter to give all the power, as he does, to Adam, and yet allow a part in his life-time to his children, when they were parents, and which he knew not well how to deny them. This makes him so doubtful in his expressions, and so uncertain where to place this absolute natural power, which he calls fatherhood. Sometimes Adam alone has it all, as p. 13. Observations, 244, 245. & Pref.

  Sometimes parents have it, which word scarce signifies the father alone, p. 12, 19.

  Sometimes children during their fathers life-time, as p. 12.

  Sometimes fathers of families, as p. 78, and 79.

  Sometimes fathers indefinitely, Observations, 155.

  Sometimes the heir to Adam, Observations, 253.

  Sometimes the posterity of Adam, 244, 246.

  Sometimes prime fathers, all sons or grand-children of Noah, Observations, 244.

  Sometimes the eldest parents, p. 12.

  Sometimes all kings, p. 19.

  Sometimes all that have supreme power, Observations, 245.

  Sometimes heirs to those first progenitors, who were at first the natural parents of the whole people, p. 19.

  Sometimes an elective king, p. 23.

  Sometimes those, whether a few or a multitude, that govern the common-wealth, p. 23.

  Sometimes he that can catch it, an usurper, p. 23. Observations, 155.

  §. 72.

  Thus this new nothing, that is to carry with it all power, authority, and government; this fatherhood, which is to design the person, and establish the throne of monarchs, whom the people are to obey, may, according to Sir Robert, come into any hands, any how, and so by his politics give to democracy royal authority, and make an usurper a lawful prince. And if it will do all these fine feats, much good do our author and all his followers with their omnipotent fatherhood, which can serve for nothing but to unsettle and destroy all the lawful governments in the world, and to establish in their room disorder, tyranny, and usurpation.

  CHAP. VII.
  Of Fatherhood and Property considered together as Fountains of Sovereignty.

  §. 73.

  In the foregoing chapters we have seen what Adam’s monarchy was, in our author’s opinion, and upon what titles he founded it. The foundations which he lays the chief stress on, as those from which he thinks he may best derive monarchical power to future princes, are two, viz. Fatherhoodand property: and therefore the way he proposes to remove the absurdities and inconveniencies of the doctrine of natural freedom, is, to maintain the natural and private dominion of Adam, Observations, 222. Conformable hereunto, he tells us, the grounds and principles of government necessarily depend upon the original of property, Observations, 108. The subjection of children to their parents is the fountain of all regal authority, p. 12. And all power on earth is either derived or usurped from the fatherly power, there being no other original to be found of any power whatsoever, Observations, 158. I will not stand here to examine how it can be said without a contradiction, that the first grounds and principles of government necessarily depend upon the original of property, and yet, that there is no other original of any power whatsoever, but that of the father: it being hard to understand how there can be no other original but fatherhood, and yet that the grounds and principles of government depend upon the original of property; property and fatherhood being as far different as lord of a manor and father of children. Nor do I see how they will either of them agree with what our author says, Observations, 244. of God’s sentence against Eve, Gen. iii. 16. That it is the original grant of government: so that if that were the original, government had not its original, by our author’s own confession, either from property or fatherhood; and this text, which he brings as a proof of Adam’s power over Eve, necessarily contradicts what he says of the fatherhood, that it is the sole fountain of all power: for if Adam had any such regal power over Eve, as our author contends for, it must be by some other title than that of begetting.

  §. 74.

  But I leave him to reconcile these contradictions, as well as many others, which may plentifully be found in him by any one, who will but read him with a little attention; and shall come now to consider, how these two originals of government, Adam’s natural and private dominion, will consist, and serve to make out and establish the titles of succeeding monarchs, who, as our author obliges them, must all derive their power from these fountains. Let us then suppose Adam made, by God’s donation, lord and sole proprietor of the whole earth, in as large and ample a manner as Sir Robert could wish; let us suppose him also, by right of fatherhood, absolute ruler over his children with an unlimited supremacy; I ask then, upon Adam’s death what becomes of both his natural and private dominion? and I doubt not it will be answered, that they descended to his next heir, as our author tells us in several places. But this way, it is plain, cannot possibly convey both his natural and private dominion to the same person: for should we allow, that all the property, all the estate of the father, ought to descend to the eldest son, (which will need some proof to establish it) and so he has by that title all the private dominion of the father, yet the father’s natural dominion, the paternal power cannot descend to him by inheritance: for it being a right that accrues to a man only by begetting, no man can have this natural dominion over any one he does not beget; unless it can be supposed, that a man can have a right to any thing, without doing that upon which that right is solely founded: for if a father by begetting, and no other title, has natural dominion over his children, he that does not beget them cannot have this natural dominion over them; and therefore be it true or false, that our author says, Observations, 156. That every man that is born, by his very birth becomes a subject to him that begets him, this necessarily follows, viz. That a man by his birth cannot become a subject to his brother, who did not beget him; unless it can be supposed that a man by the very same title can come to be under the natural and absolute dominion of two different men at once; or it be sense to say, that a man by birth is under the natural dominion of his father, only because he begat him, and a man by birth also is under the natural dominion of his eldest brother, though he did not beget him.

  §. 75.

  If then the private dominion of Adam, i. e. his property in the creatures, descended at his death all entirely to his eldest son, his heir; (for, if it did not, there is presently an end of all Sir Robert’s monarchy) and his natural dominion, the dominion a father has over his children by begetting them, belonged immediately, upon Adam’s decease, equally to all his sons who had children, by the same title their father had it, the sovereignty founded upon property, and the sovereignty founded upon fatherhood, come to be divided; since Cain, as heir, had that of property alone; Seth, and the other sons, that of fatherhood equally with him. This is the best can be made of our author’s doctrine, and of the two titles of sovereignty he sets up in Adam: one of them will either signify nothing; or, if they both must stand, they can serve only to confound the rights of princes, and disorder government in his posterity: for by building upon two titles to dominion, which cannot descend together, and which he allows may be separated, (for he yields that Adam’s children had their distinct territories by right of private dominion, Observations, 210.p.40.) he makes it perpetually a doubt upon his principles where the sovereignty is, or to whom we owe our obedience, since fatherhood and property are distinct titles, and began presently upon Adam’s death to be in distinct persons. And which then was to give way to the other?

  §. 76.

  Let us take the account of it, as he himself gives it us. He tells us out of Grotius, That Adam’s children by donation, assignation, or some kind of cession before he was dead, had their distinct territories by right of private dominion; Abel had his flocks and pastures for them: Cain had his fields for corn, and the land of Nod, where he built him a city, Observations, 210. Here it is obvious to demand, which of these two after Adam’s death was sovereign? Cain, says our author, p. 19. By what title? As heir; for heirs to progenitors, who were natural parents of their people, are not only lords of their own children, but also of their brethren, says our author, p. 19. What was Cain heir to? Not the entire possessions, not all that which Adam had private dominion in; for our author allows that Abel, by a title derived from his father, had his distinct territory for pasture by right of private dominion. What then Abel had by private dominion, was exempt from Cain’s dominion: for he could not have private dominion over that which was under the private dominion of another; and therefore his sovereignty over his brother is gone with this private dominion, and so there are presently two sovereigns, and his imaginary title of fatherhood is out of doors, and Cain is no prince over his brother: or else, if Cain retain his sovereignty over Abel, notwithstanding his private dominion, it will follow, that the first grounds and principles of government have nothing to do with property, whatever our author says to the contrary. It is true, Abel did not outlive his father Adam; but that makes nothing to the argument, which will hold good against Sir Robert in Abel’s issue, or in Seth, or any of the posterity of Adam, not descended from Cain.

  §. 77.

  The same inconvenience he runs into about the three sons of Noah, who, as he says, p. 13. had the whole world divided amongst them by their father. I ask then, in which of the three shall we find the establishment of regal power after Noah’s death? If in all three, as our author there seems to say; then it will follow, that regal power is founded in property of land, and follows private dominion, and not in paternal power, or natural dominion; and so there is an end of paternal power as the fountain of regal authority, and the so-much-magnified fatherhood quite vanishes. If the regal power descended to Shem as eldest, and heir to his father, then Noah’s division of the world by lot to his sons, or his ten years sailing about the Mediterranean to appoint each son his part, which our author tells of, p. 15. was labour lost; his division of the world to them, was to ill, or to no purpose: for his grant to Cham and Japhet was little worth, if Shem, notwithstanding this grant, as soon as Noah was dead, was to be lord over them. Or, if this grant of private dominion to them, over their assigned territories, were good, here were set up two distinct sorts of power, not subordinate one to the other, with all those inconveniences which he musters up against the power of the people, Observations, 158. which I shall set down in his own words, only changing property for people. All power on earth is either derived or usurped from the fatherly power, there being no other original to be found of any power whatsoever: for if there should be granted two sorts of power, without any subordination of one to the other, they would be in perpetual strife which should be supreme, for two supremes cannot agree: if the fatherly power be supreme, then the power grounded on private dominion must be subordinate, and depend on it; and if the power grounded on property be supreme, then the fatherly power must submit to it, and cannot be exercised without the licence of the proprietors, which must quite destroy the frame and course of nature. This is his own arguing against two distinct independent powers, which I have set down in his own words, only putting power rising from property, for power of the people; and when he has answered what he himself has urged here against two distinct powers, we shall be better able to see how, with any tolerable sense, he can derive all regal authority from the natural and private dominion of Adam, from fatherhood and property together, which are distinct titles, that do not always meet in the same person; and it is plain, by his own confession, presently separated as soon both as Adam’s and Noah’s death made way for succession: though our author frequently in his writings jumbles them together, and omits not to make use of either, where he thinks it will sound best to his purpose. But the absurdities of this will more fully appear in the next chapter, where we shall examine the ways of conveyance of the sovereignty of Adam, to princes that were to reign after him.

  CHAP. VIII.
  Of the Conveyance of Adam’s sovereign Monarchical Power.

  §. 78.

  SIR Robert, having not been very happy in any proof he brings for the sovereignty of Adam, is not much more fortunate in conveying it to future princes, who, if his politics be true, must all derive their titles from that first monarch. The ways he has assigned, as they lie scattered up and down in his writings, I will set down in his own words: in his preface he tells us, That Adam being monarch of the whole world, none of his posterity had any right to possess any thing, but by his grant or permission, or by succession from him. Here he makes two ways of conveyance of any thing Adam stood possessed of; and those are grants or succession. Again he says, All kings either are, or are tobe reputed, the next heirs to those first progenitors, who were at first the natural parents of the whole people, p. 19. There cannot be any multitude of men whatsoever, but that in it, considered by itself, there is one man amongst them, that in nature hath a right to be the king of all the rest, as being the next heir to Adam, Observations, 253. Here in these places inheritance is the only way he allows of conveying monarchical power to princes. In other places he tells us, Observations, 155. All power on earth is either derived or usurped from the fatherly power, Observations, 158. All kings that now are, or ever were, are or were either fathers of their people, or heirs of such fathers, or usurpers of the right of such fathers, Observations, 253. And here he makes inheritance or usurpation the only ways whereby kings come by this original power: but yet he tells us, This fatherly empire, as it was of itself hereditary, so it was alienable by patent, and seizable by an usurper, Observations, 190. So then here inheritance, grant, or usurpation, will convey it. And last of all, which is most admirable, he tells us, p. 100. It skills not which way kings come by their power, whether by election, donation, succession, or by any other means; for it is still the manner of the government by supreme power, that makes them properly kings, and not the means of obtaining their crowns. Which I think is a full answer to all his whole hypothesis and discourse about Adam’s royal authority, as the fountain from which all princes were to derive theirs: and he might have spared the trouble of speaking so much as he does, up and down, of heirs and inheritance, if to make any one properly a king, needs no more but governing by supreme power, and it matters not by what means he came by it.

  §. 79.

  By this notable way, our author may make Oliver as properly king, as any one else he could think of: and had he had the happiness to live under Massanello’s government, he could not by this his own rule have forborn to have done homage to him, with O king live for ever, since the manner of his government by supreme power, made him properly king, who was but the day before properly a fisherman. And if Don Quixote had taught his squire to govern with supreme authority, our author no doubt could have made a most loyal subject in Sancho Pancha’s island; and he must needs have deserved some preferment in such governments, since I think he is the first politician, who, pretending to settle government upon its true basis, and to establish the thrones of lawful princes, ever told the world, That he was properly a king, whose manner of government was by supreme power, by what means soever he obtained it; which in plain English is to say, that regal and supreme power is properly and truly his, who can by any means seize upon it; and if this be to be properly a king, I wonder how he came to think of, or where he will find, an usurper.

  §. 80.

  This is so strange a doctrine, that the surprise of it hath made me pass by, without their due reflection, the contradictions he runs into, by making sometimes inheritance alone, sometimes only grant or inheritance, sometimes only inheritance or usurpation, sometimes all these three, and at last election, or any other means, added to them, the ways whereby Adam’s royal authority, that is, his right to supreme rule, could be conveyed down to future kings and governors, so as to give them a title to the obedience and subjection of the people. But these contradictions lie so open, that the very reading of our author’s own words will discover them to any ordinary understanding; and though what I have quoted out of him (with abundance more of the same strain and coherence, which might be found in him) might well excuse me from any farther trouble in this argument, yet having proposed to myself, to examine the main parts of his doctrine, I shall a little more particularly consider how inheritance, grant, usurpation or election, can any way make out government in the world upon his principles; or derive to any one a right of empire, from this regal authority of Adam, had it been never so well proved, that he had been absolute monarch, and lord of the whole world.

  CHAP. IX.
  Of Monarchy, by Inheritance from Adam.

  §. 81.

  Though it be never so plain, that there ought to be government in the world, nay, should all men be of our author’s mind, that divine appointment had ordained it to be monarchical; yet, since men cannot obey any thing, that cannot command; and ideas of government in the fancy, though never so perfect, though never so right, cannot give laws, nor prescribe rules to the actions of men; it would be of no behoof for the settling of order, and establishment of government in its exercise and use amongst men, unless there were a way also taught how to know the person, to whom it belonged to have this power, and exercise this dominion over others. It is in vain then to talk of subjection and obedience without telling us whom we are to obey: for were I never so fully persuaded that there ought to be magistracy and rule in the world; yet I am never the less at liberty still, till it appears who is the person that hath right to my obedience; since, if there be no marks to know him by, and distinguish him that hath right to rule from other men, it may be myself, as well as any other. And therefore, though submission to government be every one’s duty, yet since that signifies nothing but submitting to the direction and laws of such men as have authority to command, it is not enough to make a man a subject, to convince him that there is regal power in the world; but there must be ways of designing, and knowing the person to whom this regal power of right belongs: and a man can never be obliged in conscience to submit to any power, unless he can be satisfied who is the person who has a right to exercise that power over him. If this were not so, there would be no distinction between pirates and lawful princes; he that has force is without any more ado to be obeyed, and crowns and scepters would become the inheritance only of violence and rapine. Men too might as often and as innocently change their governors, as they do their physicians, if the person cannot be known who has a right to direct me, and whose prescriptions I am bound to follow. To settle therefore men’s consciences, under an obligation to obedience, it is necessary that they know not only, that there is a power somewhere in the world, but the person who by right is vested with this power over them.

  §. 82.

  How successful our author has been in his attempts, to set up a monarchical absolute power in Adam, the reader may judge by what has been already said; but were that absolute monarchy as clear as our author would desire it, as I presume it is the contrary, yet it could be of no use to the government of mankind now in the world, unless he also make out these two things.

  First, That this power of Adam was not to end with him, but was upon his decease conveyed intire to some other person, and so on to posterity.

  Secondly, That the princes and rulers now on earth are possessed of this power of Adam, by a right way of conveyance derived to them.

  §. 83.

  If the first of these fail, the power of Adam, were it never so great, never so certain, will signify nothing to the present government and societies in the world; but we must seek out some other original of power for the government of politys than this of Adam, or else there will be none at all in the world. If the latter fail, it will destroy the authority of the present governors, and absolve the people from subjection to them, since they, having no better a claim than others to that power, which is alone the fountain of all authority, can have no title to rule over them.

  §. 84.

  Our author, having fancied an absolute sovereignty in Adam, mentions several ways of its conveyance to princes, that were to be his successors; but that which he chiefly insists on, is that of inheritance, which occurs so often in his several discourses; and I having in the foregoing chapter quoted several of these passages, I shall not need here again to repeat them. This sovereignty he erects, as has been said, upon a double foundation, viz. that of property, and that of fatherhood. One was the right he was supposed to have in all creatures, a right to possess the earth with the beasts, and other inferior ranks of things in it, for his private use, exclusive of all other men. The other was the right he was supposed to have, to rule and govern men, all the rest of mankind.

  §. 85.

  In both these rights, there being supposed an exclusion of all other men, it must be upon some reason peculiar to Adam, that they must both be founded.

  That of his property our author supposes to arise from God’s immediate donation, Gen. i. 28. and that of fatherhood from the act of begetting: now in all inheritance, if the heir succeed not to the reason upon which his father’s right was founded, he cannot succeed to the right which followeth from it. For example, Adam had a right of property in the creatures upon the donation and grant of God almighty, who was lord and proprietor of them all: let this be so as our author tells us, yet upon his death his heir can have no title to them, no such right of property in them, unless the same reason, viz. God’s donation, vested a right in the heir too: for if Adam could have had no property in, nor use of the creatures, without this positive donation from God, and this donation were only personally to Adam, his heir could have no right by it; but upon his death it must revert to God, the lord and owner again; for positive grants give no title farther than the express words convey it, and by which only it is held. And thus, if as our author himself contends, that donation, Gen. i. 28. were made only to Adam personally, his heir could not succeed to his property in the creatures; and if it were a donation to any but Adam, let it be shewn, that it was to his heir in our author’s sense, i. e. to one of his children, exclusive of all the rest.

  §. 86.

  But not to follow our author too far out of the way, the plain of the case is this. God having made man, and planted in him, as in all other animals, a strong desire of self-preservation; and furnished the world with things fit for food and raiment, and other necessaries of life, subservient to his design, that man should live and abide for some time upon the face of the earth, and not that so curious and wonderful a piece of workmanship, by his own negligence, or want of necessaries, should perish again, presently after a few moments continuance; God, I say, having made man and the world thus, spoke to him, (that is) directed him by his senses and reason, as he did the inferior animals by their sense and instinct, which were serviceable for his subsistence, and given him as the means of his preservation. And therefore I doubt not, but before these words were pronounced, i. Gen. 28, 29. (if they must be understood literally to have been spoken) and without any such verbal donation, man had a right to an use of the creatures, by the will and grant of God: for the desire, strong desire of preserving his life and being, having been planted in him as a principle of action by God himself, reason, which was the voice of God in him, could not but teach him and assure him, that pursuing that natural inclination he had to preserve his being, he followed the will of his maker, and therefore had a right to make use of those creatures, which by his reason or senses he could discover would be serviceable thereunto. And thus man’s property in the creatures was founded upon the right he had to make use of those things that were necessary or useful to his being.

  §. 87.

  This being the reason and foundation of Adam’s property, gave the same title, on the same ground, to all his children, not only after his death, but in his life-time: so that here was no privilege of his heir above his other children, which could exclude them from an equal right to the use of the inferior creatures, for the comfortable preservation of their beings, which is all the property man hath in them; and so Adam’s sovereignty built on property, or, as our author calls it, private dominion, comes to nothing. Every man had a right to the creatures, by the same title Adam had, viz. by the right every one had to take care of, and provide for their subsistence: and thus men had a right in common, Adam’s children in common with him. But if any one had began, and made himself a property in any particular thing, (which how he, or any one else, could do, shall be shewn in another place) that thing, that possession, if he disposed not otherwise of it by his positive grant, descended naturally to his children, and they had a right to succeed to it, and possess it.

  §. 88.

  It might reasonably be asked here, how come children by this right of possessing, before any other, the properties of their parents upon their decease? for it being personally the parents, when they die, without actually transferring their right to another, why does it not return again to the common stock of mankind? It will perhaps be answered, that common consent hath disposed of it to their children. Common practice, we see indeed, does so dispose of it; but we cannot say, that it is the common consent of mankind; for that hath never been asked, nor actually given; and if common tacit consent hath established it, it would make but a positive, and not a natural right of children to inherit the goods of their parents: but where the practice is universal, it is reasonable to think the cause is natural. The ground then I think to be this. The first and strongest desire God planted in men, and wrought into the very principles of their nature, being that of self-preservation, that is the foundation of a right to the creatures for the particular support and use of each individual person himself. But, next to this, God planted in men a strong desire also of propagating their kind, and continuing themselves in their posterity; and this gives children a title to share in the property of their parents, and a right to inherit their possessions. Men are not proprietors of what they have, meerly for themselves; their children have a title to part of it, and have their kind of right joined with their parents, in the possession which comes to be wholly their’s, when death, having put an end to their parents use of it, hath taken them from their possessions; and this we call inheritance: men being by a like obligation bound to preserve what they have begotten, as to preserve themselves, their issue come to have a right in the goods they are possessed of. That children have such a right, is plain from the laws of God; and that men are convinced that children have such a right, is evident from the law of the land; both which laws require parents to provide for their children.

  §. 89.

  For children being by the course of nature, born weak, and unable to provide for themselves, they have by the appointment of God himself, who hath thus ordered the course of nature, a right to be nourished and maintained by their parents; nay, a right not only to a bare subsistence, but to the conveniencies and comforts of life, as far as the conditions of their parents can afford it. Hence it comes, that when their parents leave the world, and so the care due to their children ceases, the effects of it are to extend as far as possibly they can, and the provisions they have made in their life-time, are understood to be intended, as nature requires they should, for their children, whom, after themselves, they are bound to provide for: though the dying parents, by express words, declare nothing about them, nature appoints the descent of their property to their children, who thus come to have a title, and natural right of inheritance to their fathers goods, which the rest of mankind cannot pretend to.

  §. 90.

  Were it not for this right of being nourished and maintained by their parents, which God and nature has given to children, and obliged parents to as a duty, it would be reasonable, that the father should inherit the estate of his son, and be preferred in the inheritance before his grand-child: for to the grand-father there is due a long score of care and expences laid out upon the breeding and education of his son, which one would think in justice ought to be paid. But that having been done in obedience to the same law, whereby he received nourishment and education from his own parents; this score of education, received from a man’s father, is paid by taking care, and providing for his own children; is paid, I say, as much as is required of payment by alteration of property, unless present necessity of the parents require a return of goods for their necessary support and subsistence: for we are not now speaking of that reverence, acknowledgment, respect and honour, that is always due from children to their parents; but of possessions and commodities of life valuable by money. But though it be incumbent on parents to bring up and provide for their children, yet this debt to their children does not quite cancel the score due to their parents; but only is made by nature preferable to it: for the debt a man owes his father takes place, and gives the father a right to inherit the son’s goods, where, for want of issue, the right of children doth not exclude that title. And therefore a man having a right to be maintained by his children, where he needs it; and to enjoy also the comforts of life from them, when the necessary provision due to them and their children will afford it; if his son die without issue, the father has a right in nature to possess his goods, and inherit his estate, (whatever the municipal laws of some countries may absurdly direct otherwise;) and so again his children and their issue from him; or, for want of such, his father and his issue. But where no such are to be found, i. e. no kindred, there we see the possessions of a private man revert to the community, and so in politic societies come into the hands of the public magistrate; but in the state of nature become again perfectly common, no body having a right to inherit them: nor can any one have a property in them, otherwise than in other things common by nature; of which I shall speak in its due place.

  §. 91.

  I have been the larger, in shewing upon what ground children have a right to succeed to the possession of their fathers properties, not only because by it, it will appear, that if Adam had a property (a titular, insignificant, useless property; for it could be no better, for he was bound to nourish and maintain his children and posterity out of it) in the whole earth and its product, yet all his children coming to have, by the law of nature, and right of inheritance, a joint title, and right of property in it after his death, it could convey no right of sovereignty to any one of his posterity over the rest: since every one having a right of inheritance to his portion, they might enjoy their inheritance, or any part of it in common, or share it, or some parts of it, by division, as it best liked them. But no one could pretend to the whole inheritance, or any sovereignty supposed to accompany it; since a right of inheritance gave every one of the rest, as well as any one, a title to share in the goods of his father. Not only upon this account, I say, have I been so particular in examining the reason of children’s inheriting the property of their fathers, but also because it will give us farther light in the inheritance of rule and power, which in countries where their particular municipal laws give the whole possession of land entirely to the first-born, and descent of power has gone so to men by this custom, some have been apt to be deceived into an opinion, that there was a natural or divine right of primogeniture, to both estate and power; and that the inheritance of both rule over men, and property in things, sprang from the same original, and were to descend by the same rules.

  §. 92.

  Property, whose original is from the right a man has to use any of the inferior creatures, for the subsistence and comfort of his life, is for the benefit and sole advantage of the proprietor, so that he may even destroy the thing, that he has property in by his use of it, where need requires: but government being for the preservation of every man’s right and property, by preserving him from the violence or injury of others, is for the good of the governed: for the magistrate’s sword being for a terror to evil doers, and by that terror to inforce men to observe the positive laws of the society, made conformable to the laws of nature, for the public good, i. e. the good of every particular member of that society, as far as by common rules it can be provided for; the sword is not given the magistrate for his own good alone.

  §. 93.

  Children therefore, as has been shewed, by the dependance they have on their parents for subsistence, have a right of inheritance to their fathers property, as that which belongs to them for their proper good and behoof, and therefore are fitly termed goods, wherein the first-born has not a sole or peculiar right by any law of God and nature, the younger children having an equal title with him, founded on that right they all have to maintenance, support, and comfort from their parents, and on nothing else. But government being for the benefit of the governed, and not the sole advantage of the governors, (but only for their’s with the rest, as they make a part of that politic body, each of whose parts and members are taken care of, and directed in its peculiar functions for the good of the whole, by the laws of society) cannot be inherited by the same title, that children have to the goods of their father. The right a son has to be maintained and provided with the necessaries and conveniences of life out of his father’s stock, gives him a right to succeed to his father’s property for his own good; but this can give him no right to succeed also to the rule, which his father had over other men. All that a child has right to claim from his father is nourishment and education, and the things nature furnishes for the support of life: but he has no right to demand rule or dominion from him: he can subsist and receive from him the portion of good things, and advantages of education naturally due to him, without empire and dominion. That (if his father hath any) was vested in him, for the good and behoof of others: and therefore the son cannot claim or inherit it by a title, which is founded wholly on his own private good and advantage.

  §. 94.

  We must know how the first ruler, from whom any one claims, came by his authority, upon what ground any one has empire, what his title is to it, before we can know who has a right to succeed him in it, and inherit it from him: if the agreement and consent of men first gave a scepter into any one’s hand, or put a crown on his head, that also must direct its descent and conveyance; for the same authority, that made the first a lawful ruler, must make the second too, and so give right of succession: in this case inheritance, or primogeniture, can in its self have no right, no pretence to it, any farther than that consent, which established the form of the government, hath so settled the succession. And thus we see, the succession of crowns, in several countries, places it on different heads, and he comes by right of succession to be a prince in one place, who would be a subject in another.

  §. 95.

  If God, by his positive grant and revealed declaration, first gave rule and dominion to any man, he that will claim by that title, must have the same positive grant of God for his succession: for if that has not directed the course of its descent and conveyance down to others, no body can succeed to this title of the first ruler. Children have no right of inheritance to this; and primogeniture can lay no claim to it, unless God, the author of this constitution, hath so ordained it. Thus we see, the pretensions of Saul’s family, who received his crown from the immediate appointment of God, ended with his reign; and David, by the same title that Saul reigned, viz. God’s appointment, succeeded in his throne, to the exclusion of Jonathan, and all pretensions of paternal inheritance: and if Solomon had a right to succeed his father, it must be by some other title, than that of primogeniture. A cadet, or sister’s son, must have the preference in succession, if he has the same title the first lawful prince had: and in dominion that has its foundation only in the positive appointment of God himself, Benjamin, the youngest, must have the inheritance of the crown, if God so direct, as well as one of that tribe had the first possession.

  §. 96.

  If paternal right, the act of begetting, give a man rule and dominion, inheritance or primogeniture can give no title: for he that cannot succeed to his father’s title, which was begetting, cannot succeed to that power over his brethren, which his father had by paternal right over them. But of this I shall have occasion to say more in another place. This is plain in the mean time, that any government, whether supposed to be at first founded in paternal right, consent of the people, or the positive appointment of God himself, which can supersede either of the other, and so begin a new government upon a new foundation; I say, any government began upon either of these, can by right of succession come to those only, who have the title of him they succeed to: power founded on contract can descend only to him, who has right by that contract: power founded on begetting, he only can have that begets; and power founded on the positive grant or donation of God, he only can have by right of succession, to whom that grant directs it.

  §. 97.

  From what I have said, I think this is clear, that a right to the use of the creatures, being founded originally in the right a man has to subsist and enjoy the conveniencies of life; and the natural right children have to inherit the goods of their parents, being founded in the right they have to the same subsistence and commodities of life, out of the stock of their parents, who are therefore taught by natural love and tenderness to provide for them, as a part of themselves; and all this being only for the good of the proprietor, or heir; it can be no reason for children’s inheriting of rule and dominion, which has another original and a different end. Nor can primogeniture have any pretence to a right of solely inheriting either property or power, as we shall, in its due place, see more fully. It is enough to have shewed here, that Adam’s property, or private dominion, could not convey any sovereignty or rule to his heir, who not having a right to inherit all his father’s possessions, could not thereby come to have any sovereignty over his brethren: and therefore, if any sovereignty on account of his property had been vested in Adam, which in truth there was not, yet it would have died with him.

  §. 98.

  As Adam’s sovereignty, if, by virtue of being proprietor of the world, he had any authority over men, could not have been inherited by any of his children over the rest, because they had the same title to divide the inheritance, and every one had a right to a portion of his father’s possessions; so neither could Adam’s sovereignty by right of fatherhood, if any such he had, descend to any one of his children: for it being, in our author’s account, a right acquired by begetting to rule over those he had begotten, it was not a power possible to be inherited, because the right being consequent to, and built on, an act perfectly personal, made that power so too, and impossible to be inherited: for paternal power, being a natural right rising only from the relation of father and son, is as impossible to be inherited as the relation itself; and a man may pretend as well to inherit the conjugal power the husband, whose heir he is, had over his wife, as he can to inherit the paternal power of a father over his children: for the power of the husband being founded on contract, and the power of the father on begetting, he may as well inherit the power obtained by the conjugal contract, which was only personal, as he may the power obtained by begetting, which could reach no farther than the person of the begetter, unless begetting can be a title to power in him that does not beget.

  §. 99.

  Which makes it a reasonable question to ask, whether Adam, dying before Eve, his heir, (suppose Cain or Seth) should have by right of inheriting Adam’s fatherhood, sovereign power over Eve his mother: for Adam’s fatherhood being nothing but a right he had to govern his children, because he begot them, he that inherits Adam’s fatherhood, inherits nothing, even in our author’s sense, but the right Adam had to govern his children, because he begot them: so that the monarchy of the heir would not have taken in Eve; or if it did, it being nothing but the fatherhood of Adam descended by inheritance, the heir must have right to govern Eve, because Adam begot her; for fatherhood is nothing else.

  §. 100.

  Perhaps it will be said with our author, that a man can alien his power over his child; and what may be transferred by compact, may be possessed by inheritance. I answer, a father cannot alien the power he has over his child: he may perhaps to some degrees forfeit it, but cannot transfer it; and if any other man acquire it, it is not by the father’s grant, but by some act of his own. For example, a father, unnaturally careless of his child, sells or gives him to another man; and he again exposes him; a third man finding him, breeds up, cherishes, and provides for him as his own: I think in this case, no body will doubt, but that the greatest part of filial duty and subjection was here owing, and to be paid to this foster-father; and if any thing could be demanded from the child, by either of the other, it could be only due to his natural father, who perhaps might have forfeited his right to much of that duty comprehended in the command, Honour your parents, but could transfer none of it to another. He that purchased, and neglected the child, got by his purchase and grant of the father, no title to duty or honour from the child; but only he acquired it, who by his own authority, performing the office and care of a father, to the forlorn and perishing infant, made himself, by paternal care, a title to proportionable degrees of paternal power. This will be more easily admitted upon consideration of the nature of paternal power, for which I refer my reader to the second book.

  §. 101.

  To return to the argument in hand; this is evident, That paternal power arising only from begetting, for in that our author places it alone, can neither be transferred nor inherited: and he that does not beget, can no more have paternal power, which arises from thence, than he can have a right to any thing, who performs not the condition, to which only it is annexed. If one should ask, by what law has a father power over his children? it will be answered, no doubt, by the law of nature, which gives such a power over them, to him that begets them. If one should ask likewise, by what law does our author’s heir come by a right to inherit? I think it would be answered, by the law of nature too: for I find not that our author brings one word of scripture to prove the right of such an heir he speaks of. Why then the law of nature gives fathers paternal power over their children, because they did beget them; and the same law of nature gives the same paternal power to the heir over his brethren, who did not beget them: whence it follows, that either the father has not his paternal power by begetting, or else that the heir has it not at all; for it is hard to understand how the law of nature, which is the law of reason, can give the paternal power to the father over his children, for the only reason of begetting; and to the first-born over his brethren without this only reason, i. e. for no reason at all: and if the eldest, by the law of nature, can inherit this paternal power, without the only reason that gives a title to it, so may the youngest as well as he, and a stranger as well as either; for where there is no reason for any one, as there is not, but for him that begets, all have an equal title. I am sure our author offers no reason; and when any body does, we shall see whether it will hold or no.

  §. 102.

  In the mean time it is as good sense to say, that by the law of nature a man has right to inherit the property of another, because he is of kin to him, and is known to be of his blood; and therefore, by the same law of nature, an utter stranger to his blood has right to inherit his estate; as to say that, by the law of nature, he that begets them has paternal power over his children, and therefore, by the law of nature, the heir that begets them not, has this paternal power over them; or supposing the law of the land gave absolute power over their children, to such only who nursed them, and fed their children themselves, could any body pretend, that this law gave any one, who did no such thing, absolute power over those, who were not his children?

  §. 103.

  When therefore it can be shewed, that conjugal power can belong to him that is not an husband, it will also I believe be proved, that our author’s paternal power, acquired by begetting, may be inherited by a son; and that a brother, as heir to his father’s power, may have paternal power over his brethren, and by the same rule conjugal power too: but till then, I think we may rest satisfied, that the paternal power of Adam, this sovereign authority of fatherhood, were there any such, could not descend to, nor be inherited by, his next heir. Fatherly power, I easily grant our author, if it will do him any good, can never be lost, because it will be as long in the world as there are fathers: but none of them will have Adam’s paternal power, or derive their’s from him; but every one will have his own, by the same title Adam had his, viz. by begetting, but not by inheritance, or succession, no more than husbands have their conjugal power by inheritance from Adam. And thus we see, as Adam had no such property, no such paternal power, as gave him sovereign jurisdiction over mankind; so likewise his sovereignty built upon either of these titles, if he had any such, could not have descended to his heir, but must have ended with him. Adam therefore, as has been proved, being neither monarch, nor his imaginary monarchy hereditable, the power which is now in the world, is not that which was Adam’s, since all that Adam could have upon our author’s grounds, either of property or fatherhood, necessarily died with him, and could not be conveyed to posterity by inheritance. In the next place we will consider, whether Adam had any such heir, to inherit his power, as our author talks of.

  CHAP. X.
  Of the Heir to Adam’s Monarchical Power.

  §. 104.

  OUR author tells us, Observations, 253. That it is a truth undeniable, that there cannot be any multitude of men whatsoever, either great or small, tho’ gathered together from the several corners and remotest regions of the world, but that in the same multitude, considered by its self, there is one man amongst them, that in nature hath a right to be king of all the rest, as being the next heir to Adam, and all the other subjects to him: every man by nature is a king or a subject. And again, p. 20. If Adam himself were still living, and now ready to die, it is certain that there is one man, and but one in the world, who is next heir. Let this multitude of men be, if our author pleases, all the princes upon the earth, there will then be, by our author’s rule, one amongst them, that in nature hath a right to be king of all the rest, as being the right heir to Adam; an excellent way to establish the thrones of princes, and settle the obedience of their subjects, by setting up an hundred, or perhaps a thousand titles (if there be so many princes in the world) against any king now reigning, each as good, upon our author’s grounds, as his who wears the crown. If this right of heir carry any weight with it, if it be the ordinance of God, as our author seems to tells us, Observations, 244. must not all be subject to it, from the highest to the lowest? Can those who wear the name of princes, without having the right of being heirs to Adam, demand obedience from their subjects by this title, and not be bound to pay it by the same law? Either governments in the world are not to be claimed, and held by this title of Adam’s heir; and then the starting of it is to no purpose, the being or not being Adam’s heir signifies nothing as to the title of dominion: or if it really be, as our author says, the true title to government and sovereignty, the first thing to be done, is to find out this true heir of Adam, seat him in his throne, and then all the kings and princes of the world ought to come and resign up their crowns and scepters to him, as things that belong no more to them, than to any of their subjects.

  §. 105.

  For either this right in nature, of Adam’s heir, to be king over all the race of men, (for all together they make one multitude) is a right not necessary to the making of a lawful king, and so there may be lawful kings without it, and then kings titles and power depend not on it; or else all the kings in the world but one are not lawful kings, and so have no right to obedience: either this title of heir to Adam is that whereby kings hold their crowns, and have a right to subjection from their subjects, and then one only can have it, and the rest being subjects can require no obedience from other men, who are but their fellow subjects; or else it is not the title whereby kings rule, and have a right to obedience from their subjects, and then kings are kings without it, and this dream of the natural sovereignty of Adam’s heir is of no use to obedience and government: for if kings have a right to dominion, and the obedience of their subjects, who are not, nor can possibly be, heirs to Adam, what use is there of such a title, when we are obliged to obey without it? If kings, who are not heirs to Adam, have no right to sovereignty, we are all free, till our author, or any body for him, will shew us Adam’s right heir. If there be but one heir of Adam, there can be but one lawful king in the world, and no body in conscience can be obliged to obedience till it be resolved who that is; for it may be any one, who is not known to be of a younger house, and all others have equal titles. If there be more than one heir of Adam, every one is his heir, and so every one has regal power: for if two sons can be heirs together, then all the sons are equally heirs, and so all are heirs, being all sons, or sons sons of Adam. Betwixt these two the right of heir cannot stand; for by it either but one only man, or all men are kings. Take which you please, it dissolves the bonds of government and obedience; since, if all men are heirs, they can owe obedience to no body; if only one, no body can be obliged to pay obedience to him, till he be known, and his title made out.

  CHAP. XI.
  Who HEIR?

  §. 106.

  THE great question which in all ages has disturbed mankind, and brought on them the greatest part of those mischiefs which have ruined cities, depopulated countries, and disordered the peace of the world, has been, not whether there be power in the world, nor whence it came, but who should have it. The settling of this point being of no smaller moment than the security of princes, and the peace and welfare of their estates and kingdoms, a reformer of politics, one would think, should lay this sure, and be very clear in it: for if this remain disputable, all the rest will be to very little purpose; and the skill used in dressing up power with all the splendor and temptation absoluteness can add to it, without shewing who has a right to have it, will serve only to give a greater edge to man’s natural ambition, which of its self is but too keen. What can this do but set men on the more eagerly to scramble, and so lay a sure and lasting foundation of endless contention and disorder, instead of that peace and tranquillity, which is the business of government, and the end of human society?

  §. 107.

  This designation of the person our author is more than ordinary obliged to take care of, because he, affirming that the assignment of civil power is by divine institution, hath made the conveyance as well as the power itself sacred: so that no consideration, no act or art of man, can divert it from that person, to whom, by this divine right, it is assigned; no necessity or contrivance can substitute another person in his room: for if the assignment of civil power be by divine institution, and Adam’s heir be he to whom it is thus assigned, as in the foregoing chapter our author tells us, it would be as much sacrilege for any one to be king, who was not Adam’s heir, as it would have been amongst the Jews, for any one to have been priest, who had not been of Aaron’s posterity: for not only the priesthood in general being by divine institution, but the assignment of it to the sole line and posterity of Aaron, made it impossible to be enjoyed or exercised by any one, but those persons who were the off-spring of Aaron: whose succession therefore was carefully observed, and by that the persons who had a right to the priesthood certainly known.

  §. 108.

  Let us see then what care our author has taken, to make us know who is this heir, who by divine institution has a right to be king over all men. The first account of him we meet with is, p. 12. in these words: This subjection of children, being the fountain of all regal authority, by the ordination of God himself; it follows, that civil power, not only in general, is by divine institution, but even the assignment of it, specifically to the eldest parents. Matters of such consequence as this is, should be in plain words, as little liable, as might be, to doubt or equivocation; and I think, if language be capable of expressing any thing distinctly and clearly, that of kindred, and the several degrees of nearness of blood, is one. It were therefore to be wished, that our author had used a little more intelligible expressions here, that we might have better known, who it is, to whom the assignment of civil power is made by divine institution; or at least would have told us what he meant by eldest parents: for I believe, if land had been assigned or granted to him, and the eldest parents of his family, he would have thought it had needed an interpreter; and it would scarce have been known to whom next it belonged.

  §. 109.

  In propriety of speech, (and certainly propriety of speech is necessary in a discourse of this nature) eldest parents signifies either the eldest men and women that have had children, or those who have longest had issue; and then our author’s assertion will be, that those fathers and mothers, who have been longest in the world, or longest fruitful, have by divine institution a right to civil power. If there be any absurdity in this, our author must answer for it: and if his meaning be different from my explication, he is to be blamed, that he would not speak it plainly. This I am sure, parents cannot signify heirs male, nor eldest parents an infant child: who yet may sometimes be the true heir, if there can be but one. And we are hereby still as much at a loss, who civil power belongs to, notwithstanding this assignment by divine institution, as if there had been no such assignment at all, or our author had said nothing of it. This of eldest parents leaving us more in the dark, who by divine institution has a right to civil power, than those who never heard any thing at all of heir, or descent, of which our author is so full. And though the chief matter of his writing be to teach obedience to those, who have a right to it, which he tells us is conveyed by descent, yet who those are, to whom this right by descent belongs, he leaves, like the philosophers stone in politics, out of the reach of any one to discover from his writings.

  §. 110.

  This obscurity cannot be imputed to want of language in so great a master of style as Sir Robert is, when he is resolved with himself what he would say: and therefore, I fear, finding how hard it would be to settle rules of descent by divine institution, and how little it would be to his purpose, or conduce to the clearing and establishing the titles of princes, if such rules of descent were settled, he chose rather to content himself with doubtful and general terms, which might make no ill found in mens ears, who were willing to be pleased with them, rather than offer any clear rules of descent of this fatherhood of Adam, by which men’s consciences might be satisfied to whom it descended, and know the persons who had a right to regal power, and with it to their obedience.

  §. 111.

  How else is it possible, that laying so much stress, as he does, upon descent, and Adam’s heir, next heir, true heir, he should never tell us what heir means, nor the way to know who the next or true heir is? This, I do not remember, he does any where expresly handle; but, where it comes in his way, very warily and doubtfully touches; though it be so necessary, that without it all discourses of government and obedience upon his principles would be to no purpose, and fatherly power, never so well made out, will be of no use to any body. Hence he tells us, Observations, 244. That not only the constitution of power in general, but the limitation of it to one kind, (i. e.) monarchy, and the determination of it to the individual person and line of Adam, are all three ordinances of God; neither Eve nor her children could either limit Adam’s power, or join others with him; and what was given unto Adam was given in his person to his posterity. Here again our author informs us, that the divine ordinance hath limited the descent of Adam’s monarchical power. To whom? To Adam’s line and posterity, says our author. A notable limitation, a limitation to all mankind: for if our author can find any one amongst mankind, that is not of the line and posterity of Adam, he may perhaps tell him, who this next heir of Adam is: but for us, I despair how this limitation of Adam’s empire to his line and posterity will help us to find out one heir. This limitation indeed of our author will save those the labour, who would look for him amongst the race of brutes, if any such there were; but will very little contribute to the discovery of one next heir amongst men, though it make a short and easy determination of the question about the descent of Adam’s regal power, by telling us, that the line and posterity of Adam is to have it, that is, in plain English, any one may have it, since there is no person living that hath not the title of being of the line and posterity of Adam; and while it keeps there, it keeps within our author’s limitation by God’s ordinance. Indeed, p. 19. he tells us, that such heirs are not only lords of their own children, but of their brethren; whereby, and by the words following, which we shall consider anon, he seems to insinuate, that the eldest son is heir; but he no where, that I know, says it in direct words, but by the instances of Cain and Jacob, that there follow, we may allow this to be so far his opinion concerning heirs, that where there are divers children, the eldest son has the right to be heir. That primogeniture cannot give any title to paternal power, we have already shewed. That a father may have a natural right to some kind of power over his children, is easily granted; but that an elder brother has so over his brethren, remains to be proved: God or nature has not any where, that I know, placed such jurisdiction in the first-born; nor can reason find any such natural superiority amongst brethren. The law of Moses gave a double portion of the goods and possessions to the eldest; but we find not any where that naturally, or by God’s institution, superiority or dominion belonged to him, and the instances there brought by our author are but slender proofs of a right to civil power and dominion in the first-born, and do rather shew the contrary.

  §. 112.

  His words are in the forecited place: And therefore we find God told Cain of his brother Abel; his desire shall be subject unto thee, and thou shalt rule over him. To which I answer,

  1. These words of God to Cain, are by many interpreters, with great reason, understood in a quite different sense than what our author uses them in.

  2. Whatever was meant by them, it could not be, that Cain, as elder, had a natural dominion over Abel; for the words are conditional, If thou dost well; and so personal to Cain: and whatever was signified by them, did depend on his carriage, and not follow his birth-right; and therefore could by no means be an establishment of dominion in the first-born in general: for before this Abel had his distinct territories by right of private dominion, as our author himself confesses, Observations, 210. which he could not have had to the prejudice of the heirs title, if by divine institution, Cain as heir were to inherit all his father’s dominion.

  3. If this were intended by God as the charter of primogeniture, and the grant of dominion to elder brothers in general as such, by right of inheritance, we might expect it should have included all his brethren: for we may well suppose, Adam, from whom the world was to be peopled, had by this time, that these were grown up to be men, more sons than these two: whereas Abel himself is not so much as named; and the words in the original can scarce, with any good construction, be applied to him.

  4. It is too much to build a doctrine of so mighty consequence upon so doubtful and obscure a place of scripture, which may be well, nay better, understood in a quite different sense, and so can be but an ill proof, being as doubtful as the thing to be proved by it; especially when there is nothing else in scripture or reason to be found, that favours or supports it.

  §. 113.

  It follows, p. 19. Accordingly when Jacob bought his brother’s birth-right, Isaac blessed him thus; Be lord over thy brethren, and let the sons of thy mother bow before thee. Another instance, I take it, brought by our author to evince dominion due to birth-right, and an admirable one it is: for it must be no ordinary way of reasoning in a man, that is pleading for the natural power of kings, and against all compact, to bring for proof of it, an example, where his own account of it founds all the right upon compact, and settles empire in the younger brother, unless buying and selling be no compact; for he tells us, when Jacob bought his brother’s birthright. But passing by that, let us consider the history itself, with what use our author makes of it, and we shall find these following mistakes about it.

  1. That our author reports this, as if Isaac had given Jacob this blessing, immediately upon his purchasing the birth-right; for he says, when Jacob bought, Isaac blessed him; which is plainly otherwise in the scripture: for it appears, there was a distance of time between, and if we will take the story in the order it lies, it must be no small distance; all Isaac’s sojourning in Gerar, and transactions with Abimelech, Gen. xxvi. coming between; Rebecca being then beautiful, and consequently young; but Isaac, when he blessed Jacob, was old and decrepit: and Esau also complains of Jacob, Gen. xxvii. 36. that two times he had supplanted him; He took away my birth-right, says he, and behold now he hath taken away my blessing; words, that I think signify distance of time and difference of action.

  2. Another mistake of our author’s is, that he supposes Isaac gave Jacob the blessing, and bid him be lord over his brethren, because he had the birth-right; for our author brings this example to prove, that he that has the birth-right, has thereby a right to be lord over his brethren. But it is also manifest by the text, that Isaac had no consideration of Jacob’s having bought the birth-right; for when he blessed him, he considered him not as Jacob, but took him for Esau. Nor did Esau understand any such connection between birth-right and the blessing; for he says, He hath supplanted me these two times, he took away my birth-right, and behold now he hath taken away my blessing: whereas had the blessing, which was to be lord over his brethren, belonged to the birth-right, Esau could not have complained of this second, as a cheat, Jacob having got nothing but what Esau had sold him, when he sold him his birth-right; so that it is plain, dominion, if these words signify it, was not understood to belong to the birth-right.

  §. 114.

  And that in those days of the patriarchs, dominion was not understood to be the right of the heir, but only a greater portion of goods, is plain from Gen. xxi. 10. for Sarah, taking Isaac to be heir, says, Cast out this bondwoman and her son, for the son of this bondwoman shall not be heir with my son: whereby could be meant nothing, but that he should not have a pretence to an equal share of his father’s estate after his death, but should have his portion presently, and be gone. Accordingly we read, Gen. xxv. 5, 6. That Abraham gave all that he had unto Isaac, but unto the sons of the concubines which Abraham had, Abraham gave gifts, and sent them away from Isaac his son, while he yet lived. That is, Abraham having given portions to all his other sons, and sent them away, that which he had reserved, being the greatest part of his substance, Isaac as heir possessed after his death: but by being heir, he had no right to be lord over his brethren; for if he had, why should Sarah endeavour to rob him of one of his subjects, or lessen the number of his slaves, by desiring to have Ishmael sent away?

  §. 115.

  Thus, as under the law, the privilege of birth-right was nothing but a double portion: so we see that before Moses, in the patriarchs time, from whence our author pretends to take his model, there was no knowledge, no thought, that birth-right gave rule or empire, paternal or kingly authority, to any one over his brethren. If this be not plain enough in the story of Isaac and Ishmael, he that will look into 1 Chron. v. 12. may there read these words: Reuben was the first-born; but forasmuch as he defiled his father’s bed, his birth-right was given unto the sons of Joseph, the son of Israel: and the genealogy is not to be reckoned after the birth-right; for Judah prevailed above his brethren, and of him came the chief ruler; but the birth-right was Joseph’s. What this birth-right was, Jacob blessing Joseph, Gen. xlviii. 22. telleth us in these words, Moreover I have given thee one portion above thy brethren, which I took out of the hand of the Amorite, with my sword and with my bow. Whereby it is not only plain, that the birth-right was nothing but a double portion; but the text in Chronicles is express against our author’s doctrine, and shews that dominion was no part of the birth-right; for it tells us, that Joseph had the birth-right, but Judah the dominion. One would think our author were very fond of the very name of birth-right, when he brings this instance of Jacob and Esau, to prove that dominion belongs to the heir over his brethren.

  §. 116.

  1. Because it will be but an ill example to prove, that dominion by God’s ordination belonged to the eldest son, because Jacob the youngest here had it, let him come by it how he would: for if it prove any thing, it can only prove, against our author, that the assignment of dominion to the eldest is not by divine institution, which would then be unalterable: for if by the law of God, or nature, absolute power and empire belongs to the eldest son and his heirs, so that they are supreme monarchs, and all the rest of their brethren slaves, our author gives us reason to doubt whether the eldest son has a power to part with it, to the prejudice of his posterity, since he tells us, Observations, 158. That in grants and gifts that have their original from God or nature, no inferior power of man can limit, or make any law of prescription against them.

  §. 117.

  2. Because this place, Gen. xxvii. 29. brought by our author, concerns not at all the dominion of one brother over the other, nor the subjection of Esau to Jacob: for it is plain in the history, that Esau was never subject to Jacob, but lived apart in mount Seir, where he founded a distinct people and government, and was himself prince over them, as much as Jacob was in his own family. This text, if considered, can never be understood of Esau himself, or the personal dominion of Jacob over him: for the words brethren and sons of thy mother, could not be used literally by Isaac, who knew Jacob had only one brother; and these words are so far from being true in a literal sense, or establishing any dominion in Jacob over Esau, that in the story we find the quite contrary, for Gen. xxxii. Jacob several times calls Esau lord, and himself his servant; and Gen. xxxiii. he bowed himself seven times to the ground to Esau. Whether Esau then were a subject and vassal (nay, as our author tells us, all subjects are slaves) to Jacob, and Jacob his sovereign prince by birth-right, I leave the reader to judge; and to believe if he can, that these words of Isaac, Be lord over thy brethren, and let thy mother’s sons bow down to thee, confirmed Jacob in a sovereignty over Esau, upon the account of the birth-right he had got from him.

  §. 118.

  He that reads the story of Jacob and Esau, will find there was never any jurisdiction or authority, that either of them had over the other after their father’s death: they lived with the friendship and equality of brethren, neither lord, neither slave to his brother; but independent each of other, were both heads of their distinct families, where they received no laws from one another, but lived separately, and were the roots out of which sprang two distinct people under two distinct governments. This blessing then of Isaac, whereon our author would build the dominion of the elder brother, signifies no more, but what Rebecca had been told from God, Gen. xxv. 23. Two nations are in thy womb, and two manner of people shall be separated from thy bowels, and the one people shall be stronger than the other people, and the elder shall serve the younger; and so Jacob blessed Judah, Gen. xlix. and gave him the scepter and dominion, from whence our author might have argued as well, that jurisdiction and dominion belongs to the third son over his brethren, as well as from this blessing of Isaac, that it belonged to Jacob: both these places contain only predictions of what should long after happen to their posterities, and not any declaration of the right of inheritance to dominion in either. And thus we have our author’s two great and only arguments to prove, that heirs are lords over their brethren.

  1. Because God tells Cain, Gen. iv. that however sin might set upon him, he ought or might be master of it: for the most learned interpreters understood the words of sin, and not of Abel, and give so strong reasons for it, that nothing can convincingly be inferred, from so doubtful a text, to our author’s purpose.

  2. Because in this of Gen. xxvii. Isaac foretels that the Israelites, the posterity of Jacob, should have dominion over the Edomites, the posterity of Esau; therefore says our author, heirs are lords of their brethren: I leave any one to judge of the conclusion.

  §. 119.

  And now we see how our author has provided for the descending, and conveyance down of Adam’s monarchical power, or paternal dominion to posterity, by the inheritance of his heir, succeeding to all his father’s authority, and becoming upon his death as much lord as his father was, not only over his own children, but over his brethren, and all descended from his father, and so in infinitum. But yet who this heir is, he does not once tell us; and all the light we have from him in this so fundamental a point, is only, that in his instance of Jacob, by using the word birth-right, as that which passed from Esau to Jacob, he leaves us to guess, that by heir, he means the eldest son; though I do not remember he any where mentions expresly the title of the first-born, but all along keeps himself under the shelter of the indefinite term heir. But taking it to be his meaning, that the eldest son is heir, (for if the eldest be not, there will be no pretence why the sons should not be all heirs alike) and so by right of primogeniture has dominion over his brethren; this is but one step towards the settlement of succession, and the difficulties remain still as much as ever, till he can shew us who is meant by right heir, in all those cases which may happen where the present possessor hath no son. This he silently passes over, and perhaps wisely too: for what can be wiser, after one has affirmed, that the person having that power, as well as the power and form of government, is the ordinance of God, and by divine institution, vid. Observations, 254. p. 12. than to be careful, not to start any question concerning the person, the resolution whereof will certainly lead him into a confession, that God and nature hath determined nothing about him? And if our author cannot shew who by right of nature, or a clear positive law of God, has the next right to inherit the dominion of this natural monarch he has been at such pains about, when he died without a son, he might have spared his pains in all the rest, it being more necessary for the settling men’s consciences, and determining their subjection and allegiance, to shew them who by original right, superior and antecedent to the will, or any act of men, hath a title to this paternal jurisdiction, than it is to shew that by nature there was such a jurisdiction; it being to no purpose for me to know there is such a paternal power, which I ought, and am disposed to obey, unless, where there are many pretenders, I also know the person that is rightfully invested and endowed with it.

  §. 120.

  For the main matter in question being concerning the duty of my obedience, and the obligation of conscience I am under to pay it to him that is of right my lord and ruler, I must know the person that this right of paternal power resides in, and so impowers him to claim obedience from me: for let it be true what he says, p. 12. That civil power not only in general is by divine institution, but even the assignment of it specially to the eldest parents; and Observations, 254. That not only the power or right of government, but the form of the power of governing, and the person having that power, are all the ordinance of God; yet unless he shew us in all cases who is this person, ordained by God, who is this eldest parent; all his abstract notions of monarchical power will signify just nothing, when they are to be reduced to practice, and men are conscientiously to pay their obedience: for paternal jurisdiction being not the thing to be obeyed, because it cannot command, but is only that which gives one man a right which another hath not, and if it come by inheritance, another man cannot have, to command and be obeyed; it is ridiculous to say, I pay obedience to the paternal power, when I obey him, to whom paternal power gives no right to my obedience: for he can have no divine right to my obedience, who cannot shew his divine right to the power of ruling over me, as well as that by divine right there is such a power in the world.

  §. 121.

  And hence not being able to make out any prince’s title to government, as heir to Adam, which therefore is of no use, and had been better let alone, he is fain to resolve all into present possession, and makes civil obedience as due to an usurper, as to a lawful king; and thereby the usurper’s title as good. His words are, Observations, 253. and they deserve to be remembered: If an usurper dispossess the true heir, the subjects obedience to the fatherly power must go along, and wait upon God’s providence. But I shall leave his title of usurpers to be examined in its due place, and desire my sober reader to consider what thanks princes owe such politics as this, which can suppose paternal power (i. e.) a right to government in the hands of a Cade, or a Cromwell; and so all obedience being due to paternal power, the obedience of subjects will be due to them, by the same right, and upon as good grounds, as it is to lawful princes; and yet this, as dangerous a doctrine as it is, must necessarily follow from making all political power to be nothing else, but Adam’s paternal power by right and divine institution, descending from him without being able to shew to whom it descended, or who is heir to it.

  §. 122.

  To settle government in the world, and to lay obligations to obedience on any man’s conscience, it is as necessary (supposing with our author that all power be nothing but the being possessed of Adam’s fatherhood) to satisfy him, who has a right to this power, this fatherhood, when the possessor dies without sons to succeed immediately to it, as it was to tell him, that upon the death of the father, the eldest son had a right to it: for it is still to be remembered, that the great question is, (and that which our author would be thought to contend for, if he did not sometimes forget it) what persons have a right to be obeyed, and not whether there be a power in the world, which is to be called paternal, without knowing in whom it resides: for so it be a power, i. e. right to govern, it matters not, whether it be termed paternal or regal, natural or acquired; whether you call it supreme fatherhood, or supreme brotherhood, will be all one, provided we know who has it.

  §. 123.

  I go on then to ask, whether in the inheriting of this paternal power, this supreme fatherhood, the grandson by a daughter hath a right before a nephew by a brother? Whether the grandson by the eldest son, being an infant, before the younger son, a man and able? Whether the daughter before the uncle? or any other man, descended by a male line? Whether a grandson by a younger daughter, before a grand-daughter by an elder daughter? Whether the elder son by a concubine, before a younger son by a wife? From whence also will arise many questions of legitimation, and what in nature is the difference betwixt a wife and a concubine? for as to the municipal or positive laws of men, they can signify nothing here. It may farther be asked, Whether the eldest son, being a fool, shall inherit this paternal power, before the younger, a wise man? and what degree of folly it must be that shall exclude him? and who shall be judge of it? Whether the son of a fool, excluded for his folly, before the son of his wise brother who reigned? Who has the paternal power whilst the widow-queen is with child by the deceased king, and no body knows whether it will be a son or a daughter? Which shall be heir of the two male-twins, who by the dissection of the mother were laid open to the world? Whether a sister by the half blood, before a brother’s daughter by the whole blood?

  §. 124.

  These, and many more such doubts, might be proposed about the titles of succession, and the right of inheritance; and that not as idle speculations, but such as in history we shall find have concerned the inheritance of crowns and kingdoms; and if our’s want them, we need not go farther for famous examples of it, than the other kingdom in this very island, which having been fully related by the ingenious and learned author of Patriarcha non Monarcha, I need say no more of. Till our author hath resolved all the doubts that may arise about the next heir, and shewed that they are plainly determined by the law of nature, or the revealed law of God, all his suppositions of a monarchical, absolute, supreme, paternal power in Adam, and the descent of that power to his heirs, would not be of the least use to establish the authority, or make out the title, of any one prince now on earth; but would rather unsettle and bring all into question: for let our author tell us as long as he pleases, and let all men believe it too, that Adam had a paternal, and thereby a monarchical power; that this (the only power in the world) descended to his heirs; and that there is no other power in the world but this: let this be all as clear demonstration, as it is manifest error, yet if it be not past doubt, to whom this paternal power descends, and whose now it is, no body can be under any obligation of obedience, unless any one will say, that I am bound to pay obedience to paternal power in a man who has no more paternal power than I myself; which is all one as to say, I obey a man, because he has a right to govern; and if I be asked, how I know he has a right to govern, I should answer, it cannot be known, that he has any at all: for that cannot be the reason of my obedience, which I know not to be so; much less can that be a reason of my obedience, which no body at all can know to be so.

  §. 125.

  And therefore all this ado about Adam’s fatherhood, the greatness of its power, and the necessity of its supposal, helps nothing to establish the power of those that govern, or to determine the obedience of subjects who are to obey, if they cannot tell whom they are to obey, or it cannot be known who are to govern, and who to obey. In the state the world is now, it is irrecoverably ignorant, who is Adam’s heir. This fatherhood, this monarchical power of Adam, descending to his heirs, would be of no more use to the government of mankind, than it would be to the quieting of mens consciences, or securing their healths, if our author had assured them, that Adam had a power to forgive sins, or cure diseases, which by divine institution descended to his heir, whilst this heir is impossible to be known. And should not he do as rationally, who upon this assurance of our author went and confessed his sins, and expected a good absolution; or took physic with expectation of health, from any one who had taken on himself the name of priest or physician, or thrust himself into those employments, saying, I acquiesce in the absolving power descending from Adam, or I shall be cured by the medicinal power descending from Adam; as he who says, I submit to and obey the paternal power descending from Adam, when it is confessed all these powers descend only to his single heir, and that heir is unknown?

  §. 126.

  It is true, the civil lawyers have pretended to determine some of these cases concerning the succession of princes; but by our author’s principles, they have meddled in a matter that belongs not to them: for if all political power be derived only from Adam, and be to descend only to his successive heirs, by the ordinance of God and divine institution, this is a right antecedent and paramount to all government; and therefore the positive laws of men cannot determine that, which is itself the foundation of all law and government, and is to receive its rule only from the law of God and nature. And that being silent in the case, I am apt to think there is no such right to be conveyed this way: I am sure it would be to no purpose if there were, and men would be more at a loss concerning government, and obedience to governors, than if there were no such right; since by positive laws and compact, which divine institution (if there be any) shuts out, all these endless inextricable doubts can be safely provided against: but it can never be understood, how a divine natural right, and that of such moment as is all order and peace in the world, should be conveyed down to posterity, without any plain natural or divine rule concerning it. And there would be an end of all civil government, if the assignment of civil power were by divine institution to the heir, and yet by that divine institution the person of the heir could not be known. This paternal regal power being by divine right only his, it leaves no room for human prudence, or consent, to place it any where else; for if only one man hath a divine right to the obedience of mankind, no body can claim that obedience, but he that can shew that right; nor can men’s consciences by any other pretence be obliged to it. And thus this doctrine cuts up all government by the roots.

  §. 127.

  Thus we see how our author, laying it for a sure foundation, that the very person that is to rule, is the ordinance of God, and by divine institution, tells us at large, only that this person is the heir, but who this heir is, he leaves us to guess; and so this divine institution, which assigns it to a person whom we have no rule to know, is just as good as an assignment to no body at all. But whatever our author does, divine institution makes no such ridiculous assignments: nor can God be supposed to make it a sacred law, that one certain person should have a right to something, and yet not give rules to mark out, and know that person by, or give an heir a divine right to power, and yet not point out who that heir is. It is rather to be thought, that an heir had no such right by divine institution, than that God should give such a right to the heir, but yet leave it doubtful and undeterminable who such heir is.

  §. 128.

  If God had given the land of Canaan to Abraham, and in general terms to some body after him, without naming his seed, whereby it might be known who that somebody was, it would have been as good and useful an assignment, to determine the right to the land of Canaan, as it would be the determining the right of crowns, to give empire to Adam and his successive heirs after him, without telling who his heir is: for the word heir, without a rule to know who it is, signifies no more than some body, I know not whom. God making it a divine institution, that men should not marry those who were near of kin, thinks it not enough to say, None of you shall approach to any that is near of kin to him, to uncover their nakedness; but moreover, gives rules to know who are those near of kin, forbidden by divine institution; or else that law would have been of no use, it being to no purpose to lay restraint, or give privileges to men, in such general terms, as the particular person concerned cannot be known by. But God not having any where said, the next heir shall inherit all his father’s estate or dominion, we are not to wonder, that he hath no where appointed who that heir should be; for never having intended any such thing, never designed any heir in that sense, we cannot expect he should any where nominate, or appoint any person to it, as we might, had it been otherwise. And therefore in scripture, though the word heir occur, yet there is no such thing as heir in our author’s sense, one that was by right of nature to inherit all that his father had, exclusive of his brethren. Hence Sarah supposes, that if Ishmael staid in the house, to share in Abraham’s estate after his death, this son of a bond-woman might be heir with Isaac; and therefore, says she, cast out this bond-woman and her son, for the son of this bond-woman shall not be heir with my son: but this cannot excuse our author, who telling us there is, in every number of men, one who is right and next heir to Adam, ought to have told us what the laws of descent are: but he having been so sparing to instruct us by rules, how to know who is heir, let us see in the next place, what his history out of scripture, on which he pretends wholly to build his government, gives us in this necessary and fundamental point.

  §. 129.

  Our author, to make good the title of his book, p. 13. begins his history of the descent of Adam’s regal power, p. 13. in these words: This lordship which Adam by command had over the whole world, and by right descending from him, the patriarchs did enjoy, was a large, &c. How does he prove that the patriarchs by descent did enjoy it? for dominion of life and death, says he, we find Judah the father pronounced sentence of death against Thamar his daughter in law for playing the harlot, p. 13. How does this prove that Judah had absolute and sovereign authority? he pronounced sentence of death. The pronouncing of sentence of death is not a certain mark of sovereignty, but usually the office of inferior magistrates. The power of making laws of life and death is indeed a mark of sovereignty, but pronouncing the sentence according to those laws may be done by others, and therefore this will but ill prove that he had sovereign authority: as if one should say, Judge Jefferies pronounced sentence of death in the late times, therefore Judge Jefferies had sovereign authority. But it will be said, Judah did it not by commission from another, and therefore did it in his own right. Who knows whether he had any right at all? Heat of passion might carry him to do that which he had no authority to do. Judah had dominion of life and death: how does that appear? He exercised it, he pronounced sentence of death against Thamar: our author thinks it is very good proof, that because he did it, therefore he had a right to do it: he lay with her also: by the same way of proof, he had a right to do that too. If the consequence be good from doing to a right of doing, Absalom too may be reckoned amongst our author’s sovereigns, for he pronounced such a sentence of death against his brother Amnon, and much upon a like occasion, and had it executed too, if that be sufficient to prove a dominion of life and death.

  But allowing this all to be clear demonstration of sovereign power, who was it that had this lordship by right descending to him from Adam, as large and ample as the absolutest dominion of any monarch? Judah, says our author, Judah a younger son of Jacob, his father and elder brethren living; so that if our author’s own proof be to be taken, a younger brother may, in the life of his father and elder brothers, by right of descent, enjoy Adam’s monarchical power; and if one so qualified may be monarch by descent, why may not every man? if Judah, his father and elder brother living, were one of Adam’s heirs, I know not who can be excluded from this inheritance; all men by inheritance may be monarchs as well as Judah.

  §. 130.

  Touching war, we see that Abraham commanded an army of 318 soldiers of his own family, and Esau met his brother Jacob with 400 men at arms: for matter of peace, Abraham made a league with Abimelech, &c. p. 13. Is it not possible for a man to have 318 men in his family, without being heir to Adam? A planter in the West Indies has more, and might, if he pleased, (who doubts?) muster them up and lead them out against the Indians, to seek reparation upon any injury received from them; and all this without the absolute dominion of a monarch, descending to him from Adam. Would it not be an admirable argument to prove, that all power by God’s institution descended from Adam by inheritance, and that the very person and power of this planter were the ordinance of God, because he had power in his family over servants, born in his house, and bought with his money? For this was just Abraham’s case; those who were rich in the patriarch’s days, as in the West Indies now, bought men and maid servants, and by their increase, as well as purchasing of new, came to have large and numerous families, which though they made use of in war or peace, can it be thought the power they had over them was an inheritance descended from Adam, when it was the purchase of their money? A man’s riding in an expedition against an enemy, his horse bought in a fair would be as good a proof that the owner enjoyed the lordship which Adam by command had over the whole world, by right descending to him, as Abraham’s leading out the servants of his family is, that the patriarchs enjoyed this lordship by descent from Adam: since the title to the power, the master had in both cases, whether over slaves or horses, was only from his purchase; and the getting a dominion over any thing by bargain and money, is a new way of proving one had it by descent and inheritance.

  §. 131.

  But making war and peace are marks of sovereignty. Let it be so in politic socities: may not therefore a man in the West Indies, who hath with him sons of his own, friends, or companions, soldiers under pay, or slaves bought with money, or perhaps a band made up of all these, make war and peace, if there should be occasion, and ratify the articles too with an oath, without being a sovereign, an absolute king over those who went with him? He that says he cannot, must then allow many masters of ships, many private planters, to be absolute monarchs, for as much as this they have done. War and peace cannot be made for politic societies, but by the supreme power of such societies; because war and peace, giving a different motion to the force of such a politic body, none can make war or peace, but that which has the direction of the force of the whole body, and that in politic societies is only the supreme power. In voluntary societies for the time, he that has such a power by consent, may make war and peace, and so may a single man for himself, the state of war not consisting in the number of partisans, but the enmity of the parties, where they have no superior to appeal to.

  §. 132.

  The actual making of war or peace is no proof of any other power, but only of disposing those to exercise or cease acts of enmity for whom he makes it; and this power in many cases any one may have without any politic supremacy: and therefore the making of war or peace will not prove that every one that does so is a politic ruler, much less a king; for then common-wealths must be kings too, for they do as certainly make war and peace as monarchical government.

  §. 133.

  But granting this a mark of sovereignty in Abraham, is it a proof of the descent to him of Adam’s sovereignty over the whole world? If it be, it will surely be as good a proof of the descent of Adam’s lordship to others too. And then common-wealths, as well as Abraham, will be heirs of Adam, for they make war and peace, as well as he. If you say, that the lordship of Adam doth not by right descend to common-wealths, though they make war and peace, the same say I of Abraham, and then there is an end of your argument: if you stand to your argument, and say those that do make war and peace, as common-wealths do without doubt, do inherit Adam’s lordship, there is an end of your monarchy, unless you will say, that commonwealths by descent enjoying Adam’s lordship are monarchies; and that indeed would be a new way of making all the governments in the world monarchical.

  §. 134.

  To give our author the honour of this new invention, for I confess it is not I have first found it out by tracing his principles, and so charged it on him, it is fit my readers know that (as absurd as it may seem) he teaches it himself, p. 23. where he ingenuously says, In all kingdoms and common-wealths in the world, whether the prince be the supreme father of the people, or but the true heir to such a father, or come to the crown by usurpation or election, or whether some few or a multitude govern the common-wealth; yet still the authority that is in any one, or in many, or in all these, is the only right, and natural authority of a supreme father; which right of fatherhood, he often tells us, is regal and royal authority; as particularly, p. 12. the page immediately preceding this instance of Abraham. This regal authority, he says, those that govern common-wealths have; and if it be true, that regal and royal authority be in those that govern common-wealths, it is as true that common-wealths are governed by kings; for if regal authority be in him that governs, he that governs must needs be a king, and so all common-wealths are nothing but down-right monarchies; and then what need any more ado about the matter? The governments of the world are as they should be, there is nothing but monarchy in it. This, without doubt, was the surest way our author could have found, to turn all other governments, but monarchical, out of the world.

  §. 135.

  But all this scarce proves Abraham to have been a king as heir to Adam. If by inheritance he had been king, Lot, who was of the same family, must needs have been his subject, by that title, before the servants in his family; but we see they lived as friends and equals, and when their herdsmen could not agree, there was no pretence of jurisdiction or superiority between them, but they parted by consent, Gen. xiii. hence he is called both by Abraham, and by the text, Abraham’s brother, the name of friendship and equality, and not of jurisdiction and authority, though he were really but his nephew. And if our author knows that Abraham was Adam’s heir, and a king, it was more, it seems, than Abraham himself knew, or his servant whom he sent a wooing for his son; for when he sets out the advantages of the match, xxiv. Gen. 35. thereby to prevail with the young woman and her friends, he says, I am Abraham’s servant, and the lord hath blessed my master greatly, and he is become great; and he hath given him flocks and herds, and silver and gold, and men-servants and maid-servants, and camels and asses; and Sarah, my master’s wife, bare a son to my master when she was old, and unto him hath he given all he hath. Can one think that a discreet servant, that was thus particular to set out his master’s greatness, would have omitted the crown Isaac was to have, if he had known of any such? Can it be imagined he should have neglected to have told them on such an occasion as this, that Abraham was a king, a name well known at that time, for he had nine of them his neighbours, if he or his master had thought any such thing, the likeliest matter of all the rest, to make his errand successful?

  §. 136.

  But this discovery it seems was reserved for our author to make 2 or 3000 years after, and let him enjoy the credit of it; only he should have taken care that some of Adam’s land should have descended to this his heir, as well as all Adam’s lordship: for though this lordship which Abraham, (if we may believe our author) as well as the other patriarchs, by right descending to him, did enjoy, was as large and ample as the absolutest dominion of any monarch which hath been since the creation; yet his estate, his territories, his dominions were very narrow and scanty, for he had not the possession of a foot of land, till he bought a field and a cave of the sons of Heth to bury Sarah in.

  §. 137.

  The instance of Esau joined with this of Abraham, to prove that the lordship which Adam had over the whole world, by right descending from him, the patriarchs did enjoy, is yet more pleasant than the former. Esau met his brother Jacob with 400 men at arms; he therefore was a king by right of heir to Adam. Four hundred armed men then, however got together, are enough to prove him that leads them, to be a king and Adam’s heir. There have been tories in Ireland, (whatever there are in other countries) who would have thanked our author for so honourable an opinion of them, especially if there had been no body near with a better title of 500 armed men, to question their royal authority of 400. It is a shame for men to trifle so, to say no worse of it, in so serious an argument. Here Esau is brought as a proof that Adam’s lordship, Adam’s absolute dominion, as large as that of any monarch, descended by right to the patriarchs, and in this very chap. p. 19. Jacob is brought as an instance of one, that by birth-right was lord over his brethren. So we have here two brothers absolute monarchs by the same title, and at the same time heirs to Adam; the eldest, heir to Adam, because he met his brother with 400 men; and the youngest, heir to Adam by birth-right: Esau enjoyed the lordship which Adam had over the whole world by right descending to him, in as large and ample manner, as the absolutest dominion of any monarch; and at the same time, Jacob lord over him, by the right heirs have to be lords over their brethren. Risum teneatis? I never, I confess, met with any man of parts so dexterous as Sir Robert at this way of arguing: but it was his misfortune to light upon an hypothesis, that could not be accommodated to the nature of things, and human affairs; his principles could not be made to agree with that constitution and order, which God had settled in the world, and therefore must needs often clash with common sense and experience.

  §. 138.

  In the next section, he tells us, This patriarchal power continued not only till the flood, but after it, as the name patriarch doth in part prove. The word patriarch doth more than in part prove, that patriarchal power continued in the world as long as there were patriarchs, for it is necessary that patriarchal power should be whilst there are patriarchs; as it is necessary there should be paternal or conjugal power whilst there are fathers or husbands; but this is but playing with names. That which he would fallaciously insinuate is the thing in question to be proved, viz. that the lordship which Adam had over the world, the supposed absolute universal dominion of Adam by right descending from him, the patriarchs did enjoy. If he affirms such an absolute monarchy continued to the flood, in the world, I would be glad to know what records he has it from; for I confess I cannot find a word of it in my Bible: if by patriarchal power he means any thing else, it is nothing to the matter in hand. And how the name patriarch in some part proves, that those, who are called by that name, had absolute monarchical power, I confess, I do not see, and therefore I think needs no answer till the argument from it be made out a little clearer.

  §. 139.

  The three sons of Noah had the world, says our author, divided amongst them by their father, for of them was the whole world overspread, p. 14. The world might be overspread by the offspring of Noah’s sons, though he never divided the world amongst them; for the earth might be replenished without being divided: so that all our author’s argument here proves no such division. However, I allow it to him, and then ask, the world being divided amongst them, which of the three was Adam’s heir? If Adam’s lordship, Adam’s monarchy, by right descended only to the eldest, then the other two could be but his subjects, his slaves: if by right it descended to all three brothers, by the same right, it will descend to all mankind; and then it will be impossible what he says, p. 19. that heirs are lords of their brethren, should be true; but all brothers, and consequently all men, will be equal and independent, all heirs to Adam’s monarchy, and consequently all monarchs too, one as much as another. But it will be said, Noah their father divided the world amongst them; so that our author will allow more to Noah, than he will to God almighty, for Observations, 211. he thought it hard, that God himself should give the world to Noah and his sons, to the prejudice of Noah’s birth-right: his words are, Noah was left sole heir to the world: why should it be thought that God would disinherit him of his birth-right, and make him, of all men in the world, the only tenant in common with his children? and yet here he thinks it fit that Noah should disinherit Shem of his birth-right, and divide the world betwixt him and his brethren; so that this birth-right, when our author pleases, must, and when he pleases must not, be sacred and inviolable.

  §. 140.

  If Noah did divide the world between his sons, and his assignment of dominions to them were good, there is an end of divine institution; all our author’s discourse of Adam’s heir, with whatsoever he builds on it, is quite out of doors; the natural power of kings falls to the ground; and then the form of the power governing, and the person having that power, will not be (as he says they are, Observations, 254.) the ordinance of God, but they will be ordinances of man: for if the right of the heir be the ordinance of God, a divine right, no man, father or not father, can alter it: if it be not a divine right, it is only human, depending on the will of man: and so where human institution gives it not, the first-born has no right at all above his brethren; and men may put government into what hands, and under what form, they please.

  §. 141.

  He goes on, Most of the civilest nations of the earth labour to fetch their originalfrom some of the sons, or nephews of Noah, p. 14. How many do most of the civilest nations amount to? and who are they? I fear the Chineses, a very great and civil people, as well as several other people of the East, West, North and South, trouble not themselves much about this matter. All that believe the Bible, which I believe are our author’s most of the civilest nations, must necessarily derive themselves from Noah; but for the rest of the world, they think little of his sons or nephews. But if the heralds and antiquaries of all nations, for it is these men generally that labour to find out the originals of nations, or all the nations themselves, should labour to fetch their original from some of the sons or nephews of Noah, what would this be to prove, that the lordship which Adam had over the whole world, by right descended to the patriarchs? Whoever, nations, or races of men, labour to fetch their original from, may be concluded to be thought by them, men of renown, famous to posterity, for the greatness of their virtues and actions; but beyond these they look not, nor consider who they were heirs to, but look on them as such as raised themselves, by their own virtue, to a degree that would give a lustre to those who in future ages could pretend to derive themselves from them. But if it were Ogyges, Hercules, Brama, Tamberlain, Pharamond; nay, if Jupiter and Saturn were the names, from whence divers races of men, both ancient and modern, have laboured to derive their original; will that prove, that those men enjoyed the lordship of Adam, by right descending to them? If not, this is but a flourish of our author’s to mislead his reader, that in itself signifies nothing.

  §. 142.

  To as much purpose is what he tells us, p. 15. concerning this division of the world, That some say it was by Lot, and others that Noah sailed round the Mediterreanean in ten years, and divided the world into Asia, Afric and Europe, portions for his three sons. America then, it seems, was left to be his that could catch it. Why our author takes such pains to prove the division of the world by Noah to his sons, and will not leave out an imagination, though no better than a dream, that he can find any where to favour it, is hard to guess, since such a division, if it prove any thing, must necessarily take away the title of Adam’s heir; unless three brothers can all together be heirs of Adam; and therefore the following words, Howsoever the manner of this division be uncertain, yet it is most certain the division itself was by families from Noah and his children, over which the parents were heads and princes, p. 15. if allowed him to be true, and of any sorce to prove, that all the power in the world is nothing but the lordship of Adam’s descending by right, they will only prove, that the fathers of the children are all heirs to this lordship of Adam: for if in those days Cham and Japhet, and other parents, besides the eldest son, were heads and princes over their families, and had a right to divide the earth by families, what hinders younger brothers, being fathers of families, from having the same right? If Cham and Japhet were princes by right descending to them, notwithstanding any title of heir in their eldest brother, younger brothers by the same right descending to them are princes now; and so all our author’s natural power of kings will reach no farther than their own children, and no kingdom, by this natural right, can be bigger than a family: for either this lordship of Adam over the whole world, by right descends only to the eldest son, and then there can be but one heir, as our author says, p. 19. or else, it by right descends to all the sons equally, and then every father of a family will have it, as well as the three sons of Noah: take which you will, it destroys the present governments and kingdoms, that are now in the world, since whoever has this natural power of a king, by right descending to him, must have it, either as our author tells us Cain had it, and be lord over his brethren, and so be alone king of the whole world; or else, as he tells us here, Shem, Cham and Japhet had it, three brothers, and so be only prince of his own family, and all families independent one of another: all the world must be only one empire by the right of the next heir, or else every family be a distinct government of itself, by the lordship of Adam’s descending to parents of families. And to this only tend all the proofs he here gives us of the descent of Adam’s lordship: for continuing his story of this descent, he says,

  §. 143.

  In the dispersion of Babel, we must certainly find the establishment of royal power, throughout the kingdoms of the world, p. 14. If you must find it, pray do, and you will help us to a new piece of history: but you must shew it us before we shall be bound to believe, that regal power was established in the world upon your principles: for, that regal power was established in the kingdoms of the world, I think no body will dispute; but that there should be kingdoms in the world, whose several kings enjoyed their crowns, by right descending to them from Adam, that we think not only apocryphal, but also utterly impossible. If our author has no better foundation for his monarchy than a supposition of what was done at the dispersion of Babel, the monarchy he erects thereon, whose top is to reach to heaven to unite mankind, will serve only to divide and scatter them as that tower did; and, instead of establishing civil government and order in the world, will produce nothing but confusion.

  §. 144.

  For he tells us, the nations they were divided into, were distinct families, which had fathers for rulers over them; whereby it appears, that even in the confusion, God was careful to preserve the fatherly authority, by distributing the diversity of languages according to the diversity of families, p. 14. It would have been a hard matter for any one but our author to have found out so plainly, in the text he here brings, that all the nations in that dispersion were governed by fathers, and that God was careful to preserve the fatherly authority. The words of the text are; These are the sons of Shem after their families, after their tongues in their lands, after their nations; and the same thing is said of Cham and Japhet, after an enumeration of their posterities; in all which there is not one word said of their governors, or forms of government; of fathers, or fatherly authority. But our author, who is very quick sighted to spy out fatherhood, where no body else could see any the least glimpses of it, tells us positively their rulers were fathers, and God was careful to preserve the fatherly authority; and why? Because those of the same family spoke the same language, and so of necessity in the division kept together. Just as if one should argue thus: Hanibal in his army, consisting of divers nations, kept those of the same language together; therefore fathers were captains of each band, and Hanibal was careful of the fatherly authority: or in peopling of Carolina, the English, French, Scotch and Welch that are there, plant themselves together, and by them the country is divided in their lands after their tongues, after their families, after their nations; therefore care was taken of the fatherly authority: or because, in many parts of America, every little tribe was a distinct people, with a different language, one should infer, that therefore God was careful to preserve the fatherly authority, or that therefore their rulers enjoyed Adam’s lordship by right descending to them, though we know not who were their governors, nor what their form of government, but only that they were divided into little independent societies, speaking different languages.

  §. 145.

  The scripture says not a word of their rulers or forms of government, but only gives an account, how mankind came to be divided into distinct languages and nations; and therefore it is not to argue from the authority of scripture, to tell us positively, fathers were their rulers, when the scripture says no such thing; but to set up fancies of one’s own brain, when we confidently aver matter of fact, where records are utterly silent. Upon a like ground, i. e. none at all, he says, That they were not confused multitudes without heads and governors, and at liberty to choose what governors or governments they pleased.

  §. 146.

  For I demand, when mankind were all yet of one language, all congregated in the plain of Shinar, were they then all under one monarch, who enjoyed the lordship of Adam by right descending to him? If they were not, there were then no thoughts, it is plain, of Adam’s heir, no right to government known then upon that title; no care taken, by God or man, of Adam’s fatherly authority. If when mankind were but one people, dwelt all together, and were of one language, and were upon building a city together; and when it was plain, they could not but know the right heir, for Shem lived till Isaac’s time, a long while after the division at Babel; if then, I say, they were not under the monarchical government of Adam’s fatherhood, by right descending to the heir, it is plain there was no regard had to the fatherhood, no monarchy acknowledged due to Adam’s heir, no empire of Shem’s in Asia, and consequently no such division of the world by Noah, as our author has talked of. As far as we can conclude any thing from scripture in this matter, it seems from this place, that if they had any government, it was rather a common-wealth than an absolute monarchy: for the scripture tells us, Gen. xi. They said: it was not a prince commanded the building of this city and tower, it was not by the command of one monarch, but by the consultation of many, a free people; let us buildus a city: they built it for themselves as free-men, not as slaves for their lord and master: that we be not scattered abroad; having a city once built, and fixed habitations to settle our abodes and families. This was the consultation and design of a people, that were at liberty to part asunder, but desired to keep in one body, and could not have been either necessary or likely in men tied together under the government of one monarch, who if they had been, as our author tells us, all slaves under the absolute dominion of a monarch, needed not have taken such care to hinder themselves from wandering out of the reach of his dominion. I demand whether this be not plainer in scripture than any thing of Adam’s heir or fatherly authority?

  §. 147.

  But if being, as God says, Gen. xi. 6. one people, they had one ruler, one king by natural right, absolute and supreme over them, what care had God to preserve the paternal authority of the supreme fatherhood, if on a sudden he suffer 72 (for so many our author talks of) distinct nations to be erected out of it, under distinct governors, and at once to withdraw themselves from the obedience of their sovereign? This is to intitle God’s care how, and to what we please. Can it be sense to say, that God was careful to preserve the fatherly authority in those who had it not? for if these were subjects under a supreme prince, what authority had they? Was it an instance of God’s care to preserve the fatherly authority, when he took away the true supreme fatherhood of the natural monarch? Can it be reason to say, that God, for the preservation of fatherly authority, lets several new governments with their governors start up, who could not all have fatherly authority? And is it not as much reason to say, that God is careful to destroy fatherly authority, when he suffers one, who is in possession of it, to have his government torn in pieces, and shared by several of his subjects? Would it not be an argument just like this, for monarchical government, to say, when any monarchy was shattered to pieces, and divided amongst revolted subjects, that God was careful to preserve monarchical power, by rending a settled empire into a multitude of little governments? If any one will say, that what happens in providence to be preserved, God is careful to preserve as a thing therefore to be esteemed by men as necessary or useful, it is a peculiar propriety of speech, which every one will not think fit to imitate: but this I am sure is impossible to be either proper, or true speaking, that Shem, for example, (for he was then alive,) should have fatherly authority, or sovereignty by right of fatherhood, over that one people at Babel, and that the next moment, Shem yet living, 72 others should have fatherly authority, or sovereignty by right of fatherhood, over the same people, divided into so many distinct governments: either these 72 fathers actually were rulers, just before the confusion, and then they were not one people, but that God himself says they were; or else they were a common-wealth, and then where was monarchy? or else these 72 fathers had fatherly authority, but knew it not. Strange! that fatherly authority should be the only original of government amongst men, and yet all mankind not know it; and stranger yet, that the confusion of tongues should reveal it to them all of a sudden, that in an instant these 72 should know that they had fatherly power, and all others know that they were to obey it in them, and every one know that particular fatherly authority to which he was a subject. He that can think this arguing from scripture, may from thence make out what model of an Eutopia will best suit with his fancy or interest; and this fatherhood, thus disposed of, will justify both a prince who claims an universal monarchy, and his subjects, who, being fathers of families, shall quit all subjection to him, and canton his empire into less governments for themselves; for it will always remain a doubt in which of these the fatherly authority resided, till our author resolves us, whether Shem, who was then alive, or these 72 new princes, beginning so many new empires in his dominions, and over his subjects, had right to govern, since our author tells us, that both one and the other had fatherly, which is supreme authority, and are brought in by him as instances of those who did enjoy the lordships of Adam by right descending to them, which was as large and ample as the absolutest dominion of any monarch. This at least is unavoidable, that if God was careful to preserve the fatherly authority, in the 72 new-erected nations, it necessarily follows, that he was as careful to destroy all pretences of Adam’s heir; fince he took care, and therefore did preserve the fatherly authority in so many, at least 71, that could not possibly be Adam’s heirs, when the right heir (if God had ever ordained any such inheritance) could not but be known, Shem then living, and they being all one people.

  §. 148.

  Nimrod is his next instance of enjoying this patriarchal power, p. 16. but I know not for what reason our author seems a little unkind to him, and says, that he against right enlarged his empire, by seizing violently on the rights of other lords of families. These lords of families here were called fathers of families, in his account of the dispersion at Babel: but it matters not how they were called, so we know who they are; for this fatherly authority must be in them, either as heirs to Adam, and so there could not be 72, nor above one at once; or else as natural parents over their children, and so every father will have paternal authority over his children by the same right, and in as large extent as those 72 had, and so be independent princes over their own offspring. Taking his lords of families in this later sense, (as it is hard to give those words any other sense in this place) he gives us a very pretty account of the original of monarchy, in these following words, p. 16. And in this sense he may be said to be the author and founder of monarchy, viz. As against right seizing violently on the rights of fathers over their children; which paternal authority, if it be in them, by right of nature, (for else how could those 72 come by it?) no body can take from them without their own consents; and then I desire our author and his friends to consider, how far this will concern other princes, and whether it will not, according to his conclusion of that paragraph, resolve all regal power of those, whose dominions extend beyond their families, either into tyranny and usurpation, or election and consent of fathers of families, which will differ very little from consent of the people.

  §. 149.

  All his instances, in the next section, p. 17. of the 12 dukes of Edom, the nine kings in a little corner of Asia in Abraham’s days, the 31 kings in Canaan destroyed by Joshua, and the care he takes to prove that these were all sovereign princes, and that every town in those days had a king, are so many direct proofs against him, that it was not the lordship of Adam by right descending to them, that made kings: for if they had held their royalties by that title, either there must have been but one sovereign over them all, or else every father of a family had been as good a prince, and had as good a claim to royalty, as these: for if all the sons of Esau had each of them, the younger as well as the eldest, the right of fatherhood, and so were sovereign princes after their fathers death, the same right had their sons after them, and so on to all posterity; which will limit all the natural power of fatherhood, only to be over the issue of their own bodies, and their descendents; which power of fatherhood dies with the head of each family, and makes way for the like power of fatherhood to take place in each of his sons over their respective posterities: whereby the power of fatherhood will be preserved indeed, and is intelligible, but will not be at all to our author’s purpose. None of the instances he brings are proofs of any power they had, as heirs of Adam’s paternal authority by the title of his fatherhood descending to them; no, nor of any power they had by virtue of their own: for Adam’s fatherhood being over all mankind, it could descend but to one at once, and from him to his right heir only, and so there could by that title be but one king in the world at a time: and by right of fatherhood, not descending from Adam, it must be only as they themselves were fathers, and so could be over none but their own posterity. So that if those 12 dukes of Edom; if Abraham and the nine kings his neighbours; if Jacob and Esau, and the 31 kings in Canaan, the 72 kings mutilated by Adonibeseck, the 32 kings that came to Benhadad, the 70 kings of Greece making war at Troy, were, as our author contends, all of them sovereign princes; it is evident that kings derived their power from some other original than fatherhood, since some of these had power over more than their own posterity; and it is demonstration, they could not be all heirs to Adam: for I challenge any man to make any pretence to power by right of fatherhood, either intelligible or possible in any one, otherwise, than either as Adam’s heir, or as progenitor over his own descendents, naturally sprung from him. And if our author could shew that any one of these princes, of which he gives us here so large a catalogue, had his authority by either of these titles, I think I might yield him the cause; though it is manifest they are all impertinent, and directly contrary to what he brings them to prove, viz. That the lordship which Adam had over the world by right descended to the patriarchs.

  §. 150.

  Having told us, p. 16, That the patriarchal government continued in Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, until the Egyptian bondage, p. 17. he tells us, By manifest footsteps we may trace this paternal government unto the Israelites coming into Egypt, where the exercise of supreme patriarchal government was intermitted, because they were in subjection to a stronger prince. What these footsteps are of paternal government, in our author’s sense, i. e. of absolute monarchical power descending from Adam, and exercised by right of fatherhood, we have seen, that is for 2290 years no footsteps at all; since in all that time he cannot produce any one example of any person who claimed or exercised regal authority by right of fatherhood; or shew any one who being a king was Adam’s heir: all that his proofs amount to, is only this, that there were fathers, patriarchs and kings, in that age of the world; but that the fathers and patriarchs had any absolute arbitrary power, or by what titles those kings had their’s, and of what extent it was, the scripture is wholly filent; it is manifest by right of fatherhood they neither did, nor could claim any title to dominion and empire.

  §. 151.

  To say, that the exercise of supreme patriarchal government was intermitted, because they were in subjection to a stronger prince, proves nothing but what I before suspected, viz. That patriarchal jurisdiction or government is a fallacious expression, and does not in our author signify (what he would yet insinuate by it) paternal and regal power, such an absolute sovereignty as he supposes was in Adam.

  §. 152.

  For how can he say that patriarchal jurisdiction was intermitted in Egypt, where there was a king, under whose regal government the Israelites were, if patriarchal were absolute monarchical jurisdiction? And if it were not, but something else, why does he make such ado about a power not in question, and nothing to the purpose? The exercise of patriarchal jurisdiction, if patriarchal be regal, was not intermitted whilst the Israelites were in Egypt. It is true, the exercise of regal power was not then in the hands of any of the promised seed of Abraham, nor before neither that I know; but what is that to the intermission of regal authority, as descending from Adam, unless our author will have it, that this chosen line of Abraham had the right of inheritance to Adam’s lordship? and then to what purpose are his instances of the 72 rulers, in whom the fatherly authority was preserved in the confusion at Babel? Why does he bring the 12 princes sons of Ismael; and the dukes of Edom, and join them with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, as examples of the exercise of true patriarchal government, if the exercise of patriarchal jurisdiction were intermitted in the world, whenever the heirs of Jacob had not supreme power? I fear, supreme patriarchal jurisdiction was not only intermitted, but from the time of the Egyptian bondage quite lost in the world, since it will be hard to find, from that time downwards, any one who exercised it as an inheritance descending to him from the patriarchs Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. I imagined monarchical government would have served his turn in the hands of Pharaoh, or any body. But one cannot easily discover in all places what his discourse tends to, as particularly in this place it is not obvious to guess what he drives at, when he says, the exercise of supreme patriarchal jurisdiction in Egypt, or how this serves to make out the descent of Adam’s lordship to the patriarchs, or any body else.

  §. 153.

  For I thought he had been giving us out of scripture, proofs and examples of monarchical government, founded on paternal authority, descending from Adam; and not an history of the Jews: amongst whom yet we find no kings, till many years after they were a people: and when kings were their rulers, there is not the least mention or room for a pretence that they were heirs to Adam, or kings by paternal authority. I expected, talking so much as he does of scripture, that he would have produced thence a series of monarchs, whose titles were clear to Adam’s fatherhood, and who, as heirs to him, owned and exercised paternal jurisdiction over their subjects, and that this was the true patriarchical government; whereas he neither proves, that the patriarchs were kings; nor that either kings or patriarchs were heirs to Adam, or so much as pretended to it: and one may as well prove, that the patriarchs were all absolute monarchs; that the power both of patriarchs and kings was only paternal; and that this power descended to them from Adam: I say all these propositions may be as well proved by a confused account of a multitude of little kings in the West-Indies, out of Ferdinando Soto, or any of our late histories of the Northern America, or by our author’s 70 kings of Greece, out of Homer, as by any thing he brings out of scripture, in that multitude of kings he has reckoned up.

  §. 154.

  And methinks he should have let Homer and his wars of Troy alone, since his great zeal to truth or monarchy carried him to such a pitch of transport against philosophers and poets, that he tells us in his preface, that there are too many in these days, who please themselves in running after the opinions of philosophers and poets, to find out such an original of government, as might promise them some title to liberty, to the great scandal of Christianity, and bringing in of atheism. And yet these heathens, philosopher Aristotle, and poet Homer, are not rejected by our zealous Christian politician, whenever they offer any thing that seems to serve his turn; whether to the great scandal of Christianity and bringing in of atheism, let him look. This I cannot but observe, in authors who it is visible write not for truth, how ready zeal for interest and party is to entitle Christianity to their designs, and to charge atheism on those who will not without examining submit to their doctrines, and blindly swallow their nonsense.

  But to return to his scripture history, our author farther tells us, p. 18. that after the return of the Israelites out of bondage, God, out of a special care of them, chose Moses and Joshua successively to govern as princes in the place and stead of the supreme fathers. If it be true, that they returned out of bondage, it must be into a state of freedom, and must imply, that both before and after this bondage they were free, unless our author will say, that changing of masters is returning out of bondage; or that a slave returns out of bondage, when he is removed from one gally to another. If then they returned out of bondage, it is plain that in those days, whatever our author in his preface says to the contrary, there were difference between a son, a subject, and a slave; and that neither the patriarchs before, nor their rulers after this Egyptian bondage, numbered their sons or subjects amongst their possessions, and disposed of them with as absolute a dominion, as they did their other goods.

  §. 155.

  This is evident in Jacob, to whom Reuben offered his two sons as pledges; and Judah was at last surety for Benjamin’s safe return out of Egypt: which all had been vain, superfluous, and but a sort of mockery, if Jacob had had the same power over every one of his family, as he had over his ox or his ass, as an owner over his substance; and the offers that Reuben or Judah made had been such a security for returning of Benjamin, as if a man should take two lambs out of his lord’s flock, and offer one as security, that he will safely restore the other.

  §. 156.

  When they were out of this bondage, what then? God out of a special care of them, the Israelites. It is well that once in his book he will allow God to have any care of the people; for in other places he speaks of mankind, as if God had no care of any part of them, but only of their monarchs, and that the rest of the people, the societies of men, were made as so many herds of cattle, only for the service, use, and pleasure of their princes.

  §. 157.

  Chose Moses and Joshua successively to govern as princes; a shrewd argument our author has found out to prove God’s care of the fatherly authority, and Adam’s heirs, that here, as an expression of his care of his own people, he chooses those for princes over them, that had not the least pretence to either. The persons chosen were, Moses of the tribe of Levi, and Joshua of the tribe of Ephraim, neither of which had any title of fatherhood. But says our author, they were in the place and stead of the supreme fathers. If God had any where as plainly declared his choice of such fathers to be rulers, as he did of Moses and Joshua, we might believe Mases and Joshua were in their place and stead: but that being the question in debate, till that be better proved, Moses being chosen by God to be ruler of his people, will no more prove that government belonged to Adam’s heir, or to the fatherhood, than God’s choosing Aaron of the tribe of Levi to be priest, will prove that the priesthood belonged to Adam’s heir, or the prime fathers; since God would choose Aaron to be priest, and Moses ruler in Israel, though neither of those offices were settled on Adam’s heir, or the fatherhood.

  §. 158.

  Our author goes on, and after them likewise for a time he raised up judges, to defend his people in time of peril, p. 18. This proves fatherly authority to be the original of government, and that it descended from Adam to his heirs, just as well as what went before: only here our author seems to confess, that these judges, who were all the governors they then had, were only men of valour, whom they made their generals to defend them in time of peril; and cannot God raise up such men, unless fatherhood have a title to government?

  But says our author, when God gave the Israelites kings, he re-established the ancient andprime right of lineal succession to paternal government, p. 18.

  §. 160.

  How did God re-establish it? by a law, a positive command? We find no such thing. Our author means then, that when God gave them a king, in giving them a king, he re-established the right, &c. To re-establish de facto the right of lineal succession to paternal government, is to put a man in possession of that government which his fathers did enjoy, and he by lineal succession had a right to: for, first, if it were another government than what his ancestors had, it was not succeeding to an ancient right, but beginning a new one: for if a prince should give a man, besides his antient patrimony, which for some ages his family had been disseized of, an additional estate, never before in the possession of his ancestors, he could not be said to re-establish the right of lineal succession to any more than what had been formerly enjoyed by his ancestors. If therefore the power the kings of Israel had, were any thing more than Isaac or Jacob had, it was not the re-establishing in them the right of succession to a power, but giving them a new power, however you please to call it, paternal or not: and whether Isaac and Jacob had the same power that the kings of Israel had, I desire any one, by what has been above said, to consider; and I do not think they will find, that either Abraham, Isaac, or Jacob, had any regal power at all.

  §. 161.

  Next, there can be no re-establishment of the prime and ancient right of lineal succession to any thing, unless he, that is put in possession of it, has the right to succeed, and be the true and next heir to him he succeeds to. Can that be a re-establishment, which begins in a new family? or that the re-establishment of an ancient right of lineal succession, when a crown is given to one, who has no right of succession to it, and who, if the lineal succession had gone on, had been out of all possibility of pretence to it? Saul, the first king God gave the Israelites, was of the tribe of Benjamin. Was the ancient and prime right of lineal succession re-established in him? The next was David, the youngest son of Jesse, of the posterity of Judah, Jacob’s third son. Was the ancient and prime right of lineal succession to paternal government re-established in him? or in Solomon, his younger son and successor in the throne? or in Jereboam over the ten tribes? or in Athaliah, a woman who reigned six years an utter stranger to the royal blood? If the ancient and prime right of lineal succession to paternal government were re-established in any of these or their posterity, the ancient and prime right of lineal succession to paternal government belongs to younger brothers as well as elder, and may be re-established in any man living; for whatever younger brothers, by ancient and prime right of lineal succession, may have as well as the elder, that every man living may have a right to, by lineal succession, and Sir Robert as well as any other. And so what a brave right of lineal succession, to his paternal or regal government, our author has re-established, for the securing the rights and inheritance of crowns, where every one may have it, let the world consider.

  §. 162.

  But says our author however, p. 19. Whensoever God made choice of any special person to be king, he intended that the issue also should have benefit thereof, as being comprehended sufficiently in the person of the father, altho’ the father was only named in the grant. This yet will not help out succession; for if, as our author says, the benefit of the grant be intended to the issue of the grantee, this will not direct the succession; since, if God give any thing to a man and his issue in general, the claim cannot be to any one of that issue in particular; every one that is of his race will have an equal right. If it be said, our author meant heir, I believe our author was as willing as any body to have used that word, if it would have served his turn: but Solomon, who succeeded David in the throne, being no more his heir than Jeroboham, who succeeded him in the government of the ten tribes, was his issue, our author had reason to avoid saying, That God intended it to the heirs, when that would not hold in a succession, which our author could not except against; and so he has left his succession as undetermined, as if he had said nothing about it: for if the regal power be given by God to a man and his issue, as the land of Canaan was to Abraham and his seed, must they not all have a title to it, all share in it? And one may as well say, that by God’s grant to Abraham and his seed, the land of Canaan was to belong only to one of his seed exclusive of all others, as by God’s grant of dominion to a man and his issue, this dominion was to belong in peculiar to one of his issue exclusive of all others.

  §. 163.

  But how will our author prove that whensoever God made choice of any special person to be a king, he intended that the (I suppose he means his) issue also should have benefit thereof? has he so soon forgot Moses and Joshua, whom in this very section, he says, God out of a special care chose to govern as princes, and the judges that God raised up? Had not these princes, having the authority of the supreme fatherhood, the same power that the kings had; and being specially chosen by God himself, should not their issue have the benefit of that choice, as well as David’s or Solomon’s? If these had the paternal authority put into their hands immediately by God, why had not their issue the benefit of this grant in a succession to this power? or if they had it as Adam’s heirs, why did not their heirs enjoy it after them by right descending to them? for they could not be heirs to one another. Was the power the same, and from the same original, in Moses, Joshua and the Judges, as it was in David and the Kings; and was it inheritable in one, and not in the other? If it was not paternal authority, then God’s own people were governed by those that had not paternal authority, and those governors did well enough without it: if it were paternal authority, and God chose the persons that were to exercise it, our author’s rule fails, that whensoever God makes choice of any person to be supreme ruler (for I suppose the name king has no spell in it, it is not the title, but the power makes the difference) he intends that the issue also should have the benefit of it, since from their coming out of Egypt to David’s time, 400 years, the issue was never so sufficiently comprehended in the person of the father, as that any son, after the death of his father, succeeded to the government amongst all those judges that judged Israel. If, to avoid this, it be said, God always chose the person of the successor, and so, transferring the fatherly authority to him, excluded his issue from succeeding to it, that is manifestly not so in the story of Jephtha, where he articled with the people, and they made him judge over them, as is plain, Judg. 11.

  §. 164.

  It is in vain then to say, that whensoever God chooses any special person to have the exercise of paternal authority, (for if that be not to be king, I desire to know the difference between a king and one having the exercise of paternal authority) he intends the issue also should have the benefit of it, since we find the authority, the judges had, ended with them, and descended not to their issue; and if the judges had not paternal authority, I fear it will trouble our author, or any of the friends to his principles, to tell who had then the paternal authority, that is, the government and supreme power amongst the Israelites; and I suspect they must confess that the chosen people of God continued a people several hundreds of years, without any knowledge or thought of this paternal authority, or any appearance of monarchical government at all.

  §. 165.

  To be satisfied of this, he need but read the story of the Levite, and the war thereupon with the Benjamites, in the three last chapters of Judges; and when he finds, that the Levite appeals to the people for justice that it was the tribes and the congregation, that debated, resolved, and directed all that was done on that occasion; he must conclude, either that God was not careful to preserve the fatherly authority amongst his own chosen people; or else that the fatherly authority may be preserved, where there is no monarchical government: if the latter, then it will follow, that though fatherly authority be never so well proved, yet it will not infer a necessity of monarchical government; if the former, it will seem very strange and improbable, that God should ordain fatherly authority to be so sacred amongst the sons of men, that there could be no power, or government without it, and yet that amongst his own people, even whilst he is providing a government for them, and therein prescribes rules to the several states and relations of men, this great and fundamental one, this most material and necessary of all the rest, should be concealed, and lie neglected for 400 years after.

  §. 166.

  Before I leave this, I must ask how our author knows that whensoever God makes choice of any special person to be king, he intends that the issue should have the benefit thereof? Does God by the law of nature or revelation say so? By the same law also he must say, which of his issue must enjoy the crown in succession, and so point out the heir, or else leave his issue to divide or scramble for the government: both alike absurd, and such as will destroy the benefit of such grant to the issue. When any such declaration of God’s intention is produced, it will be our duty to believe God intends it so; but till that be done, our author must shew us some better warrant, before we shall be obliged to receive him as the authentic revealer of God’s intentions.

  §. 167.

  The issue, says our author, is comprehended sufficiently in the person of the father, although the father only was named in the grant: and yet God, when he gave the land of Canaan to Abraham, Gen. xiii. 15. thought fit to put his seed into the grant too: so the priesthood was given to Aaron and his seed; and the crown God gave not only to David, but his seed also: and however our author assures us that God intends, that the issue should have the benefit of it, when he chooses any person to be king, yet we see that the kingdom which he gave to Saul, without mentioning his seed after him, never came to any of his issue: and why, when God chose a person to be king, he should intend, that his issue should have the benefit of it, more than when he chose one to be judge in Israel, I would fain know a reason; or why does a grant of fatherly authority to a king more comprehend the issue, than when a like grant is made to a judge? Is paternal authority by right to descend to the issue of one, and not of the other? There will need some reason to be shewn of this difference, more than the name, when the thing given is the same fatherly authority, and the manner of giving it, God’s choice of the person, the same too; for I suppose our author, when he says, Godraised up judges, will by no means allow, they were chosen by the people.

  §. 168.

  But since our author has so confidently assured us of the care of God to preserve the fatherhood, and pretends to build all he says upon the authority of the scripture, we may well expect that that people, whose law, constitution and history is chiefly contained in the scripture, should furnish him with the clearest instances of God’s care of preserving the fatherly authority, in that people who it is agreed he had a most peculiar care of. Let us see then what state this paternal authority or government was in amongst the Jews, from their beginning to be a people. It was omitted, by our author’s confession, from their coming into Egypt, till their return out of that bondage, above 200 years: from thence till God gave the Israelites a king, about 400 years more, our author gives but a very slender account of it; nor indeed all that time are there the least footsteps of paternal or regal government amongst them. But then says our author, God re-established the ancient and prime right of lineal succession to paternal government.

  §. 169.

  What a lineal succession to paternal government was then established, we have already seen. I only now consider how long this lasted, and that was to their captivity, about 500 years: from thence to their destruction by the Romans, above 650 years after, the ancient and prime right of lineal succession to paternal government was again lost, and they continued a people in the promised land without it. So that of 1750 years that they were God’s peculiar people, they had hereditary kingly government amongst them not one third of the time; and of that time there is not the least footstep of one moment of paternal government, nor the re-establishment of the ancient and prime right of lineal succession to it, whether we suppose it to be derived, as from its fountain, from David, Saul, Abraham, or, which upon our author’s principles is the only true, from Adam.

  OF CIVIL-GOVERNMENT

  BOOK II

  Chap. I.

  §. 1.

  It having been shewn in the foregoing discourse,

  1. That Adam had not, either by natural right of fatherhood, or by positive donation from God, any such authority over his children, or dominion over the world, as is pretended:

  2. That if he had, his heirs, yet, had no right to it:

  3. That if his heirs had, there being no law of nature nor positive law of God that determines which is the right heir in all cases that may arise, the right of succession, and consequently of bearing rule, could not have been certainly determined:

  4. That if even that had been determined, yet the knowledge of which is the eldest line of Adam’s posterity, being so long since utterly lost, that in the races of mankind and families of the world, there remains not to one above another, the least pretence to be the eldest house, and to have the right of inheritance:

  All these premises having, as I think, been clearly made out, it is impossible that the rulers now on earth should make any benefit, or derive any the least shadow of authority from that, which is held to be the fountain of all power, Adam’s private dominion and paternal jurisdiction; so that he that will not give just occasion to think that all government in the world is the product only of force and violence, and that men live together by no other rules but that of beasts, where the strongest carries it, and so lay a foundation for perpetual disorder and mischief, tumult, sedition and rebellion, (things that the followers of that hypothesis so loudly cry out against) must of necessity find out another rise of governwent, another original of political power, and another way of designing and knowing the persons that have it, than what Sir Robert Filmer hath taught us.

  §. 2.

  To this purpose, I think it may not be amiss, to set down what I take to be political power; that the power of a magistrate over a subject may be distinguished from that of a father over his children, a master over his servant, a husband over his wife, and a lord over his slave. All which distinct powers happening sometimes together in the same man, if he be considered under these different relations, it may help us to distinguish these powers one from another, and shew the difference betwixt a ruler of a common-wealth, a father of a family, and a captain of a galley.

  §. 3.

  Political power, then, I take to be a right of making laws with penalties of death, and consequently all less penalties, for the regulating and preserving of property, and of employing the force of the community, in the execution of such laws, and in the defence of the common-wealth from foreign injury; and all this only for the public good.

  CHAP. II.
  Of the State of Nature.

  §. 4.

  TO understand political power right, and derive it from its original, we must consider, what state all men are naturally in, and that is, a state of perfect freedom to order their actions, and dispose of their possessions and persons, as they think fit, within the bounds of the law of nature, without asking leave, or depending upon the will of any other man.

  A state also of equality, wherein all the power and jurisdiction is reciprocal, no one having more than another; there being nothing more evident, than that creatures of the same species and rank, promiscuously born to all the same advantages of nature, and the use of the same faculties, should also be equal one amongst another without subordination or subjection, unless the lord and master of them all should, by any manifest declaration of his will, set one above another, and confer on him, by an evident and clear appointment, an undoubted right to dominion and sovereignty.

  §. 5.

  This equality of men by nature, the judicious Hooker looks upon as so evident in itself, and beyond all question, that he makes it the foundation of that obligation to mutual love amongst men, on which he builds the duties they owe one another, and from whence he derives the great maxims of justice and charity. His words are,

  The like natural inducement hath brought men to know that it is no less their duty, to love others than themselves; for seeing those things which are equal, must needs all have one measure; if I cannot but wish to receive good, even as much at every man’s hands, as any man can wish unto his own soul, how should I look to have any part of my desire herein satisfied, unless myself be careful to satisfy the like desire, which is undoubtedly in other men, being of one and the same nature? To have any thing offered them repugnant to this desire, must needs in all respects grieve them as much as me; so that if I do harm, I must look to suffer, there being no reason that others should shew greater measure of love to me, than they have by me shewed unto them: my desire therefore to be loved of my equals in nature, as much as possible may be, imposeth upon me a natural duty of bearing to them-ward fully the like affection; from which relation of equality between ourselves and them that are as ourselves, what several rules and canons natural reason hath drawn, for direction of life, no man is ignorant. Eccl. Pol. Lib. 1.

  §. 6.

  But though this be a state of liberty, yet it is not a state of licence: though man in that state have an uncontroulable liberty to dispose of his person or possessions, yet he has not liberty to destroy himself, or so much as any creature in his possession, but where some nobler use than its bare preservation calls for it. The state of nature has a law of nature to govern it, which obliges every one: and reason, which is that law, teaches all mankind, who will but consult it, that being all equal and independent, no one ought to harm another in his life, health, liberty, or possessions: for men being all the workmanship of one omnipotent, and infinitely wise maker; all the servants of one sovereign master, sent into the world by his order, and about his business; they are his property, whose workmanship they are, made to last during his, not one another’s pleasure: and being furnished with like faculties, sharing all in one community of nature, there cannot be supposed any such subordination among us, that may authorize us to destroy one another, as if we were made for one another’s uses, as the inferior ranks of creatures are for our’s. Every one, as he is bound to preserve himself, and not to quit his station wilfully, so by the like reason, when his own preservation comes not in competition, ought he, as much as he can, to preserve the rest of mankind, and may not, unless it be to do justice on an offender, take away, or impair the life, or what tends to the preservation of the life, the liberty, health, limb, or goods of another.

  §. 7.

  And that all men may be restrained from invading others rights, and from doing hurt to one another, and the law of nature be observed, which willeth the peace and preservation of all mankind, the execution of the law of nature is, in that state, put into every man’s hands, whereby every one has a right to punish the transgressors of that law to such a degree, as may hinder its violation: for the law of nature would, as all other laws that concern men in this world, be in vain, if there were no body that in the state of nature had a power to execute that law, and thereby preserve the innocent and restrain offenders. And if any one in the state of nature may punish another for any evil he has done, every one may do so: for in that state of perfect equality, where naturally there is no superiority or jurisdiction of one over another, what any may do in prosecution of that law, every one must needs have a right to do.

  §. 8.

  And thus, in the state of nature, one man comes by a power over another; but yet no absolute or arbitrary power, to use a criminal, when he has got him in his hands, according to the passionate heats, or boundless extravagancy of his own will; but only to retribute to him, so far as calm reason and conscience dictate, what is proportionate to his transgression, which is so much as may serve for reparation and restraint: for these two are the only reasons, why one man may lawfully do harm to another, which is that we call punishment. In transgressing the law of nature, the offender declares himself to live by another rule than that of reason and common equity, which is that measure God has set to the actions of men, for their mutual security; and so he becomes dangerous to mankind, the tye, which is to secure them from injury and violence, being slighted and broken by him. Which being a trespass against the whole species, and the peace and safety of it, provided for by the law of nature, every man upon this score, by the right he hath to preserve mankind in general, may restrain, or where it is necessary, destroy things noxious to them, and so may bring such evil on any one, who hath transgressed that law, as may make him repent the doing of it, and thereby deter him, and by his example others, from doing the like mischief. And in this case, and upon this ground, every man hath a right to punish the offender, and be executioner of the law of nature.

  §. 9.

  I doubt not but this will seem a very strange doctrine to some men: but before they condemn it, I desire them to resolve me, by what right any prince or state can put to death, or punish an alien, for any crime he commits in their country. It is certain their laws, by virtue of any sanction they receive from the promulgated will of the legislative, reach not a stranger: they speak not to him, nor, if they did, is he bound to hearken to them. The legislative authority, by which they are in force over the subjects of that common-wealth, hath no power over him. Those who have the supreme power of making laws in England, France or Holland, are to an Indian, but like the rest of the world, men without authority: and therefore, if by the law of nature every man hath not a power to punish offences against it, as he soberly judges the case to require, I see not how the magistrates of any community can punish an alien of another country; since, in reference to him, they can have no more power than what every man naturally may have over another.

  §. 10.

  Besides the crime which consists in violating the law, and varying from the right rule of reason, whereby a man so far becomes degenerate, and declares himself to quit the principles of human nature, and to be a noxious creature, there is commonly injury done to some person or other, and some other man receives damage by his transgression: in which case he who hath received any damage, has, besides the right of punishment common to him with other men, a particular right to seek reparation from him that has done it: and any other person, who finds it just, may also join with him that is injured, and assist him in recovering from the offender so much as may make satisfaction for the harm he has suffered.

  §. 11.

  From these two distinct rights, the one of punishing the crime for restraint, and preventing the like offence, which right of punishing is in every body; the other of taking reparation, which belongs only to the injured party, comes it to pass that the magistrate, who by being magistrate hath the common right of punishing put into his hands, can often, where the public good demands not the execution of the law, remit the punishment of criminal offences by his own authority, but yet cannot remit the satisfaction due to any private man for the damage he has received. That, he who has suffered the damage has a right to demand in his own name, and he alone can remit: the damnified person has this power of appropriating to himself the goods or service of the offender, by right of self-preservation, as every man has a power to punish the crime, to prevent its being committed again, by the right he has of preserving all mankind, and doing all reasonable things he can in order to that end: and thus it is, that every man, in the state of nature, has a power to kill a murderer, both to deter others from doing the like injury, which no reparation can compensate, by the example of the punishment that attends it from every body, and also to secure men from the attempts of a criminal, who having renounced reason, the common rule and measure God hath given to mankind, hath, by the unjust violence and slaughter he hath committed upon one, declared war against all mankind, and therefore may be destroyed as a lion or a tyger, one of those wild savage beasts, with whom men can have no society nor security: and upon this is grounded that great law of nature, Whoso sheddeth man’s blood, by man shall his blood be shed. And Cain was so fully convinced, that every one had a right to destroy such a criminal, that after the murder of his brother, he cries out, Every one that findethme, shall slay me; so plain was it writ in the hearts of all mankind.

  §. 12.

  By the same reason may a man in the state of nature punish the lesser breaches of that law. It will perhaps be demanded, with death? I answer, each transgression may be punished to that degree, and with so much severity, as will suffice to make it an ill bargain to the offender, give him cause to repent, and terrify others from doing the like. Every offence, that can be committed in the state of nature, may in the state of nature be also punished equally, and as far forth as it may, in a common-wealth: for though it would be besides my present purpose, to enter here into the particulars of the law of nature, or its measures of punishment; yet, it is certain there is such a law, and that too, as intelligible and plain to a rational creature, and a studier of that law, as the positive laws of common-wealths; nay, possibly plainer; as much as reason is easier to be understood, than the fancies and intricate contrivances of men, following contrary and hidden interests put into words; for so truly are a great part of the municipal laws of countries, which are only so far right, as they are founded on the law of nature, by which they are to be regulated and interpreted.

  §. 13.

  To this strange doctrine, viz. That in the state of nature every one has the executive power of the law of nature, I doubt not but it will be objected, that it is unreasonable for men to be judges in their own cases, that self-love will make men partial to themselves and their friends: and on the other side, that ill nature, passion and revenge will carry them too far in punishing others; and hence nothing but confusion and disorder will follow, and that therefore God hath certainly appointed government to restrain the partiality and violence of men. I easily grant, that civil government is the proper remedy for the inconveniencies of the state of nature, which must certainly be great, where men may be judges in their own case, since it is easy to be imagined, that he who was so unjust as to do his brother an injury, will scarce be so just as to condemn himself for it: but I shall desire those who make this objection, to remember, that absolute monarchs are but men; and if government is to be the remedy of those evils, which necessarily follow from men’s being judges in their own cases, and the state of nature is therefore not to be endured, I desire to know what kind of government that is, and how much better it is than the state of nature, where one man, commanding a multitude, has the liberty to be judge in his own case, and may do to all his subjects whatever he pleases, without the least liberty to any one to question or controul those who execute his pleasure? and in whatsoever he doth, whether led by reason, mistake or passion, must be submitted to? much better it is in the state of nature, wherein men are not bound to submit to the unjust will of another: and if he that judges, judges amiss in his own, or any other case, he is answerable for it to the rest of mankind.

  §. 14.

  It is often asked as a mighty objection, where are, or ever were there any men in such a state of nature? To which it may suffice as an answer at present, that since all princes and rulers of independent governments all through the world, are in a state of nature, it is plain the world never was, nor ever will be, without numbers of men in that state. I have named all governors of independent communities, whether they are, or are not, in league with others: for it is not every compact that puts an end to the state of nature between men, but only this one of agreeing together mutually to enter into one community, and make one body politic; other promises, and compacts, men may make one with another, and yet still be in the state of nature. The promises and bargains for truck, &c. between the two men in the desert island, mentioned by Garcilasso de la Vega, in his history of Peru; or between a Swiss and an Indian, in the woods of America, are binding to them, though they are perfectly in a state of nature, in reference to one another: for truth and keeping of faith belongs to men, as men, and not as members of society.

  §. 15.

  To those that say, there were never any men in the state of nature, I will not only oppose the authority of the judicious Hooker, Eccl. Pol. lib. i. sect. 10. where he says, The laws which have been hitherto mentioned, i. e. the laws of nature, do bind men absolutely, even as they are men, although they have never any settled fellowship, never any solemn agreement amongst themselves what to do, or not to do: but forasmuch as we are not by ourselves sufficient to furnish ourselves with competent store of things, needful for such a life as our nature doth desire, a life fit for the dignity of man; therefore to supply those defects and imperfections which are in us, as living single and solely by ourselves, we are naturally induced to seek communion and fellowship with others: this was the cause of men’s uniting themselves at first in politic societies. But I moreover affirm, that all men are naturally in that state, and remain so, till by their own consents they make themselves members of some politic society; and I doubt not in the sequel of this discourse, to make it very clear.

  CHAP. III.
  Of the State of War.

  §. 16.

  THE state of war is a state of enmity and destruction: and therefore declaring by word or action, not a passionate and hasty, but a sedate settled design upon another man’s life, puts him in a state of war with him against whom he has declared such an intention, and so has exposed his life to the other’s power to be taken away by him, or any one that joins with him in his defence, and espouses his quarrel; it being reasonable and just, I should have a right to destroy that which threatens me with destruction: for, by the fundamental law of nature, man being to be preserved as much as possible, when all cannot be preserved, the safety of the innocent is to be preferred: and one may destroy a man who makes war upon him, or has discovered an enmity to his being, for the same reason that he may kill a wolf or a lion; because such men are not under the ties of the common-law of reason, have no other rule, but that of force and violence, and so may be treated as beasts of prey, those dangerous and noxious creatures, that will be sure to destroy him whenever he falls into their power.

  §. 17.

  And hence it is, that he who attempts to get another man into his absolute power, does thereby put himself into a state of war with him; it being to be understood as a declaration of a design upon his life: for I have reason to conclude, that he who would get me into his power without my consent, would use me as he pleased when he had got me there, and destroy me too when he had a fancy to it; for no body can desire to have me in his absolute power, unless it be to compel me by force to that which is against the right of my freedom, i. e. make me a slave. To be free from such force is the only security of my preservation; and reason bids me look on him, as an enemy to my preservation, who would take away that freedom which is the fence to it; so that he who makes an attempt to enslave me, thereby puts himself into a state of war with me. He that, in the state of nature, would take away the freedom that belongs to any one in that state, must necessarily be supposed to have a design to take away every thing else, that freedom being the foundation of all the rest; as he that, in the state of society, would take away the freedom belonging to those of that society or common-wealth, must be supposed to design to take away from them every thing else, and so be looked on as in a state of war.

  §. 18.

  This makes it lawful for a man to kill a thief, who has not in the least hurt him, nor declared any design upon his life, any farther than, by the use of force, so to get him in his power, as to take away his money, or what he pleases, from him; because using force, where he has no right, to get me into his power, let his pretence be what it will, I have no reason to suppose, that he, who would take away my liberty, would not, when he had me in his power, take away every thing else. And therefore it is lawful for me to treat him as one who has put himself into a state of war with me, i. e. kill him if I can; for to that hazard does he justly expose himself, whoever introduces a state of war, and is aggressor in it.

  §. 19.

  And here we have the plain difference between the state of nature and the state of war, which however some men have confounded, are as far distant, as a state of peace, good will, mutual assistance and preservation, and a state of enmity, malice, violence and mutual destruction, are one from another. Men living together according to reason, without a common superior on earth, with authority to judge between them, is properly the state of nature. But force, or a declared design of force, upon the person of another, where there is no common superior on earth to appeal to for relief, is the state of war: and it is the want of such an appeal gives a man the right of war even against an aggressor, tho’ he be in society and a fellow subject. Thus a thief, whom I cannot harm, but by appeal to the law, for having stolen all that I am worth, I may kill, when he sets on me to rob me but of my horse or coat; because the law, which was made for my preservation, where it cannot interpose to secure my life from present force, which, if lost, is capable of no reparation, permits me my own defence, and the right of war, a liberty to kill the aggressor, because the aggressor allows not time to appeal to our common judge, nor the decision of the law, for remedy in a case where the mischief may be irreparable. Want of a common judge with authority, puts all men in a state of nature: force without right, upon a man’s person, makes a state of war, both where there is, and is not, a common judge.

  §. 20.

  But when the actual force is over, the state of war ceases between those that are in society, and are equally on both sides subjected to the fair determination of the law; because then there lies open the remedy of appeal for the past injury, and to prevent future harm: but where no such appeal is, as in the state of nature, for want of positive laws, and judges with authority to appeal to, the state of war once begun, continues, with a right to the innocent party to destroy the other whenever he can, until the aggressor offers peace, and desires reconciliation on such terms as may repair any wrongs he has already done, and secure the innocent for the future; nay, where an appeal to the law, and constituted judges, lies open, but the remedy is denied by a manifest perverting of justice, and a barefaced wresting of the laws to protect or indemnify the violence or injuries of some men, or party of men, there it is hard to imagine any thing but a state of war: for where-ever violence is used, and injury done, though by hands appointed to administer justice, it is still violence and injury, however coloured with the name, pretences, or forms of law, the end whereof being to protect and redress the innocent, by an unbiassed application of it, to all who are under it; where-ever that is not bona fide done, war is made upon the sufferers, who having no appeal on earth to right them, they are left to the only remedy in such cases, an appeal to heaven.

  §. 21.

  To avoid this state of war (wherein there is no appeal but to heaven, and wherein every the least difference is apt to end, where there is no authority to decide between the contenders) is one great reason of men’s putting themselves into society, and quitting the state of nature: for where there is an authority, a power on earth, from which relief can be had by appeal, there the continuance of the state of war is excluded, and the controversy is decided by that power. Had there been any such court, any superior jurisdiction on earth, to determine the right between Jephtha and the Ammonites, they had never come to a state of war: but we see he was forced to appeal to heaven. The Lord the Judge (says he) be judge this day between the children of Israel and the children of Ammon, Judg. xi. 27. and then prosecuting, and relying on his appeal, he leads out his army to battle: and therefore in such controversies, where the question is put, who shall be judge? It cannot be meant, who shall decide the controversy; every one knows what Jephtha here tells us, that the Lord the Judge shall judge. Where there is no judge on earth, the appeal lies to God in heaven. That question then cannot mean, who shall judge, whether another hath put himself in a state of war with me, and whether I may, as Jephtha did, appeal to heaven in it? of that I myself can only be judge in my own conscience, as I will answer it, at the great day, to the supreme judge of all men.

  CHAP. IV.
  Of SLAVERY.

  §. 22.

  THE natural liberty of man is to be free from any superior power on earth, and not to be under the will or legislative authority of man, but to have only the law of nature for his rule. The liberty of man, in society, is to be under no other legislative power, but that established, by consent, in the common-wealth; nor under the dominion of any will, or restraint of any law, but what that legislative shall enact, according to the trust put in it. Freedom then is not what Sir Robert Filmer tells us, Observations, A. 55. a liberty for every oneto do what he lists, to live as he pleases, and not to be tied by any laws: but freedom of men under government is, to have a standing rule to live by, common to every one of that society, and made by the legislative power erected in it; a liberty to follow my own will in all things, where the rule prescribes not; and not to be subject to the inconstant, uncertain, unknown, arbitrary will of another man: as freedom of nature is, to be under no other restraint but the law of nature.

  §. 23.

  This freedom from absolute, arbitrary power, is so necessary to, and closely joined with a man’s preservation, that he cannot part with it, but by what forfeits his preservation and life together: for a man, not having the power of his own life, cannot, by compact, or his own consent, enslave himself to any one, nor put himself under the absolute, arbitrary power of another, to take away his life, when he pleases. No body can give more power than he has himself; and he that cannot take away his own life, cannot give another power over it. Indeed, having by his fault forfeited his own life, by some act that deserves death; he, to whom he has forfeited it, may (when he has him in his power) delay to take it, and make use of him to his own service, and he does him no injury by it: for, whenever he finds the hardship of his slavery outweigh the value of his life, it is in his power, by resisting the will of his master, to draw on himself the death he desires.

  §. 24.

  This is the perfect condition of slavery, which is nothing else, but the state of war continued, between a lawful conqueror and a captive: for, if once compact enter between them, and make an agreement for a limited power on the one side, and obedience on the other, the state of war and slavery ceases, as long as the compact endures: for, as has been said, no man can, by agreement, pass over to another that which he hath not in himself, a power over his own life.

  I confess, we find among the Jews, as well as other nations, that men did sell themselves; but, it is plain, this was only to drudgery, not to slavery: for, it is evident, the person sold was not under an absolute, arbitrary, despotical power: for the master could not have power to kill him, at any time, whom, at a certain time, he was obliged to let go free out of his service; and the master of such a servant was so far from having an arbitrary power over his life, that he could not, at pleasure, so much as maim him, but the loss of an eye, or tooth, set him free, Exod. xxi.

  CHAP. V.
  Of PROPERTY.

  §. 25.

  WHether we consider natural reason, which tells us, that men, being once born, have a right to their preservation, and consequently to meat and drink, and such other things as nature affords for their subsistence: or revelation, which gives us an account of those grants God made of the world to Adam, and to Noah, and his sons, it is very clear, that God, as king David says, Psal. CXV. 16. has given the earth to the children of men; given it to mankind in common. But this being supposed, it seems to some a very great difficulty, how any one should ever come to have a property in any thing: I will not content myself to answer, that if it be difficult to make out property, upon a supposition that God gave the world to Adam, and his posterity in common, it is impossible that any man, but one universal monarch, should have any property upon a supposition, that God gave the world to Adam, and his heirs in succession, exclusive of all the rest of his posterity. But I shall endeavour to shew, how men might come to have a property in several parts of that which God gave to mankind in common, and that without any express compact of all the commoners.

  §. 26.

  God, who hath given the world to men in common, hath also given them reason to make use of it to the best advantage of life, and convenience. The earth, and all that is therein, is given to men for the support and comfort of their being. And tho’ all the fruits it naturally produces, and beasts it feeds, belong to mankind in common, as they are produced by the spontaneous hand of nature; and no body has originally a private dominion, exclusive of the rest of mankind, in any of them, as they are thus in their natural state: yet being given for the use of men, there must of necessity be a means to appropriate them some way or other, before they can be of any use, or at all beneficial to any particular man. The fruit, or venison, which nourishes the wild Indian, who knows no inclosure, and is still a tenant in common, must be his, and so his, i. e. a part of him, that another can no longer have any right to it, before it can do him any good for the support of his life.

  §. 27.

  Though the earth, and all inferior creatures, be common to all men, yet every man has a property in his own person: this no body has any right to but himself. The labour of his body, and the work of his hands, we may say, are properly his. Whatsoever then he removes out of the state that nature hath provided, and left it in, he hath mixed his labour with, and joined to it something that is his own, and thereby makes it his property. It being by him removed from the common state nature hath placed it in, it hath by this labour something annexed to it, that excludes the common right of other men: for this labour being the unquestionable property of the labourer, no man but he can have a right to what that is once joined to, at least where there is enough, and as good, left in common for others.

  §. 28.

  He that is nourished by the acorns he picked up under an oak, or the apples he gathered from the trees in the wood, has certainly appropriated them to himself. No body can deny but the nourishment is his. I ask then, when did they begin to be his? when he digested? or when he eat? or when he boiled? or when he brought them home? or when he picked them up? and it is plain, if the first gathering made them not his, nothing else could. That labour put a distinction between them and common: that added something to them more than nature, the common mother of all, had done; and so they became his private right. And will any one say, he had no right to those acorns or apples, he thus appropriated, because he had not the consent of all mankind to make them his? Was it a robbery thus to assume to himself what belonged to all in common? If such a consent as that was necessary, man had starved, notwithstanding the plenty God had given him. We see in commons, which remain so by compact, that it is the taking any part of what is common, and removing it out of the state nature leaves it in, which begins the property; without which the common is of no use. And the taking of this or that part, does not depend on the express consent of all the commoners. Thus the grass my horse has bit; the turfs my servant has cut; and the ore I have digged in any place, where I have a right to them in common with others, become my property, without the assignation or consent of any body. The labour that was mine, removing them out of that common state they were in, hath fixed my property in them.

  §. 29.

  By making an explicit consent of every commoner, necessary to any one’s appropriating to himself any part of what is given in common, children or servants could not cut the meat, which their father or master had provided for them in common, without assigning to every one his peculiar part. Though the water running in the fountain be every one’s, yet who can doubt, but that in the pitcher is his only who drew it out? His labour hath taken it out of the hands of nature, where it was common, and belonged equally to all her children, and hath thereby appropriated it to himself.

  §. 30.

  Thus this law of reason makes the deer that Indian’s who hath killed it; it is allowed to be his goods, who hath bestowed his labour upon it, though before it was the common right of every one. And amongst those who are counted the civilized part of mankind, who have made and multiplied positive laws to determine property, this original law of nature, for the beginning of property, in what was before common, still takes place; and by virtue thereof, what fish any one catches in the ocean, that great and still remaining common of mankind; or what ambergrise any one takes up here, is by the labour that removes it out of that common state nature left it in, made his property, who takes that pains about it. And even amongst us, the hare that any one is hunting, is thought his who pursues her during the chase: for being a beast that is still looked upon as common, and no man’s private possession; whoever has employed so much labour about any of that kind, as to find and pursue her, has thereby removed her from the state of nature, wherein she was common, and hath begun a property.

  §. 31.

  It will perhaps be objected to this, that if gathering the acorns, or other fruits of the earth, &c. makes a right to them, then any one may ingross as much as he will. To which I answer, Not so. The same law of nature, that does by this means give us property, does also bound that property too. God has given us all things richly, 1 Tim. vi. 12. is the voice of reason confirmed by inspiration. But how far has he given it us? To enjoy. As much as any one can make use of to any advantage of life before it spoils, so much he may by his labour fix a property in: whatever is beyond this, is more than his share, and belongs to others. Nothing was made by God for man to spoil or destroy. And thus, considering the plenty of natural provisions there was a long time in the world, and the few spenders; and to how small a part of that provision the industry of one man could extend itself, and ingross it to the prejudice of others; especially keeping within the bounds, set by reason, of what might serve for his use; there could be then little room for quarrels or contentions about property so established.

  §. 32.

  But the chief matter of property being now not the fruits of the earth, and the beasts that subsist on it, but the earth itself; as that which takes in and carries with it all the rest; I think it is plain, that property in that too is acquired as the former. As much land as a man tills, plants, improves, cultivates, and can use the product of, so much is his property. He by his labour does, as it were, inclose it from the common. Nor will it invalidate his right, to say every body else has an equal title to it; and therefore he cannot appropriate, he cannot inclose, without the consent of all his fellow-commoners, all mankind. God, when he gave the world in common to all mankind, commanded man also to labour, and the penury of his condition required it of him. God and his reason commanded him to subdue the earth, i. e. improve it for the benefit of life, and therein lay out something upon it that was his own, his labour. He that in obedience to this command of God, subdued, tilled and sowed any part of it, thereby annexed to it something that was his property, which another had no title to, nor could without injury take from him.

  §. 33.

  Nor was this appropriation of any parcel of land, by improving it, any prejudice to any other man, since there was still enough, and as good left; and more than the yet unprovided could use. So that, in effect, there was never the less left for others because of his inclosure for himself: for he that leaves as much as another can make use of, does as good as take nothing at all. No body could think himself injured by the drinking of another man, though he took a good draught, who had a whole river of the same water left him to quench his thirst: and the case of land and water, where there is enough of both, is perfectly the same.

  §. 34.

  God gave the world to men in common; but since he gave it them for their benefit, and the greatest conveniencies of life they were capable to draw from it, it cannot be supposed he meant it should always remain common and uncultivated. He gave it to the use of the industrious and rational, (and labour was to be his title to it;) not to the fancy or covetousness of the quarrelsome and contentious. He that had as good left for his improvement, as was already taken up, needed not complain, ought not to meddle with what was already improved by another’s labour: if he did, it is plain he desired the benefit of another’s pains, which he had no right to, and not the ground which God had given him in common with others to labour on, and whereof there was as good left, as that already possessed, and more than he knew what to do with, or his industry could reach to.

  §. 35.

  It is true, in land that is common in England, or any other country, where there is plenty of people under government, who have money and commerce, no one can inclose or appropriate any part, without the consent of all his fellow-commoners; because this is left common by compact, i. e. by the law of the land, which is not to be violated. And though it be common, in respect of some men, it is not so to all mankind; but is the joint property of this country, or this parish. Besides, the remainder, after such inclosure, would not be as good to the rest of the commoners, as the whole was when they could all make use of the whole; whereas in the beginning and first peopling of the great common of the world, it was quite otherwise. The law man was under, was rather for appropriating. God commanded, and his wants forced him to labour. That was his property which could not be taken from him where-ever he had fixed it. And hence subduing or cultivating the earth, and having dominion, we see are joined together. The one gave title to the other. So that God, by commanding to subdue, gave authority so far to appropriate: and the condition of human life, which requires labour and materials to work on, necessarily introduces private possessions.

  §. 36.

  The measure of property nature has well set by the extent of men’s labour and the conveniencies of life: no man’s labour could subdue, or appropriate all; nor could his enjoyment consume more than a small part; so that it was impossible for any man, this way, to intrench upon the right of another, or acquire to himself a property, to the prejudice of his neighbour, who would still have room for as good, and as large a possession (after the other had taken out his) as before it was appropriated. This measure did confine every man’s possession to a very moderate proportion, and such as he might appropriate to himself, without injury to any body, in the first ages of the world, when men were more in danger to be lost, by wandering from their company, in the then vast wilderness of the earth, than to be straitened for want of room to plant in. And the same measure may be allowed still without prejudice to any body, as full as the world seems: for supposing a man, or family, in the state they were at first peopling of the world by the children of Adam, or Noah; let him plant in some in-land, vacant places of America, we shall find that the possessions he could make himself, upon the measures we have given, would not be very large, nor, even to this day, prejudice the rest of mankind, or give them reason to complain, or think themselves injured by this man’s incroachment, though the race of men have now spread themselves to all the corners of the world, and do infinitely exceed the small number was at the beginning. Nay, the extent of ground is of so little value, without labour, that I have heard it affirmed, that in Spain itself a man may be permitted to plough, sow and reap, without being disturbed, upon land he has no other title to, but only his making use of it. But, on the contrary, the inhabitants think themselves beholden to him, who, by his industry on neglected, and consequently waste land, has increased the stock of corn, which they wanted. But be this as it will, which I lay no stress on; this I dare boldly affirm, that the same rule of propriety, (viz.) that every man should have as much as he could make use of, would hold still in the world, without straitening any body; since there is land enough in the world to suffice double the inhabitants, had not the invention of money, and the tacit agreement of men to put a value on it, introduced (by consent) larger possessions, and a right to them; which, how it has done, I shall by and by shew more at large.

  §. 37.

  This is certain, that in the beginning, before the desire of having more than man needed had altered the intrinsic value of things, which depends only on their usefulness to the life of man; or had agreed, that a little piece of yellow metal, which would keep without wasting or decay, should be worth a great piece of flesh, or a whole heap of corn; though men had a right to appropriate, by their labour, each one to himself, as much of the things of nature, as he could use: yet this could not be much, nor to the prejudice of others, where the same plenty was still left to those who would use the same industry. To which let me add, that he who appropriates land to himself by his labour, does not lessen, but increase the common stock of mankind: for the provisions serving to the support of human life, produced by one acre of inclosed and cultivated land, are (to speak much within compass) ten times more than those which are yielded by an acre of land of an equal richness lying waste in common. And therefore he that incloses land, and has a greater plenty of the conveniencies of life from ten acres, than he could have from an hundred left to nature, may truly be said to give ninety acres to mankind: for his labour now supplies him with provisions out of ten acres, which were but the product of an hundred lying in common. I have here rated the improved land very low, in making its product but as ten to one, when it is much nearer an hundred to one: for I ask, whether in the wild woods and uncultivated waste of America, left to nature, without any improvement, tillage or husbandry, a thousand acres yield the needy and wretched inhabitants as many conveniencies of life, as ten acres of equally fertile land do in Devonshire, where they are well cultivated?

  Before the appropriation of land, he who gathered as much of the wild fruit, killed, caught, or tamed, as many of the beasts, as he could; he that so imployed his pains about any of the spontaneous products of nature, as any way to alter them from the state which nature put them in, by placing any of his labour on them, did thereby acquire a propriety in them: but if they perished, in his possession, without their due use; if the fruits rotted, or the venison putrified, before he could spend it, he offended against the common law of nature, and was liable to be punished; he invaded his neighbour’s share, for he had no right, farther than his use called for any of them, and they might serve to afford him conveniencies of life.

  §. 38.

  The same measures governed the possession of land too: whatsoever he tilled and reaped, laid up and made use of, before it spoiled, that was his peculiar right; whatsoever he enclosed, and could feed, and make use of, the cattle and product was also his. But if either the grass of his inclosure rotted on the ground, or the fruit of his planting perished without gathering, and laying up, this part of the earth, notwithstanding his inclosure, was still to be looked on as waste, and might be the possession of any other. Thus, at the beginning, Cain might take as much ground as he could till, and make it his own land, and yet leave enough to Abel’s sheep to feed on; a few acres would serve for both their possessions. But as families increased, and industry inlarged their stocks, their possessions inlarged with the need of them; but yet it was commonly without any fixed property in the ground they made use of, till they incorporated, settled themselves together, and built cities; and then, by consent, they came in time, to set out the bounds of their distinct territories, and agree on limits between them and their neighbours; and by laws within themselves, settled the properties of those of the same society: for we see, that in that part of the world which was first inhabited, and therefore like to be best peopled, even as low down as Abraham’s time, they wandered with their flocks, and their herds, which was their substance, freely up and down; and this Abraham did, in a country where he was a stranger. Whence it is plain, that at least a great part of the land lay in common; that the inhabitants valued it not, nor claimed property in any more than they made use of. But when there was not room enough in the same place, for their herds to feed together, they by consent, as Abraham and Lot did, Gen. xiii. 5. separated and inlarged their pasture, where it best liked them. And for the same reason Esau went from his father, and his brother, and planted in mount Seir, Gen. xxxvi. 6.

  §. 39.

  And thus, without supposing any private dominion, and property in Adam, over all the world, exclusive of all other men, which can no way be proved, nor any one’s property be made out from it; but supposing the world given, as it was, to the children of men in common, we see how labour could make men distinct titles to several parcels of it, for their private uses; wherein there could be no doubt of right, no room for quarrel.

  §. 40.

  Nor is it so strange, as perhaps before consideration it may appear, that the property of labour should be able to over-balance the community of land: for it is labour indeed that puts the difference of value on every thing; and let any one consider what the difference is between an acre of land planted with tobacco or sugar, sown with wheat or barley, and an acre of the same land lying in common, without any husbandry upon it, and he will find, that the improvement of labour makes the far greater part of the value. I think it will be but a very modest computation to say, that of the products of the earth useful to the life of man nine tenths are the effects of labour: nay, if we will rightly estimate things as they come to our use, and cast up the several expences about them, what in them is purely owing to nature, and what to labour, we shall find, that in most of them ninety-nine hundredths are wholly to be put on the account of labour.

  §. 41.

  There cannot be a clearer demonstration of any thing, than several nations of the Americans are of this, who are rich in land, and poor in all the comforts of life; whom nature having furnished as liberally as any other people, with the materials of plenty, i. e. a fruitful soil, apt to produce in abundance, what might serve for food, raiment, and delight; yet for want of improving it by labour, have not one hundredth part of the conveniencies we enjoy: and a king of a large and fruitful territory there, feeds, lodges, and is clad worse than a day-labourer in England.

  §. 42.

  To make this a little clearer, let us but trace some of the ordinary provisions of life, through their several progresses, before they come to our use, and see how much they receive of their value from human industry. Bread, wine and cloth, are things of daily use, and great plenty; yet notwithstanding, acorns, water and leaves, or skins, must be our bread, drink and cloathing, did not labour furnish us with these more useful commodities: for whatever bread is more worth than acorns, wine than water, and cloth or silk, than leaves, skins or moss, that is wholly owing to labour and industry; the one of these being the food and raiment which unassisted nature furnishes us with; the other, provisions which our industry and pains prepare for us, which how much they exceed the other in value, when any one hath computed, he will then see how much labour makes the far greatest part of the value of things we enjoy in this world: and the ground which produces the materials, is scarce to be reckoned in, as any, or at most, but a very small part of it; so little, that even amongst us, land that is left wholly to nature, that hath no improvement of pasturage, tillage, or planting, is called, as indeed it is, waste; and we shall find the benefit of it amount to little more than nothing.

  This shews how much numbers of men are to be preferred to largeness of dominions; and that the increase of lands, and the right employing of them, is the great art of government: and that prince, who shall be so wise and godlike, as by established laws of liberty to secure protection and encouragement to the honest industry of mankind, against the oppression of power and narrowness of party, will quickly be too hard for his neighbours: but this by the by. To return to the argument in hand,

  §. 43.

  An acre of land, that bears here twenty bushels of wheat, and another in America, which, with the same husbandry, would do the like, are, without doubt, of the same natural intrinsic value: but yet the benefit mankind receives from the one in a year, is worth 5 l. and from the other possibly not worth a penny, if all the profit an Indian received from it were to be valued, and sold here; at least, I may truly say, not one thousandth. It is labour then which puts the greatest part of value upon land, without which it would scarcely be worth any thing: it is to that we owe the greatest part of all its useful products; for all that the straw, bran, bread, of that acre of wheat, is more worth than the product of an acre of as good land, which lies waste, is all the effect of labour: for it is not barely the plough-man’s pains, the reaper’s and thresher’s toil, and the baker’s sweat, is to be counted into the bread we eat; the labour of those who broke the oxen, who digged and wrought the iron and stones, who felled and framed the timber employed about the plough, mill, oven, or any other utensils, which are a vast number, requisite to this corn, from its being seed to be sown to its being made bread, must all be charged on the account of labour, and received as an effect of that: nature and the earth furnished only the almost worthless materials, as in themselves. It would be a strange catalogue of things, that industry provided and made use of, about every loaf of bread, before it came to our use, if we could trace them; iron, wood, leather, bark, timber, stone, bricks, coals, lime, cloth, dying drugs, pitch, tar, masts, ropes, and all the materials made use of in the ship, that brought any of the commodities made use of by any of the workmen, to any part of the work; all which it would be almost impossible, at least too long, to reckon up.

  §. 44.

  From all which it is evident, that though the things of nature are given in common, yet man, by being master of himself, and proprietor of his own person, and the actions or labour of it, had still in himself thegreat foundation of property; and that, which made up the great part of what he applied to the support or comfort of his being, when invention and arts had improved the conveniencies of life, was perfectly his own, and did not belong in common to others.

  §. 45.

  Thus labour, in the beginning, gave a right of property, wherever any one was pleased to employ it upon what was common, which remained a long while the far greater part, and is yet more than mankind makes use of. Men, at first, for the most part, contented themselves with what unassisted nature offered to their necessities: and though afterwards, in some parts of the world, (where the increase of people and stock, with the use of money, had made land scarce, and so of some value) the several communities settled the bounds of their distinct territories, and by laws within themselves regulated the properties of the private men of their society, and so, by compact and agreement, settled the property which labour and industry began; and the leagues that have been made between several states and kingdoms, either expresly or tacitly disowning all claim and right to the land in the others possession, have, by common consent, given up their pretences to their natural common right, which originally they had to those countries, and so have, by positive agreement, settled a property amongst themselves, in distinct parts and parcels of the earth; yet there are still great tracts of ground to be found, which (the inhabitants thereof not having joined with the rest of mankind, in the consent of the use of their common money) lie waste, and are more than the people who dwell on it do, or can make use of, and so still lie in common; tho’ this can scarce happen amongst that part of mankind that have consented to the use of money.

  §. 46.

  The greatest part of things really useful to the life of man, and such as the necessity of subsisting made the first commoners of the world look after, as it doth the Americans now, are generally things of short duration; such as, if they are not consumed by use, will decay and perish of themselves: gold, silver and diamonds, are things that fancy or agreement hath put the value on, more than real use, and the necessary support of life. Now of those good things which nature hath provided in common, every one had a right (as hath been said) to as much as he could use, and property in all that he could effect with his labour; all that his industry could extend to, to alter from the state nature had put it in, was his. He that gathered a hundred bushels of acorns or apples, had thereby a property in them, they were his goods as soon as gathered. He was only to look, that he used them before they spoiled, else he took more than his share, and robbed others. And indeed it was a foolish thing, as well as dishonest, to hoard up more than he could make use of. If he gave away a part to any body else, so that it perished not uselesly in his possession, these he also made use of. And if he also bartered away plums, that would have rotted in a week, for nuts that would last good for his eating a whole year, he did no injury; he wasted not the common stock; destroyed no part of the portion of goods that belonged to others, so long as nothing perished uselesly in his hands. Again, if he would give his nuts for a piece of metal, pleased with its colour; or exchange his sheep for shells, or wool for a sparkling pebble or a diamond, and keep those by him all his life, he invaded not the right of others, he might heap up as much of these durable things as he pleased; the exceeding of the bounds of his just property not lying in the largeness of his possession, but the perishing of any thing uselesly in it.

  §. 47.

  And thus came in the use of money, some lasting thing that men might keep without spoiling, and that by mutual consent men would take in exchange for the truly useful, but perishable supports of life.

  §. 48.

  And as different degrees of industry were apt to give men possessions in different proportions, so this invention of money gave them the opportunity to continue and enlarge them: for supposing an island, separate from all possible commerce with the rest of the world, wherein there were but an hundred families, but there were sheep, horses and cows, with other useful animals, wholsome fruits, and land enough for corn for a hundred thousand times as many, but nothing in the island, either because of its commonness, or perishableness, fit to supply the place of money; what reason could any one have there to enlarge his possessions beyond the use of his family, and a plentiful supply to its consumption, either in what their own industry produced, or they could barter for like perishable, useful commodities, with others? Where there is not some thing, both lasting and scarce, and so valuable to be hoarded up, there men will be apt to enlarge their possessions of land, were it never so rich, never so free for them to take: for I ask, what would a man value ten thousand, or an hundred thousand acres of excellent land, ready cultivated, and well stocked too with cattle, in the middle of the inland parts of America, where he had no hopes of commerce with other parts of the world, to draw money to him by the sale of the product? It would not be worth the inclosing, and we should see him give up again to the wild common of nature, whatever was more than would supply the conveniencies of life to be had there for him and his family.

  §. 49.

  Thus in the beginning all the world was America, and more so than that is now; for no such thing as money was any where known. Find out something that hath the use and value of money amongst his neighbours, you shall see the same man will begin presently to enlarge his possessions.

  §. 50.

  But since gold and silver, being little useful to the life of man in proportion to food, raiment, and carriage, has its value only from the consent of men, whereof labour yet makes, in great part, the measure, it is plain, that men have agreed to a disproportionate and unequal possession of the earth, they having, by a tacit and voluntary consent, found out a way how a man may fairly possess more land than he himself can use the product of, by receiving in exchange for the overplus gold and silver, which may be hoarded up without injury to any one; these metals not spoiling or decaying in the hands of the possessor. This partage of things in an inequality of private possessions, men have made practicable out of the bounds of society, and without compact, only by putting a value on gold and silver, and tacitly agreeing in the use of money: for in governments, the laws regulate the right of property, and the possession of land is determined by positive constitutions.

  §. 51.

  And thus, I think, it is very easy to conceive, without any difficulty, how labour could at first begin a title of property in the common things of nature, and how the spending it upon our uses bounded it. So that there could then be no reason of quarrelling about title, nor any doubt about the largeness of possession it gave. Right and conveniency went together; for as a man had a right to all he could employ his labour upon, so he had no temptation to labour for more than he could make use of. This left no room for controversy about the title, nor for incroachment on the right of others; what portion a man carved to himself, was easily seen; and it was useless, as well as dishonest, to carve himself too much, or take more than he needed.

  CHAP. VI.
  Of Paternal Power.

  §. 52.

  IT may perhaps be censured as an impertinent criticism, in a discourse of this nature, to find fault with words and names, that have obtained in the world: and yet possibly it may not be amiss to offer new ones, when the old are apt to lead men into mistakes, as this of paternal power probably has done, which seems so to place the power of parents over their children wholly in the father, as if the mother had no share in it; whereas, if we consult reason or revelation, we shall find, she hath an equal title. This may give one reason to ask, whether this might not be more properly called parental power? for whatever obligation nature and the right of generation lays on children, it must certainly bind them equal to both the concurrent causes of it. And accordingly we see the positive law of God every where joins them together, without distinction, when it commands the obedience of children, Honour thy father and thy mother, Exod. xx. 12. Whosoever curseth his father or his mother, Lev. xx. 9. Ye shall fear every man his mother and his father, Lev. xix. 3. Children, obey your parents, &c. Eph. vi. 1. is the stile of the Old and New Testament.

  §. 53.

  Had but this one thing been well considered, without looking any deeper into the matter, it might perhaps have kept men from running into those gross mistakes, they have made, about this power of parents; which, however it might, without any great harshness, bear the name of absolute dominion, and regal authority, when under the title of paternal power it seemed appropriated to the father, would yet have sounded but oddly, and in the very name shewn the absurdity, if this supposed absolute power over children had been called parental; and thereby have discovered, that it belonged to the mother too: for it will but very ill serve the turn of those men, who contend so much for the absolute power and authority of the fatherhood, as they call it, that the mother should have any share in it; and it would have but ill supported the monarchy they contend for, when by the very name it appeared, that that fundamental authority, from whence they would derive their government of a single person only, was not placed in one, but two persons jointly. But to let this of names pass.

  §. 54.

  Though I have said above, Chap. II. That all men by nature are equal, I cannot be supposed to understand all sorts of equality: age or virtue may give men a just precedency: excellency of parts and merit may place others above the common level: birth may subject some, and alliance or benefits others, to pay an observance to those to whom nature, gratitude, or other respects, may have made it due: and yet all this consists with the equality, which all men are in, in respect of jurisdiction or dominion one over another; which was the equality I there spoke of, as proper to the business in hand, being that equal right, that every man hath, to his natural freedom, without being subjected to the will or authority of any other man.

  §. 55.

  Children, I confess, are not born in this full state of equality, though they are born to it. Their parents have a sort of rule and jurisdiction over them, when they come into the world, and for some time after; but it is but a temporary one. The bonds of this subjection are like the swaddling clothes they art wrapt up in, and supported by, in the weakness of their infancy: age and reason as they grow up, loosen them, till at length they drop quite off, and leave a man at his own free disposal.

  §. 56.

  Adam was created a perfect man, his body and mind in full possession of their strength and reason, and so was capable, from the first instant of his being to provide for his own support and preservation, and govern his actions according to the dictates of the law of reason which God had implanted in him. From him the world is peopled with his descendants, who are all born infants, weak and helpless, without knowledge or understanding: but to supply the defects of this imperfect state, till the improvement of growth and age hath removed them, Adam and Eve, and after them all parents were, by the law of nature, under an obligation to preserve, nourish, and educate the children they had begotten; not as their own workmanship, but the workmanship of their own maker, the Almighty, to whom they were to be accountable for them.

  §. 57.

  The law, that was to govern Adam, was the same that was to govern all his posterity, the law of reason. But his offspring having another way of entrance into the world, different from him, by a natural birth, that produced them ignorant and without the use of reason, they were not presently under that law; for no body can be under a law, which is not promulgated to him; and this law being promulgated or made known by reason only, he that is not come to the use of his reason, cannot be said to be under this law; and Adam’s children, being not presently as soon as born under this law of reason, were not presently free: for law, in its true notion, is not so much the limitation as the direction of a free and intelligent agent to his proper interest, and prescribes no farther than is for the general good of those under that law: could they be happier without it, the law, as an useless thing, would of itself vanish; and that ill deserves the name of confinement which hedges us in only from bogs and precipices. So that, however it may be mistaken, the end of law is not to abolish or restrain, but to preserve and enlarge freedom: for in all the states of created beings capable of laws, where there is no law, there is no freedom: for liberty is, to be free from restraint and violence from others; which cannot be, where there is no law: but freedom is not, as we are told, a liberty for every man to do what he lists: (for who could be free, when every other man’s humour might domineer over him?) but a liberty to dispose, and order as he lists, his person, actions, possessions, and his whole property, within the allowance of those laws under which he is, and therein not to be subject to the arbitrary will of another, but freely follow his own.

  §. 58.

  The power, then, that parents have over their children, arises from that duty which is incumbent on them, to take care of their off-spring, during the imperfect state of childhood. To inform the mind, and govern the actions of their yet ignorant non-age, till reason shall take its place, and ease them of that trouble, is what the children want, and the parents are bound to: for God having given man an understanding to direct his actions, has allowed him a freedom of will, and liberty of acting, as properly belonging thereunto, within the bounds of that law he is under. But whilst he is in an estate, wherein he has not understanding of his own to direct his will, he is not to have any will of his own to follow: he that understands for him, must will for him too; he must prescribe to his will, and regulate his actions; but when he comes to the estate that made his father a freeman, the son is a freeman too.

  §. 59.

  This holds in all the laws a man is under, whether natural or civil. Is a man under the law of nature? What made him free of that law? what gave him a free disposing of his property, according to his own will, within the compass of that law? I answer, a state of maturity wherein he might be supposed capable to know that law, that so he might keep his actions within the bounds of it. When he has acquired that state, he is presumed to know how far that law is to be his guide, and how far he may make use of his freedom, and so comes to have it; till then, some body else must guide him, who is presumed to know how far the law allows a liberty. If such a state of reason, such an age of discretion made him free, the same shall make his son free too. Is a man under the law of England? What made him free of that law? that is, to have the liberty to dispose of his actions and possessions according to his own will, within the permission of that law? A capacity of knowing that law; which is supposed by that law, at the age of one and twenty years, and in some cases sooner. If this made the father free, it shall make the son free too. Till then we see the law allows the son to have no will, but he is to be guided by the will of his father or guardian, who is to understand for him. And if the father die, and fail to substitute a deputy in his trust; if he hath not provided a tutor, to govern his son, during his minority, during his want of understanding, the law takes care to do it; some other must govern him, and be a will to him, till he hath attained to a state of freedom, and his understanding be fit to take the government of his will. But after that, the father and son are equally free as much as tutor and pupil after nonage; equally subjects of the same law together, without any dominion left in the father over the life, liberty, or estate of his son, whether they be only in the state and under the law of nature, or under the positive laws of an established government.

  §. 60.

  But if, through defects that may happen out of the ordinary course of nature, any one comes not to such a degree of reason, wherein he might be supposed capable of knowing the law, and so living within the rules of it, he is never capable of being a free man, he is never let loose to the disposure of his own will (because he knows no bounds to it, has not understanding, its proper guide) but is continued under the tuition and government of others, all the time his own understanding is uncapable of that charge. And so lunatics and ideots are never set free from the government of their parents; children, who are not as yet come unto those years whereat they may have; and innocents which are excluded by a natural defect from ever having; thirdly, madmen, which for the present cannot possibly have the use of right reason to guide themselves, have for their guide, the reason that guideth other men which are tutors over them, to seek and procure their good for them, says Hooker, Eccl. Pol. lib. i. sect. 7. All which seems no more than that duty, which God and nature has laid on man, as well as other creatures, to preserve their offspring, till they can be able to shift for themselves, and will scarce amount to an instance or proof of parents regal authority.

  §. 61.

  Thus we are born free, as we are born rational; not that we have actually the exercise of either: age, that brings one, brings with it the other too. And thus we see how natural freedom and subjection to parents may consist together, and are both founded on the same principle. A child is free by his father’s title, by his father’s understanding, which is to govern him till he hath it of his own. The freedom of a man at years of discretion, and the subjection of a child to his parents, whilst yet short of that age, are so consistent, and so distinguishable, that the most blinded contenders for monarchy, by right of fatherhood, cannot miss this difference; the most obstinate cannot but allow their consistency: for were their doctrine all true, were the right heir of Adam now known, and by that title settled a monarch in his throne, invested with all the absolute unlimited power Sir Robert Filmer talks of; if he should die as soon as his heir were born, must not the child, notwithstanding he were never so free, never so much sovereign, be in subjection to his mother and nurse, to tutors and governors, till age and education brought him reason and ability to govern himself and others? The necessities of his life, the health of his body, and the information of his mind, would require him to be directed by the will of others, and not his own; and yet will any one think, that this restraint and subjection were inconsistent with, or spoiled him of that liberty or sovereignty he had a right to, or gave away his empire to those who had the government of his nonage? This government over him only prepared him the better and sooner for it. If any body should ask me, when my son is of age to be free? I shall answer, just when his monarch is of age to govern. But at what time, says the judicious Hooker, Eccl. Pol. l. i. sect. 6. a man may be said to have attained so far forth the use of reason, as sufficeth to make him capable of those laws whereby he is then bound to guide his actions: this is a great deal more easy for sense to discern, than for any one by skill and learning to determine.

  §. 62.

  Common-wealths themselves take notice of, and allow, that there is a time when men are to begin to act like free men, and therefore till that time require not oaths of fealty, or allegiance, or other public owning of, or submission to the government of their countries.

  §. 63.

  The freedom then of man, and liberty of acting according to his own will, is grounded on his having reason, which is able to instruct him in that law he is to govern himself by, and make him know how far he is left to the freedom of his own will. To turn him loose to an unrestrained liberty, before he has reason to guide him, is not the allowing him the privilege of his nature to be free; but to thrust him out amongst brutes, and abandon him to a state as wretched, and as much beneath that of a man, as their’s. This is that which puts the authority into the parents hands to govern the minority of their children. God hath made it their business to employ this care on their off-spring, and hath placed in them suitable inclinations of tenderness and concern to temper this power, to apply it, as his wisdom designed it, to the children’s good, as long as they should need to be under it.

  §. 64.

  But what reason can hence advance this care of the parents due to their off-spring into an absolute arbitrary dominion of the father, whose power reaches no farther, than by such a discipline, as he finds most effectual, to give such strength and health to their bodies, such vigour and rectitude to their minds, as may best fit his children to be most useful to themselves and others; and, if it be necessary to his condition, to make them work, when they are able, for their own subsistence. But in this power the mother too has her share with the father.

  §. 65.

  Nay, this power so little belongs to the father by any peculiar right of nature, but only as he is guardian of his children, that when he quits his care of them, he loses his power over them, which goes along with their nourishment and education, to which it is inseparably annexed; and it belongs as much to the foster-father of an exposed child, as to the natural father of another. So little power does the bare act of begetting give a man over his issue; if all his care ends there, and this be all the title he hath to the name and authority of a father. And what will become of this paternal power in that part of the world, where one woman hath more than one husband at a time? or in those parts of America, where, when the husband and wife part, which happens frequently, the children are all left to the mother, follow her, and are wholly under her care and provision? If the father die whilst the children are young, do they not naturally every where owe the same obedience to their mother, during their minority, as to their father were he alive? and will any one say, that the mother hath a legislative power over her children? that she can make standing rules, which shall be of perpetual obligation, by which they ought to regulate all the concerns of their property, and bound their liberty all the course of their lives? or can she inforce the observation of them with capital punishments? for this is the proper power of the magistrate, of which the father hath not so much as the shadow. His command over his children is but temporary, and reaches not their life or property: it is but a help to the weakness and imperfection of their nonage, a discipline necessary to their education: and though a father may dispose of his own possessions as he pleases, when his children are out of danger of perishing for want, yet his power extends not to the lives or goods, which either their own industry, or another’s bounty has made their’s; nor to their liberty neither, when they are once arrived to the infranchisement of the years of discretion. The father’s empire then ceases, and he can from thence forwards no more dispose of the liberty of his son, than that of any other man: and it must be far from an absolute or perpetual jurisdiction, from which a man may withdraw himself, having licence from divine authority to leave father and mother, and cleave to his wife.

  §. 66.

  But though there be a time when a child comes to be as free from subjection to the will and command of his father, as the father himself is free from subjection to the will of any body else, and they are each under no other restraint, but that which is common to them both, whether it be the law of nature, or municipal law of their country; yet this freedom exempts not a son from that honour which he ought, by the law of God and nature, to pay his parents. God having made the parents instruments in his great design of continuing the race of mankind, and the occasions of life to their children; as he hath laid on them an obligation to nourish, preserve, and bring up their offspring; so he has laid on the children a perpetual obligation of honouring their parents, which containing in it an inward esteem and reverence to be shewn by all outward expressions, ties up the child from any thing that may ever injure or affront, disturb or endanger, the happiness or life of those from whom he received his; and engages him in all actions of defence, relief, assistance and comfort of those, by whose means he entered into being, and has been made capable of any enjoyments of life: from this obligation no state, no freedom can absolve children. But this is very far from giving parents a power of command over their children, or an authority to make laws and disposs as they please of their lives or liberties. It is one thing to owe honour, respect, gratitude and assistance; another to require an absolute obedience and submission. The honour due to parents, a monarch in his throne owes his mother; and yet this lessens not his authority, nor subjects him to her government.

  §. 67.

  The subjection of a minor places in the father a temporary government, which terminates with the minority of the child: and the honour due from a child, places in the parents a perpetual right to respect, reverence, support and compliance too, more or less, as the father’s care, cost, and kindness in his education, has been more or less. This ends not with minority, but holds in all parts and conditions of a man’s life. The want of distinguishing these two powers, viz. that which the father hath in the right of tuition, during minority, and the right of honour all his life, may perhaps have caused a great part of the mistakes about this matter: for to speak properly of them, the first of these is rather the privilege of children, and duty of parents, than any prerogative of paternal power. The nourishment and education of their children is a charge so incumbent on parents for their children’s good, that nothing can absolve them from taking care of it: and though the power of commanding and chastising them go along with it, yet God hath woven into the principles of human nature such a tenderness for their off-spring, that there is little fear that parents should use their power with too much rigour; the excess is seldom on the severe side, the strong byass of nature drawing the other way. And therefore God almighty when he would express his gentle dealing with the Israelites, he tells them, that though he chastened them, he chastened them as a man chastens his son, Deut. viii. 5. i. e. with tenderness and affection, and kept them under no severer discipline than what was absolutely best for them, and had been less kindness to have slackened. This is that power to which children are commanded obedience, that the pains and care of their parents may not be increased, or ill rewarded.

  §. 68.

  On the other side, honour and support, all that which gratitude requires to return for the benefits received by and from them, is the indispensible duty of the child, and the proper privilege of the parents. This is intended for the parents advantage, as the other is for the child’s; though education, the parents duty, seems to have most power, because the ignorance and infirmities of childhood stand in need of restraint and correction; which is a visible exercise of rule, and a kind of dominion. And that duty which is comprehended in the word honour, requires less obedience, though the obligation be stronger on grown, than younger children: for who can think the command, Children obey your parents, requires in a man, that has children of his own, the same submission to his father, as it does in his yet young children to him; and that by this precept he were bound to obey all his father’s commands, if, out of a conceit of authority, he should have the indiscretion to treat him still as a boy?

  §. 69.

  The first part then of paternal power, or rather duty, which is education, belongs so to the father, that it terminates at a certain season; when the business of education is over, it ceases of itself, and is also alienable before: for a man may put the tuition of his son in other hands; and he that has made his son an apprentice to another, has discharged him, during that time, of a great part of his obedience both to himself and to his mother. But all the duty of honour, the other part, remains never the less entire to them; nothing can cancel that: it is so inseparable from them both, that the father’s authority cannot dispossess the mother of this right, nor can any man discharge his son from honouring her that bore him. But both these are very far from a power to make laws, and inforcing them with penalties, that may reach estate, liberty, limbs and life. The power of commanding ends with nonage; and though, after that, honour and respect, support and defence, and whatsoever gratitude can oblige a man to, for the highest benefits he is naturally capable of, be always due from a son to his parents; yet all this puts no scepter into the father’s hand, no sovereign power of commanding. He has no dominion over his son’s property, or actions; nor any right, that his will should prescribe to his son’s in all things; however it may become his son in many things, not very inconvenient to him and his family, to pay a deference to it.

  §. 70.

  A man may owe honour and respect to an ancient, or wise man; desence to his child or friend; relief and support to the distressed; and gratitude to a benefactor, to such a degree, that all he has, all he can do, cannot sufficiently pay it: but all these give no authority, no right to any one, of making laws over him from whom they are owing. And it is plain, all this is due not only to the bare title of father; not only because, as has been said, it is owing to the mother too; but because these obligations to parents, and the degrees of what is required of children, may be varied by the different care and kindness, trouble and expence, which is often employed upon one child more than another.

  §. 71.

  This shews the reason how it comes to pass, that parents in societies, where they themselves are subjects, retain a power over their children, and have as much right to their subjection, as those who are in the state of nature. Which could not possibly be, if all political power were only paternal, and that in truth they were one and the same thing: for then, all paternal power being in the prince, the subject could naturally have none of it. But these two powers, political and paternal, are so perfectly distinct and separate; are built upon so different foundations, and given to so different ends, that every subject that is a father, has as much a paternal power over his children, as the prince has over his: and every prince, that has parents, owes them as much filial duty and obedience, as the meanest of his subjects do to their’s; and can therefore contain not any part or degree of that kind of dominion, which a prince or magistrate has over his subject.

  §. 72.

  Though the obligation on the parents to bring up their children, and the obligation on children to honour their parents, contain all the power on the one hand, and submission on the other, which are proper to this relation, yet there is another power ordinarily in the father, whereby he has a tie on the obedience of his children; which tho’ it be common to him with other men, yet the occasions of shewing it, almost constantly happening to fathers in their private families, and the instances of it elsewhere being rare, and less taken notice of, it passes in the world for a part of paternal jurisdiction. And this is the power men generally have to bestow their estates on those who please them best; the possession of the father being the expectation and inheritance of the children, ordinarily in certain proportions, according to the law and custom of each country; yet it is commonly in the father’s power to bestow it with a more sparing or liberal hand, according as the behaviour of this or that child hath comported with his will and humour.

  §. 73.

  This is no small tie on the obedience of children: and there being always annexed to the enjoyment of land, a submission to the government of the country, of which that land is a part; it has been commonly supposed, that a father could oblige his posterity to that government, of which he himself was a subject, and that his compact held them; whereas, it being only a necessary condition annexed to the land, and the inheritance of an estate which is under that government, reaches only those who will take it on that condition, and so is no natural tie or engagement, but a voluntary submission: for every man’s children being by nature as free as himself, or any of his ancestors ever were, may, whilst they are in that freedom, choose what society they will join themselves to, what common-wealth they will put themselves under. But if they will enjoy the inheritance of their ancestors, they must take it on the same terms their ancestors had it, and submit to all the conditions annexed to such a possession. By this power indeed fathers oblige their children to obedience to themselves, even when they are past minority, and most commonly too subject them to this or that political power: but neither of these by any peculiar right of fatherhood, but by the reward they have in their hands to inforce and recompence such a compliance; and is no more power than what a French man has over an English man, who by the hopes of an estate he will leave him, will certainly have a strong tie on his obedience: and if, when it is left him, he will enjoy it, he must certainly take it upon the conditions annexed to the possession of land in that country where it lies, whether it be France or England.

  §. 74.

  To conclude then, tho’ the father’s power of commanding extends no farther than the minority of his children, and to a degree only fit for the discipline and government of that age; and tho’ that honour and respect, and all that which the Latins called piety, which they indispensibly owe to their parents all their life-time, and in all estates, with all that support and defence is due to them, gives the father no power of governing, i. e. making laws and enacting penalties on his children; though by all this he has no dominion over the property or actions of his son: yet it is obvious to conceive how easy it was, in the first ages of the world, and in places still, where the thinness of people gives families leave to separate into unpossessed quarters, and they have room to remove or plant themselves in yet vacant habitations, for the father of the family to become the prince of* it; he had been a ruler from the beginning of the infancy of his children: and since without some government it would be hard for them to live together, it was likeliest it should, by the express or tacit consent of the children when they were grown up, be in the father, where it seemed without any change barely to continue; when indeed nothing more was required to it, than the permitting the father to exercise alone, in his family, that executive power of the law of nature, which every free man naturally hath, and by that permission resigning up to him a monarchical power, whilst they remained in it. But that this was not by any paternal right, but only by the consent of his children, is evident from hence, that no body doubts, but if a stranger, whom chance or business had brought to his family, had there killed any of his children, or committed any other fact, he might condemn and put him to death, or otherwise have punished him, as well as any of his children; which it was impossible he should do by virtue of any paternal authority over one who was not his child, but by virtue of that executive power of the law of nature, which, as a man, he had a right to: and he alone could punish him in his family, where the respect of his children had laid by the exercise of such a power, to give way to the dignity and authority they were willing should remain in him, above the rest of his family.

  §. 75.

  Thus it was easy, and almost natural for children, by a tacit, and scarce avoidable consent, to make way for the father’s authority and government. They had been accustomed in their childhood to follow his direction, and to refer their little differences to him; and when they were men, who fitter to rule them? Their little properties, and less covetousness, seldom afforded greater controversies; and when any should arise, where could they have a fitter umpire than he, by whose care they had every one been sustained and brought up, and who had a tenderness for them all? It is no wonder that they made no distinction betwixt minority and full age; nor looked after one and twenty, or any other age that might make them the free disposers of themselves and fortunes, when they could have no desire to be out of their pupilage: the government they had been under, during it, continued still to be more their protection than restraint; and they could no where find a greater security to their peace, liberties, and fortunes, than in the rule of a father.

  §. 76.

  Thus the natural fathers of families, by an insensible change, became the politic monarchs of them too: and as they chanced to live long, and leave able and worthy heirs, for several successions, or otherwise; so they laid the foundations of hereditary, or elective kingdoms, under several constitutions and mannors, according as chance, contrivance, or occasions happened to mould them. But if princes have their titles in their fathers right, and it be a sufficient proof of the natural right of fathers to political authority, because they commonly were those in whose hands we find, de facto, the exercise of government: I say, if this argument be good, it will as strongly prove, that all princes, nay princes only, ought to be priests, since it is as certain, that in the beginning, the father of the family was priest, as that he was ruler n his own houshold.

  CHAP. VII.
  Of Political or Civil Society.

  §. 77.

  GOD having made man such a creature, that in his own judgment, it was not good for him to be alone, put him under strong obligations of necessity, convenience, and inclination to drive him into society, as well as fitted him with understanding and language to continue and enjoy it. The first society was between man and wife, which gave beginning to that between parents and children; to which, in time, that between master and servant came to be added: and though all these might, and commonly did meet together, and make up but one family, wherein the master or mistress of it had some sort of rule proper to a family; each of these, or all together, came short of political society, as we shall see, if we consider the different ends, ties, and bounds of each of these.

  §. 78.

  Conjugal society is made by a voluntary compact between man and woman; and tho’ it consist chiefly in such a communion and right in one another’s bodies as is necessary to its chief end, procreation; yet it draws with it mutual support and assistance, and a communion of interests too, as necessary not only to unite their care and affection, but also necessary to their common off-spring, who have a right to be nourished, and maintained by them, till they are able to provide for themselves.

  §. 79.

  For the end of conjunction, between male and female, being not barely procreation, but the continuation of the species; this conjunction betwixt male and female ought to last, even after procreation, so long as is necessary to the nourishment and support of the young ones, who are to be sustained by those that got them, till they are able to shift and provide for themselves. This rule, which the infinite wise maker hath set to the works of his hands, we find the inferior creatures steadily obey. In those viviparous animals which feed on grass, the conjunction between male and female lasts no longer than the very act of copulation; because the teat of the dam being sufficient to nourish the young, till it be able to feed on grass, the male only begets, but concerns not himself for the female or young, to whose sustenance he can contribute nothing. But in beasts of prey the conjunction lasts longer: because the dam not being able well to subsist herself, and nourish her numerous off-spring by her own prey alone, a more laborious, as well as more dangerous way of living, than by feeding on grass, the assistance of the male is necessary to the maintenance of their common family, which cannot subsist till they are able to prey for themselves, but by the joint care of male and female. The same is to be observed in all birds, (except some domestic ones, where plenty of food excuses the cock from feeding, and taking care of the young brood) whose young needing food in the nest, the cock and hen continue mates, till the young are able to use their wing, and provide for themselves.

  §. 80.

  And herein I think lies the chief, if not the only reason, why the male and female in mankind are tied to a longer conjunction than other creatures, viz. because the female is capable of conceiving, and de facto is commonly with child again, and brings forth too a new birth, long before the former is out of a dependency for support on his parents help, and able to shift for himself, and has all the assistance is due to him from his parents: whereby the father, who is bound to take care for those he hath begot, is under an obligation to continue in conjugal society with the same woman longer than other creatures, whose young being able to subsist of themselves, before the time of procreation returns again, the conjugal bond dissolves of itself, and they are at liberty, till Hymen at his usual anniversary season summons them again to chuse new mates. Wherein one cannot but admire the wisdom of the great Creator, who having given to man foresight, and an ability to lay up for the future, as well as to supply the present necessity, hath made it necessary, that society of man and wife should be more lasting, than of male and female amongst other creatures; that so their industry might be encouraged, and their interest better united, to make provision and lay up goods for their common issue, which uncertain mixture, or easy and frequent solutions of conjugal society would mightily disturb.

  §. 81.

  But tho’ these are ties upon mankind, which make the conjugal bonds more firm and lasting in man, than the other species of animals; yet it would give one reason to enquire, why this compact, where procreation and education are secured, and inheritance taken care for, may not be made determinable, either by consent, or at a certain time, or upon certain conditions, as well as any other voluntary compacts, there being no necessity in the nature of the thing, nor to the ends of it, that it should always be for life; I mean, to such as are under no restraint of any positive law, which ordains all such contracts to be perpetual.

  §. 82.

  But the husband and wife, though they have but one common concern, yet having different understandings, will unavoidably sometimes have different wills too; it therefore being necessary that the last determination, i. e. the rule, should be placed somewhere; it naturally falls to the man’s share, as the abler and the stronger. But this reaching but to the things of their common interest and property, leaves the wife in the full and free possession of what by contract is her peculiar right, and gives the husband no more power over her life than she has over his; the power of the husband being so far from that of an absolute monarch, that the wife has in many cases a liberty to separate from him, where natural right, or their contract allows it; whether that contract be made by themselves in the state of nature, or by the customs or laws of the country they live in; and the children upon such separation fall to the father or mother’s lot, as such contract does determine.

  §. 83.

  For all the ends of marriage being to be obtained under politic government, as well as in the state of nature, the civil magistrate doth not abridge the right or power of either naturally necessary to those ends, viz. procreation and mutual support and assistance whilst they are together; but only decides any controversy that may arise between man and wife about them. If it were otherwise, and that absolute sovereignty and power of life and death naturally belonged to the husband, and were necessary to the society between man and wife, there could be no matrimony in any of those countries where the husband is allowed no such absolute authority. But the ends of matrimony requiring no such power in the husband, the condition of conjugal society put it not in him, it being not at all necessary to that state. Conjugal society could subsist and attain its ends without it; nay, community of goods, and the power over them, mutual assistance and maintenance, and other things belonging to conjugal society, might be varied and regulated by that contract which unites man and wife in that society, as far as may consist with procreation and the bringing up of children till they could shift for themselves; nothing being necessary to any society, that is not necessary to the ends for which it is made.

  §. 84.

  The society betwixt parents and children, and the distinct rights and powers belonging respectively to them, I have treated of so largely, in the foregoing chapter, that I shall not here need to say any thing of it. And I think it is plain, that it is far different from a politic society.

  §. 85.

  Master and servant are names as old as history, but given to those of far different condition; for a freeman makes himself a servant to another, by selling him, for a certain time, the service he undertakes to do, in exchange for wages he is to receive: and though this commonly puts him into the family of his master, and under the ordinary discipline thereof; yet it gives the master but a temporary power over him, and no greater than what is contained in the contract between them. But there is another sort of servants, which by a peculiar name we call slaves, who being captives taken in a just war, are by the right of nature subjected to the absolute dominion and arbitrary power of their masters. These men having, as I say, forfeited their lives, and with it their liberties, and lost their estates; and being in the state of slavery, not capable of any property, cannot in that state be considered as any part of civil society; the chief end whereof is the preservation of property.

  §. 86.

  Let us therefore consider a master of a family with all these subordinate relations of wife, children, servants, and slaves, united under the domestic rule of a family; which, what resemblance soever it may have in its order, offices, and number too, with a little common-wealth, yet is very far from it, both in its constitution, power and end: or if it must be thought a monarchy, and the paterfamilias the absolute monarch in it, absolute monarchy will have but a very shattered and short power, when it is plain, by what has been said before, that the master of the family has a very distinct and differently limited power, both as to time and extent, over those several persons that are in it; for excepting the slave (and the family is as much a family, and his power as paterfamilias as great, whether there be any slaves in his family or no) he has no legislative power of life and death over any of them, and none too but what a mistress of a family may have as well as he. And he certainly can have no absolute power over the whole family, who has but a very limited one over every individual in it. But how a family, or any other society of men, differ from that which is properly political society, we shall best see, by considering wherein political society itself consists.

  §. 87.

  Man being born, as has been proved, with a title to perfect freedom, and an uncontrouled enjoyment of all the rights and privileges of the law of nature, equally with any other man, or number of men in the world, hath by nature a power, not only to preserve his property, that is, his life, liberty and estate, against the injuries and attempts of other men; but to judge of, and punish the breaches of that law in others, as he is persuaded the offence deserves, even with death itself, in crimes where the heinousness of the fact, in his opinion, requires it. But because no political society can be, nor subsist, without having in itself the power to preserve the property, and in order thereunto, punish the offences of all those of that society; there, and there only is political society, where every one of the members hath quitted this natural power, resigned it up into the hands of the community in all cases that exclude him not from appealing for protection to the law established by it. And thus all private judgment of every particular member being excluded, the community comes to be umpire, by settled standing rules, indifferent, and the same to all parties; and by men having authority from the community, for the execution of those rules, decides all the differences that may happen between any members of that society concerning any matter of right; and punishes those offences which any member hath committed against the society, with such penalties as the law has established: whereby it is easy to discern, who are, and who are not, in political society together. Those who are united into one body, and have a common established law and judicature to appeal to, with authority to decide controversies between them, and punish offenders, are in civil society one with another: but those who have no such common people, I mean on earth, are still in the state of nature, each being, where there is no other, judge for himself, and executioner; which is, as I have before shewed it, the perfect state of nature.

  §. 88.

  And thus the common-wealth comes by a power to set down what punishment shall belong to the several transgressions which they think worthy of it, committed amongst the members of that society, (which is the power of making laws) as well as it has the power to punish any injury done unto any of its members, by any one that is not of it, (which is the power of war and peace;) and all this for the preservation of the property of all the members of that society, as far as is possible. But though every man who has entered into civil society, and is become a member of any common-wealth, has thereby quitted his power to punish offences, against the law of nature, in prosecution of his own private judgment, yet with the judgment of offences, which he has given up to the legislative in all cases, where he can appeal to the magistrate, he has given a right to the common-wealth to employ his force, for the execution of the judgments of the common-wealth, whenever he shall be called to it; which indeed are his own judgments, they being made by himself, or his representative. And herein we have the original of the legislative and executive power of civil society, which is to judge by standing laws, how far offences are to be punished, when committed within the common-wealth; and also to determine, by occasional judgments founded on the present circumstances of the fact, how far injuries from without are to be vindicated; and in both these to employ all the force of all the members, when there shall be need.

  §. 89.

  Where-ever therefore any number of men are so united into one society, as to quit every one his executive power of the law of nature, and to resign it to the public, there and there only is a political, or civil society. And this is done, where-ever any number of men, in the state of nature, enter into society to make one people, one body politic, under one supreme government; or else when any one joins himself to, and incorporates with any government already made: for hereby he authorizes the society, or which is all one, the legislative thereof, to make laws for him, as the public good of the society shall require; to the execution whereof, his own assistance (as to his own decrees) is due. And this puts men out of a state of nature into that of a common-wealth, by setting up a judge on earth, with authority to determine all the controversies, and redress the injuries that may happen to any member of the common-wealth; which judge is the legislative, or magistrates appointed by it. And where-ever there are any number of men, however associated, that have no such decisive power to appeal to, there they are still in the state of nature.

  §. 90.

  Hence it is evident, that absolute monarchy, which by some men is counted the only government in the world, is indeed inconsistent with civil society, and so can be no form of civil-government at all: for the end of civil society, being to avoid, and remedy those inconveniencies of the state of nature, which necessarily follow from every man’s being judge in his own case, by setting up a known authority, to which every one of that society may appeal upon any injury received, or controversy that may arise, and which every one of the* society ought to obey; where-ever any persons are, who have not such an authority to appeal to, for the decision of any difference between them, there those persons are still in the state of nature; and so is every absolute prince, in respect of those who are under his dominion.

  §. 91.

  For he being supposed to have all, both legislative and executive power in himself alone, there is no judge to be found, no appeal lies open to any one, who may fairly, and indifferently, and with authority decide, and from whose decision relief and redress may be expected of any injury or inconviency, that may be suffered from the prince, or by his order: so that such a man, however intitled, Czar, or Grand Seignior, or how you please, is as much in the state of nature, with all under his dominion, as he is with the rest of mankind: for where-ever any two men are, who have no standing rule, and common judge to appeal to on earth, for the determination of controversies of right betwixt them, there they are still in the stateof*nature, and under all the inconveniencies of it, with only this woful difference to the subject, or rather slave of an absolute prince: that whereas, in the ordinary state of nature, he has a liberty to judge of his right, and according to the best of his power, to maintain it; now, whenever his property is invaded by the will and order of his monarch, he has not only no appeal, as those in society ought to have, but as if he were degraded from the common state of rational creatures, is denied a liberty to judge of, or to defend his right; and so is exposed to all the misery and inconveniencies, that a man can fear from one, who being in the unrestrained state of nature, is yet corrupted with flattery, and armed with power.

  §. 92.

  For he that thinks absolute power purifies men’s blood, and corrects the baseness of human nature, need read but the history of this, or any other age, to be convinced of the contrary. He that would have been insolent and injurious in the woods of America, would not probably be much better in a throne; where perhaps learning and religion shall be found out to justify all that he shall do to his subjects, and the sword presently silence all those that dare question it: for what the protection of absolute monarchy is, what kind of fathers of their countries it makes princes to be, and to what a degree of happiness and security it carries civil society, where this sort of government is grown to perfection, he that will look into the late relation of Ceylon, may easily see.

  §. 93.

  In absolute monarchies indeed, as well as other governments of the world, the subjects have an appeal to the law, and judges to decide any controversies, and restrain any violence that may happen betwixt the subjects themselves, one amongst another. This every one thinks necessary, and believes he deserves to be thought a declared enemy to society and mankind, who should go about to take it away. But whether this be from a true love of mankind and society, and such a charity as we owe all one to another, there is reason to doubt: for this is no more than what every man, who loves his own power, profit, or greatness, may and naturally must do, keep those animals from hurting, or destroying one another, who labour and drudge only for his pleasure and advantage; and so are taken care of, not out of any love the master has for them, but love of himself, and the profit they bring him: for if it be asked, what security, what fence is there, in such a state, against the violence and oppression of this absolute ruler? the very question can scarce be borne. They are ready to tell you, that it deserves death only to ask after safety. Betwixt subject and subject, they will grant, there must be measures, laws and judges, for their mutual peace and security: but as for the ruler, he ought to be absolute, and is above all such circumstances; because he has power to do more hurt and wrong, it is right when he does it. To ask how you may be guarded from harm, or injury, on that side where the strongest hand is to do it, is presently the voice of faction and rebellion: as if when men quitting the state of nature entered into society, they agreed that all of them but one, should be under the restraint of laws, but that he should still retain all the liberty of the state of nature, increased with power, and made licentious by impunity. This is to think, that men are so foolish, that they take care to avoid what mischiefs may be done them by pole-cats, or foxes; but are content, nay, think it safety, to be devoured by lions.

  §. 94.

  But whatever flatterers may talk to amuse people’s understandings, it hinders not men from feeling; and when they perceive, that any man, in what station soever, is out of the bounds of the civil society which they are of, and that they have no appeal on earth against any harm, they may receive from him, they are apt to think themselves in the state of nature, in respect of him whom they find to be so; and to take care, as soon as they can, to have that safety and security in civil society, for which it was first instituted, and for which only they entered into it. And therefore, though perhaps at first, (as shall be shewed more at large hereafter in the following part of this discourse) some one good and excellent man having got a pre-eminency amongst the rest, had this deference paid to his goodness and virtue, as to a kind of natural authority, that the chief rule, with arbitration of their differences, by a tacit consent devolved into his hands, without any other caution, but the assurance they had of his uprightness and wisdom; yet when time, giving authority, and (as some men would persuade us) sacredness of customs, which the negligent, and unforeseeing innocence of the first ages began, had brought in successors of another stamp, the people finding their properties not secure under the government, as then it was, (whereas government has no other end but the preservation of* property) could never be safe nor at rest, nor think themselves in civil society, till the legislature was placed in collective bodies of men, call them senate, parliament, or what you please. By which means every single person became subject, equally with other the meanest men, to those laws, which he himself, as part of the legislative, had established; nor could any one, by his own authority, avoid the force of the law, when once made; nor by any pretence of superiority plead exemption, thereby to license his own, or the miscarriages of any of his dependents. †No man in civil society can be exempted from the laws of it: for if any man may do what he thinks fit, and there be no appeal on earth, for redress or security against any harm he shall do; I ask, whether he be not perfectly still in the state of nature, and so can be no part or member of that civil society; unless any one will say, the state of nature and civil society are one and the same thing, which I have never yet found any one so great a patron of anarchy as to affirm.

  CHAP. VIII.
  Of the Beginning of Political Societies.

  §. 95.

  MEN being, as has been said, by nature, all free, equal, and independent, no one can be put out of this estate, and subjected to the political power of another, without his own consent. The only way whereby any one divests himself of his natural liberty, and puts on the bonds of civil society, is by agreeing with other men to join and unite into a community, for their comfortable, safe, and peaceable living one amongst another, in a secure enjoyment of their properties, and a greater security against any, that are not of it. This any number of men may do, because it injures not the freedom of the rest; they are left as they were in the liberty of the state of nature. When any number of men have so consented to make one community or government, they are thereby presently incorporated, and make one body politic, wherein the majority have a right to act and conclude the rest.

  §. 96.

  For when any number of men have, by the consent of every individual, made a community, they have thereby made that community one body, with a power to act as one body, which is only by the will and determination of the majority: for that which acts any community, being only the consent of the individuals of it, and it being necessary to that which is one body to move one way; it is necessary the body should move that way whither the greater force carries it, which is the consent of the majority: or else it is impossible it should act or continue one body, one community, which the consent of every individual that united into it, agreed that it should; and so every one is bound by that consent to be concluded by the majority. And therefore we see, that in assemblies, impowered to act by positive laws, where no number is set by that positive law which impowers them, the act of the majority passes for the act of the whole, and of course determines, as having, by the law of nature and reason, the power of the whole.

  §. 97.

  And thus every man, by consenting with others to make one body politic under one government, puts himself under an obligation, to every one of that society, to submit to the determination of the majority, and to be concluded by it; or else this original compact, whereby he with others incorporates into one society, would signify nothing, and be no compact, if he be left free, and under no other ties than he was in before in the state of nature. For what appearance would there be of any compact? what new engagement if he were no farther tied by any decrees of the society, than he himself thought fit, and did actually consent to? This would be still as great a liberty, as he himself had before his compact, or any one else in the state of nature hath, who may submit himself, and consent to any acts of it if he thinks fit.

  §. 98.

  For if the consent of the majority shall not, in reason, be received as the act of the whole, and conclude every individual; nothing but the consent of every individual can make any thing to be the act of the whole: but such a consent is next to impossible ever to be had, if we consider the infirmities of health, and avocations of business, which in a number, though much less than that of a common-wealth, will necessarily keep many away from the public assembly. To which if we add the variety of opinions, and contrariety of interests, which unavoidably happen in all collections of men, the coming into society upon such terms would be only like Cato’s coming into the theatre, only to go out again. Such a constitution as this would make the mighty Leviathan of a shorter duration, than the feeblest creatures, and not let it outlast the day it was born in: which cannot be supposed, till we can think, that rational creatures should desire and constitute societies only to be dissolved: for where the majority cannot conclude the rest, there they cannot act as one body, and consequently will be immediately dissolved again.

  §. 99.

  Whosoever therefore out of a state of nature unite into a community, must be understood to give up all the power, necessary to the ends for which they unite into society, to the majority of the community, unless they expresly agreed in any number greater than the majority. And this is done by barely agreeing to unite into one political society, which is all the compact that is, or needs be, between the individuals, that enter into, or make up a common-wealth. And thus that, which begins and actually constitutes any political society, is nothing but the consent of any number of freemen capable of a majority to unite and incorporate into such a society. And this is that, and that only, which did, or could give beginning to any lawful government in the world.

  §. 100.

  To this I find two objections made.

  First, That there are no instances to be found in story, of a company of men independent, and equal one amongst another, that met together, and in this way began and set up a government.

  Secondly, It is impossible of right, that men should do so, because all men being born under government, they are to submit to that, and are not at liberty to begin a new one.

  §. 101.

  To the first there is this to answer, That it is not at all to be wondered, that history gives us but a very little account of men, that lived together in the state of nature. The inconveniences of that condition, and the love and want of society, no sooner brought any number of them together, but they presently united and incorporated, if they designed to continue together. And if we may not suppose men ever to have been in the state of nature, because we hear not much of them in such a state, we may as well suppose the armies of Salmanasser or Xerxes were never children, because we hear little of them, till they were men, and imbodied in armies. Government is every where antecedent to records, and letters seldom come in amongst a people till a long continuation of civil society has, by other more necessary arts, provided for their safety, ease, and plenty: and then they begin to look after the history of their founders, and search into their original, when they have outlived the memory of it: for it is with common-wealths as with particular persons, they are commonly ignorant of their own births and infancies: and if they know any thing of their original, they are beholden for it, to the accidental records that others have kept of it. And those that we have, of the beginning of any polities in the world, excepting that of the Jews, where God himself immediately interposed, and which favours not at all paternal dominion, are all either plain instances of such a beginning as I have mentioned, or at least have manifest footsteps of it.

  §. 102.

  He must shew a strange inclination to deny evident matter of fact, when it agrees not with his hypothesis, who will not allow, that the beginning of Rome and Venice were by the uniting together of several men free and independent one of another, amongst whom there was no natural superiority or subjection. And if Josephus Acosta’s word may be taken, he tells us, that in many parts of America there was no government at all. There are great and apparent conjectures, says he, that these men, speaking of those of Peru, for a long time had neither kings nor common-wealths, but lived in troops, as they do this day in Florida, the Cheriquanas, those of Brasil, and many other nations, which have no certain kings, but as occasion is offered, in peace or war, they choose their captains as they please, l. i. c. 25. If it be said, that every man there was born subject to his father, or the head of his family; that the subjection due from a child to a father took not away his freedom of uniting into what political society he thought fit, has been already proved. But be that as it will, these men, it is evident, were actually free; and whatever superiority some politicians now would place in any of them, they themselves claimed it not, but by consent were all equal, till by the same consent they set rulers over themselves. So that their politic societies all began from a voluntary union, and the mutual agreement of men freely acting in the choice of their governors, and forms of government.

  §. 103.

  And I hope those who went away from Sparta with Palantus, mentioned by Justin, l. iii. c. 4. will be allowed to have been freemen independent one of another, and to have set up a government over themselves, by their own consent. Thus I have given several examples, out of history, of people free and in the state of nature, that being met together incorporated and began a common-wealth. And if the want of such instances be an argument to prove that government were not, nor could not be so begun, I suppose the contenders for paternal empire were better let it alone, than urge it against natural liberty: for if they can give so many instances, out of history, of governments begun upon paternal right, I think (though at best an argument from what has been, to what should of right be, has no great force) one might, without any great danger, yield them the cause. But if I might advise them in the case, they would do well not to search too much into the original of governments, as they have begun de facto, lest they should find, at the foundation of most of them, something very little favourable to the design they promote, and such a power as they contend for.

  §. 104.

  But to conclude, reason being plain on our side, that men are naturally free, and the examples of history shewing, that the governments of the world, that were begun in peace, had their beginning laid on that foundation, and were made by the consent of the people; there can be little room for doubt, either where the right is, or what has been the opinion, or practice of mankind, about the first erecting of governments.

  §. 105.

  I will not deny, that if we look back as far as history will direct us, towards the original of common-wealths, we shall generally find them under the government and administration of one man. And I am also apt to believe, that where a family was numerous enough to subsist by itself, and continued entire together, without mixing with others, as it often happens, where there is much land, and few people, the government commonly began in the father: for the father having, by the law of nature, the same power with every man else to punish, as he thought fit, any offences against that law, might thereby punish his transgressing children, even when they were men, and out of their pupilage; and they were very likely to submit to his punishment, and all join with him against the offender, in their turns, giving him thereby power to execute his sentence against any transgression, and so in effect make him the law-maker, and governor over all that remained in conjunction with his family. He was fittest to be trusted; paternal affection secured their property and interest under his care; and the custom of obeying him, in their childhood, made it easier to submit to him, rather than to any other. If therefore they must have one to rule them, as government is hardly to be avoided amongst men that live together; who so likely to be the man as he that was their common father; unless negligence, cruelty, or any other defect of mind or body made him unfit for it? But when either the father died, and left his next heir, for want of age, wisdom, courage, or any other qualities, less fit for rule; or where several families met, and consented to continue together; there, it is not to be doubted, but they used their natural freedom, to set up him, whom they judged the ablest, and most likely, to rule well over them. Conformable hereunto we find the people of America, who (living out of the reach of the conquering swords, and spreading domination of the two great empires of Peru and Mexico) enjoyed their own natural freedom, though, cæteris paribus, they commonly prefer the heir of their deceased king; yet if they find him any way weak, or uncapable, they pass him by, and set up the stoutest and bravest man for their ruler.

  §. 106.

  Thus, though looking back as far as records give us any account of peopling the world, and the history of nations, we commonly find the government to be in one hand; yet it destroys not that which I affirm, viz. that the beginning of politic society depends upon the consent of the individuals, to join into, and make one society; who, when they are thus incorporated, might set up what form of government they thought fit. But this having given occasion to men to mistake, and think, that by nature government was monarchical, and belonged to the father, it may not be amiss here to consider, why people in the beginning generally pitched upon this form, which though perhaps the father’s pre-eminency might, in the first institution of some common-wealths, give a rise to, and place in the beginning, the power in one hand; yet it is plain that the reason, that continued the form of government in a single person, was not any regard, or respect to paternal authority; since all petty monarchies, that is, almost all monarchies, near their original, have been commonly, at least upon occasion, elective.

  §. 107.

  First then, in the beginning of things, the father’s government of the childhood of those sprung from him, having accustomed them to the rule of one man, and taught them that where it was exercised with care and skill, with affection and love to those under it, it was sufficient to procure and preserve to men all the political happiness they sought for in society. It was no wonder that they should pitch upon, and naturally run into that form of government, which from their infancy they had been all accustomed to; and which, by experience, they had found both easy and safe. To which, if we add, that monarchy being simple, and most obvious to men, whom neither experience had instructed in forms of government, nor the ambition or insolence of empire had taught to beware of the encroachments of prerogative, or the inconveniencies of absolute power, which monarchy in succession was apt to lay claim to, and bring upon them; it was not at all strange, that they should not much trouble themselves to think of methods of restraining any exorbitances of those to whom they had given the authority over them, and of balancing the power of government, by placing several parts of it in different hands. They had neither felt the oppression of tyrannical dominion, nor did the fashion of the age, nor their possessions, or way of living, (which afforded little matter for covetousness or ambition) give them any reason to apprehend or provide against it; and therefore it is no wonder they put themselves into such a frame of government, as was not only, as I said, most obvious and simple, but also best suited to their present state and condition; which stood more in need of defence against foreign invasions and injuries, than of multiplicity of laws. The equality of a simple poor way of living, confining their desires within the narrow bounds of each man’s small property, made few controversies, and so no need of many laws to decide them, or variety of officers to superintend the process, or look after the execution of justice, where there were but few trespasses, and few offenders. Since then those, who liked one another so well as to join into society, cannot but be supposed to have some acquaintance and friendship together, and some trust one in another; they could not but have greater apprehensions of others, than of one another: and therefore their first care and thought cannot but be supposed to be, how to secure themselves against foreign force. It was natural for them to put themselves under a frame of government which might best serve to that end, and chuse the wisest and bravest man to conduct them in their wars, and lead them out against their enemies, and in this chiefly be their ruler.

  §. 108.

  Thus we see, that the kings of the Indians in America, which is still a pattern of the first ages in Asia and Europe, whilst the inhabitants were too few for the country, and want of people and money gave men no temptation to enlarge their possessions of land, or contest for wider extent of ground, are little more than generals of their armies; and though they command absolutely in war, yet at home and in time of peace they exercise very little dominion, and have but a very moderate sovereignty, the resolutions of peace and war being ordinarily either in the people, or in a council. Tho’ the war itself, which admits not of plurality of governors, naturally devolves the command into the king’s sole authority.

  §. 109.

  And thus in Israel itself, the chief business of their judges, and first kings, seems to have been to be captains in war, and leaders of their armies; which (besides what is signified by going out and in before the people, which was, to march forth to war, and home again in the heads of their forces) appears plainly in the story of Jephtha. The Ammonites making war upon Israel, the Gileadites in fear send to Jephtha, a bastard of their family whom they had cast off, and article with him, if he will assist them against the Ammonites, to make him their ruler; which they do in these words, And the people made him head and captain over them, Judg. xi. 11. which was, as it seems, all one as to be judge. And he judged Israel, Judg. xii. 7. that is, was their captain-general six years. So when Jotham upbraids the Shechemites with the obligation they had to Gideon, who had been their judge and ruler, he tells them, He fought for you, and adventured his life far, and delivered you out of the hands of Midian, Judg. ix. 17. Nothing mentioned of him, but what he did as a general: and indeed that is all is found in his history, or in any of the rest of the judges. And Abimelech particularly is called king, though at most he was but their general. And when, being weary of the ill conduct of Samuel’s sons, the children of Israel desired a king, like all the nations to judge them, and to go out before them, and to fight their battles, 1 Sam. viii. 20. God granting their desire, says to Samuel, I will send thee a man, and thou shalt anoint him to be captain over my people Israel, that he may save my people out of the hands of the Philistines, ix. 16. As if the only business of a king had been to lead out their armies, and fight in their defence; and accordingly at his inauguration pouring a vial of oil upon him, declares to Saul, that the Lord had anointed him to be captain over his inheritance, x. 1. And therefore those, who after Saul’s being solemnly chosen and saluted king by the tribes at Mispah, were unwilling to have him their king, made no other objection but this, How shall this man save us? v. 27. as if they should have said, this man is unfit to be our king, not having skill and conduct enough in war, to be able to defend us. And when God resolved to transfer the government to David, it is in these words, But now thy kingdom shall not continue: the Lord hath sought him a man after his own heart, and the Lord hath commanded him to be captain over his people, xiii. 14. As if the whole kingly authority were nothing else but to be their general: and therefore the tribes who had stuck to Saul’s family, and opposed David’s reign, when they came to Hebron with terms of submission to him, they tell him, amongst other arguments they had to submit to him as to their king, that he was in effect their king in Saul’s time, and therefore they had no reason but to receive him as their king now. Also (say they) in time past, when Saul was king over us, thou wast he that leddest out and broughtest in Israel, and the Lord said unto thee, Thou shalt feed my people Israel, and thou shalt be a captain over Israel.

  §. 110.

  Thus, whether a family by degrees grew up into a common-wealth, and the fatherly authority being continued on to the elder son, every one in his turn growing up under it, tacitly submitted to it, and the easiness and equality of it not offending any one, every one acquiesced, till time seemed to have confirmed it, and settled a right of succession by prescription: or whether several families, or the descendants of several families, whom chance, neighbourhood, or business brought together, uniting into society, the need of a general, whose conduct might defend them against their enemies in war, and the great confidence the innocence and sincerity of that poor but virtuous age, (such as are almost all those which begin governments, that ever come to last in the world) gave men one of another, made the first beginners of common-wealths generally put the rule into one man’s hand, without any other express limitation or restraint, but what the nature of the thing, and the end of government required: which ever of those it was that at first put the rule into the hands of a single person, certain it is no body was intrusted with it but for the public good and safety, and to those ends, in the infancies of common-wealths, those who had it commonly used it. And unless they had done so, young societies could not have subsisted; without such nursing fathers tender and careful of the public weal, all governments would have sunk under the weakness and infirmities of their infancy, and the prince and the people had soon perished together.

  §. 111.

  But though the golden age (before vain ambition, and amor sceleratus habendi, evil concupiscence, had corrupted men’s minds into a mistake of true power and honour) had more virtue, and consequently better governors, as well as less vicious subjects; and there was then no stretching prerogative on the one side, to oppress the people; nor consequently on the other, any dispute aboutprivilege, to lessen or restrain the power of the magistrate, and so no contest betwixt rulers and people about governors or government: yet, when ambition and luxury in future ages* would retain and increase the power, without doing the business for which it was given; and aided by slattery, taught princes to have distinct and separate interests from their people, men found it necessary to examine more carefully the original and rights of government; and to find out ways to restrain the exorbitances, and prevent the abuses of that power, which they having intrusted in another’s hands only for their own good, they found was made use of to hurt them.

  §. 112.

  Thus we may see how probable it is, that people that were naturally free, and by their own consent either submitted to the government of their father, or united together out of different families to make a government, should generally put the rule into one man’s hands, and chuse to be under the conduct of a single person, without so much as by express conditions limiting or regulating his power, which they thought safe enough in his honesty and prudence; though they never dreamed of monarchy being Jure Divino, which we never heard of among mankind, till it was revealed to us by the divinity of this last age; nor ever allowed paternal power to have a right to dominion, or to be the foundation of all government. And thus much may suffice to shew, that as far as we have any light from history, we have reason to conclude, that all peaceful beginnings of government have been laid in the consent of the people. I say peaceful, because I shall have occasion in another place to speak of conquest, which some esteem a way of beginning of governments.

  The other objection I find urged against the beginning of polities, in the way I have mentioned, is this, viz.

  §. 113.

  That all men being born under government, some or other, it is impossible any of them should ever be free, and at liberty to unite together, and begin a new one, or ever be able to erect a lawful government.

  If this argument be good; I ask, how came so many lawful monarchies into the world? for if any body, upon this supposition, can shew me any one man in any age of the world free to begin a lawful monarchy, I will be bound to shew him ten other freemen at liberty, at the same time to unite and begin a new government under a regal, or any other form; it being demonstration, that if any one, born under the dominion of another, may be so free as to have a right to command others in a new and distinct empire, every one that is born under the dominion of another may be so free too, and may become a ruler, or subject, of a distinct separate government. And so by this their own principle, either all men, however born, are free, or else there is but one lawful prince, one lawful government in the world. And then they have nothing to do, but barely to shew us which that is; which when they have done, I doubt not but all mankind will easily agree to pay obedience to him.

  §. 114.

  Though it be a sufficient answer to their objection, to shew that it involves them in the same difficulties that it doth those they use it against; yet I shall endeavour to discover the weakness of this argument a little farther.

  All men, say they, are born under government, and therefore they cannot be at liberty to begin a new one. Every one is born a subject to his father, or his prince, and is therefore under the perpetual tie of subjection and allegiance. It is plain mankind never owned nor considered any such natural subjection that they were born in, to one or to the other that tied them, without their own consents, to a subjection to them and their heirs.

  §. 115.

  For there are no examples so frequent in history, both sacred and profane, as those of men withdrawing themselves, and their obedience, from the jurisdiction they were born under, and the family or community they were bred up in, and setting up new governments in other places; from whence sprang all that number of petty commonwealths in the beginning of ages, and which always multiplied, as long as there was room enough, till the stronger, or more fortunate, swallowed the weaker; and those great ones again breaking to pieces, dissolved into lesser dominions. All which are so many testimonies against paternal sovereignty, and plainly prove, that it was not the natural right of the father descending to his heirs, that made governments in the beginning, since it was impossible, upon that ground, there should have been so many little kingdoms; all must have been but only one universal monarchy, if men had not been at liberty to separate themselves from their families, and the government, be it what it will, that was set up in it, and go and make distinct common-wealths and other governments, as they thought fit.

  §. 116.

  This has been the practice of the world from its first beginning to this day; nor is it now any more hindrance to the freedom of mankind, that they are born under constituted and ancient polities, that have established laws, and set forms of government, than if they were born in the woods, amongst the unconfined inhabitants, that run loose in them: for those, who would persuade us, that by being born under any government, we are naturally subjects to it, and have no more any title or pretence to the freedom of the state of nature, have no other reason (bating that of paternal power, which we have already answered) to produce for it, but only, because our fathers or progenitors passed away their natural liberty, and thereby bound up themselves and their posterity to a perpetual subjection to the government, which they themselves submitted to. It is true, that whatever engagements or promises any one has made for himself, he is under the obligation of them, but cannot, by any compact whatsoever, bind his children or posterity: for his son, when a man, being altogether as free as the father, any act of the father can no more give away the liberty of the son, than it can of any body else: he may indeed annex such conditions to the land, he enjoyed as a subject of any common-wealth, as may oblige his son to be of that community, if he will enjoy those possessions which were his father’s; because that estate being his father’s property, he may dispose, or settle it, as he pleases.

  §. 117.

  And this has generally given the occasion to mistake in this matter; because common-wealths not permitting any part of their dominions to be dismembered, nor to be enjoyed by any but those of their community, the son cannot ordinarily enjoy the possessions of his father, but under the same terms his father did, by becoming a member of the society; whereby he puts himself presently under the government he finds there established, as much as any other subject of that common-wealth. And thus the consent of freemen, born under government, which only makes them members of it, being given separately in their turns, as each comes to be of age, and not in a multitude together; people take no notice of it, and thinking it not done at all, or not necessary, conclude they are naturally subjects as they are men.

  §. 118.

  But, it is plain, governments themselves understand it otherwise; they claim no power over the son, because of that they had over the father; nor look on children as being their subjects, by their fathers being so. If a subject of England have a child, by an English woman in France, whose subject is he? Not the king of England’s; for he must have leave to be admitted to the privileges of it: nor the king of France’s; for how then has his father a liberty to bring him away, and breed him as he pleases? and who ever was judged as a traytor or deserter, if he left, or warred against a country, for being barely born in it of parents that were aliens there? It is plain then, by the practice of governments themselves, as well as by the law of right reason, that a child is born a subject of no country or government. He is under his father’s tuition and authority, till he comes to age of discretion; and then he is a freeman, at liberty what government he will put himself under, what body politic he will unite himself to: for if an Englishman’s son, born in France, be at liberty, and may do so, it is evident there is no tie upon him by his father’s being a subject of this kingdom; nor is he bound up by any compact of his ancestors. And why then hath not his son, by the same reason, the same liberty, though he be born any where else? Since the power that a father hath naturally over his children, is the same, where-ever they be born, and the ties of natural obligations, are not bounded by the positive limits of kingdoms and common-wealths.

  §. 119.

  Every man being, as has been shewed, naturally free, and nothing being able to put him into subjection to any earthly power, but only his own consent; it is to be considered, what shall be understood to be a sufficient declaration of a man’s consent, to make him subject to the laws of any government. There is a common distinction of an express and a tacit consent, which will concern our present case. No body doubts but an express consent, of any man entering into any society, makes him a perfect member of that society, a subject of that government. The difficulty is, what ought to be looked upon as a tacit consent, and how far it binds, i. e. how far any one shall be looked on to have consented, and thereby submitted to any government, where he has made no expressions of it at all. And to this I say, that every man, that hath any possessions, or enjoyment, of any part of the dominions of any government, doth thereby give his tacit consent, and is as far forth obliged to obedience to the laws of that government, during such enjoyment, as any one under it; whether this his possession be of land, to him and his heirs for ever, or a lodging only for a week; or whether it be barely travelling freely on the highway; and in effect, it reaches as far as the very being of any one within the territories of that government.

  §. 120.

  To understand this the better, it is fit to consider, that every man, when he at first incorporates himself into any common-wealth, he, by his uniting himself thereunto, annexed also, and submits to the community, those possessions, which he has, or shall acquire, that do not already belong to any other government: for it would be a direct contradiction, for any one to enter into society with others for the securing and regulating of property; and yet to suppose his land, whose property is to be regulated by the laws of the society, should be exempt from the jurisdiction of that government, to which he himself, the proprietor of the land, is a subject. By the same act therefore, whereby any one unites his person, which was before free, to any common-wealth; by the same he unites his possessions, which were before free, to it also; and they become, both of them, person and possession, subject to the government and dominion of that common-wealth, as long as it hath a being. Whoever therefore, from thenceforth, by inheritance, purchase, permission, or otherways, enjoys any part of the land, so annexed to, and under the government of that common-wealth, must take it with the condition it is under; that is, of submitting to the government of the common-wealth, under whose jurisdiction it is, as far forth as any subject of it.

  §. 121.

  But since the government has a direct jurisdiction only over the land, and reaches the possessor of it, (before he has actually incorporated himself in the society) only as he dwells upon, and enjoys that; the obligation any one is under, by virtue of such enjoyment, to submit to the government, begins and ends with the enjoyment; so that whenever the owner, who has given nothing but such a tacit consent to the government, will, by donation, sale, or otherwise, quit the said possession, he is at liberty to go and incorporate himself into any other common-wealth; or to agree with others to begin a new one, in vacuis locis, in any part of the world, they can find free and unpossessed: whereas he, that has once, by actual agreement, and any express declaration, given his consent to be of any common-wealth, is, perpetually and indispensibly obliged to be, and remain unalterably a subject to it, and can never be again in the liberty of the state of nature; unless, by any calamity, the government he was under comes to be dissolved; or else by some public act cuts him off from being any longer a member of it.

  §. 122.

  But submitting to the laws of any country, living quietly, and enjoying privileges and protection under them, makes not a man a member of that society: this is only a local protection and homage due to and from all those, who, not being in a state of war, come within the territories belonging to any government, to all parts whereof the force of its laws extends. But this no more makes a man a member of that society, a perpetual subject of that common-wealth, than it would make a man a subject to another, in whose family he found it convenient to abide for some time; though, whilst he continued in it, he were obliged to comply with the laws, and submit to the government he found there. And thus we see, that foreigners, by living all their lives under another government, and enjoying the privileges and protection of it, though they are bound, even in conscience, to submit to its administration, as far forth as any denison; yet do not thereby come to be subjects or members of that common-wealth. Nothing can make any man so, but his actually entering into it by positive engagement, and express promise and compact. This is that, which I think, concerning the beginning of political societies, and that consent which makes any one a member of any common-wealth.

  CHAP. IX.
  Of the Ends of Political Society and Government.

  §. 123.

  IF man in the state of nature be so free, as has been said; if he be absolute lord of his own person and possessions, equal to the greatest, and subject to no body, why will he part with his freedom? why will he give up this empire, and subject himself to the dominion and controul of any other power? To which it is obvious to answer, that though in the state of nature he hath such a right, yet the enjoyment of it is very uncertain, and constantly exposed to the invasion of others: for all being kings as much as he, every man his equal, and the greater part no strict observers of equity and justice, the enjoyment of the property he has in this state is very unsafe, very unsecure. This makes him willing to quit a condition, which, however free, is full of fears and continual dangers: and it is not without reason, that he seeks out, and is willing to join in society with others, who are already united, or have a mind to unite, for the mutual preservation of their lives, liberties and estates, which I call by the general name, property.

  §. 124.

  The great and chief end, therefore, of men’s uniting into common-wealths, and putting themselves under government, is the preservation of their property. To which in the state of nature there are many things wanting.

  First, There wants an established, settled, known law, received and allowed by common consent to be the standard of right and wrong, and the common measure to decide all controversies between them: for though the law of nature be plain and intelligible to all rational creatures; yet men being biassed by their interest, as well as ignorant for want of study of it, are not apt to allow of it as a law binding to them in the application of it to their particular cases.

  §. 125.

  Secondly, In the state of nature there wants a known and indifferent judge, with authority to determine all differences according to the established law: for every one in that state being both judge and executioner of the law of nature, men being partial to themselves, passion and revenge is very apt to carry them too far, and with too much heat, in their own cases; as well as negligence, and unconcernedness, to make them too remiss in other men’s.

  §. 126.

  Thirdly, In the state of nature there often wants power to back and support the sentence when right, and to give it due execution. They who by any injustice offended, will seldom fail, where they are able, by force to make good their injustice; such resistance many times makes the punishment dangerous, and frequently destructive, to those who attempt it.

  §. 127.

  Thus mankind, notwithstanding all the privileges of the state of nature, being but in an ill condition, while they remain in it, are quickly driven into society. Hence it comes to pass, that we seldom find any number of men live any time together in this state. The inconveniencies that they are therein exposed to, by the irregular and uncertain exercise of the power every man has of punishing the transgressions of others, make them take sanctuary under the established laws of government, and therein seek the preservation of their property. It is this makes them so willingly give up every one his single power of punishing, to be exercised by such alone, as shall be appointed to it amongst them; and by such rules as the community, or those authorized by them to that purpose, shall agree on. And in this we have the original right and rise of both the legislative and executive power, as well as of the governments and societies themselves.

  §. 128.

  For in the state of nature, to omit the liberty he has of innocent delights, a man has two powers.

  The first is to do whatsoever he thinks fit for the preservation of himself, and others within the permission of the law of nature: by which law, common to them all, he and all the rest of mankind are one community, make up one society, distinct from all other creatures. And were it not for the corruption and vitiousness of degenerate men, there would be no need of any other; no necessity that men should separate from this great and natural community, and by positive agreements combine into smaller and divided associations.

  The other power a man has in the state of nature, is the power to punish the crimes committed against that law. Both these he gives up, when he joins in a private, if I may so call it, or particular politic society, and incorporates into any common-wealth, separate from the rest of mankind.

  §. 129.

  The first power, viz. of doing whatsoever be thought for the preservation of himself, and the rest of mankind, he gives up to be regulated by laws made by the society, so far forth as the preservation of himself, and the rest of that society shall require; which laws of the society in many things confine the liberty he had by the law of nature.

  §. 130.

  Secondly, The power of punishing he wholly gives up, and engages his natural force, (which he might before employ in the execution of the law of nature, by his own single authority, as he thought fit) to assist the executive power of the society, as the law thereof shall require: for being now in a new state, wherein he is to enjoy many conveniencies, from the labour, assistance, and society of others in the same community, as well as protection from its whole strength; he is to part also with as much of his natural liberty, in providing for himself, as the good, prosperity, and safety of the society shall require; which is not only necessary, but just, since the other members of the society do the like.

  §. 131.

  But though men, when they enter into society, give up the equality, liberty, and executive power they had in the state of nature, into the hands of the society, to be so far disposed of by the legislative, as the good of the society shall require; yet it being only with an intention in every one the better to preserve himself, his liberty and property; (for no rational creature can be supposed to change his condition with an intention to be worse) the power of the society, or legislative constituted by them, can never be supposed to extend farther, than the common good; but is obliged to secure every one’s property, by providing against those three defects above mentioned, that made the state of nature so unsafe and uneasy. And so whoever has the legislative or supreme power of any common-wealth, is bound to govern by established standing laws, promulgated and known to the people, and not by extemporary decrees; by indifferent and upright judges, who are to decide controversies by those laws; and to employ the force of the community at home, only in the execution of such laws, or abroad to prevent or redress foreign injuries, and secure the community from inroads and invasion. And all this to be directed to no other end, but the peace, safety, and public good of the people.

  CHAP. X.
  Of the Forms of a Common-wealth.

  §. 132.

  THE majority having, as has been shewed, upon men’s first uniting into society, the whole power of the community naturally in them, may employ all that power in making laws for the community from time to time, and executing those laws by officers of their own appointing; and then the form of the government is a perfect democracy: or else may put the power of making laws into the hands of a few select men, and their heirs or successors; and then it is an oligarchy: or else into the hands of one man, and then it is a monarchy: if to him and his heirs, it is an hereditary monarchy: if to him only for life, but upon his death the power only of nominating a successor to return to them; an elective monarchy. And so accordingly of these the community may make compounded and mixed forms of government, as they think good. And if the legislative power be at first given by the majority to one or more persons only for their lives, or any limited time, and then the supreme power to revert to them again; when it is so reverted, the community may dispose of it again anew into what hands they please, and so constitute a new form of government: for the form of government depending upon the placing the supreme power, which is the legislative, it being impossible to conceive that an inferior power should prescribe to a superior, or any but the supreme make laws, according as the power of making laws is placed, such is the form of the common-wealth.

  §. 133.

  By common-wealth, I must be understood all along to mean, not a democracy, or any form of government, but any independent community, which the Latines signified by the word civitas, to which the word which best answers in our language, is common-wealth, and most properly expresses such a society of men, which community or city in English does not; for there may be subordinate communities in a government; and city amongst us has a quite different notion from common-wealth: and therefore, to avoid ambiguity, I crave leave to use the word common-wealth in that sense, in which I find it used by king James the first; and I take it to be its genuine signification; which if any body dislike, I consent with him to change it for a better.

  CHAP. XI.
  Of the Extent of the Legislative Power.

  §. 134.

  THE great end of men’s entering into society, being the enjoyment of their properties in peace and safety, and the great instrument and means of that being the laws established in that society; the first and fundamental positive law of all common-wealths is the establishing of the legislative power; as the first and fundamental naturallaw, which is to govern even the legislative itself, is the preservation of the society, and (as far as will consist with the public good) of every person in it. This legislative is not only the supreme power of the common-wealth, but sacred and unalterable in the hands where the community have once placed it; nor can any edict of any body else, in what form soever conceived, or by what power soever backed, have the force and obligation of a law, which has not its sanction from that legislative which the public has chosen and appointed: for without this the law could not have that, which is absolutely necessary to its being a law,*the consent of the society, over whom no body can have a power to make laws, but by their own consent, and by authority received from them; and therefore all the obedience, which by the most solemn ties any one can be obliged to pay, ultimately terminates in this supreme power, and is directed by those laws which it enacts: nor can any oaths to any foreign power whatsoever, or any domestic subordinate power, discharge any member of the society from his obedience to the legislative, acting pursuant to their trust; nor oblige him to any obedience contrary to the laws so enacted, or farther than they do allow; it being ridiculous to imagine one can be tied ultimately to obey any power in the society, which is not the supreme.

  §. 135.

  Though the legislative, whether placed in one or more, whether it be always in being, or only by intervals, though it be the supreme power in every common-wealth; yet,

  First, It is not, nor can possibly be absolutely arbitrary over the lives and fortunes of the people: for it being but the joint power of every member of the society given up to that person, or assembly, which is legislator; it can be no more than those persons had in a state of nature before they entered into society, and gave up to the community: for no body can transfer to another more power than he has in himself; and no body has an absolute arbitrary power over himself, or over any other, to destroy his own life, or take away the life or property of another. A man, as has been proved, cannot subject himself to the arbitrary power of another; and having in the state of nature no arbitrary power over the life, liberty, or possession of another, but only so much as the law of nature gave him for the preservation of himself, and the rest of mankind; this is all he doth, or can give up to the common-wealth, and by it to the legislative power, so that the legislative can have no more than this. Their power, in the utmost bounds of it, is limited to the public good of the society. It is a power, that hath no other end but preservation, and therefore can never* have a right to destroy, enslave, or designedly to impoverish the subjects. The obligations of the law of nature cease not in society, but only in many cases are drawn closer, and have by human laws known penalties annexed to them, to inforce their observation. Thus the law of nature stands as an eternal rule to all men, legislators as well as others. The rules that they make for other men’s actions, must, as well as their own and other men’s actions, be conformable to the law of nature, i. e. to the will of God, of which that is a declaration, and the fundamental law of nature being the preservation of mankind, no human sanction can be good, or valid against it.

  §. 136.

  Secondly,* The legislative, or supreme authority, cannot assume to its self a power to rule by extemporary arbitrary decrees, but is bound to dispense justice, and decide the rights of the subject by promulgated standing laws, and known authorized judges: for the law of nature being unwritten, and so no where to be found but in the minds of men, they who through passion or interest shall miscite, or misapply it, cannot so easily be convinced of their mistake where there is no established judge: and so it serves not, as it ought, to determine the rights, and fence the properties of those that live under it, especially where every one is judge, interpreter, and executioner of it too, and that in his own case: and he that has right on his side, having ordinarily but his own single strength, hath not force enough to defend himself from injuries, or to punish delinquents. To avoid these inconveniencies, which disorder men’s properties in the state of nature, men unite into societies, that they may have the united strength of the whole society to secure and defend their properties, and may have standing rules to bound it, by which every one may know what is his. To this end it is that men give up all their natural power to the society which they enter into, and the community put the legislative power into such hands as they think fit, with this trust, that they shall be governed by declared laws, or else their peace, quiet, and property will still be at the same uncertainty, as it was in the state of nature.

  §. 137.

  Absolute arbitrary power, or governing without settled standing laws, can neither of them consist with the ends of society and government, which men would not quit the freedom of the state of nature for, and tie themselves up under, were it not to preserve their lives, liberties and fortunes, and by stated rules of right and property to secure their peace and quiet. It cannot be supposed that they should intend, had they a power so to do, to give to any one, or more, an absolute arbitrary power over their persons and estates, and put a force into the magistrate’s hand to execute his unlimited will arbitrarily upon them. This were to put themselves into a worse condition than the state of nature, wherein they had a liberty to defend their right against the injuries of others, and were upon equal terms of force to maintain it, whether invaded by a single man, or many in combination. Whereas by supposing they have given up themselves to the absolute arbitrary power and will of a legislator, they have disarmed themselves, and armed him, to make a prey of them when he pleases; he being in a much worse condition, who is exposed to the arbitrary power of one man, who has the command of 100,000, than he that is exposed to the arbitrary power of 100,000 single men; no body being secure, that his will, who has such a command, is better than that of other men, though his force be 100,000 times stronger. And therefore, whatever form the commonwealth is under, the ruling power ought to govern by declared and received laws, and nor by extemporary dictates and undetermined resolutions: for then mankind will be in a far worse condition than in the state of nature, if they shall have armed one, or a few men with the joint power of a multitude, to force them to obey at pleasure the exorbitant and unlimited decrees of their sudden thoughts, or unrestrained, and till that moment unknown wills, without having any measures set down which may guide and justify their actions: for all the power the government has, being only for the good of the society, as it ought not to be arbitrary and at pleasure, so it ought to be exercised by established and promulgated laws; that both the people may know their duty, and be safe and secure within the limits of the law; and the rulers too kept within their bounds, and not be tempted, by the power they have in their hands, to employ it to such purposes, and by such measures, as they would not have known, and own not willingly.

  §. 138.

  Thirdly, The supreme power cannot take from any man any part of his property without his own consent: for the preservation of property being the end of government, and that for which men enter into society, it necessarily supposes and requires, that the people should have property, without which they must be supposed to lose that, by entering into society, which was the end for which they entered into it; too gross an absurdity for any man to own. Men therefore in society having property, they have such a right to the goods, which by the law of the community are their’s, that no body hath a right to take their substance or any part of it from them, without their own consent: without this they have no property at all; for I have truly no property in that, which another can by right take from me, when he pleases, against my consent. Hence it is a mistake to think, that the supreme or legislative power of any common-wealth, can do what it will, and dispose of the estates of the subject arbitrarily, or take any part of them at pleasure. This is not much to be feared in governments where the legislative consists, wholly or in part, in assemblies which are variable, whose members, upon the dissolution of the assembly, are subjects under the common laws of their country, equally with the rest. But in governments, where the legislative is in one lasting assembly always in being, or in one man, as in absolute monarchies, there is danger still, that they will think themselves to have a distinct interest from the rest of the community; and so will be apt to increase their own riches and power, by taking what they think fit from the people: for a man’s property is not at all secure, tho’ there be good and equitable laws to set the bounds of it between him and his fellow subjects, if he who commands those subjects have power to take from any private man, what part he pleases of his property, and use and dispose of it as he thinks good.

  §. 139.

  But government, into whatsoever hands it is put, being, as I have before shewed, intrusted with this condition, and for thisend, that men might have and secure their properties; the prince, or senate, however it may have power to make laws, for the regulating of property between the subjects one amongst another, yet can never have a power to take to themselves the whole, or any part of the subjects property, without their own consent: for this would be in effect to leave them no property at all. And to let us see, that even absolute power, where it is necessary, is not arbitrary by being absolute, but is still limited by that reason, and confined to those ends, which required it in some cases to be absolute, we need look no farther than the common practice of martial discipline: for the preservation of the army, and in it of the whole common-wealth, requires an absolute obedience to the command of every superior officer, and it is justly death to disobey or dispute the most dangerous or unreasonable of them; but yet we see, that neither the serjeant, that could command a soldier to march up to the mouth of a cannon, or stand in a breach, where he is almost sure to perish, can command that soldier to give him one penny of his money; nor the general, that can condemn him to death for deserting his post, or for not obeying the most desperate orders, can yet, with all his absolute power of life and death, dispose of one farthing of that soldier’s estate, or seize one jot of his goods; whom yet he can command any thing, and hang for the least disobedience; because such a blind obedience is necessary to that end, for which the commander has his power, viz. the preservation of the rest; but the disposing of his goods has nothing to do with it.

  §. 140.

  It is true, governments cannot be supported without great charge, and it is fit every one who enjoys his share of the protection, should pay out of his estate his proportion for the maintenance of it. But still it must be with his own consent, i. e. the consent of the majority, giving it either by themselves, or their representatives chosen by them: for if any one shall claim a power to lay and levy taxes on the people, by his own authority, and without such consent of the people, he thereby invades the fundamental law of property, and subverts the end of government: for what property have I in that, which another may by right take, when he pleases, to himself?

  §. 141.

  Fourthly, The legislative cannot transfer the power of making laws to any other hands: for it being but a delegated power from the people, they who have it cannot pass it over to others. The people alone can appoint the form of the common-wealth, which is by constituting the legislative, and appointing in whose hands that shall be. And when the people have said, We will submit to rules, and be governed by laws made by such men, and in such forms, no body else can say other men shall make laws for them; nor can the people be bound by any laws, but such as are enacted by those whom they have chosen, and authorized to make laws for them. The power of the legislative, being derived from the people by a positive voluntary grant and institution, can be no other than what that positive grant conveyed, which being only to make laws, and not to make legislators, the legislative can have no power to transfer their authority of making laws, and place it in other hands.

  §. 142.

  These are the bounds which the trust, that is put in them by the society, and the law of God and nature, have set to the legislative power of every common-wealth, in all forms of government.

  First, They are to govern by promulgated established laws, not to be varied in particular cases, but to have one rule for rich and poor, for the favourite at court, and the country man at plough.

  Secondly, These laws also ought to be designed for no other end ultimately, but the good of the people.

  Thirdly, They must not raise taxes on the property of the people, without the consent of the people, given by themselves, or their deputies. And this properly concerns only such governments where the legislative is always in being, or at least where the people have not reserved any part of the legislative to deputies, to be from time to time chosen by themselves.

  Fourthly, The legislative neither must nor can transfer the power of making laws to any body else, or place it any where, but where the people have.

  CHAP. XII.
  Of the Legislative, Executive, and Federative Power of the Common-wealth.

  §. 143.

  THE legislative power is that, which has a right to direct how the force of the common-wealth shall be employed for preserving the community and the members of it. But because those laws which are constantly to be executed, and whose force is always to continue, may be made in a little time; therefore there is no need, that the legislative should be always in being, not having always business to do. And because it may be too great a temptation to human frailty, apt to grasp at power, for the same persons, who have the power of making laws, to have also in their hands the power to execute them, whereby they may exempt themselves from obedience to the laws they make, and suit the law, both in its making, and execution, to their own private advantage, and thereby come to have a distinct interest from the rest of the community, contrary to the end of society and government: therefore in well-ordered common-wealths, where the good of the whole is so considered, as it ought, the legislative power is put into the hands of divers persons, who duly assembled, have by themselves, or jointly with others, a power to make laws, which when they have done, being separated again, they are themselves subject to the laws they have made; which is a new and near tie upon them, to take care, that they make them for the public good.

  §. 144.

  But because the laws, that are at once, and in a short time made, have a constant and lasting force, and need a perpetual execution, or an attendance thereunto; therefore it is necessary there should be a power always in being, which should see to the execution of the laws that are made, and remain in force. And thus the legislative and executive power come often to be separated.

  §. 145.

  There is another power in every common-wealth, which one may call natural, because it is that which answers to the power every man naturally had before he entered into society: for though in a common-wealth the members of it are distinct persons still in reference to one another, and as such are governed by the laws of the society; yet in reference to the rest of mankind, they make one body, which is, as every member of it before was, still in the state of nature with the rest of mankind. Hence it is, that the controversies that happen between any man of the society with those that are out of it, are managed by the public; and an injury done to a member of their body, engages the whole in the reparation of it. So that under this consideration, the whole community is one body in the state of nature, in respect of all other states or persons out of its community.

  §. 146.

  This therefore contains the power of war and peace, leagues and alliances, and all the transactions, with all persons and communities without the common-wealth, and may be called federative, if any one pleases. So the thing be understood, I am indifferent as to the name.

  §. 147.

  These two powers, executive and federative, though they be really distinct in themselves, yet one comprehending the execution of the municipal laws of the society within its self, upon all that are parts of it; the other the management of the security and interest of the public without, with all those that it may receive benefit or damage from, yet they are always almost united. And though this federative power in the well or ill management of it be of great moment to the common-wealth, yet it is much less capable to be directed by antecedent, standing, positive laws, than the executive; and so must necessarily be left to the prudence and wisdom of those, whose hands it is in, to be managed for the public good: for the laws that concern subjects one amongst another, being to direct their actions, may well enough precede them. But what is to be done in reference to foreigners, depending much upon their actions, and the variation of designs and interests, must be left in great part to the prudence of those, who have this power committed to them, to be managed by the best of their skill, for the advantage of the common-wealth.

  §. 148.

  Though, as I said, the executive and federative power of every community be really distinct in themselves, yet they are hardly to be separated, and placed at the same time, in the hands of distinct persons: for both of them requiring the force of the society for their exercise, it is almost impracticable to place the force of the common-wealth in distinct, and not subordinate hands; or that the executive and federative power should be placed in persons, that might act separately, whereby the force of the public would be under different commands: which would be apt some time or other to cause disorder and ruin.

  CHAP. XIII.
  Of the Subordination of the Powers of the Common-wealth.

  §. 149.

  THough in a constituted common-wealth, standing upon its own basis, and acting according to its own nature, that is, acting for the preservation of the community, there can be but one supreme power, which is the legislative, to which all the rest are and must be subordinate, yet the legislative being only a fiduciary power to act for certain ends, there remains still in the people a supreme power to remove or alter the legislative, when they find the legislative act contrary to the trust reposed in them: for all power given with trust for the attaining an end, being limited by that end, whenever that end is manifestly neglected, or opposed, the trust must necessarily be forfeited, and the power devolve into the hands of those that gave it, who may place it anew where they shall think best for their safety and security. And thus the community perpetually retains a supreme power of saving themselves from the attempts and designs of any body, even of their legislators, whenever they shall be so foolish, or so wicked, as to lay and carry on designs against the liberties and properties of the subject: for no man or society of men, having a power to deliver up their preservation, or consequently the means of it, to the absolute will and arbitrary dominion of another; when ever any one shall go about to bring them into such a slavish condition, they will always have a right to preserve, what they have not a power to part with; and to rid themselves of those, who invade this fundamental, sacred, and unalterable law of self-preservation, for which they entered into society. And thus the community may be said in this respect to be always the supreme power, but not as considered under any form of government, because this power of the people can never take place till the government be dissolved.

  §. 150.

  In all cases, whilst the government subsists, the legislative is the supreme power: for what can give laws to another, must needs be superior to him; and since the legislative is no otherwise legislative of the society, but by the right it has to make laws for all the parts, and for every member of the society, prescribing rules to their actions, and giving power of execution, where they are transgressed, the legislative must needs be the supreme, and all other powers, in any members or parts of the society, derived from and subordinate to it.

  §. 151.

  In some common-wealths, where the legislative is not always in being, and the executive is vested in a single person, who has also a share in the legislative; there that single person in a very tolerable sense may also be called supreme: not that he has in himself all the supreme power, which is that of law-making; but because he has in him the supreme execution, from whom all inferior magistrates derive all their several subordinate powers, or at least the greatest part of them: having also no legislative superior to him, there being no law to be made without his consent, which cannot be expected should ever subject him to the other part of the legislative, be is properly enough in this sense supreme. But yet it is to be observed, that tho’ oaths of allegiance and fealty are taken to him, it is not to him as supreme legislator, but as supreme executor of the law, made by a joint power of him with others; allegiance being nothing but an obedience according to law, which when he violates, he has no right to obedience, nor can claim it otherwise than as the public person vested with the power of the law, and so is to be considered as the image, phantom, or representative of the common-wealth, acted by the will of the society, declared in its laws; and thus he has no will, no power, but that of the law. But when he quits this representation, this public will, and acts by his own private will, he degrades himself, and is but a single private person without power, and without will, that has any right to obedience; the members owing no obedience but to the public will of the society.

  §. 152.

  The executive power, placed any where but in a person that has also a share in the legislative, is visibly subordinate and accountable to it, and may be at pleasure changed and displaced; so that it is not the supreme executive power, that is exempt from subordination, but the supreme executive power vested in one, who having a share in the legislative, has no distinct superior legislative to be subordinate and accountable to, farther than he himself shall join and consent; so that he is no more subordinate than he himself shall think fit, which one may certainly conclude will be but very little. Of other ministerial and subordinate powers in a common-wealth, we need not speak, they being so multiplied with infinite variety, in the different customs and constitutions of distinct common-wealths, that it is impossible to give a particular account of them all. Only thus much, which is necessary to our present purpose, we may take notice of concerning them, that they have no manner of authority, any of them, beyond what is by positive grant and commission delegated to them, and are all of them accountable to some other power in the common-wealth.

  §. 153.

  It is not necessary, no, nor so much as convenient, that the legislative should be always in being; but absolutely necessary that the executive power should, because there is not always need of new laws to be made, but always need of execution of the laws that are made. When the legislative hath put the execution of the laws, they make, into other hands, they have a power still to resume it out of those hands, when they find cause, and to punish for any mal-administration against the laws. The same holds also in regard of the federative power, that and the executive being both ministerial and subordinate to the legislative, which, as has been shewed, in a constituted common-wealth is the supreme. The legislative also in this case being supposed to consist of several persons, (for if it be a single person, it cannot but be always in being, and so will, as supreme, naturally have the supreme executive power, together with the legislative) may assemble, and exercise their legislature, at the times that either their original constitution, or their own adjournment, appoints, or when they please; if neither of these hath appointed any time, or there be no other way prescribed to convoke them: for the supreme power being placed in them by the people, it is always in them, and they may exercise it when they please, unless by their original constitution they are limited to certain seasons, or by an act of their supreme power they have adjourned to a certain time; and when that time comes, they have a right to assemble and act again.

  §. 154.

  If the legislative, or any part of it, be made up of representatives chosen for that time by the people, which afterwards return into the ordinary state of subjects, and have no share in the legislature but upon a new choice, this power of chusing must also be exercised by the people, either at certain appointed seasons, or else when they are summoned to it; and in this latter case, the power of convoking the legislative is ordinarily placed in the executive, and has one of these two limitations in respect of time: that either the original constitution requires their assembling and acting at certain intervals, and then the executive power does nothing but ministerially issue directions for their electing and assembling, according to due forms; or else it is left to his prudence to call them by new elections, when the occasions or exigencies of the public require the amendment of old, or making of new laws, or the redress or prevention of any inconveniencies, that lie on, or threaten the people.

  §. 155.

  It may be demanded here, What if the executive power, being possessed of the force of the common-wealth, shall make use of that force to hinder the meeting and acting of the legislative, when the original constitution, or the public exigencies require it? I say, using force upon the people without authority, and contrary to the trust put in him that does so, is a state of war with the people, who have a right to reinstate their legislative in the exercise of their power: for having erected a legislative, with an intent they should exercise the power of making laws, either at certain set times, or when there is need of it, when they are hindered by any force from what is so necessary to the society, and wherein the safety and preservation of the people consists, the people have a right to remove it by force. In all states and conditions, the true remedy of force without authority, is to oppose force to it. The use of force without authority, always puts him that uses it into a state of war, as the aggressor, and renders him liable to be treated accordingly.

  §. 156.

  The power of assembling and dismissing the legislative, placed in the executive, gives not the executive a superiority over it, but is a fiduciary trust placed in him, for the safety of the people, in a case where the uncertainty and variableness of human affairs could not bear a steady fixed rule: for it not being possible, that the first framers of the government should, by any foresight, be so much masters of future events, as to be able to prefix so just periods of return and duration to the assemblies of the legislative, in all times to come, that might exactly answer all the exigencies of the common-wealth; the best remedy could be found for this defect, was to trust this to the prudence of one who was always to be present, and whose business it was to watch over the public good. Constant frequent meetings of the legislative, and long continuations of their assemblies, without necessary occasion, could not but be burdensome to the people, and must necessarily in time produce more dangerous inconveniencies, and yet the quick turn of affairs might be sometimes such as to need their present help: any delay of their convening might endanger the public; and sometimes too their business might be so great, that the limited time of their sitting might be too short for their work, and rob the public of that benefit which could be had only from their mature deliberation. What then could be done in this case to prevent the community from being exposed some time or other to eminent hazard, on one side or the other, by fixed intervals and periods, set to the meeting and acting of the legislative, but to intrust it to the prudence of some, who being present, and acquainted with the state of public affairs, might make use of this prerogative for the public good? and where else could this be so well placed as in his hands, who was intrusted with the execution of the laws for the same end? Thus supposing the regulation of times for the assembling and sitting of the legislative, not settled by the original constitution, it naturally fell into the hands of the executive, not as an arbitrary power depending on his good pleasure, but with this trust always to have it exercised only for the public weal, as the occurrences of times and change of affairs might require. Whether settled periods of their convening, or a liberty left to the prince for convoking the legislative, or perhaps a mixture of both, hath the least inconvenience attending it, it is not my business here to inquire, but only to shew, that though the executive power may have the prerogative of convoking and dissolving such conventions of the legislative, yet it is not thereby superior to it.

  §. 157.

  Things of this world are in so constant a flux, that nothing remains long in the same state. Thus people, riches, trade, power, change their stations, flourishing mighty cities come to ruin, and prove in times neglected desolate corners, whilst other unfrequented places grow into populous countries, filled with wealth and inhabitants. But things not always changing equally, and private interest often keeping up customs and privileges, when the reasons of them are ceased, it often comes to pass, that in governments, where part of the legislative consists of representatives chosen by the people, that in tract of time this representation becomes very unequal and disproportionate to the reasons it was at first established upon. To what gross absurdities the following of custom, when reason has left it, may lead, we may be satisfied, when we see the bare name of a town, of which there remains not so much as the ruins, where scarce so much housing as a sheepcote, or more inhabitants than a shepherd is to be found, sends as many representatives to the grand assembly of law-makers, as a whole county numerous in people, and powerful in riches. This strangers stand amazed at, and every one must confess needs a remedy; tho’ most think it hard to find one, because the constitution of the legislative being the original and supreme act of the society, antecedent to all positive laws in it, and depending wholly on the people, no inferior power can alter it. And therefore the people, when the legislative is once constituted, having, in such a government as we have been speaking of, no power to act as long as the government stands; this inconvenience is thought incapable of a remedy.

  §. 158.

  Salus populi suprema lex, is certainly so just and fundamental a rule, that he, who sincerely follows it, cannot dangerously err. If therefore the executive, who has the power of convoking the legislative, observing rather the true proportion, than fashion of representation, regulates, not by old custom, but true reason, the number of members, in all places that have a right to be distinctly represented, which no part of the people however incorporated can pretend to, but in proportion to the assistance which it affords to the public, it cannot be judged to have set up a new legislative, but to have restored the old and true one, and to have rectified the disorders which succession of time had insensibly, as well as inevitably introduced: For it being the interest as well as intention of the people, to have a fair and equal representative; whoever brings it nearest to that, is an undoubted friend to, and establisher of the government, and cannot miss the consent and approbation of the community; prerogative being nothing but a power, in the hands of the prince, to provide for the public good, in such cases, which depending upon unforeseen and uncertain occurrences, certain and unalterable laws could not safely direct; whatsoever shall be done manifestly for the good of the people, and the establishing the government upon its true foundations, is, and always will be, just prerogative. The power of erecting new corporations, and therewith new representatives, carries with it a supposition, that in time the measures of representation might vary, and those places have a just right to be represented which before had none; and by the same reason, those cease to have a right, and be too inconsiderable for such a privilege, which before had it. ’Tis not a change from the present state, which perhaps corruption or decay has introduced, that makes an inroad upon the government, but the tendency of it to injure or oppress the people, and to set up one part or party, with a distinction from, and an unequal subjection of the rest. Whatsoever cannot but be acknowledged to be of advantage to the society, and people in general, upon just and lasting measures, will always, when done, justify itself; and whenever the people shall chuse their representatives upon just and undeniably equal measures, suitable to the original frame of the government, it cannot be doubted to be the will and act of the society, whoever permitted or caused them so to do.

  CHAP. XIV.
  Of PREROGATIVE.

  §. 159.

  WHERE the legislative and executive power are in distinct hands, (as they are in all moderated monarchies, and well-framed governments) there the good of the society requires, that several things should be left to the discretion of him that has the executive power: for the legislators not being able to foresee, and provide by laws, for all that may be useful to the community, the executor of the laws, having the power in his hands, has by the common law of nature a right to make use of it for the good of the society, in many cases, where the municipal law has given no direction, till the legislative can conveniently be assembled to provide for it. Many things there are, which the law can by no means provide for; and those must necessarily be left to the discretion of him that has the executive power in his hands, to be ordered by him as the public good and advantage shall require: nay, it is fit that the laws themselves should in some cases give way to the executive power, or rather to this fundamental law of nature and government, viz. That as much as may be, all the members of the society are to be preserved: for since many accidents may happen, wherein a strict and rigid observation of the laws may do harm; (as not to pull down an innocent man’s house to stop the fire, when the next to it is burning) and a man may come somtimes within the reach of the law, which makes no distinction of persons, by an action that may deserve reward and pardon; ’tis fit the ruler should have a power, in many cases, to mitigate the severity of the law, and pardon some offenders: for the end of government being the preservation of all, as much as may be, even the guilty are to be spared, where it can prove no prejudice to the innocent.

  §. 160.

  This power to act according to discretion, for the public good, without the prescription of the law, and sometimes even against it, is that which is called prerogative: for since in some governments the lawmaking power is not always in being, and is usually too numerous, and so too slow, for the dispatch requisite to execution; and because also it is impossible to foresee, and so by laws to provide for, all accidents and necessities that may concern the public, or to make such laws as will do no harm, if they are executed with an inflexible rigour, on all occasions, and upon all persons that may come in their way; therefore there is a latitude left to the executive power, to do many things of choice which the laws do not prescribe.

  §. 161.

  This power, whilst employed for the benefit of the community, and suitably to the trust and ends of the government, is undoubted prerogative, and never is questioned: for the people are very seldom or never scrupulous or nice in the point; they are far from examining prerogative, whilst it is in any tolerable degree employed for the use it was meant, that is, for the good of the people, and not manifestly against it: but if there comes to be a question between the executive power and the people, about a thing claimed as a prerogative; the tendency of the exercise of such prerogative to the good or hurt of the people, will easily decide that question.

  §. 162.

  It is easy to conceive, that in the infancy of governments, when commonwealths differed little from families in number of people, they differed from them too but little in number of laws: and the governors, being as the fathers of them, watching over them for their good, the government was almost all prerogative. A few established laws served the turn, and the discretion and care of the ruler supplied the rest. But when mistake or flattery prevailed with weak princes to make use of this power for private ends of their own, and not for the public good, the people were fain by express laws to get prerogative determined in those points wherein they found disadvantage from it: and thus declared limitations of prerogative were by the people found necessary in cases which they and their ancestors had left, in the utmost latitude, to the wisdom of those princes who made no other but a right use of it, that is, for the good of their people.

  §. 163.

  And therefore they have a very wrong notion of government, who say, that the people have incroached upon the prerogative, when they have got any part of it to be defined by positive laws: for in so doing they have not pulled from the prince any thing that of right belonged to him, but only declared, that that power which they indefinitely left in his or his ancestors hands, to be exercised for their good, was not a thing which they intended him when he used it otherwise: for the end of government being the good of the community, whatsoever alterations are made in it, tending to that end, cannot be an incroachment upon any body, since no body in government can have a right tending to any other end: and those only are incroachments which prejudice or hinder the public good. Those who say otherwise, speak as if the prince had a distinct and separate interest from the good of the community, and was not made for it; the root and source from which spring almost all those evils and disorders which happen in kingly governments. And indeed, if that be so, the people under his government are not a society of rational creatures, entered into a community for their mutual good; they are not such as have set rulers over themselves, to guard, and promote that good; but are to be looked on as an herd of inferior creatures under the dominion of a master, who keeps them and works them for his own pleasure or profit. If men were so void of reason, and brutish, as to enter into society upon such terms, prerogative might indeed be, what some men would have it, an arbitrary power to do things hurtful to the people.

  §. 164.

  But since a rational creature cannot be supposed, when free, to put himself into subjection to another, for his own harm; (though, where he finds a good and wise ruler, he may not perhaps think it either necessary or useful to set precise bounds to his power in all things) prerogative can be nothing but the people’s permitting their rulers to do several things, of their own free choice, where the law was silent, and sometimes too against the direct letter of the law, for the public good; and their acquiescing in it when so done: for as a good prince, who is mindful of the trust put into his hands, and careful of the good of his people, cannot have too much prerogative, that is, power to do good; so a weak and ill prince, who would claim that power which his predecessors exercised without the direction of the law, as a prerogative belonging to him by right of his office, which he may exercise at his pleasure, to make or promote an interest distinct from that of the public, gives the people an occasion to claim their right, and limit that power, which, whilst it was exercised for their good, they were content should be tacitly allowed.

  §. 165.

  And therefore he that will look into the history of England, will find, that prerogative was always largest in the hands of our wisest and best princes; because the people, observing the whole tendency of their actions to be the public good, contested not what was done without law to that end: or, if any human frailty or mistake (for princes are but men, made as others) appeared in some small declinations from that end; yet ’twas visible, the main of their conduct tended to nothing but the care of the public. The people therefore, finding reason to be satisfied with these princes, whenever they acted without, or contrary to the letter of the law, acquiesced in what they did, and, without the least complaint, let them inlarge their prerogative as they pleased, judging rightly, that they did nothing herein to the prejudice of their laws, since they acted conformable to the foundation and end of all laws, the public good.

  §. 166.

  Such god-like princes indeed had some title to arbitrary power by that argument, that would prove absolute monarchy the best government, as that which God himself governs the universe by; because such kings partake of his wisdom and goodness. Upon this is founded that saying, That the reigns of good princes have been always most dangerous to the liberties of their people: for when their successors, managing the government with different thoughts, would draw the actions of those good rulers into precedent, and make them the standard of their prerogative, as if what had been done only for the good of the people was a right in them to do, for the harm of the people, if they so pleased; it has often occasioned contest, and sometimes public disorders, before the people could recover their original right, and get that to be declared not to be prerogative, which truly was never so; since it is impossible that any body in the society should ever have a right to do the people harm; though it be very possible, and reasonable, that the people should not go about to set any bounds to the prerogative of those kings, or rulers, who themselves transgressed not the bounds of the public good: for prerogative is nothing but the power of doing public good without a rule.

  §. 167.

  The power of calling parliaments in England, as to precise time, place, and duration, is certainly a prerogative of the king, but still with this trust, that it shall be made use of for the good of the nation, as the exigencies of the times, and variety of occasions, shall require: for it being impossible to foresee which should always be the fittest place for them to assemble in, and what the best season; the choice of these was left with the executive power, as might be most subservient to the public good, and best suit the ends of parliaments.

  §. 168.

  The old question will be asked in this matter of prerogative, But who shall be judge when this power is made a right use of? I answer: between an executive power in being, with such a prerogative, and a legislative that depends upon his will for their convening, there can be no judge on earth; as there can be none between the legislative and the people, should either the executive, or the legislative, when they have got the power in their hands, design, or go about to enslave or destroy them. The people have no other remedy in this, as in all other cases where they have no judge on earth, but to appeal to heaven: for the rulers, in such attempts, exercising a power the people never put into their hands, (who can never be supposed to consent that any body should rule over them for their harm) do that which they have not a right to do. And where the body of the people, or any single man, is deprived of their right, or is under the exercise of a power without right, and have no appeal on earth, then they have a liberty to appeal to heaven, whenever they judge the cause of sufficient moment. And therefore, though the people cannot be judge, so as to have, by the constitution of that society, any superior power, to determine and give effective sentence in the case; yet they have, by a law antecedent and paramount to all positive laws of men, reserved that ultimate determination to themselves which belongs to all mankind, where there lies no appeal on earth, viz. to judge, whether they have just cause to make their appeal to heaven. And this judgment they cannot part with, it being out of a man’s power so to submit himself to another, as to give him a liberty to destroy him; God and nature never allowing a man so to abandon himself, as to neglect his own preservation: and since he cannot take away his own life, neither can he give another power to take it. Nor let any one think, this lays a perpetual foundation for disorder; for this operates not, till the inconveniency is so great, that the majority feel it, and are weary of it, and find a necessity to have it amended. But this the executive power, or wise princes, never need come in the danger of: and it is the thing, of all others, they have most need to avoid, as of all others the most perilous.

  CHAP. XV.
  Of Paternal, Political, and Despotical Power, considered together.

  §. 169.

  THOUGH I have had occasion to speak of these separately before, yet the great mistakes of late about government, having, as I suppose, arisen from confounding these distinct powers one with another, it may not, perhaps, be amiss to consider them here together.

  §. 170.

  First, then, Paternal or parental power is nothing but that which parents have over their children, to govern them for the children’s good, till they come to the use of reason, or a state of knowledge, wherein they may be supposed capable to understand that rule, whether it be the law of nature, or the municipal law of their country, they are to govern themselves by: capable, I say, to know it, as well as several others, who live as freemen under that law. The affection and tenderness which God hath planted in the breast of parents towards their children, makes it evident, that this is not intended to be a severe arbitrary government, but only for the help, instruction, and preservation of their offspring. But happen it as it will, there is, as I have proved, no reason why it should be thought to extend to life and death, at any time, over their children, more than over any body else; neither can there be any pretence why this parental power should keep the child, when grown to a man, in subjection to the will of his parents, any farther than having received life and education from his parents, obliges him to respect, honour, gratitude, assistance and support, all his life, to both father and mother. And thus, ’tis true, the paternal is a natural government, but not at all extending itself to the ends and jurisdictions of that which is political. The power of the father doth not reach at all to the property of the child, which is only in his own disposing.

  §. 171.

  Secondly, Political power is that power, which every man having in the state of nature, has given up into the hands of the society, and therein to the governors, whom the society hath set over itself, with this express or tacit trust, that it shall be employed for their good, and the preservation of their property: now this power, which every man has in the state of nature, and which he parts with to the society in all such cases where the society can secure him, is to use such means, for the preserving of his own property, as he thinks good, and nature allows him; and to punish the breach of the law of nature in others, so as (according to the best of his reason) may most conduce to the preservation of himself, and the rest of mankind. So that the end and measure of this power, when in every man’s hands in the state of nature, being the preservation of all of his society, that is, all mankind in general, it can have no other end or measure, when in the hands of the magistrate, but to preserve the members of that society in their lives, liberties, and possessions; and so cannot be an absolute, arbitrary power over their lives and fortunes, which are as much as possible to be preserved; but a power to make laws, and annex such penalties to them, as may tend to the preservation of the whole, by cutting off those parts, and those only, which are so corrupt, that they threaten the sound and healthy, without which no severity is lawful. And this power has its original only from compact and agreement, and the mutual consent of those who make up the community.

  §. 172.

  Thirdly, Despotical power is an absolute, arbitrary power one man has over another, to take away his life, whenever he pleases. This is a power, which neither nature gives, for it has made no such distinction between one man and another; nor compact can convey: for man not having such an arbitrary power over his own life, cannot give another man such a power over it; but it is the effect only of forfeiture, which the aggressor makes of his own life, when he puts himself into the state of war with another: for having quitted reason, which God hath given to be the rule betwixt man and man, and the common bond whereby human kind is united into one fellowship and society; and having renounced the way of peace which that teaches, and made use of the force of war, to compass his unjust ends upon another, where he has no right; and so revolting from his own kind to that of beasts, by making force, which is their’s, to be his rule of right, he renders himself liable to be destroyed by the injured person, and the rest of mankind, that will join with him in the execution of justice, as any other wild beast, or noxious brute, with whom mankind can have neither society nor security* . And thus captives, taken in a just and lawful war, and such only, are subject to a despotical power, which, as it arises not from compact, so neither is it capable of any, but is the state of war continued: for what compact can be made with a man that is not master of his own life? what condition can he perform? and if he be once allowed to be master of his own life, the despotical, arbitrary power of his master ceases. He that is master of himself, and his own life, has a right too to the means of preserving it; so that as soon ascompact enters, slavery ceases, and he so far quits his absolute power, and puts an end to the state of war, who enters into conditions with his captive.

  §. 173.

  Nature gives the first of these, viz. paternal power to parents for the benefit of their children during their minority, to supply their want of ability, and understanding how to manage their property. (By property I must be understood here, as in other places, to mean that property which men have in their persons as well as goods.) Voluntary agreement gives the second, viz. political power to governors for the benefit of their subjects, to secure them in the possession and use of their properties. And forfeiture gives the third despotical power to lords for their own benefit, over those who are stripped of all property.

  §. 174.

  He, that shall consider the distinct rise and extent, and the different ends of these several powers, will plainly see, that paternal power comes as far short of that of the magistrate, as despotical exceeds it; and that absolute dominion, however placed, is so far from being one kind of civil society, that it is as inconsistent with it, as slavery is with property. Paternal power is only where minority makes the child incapable to manage his property; political, where men have property in their own disposal; and despotical, over such as have no property at all.

  CHAP. XVI.
  Of CONQUEST.

  §. 175.

  THough governments can originally have no other rise than that before mentioned, nor polities be founded on any thing but the consent of the people; yet such have been the disorders ambition has filled the world with, that in the noise of war, which makes so great a part of the history of mankind, this consent is little taken notice of: and therefore many have mistaken the force of arms for the consent of the people, and reckon conquest as one of the originals of government. But conquest is as far from setting up any government, as demolishing an house is from building a new one in the place. Indeed, it often makes way for a new frame of a common-wealth, by destroying the former; but, without the consent of the people, can never erect a new one.

  §. 176.

  That the aggressor, who puts himself into the state of war with another, and unjustly invades another man’s right, can, by such an unjust war, never come to have a right over the conquered, will be easily agreed by all men, who will not think, that robbers and pyrates have a right of empire over whomsoever they have force enough to master; or that men are bound by promises, which unlawful force extorts from them. Should a robber break into my house, and with a dagger at my throat make me seal deeds to convey my estate to him, would this give him any title? Just such a title, by his sword, has an unjust conqueror, who forces me into submission. The injury and the crime is equal, whether committed by the wearer of a crown, or some petty villain. The title of the offender, and the number of his followers, make no difference in the offence, unless it be to aggravate it. The only difference is, great robbers punish little ones, to keep them in their obedience; but the great ones are rewarded with laurels and triumphs, because they are too big for the weak hands of justice in this world, and have the power in their own possession, which should punish offenders. What is my remedy against a robber, that so broke into my house? Appeal to the law for justice. But perhaps justice is denied, or I am crippled and cannot stir, robbed and have not the means to do it. If God has taken away all means of seeking remedy, there is nothing left but patience. But my son, when able, may seek the relief of the law, which I am denied: he or his son may renew his appeal, till he recover his right. But the conquered, or their children, have no court, no arbitrator on earth to appeal to. Then they may appeal, as Jephtha did, to heaven, and repeat their appeal till they have recovered the native right of their ancestors, which was, to have such a legislative over them, as the majority should approve, and freely acquiesce in. If it be objected, This would cause endless trouble; I answer, no more than justice does, where she lies open to all that appeal to her. He that troubles his neighbour without a cause, is punished for it by the justice of the court he appeals to: and he that appeals to heaven must be sure he has right on his side; and a right too that is worth the trouble and cost of the appeal, as he will answer at a tribunal that cannot be deceived, and will be sure to retribute to every one according to the mischiefs he hath created to his fellow subjects; that is, any part of mankind: from whence it is plain, that he that conquers in an unjust war can thereby have no title to the subjection and obedience of the conquered.

  §. 177.

  But supposing victory favours the right side, let us consider a conqueror in a lawful war, and see what power he gets, and over whom.

  First, It is plain he gets no power by his conquest over those that conquered with him. They that fought on his side cannot suffer by the conquest, but must at least be as much freemen as they were before. And most commonly they serve upon terms, and on condition to share with their leader, and enjoy a part of the spoil, and other advantages that attend the conquering sword; or at least have a part of the subdued country bestowed upon them. And the conquering people are not, I hope, to be slaves by conquest, and wear their laurels only to shew they are sacrifices to their leaders triumph. They that found absolute monarchy upon the title of the sword, make their heroes, who are the founders of such monarchies, arrant Draw-can-sirs, and forget they had any officers and soldiers that fought on their side in the battles they won, or assisted them in the subduing, or shared in possessing, the countries they mastered. We are told by some, that the English monarchy is founded in the Norman conquest, and that our princes have thereby a title to absolute dominion: which if it were true, (as by the history it appears otherwise) and that William had a right to make war on this island; yet his dominion by conquest could reach no farther than to the Saxons and Britons, that were then inhabitants of this country. The Normans that came with him, and helped to conquer, and all descended from them, are freemen, and no subjects by conquest; let that give what dominion it will. And if I, or any body else, shall claim freedom, as derived from them, it will be very hard to prove the contrary: and it is plain, the law, that has made no distinction between the one and the other, intends not there should be any difference in their freedom or privileges.

  §. 178.

  But supposing, which seldom happens, that the conquerors and conquered never incorporate into one people, under the same laws and freedom; let us see next what power a lawful conqueror has over the subdued: and that I say is purely despotical. He has an absolute power over the lives of those who by an unjust war have forfeited them; but not over the lives or fortunes of those who engaged not in the war, nor over the possessions even of those who were actually engaged in it.

  §. 179.

  Secondly, I say then the conqueror gets no power but only over those who have actually assisted, concurred, or consented to that unjust force that is used against him: for the people having given to their governors no power to do an unjust thing, such as is to make an unjust war, (for they never had such a power in themselves) they ought not to be charged as guilty of the violence and unjustice that is committed in an unjust war, any farther than they actually abet it; no more than they are to be thought guilty of any violence or oppression their governors should use upon the people themselves, or any part of their fellow subjects, they having impowered them no more to the one than to the other. Conquerors, it is true, seldom trouble themselves to make the distinction, but they willingly permit the confusion of war to sweep all together: but yet this alters not the right; for the conquerors power over the lives of the conquered, being only because they have used force to do, or maintain an injustice, he can have that power only over those who have concurred in that force; all the rest are innocent; and he has no more title over the people of that country, who have done him no injury, and so have made no forfeiture of their lives, than he has over any other, who, without any injuries or provocations, have lived upon fair terms with him.

  §. 180.

  Thirdly, The power a conqueror gets over those he overcomes in a just war, is perfectly despotical: he has an absolute power over the lives of those, who, by putting themselves in a state of war, have forfeited them; but he has not thereby a right and title to their possessions. This I doubt not, but at first sight will seem a strange doctrine, it being so quite contrary to the practice of the world; there being nothing more familiar in speaking of the dominion of countries, than to say such an one conquered it; as if conquest, without any more ado, conveyed a right of possession. But when we consider, that the practice of the strong and powerful, how universal soever it may be, is seldom the rule of right, however it be one part of the subjection of the conquered, not to argue against the conditions cut out to them by the conquering sword.

  §. 181.

  Though in all war there be usually a complication of force and damage, and the aggressor seldom fails to harm the estate, when he uses force against the persons of those he makes war upon; yet it is the use of force only that puts a man into the state of war: for whether by force he begins the injury, or else having quietly, and by fraud, done the injury, he refuses to make reparation, and by force maintains it, (which is the same thing, as at first to have done it by force) it is the unjust use of force that makes the war: for he that breaks open my house, and violently turns me out of doors; or having peaceably got in, by force keeps me out, does in effect the same thing; supposing we are in such a state, that we have no common judge on earth, whom I may appeal to, and to whom we are both obliged to submit: for of such I am now speaking. It is the unjust use of force then, that puts a man into the state of war with another; and thereby he that is guilty of it makes a forfeiture of his life: for quitting reason, which is the rule given between man and man, and using force, the way of beasts, he becomes liable to be destroyed by him he uses force against, as any savage ravenous beast, that is dangerous to his being.

  §. 182.

  But because the miscarriages of the father are no faults of the children, and they may be rational and peaceable, notwithstanding the brutishness and injustice of the father; the father, by his miscarriages and violence, can forfeit but his own life, but involves not his children in his guilt or destruction. His goods, which nature, that willeth the preservation of all mankind as much as is possible, hath made to belong to the children to keep them from perishing, do still continue to belong to his children: for supposing them not to have joined in the war, either thro’ infancy, absence, or choice, they have done nothing to forfeit them: nor has the conqueror any right to take them away, by the bare title of having subdued him that by force attempted his destruction; though perhaps he may have some right to them, to repair the damages he has sustained by the war, and the defence of his own right; which how far it reaches to the possessions of the conquered, we shall see by and by. So that he that by conquest has a right over a man’s person to destroy him if he pleases, has not thereby a right over his estate to possess and enjoy it: for it is the brutal force the aggressor has used, that gives his adversary a right to take away his life, and destroy him if he pleases, as a noxious creature; but it is damage sustained that alone gives him title to another man’s goods: for though I may kill a thief that sets on me in the high-way, yet I may not (which seems less) take away his money, and let him go: this would be robbery on my side. His force, and the state of war he put himself in, made him forfeit his life, but gave me no title to his goods. The right then of conquest extends only to the lives of those who joined in the war, not to their estates, but only in order to make reparation for the damages received, and the charges of the war, and that too with reservation of the right of the innocent wife and children.

  §. 183.

  Let the conqueror have as much justice on his side, as could be supposed, he has no right to seize more than the vanquished could forfeit: his life is at the victor’s mercy; and his service and goods he may appropriate, to make himself reparation; but he cannot take the goods of his wife and children; they too had a title to the goods he enjoyed, and their shares in the estate he possessed: for example, I in the state of nature (and all common-wealths are in the state of nature one with another) have injured another man, and refusing to give satisfaction, it comes to a state of war, wherein my defending by force what I had gotten unjustly, makes me the aggressor. I am conquered: my life, it is true, as forfeit, is at mercy, but not my wife’s and children’s. They made not the war, nor assisted in it. I could not forfeit their lives; they were not mine to forfeit. My wife had a share in my estate; that neither could I forfeit. And my children also, being born of me, had a right to be maintained out of my labour or substance. Here then is the case: the conqueror has a title to reparation for damages received, and the children have a title to their father’s estate for their subsistence: for as to the wife’s share, whether her own labour, or compact, gave her a title to it, it is plain, her husband could not forfeit what was her’s. What must be done in the case? I answer; the fundamental law of nature being, that all, as much as may be, should be preserved, it follows, that if there be not enough fully to satisfy both, viz. for the conqueror’s losses, and children’s maintenance, he that hath, and to spare, must remit something of his full satisfaction, and give way to the pressing and preferable title of those who are in danger to perish without it.

  §. 184.

  But supposing the charge and damages of the war are to be made up to the conqueror, to the utmost farthing; and that the children of the vanquished, spoiled of all their father’s goods, are to be left to starve and perish; yet the satisfying of what shall, on this score, be due to the conqueror, will scarce give him a title to any country be shall conquer: for the damages of war can scarce amount to the value of any considerable tract of land, in any part of the world, where all the land is possessed, and none lies waste. And if I have not taken away the conqueror’s land, which, being vanquished, it is impossible I should; scarce any other spoil I have done him can amount to the value of mine, supposing it equally cultivated, and of an extent any way coming near what I had over-run of his. The destruction of a year’s product or two (for it seldom reaches four or five) is the utmost spoil that usually can be done: for as to money, and such riches and treasure taken away, these are none of nature’s goods, they have but a fantastical imaginary value: nature has put no such upon them: they are of no more account by her standard, than the wampompeke of the Americans to an European prince, or the silver money of Europe would have been formerly to an American. And five years product is not worth the perpetual inheritance of land, where all is possessed, and none remains waste, to be taken up by him that is disseized: which will be easily granted, if one do but take away the imaginary value of money, the disproportion being more than between five and five hundred; though, at the same time, half a year’s product is more worth than the inheritance, where there being more land than the inhabitants possess and make use of, any one has liberty to make use of the waste: but there conquerors take little care to possess themselves of the lands of the vanquished. No damage therefore, that men in the state of nature (as all princes and governments are in reference to one another) suffer from one another, can give a conqueror power to dispossess the posterity of the vanquished, and turn them out of that inheritance, which ought to be the possession of them and their descendants to all generations. The conqueror indeed will be apt to think himself master: and it is the very condition of the subdued not to be able to dispute their right. But if that be all, it gives no other title than what bare force gives to the stronger over the weaker: and, by this reason, he that is strongest will have a right to whatever he pleases to seize on.

  §. 185.

  Over those then that joined with him in the war, and over those of the subdued country that opposed him not, and the posterity even of those that did, the conqueror, even in a just war, hath, by his conquest, no right of dominion: they are free from any subjection to him, and if their former government be dissolved, they are at liberty to begin and erect another to themselves.

  §. 186.

  The conqueror, it is true, usually, by the force he has over them, compels them, with a sword at their breasts, to stoop to his conditions, and submit to such a government as he pleases to afford them; but the enquiry is, what right he has to do so? If it be said, they submit by their own consent, then this allows their own consent to be necessary to give the conqueror a title to rule over them. It remains only to be considered, whether promises extorted by force, without right, can be thought consent, and how far they bind. To which I shall say, they bind not at all; because whatsoever another gets from me by force, I still retain the right of, and he is obliged presently to restore. He that forces my horse from me, ought presently to restore him, and I have still a right to retake him. By the same reason, he that forced a promise from me, ought presently to restore it, i. e. quit me of the obligation of it; or I may resume it myself, i. e. chuse whether I will perform it: for the law of nature laying an obligation on me only by the rules the prescribes, cannot oblige me by the violation of her rules: such is the extorting any thing from me by force. Nor does it at all alter the case to say, I gave my promise, no more than it excuses the force, and passes the right, when I put my hand in my pocket, and deliver my purse myself to a thief, who demands it with a pistol at my breast.

  §. 187.

  From all which it follows, that the government of a conqueror, imposed by force on the subdued, against whom he had no right of war, or who joined not in the war against him, where he had right, has no obligation upon them.

  §. 188.

  But let us suppose, that all the men of that community, being all members of the same body politic, may be taken to have joined in that unjust war wherein they are subdued, and so their lives are at the mercy of the conqueror.

  §. 189.

  I say, this concerns not their children who are in their minority: for since a father hath not, in himself, a power over the life or liberty of his child, no act of his can possibly forfeit it. So that the children, whatever may have happened to the fathers, are freemen, and the absolute power of the conqueror reaches no farther than the persons of the men that were subdued by him, and dies with them: and should he govern them as slaves, subjected to his absolute arbitrary power, he has no such right of dominion over their children. He can have no power over them but by their own consent, whatever he may drive them to say or do; and he has no lawfull authority, whilst force, and not choice, compels them to submission.

  §. 190.

  Every man is born with a double right: first, a right of freedom to his person, which no other man has a power over, but the free disposal of it lies in himself. Secondly, a right, before any other man, to inherit with his brethren his father’s goods.

  §. 191.

  By the first of these, a man is naturally free from subjection to any government, tho’ he be born in a place under its jurisdiction; but if he disclaim the lawful government of the country he was born in, he must also quit the right that belonged to him by the laws of it, and the possessions there descending to him from his ancestors, if it were a government made by their consent.

  §. 192.

  By the second, the inhabitants of any country, who are descended, and derive a title to their estates from those who are subdued, and had a government forced upon them against their free consents, retain a right to the possession of their ancestors, though they consent not freely to the government, whose hard conditions were by force imposed on the possessors of that country: for the first conqueror never having had a title to the land of that country, the people who are the descendants of, or claim under those who were forced to submit to the yoke of a government by constraint, have always a right to shake it off, and free themselves from the usurpation or tyranny which the sword hath brought in upon them, till their rulers put them under such a frame of government as they willingly and of choice consent to. Who doubts but the Grecian christians, descendants of the ancient possessors of that country, may justly cast off the Turkish yoke, which they have so long groaned under, whenever they have an opportunity to do it? For no government can have a right to obedience from a people who have not freely consented to it; which they can never be supposed to do, till either they are put in a full state of liberty to chuse their government and governors, or at least till they have such standing laws, to which they have by themselves or their representatives given their free consent, and also till they are allowed their due property, which is so to be proprietors of what they have, that no body can take away any part of it without their own consent, without which, men under any government are not in the state of freemen, but are direct slaves under the force of war.

  §. 193.

  But granting that the conqueror in a just war has a right to the estates, as well as power over the persons, of the conquered; which, it is plain, he hath not: nothing of absolute power will follow from hence, in the continuance of the government; because the descendants of these being all freemen, if he grants them estates and possessions to inhabit his country, (without which it would be worth nothing) whatsoever he grants them, they have, so far as it is granted, property in. The nature whereof is, that without a man’s own consent it cannot be taken from him.

  §. 194.

  Their persons are free by a native right, and their properties, be they more or less, are their own, and at their own dispose, and not at his; or else it is no property. Supposing the conqueror gives to one man a thousand acres, to him and his heirs for ever, to another he lets a thousand acres for his life, under the rent of 50l. or 500l. per ann. has not the one of these a right to his thousand acres for ever, and the other, during his life, paying the said rent? and hath not the tenant for life a property in all that he gets over and above his rent, by his labour and industry during the said term, supposing it be double the rent? Can any one say, the king, or conqueror, after his grant, may by his power of conqueror take away all, or part of the land from the heirs of one, or from the other during his life, he paying the rent? or can he take away from either the goods or money they have got upon the said land, at his pleasure? If he can, then all free and voluntary contracts cease, and are void in the world; there needs nothing to dissolve them at any time, but power enough: and all the grants and promises of men in power are but mockery and collusion: for can there be any thing more ridiculous than to say, I give you and your’s this for ever, and that in the surest and most solemn way of conveyance can be devised; and yet it is to be understood, that I have right, if I please, to take it away from you again to morrow?

  §. 195.

  I will not dispute now whether princes are exempt from the laws of their country; but this I am sure, they owe subjection to the laws of God and nature, No body, no power, can exempt them from the obligations of that eternal law. Those are so great, and so strong, in the case of promises, that omnipotency itself can be tied by them. Grants, promises, and oaths, are bonds that hold the Almighty: whatever some flatterers say to princes of the world, who all together, with all their people joined to them, are, in comparison of the great God, but as a drop of the bucket, or a dust on the balance, inconsiderable, nothing!

  §. 196.

  The short of the case in conquest is this: the conqueror, if he have a just cause, has a despotical right over the persons of all, that actually aided, and concurred in the war against him, and a right to make up his damage and cost out of their labour and estates, so he injure not the right of any other. Over the rest of the people, if there were any that consented not to the war, and over the children of the captives themselves, or the possessions of either, he has no power; and so can have, by virtue of conquest, no lawful title himself to dominion over them, or derive it to his posterity; but is an aggressor, if he attempts upon their properties, and thereby puts himself in a state of war against them, and has no better a right of principality, he, nor any of his successors, than Hingar, or Hubba, the Danes, had here in England; or Spartacus, had he conquered Italy, would have had; which is to have their yoke cast off, as soon as God shall give those under their subjection courage and opportunity to do it. Thus, notwithstanding whatever title the kings of Assyria had over Judah, by the sword, God assisted Hezekiah to throw off the dominion of that conquering empire. And the lord was with Hezekiah, and he prospered; wherefore he went forth, and he rebelled against the king of Assyria, and served him not, 2 Kings xviii. 7. Whence it is plain, that shaking off a power, which force, and not right, hath set over any one, though it hath the name of rebellion, yet is no offence before God, but is that which he allows and countenances, though even promises and covenants, when obtained by force, have intervened: for it is very probable, to any one that reads the story of Ahaz and Hezekiah attentively, that the Assyrians subdued Ahaz, and deposed him, and made Hezekiah king in his father’s lifetime; and that Hezekiah by agreement had done him homage, and paid him tribute all this time.

  CHAP. XVII.
  Of USURPATION.

  §. 197.

  AS conquest may be called a foreign usurpation, so usurpation is a kind of domestic conquest, with this difference, that an usurper can never have right on his side, it being no usurpation, but where one is got into the possession of what another has right to. This, so far as it is usurpation, is a change only of persons, but not of the forms and rules of the government: for if the usurper extend his power beyond what of right belonged to the lawful princes, or governors of the commonwealth, it is tyranny added to usurpation.

  §. 198.

  In all lawful governments, the designation of the persons, who are to bear rule, is as natural and necessary a part as the form of the government itself, and is that which had its establishment originally from the people; the anarchy being much alike, to have no form of government at all; or to agree, that it shall be monarchical, but to appoint no way to design the person that shall have the power, and be the monarch. Hence all commonwealths, with the form of government established, have rules also of appointing those who are to have any share in the public authority, and settled methods of conveying the right to them: for the anarchy is much alike, to have no form of government at all; or to agree that it shall be monarchical, but to appoint no way to know or design the person that shall have the power, and be the monarch. Whoever gets into the exercise of any part of the power, by other ways than what the laws of the community have prescribed, hath no right to be obeyed, though the form of the commonwealth be still preserved; since he is not the person the laws have appointed, and consequently not the person the people have consented to. Nor can such an usurper, or any deriving from him, ever have a title, till the people are both at liberty to consent, and have actually consented to allow, and confirm in him the power he hath till then usurped.

  CHAP. XVIII.
  Of TYRANNY.

  §. 199.

  AS usurpation is the exercise of power, which another hath a right to; so tyranny is the exercise of power beyond right, which no body can have a right to. And this is making use of the power any one has in his hands, not for the good of those who are under it, but for his own private separate advantage. When the governor, however intitled, makes not the law, but his will, the rule; and his commands and actions are not directed to the preservation of the properties of his people, but the satisfaction of his own ambition, revenge, covetousness, or any other irregular passion.

  §. 200.

  If one can doubt this to be truth, or reason, because it comes from the obscure hand of a subject, I hope the authority of a king will make it pass with him. King James the first, in his speech to the parliament, 1603, tells them thus, I will ever prefer the weal of the public, and of the whole commonwealth, in making of good laws and constitutions, to any particular and private ends of mine; thinking ever the wealth and weal of the commonwealth to be my greatest weal and worldly felicity; a point wherein a lawful king doth directly differ from a tyrant: for I do acknowledge, that the special and greatest point of difference that is between a rightful king and an usurping tyrant, is this, that whereas the proud and ambitious tyrant doth think his kingdom and people are only ordained for satisfaction of his desires and unreasonable appetites, the righteous and just king doth by the contrary acknowledge himself to be ordained for the procuring of the wealth and property of his people. And again, in his speech to the parliament, 1609, he hath these words, The king binds himself by a double oath, to the observation of the fundamental laws of his kingdom; tacitly, as by being a king, and so bound to protect aswell the people, as the laws of his kingdom; and expresly, by his oath at his coronation; so as every just king, in a settled kingdom, is bound to observe that paction made to his people, by his laws, in framing his government agreeable thereunto, according to that paction which God made with Noah after the deluge. Hereafter, seed-time and harvest, and cold and heat, and summer and winter, and day and night, shall not cease while the earth remaineth. And therefore a king governing in a settled kingdom, leaves to be a king, and degenerates into a tyrant, as soon as he leaves off to rule according to his laws. And a little after, Therefore all kings that are not tyrants, or perjured, will be glad to bound themselves within the limits of their laws; and they that persuade them the contrary, are vipers, and pests both against them and the commonwealth. Thus that learned king, who well understood the notion of things, makes the difference betwixt a king and a tyrant to consist only in this, that one makes the laws the bounds of his power, and the good of the public, the end of his government; the other makes all give way to his own will and appetite.

  §. 201.

  It is a mistake, to think this fault is proper only to monarchies; other forms of government are liable to it, as well as that: for wherever the power, that is put in any hands for the government of the people, and the preservation of their properties, is applied to other ends, and made use of to impoverish, harass, or subdue them to the arbitrary and irregular commands of those that have it; there it presently becomes tyranny, whether those that thus use it are one or many. Thus we read of the thirty tyrants at Athens, as well as one at Syracuse; and the intolerable dominion of the Decemviri at Rome was nothing better.

  §. 202.

  Where-ever law ends, tyranny begins, if the law be transgressed to another’s harm; and whosoever in authority exceeds the power given him by the law, and makes use of the force he has under his command, to compass that upon the subject, which the law allows not, ceases in that to be a magistrate; and, acting without authority, may be opposed, as any other man, who by force invades the right of another. This is acknowledged in subordinate magistrates. He that hath authority to seize my person in the street, may be opposed as a thief and a robber, if he endeavours to break into my house to execute a writ, notwithstanding that I know he has such a warrant, and such a legal authority, as will impower him to arrest me abroad. And why this should not hold in the highest, as well as in the most inferior magistrate, I would gladly be informed. Is it reasonable, that the eldest brother, because he has the greatest part of his father’s estate, should thereby have a right to take away any of his younger brothers portions? or that a rich man, who possessed a whole country, should from thence have a right to seize, when he pleased, the cottage and garden of his poor neighbour? The being rightfully possessed of great power and riches, exceedingly beyond the greatest part of the sons of Adam, is so far from being an excuse, much less a reason, for rapine and oppression, which the endamaging another without authority is, that it is a great aggravation of it: for the exceeding the bounds of authority is no more a right in a great, than in a petty officer; no more justifiable in a king than a constable; but is so much the worse in him, in that he has more trust put in him, has already a much greater share than the rest of his brethren, and is supposed, from the advantages of his education, employment, and counsellors, to be more knowing in the measures of right and wrong.

  §. 203.

  May the commands then of a prince be opposed? may he be resisted as often as any one shall find himself aggrieved, and but imagine he has not right done him? This will unhinge and overturn all polities, and, instead of government and order, leave nothing but anarchy and confusion.

  §. 204.

  To this I answer, that force is to be opposed to nothing, but to unjust and unlawful force; whoever makes any opposition in any other case, draws on himself a just condemnation both from God and man; and so no such danger or confusion will follow, as is often suggested: for,

  §. 205.

  First, As, in some countries, the person of the prince by the law is sacred; and so, whatever he commands or does, his person is still free from all question or violence, not liable to force, or any judicial censure or condemnation. But yet opposition may be made to the illegal acts of any inferior officer, or other commissioned by him; unless he will, by actually putting himself into a state of war with his people, dissolve the government, and leave them to that defence which belongs to every one in the state of nature: for of such things who can tell what the end will be? and a neighbour kingdom has shewed the world an odd example. In all other cases the sacredness of the person exempts him from all inconveniencies, whereby he is secure, whilst the government stands, from all violence and harm whatsoever; than which there cannot be a wiser constitution: for the harm he can do in his own person not being likely to happen often, nor to extend itself far; nor being able by his single strength to subvert the laws, nor oppress the body of the people, should any prince have so much weakness, and ill nature as to be willing to do it, the inconveniency of some particular mischiefs, that may happen sometimes, when a heady prince comes to the throne, are well recompensed by the peace of the public, and security of the government, in the person of the chief magistrate, thus set out of the reach of danger: it being safer for the body, that some few private men should be sometimes in danger to suffer, than that the head of the republic should be easily, and upon slight occasions, exposed.

  §. 206.

  Secondly, But this privilege, belonging only to the king’s person, hinders not, but they may be questioned, opposed, and resisted, who use unjust force, though they pretend a commission from him, which the law authorizes not; as is plain in the case of him that has the king’s writ to arrest a man, which is a full commission from the king; and yet he that has it cannot break open a man’s house to do it, nor execute this command of the king upon certain days, nor in certain places, though this commission have no such exception in it; but they are the limitations of the law, which if any one transgress, the king’s commission excuses him not: for the king’s authority being given him only by the law, he cannot impower any one to act against the law, or justify him, by his commission, in so doing; the commission, or command of any magistrate, where he has no authority, being as void and insignificant, as that of any private man; the difference between the one and the other, being that the magistrate has some authority so far, and to such ends, and the private man has none at all: for it is not the commission, but the authority, that gives the right of acting; and against the laws there can be no authority. But, notwithstanding such resistance, the king’s person and authority are still both secured, and so no danger to governor or government.

  §. 207.

  Thirdly, Supposing a government wherein the person of the chief magistrate is not thus sacred; yet this doctrine of the lawfulness of resisting all unlawful exercises of his power, will not upon every slight occasion indanger him, or imbroil the government: for where the injured party may be relieved, and his damages repaired by appeal to the law, there can be no pretence for force, which is only to be used where a man is intercepted from appealing to the law: for nothing is to be accounted hostile force, but where it leaves not the remedy of such an appeal; and it is such force alone, that puts him that uses it into a state of war, and makes it lawful to resist him. A man with a sword in his hand demands my purse in the high-way, when perhaps I have not twelve pence in my pocket: this man I may lawfully kill. To another I deliver 100 l. to hold only whilst I alight, which he refuses to restore me, when I am got up again, but draws his sword to defend the possession of it by force, if I endeavour to retake it. The mischief this man does me is a hundred, or possibly a thousand times more than the other perhaps intended me (whom I killed before he really did me any); and yet I might lawfully kill the one, and cannot so much as hurt the other lawfully. The reason whereof is plain; because the one using force, which threatened my life, I could not have time to appeal to the law to secure it: and when it was gone, it was too late to appeal. The law could not restore life to my dead carcass: the loss was irreparable; which to prevent, the law of nature gave me a right to destroy him, who had put himself into a state of war with me, and threatened my destruction. But in the other case, my life not being in danger, I may have the benefit of appealing to the law, and have reparation for my 100 l. that way.

  §. 208.

  Fourthly, But if the unlawful acts done by the magistrate be maintained (by the power he has got), and the remedy which is due by law, be by the same power obstructed; yet the right of resisting, even in such manifest acts of tyranny, will not suddenly, or on slight occasions, disturb the government: for if it reach no farther than some private men’s cases, though they have a right to defend themselves, and to recover by force what by unlawful force is taken from them; yet the right to do so will not easily engage them in a contest, wherein they are sure to perish; it being as impossible for one, or a few oppressed men to disturb the government, where the body of the people do not think themselves concerned in it, as for a raving mad-man, or heady mal-content to overturn a well-settled state; the people being as little apt to follow the one, as the other.

  §. 209.

  But if either these illegal acts have extended to the majority of the people; or if the mischief and oppression has lighted only on some few, but in such cases, as the precedent, and consequences seem to threaten all; and they are persuaded in their consciences, that their laws, and with them their estates, liberties, and lives are in danger, and perhaps their religion too; how they will be hindered from resisting illegal force, used against them, I cannot tell. This is an inconvenience, I confess, that attends all governments whatsoever, when the governors have brought it to this pass, to be generally suspected of their people; the most dangerous state which they can possibly put themselves in; wherein they are the less to be pitied, because it is so easy to be avoided; it being as impossible for a governor, if he really means the good of his people, and the preservation of them, and their laws together, not to make them see and feel it, as it is for the father of a family, not to let his children see he loves, and takes care of them.

  §. 210.

  But if all the world shall observe pretences of one kind, and actions of another; arts used to elude the law, and the trust of prerogative (which is an arbitrary power in some things left in the prince’s hand to do good, not harm to the people) employed contrary to the end for which it was given: if the people shall find the ministers and subordinate magistrates chosen suitable to such ends, and favoured, or laid by, proportionably as they promote or oppose them: if they see several experiments made of arbitrary power, and that religion underhand favoured, (tho’ publicly proclaimed against) which is readiest to introduce it; and the operators in it supported, as much as may be; and when that cannot be done, yet approved still, and liked the better: if a long train of actions shew the councils all tending that way; how can a man any more hinder himself from being persuaded in his own mind, which way things are going; or from casting about how to save himself, than he could from believing the captain of the ship he was in, was carrying him, and the rest of the company, to Algiers, when he found him always steering that course, though cross winds, leaks in his ship, and want of men and provisions did often force him to turn his course another way for some time, which he steadily returned to again, as soon as the wind, weather, and other circumstances would let him?

  CHAP. XIX.
  Of the Dissolution of Government.

  §. 211.

  HE that will with any clearness speak of the dissolution of government, ought in the first place to distinguish between the dissolution of the society and the dissolution of the government. That which makes the community, and brings men out of the loose state of nature, into one politic society, is the agreement which every one has with the rest to incorporate, and act as one body, and so be one distinct common-wealth. The usual, and almost only way whereby this union is dissolved, is the inroad of foreign force making a conquest upon them: for in that case, (not being able to maintain and support themselves, as one intire and independent body) the union belonging to that body which consisted therein, must necessarily cease, and so every one return to the state he was in before, with a liberty to shift for himself, and provide for his own safety, as he thinks fit, in some other society. Whenever the society is dissolved, it is certain the government of that society cannot remain. Thus conquerors swords often cut up governments by the roots, and mangle societies to pieces, separating the subdued or scattered multitude from the protection of, and dependence on, that society which ought to have preserved them from violence. The world is too well instructed in, and too forward to allow of, this way of dissolving of governments, to need any more to be said of it; and there wants not much argument to prove, that where the society is dissolved, the government cannot remain; that being as impossible, as for the frame of an house to subsist when the materials of it are scattered and dissipated by a whirl-wind, or jumbled into a confused heap by an earthquake.

  §. 212.

  Besides this over-turning from without, governments are dissolved from within,

  First, When the legislative is altered. Civil society being a state of peace, amongst those who are of it, from whom the state of war is excluded by the umpirage, which they have provided in their legislative, for the ending all differences that may arise amongst any of them, it is in their legislative, that the members of a common-wealth are united, and combined together into one coherent living body. This is the soul that gives form, life, and unity, to the common-wealth: from hence the several members have their mutual influence, sympathy, and connexion: and therefore, when the legislative is broken, or dissolved, dissolution and death follows: for the essence and union of the society consisting in having one will, the legislative, when once established by the majority, has the declaring, and as it were keeping of that will. The constitution of the legislative is the first and fundamental act of society, whereby provision is made for the continuation of their union, under the direction of persons, and bonds of laws, made by persons authorized thereunto, by the consent and appointment of the people, without which no one man, or number of men, amongst them, can have authority of making laws that shall be binding to the rest. When any one, or more, shall take upon them to make laws, whom the people have not appointed so to do, they make laws without authority, which the people are not therefore bound to obey; by which means they come again to be out of subjection, and may constitute to themselves a new legislative, as they think best, being in full liberty to resist the force of those, who without authority would impose any thing upon them. Every one is at the disposure of his own will, when those who had, by the delegation of the society, the declaring of the public will, are excluded from it, and others usurp the place, who have no such authority or delegation.

  §. 213.

  This being usually brought about by such in the common-wealth who misuse the power they have; it is hard to consider it aright, and know at whose door to lay it, without knowing the form of government in which it happens. Let us suppose then the legislative placed in the concurrence of three distinct persons.

  1. A single hereditary person, having the constant, supreme, executive power, and with it the power of convoking and dissolving the other two within certain periods of time.

  2. An assembly of hereditary nobility.

  3. An assembly of representatives chosen, pro tempore, by the people. Such a form of government supposed, it is evident,

  §. 214.

  First, That when such a single person, or prince, sets up his own arbitrary will in place of the laws, which are the will of the society, declared by the legislative, then the legislative is changed: for that being in effect the legislative, whose rules and laws are put in execution, and required to be obeyed; when other laws are set up, and other rules pretended, and inforced, than what the legislative, constituted by the society, have enacted, it is plain that the legislative is changed. Whoever introduces new laws, not being thereunto authorized by the fundamental appointment of the society, or subverts the old, disowns and overturns the power by which they were made, and so sets up a new legislative.

  §. 215.

  Secondly, When the prince hinders the legislative from assembling in its due time, or from acting freely, pursuant to those ends for which it was constituted, the legislative is altered: for it is not a certain number of men, no, nor their meeting, unless they have also freedom of debating, and leisure of perfecting, what is for the good of the society, wherein the legislative consists: when these are taken away or altered, so as to deprive the society of the due exercise of their power, the legislative is truly altered; for it is not names that constitute governments, but the use and exercise of those powers that were intended to accompany them; so that he, who takes away the freedom, or hinders the acting of the legislative in its due seasons, in effect takes away the legislative, and puts an end to the government.

  §. 216.

  Thirdly, When, by the arbitrary power of the prince, the electors, or ways of election, are altered, without the consent, and contrary to the common interest of the people, there also the legislative is altered: for, if others than those whom the society hath authorized thereunto, do chuse, or in another way than what the society hath prescribed, those chosen are not the legislative appointed by the people.

  §. 217.

  Fourthly, The delivery also of the people into the subjection of a foreign power, either by the prince, or by the legislative, is certainly a change of the legislative, and so a dissolution of the government: for the end why people entered into society being to be preserved one intire, free, independent society, to be governed by its own laws; this is lost, whenever they are given up into the power of another.

  §. 218.

  Why, in such a constitution as this, the dissolution of the government in these cases is to be imputed to the prince, is evident; because he, having the force, treasure and offices of the state to employ, and often persuading himself, or being flattered by others, that as supreme magistrate he is uncapable of controul; he alone is in a condition to make great advances toward such changes, under pretence of lawful authority, and has it in his hands to terrify or suppress opposers, as factious, seditious, and enemies to the government: whereas no other part of the legislative, or people, is capable by themselves to attempt any alteration of the legislative, without open and visible rebellion, apt enough to be taken notice of, which, when it prevails, produces effects very little different from foreign conquest. Besides, the prince in such a form of government, having the power of dissolving the other parts of the legislative, and thereby rendering them private persons, they can never in opposition to him, or without his concurrence, alter the legislative by a law, his consent being necessary to give any of their decrees that sanction. But yet, so far as the other parts of the legislative any way contribute to any attempt upon the government, and do either promote, or not, what lies in them, hinder such designs, they are guilty, and partake in this, which is certainly the greatest crime men can be guilty of one towards another.

  §. 219.

  There is one way more whereby such a government may be dissolved, and that is, when he who has the supreme executive power, neglects and abandons that charge, so that the laws already made can no longer be put in execution. This is demonstratively to reduce all to anarchy, and so effectually to dissolve the government: for laws not being made for themselves, but to be, by their execution, the bonds of the society, to keep every part of the body politic in its due place and function; when that totally ceases, the government visibly ceases, and the people become a confused multitude, without order or connexion. Where there is no longer the administration of justice, for the securing of men’s rights, nor any remaining power within the community to direct the force, or provide for the necessities of the public, there certainly is no government left. Where the laws cannot be executed, it is all one as if there were no laws; and a government without laws is, I suppose, a mystery in politics, unconceivable to human capacity, and inconsistent with human society.

  §. 220.

  In these and the like cases, when the government is dissolved, the people are at liberty to provide for themselves, by erecting a new legislative, differing from the other, by the change of persons, or form, or both, as they shall find it most for their safety and good: for the society can never, by the fault of another, lose the native and original right it has to preserve itself, which can only be done by a settled legislative, and a fair and impartial execution of the laws made by it. But the state of mankind is not so miserable that they are not capable of using this remedy, till it be too late to look for any. To tell people they may provide for themselves, by erecting a new legislative, when by oppression, artifice, or being delivered over to a foreign power, their old one is gone, is only to tell them, they may expect relief when it is too late, and the evil is past cure. This is in effect no more than to bid them first be slaves, and then to take care of their liberty; and when their chains are on, tell them, they may act like freemen. This, if barely so, is rather mockery than relief; and men can never be secure from tyranny, if there be no means to escape it till they are perfectly under it: and therefore it is, that they have not only a right to get out of it, but to prevent it.

  §. 221.

  There is therefore, secondly, another way whereby governments are dissolved, and that is, when the legislative, or the prince, either of them, act contrary to their trust.

  First, The legislative acts against the trust reposed in them, when they endeavour to invade the property of the subject, and to make themselves, or any part of the community, masters, or arbitrary disposers of the lives, liberties, or fortunes of the people.

  §. 222.

  The reason why men enter into society, is the preservation of their property; and the end why they chuse and authorize a legislative, is, that there may be laws made, and rules set, as guards and fences to the properties of all the members of the society, to limit the power, and moderate the dominion, of every part and member of the society: for since it can never be supposed to be the will of the society, that the legislative should have a power to destroy that which every one designs to secure, by entering into society, and for which the people submitted themselves to legislators of their own making; whenever the legislators endeavour to take away, and destroy the property of the people, or to reduce them to slavery under arbitrary power, they put themselves into a state of war with the people, who are thereupon absolved from any farther obedience, and are left to the common refuge, which God hath provided for all men, against force and violence. Whensoever therefore the legislative shall transgress this fundamental rule of society; and either by ambition, fear, folly or corruption, endeavour to grasp themselves, or put into the hands of any other, an absolute power over the lives, liberties, and estates of the people; by this breach of trust they forfeit the power the people had put into their hands for quite contrary ends, and it devolves to the people, who have a right to resume their original liberty, and, by the establishment of a new legislative, (such as they shall think fit) provide for their own safety and security, which is the end for which they are in society. What I have said here, concerning the legislative in general, holds true also concerning the supreme executor, who having a double trust put in him, both to have a part in the legislative, and the supreme execution of the law, acts against both, when he goes about to set up his own arbitrary will as the law of the society. He acts also contrary to his trust, when he either employs the force, treasure, and offices of the society, to corrupt the representatives, and gain them to his purposes; or openly pre-engages the electors, and prescribes to their choice, such, whom he has, by sollicitations, threats, promises, or otherwise, won to his designs; and employs them to bring in such, who have promised before-hand what to vote, and what to enact. Thus to regulate candidates and electors, and new-model the ways of election, what is it but to cut up the government by the roots, and poison the very fountain of public security? for the people having reserved to themselves the choice of their representatives, as the fence to their properties, could do it for no other end, but that they might always be freely chosen, and so chosen, freely act, and advise, as the necessity of the common-wealth, and the public good should, upon examination, and mature debate, be judged to require. This, those who give their votes before they hear the debate, and have weighed the reasons on all sides, are not capable of doing. To prepare such an assembly as this, and endeavour to set up the declared abettors of his own will, for the true representatives of the people, and the law-makers of the society, is certainly as great a breach of trust, and as perfect a declaration of a design to subvert the government, as is possible to be met with. To which, if one shall add rewards and punishments visibly employed to the same end, and all the arts of perverted law made use of, to take off and destroy all that stand in the way of such a design, and will not comply and consent to betray the liberties of their country, it will be past doubt what is doing. What power they ought to have in the society, who thus employ it contrary to the trust went along with it in its first institution, is easy to determine; and one cannot but see, that he, who has once attempted any such thing as this, cannot any longer be trusted.

  §. 223.

  To this perhaps it will be said, that the people being ignorant, and always discontented, to lay the foundation of government in the unsteady opinion and uncertain humour of the people, is to expose it to certain ruin; and no government will be able long to subsist, if the people may set up a new legislative, whenever they take offence at the old one. To this I answer, Quite the contrary. People are not so easily got out of their old forms, as some are apt to suggest. They are hardly to be prevailed with to amend the acknowledged faults in the frame they have been accustomed to. And if there be any original defects, or adventitious ones introduced by time, or corruption; it is not an easy thing to get them changed, even when all the world sees there is an opportunity for it. This slowness and aversion in the people to quite their old constitutions, has, in the many revolutions which have been seen in this kingdom, in this and former ages, still kept us to, or, after some interval of fruitless attempts, still brought us back again to our old legislative of king, lords and commons: and whatever provocations have made the crown be taken from some of our princes heads, they never carried the people so far as to place it in another line.

  §. 224.

  But it will be said, this hypothesis lays a ferment for frequent rebellion. To which I answer,

  First, No more than any other hypothesis: for when the people are made miserable, and find themselves exposed to the ill usage of arbitrarypower, cry up their governors, as much as you will, for sons of Jupiter; let them be sacred and divine, descended, or authorized from heaven; give them out for whom or what you please, the same will happen. The people generally ill treated, and contrary to right, will be ready upon any occasion to ease themselves of a burden that sits heavy upon them. They will wish, and seek for the opportunity, which in the change, weakness and accidents of human affairs, seldom delays long to offer itself. He must have lived but a little while in the world, who has not seen examples of this in his time; and he must have read very little, who cannot produce examples of it in all sorts of governments in the world.

  §. 225.

  Secondly, I answer, such revolutions happen not upon every little mismanagement in public affairs. Great mistakes in the ruling part, many wrong and inconvenient laws, and all the slips of human frailty, will be born by the people without mutiny or murmur. But if a long train of abuses, prevarications and artifices, all tending the same way, make the design visible to the people, and they cannot but feel what they lie under, and see whither they are going; it is not to be wondered, that they should then rouze themselves, and endeavour to put the rule into such hands which may secure to them the ends for which government was at first erected; and without which, ancient names, and specious forms, are so far from being better, that they are much worse, than the state of nature, or pure anarchy; the inconveniencies being all as great and as near, but the remedy farther off and more difficult.

  §. 226.

  Thirdly, I answer, that this doctrine of a power in the people of providing for their safety a-new, by a new legislative, when their legislators have acted contrary to their trust, by invading their property, is the best fence against rebellion, and the probablest means to hinder it: for rebellion being an opposition, not to persons, but authority, which is founded only in the constitutions and laws of the government; those, whoever they be, who by force break through, and by force justify their violation of them, are truly and properly rebels: for when men, by entering into society and civil-government, have excluded force, and introduced laws for the preservation of property, peace, and unity amongst themselves, those who set up force again in opposition to the laws, do rebellare, that is, bring back again the state of war, and are properly rebels: which they who are in power, (by the pretence they have to authority, the temptation of force they have in their hands, and the flattery of those about them) being likeliest to do; the properest way to prevent the evil, is to shew them the danger and injustice of it, who are under the greatest temptation to run into it.

  §. 227.

  In both the fore-mentioned cases, when either the legislative is changed, or the legislators act contrary to the end for which they were constituted; those who are guilty are guilty of rebeliion: for if any one by force takes away the established legislative of any society, and the laws by them made, pursuant to their trust, he thereby takes away the umpirage, which every one had consented to, for a peaceable decision of all their controversies, and a bar to the state of war amongst them. They, who remove, or change the legislative, take away this decisive power, which no body can have, but by the appointment and consent of the people; and so destroying the authority which the people did, and no body else can set up, and introducing a power which the people hath not authorized, they actually introduce a state of war, which is that of force without authority: and thus, by removing the legislative established by the society, (in whose decisions the people acquiesced and united, as to that of their own will) they untie the knot, and expose the people a-new to the state of war. And if those, who by force take away the legislative, are rebels, the legislators themselves, as has been shewn, can be no less esteemed so; when they, who were set up for the protection, and preservation of the people, their liberties and properties, shall by force invade and endeavour to take them away; and so they putting themselves into a state of war with those who made them the protectors and guardians of their peace, are properly, and with the greatest aggravation, rebellantes, rebels.

  §. 228.

  But if they, who say it lays a foundation for rebellion, mean that it may occasion civil wars, or intestine broils, to tell the people they are absolved from obedience when illegal attempts are made upon their liberties or properties, and may oppose the unlawful violence of those who were their magistrates, when they invade their properties contrary to the trust put in them; and that therefore this doctrine is not to be allowed, being so destructive to the peace of the world: they may as well say, upon the same ground, that honest men may not oppose robbers or pirates, because this may occasion disorder or bloodshed. If any mischief come in such cases, it is not to be charged upon him who defends his own right, but on him that invades his neighbours. If the innocent honest man must quietly quit all he has, for peace sake, to him who will lay violent hands upon it, I desire it may be considered, what a kind of peace there will be in the world, which consists only in violence and rapine; and which is to be maintained only for the benefit of robbers and oppressors. Who would not think it an admirable peace betwixt the mighty and the mean, when the lamb, without resistance, yielded his throat to be torn by the imperious wolf? Polyphemus’s den gives us a perfect pattern of such a peace, and such a government, wherein Ulysses and his companions had nothing to do, but quietly to suffer themselves to be devoured. And no doubt Ulysses, who was a prudent man, preached up passive obedience, and exhorted them to a quiet submission, by representing to them of what concernment peace was to mankind; and by shewing the inconveniences might happen, if they should offer to resist Polyphemus, who had now the power over them.

  §. 229.

  The end of government is the good of mankind; and which is best for mankind, that the people should be always exposed to the boundless will of tyranny, or that the rulers should be sometimes liable to be opposed, when they grow exorbitant in the use of their power, and employ it for the destruction, and not the preservation of the properties of their people?

  §. 230.

  Nor let any one say, that mischief can arise from hence, as often as it shall please a busy head, or turbulent spirit, to desire the alteration of the government. It is true, such men may stir, whenever they please; but it will be only to their own just ruin and perdition: for till the mischief be grown general, and the ill designs of the rulers become visible, or their attempts sensible to the greater part, the people, who are more disposed to suffer than right themselves by resistance, are not apt to stir. The examples of particular injustice, or oppression of here and there an unfortunate man, moves them not. But if they universally have a persuasion, grounded upon manifest evidence, that designs are carrying on against their liberties, and the general course and tendency of things cannot but give them strong suspicions of the evil intention of their governors, who is to be blamed for it? Who can help it, if they, who might avoid it, bring themselves into this suspicion? Are the people to be blamed, if they have the sense of rational creatures, and can think of things no otherwise than as they find and feel them? And is it not rather their fault, who put things into such a posture, that they would not have them thought to be as they are? I grant, that the pride, ambition, and turbulency of private men have sometimes caused great disorders in common-wealths, and factions have been fatal to states and kingdoms. But whether the mischief hath oftener begun in the peoples wantonness, and a desire to cast off the lawful authority of their rulers, or in the rulers insolence, and endeavours to get and exercise an arbitrary power over their people; whether oppression, or disobedience, gave the first rise to the disorder, I leave it to impartial history to determine. This I am sure, whoever, either ruler or subject, by force goes about to invade the rights of either prince or people, and lays the foundation for overturning the constitution and frame of any just government, is highly guilty of the greatest crime, I think, a man is capable of, being to answer for all those mischiefs of blood, rapine, and desolation, which the breaking to pieces of governments bring on a country. And he who does it, is justly to be esteemed the common enemy and pest of mankind, and is to be treated accordingly.

  §. 231.

  That subjects or foreigners, attempting by force on the properties of any people, may be resisted with force, is agreed on all hands. But that magistrates, doing the same thing, may be resisted, hath of late been denied: as if those who had the greatest privileges and advantages by the law, had thereby a power to break those laws, by which alone they were set in a better place than their brethren: whereas their offence is thereby the greater, both as being ungrateful for the greater share they have by the law, and breaking also that trust, which is put into their hands by their brethren.

  §. 232.

  Whosoever uses force without right, as every one does in society, who does it without law, puts himself into a state of war with those against whom he so uses it; and in that state all former ties are cancelled, all other rights cease, and every one has a right to defend himself, and to resist the aggressor. This is so evident, that Barclay himself, that great assertor of the power and sacredness of kings, is forced to confess, That it is lawful for the people, in some cases, to resist their king; and that too in a chapter, wherein he pretends to shew, that the divine law shuts up the people from all manner of rebellion. Whereby it is evident, even by his own doctrine, that, since they may in some cases resist, all resisting of princes is not rebellion. His words are these. Quod siquis dicat, Ergone populus tyrannicæ crudelitati & furori jugulum semper præbehit? Ergone multitudo civitates suas fame, ferro, & flammâ vastari, seque, conjuges, & liberos fortunæ ludibrio & tyranni libidini exponi, inque omnia vitæ pericula omnesque miserias & molestias á rege deduci patientur? Num illis quod omni animantium generi est á naturâ tributum, denegari debet, ut sc. vim vi repellant, seseq; ab injuriâ tueantur? Huic breviter responsum sit, Populo universo negari defensionem, quæ juris naturalis est, neque ultionem quæ præter naturam est adversus regem concedi debere. Quapropter si rex non in singulares tantum personas aliquot privatum odium exerceat, sed corpus etiam reipublicæ, cujus ipse caput est, i. e. totum populum, vel insignem aliquam ejus partem immani & intolerandâ seu tyrannide divexet; populo, quidem hoc casu resistendi ac tuendi se ab injuriâ potestas competit, sed tuendise tantum, non enim in principem invadendi: & restituendæ injuriæ illatæ, non recedendi à debitâ reverentiâ propter acceptam injuriam. Præsentem denique impetum propulsandi non vim præteritam ulciscenti jus habet. Horum enim alterum à naturâ est, ut vitam scilicet corpusque tueamur. Alterum vero contra naturam, ut inferior de superiori supplicium sumat. Quod itaque populus malum, antequam factum sit, impedire potest, ne fiat, id postquam factum est, in regem authorem sceleris vindicare non potest: populus igitur hoc ampliùs quam privatus quispiam habet: quod huic, vel ipsis adversariis judicibus, excepto Buchanano, nullum nisi in patientia remedium superest. Cùm ille si intolerabilis tyrannus est (modicum enim ferre omnino debet) resistere cum reverentiâ possit, Barclay contra Monarchom. l. iii. c. 8.

  In English thus.

  §. 233.

  But if any one should ask, Must the people then always lay themselves open to the cruelty and rage of tyranny? Must they see their cities pillaged, and laid in ashes, their wives and children exposed to the tyrant’s lust and fury, and themselves and families reduced by their king to ruin, and all the miseries of want and oppression, and yet sit still? Must men alone be debarred the common privilege of opposing force with force, which nature allows so freely to all other creatures for their preservation from injury? I answer: Self-defence is a part of the law of nature; nor can it be denied the community, even against the king himself: but to revenge themselves upon him, must by no means be allowed them: it being not agreeable to that law. Wherefore if the king shall shew an hatred, not only to some particular persons, but sets himself against the body of the common-wealth, whereof he is the head, and shall, with intolerable ill usage, cruelly tyrannize over the whole, or a considerable part of the people, in this case the people have a right to resist and defend themselves from injury: but it must be with this caution, that they only defend themselves, but do not attack their prince: they may repair the damages received, but must not for any provocation exceed the bounds of due reverence and respect. They may repulse the present attempt, but must not revenge past violences: for it is natural for us to defend life and limb, but that an inferior should punish a superior, is against nature. The mischief which is designed them, the people may prevent before it be done; but when it is done, they must not revenge it on the king, though author of the villany. This therefore is the privilege of the people in general, above what any private person hath; that particular men are allowed by our adversaries themselves (Buchanan only excepted) to have no other remedy but patience; but the body of the people may with respect resist intolerable tyranny; for when it is but moderate, they ought to endure it.

  §. 234.

  Thus far that great advocate of monarchical power allows of resistance.

  §. 235.

  It is true, he has annexed two limitations to it, to no purpose:

  First, He says, it must be with reverence.

  Secondly, It must be without retribution, or punishment; and the reason he gives is, because an inferior cannot punish a superior.

  First, How to resist force without striking again, or how to strike with reverence, will need some skill to make intelligible. He that shall oppose an assault only with a shield to receive the blows, or in any more respectful posture, without a sword in his hand, to abate the confidence and force of the assailant, will quickly be at an end of his resistance, and will find such a defence serve only to draw on himself the worse usage. This is as ridiculous a way of resisting, as Juvenal thought it of fighting; ubi tu pulsas, ego vapulo tantum. And the success of the combat will be unavoidably the same he there describes it:

  • —Libertas pauperis hæc est:
  • Pulsatus rogat, & pugnis concisus, adorat,
  • Ut liceat paucis cum dentibus inde reverti.

  This will always be the event of such an imaginary resistance, where men may not strike again. He therefore who may resist, must be allowed to strike. And then let our author, or any body else, join a knock on the head, or a cut on the face, with as much reverence and respect as he thinks fit. He that can reconcile blows and reverence, may, for aught I know, desire for his pains, a civil, respectful cudgeling where-ever he can meet with it.

  Secondly, As to his second, An inferior cannot punish a superior; that is true, generally speaking, whilst he is his superior. But to resist force with force, being the state of war that levels the parties, cancels all former relation of reverence, respect, and superiority: and then the odds that remains, is, that he, who opposes the unjust aggressor, has this superiority over him, that he has a right, when he prevails, to punish the offender, both for the breach of the peace, and all the evils that followed upon it. Barclay therefore, in another place, more coherently to himself, denies it to be lawful to resist a king in any case. But he there assigns two cases, whereby a king may un-king himself. His words are,

  Quid ergo, nulline casus incidere possunt quibus populo sese erigere atque in regem impotentius dominantem arma capere & invadere jure suo suâque authoritate liceat? Nulli certe quamdiu rex manet. Semper enim ex divinis id obstat, Regem honorificato; & qui potestati resistit, Dei ordinationi resistit: non aliàs igitur in eum populo potestas est quam si id committat propter quod ipso jure rex esse desinat. Tunc enim se ipse principatu exuit atque in privatis constituit liber: hoc modo populus & superior efficitur, reverso ad eum sc. jure illo quod ante regem inauguratum in interregno habuit. At sunt paucorum generum commissa ejusmodi quæ hunc effectum pariunt. At ego cum plurima animo perlustrem, duo tantum invenio, duos, inquam, casus quibus rex ipso facto ex rege non regem se facit & omni honore & dignitate regali atque in subditos potestate destituit; quorum etiam meminit Winzerus. Horum unus est, Si regnum disperdat, quemadmodum de Nerone fertur, quod is nempe senatum populumque Romanum, atque adeo urbem ipsam ferro flammaque vastare, ac novas sibi sedes quærere decrevisset. Et de Caligula, quod palam denunciarit se neque civem neque principem senatui amplius fore, inque animo habuerit interempto utriusque ordinis electissimo quoque Alexandriam commigrare, ac ut populum uno ictu interimeret, unam ei cervicem optavit. Talia cum rex aliquis meditatur & molitur serio, omnem regnandi curam & animum ilico abjicit, ac proinde imperium in subditos amittit, ut dominus servi pro derelicto habiti dominium.

  §. 236.

  Alter casus est, Si rex in alicujus clientelam se contulit; ac regnum quod liberum à majoribus & populo traditum accepit, alienæ ditioni mancipavit. Nam tunc quamvis forte non eâ mente id agit populo plane ut incommodet: tamen quia quod præcipuum est regiæ dignitatis amisit, ut summus scilicet in regno secundum Deum sit, & solo Deo inferior, atque populum etiam totum ignorantem vel invitum, cujus libertatem sartam & tectam conservare debuit, in alterius gentis ditionem & potestatem dedidit; hâc velut quadam regni ab alienatione effecit, ut nec quod ipse in regno imperium habuit retineat, nec in eum cui collatum voluit, juris quicquam transferat; atque ita eo facto liberum jam & suæ potestatis populum relinquit, cujus rei exemplum unum annales Scotici suppeditant. Barclay contra Monarchom. l. iii. c. 16.

  Which in English runs thus.

  §. 237.

  What then, can there no case happen wherein the people may of right, and by their own authority, help themselves, take arms, and set upon their king, imperiously domineering over them? None at all, whilst he remains a king. Honour the king, and he that resists the power, resists the ordinance of God; are divine oracles that will never permit it. The people therefore can never come by a power over him, unless he does something that makes him cease to be a king: for then he divests himself of his crown and dignity, and returns to the state of a private man, and the people become free and superior, the power which they had in the interregnum, before they crowned him king, devolving to them again. But there are but few miscarriages which bring the matter to this state. After considering it well on all sides, I can find but two. Two cases there are, I say, whereby a king, ipso facto, becomes no king, and loses all power and regal authority over his people; which are also taken notice of by Winzerus.

  The first is, If he endeavour to overturn the government, that is, if he have a purpose and design to ruin the kingdom and common-wealth, as it is recorded of Nero, that he resolved to cut off the senate and people of Rome, lay the city waste with fire and sword, and then remove to some other place. And of Caligula, that he openly declared, that he would be no longer a head to the people or senate, and that he had it in his thoughts to cut off the worthiest men of both ranks, and then retire to Alexandria: and he wisht that the people had but one neck, that he might dispatch them all at a blow. Such designs as these, when any king harbours in his thoughts, and seriously promotes, he immediately gives up all care and thought of the common-wealth; and consequently forfeits the power of governing his subjects, as a master does the dominion over his slaves whom he hath abandoned.

  §. 238.

  The other case is, When a king makes himself the dependent of another, and subjects his kingdom which his ancestors left him, and the people put free into his hands, to the dominion of another: for however perhaps it may not be his intention to prejudice the people; yet because he has hereby lost the principal part of regal dignity, viz. to be next and immediately under God, supreme in his kingdom; and also because he betrayed or forced his people, whose liberty he ought to have carefully preserved, into the power and dominion of a foreign nation. By this, as it were, alienation of his kingdom, he himself loses the power he had in it before, without transferring any the least right to those on whom he would have bestowed it; and so by this act sets the people free, and leaves them at their own disposal. One example of this is to be found in the Scotch Annals.

  §. 239.

  In these cases Barclay, the great champion of absolute monarchy, is forced to allow, that a king may be resisted, and ceases to be a king. That is, in short, not to multiply cases, in whatsoever he has no authority, there he is no king, and may be resisted: for wheresoever the authority ceases, the king ceases too, and becomes like other men who have no authority. And these two cases he instances in, differ little from those above mentioned, to be destructive to governments, only that he has omitted the principle from which his doctrine flows; and that is, the breach of trust, in not preserving the form of government agreed on, and in not intending the end of government itself, which is the public good and preservation of property. When a king has dethroned himself, and put himself in a state of war with his people, what shall hinder them from prosecuting him who is no king, as they would any other man, who has put himself into a state of war with them; Barclay, and those of his opinion, would do well to tell us. This farther I desire may be taken notice of out of Barclay, that he says, The mischief that is designed them, the people may prevent before it be done: whereby he allows resistance when tyranny is but in design. Such designs as these (says he) when any king harbours in his thoughts and seriously promotes, he immediately gives up all care and thought of the common-wealth; so that, according to him, the neglect of the public good is to be taken as an evidence of such design, or at least for a sufficient cause of resistance. And the reason of all, he gives in these words, Because he betrayed or forced his people, whose liberty he ought carefully to have preserved. What he adds, into the power and dominion of a foreign nation, signifies nothing, the fault and forfeiture lying in the loss of their liberty, which he ought to have preserved, and not in any distinction of the persons to whose dominion they were subjected. The peoples right is equally invaded, and their liberty lost, whether they are made slaves to any of their own, or a foreign nation; and in this lies the injury, and against this only have they the right of defence. And there are instances to be found in all countries, which shew, that it is not the change of nations in the persons of their governors, but the change of government, that gives the offence. Bilson, a bishop of our church, and a great stickler for the power and prerogative of princes, does, if I mistake not, in his treatise of Christian subjection, acknowledge, that princes may forfeit their power, and their title to the obedience of their subjects; and if there needed authority in a case where reason is so plain, I could send my reader to Bracton, Fortescue, and the author of the Mirrour, and others, writers that cannot be suspected to be ignorant of our government, or enemies to it. But I thought Hooker alone might be enough to satisfy those men, who relying on him for their ecclesiastical polity, are by a strange fate carried to deny those principles upon which he builds it. Whether they are herein made the tools of cunninger workmen, to pull down their own fabric, they were best look. This I am sure, their civil policy is so new, so dangerous, and so destructive to both rulers and people, that as former ages never could bear the broaching of it; so it may be hoped, those to come, redeemed from the impositions of these Egyptian under-task-masters, will abhor the memory of such servile flatterers, who, whilst it seemed to serve their turn, resolved all government into absolute tyranny, and would have all men born to, what their mean souls fitted them for, slavery.

  §. 240.

  Here, it is like, the common question will be made, Who shall be judge, whether the prince or legislative act contrary to their trust? This, perhaps, ill-affected and factious men may spread amongst the people, when the prince only makes use of his due prerogative. To this I reply, The people shall be judge; for who shall be judge whether his trustee or deputy acts well, and according to the trust reposed in him, but he who deputes him, and must, by having deputed him, have still a power to discard him, when he fails in his trust? If this be reasonable in particular cases of private men, why should it be otherwise in that of the greatest moment, where the welfare of millions is concerned, and also where the evil, if not prevented, is greater, and the redress very difficult, dear, and dangerous?

  §. 141.

  But farther, this question, (Who shall be judge?) cannot mean, that there is no judge at all: for where there is no judicature on earth, to decide controversies amongst men, God in heaven is judge. He alone, it is true, is judge of the right. But every man is judge for himself, as in all other cases, so in this, whether another hath put himself into a state of war with him, and whether he should appeal to the Supreme Judge, as Jeptha did.

  §. 242.

  If a controversy arise betwixt a prince and some of the people, in a matter where the law is silent, or doubtful, and the thing be of great consequence, I should think the proper umpire, in such a case, should be the body of the people: for in cases where the prince hath a trust reposed in him, and is dispensed from the common ordinary rules of the law; there, if any men find themselves aggrieved, and think the prince acts contrary to, or beyond that trust, who so proper to judge as the body of the people, (who, at first, lodged that trust in him) how far they meant it should extend? But if the prince, or whoever they be in the administration, decline that way of determination, the appeal then lies no where but to heaven; force between either persons, who have no known superior on earth, or which permits no appeal to a judge on earth, being properly a state of war, wherein the appeal lies only to heaven; and in that state the injured party must judge for himself, when he will think fit to make use of that appeal, and put himself upon it.

  §. 243.

  To conclude, The power that every individual gave the society, when he entered into it, can never revert to the individuals again, as long as the society lasts, but will always remain in the community; because without this there can be no community, no common-wealth, which is contrary to the original agreement: so also when the society hath placed the legislative in any assembly of men, to continue in them and their successors, with direction and authority for providing such successors, the legislative can never revert to the people whilst that government lasts; because having provided a legislative with power to continue for ever, they have given up their political power to the legislative, and cannot resume it. But if they have set limits to the duration of their legislative, and made this supreme power in any person, or assembly, only temporary; or else, when by the miscarriages of those in authority, it is forfeited; upon the forfeiture, or at the determination of the time set, it reverts to the society, and the people have a right to act as supreme, and continue the legislative in themselves; or erect a new form, or under the old form place it in new hands, as they think good.

  FINIS.

  [* ]In grants and gifts that have their original from God or nature, as the power of the father hath, no inferior power of man can limit, nor make any law of prescription against them. Observations, 158.
  
  The scripture teaches, that supreme power was originally the father, without any limitation. Observations, 245.

  [* ]It is no improbable opinion therefore, which the archphilosopher was of, that the chief person in every houshold was always, as it were, a king: so when numbers of housholds joined themselves in civil societies together, kings were the first kind of governors amongst them, which is also, as it seemeth, the reason why the name of fathers continued still in them, who, of fathers, were made rulers; as also the ancient custom of governors to do as Melchizedec, and being kings, to exercise the office of priests, which fathers did at the first, grew perhaps by the same occasion. Howbeit, this is not the only kind of regiment that has been received in the world. The inconveniences of one kind have caused sundry others to be devised; so that in a word, all public regiment, of what kind soever, seemeth evidently to have risen from the deliberate advice, consultation and composition between men, judging it convenient and behoveful; there being no impossibility in nature considered by itself, but that man might have lived without: any public regiment, Hooker’s Eccl. P. lib. i. sect. 10.

  [* ]The public power of all society is above every soul contained in the same society; and the principal use of that power is, to give laws unto all that are under it, which laws in such cases we must obey, unless there be reason shewed which may necessarily inforce, that the law of reason, or of God, doth enjoin the contrary, Hook. Eccl. Pol. l. i. sect. 16.

  [* ]To take away all such mutual grievances, injuries and wrongs, i. e. such as attend men in the state of nature, there was no way but only by growing into composition and agreement amongst themselves, by ordaining some kind of government public, and by yielding themselves subject thereunto, that unto whom they granted authority to rule and govern, by them the peace, tranquillity and happy estate of the rest might be procured. Men always knew that where force and injury was offered, they might be defenders of themselves; they knew that however men may seek their own commodity, yet if this were done with injury unto others, it was not to be suffered, but by all men, and all good means to be withstood. Finally, they knew that no man might in reason take upon him to determine his own right, and according to his own determination proceed in maintenance thereof, in as much as every man is towards himself, and them whom he greatly affects, partial; and therefore that strifes and troubles would be endless, except they gave their common consent, all to be ordered by some, whom they should agree upon, without which consent there would be no reason that one man should take upon him to be lord or judge over another, Hooker’s Eccl. Pol. l. i. sect. 10.

  [* ]At the first, when some certain kind of regiment was once appointed, it may be that nothing was then farther thought upon for the manner of governing, but all permitted unto their wisdom and discretion, which were to rule, till by experience they found this for all parts very inconvenient, so as the thing which they had devised for a remedy, did indeed but increase the sore, which it should have cured. They saw, that to live by one man’s will, became the cause of all men’s misery. This constrained them to come unto laws, wherein all men might see their duty beforehand, and know the penalties of transgressing them. Hooker’s Eccl. Pol. l. i. sect. 10.

  [† ]Civil law being the act of the whole body politic, doth therefore over-rule each several part of the same body. Hooker ibid.

  [* ]At first, when some certain kind of regiment was once approved, it may be nothing was then farther thought upon for the manner of governing, but all permitted unto their wisdom and discretion which were to rule, till by experience they found this for all parts very inconvenient, so as the thing which they had devised for a remedy, did indeed but increase the sore which it should have cured. They saw, that to live by one man’s will, became the cause of all men’s misery. This constrained them to come unto laws wherein all men might see their duty before hand, and know the penalties of transgressing them. Hooker’s Eccl. Pol. l. i. sect. 10.

  [* ]The lawful power of making laws to command whole politic societies of men, belonging so properly unto the same intire societies, that for any prince or potentate of what kind soever upon earth, to exercise the same of himself, and not by express commission immediately and personally received from God, or else by authority derived at the first from their consent, upon whose persons they impose laws, it is no better than mere tyranny. Laws they are not therefore which public approbation hath not made so. Hooker’s Eccl. Pol. l. i. sect. 10. Of this point therefore we are to note, that sith men naturally have no full and perfect power to command whole politic multitudes of men, therefore utterly without our consent, we could in such sort be at no man’s commandment living. And to be commanded we do consent, when that society, whereof we be a part, hath at any time before consented, without revoking the same after by the like universal agreement.
  
  Laws therefore human, of what kind so ever, are available by consent. Ibid.

  [* ]Two foundations there are which bear up public societies; the one a natural inclination, whereby all men desire sociable life and fellowship; the other an order, expresly or secretly agreed upon, touching the manner of their union in living together: the latter is that which we call the law of a common-weal, the very soul of a politic body, the parts whereof are by law animated, held together, and set on work in such actions as the common good requireth. Laws politic, ordained for external order and regiment amongst men, are never framed as they should be, unless presuming the will of man to be inwardly obstinate, rebellious, and averse from all obedience to the sacred laws of his nature; in a word, unless presuming man to be, in regard of his depraved mind, little better than a wild beast, they do accordingly provide, notwithstanding, so to frame his outward actions, that they be no hindrance unto the common good, for which societies are instituted. Unless they do this, they are not perfect. Hooker’s Eccl. Pol. l. i. sect. 10.

  [* ]Human laws are measures in respect of men whose actions they must direct, howbeit such measures they are as have also their higher rules to be measured by, which rules are two, the law of God, and the law of nature; so that laws human must be made according to the general laws of nature, and without contradiction to any positive law of scripture, otherwise they are ill made. Hooker’s Eccl. Pol. l. iii. sect. 9.
  
  To constrain men to any thing inconvenient doth seem unreasonable. Ibid. l. i. sect. 10.

  [* ]Another copy corrected by Mr. Locke, has it thus, Noxious brute that is destructive to their being.

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  3: 3. Thomas Hodgskin, The Natural and Artificial Right of Property Contrasted [1832]

  

  Thomas Hodgskin (1787-1869) was an English radical individualist and advocate of natural rights who in the mid-19th century worked with Herbert Spencer on The Economist magazine, a radical free trade paper. He was turned into an ardent defender of individual liberty by witnessing the brutality of the British Navy in the Napoleonic Wars first hand as a young naval officer. In the early 1830s he wrote a very strong defence of the natural right to property against the growing tendency of the utilitarian Benthamites to turn to the government to “improve” society, usually by confiscating or regulating other people’s property. In the Natural and Artificial Right of Property Contrasted he warned that the utilitarian reformers were rapidly turning into a new ruling class who saw no theoretical or moral limits to their power to increase the “happiness” of the people.

  In his final letter to Lord Brougham Hodgskin sums up his argument about justly and unjustly acquired property thusly:

  The preservation of the power of the unjust appropriators has been called social order, and mankind have believed the assertion. To maintain their dominion is the object and aim of all human legislation. The great mass of the two hundred and odd statutes, which, up to a recent period, inflicted death on our people, had no other object than to enforce obedience to an unjust scheme of appropriation. That government is a great evil,—that laws to model and uphold it, imposing restraints on thought and commerce, on the press and locomotion, that taxes to pay its expenses, kings and judges to administer it, and armies and hangmen to carry their blood-stained decrees into execution—that Aristocra cies dazzling us with the display of gaudy magnificence, and hierarchies imposing on our senses by more solemn delusions—both intended to cheat us into admiration of their tinsel shew to which substantial happiness is sacrificed; that gaols and gibbets, and tread-mills, the instruments of legislative wrath, and the signs of its dominion, that they all inflict sharp pain in their first operation, and spread misery through society, is universally admitted; that I have convinced you of the unholiness of their origin, or their inability to answer the end proposed, I cannot assert; but I must express my sincere conviction, that the apparent necessity for maintaining them is altogether a consequence of our artificial and unjust right of property. Whether or not there be a natural right of property which would be generally respected, though no law guaranteed it, may be doubted; but it is nevertheless proper to make men aware that the price they pay for attempting to uphold the artificial right of property, is nothing less than the enormous sum of misery inflicted in the name of law and government.

  Thomas Hodgskin, The Natural and Artificial Right of Property Contrasted. A Series of Letters, addressed without permission to H. Brougham, Esq. M.P. F.R.S. (London: B. Steil, 1832).

  Accessed from oll.libertyfund.org/title/323 on 2008-01-25

  The text is in the public domain.

  ---

  ADVERTISEMENT.

  The present letters, except verbal alterations, were written in the year 1829, and consequently in ignorance of those political convulsions which have led the author to think that this is a proper time to publish them. In his opinion, the contest now going on in society, the preternatural throes and heavings which frightfully convulse it from one end to the other, arise exclusively and altogether from the right of property, and can be neither understood nor relieved, but by attending to the great distinction he has endeavoured to establish between the natural and the legal right of property. Whether his voice be listened to or not is of trifling moment; but it is of infinite importance to every man to listen to the voice of nature, let who will be its interpreter.

  To elucidate some of the following remarks, it is right to add, that the present is only an episode in a larger work relating to criminal law. Legislators are yet completely ignorant of the first elements of criminal legislation, and the correct and philosophic answer to the meaning question, “What is crime?” throws down at one blow the whole theoretical structure of penal enactments. By a deduction from principles not here enunciated, the author has satisfied himself that all law-making, except gradually and quietly to repeal all existing laws, is arrant humbug. Such being his well weighed and long cherished conviction, he cannot possibly feel any respect for titles, dignities, offices, individuals, or acts which have and can have no other possible claim to approbation, than the supposition that legislation and its consequences are of vital importance to the welfare of society. He mentions this circumstance, to account for some, perhaps, strong expressions and peculiar opinions, while he hopes by demonstrating, that even property is not regulated and determined by human laws, to prepare the mind of the reader to admit the general principle, that society can exist and prosper without the lawmaker, and consequently without the tax-gatherer. He is quite aware that such a conclusion, generally adopted, must be the work of time, and of a mightier artist than ever wrote with pen, but he is not without hope, that the present and his meditated work, should he find leisure and encouragement to undertake the publication, may contribute to what he thinks so desirable a result.

  He is aware also, that speculations of this kind have no charm for the multitude. He has learnt, by experience, that books of this description are not and cannot be much read. Popular displays of popular errors, or of these truths which have been long enough known to form a part of the general creed, pretended illustrations of the progress of society, drawn up in the form of novels, pictures of individual life, biographies, as it were, of any particular state or condition, may have a strong charm for many readers, and sell so extensively, as to procure an ample remuneration for author, publisher, and bookseller. But works unfolding a dawning truth, which is afterwards to become a part of the general stock of knowledge, which lay claim to increase the extent of abstract moral science, which announce a discovery, and because it is a discovery, or an extension of knowledge, it cannot be immediately understood, much less immediately popular—works of this kind cannot be much read; and therefore, with the prudence of a tradesman and the calculation of a poor man, he has put a large price on this book, and printed only a small number of copies, in order that he may not lose a great sum by his speculation. The book will, undoubtedly, by compared, as to size and price, with numerous popular books of the classes just mentioned, and will be tried by the price of those which are expected to sell to the extent of several thousand copies. Compared, therefore, to volumes of the “Library of Entertaining Knowledge, or of the “Family Library,” it must appear out-rageously high priced. This will, however, shew that it is not intended for the poor. It is not likely, indeed, to be popular with any class. It flatters no passions. It neither proves that the wealth of the rich is in the order of the nature, nor justifies the desire of spoliation in the poor. It encourages no hopes of finding a speedy remedy for present evils, and seems destined to find no favour with any one class, because all look only to the law either for protection or improvement. Flattering no popular prejudice, and basing itself on no popular creed, it appeals to reasen; and the author knows the judges in that court are few, and too indolent to inquire diligently into the causes which are brought before it. Such as the book is, conscious of meaning well, however the execution may have fallen short, or gone wide of his intentions, the author commits his production to the mercy of the law and the justice of his countrymen.

  LETTER THE FIRST.
  INTRODUCTORY.

  Reasons for addressing Mr. Brougham. His Law commission—Its inutility. The necessity of inquiry into first principles—The right of property is one of these principles, and the foundation of the political edifice. Important difference of opinion between Mr. Locke and Mr. Bentham, as to the origin of this right.

  TO H. BROUGHAM, ESQ. M.P. F.R.S. &c.

  Sir,

  The only circumstance I can allege as an excuse for addressing you, is the conspicuous manner in which you some time ago stepped forward as a reformer of the law. Every such attempt involves the safety of our property and the security of our persons, and gives every man in the kingdom a title to canvass your proceedings. If they are right, we are bound to aid, and if wrong, to oppose you. He who has not access to your ear, may adopt this method of reaching your understanding, and pleading in face of the public, he cannot be met by a nonsuit. Your power rests on your reputation, and having assumed the character of a leader to conduct us out of the quagmire of law, you can neither reject our assistance, nor escape from our opposition. I do not confront you however as an antagonist, I am merely an inquirer, who wish, having at heart, like yourself—the welfare of man—to point out some of the obstacles in your path, and to suggest that it does not lead to the firm ground and pleasant fields we desire to reach. That I may add to the confusion—many voices now vociferating different counsel—is not improbable; but I have set before me a grand object which conceals every thing else from my view, and makes me indifferent whether I promote your views or lessen your fame.

  I find, with astonishment, on looking back at dates, that it was so long ago as February 7th, 1828, that you made your celebrated speech on the present state of the law. You then moved “That an humble address be presented to His Majesty, praying that he will be graciously pleased to issue a commission for inquiring into the defects occasioned by time and otherwise in the laws of this realm, and into the measures necessary for removing the same.” Your motion was only half granted, because those who have more power than you have, are opposed to improvement: but if you thought that it would produce any good, except, as your speech justifies, the general disrepute into which the law has fallen, you are no doubt by this time satisfied that you were mistaken. Your motion was founded in error. It implies, contrary even to the tenor of some of your arguments, that the law was once appropriate and excellent. Ill-adapted as it is to the present state of society, the law never was abstractedly so good nor so well administered as in the reign of George IV. It has been carried forward by the progress of society. Time has not occasioned defects, but improvements, in the laws, though the legislator who always aims at preserving the institutions of a past age, has not suffered the laws to keep pace with society. The latter has extended and improved more rapidly than the former, suggesting the important truth that your laws have not regulated its course, and do not preserve social order. It has out-run and out-grown all the cunning political devices of men, teaching us that the institutions which are now supposed to be wise and which the lawgiver struggles to make consistent, will, ere long, like those that have already passed away—like monachism and the trial by ordeal—become the mockery and scorn of mankind. Sir, the vital principle of society which distinguishes it from every other part of the earthly creation, that of steady progression in improvement, carrying with it all that pertains to it, prevents time from corrupting laws as it destroys neglected buildings. Either your motion was founded on a mistake, or you wished, like other law makers and law interpreters, to mystify mankind and cherish their veneration for the ignorant legislator, by ascribing follies, of which he alone is the author, to a pure abstraction. A motion founded on such an error can be of no benefit except to the commissioners appointed to inquire and report. Should their recommendations be useful, they will hardly be carried into effect for two or three generations; and in the mean time such pompous investigations into evils of which men have a practical conviction, merely substitute the hope of improvement for impatience under legal vexations. They serve to foil public indignation, turning it aside, and blunting the appetite for reform. That they will lead to any substantial good, can only be believed by those who deny the authority of experience, and conceive the law, which has always been acknowlegedly mischievous in practice to be admirable in principle.

  I am disposed to think that the inquiries and recommendations of your commissioners are more likely to do harm than good; and I shall explain why I think so. Your late friend and preceptor, Mr. Stewart, whose bland manners, eloquent language, and humane disposition, obtained for him a greater reputation as a philosopher than he deserved, turning away dismayed, as he frequently, did from the search after truth, because he was afraid, like many other purblind, timid mortals, of its consequences;—Mr. Dugald Stewart remarks that “in order to lay a solid foundation for the science of politics, the first step ought to be, to ascertain that form of society which is perfectly agreeable to nature and to justice, and what are the principles of legislation necessary for maintaining it.” He had previously said that “it is easy for the statesman to form to himself a distinct and steady idea of the ultimate objects at which a wise legislator ought to aim, and to foresee that modification of the social order to which human affairs have of themselves a tendency to approach.”∗ He adds that “they are to be the most (the only) successful statesmen who paying all due regard to past experience, search for the rules of their conduct chiefly in the peculiar circumstances of their own times, and in an enlightened anticipation of the future history of mankind.”† You admit, Sir, that society has a course of its own‡ which legislation is compelled to follow, and every statesman, every law maker, every law promoter, must do mischief who does not frame his enactments by an “enlightened anticipation” of that course in future. Every new law must of necessity be injurious which is not adapted to “that form of society which is per fectly agreeable to nature and justice.” Every one of your commissioners then must work evil if he have not a distinct and steady idea of the “ultimate objects at which a wise legislator ought to aim.” Among these gentlemen I do not recognize one who has made the principles which regulate the progress of society the object of his study. They are, I believe, men of detail, men profoundly versed in all the technicalities of conveyancing, profoundly attached even, it is to be apprehended, to those technicalities which are to them a means of attaining reputation and wealth, but among them there is not I believe one philosopher.∗ Their recommendations I take it, will only go to amend some of these technicalities,—some trifling discrepancies of detail—and they will assume as correct that principle which science teaches to be an error. As far as their authority can go, they will recommend the continuance of error, and they will contribute to perpetuate it, by pruning away some of its most revolting consequences.

  There is one means indeed by which they may do good. All men are instinctively obedient to public opinion. The force of circumstances operates upon all mankind. It influences the sentiments, and even fashions the minds, of the most dignified members of the Bench and the Bar, as well of the meanest of our species. Under the influence of circumstances, and in obedience to public opinion, your commissioners, forgetting the details of their profession, may perchance endeavour to bring our anomalous law into accord with the prevalent feelings of the age: but their respect for it will not allow them to go so far as even present cimcumstances dictate, and still less will their recommendations be guided by an enlightened anticipation of the future. The laws enacted by their advice, will only be so many additional noxious statutes imposed on mankind by authority, to be swept out of existence at the first convenient opportunity.∗

  I might quote many other authorities besides your own and that of Mr. Stewart, to prove that society has a course of its own, and that it is the highest duty of the legislator to study that course, and ascertain the laws which guide it, before he frames new statutes; but I am convinced by the passage of your speech, which I have just referred to, that you are already satisfied of this important truth, and I know that you have a high respect for the authority of your late venerable teacher. But being convinced of this important fact, have you ever examined the first principles of legislation, in relation to the natural laws which give birth to society and carry it onward to perfection. “Have you,” to use the language of Lord Bolingbroke, “and deceive neither yourself nor me, have you in the course of these thirty years once examined the first principles, and fundamental facts on which all these questions depend, with an absolute indifference of judgment and with a scrupulous exactness? With the same that you have employed in dealing with the various consequences drawn from them, and the different opinions about them? Have you not taken principles for granted in the whole course of your proceedings? Or if you have looked now and then on the state of the proofs brought to maintain them, have you not done it as a mathematician looks over a demonstration formerly made, to refresh his memory, not to satisfy any doubt?∗ If, as I am afraid, from your multifarious pursuits, though you have sometimes left politics and law to court philosophy, your answer must be in the negative—what assurance can even you supply, that another costly commission, and other remedies for legal errors, will not in a few months or years be required? What guarantee can you give us that all this expense, all this fretfulness and feverishness of change, will not be suffered in vain?

  But if you have not studied the natural principles which regulate society, do you believe that the bankers and merchants, whose lives are passed in a counting-house—that country gentlemen, who are minutely acquainted with horses and dogs, with good living, and the duty of punishing poachers—that treasury clerks, who by performing sundry mechanical evolutions, come at length to sit on the treasury benches—that captains and colonels who are great at manœuvring a ship or a regiment—that lords of the bed-chamber, whose lives are passed amidst the frivolous dissipation of London and Paris—do you believe that the members of the motley group, which, when collected at Westminster, the public honours as the legislature of this country, have meditated night and day on these principles, and on the great interests they continually try to model after their own image of perfection? With one or two exceptions, they are so ignorant that they have yet to learn the existence of any natural laws regulating society. They believe that it is held together by the statutes at large; and they know no other laws which influence its destiny than those decreed by themselves and interpreted by the judges. If the legislature have not examined these principles, have they been examined by the practical lawyers engaged in the commission, whose whole soul is engrossed by the details of their profession? Has this work been done even by the public, who eagerly call for new regulations and who worship an idol under the name of law, more extensively mischievous than the Moloch of antiquity? For the public there is much excuse. Continually occupied in providing for their own animal wants, and the craving wants of the state, they have no time for deep investigation: and they are only to blame for relying implicitly on others, who, though, at least, as ignorant as themselves, arrogantly claim to govern and instruct them. If neither the public nor the legislature be acquainted with the ultimate objects at which the latter ought to aim, how is it possible that our tinkering mode of making laws, merely fastening together the links which time is continually snapping, can adapt our corroded and worn-out system to the future form and condition of society? Never were the discrepancies between the state of the law and the condition of society greater than at present. Never was the conviction so general that the laws must now be extensively altered and amended. Rapidly therefore as the gentlemen at Westminster work, making three or four hundred laws per year, repeating their tasks session after session—actively as they multiply restraints, or add patch after patch, they invariably find that the call for their labours is continually renewed. The more they botch and mend, the more numerous are the holes. Knowing nothing of natural principles, they seem to fancy that society—the most glorious part of creation, if individual man be the noblest of animals—derives its life and strength only from them. They regard it as a baby, whom they must dandle and foster into healthy existence; but while they are scheming how to breed and clothe their pretty fondling—lo! it has become a giant, whom they can only control as far as he consents to wear their fetters.

  Look for a moment at the consequences of the legislature being ignorant of the principles by which it ought to make laws. I merely turn to the heads of your speech, and I find “the courts are in conflict with each other, that one is overloaded with business while another has nothing to do, that there are different laws for different persons, that principles and practices are in opposition, that pleadings are inconsistent and incomprehensible,” and as the sum of a mass of incongruities, “that justice can rarely or never be attained.” Because we have continually altered our laws piecemeal, paying no regard to principles, or setting out from an erroneous one, that has never since been revised, we are now lost in a vast wilderness of fictions and absurdities. The law, instead of being “the staff of honesty and the shield of innocence, is a two-edged sword of craft and oppression,”∗ which, but for the large shield of the public press which the law has in vain endeavoured to break, would back society asunder. To remedy these monstrous evils, vitiating the whole social compact we must begin at first principles. To stop the flowing of the volcanic and sulphureous stream, which, though shining and sparkling with promise, like the fertilizing waters of the earth, withers the heart of the land, we must go to the fountain head. Convinced, by the every day practices of our legistators, that they never study first principles, though they continually and vainly try to modify results, and convinced by the present state of the law that they cannot begin the study too soon. I propose to call your attent on to one of those principles, THE RIGHT OF PROPERTY—some of the consequences of which are now undergoing investigation by two sets of commissioners.

  I am aware, indeed, that nothing is more irk-some to legislators than to stop them short in their career, by any demands for previous investigation.—It is so much easier and shorter to decree than inquire, and so much more flattering to self-love to dictate than examine, that both indolence and vanity combine to make the law-giver act before he understands. He takes no comprehensive view of society; he grubs forward under the influence of his passions and animal instincts, like the mole, and is quite as blind. If any of those instincts had for their object the welfare of society, I should join the crowd and huzza him on. Unfortunately for his pretentions, his instincts, his passions, his desires—like those of all animals—have no other object than the preservation and welfare of the individual. Till, therefore, some incarnation of social instincts be made manifest, I, for one, must insist that the legislator is bound to inquire into the natural laws which regulate society, before he tries to bind society down to his own short-sighted views. Self-interest, too, should now dictate inquiry: for mankind are every where becoming the critics of his actions; and he will command their respect and obedience, no longer than he guides his conduct by the natural principles to which society owes its rise, progress, and continued existence.

  The legislator is probably afraid that inquiry might lessen his authority. He would blush to ap pear ignorant of any thing before other men. He may be too apprehensive of learning that his power is not quite so beneficial as he wishes to believe it. He may be aware that inquiry would strike at its root. A philosopher, indeed, might say, inquire into what? Into the past condition of society? Legislators would not surely make laws for that. Into the future condition of society? There are no means for conducting the inquiry with success The progress of the past may cast its shadow before, so that you may have a rough notion that society is to go on increasing in people, in wealth, and in knowledge, as it has increased in past time; but what shape that increase is to take, how rapid is to be the progress, and what are to be the new relations, both among individuals and among nations, it will call into existence—what new trades, what new arts, may arise—what new habits, manners, customs, and opinions, will be formed—what is the precise outline society will assume, with all the fillings-in of the picture to the most minute touches;—all these things, to which laws ought to be adapted, cannot possibly be known: and inquiry into them, with a view of making laws to accord with them, must necessarily make the whole business of legislation appear in its true character to mankind—a mockery of their interests, and a fraud on their understandings. Will legislators inquire, then, into the present? It is a line without breadth—the negation both of the past and the future—one of which passes into the other, while you are talking of inquiring, and before you can make your laws to catch it. Inquiry either into the past, the future, or the present, is adverse to the principles of legislation; and it is not, therefore, extraordinary that legislators should decree, as they always have done, without previous investigation.

  Although I am convinced that all legislation must be injurious, till all the natural principles which govern society be investigated, yet I have no intention, on this occasion, of extending my researches so far. I aim not at laying “a solid foundation for the art of politics,” by ascertaining all the principles of legislation necessary to maintain “that form of society which is most agreeable to nature;” I am contented with a far humbler task, and mean to confine my remarks to one only of these natural principles, and to one only of the branches of legislation. That one, however, you are aware, is of vital importance. Political organization depends very much on the mode in which property is distributed. Wherever the right of property is placed on a proper foundation, slavery, with all its hateful consequences, is unknown:—wherever this foundation is rotten, freedom cannot exist, nor justice be administered.—Moreover, we have Mr. Locke's authority for saying—others, as Cicero,∗ having said the same thing before—“That the great and chief end of men's uniting into commonwealths, and putting themselves under government, is the preservation of their property, to which, in the state of nature, there are many things wanting.† A yet living writer, for whose authority you also profess great respect,‡ Mr. Bentham, tells M. Dumont to express his opinion in these words—“Pour mieux sentir le bienfait de la loi, cherchons à nous faire une idée nette de la propriété. Nous verrons qu'il n'y a point de propriéte naturelle, qu'elle est uniquement l'ouvrage des lois.”—“L'idee de la propriété consiste dans une attente ètablie, dans la persuasion de pouvoir retirer tel ou tel avantage de la chose selon la nature du cas. Or, cette attente, cette persuasion ne peuvent être que l'ouvrage de la loi. Je né puis compter sur la jouissance de ce que je regarde comme mien, que sur la promesse de la loi qui me le garantit.” “La propriété et la loi sont nées ensemble et mouront en semble. Avant les lois, point de propriété. Otez les lois toute propriété cesse“∗

  The vast importance of the right of property, in Mr. Bentham's opinion, is also expressed in this passage. “C'est ce droit qui a vaincu l'aversion naturelle du travail, qui a donné à l'homme l'empire de la terre, qui a fait cesser la vie errante des peuples, qui a formé l'amour de la patrie et celui de la posterité. Jouir promptement, jouir sans peine, voilá le desir universel des hommes. C'est ce desir qui est terrible, puisqu' il armeroit tous ceux qui n'ont rien contre ceux qui ont quelque chose. Mais le droit qui restreint ce desir est le plus beau triomphe de l'humanité sur elle même.”†

  The benefits here ascribed to the right of property as created by law, are much exaggerated; but the passage, which has been adopted by several authors of distinction, as well as the one I shall now quote from Mr. Mill's writings, shews distinctly that in their opinion the right of property is the key-stone of society. “The end, says Mr. Mill, to be obtained through government as the means, is to make that distribution of the scanty materials of happiness, which would ensure the greatest sum of it to the members of the community, taken altogether, preventing every individual or combination of individuals from interfering with that distribution, or making any man to have less than his share.”∗ You will find in the article “Jurisprudence,” also written by this gentleman for the Supplement to the Encyclopædia Brittanica, that he like Mr. Locke, says that the object of the social union is “to secure to the weak their share of the good things of life;” and he actually describes all rights as consisting in “the shares of good things allotted by the legislator.” If we were to adopt his opinions to the fullest extent, in discussing the right of property we should discuss all the principles of society; but though we go not this length, we cannot doubt the general accuracy of his views as to the importance, but only as to the importance, of the great principle I call on you to examine.

  The slightest observation too must satisfy you, that in practice, as well as in theory, this right is now of pre-eminent importance. Throughout Europe there is a contest between governments and their subjects; and what, I would ask, is its object? The growth of humanity, the general love of liberty, and the general hatred of oppression, prevent the existence of any odious and revolting cruelty in any part of Europe; but avarice and profusion are yet unchecked; and the contest, a very ignoble one, is simply who shall have most riches. There are no heroes on the thrones of Europe, but many extortioners. Great generals or great inventors, no longer take, as in the olden times, the lead in the affairs of government: but money-scriveners. Our leaders invent nothing but new taxes, and conquer nothing but the pockets of their subjects. The contest now raging, whether it break out into open rebellion or glide into notice, in the form of a smuggler, on the frontiers and shores of kingdoms—whether it be simply heard in a demand for a reduction of taxation, or come in the thunder of popular indignation, hurling princes from their thrones, is merely a contest to obtain wealth. When this is the case between governments and their subjects, you will readily believe that it is also the case between different classes of the people. The peasant hates the noble, and the noble fleeces the peasant, because the one desires to keep and the other to get wealth. The priest grasps at and thinks of it alone, while he holds up his idol-god; for the God of our priests is not the God of nature—not that great Being, who fills and sustains all, who spreads life and happiness throughout creation—but a malicious and revengeful being, born of the barbarous fancies of a cruel and barbarous people; and while the priest holds up the idol-god of a foreign and a despised race, to terrify the vulgar, he makes searching demands on our pockets. If he did not, if there were no tithes, no hierarchy, no splendid colleges to be sustained, no man would trouble himself either to uphold or gainsay the dogmas, in the name of which the priest fleeces the people. As the contests between individuals, between classes, and between subjects and their rulers, all relate to wealth, you may be sure, that no topic can in practise, be pregnant with more important results—The right of property, which is now arming the land-owner and the capitalist against the peasant and the artizan, will, in truth, be the one great subject of contention for this and the next generation; before which, it needs no prophetic vision to foretel, the squabbles of party politicians, and the ravings of intolerant fanatics will die away unnoticed and unheard.

  But though the Westminster philosophers, and you also, agree with Mr. Locke, in attributing to the right of property the utmost importance, making it the basis of the political edifice, they differ from him, fundamentally and totally, as to the origin of this right. Mr. Locke lays it down, that the preservation of property is the object for which men unite into a commonwealth. For this purpose, they put themselves under government. Property therefore, according to Mr. Locke, existed antecedently to government, and government was established for the protection of an antecedently existing right of property. On the contrary, both Mr. Mill and M. Dumont, describe the right of property to be the offspring of law. Mr. Mill says, “the end of government is to make a distribution of wealth,” or create such a right. M. Dumont expressly says, that the right of property is altogether the work or creation of the legislator, or the law. This difference of opinion is pregnant with momentous consequences. If a right of property be a natural right, not created by legislation, if it be a principle of society, derived immediately and directly from the laws of the universe, all its results will be determined, at all times, by those laws; and the legislator ought to ascertain these results, before he dreams of making decrees, to enforce them. Before he takes any steps to protect the right of property, he must, on Mr. Locke's principles, find out in what it consists. If, on the other hand, a right of property be altogether the creature and work of laws, as the legislator seems to suppose, he may at all times determine all its consequences. He will have no occasion to inquire into any circumstances foreign to his own enactments; he will only have to frame his decrees with logical accuracy from the principles he lays down. One system looks on the legislator as an ally, in enforcing the laws of nature, to do which he must know them; the other denies that there are any such laws, which in fact its authors do in express terms,∗ and they look on enactments as determining the welfare and destiny of mankind. A more important difference of opinion cannot exist. Either principle lies at the very foundation of the whole political edifice. Mr. Locke's view is, in my opinion, more correct than Mr. Bentham's, though at present among legislators, and those who aspire to be legislators, the latter is by far the most prevalent. Practical men universally adopt it; for they always decree, and never inquire into the laws of nature. The prevalence of Mr. Bentham's opinion, makes it necessary to illustrate and enforce that of Mr. Locke, in so far as it is limited to asserting that a right of property is not the offspring of legislation.

  I cannot, however, pass by the opinion, that all the rights of man are derived from the legislator, without noticing its absurdity. This is the main principle—the incorrect and insecure foundation of all the logical consequences, called the system of Mr. Bentham, of which I am afraid neither you nor the world in general is aware,—and which being removed, the whole of that unsightly fabric tumbles valueless to the ground. The materials of this vast building, its crabbed deductions from false premises—are of such a rude and uncouth description, that no other edifice can be constructed out of them; and when once the foundation is removed, there they will lie till time sweeps them away, encumbering a portion of the mind of society which might, but for these errors, have borne the choicest fruits, or served for the erection of a splendid temple of truth.

  Without attempting to describe the vast number of rights, such as those said to be dictated by humanity, and acknowledged to exist in the negroes, and in all men, which have obviously not been decreed by any legislator,—such as those we call domestic, and which, with their corresponding duties, are mutually recognised by parents and children, by wives and husbands, by friends and neighbours, and even by strangers and enemies, and which no law-giver has ever yet thought of dictating;—without attempting to notice numberless decrees issued by him, such as those prohibiting certain branches of traffic, those protecting game and granting tithes; which, though he has enforced them by all the means at his command, have completely failed to create in men any corresponding ideas of rights and duties, those decrees being only obeyed of necessity, and violated without the least remorse, whenever that can be done;—without now insisting on the well-known fact, that the ideas men have of rights and duties,—as, for example, of the right of one man to personal freedom, and of the duty of another not to make him a slave,—which have at all times over-ruled the decrees of the law-giver, shewing distinctly that lie does not create, and has not created, the great stream of our rights and duties, which springs from a higher source than his decrees, carrying with it the little rivulet of legal rights he in vain endeavours to force in a different direction:—without referring to authorities to show “that the law on which right and wrong depend is older than the ages of nations, and is contemporary with the very eternity of God,”—I shall confine myself to briefly proving, by some of the deductions from Mr. Bentham's favourite dogma, that no principle, ever embraced by a thinking man, was, than this, more menstrously absurd.

  Other philosophers have wisely represented government and law as necessary evils, imposing—for some imagined, though incomprehensible, general good—restrictions on the natural rights and natural freedom of individuals, which they might dispense with as they grew enlightened and wise: but Messrs. Bentham and Mill, both being eager to exercise the power of legislation, represent it as a beneficent deity which curbs our naturally evil passions and desires (they adopting the doctrine of the priests, that the desires and passions of man are naturally evil)—which checks ambition, sees justice done, and encourages virtue. Delightful characteristics! which have the single fault of being contradicted by every page of history. Hitherto, it has been generally supposed that the whole world was given to the human race, with dominion over all other created things, for them to use and enjoy in every way, abstaining from nothing—restricted in nothing consistent with their own happiness—bound mutually to share the blessings provided for them, because mutual assistance begets mutual love—supplies physical wants easier and better, and promotes moral and intellectual improvement;—that the rights and duties of men grow out of the great scheme of creation, which is sometimes misinterpreted, and rarely understood, by human sagacity,—sometimes marred, and never mended, by human wisdom. But, now, in compliment to political power, and to Mr. Bentham's theory, that we may find an apology for our own infirm and base submission, we must believe that men had naturally no right to pick up cockles on the beach or gather berries from the hedge—no right to cultivate the earth, to invent and make comfortable clothing, to use instruments to provide more easily for their enjoyments—no right to improve and adorn their habitations—nay, no right to have habitations—no right to buy or sell, or move from place to place—till the benevolent and wise law-giver conferred all these rights on them. If the principle be true in one case it must be universally true; and, according to it, parents had no right to the love and respect of their offspring, and infants no right to draw nourishment from the breasts of their mothers, until the legislator—foreseeing, fore-calcula ing the immense advantages to the human race of establishing the long list of rights and duties which grow out of our affections, and constitute our happiness—had established them by his decrees. With an extraordinary species of quaker-like humility, these reasoners assume, as the basis of their system, the principle which all spirited men, and even other philosophers, contemptuously reject—not merely “questioning,” as Mr. Burke says, marking it with his detestation—“whether man has any rights by nature,” but broadly and boldly asserting that he has none; and “that all the property he enjoys is the alms of government, and life itself derived from its favor and indulgence.”∗ “La loi,” says M. Dumont, in the true spirit of these doctrines, “me defend-elle de vous tuer? Elle m' impose l'obligation de ne pas vous tuer; elle vous accorde le droit de n'etre pas tué par moi.”† Men, therefore, according to the system which affirms that there are no natural laws and natural rights, had no right even to life—that blessed gift of a bounteous Creator!—and no one was under an obligation not to kill another till the legislator created this right, and imposed this duty.—Mothers, according to the same dogma, might devour their offspring, and children, if their parents would allow them to grow to maturity might eat up their parents—if he should, unhappily, forget to prohibit so unhallowed a feast! Poor human beings! How were you cast away—thrust out from the protection of Divine Providence, which extends its fostering care to the meanest things of creation, till that better divinity, a decree-manufacturer, took you under his charge! Such deductions would be shocking, if they were not eminently absurd; and yet, Sir, you, who know on what principles Mr. Bentham reasons, must admit that they are the legitimate results of a system denominated, from the seat and centre of civilization, the Philosophy of Westminster.

  To me, this system appears as mischievous as it is absurd. The doctrines accord too well with the practice of law-givers, they cut too securely all the gordian knots of legislation, not to be readily adopted by all those who, however discontented they may be with a distribution of power, in which no share falls to them, are anxious to become the tutelary guardians of the happiness of mankind. They lift legislation beyond our reach, and secure it from censure. Man, having naturally no rights, may be experimented on, imprisoned, expatriated or even exterminated, as the legislator pleases. Life and property being his gift, he may resume them at pleasure; and hence he never classes the executions and wholesale slaughters, he continually commands, with murder—nor the forcible appropriation of property he sanctions, under the name of taxes, tithes, &c., with larceny or high-way robbery. Filmer's doctrine of the divine right of kings was rational benevolence, compared to the monstrous assertion that “all right is factitious, and only exists by the will of the law-maker.”∗ But though this may be comfortable doctrine for legislators, it will not satisfy the people; and in spite of false theories and unreasonable practices, events are now teaching mankind to place a just value on law-making. Day does not follow day, without increasing our knowlege of the consequences of actions; and it is fast becoming apparent, that the wise men, such as Cicero and Seneca, as Bacon and Locke, and as Burke and Smith, who have advocated a totally different system from that of Messrs. Bentham and Mill and their arrogant disciples, have not cast the seeds of their faith in nature, on a barren and ungrateful soil.∗

  Your obedient servant,

  A LABOURER.

  LETTER THE SECOND.
  the NATURAL RIGHT OF PROPERTY illustrated.

  Mr. Locke's opinion of this right adopted and confirmed—Proofs of its existence at all times and places—Proof that M. Dumont is wrong in ascribing a sense of security to legislation.

  TO H. BROUGHAM, ESQ. M. P. F.R.S. &c.

  Sir,

  As the right of property includes many other rights, being connected with some of our strongest emotions, and the source of some most inveterate prejudices, it requires to be handled with great discretion. If it were not the very foundation of systems of government, and of theories of political philosophy—and if there were any rational hope, that the former could be amended, and the latter constructed on correct principles, without digging down to the very bottom—I, for one, should carefully avoid meddling with so great and, perhaps, dangerous a work. But after much and anxious deliberation, I am satisfied that it is not possible to meliorate our political condition, or even to save society from convulsions, more terrible perhaps than have ever been known, unless all classes attain correct notions of the natural right of property, and endeavour gradually to adapt their conduct and social institutions to what nature decrees. Allow me, however, at once to declare (as there have been in almost every age individuals, such as Beccaria and Rousseau—and sects, some existing at present, such as Mr. Owen's cooperative societies, the Saint Simonians in France, and the Moravians, who have asserted that all the evils of society arise from a right of property, the utility of which they have accordingly and utterly denied) allow me to separate myself entirely from them, by declaring that I look on a right of property—on the right of individuals, to have and to own, for their own separate and selfish use and enjoyment, the produce of their own industry, with power freely to dispose of the whole of that in the manner most agreeable to themselves, as essential to the welfare and even to the continued existence of society. If, therefore, I did not suppose, with Mr. Locke, that nature establishes such a right—if I were not prepared to shew that she not merely establishes, but also protects and preserves it, so far as never to suffer it to be violated with impunity—I should at once take refuge in Mr. Bentham's impious theory, and admit that the legislator who established and preserved a right of property, deserved little less adoration than the Divinity himself. Believing, however, that nature establishes such a right, I can neither join those who vituperate it as the source of all our social misery, nor those who claim for the legislator the high honour of being “the author of the finest triumph of humanity over itself.”

  I heartily and cordially concur with Mr. Locke, in his view of the origin and foundation of a right of property. “Every man,” he says, “has a property in his own person that nobody has any right to but himself. The labour of his body and the work of his hand are his property. Whatsoever, then, he removes out of the state that nature hath provided and left it in, he hath mixed his labour with it and joined to something that is his own, and thereby makes it his property. It being by him removed from the common state nature hath placed it in, it hath by this labour something annexed to it that excludes the common right of other men. For the labour being the unquestionable property of the labourer, no man but he can have a right to what that is joined to—at least, where there is enough and as good left in common for others.”

  “He that is nourished by the acorn he picked up under an oak, or the apple he gathered from the trees in the wood, has certainly appropriated them to himself. Nobody can deny but the nourishment is his. I ask, then, when they began to be his? When he digested? Or when he eat, or when he boiled? Or when he brought them home? Or when he picked them up? And it is plain, that if the first gathering made them not his, nothing else could. That labour put a distinction between them and common, that added something to them more than nature—the common mother of all—had done, and so they became his private right.”∗

  “Thus the law of reason makes the deer that Indian's who hath killed it; it is allowed to be his goods who hath bestowed his labour upon it, though before it was the common right of every one. And amongst those who are accounted the civilized part of mankind—who have made and multiplied laws to determine property—this original law of nature for the beginning of property in what was before common, still takes place; and by virtue thereof, what fish any one catches in the ocean—that great and still remaining common of mankind,—or what ambergris any one takes up here, is, by the labour that removes it out of the common state nature left it, made his property who takes that pains about it.“∗

  “But the chief matter of property being now,” he goes on, “not the fruits of the earth and the beasts that subsist on it, but the earth itself as that which takes and carries with it all the rest, I think it plain that property in that too is (ought to be?) acquired as the former. As much land as a man tills, plants, cultivates, and can use the products of, so much is his property. He, by his labour, does, as it were, inclose it from the common.”†

  Thus the principle Mr. Locke lays down is, that nature gives to each individual his body and his labour; and what he can make or obtain by his labour naturally belongs to him. Though I cannot make this principle any clearer by repeating the statement in my own way, yet as different minds are effected by different means, the object I have in view may, perhaps, be promoted, by putting it in a somewhat different, even if it be not so clear a form. The power to labour is the gift of nature to each individual; and the power which belongs to each, cannot be confounded with that which belongs to another: The natural wants of man, particularly of food and clothing, are the natural stimulus to exert this power; and the means of gratifying them, which it provides, is the natural reward of the exertion. The power to labour and the natural wants which stimulate labour, are generally found together; thus we see that the motive to labour—the power to labour—and the produce of labour—all exist exclusive of all legislation.

  Nature, not the legislator, creates man with these wants, and conjoins with them the power to gratify them. The unpleasant feeling of hunger may be properly called a command or admonition to labour. Nature gives also to each individual: and her separate gifts—as, for example, the fish she bestows on him who baits a hook and watches the line—can no more be confounded with those she gives to another, than the distinct and separate wants they are intended to gratify. The commodities which labour, acting in obedience to this command, creates or obtains, nature—or God, (for it is better to use the latter term than the former)—bestows on labour; and He gives to labour, if violence and wrong interfere not, whatever it can make. On the naked savage, and on him alone, the Almighty primarily bestows the wild fruits he gathers, and the game he kills; to him, exclusively, the Creator gives the branch he rends from the parent stem, and confirms it in his possession, while he fashions it into a club, by the stone hatchet he has previously made, and therefore calls his: as well as guarantees its use to him by the wish and power He continually engenders to retain and use it. A savage, stronger than the labourer or more cunning, may undoubtedly take the fruit of his industry from him by force or fraud; but antecedently to the use of force or fraud, and antece dently to all legislation, nature bestows on every individual what his labour produces, just as she gives him his own body. She bestows the wish and the power to produce, she couples them with the expectation of enjoying that which is produced, and she confirms in the labourer's possession, if no wrong be practised, as long as he wishes to possess, whatever he makes or produces. All these are natural circumstances—the existence of any other person than the labourer not being necessary to the full accomplishment of them. The enjoyment is secured by the individual's own means. No contract, no legislation, is required. Whatever is made by human industry, is naturally appropriated as made, and belongs to the maker. In substance, I would feign hope, there is no difference between this statement and that of Mr. Locke; but I wish to mark, stronger than I think he has done, the fact, that, antecedently to all legislation, and to any possible interference by the legislator, nature establishes a law of appropriation by bestowing, as she creates individuality, the produce of labour on the labourer.

  Mr. Locke says, that every man has a property in his own person; in fact, individuality—which is signified by the word own—cannot be disjoined from the person. Each individual learns his own shape and form, and even the existence of his limbs and body, from seeing and feeling them.∗ These constitute his notion of personal identity, both for himself and others; and it is impossible to conceive—it is in fact a contradiction to say—that a man's limbs and body do not belong to himself: for the words him, self, and his body, signify the same material thing.

  As we learn the existence of our own bodies from seeing and feeling them, and as we see and feel the bodies of others, we have precisely similar grounds for believing in the individuality or identity of other persons, as for believing in our own identity. The ideas expressed by the words mine and thine, as applied to the produce of labour, are simply then an extended form of the ideas of personal identity and individuality. We readily spread them from our hands and other limbs, to the things the hands seize, or fashion, or create, or the legs hunt down and overtake. Nor is this extension limited to material objects. Were it not the practice to despise the sententious wisdom of proverbs, I might quote several: such as this—“As you make your bed, so you must lie in it”—to shew that these ideas are generally extended to the immaterial consequences of our actions. In the popular creed, the pleasure or pain that results from an individual's conduct, his hopes or his despair, his remorse or his self approbation, are properly deemed to belong to him, equally with the book he writes or the game he kills. In fact, the material objects are only sought after for the immaterial pleasure they bestow.

  By the operations of nature, then, it being, indeed, the necessary consequence of existence, there arises in every individual, unwilled by any lawgiver, a distinct notion of his own individuality and of the individuality of others. By the same operations, we extend this idea, first for ourselves and afterwards for others, to the things we make or create, or have given to us, including the pleasure or pain resulting from our own conduct. Thus, the natural idea of property is a mere extension of that of individuality; and it embraces all the mental as well as all the physical consequences of muscular exertion. As nature gives to labour whatever it produces—as we extend the idea of personal individuality to what is produced by every individual—not merely is a right of property established by nature, we see also that she takes means to make known the existence of that right. It is as impossible for men not to have a notion of a right of property, as it is for them to want the idea of personal identity. When either is totally absent man is insane.

  Nature, or God—for I use these terms as one—having thus established a right of property, and having effectually provided for our attaining a knowledge of its existence, we must ask, has she, independently of all human legislation, provided men with motives mutually to respect this right, and mutually to abstain from any actions that would weaken or destroy the sense of security? She has. As far as we know, the great mass of mankind seem to have been created nearly equal to each other: at least, the members of every single community are so nearly equal in capacity and skill, that it must be at all times more difficult for one man to take, by force, from another what the latter has already made, than to make something similar for himself. In the latter case, he has only to overcome the resistance of nature, who invites rather than repels his exertions; in the former, he must surmount all the opposition of an equal, who, if openly conquered, may secretly find a means of revenge. Nature creates the majority of individuals nearly equal in bodily strength, skill, and capacity, and gives to all nearly the same facilities for acquiring knowledge; and thus, making it generally more difficult and dangerous to take from another, than for each, by his labour, to provide for himself, she creates in all men motives to respect that right of property which she, by bestowing on labour all its produce, every where establishes, and every where makes known.

  Moreover, you will observe, as a general rule, that the inequality of productive power in indi viduals, by which one might obtain greater wealth than another, exciting, as is supposed, the cupidity of those who are comparatively destitute is almost always accompanied by corresponding means of defending its acquisitions. The same strength or skill which enables one man to catch more game or fish, or create more wealth, than his less skilful or weaker compatriot, will enable him to defend his acquisitions. This rule also holds good with nations, the most wealthy being the most skilful, the most ingenious, and the most powerful. By tracing analogies and harmonies of this description in the moral world, we acquire a strong conviction of the folly of setting up our wisdom in opposition to the benevolent decrees by which every part of creation appears to be equally regulated. When we cannot, as in this case, easily trace such regulations, we may infer them. “We see,” says Lord Bolingbroke, “in so many instances, a just proportion of things, according to their several relations to one another, that philosophy should lead us to conclude this proportion preserved, even where we cannot discern it.”∗

  By some persons it seems to be supposed that motives, like those I have just alluded to can only exist in savage life, that they disappear in the progress of society, and that it has become, at present, more easy, generally speaking, to take from another, than to produce for one's self. One object I propose is to shew that this supposition is incorrect, and that the principles just mentioned are so powerful in their operation that they have silently overcome the greatest obstacles thrown in their way by legislation. With reference to the source of the error fallen into by these persons, it may not be premature, even at present, to remark, that the right of property, which they call natural, and which they can perceive no motives to respect, is merely legal, and is established and sanctioned by the law-giver only. That there are natural motives to respect the legal right, I do not contend: I even deny it, and cannot believe, that the right is founded on justice. The power of making laws was long vested in those—and still is vested in their descendants—who followed no trade but war, and knew no handicraft but robbery and plunder. I make no exception to this assertion: for even those who, under the influence of a wish to share the power of legislation, fight their way, by honest industry, into the rank of legislators, have adopted the principles of their former masters and despoilers. The present legislators of Europe are the descendants of men—cherishing their opinions and habits, and acting on their principles—who were unacquainted with any wealth-creating arts, and who lived by appropriating the produce of others. On them nature bestowed no property; all which they possessed they took, by force, from those on whom she had bestowed it. Even to this day, in many countries of Europe, a nobleman or legislator loses caste if he engage in any useful, wealth-creating business, or endeavour to gain his own livelihood by his own labour. I state these facts now, in order, at once, to account for the origin of the supposition, that the motives to respect the natural right of property, which are acknowleged to prevail in the infancy of society, do not exist in its advanced stages. They do exist: but they are so overgrown with legislation that we can only detect them by their operation through long periods of time. They are like the precession of the equinox, which must be observed for ages before it can be ascertained. They, of course, do not apply to the legal right of property, for which nature inspires no respect.

  M. Dumont, indeed, says, and, of course, he is only the expounder of Mr. Bentham's theories, that “the conviction or persuasion, that we shall be able to derive appropriate advantages from the things we make, can only be the work of human laws;” but such a persuasion or conviction is obviously as much the natural and necessary result of individual organization, as our notion of personal identity, or the want which prompts to exertion. It is the spontaneous growth of every mind, antecedent to all legislation. The savage never suspects, till his game has been once taken from him, that he shall not be allowed to enjoy it. Men never would have made any thing—not even laws—unless a persuasion had naturally arisen, that they should be enabled to enjoy the advantages of what they make. In fact, this conviction is a component part of the idea of individual production. The making, with which the expectation of enjoyment is combined, is effected by individuals, and the expectation exists as universally as the wants which excite labour. Doubt or fear of not enjoying, is the offspring of wrong doing in others, and could not have existed till the expectation had been frustrated and the enjoyment unjustly disturbed. The persuasion or expectation then is natural and necessary—the doubt or suspicion is incidental—and is, very generally, the result of wrong done by those who have afterwards made laws to protect their usurpations.

  On the principle that property is altogether the creature of the law, we could not know what is ours and what is another's, unless we were benevolently informed of it by a parliament or a king. I know that literary men, by whom such an opinion is generally countenanced, are capable of making any false statement look like truth; but their ingenuity could scarcely persuade the smith, or the carpenter, that his right to own the horse-shoe, or the gate, he makes, has been conferred on him by the statutes and the judges. Poor simple man! he never supposes that his right is even guaranteed by the law; though in case it were infringed, he would appeal to the law as a last, but still ruinous, resource to compel those who infringed his right to make him a compensation. Ideas of property are truly instinctive, and are acquired by children long before they ever hear of law. If they do not belong to the mind, as the legs and the tongue belong to the body, like the habit of walking or speaking, they are so early acquired, and so continually present to us that they appear innate. The continual possession and use by one person of any one thing, generates in another the idea that it belongs to the former. The manner in which each individual acquires what he possesses, leaving him free or not from apprehension in the enjoyment of it, informs him whether or not it properly belongs to him or to another. Such ideas are neither created nor confirmed by decrees; but, as the source of apprehension is always the opposition of those whom we have injured, the enjoyment of that which is acquired according to law being free from such apprehension, because there is no one powerful enough to overturn the law, is also free, though it be unjustly acquired, from any notion of wrong. The general consent, then, when expressed in laws, does not establish right, but being the chief means of informing individuals what is regarded as right, it may and does, when wrong itself, prevent them from knowing what is right, and it makes injustice legal.

  These quotations from Mr. Locke, and these remarks, have probably established the following truths. Without the intervention of any law, contract, or agreement between individuals, as to what shall belong to each, Nature produces in each the idea of individuality, which she extends to ownership, by bestow ing on each individual, and exclusively, whatever he produces.∗ She provides a principle of general security, by making it easier for all men to obtain from her, than to plunder from one another. And she begets antecedently to all law an expectation in every one that he shall be able to enjoy what he produces. All the fruits of industry she bestows on industry, and bestows them in proportion commensurate to the labour and skill employed. All these truths show the foundation of a natural right of property. It is the right of each individual to own for his separate and selfish use whatever he can make.

  You do not require to be informed, though I may state the fact for the benefit of less enlightened persons, that all the wealth of the world, the whole means of subsistence, whatever contributes to clothe and to feed man, is the produce of labour, and is annually created and annually consumed. Even those useful instruments, such as ships, houses, &c. which last for several years, require to be continually kept in repair by the hand of labour, which is tantamount to continual production. The field that has been once cleared and ploughed, is soon overrun with useless weeds, if it be not continually cultivated. There is no other wealth in the world but what is created by labour, and by it continually renewed. This principle, now universally acknowledged, makes the right of property appear more absolute and definite than it was in Mr. Locke's comprehension, because the right to own land is in fact only the right to own what agricultural or other labour produces. The natural law of appropriation, therefore, exists in full force at all times and places; and at this moment constitutes a rule for appropriating every part of the wealth which is continually created. The wants which can only be gratified by labour always exist, or are always renewed, the necessity to gratify them by labour is never suspended; and now, as at the beginning, nature bestows on the labour intended to gratify these wants whatever it can produce. Thus a right of property is founded on principles that are universal, and always in operation; and even at this day in our very artificial communities, by extending observation over long periods, we shall be convinced that they continue in force, and continually subvert the institutions of the human lawgiver.

  If this view be correct, a right of property ought to be known and established among all mankind; and it may, I believe, be affirmed that no people, however rude, have yet been discovered, or ever were known, among whom a right of property, in the things they had made by their industry, was not established. Major Collins says, in his work on New South Wales, a country in which there is the nearest approach to the absence of a right of property I have ever read of, “that the savages left their spears and things of that kind lying about, but they had a strong notion of ownership, and resisted the appropriation of these things by the people of Captain Phillips' vessel.” They comprehended the right of property which springs from labour; but agriculture not being known amongst them, and they not having vested any labour in the soil, they had not established a right of property in land.

  Savages have been discovered who had no ideas of religion or of God, or only such as were copied from their own wretched existence and untamed passions; but even of their community each member was as sensible that the stone hatchet he had made, the canoe he had hollowed out with it, or the bow he had bought with a hatchet of his own making, was his, as are the members of the most law-regulated community, that they have a right to enjoy what the law confirms in the possession of each person. So certain have voyagers and travellers been of this fact, that they have not thought inquiry concerning it necessary, any more than inquiry to ascertain if savages comprehended identity and individuality. They have asked if the savage had any knowledge of God, but that he had ideas of thine and mine they have always taken for granted. Even those tribes, like the people of Nootka Sound, who were so delighted with the possessions of the Europeans, that they furtively appropriated whatever they could lay their hands on, were sensible that they took what did not belong to them. They respected a right of property among themselves, and acknowledged, though they did not respect, that right in the strangers.

  Similar to the people of Nootka the Esquimaux seem latterly to have thought that they might take the cargoes of one of Captain Franklin's boats;∗ but the manner in which they attempted it, intimated a clear conviction on their part that the things did not belong to them. A comparison between civilized and uncivilized men, as to the respect of each for a right of property, cannot be established; but there is reason to believe that the respect among the latter for the property of each other, as far as the individuals of their own tribe are concerned,—though they may have no written law, and no regular establishments for the administration of law,—is stronger than the respect for the right of property among the former, which their lawgivers have endeavoured in vain for ages, by all the terrors at their command, to preserve from infraction. The inhabitants of Nootka Sound wished to appropriate the numberless useful instruments they saw in the possession of Captain Cook's people. The Esquimaux were perhaps unable to resist their desire to possess the glittering objects they beheld for the first time lying before them. The people of the Ladrone islands, dazzled by the novelty of the things their first European visitors displayed to their view, might greedily seize them; but it is not said that these people, though ready to plunder the strangers, were in the habit of thieving from each other. Without wishing to magnify the virtues of savage, and exaggerate the vices of civilized society, I must say that of the latter a continual violation both of the natural and artificial right of property seems the most wide spread and distinguishing evil.

  To explain, not to excuse the conduct of those savages, who have been too eager to acquire the tempting possessions of European voyagers, to comport themselves according to our idea of justice, allow me to observe, that prior to the arrival of strangers among them, the great majority of the objects, either pleasing or useful, with which they were acquainted, had not been previously appropriated, and were therefore readily yielded to their exertions. They might hence, practically, but too rashly conclude, that the property of the strangers, like the gifts of nature, would become theirs by the trouble of putting forth their hands to take them. To appropriate whatever is pleasing is natural, to refrain from seizing what has been already appropriated, implies knowledge, and restraint, and is a habit of action, formed by a continual apprehension of suffering, if we do not so refrain. Such a habit could not have been formed among the people just mentioned, in regard to the wealth of the Europeans; and coupling this with the fact, that every thing useful which they had before seen had been readily yielded to their wishes, we cannot be surprised that their desire to possess the new objects they beheld was stronger than their respect for property.

  Originally whatever one man thought useful, such as wild-fowls and game, he might appropriate without wronging another; but by an act of appropriation the original relation of man to the spontaneous productions of nature is altered; and after they are appropriated, to take them would be to injure another. At present, the great mass of objects is appropriated, and the relation thus established must be learnt. As new arts, as new instruments are invented, new wealth is created; and as men are multiplied filling the whole earth, supplying their mutual wants by mutual exchange, the original relation gradually ceases, and disappears altogether. There is now hardly any thing about us on which the labour of man has not been employed, and of course hardly any thing except fish and game to appropriate. Between the original and present condition of mankind, the alteration—from all which existed, though scanty, being unappropriated, to all which exists, though abundant, being appropriated,—must have been gradual, and could not have been provided for before hand by the legislator. Not only was he necessarily ignorant that the alteration was to take place, but when it did occur he was mistrustful of its utility. New branches of industry, and the new wealth they create,—as for example—printing, have generally been looked on by him with great suspicion. He supposes that social order and happiness depend upon his enactments, and what does not flow from them, must in his opinion be evil. All novelties lie beyond his previous statutes, and must necessarily form no part of the organization which springs from him. But we have just seen, that as new wealth is formed, and as labour multiplies the conveniences of life, mingling with all the things of creation, and modifying them so as to adapt them to the supply of our wants, a new relation between man and all surrounding objects is called into existence. As the legislator cannot before hand provide means to secure the enjoyment of this new relation, it is fair to presume that nature, who plans the whole frame work of society, and gives rise to new arts, and new wealth, provides such means. Indeed, it may be boldly asserted from this view of the legislator's limited knowledge, that if nature did not at all times provide motives for respecting the new relation of man to the work of his hands, as it is continually called into existence by the creation of new wealth, society could not hold together. On examining the subject we actually find, which is one of the many beautiful harmonies of the moral world, that as the relation alters between man and appropriated objects,—as the change takes place from savage to civilized life, (which, looking at its universality, we must regard as dependent on natural laws) so a powerful motive arises for forming a habit of restraint, and for respecting the new right of property, which is continually called into existence. As mankind are multiplied, the moral influence of the mass increases over individuals, and each one, feeling the impossibility of resisting a great many, is humbly submissive to the general voice, and therefore prone to respect that right of property, which is acknowledged by all.

  There is then, I conclude, a natural right of property, founded on the fact that labour is necessary to produce whatever bears the name of wealth, which right of property exists, with all its consequences, like the principles from which it flows, at all times and places. Men naturally and necessarily do, and for ever will extend the idea of individality which is derived from the human body to the things the hands make, thus constituting the idea of ownership. The operation of human laws is confined to short periods and limited spaces; they are suited to the usages of particular times and countries; and hence it is clear, as stated by Mr. Locke, though it be denied by M. Dumont and Mr. Bentham, that the right of property which exists universally, is not created by legislation. It is the result of the laws of the universe, the offspring of the will of our Creator, who made man such as he is. A complete community of goods, of food, clothing, dwellings, instruments, weapons, and utensils, or of all the produce of labour, never has existed, and never could exist, even in any family much less in any community. The use of such things, like the making of them, must be individual, not common, selfish, not general. The approximations to a community of goods among some religious, and some political societies, have always been the constrained and unhappy results of positive institutions, which have neither been of long duration, nor generally advantageous.

  The relation between labour and its produce, or ownership or the right of property, as thus explained, seems to me as much a creation of the Deity,—if not immediate and perfect, yet continual and progressive,—as much a part of the universe as the great globe itself, or as the law regulating the course of the seasons. That it is essential to our happiness to regulate our conduct by the latter, clothing ourselves warmer in winter than in summer, and sowing in autumn the seed that is to ripen against the next harvest, no man doubts; and it must, I presume, be equally essential to our happiness, to regulate our conduct by the relation which the Almighty has established between labour and its produce. To desire or enforce any other species of appropriation is a presumptuous interference with the laws of nature or of the Deity, not less absurd, or wicked in principle, than to decree a new course to the winds, or a different return of the seasons. To attempt even to enforce by laws that species of appropriation which nature decrees, seems unnecessary, and an improper intervention between our ideas of individuality, and those natural results of a man's conduct, which are its ordered and appropriate rewards or punishments. Such an attempt may perhaps be called even more absurd than an attempt to regulate the winds or the seasons, because we are continually admonished against it by the pain and misery which continually ensue.

  Does legislation, Sir, that legislation which you, as a member of parliament, have sworn to uphold, proceed upon a study of the principles which determine the natural right of property? Is the latter—is the natural relation between labour and its produce recognised and acted on throughout society, as we acknowledge and act on the relation between seed time and sowing? Have all the laws of society said to be intended expressly to protect property, been framed with a view to preserve this relation entire and untouched? Has government, instituted, according to Mr. Locke, for no other purpose but to guarantee the enjoyment of our natural property, fulfilled its commission? Does labour now obtain and own whatever it produces? Is every man's right to have and enjoy whatever he creates or obtains by honest exertions protected by the law? Is it that splendid achievement described. Are the natural consequences of every man's conduct allowed to come freely home to him under the guarantee of the law? Let us look at these subjects a little closer; and I shall do so with out answering the questions regularly, but by describing that right of property which the law does guarantee and protect. At present I sign myself, with much diminished respect.

  A Labourer.

  LETTER THE THIRD.
  THE LEGAL RIGHT OF PROPERTY.

  What is the law?—Who are the law makers?—The law is a great scheme of rules intended to preserve the power of government, secure the wealth of the landowner, the priest, and the capitalist, but never to secure his produce to the labourer.—The law-maker is never a labourer, and has no natural right to any wealth.—He takes no notice of the natural right of property.—Manifold miseries which result from his appropriating the produce of labour, and from the legal right of property being in opposition to the natural.

  TO H. BROUGHAM, ESQ. M. P. F.R.S. &c.

  Sir,

  When we inquire, casting aside all theories and suppositions, into the end kept in view by legislators, or examine any existing laws, we find that the first and chief object proposed is to preserve the unconstrained dominion of the law over the minds and bodies of mankind. It may be simplicity in me, but I protest that I see no anxiety to preserve the natural right of property but a great deal to enforce obedience to the legislator. No misery indeed is deemed too high a price to pay for his supremacy, and for the quiet submission of the people. To attain this end many individuals, and even nations, have been extirpated. Perish the peo ple, but let the law live, has ever been the maxim of the masters of mankind.∗ Cost what it may, we are continually told, the dominion of the law, not the natural right of property, must be upheld. Every writer, in our newspapers, whether he writes about a rebellion in Ireland, or killing partridges, loudly and continually repeats this maxim of our masters.∗ Society, it is said, will fall into anarchy, the human race will first relapse into barbarism, and then pass out of existence if law be not obeyed. By a most ridiculous analogy—the precept of self preservation, the dictate of the holy and delightful impulse by which we cherish our happy animal existence, is transferred to the institutions of barbarous men. Self preservation is said to be the first duty of corporate bodies, as of individual animals, as if the ignorant contrivances of men less instructed than we are, deserved the veneration justly due to the works of the Almighty.

  We are on this principle, singularly enough, continually called on to preserve the institutions of the legislator by violating the principle from which the analogy is derived. In many cases, the corporate existence decreed by the legislator can only be maintained by putting individuals out of existence, and men are massacred that governments may be upheld. Looking at this question practically, let us coolly inquire what is this said law, before which every thing, whether it be that which is holy in affection, or ought to be held sacred among men, and before which even the laws of nature must quail, and wither and perish?

  The law, to preserve which is said to be the first duty of communities, as to preserve life is that of individuals, is a set of rules and practices laid down and established, partly by the legislator, partly by custom, and partly by the judges, supported and enforced by all the power of the government, and intended as far as our subject is concerned, to secure the appropriation of the whole annual produce of labour. Nominally these rules and practices are said to have for their object to secure property in land; to appropriate tithes, and to procure a revenue for the government; actually and in fact they are intended to appropriate to the law-makers the produce of those who cultivate the soil, prepare clothing, or distribute what is produced among the different classes, and among different communities. Such is law.

  It is a not less important question, who is the law-maker, who made, who makes, who enforces obedience to these rules and practices? Can he show a title bestowed upon him by nature, derived from the laws of his organization, and the constitution of the universe, to have and to own, and to appropriate all the wealth that is created? Now it is an important fact, but it is so obvious that one is sneered at for drawing a deduction from it, that the law has always been, and is at present made, by men who are not labourers. It is actually made by those who derive from nature no title whatever to any wealth. But as law in fact is only a general name for the will of the law-maker, being, the expression of his desire to have wealth, and retain power and dominion, it is clear that in making laws for the appropriation of property, he will not, consistently with nature, give to every one what he produces. This object always has been, and now is, so to dispose of the annual produce as will best tend to preserve his power. Nature rewards industry and skill, the legislator be he who he may, is utterly regardless of the connection between industry and plenty. Let us look closer at who is the legislator, and what is his object in making laws.

  In some countries the power of making laws is vested in a king; in others in an aristocracy; and in others, though they are few, the great body of the community has a direct share in legislation. Some times a particular class of men, as the ministers of religion, has made regulations for the whole society. In no part of Europe, however, which is the main fact for our consideration, had the producers of wealth, in any form or shape, any direct share in legislation for many ages. Nor have they yet as such any direct share. Our own country does not differ in this respect, at least not in principle, from most of the countries of Europe. One man has a right to assist in making laws, because he is a king, another because he is a peer, a third because he is a bishop, a fourth because he legally owns a large estate, and a fifth because he served his time to a particular tradesman in a particular place, or because he was born there of parents who were born there before him; but no man merely because he is a producer of wealth, has any right to assist in making the laws which appropriate, or attempt to appropriate, the whole of his produce.

  Laws being made by others than the labourer, and being always intended to preserve the power of those who make them, their great and chief aim for many ages, was, and still is, to enable those who are not labourers to appropriate wealth to themselves. In other words, the great object of law and of government has been and is, to establish and protect a violation of that natural right of property they are described in theory as being intended to guarantee. This chief purpose and principle of legislation is the parent crime, from which continually flow all the theft and fraud, all the vanity and chicanery, which torment mankind worse than pestilence and famine. They only, but kindly and speedily, destroy them. The first and chief violation of the right of property, which pervades and disturbs all the natural relations of ownership, confusing, an per plexing the ideas of all men as to the source of the right of property, and what is their own, of which so many actions stigmatized by the law as crimes, are the necessary consequences, and the natural corrections,—the parent theft from which flow all other thefts, is that of the legislator, who, not being a labourer, can make no disposition of any property whatever, without appropriating what does not naturally belong to him.

  Those who make laws, appropriate wealth in order to secure power. All the legislative classes, and all the classes whose possessions depend not on nature, but on the law, perceiving that law alone guarantees and secures their possessions, and perceiving that government as the instrument for enforcing obedience to the law, and thus for preserving their power and possessions, is indispensable, unite one and all, heart and soul to uphold it, and, as the means of upholding it, to place at its disposal a large part of the annual produce of labour. One of the first objects then of the law, subordinate to the great principle of preserving its unconstrained dominion over our minds and bodies, is to bestow a sufficient revenue on the government. Who can enumerate the statutes imposing and exacting taxes? Who can describe the disgusting servility with which all classes submit to be fleeced by the demands of the tax-gatherer, on all sorts of false pretences, when his demands cannot be fraudulently evaded? Who is acquainted with all the restrictions placed on honest and praiseworthy enterprise; the penalties inflicted on upright and honourable exertions;—what pen is equal to the task of accurately describing all the vexations, and the continual misery, heaped on all the industrious classes of the community, under the pretext that it is necessary to raise a revenue for the government? “The miseries inflicted upon individuals and families by fiscal prosecutions, founded on excise laws, stamp laws, post-office laws, &c. are equal to those arising from some of the most extensive natural calamities.”∗ Perhaps they are far greater. Nature may annihilate, but she never tortures. Equally benevolent and wise, she warns us by pain against injury; so she instructs her children; and whenever she finds either the race or the individual incorrigible,—when pain ceases to be useful,—she mercifully puts an end to existence. Not so the legislator. He has inflicted on mankind for ages the miseries of revenue laws,—greater than those of pestilence and famine, and sometimes producing both these calamities, without our learning the lesson which nature seems to have intended to teach, viz. the means of avoiding this perpetual calamity. Revenue laws meet us at every turn. They embitter our meals, and disturb our sleep. They excite dishonesty, and check enterprize. They impede division of labour, and create division of interest. They sow strife and enmity amongst townsmen and brethren; and they frequently lead to murders, that are not the less atrocious because they are committed in battle with smugglers, or consummated on the gallows. The preservation of government, it is said, must be purchased at whatever sacrifice; and it is impossible to enumerate the vexatious statutes and cruel penalties, by which its preservation is sought to be attained. Government, as such, produces nothing, and all its revenues are exacted by violating the natural right of property. This I put down as the first point aimed at by all laws. That all this misery is gratuitously inflicted; that the power of the government is not preserved according to the wish of the legislator, by means of the revenue raised, is perhaps a trifle in the account, but it is one which I shall hereafter attempt to render important, shewing that the folly of making and of submitting to revenue laws, is just equal to the pain they inflict.

  Among the legislative classes embodied into, and constituting the government, we must place the landed aristocracy. In fact, the landed aristocracy and the government are one—the latter being nothing more than the organized means of preserving the power and privileges of the former. After securing a revenue for the government,—the landed aristocracy sacrificing to this even a part of their private property, or rather taking a portion from rent, which they appropriate as taxes, transferring their cash from one hand to the other,—after securing a revenue to the state, the laws have been made with a view to guarantee the possessions and the wealth of the landowners. Numberless are the statutes and the decisions at common law, having the force of statutes, intended solely to secure their rights and privileges. Subject to supporting the government—the instrument for protecting their privileges—they may do what they please with the land. In some countries also, by the transmitted remnant of an ancient practice, founded on the fact that the labourers belonged like cattle to the landowners, the latter are obliged to maintain all the people born on their land; otherwise they might quarter their sick and destitute slaves on other landowners. With these exceptions, the landowner may leave his land uncultivated, or he may let it on what conditions he pleases, and the law is always ready to support him with its powerful aid. His right to possess the land, not to possess the produce of his own labour, is as admirably protected as can be effected by the law. Another must not even walk on it, and all the wild animals and fruit it bears are said by the law to be his. Nature makes it a condition of man having land, that he must occupy and cultivate it, or it will yield nothing. The instant he ceases his labour, she decks it with flowers, and stocks it with the birds and animals which she delights to clothe and feed; exacting no payment but their happiness. The mere landowner is not a labourer, and he never has been even fed but by violating the natural right of property. Patiently and perseveringly, however, has the law endeavoured to maintain his privileges, power, and wealth. To support the government the aristocracy has sometimes made laws trenching on its own privileges, but after enforcing submission to government, the next object of the law has been to preserve the dominion and power of the aristocracy over the land.

  In most countries the ministers of religion support the government, and inculcate obedience to the law. For this they receive a share of legislation, and of the annual produce of labour. The laws, at least of this country, after providing a revenue for the government, and securing the wealth of the aristocracy, seek to bestow a liberal allowance on the priesthood. We can neither eat nor drink, be neither legally born nor buried, neither married nor enter into the community of our fellows, without paying the parson. He who objects to comply with his demands, and to give him what the law, —not what nature, or the free-will of the labourer, bestows on him,—must suffer under denunciations of future punishment; and, what is more compulsory he is scourged through ecclesiastical and other courts, till he be turned naked and flayed upon the world. Such is the charity of those whose office it is to preach meekness and forbearance. The law grants tithes, and enforces the payment of them. It gives the soil, and a power to exact rent to the landlord, and a revenue to the government; but in all these, the great and leading objects of law, I see no protection for the natural right of property. On the contrary, not one of them can be thought of without trenching on this natural right.

  At present, besides the government, the ariscocracy, and the church, the law also protects, to a certain extent, the property of the capitalist, of whom there is somewhat more difficulty to speak correctly than of the priest, the landowner, and the administerer of the law, because the capitalist is very often also a labourer. The capitalist as such, however, whether he be a holder of East India stock, or of a part of the national debt, a discounter of bills, or a buyer of annuities, has no natural right to the large share of the annual produce the law secures to him. There is sometimes a conflict between him and the landowner, sometimes one obtains a triumph, and sometimes the other; both however willingly support the government and the church; and both side against the labourer to oppress him; one lending his aid to enforce combination laws, while the other upholds game laws, and both enforce the exaction of tithes and of the revenue. Capitalists have in general formed a most intimate union with the landowners, and except when the interest of these classes clash, as in the case of the corn laws, the law is extremely punctilious in defending the claims and exactions of the capitalist.

  In all these circumstances which in relation to the right of property may be considered as the leading objects of legislation, I see no guarantee or protection of the natural right of property. The end for which men are said by Mr. Locke to unite into commonwealths, and put themselves under government, is in practice unknown to the law. The natural right of property far from being protected, is systematically violated, and both government and law seem to exist chiefly or solely, in order to protect and organize the most efficacious means of protecting the violation. On the men who produce a bushel of malt, nature bestows it every grain; the law instead of guaranteeing to them its full use and enjoyment, takes three-fourths of it from them. To those by whose combined labour the ground is cultivated, and the harvest gathered in, nature gives every sheaf and every stalk which they choose to collect; the law, however, takes almost the whole of it away. Under the false pretence of protecting them in the use and enjoyment of the produce of their labour, it takes so large a portion of it for those who make and administer the law, that what it leaves, did it secure that, would scarcely be worth having; but the system, for administering which payment is demanded, is so completely one of extortion, that the actual labourer is only allowed to retain for his own use as small a portion as possible of the munificent' gift with which nature rewards his exertions. Under one miserable pretext or another, the wisdom of politicians continually thwarts the decrees of the Almighty. To ensure a national superiority, or the welfare of men's souls, are maxims equally efficacious in their eyes to justify violating the natural right of property.

  When we look at the great number of laws restricting industry, and at the great number intended to exact a revenue for the government, rent for the landowner, tithes for the priests, and profit for the capitalist, we feel more surprised that industry should have survived the immense burdens laid on it, than that a few thieves should prefer living by open plunder, risking the punishment of the laws, to a life of unrewarded labour. That men yet labour at all, is an admirable contradiction of the law-makers' base assertion, I say base, because it is made for a base purpose—that men are naturally averse from labour. The legislator has been careful to punish combinations of workmen, careful to compel the labourer to work, careful to enforce the payment of tithes and taxes, but, I protest that I never yet heard of a law which had for its object to secure to the labourer the undisturbed, unfettered, unlimited enjoyment of the gifts which nature bestows on him, and him alone. I do not believe, indeed, that any law can effect this for every law effecting appropriation is, in principle, an alteration or a violation of the natural right.∗

  The important and yet perhaps trite fact to which I wish by these remarks to direct your attention is, that law and governments are intended, and always have been intended, to establish and protect a right of property, different from that which, in common with Mr. Locke, I say is ordained by nature. The right of property created and protected by the law, is the artificial or legal right of property, as contra-distinguished from the natural right of property. It may be the theory that government ought to protect the natural right; in practice, government seems to exist only to violate it. Never has the law employed any means whatever to protect the property nature bestows on individuals; on the contrary, it is a great system of means devised to appropriate in a peculiar and unjust manner the gifts of nature. It exacts a revenue for the government,—it compels the payment of rent,—it enforces the giving of tithes, but it does not ensure to labour its produce and its reward.

  In saying this I wish to be understood as stating a fact, not expressing censure. I am more interested in describing and in accounting for social misery, than in condemning past faults, or in proposing schemes to change the constitution of the country, or the habits of mankind. I must at the same time, in solemn earnest aver, that to the violation of the natural right of property, effected by the law, we owe most of our social miseries. If, overlooking the commands of nature to walk upon our feet, to use hands for fabricating instruments, and to live together, men were mad enough to crawl like the serpent with their bellies on the ground, seeking for no food but what their mouths could thus find, and were to live separate and apart from one another like beasts of prey, we, who are sensible of those commands, should attribute the want, ignorance, and destitution which must on this supposition be their lot, even if they could preserve their existence, to their disobedience. But surely no commands are more plain and certain, than those establishing ownership, and a right of property in the things which each individual makes; and therefore we are entitled at once to conclude, that the continual violation by the law-maker of the natural right of property, must be a prolific source of social misery. It is demonstrated, from the structure of the body, that man was intended to walk erect, and the fact that nature bestows all wealth on industry, is a demonstration that she intended only industry to be wealthy. We have overlooked her intention, and suffer accordingly as much misery as if we had followed Rousseau a advice, and walked on our hands and feet.

  If there be one command of that Power which created and sustains the universe, and which brings about all the consequences of man's actions more clear than another—and infinitely clearer than any commands that were delivered, as is said on Mount Sinai, or propagated at any time in the past-away kingdom of Jerusalem, it is that which bestows on each individual whatever his hands can catch, can fashion or create Nature or God, whichever the reader pleases, for the two words signify the same everliving First Cause, commands, and always has commanded, that industry should be followed by wealth, and idleness by destitution. But political society is formed on the principle of violating this command. Those who pretend to teach and enforce the commands of the Deity, the priest and the law-maker, go about continually to violate them. Nay, it may be stated that their very existence, prescribing conduct, and exacting the wealth of others, to support their power of prescribing conduct, is a violation of the commands of God. Away, then, with that delusion, with that hypocrisy which, pretending to explain to us these commands, and to enforce them, begins by denying that one amongst them which is the most certain, the most clearly expressed, the most easily understood, and the most universally recognized. Laws and constitutions—political organisation altogether, being founded on a violation of the natural right of property, is the source of most, if not all the evils, moral and physical, which yet afflict our race; but which, I verily believe, we are speedily destined to get rid of, substituting the government of God for the rule of ignorant perverse men.

  The stale pretext that nature has not established any right of property, and the stale excuses for violating the natural right, continually made by unthinking persons, deserve only to be met by contempt. Na ture regulates and determines all things, including those sufferings which follow from violating her decrees. When the principles of good government are universally recognized, we may perhaps believe that raising an immense revenue for their support is necessary to the happiness of all. When no example shall be found of a virtuous man not priest-ridden, we may assert that tithes are beneficial. When it is demonstrated that nobles and capitalists are more essential to the existence of society than labourers, we shall be justified in honouring the vaunted merits of an aristocracy. But, till all these things are established, men may be excused for believing that nature is a better judge of what is suitable to society than law-makers, and that those institutions, if they can only be maintained by violating the natural right of property, ought to be swept away. When the wisdom of man shall surpass the wisdom of God, we may suppose that there is some reason in the false pretexts continually put forth by priests, and kings, and their agents.

  The words, laws of nature, decrees of nature, which I so freely use, are certainly imposing phrases, and when we speak of such decrees in the material world, we mean an irresistible power which man can neither change nor influence. It appears therefore at first somewhat ridiculous to speak of such decrees in the moral world, and in the same breath to speak of their violation. If we look closer at the matter, the ludicrousness will vanish. The decrees of nature concerning the moral world are as unchangeable as the laws of matter; and I should join in the laugh against myself, if the decrees I have mentioned did not unchangeably exist. When, Sir, was it known, that wants could be supplied without labour? When has man, when has society, existed. for ever so short a period, but on the fruits of industry? I should concede to those who deny that nature establishes a right of property, the correctness of their opinions, did she suffer the right, which I say she establishes, to be ever infringed, much less abrogated, with impunity. Mark, with impunity is the important consideration, because we can trespass on physical laws, but not with impunity. Both in the material and moral world the commands of nature are only known to us through our own pleasures and pains. If we run our head against a post, she warns us by the pain that it is harder than our skull, and commands us to make use of our eyes; if we throw ourselves from a height she breaks our bones, as a punishment, or puts an end to the existence, which would become unbearable from our own carelessness or folly. When we examine the question of property, we shall in like manner find that much misery is caused by our opposing the natural right of property. Nature warns us against that by pain, in the same manner as she warns us to respect the laws of gravity.

  We shall also find on examination that the artificial right of property is continually modified by the natural right. Nature therefore suffers us not to abrogate her decrees in the moral world; and she suffers us not to violate them with impunity. She only permits us at our own cost to inflict pain on ourselves, or do wrong for a season, which we can do, as well by violating physical as by violating moral laws. Protesting continually against our rebellion, and warning us continually by its evil consequences, she ultimately, in her own good time, reasserts her authority. She is as absolute in the moral, as in the physical world; governing and regulating every part of it with the most thorough mastery, but kindly compassionate to the infancy of her children, she allows them a long probation to learn her commands. The least knowledge of history is sufficient to satisfy us that her decrees as to property, have always been in operation, are now overthrowing every conflicting in stitution, and are gradually restoring what the ignorance of man, rather than his malevolence, has vainly endeavoured to set aside.

  All the efforts made by the legislator to maintain his artificial right of property, are transient, and bygoing facts; the principles which establish the natural right of property are eternal. Their operation is constant though silent, and they are leading forward a very different, if not a better futurity, than what the legislator contemplates. His system has been and will be overruled by them. To show in what manner his decrees as to property have been set aside by the natural laws which establish a right of property, we must advert to the circumstances under which a right of property in land was established in Europe. The changes in man's condition, have made that right which perhaps was sanctioned by reason when it was founded, unsuitable and injurious at present. The right of property in land, however, from its importance, and its peculiarity, deserves to be separately treated of, and I shall postpone my remarks on it to my next communication. At present I rest,

  Yours, &c.

  A Labourer.

  LETTER THE FOURTH.
  ON THE RIGHT OF PROPERTY IN LAND.

  Origin of the right of property in land.—Changes which it is undergoing.—The quantity of land required to raise subsistence gradually diminishes.—Important principle overlooked by Mr. Malthus and his followers.—Appropriation of land in Europe.

  TO H. BROUGHAM, ESQ. M. P. F.R.S. &c.

  Sir,

  The right of property in land is now to be briefly examined, and you will readily believe that I reject no conclusions because they militate, as the very principle I shall borrow from Mr. Locke, seems to militate against the power assumed by modern governments, over the soil. He says accurately, “as much land as a man tills, plants, and improves, cultivates, and can use, the product of so much is his property.”—“This is the measure of property in land, which nature has well set by the extent of man's labour, and the conveniences of life; no man's labour could subdue or appropriate all, nor could his enjoyment consume more than a small part, so that it would be impossible in this way to intrench on the right of another, or acquire to himself a property to the injury of his neighbours.∗ Unfortunately, however, this admirable principle has not the smallest influence over legislators in dealing out that which, by the bye, is not theirs, the land of new colonies. It is merely an harmonious agreement, remarked by this excellent philosopher, between the physical powers of man and the principles of justice, which the most depraved acknowledge even when they violate them; but except in the very infancy of society it has seldom been acted on. It is rather a principle which, in the long run, will guide the conduct of mankind, rather the prophetic announcement, as it were, of a future fact, than the exact description of a fact which has already existed, or of a principle on which men have already acted.

  There are many things about the right of property in land, which those who study it only in codes of human laws, never can comprehend, but which ought to be deeply meditated by those who, like you, aspire to influence the opinions and the destinies of their fellow men. You must be sensible, for example, that the quantity of land necessary for each individual, according to the principle just quoted from Mr. Locke, must vary with the qualities and situation of the soil with the skill and knowledge of the people; and, in short, with the successive changes in the condition of mankind. It is a fact of some importance in this inquiry, that the same power which has established a right of property in what individuals create or produce, has also provided for the continual multiplication of the species, which multiplication affects the right of property in land. It is plain and obvious, that a species of appropriation (suitable to the period when only a few human beings wandered over the earth) must be injurious when every part of it is crowded with our fellow creatures. In fact, the sort of appropriation adapted to a nation of hunters, would be impossible in a nation of manufacturers and agriculturists. What sort of a subsistence, for example, could a hunter obtain within twelve miles of St. Paul's? In the multiplication of mankind, therefore, in improvements in skill and knowledge, as well as in diversities of soil and climate, we find principles which continually modify the appropriation of land, and alter the quantity to which a man can properly devote his labour. They extend their influence over the future, as well as over the past. The manner in which the multiplication of mankind thus makes a species of appropriation, once sanctioned by their circumstances and condition, now injurious to their welfare, is deserving the serious attention of the legislator.

  In the earliest known periods mankind were few in numbers, and equally ignorant and destitute. From the beginning of history to the present day,—from Mount Ararat to Melville Island, the first known condition of society is that of scattered and wandering savages; destitute of arts, of knowledge, and of skill Man was everywhere originally, if ancient history, and modern voyages are to be credited, a wild hunter, or fisher, contending with beasts as ferocious as himself, for a scanty subsistence.∗ He had no fixed habitation, and wherever he was driven by his necessities, or tempted by the probability of obtaining the means of subsistence, thither he wandered. When the earth was thinly inhabited, each individual, or each tribe, like the Esquimaux, and other savages, at present, or like Abraham and Lot, when one drove his flocks to the right hand, and the other to the left,—might travel over many square leagues of land, using the whole of its produce, if he did not till and plant it, without encountering any other individual or tribe, and of course without infringing on any other person's rights. Under such circumstances, though no individual could possibly care much for any particular spot of ground, yet to each one it must have appeared,—and in fact it was,—necessary to have an extensive district, wherefrom to obtain wild animals, or wild fruits. In the early stages of society, all men must have found, just as the Indians of America now find, that hunting grounds, which we know to be large enough to subsist many thousand agriculturists, were necessary to supply a few hunters with the means of subsistence; and, like the Indians, being in a similar condition of society, they might appropriate, as theirs, all the land over which they roamed and hunted. A right of property in land, on the principle of each individual having as much as he can use the product of, must then have been very differently modified, as it was dictated by very different circumstances, from such a right at present. Each individual would then require more square acres than he now requires square feet.

  From rude and savage hunters, men became shepherds, feeding flocks and herds which they had previously tamed; but even in this condition they required extensive territories, though not equal to those required by the hunters, to nourish their cattle and themselves. They accordingly roamed over such districts, each of which was limited by some almost impassable mountain, ocean, or desart: but like the Tartars of our own time, they did not fix their habitation in any one spot within their impassable boundaries. The German tribes, at the time when history first records their appearance, living in moveable houses or wagons, will undoubtedly recur to you as an illustration. In this state of society, the right of property in land would not be limited by the quantity which a man could dig and cultivate, but by the quantity necessary for the pasturage of his cattle, including a large portion to lie continually fallow, and recover its natural herbage.

  Subsequently men became agriculturists, and then a comparatively small space sufficed to supply each one with the means of subsistence. They fixed their habitations, and around them they fixed landmarks, each one appropriating as much land as he was able consistently with the rudeness of original agriculture, to till, plant, and cultivate, and as he deemed necessary to supply his family with food. Of course, the agriculturist not only required a less spot of ground than the shepherd, or the hunter, but, in order to prosecute his art, he was obliged to remain in one spot. That spot, within which he limited his labours; that small spot, which he and his family cultivated, he called his; and then the right of property over land, became more absolute as it was more restricted, than when men were hunters or shepherds. Each individual found a decreasing extent of surface suffice to supply his wants, as the condition of mankind was changed from that of hunters to shepherds, and from that of shepherds to agriculturists. No person can deny the almost universality of these great and successive changes in the condition of our species; and, looked at in this comprehensive manner,—extending our view over many ages and countries,—we learn this most important truth; namely, that as the condition of man changed from a shepherd to a hunter, and from that to an agriculturist so the quantity of land required to supply him with the means of subsistence, became less and less.

  But it is also obvious, that skilful agriculture obtains more produce from a given space than rude agriculture. Thus, as agriculture is improved, the quantity of land necessary to supply each individual with the means of subsistence diminishes. As mankind have multiplied, and as time has flowed on, knowledge has been extended, and the arts improved. Agriculture sharing the general fate, has also been improved, and is continually improving; so that a less and less quantity of land gradually suffices for the maintenance of individuals. The same process, then, after the introduction of agriculture, goes on as before, and the same principle is found continually to operate, it being dependant on the increase of mankind.

  I need not inform you, in corroboration of this statement, that the population of all Europe has, continually increased since the beginning of history; and that the population of the countries in which improvements in agriculture have of late been most conspicuous, has also much augmented. Formerly, much ground was allowed to remain fallow every third year, which is now regularly tilled, and sowed with some green crop. The tillage of the third year is a third more labour vested in any particular spot. This is a specimen of the manner in which, as knowledge is extended, and as men become skilful agriculturists, and as the quantity of land which each one requires to provide him with the means of subsistence is gradually diminished, so more labour is gradually required for any given space. Agricultural processes are, however gradually simplified; man performs his task with less muscular exertion; the instruments he uses are improved; but the increase of his skill, which enables him to labour more effectually, and to produce more within a given space, also compels him to restrict his operations to a narrowing surface. As he requires a less space to supply him with food, he will naturally and necessarily confine his labours to that, and the right of each individual to own land, on Mr. Locke's principle, ought to be gradually limited to an ever narrowing, ever decreasing space.

  Perhaps you may suppose, that the collecting of many small farms into the hands of one farmer,—a process which for some years was going on in this country, though it appears now to have stopped,—is an exception to these remarks. I am speaking, however, of the quantity of land from which increasing skill obtains a sufficient quantity of subsistence, and of the decreasing surface to which, as labour becomes skilful, it will be necessarily confined, not of the quantity of land which a capitalist, or farmer, commanding the service of any given number of labourers, finds it at present most convenient to hire. The size farms ought to be of, in the present condition of society, is quite a distinct question from the quantity of land necessary to supply an individual with the means of subsistence, and therefore determining the natural right of property in land; but, I apprehend, that even the same rule will hold with regard to farms. As more labour is required for any given surface, it becomes necessary that the persons having farms should limit their business of inspection and management to diminishing spaces. Where skill is carried to a great extent, as in horticulture, and much labour is required, as in the neighbourhood of large towns—wherever the population is dense, and garden cultivation introduced, and such a cultivation is gradually extending itself from every town throughout this country, aye, and throughout the continent, the quantity of land which each master-gardener can conveniently manage, is small, compared to the quantity a man may with propriety farm in a remote part of Northumberland. A few hundred acres, at the utmost, and very generally much less than a hundred, (most gardens not being above five or ten acres), is the extent of any gardener's, or nurseryman's possession, in the neighbourhood of the metropolis; but farms of one, two, three, or four thousand acres are not unknown in parts of the country distant from the metropolis.

  As mankind have, in general passed, or are passing, through the stages of hunters and shepherds, and have become agriculturists—as agriculture, wherever we know any thing of it—that is, throughout Europe, has been gradually improved, and is continually improving; and as European knowledge of all kinds, with all the arts of Europe, including agriculture, are extending themselves over the globe, giving us reason to believe that the same process of improvement will be everywhere gone through, it may be supposed that Nature, with her wonted benevolence, has provided, that, as men are multiplied, and knowledge and skill increase, which take place universally, and conjointly, a less and less quantity of land shall suffice to supply each individual with the means of subsistence.

  Adopting Mr. Locke's rule, then, for the appropriation of land,—“the extent of man's labour, and the conveniences of life,” it may also be inferred, that the property of each individual in land, will, by the laws of nature, be gradually contracted within a diminishing surface. That seems to be the natural rule of appropriation. It is effected on a great scale in America, where a few Indians are making way for millions of the descendants of Europeans, and on a smaller scale in all Europe, where property in land is continually subdivided. The legal appropriation and division of land have not, indeed, taken place, on Mr. Locke's principle, or the natural rule; on the contrary, the object of the law, generally speaking, has been, and is, to prevent the natural principles from which the rule of appropriation is deduced, from coming into full operation. For example, the lawglver has continually tried by the law of primogeniture, to prevent the division of land. In relation, however, to the prevalent doctrines concerning population, and also in relation to every law regulating the right of property in land, I take the general rule inferred on a large scale, from the successive changes in the condition of mankind, and the successive improvements in agriculture, viz. that a diminishing surface suffices to supply man with food as population multiplies, to be one of the most important to which society can have its attention directed.∗

  It ought to be remembered in conjunction with the rule just mentioned, being also of great importance, that when the land of Europe was appropriated, many of the facts from which I have inferred the rule, had not been called into existence, and could not possibly be known. There was an incipient species of agriculture in the Roman empire, but the then prevalent existence of slavery prevented those continual improvements in agriculture, which form one great element of the deduction. It should also be recollected that the rude tribes, who, on the destruction of the Roman empire, overran and appropriated Europe, knew much less of agriculture than the Romans; they were ignorant too of the successive changes which had previously taken place in the condition of man, and they could not possibly have had any knowledge of the important rule for the appropriation of land, to which I have alluded. Knowing very little of agriculture, their ideas of property in land were derived, from a state of society in which men were hunters or shepherds, and when each man required a comparatively large quantity of land to provide the means of subsistence.

  Dr. Smith remarks, “that laws,”—and we may extend his remark to customs—“are continued long after the circumstances which first gave occasion to them, and could render them reasonable, are no more.” The rule, concerning the appropriation of land, just mentioned, not only could not possibly have been known when the land of Europe was appropriated, but those northern and wandering tribes, who appropriated it successively, from the first to the tenth century, must have acted on a rule that was borrowed from a previous state of society in which agriculture was scarcely in existence. Land was accordingly appropriated on the principles and habits of their wandering shepherd ancestors. Even at this day this rule is not generally acknowledged, nor are its consequences attended to. The mind is slow in getting rid of the habits of thought dictated by any pre-existing circumstances, and an opinion derived from times when men were hunters and shepherds, viz. that a considerable quantity of land is a great benefit, and necessary to enable each man to provide himself with the means of subsistence, even now dictates our conduct. Be all these things, however, as they may, it necessarily happened, because there could not be cultivation without appropriation, that the land of Europe was all appropriated when agriculture was in its infancy, and when the great truth I have just brought under your notice had not been developed to the understanding.

  Accordingly, “when the German and Scythian nations overran the western provinces of the Roman empire, the chiefs and principal leaders of those nations acquired or usurped to themselves the greater part of the land of those countries. A great part of them was uncultivated, but no part of them, whether cultivated or uncultivated, was left without a proprietor.”∗ Can it be supposed that these barbarians followed a rule in appropriating the land that was consistent with the present state of agriculture and of society? And must we tenaciously adhere to the rules which they in their ignorance did follow? They appropriated the land by a rule borrowed from previous habits of life; that is, in large portions, not at all adapted to the present state of population, of the arts, and of knowledge; and not at all adapted to the present state of society, but admirably adapted to the wild life they and their ancestors had led. Accustomed to hunting, first as a means of obtaining subsistence, and afterwards keeping up the custom as an amusement, each head of a family needed a large tract, that he might not come into hostile conflict with other members of his own tribe. Deriving their chief nourishment from herds of cattle, and from swine, each chief required a large space to supply himself and his family and followers with food. Accordingly all Europe was parcelled out by the German tribes, in what are now become princely portions. The followers of Alboin in Italy, of Theodoric in Spain, of Clovis in France, of Hengist in England, and subsequently of William the Conqueror, appropriated the land, not according to what quantity each man could dig by his hand, but rather according to the quantity his horse could gallop round.† The appropriation of the land in such large portions was, for our subject the original sin; but I do not accuse the appropriators of meditating evil. If they had known the rule above alluded to, they would not have encumbered their descendants with so much superfluous care. If they had foreseen the great change which has now taken place, they would undoubtedly have been more anxious to make them mortgagees than mortgagors of the land, and would at once have given them, after the fashion of the long-sighted clergy, a claim on a certain definite proportion of the annual produce, as a more efficacious instrument of power, than land. If they had been endowed with prescience, they would probably have selected, as even better than tithes, a large share of the taxes, and made them holders of a national debt. They wished to obtain wealth, and secure power, and the rule they acted on to accomplish their wish, was dictated by the habits of a previous pastoral, and rude state of existence.

  The persons who thus appropriated the soil of Europe, did so by a right of conquest. They did not lay down the sword the instant they had overrun the land, they kept it drawn in their hand, and engraved with it laws for the conquered. The countries they overran had been previously cultivated by slaves in a rude manner. In appropriating the soil, they appropriated its inhabitants, reduced some to slavery, and continued the slavery of others. Power so acquired, and privileges so established, were the basis of the present political and legal, not social, edifice of Europe. These conquerors were the first legislators. By an almost uninterrupted succession, the power of legislation has continued in the hands of their descendants to the present day. If other conquerors have on some occasions overcome them, it has only been to succeed to their places. Whatever names, Danes, Normans, or Saxons, they may have borne, is not of the slightest consequence,—the principle is the same; on conquest all the legislation of Europe is founded, and conquerors and their descendants have been the law-makers.

  “Almost all governments,” Hume correctly observes, “which exist at present, or of which there remains any record, have been founded originally on usurpation or conquest, or both.”∗ “The laws,” says a writer in the Quarterly Review, “in relation to the inferior classes of society, were throughout all European governments, made by the strong against the weak, the natural consequence of government founded on oppression.”† “The first materials,” it is stated in the Edinburgh Review, “of the laws of England, were little more than the schemes of avarice and aggrandizement, or the ebullitions of revenge. The text, though written often upon sand, was written with the sword. The practice, indeed, afforded an evil commentary, but the law itself was the parent crime.”‡ And this law, founded on oppression, upheld by force and fraud, intended solely to preserve ill-gotten power, or ill-gotten wealth, to maintain the dominion of an aristocracy, and the supremacy of a priesthood, to perpetuate the slavery, ignorance, and poverty of the great body of the people, the political writers of our day, call on all mankind to obey, as the only means of social salvation. Obedience to such law is the master-folly of mankind; and this folly is inculcated with as much pertinacity by those who have apparently no interest in making men fools and slaves, as if their own bread, and their own breath, hung on the doctrine.

  The great and important fact, which it is necessary to promulgate far and wide then is, that all European legislation was originally founded on oppression. But the oppressors and their descendants have never ceased to be in possession of the power of legislation. The authors I have just quoted may wish to except from the general principles they lay down the legislation of their own age and country, but I can make no such exception. Seeing that conquerors have always been the legislators, and knowing that they have always endeavoured to preserve their own power, I cannot avoid concluding, that the law has always been made with a view to preserve, as much as possible, that appropriation of the soil, that artificial right of property, and that system of government, which the northern barbarians, under the blind impulse of previous habits, utterly ignorant of the form society was destined to assume, and utterly ignorant of that rule for the appropriation of land. I have quoted from Mr. Locke, and illustrated by a brief view of the changes of our condition,—originally estab lished. It is not for me to condemn habits which were too general, not to be the result of natural general laws. Neither is it for me to enquire into what good purpose those habits were ultimately destined to promote; but as they were general, I cannot refuse to believe that they were necessary parts of the great scheme of creation, and intended finally to subserve the happiness of our species. I am less anxious to investigate final causes, than to state general facts; and it is such a fact, that all the laws of Europe have been made with a view to maintain and preserve by force an artificial right of property, a scheme of appropriating the land, and a system of political power, all of which were originally established by the sword. It is another such fact, that the laws have not accomplished this object. This fact, however, is not so plain and palpable as the former; and to make it evident with a view of shewing how nugatory and how vain have been the efforts to set aside the natural right of property, is one of the principal objects I have in view. I shall postpone pursuing it to another letter; and at present remain.

  Your obedient servant,

  A Labourer.

  LETTER THE FIFTH.
  THE LEGAL RIGHT OF PROPERTY IS UNDERGOING SUBVERSION BY THE NATURAL RIGHT OF PROPERTY.

  False pretexts and real objects of the legislator.—Proofs that his real object of preserving his power, has not been attained.—He has failed to secure the superiority of the landlords, and the legal rights of the clergy.—The revenue of the state.—The abolition of slavery, and the rise and progress of the middle classes, contrary to the legislator's will.—Illustration of the usury laws.—Alteration in the right of property.

  TO H. BROUGHAM, ESQ. M. P. F.R.S. &c.

  Sir,

  I explained, in my third letter, what appears to me to have been the great object of the legislator as to property; in my last letter I called your attention to the origin of the present appropriation of the land of Europe; and I am now to shew you that the acts of the legislator have not been less inefficacious to obtain his own object, than mischievous to society. If I can make it clear by adverting, in some detail, to the history of property, that he has failed most signally to accomplish the object he has proposed to himself, even as to property, which seems a measurable substance, and some what within the grasp of legislation, I shall do something, I apprehend, to make it doubtful whether he can comprehend, or is likely to attain the more abstruse and recondite objects of preventing crime and promoting virtue.

  The great object contemplated by the legislator, I observed, was to preserve his own power, and the dominion of the law, and with that view to keep in the possession of the landed aristocracy, and the clergy, and the government, all the wealth of society; and we are going coolly to examine if the legislator has succeeded in these objects.

  Allow me, first of all, to notice that the pretexts which the legislator puts forth, about preserving social order, and promoting public good, must not be confounded with his real objects. The public good is not cognizable by human faculties; and he who pretends that his actions are guided by a view to that, is an impostor, who looks only to his own interest and ambition. To make that the pretended motive for action, is so obviously a mere pretext, as to need no further refutation. Nor is the pretext that he promotes social order better founded. Social order is the mutual dependence of all those who contribute to the subsistence and welfare of society. It includes the manner in which they assist and protect each other, and provide for their mutual wants by the interchange of their respective products. If by social order be meant the great scheme of social production, mutual dependance, and mutual service, which grows out of the division of labour, that scheme I will boldly assert the legislator frequently contravenes, but never promotes—that grows from the laws of man's being, and precedes all the plans of the legislator, to regulate or preserve it. In fact, his attempts to keep in one state what is continually in progress are mischievous. We must then set aside as mere pretexts the assertions of the legis lator, that he intends to preserve social order, and promote the public welfare; and we must deal with legislation as solely intended to preserve the power and privileges of the legislator.

  Has he preserved that power? Is the authority of the legislator undiminished? Is it not rather questioned on every side? Look at thrones overturned! and laws established; by the legislator? No; but by the great body of the people. Look at every one of his acts questioned by the press, and by the press set aside, or confirmed; the dominion which it has now acquired, and which it exercises throughout Europe, being a full and complete refutation of the opinion that the legislator has preserved his power.

  If then it be admitted, that the legislation of all Europe was originally founded in conquest, and that the great object of the legislator has, and must have been at every moment to maintain his own power,—and if it be plain that he has every where lost, or is fast losing his power, it must also be plain, on a great scale, whatever persons may suppose to the contrary in detail, that the great object kept in view by legislators has not been attained. It is only necessary to compare the past political condition of Europe, with which you are well acquainted, with its present political condition—to notice how the power of kings, nobles, and priests has gradually decayed, while the legislator has always endeavoured to maintain their powers and privileges—to become immediately sensible of his conspicuous and complete failure. When we contemplate long periods, the truth that society has a course of its own, which legislation does not foresee and cannot regulate, and which has gradually carried it away from the control of successive generations of lawgivers, becomes clearly evident.

  I might without difficulty draw numerous illus trations of this important truth from the history of the last twenty years; but I shall content myself with referring to scenes in which you have taken a part, and which are fresh in every man's recollection. What, for example, produced your own motion on the subject of law reform, but a conviction of the discrepancy between the present state of the law, and the state of society which created an overruling necessity to alter the law? Was it the legislator's inclination, or a similar necessity which compelled him unwillingly to alter the Navigation Laws, to introduce the New Police, to abolish the Test and Corporation Acts, and to emancipate the Catholics? I can now add, having lived to see you Lord Chancellor, was it the will of the legislator, or an overruling necessity for a change in the laws, and for an improvement in the system of government, is which forced you and your party into office, and compelled the House of Commons to set about reforming itself? Was it your will also, and the will of your colleagues, or your unwilling task, to undertake the settlement of the tithe question in Ireland? Have you not, my lord, been forced against your inclinations, to propose some modification in the tithe laws of that country, and do you not feel that that important question is already practically settled by the conduct of the people. Deceive yourself, my lord, and others no longer, but learn, from the history of the last few years, to study the laws, which impose on the legislator a necessity of obeying them. Since the time when I first began to take notice of public events, the conduct of the legislator, not merely in England, but in almost every country of Europe, has been dictated by a tardy and unwilling, and in his case, a disgraceful obedience to the dictates of public opinion. His power, my lord, has every where passed into decrepitude, and is merging in that possessed by the press, as the representative of the public reason.

  I may confirm these observations by a more general view. None but demons would voluntarily work mischief, and we only class legislators in the same species as ourselves, when we assert that they have been generally disposed to promote the happiness of the people. At least they have so professed, and so have the people believed, or their power could not have lasted a single day. But what is the fact? Happiness being a very indefinite term, let us substitute for it prosperity, or wealth; and then we see that those countries in which the power of the legislator has been greatest, and he has exercised it most, restricting every branch of trade, and providing as he thinks for the conduct and welfare of the people in the most minute particulars, such as France under the old and under the imperial regime, Spain, Germany, &c. have not made an equal progress, in wealth and prosperity, to Holland, England, and the United States, where the power of the legislator has been less and much less called into exercise. I admit that the legislator has wished to promote the happiness of nations, but I affirm that where he has interfered most, prosperity has been least, and I conclude on this general view, that he has every where failed in his object.

  Let me further ask you, what is the main principle of those doctrines of free trade, which you and almost all other enlightened men now advocate? Is it not that trade,—that human industry thrives most when restrictions are removed; in other words, when legislation does not interfere with it? The doctrines of free trade, then, must convince all who believe in them, that legislation has not promoted, and cannot promote national wealth, or national happiness, which are corelative terms. Supposing national welfare to be the object of legislation, those doctrines must satisfy every man that legislation generally has as completely failed in effecting what it lyingly and boastingly promises to mankind, as it has especially failed to secure, as I shall now show you, the power of the classes it has aimed to uphold.

  To look, then, at the failure of the legislator more particularly in relation to the right of property. You admit, I hope, as the landowner and the legislator have been one and the same person, that his great object has been, as I stated in my third letter, to preserve his dominion over the soil, and to secure large revenues to the landowners, to the clergy, and to the government, as a means of protecting the possessions of these two classes. Let us first ascertain what has happened with regard to the landowners of our own country.

  The whole soil of Europe was engrossed in large masses, as I mentioned in my former letter, by successive conquerors, and with the land the conquerors engrossed all the wealth of the country. “The original engrossing of uncultivated lands,” says Dr. Smith, speaking of the act of the northern barbarians, already alluded to, “though a great, might have been but a transitory, evil. They might soon have been divided again, and broke into small parcels, either by succession or alienation. The law of primogeniture hindered them from being divided by succession, the introduction of entails prevented their being broke into small parcels by alienation.”∗ Primogeniture and entails, cherished by all the legislating classes of Europe, were intended to preserve landed estates entire; Have these devices succeeded? Is the theory, that land will be divided into smaller portions, as agricultural skill increases, and as population multiplies, contradicted by facts? Are the nobility of Europe now in possession of such vast domains, as the leaders of the German hordes occupied when they overran Europe?

  Opulent as many of the nobles of Great Britain now are, none of them are masters of such extensive districts as belonged to the immediate followers of William the Conqueror. The Earl of Grosvenor and the Duke of Bedford have very ample possessions, but they do not, I believe, quite equal in extent of surface the 846 manors possessed by the brother of that invader. They are probably much richer than that king himself was, but they do not own so much of the surface of the country as many of his followers did, Throughout Europe it is manifest, when we extend our view over long periods, that the quantity of land in the possession of individuals has been gradually lessened. The effect of the increase of population, when all the members of the same family have equal shares, in dividing and breaking into small parcels all landed property, has of late been too often complained of, not to be familiarly known. But this increase has been going on for ages, and has had its effects even over those princely properties that were once the patrimonies of the Montmorencies, the Percies, the Guises, and the Mowbrays. Without inquiring further into the immediate causes of the breaking up of the great estates, which once were in possession of the nobility of Europe, though it has been much too general to be justly attributed to a cunning king, or a contriving minister, I am content to state, as a fact illustrative of my argument, that the land of Europe has been gradually divided, since it was first appropriated by the northern barbarians into smaller portions than they seized on, notwithstanding the attempts to prevent such a division, by the laws of primogeniture and entail.

  In many cases, the domains which the conquerors of Europe appropriated, such as those of the dukedoms of Normandy and Brittany in France, and of Lancaster and York in England, merged in the crown; but the crown now possesses comparatively few domains in either of these countries, these estates having subsequently been sold or given away in an almost infinite number of small portions. None of them remain undivided. None of the districts appropriated by the Norman barons have descended unbroken to their present heirs. They have all been divided and sub-divided, and the portions have generally passed into the hands of bankers, clothiers, stock-brokers, merchants, money scriveners, and their descendants. Cut down and divided, however, as the land of the country comparatively is, even these small portions are no longer the actual property of those who are their nominal owners. Sir James Graham says, “that not less than nine out of ten” of the little pieces into which the estates of our great barons have been split, “are encumbered with mortgages.”∗ Each estate probably is encumbered with several; so that, in fact, the absolute property even of these fragments of princely domains, does not belong to the nominal owner. Without including the national debt, which is so well known to be an immense mortgage on the land, divided among a great many persons, that it has been proposed to pay it off, by making over portions of the land to these mortgagees, it is plain, that the nominal land-owner is only the receiver for two, three, four, or perhaps half a dozen creditors. The great object, therefore, at which the legislating land-owners have always aimed, to attain which they have inflicted a great deal of misery on the majority of society—for which they have not hesitated to wage war, and punish people with death, has been completely frustrated. They have not succeeded in keeping estates undivided, and in securing the possession of them in their own families. Through the greater part of Europe, not only has the land been divided into diminishing portions, but it has passed from the descendants of warlike barons, and come into the possession of the children of their once much-despised vassals and slaves.

  So much for the landlords. Have the clergy preserved the share which the law allotted to them? Where are now the prince bishops, the spiritual sovereigns, who formerly taught the nobility arrogance by their example, and enforced obedience by their cunning? Look, however, at what is actually taking place in England and Ireland as to tithes. The present Bishop of Bath and Wells some time ago made the following observation, in a charge which was published and inserted in the newspapers, in reference to England. “This unjust clamour against our church has been not inconsiderably augmented by the unpopularity which has attached itself to the payment of tithes; on this point, however, the public mind has been grossly misled. No body of men in general could have been more moderate in the exaction of their legal dues than the clergy of the established church. The average of the payments received by them has seldom amounted to two-thirds of what was fairly due; whilst it has, for the most part, fallen very considerably below this proportion.” So that the clergy cannot even at present obtain two-thirds of that small pittance of the national wealth, which the law, after appropriating their numerous abbeys and fat lands to the nobility, still endeavours to secure to them. In other words, my lord, the legal right of the clergy to church property, is at least in part an empty name. A somewhat similar state of things, but even more confirmatory of my proposition, exists in Ireland. The legislature decrees, that the Irish shall pay tithes; they continually refuse to obey, or continually evade the law, and for many years past the clergy have never been able to obtain above a half, or even a fourth of their legal dues. Now, however, the business is carried further,—the people have in several counties refused to pay tithes; the ordinary legal force of the government is not sufficient to enforce the clergyman's claims; and what does the legislature? Does it say that the payment of tithes shall and must be enforced? Does it affirm that the rights it ordains shall be observed? Does it now dream of declaring, that the right of the clergy to church property is as good as the right of the peasant to the fruit of his labour? Oh, no. It appoints committees to find out the best way of making its obsolete laws conform to the determination of the Irish people, and to their notions of property. Have its decrees, though so much, so strongly enforced, begotten in the minds of the Irish a complete, a thorough conviction that the clergy have as good a right to tithes as the farmer has to the pigs and horned cattle he rears? No such thing. The utmost power of the legislature has been unable to beget any such notion; its decrees are set aside by the higher power of conscience, and should it attempt to enforce them, it will most probably now, and certainly, hereafter, be triumphantly resisted and overcome by the physical force of those who have both conscience and right on their side. The present state of church property, both in England and Ireland, demonstrates the two principles for which I contend, namely, that the natural right of property,—for it is the conviction in the bosom of the Irish peasant, that he ought to own what he produces, which is at the bottom of his resistance to the claims of the church,—is even now rapidly subverting the legal right of property, and that the decrees of the lawgiver do not establish the rights of the people.

  You may perhaps at first think, that my proposition does not hold good as to government, and that the enormous revenue it levies on the people is a proof that its power of appropriation is not decayed. A closer examination may teach you a different lesson; two-thirds of that revenue belongs to the holders of the national debt, and the government, in point of fact, is only the agent for distributing nearly thirty millions sterling annually among the middle classes of the people. But even that sum it can with difficulty raise. Within the last few years it has been compelled to remit taxes to the amount of several millions; other reductions are called for, and other reductions it will be compelled to make. Great, therefore, as the revenue is, which the government levies, it does not possess an unrestricted control over the pockets of the people, and it must, ere long, abolish those laws, by which it now exacts a considerable sum more than the people think its services merit, and than they are willing to pay.

  But I come to a circumstance, which I regard as a still more conclusive evidence, of a change in the right of property, not willed by the legislator; I allude to the gradual decay of slavery, and the gradual rise of the middle classes in Europe. The right of property established by the northern barbarians, when they overran Europe, between the fifth and the tenth centuries, was established by the sword. By virtue of that they claimed the land, and every thing that could be made by its help. All the men who dwelt on it were appropriated with it, and were compelled to serve and obey them. Their vassals and serfs had to supply them with food, or to labour at their bidding. They were free themselves, but they reduced other men to slavery. Being the masters, they were of course the legislators. Their great object was, as far as that could be effected by legislation, to preserve their power over their slaves. Did they succeed? Where then are now the thralls of England? There are certainly thralls; the labourers are yet unhappily thralls; but they are less the thralls of the landlord than the capitalist. So completely alien to our present habits and thoughts is this principle of slavery, that he who should act on it, would be speedily convinced, that other men had rights which he could not violate with impunity. The power of the sword, which established the wrong of slavery, has obviously passed away, and with that all the means of making men slaves. We now so abhor slavery, that we compel those who are dependant on us to emancipate their slaves. The nation, on this principle, put an end to the slave trade. Even the practices of war, though not regulated by legislation, do not now authorize the appropriation of the soil, and of the persons and property of other men, as was done by the northern barbarians. Those who should imitate their practices would be universally resisted. The only exception I know of to this rule, is the disgraceful and barbarous practice of impressment, by which some men are still forcibly appropriated by others, under the miserable pretext of its promoting the public good, that is, the good of the men so appropriated. We may be sure, then, of this fact. The original legal right of property, established by our progenitors, was a principle of slavery, but that principle has been gradually subverted, and is no longer acted on in any part of Europe.

  Has this great alteration been brought about by the legislator, or in spite of him? The warriors, who, as I have mentioned, overran and appropriated extensive territories, could not possibly cultivate them. Their business was war, love, and legislation, and the land was cultivated by serfs. That they appropriated the people as well as the soil, and compelled them to labour for the advantage of a master, is so well known as not to need any illustration. That personal slavery was established throughout Europe at a former period, and that some men, like cattle, were the property of others, are facts so familiar, that I need not refer to the pages of Turner, Robertson, Hallam, or any other historian, to satisfy you of the correctness of the statement. That one great object of the law was, in the first instance, to keep the slaves obedient to their masters, and after they became emancipated, to keep them, as labourers, poor and dependant, is an admitted fact. If you require any proof of it, I refer you to the statute of labourers, passed in 1350, as Mr. Malthus says, “for the most unjust and impolitic purpose, of preventing the price of labour from rising, after the great pestilence,”∗ —to our several other statutes and regulations “to fix the price of labour, which are generally intended to prevent it from rising,”† and to the numberless regulations against the combination of workmen, which disgraced both the statute and common law of the nation for many ages.

  That our people are not still in a state of vassalage like the serfs of Russia and Hungary, we are indebted, according to Dr. Smith, not to legislation, but, after natural laws, “to the most childish, the meanest, and the most sordid of all vanities,” to gratify which, the ancient feudal lords “gradually bartered their whole power and authority.” “All for ourselves, and nothing for other people, seems in every age of the world to have been the vile maxim of the masters of mankind.” Consistently with that maxim the legislating landowners of Europe did what they could to perpetuate personal slavery, and but for the “silent and insensible operation of commerce and manufactures,”∗ which the legislator has at every period tried to check and restrain, the people of Great Britain would to this day have continued in the same state of vassalage as in the twelfth century. It is plain, from the contemptuous manner in which the working classes ever have been treated by the law—the possession of land or capital being essential to secure even in this country, a share of the common political advantages of the social union, that the legislator always was, and still is, disposed to keep in thraldom and servitude all the descendants of his ancient vassals. But he has not succeeded, and through a great part of Europe, in spite of the legislator, personal slavery has been abolished. The claim of some men to possess others as their property is now universally scouted. This great and beneficial change in the right of property has not been effected by the lawgiver, who has always endeavoured, and is now endeavouring, to keep the slave-descended labourer poor and dependant.

  For my view, it is of much importance to remember, that the legislator always endeavours, as a rule, to preserve institutions. He rarely leads the way in reform, and only reforms to save some remnant of his original errors. From the time when William the First established the curfew Bell, till Lord Eldon's stout resistance against the Catholics, the legislator has sought to preserve principles of government previously acted upon. A state of things, however, directly adverse to his views has continually arisen, and continually compelled him to forego his most cherished views.

  If the change I have noticed were not brought about, in despite of the legislator, by which of his enactments was it accomplished? What law decreed that bondsmen should be free before they had emancipated themselves? By what act of the legislator was it first settled that they should no longer be property, and should possess as their own whatever they could make or earn? I am not acquainted with our statute books; you perhaps know in which, of the many hundred volumes they consist of, this divine decree of the owners of bondmen is to be found. I know, however, that it is vain to look for any such gem of humanity, in that monstrous catalogue of follies and cruelties; and I therefore shall content myself with the authority of those who have traced philosophically, rather than by the route of laws, the progress of society. On that I assert that the right of the serf to personal freedom, and his right to own what he could earn, were not recognised either by the common or written law, till he had obtained freedom and wealth, and with them the power to defend his new rights against his former master.

  I may not be able to confirm this assertion by the authority of those who lived at the time the alteration occurred, because it was not noticed in any of the chronicles of that period, history having been, as it seems to me, confined to recording the follies of mankind. The progress of civilization is so slow and gradual, that its successive movements are never seen as they take place. Society, like the human body, is continually changing; but we must carry back our thoughts for a long period to learn this important fact. Like the hour-hand of a watch, we do not see it moving, but we are convinced that it moves. The chief cause of alterations in its condition, is the increase of population leading to inventions in the arts, discoveries in science, and to the creation of new wealth. In general, historians have not considered physical changes in connection with changes in our moral condition, as if the effects of mechanical improvement were limited to bodily ease and comfort. This is an oversight,—for discoveries in science, and improvements in art, have wrought the greatest changes in our political condition; and almost all the changes in modern times may be traced up to the influence of that mechanical invention, which is called by the comprehensive name of the press. Though we may not be able to foresee the moral effects of the splendid mechanical inventions of modern times, yet we may be sure that they are the harbingers of a more extensive change in the moral condition of society, than was ever effected by political institutions.∗

  Of such important changes there can be no contemporary notice, for they are silent and unobtrusive, not observed at the time, and they can only be ascertained by men who live posterior to the occurrences. Adam Smith, one of our most acute investigators of past events, has satisfactorily proved that the emancipation of villeins, the growth of towns, the rise of the commercial and manufacturing interests, the formation of an influential middle class, and the comparative decay of the landed aristocracy throughout Europe, altering the legal right of property, and altering the political relations of all classes, were brought about in spite of the law. They were the results of natural circumstances, and chiefly of the respect for the natural right of property, which the law has tried in yain to extinguish. Had the abolition of villenage been the result of a positive enactment, there could have been no doubt as to the date of the occurrence.

  “The time and manner, however,” says Adam Smith, “in which so important a revolution was brought about, is one of the most obscure points of modern history. The church of Rome claims great merit in it; and it is certain that so early as the twelfth century, Alexander III. published a bull for the general emancipation of slaves. It seems, however, to have been rather a pious exhortation, than a law to which exact obedience was required from the faithful. Slavery continued to take place almost universally for several centuries afterwards, till it was gradually abolished by the joint operation of the two interests above mentioned, that of the proprietor on the one hand, and that of the sovereign on the other.”∗

  Allow me to direct your attention also to this brief passage of Mr. Millar's work on the English Government. If I do not quote many other authors, it is not from inability, but from disinclination to waste your time. “While the influence and power of the great lords was gradually extended, by the multiplication of their vassals, their authority over each particular vassal was necessarily reduced, and they were obliged to exercise it with greater moderation,† as well as to endeavour, by the arts of popularity, and even sometimes by pecuniary rewards and advantages, to gain the effectual support of their followers.”

  “The improvements made in agriculture (not in the law) produced alterations of no less importance in the state of the peasants or churles. The peasants, as has been formerly observed, were originally bondmen, or slaves. But as from the nature of their employment, and from their living at such a distance as to be beyond the reach of their master's inspection (you will recollect the gradual change by which these masters, for the sake of amusement, came to reside in towns) it was found expedient to excite their industry by bestowing on them successive gratuities and privileges: many of them were enabled at an early period to acquire considerable property, and some of them were advanced to the condition of tenants, entrusted by the master with a discretionary management of their farms. In the natural course of things these tenants were afterwards raised to a still better situation.”∗

  “The first artificers were villeins, or servants of the greater thanes, who happening to discover some ingenuity in the common mechanical arts, were employed by the master in those branches of manufacture which he found requisite for his accommodation. The possession of these farms, according to the rude manner in which agriculture was then practised, did not hinder them from exercising this collateral employment. When these people began to be emancipated from their ancient bondage, they were at liberty to work, not only for their former master, but for any person who chose to employ them, and by working for hire, they drew a regular profit for their labour.”†

  My argument is, that those great changes which the law did not ordain, were effected in spite of the law. The law-maker, instead of facilitating the emancipation of villeins, did what he could to prevent it, but his ambition and his greed were overpowered by the beneficent operation of natural laws. Improvements in art and science, the introduction of commerce and manufactures, consequent upon multiplication of the species,—to all of which, except perhaps the last, which he has opposed indirectly by mis-appropriating the produce of industry, the law-maker has in general been excessively hostile, brought about the abolition of personal slavery.

  Accompanying the gradual abolition of personal slavery, and arising from it the middle class, the tiers etat gradually have arisen, and have attained much influence in the most civilized parts of Europe. To the ancient lawgiver—the lawgiver antecedent to Alfred's time, they, and consequently all their rights, including their right of property, were quite unknown; but to them, and to their continual growth in wealth, power, and intelligence, as a secondary cause, all the revolutions in Europe, whether religious or political, since the tenth century, must be chiefly ascribed. The multiplication of traders, manufacturers, and artizans, and generally of the inhabitants of towns, has worked a most conspicuous alteration in all the moral relations of society, gradually mastering the landed aristocracy, and gradually tending to extinguish it. As men multiplied, new businesses and new arts came into existence; new wants were formed, and new luxuries found to gratify them; new classes of men arose; wealth new in form, and different in kind from any thing our ancestors were acquainted with, was created, and new rights of property to the new wealth were continually developed. The idea of property seems formerly to have been limited to land, or what the gentlemen of your profession still call real property. In fact, even yet, much confusion exists from many persons still speaking of property as if there were only real property. Because the soil is appropriated by one class of men, the labourers have a claim on them for relief; and this was formerly confounded with the appropriation of property. At present the idea of property is much more extensive, and the labour employed about land supplies but a part of the wealth of the community. The right, however, to the new property which is continually created, is now generally held to be as sacred as the right of the landowner to his estate. The growth of a middle class in European society, founded on the gradual recognition of a right of property to this new wealth, and the establishment of that right, are conspicuous alterations in its condition, compared to the time when it consisted only of masters and slaves, and when no other property was recognised but that in land. Now the important questions for your consideration are these. Is the growth of this middle class, and the respect for their right of property, the results of the will of the law-maker, or have they taken place in spite of his will?

  Need I further ask, if the feudal law-maker, the warlike baron, the armour-cased knight, or the battle-axe-wielding king, willed the rise and growth, and increase in wealth of, those pedlars and traders, whose quiet and peaceful, and humble occupations, as they have spread through society, have gradually extinguished all the regretted glories of chivalry, and have equally subdued the belligerent propensities of the knight, and the predatory habits of the baron? No fact seems more certain, than that the inhabitants of towns, the middle classes of Europe, grew into influence and power, altering all the political relations of individuals and of states, in spite of the land-owners, who were the legislators of Europe. I shall content myself with the following pithy sentence, as the authority for my assertion. “The lords despised the burghers, whom they considered not only as a different order, but as a parcel of emancipated slaves, almost of a different species from themselves. The wealth of the burghers never failed to provoke their envy and indignation, and they plundered them upon every occasion, without mercy or remorse.”∗ When the burghers, the inhabitants of towns, the slaves who had emancipated themselves in spite of the legislating landowning lords, had struggled into existence and strength, they had to fight their way to security and influence against the sword-bearing law-maker. For ages, that is, at least from the eighth to the sixteenth century, the contest was carried on till it issued, as we fortunately experience, in the establishing the supremacy of the middle classes. The feudal lawgiver was every where the enemy of that trade which gradually subverted his power. He was slow and unwilling even to acknowledge the rights of his emancipated slaves. When they had congregated in towns, and were able to enforce their claims, a sort of compromise ensued, and the legislator or sovereign ceased his hostility in exchange for a tribute. The inhabitants of towns purchased of the feudal law-maker an exemption from his vexatious oppressions; though his continual and ever frustrated aim was to maintain them in submission and slavery. Those who were hostile to the middle classes, and who plundered them upon every occasion, could not have established and protected their right of property. They acknowledged it indeed when the others became powerful enough to compel them; but they did not establish it.

  Formerly, the labourers, and with them all the wealth of the country, were the property of the legislating landowners; now it is in the possession of the descendants of emancipated slaves. The landowners are neither the most important, nor the most opulent portion of this community. They are far surpassed in numbers and in wealth by the capitalists. The great mass of the original land-owners families are extinct, or the land has passed from their descendants for some pecuniary consideration; so that in fact the property of the present land-owner is derived from, or represents, capital. The landowner, as such, derives his right to that share of the produce of labour he receives, under the name of rent, from being the descendant of those who forcibly appropriated, not merely the land, but the labourer; or he possesses the remains of the power of those who did so appropriate the land; and his annual income now represents the compensation given to him by the good sense of society, in its progress for the emancipation of bondmen and serfs. At present, all the wealth of society goes first into the possession of the capitalist, and even most of the land has been purchased by him; he pays the landowner his rent, the labourer his wages, the tax and the tithe gatherer their claims, and keeps a large, indeed the largest, and a continually augmenting share, of the annual produce of labour for himself. The capitalist may now be said to be the first owner of all the wealth of the community; though no law has conferred on him the right to this property.∗

  The capitalist was originally a labourer, or the descendant of a villein, and he obtained profit on what he was able to save from the produce of his own labour, after he had wrested his liberty from his masters, because he was then able to make them respect his right to use the produce of his own industry. But what he then received, and now receives, under the name of profit, is a portion of the wealth annually created by labour. In fact, the capitalist has obtained the whole of the landlord's power, and his right to have profit is a right to receive a portion of the produce of the landlord's slaves. His right to share this power, or receive this produce was never conferred on him directly by any law. It has grown up, however, gradually, in all the countries of Europe, being the moral result of the homage men pay to that great natural principle, the foundation of all property, that each individual has a right to the free use of his own limbs, and to the produce of his own labour; which right led first gradually to emancipate the slave, and then induced the landowner to buy from him, by giving him a share of his power over labour, the loan or use of the new property the slave had the skill to create, and the economy to spare; and which the landowner, as the emancipated slaves increased in numbers and wealth, did not dare to take. In the case of the emancipated slave, the landlord, and those who were the interpreters of his will, were gradually forced to respect the right of each man to possess, and use what he makes or produces; and out of the respect for this natural right of property, implanted in the hearts of all, though greed, may and does frequently overstep it, it being the great moral or sentimental basis of all justice,—has grown up in Europe that new order of society of which the distinguishing feature, as far as my subject is concerned, is the power and the wealth of the capitalist.

  But the power of the capitalist over all the wealth of the country, is a complete change in the right of property, and by what law, or series of laws, was it effected? Was it by all those laws which you have of late complained of, and which you and other members of parliament have tried to get repealed; such as the laws for protecting real property from the claims of creditors, the obvious intention of which was to defeat the right of the monied interest, to recover from the landowner the sums the latter might borrow, or even steal from the former!∗ You cannot answer in the affirmative. The law, till the legislator could not help himself, was opposed to the claims of the capitalist.

  We have a good illustration of the conduct of the legislator in this respect, in the usury laws. He declared it to be a crime to take usury or interest at all. When the advantages of doing so had become manifest, and when the practice had become prevalent, the law following as usual in the wake of a custom, permitted a certain rate of interest to be taken; but the rate fixed by the law being below the average or market rate, the law was continually violated. It never determined in any case the rate of interest or usury. That, owing to various natural circumstances, or circumstances quite independent of laws, underwent successive alterations in every part of Europe; and the law subsequent to those alterations was gradually and necessarily altered, but was always inoperative, whenever the legal rate of interest differed from the market rate. It was only operative when it precisely copied the practices of the people and the prices of the market. Finally, when it seems probable that the market rate of interest will remain permanently below the rate fixed by the law, which has rendered it altogether inoperative, according to the inteation of the law-maker, it is in a fair way of being repealed. The great object of the usury laws was to keep down the monied interest. The right to take interest and to have profit, with a right to have usance, which are rights of property, as well as the right to an estate, have been continually denied, or vainly attempted to be limited by the law. There was for many ages a contest between the monied and the landed interests, the latter dictating the laws for its own advantage. In spite, however, of country gentlemen, that respect for the natural right of property which has been felt by the law-maker, even when he has endeavoured partially to set it aside,—of which the right to have as much interest as a capitalist can get, is a part—has gradually altered, not merely the legal right of property, but all the political relations of Europe.

  The changes which I have briefly brought under your notice, form an important part of the history of civilization, and when we examine that we find it quite distinct from the history of law. Subsequent to the period when the latter was written with the sword, and men were appropriated by the right of conquest, the serf gradually outgrew his bondage, ceased to be the property of the warrior noble, and acquired a right of property in what he created acknowledged by his master. The capitalist then emerged into notice, and, obtaining from the landlord interest or profit on his property, shared his power. Now we find, in consequence of the respect for the natural right of property, that a large middle class, completely emancipated from the bondage and destitution which the law, by fixing the rate both of wages and interest, sought to perpetuate, has grown up in every part of Europe, uniting in their own persons the character both of labourers and capitalists. They are fast increasing in numbers; and we may hope, as the beautiful inventions of art gradually supersede unskilled labour, that they, reducing the whole society to equal and free men, will gradually extinguish all that yet remains of slavery and oppression. All these changes have been effected in spite of the law; and the equally benevolent changes now in progress, will be unnoticed by it till they can no longer be controuled. And by what could these mighty changes be accomplished, if not by a Power greater than that of the law-giver? They have been brought about, I contend, by the moral laws implanted in our hearts, such as that mutual respect for the rights of each other, and the mutual fear of each others equal power, with which Nature inspires all our race, and of which the natural right of property is a portion and a part. The natural right, existing at all times, gradually supersedes the law of the land, and effectually secures those new rights belonging to individuals, which, as men multiply, are continually created. That each individual has a natural right of property in his own limbs, and in what they create, is a principle unremitting in its influence, and it teaches even those who are most greedy of dominion to pronounce—as, in making laws against its violation,—a severe condemnation on their own conduct. Through our moral sentiments, then, they being as far as property is concerned, the offspring of palpable physical circumstances, Nature is even now gradually overthrowing unjust appropriation, and gradually restoring that virtuous freedom, and healthy equality of possession, which being the original condition of mankind, are equally consistent with the highest degree of productive power, and the unbounded affluence of a civilized community, and with the naked destitution of the savage.∗

  All these alterations are sometimes attributed to the discovery of America, to the first voyage round the Cape of Good Hope, to the sagacity of some individual King, to the intellect of some philosophers, to the invention of printing, or to any thing rather than acknowledge the Divine government of the moral world. But it is plain, that the changes I have brought under your notice, were going on long before America was discovered, which was in fact a consequence of the spread of people and knowledge in Europe, and probably necessary to their further progress. National wars, and national debts, have undoubtedly contributed to these changes: but directly in opposition to the will of those who contracted the latter to carry on the former. To me it is pleasant to see the bad passions of warriors leading them to mortgage their land, and from that to see arising the universal equality which conquest destroyed. The events to which historians, each of them partially selecting one, ascribe these alterations, are undoubtedly links in the great chain of causation; but only the dull materialist, overlooking the moral laws of man's being, will ascribe to those events the merit of social improvement.

  I am well aware that this statement of facts is decidedly adverse to the prevalent theories on the subject of legislation, and the continual practices of legislators. We are generally taught, that the constitution and the laws of the country determine all the rights of the people; and legislators continually act as if every right that exists in society were the offspring of their kindly care. I have already quoted passages from Messrs. Bentham's and Mill's writings, to shew that they describe the great business of government and law to be the determining what each man is to possess, and to guarantee that in his possession. On the contrary, if the observations I have made be correct, the right of property is determined by natural laws, and that right, gradually overturning the laws of man, to which it is opposed, cannot be said to be guaranteed by them. What the law did not foresee and create, what it opposed when called into existence, what it only sanctioned when the legislator could no longer shew hostility with advantage, it can in no sense be said to have established and guaranteed. But if this be true, it may be supposed that there are no guarantees for any rights. If legislation as to property be as I represent it, inefficient and incapable of securing respect for its own decrees; how, it may be asked, could society exist? Before I shew how the natural right of property is guaranteed, I wish therefore to direct your attention to several important rights and privileges, which have grown up in society unwilled by the legislator, and which he has only guaranteed when he could no longer oppose them. Such facts, when properly understood, are in truth, of great practical importance. If any thing can abate the present rage for law making, and for multiplying regulations for every part of society, the fact to be learnt by an attentive consideration of history, that laws have little or no beneficial influence over the fate of mankind, is well calculated to produce so desirable a result. I shall therefore, in another communication, illustrate this statement both by principles and facts.

  Your obedient servant,

  A Labourer.

  LETTER THE SIXTH.
  THE LAW-MAKER DOES NOT ESTABLISH RIGHTS: HE ONLY COPIES USAGES.

  Identity of Lord Bacon and Mr. Locke's philosophy.—Law-makers in establishing a right of property only copy a previous usage.—Examples of the test acts and Catholic emancipation.—The press.—Last act of legislation.—Examples of Peter the Great and Joseph II.—Of the middle ages—Of forgery.—An example in the time of Athelstan—In modern Mexico.—Attempts to abolish villeinage on the continent.—The French revolution.

  TO H. BROUGHAM, ESQ. M. P. F.R.S. &c.

  Sir,

  It seems to me that the leading principles of Lord Bacon's, and of Mr. Locke's philosophy, which when properly understood are identical, viz. that “man is but the interpreter of Nature,” and that “all our knowledge of the external world is obtained by means of our senses,” or, “is a copy of that world;” though these principles have been overlooked by writers on legislation, and on the progress of civilization, throw a clear and steady light on many social phenomena. The deductions we may draw from them, or rather from it, for in substance the foundations of all knowledge, as laid down by these illustrious men are, I repeat, identical, will confirm the inference already drawn from history, and prove that the legislator neither could, nor did, originate and establish, or even modify to any extent, a right of property. Like the philosopher, he is at best but an incorrect interpreter of a part of Nature. Where, I ask, did he get his idea of a right of property? He is one of us; the laws which regulate our knowledge domineer also over him, and his notion of that relation we call property, must at all times have been derived from what he saw. It was copied from an external fact previously called into existence. The right of property existed, the relation between man and the work of his hands—to compel a respect for which is the pretended object of laws—existed before he thought of supporting the right by threats or promises. Not only did the right exist, it had been violated; the legislator had violated it himself before he undertook to preserve it from future infraction. The species of appropriation he has confirmed, existed prior to his decrees. The notions of mine and thine, and the relation of man to what he fashions or produces, were antecedent to all law; and in strict conformity with the great principles taught by Bacon and Locke, I affirm that law-makers only set the seal of their authority to the rights established, or the wrongs practised, by mankind. The appropriation of the land was made by the sword, not by the law; but what the sword acquired, the law afterwards endeavoured to preserve.

  The flatterers of kings and of law-makers, and youth hot from the study of the first French class-book, seduced by the eloquence of the amiable Fenelon, may fancy that the legislator marks out the rights and duties of the several classes of his subjects, and apportions to each one, like Idomeneus, or the revered Manco Capac, or the not less revered jesuits of Paraguay, his task and his reward. But the mature men of this age, who have enquired into the progress of society, and are acquainted with the manner in which the inhabitants of Europe, as Mr. Hallam says, have purchased from their governments privilege after privilege, toleration after toleration, or won them out of the iron clench of the legislator, cannot for one moment suppose that he ever has established the rights, or prescribed the duties of his subjects. That every blessing of freedom we enjoy, from Magna Charta down to the abolition of the Corporation and Test acts, and the admission of the Catholics to share the civil rights of the rest of the community,—that every civil and religious privilege of which the people now boast — that freedom of trade, and freedom of the press, and freedom of judgment (imperfect as they yet are), that protection against the sword of majesty, against the injustice of the judge, and against the plunder of the noble—that our security, partial and incomplete in this respect though it yet be, for we are still a prey to the procrastination and fiction of the law administerer, and the despotism of the law-maker,—that all the blessings of freedom, and that all our civil rights, have been gradually and slowly gained by the exertions of the people, by their gradual increase in wealth and numbers, giving force to the gradual increase of their knowledge, and making the general reason, as contrasted to the caprice of individuals, the rule of our lives,—are truths of which no reader of history can for one moment doubt. When the people, as they have become powerful and wise, have compelled the legislator to make laws consistent with the rights which gradually come into existence, it has then been very flatteringly asserted, that he has conferred these rights on them, and guaranteed their enjoyment—an assertion which he has sought to make the general creed of mankind—but which can only be true if the parliament of England bestowed that physical power on the Catholics, and confirmed it in their possession, by which they have at length, in spite of its continual opposition, compelled that parliament to give them full religious freedom.

  Not to go beyond circumstances well known to every man, to confirm this view I shall merely remind you, that the question of the repeal of the Test and Corporation Acts was settled out of parliament before it received the legislature's sanction. The government resisted the repeal of these Acts as long as it could, but when the general knowledge of the age made intolerance hateful, and the wealth and power of the dissenters enabled them to enforce their claims, the legislature was obliged to give them a specific sanction.∗ Hereafter, and even at present, we may hear praises chaunted forth on the toleration of the government, on account of the protection and guarantee it affords to the rights of Dissenters; but the same power which compelled the legislature to affix its seal to these rights, viz. public opinion modelled by circumstances, at all times guarantees and preserves them.

  At length, also, the Catholics have been placed almost on a level with the rest of the people. Their numbers their wealth, and their power, manifested in various associations and acts of display, having alarmed such of the Protestants as dreaded a civil war, and were not previously conscience stricken at the effects of their own injustice, the legislature and the church of England, however unwilling, have been compelled to cease from persecuting the Catholics.∗ Those who are in love with law, which I am not, may tell us that the constitution or the legislature guarantees and secures the rights of the Catholics, but to me it appears that the strength of the Catholic arm, or the apprehensions of that strength, or whatever else determined the legislature to concede emancipation against its frequently declared will, is the power which guarantees and secures toleration. I have seen too much of the process of manufacturing acts of parliament, to attribute any great virtue to a few speeches, in which as much is said for, as against an opinion—to the hocus pocus of a man in a large wig, putting a question which an obsequious majority answers as the minister bids, and to a clerk of a parliament reading a few words in Norman French;—I have seen, I say, too much of your proceedings to join in the opinion, that an act of parliament establishes and protects rights. I can attribute no such miraculous effects to the ridiculous ceremonies and mummeries practised at Westminster. I put them aside as wholly extrinsic, extraneous, and unnecessary to the great scheme of society, and then I see that the living power of public opinion which compels the legislature, as yet respecting its existence—to go through these mummeries, is in fact the power which at all times secures all the rights of every member of the community.∗

  The freedom now enjoyed by the press, the true church of England, as it has been called, is a still more striking example of the same fact; because imperfect as that freedom is, it has not yet received the positive sanction of the legislature. The press grew into influence and power in spite of Star-chamber fines and imprisonment; it is increasing in respectability, in influence, and in magnitude in spite of the libel-law; it wafts to every corner of the globe, in spite of the privileges of either House of Parliament, which are gladly waived to connive at its bold aspirings, an account of their proceedings; and representing the general reason, it rules both over the throne and the legislature. By what law have these most important rights and privilege, been conferred? By no law whatever; they are exercised and acknowledged in direct opposition to the law, because all classes and conditions of men are sensible that they are necessary for the welfare of all. Public opinion, not the judges, conferred on the press its rights and privileges; and public opinion, against the inclination of the judges, continually maintains and extends them. An inquirer into the laws of vegetation is not satisfied with describing the appearances of plants, he dissects them, and traces the sap-vessels drawing nourishment from the earth, and carrying the living juices to every branch and every bud, where, by the combined agencies of the sun and the air, and the assimilating powers of the plant it is formed into new matter, constituting the growth, the flowering, or the fructifying of vegetables. In like manner, the inquirer into political science is not content to record the views of a legislature or a judge, and he looks for the source of their altered opinions and improved conduct. When he finds the legislature and the judge gradually, but tacitly, recognizing the power of the press; gradually but silently abstaining to enforce against it the rigorous laws which are yet in existence; and when he traces this forbearance to the power of an improved and concentrated public opinion, when he detects in it the cause for greater humanity in the judge, and greater caution in the law-maker, he ascribes them to the altered circumstances of mankind, not to the better laws, and the better administration of them, which gradually come to prevail. The mind and opinions of the lawgiver, or the law administerer, are not unaccountable and miraculous; like the mind and opinions of a chemist, which are formed by the chemical knowledge of the age in which he lives, they are the result of what is seen, or felt, or known to be the state of society at the time. The circumstances which dictate the opinions, and create the mind and temper of the lawgiver and the judge, of which the chief is public opinion,—and not the technical expression of those circumstances put forth by the legislator or the judge, are the actual guarantees, and the actual means of protecting the rights of mankind.

  The influence of the press in controlling or overruling the enactments of the lawgiver, and the decrees of the judge, the press being a power neither acknowledged nor avowedly obeyed by either of these functionaries, is an illustration of the manner in which both of them have their minds reduced to an accordance with the prevalent opinions and practices of society. Neither of these functionaries can dictate the opinions of society, but those opinions publicly expressed dictate their actions. In the long run, the material world is sure to correct, if it do not inspire, all opinions. The mind, in fact, is a copy of that world, more or less complete and accurate. Thus we go to the fountain head, when we seek to ascertain those material circumstances, such as changes in the numbers and wealth, and social relations of mankind, which determine first, the general opinions of society; and secondly, the actions of the legislator and the judge.

  In these examples of our right freely to speak truth of and to the legislator himself, and of our right to worship as we please, it is evident that the legislator has only confirmed by his declaration, or acknowledged by his forbearance, rights that have grown into existence without his permission, and frequently in opposition to his will. When the legislature fulfils its functions in the best possible manner, it only embodies the customs of the community in a legal and precise form of words, lending the sanction of its clear and delightful phraseology to the opinions and rights already existing among its subjects. “To follow, not to force, the public inclination,” is the accurate definition of legislation, given by Mr. Burke, “to give a direction, a form, a technical dress, and a specific sanction to the general sense of the community, is the true end of legislature. When it goes beyond this, its authority will be precarious, let its rights be what they will.” “Those who will stand at the head of affairs, must follow and obey the general sentiment,”∗ is a truth which his wisdom frequently enforces.

  Such a description of your presumed high duties, is rather true than flattering. A king, by those who only learn from the court-crier that all justice is administered in his name, is supposed to possess great power; in fact, however, whatever luxuries he may enjoy, in relation to the power of the nation, he is a mere instrument for affixing the sign manual to the business his ministers bring before him. His ministers in turn are supposed to govern both him and the nation, but the fear of that nation is continually in their minds; their responsibility weighs on them, and they conform to its wishes, as they are expressed by its representatives. In like manner, the representatives, or parliament altogether may be considered as only a sort of mechanical stamper, which puts a seal to the general decisions. It has certified and registered the decree, releasing the Dissenters and Catholics from the disabilities former times imposed on them; and were the Jews, or even a body of Atheists as numerous as the Catholics, and as rich as the Dissenters, to form a part of the community, the legislature would be compelled to grant them all the civil rights enjoyed by the rest of the people. What else it may have to register, is in the womb of Time; but the last decree to which its seal will be affixed, will, from that time forward, give validity to the public sentiments without the necessity of its visa. Its power is now derived from echoing those sentiments, and when men perceive this truth, that power will be for ever annihilated.

  If I have not entered, and shall not enter into any examination, as most writers do, of the gradual alterations made in the law relative to the tenures of land, attributing to these alterations that great change in the right of property, which cannot be denied; if I do not inquire into the stratagems and cunning contrivances by which, at various times, the judges are said to have sought occasionally to prevent the accumulation of land in the hands of individuals and corporations, it is because the object I have in view lies beyond all such verbal copies of pre-existing rights. I look chiefly at the alterations in those rights to which the judge and the lawgiver have been gradually compelled to make their decisions and enactments conform. Persons fond of prying into law books may inform us, that at one period the lawgiver did this, and the judges did that; but the more rational enquiry is into the circumstances, or natural laws which compelled the judge to do this, and the law-maker to do that; or which brought about the altered opinions which have gradually prevailed amongst legislators and judges. The lawgiver was originally called on to protect a pre-existing right of property; and in the great majority of cases the law was only subsequently altered, to make it conform to alterations previously made in that right. Now, as the latter alterations have in former times determined the mind of the legislature and the judge, and as we may be sure that such alterations will, hereafter determine his mind, it seems to me of more importance to inquire into the determining circumstances, than into the flecting thoughts, though embodied into somewhat permanent decrees of past legislators and judges. Generally speaking, our antiquaries and historians have looked only at the letter of the law, and have neglected to notice those successive changes of which the law was a copy. They have been so desperately in love with the sentences put together by the lawgiver, so besottedly attached to a form of words, that they have ascribed to language every thing good and valuable in society, as well as all the alterations which have taken place. They have never looked further than the parchment decrees. Holding to the principle of Locke and Bacon's philosophy in all times and places, and regarding it as applicable to all things, I have passed over the decrees of the law-maker, to inquire into some of the great alterations in society, of which they were the imperfect copies.

  The power as well as the utility of legislators, seems to me therefore to be in general rated much too high, and a few more illustrations of their inability to do more than sanction customs, usages, and rights already established, may not be thrown away. M. Dumont and Mr. Bentham have explained at some length the difficulty, or even the impossibility, of transplanting laws, however excellent, from one country to another; but whether the law be borrowed from another country, or be born of the fancy of a native lawgiver, can make no difference as to the difficulty of bringing it into practice, if it be at variance with the customs of a people. If it accord not with their customs, it can only be made the rule of their conduct by force of arms. The individual law-maker soon runs his course, his successor has whims of his own, and cares not to employ his military power to enforce obedience to some whim of his predecessor. The new law consequently ceases to be enforced and obeyed. Peter the Great was enabled, by the power of his guards, and the fears of individuals living in a community composed of different and hostile tribes, to compel some of his Boyars to shear their chins; but since his death the Russians have returned to the venerable custom of wearing beards. From the hereditary respect which the inhabitants of the Netherlands bore to the house of Hapsburgh, the chief protectors of the Catholic religion, Joseph II., was able to effect a trifling reform in the church of that country, but his power was unequal to his wishes, and he had the vexation even to see his plans rendered abortive. His failure broke his heart. The legislator may will good or evil, but whatever he wills, his power is very circumscribed. If a despotic sovereign, like Peter or Joseph, cannot effect any great alteration in the customs and conduct of his people, cannot establish new rights, and impose new duties, are publican or representative government, existing more im mediately under the controul of opinion, cannot possibly attempt even to introduce laws not sanctioned by the customs of its subjects.

  I might multiply, without any other difficulty than seeking in a few books, instances of laws failing to effect any alteration or improvement in the morals or manners of a people; but the fact seems so obvious, that I shall only briefly notice such as my memory will supply me with, neglecting to quote the volume and page in which documentary proofs of the assertions may be found.

  The whole history of the middle ages, embracing several centuries, and almost all the countries of Europe, seems to me little more than a contest between laws and customs. The clergy denounced and excommunicated feuds and maraudings; the sovereigns, as soon as they acquired power, fulminated decrees against those who prosecuted their revenge, or carved out their own fortunes with their own swords, after a fashion of their own; but as both the sovereign and the clergy acted on the very principles they condemned, their efforts were quite unavailing, and the whole of Europe was one great scene of reciprocal contention, plunder and war. Even after the inhabitants of towns, prosecuting their own peaceful pursuits, had grown into importance, and had both taught the principles of mutual service, on which all trade is founded, to the clergy and to the sovereign, and had strengthened their power, baronial excursions to prosecute a feud, or to commit plunder, were still practised in spite of the law. In fact, such customs continued in our own country almost to our own time. A century has yet scarcely elapsed since the chiefs of the Scotch highlands kept in their own hands the power of administering justice after their own manner, on their own estates; and within the same period they were in the habit of making excursions to levy black mail, &c. on the inhabitants of the lowlands; while among the clans private feuds continued, and led frequently to bloodshed and murder. The decrees of the law-maker were inoperative during the period I have referred to, and failed completely to make men respect each other's rights, till the extension of trade, the invention of new arts, and the importation of new luxuries, slowly brought a new class of men into existence, introduced into the community other tastes, supplied passions with less mischievous gratifications, beat down individual power, and spread through the land those principles of order and reciprocal service, which are the basis of all mutual exchange.∗

  For many years the law has been sharply directed in this country against forgery and fraud of every description; but it is the custom of the people, from high to low, from the monarch to the peasant, to obtain splendid luxuries, or the mere means of subsistence, on false pretences. One deludes the nation; or his ministers delude it in his name; the other deceives the parish officers; and of this universal custom, illegal fraud and forgery are but the rankest shoots. The decrees against them, promulgated by a palace-loving king, solemnly sanctioned by salary and place-hunting nobles and squires, and enforced by a large fee-exacting or salaried judge, have been powerless, in this instance, to abate a practice which is consistent with their own every day behaviour, and the general customs of society. The general disposition to plunder which prevails, is probably a habit of action transmitted from those ages of predatory warfare, and universal plunder I have just alluded to, the industrious classes having too closely followed the fashions, and aped the manners of their idle and worthless masters; and the laws will only seem to effect an alteration in the general disposition, when the power of making them shall have fallen into the hands of those who live by the produce of their own labour.

  Here is a precise and specific example of laws failing to influence customs. “We find,” says Mr. Miller, “that by a statute in the reign of King Athelstane, a churle who had purchased an estate consisting of a few hides of land, with certain appendages usually possessed by gentlemen of that fortune, was declared to have a right to all the privileges of a thane.” “Such was, however, the original inferiority of the peasants, and so strong were the habits connected with their primitive condition, that though they had been raised to independent circumstances, it was with some difficulty that they were permitted to hold the rank of gentlemen, and procured the treatment suitable to men of that superior class.∗ The law, therefore, even at that early period, when customs, it might be supposed, would not be more unalterable than at present, failed to procure for the opulent churle all the rights and privileges attached to the property he possessed, when in the hands of one nobly born. The same sort of thing existed only a few years ago, or even yet exists in Germany. It exists also in the western hemisphere. In those parts of the United States where slavery has been abolished, the “niggers,” as they are called, are now as badly treated, as much domineered over,—their society is as much scorned as before they were emancipated.

  We have a similar testimony to the impotency of laws in Mr. Ward's account of Mexico. That gentleman states, that the Indians of the capital seemed, when he was there, at the service of any white who chose to command them, notwithstanding they had been declared free citizens by the constitution. The custom of obedience was of course far more influential than the words of the lawgiver, and those who had declared they should be free, continued, under its influence, to treat them like slaves.∗

  The advantages which have accrued from the gradual conversion of villeins into free labourers in some of the countries of Europe,—the greater ingenuity, industry and skill, possessed by the latter, and the consequent more rapid increase of national wealth, have induced the sovereigns of those countries in which the conversion has not yet been fully effected, to hasten it by decrees. Both Maria Theresa and Joseph II. in Austria, and the present king of Prussia, have endeavoured to abolish feudal servitude, to change the right of property which exists among their subjects, and thus to make them wealthy, like the inhabitants of Britain or Holland. Have they succeeded? I know from personal observation, notwithstanding the number of years which have now elapsed since the first attempt was made in Austria, that a population of free labourers is yet to be called into existence in that country. I know also from personal observation, as well as from various publications, that the laws for abolishing feudal servitude in Prussia, emitted by the celebrated Prussian reformer Baron von Stein, though they were aided by a revolutionary ferment, which brought all the elements of society into new combinations, and the more cautious repetition of those decrees at a later period by Prince Hardenberg, have not accomplished their object. The peasants have rarely made any use of the power given them by the decree of 1811, to convert the farms they cultivate as serfs into their own property, on the payment of a reasonable compensation for the services they are now bound to perform. Partly they have been accustomed to hold their lands on these conditions, and never formed a wish to change them; and partly there is among them a deficiency of means to make the compensation required. It would be plainly impossible for the law-maker to carry such an alteration into effect, without compensating the landowner; and in that part of Prussia where personal servitude prevails, none of that new wealth has yet been created or introduced, which in past times effected the emancipation of villeins in other parts of Europe.∗

  Perhaps the French revolution affords even a more striking example of the inefficacy of laws in altering established rights. At an early period in its progress, equality was decreed. The old proprietors were banished, and the people were invited to divide the spoil equally amongst them. The particular disposition such laws encourage is thought to be so strong, that in general legislators have done all in their power to repress it; yet those laws did not produce equality in France, though they were seconded by several years of revolutionary confusion, and did not eradicate from the hearts of the people the respect in which they had been nurtured for their ancient masters. The laws of confiscation, a national sale, and the quiet possession of the land for several years under the emperor, were found insufficient, on the return of the Bourbons and the emigrants, to make the new owners satisfied with their titles. Conscientious apprehensions were felt, and were followed by alarm throughout the country. Some of the emigrants were quietly reinstated in the possessions of their ancestors; to some of them a voluntary surrender of purchased rights was made; to others money was offered if they would sign a renunciation of what they had never possessed; and all of them found that being the heir to the person dispossessed, enabled them to obtain what had been his property, on easier terms than other persons.

  Thirty millions sterling were voted by the French parliament in 1826, almost without opposition, and paid almost without a murmur by the people, to put an end to these claims, and obtain a conscientious right to the land they now hold. If any doubt should be entertained of the single facts I have alluded to, for I do not pretend to hunt up any other authority than memory for them, no doubt can be entertained that the decrees establishing equality, which for years terrified all the opulent people of this country, and perhaps of all Europe, failed completely in their intended effect, and there is at present very little more equality in France, either as to possessions or persons, than there was prior to the revolution. The people only transferred their affections. They had long worshipped the old monarchy, and they fell down before the idol of the republic to lift up their eyes in adoration of the empire. The glories of their old dynasty were for a time obscured by the fresher splendour of Buonaparte's victories; but the longing after some human idol, and the sentiment of worship were the same. The law changed names and forms, but it did not change the customs and opinions of the people. It is of no consequence, therefore, to my argument, whether the laws be decreed by a wild democracy, or an arch despot; unless they accord with the feelings and habits of the people, or are copied from their customs, they will be inoperative and powerless.

  This principle of the inefficacy of laws applies to reforming the laws; and nothing is better known than the fact that bad laws are retained long after it is ascertained that they are bad, because they are closely and intimately connected with the habits of a people. A written decree is in fact originally the offspring of a single mind; and no one mind has much influence over a whole nation. No single reformer who precedes can ever represent the general sentiments. Bad laws therefore should not be swept away by new laws, but be suffered to fall into desuetude, which is for all parties a gradual and safe extinction of evil. The reform of laws, which it is now desirable to promote, is not to introduce a body of new enactments, but to bring legislation into contempt. In all questions of reform the happiness of the reformer himself ought not to be lost sight of, and in general reformers are so much annoyed, that when they perceive the safer path I have just indicated, they will not be anxious to encounter popular odium by substituting new laws for old ones. We know, indeed, that one self-sufficient secretary, who plumes himself on adopting the wisdom of others, has been enabled to transmit his name to posterity on some acts of parliament; but his reforms were so gentle, and had been so long demanded, that he encountered no other opposition than a few professional frowns. Another secretary, however, (Mr. Huskisson) who acted with greater boldness than Sir Robert Peel, was driven from office, and was publicly insulted, for carrying into execution reforms which, in principle, have long received the sanction of every enquirer, but are not yet recognized by the mass of society. Very few reformers are held in honour, and there is neither patriotism nor humanity in sacrificing one's self to obtain only the execration of our fellow citizens.

  I conclude from these statements, that laws are copied from rights existing in practice, not rights created by laws. There is a close connection between them; but a vulgar materialism, which must have a tangible foundation for belief, commits the mistake of substituting the piece of parchment for its immaterial cause, the opinions of society. With very few exceptions, such as the artificial community of Sparta, of which we know but little, and some religious communities, the law-maker, whether he be an emperor, a king, a prophet, an archon, a consul, a baron, a provost, a mayor, or a burgomaster, has only endeavoured by his enactments to enforce the customs, and maintain the rights of the people for whom he legislated. The people, from respecting the legislator too much, may have endeavoured to preserve his laws, and to act on them long after they had ceased to represent the circumstances of society; and he by endeavouring also to fix at some one point what nature has made progressive, may have modified rights as they came into existence, and have had a considerable influence over the formation of rights subsequent to his enactments; but in general, the law has only expressed in words, and endeavoured to enforce by penalties, the practices, whether right or wrong, which previously prevailed among, and were generally approved of by, the people for whom the law was intended.

  The boasting lawmaker then, like the theoretical philosopher, does not get one step beyond what he sees. When he glories in his profound schemes, he ought to be reminded that they are mere copies of some absurdities already carried into execution. Our Bank Restriction Act, and our Police Law, conforming in some measure to our peculiar circumstances, to take two examples, have both of them existing prototypes. Among the despots of the continent, it was a common trick to make their subjects take their paper as money, before the despotic Mr. Pitt recommended us to follow their example. Police systems, somewhat similar to that Mr. Peel (now Sir Robert) is at present promoting, have existed for years on the continent, in all the perfection unlimited political power can give them; and, judging from the atrocious crimes still continually committed in France, where the police is organized in the best manner, they are just as ineffectual in preventing crimes as the old watchmen of London.∗ If we were curious on such subjects, we might perhaps trace these pleasant devices up to their very sources, in the acts of some blood-stained and ferocious soldier, seizing the provisions of the industrious peasant, promising by a sort of tally, if he could not write, and by a bit of paper if he could, to pay for them at a future time, and when that time came, postponing the payment by his own lawless will. to a more convenient opportunity,—or establishing some rigid system of surveillance over the peasantry, whom he had first plundered of all they possessed, and then appropriated them as he had previously done their cattle. Deeds of this description are the monads, the first little nervous threads in the life of such laws, as the Bank Restriction Act, and of such schemes as those you dignify by the name of police. Most of your boasted enactments are found, when examined, to represent the barbarous customs of a barbarous people, and to have no better origin than acts of outrage, or systems of plunder.

  I have already shewn you that the right of property is not an exception to the general rule. It does not spring from the brain of the lawgiver, and is not modified by him. It arises from physical circumstances, and as they modify the customs of men, the law-maker alters his decrees. Such as it now is, it had its origin in the actions of mankind; their customs have ever since modified it, and have gradually altered the right of property, which the laws, always copied from, and always representing the customs of a past age, have vainly endeavoured to maintain. We have seen that the power of the landowner has been gradually overthrown, and that an alteration in the right of property has accompanied the ruin of his power. What may be called the practical deduction from these facts, the deduction that ought immediately to influence the conduct of legislators, is obvious. As the laws have not in times past, when the legislator had more power than at present, and when there was no public opinion to controul the career of the governing class, saved the landowner from comparative decay, it is the height of folly in you legislators now to make laws with such an object in view, when all the causes which formerly conspired to weaken the power of the landowners now exist in tenfold force. The principles which have already produced the changes noticed, are still in active operation, and still tend to the same results. The gradual and continued declension of the landed interest throughout Europe since conquest ceased, the gradual rise of the monied and the commercial interests, were produced by natural causes; and that declension is still in progress, and cannot be arrested by human contrivances. Those who live on rent have shared in the general prosperity, they possess more conveniences than their ancestors, but they have every where declined in power and splendour, compared to the other classes, who a few centuries ago had nothing but what the owners of land pleased to give them. “The usurer being,” as Lord Bacon expresses it, “at certainties, and the others at uncertainties, at the end of the game the money will be in his box.” The landowner has been overshadowed and stifled by the luxuriant growth of commercial and manufacturing wealth.∗

  The pertinacity with which he resists the abrogation of the Corn Laws is dictated by despair. It is one of the last attempts to preserve by legislation the superiority established by the sword, to which nature has decreed a termination; and his short-sighted obstinacy by which, bringing on himself contempt and hatred, he hastens his fall, is only to be equalled by the patient ignorance with which the rest of the community suffer him for a season to inflict comparative poverty and comparative famine on the whole.

  By some of those authors, who are fond of attributing even the very existence of society, and every beneficial change in it to the law, it seems to be supposed that the adoption of the Roman laws, and the influence they gave to those who interpreted them, were the causes of the alterations and improvements I have brought under your notice; but this opinion, to say nothing of the barbarous nature of the laws themselves, is disproved by those alterations and improvements not having borne any proportion to the influence of those laws, which has been least, as in England, where the improvement has been greatest. It is plain, from our law relative to property being partly unwritten, we not having adopted the Roman law, and from our judges having worked out a system, by deciding cases as they were brought before them, partly following previous decisions, and partly straining them to meet, according to their ideas, the equity of each particular case, as wel as from the other circumstances I have mentioned, that our laws have not created the right of property such as it is, which now exists among us; they have followed, and followed with a very lingering pace, and at a great distance, the various slow and successive improvements which intervened between the first appropriation of the land, and our present right of property.

  I need not recommend, however, such arguments to your attention, because the gist of that part of your celebrated speech which relates to our law concerning property is, that new property and new rights of property, have gradually arisen, to which, according to you, the laws are not yet adapted. The facts, or the rights, of which the law was originally only an imperfect copy, have been changed, while the law being nearly unaltered, enables the diligent antiquary to trace the history of man's delusions, but no more settles our ideas of mine and thine, and no more secures us in the possession of our rights than the Talmud or the Koran.

  That at present there are many discrepancies between the law relative to property, particularly as to property in land, and the actual right of property, is generally acknowledged. That these discrepancies have been caused by gradual alterations in the right, and not by alterations in the law, for such as have been made, have approximated it more nearly to the right, cannot be doubted. But under these circumstances, no man pretends that the right must be altered and carried back to the old law. On the contrary, it is generally demanded that the law should be altered, and be made to conform to existing rights, and Low this may be best accomplished, is the object of the numberless commissions and committees which have of late inquired into the state of the law. All the remarks I have made, are confirmed by the fact that the alteration demanded in the law, is such as will make it conform to the rights the people already possess or guarantee to each other by their mutual opinion, or think they ought to possess, and therefore are willing to guarantee. On this principle I affirm, that it would be more rational for your commissioners, first of all to enquire into the rights which now exist, not in law books, but among the people, and to ascertain, from the alterations which have taken place in past times, what the future alterations are likely to be; and finally, to try and adapt the law, so as to make it oppose as few impediments as possible, to the bringing about the results ordained by nature, in gradually restoring the natural right of property.

  If these observations be correct, if it be historically true, and in principle well founded, that the law neither establishes nor guarantees, nor maintains the rights of individuals, those who assert that social order, and the existence of society, depend on the law, must look for nothing but confusion and anarchy. Let them, however be reassured. That power which in past times has continually overruled the decrees of the legislator, has always established and preserved a social order of its own, far superior to any thing he ever contemplated. I might exp tiate on the subject at great length, but I shall content myself with shewing in what manner the law has not, and in what manner natural circumstances have, guaranteed that right of property which they have continually introduced. I shall reserve this, however, for another epistle, and in the mean time rest from my task.

  A Labourer.

  LETTER THE SEVENTH.
  REAL GUARANTEE OF THE RIGHT OF PROPERTY.

  The existing right of property is guaranteed by opinion, not by law.—Source of the opposite mistake.—Protection afforded by law against governments.—Illustration of Turkey and Britain.—Illustrations of opinion guaranteeing rights, not laws.—Tenants at will in England and Italy.—Property of traders.—Domestic rights.—All rights are guaranteed by opinion.

  TO H. BROUGHAM, ESQ. M. P. F.R.S. &c.

  Sir,

  It is very generally said, that there is no guarantee for property but what the law affords; and that the security of property guaranteed by it, has been of the greatest use in promoting national welfare. These assertions are contradicted by the facts I have brought before you. The origin of the mistake seems to be this:

  History informs us that the governing and legislating classes of society have very generally sought to restrain, limit, or regulate the natural right of property. Having violated or destroyed it, for even inter ference is violation, all other men require some guarantee against them. Considering laws for the protection of property as promises made by the legislative and ruling powers of society, that they will not to a certain extent interfere with the natural persuasion that we shall be permitted by them to enjoy what we produce, they may be called, I admit, guarantees. They are declarations on the part of some original wrong doers and their descendants, who have been by the silent and insensible operation of natural laws approximated to humanity and justice, that they will, within certain limits, respect the natural right of property. A security against their oppressions, a guarantee against the repetition of their flagrant outrages, was needed by the released serfs, and emancipated inhabitants of towns, and such a security and guarantee may have been found in laws, but they were only wrung from the legislator by the dread of that growing power in the people he had not been able to annihilate. The theory of those who say laws create rights, is copied from this single fact. The authors of it have been duly sensible of the necessity, that the natural right of property should be defended against the exactions of the legislating classes, and they have extended this fact to all the classes of society. With a strange oversight or inconsistency they found on the circumstance of the ruling classes having violated the natural right of property, a necessity for these ruling classes to retain a power to regulate their own unjust appropriation. The butcher-wolf has seized a lamb, and is tearing it to pieces; and Mr. Bentham and his followers, the pretended watch-dogs of the flock, bark aloud—To make him desist? NO! but to sanction his proceedings, and encourage him to do his work orderly, decently, and with decorum.

  They bestow great praise on security of property, as conducing to the prosperity of a people. They ap peal to Turkey and to Britain, to shew the effects of wanting and possessing such security; but the greater security which exists in the latter than in the former, and which is described as the foundation of our greater industry, and superior national wealth, is not a security of the property of labourers against plunder, and against fraud, for it may well be doubted, looking at our criminal returns, and at the frauds which are daily practised, if private depredations are greater in Turkey than in Britain; it is security against the cadis, pachas, muftis, and sultans of our society. A regular compact has here been entered into between the peaceable flock and the wolves, and the latter receiving a stated, and as large a quantity of the whole as they can possibly exact, promise to allow the remainder to fatten in peace and tranquillity. At least they have ceased making open war on the flock, and only privately in the guise of shepherds, take as much as they can without terrifying and revolting the peaceable industrious people. In this country we have been enabled by a series of circumstances, to limit the exactions of our law-makers by some certain rules; industry here pays regular and stated tribute to pompous profligate idleness; there the tribute is still levied by the sword, in the same manner as it was first exacted by the warlike prophet and his immediate descendants. We have been able to subject our feudal masters to a certain regular rule, and we can only preserve them in this reasonable species of obedience by our intelligence. In the restraints thus imposed on the avarice and exactions of our Divan consists that security of property so much and justly vaunted in Britain. It is a security, not procured by the legislature for the people against each other, but obtained by them against the imposer of taxes; it is security against the rapaciousness of government, not against the unjust exactions, the secret thieving or open plunder of individuals, Considering laws for the protection of property as limits placed to the unbounded, indefinite and capricious plunder of the ruling classes—the former conquerors of the soil—they cannot be too much praised; under any other view they appear intended only to protect oppression.

  That a law does not give us security against each other, is evident by considering what it is—a piece of parchment, containing a declaration of the opinion of those who drew it up. It has of itself no power whatever, and can only be carried into execution by the resolves of living men. Any law, therefore, relative to a right of property, can only be a declaration that such a right exists, or ought to exist, supported by the opinion of the people, and determination to enforce that opinion at any given moment. Our persuasion that we shall he permitted to enjoy, and the actual guarantee of enjoyment, is not derived from the material parchment, or the significant black marks within it; a fact which cannot be doubted in this country, where the people are even more ignorant than the judges what are the provisions of the law,—but from our knowledge of the opinions and moral character of our fellow men. Our sense of security, as far as that original and natural, or instinctive, expectation is confirmed by experience, is founded on the effects of those principles of respect for mutual rights, the natural origin of which I have pointed out, and which are extended through all the relations of life, as society increases in numbers and civilization. An act of parliament derives all its force from the sentiments of the people, and it is quite consistent with all the opinions already advanced for me to state, that all men do, and must, ultimately rely for the security of their possessions on the mutual respect they have for each other's rights.

  The actual right of property, as it is gradually created or altered, by the natural right of property modifying the artificial right, is secured by the consequences of those laws which call it into existence. The Benevolent Power which has gradually broken the iron fetters of the landowner, has never liberated man from the silken and flowery bands of duty and happiness. The assertion that a right of property is created by human laws, is contradicted by every part of history, in every page of which you find evidence that the power, whether it was that of the Catholic or the Dissenter, of the emancipated serf, or the opulent burgher, which inspired the legislator with respect for his rights actually guaranteed them against all other men. The legislator, being the descendant of our conquerors, was more powerful than any other individual, and therefore we may be sure that the principles which compelled his obedience, must have been of paramount influence over the rest of the world. The right of the labourer to personal freedom, however long it was over looked, is obviously founded in the common principles of our nature. When he, from the multiplication of his class, was able to claim that right, and not till then, it was respected; in like manner the right of the free labourer to own what he produces, is obviously founded on the natural principle of the right of property; he could never do otherwise than recognize it himself; and when he was able within the walls of his own place of refuge to protect that right, it was recognized and acknowledged by others. In like manner his right to receive interest for the loan of that property, or to obtain a profit by employing it, was respected when the use of that property was desired by others, and they were unable to force it from him. Thus, as new wealth was created, and as a new right of property came into existence, the circumstances, that nature gives all wealth to the labourer, and then gives him, as a capitalist, the power to defend it, begot in all other men motives to respect his right. The actual labourer deeply respecting, or not yet possessing a sufficient power to resist the united claims of the landlord, the capitalist, the priest, and the law-maker, finds in fact that his right is neither acknowledged nor protected. The right of property, such as it is therefore, is continually guaranteed by the same circumstances as create it. The persuasion that we shall be permitted to enjoy what we make is natural and necessary, and inspiring us with anger and indignation when it is disappointed by the conduct of another, and rousing us to exertion, inspires that other with apprehension, and compels him to be just. In the progress of society, the apprehension begets a habit of acting justly. The painful fear ceases, when the habit is established, and men respect the rights of each other after the application of personal strength to protect them has ceased to be made, and ceased to be dreaded. A sort of sufferance, or, if you please, of mutual forbearance, which constitutes a mutual guarantee, arises among men, and this sufferance and forbearance, not the law, protects the rights and enjoyments of all.

  Those who distinguish between sufferance and right, the latter being sufferance put into a particular form, do not seem to me to be very accurate observers. Such a distinction forms the basis of many an eloquent parliamentary oration, and is the theme for learned speeches at debating clubs. Beardless youths, and grey-headed statesment have largely dilated on the security of law, and the insecurity of depending on the consciences of our fellow men. When such a distinction is analyzed, no difference between right and sufferance can be discovered. The laws themselves exist by sufferance. They depend on our will; they are suffered to remain by us they are kept up and preserved by our moral sentiments, and cannot possibly have any greater power, or give any greater security than those sentiments from which their force is derived. If you will but put aside the statute-book, and the legislator and the judge, and look into society, you will see, that the greater parts of the rights of men and of women, of neighbours and friends, of parents and children, of common acquaintance, and even of those who live in hostility, for they have rights, you will see that most of our domestic and civil rights, the dearest and the best, are not guaranteed by any law, and have no other security but the mutual respect of man for man, or the moral feelings of individuals.

  Here is a picture of a large portion of society living for years, for centuries, in the secure enjoyment of a right of property, not guaranteed by the law. “In that state of society,” says Mr. Miller, “which determined allodial proprietors to shelter themselves under the protection of a feudal superior, and by which the number of military retainers was therefore gradually augmented, the privileges belonging to this order of men were naturally increased, and their condition was rendered more secure and comfortable. The original vassals of any person were the members of his own family, who, from natural affection, and from ancient habits, were strongly attached to his interest; and upon whom, from a reciprocal regard, as well as from the consideration of expediency, when they became too numerous to live in his own house, he voluntarily bestowed the possession of land for their maintenance. As the superior had no reason to suspect that these men would ever be deficient in fidelity, or seek to withdraw their allegiance, so they entertained no apprehension that while they were willing to fulfil their duty, they should ever be dispossessed of their lands.” “The intimate connection between the parties, and the simplicity of their manners, made them place a mutual confidence in each other, and prevented their being apprehensive of any future disputes, so that neither the superior required any specification of the services to be performed, nor the vassal any express stipulation with respect to the duration, or the terms of his possession. Thus the original vassals, though in fact their land was commonly permitted to remain with them and their posterity, were properly no more than tenants at will, and therefore entirely dependant upon the superior.∗

  Sir, I need not remind you that this mutual regard for rights between landlords and tenants, descended to our own times; and that in many parts of England, up to comparatively a recent period, and even to this day, tenants at will cultivate their farms as secure in their possessions, as if their leases were enrolled and registered in Chancery, having all the army of its black myrmidons to enforce them. The proprietors, for centuries, would as soon have thought of stealing poultry, or snuff-boxes, as Mr. Wyndham once said of them, as of disturbing these mere customary tenants in their possessions. Here then, I say, we have evidence of the whole frame-work of society, and all customary tenures fall under this description, existing through long periods without any of the tyers, and rafters, and wall-plates, and king-posts of positive enactments.

  Here is another example of the same fact in a distant land and a different age. “The peasants of this province (Bologna) are not proprietors, they have not even a lease of their farms, but retain possession by a sort of tacit understanding, deemed as binding as any written engagement could be; generation succeeds generation without a change of tenure; children marry, and their children after them on the same; and it is not uncommon to meet with families composed of thirty or forty individuals, all under the same roof, and acknowledging a chief or head, who is alone accountable to the proprietor of the soil.†

  The same understanding generally prevails between landlord and tenant; for the latter gets in his harvest, threshes his corn, and shells his maize, without being overlooked by the landlord, who comes only to choose one out of two heaps of grain, or one out of two parcels of hemp ready prepared for the purpose. The same confidence is shown as to the produce of the vineyard; for every other tubfull of mashed grapes is sent to the landlord, without his deeming it necessary to inpect those which the tenant keeps for himself. All this security constitutes a state of things to which few other countries offer a parallel.”∗

  Has this state of mutual confidence passed away? Are there now no examples of men relying implicitly on each other in this country? The examples already quoted were found among the land-owners: look now at the commercial part of the community. The master principle of all modern production is division of labour, or mutual co-operation; and under the influence of this principle, men on the other side of the globe, fully relying on having their wants supplied by those who live here, devote themselves to one species of industry. Is this mutual confidence, which is the very soul of all trade, is the reliance of one class of men on another for subsistence, the work of your alehouse-licensing, gameselling, pewter-pot regulating enactments? Is it the work even of any human being? It is not. It is a blind instinctive confidence, the result of circumstances, or rather of the reciprocal laws of matter and of mind; and the cotton-spinner of Manchester may be utterly ignorant even of the existence of the Polish serf or Irish peasant, by whose labour he is fed. Out of this mutual co-operation of different tribes and nations, out of this instinctive confidence, new rights of property continually arise which cannot be protected by laws, because the influence and power of laws are limited to a district, and these rights are relations esta blished between men living in one place and commodities that are then in another. Those relations of property, which are created or acquired by men living under different governments, and to commodities in places where they dwell not, cannot possibly be provided for by the enactments of any one state. In how many cases must men engaged in trade entrust their property to other men, over whom they have not the smallest controul, but what is derived from a sense of moral obligation?∗ In how many cases does the idea of one man, having produced or purchased a commodity, make his right to use or dispose of it respected over half the globe, and in places where no laws can reach? I quote from an eloquent preacher an exquisite picture of this mutual confidence.

  “The commercial man,” (who neither reads his bible nor goes to church, according to Dr. Chalmers, and who we may consider therefore to be little under the influence of the priests, and not standing much in awe of the lawmaker, has, he says,) “a natural principle of integrity; and under its impulse he may be carried forward to such fine exhibitions of himself as are worthy of all admiration. It is very noble when the single utterance of his word carries as much security with it, as if he had accompanied that utterance by the signatures, the securities, and the legal obligations which are required of other men. It might tempt one to be proud of his species, when he looks at the faith that is put in him by a distant correspondent, who, without one other hold of him than his honour, consigns to him the wealth of a whole flotilla, and sleeps in the confidence that it is safe. It is, indeed, an animating thought, when we behold the credit which one man puts in another, though separated by oceans and by continents, when he fixes the anchor of a sure and steady dependance on the reported honesty of one whom he never saw: when, with all his fears for the treachery of the varied elements through which his property has to pass, he knows, that should it only arrive at the door of its destined agent, all his fears, and all his suspicions may be at an end. We know nothing finer than such an act of homage from one human being to another, when perhaps the diameter of the globe is between them. Nor do we think, that either the renown of her victories, or the wisdom of her councils, so signalise the country in which we live, as does the honourable dealing of her merchants; that all the glory of British policy and British valour, are far eclipsed by the moral splendour which British faith has thrown over the name and character of our nation; nor has she gathered so proud a distinction from all the tributaries of her power, as she has done from the awarded confidence of those men of all tribes and colours and languages, who look to our agency for the most faithful of all management, and to our keeping for the most inviolable of all custody.”∗

  It is somewhat remarkable, that this principle of integrity, and this mutual confidence among the merchants of different countries, has not been promoted by laws. In the early stages of European society, the laws were any thing but friendly to commerce, and only sometimes, as a matter of special grace and favour, guaranteed to the alien his life and property, on paying a heavy tribute, in the shape of double and treble duties. Independently of those breaches of faith—profligately scorning all moral principle, committed by all the governments of Europe, in seizing the property of foreign merchants at the breaking out of war—that great anomaly which the hired butchers of their fellow men dignify with every honourable appellation: independently, Sir, of these breaches of faith, which, by the force of example, are enough to weaken the integrity of every merchant, the law in almost all Europe, during the time that trade was silently struggling into importance, refused protection to the property of aliens. Those who received it were often obliged to do so secretly. If the law, therefore, had any effect on the merchants, it was not to strengthen their respect for the property of a man living on the other side of the globe. Till they had become as powerful as plundering barons, and were able to protect the new rights their industry had created, the law was made by those who despised them, and despised all trade as mean and grovelling, calling merchants pedlars, and treating the foreign trader as only fit to be plundered.∗

  In addition to the mutual respect of landlords and tenants for their reciprocal rights, which, though in no wise the offspring of any positive institution, formerly prevailed through the larger part of society, I shall now quote an illustration of a similar respect pervading our domestic relations at present. Do parents and children, do wives and husbands, look to the laws to guarantee to them their individual possessions against each other? Have they no sense of security but what the lawmaker supplies? My little experience bids me answer these questions in the negative. Except large possessions, jointures, and lands be concerned, husbands and wives, parents and children, rarely appeal to the law. The great majority of the middle classes have a sense of security, and a persuasion that each will be permitted to enjoy what is his or hers, unassailed by any rival claims of members of the same family, without the law being ever present to the mind. They may look, indeed, to the law for protection against strangers whom they mistrust, because they do not know them, but against their relations and friends and neighbours, in the great majority of cases, and in most of the transactions of life, they never think of what the law prescribes. If we find this sense of security pervading every house in the country, if it extend to all our domestic relations, if the conduct of parents and children, of husbands and wives, be determined without any reference whatever to law, how much of the actual possessions of each, I ask, does the law guarantee? It guarantees the rights of the land-owner as far as it can, it protects the possessions of the clergy, it gives the taxeater his bread, but that it protects or guarantees the possessions and enjoyments of the industrious classes, is only true if it be found prescribing our domestic duties and protecting all our individual possessions.

  One great part of the business of life consists in parents providing for their children. In the middle classes, when the latter arrive at a certain age, they are frequently launched into the world, provided with a small capital to commence business. The prudent parent, till his son gives proof of his capacity and integrity, rather lends than gives the necessary stock, and very often retains a right of property over that wealth he entrusts to his child. The law would support the father in resuming the possession, and we should therefore expect that the child, deriving no security from the law, would have no motive for exerting himself. In fact, however, he does not need its assurances; he has a confident expectation that his parent will allow him to retain what he acquires by the use of the property en trusted to him—will, if he deserve it, leave him in full possession of that property, and he does not cease to be industrious, because the law is not on his side. Those young people who remain dependant on their parents till they have proved themselves worthy to be trusted, are the staple of all that is honourable and industrious among the tradesmen of the country. On the contrary, those who are secured in the possession of a certain property by the law, like the heirs to entailed estates, too frequently turn out idle, dissipated, and worthless. They seldom or never render themselves of any use to the public, till, from some circumstance or other, they become dependant on its good opinion. Thus, where we can distinctly trace the operation of the law guaranteeing the possession of property, we find its effects any thing but virtue; and where we trace the total absence of law, as in our domestic relations, we find a strong sense of security giving birth to manly exertions. The persuasion that we shall enjoy what we produce, and the industrious habits consequent on that persuasion are not, in these cases, it is plain, the produce of the law—for that, let it never be forgotten, does not guarantee to each man what he produces—but of the mutual respect for claims and rights which naturally grows up among individuals, and extends, as they multiply, through all their complicated relations to one another.

  Being willing to believe that the natural right of property, the foundation of which is so palpable, extends its influence, from the evident relation of the savage to the first rude products of his untutored skill, over all the ramifications of civilized life, in the same manner as the properties of the precious metals, and of other commodities, determine their relative value and all the minute phenomena of trade, of money and of credit, consequent thereupon, I may borrow from the few facts I have here brought under your notice, a conviction, which they will be far from generating in those who deny the existence of any natural right of property, and who contend that such a right is the proudest work of human art. To me they seem satisfactorily to prove, that the same natural law which induces the savage to call that his, which he seizes on or makes, and induces all men, on account of its being at all times more difficult to take from one another, than for each to make for himself, to respect their mutual rights, operates at all times and places, and as it modifies and changes the right of property sought to be maintained by the legislator, so it continually protects the new right of property industry calls into existence. If these observations be correct, the right of property now actually in existence, like the right to and the enjoyment of religious toleration, and like the freedom of the press, is neither created nor guaranteed by the law, but by the moral principles of our being.∗

  I have yet a few concluding observations to append, by way of summary, but I shall devote to them a distinct though a short epistle.

  A Labourer.

  LETTER THE EIGHTH.
  EVILS OF THE ARTIFICIAL RIGHT OF PROPERTY.

  Not intended to go deeply into this subject.—The sufferings and crimes of the oppressed labourer overlooked. The pains and penalties suffered, by the oppressors only adverted to—Mr. Combe's description of the present state of society.—Fraud, forgery, and overtrading, all result from an artificial right of property.—No legislative remedy suggested for these evils, because legislation has no influence over natural laws.—Society a natural phenomenon.—Conclusion.

  TO H. BROUGHAM, ESQ. M. P. F.R.S. &c.

  Sir,

  The purpose of my former communications has been to make you acquainted with my opinions as to the origin of a natural and an artificial right of property, to shew you that the latter is continually changed and subverted by the former, and that the real guarantee of all our rights is not, as commonly said, the law of the land, but the opinions and habits of mankind, which are continually corrected, if not formed, by external circumstances. Were I disposed to philosophise deeply on the subject, I might, perhaps, go on to demonstrate, that these circumstances are the immediate creation of the Deity, even if they may not be called, consistently with a sublime but not popular theory, emana tions from, or a revelation of the Deity himself; and thus also to demonstrate that the government of the whole moral world, even to its minutest part, is carefully regulated by Divine Providence. This, however, might lead me to subjects that lie more out of the common tract than the every-day evils of society, and therefore I shall confine myself to traceing the connection between some of them and the legislative attempt to maintain an artificial right of property.

  Nature willing the happiness of our species, has given us a facility to accommodate ourselves to circumstances, so that the real social misery—the actual pain which exists, is perhaps not so great as the common lamentations of certain classes would lead us to believe. At least I am not disposed to exaggerate it, but enough of privation and pain may be perceived and traced to the legal right of property, to warrant us in ascribing to it most of the misery which exists in the world.

  I put out of view the sufferings of the more than halfstarved, toil-worn, and degraded labourers, with all their families and persons dependant on them, though I believe they sometimes reach the extremity of human endurance, and are all plainly to be referred to that right of property which does not allow them to own the produce of their own labour. I put them out of view, because I address myself, through you, to a different class of persons, whom I wish to make sensible that their interest and happiness are not promoted by this right; and I have no wish, by expatiating on the privations and sufferings of the poor, to rouse in them the slumbering feelings of hatred and revenge. At the same time, the fact of the great mass of the labouring classes in this country being in a state of comparative pauperism and destitution, which is at the bottom of most of the apprehensions, and many of the sufferings of the rich, must on no account be forgotten or overlooked. As these people are very industrious and very skilful, very frugal and very economical—as their labour pays taxes, tithes, rent, and profit—it cannot be for one moment doubted, whatever the final cause may be, which induces them to submit to law; whether it be their prejudice in its favour, their ignorance, their bad passions, their fear of each other, or the undue proportion of their numbers to their capacity to obtain subsistence from nature,—it cannot be doubted, I say, that the immediate and proximate cause of their poverty and destitution, seeing how much they labour, and how many people their labour nourishes in opulence, is the law which appropriates their produce, in the shape of revenue, rent, tithes, and profit.

  I also pass by the manner in which the legal right of property operates in checking all improvement, because to elucidate that fully, would take up too much time. It is, however, evident, that the labour which would be amply rewarded in cultivating all our waste lands, till every foot of the country became like the garden grounds about London, were all the produce of labour on those lands to be the reward of the labourer, cannot obtain from them a sufficiency to pay profit, tithes, rent, and taxes. Although the land itself should be exempt from those charges, they fall on every thing the labourer uses or consumes in bringing them under cultivation, and thus the artificial right of property, with the exactions of government, are the real causes why there is, in the nineteenth century, a single acre of uncultivated land in the country. There seems no reason why society should be clogged in its progress. It is not like a machine made by man, which friction speedily brings to a still stand. On the contrary, the longer it continues the more are the means multiplied for its rapid advancement.∗ It is more easy to cultivate land in the neighbourhood of previous cultivation, where both skill and instruments are ready prepared, than in the wilds of America; and much of the land not yet cultivated in Europe, is as fit for cultivation as the forests of that country. It is generally said, that capital is the great means of promoting improvement, but with this theory I am unable to reconcile the fact, that in Europe capital has greatly accumulated, and here improvement is nearly at a stand, while in America there is comparatively little capital, and there improvement is most rapid. The fact is, that improvement is checked, in Europe, by the exactions of the capitalist, the landlord, the clergy, and the government; all of which must and do fall on industry, rendering it barren and unproductive to the labourer.

  In the same manner as the cultivation of waste lands is checked, so are commercial enterprise and manufacturing industry arrested. Infinite are the undertakings which would amply reward the labour necessary for their success, but which will not pay the additional sums required for rent, profits, tithes, and taxes. These, and no want of soil, no want of adequate means for industry to employ itself, are the causes which impede the exertions of the labourer and clog the progress of society. But though I pass over this important branch of the subject, it is proper to make you aware, that the general want of profitable employment for industry, which produces all those miseries and crimes, always resulting as experience has demonstrated, from a stagnating condition of society, are primarily caused by the law supporting an unjust appropriation of wealth. Industry is without a motive, and enterprise without means, when neither can obtain its appropriate reward.

  The way in which we learn that we have violated a command of nature, is through the suffering which ensues. Thus we say, that nature prohibits us to mutilate the body, because doing so inflicts pain. Are the opulent people then of this and other countries not continually warned, that they violate some of the laws of nature. Is the weariness, the loathing of life, the hurrying about from place to place, as if mere motion could carry them away from themselves, is that “leafless desart of the mind” for which they are generally distinguished, is that want of an aim and an object to steady their exertions, which makes life a burthensome blank to them, and all of which are obviously caused by their living on the produce of other men's labour—violating the natural right of property—are all these no evils? Is the perpetual hunt in which they are engaged after health, and the perpetual apprehension they are under of losing it, which never exists when men are engaged in providing the means of subsistence, not evils? Does it cause an exquisite feeling of delight in our opulent people, to see themselves surrounded by a mass of labourers, in the lowest state of destitution, and to be continually apprehensive of meeting in them thieves or foes? Is it gratifying to be conscious that you have no security for your highly-prized possessions, but the dread of the gaol and the gallows and to perceive that the gaol is even sought as a place of refuge, and that the gallows has lost all its terror? If the opulent suffer no evil from the destitution of the labourers, why are there so many fears, and why is such eagerness manifested to provide for the famishing and the dreaded multitude? Why are emigration and the poor laws, or military law and extermination, proposed for Ireland, as men are humane or sanguinary, if the poor excite no terror in the rich? The fact of the existence of a multitude of poor cannot be denied, and that multitude is a source of never-dying uneasiness to those who live by the produce of their labour. Men generally love mirth, and music, and dancing; as their taste gets refined, they love literature and science, and the arts; love to walk abroad amidst the beauties of creation, and to admire the mimic wonders of the artist's skill; some of them are then content “to minister to their wants by their own hands;” but whatever may be their taste and acquirements, no one can suppose that police officers and night watchmen, gaols and magistrates, complicated laws and procrastinating courts, which only serve to keep in order the oppressed labourers, promote happiness. None of these things seem to me suitable either to the dignity of the intellectual being, or adapted to ensure animal gratification, and as they all, at least impede positive enjoyment if they do not inflict positive evil, we must look on them as so many admonitions to the idle and opulent part of society, not to lend themselves to the violation of the natural right of property.∗

  As you may doubt the picture I am disposed to draw of the state of society, here is a sketch by another hand. “This island exhibits the spectacle of millions of men toiled to the extremity of human endurance, for a pittance scarcely sufficient to sustain life; weavers labouring for fourteen or sixteen hours a-day for eightpence, frequently unable to procure work even on these terms: other artizans exhausted almost to death by laborious drudgery, who, if better recompensed, seek compensa tion and enjoyment in the grossest sensual debauchery, drunkenness and gluttony, master traders and manufacturers anxiously labouring for wealth, now gay in the fond hope that all their expectations will be realized, then sunk in deep despair by the breath of ruin having passed over them; landlords and tenants now reaping unmeasured returns from their properties, then pining in penury amidst an overflow of every species of produce; the government cramped by an overwhelming debt, and the prevalence of ignorance and selfishness on every side, so that it is impossible for it to follow with a bold step, the most obvious dictates of reason and justice, owing to the countless prejudices and imaginary interests which every where obstruct the path of improvement. This resembles much more punishment for transgression than reward for obedience to the divine institutions.”∗

  The law of nature is, that industry shall be rewarded by wealth, and idleness be punished by destitution; the law of the land is to give wealth to idleness, and fleece industry till it be destitute. As far as the law can, therefore, it encourages idleness, and does what is in its power to destroy “the only spring which keeps human labour in motion.” The idle classes also occupy the highest stations of society, and are looked up to with respect and reverence. Whatever they do is necessarily imitated. As all their natural wants are supplied, they have nothing to do but fancy “low unreal” wants. Their imaginations are racked to hunt up new gratifications. They indulge in all sorts of expensive vanities; and setting the fashion, what they indulge in out of idleness and whim, is also sought after by all beneath them. Thus we may trace to our artificial right of property, by neither a long nor a circuitous route, that vanity,—that excessive love of expense, in all classes, which makes prostitutes of our women and fraudulent knaves of our men, and plunges all classes in vices and crimes. We may trace all the fraud and forgery in society, all the evils, in short, which call forth the exertions of vindictive law, and are embraced by the comprehensive term crime, up to the system of our artificial right of property, which severs the natural connection between labour and its rewards.

  The wants of individuals which labour is intended to gratify, are the natural guide to their exertions. The instant they are compelled to labour for others, this guide forsakes them, and their exertions are dictated by the greed and avarice, and false hopes of their masters. The wants springing from our organization, and accompanying the power to labour, being created by the same hand which creates and fashions the whole universe, including the course of the seasons, and what the earth brings forth, it is fair to suppose that they would at all times guide the exertions of the labourer, so as fully to ensure a supply of necessaries and conveniences, and nothing more. They have, as it were, a prototype in nature, agreeing with other phenomena, but the avarice and greed of masters have no such prototype. They stand isolated and apart from all the great phenomena of the universe. They were originally crimes condemned by our moral sentiments, and still have their source in our crime-begotten political systems. Nature disowns them as a guide to action, and punishes us for following them. By this system the hand is dissevered from the mouth, and labour is put in motion to gratify vanity and ambition, not the natural wants of animal existence. When we look at the commercial history of our country, and see the false hopes of our merchants and manufacturers leading to periodical commercial convulsions, we are compelled to conclude, that they have not the same source as the regular and harmonious external world. Capitalists have no guide to their exertions, because nature rejects and opposes their dominion over labour. Starts of national prosperity, followed by bankruptcy and ruin, have the same source then as fraud and forgery. To our legal right of property we are indebted for those gleams of false wealth and real panic, which, within the last fifty years, have so frequently shook, to its centre, the whole trading world.

  Founded, Sir, on our mutual respect for mutual rights, for the lawgiver has dexterously endeavoured to turn both our vices and our virtues to his own account, but quite distinct from that right of property which arises from the physical and moral laws of the universe, and is coextensive with our race, is the legal right of property, ordained and enforced, but neither secured, settled, nor protected by the laws of every political society. In almost all ages and nations—from the first dawn of history to the present moment, from the mountains of the East, the cradle of the human race, to the Savannahs of the West, where mankind seems destined to grow to maturity, in the Bible, and in the last Colonial Gazette, from Chaldea to Kentucky, ambition and greed, open force and covert plunder—both being condemned by our moral sentiments, have unjustly appropriated man as well as the soil he must till for his subsistence.

  The preservation of the power of the unjust appropriators has been called social order, and mankind have believed the assertion. To maintain their dominion is the object and aim of all human legislation. The great mass of the two hundred and odd statutes, which, up to a recent period, inflicted death on our people, had no other object than to enforce obedience to an unjust scheme of appropriation. That government is a great evil,—that laws to model and uphold it, imposing restraints on thought and commerce, on the press and locomotion, that taxes to pay its expenses, kings and judges to administer it, and armies and hangmen to carry their blood-stained decrees into execution—that Aristocra cies dazzling us with the display of gaudy magnificence, and hierarchies imposing on our senses by more solemn delusions—both intended to cheat us into admiration of their tinsel shew to which substantial happiness is sacrificed; that gaols and gibbets, and tread-mills, the instruments of legislative wrath, and the signs of its dominion, that they all inflict sharp pain in their first operation, and spread misery through society, is universally admitted; that I have convinced you of the unholiness of their origin, or their inability to answer the end proposed, I cannot assert; but I must express my sincere conviction, that the apparent necessity for maintaining them is altogether a consequence of our artificial and unjust right of property. Whether or not there be a natural right of property which would be generally respected, though no law guaranteed it, may be doubted; but it is nevertheless proper to make men aware that the price they pay for attempting to uphold the artificial right of property, is nothing less than the enormous sum of misery inflicted in the name of law and government.

  All the misery arising from brutal hangman laws, from judicial murders, which the wise and good have for a long time reprobated, has been, and this is a striking fact, gratuitously inflicted. It has not preserved the artificial right of property, it has not secured power to the landowner, it has not seated the legislator more firmly in our veneration, it has not saved his authority from being overthrown by the general reason, as expressed by the Press, and it has, therefore, as completely failed in attaining the great object proposed, as the laws against fraud and forgery have failed in putting a stop to these offences. The lawgiver, Sir, has been unable, notwithstanding the terror he has employed, to invest his artificial right of property with the sanctity of a moral obligation. He is as imbecile as he is wicked. Whatever he may decree, depredation, the violation of his right of property, from the highest to the lowest, from the king on the throne, who exacts the property of his subjects on numberless false pretences, through all classes of nobles, archbishops and bishops, placemen, jobbing members of parliament, professional men, traders, buyers and sellers, one demanding more than his due, and the other not paying his just debts; whatever may be the law, depredation, I assert, is the practice of the people. The lawgiver can no more excite, even among the most virtuous and well educated classes, a respect for his artificial right of property, than he can create for that right of property, which exists in the West Indies, a sanction in the bosom of the Negro. The laws, according not with our moral sentiments, are, in fact, inoperative. They inflict pain, but they produce no amendment, and impose no salutary controul. What is generally beneficial, what is commanded by Nature, needs not to be enforced by laws; what is intended for the benefit of a sect or a class and not agreeable to her commands, men seek to maintain by terror and pain.∗ Behold, at once, the origin of all our brutal penal enactments for the protection of an artificial right of property, and of their complete inefficacy. Behold too the source of ignorance, poverty, and misery. By those very laws, by the pain we continually inflict on one another under the prostituted name of justice, by all the social evils arising from inequality of wealth, from boundless profusion encouraging every apeing extravagance, and from complete destitution, making men reckless and criminal, Nature, whatever kings and lawgivers may foolishly teach, continually vindicates her decrees, and continually informs us, by almost every variety of suffering, that we have violated them, and that they cannot be violated with impunity. I have shown you, Sir, that the artificial right of property is not and cannot be preserved. Nature marks the violation of the natural right, by pain, at every stage, but after that has been inflicted and suffered, she permits not that the unrighteous aim should be accomplished.

  If this view be correct, no benefit can be anticipated from alterations in the laws, but such as tend gradually to remove them. A multitude of schemes are, I know, weekly promulgated out of parliament, and yearly discussed within its walls, to relieve our social difficulties. On the one hand we have deportation, and on the other confinement in gaols and workhouses. Extermination, and a liberal provision for the poor, have both been recommended. In none of these have I any faith. No legislative scheme whatever can be carried into execution without trespassing on the natural right of property. For human beings, for society at large, when it exercises its healthy common sense, for mankind universally, whatever may be their temporary distresses and privations, there is much, nay unbounded hope; but that any one of their distresses, even the most trivial, can be permanently relieved by any laws, recommended or dictated by those who have, and can have nothing else in view, even in those schemes which are decked out with the brightest attributes of benevolence, but to preserve their power and the artificial right of property, I do not believe. Those who propose these schemes, all imagine that law creates social order and preserves social happiness. With a view to their opinions, I have shown the insufficiency of law to create and preserve even the right of property it has sought to preserve, the most important and the most cher shed by the legislator of all rights, and the basis of all political power.

  Without entering into a full description of the social order, which is established in spite of the law, gradually sweeping it out of existence, and extending to all the nations of the globe, I have contented myself with endeavouring to explain the manner in which the natural right of property, as it has gradually subverted the law-made right of property, has always supplied a guarantee for the new rights gradually called into existence. To meet their false hopes I add, that though our present system is wrong, I am not bound, in order to satisfy their unholy craving to regulate what no individual does or can comprehend, viz. society, for it is yet in progress, or is not yet fully created, all its phenomena not being yet unfolded to our understanding; I am not bound, though present legislation be bad, to suggest some legislation which would be better. Society is a natural phenomenon, and I inquire into the laws which regulate it, as I would inquire into the laws which regulate the course of the seasons. To suppose that the controul of them is given into our hands has been set down as madness by one of our greatest moralists. To those who having, century after century, tried in vain to regulate society and determine its course, who, foreseeing none of the great changes which have occurred in personal rights, and in the right of property, have been gradually compelled to make their legislation conform to the circumstances of society, I willingly leave the task, as they of course foresee its future condition, of projecting schemes and prescribing laws for its welfare. I only aim at ascertaining natural laws, and seeing that with them legislation is in conflict, I reject it, trusting the welfare of society, which I do not comprehend, to the same benevolent Power which overruling, in past times, the decrees of the lawmaker, has ever established and upheld order, and has conducted mankind so far on the glorious career, which, judging from past changes, we may hope they have yet to run.

  Legislation, according to my view, was originally founded in conquest, and it has ever since been continued in utter ignorance of its results. As was the primitive act, so are all its consequences hostile to the course of nature. As long as mankind obey principles flowing from that primitive aggression, so long will they be tormented by open theft and secret fraud, which tending to destroy confidence, and making each man act as much as possible for himself, instead of all mutually exchanging their services, check division of labour far more even than restrictions on trade. As long as political society is based on mutual oppression and plunder, so long shall we all suffer from that profligate scorn of natural right, which, dictating the conduct of those in high places, corrupts others by its example; so long also shall we be tormented by courts of law, and customs, and excise duties, and visits from the taxgatherer; which prevent every man from knowing what accurately belongs to himself, and making him hold even food, drink, and clothing, by the insecure tenor of the tax-inflictor's conscience, and the lawyer's mystic interpretation of almost incomprehensible decrees, convert our naturally happy existence into a long scene of contention, uncertainty, and dread. As long as we cherish the mistrust of each other avowed by legislation, though contrary to the mutual reliance continually taught and continually extended by nature, as division of labour is extended, and all the families of mankind are knit by the common bond of commerce into one, so long shall we be the victims of those vices and crimes which pollute all our domestic relations, arming man against man, and nation against nation, till the face of the whole earth is stained with the blood of private assassinations and public murders. As long as we, thus mistrusting each other, are guilty of these atrocities, so long will the greed and the ambition of the priesthood be fattened by our apprehensions and remorse, and so long will they, for the sake of base lucre, invest our benevolent God with their own vile characteristics, filling, the mind with horrid phantoms by their furious denunciations, turning religion, from being a consolation, into a plague and a curse, and by corrupting thought at its source, make all mankind feel as if the barb of death were ever rankling in their hearts. We like to go far about to seek for the causes of our misery, but they may all be found in those unholy political institutions, which, originally founded by the sword, have ever since been maintained by the sword, breathing nothing but hatred, discord, and bloodshed. Duly to appreciate and remove, by casting aside our veneration for the human lawgiver, these obvious causes of social misery is a species of wisdom we shall be, I am afraid, slow to acquire; to assist in making this acquisition, though in ever so slight a degree, would be an unspeakable gratification to him, who now concludes, by signing himself,∗

  A Labourer.

  POSTSCRIPT.
  TO LORD BROUGHAM AND VAUX,
  lord high chancellor of england, &c. &c.

  Change in the situation of the Lord Chancellor—Reasons for believing that his former liberality of sentiment was assumed.—The Lord Chancellor's attack upon the author.—Changes in Europe.—As they have not led to social happiness, men will and necessarily must inquire into the Right of Property.—Other proofs of this necessity.—Answer to the statement, that these doctrines lead to no legal improvement.—It has been shewn that property is not regulated by human laws, and therefore society is not.—The power which has regulated it in past times must be trusted in future.—Source of the alarm as to property, and reasons for believing it unfounded.—Conclusion.

  My Lord,

  I certainly did not dream, when I began these letters, that before they saw the light, you would be Lord Chancellor of England. I cannot, however, congratulate you on your elevation, for since you have occupied the woolsack, you have forfeited the chief title you had to my respect. When you boasted, soon after your accession to power, of sending forth the sword of the law to smite the poor unhappy victims of the system of mis-government which you had long denounced, and when you took the jurors of London to task, on Sept. 8, 1831, for violating, not an oath, but a form of words, rather than be the ministers for executing what is called our sanguinary criminal code, which means the cruel orders of men, long since dead, who were even more cruel than modern lawgivers, you convinced me that your love of liberty and humanity, when out of office, had served as a stepping stone to public confidence and political power; and that in heart and mind, in argument and speech, you are a mere lawyer, setting up, high above the principles of justice, the maxims of that abominable system of fictions, absurdities, and cruelties, at the head of which you are now placed. The respect I had for you, as a lover of the best interests of the human race, has accordingly vanished, and I have only to regret that I ever believed the professions of a lawyer, all his life accustomed to look at words as usurers look at money, only to be lent out at large and profitable interest. To such a general and public motive for changing my opinion, I have to add, a special and private one. A particular circumstance has made me suspect, that your love of literature, your professions of liberality, and your often expressed wishes to educate the people, meaning to drill them to your own, or to Whig purposes, were all, like your love of humanity, displayed to the public as a mountebank tells his audience coarse jokes, in order to amuse them while he is taking them in. Having now attained the height of your ambition, you have no repugnance to propagate error and delusion, upholding them by persecuting, as far as the present usages of society will allow, those who do not agree with you in dogma and in doctrine.

  I am pleased that I am able to remind you, that the last observation, in my last letter, written upwards of two years ago, was a comment on some errors put forth by your society, commonly called “The Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge,” because that observation shows, that I was then attentive to its proceedings, and prepared to expose some of its undeserved claims to public respect, before I had a personal motive for pointing my remarks. Since then, your society has published a book, entitled, “The Rights of Industry, Capitaland Labour,“ one great object of which is, to refute, and failing to refute, to decry my little work, called, “Labour Defended against the Claims of Capital.“ In your book, for you are the avowed patron and protector of the society, and for aught I know, the author of this very work, the present legal right of property is held up to the admiration of the people, through a whole chapter, and the impugners of that right, myself among the number, are stigmatized as “bitter enemies of the people,” as “blind guides,” as “ministers of desolation,” as “destroyers,”∗ and as possessing, many other ugly antisocial characteristics. Pretending to be the instructors of the people, though the works of your society have ever been distinguished for the incorrectness of their logic and the meagreness of their knowledge, here we find you and it defending a natural wrong, because it is a legal right; and like a set of religious bigots, whose language and conduct are as intolerant as those of Mr. J. E. Gordon, we find you, the Lord Chancellor, the man whom we once honoured as Henry Brougham, we find you and your pretended liberal society, pronouncing all the anathemas that can be heaped on crime, against a mere difference of opinion. Is not to think, then, as you and your fellow scribblers think, worthy of the severest punishment? I am taught by this, my lord, that you only want the power, not the wish, to be as great a tyrant as was Castlereagh, and I conclude, that the love of truth and good has no abiding place in your lordship's bosom, or it is stifled and suppressed by the individual love of power. For the proceedings of your society I hold you responsible, and detesting any species of persecution for opinion's sake, and as the individual unhandsomely attacked, I must take you to task for supporting, like other champions of error, what is wrong, by as much violence as the hu mane temper of the present age will permit you to employ. The man pretending to be a friend to literature and to education, who either abuses those who differ from him in opinion, or countenances its being done by others, has no claim to my respect, even though he sit on the king's right hand, and be the keeper of the king's conscience.∗

  For you to countenance illiberal abuse, on account of a difference of opinion, excites my astonishment, because you hold that belief is involuntary,† and can have, therefore, no more pretence for abusing those who disbelieve either political or religious dogmas, than you have for abusing the immense variety of minerals, plants, and animals, with which the world is not more adorned, than it is by an immense variety in the shades of human thought. Your society, by drawing attention to the crippled and decaying legal right of property, while it shews the importance of the subject, can only hasten its ruin. Personally I thank you for the interference, for it gives a weight to my opinions, which, unnoticed by you, they would never have obtained. It must be hoped, however, that you defend other principles on better grounds than your society defends the legal right of property, or woe be to those who trust you! What you and your society have done is this; you have taken up a vulgar prejudice without investigation, and you boldly and crudely defend an error, because it exists, and because you fancy it is your interest to maintain it. Like the priests of Ephesus, you and your fellow craftsmen cry aloud, because your craft is endangered. You and your society labour like the borough mongers, like the Tory press, like the bishops, like all the offspring of error and the spawn of corruption, to uphold our present mischievous system, and the obvious motive you now have for cherishing the delusion, ought to deprive you of all the confidence of the people. Those who defend the legal right of property, seek to perpetuate misgovernment, and the misery and degradation of the industrious classes. Seeing you so engaged, being convinced by your late conduct, that you place the law above justice, though I could quote a speech of yours, when you were Mr. Brougham, in which you exalt natural rights far above legal wrongs,∗ —seeing that since you have been in power, you have embraced and acted on nearly all the principles of those who preceded you in office, I cannot, I repeat, congratulate you on the conversion of the liberal-minded patriot, to whom my letters were addressed, into the arrogant politician and dogmatic inquisitor, to whom I have now to direct this postcript.

  If the change be great in you, my lord, since these letters were begun, the changes in society have been even still more astounding. Three years ago Europe was in a state of internal tranquillity, and remained so till some time after these letters were finished. The practised eye might possibly foresee that some great changes were preparing, but Charles the Tenth then seemed firmly seated on the throne of France, Belgium was closely united with Holland, and the demand for Reform had almost died away in England. But even then, misery existed to a considerable extent in all the countries of Europe, and voices were heard exclaiming against the right of property, such complaints being no transient theme, the consequence of temporary excitement, produced by the contrivances of an intriguing party, and destined to be forgotten when the prime agitator disappears, or is provided for; but a permanent and enduring subject of controversy. Even then, when the demand for reform was unheard, when the voice of sedition was every where still, when rebellion had not shook thrones, and perplexed the monarchs whose thrones it did not reach, the Saint Simonians had risen up, and were extending themselves in France; and even in America,∗ where men have scarcely any political evils to complain of, the legal right of property was called in question and denounced. That right is now a subject of almost universal controversy, and be assured this controversy will never pass away, till that right be securely based by all men acknowledging the eternal decrees of justice.

  The political agitation which began, or rather was first made manifest, even to careless observers, by the expulsion of Charles X., the unquietness which, from that, spread over Europe, destroying forms of government, and changing political institutions, without leading to the diminution of public charges, or relieving individual poverty, has given to inquiries into the right of property, an extensiveness and an intensity, which must speedily lead to a general and a thorough reform. As those political changes have not effected, and cannot effect the expected benefits, men will necessarily turn away from political alterations as unproductive of good, and inquire into the sources of evil, and means of drying them up. They must come to that great source, the opposition between the legal and the natural right of property, and which of these two rights they will choose, and which they will cling to, you have told us in the speech I have just quoted. They will cling to that “ancient law, which is of higher authority than the law of the land,” in which “their judgments agree, and which unite their hearts together.”

  As a proof of the necessity of you politicians instituting inquiries into the right of property, before you meddle with several subjects, I may mention, that the whole doctrines of the distribution of wealth, embracing all that can be said about rent, profit, and wages, depend altogether on the right of property. I defy any man to explain either of those without assuming, as the basis of his argument, the present legal right of property, and I am sure that no man can be acquainted with the modern doctrines on these subjects, without being thoroughly sensible, that, by assuming the present legal right of property to be the natural right, the whole of those doctrines are founded on a false basis, and give a false notion of the natural laws which regulate the progress of society. They do a most bitter injustice to nature, they cast unworthy and even impious reflections on God, by representing him as placing those limits to human welfare, which are laid down by the ignorant legislator. These errors, however, are now beginning to be seen through; discussions on the right of property are connected with the science of political economy; and at least one gentleman, Mr. Reid, has had the honesty to avow, even in embracing and defending the legal right, that the laws of distribution and the natural limits to the progress of society, can only be correctly studied, in conjunction with the established right of property.

  At present public attention is directed to the Reform Bill, but while its opponents loudly assert, that it will give the people no relief whatever, its advocates only claim for it, a capability of ultimately effecting that by improving the government and lessening the burden of taxation. Experience, however, warrants me in assert ing that changes of government more frequently lead to derange trade, and to augment that burden, than to diminish it. Thus, my lord, it is probable, indeed, in its immediate effects, it is certain, that the Reform Bill will and must disappoint any hope of relief which people have formed from it. If you look, however, at the intense suffering of the children of our manufacturing districts, if you look at the derangement to which trade is already liable, if you are at all sensible that farmers can no longer obtain any profit, and that even their capital has been melting away, while the peasantry are almost starving,∗ you must conclude, that these great and pressing evils are too violent, too extensive, and the pangs of hunger are too sharp, to wait for relief by the slow progress of improving the government through the means of the Reform Bill. But what can you, my lord, or what can your colleagues in the ministry, expect will be the result of exciting the hopes of a long suffering people, only to disappoint them? Be assured, my lord, and prepare yourself for this consequence, that the disappointed desire for relief, will infallibly turn back the attention of mankind, with tenfold force, on the first principles of government and of property, and the institutions of society will only be preserved, as far as they are founded in reason. Why not put an end, at once then, to this paltering with the hopes of mankind, this juggling with the public reason; and why not at once say, that political change will not give relief from poverty? Why, my lord, will you hasten the overthrow of the present system, by directing all the natural discontent of mankind to the deluding institutions of the politician?

  To relieve this distress, only one of two things can possibly be done; either the quantity of wealth must be augmented, or it must be better and differently distributed. But the quantity of wealth, and this is a very singular circumstance, is at present too great. What is meant, my lord, by “those gluts” of which we have heard so much, both in parliament and in the public at large, for the last fifteen years? What is meant by “labourers being too numerous,” by “machinery being too extensively employed,” of which we now continually hear, but that the productive power of the country has been too much augmented? I shall, as I have already stated, not inquire into the cause of production actually exceeding the wants of the owners, nor into the absence of all principle regulating the production of wealth, from which arise gluts and commercial revulsions, I shall content myself with observing, that the complaint of the farmer is, that he cannot get a remunerating price for his corn, and he, therefore, will not consent to food being imported; that the complaint of the manufacturer is, that he is overwhelmed with the cheap-made produce of other countries, and finds no sufficient sale for what he is able to produce; that the labourer complains that there is no market for labour, and that wages are too low; that all classes of producers, in short, complain that they can find no sufficient vent for their commodities; that there is too much of them; that prices are too low; and all agree in complaining, that each has more of his own peculiar produce, or useful commodity, than he knows what to do with. It is a plain matter of fact, notwithstanding the theory of Mr. Malthus, that more wealth is now produced, or can be produced, than can find a market, and that consequently the great remedy for all the evils of society, as far as poverty and wealth are concerned, must be found not in augmenting the quantity of wealth, but in altering its distribution. In other words, my lord, the right of ownership or property must be im proved. The present condition, then, of all classes, as well as the attacks every where making on the right of property, give to the subject of this inquiry a preeminent importance.

  Consider too, my lord, the difficulties in which, persisting in upholding the legal right of property, now involves all the discussions of the legislature, and all the actions of different classes. Look, for example, at the question of tithes, the legislature labouring by threats of fine and imprisonment to enforce the legal right, while the people, grounding their resistance on the natural right, are, in this country, calling for the amendment, and in Ireland compelling, by force, the abolition of the legal right. Can any process of legislation reconcile these two conflicting rights? If it cannot, my lord, if the legal right must, as I have shown you, come to an end, is it wise, is it commonly expedient, is it decent, is it humane, is it even honest, for you and your colleagues to pass laws for the purpose of enforcing, at the expense of fine, imprisonment, riots, and bloodshed, the legal right? Look too at the disputes, as to whether these tithes be the property of the state or not, and whether they ought and will go into the pockets of the landlords. My lord, they are the property, the natural property of those who produce the pigs and poultry, the potatoes and the milk, which the parsons unjustly claim, and the legislature as unjustly attempts to appropriate to their use. What right have you, or what right has any man, or any set of men, whatever may be their names or titles, to take away from the Irish peasant the produce of his labour, and confer it on the priest. Neither the state nor the priests own this property, and the state has no more business with it than have the South Americans. The state, in fact, is now only another name for boroughmongers, and what have they to do with the property of the people? Only to plunder it. Be assured, my lord, that you and the whole gang of legislators are exceeding your power, and that until you learn to respect the laws of nature, there will be a continuance of those crimes which you pretend to deplore.

  But admitting, my lord, the necessity of making inquiries, you may taunt me by saying, that my inquiries lead to nothing, that my conclusions are all vague and unprofitable, that I propose no schemes for relieving distress, no measures for reforming the state, that I look only to futurity, and counsel men, who are on the verge of starvation, to live upon hope; that I propose nothing, that I advise, even in these stirring times of reform, to leave things alone, and that my doctrines will please neither the great vulgar, who fancy they can confer happiness by making laws, nor the little vulgar who, unfortunately, trust only to the law-maker for restoring prosperity. But am I to blame, or are those laws of nature to blame, which I humbly, but zealously endeavour to interpret? All my remarks are directed against legislation, and you cannot expect me to be so inconsistent, as to propose to redress wrongs by inflicting them. My object has been to show, that even the distribution of property is regulated by natural laws, and if that be the case with property, which is tangible and measurable, and seems to come within the grasp of legislation,—if those natural laws have set aside human laws, is it not clear, is it not certain, that every other part of society,—from the trade to South America to the daily huckstering at our own doors,—from the propagation and increase of the species, the very source of society, to the invention of the minutest art, the steel pen with which I write,—from the growth of nations in wealth to the decay and falling to ruin of individuals,—is it not certain, that every part of society is also regulated, as well as the right of property; and can you expect me to be so mad as to propose regulations for any part of that, all of which, I believe to be regulated by the highest wis dom? No, my lord, I am not so mad. I aim at establishing no system; I recommend no plans; I advise only inquiry, patient inquiry, and confidence in the power which has hitherto subverted your laws and preserved the order of society.

  To me, indeed, it is abundantly strange, after so long an experience of the inefficacy of laws to attain the objects proposed by them, all the systems devised by man for the government of society, having been gradually swept out of existence, that the good and the wise, as well as the depraved and the ignorant, should yet place their hopes on the decrees of such a motley assembly as that which collects at St. Stephen's. Not attempting to account for the mistrust in the passions and desires of human nature, which is so general, nor for the confidence in some of their effects, in the shape of systems of government, neither attributing it to the sinister influence of priests, nor the ambition of legislators, nor ascribing it to any peculiarity in man himself,—I may, nevertheless, remark, that it is singular to see the most pious men, even those

  “Who see God in clouds, and hear him in the storm,”

  those who find

  “Tongues in trees, books in the running brooks,

  Sermons in stones, and good in every thing,”

  even those can not find God in the mind and thoughts of man; they treat the human being, not including themselves, as altogether evil. They never allow his passions to be worthy of having a tongue. The voice of trees, the mute sermons of stones, the impressive lessons of the the insect world, are all listened to as speaking of the goodness of the deity, but the desires and passions of man, his heart and mind are regarded as outcasts from the great system of creation, as the offspring of the devil, and as continually needing the correction of priests and legislators. I am content, my lord, to trust to these despised passions, guided and enlightened as they may, must, and will be, by the recorded knowledge of their consequences.

  My main object has been to show, that even as to property, some power constantly over-rules the decrees of the legislator, which being, however, generally admitted as an abstract truth, the delay in making the universal and thorough application of it to society, in all its details, is more to be wondered at, than that it should now be insisted on. But so much in love with their systems are our vain and blundering politicians, whether they be actual legislators, or only aspirants to this dignity, that they even condemn any observations as mischievous, which are opposed to their own systems. According to them, the observations of a Cobbett, or of a Paine, who merely speaks of the things he beholds, are the causes of the overthrow of their systems, just as they attribute the rebellion of the slaves in the West Indies to the preaching of some missionaries Such nonsense implies, that neither political oppression, political plunder, nor slavery, is, of itself, an abomination hated of God, hated of men, and quite diabolical enough to generate continually, in its victims, the desire of vengeance; but that it is only made hateful by the eloquence of an individual. When tory newspaper writers and members of parliament declaim against those as incendiaries, who merely use their tongues, or their pens, in expounding truth, do they take counsel from their own experience? Have the speeches of the gentlemen of St. Stephen's, though wafted by every journal to every corner of the empire, have the loyal comments of learned editors, have the admonitions and instructions to obey the law, which all parties continually put forth, have the ever weekly-renewed admonitions of the parsons to honour the king and respect the tithes, have they all had the desired effect? All the eloquence of the senate, of the bar, and of the press, has not saved the dominion of the law from being questioned and overturned. When hired scribblers, and hired pleaders, and hired priests, denounce the observers of social phenomena as mischievous, when authors abuse and legislators persecute, for the sake of some falling systems, they are worse than that philosopher, described by Dr. Johnson, who refused to see the experiments by which his theory was overturned. The facts noticed by those who interpret nature, are the proofs of the wickedness of these systems, and to repress the voice of the interpreter, is wilfully to close the ears to information. To point out the inevitable consequences of erring systems of policy, whether they be intended to secure the dominion of the whites over the blacks, or of the landlords of England over their former slaves, whether they be intended to preserve superstition erect, and men groveling in political slavery, is, or ought to be, as far as society is concerned, the one great and only duty of observers, whether they assume the character of political or religious missionaries.∗ To recommend regulations is quite proper in those who expect to make something by carrying them into effect, and by those who set the wisdom “of the critic fly, whose vision scarce exceeds the expanse of an inch,” deciding against the work of a Wren, above the wisdom of the architect of St. Paul's, though this is a feeble comparison of those “critic flies,” who not merely decide against nature in constructing society, but attempt to correct her errors.

  When conceited politicians ask me what I would substitute for their systems, my answer is, that I propose no substitute. My argument is, that individual man does not make society, and that man cannot organize it. Society is the offspring of the instincts of the human animal, not of his will, and it cannot be modelled by an individual as he makes a watch or a steam engine. My answer, my lord, to all your fears, on which you found restrictions and criminal laws, is, that you have not brought society to its present state; that laws do not hasten on improvement, but follow in its wake; and that I trust to that great power, call it Nature, or call it God, which has brought society forth out of the wilderness, to provide for its future welfare. When you ask me for plans and schemes, my reply is, trust in that power, do justice, and fear not. It is certain, my lord, that nine-tenths of the crimes which the laws punish, are mere violations of the legal and unjust right of property. Men revolt against it, and inflict misery on themselves and others, in their blind efforts to correct wrong. You know, my lord, from the criminal returns of both France and England, that the number of crimes of personal violence has diminished in both countries; that murder, except from cupidity, is rarely or never heard of in England, and only very rarely in France; while murder, from a desire of gain is unhappily, as witness the Burkers, yet too frequent amongst us. Jealousy, as a frantic passion, is almost unknown in England, and a bloody desire of vengeance is no where preserved but in the statute book. When I am asked then what I propose, to prevent crimes, I answer, “Amend the laws as to property; for all the crimes which afflict society grow from them.” The law itself is the parent of those crimes which the law attempts to stifle or repress by severe penalties, in addition. Sin, struggling with her own death-begotten offspring, is the apt type and resemblance of our cruel penal laws for the protection of legal property.

  This, my lord, opens to our view a delightful prospect for our posterity, and from contemplating which, we even now may derive considerable enjoyment. I have shown you that the legal right of property is undergoing subversion, and that no earthly power can stop it. I have now remarked, that this legal right, and the laws made to uphold it, are the sources of almost all crimes; and, therefore, when fearful, timid, mistrustful politicians tell me, that society would fall into anarchy if their hold of it were to be relaxed, and if the incubus of their regulations were removed, I answer them, and I answer all such schemes, and all such apprehensions, by pointing to these facts, and calling on them to believe that the God of nature has appointed a means, not merely for the repression, but for the extinction of crime.

  The general change adverted to in my former letters, consisting of the growth and extension of the middle classes, is to me another ground of consolation and hope. The utility of mechanical inventions is too often supposed to consist only in the physical results, and the moral effects are entirely overlooked. But the moral effects are as important as the physical. Now one of the distinguishing circumstances of this age is the great extent of mechanical improvements, and one of the moral consequences, least noticed, is the prodigious, comparative, multiplication of the middle classes; that is, of men who labour a little, by, or in conjunction with, this machinery, who are at once labourers and capitalists, who do not suffer from the stigma which is cast on ordinary or long practised labour, because that was done formerly by slaves,—new occupations, as they arise in society, being exempt from that stigma,—and who, without being relieved from the necessity of labouring, are placed far above the condition of the great majority of slave-labourers and their descendants. On that class of men, who have something to lose by change, and nothing to gain by the continuance of the tax-gatherers and tithe-gatherers exactions, I place my best hopes. That class has multiplied amazingly within the last fifty years, that class must multiply still more extensively, with new occupations and new machinery, and that class must gra dually extinguish both the mere slave-labourer and the mere idle slothful dolts, who live on the rent of land or the interest of money.

  Politicians, my lord, of your description, object to stirring the important subject of property. You are already conscience-stricken, and you know that inquiry must end in the discomfiture and overthrow of your political systems. Hence you, in the House of Lords, put forth such unsound doctrines, as that “the property of the church rests on the same foundation as other property,” and hence your diffusion society praises the legal right, and endeavours to consign those to infamy who question it. From a bad conscience also arises that great alarm which exists among all the wealthy classes, and amongst all those who are made rich by means of the extortionate and unjust law, and they cry out with vehemence on every occasion, that the only object of the poor is to appropriate to themselves the wealth which the upper classes love and desire so much. Allow me to make one or two remarks on the subject of the apprehension and the alarm.

  The alarm is first generated in the minds of those who possess property without having any natural right to it; the alarm is, founded on the consciousness of injustice committed on the labouring classes, who, though they create all property, are allowed to possess none; and this alarm is then sought to be spread as to all property, and to those who possess it by a good natural title. But is it to be believed, that the great mass of men are inimical to that which they produce, and to that for which they strive and struggle? No. They are only inimical to its unjust appropriation. What, however, must we think of the legal right of property, when it is supposed, by those who derive enjoyment from it, to make the labourer hate the ingenious work of his own hands? What too can you think of a right, which those who possess it, fancy must be the source of hatred in other men, to them and to their possessions? A right producing hatred.” Above all, what can you think will be the result to society of different classes and conditions being animated with such deadly and destructive feelings? Life, skill, talents, affections, &c. are possessions we each and all derive from nature, are they like the legal right of property, the bitter sources of hatred, fear, and a thirst for vengeance? Do we hate beauty and strength? Do we hate ingenious contrivance, splendid eloquence, and a cultivated taste? No. How then should men come to hate the objects and possessions they are calculated to obtain? When they are isolated and strangers to each other, speaking different languages, clothed after different fashions, neither buying nor selling, they may dislike, despise, contemn, or hate each other; but to say that the inhabitants of the same community, those who associate together, whose labours are mutual, who must work into each other's hands, to produce food and raiment, whose dresses and diversions are similar, whose speech is identical, to say that they hate or dislike, or dread each other, is contradicted by the whole frame and structure of modern society.

  You, my lord, are not insensible to the advantages derived to all classes from the great scheme of division of labour, which would perhaps be better called combined exertions. Of this scheme one great consequence is, that no single labourer completes, by himself, any one article necessary to subsistence. The very instant this scheme comes into operation,—and in what state of society is it not in operation? for where does not the man perform one task, and the woman a separate and distinct task, equally necessary to the subsistence of themselves and families?—the very instant this scheme comes into operation, and wherever it exists, men become dependant on one another, and as it is extended, so the more dependant does each individual become on the combined exertions of all the rest. To talk of mutually dependant labourers, who cannot live without each other's assistance, hating each other,—of the hunter hating the man who makes him his how; of the weaver hating the loom-maker; of the merchant hating the cotton grower, or the shipbuilder, is like saying, that the right hand hates the left. No, my lord, the weaver cannot hate the spinner, the spinner cannot be the enemy of the engine maker, the engine maker cannot dread the iron founder, nor can any one of them be the foe of the farmer, and the baker, and the butcher. The division of labour, then, which is now so extensive in every part of society, must appear to every reflecting man a complete and perfect guarantee, that the great mass of the labourers who constitute, in fact, the whole useful community, cannot and dare not quarrel with each other. The supposition is absurd, because the thing supposed is impossible.

  But, besides the labourers, besides all those, who, by their mutual and dependant exertions, contribute to clothe and feed, and preserve the whole society, there are classes who do not labour, who live by the produce of the labour of others, and who make or uphold laws to dispose of what does not belong to them; besides the weavers and the spinners, the engine makers and the farmers, the merchants and the ship builders, the butchers and the bakers, &c. &c. there are also, the law makers, the land owners, the mere capitalists, the clergy, &c. &c. who have no other security for their incomes,—their receipts growing from no natural cause, like that which confers on industry the fish it catches, or the game it kills,—than the law of the land. All these legally fed men may hate the working classes, and may justly dread them; but to suppose that the different classes of industrious men, whether living in the same or in different countries who trade or labour together—to suppose that they should hate and dread each other, is a monstrous error, not to be surpassed by any creation of the wildest fancy. Such a sentiment may be, and unfortunately is attributed to them by the law-makers, who, borrow it from their own schemes and acts of injustice and oppression; but it exists not in the minds of the labourers themselves. Its prototype is the wrong done in the olden times by these upper classes, and now continued by the laws; and the labouring classes are only to be blamed for suffering this wrong-born idea of their masters to sway, in any degree, their thoughts, theories, and practices. If they, at any time, look upon each other with mistrust, if the farmer dreads the shopkeeper, and the merchant the ship-owner, it is because they have been taught to do so by the law-maker. Such mistrust is not the natural result of their mutual dependance, which in practice teaches only mutual confidence—but of the system established by their oppressors, of which the labourers are, one and all, the victims.

  As for the particular property possessed by the rich, of which they suppose the poor to be so envious, let me ask what use the laborious and honest artizan, or the hard-worked and half starved peasant could make of your sumptuous palaces? He would feel distressed by their finery, and would be only anxious to escape back to his cottage, or his hovel, to his bench at the ale-house, and to his pipe, and to his usual habits and usual companions. Of what service would your fine bound books be to him? What would he care for your pier glasses, your chandeliers, your ottomans, and your rose wood tables? He might like, from that unnatural hatred against the misappropriated work of his own hands, which you have nourished in him, to make a boufire of them, but use them he could not and would not. What would he do with your carriages? He would pine to death when pent up in them, deprived of the use of his limbs. What use could he make of your horses, for he has never learnt to ride? Would he desire your high-priced wines? Alas, no; his taste is corrupted by the deleterious spirits, your commercial restrictions, your excise laws, your duties on malt and hops, and on foreign wines, have brought him acquainted with, and made his only drink. Do you think he would need gold to buy the smiles of the high-priced courtezan, who solaces the hours and empties the pockets of the wealthy stripling? She would be too much of a lady for him, and he would willingly leave her to do her proper work of corrupting and debasing his oppressors. It is idle then, and even monstrously absurd, to be afraid of the poor man desiring your wealth, except to destroy it. What he desires is to enjoy the fruits of his own labour, and to have plenty of that bread, and meat, and clothing, he makes both for himself and his oppressors, though small be the share which he now receives.

  But I would beg leave to remind you, that the poor and the labourers are like all the rest of mankind, the children of habit. They could not be tempted, therefore, by any arts, to use your fine clothes, fine houses, fine pictures, fine books, fine wines, fine women, and costly statues. To them the habit of labour is a second nature, and with that is conjoined the habit of obedience. Dreadful then must be the outrages committed upon them, when they break through these habits, and so far violate their own feelings, as to attack that property they can never use, and seize that power they are the next moment ready to resign. The dread which some people entertain of the great body of the people violating the natural right of property, is the mere idle coinage of the brain, and has no foundation in the laws of nature.

  But though there can be no rational dread of the people doing more than breaking out into temporary fits of violence, let the legislator beware how he goes on in his present career of outraging and plundering the labourers; let him beware how he nourishes that hatred he already dreads; let him beware how he violates by taxes and tithes, that right of property he obtains power to protect, and professes to respect,—let him beware how he seeks to perpetuate oppression by “the sword of the law;” for be assured, falling, as the law is, into contempt, decaying as the class of legislators is in public esteem, any attempt to preserve your power and its authority by violence, will only call a counteracting violence into life, which may for ever extinguish, in blood, your political systems.

  But, my lord, I must stop, I have not, perhaps, entered as fully as I ought, and certainly not as fully as I might, into the advantages which would arise from the legislator recognizing and acting on the natural right of property, and into all the disadvantages which do actually flow from his continual struggles to uphold an unjust right of property. I have not contrasted, as I might have done, the works of nature and man. Not that I am one of those ascetics, who think man can effect nothing good within his proper sphere, his works are noble, and no person admires, more than I do, his manifold and wondrous achievements in every branch of art. But, my lord, the regulation of society is as much beyond individual skill, as reining in the storm. My disparagement of the lawgiver's labours, therefore, arises not from the religious dogma, “that all man's works are evil,” but from a conviction that, in attempting to regulate society, he has miscalculated his power; and I beg to be understood as treating with the most complete scorn, those who preach the doctrine that all men are weak and sinful creatures, and yet act with as much arrogance and presumption as if they were thoroughly exempt from the general weaknesses. If I have not contrasted the advantages of the natural principle with the disadvantages of the legal error, if I have not dwelt on the one hand at length on the independence of equality, on the fearless boldness which results from man not having a master, on the blessedness of comfortable competence being universal, on the total absence of all temptation to theft, where all are nearly alike, of the impossibility of crimes existing against property, where the natural right of property is respected by the law; and if I have not dwelt, on the other hand, on the miserable dependance of rich and poor, on the debasing timidity which distinguishes both the master and the slave, on the arrogance of the one and the brutal servility of the other, on the miserable idleness, “the waste of feelings unemployed,” which result from one class having all their wants supplied without exertion, and on the excessive, wearisome, unbroken toil which that imposes on another class, on the excessive misery which the latter feel from extreme poverty, and the former feel from the dread of losing their excessive opulence,—if I have not contrasted, as I might have done, the blessings of the natural right of property, and the horrors of the legal right, that has been, I assure you, from no disposition to depreciate, like our blaspheming priesthood, the mind of man and the work of man's hands, but from a want of time and opportunity. But whatever may be my conviction of the advantages of observing the natural right of property, they cannot be made manifest to others, because they have, in fact, never existed; and though the principle may warrant me in deducing them, my adversaries may and will deride the deduction as the work of my own imagination. I do not deny that it would be, but I know not why one moral or social fact, or principle, being given, the imagination may not deduce as complete and logical consequences from that, as the mathematician deduces from any one quality of space. I am not persuaded that the universe within the mind is not as perfect and harmonious as the solar system, and not convinced that one part being known, we may not with undoubted accuracy infer all the other parts. I will not, however, enter into such topics, which are I am afraid, equally, remote from the studies of both classes of the vulgar, who are at the extremes of the political scale. Our successors, my lord, who will see more of the social system developed than we see, will be able to describe it better, and contrast more forcibly than I can do, the effects of the natural and the legal systems of society. To them I must leave this important task, conceiving myself fortunate in having been allowed to go so far; and contented, at present, with being suffered thus to complete the little I have undertaken.

  A Labourer.

  [∗]Elements of the Philosophy of the Human Mind, by Mr. Stewart. Vol. I, page 251, 2nd ed.

  [†]Ibid.

  [‡]Mr. Brougham's speech on the present state of the Law.—Authentic edition, p. 109.

  [∗]Mr. John Campbell is reported to have said of Lord Eldon and this may be said of all lawyers, that they are so well acquainted with what the law is, that they have no conception of what it ought to be.

  [∗]Since the observations of the text were written, the commissioners have published two reports, and you are well aware—though you have praised them—that they do not falsify my predictions. They recommend the tinkering up of some of the defects of the law, but they throw no light on its principles. These, the commissioners—good easy men—take for granted.

  [∗]“Of the true use of Retirement and Study,” with one or two verbal alterations.

  [∗]Mr. Brougham's Speech on the Present State of the Law, delivered February 7th, 1828.

  [∗]De Offic. Lib. ii. cap. 21.

  [†]On Civil Government, p 124.

  [‡]See Mr. Brougham's Speech.—Note to page 84.

  [∗]Traités de Legislation—Tom. I, page 179, 2nd ed.—M. Dumont's “Je regarde comme mien” obviously applies to that which he now regards as his, which is, probably, not naturally his own.

  [†]Ibid, page 182.

  [∗]Article Government in the Supplement to the Encyclopœdia Britannica.—“His share,” I take it implies that a man has a share without the government making the distribution, and with reference to that gentleman's opinions this remark you will find to be important.

  [∗]See both Mr. Bentham's “Introduction to Morals and Legislation” and M. Dumont's “Traités.”

  [∗]Letter on the Affairs of America.

  [†]Traités de Legislation—pr. edit.

  [∗]See Mr. Mill's article on Jurisprudence: Supp. to the Ency. Brit.

  [∗]Much has of late been very needlessly written about the greatest happiness principle, the basis of all Mr. Bentham's philosophy. There can be no doubt that the Deity wills the greatest happiness—no doubt that the legislator, whenever he speaks of the good of the country, pretends to mean the greatest happiness of the greatest number of inhabitants; and no doubt that the faculties of individuals, admirably adapted to secure their own preservation, are not competent to measure the happiness of nations. Admitting therefore that the legislator ought to look at the general good, the impossibility that any individual can ascertain that which will promote it, leads directly to the conclusion that there ought to be no legislation. If the greatest happiness principle, be the only one that justifies law-making, and if that principle be suitable only to Omniscience—man, having no means of measuring it, there can be no justification of all Mr. Bentham's nicely adapted contrivances, which he calls civil and penal laws.

  [∗]Of Civil Government—Book II, Chap. 5, see. 28.

  [∗]Of Civil Government—Book II, Chap. 5, sec. 30.

  [†]Ibid—sec. 32. It is not a little extraordinary that every writer of any authority, since the days of Mr. Locke, has theoretically adopted this view of the origin of the right of property, and has, at the same time, in defending the present right of property in practice, continually denied it. This is the logical consistence of literary logicians.

  [∗]Brown's Lectures on the Human Mind.

  [∗]Of the true Use of Retirement and Study.

  [∗]Should an objection be raised to this statement, on the ground that at present, owing to the great extent of division of labour, no individual completes any one thing of himself, I shall reply, that the mutual shares of any two persons engaged in producing an article, as for example, cotton-cloth, is settled by contract or bargain between them, the weaver buying the yarn from the spinner, as the spinner buys the raw material from the merchant importer. If any question be raised, as to the share of any two or more workmen engaged in the same work, or as to their wages respectively, I shall answer, that this too must be settled by the parties themselves, and is not now in any case the subject of legal enactment.

  [∗]See the narrative of this intelligent voyager's second expedition.

  [∗]We may find numberless illustrations of the observation in the text in every part of the history of Ireland. If an outraged peasantry, driven to despair by ages of oppression, silently form combinations to obtain revenge—if they in secret lift their hands against the most odious, and the most meddling of their oppressors—if a magistrate be waylaid and put to death, without law, who has, by the aid of the law, slowly starved with much anguish and misery a whole generation. If a priest, whose life has been one vexatious and consistent scheme of legal plunder, fall suddenly by the hand of an assassin—the only language we hear from the conductors of the press is the necessity of supporting that instrument of tyranny—the law, by which alone the magistrate is enabled to tyrannize, and the priest to vex and harass his fellow men. I do not comprehend that philosophy which embracing a long chain of events, rigorously connected as cause and effect, bestows all its indignation on the burning desire of vengeance in the oppressed, and on its consequence, assassination, while it has nothing but praise, or at most a feeble sentiment of half censure, for the numberless acts of oppression of which the desire of vengeance is the necessary consequence. Or rather I do comprehend the base passions which, clothed in the garb of reason, or I should say of reasoning, are palmed on the world as philosophy. The law and the oppression are the work of the same hand; and the indignation expressed by the mouth-piece of the law-makers, and by the class of society for whose behoof laws are made, is the indignation of tyrants, when they find their career of oppression hemmed in; and their desire of wealth and power thwarted by their own fears of the vengeance of the oppressed. The law is the creature of their passions, and they rightly endeavour, according to their own views, to substitute it for the violence which is the offspring of the passions of other people. If, when laws were made, all sentiment of right could have been clean swept out of the heart of man, their career would have been unchecked; the priest might have exacted his tithe, and the landlord might have driven the cows and the pigs of the cottagers for rent, without the least restraint; but as their power does not tend to extinguish this sentiment, law must be brought to conform to the sentiments of both parties; and he, whether priest or gentile, who wants to enjoy his own in security, must respect the own of others, or the natural in preference to the legal rights, of mankind.

  [∗]January 1832. This is well exemplified by the late debates on Irish tithes, which the sapient Commons, particularly Mr. John Weyland, insisted on the propriety, whatever might be the cost, of preserving the paramount dominion of the law.

  [∗]Constitution of Man, by George Combe, page 221.

  [∗]I have just been carefully looking over the reports of the proceedings of the legislature for some years past, and I find in them nothing to contradict the statements of the text. It has been busily engaged, session after session, in making laws to augment the revenue,—strenuously resisting every effort even 10 circumscribe its exactions;—in passing acts to amend corn laws and keep up rents, to build new churches, and to provide greater emoluments for the clergy; in creating jobs of all kinds for the behoof of the aristocracy; in short, continually engaged in devising means to preserve its own power, and secure wealth to those who disdain every employment that creates the objects of their cupidity. When I find the legislature continually so occupied, not merely for getting or overlooking that which is said by Mr. Locke to be the motive for men uniting into a commonwealth, but acting in direct opposition thereto, I must come to one of two conclusions, viz. either all philosophy is arrant nonsense, and nature is a cheat, or your annual legislation is the vilest imposition that ever was tolerated by the too easy credulity of mankind.

  [∗]Of Civil Government, sec. 36, book ii.

  [∗]For the condition of mankind in the earliest periods of the world, consult Goguet, Origin of Laws, &c., Vol. I.: For the condition of the seal-hunting Esquimaux, see Captain Parry's voyages.

  [∗]Are not the complaints, which are now continually made by political economists, and which are not unfrequently heard in the legislature, of the subdivision of land in Ireland, directed against a part of the inevitable and beneficial progress mentioned in the text? If the subdivision in Ireland is vicions, that is easily accounted for by the whole structure of political society in that country being vicious. I would also ask, if the outcry of landlords and political economists against the subdivision of land, is not an example of that condemnation of every novelty in society, which does not grow directly from the will of the legislator, to which allusion is made in page 39. Is it not rather a blind prejudiced attachment to things that are past, instead of a just appreciation of the present and the future? This remark may show the reader, however abstract the principle stated in the text may appear, that it is not destitute of practical application.

  [∗]Wealth of Nations, book iii, chap. 2.

  [†]As a specimen of what is stated in the text, I transcribe an extract from Smollett's History of England, relative to the appropriation of our country by William the Conqueror. “He bestowed upon his uterine brother Robert, the county of Cornwall, comprehending 288 manors, besides 558 which he possessed in other provinces. The next brother Odo, was created count palatine of Kent, and high justiciary of England, with above 400 fiefs in different provinces. William Fitzosborne's services were compensated with the whole county of Hereford. William's nephew, Hugh Loup, was presented with the county palatine of Chester, to be held with all the rights of regality, as independent of the crown. His son-in-law, Alaiu Fergeant, Duke of Bretagne, was put in possession of all the estates formerly belonging to Count Morcar, with the same right of regality. To Roger de Montgomery, he gave, first of all, the towns of Arundel and Chichester, and afterwards the county of Salop. Walter Giffard obtained the county of Buckingham, and that of Surrey fell to the share of William Warren. Eudes, Count of Blois, received the lordship of Holderness. Raoul de Guair, of Bretagne, was created count, or Earl of Norfolk and Suffolk, and Lord of Norwick. Henry de Ferrieres was complimented with the castle of Tutbury. And Geoffry, bishop of Coutance, justiciary of England, possessed 280 manors, which he bequeathed at his death to his nephew Robert de Mowbray.” Vol. i. page 409.

  [∗]Essays. Of the original contract.

  [†]No. 74.

  [‡]For May, 1826. “Government, to define it de facto according to modern prudence) is an art whereby some man, or some few men, subject a city, or a nation, and rule it according to his or their private interest; which, because the laws in such cases are made according to the interest of a man, or of some few families, may be said to be the empire of men and not of laws.”—Oceana. The Preliminaries, &c.

  [∗]Wealth of Nations, book iii. chap. 2.

  [∗]Corn and currency, page 75. At the very moment that this sheet is going through the press, a brief debate takes place in the House of Commons (February 14) on a motion of Mr. Baring's, for leave to bring in a bill, to limit the privilege of Members of Parliament. That motion shews, in one sense, how careful the legislature has been to protect the landlords; and the remarkable, or as it has been called, naïve speech of Mr. Lambert on the occasion, shews how completely your laws have failed to keep the wealth of the country in the hands of the landowners. I take his speech from the Morning Herald, remarking that all the other papers concur in substance with that journal. A man in debt half his nominal income, is in fact only the owner of half his so called estate.
  
  “Mr. Lambert rose at this early stage, merely to protest against depriving members of parliament of the privilege of arrest. There was scarcely a landed proprietor in the kingdom, whose property was not liable to judgment debts; and under the bill now introduced, those debts might be purchased, and a member arrested from political or other improper motives. Under these circumstances he, for one, could not consent to taking away the privilege of freedom from arrest.”

  [∗]Principles of Political Economy, p. 271.

  [†]Ibid, p. 270.

  [∗]See for all these brief extracts, The Wealth of Nations, book iv. chap. 4.

  [∗]Hume, in his Essay “On the Populousness of Ancient Nations” has noticed the effects of the invention of gunpowder in abating the cruelties of war, and meliorating the character of man. After that invention, was necessarily ceased to be a personal combat. Individuals could not fight with mortars or sixty-eight pounders, consequently that invention tended to put an end to personal feuds, and to extinguish throughout society personal feelings of hatred, and the desire of vengeance. Before writing was invented, all acts which required to be authenticated were performed in public. Brides, who were then generally obtained after a contest, were led along the street. Marriages were celebrated as it were before those who had lost the game; and victory in a contest before a civil magistrate, was made known by a triumphal procession. The invention of writing, by putting an end to the necessity for such public exhibitions, did a great deal to meliorate all the bad passions. An explanation of the effects of mechanical improvement over our moral condition is yet wanted, and would form both an amusing and an instructive book.
  
  I may perhaps add here, that I look upon the increase of people as the great physical cause of all the moral changes in society. The several causes, therefore, subsequently mentioned in the text, as leading forward improvement, such as inventions in the arts, discoveries of science, the rise and growth of the middle classes, the influence of the press, are all subordinate to, and dependant upon, the increase of population.

  [∗]Wealth of Nations, book iii., chap. 2.

  [†]I have distinguished a passage in the text by italies, because it displays clearly the mode in which the multiplication of vassals produced moderation in their masters, and thus points out the natural source of that gradual abatement in violent passions, which is one of the distinctions, and the great blessing of civilized Europe.

  [∗]An historical view of the English government, &c., by John Millar, Esq. vol. i. p. 313.

  [†]Ibid. p. 316.

  [∗]Wealth of Nations, book iii. chap. 3. The reader may consult this book and chapter for the proofs of many of the assertions of the text. He may also look at Mr. Hallam's work on the Middle Ages, vol. iii. chap. 8. part 3. This author places first among the causes which contributed to the improvement of the four last centuries of the middle ages, “the gradual elevation of those whom unjust systems of polity had long depressed,” though he does not seem fully aware of the causes of the elevation. With a too antiquarian spirit, he looks more at records and parchment rolls, than at the laws of human nature. See particularly vol. iii. p. 459.

  [∗]In page 21, of “Labour Defended against Capital“ I have demonstrated that this change has been effected by the taking of interest on capital, and by the process of compound interest; and it is not a little curious, that all the lawgivers of Europe endeavoured to prevent this by statutes, viz. statutes against usury, compound interest being, I believe, even now forbidden. The change indicated in the text is still in progress, and though the Reform Bill is said by its supporters to be intended to preserve the influence of the landed interest, it will do no such thing. You cannot, however, read the debates on the Bill, without becoming sensible how very much our legislators have it at heart to preserve the superiority of that interest; and you cannot look upon society without being convinced that their exertions have not been successful.

  [∗]See Mr. Brougham's speech, p. 107, authentic edition, and the present Solicitor-general's (then Mr. Sugden) speech, in the House of Commons, Tuesday, May 6th. “It was,” said the learned gentleman, “the original law of the land, that if a person were indebted to another, his land could not be seized by the creditor, though the annual profit might be.” Mirror of Parliament, 1828, p. 1334.

  [∗]Laws of entail and primogeniture, inform us of the constraint which is, and must be, used to prevent the progress indicated in the text.

  [∗]“With respect to the object of the motion,” said Lord John Russell, in the debate on the Corporation and Test acts, “I am sure that though its opponents may for a time retard it, they never will be able to prevent its final accomplishment. Of this I am fully convinced, that any attempt which may be made to thwart the spirit of liberality and intelligence, which is daily increasing in this country, will be perfectly fruitless. Whatever kings or cabinets may think of the power they possess, I can assure them that the country governs them quite as much as they govern the country.” This power, that the opponents of the measure cannot ultimately resist, which renders attempts to thwart it fruitless, and which governs cabinets more than they govern countries, is the power which actually governs all our affairs, and guarantees all our rights. Language has no meaning, if the terms of constraint continually applied to the actions of government do not signify a power superior to its decrees. If that power did not preserve social order, governments, which are subordinate to it, would be impotent to do so.

  [∗]It is hardly necessary to quote any authorities, to satisfy the reader that the Catholics have grown into wealth and power, in spite of the law; but the following eloquent passage in Lord F. Leveson Gower's speech, on Thursday, May 9th, is so appropriate, that I am induced to quote it. “Much had been said of the power of the Catholic clergy in Ireland: What was the lesson to be drawn from the history of its rise and progress? The same lesson that is blazoned on the page of every other history: that, if you wish to deal with the nascent energies of religious opinion, you have no choice but extirpation or toleration. The former course has been tried with success in Spain. With shame I confess that it has been tried; but, thank God, with far different success in Ireland. Yes, the evils of that country I deplore; the power and principles of the Catholic religion I deprecate; but I had rather have Ireland as she is, than see her near to us by position, dear to us as she ought to be, and as she is, by every tie that can bind sister countries together, the living witness that the sword of Cromwell, or the statutes of Anne had succeeded to the full extent of their sanguinary and unrighteous aims.”

  [∗]The following brief quotation, sets in a clear light the force of public opinion, which it is obvious the legislature has not voluntarily called into existence. The writer of the article from which it is taken is only wrong in throwing doubts on the utility of this species of fatalism or mechanism. He has only to recollect that the external world, or if he so pleases, the Divinity himself, ultimately corrects all our opinions—for all men, in the long run, appeal to facts to justify every opinion—and all our opinions may therefore be said to be formed by facts, or by emanations of the Deity;—he has only to be aware that the mind is, as Lord Bacon says, when most correct, only a copy of Nature, or of God, to reverence as I do that fatalism or mechanism he now denounces. “We stand leashed together,” this writer correctly and eloquently remarks, “uniform in dress and movement, like the rowers of some boundless galley. This and that may be right and true; but we must not do it. Wonderful “force of public opinion.” We must act and walk in all points as it prescribes; follow the traffic it bids us; realise the sum of money, the degree of 'influence' it offers, or we shall be lightly esteemed; certain mouthfuls of articulate wind will be blown at us: and this what mortal courage can front! Thus while civil liberty is more and more secured to us, moral liberty is all but lost. Practically considered, our creed is fatalism; and free in hand and foot, we are shackled in heart and soul with far straiter than feudal chains.” See Edinburgh Review for June, 1829, p. 457.

  [∗]Letter to the sheriff of Bristol, on the affairs of America. The observations in the text were written many months ago, and the conclusion drawn, viz. that it is wiser to look to the overruling circumstances, than to the overruled will of the legislator, for the causes which have promoted, and for the means which will promote, the welfare of society, may not be enforced by the following remark; but as a proof that those who most strenuously insist on holding fast by legislative authority, are not insensible to the manner in which society is governed and regulated independently of them, is not unworthy of attention. “When gentlemen talk of the dangers of innovation,” says Mr. Huskisson, “they ought to remember, with Lord Bacon, that Time is the great innovator; Time has raised these great interests and populous towns, and it is the business of a statesman to move onward with the new combinations which have grown about him. In advance of that great innovator I have never been. If I do not put myself in advance, however, I ought to follow Time, with a cautions and prudent, but a steady step. For my part, I have always endeavoured to modify, not to force, the pressure of these circumstances.”—Mr. Huskisson's speech on the motion for disfranchising East Retford, May 5th, 1829.

  [∗]The reader will find numberless examples of the truth stated in the text, in the philosophical work of Mr. Hallam, on the middle ages. It is, however, to be regretted, that in acknowledging many natural causes for the continual increase of civilization, he should have overlooked, as almost all authors have done, the continual increase of mankind, which is the most marked part of all the material social phenomena. Hardly any of its consequences, I believe, have yet been accurately traced.

  [∗]An Historical View of the English Government, by John Millar, Esq., vol. i. p. 315.

  [∗]See this gentleman's work on Mexico; or see the Westminister Review for April, 1828, article Mexico, for an additional and rather an amusing anecdote of a priest, which illustrates this subject.

  [∗]It may probably strike you, Sir, that the failure of the law in Prussia to effect the object contemplated by the legislator, when so many circumstances were favourable, is a proof that the gradual emancipation of the slaves throughout Europe, was not effected by laws. That it has failed, See also Mr. Jacob's First Report on the Agriculture of the North of Europe.

  [∗]It is a well ascertained fact, that crimes against the person, violent crimes of all descriptions, are much more numerous in France, where there is such an admirable police, than in England, where there is comparatively none. See the report of the Keeper of the Seals to the French king in 1826 and 1827; the report of the committee of the House of Commons of 1828, for enquiring into the increase of crimes, and the work of M. Lucas, Sur le Systeme Benal.

  [∗]For an explanation of this circumstance, see Popular Political Economy, page 147, and the note. When the land-owners were mighty there was no other wealth in existence, but the rude produce of agricultural skill; at present that produce forms but a portion of the whole wealth of society. As the other descriptions of wealth have come into existence, the comparative power of the landlords, who can be the owners of nothing more than the produce of agriculture, has declined.

  [∗]Historical View, &c., vol. i. p. 303.

  [†]A Tour in Italy and Sieily, by J. Simond, London, 1828, page 79.

  [∗]Ibid.

  [∗]If the most striking inconsistencies in the writings of theoretical men had not long since ceased to surprise me, the existence of the two following passages in the same page of M. Dumont's work would certainly have had such an effect. “Une pièce d'etoffe, qui est actuellement aux Indes peut m'appartenir tandis que l'habit que je porte peut n'etre pas à moi.” This relation of a man to a piece of cloth in India, being a beautiful illustration of the natural right of property, is said to be the work of law, but whether of the legislator in India or France is not added. “Pour mieux sentir le bienfait de la loi, cherchons, à nous faire une idée nette de la propriété. Nous verrons qu'il n'ya point de propriété naturelle qu'elle est uniquement l'ouvrage des lois.”—Traités de Legislation, etc. Par Et. Dumont, 2 ed. premiere partie, chap. 8.
  
  To me it seems quite certain, that this right to own the cloth in India is conferred neither by the legislator in India, who does not know any thing of M. Dumont, nor the legislator in France, who has no power in India.

  [∗]Discourses on the application of Christianity to the commercial and ordinary affairs of life, p. 31. There is some reason, unfortunately, to believe, that this high character is no longer deserved, but that the confidence existed cannot be doubted.

  [∗]At a period when every town was a walled fortress, and every man, not a burgess, an enemy, there was some reason to be jealous of aliens. The laws, however, to which that jealousy gave rise, were continued and extended by those who did not comprehend the reason of the enactment, when the circumstances which justified it had passed away. There are proofs in the oldest books, of different laws prevailing in different countries in the most ancient times, for natives and foreigners. See among others the Bible, Leviticus, chap. 24th.
  
  If the reader require any authority for the statement of the text, I shall beg leave to refer him, among others, to Mr. Hallam's work on the “Middle Ages,” vol. iii. page 400, et seq. where we learn, that it was only in the reign of Edward II. that the privilege of English subjects, under the statute of Westminster, were extended to foreigners; and that before that time, resident foreigners were liable, both in their goods and their persons, to answer for the debts and delinquencies of their non-resident countrymen. By Magna Charta, the same author says, freedom of trade was guaranteed to alien merchants, which merely means, I presume, that they might bring their commodities here, not without the payment of exorbitant duties, but without being despoiled and plundered. As Mr. Hallam says in another place, the law from that time permitted no rapine but its own. Long after that period, however, they were confined, as I read in Anderson's History of Commerce, to their own vessels, to sell their own goods; and even so late as the reign of Henry VI., a law was passed which contained the following enactment.
  
  “No merchant alien shall sell any merchandise in England to another merchant alien upon pain of forfeiture thereof. The mayor, bailiff, or other chief officer of the city, borough, or town whither any merchant alien shall repair, shall assign to every such alien a host or surveyor, who shall survey all his buyings and sellings, and register them is a book, and certify them unto the Exchequer, and shall have 2d. in the pound for all merchandise by him bought or sold. The same alien shall sell all his merchandise for other money, and therewith buy English merchandise within eight months of his arrival, upon pain of forfeiture thereof.—18th Henry VI. cap. 4.—Anderson's Commerce, p. 460, vol. i. By an act of Richard III. they were prohibited to be master tradesmen, ibid page 515.

  [∗]Many of the opinions of the foregoing pages are similar to those professed by Dr. Paley on this subject. “The true reward of industry,” he says, “is in the price and sale of the produce. The exclusive right to the produce is the only incitement which acts constantly and universally, the only spring which keeps human labour in motion. All therefore that the laws can do is to secure this right to the occupier of the ground; that is, to constitute such a system of tenure, that the full and entire advantage of every improvement go to the benefit of the improver: that every man work for himself and not for another, and that no man share in the profit, who does not assist in the production.” (∗ ) The only question or difference between our opinions on this subject is, as to the fact, whether or not the laws do secure this right; and I am thoroughly persuaded, although Dr. Paley has not said as much, that he was of opinion that they do not. The admirable descriptions he has given of our legal right to property,† and of the folly of political obedience in some cases,‡ convince me that he was aware that our laws do not secure to every man the right, “that he work for himself and not for another.” Being unfortunately, for his reputation, and more unfortunately for the world, which his talents were admirably adapted to enlighten, ex-officio, the defender of laws, he is obliged to say, that by “occupier,” he does not mean “the person who performs the work,“ but “he who procures the labour.“∗ Miserable contradiction! Despicable subterfuge! The slave-owner in the West Indies does this. Dr. Paley is guilty of poor and pitiable quibbling, in order to defend an injustice of which he was sensible, but dared not condemn. He recognises the natural right of property, he sees that it bestows the best possible reward on labour, but seeing that the legal right of property does not accord with the natural right, that it diminishes the reward of industry and the encouragement and stimulus to labour, by bestowing its produce on those who perform no work, an erroneous view of his own interest led him to forego the vast glory that was within his reach, of being the most persuasive and powerful reformer that ever contributed by his pen to the happiness of his species.

  [∗]The statement of the text may be briefly illustrated by a reference to the history of England. From the time that Cæsar first landed in Britain, till the era of William the Conqueror, nearly eleven centuries elapsed, and this country, during that long period, hardly made any sensible progress in wealth and population. If the inhabitants doubled their numbers in these eleven centuries, they did no more. Subsequent to the conquest the people doubled their numbers, probably in about 400 years. Between the termination of the war of the Roses and the Revolution of 1688, a period of two hundred years, the people more than doubled themselves. During the last century, the average of the increase was a doubling in 80 years, and now, that is, since the beginning of this century, they have been doubling, in most places, at the rate of 40 years. This proves that the progress of society takes place in an accelerating ratio. Instead of its being clogged, or getting out of order in the course of time, like your Courts of Law and Parliaments, it only moves the faster the longer it continues, and only acquires a greater degree of excellence.

  [∗]That the opulent classes and the poor look on each other as enemies, is a fact which cannot be doubted, and which I find asserted in the following passage of a weekly newspaper. “Our rich and our poor are almost equally ignorant, and equally enslaved by prejudice. The one class have their minds occupied with notions of fashion, ancestry, power, distinction, and separation from the rest of mankind, whom they look upon, not as intellectual and moral beings, but as a sort of inheritance, to be turned, like their estates, to their own account; while the other look upon all above them, not as the holders of capital, or accumulated labour, without which there would be no useful employment beyond that of picking up the few natural productions of the soil—which could support only a handful of individuals—but as a sort of natural enemies—as persons leagued together to enslave and coerce all below them.” With my opinions, I cannot believe with this author, that in the poor, understanding by that term labourers, this hatred is a prejudice. It is unfortunately too well founded to be unlearnt, till the league of the laws is dissolved. To me it is a matter of great and bitter regret, to see the brightest intellect obscured by interest, leading it to adopt such nonsensical phrases as capital being accumulated labour; talk of accumulated knowledge, accumulated skill, and it may be understood, but then we shall see that this accumulated knowledge and skill, as far as the creation of wealth is concerned, cannot be separated from the arm of the labourer. Of all the current phrases now employed to soothe conscience and gloze over wrong, none is more absurd than the phrase, “capital is accumulated labour.”
  
  Since the observations of the text were written, the industrious, but pauper and unhappily ignorant peasantry of the south of England, have been in a state of insurrection. Their little plunder of those who daily and hourly, and largely plunder them, was met and repressed by an armed force, and by the gallows; but revenge sought its dark and dismal gratification in incendiarism. Is it, my Lord, a comfortable state of society, for the farmer and the landowner—that neither can ever lay his head on his pillow, without an apprehension that he may be roused in the night by the burning of his barns or even of his dwelling? This unhappy state of things is too fresh in every man's recollection, too deeply imprinted on the minds of the sufferers, to require more from me than the brief mention of it. I have only to remark, that it is an illustration of the benefits conferred on society by your legal rights of property, and your bloody laws to uphold it.

  [∗]The Constitution of Man, by George Combe, p. 250.

  [∗]We have an illustration of what is stated in the text, in the words of judge Blackstone. “Tithes and estates,” he says, “are equally freehold property.” The former we are now fully satisfied never would be paid, if the law did not compel the payment. If rent have the same origin, the judge would appear to have pushed his zeal for the church further than our landowners can approve of. To me he appears eminently correct. Rent and tithes have the same origin, both are created and bestowed by the laws, and neither would be paid if the legislating landowner did not compel the payment.

  [∗]The doctrines of the text are opposed to some circulated by your Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge. In its Companion to the Almanack for 1828, it is written, “capital, money, and property (land), are no more than the savings made from the produce of labour beyond the portion which was required for the preservation of the individuals who have worked to raise it. Upon these grounds the rich” (Princes, Archbishops and Bishops, Land-owners, Bank and India Directors, et hoc genus omne) “are as justly entitled to their large possessions as the cottager to his cottage,” p. 107. If you had added by law, which is made by the rich, I should have made no objection to the passage. The law is extremely anxious to secure the possessions of archbishops; all history is a lie, if it have ever yet been scrupulous about the poor man's cottage. If you are bound by the chains of a somewhat despicable ambition, and the hope of the woolsack, to reverence the privileges and opinions of our barbarian-aristocracy, you may have the grace not to inculcate those opinions in others. If you dare not speak truth, you can at least abstain from propagating untruth. To assert that those, who never in their whole lives did a hand's turn of productive labour, are as justly entitled to receive a large share of the annual produce as a labourer is, to obtain the tenth of what he has created, argues in you either an extraordinary degree of credulity, or a monstrous expectation of finding a huge fund of gullibility in other men. The statement being in a book intended for the people is quite unpardonable; in a treatise on real property, at a Whig dinner, or in a selling Review, it might have been tolerated. Addressed to the people, it must be stigmatised as only intended to assist in my stifying them, and to keep up the grand system of political humbug,

  [∗]See pages 212, 213, etc. of the work referred to.

  [∗]I observe, my lord, that under the superintendence of the Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge, a Penny Magazine is published. Does the Lord High Chancellor still lend his name to a scheme which has been seized hold of by a contriving bookseller, who had no hand in its concoction, to beat his competitors out of the market? Is the Penny Magazine to be a loyal Whig publication, which may shield the minds and eyes of the people from the contamination of radical doctrines, or is it a mere tradesman's trick to command the market, by the help of a once-honoured name? Be it what it may, the trick will not do, for the name of the society stinks in the nostrils of the people.

  [†]The proof of this is to be found in a discourse delivered by you, when you were elected Lord Rector of the University of Glasgow, I forget the year, and know not where the discourse is to be found. Other persons may require this information, but you can hardly need such a refresher for your memory.

  [∗]“But that renowned profession (the law) has taught me another lesson also; it has imprinted on my mind the doctrine, which all men, the learned and the unlearned, feel to be congenial with the human mind, and to gather strength with its growth, that by a law above and prior to all the laws of human lawgivers, for it is the law of God—there are some things which cannot be holden in property, and above every thing else that man hath no property in his fellow creature. But I willingly avoid those heights of moral argument, where, if we go in search of first principles, we see eternal fogs reign, and find no end, in wandering mazes lost. I had rather seek the humbler regions, and approach the level plain—where all men see clear, where their judgments agree, and common feelings unite their hearts together; and standing on that general level, I ask what is the right which one man claims over the person of another, as if he were a chattel, and one of the beasts which perish? Is this that kind of property which claims universal respect, and is it clothed in the hearts of all, with that sanctity which makes it inviolable? I resist the claim, I deny the title: As a lawyer, I demur to the declaration of the right; as a man, I set up a law superior in point of antiquity, higher in point of authority, than any which men have framed, the law of nature (what will your friend, Mr. Bentham say to this?) and if you appeal from that, I set up the law of the Christian dispensation, which holds all men equal, and commands that you treat every man as a brother. Talk not to me of such monstrous pretensions being decreed by acts of parliament.” (Speech of Mr. Brougham, July 13, 1830. Hansard's Parliamentary Debates, New Series, vol. xxv. p. 1176.) The Irish, I fancy, will echo this language, and say, speaking of the claims of the Protestant clergy. “Talk not to us of such monstrous pretensions being decreed by act of parliament.” The English will retort this on you, when you again claim for the property of the church the same sanctity as for the fruits of industry. Is that “clothed in the hearts of all with that sanctity which makes it inviolable.” Such language, however, is much more convenient to hold in relation to the negro, who will not act upon it, than to the Irish and English who will. The sympathies of lawgivers are properly awakened for the suffering slaves of other people: for those who are the slaves of their own decrees, such as the Irish peasant and the English labourer, they have only whips, fetters, the gallows, and the smiting sword.

  [∗]See Cooper's Lectures on the Elements of Political Economy, Columbia, p. 352, et sup.

  [∗]Several accounts have lately appeared in the paper, of parishes, particularly in Berkshire, being unable to raise money to pay the weekly allowances of the paupers.

  [∗]The comparative little influence of eloquence, noticed in the text, ought to be a sufficient reason why no class of men should be afraid of the press. In fact, those who controul and restrict the press, are conscience-stricken criminals.

  [∗]Many of the opinions of the foregoing pages are similar to those professed by Dr. Paley on this subject. “The true reward of industry,” he says, “is in the price and sale of the produce. The exclusive right to the produce is the only incitement which acts constantly and universally, the only spring which keeps human labour in motion. All therefore that the laws can do is to secure this right to the occupier of the ground; that is, to constitute such a system of tenure, that the full and entire advantage of every improvement go to the benefit of the improver: that every man work for himself and not for another, and that no man share in the profit, who does not assist in the production.” (∗ ) The only question or difference between our opinions on this subject is, as to the fact, whether or not the laws do secure this right; and I am thoroughly persuaded, although Dr. Paley has not said as much, that he was of opinion that they do not. The admirable descriptions he has given of our legal right to property,† and of the folly of political obedience in some cases,‡ convince me that he was aware that our laws do not secure to every man the right, “that he work for himself and not for another.” Being unfortunately, for his reputation, and more unfortunately for the world, which his talents were admirably adapted to enlighten, ex-officio, the defender of laws, he is obliged to say, that by “occupier,” he does not mean “the person who performs the work,“ but “he who procures the labour.“∗ Miserable contradiction! Despicable subterfuge! The slave-owner in the West Indies does this. Dr. Paley is guilty of poor and pitiable quibbling, in order to defend an injustice of which he was sensible, but dared not condemn. He recognises the natural right of property, he sees that it bestows the best possible reward on labour, but seeing that the legal right of property does not accord with the natural right, that it diminishes the reward of industry and the encouragement and stimulus to labour, by bestowing its produce on those who perform no work, an erroneous view of his own interest led him to forego the vast glory that was within his reach, of being the most persuasive and powerful reformer that ever contributed by his pen to the happiness of his species.

  [∗]Moral Philosophy, b. 4, ch. xi.

  [†]See the commencement of the chap. “Of property.”

  [‡]See the chapter “How subjection to civil government is maintained.”

  [∗]Ibid.

• Back to Top

  4: 4. Gustave de Molinari, Les Soirées de la Rue Saint-Lazare: Entretiens sur les lois économiques et défense de la propriété [1849]

  Gustave de Molinari, Les Soirées de la Rue Saint-Lazare: Entretiens sur les lois économiques et défense de la propriété (Paris: Guillaumin, 1849).

  Accessed from oll.libertyfund.org/title/1344 on 2008-01-25

  The text is in the public domain.

  ---

  Imprimerie de Gustave GRATIOT, 11, rue de la Monnaie.

  PRÉFACE

  La société, disaient les économistes du dixhuitième siècle, s’organise en vertu de lois naturelles; ces lois ont pour essence la Justice et l’Utilité. Lorsqu’elles sont méconnues, la société souffre; lorsqu’elles sont pleinement respectées, la société jouit d’un maximum d’abondance, et la justice règne dans les relations des hommes.

  Ces lois providentielles sont-elles aujourd’hui respectées ou méconnues? Les souffrances des masses ont-elles leur source dans les lois économiques qui gouvernent la société ou dans les entraves apportées à l’action bienfaisante de ces lois? Telle est la question que les événements ont posée.

  A cette question, les écoles socialistes répondent tantôt en niant que le monde économique soit, comme le monde physique, gouverné par des lois naturelles; tantôt en affirmant que ces lois sont imparfaites ou vicieuses, el que les maux de la société proviennent de leurs imperfections ou de leurs vices.

  Les plus timides concluent qu’il les faut modifier; les plus audacieux sont d’avis qu’il faut faire table rase d’une Organisation radicalement mauvaise et la remplacer par une Organisation nouvelle.

  La base sur laquelle repose tout l’édifice de la société, c’est la propriété; les socialistes s’efforcent donc d’altérer ou de détruire le principe de la propriété.

  Les conservateurs défendent la propriété; mais ils la défendent mal.

  Voici pourquoi.

  Les conservateurs sont naturellement partisans du statu quo; ils trouvent que le monde va bien comme il va, et ils s’épouvantent à la seule idée d’y rien changer. Ils évitent, en conséquence, de sonder les profondeurs de la société, dans la crainte d’y rencontrer des souffrances qui nécessiteraient une réforme quelconque dans les institutions actuelles.

  D’un autre côté, ils n’aiment pas les théories, et ils ont peu de foi dans les principes. Ce n’est qu’à leur corps défendant qu’ils engagent une discussion sur la propriété; on dirait qu’ils redoutent la lumière pour ce principe sacré. A l’exemple de ces chrétiens ignorants et sauvages qui proserivaient jadis les hérétiques au lieu de les réfuter, ils invoquent la loi, de préférence à la science, pour avoir raison des aberrations du socialisme.

  Il m’a semblé que l’hérésie socialiste exigeait une autre réfutation et la propriété une autre défense.

  Reconnaissant, avec tous les économistes, la propriété comme la base de l’organisation naturelle de la société, j’ai recherché si le mal dénoncé par les socialistes, et que nul, à moins d’être aveugle ou de mauvaise foi, ne saurait nier, j’ai recherché si ce mal provient, oui ou non, de la propriété.

  Le résultat de mes études et de mes recherches a été que les souffrances de la société, bien loin d’avoir leur origine dans le principe de la propriété, proviennent, au contraire, d’atteintes directement ou indirectement portées à ce principe.

  D’où j’ai conclu que la solution du problème de l’amélioration du sort des classes laborieuses réside dans l’affranchissement pur et simple de la propriété.

  Comment le principe de la propriété sert de base à l’organisation naturelle de la société; comment ce principe n’a pas cessé d’être limité ou méconnu; quels maux découlent des blessures profondes dont on l’a criblé; comment enfin l’affranchissement de la propriété restituera à la société son organisation naturelle, organisation équitable et utile par essence, telle est la substance de ces dialogues.

  La thèse que j’entreprends de soutenir n’est pas nouvelle; tous les économistes ont défendu la propriété, et l’économie politique n’est autre chose que la démonstration des lois naturelles qui ont la propriété pour base. Quesnay, Turgot, Adam Smith, Malthus, Ricardo, J.-B. Say ont passé leur vie à observer ces lois et à les démontrer; leurs disciples, MM. Mac Culloch, Senior, Wilson, Dunoyer, Michel Chevalier, Bastiat, Joseph Garnier, etc., poursuivent avec ardeur la même tâche. Je me suis borné à suivre la voie qu’ils ont tracée.

  On trouvera peut-être que j’ai été trop loin, et qu’à force de vouloir me tenir dans le droit chemin des principes, je n’ai pas su éviter l’abîme des chimères et des utopies; mais il n’importe! j’ai la conviction profonde que la vérité économique se cache sous ces chimères et sous ces utopies apparentes; j’ai la conviction profonde que l’affranchissement complet, absolu de la propriété seul peut sauver la société, en réalisant toutes les nobles et généreuses espérances des amis de la justice et de l’humanité.

  ENTRETIENS sur LES LOIS ÉCONOMIQUES

  INTERLOCUTEURS: Un conservateur.—Un socialiste.—Un économiste.

  PREMIÈRE SOIRÉE

  SOMMAIRE: Position du problème social.—Que la société est gouvernée par des lois naturelles, immuables et absolues.—Que la propriété est la base de l’organisation naturelle de la société.—Définition de la propriété.—Énumération des atteintes actuellement portées au principe de la propriété.

  le conservateur.

  Débattons ensemble, sans passion, les problèmes redoutables qui ont été soulevés dans ces derniers temps. Vous qui faites une guerre acharnée aux institutions actuelles, vous qui les défendez, sous réserves, que voulezvous donc?

  le socialiste.

  Nous voulons reconstruire la société.

  l’économiste.

  Nous voulons la réformer.

  le conservateur.

  O rèveurs, mes bons amis, je ne demanderais pas mieux, si cela était possible. Mais vous poursuivez des chimères.

  le socialiste.

  Eh! quoi, vouloir que le règne de la force et de la ruse fasse enfin place à celui de la justice; vouloir que le pauvre cesse d’être exploité par le riche; vouloir que chacun soit récompensé selon ses œuvres, est-ce donc poursuivre une chimère?

  le conservateur.

  Cet Idéal que tous les utopistes se sont proposé depuis le commencement du monde ne saurait malheureusement être réalisé sur la terre. Il n’est pas donné aux hommes de l’atteindre!

  le socialiste.

  Je crois tout le contraire. Nous avons vécu jusqu’à ce jour au sein d’une organisation sociale imparfaite, vicieuse. Pourquoi ne nous serait-il pas permis de la changer? Si la société est mal faite, disait M. Louis Blanc, ne pouvons-nous donc la refaire? Les lois sur sur lesquelles repose cette société gangrenée jusqu’à la moelle des os, sont-elles éternelles, immuables? Nous qui les avons jusqu’à présent subies, sommes-nous condamnés à les subir toujours?

  le conservateur.

  Dieu l’a voulu ainsi.

  l’économiste.

  Prenez garde d’invoquer le nom de Dieu en vain. Êtes-vous bien sûr que les maux de la société proviennent véritablement des lois sur lesquelles la société repose?

  le socialiste.

  D’où viendraient-ils?

  l’économiste.

  Ne se pourrait-il pas que ces maux eussent leur origine dans des atteintes portées aux lois fondamentales de la société?

  le socialiste.

  La belle apparence que ces lois existent!

  l’économiste.

  Il y a des lois économiques qui gouvernent la société, comme il y a des lois physiques qui gouvernent le monde matériel.

  Ces lois ont pour essence l’Utilité et la Justice. Ce qui signifie qu’en les observant, d’une manière absolue, on est sûr d’agir utilement et équitablement pour soi-même et pour les autres.

  le conservateur.

  N’exagérez-vous pas, un peu? Y a-t-il bien véritablement, dans les sciences économiques et morales, des principes absolument applicables à tous les temps et à tous les lieux. Je n’ai jamais cru, je l’avoue, aux principes absolus.

  l’économiste.

  A quels principes croyez-vous donc?

  le conservateur.

  Mon Dieu! je crois avec tous les hommes qui ont observé de près les choses de ce monde que les lois de la justice et les règles de l’utilité sont essentiellement mobiles, variables. Je crois, en conséquence, qu’on ne saurait baser aucun système universel et absolu sur ces lois. M. Joseph de Maistre avait coutume de dire: Partout j’ai vu des hommes, mais nulle part je n’ai vu l’homme. Eh! bien, je crois qu’on peut dire, de même, qu’il y a des sociétés, ayant des lois particulières, appropriées à leur nature, mais qu’il n’y a pas une société gouvernée par des lois générales.

  le socialiste.

  Sans doute, puisque nous voulons la fonder cette société unitaire et universelle.

  le conservateur.

  Je crois encore avec M. de Maistre que les lois naissent des circonstances et qu’elles n’ont rien de fixe... Ne savez-vous pas que telle loi considérée comme juste chez une nation est souvent regardée comme inique chez une autre? Le vol était permis, sous certaines conditions, à Lacédémone; la polygamie est autorisée en Orient, la castration y est tolérée. Direz-vous pour cela que les Lacédémoniens étaient des voleurs éhontés et que les Asiatiques sont d’infâmes débauchés? Non! si vous envisagez sainement les choses, vous direz que les Lacédémoniens en permettant le vol, obéissaient à des exigences particulières de leur situation, et que les Asiatiques, en autorisant la polygamie comme en tolérant la castration, subissent l’influence de leur climat. Relisez Montesquieu! Vous en conclurez que la loi morale ne se manifeste pas en tous lieux et en tous temps de la même manière. Vous en conclurez que la justice n’a rien d’absolu. Vérité en deçà des Pyrénées, erreur au delà, disait Pascal. Relisez Pascal!

  Ce qui est vrai du juste ne l’est pas moins de l’utile. Vous parlez des lois de l’utile comme si elles étaient universelles et permanentes. Quelle erreur profonde est la vôtre! Ignorez-vous que les lois économiques ont varié et varient encore à l’infini comme les lois morales?... Objecterez-vous que les nations méconnaissent leurs véritables intérêts en adoptant des législations économiques, diverses et mobiles. Mais vous aurez contre vous l’expérience des siècles. N’est-il pas avéré, par exemple, que l’Angleterre a dû sa fortune au régime prohibitif? N’est-ce pas le fameux acte de navigation de Cromwell qui a été le point de départ de sa grandeur maritime et coloniale? Cependant, elle vient d’abandonner ce régime tutélaire. Pourquoi? Parce qu’il a cessé de lui être utile, parce qu’il ferait sa ruine après avoir fait sa richesse. Il y a un siècle, la liberté commerciale aurait été funeste à l’Angleterre; elle donne aujourd’hui un nouvel essor à l’industrie et au commerce britanniques. Tant les circonstances ont changé!

  Il n’y a que mobilité et diversité dans le domaine du Juste et de l’Utile. C’est s’égarer lamentablement, c’est méconnaître les conditions mêmes de l’existence des sociétés que de croire, comme vous semblez le faire, à l’existence de principes absolus.

  l’économiste.

  Ainsi donc, vous pensez qu’il n’y a de principes absolus ni en morale ni en économie politique; vous pensez que tout est mobile, variable, divers dans la sphère du juste aussi bien que dans celle de l’utile; vous pensez que la Justice et l’Utilité dépendent des lieux, des temps et des circonstances. Eh! bien, les socialistes sont du même avis que vous. Que disent-ils? Qu’il faut des lois nouvelles pour des temps nouveaux. Que l’heure est venue de changer les vieilles lois morales et économiques qui gouvernent les sociétés humaines.

  le conservateur.

  Crime et folie!

  le socialiste.

  Pourquoi? Vous avez jusqu’à présent gouverné le monde, pourquoi ne le gouvernerions-nous pas à notre tour? Êtes-vous d’une essence supérieure à la nôtre? Où bien pouvez-vous affirmer que nul n’est plus apte que vous à gouverner les hommes? Nous en appelons à la voix universelle! Consultez les misérables qui croupissent dans les bas-fonds de vos sociétés, et demandezleur s’ils sont satisfaits du lot que vos législateurs leur ont laissé? Demandez-leur s’ils croient avoir obtenu une part équitable dans les biens de la terre? Vos lois... Eh! si vous ne les aviez point faites dans l’intérêt égoïste d’une classe, cette classe serait-elle seule à prospérer? Pourquoi donc serions-nous criminels en établissant des lois qui profitent également à tous?

  Vous nous accusez d’attaquer les principes éternels et immuables sur lesquels la société repose, la religion, la famille, la propriété. Mais, de votre aveu même, il n’y a pas de principes éternels et immuables.

  La propriété! mais, aux yeux de vos légistes, qu’est-ce donc que la propriété? Une institution purement humaine, une institution que les hommes ont fondée, décrétée, et qu’ils sont par conséquent les maîtres d’abolir. Ne l’ontils point d’ailleurs incessamment remaniée? La propriété actuelle ressemble-t-elle à la propriété égyptienne ou romaine ou même à la propriété du moyen âge? On admettait jadis l’appropriation et l’exploitation de l’homme par l’homme; vous ne l’admettez plus aujourd’hui, légalement du moins. On réservait à l’État, dans le plus grand nombre des sociétés anciennes, la propriété du sol; vous avez rendu la propriété territoriale accessible à tout le monde. Vous avez, en revanche, refusé de reconnaître pleinement certaines propriétés; vous avez dénié à l’inventeur l’absolue propriété de son œuvre, à l’homme de lettres l’absolue propriété de son livre. Vous avez compris aussi que la société devait être protégée contre les excès de la propriété individuelle, et vous avez édicté la loi d’expropriation pour cause d’utilité publique.

  Eh bien! que faisons-nous? nous limitons un peu plus encore la propriété; nous la soumettons à des gênes plus nombreuses, à des charges plus lourdes dans l’intérêt public. Sommes-nous donc si coupables? Cette voie, où nous marchons, n’est-ce pas vous qui l’avez tracée?

  La famille! mais vous admettez qu’elle a pu légitimement recevoir, dans d’autres temps et dans d’autres pays, une organisation différente de celle qui prévaut aujourd’hui parmi nous. Pourquoi donc nous serait-il interdit de la modifier de nonveau? Tout ce que l’homme a fait, l’homme ne peut-il le défaire?

  La religion! mais vos législateurs n’en ont-ils pas toujours disposé à leur guise? N’ont-ils pas débuté par autoriser la religion catholique à l’exclusion des autres? N’ont-ils pas fini par permettre tous les cultes et par en pensionner quelques-uns? S’ils ont pu régler les manifestations du sentiment religieux, pourquoi nous serait-il interdit de les régler à notre tour?

  Propriété, famille, religion, cires molles que tant de législateurs ont marquées de leurs empreintes successives, pourquoi ne vous marquerions-nous pas aussi des nôtres? Pourquoi nous abstiendrions-nous de toucher à des choses que d’autres ont si souvent touchées? Pourquoi respecterions-nous des reliques que leurs gardiens eux-mêmes ne se sont fait aucun scrupule de profaner?

  l’économiste.

  La leçon est méritée. Conservateurs qui n’admettez aucun principe absolu, préexistant et éternel, en morale non plus qu’en économie politique, aucun principe également applicable à tous les temps et à toús les lieux, voilà où aboutissent vos doctrines. On les retourne contre vous. Après avoir entendu vos moralistes et vos légistes nier les lois éternelles du juste et de l’utile pour mettre à la place je ne sais quels expédients passagers, des esprits aventureux et passionnés, substituant leurs conceptions aux vôtres, veulent gouverner le monde après vous et autrement que vous. Et si vous avez raison, ô conservateurs, quand vous affirmez qu’aucune règle fixe et absolue ne préside à l’arrangement moral et matériel des affaires humaines, peut-on condamner ces réorganisateurs de la société? L’esprit humain n’est pas infaillible. Vos législateurs ont pu errer. Pourquoi ne serait-il pas donné à d’autres législateurs de mieux faire?

  Quand Fourier, ivre d’orgueil, s’écriait: Tous les législateurs se sont trompés jusqu’à moi, et leurs livres ne sont bons qu’à être brûlés, ne pouvait-il, selon vous-mêmes, avoir raison? Si les lois du Juste et de l’Utile viennent des hommes, et s’il appartient aux hommes de les modifier selon les temps, les lieux et les circonstances, Fourier n’était-il pas fondé à dire, en consultant l’histoire, ce long martyrologe des peuples, que les antiques législations sociales avaient été conçues dans un faux système, et qu’il fallait organiser un état social nou-veau? En affirmant qu’aucun principe absolu et surhumain ne gouverne les sociétés, n’avez-vous pas ouvert les écluses aux grandes eaux de l’utopie? N’avez-vous pas autorisé le premier venu à refaire ces sociétés que vous prétendez avoir faites? Le socialisme n’est-il pas un écoulement de vos propres doctrines?

  le conservateur.

  Qu’y pouvons-nous faire? Nous connaissons bien, veuillez m’en croire, le défaut de notre cuirasse. Aussi n’avons-nous jamais nié absolument le socialisme. Quel langage tenons-nous, le plus souvent, aux socialistes? Nous leur disons: Entre vous et nous ce n’est qu’une question de temps. Vous avez tort aujourd’hui, mais peut-être aurez-vous raison dans trois cents ans. Attendez!

  le socialiste.

  Et si nous ne voulons pas attendre?

  le conservateur.

  Alors, tant pis pour vous! Comme sans rien préjuger sur l’avenir de vos théories, nous les tenons pour immorales et subversives pour le présent, nous les poursuivrons à outrance. Nous les supprimerons comme la faux supprime l’ivraie... Nous vous enverrons, dans nos prisons et dans nos bagnes, attaquer les institutions actuelles de la religion, de la famille et de la propriété.

  le socialiste.

  Tant mieux. Nous comptons beaucoup sur la persécution pour faire avancer nos doctrines. Le plus beau piédestal qu’on puisse donner à une idée c’est un échafaud ou un bûcher. Mettez-nous à l’amende, emprisonnez-nous, transportez-nous... nous ne demandons pas mieux. Si vous pouviez rétablir l’Inquisition contre les socialistes, nous serions assurés du triomphe de notre cause.

  le conservateur.

  Nous pouvons nous passer encore de ce remède extrême. Nous possédons la Majorité et la Force.

  le socialiste.

  Jusqu’à ce que la Majorité et la Force se tournent de notre côté.

  le conservateur.

  Oh! je n’ignore pas que le danger est immense, mais enfin nous résisterons jusqu’au bout.

  l’économiste.

  Et vous perdrez la partie. Conservateurs, vous êtes impuissants à conserver la société.

  le conservateur.

  Voilà un arrêt bien formel.

  l’économiste.

  Nous allons voir s’il est mal fondé. Si vous ne croyez pas à des principes absolus, vous devez, n’est-il pas vrai, considérer les nations comme des aggrégations factices, successivement constituées et perfectionnées de main d’homme. Ces aggrégations peuvent avoir des principes et des intérêts semblables, mais elles peuvent avoir aussi des principes et des intérêts opposés. Ce qui est juste pour l’une peut n’être pas juste pour l’autre. Ce qui est utile à celle-ci peut être nuisible à celle-là. Mais, quel est le résultat nécessaire de cet antagonisme de principes et d’intérêts? La guerre. S’il est vrai que le monde ne soit point gouverné par des lois universelles et permanentes, s’il est vrai que chaque nation ait des principes et des intérêts qui lui soient propres, intérêts et principes essentiellement variables selon les circonstances et les temps, la guerre n’est-elle point dans la nature des choses?

  le conservateur.

  Il est certain que nous n’avons jamais rêvé la paix perpétuelle comme ce digne abbé de Saint-Pierre. M. Joseph de Maistre a parfaitement démontré d’ailleurs que la guerre est indestructible et nécessaire.

  l’économiste.

  Vous admettez donc et, en effet, vous ne pouvez pas ne pas admettre que le monde est éternellement voué à la guerre?

  le conservateur.

  La guerre était dans le passé, elle est dans le présent, pourquoi cesserait-elle d’être dans l’avenir?

  l’économiste.

  Oui, mais dans le passé, l’immense majorité des populations se composait d’esclaves ou de serfs. Or les esclaves et les serfs ne lisaient pas les journaux, ne fréquentaient point les clubs, et ne savaient ce que c’est que le socialisme. Voyez les serfs de Russie! N’est-ce pas une pâte que le despotisme pétrit à sa guise? N’en fait-il pas, selon sa volonté, de la chair à corvées ou de la chair à canon?

  le conservateur.

  Il est évident que le servage avait du bon.

  l’économiste.

  Par malheur, il n’y a plus moyen de le rétablir parmi nous. Vous n’avez donc plus ni esclaves ni serfs. Vous avez des multitudes besoigneuses, à qui vous ne pouvez interdire les libres communications de la pensée, à qui vous ètes, au contraire, sollicités tous les jours de rendre plus accessible le domaine des connaissances générales. Empêcherez-vous ces multitudes, aujourd’hui souveraines, de s’abreuver à la source empoisonnée des écrits socialistes? Les empêcherez-vous d’écouter les rêveurs qui leur disent qu’une société où la foule travaille beaucoup pour gagner peu, tandis qu’au-dessus d’elle vivent des hommes qui gagnent beaucoup en travaillant peu, est une société vicieuse et qu’il la faut changer? Non! vous aurez beau proscrire les systèmes socialistes, vous ne les empêcherez pas de se produire et de se propager. La presse défiera vos défenses.

  le conservateur.

  Ah! la presse, cette grande empoisonneuse!

  l’économiste.

  Vous aurez beau la museler ou la proscrire, vous ne viendrez jamais à bout de la tuer. C’est une hydre dont les millions de têtes défieraient le bras d’Hercule.

  le conservateur.

  Si nous avions une bonne monarchie absolue...

  l’économiste.

  La presse tuerait la monarchie absolue comme elle a tué la monarchie constitutionnelle, et à son défaut les livres, les brochures et la conversation suffiraient.

  Eh bien, aujourd’hui, pour ne parler que de la presse, cette puissante baliste n’est plus seulement dirigée contre le gouvernement, elle est dirigée contre la société.

  le socialiste.

  Oui, depuis quelques années la presse a marché, Dieu merci!

  l’économiste.

  Elle provoquait naguère des révolutions pour changer la forme du gouvernement; elle en provoque aujourd’hui pour changer la forme de la société. Pourquoi ne réussirait-elle pas dans ce dessein comme elle a réussi dans l’autre? Ah! si les nations étaient pleinement garanties contre les luttes du dehors, peut-être réussirait-on à maîtriser toujours, au-dedans, les factions violentes et anarchiques. Mais, vous en convenez vous-même, la guerre extérieure est inévitable, car les principes et les intérêts sont mobiles, divers, et nul ne peut répondre que la guerre, aujourd’hui nuisible à certains pays, ne leur sera pas utile demain. Or si vous n’avez de foi qu’en la Force pour dompter le socialisme, comment donc réussirez-vous à le contenir, lorsque vous serez obligé de tourner contre l’ennemi du dehors, cette Force qui est votre raison suprême? Si la guerre est inévitable, l’avénement du socialisme révolutionnaire ne l’est-il pas aussi?

  le conservateur.

  Hélas! j’en ai bien peur. Aussi ai-je toujours pensé que la société marche à grands pas vers sa ruine. Nous sommes des Grecs du Bas-Empire, et les barbares sont à nos portes.

  l’économiste.

  Voilà donc où vous en êtes venus? Vous désespérez des destinées de la civilisation, et vous regardez monter la barbarie en attendant l’heure suprême où elle aura débordé vos derniers remparts. Vous êtes des Grecs du Bas-Empire..... Eh! s’il en est ainsi, laissez donc entrer les barbares. Faites mieux, allez au-devant d’eux, et remettez-leur humblement les clefs de la ville sacrée. Peut-être réussirez-vous à désarmer leur fureur. Mais craignez de la redoubler en prolongeant inutilement votre résistance. L’histoire ne rapporte-t-elle point que Constantinople fut mise à sac, et que le Bosphore charria, pendant quatre jours, du sang et des cadavres? O Grecs du nouvean Bas-Empire, redoutez le sort de vos aînés, et, de grâce, épargnez-nous l’agonie d’une résistance vaine et les horreurs d’une prise d’assaut. Hâtez-vous de livrer Byzance, si Byzance ne peut être sauvée.

  le socialiste.

  Vous avouez donc que l’avenir est à nous?

  l’économiste.

  Dieu m’en garde! mais je pense que vos adversaires ont tort de vous résister s’ils désespèrent de vous vaincre, et je conçois qu’en ne se rattachant à aucun principe fixe, immuable, ils aient cessé de compter sur la victoire. Conservateurs, ils sont impuissants à conserver la société, voilà tout ce que j’ai voulu prouver. Maintenant, je vous dirai à vous autres organisateurs, que vous seriez impuissants à l’organiser. Vous pouvez prendre Byzance et la mettre à sac, vous ne sauriez la gouverner.

  le socialiste.

  Qu’en savez-vous! N’avons-nous pas dix organisations pour une?

  l’économiste.

  Vous venez de mettre le doigt sur la plaie. A quelle secte socialiste appartenez-vous, veuillez bien me le dire. Êtes-vous saint-simonien?

  le socialiste.

  Non? le saint-simonisme est usé. C’était, à l’origine, une àspiration plutôt qu’une formule... Et les disciples ont gâté l’aspiration sans trouver la formule.

  l’économiste.

  Phalanstérien?

  le socialiste.

  C’est séduisant. Mais la morale du fouriérisme est bien scabreuse.

  l’économiste.

  Cabétiste?

  le socialiste.

  Cabet est un esprit ingénieux mais incomplet. Il n’entend rien, par exemple, aux choses de l’art. Imaginezvous qu’en Icarie on peint les statues. Les figures de Curtius, voilà l’Idéal de l’art icarien. Barbare!

  l’économiste.

  Proudhonien?

  le socialiste.

  Proudhon, ah! que voilà un beau destructeur? comme il démolit bien! Mais, jusqu’à présent, il n’a su fonder que sa banque d’échanges. Et cela ne suffit pas.

  l’économiste.

  Ni saint-simonien, ni fouriériste, ni cabétiste, ni proudhonien. Eh! qu’êtes-vous donc?

  le socialiste.

  Je suis socialiste.

  l’économiste.

  Mais encore! à quelle variété du socialisme appartenez-vous?

  le socialiste.

  A la mienne. Je suis convaincu que le grand problème de l’organisation du travail n’est pas résolu encore. On a déblayé le terrain, on a posé les assises, mais on n’a pas élevé l’édifice. Pourquoi ne chercherais-je pas comme un autre à le bâtir? Ne suis-je pas animé du pur amour de l’Humanité? N’ai-je pas étudié la Science et médité longtemps sur le Problème? Et je crois pouvoir affirmer que... non! pas encore... il y a certains points qui ne sont pas complétement élucidés (montrant son front), mais l’Idée est là... et vous verrez plus tard.

  l’économiste.

  C’est-à-dire que vous aussi vous cherchez votre organisation du travail. Vous êtes un socialiste indépendant. Vous avez votre Bible particulière. Au fait, et pourquoi pas? Pourquoi ne recevriez-vous pas comme un autre l’esprit du Seigneur? Mais aussi, pourquoi d’autres ne le recevraient-ils pas comme vous? Voilà bien des organisations du travail.

  le socialiste.

  Tant mieux, le peuple pourra choisir.

  l’économiste.

  Bon! à la majorité des suffrages. Mais que fera la minorité?

  le socialiste.

  Elle se soumettra.

  l’économiste.

  Et si elle résiste? Mais j’admets qu’elle se soumette, de gré ou de force. J’admets que l’organisation adoptée à la majorité des suffrages soit mise en vigueur. Qu’arrivera-t-il si quelqu’un, vous, moi, un autre, découvre une organisation supérieure?

  le socialiste.

  Cela n’est pas probable.

  l’économiste.

  Au contraire, c’est très probable. Ne croyez-vous pas au dogme de la perfectibilité indéfinie?

  le socialiste.

  Assurément. Je crois que l’Humanité ne cessera de progresser qu’en cessant d’être.

  l’économiste.

  Or d’où dépend principalement le progrès de l’humanité? S’il faut en croire vos docteurs, c’est la société qui fait l’homme. Lorsque l’organisation sociale est mauvaise, l’homme reste stationnaire ou il rétrograde; lorsque l’organisation sociale est bonne, l’homme se développe, progresse...

  le socialiste.

  Quoi de plus vrai?

  l’économiste.

  Y a-t-il donc rien de plus souhaitable au monde que de faire progresser l’organisation sociale? Mais s’il en est ainsi, quelle devra être la préoccupation constante des amis de l’humanité? ne sera-ce point d’inventer, de combiner des organisations de plus en plus parfaites?

  le socialiste.

  Oui, sans doute. Quel mal y voyez-vous?

  l’économiste.

  J’y vois une anarchie permanente. Une organisation vient d’être mise en vigueur et elle fonctionne, tant bien que mal, car elle n’est pas parfaite...

  le socialiste.

  Pourquoi pas?

  l’économiste.

  La doctrine de la perfectibilité indéfinie n’exclut-elle pas la perfection? D’ailleurs, je viens de vous citer une demi-douzaine d’organisations et vous n’avez été satisfait d’aucune.

  le socialiste.

  Cela ne prouve rien contre celles qui viendront plus tard. Ainsi, par exemple, j’ai la ferme conviction que mon système....

  l’économiste.

  Fourier trouvait son mécanisme parfait et cependant vous ne voulez pas du mécanisme de Fourier. De même, il se rencontrera des gens qui ne voudront pas du vôtre. Donc, une organisation bonne ou mauvaise est en vigueur. La majorité en est satisfaite, mais la minorité ne l’est point. De là un conflit, une lutte. Et remarquez bien que l’organisation future possède un avantage énorme sur l’organisation présente. On n’en a pas encore ressenti les défauts. Selon toutes probabilités elle finira par l’emporter.... jusqu’à ce qu’elle soit, à son tour, remplacée par une troisième. Mais croyez-vous qu’une société puisse, sans péril aucun, changer journellement d’organisation. Voyez dans quelle crise épouvantable nous a précipités un simple changement de gouvernement. Que serait-ce s’il s’agissait de changer la société?

  le conservateur.

  On frémit rien que d’y penser. Quel gâchis effroyable? Ah! l’esprit d’innovation? l’esprit d’innovation?

  l’économiste.

  Vous aurez beau faire, vous ne le supprimerez point. L’esprit d’innovation existe...

  le conservateur.

  Pour le malheur du monde.

  l’économiste.

  Non pas. Sans l’esprit d’innovation, les hommes n’auraient point cessé encore de se nourrir de glands ou de brouter l’herbe. Sans l’esprit d’innovation, vous seriez un grossier sauvage, gîtant dans la feuillée, au lieu d’être un digne propriétaire ayant maison à la ville et maison aux champs, confortablement nourri, vêtu, logé.

  le conservateur.

  Pourquoi l’esprit d’innovation n’est-il point demeuré dans de justes limites?

  le socialiste.

  Égoïste!

  l’économiste.

  L’esprit d’innovation n’a point de limites. L’esprit d’innovation qui est dans l’homme ne périra qu’avec l’homme. L’esprit d’innovation modifiera perpétuellement tout ce que les hommes ont établi, et si, comme vous l’affirmez, les lois qui régissent les sociétés sont d’origine humaine, l’esprit d’innovation ne s’arrêtera point devant elles. Il les modifiera, les changera, les bouleversera aussi longtemps que l’humanité séjournera sur la terre. Le monde est voué à d’incessantes révolutions, à d’éternels déchirements, à moins que...

  le conservateur.

  A moins que...

  l’économiste.

  Eh! bien, à moins qu’il n’y ait des principes absolus, à moins que les lois qui gouvernent le monde moral et le monde économique, ne soient des lois préétablies comme celles qui gouvernent le monde physique. S’il en était ainsi, si les sociétés avaient été organisées de la main de la Providence, ne devrait-on pas prendre en pitié le pygmée gonflé d’orgueil qui essayerait de substituer son œuvre à celle du Créateur? Ne serait-il pas aussi pueril de vouloir changer les bases sur lesquelles la société repose que d’entreprendre de déplacer l’orbite de la terre?

  le socialiste.

  Sans aucun doute. Mais existent-elles, ces lois providentielles? et, à supposer même qu’elles existent, ont-elles bien pour caractères essentiels la Justice et l’Utilité?

  le conservateur.

  Voilà une grosse impiété. Si Dieu a organisé luimême les sociétés, s’il a fait les lois qui les régissent, il est évident que ces lois sont essentiellement justes et utiles, et que les souffrances des hommes proviennent de leur non observation.

  l’économiste.

  Bravo. Mais, à votre tour, vous devez admettre que ces lois sont universelles et immuables?

  le socialiste.

  Eh! quoi, vous ne répondez pas? Ignorez-vous donc que la nature ne procède que par des lois universelles et immuables? Et, je vous le demande, peut-elle procéder autrement? Si les lois naturelles étaient partielles, ne se heurteraient-elles pas sans cesse? Si elles étaient variables, ne livreraient-elles pas le monde à de perpétuelles perturbations? Je ne conçois pas plus qu’une loi naturelle ne soit point universelle et immuable, que vous ne concevez qu’une loi émanée de la Divinité n’ait point pour essence la Justice et l’Utilité. Seulement, je doute que Dieu se soit mêlé de l’organisation des sociétés humaines. Et savez-vous pourquoi j’en doute? Parce que vos sociétés sont détestablement organisées; parce que l’histoire de l’humanité n’a été jusqu’à présent que la lamentable et hideuse légende du crime et de la misère. Attribuer à Dieu lui-même l’organisation de ces sociétés misérables et infâmes, ne serait-ce pas le rendre responsable du mal? ne serait-ce pas justifier les reproches de ceux qui l’accusent d’être injuste et inhumain?

  l’économiste.

  Permettez! de ce que ces lois providentielles existent, il ne s’ensuit pas nécessairement que l’humanité doive prospérer. Les hommes ne sont pas des corps dépourvus de volonté et de vie, comme ces globes que vous voyez se mouvoir dans un ordre éternel sous l’impulsion des lois physiques. Les hommes sont des êtres actifs et libres; ils peuvent observer ou ne pas observer les lois que Dieu leur a données. Seulement, quand ils ne les observent point, ils sont criminels et misérables.

  le socialiste.

  S’il en était ainsi, ils les observeraient toujours.

  l’économiste.

  Oui, s’ils les connaissaient; et, si les connaissant, ils savaient que la non observation de ces lois doit inévitablement leur porter préjudice; mais voilà précisément ce qu’ils ignorent.

  le socialiste.

  Vous affirmez donc que tous les maux de l’humanité ont leur source dans la non observation des lois morales et économiques qui gouvernent les sociétés?

  l’économiste.

  Je dis que si l’humanité avait de tout temps observé ces lois, la somme de ses maux eût été, de tout temps aussi, la plus faible possible. Cela vous suffit-il?

  le socialiste.

  Assurément. Mais je serais; en vérité, bien curieux de les connaître, ces lois miraculeuses.

  l’économiste.

  La loi fondamentale sur laquelle repose toute l’organisation sociale, et de laquelle découlent toutes les autres lois économiques, c’est la propriété.

  le socialiste.

  La propriété! allons donc; mais c’est précisément de la propriété que découlent tous les maux de l’humanité.

  l’économiste.

  J’affirme le contraire. J’affirme que les misères et les iniquités dont l’humanité n’a cessé de souffrir ne viennent point de la propriété; j’affirme qu’elles viennent d’infractions particulières ou générales, temporaires ou permanentes, légales ou illégales, commises au principe de la propriété. J’affirme que si la propriété avait été, dès l’origine du monde, religieusement respectée, l’humanité aurait constamment joui du maximum de bienêtre que comportait, à chaque époque, l’état d’avancement des arts et des sciences, comme aussi d’une entière justice.

  le socialiste.

  Voilà bien des affirmations. Et vous êtes apparemment en mesure de prouver ce que vous affirmez.

  l’économiste.

  Apparemment.

  le socialiste.

  Eh! bien, prouvez-le!

  l’économiste.

  Je ne demande pas mieux.

  le conservateur.

  Avant tout, veuillez, je vous prie, définir la propriété.

  l’économiste.

  Je ferai mieux, je commencerai par définir l’homme, du moins au point de vue économique.

  L’homme est un composé de forces physiques, morales et intellectuelles. Ces forces diverses ont besoin d’être incessamment entretenues, réparées par l’assimilation de forces semblables à elles. Lorsqu’on ne les répare point, elles périssent. Cela est vrai, aussi bien pour les forces intellectuelles et morales que pour les forces physiques.

  L’homme est donc obligé de s’assimiler perpétuellement des forces nouvelles. Comment est-il averti de cette nécessité? par la douleur. Toute déperdition de forces est accompagnée d’une douleur. Toute assimilation de forces, toute consommation est accompagnée, au contraire, d’une jouissance. Excité par ce double aiguillon, l’homme s’attache incessamment à entretenir ou à augmenter la somme des forces physiques, morales et intellectuelles qui composent son être. Telle est la raison de son activité.

  Lorsque cette activité s’exerce, lorsque l’homme agit dans la vue de réparer ou d’augmenter ses forces, on dit qu’il travaille. Si les éléments dans lesquels l’homme puise les virtualités qu’il s’assimile étaient toujours à sa portée, et naturellement préparés pour la consommation, son travail se réduirait à fort peu de chose. Mais il n’en est pas ainsi. La nature n’a pas tout fait pour l’homme; elle lui a laissé beaucoup à faire. Si elle lui fournit libéralement la matière première de toutes les choses nécessaires à sa consommation, elle l’oblige à donner une multitude de façons diverses à cette matière première pour la rendre consommable.

  La préparation des choses nécessaires à la consommation se nomme production.

  Comment s’accomplit la production? par l’action des forces ou facultés de l’homme sur les éléments que lui fournit la nature.

  Avant de consommer l’homme est donc obligé de produire. Toute production impliquant une dépense de forces occasionne une peine, une douleur. On subit cette peine, on souffre cette douleur dans la vue de se procurer une jouissance, ou, ce qui revient au même, de s’épargner une souffrance plus forte. On se procure cette jouissance et on s’épargne cette souffrance par la consommation. Produire et consommer, souffrir et jouir, voilà toute la vie humaine.

  le conservateur.

  Qu’osez-vous dire? A vos yeux, la Jouissance serait la fin unique que l’homme aurait à se proposer sur la terre?

  l’économiste.

  N’oubliez pas qu’il s’agit ici des jouissances morales et intellectuelles aussi bien que des jouissances physiques. N’oubliez pas que l’homme est un être physique, moral et intellectuel. Se développera-t-il à ce triple point de vue ou se dégradera-t-il, voilà toute la question. S’il néglige ses besoins moraux et intellectuels pour ne satisfaire que ses appétits physiques, il se dégradera moralement et intellectuellement. S’il néglige ses besoins physiques pour augmenter ses satisfactions intellectuelles et morales, il se dégradera physiquement. Dans l’une et l’autre éventualités, il souffrira d’une part, tout en jouissant avec excès d’une autre. La sagesse consiste à maintenir l’équilibre des facultés dont on est pourvu ou à produire cet équilibre lorsqu’il n’existe point. Mais l’économie politique n’a pas à s’occuper, directement du moins, de cette ordonnance intérieure des facultés humaines. L’économie politique n’examine que les lois générales de la production et de la consommation des richesses. La manière dont il convient que chaque individu distribue les forces réparatrices de son être concerne la morale.

  Souffrir le moins possible, physiquement, moralement et intellectuellement, jouir le plus possible, à ce triple point de vue, voilà quel est, en définitive, le grand mobile de la vie humaine, le pivot autour duquel se meuvent toutes les existences. Ce mobile, ce pivot se nomme l’Intérêt.

  le socialiste.

  Vous regardez l’intérêt comme le mobile unique des actions humaines, et vous dites que l’intérêt consiste à s’épargner de la peine et à se procurer du plaisir. Mais n’est-il donc, dans l’homme, aucun mobile plus noble auquel on puisse faire appel? Au lieu d’être excité par l’appât inférieur d’une satisfaction personnelle, ne peuton l’être par le stimulant plus élevé de l’amour de l’humanité? Au lieu de ceder à l’intérêt, ne peut-on obeir au dévouement?

  l’économiste.

  Le dévouement n’est qu’une des parties constituantes de l’intérêt.

  le conservateur.

  Qu’est-ce à dire? Oubliez-vous que dévouement implique sacrifice et que sacrifice implique souffrance?

  l’économiste.

  Oui, sacrifice et souffrance d’un côté, mais satisfaction et jouissance d’un autre. Quand on se dévoue pour son prochain, on se condamne, le plus souvent, du moins, à une privation matérielle, mais on éprouve en échange une satisfaction morale. Si la peine l’emporte sur la satisfaction on ne se dévoue pas.

  le conservateur.

  Et les martyrs?

  l’économiste.

  Les martyrs eux-mêmes me fourniraient un témoignage à l’appui de ce que j’avance. Le sentiment moral de la religion dépassait chez eux l’instinct physique de la conservation. En échange de leurs souffrances physiques, ils éprouvaient des jouissances morales plus intenses. Lorsqu’on n’est pas pourvu à un haut degré du sentiment religieux, on ne s’expose pas, volontairement du moins, au martyre. Pourquoi? Parce que la satisfaction morale étant faible, on la trouve trop chèrement achetée par la souffrance physique.

  le conservateur.

  Mais, s’il en est ainsi, les hommes en qui les appétits physiques prédominent, sacrifieront toujours à la satisfaction de leurs besoins inférieurs, celle de leurs besoins plus élevés. Ces hommes auront intérêt à se vautrer dans la fange....

  l’économiste.

  Cela serait, si l’existence humaine se trouvait hornée à cette terre. Les individus en qui les appétits physiques prédominent n’auraient, en ce cas, aucun intérêt à les réprimer. Mais l’homme n’est pas ou ne se croit pas une créature d’un jour. Il a foi dans une existence future, et il s’efforce de se perfectionner pour monter dans un monde meilleur, au lieu de descendre dans un monde plus mauvais. S’il se prive de certaines satisfactions icibas, c’est en vue d’acquérir des satisfactions supérieures dans une autre vie.

  S’il n’a pas foi dans ces satisfactions futures ou s’il les croit inférieures aux satisfactions présentes que la religion et la morale lui commandent de sacrifier pour les obtenir, il ne consentira point à ce sacrifice.

  Mais que la satisfaction soit présente ou future, qu’elle se trouve placée dans ce monde ou dans un autre, elle est toujours la fin que l’homme se propose, le mobile constant, immuable de ses actions.

  le socialiste.

  Ainsi élargi, on peut, je pense, accepter l’intérêt, comme mobile unique des actions de l’homme.

  l’économiste.

  Sous l’impulsion de son intérêt, où qu’il le place, l’homme agit, travaille. C’est à la religion et à la morale à lui enseigner à le bien placer.....

  L’homme s’efforce donc incessamment de réduire la somme de ses peines et d’augmenter celle de ses jouissances. Comment peut-il atteindre ce double résultat? En obtenant, en échange de moins de travail, plus de choses propres à la consommation, ou, ce qui revient au même, en perfectionnant son travail.

  Comment l’homme peut-il perfectionner son travail? Comment peut-il obtenir un maximum de jouissances en échange d’un minimum d’efforts?

  C’est en dirigeant bien les forces dont il dispose. C’est en exécutant les travaux qui conviennent le mieux à ses facultés et en accomplissant sa tâche le mieux possible.

  Or l’expérience démontre que ce résultat ne peut-être obtenu qu’à l’aide de la plus complète division du travail.

  Les hommes sont donc naturellement intéressés à diviser le travail. Mais division du travail implique rapprochement des individus, société, échanges.

  Que les hommes demeurent isolés; qu’ils satisfassent individuellement à tous leurs besoins, et ils dépenseront un maximum d’efforts pour obtenir un minimum de satisfactions.

  Cependant cet intérêt que les hommes ont à s’unir en vue de diminuer leur labeur et d’augmenter leurs jouissances n’aurait peut-être pas suffi pour les rapprocher, s’ils n’avaient été attirés les uns vers les autres d’abord par l’impulsion naturelle de certains besoins qui ne peuvent être satisfaits dans l’isolement, ensuite par la nécessité de défendre, quoi? leurs propriétés.

  le conservateur.

  Comment? La propriété existe-t-elle dans l’état d’isolement? Selon les jurisconsultes, c’est la société qui l’institue.

  l’économiste.

  Si la société l’institue, la société peut aussi l’abolir, et les socialistes qui demandent son abolition ne sont pas de si grands coupables. Mais la société n’a pas institué la propriété; c’est bien plutôt la propriété qui a institué la société.

  Qu’est-ce que la propriété?

  La propriété émane d’un instinct naturel dont l’espèce humaine tout entière est pourvue. Cet instinct révèle à l’homme avant tout raisonnement qu’il est le maître de sa personne et qu’il peut disposer à son gré de toutes les virtualités qui composent son être, soit qu’elles y adherènt, soit qu’il les en ait séparées.

  le socialiste.

  Séparées! qu’est-ce à dire?

  l’économiste.

  L’homme est obligé de produire s’il veut consommer. En produisant, il dépense, il sépare de lui-même une certaine partie de ses forces physiques, morales et intellectuelles. Les produits contiennent les forces dépensées par ceux qui les ont créés. Mais ces forces que l’homme sépare de lui-même, sous l’empire de la nécessité, il ne cesse pas de les posséder. La conscience humaine ne s’y trompe pas, et elle condamne indistinctement les atteintes portées à la propriété intérieure et à la propriété extérieure.1

  Lorsqu’on dénie à l’homme le droit de posséder la portion de ses forces qu’ll sépare de lui-même en travaillant, lorsqu’on attribue à d’autres le droit d’en disposer; qu’arrive-t-il? Cette séparation ou cette dépense de forces impliquant une douleur, l’homme cesse de travailler à moins qu’on ne l’y force.

  Supprimer le droit de propriété de l’homme sur les produits de son travail, c’est empêcher la création de ces produits.

  S’emparer d’une partie de ces produits, c’est, de même, décourager de les former; c’est ralentir l’activité de l’homme en affaiblissant le mobile qui le pousse à agir.

  De même, porter atteinte à la propriété intérieure; obliger un être actif et libre à entreprendre un travail qu’il n’entreprendrait pas de lui-même, ou lui interdire certaines branches de travail, détourner par conséquent ses facultés de leur destination naturelle, c’est diminner la puissance productive de l’homme.

  Toute atteinte portée à la propriété intérieure ou extérieure, séparée ou non séparée, est contraire à l’Utilité aussi bien qu’à la Justice.

  Comment donc se fait-il que des atteintes aient été, de tout temps, portées à la propriété?

  Tout travail impliquant une dépense de forces, et toute dépense de forces une peine, certains hommes ont voulu s’épargner cette peine tout en s’attribuant la satisfaction qu’elle procure. Ils ont, en conséquence, fait métier de dérober les fruits du travail des autres hommes, soit en les dépouillant de leurs biens extérieurs, soit en les réduisant en esclavage. Ils ont constitué ensuite des sociétés régulières pour protéger eux et les fruits de leurs rapines contre leurs esclaves ou contre d’autres ravisseurs. Voilà l’origine de la plupart des sociétés.

  Mais cette usurpation abusive des forts sur la propriété des faibles a été successivement entamée. Dès l’origine des sociétés, une lutte incessante s’est établie entre les oppresseurs et les opprimés, les spoliateurs et les spoliés; dès l’origine des sociétés, l’humanité a tendu constamment vers l’affranchissement de la propriété. L’histoire est pleine de cette grande lutte! D’un côté, vous voyez les oppresseurs défendant les priviléges qu’ils se sont attribués sur la propriété d’autrui; de l’autre, les opprimés réclamant la suppression de ces priviléges iniques et odieux.

  La lutte dure encore, et elle ne cessera que lorsque la propriété sera pleinement affranchie.

  le conservateur.

  Mais il n’y a plus de priviléges!

  le socialiste.

  Mais la propriété n’a que trop de franchises!

  l’économiste.

  La propriété n’est guère plus franche aujourd’hui qu’elle ne l’était avant 1789. Peut-être même, l’est-elle moins. Seulement il y a une différence: avant 1789, les restrictions apportées au droit de propriété profitaient à quelques-uns; aujourd’hui, elles ne profitent, le plus souvent, à personne, sans être cependant moins nuisibles à tous.

  le conservateur.

  Mais où donc les voyez-vous ces restrictions malfaisantes?

  l’économiste.

  Je vais énumérer les principales....

  le socialiste.

  Une observation encore. J’admets volontiers la propriété comme souverainement équitable et utile dans l’état d’isolement. Un homme vit et travaille seul. Il est parfaitement juste que cet homme jouisse seul du fruit de son travail. Il n’est pas moins utile que cet homme soit assuré de conserver sa propriété. Mais ce régime de propriété individuelle peut-il se maintenir équitablement et utilement dans l’état de société?

  Je veux bien admettre encore que la Justice et l’Utilité commandent de reconnaître à chacun, dans cet état comme dans l’autre, l’entière propriété de sa personne et de cette portion de ses forces qu’il sépare de lui-même en travaillant. Mais les individus pourraient-ils véritablement jouir de cette double propriété, si la société n’était pas organisée de manière à la leur garantir? Si cette organisation indispensable n’existait point; si, par un mécanisme quelconque, la société ne distribuait point à chacun l’équivalent de son travail, le faible ne se trouverait-il pas à la merci du fort, la propriété des uns ne serait-elle pas perpétuellement envahie par la propriété des autres? Et si l’on commettait l’imprudence d’affranchir pleinement la propriété, avant que la société fût dotée de ce mécanisme distributif, ne verrions-nous pas se multiplier encore les empiétements des forts sur la propriété des faibles? Le complet affranchissement de la propriété n’aggraverait-il pas le mal au lieu de le corriger?

  l’économiste.

  Si l’objection était fondée, s’il était nécessaire de construire un mécanisme pour distribuer à chacun l’équivalent de son travail, le socialisme aurait pleinement sa raison d’être, et je serais socialiste comme vous. Mais ce mécanisme que vous voulez établir artificiellement, il existe naturellement et il fonctionne. La société est organisée. Le mal que vous attribuez à son défaut d’organisation vient des entraves apportées au libre jeu de son organisation.

  le socialiste.

  Vous osez affirmer qu’en permettant à tous les hommes de disposer librement de leurs propriétés, dans le milieu social où nous sommes, les choses s’arrangeraient d’elles-mêmes de manière à rendre le travail de chacun le plus productif possible, et la distribution des fruits du travail de tous pleinement équitable?...

  l’économiste.

  J’ose l’affirmer.

  le socialiste.

  Vous croyez qu’il deviendrait superflu d’organiser sinon la production du moins la distribution, l’échange, de désobstruer la circulation...

  l’économiste.

  J’en suis sûr. Laissez faire les propriétaires, laissez passer les propriétés et tout s’arrangera pour le mieux.

  Mais on n’a jamais laissé faire les propriétaires; on n’a jamais laissé passer les propriétés.

  Jugez-en.

  S’agit-il du droit de propriété de l’homme sur luimême; du droit qu’il possède d’utiliser librement ses facultés, en tant qu’il ne cause aucun dommage à la propriété d’autrui? Dans la société actuelle les fonctions les plus élevées et les professions les plus lucratives ne sont pas libres; on ne peut exercer librement les fonctions de notaire, de prêtre, de juge, d’huissier, d’agent de change, de courtier, de médecin, d’avocat, de professeur; on ne peut être librement imprimeur, boucher, boulanger, entrepreneur de pompes funèbres; on ne peut fonder librement aucune association commerciale, aucune banque, aucune compagnie d’assurances, aucune grande entreprise de transport, construire librement aucun chemin, établir librement aucune institution de charité, vendre librement du tabac, de la poudre, du salpêtre, transporter des lettres, battre monnaie; on ne peut librement se concerter avec d’autres travailleurs pour fixer le prix du travail. La propriété de l’homme sur lui-même, la propriété intérieure, est de toutes parts entravée.

  La propriété de l’homme sur les fruits de son travail, la propriété extérieure ne l’est pas moins. La propriété littéraire ou artistique et la propriété des inventions ne sont reconnues et garanties que pendant une courte période. La propriété matérielle est généralement reconnue à perpétuité, mais elle est soumise à une multitude de restrictions et de charges. Le don, l’héritage et le prêt ne sont pas libres. L’échange est lourdement grevé tant par les impôts de mutation, d’enregistrement et de timbre, les octrois et les douanes, que par les priviléges accordés aux agents servant d’intermédiaires à certains marchés; parfois aussi l’échange est complétement prohibé hors de certaines limites. Enfin, la loi d’expropriation pour cause d’utilité publique menace incessamment la faible portion de Propriété que les autres restrictions ont épargnée.

  le conservateur.

  Toutes les restrictions que vous venez d’énumérer ont été établies dans l’intérêt de la société.

  l’économiste.

  C’est possible; mais ceux qui les ont établies ont eu la main malheureuse, car toutes agissent, à différents degrés, et quelques-unes avec une puissance considérable, comme causes d’injustices et de dommages pour la société.

  le conservateur.

  De sorte qu’en les détruisant, nous jouirions d’un véritable paradis sur la terre.

  l’économiste.

  Je ne dis pas cela. Je dis que la société se trouverait dans la situation la meilleure possible, eu égard au degré actuel d’avancement des arts et des sciences.

  le socialiste.

  Et vous vous engagez à le prouver?

  l’économiste.

  Oui.

  le conservateur et le socialiste.

  Voilà un utopiste!

  DEUXIÈME SOIRÉE

  SOMMAIRE: Atteintes portées à la propriété extérieure.—Propriété littéraire et artistique.—Contrefaçon.—Propriété des inventions.

  le socialiste.

  Vous avez entrepris de nous prouver que les maux que le socialisme attribue à la propriété, proviennent d’atteintes portées à la propriété. Êtes-vous disposé à commencer la démonstration de ce paradoxe?

  l’économiste.

  Ah! plût à Dieu que vous enseignassiez de tels paradoxes!... J’ai distingué la propriété intérieure et la propriété extérieure. La première consiste dans le droit que possède tout homme de disposer librement de ses facultés physiques, morales et intellectuelles, comme aussi du corps qui leur sert à la fois d’enveloppe et d’instrument; la seconde réside dans le droit que conserve l’homme sur la portion de ses facultés, qu’il a jugé à propos de séparer de lui-même et d’appliquer aux objets extérieurs.

  le socialiste.

  Où commence notre droit de propriété sur les objets extérieurs et où finit-il?

  l’économiste.

  Il commence au moment où nous appliquons aux choses que la nature a mises gratuitement à notre disposition, une portion de nos forces, de nos facultés; au moment où nous complétons l’œuvre de la nature en donnant à ces choses une façon nouvelle; au moment où nous ajoutons à la valeur naturelle qui est en elles une valeur artificielle; il finit au moment où cette valeur artificielle périt.

  le conservateur.

  Qu’entendez-vous par valeur?

  l’économiste.

  J’entends par valeur, la propriété qu’ont les choses ou qui leur est donnée de satisfaire aux besoins de l’homme.

  L’homme possède donc son être et les dépendances naturelles ou artificielles de son être, ses facultés, son corps et ses œuvres.

  Les œuvres de l’homme, objet de la propriété extérieure, sont de deux sortes, matérielles et immatérielles.

  La loi reconnaît à perpétuité la propriété matérielle, à perpétuité, c’est-à-dire, autant que dure l’objet de la propriété; en revanche elle limite à un délai assez bref la propriété immatérielle. Cependant l’une et l’autre ont la même origine.

  le conservateur.

  Comment? vous assimilez la propriété d’une invention ou d’un air de musique à la propriété d’une maison ou d’une terre.

  l’économiste.

  Absolument. L’une et l’autre n’ont-elles pas également leur origine dans le travail? Du moment qu’il y a effort accompli et valeur créée, que l’effort vienne des nerfs ou des muscles, que la valeur soit appliquée à un objet palpable ou intangible, une nouvelle propriété est créée. Peu importe la forme sous laquelle elle se manifeste!

  S’il s’agit d’un fonds de terre mis en culture, c’est principalement de la force physique qui a été dépensée; s’il s’agit d’un air de musique, ce sont des facultés intellectuelles aidées de certaines facultés physiques ou morales qui ont été mises en œuvre. Mais à moins de placer les facultés de l’intelligence au-dessous des forces physiques, ou bien encore, à moins de prétendre que l’homme possède son intelligence à un titre moins légitime que sa force physique, peut-on établir une différence entre ces deux sortes de propriétés?

  le conservateur.

  Vous voudriez donc que l’inventeur d’une machine, l’auteur d’un livre, ou d’un air de musique, demeurassent les maîtres absolus de leurs œuvres; qu’ils pussent à perpétuité les donner, les léguer et les vendre. Vous voudriez qu’on leur accordât même le droit de les détruire. Vous voudriez qu’il eût été permis aux héritiers de Bossuet, de Pascal, de Molière, de priver l’humanité des œuvres immortelles de ces puissants génies. Voilà, en vérité, une exagération sauvage!

  le socialiste.

  Bravo!

  l’économiste.

  Applaudissez, c’est justice. Savez-vous bien quelle doctrine vous venez de soutenir, mousieur le conservateur?

  le conservateur.

  Eh, la doctrine du sens commun, je pense.

  l’économiste.

  Non pas! la doctrine du communisme.

  le conservateur.

  Vous vous moquez. J’ai soutenu les droits de la société sur les produits de l’intelligence, voilà tout!

  l’économiste.

  Les communistes ne font pas autre chose. Seulement, ils sont plus logiques que vous. Ils soutiennent les droits de la société sur toute chose, sur les produits matériels aussi bien que sur les produits immatériels. Ils disent aux travailleurs: Remplissez votre tâche de chaque jour, travaillez selon vos forces, mais au lieu de vous attribuer à vous-mêmes les produits de votre travail, les valeurs que vous avez créées, remettez-les à l’association générale des citoyens, à la communauté qui se chargera de répartir équitablement entre tous les fruits du travail de chacun. Vous en aurez votre part! Voilà n’est-il pas vrai, le langage des communistes?

  le conservateur.

  Oui, c’est bien le langage de cette secte insensée qui ravit au travailleur le fruit légitime de son travail, pour lui donner une part arbitraire du travail de tous.

  l’économiste.

  Véritablement vous parlez d’or. Vous n’admettez donc pas qu’on ravisse au travailleur tout ou partie du fruit de son travail, pour mettre ce tout ou cette partie dans la communauté?

  le conservateur.

  C’est un vol!

  l’économiste.

  Eh! bien, ce vol, la société le commet tous les jours au détriment des gens de lettres, des artistes et des inventeurs.

  Vous connaissez la loi qui régit en France la propriété littéraire. Tandis que la propriété des choses matérielles, terres, maisons, meubles, est indéfinie, la propriété littéraire est limitée aux vingt années qui suivent la mort de l’auteur propriétaire. L’Assemblée constituante n’avait même accordé que dix années.

  Avant la révolution, la législation était, sous certains rapports, beaucoup plus équitable...

  le conservateur.

  Avant la révolution, dites-vous?

  l’économiste.

  Oui. Vous savez qu’alors tous les droits, le droit de travailler aussi bien que le droit de posséder émanaient du roi. Les auteurs obtenaient donc pour eux et pour leurs héritiers, lorsqu’ils en faisaient la demande, le droit d’exploiter exclusivement leurs livres. Ce privilége n’avait pas de limites; malheureusement il était révocable à volonté; en outre, il était soumis, dans l’usage, à des restrictions vexatoires. Lorsqu’un auteur cédait son œuvre à un libraire, le droit exclusif d’exploitation se perdait à sa mort. Seuls, les héritiers pouvaient conserver exclusivement ce droit.

  le socialiste.

  Ainsi donc, les héritiers de Molière, de La Fontaine, de Racine, ont pu exploiter exclusivement jusqu’en 1789, les œuvres de leurs illustres ancêtres?

  l’economiste.

  Oui. On trouve, par exemple, un arrêt du conseil du 14 septembre 1761, qui continue aux petits-fils de La Fontaine le privilége de leur aïcul, soixante-dix ans après sa mort. Si l’Assemblée constituante avait eu pleinement l’intelligence de sa mission, elle aurait reconnu et garanti, en la débarrassant des entraves du privilége, cette propriété que l’ancien régime même avait sanctionnée en l’opprimant. Malheureusement les idées communistes avaient déjà germé, alors, dans la société française. Résumé vivant des doctrines philosophiques et économiques du dix-huitième siècle, l’Assemblée constituante renfermait dans son sein des disciples de Rousseau et de Morelly, aussi bien que des disciples de Quesnay et de Turgot. Elle recula donc devant la reconnaissance absolue de la propriété intellectuelle. Elle mutila cette propriété légitime, afin d’abaisser le prix des œuvres de l’intelligence.

  le conservateur.

  Ce but louable ne fut-il pas atteint? Supposez que la propriété littéraire de Pascal, de Moliere, de La Fontaine n’eùt pas été éteinte au bénéfice de la Communauté, ne serions-nous pas obligés de payer plus cher les œuvres de ces illustres génies? Et peut-on mettre l’intérêt de quelques-uns en balance avec l’intérêt de tous?

  l’économiste.

  “Quand les sauvages de la Louisiane veulent avoir du fruit, dit Montesquieu, ils coupent l’arbre au pied et cueillent le fruit. Voilà le gouvernement despotique.” Voilà le communisme, aurait ajouté l’auteur de l’Esprit des Lois s’il avait vécu de nos jours. En limitant la propriété littéraire que faites-vous? Vous en diminuez la valeur vénale.—Je fais un livre et j’offre à un libraire de le lui céder. Si la possession de ce livre lui est garantie à perpétuité, il pourra évidemment m’en payer et m’en payera un prix plus élevé que si, vingt années après ma mort, cette propriété périt.

  le conservateur.

  Oh! ceci a bien peu d’importance dans la pratique. Combien peu de livres vivent encore vingt années après la mort de leurs auteurs?

  l’économiste.

  Vous me fournissez une nouvelle arme contre vous. Il y a deux sortes de livres, ceux qui ne durent pas et ceux qui durent. Votre loi limitative de la propriété littéraire laisse intacte la valeur des premiers pour amoindrir celle des seconds. Exemple: un homme de génie a écrit un livre destiné à traverser les âges; il va le porter à son libraire. Celui-ci peut-il payer cette œuvre immortelle beaucoup plus cher que le commun des œuvres destinées à l’oubli, après un succès éphémère? Non! car si l’œuvre ne périt pas, la propriété de l’œuvre périt, ou, ce qui revient au même, elle devient commune. Au bout d’un certain nombre d’années le détenteur en est légalement dépossédé. Votre loi respecte la médiocrité, mais elle met le génie à l’amende.

  Aussi qu’arrive-t-il? C’est qu’on voit diminuer le nombre des œuvres durables et augmenter celui des œuvres éphémères. “Le Temps, dit Eschyle, ne respecte que ce qu’il a fondé.” A peu d’exceptions près, les chefs-d’œuvre que le passé nous a légués ont été le fruit d’un long travail. Descartes consacrait la plus grande partie de sa vie à composer ses Méditations. Pascal copiait jusqu’à treize fois ses Lettres provinciales avant de les livrer à l’impression. Adam Smith observait pendant trente années les phénomènes économiques de la société, avant d’écrire son immortel traité de la Richesse des Nations. Mais quand l’homme de génie ne jouit point d’une certaine aisance, peut-il semer si longtemps sans recueillir? Pressé par l’aiguillon des nécessités de la vie n’est-il pas obligé de livrer encore vertes les moissons de son intelligence?

  On déclame beaucoup contre la littérature facile, mais pouvons-nous en avoir une autre? Comment n’improviserait-on pas lorsque la valeur des œuvres laborieusement finies est raccourcie jusqu’à celle des œuvres improvisées? En vain, vous recommanderez aux hommes de lettres de sacrifier leurs intérêts à ceux de l’art, les hommes de lettres ne vous écouteront point et, le plus souvent, ils auront raison. N’ont-ils pas, eux aussi, des devoirs de famille à remplir, des enfants à élever, des parents à soutenir, des dettes à payer, une position à conserver? Peuvent-ils négliger, pour l’amour de l’art, ces devoirs naturels et sacrés?

  On improvise donc et l’on se précipite dans les branches de littérature où l’improvisation est le plus facile. Dans la science, la même cause engendre les mêmes résultats déplorables. Ce n’est plus l’observation qui domine dans la science moderne, c’est l’hypothèse. Pourquoi? Parce qu’on bâtit une hypothèse plus vite qu’on n’observe une loi. Parce qu’on fait plus facilement des livres avec des hypothèses qu’on n’en peut faire avec des observations. A quoi il faut ajouter que l’hypothèse est souvent plus frappante. Le paradoxe étonne plus que la vérité. Il conquiert beaucoup plus vite le succès. Il le perd promptement aussi, sans doute. Mais, en attendant, l’improvisateur de paradoxes fait fortune tandis que le patient chercheur de vérités se débat contre la misère. Faut-il s’étonner après cela si le paradoxe fourmille et si la véritable science devient de plus en plus rare?

  le conservateur.

  Vous négligez de dire que le gouvernement se charge de récompenser les hommes qui se distinguent dans la carrière des sciences et des lettres. La société a des récompenses et des honneurs pour les vrais savants et les vrais littérateurs.

  l’économiste.

  Oui; et ce n’est pas ce qu’il y a de moins absurde dans ce système absurde. Voyez plutôt! Vous dépréciez la propriété des vrais savants et des vrais littérateurs dans l’intérêt prétendu de la postérité. Mais je ne sais quel sentiment d’équité naturelle vous avertit que vous les spoliez. Vous prélevez donc sur la société un impôt dont vous leur allouez le produit. Vous avez un budget des beaux-arts et des lettres. Je suppose que les fonds de ce budget soient toujours équitablement répartis; qu’ils aillent directement à ceux-là que la loi atteint (et vous savez si l’hypothèse est fondée), cette indemnité en est-elle moins entachée d’iniquité? Est-il juste d’obliger les contribuables à payer un impôt au profit des consommateurs de livres de l’avenir? N’est-ce pas un communisme de la pire espèce que ce communisme d’outre-tombe?

  le conservateur.

  Où le voyez-vous ce communisme?

  l’économiste.

  Dans une société communiste, que fait le gouvernement? Il s’empare du produit du travail de chacun pour le distribuer gratuitement à tous. Eh bien, que fait le gouvernement, en limitant la propriété littéraire? Il prend une partie de la valeur de la propriété du savant et du littérateur pour la distribuer gratuitement à la postérité; après quoi, il oblige les contribuables à donner gratuitement une partie de leur propriété aux savants et aux littérateurs.

  Ceux-ci perdent à cette combinaison communiste, car la portion de propriété qu’on leur ravit est supérieure d’ordinaire à l’indemnité qu’on leur alloue.

  Les contribuables y perdent plus encore, car on ne leur donne rien en échange de l’indemnité qu’on les oblige à payer.

  Au moins, les consommateurs de livres y gagnentils quelque chose?

  Les consommateurs actuels n’y gagnent rien, puisque les auteurs jouissent temporairement d’un droit de propriété absolu sur leurs œuvres.

  Les consommateurs futurs peuvent, sans doute, acheter à meilleur marché les ouvrages anciens; en revanche, ils en sont moins abondamment pourvus. D’un autre coté, les livres qui traversent les âges subissent, sous le régime de la propriété limitée, tous les inconvénients attachés au communisme. Tombés dans le domaine public, ils cessent d’être l’objet des soins attentifs et vigilants qu’un propriétaire sait donner à sa chose. Les meilleures éditions fourmillent d’altérations et de fautes.

  Parlerai-je des dommages indirects qui résultent de la limitation de la propriété littéraire; parlerai-je de la contrefaçon?

  le conservateur.

  Quel rapport voyez-vous entre la contrefaçou et la limitation légale de la propriété littéraire?

  l’économiste.

  Qu’est-ce donc que la contrefaçon, sinon une limitation de la propriété littéraire dans l’espace, comme votre loi en est une limitation dans le temps? Y a-t-il, en réalité, la moindre différence entre ces deux sortes d’atteintes à la propriété? Je dirai plus. C’est la limitation dans le temps qui a engendré la limitation dans l’espace.

  Lorsque la propriété matérielle était considérée comme un simple privilége émané du bon plaisir du souverain, ce privilége expirait aux frontières de chaque État. La propriété des étrangers était soumise au droit d’aubaine.

  Lorsque la propriété matérielle a été partout reconnue comme un droit imprescriptible et sacré, le droit d’aubaine a cessé de lui être appliqué.

  Seule la propriété intellectuelle est demeurée assujettie à ce droit barbare. Mais, en bonne justice, pouvonsnous nous en plaindre? Si nous respectons la propriété intellectuelle moins que la propriété matérielle, pouvonsnous obliger les étrangers à la respecter autant?

  le socialiste.

  Soit! mais vous ne tenez aucun compte des avantages moraux de la contrefaçon. C’est grâce à la contrefaçon que les idées françaises se répandent au dehors: nos gens de lettres et nos savants y perdent, sans doute; mais la civilisation y gagne. Qu’importe l’intérêt de quelques centaines d’individus, en présence des grands intérêts de l’humanité!

  l’économiste.

  Vous employez en faveur des consommateurs étrangers l’argument dont vous vous serviez tout à l’heure, en faveur des consommateurs futurs. Je me placerai pour le réfuter au point de vue de la consommation générale.

  La France est peut-être le pays du monde où la production littéraire est la plus active et la plus abondante; cependant les livres y sont fort chers. On y paye 15 fr. un roman en deux volumes, tandis qu’en Belgique les deux mêmes volumes ne coûtent que 1 fr. 50 c. Faut-il attribuer cette différence de prix uniquement aux droits d’auteurs? Non pas! de l’aveu des intéressés eux-mêmes, elle provient principalement de l’exiguité du marché dont peut disposer le libraire français. Si la contrefaçon venait à être supprimée, les deux volumes, qui se vendent 15 francs en France, tomberaient probablement à 5 francs sur le marché général, peut-être plus bas encore. Dans ce cas, le consommateur étranger payerait 3 fr. 50 c. de plus que sous le régime de la contrefacon; en revanche, le consommateur français payerait 10 fr. de moins. Au point de vue de la consommation générale, n’y aurait-il pas évidemment avantage?

  J’ai entendu, il y a quelques années, à la Chambre des Députés, M. Chaix-d’Est-Ange défendre la contrefaçon au point de vue de la diffusion des lumières. C’est grâce à la contrefaçon, disait-il, que les idées françaises pénètrent à l’étranger.—C’est possible, aurait-on pu répondre à l’illustre avocat; en revanche, c’est la contrefaçon qui empèche les idées françaises de pénétrer en France.

  Les consommateurs étrangers payeraient nos livres un peu plus cher, si la contrefaçon cessait d’exister, et encore! mais nous leur en fournirions de meilleurs et en plus grand nombre. N’y gagneraient-ils pas autant que nous-mêmes?

  le conservateur.

  Allons! je crois décidément que vous avez raison, et je me sens assez disposé à me rallier à la cause de la propriété littéraire.

  l’économiste.

  J’aurais pu développer encore quelques considérations sur l’extension et la stabilité que la reconnaissance entière de la proprieté littéraire donnerait non seulement à l’industrie des gens de lettres, mais encore à celle des libraires.... Mais puisque ma cause est gagnée, je n’insiste pas.

  Si vous m’accordez la propriété littéraire, vous devez m’accorder aussi la propriété artistique.

  le conservateur.

  En quoi consiste la propriété artistique?

  l’économiste.

  S’il s’agit d’un tableau, d’une statue ou d’un monument, la propriété artistique consiste dans le droit d’en disposer comme de toute autre propriété matérielle, puis d’en opérer ou d’en autoriser exclusivement la reproduction par le dessin, la gravure, etc. S’il s’agit d’un modèle ou d’un dessin, la propriété artistique réside de même dans un droit de reproduction exclusif. Il est bien entendu que cette propriété peut être cédée, vendue comme toute autre.

  le conservateur.

  Je n’y vois aucun inconvénient. Cependant il conviendrait d’établir une exception pour les modèles et dessins de fabrique. Les artistes, dessinateurs ou modeleurs deviendraient par trop exigeants, si on leur accordait l’absolue propriété de leurs œuvres.

  l’économiste.

  Ah! ah! je vous y prends encore une fois, monsieur le conservateur-communiste! Eh bien, sachez donc que, par une inadvertance des législateurs réglementaires de l’Empire, cette propriété-là a échappé seule à la limitation. Cet oubli salutaire n’a pas manqué de produire d’excellents fruits. Nos modèles et dessins de fabrique sont aujourd’hui sans rivaux dans le monde.

  Cela s’explique aisément. D’une part, les industriels qui achètent aux artistes la propriété des modèles et dessins de fabrique, étant assurés de conserver perpétuellement cette propriété, peuvent la payer le plus cher possible. D’une autre part, les artistes, assurés de recevoir une rémunération suffisante, mettent le temps et le soin nécessaires à l’exécution de leurs œuvres.

  le socialiste.

  Mais, savez-vous aussi ce qui est arrivé? je vous le donne en mille. Ces industriels, qui sont des gardiens si farouches de la propriété, s’avisèrent un beau jour de penser qu’ils payaient trop cher leurs modèles et dessius de fabrique. La question fut mise à l’ordre du jour dans leurs chambres de commerce et de perfectionnement: à l’unanimité, on reconnut que le mal venait de ce que la propriété était perpétuelle. On demanda, en conséquence, au gouvernement de la limiter. Le gouvernement s’empressa d’obtempérer à cette demande des hauts-barons de l’industrie. Le ministre de l’agriculture et du commerce bâcla un projet de loi, réduisant à trois, cinq, dix et quinze années la propriété des modèles et dessins de fabrique. Le projet fut présenté aux Chambres, discuté à la Chambre des pairs....

  le conservateur.

  Et adopté?

  le socialiste.

  Non! la révolution de février le fit écarter de l’ordre du jour; mais soyez sûr que la discussion en sera reprise et que la loi passera. Cependant ces conservateurs, qui attentent sans scrupule à la propriété des artistes, ces conservateurs qui n’hésitent pas à faire du communisme quand cela leur profite, sont les mêmes qui traquent les communistes comme des bêtes fauves.

  l’économiste.

  Si les industriels dont vous parlez avaient bien réfléchi sur leurs véritables intérêts; s’ils avaient eu quelques notions saines d’économie politique, ils auraient compris qu’en nuisant aux artistes, ils ne pouvaient manquer de se nuire aussi à eux-mêmes. Lorsque la loi aura limité la propriété des modèles et dessins de fabrique, ces œuvres d’art se vendront à plus bas prix sans doute; mais conserveront-elles le même degré de perfection? Les artistes d’élite ne se détourneront-ils pas de cette branche de travail, lorsqu’on ne pourra plus payer suffisamment leurs œuvres?

  le conservateur.

  On le pourra toujours, ce me semble.

  l’économiste.

  Si les maisons ne pouvaient être possédées que pendant une période de trois années, ne baisseraient-elles pas de prix?

  le socialiste.

  Assurément. On ne mettrait pas un prix bien élevé à une maison dont on pourrait être dépossédé au bout de trois années.

  le conservateur.

  Avec ce système on ne bâtirait plus que des masures.

  l’économiste.

  Eh bien, si la loi abaisse de même la valeur vénale des modèles et des dessins, en ne fera plus que des modèles et des dessins de pacotille.

  Mais alors nos étoffes et nos bronzes, dont le dessin ou le modèle font souvent tout le prix, pourront-ils encore soutenir la concurrence de l’étranger? En limitant la propriété des artistes, les industriels n’auront-ils pas coupé l’arbre pour avoir le fruit?

  le conservateur.

  C’est vrai.

  l’économiste.

  Vous voyez où conduit la limitation de la propriété. Les choses deviennent communes, soit! mais elles se produisent mal ou elles ne se produisent plus.

  Si vous admettez la propriété illimitée des œuvres d’art, vous devez admettre aussi la propriété illimitée des inventions.

  le conservateur.

  La propriété illimitée des inventions! mais ce serait la mort de l’industrie déjà rançonnée sans merci par les inventeurs.

  l’économiste.

  Cependant les inventions sont le fruit du travail de l’intelligence comme les œuvres littéraires et les œuvres d’art. Si celles-ci donnent lieu à un droit de propriété illimité, absolu, pourquoi celles-là, qui ont la même origine, ne donneraient-elles lieu qu’à un droit limité et conditionnel?

  le conservateur.

  L’intérêt de la société n’est-il pas ici en cause? Je conçois qu’on accorde un droit de propriété illimité, absolu aux littérateurs et aux artistes. Cela n’a qu’une faible importance. Le monde pourrait, à la rigueur, se passer d’artistes et de littérateurs.

  le socialiste.

  Oh! oh!

  le conservateur.

  Mais on ne pourrait se passer d’inventeurs. Ce sont les inventeurs qui fournissent des instruments et des procédés à l’agriculture et à l’industrie.

  l’économiste.

  Aussi n’est-il nullement question de supprimer les inventeurs ou d’en réduire le nombre. Il est question, au contraire, de les multiplier en assurant à leur travail la rémunération qui lui est due.

  le conservateur.

  Je le veux bien; mais en décrétant la perpétuité de la propriété des inventions, ne mettrez-vous pas, à perpétuité, l’agriculteur et l’industrie sous le joug d’un petit nombre d’inventeurs? N’assujettirez-vous pas les branches les plus nécessaires de la production à des monopoles exigeants, intraitables, odieux? Supposez, pas exemple, que l’inventeur de la charrue eût conservé la propriété de son invention, et que cette propriété eût été transmise intacte jusqu’à nos jours, que serait-il arrivé?

  l’économiste.

  Il serait arrivé que nous aurions aujourd’hui des instruments aratoires plus nombreux et plus parfaits.

  le conservateur.

  C’est une aberration pure!

  l’économiste.

  Discutons. Vous connaissez la législation qui régit actuellement les inventions. On garantit aux inventeurs la propriété de leurs œuvres pour cinq, dix et quinze années, à la condition de payer au fisc 500 francs dans le premier cas, 1,000 dans le second, 1,500 dans le troisième. Or, il peut fort bien arriver qu’une invention ne donne point les résultats que l’auteur en avait attendus. Dans ce cas, il se trouve puni, mis à l’amende pour avoir inventé.

  le conservateur.

  Je n’ai jamais prétendu que la loi actuelle fût parfaite. On peut la réformer. Mais accorder à l’inventeur la propriété perpétuelle de son œuvre, folie!

  l’économiste.

  Dans quel intérêt voulez-vous dépouiller l’inventeur d’une partie de sa propriété? Est-ce dans l’intérêt des consommateurs actuels? Nou, car vous accordez à l’inventeur une propriété de cinq, dix et quinze années. Dans cet intervalle, il tire naturellement tout le parti possible d’une propriété qui doit lui échapper bientôt; il exploite rigoureusement son monopole. C’est donc uniquement en vue de l’intérêt de la postérité que vous dépouillez les inventeurs.

  le conservateur.

  C’est dans l’intérêt du progrès, de la civilisation. D’ailleurs, comment serait-il possible de démêler et de délimiter les droits des inventeurs. Toutes les inventions se touchent par quelque point.

  l’économiste.

  Comme toutes les propriétés matérielles. Cela n’empêche pas que chacun ne réussisse, en fin de compte, à maintenir l’intégrité des siennes.

  le conservateur.

  Oui, mais cela serait bien plus malaisé dans le domaine de l’invention. La reconnaissance de la propriété des inventeurs ne donnerait-elle pas naissance à des myriades de procès?

  l’économiste.

  N’est-ce pas un moyen singulier de préserver la propriété du danger des procès que de la supprimer? Au reste, la difficulté que vous venez de soulever se présente tous les jours et elle est tous les jours résolue. La propriété des inventions étant garantie pour cinq, dix et quinze ans, donne lieu à des procès, tout comme si elle était perpétuelle. Ces procès on les juge, et tout est dit. Votre objection tombe devant les faits. Je reprends. C’est en vue de l’intérêt de la postérité que vous voulez limiter la propriété des inventions.

  le conservateur.

  Sans doute.

  l’économiste.

  Il y a dans l’ouest de l’Union américaine d’immenses terrains vierges, qui sont journellement entamés par des émigrants audacieux. Lorsque ces pionniers de la civilisation aperçoivent un site qui leur convient, ils arrêtent leurs wagons, plantent leur tente, et, avec la cognée d’abord, avec la charrue ensuite, ils déblayent et défrichent le sol. Ils donnent une valeur à ce sol qui naguère n’en avait point. Eh! bien, cette valeur que le travail a créée, trouveriez-vous équitable que la communauté se l’appropriât au bout de cinq, dix et quinze années, au lieu de permettre au travailleur de la léguer à sa postérité.

  le conservateur.

  Juste ciel! mais ce serait du communisme, ce serait de la barbarie! Qui voudrait défricher des terres à ces conditions-là?—Mais y a-t-il la moindre analogie entre le travail du pionnier et celui de l’inventeur. L’intelligence n’est-elle pas un fonds commun qui appartient à l’humanité? Peut-on s’en attribuer exclusivement les fruits? L’inventeur ne profite-t-il point d’ailleurs, largement, des découvertes de ses devanciers et des connaissances qui se trouvent accumulées dans la société? S’il n’inventait pas, un autre profitant de ces découvertes et de ces connaissances communes, n’inventerait-il pas à sa place?

  le socialiste.

  L’objection s’applique au défricheur aussi bien qu’à l’inventeur. La société ne devrait-elle pas dire à ce premier occupant de la terre: Vous allez mettre en valeur un sol demeuré jusqu’à présent improductif, soit! j’y consens; mais n’oubliez pas que ce sol est l’œuvre de Dieu et non la vôtre? n’oubliez pas que les fruits sont à tous et que la terre n’est à personne! Jouissez donc, pendant quelques années, de cette portion de terre, mais restituez-la ensuite fidèlement à l’humanité qui la tient de Dieu. Et si vous ne consentez point de bonne grâce à cette restitution légitime, je saurai bien employer la force pour faire prévaloir le Droit de Tous sur l’Égoïsme d’un seul..... Eh! quoi, vous resistez, vous objectez que vous seul avez créé, au prix de vos sueurs, la valeur que je prétends vous ravir, mais, ô propriétaire rebelle et dénaturé, eussiez-vous pu la créer, cette valeur, sans les instruments et les connaissances que la communauté vous a fournis? Répondez!

  l’économiste.

  Et le propriétaire aurait répondu sans doute:—La communauté m’a fourni des instruments et des connaissances, cela est vrai, mais je les lui ai payés. Mes ancêtres et moi, nous avons acquis par notre travail tout ce que nous possédons. La société n’a donc aucun droit sur les fruits de mon travail actuel. Et si, abusant de sa force, elle me ravit ma propriété, pour la mettre en commun ou la distribuer à des hommes qui ne l’ont point créée, elle commettra la plus inique et la plus odieuse des spoliations.

  le conservateur.

  Bien répondu. Parez-moi celle-là, messieurs les communistes!

  le socialiste.

  Parez-la vous-même. Si la société reconnaît n’avoir aucun droit sur la propriété des défricheurs, bien qu’ils exploitent des terrains naguères communs, bien qu’ils utilisent des découvertes et des connaissances antérieures, elle ne saurait évidemment rien prétendre sur la propriété des inventeurs.

  le conservateur.

  Cela dépend des exigences de l’intérêt général. Si la communauté s’empare d’une terre cinq, dix et quinze années après qu’elle a été défrichée.....

  l’économiste.

  ..... Et si elle oblige le défricheur à payer cinq cents francs, mille francs ou quinze cents francs avant qu’il ne sache si la terre sera ou non féconde.....

  le socialiste.

  ..... Et quelle que soit l’étendue du terrain défriché.

  le conservateur.

  Il est certain que les défrichements seront extrêmement rares, et que la communauté, elle-même, y perdra.

  l’économiste.

  Il en est de même pour les inventions. On invente beaucoup moins sous le régime de la propriété limitée qu’on n’inventerait sous le régime de la propriété illimitée. Or, comme la civilisation ne marche qu’à coups d’inventions, la postérité, dont vous avez invoqué les intérêts, gagnerait évidemment à la reconnaissance de la propriété des inventeurs, comme elle a gagné à la reconnaissance de la propriété foncière.

  le conservateur.

  Vous avez peut-être raison pour le plus grand nombre des inventions. Mais il y en a de si nécessaires qu’on ne saurait les laisser longtemps appropriées. J’ai cité la charrue. Ne serait-ce pas un malheur effroyable, si un seul individu avait le droit de fabriquer et de vendre des charrues, si la propriété de cet instrument, indispensable à l’agriculture, n’était pas tombée dans le domaine public?

  le socialiste.

  En effet, ce serait désastreux.

  l’économiste.

  Examinons ensemble comment les choses se seraient passées si l’inventeur de la charrue avait joui de la propriété de son invention, au lieu d’en être frustré. Mais avant tout, voici ma réponse: Non! la société n’a point servi son véritable intérêt en méconnaissant le droit de l’inventeur de la charrue, en s’attribuant cette propriété due au travail de l’un des siens et en la rendant commune. Non! elle a entravé le progrès des cultures au lieu de le faciliter, et en spoliant l’inventeur elle s’est spoliée elle-même.

  le conservateur.

  Paradoxe!

  l’économiste.

  Nous allons bien voir. Qu’est-ce que la charrue et à quoi sert-elle?

  La charrue est un instrument mû par des bêtes de somme, des chevaux ou des bœufs, sous la direction de l’homme, et qui sert à ouvrir le sol. Avant l’invention de la charrue, de quoi se servait-on pour cultiver la terre? On se servait de la bêche. Voilà donc deux instruments bien distincts, à l’aide desquels la même œuvre peut être accomplie; deux instruments qui se font concurrence l’un à l’autre. Cette concurrence est, à la vérité, fort inégale, car la charrue est infiniment préférable à la bêche; et plutôt que d’en revenir à ce dernier outil, le moins économique de tous, la plupart des cultivateurs se résigneraient à payer une surtaxe considérable aux détenteurs de la propriété de la charrue. Mais enfin les champs ne demeureraient pas incultes. On se servirait de la bêche, jusqu’à ce que les détenteurs de la charrue s’apercevant qu’on peut, à la rigueur, se passer d’eux, se montrassent plus traitables.

  Mais de cette situation de la société, en butte aux prétentions exagérées des propriétaires de certains instruments indispensables, que résulterait-il? Qu’il y aurait un immense intérêt à multiplier le nombre de ces instruments, à en créer de plus parfaits. Dans un moment où le prix de la charrue, par exemple, se trouverait surélevé, celui qui inventerait un instrument aussi économique ou plus économique pour remplir le même office, ne réaliserait-il pas une fortune? Et s’il voulait, à son tour, surélever le prix de son instrument, ne se trouverait-il pas arrêté dans ses prétentions, d’abord par le fait même de l’existence des deux anciens véhicules, auxquels on pourrait toujours revenir, ensuite par la crainte de faire surgir une concurrence nouvelle, en augmentant l’intérêt attaché à la découverte d’un instrument plus parfait.—Vous voyez donc que le monopole ne serait jamais à redouter; car il y aurait toujours, d’une part, la concurrence existante, effective, des instruments moins parfaits; d’une autre part, la concurrence éventuelle, prochaine des instruments plus parfaits.

  le conservateur.

  Le domaine de l’invention n’est-il pas limité?

  l’économiste.

  Les plaines de l’intelligence sont plus vastes encore que celles de la terre. Dans quelle branche de la production peut-on affirmer qu’il n’y a plus de progrès à réaliser, plus de découvertes à faire? Ne craignez pas que la carrière de l’invention se ferme; les forces défailleront à l’humanité avant qu’elle ne l’ait parcourue jusqu’au bout.

  Croyez-vous, par exemple, qu’on ne puisse rien trouver de mieux, en fait d’instruments aratoires, que les instruments actuels? Comparée aux véhicules dont on se sert dans la production manufacturière, la charrue n’estelle pas un instrument barbare? La charrue est un véhicule mû par une force animée. Or, l’industrie manufacturière ne doit-elle pas les immenses progrès qu’elle a réalisés, depuis un demi-siècle, à la substitution d’un moteur inanimé, la vapeur, à la force animée des brutes? Pourquoi cette substitution économique d’un moteur inanimé à un moteur animé ne s’opèrerait-elle point aussi en agriculture? Pourquoi un véhicule à vapeur ne remplacerait-il pas la charrue comme la mull-Jenny a remplacé la machine à filer, comme le moulin à vapeur a remplacé la meule, mise en mouvement par un cheval aveugle, comme la charrue même, mue par la force des bêtes de somme, s’est substituée à la bêche, mue par la force de l’homme?

  Si, dès l’origine, la propriété des inventions avait été reconnue et respectée au même degré que la propriété matérielle, n’est-il pas au moins probable que ce progrès bienfaisant se trouverait déjà accompli? N’est-il pas probable que la vapeur aurait déjà transformé et multiplié la production agricole comme elle a transformé et multiplié la production industrielle? N’en résulterait-il pas un avantage immense pour l’humanité tout entière?

  De tout cela je conclus que la société aurait eu, dès l’origine, le plus grand intérêt à reconnaître et à respecter la propriété de l’invention, s’agit-il même de celle de la charrue?

  le conservateur.

  Vous croyez donc qu’on invente d’autant plus que la propriété de l’invention est plus étendue et mieux garantie?

  l’économiste.

  Assurément, je le crois. Ce n’est guère qu’au dix-huitième siècle qu’on a commencé à reconnaître la propriété des inventions. Comparez donc les découvertes accomplies dans une période déterminée, avant et après cette époque.

  le conservateur.

  Voilà qui témoigne contre vos théories, puisque la propriété des inventions n’est pas illimitée.

  l’économiste.

  Si la propriété d’un champ de blé, après avoir été longtemps commune, venait à être reconnue et garantie pour cinq, dix ou quinze années à un seul individu, l’augmentation de la production du blé prouverait-elle quelque chose contre la propriété illimitée?

  le conservateur.

  Non, sans doute...Mais certaines choses ne se découvrent-elles pas, pour ainsi dire, toutes seules? Il y a des découvertes qui sont dans l’air.

  l’économiste.

  Comme il y a des récoltes qui sont sous la terre. Il ne s’agit que de les en faire sortir. Mais soyez bien certain que “le hasard” ne se chargera pas de ce soin.—Comment avez-vous découvert la loi de la gravitation, demandait-on un jour à Newton?—En y pensant toujours, répondit l’homme de génie. Watt, Jacquart, Fulton auraient fait probablement la même réponse à une question semblable. Le hasard n’invente rien; il ne défriche pas plus le domaine de l’intelligence que celui de la matière. Laissons donc le hasard.

  On dit que si une découverte n’était pas faite aujourd’hui, elle serait faite demain; mais cette hypothèse ne peut-elle pas tout aussi justement s’appliquer aux défrichements des terres qu’aux nouvelles combinaisons d’idées, aux inventions? Si les Backwoodsmen qui émigrent aujourd’hui à l’ouest demeuraient chez eux, ne peut-on pas admettre que d’autres Backwoodsmen iraient s’établir sur les mêmes terrains vierges avant cinq, dix ou quinze années? pourquoi donc ne point limiter le droit de propriété des premiers? Pourquoi? parce que si on le limitait personne ne voudrait s’enfoncer dans les solitudes de l’ouest, ni aujourd’hui ni demain. De même, croyez-le bien, nul ne s’efforcerait de saisir les découvertes qui sont dans l’air si nul n’avait intérêt à les saisir.

  le conservateur.

  Vous oubliez que la gloire et le désir plus noble encore de servir l’humanité, agissent non moins puissamment que l’intérêt sur les inventeurs.

  l’économiste.

  La gloire et le désir de servir l’humanité font partie de l’intérêt et n’en sont pas distincts, ainsi que je vous l’ai démontré déjà. Mais ces mobiles élevés ne suffisent pas. Comme les écrivains et les artistes, les inventeurs sont soumis aux infirmités humaines. Comme eux, ils sont obligés de se nourrir, de se vêtir, de se loger, et, le plus souvent aussi, de soutenir une famille. Si vous ne leur offrez d’autre appât que la gloire et la satisfaction d’avoir servi l’humanité, ils devront pour la plupart renoncer à suivre la carrière de l’invention. Les gens riches seuls pourront inventer, écrire, sculpter et peindre. Or, comme les gens riches ne sont pas des travailleurs bien actifs, la civilisation n’avancera guère.

  le socialiste.

  Allons, allons, monsieur le conservateur, convenez de bonne grâce que vous êtes battu. Si vous admettez la perpétuité de la propriété matérielle, vous ne pouvez pas ne pas admettre celle de la propriété intellectuelle. Il y a même droit et mêmes nécessités des deux parts (en supposant, bien entendu, que l’on reconnaisse ce droit et ces nécessités). Consentez donc à reconnaître la propriété de l’invention comme vous avez reconnu les autres.

  le conservateur.

  Tout cela peut être vrai en théorie, mais, ma foi! dans la pratique je prefère m’en tenir au statu quo.

  le socialiste.

  Si nous voulous bien le permettre1 !

  TROISIÈME SOIRÉE

  SOMMAIRE: Suite des atteintes portées à la propriété extérieure.—Loi d’expropriation pour cause d’utilité publique.—Législation des mines.—Domaine public, propriétés de l’État, des départements et des communes.—Forêts.—Routes.—Canaux.—Cours d’eau.—Eaux minérales.

  l’économiste.

  Nous avons constaté que la propriété des œuvres de l’intelligence est fort maltraitée sous le régime actuel. La propriété matérielle est plus favorisée, en ce sens qu’on l’a reconnue et garantie et perpétuité. Toutefois cette reconnaissance et cette garantie n’ont rien d’absolu. Un propriétaire peut être dépouillé de sa propriété, en vertu de la loi d’expropriation pour cause d’utilité publique.

  le conservateur.

  Eh quoi! vous voulez abolir cette loi tutélaire sans laquelle aucune entreprise d’utilité publique ne serait possible?

  l’économiste.

  Qu’entendez-vous par entreprise d’utilité publique?

  le conservateur.

  Une entreprise d’utilité publique, c’est...une entreprise utile à tout le monde, un chemin de fer, par exemple.

  l’économiste.

  Ah! et une ferme où l’on produit des aliments pour tout le monde n’est-elle pas aussi une entreprise d’utilité publique? Le besoin de manger n’est-il pas tout au moins aussi général et aussi nécessaire que le besoin de voyager?

  le conservateur.

  Sans doute, mais une ferme est une entreprise particulière assez bornée.

  l’économiste.

  Pas toujours. En Angleterre, il y a des fermes immenses; aux colonies, il y a des plantations qui appartiennent à de nombreuses et puissantes compagnies. D’ailleurs, qu’importe! L’utilité d’une entreprise n’est pas toujours en raison de l’espace qu’elle occupe, et la loi ne recherche point si une entreprise dite “d’utilité publique” appartient à une association ou a un individu isolé.

  le conservateur.

  On ne saurait établir aucune analogie entre une ferme ou une plantation et un chemin de fer. Une entreprise de chemin de fer est soumise à certaines exigences naturelles; la moindre déviation dans le tracé, par exemple, peut entraîner une augmentation considérable dans les dépenses. Qui payerait cette augmentation? Le public. Eh bien, je vous le demande, l’intérêt du public, l’intérêt de la société doit-il être sacrifié à l’obstination ou à la cupidité d’un propriétaire?

  le socialiste.

  Ah! monsieur le conservateur, voilà des paroles qui me réconcilient avec vous. Vous êtes un digne homme. Touchez-là!

  l’économiste.

  Il y a dans la Sologne de vastes étendues de terre d’une excessive pauvreté. Les misérables paysans qui les cultivent ne recoivent qu’un faible produit en échange des plus laborieux efforts; mais auprès de leurs chétives cabanes, s’élèvent des châteaux magnifiques, avec d’immenses pelouses où le blé pousserait à ravir. Si les paysans de la Sologne demandaient l’expropriation de ces bonnes terres pour les transformer en champs de blé, l’intérêt public ne commanderait-il pas de la leur accorder?

  le conservateur.

  Vous allez trop loin. Si l’on se servait de la loi d’expropriation pour cause d’utilité publique pour transformer les pelouses et les pares d’agrément en champs de blé, que deviendrait la sécurité de la propriété? qui voudrait embellir une pelouse, planter un parc, orner un château?

  le socialiste.

  On n’exproprie pas sans accorder une indemnité.

  le conservateur.

  Mais l’indemnité ne suffit pas toujours. Il y a des choses qu’aucune indemnité ne saurait payer. Peut-on payer le toit qui a abrité les générations, le foyer auprès duquel elles ont vécu, les grands arbres qui les ont vus naître et mourir? N’y a-t-il pas quelque chose de sacré dans ces nids séculaires, où vivent les traditions des ancêtres, où respire, pour ainsi dire, l’âme de la famille? N’est-ce pas commettre un véritable attentat moral que d’expulser à jamais une famille de son vieux patrimoine?

  l’économiste.

  Excepté, n’est-il pas vrai, quand il s’agit de construire un chemin de fer.

  le conservateur.

  Tout dépend du degré d’utilité de l’entreprise.

  le socialiste.

  Eh! est-il rien de plus utile qu’une exploitation consacrée à la subsistance du peuple? Quant à moi, j’espère bien que la loi d’expropriation pour cause d’utilité publique recevra bientôt une extension nouvelle. La Convention faisait cultiver des pommes de terre dans le jardin des Tuileries. Exemple sublime! Puissent nos Assemblées législatives l’avoir, sans cesse, sous les yeux? Combien de milliers d’heetares demeurent improductifs, autour des habitations de plaisance des seigneurs de la terre? Combien de bouches on pourrait nourrir, combien de travail on pourrait distribuer, en livrant ces bonnes terres aux travailleurs qui seraient disposés à les mettre en culture? Ah! riches aristos, on plantera, un jour, des pommes de terre dans vos somptueux parterres; on sèmera des navets et des carottes à la place de vos dahlias et de vos rosiers du Bengale! On vous expropriera pour cause d’utilité publique!

  le conservateur.

  Heureusement les jurys d’expropriation ne donneront pas les mains à ces projets barbares.

  le socialiste.

  Pourquoi pas? si l’Utilité Publique exige que vos châteaux avec pelouses et parcs d’agrément soient remplacés par des champs de pommes de terre, pourquoi les jurys ne consentiraient-ils pas à l’expropriation? S’ils l’accordent bien quand il s’agit de transformer des exploitations agricoles en chemins de fer, ne l’accorderont-ils pas, à plus forte raison, quand il s’agira de transformer des parcs de luxe en exploitations agricoles? M’opposerezvous la composition actuelle des jurys d’expropriation? Ils sont composés de grands propriétaires, je ne l’ignore pas. Mais ce jury-là n’échappera pas plus que l’autre à la loi du suffrage universel. On y fera entrer des petits propriétaires et des ouvriers, et alors, ma foi... la grande propriété la dansera.

  le conservateur.

  Voilà un propos subversif, au premier chef!

  l’économiste.

  Que voulez-vous? on élargit, on généralise l’application d’une loi que vous avez établie vous-même, en vue de l’Utilité Sociale. On complète votre œuvre. Pouvez-vous vous en plaindre?

  le conservateur.

  Je sais bien que l’expropriation pour cause d’utilité publique a ses dangers, surtout depuis cette révolution maudite.... Mais n’est-elle pas indispensable? Les intérêts privés ne sont-ils pas perpétuellement en hostilité avec l’intérêt public?

  D’ailleurs cette loi ne contient-elle pas une reconnaissance implicite de la propriété? Si l’État ne respectait pas le droit de propriété, se serait-il donné la peine de demander une loi d’expropriation aux Chambres législatives? De simples ordonnances n’auraient-elles pas suffi? La loi d’expropriation pour cause d’utilité publique ne renferme-t-elle pas une reconnaissance implicite de la propriété?

  l’économiste.

  Oui, comme le viol renferme une reconnaissance implicite de la virginité.

  le conservateur.

  Et l’indemnité?

  l’économiste.

  Croyez-vous qu’aucune indemnité puisse dédommager d’un viol? Or si je ne veux pas vous céder ma propriété et qu’usant de votre supériorité de forces vous me la ravissiez, n’est-ce pas un viol que vous commettrez? L’indemnité n’effacera point cette atteinte portée à mon droit.—Mais, objectez-vous, l’intérêt public peut exiger le sacrifice de certains intérêts privés, et il faut pourvoir à cette nécessité.—Eh, quoi! c’est vous, un conservateur, qui me tenez ce langage? C’est vous qui me dénoncez l’antagonisme de l’intérêt public et des intérêts privés? Mais prenez-y garde, vous faites du socialisme?

  le socialiste.

  Sans doute. Suum cuique. Nous avons dénoneé, les premiers, ce lamentable antagonisme de l’intérêt public et des intérêts privés.

  le conservateur.

  Oui, mais comment y mettez-vous un terme?

  le socialiste.

  C’est bien simple. Nous supprimons les intérêts privés. Nous faisons rentrer les biens de chacun dans le domaine de Tous. Nous appliquous sur une échelle immense la loi d’expropriation pour cause d’utilitê publique.

  l’économiste.

  Et s’il y a véritablement antagonisme entre l’intérêt de chacun et l’intérêt de tous, vous agissez très sagement et votre adversaire a tort de ne pas vous suivre jusque-là!

  le socialiste.

  Vous faites de l’ironie! Croyez-vous, par hasard, que les intérêts privés s’accordent naturellement, d’euxmêmes, avec l’intérêt public?

  l’économiste.

  Si je n’en étais pas convaincu, je serais depuis longtemps socialiste. Je ferais comme vous une immortelle guerre aux intérêts privés, je demanderais l’association intégrale, la communauté, que sais-je encore? Je ne voudrais à aucun prix maintenir un état social où nul ne prospérerait qu’à la condition de nuire à autrui. Mais grâces à Dieu, la société n’est pas ainsi faite! Naturellement tous les intérêts s’accordent. Naturellement l’intérêt de chacun coincide avec l’intérêt de tous. Pourquoi donc faire des lois qui mettent celui-là à la merci de celui-ci? Ou ces lois sont inutiles, ou, comme l’affirment les socialistes, la société est à refaire.

  le conservateur.

  Vous raisonnez comme si tous les hommes étaient de justes appréciateurs de leur intérêt. Eh bien! c’est faux. Les hommes se trompent fréquemment sur leur intérêt.

  l’économiste.

  Je sais parfaitement que les hommes ne sont pas infaillibles; mais je sais aussi que chacun est le meilleur juge de son intérêt.

  le conservateur.

  Vous avez peut-être raison en théorie, mais, dans la pratique, il y a des gens si entêtés et si stupides.

  l’économiste.

  Pas si entêtés et pas si stupides, lorsqu’il s’agit de leur intérêt. Toutefois, j’admets que ces gens-là fassent avorter quelques entreprises utiles. Croyez-vous que la loi actuelle ne cause pas plus de mal qu’ils n’en pourraient causer? Ne compromet-elle pas la sécurité de la propriété dans le présent et ne la menace-t-elle pas dans l’avenir?

  le conservateur.

  Il est certain que le socialisme pourrait faire un bien déplorable usage de la loi d’expropriation pour cause d’utilité publique.

  l’économiste.

  Et vous autres conservateurs qui avez établi cette loi, auriez-vous bonne grâce à vous opposer à son application? N’est-ce pas une arme dangereuse que vous avez forgée, à l’usage de vos ennemis? En déclarant qu’une majorité quelconque a le droit de mettre la main sur la propriété d’un individu lorsque l’intérêt public l’exige, n’avezvous pas fourni d’avance au socialisme une justification et un moyen légal d’exécution?

  le conservateur.

  Hélas! mais qui pouvait prévoir cette révolution infernale!

  l’économiste.

  Lorsqu’on se mêle de faire des lois, il faut tout prévoir.

  A côté de cette loi qui menace la propriété jusque dans ses racines, notre Code renferme d’autres lois qui atteignent partiellement certaines propriétés; la législation des mines par exemple. Comme les œuvres de l’intelligence, les mines se trouvent placées en dehors de la loi commune.

  le conservateur.

  N’est-ce pas une propriété spéciale, et ne doit-elle pas être, en conséquence, régie par des lois spéciales?

  le socialiste.

  Quelle est actuellement la législation des mines?

  l’economiste.

  La législation française sur les mines a subi des modifications très diverses, depuis un siècle. Sous l’ancien régime, les mines étaient considérées comme appartenant au domaine royal. Le roi en accordait la concession à qui bon lui semblait, au découvreur, au proprietaire du sol ou à tout autre, moyennant une redevance annuelle du dixième des produits. Lorsque la révolution affranchit la propriété et le travail on devait espérer que ce bienfait s’étendrait aussi à la propriété des mines; malheureusement, il n’en fut pas ainsi. Le législateur refusa d’accorder à la propriété du sous-sol sa charte d’affranchissement.

  Trois opinions se produisirent au sujet de cette propriété. Selon les uns, la propriété du sous-sol se rattachait à celle de la surface; selon les autres, elle rentrait dans le domaine de la communauté; selon les troisièmes, elle revenait aux découvreurs. Dans ce dernier système, qui était le seul équitable, le seul conforme au droit, les propriétaires du sol ne pouvaient exiger qu’une simple indemnité pour les parties de la surface, nécessaires à l’exploitation des gîtes mineraux, et le gouvernement ne pouvait, de même, exiger autre chose qu’un impôt pour la protection dévolue aux exploitants.

  le socialiste.

  Selon vous, la propriété des mines devrait donc être rangée dans la même catégorie que la propriété des inventions?

  l’economiste.

  Précisément. Vous êtes un chercheur d’or, je suppose. Après bien des recherches, vous êtes parvenu à découvrir un filon de ce précieux métal. Vous avez le droit d’exploiter seul ce filon que vous avez decouvert seul.

  le socialiste.

  A ce compte, l’Amérique entière aurait dû appartenir à Christophe Colomb qui l’avait découverte.

  l’économiste.

  Vous oubliez que l’Amérique était déjà, en grande partie, possédée à l’époque de la découverte de Christophe Colomb. Au reste, c’est une règle du droit des gens qu’une terre inhabitée appartient au premier qui la découvre.

  le socialiste.

  Mais si, apres l’avoir découverte, il ne juge pas à propos de l’exploiter, son droit de propriété périt. Comment expliquez-vous cette mort du droit de propriété?

  l’économiste.

  Le droit de propriété ne meurt point. On ne cesse de posséder qu’en renonçant à posséder. Si j’ai découvert une mine, je l’exploiterai, ou je la céderai à quelqu’un qui l’exploitera. Il en sera de même si j’ai découvert une terre: je l’exploiterai ou je la vendrai.

  le socialiste.

  Et si vous la gardez sans l’exploiter?

  l’économiste.

  Ce sera mon droit, mais ce ne sera point mon intérêt. Toute chose coùte à garder: il faut payer la sécurité de la propriété. Si donc je ne veux pas exploiter la terre ou la mine que j’ai découverte, et si personne ne veut me l’acheter, je renoncerai bientôt a la garder; car elle me causera une perte au lieu de me donner un profit. Il n’y a, vous le voyez, aucun inconvénient à laisser au découvreur la pleine disposition de l’objet de sa découverte.

  le conservateur.

  Que le découvreur d’une mine possède un droit sur cette mine, cela me semble assez légitime. Il est juste que son travail de découverte soit rémunéré. Mais la société et les propriétaires de la surface, n’ont-ils pas bien aussi quelques droits sur le sous-sol? La société protége les exploitants des mines, et elle leur fournit les moyens d’exploiter. Quant aux propriétaires de la surface, n’ont-ils pas un droit de revendication sur le soussol, par le fait de l’occupation du sol? Où est la limite des deux propriétés?

  le socialiste.

  Oui, où est la limite?

  l’économiste.

  Ni la société ni les propriétaires de la surface ne peuvent revendiquer le moindre droit sur le sous-sol. Je vous ai déjà prouvé, à propos des inventions, que la société ne possède aucun droit sur les fruits du travail des individus. Il est inutile de revenir là-dessus. Quant aux propriétaires de la surface, Mirabeau a fait bonne justice de leurs prétentions sur la propriété du sous-sol: “L’idée d’être maître d’un torrent ou d’une rivière, qui répond sous la terre à la surface de nos champs, me paraît, disait-il, aussi absurde que celle d’empêcher le passage d’un ballon dans l’air, qui répond aussi, à coup sûr, au sol d’une propriété particulière.” Et pourquoi est-ce absurde? Parce que la propriété des champs réside uniquement dans la valeur que le travail a donnée à la surface, et que les propriétaires du sol n’ont donné aucunc valeur au sous-sol non plus qu’à l’atmosphère. Recherchez qui a travaillé ou travaille, et vous saurez toujours qui possède ou doit posséder.

  le conservateur.

  Mais est-il possible de découvrir une mine et de l’exploiter sans le concours des propriétaires de la surface?

  l’économiste.

  Voici comment les choses se passent. On demande aux propriétaires de la surface l’autorisation d’explorer le sol, en s’engageant à leur donner une indemnité ou une part de propriété dans la mine pour compenser le dommage qu’on pourra leur causer. La mine découverte, on fait les parts et l’on exploite. Si l’exploitation du soussol est de nature à nuire à la propriété du sol, les propriétaires de la surface ont évidemment le droit de s’y opposer ou de réclamer une nouvelle indemnité. Ils choisissent de préférence l’indemnité; car l’ouverture d’une mine, en donnant un nouveau débouché à leurs produits, augmente directement ou indirectement leurs revenus. C’est ainsi que des intérêts en apparence opposés sc concilient d’eux-mêmes.

  Par malheur, l’Assemblée constituante et Mirabeau lui-même ne comprirent pas que la propriété minérale pouvait être laissée libre, sans inconvénient aucun. Ils attribuèrent à la nation la propriété des mines. Ils firent du communisme souterrain. La loi de 1791 accorda au gouvernement le pouvoir de disposer de la propriété minérale, et limita à cinquante années la durée des concessions. Le gouvernement fut investi, en outre, du pouvoir de retirer ces concessions, lorsque les mines ne seraient pas tenues en bon état ou lorsqu’elles cesseraient momentanément d’être exploitées.

  La disposition la plus funeste de cette loi était, sans contredit, celle qui limitait la durée des concessions. L’exploitation des mines exigeant d’immenses capitaux et des travaux préparatoires qui se prolongent quelquefois pendant plusieurs années, il importait, par dessus tout, aux entrepreneurs d’être assurés de l’avenir; borner leur jouissance, c’était les mettre dans l’obligation de borner aussi leurs sacrifices; c’était apporter un obstacle presque insurmontable au développement des exploitations minérales.

  Le Droit attribué au gouvernement, de retirer les concessions, dans certaines circonstances déterminées, entraînait aussi des inconvénients très graves. Il n’est pas facile de décider si une mine est bien exploitée ou si elle l’est mal. Les avis peuvent être partages sur le mode d’exploitation le plus convenable. On argnait par exemple contre l’exploitation libre, que les exploitants épuisaient d’abord les filons les plus riches et négligeaient les autres, mais ne suivaient-ils pas, en cela, la marche la plus rationnelle? N’était-il pas naturel de commencer par les parties les plus productives des exploitations? En débutant par exploiter les filons les moins riches, les concessionnaires n’auraient-ils pas discrédité leurs entreprises naissantes? On ne pouvait décider avec plus de certitude si un exploitant avait tort ou raison d’abandonner momentanément tout ou partie de son exploitation. Son intérêt personnel, qui était de la tenir constamment en activité, offrait, sous ce rapport, une garantie suffisante. A moins que la demande ne vint à se ralentir, et dans ce cas, la suspension partielle ou totale de l’extraction minérale se justifiait d’elle-même, quel intérêt pouvait-il avoir d’interrompre les travaux?

  le conservateur.

  On a réformé cette mauvaise loi.

  l’économiste.

  On l’a réformée fort incomplètement. La loi du 21 avril 1810 qui l’a remplacée, a maintenu au gouvernement le droit d’accorder et de retirer les concessions. Seulement les concessions ont cessé d’être limitées à cinquante années. Mais, sous d’autres rapports, la situation des propriétaires du sous-so! a été aggravée. La loi de 1810 leur interdit de vendre par lots et de partager leurs mines, sans une autorisation préalable du gouvernement, et elle assujettit leurs exploitations à la surveillance d’une administration créée ad hoc; de plus, elle réserve les prétendus droits des propriétaires de la surface, et elle commet au conseil d’État le soin de déterminer le montant des indemnités à leur accorder. Les exploitations minérales se trouvent, de la sorte, étroitement réglementées et lourdement grevées.

  Aussi, quel a été le résultat de cette loi? Ca été de reduire au minimum la production minerale. Qui voudrait aujourd’hui se faire découvreur de mines? qui voudrait s’occuper spécialement de rechercher de nouveaux gîtes métallifères? Avant de faire valoir sa découverte, n’est-on pas obligé d’en solliciter, pendant de longues annécs, la concession (la concession d’une propriété que l’on a créec par son travail), et après l’avoir obtenue, de se soumettre a la surveillance inquiète et à la direction inintelligente de l’administration des mines? Que deviendrait, je vous le demande, la culture de nos champs, si nos agriculteurs ne pouvaient remuer une pelletec de terre sans l’approbation d’un agent du ministère de l’agriculture? s’il ne leur était pas pernus de vendre la moindre parcelle de leurs champs, sans l’approbation du gouvernement? si enfin l’administration s’attribuait le droit de leur retirer, à sa volonté, leur propriété? Ne scrait-ce pas la mort de notre agriculture? Les capitaux ne se détourneraient-ils pas avec empressement, d’une industrie si detestablement opprimce?... Eh! bien, les capitaux se sont détournés des exploitations minérales. Il a fallu leur accorder des priviléges spéciaux pour les y ramener. Il a fallu écarter la concurrence étrangère, et faciliter ainsi a l’interieur l’etablissement d’un immense monopole, pour décider les capitaux à s’aventurer dans une industrie asservie au bon plaisir administratif. Il a fallu rejeter sur les consommateurs des produits mineraux une partie du dommage qu’on infligeait a la propriété des mines. N’est-ce pas de la barbarie?

  Supposons, au contraire, qu’on eùt purement et simplement supprime, en 1789, le droit abusil que s’attribuaient les monarques de concéder la propriéte des mines; supposons que cette propriété eût été librement abandonnée et garantie à ceux dont le travail l’avait créée, la production des mines ne se serait-elle pas développée au maximum, sans qu’il eût été nécessaire de la protéger? Cette source de travail qui ne laisse échapper encore que de maigres filets, ne coulerait-elle pas à longs flots?

  le conservateur.

  Oui, c’est une chose merveilleuse que la propriété. Avec quelle ardeur on travaille quand on est sûr de posséder a toujours le fruit de son labeur, et d’en disposer librement, de le consommer, de le donner, de le prêter, de le vendre, sans être entravé, gêné, vexé. La propriété, voilà la vraie Californie. Vive la propriété!

  le socialiste.

  Vive le travail!

  l’économiste.

  Travail et propriété se tiennent, puisque c’est le travail qui crée la propriété, et la propriété qui suscite le travail. Vivent donc le travail et la propriété!

  Le gouvernement nuit au développement de la production, non seulement en entravant la proériéte individuelle, mais encore en s’attribuant certaines propriétés. A côté du domaine des particuliers, il y a, vous le savez, le domaine public ou commun. L’État, les départements, les communes possèdent des biens considérables, des champs, des prairies, des forêts, des canaux, des routes, des bâtiments, et que sais-je encore. Ces diverses propriétés, qui sont gérées au nom de la société, ne constituent-elles pas un véritable communisme?

  le conservateur.

  Oui, dans une certaine mesure. Mais les choses pour-raient-elles être arrangées autrement? Le gouvernement ne doit-il pas nécessairement disposer de certaines propriétés? Le gouvernement est institué pour rendre à la société des services...

  l’économiste.

  Quels services?

  le conservateur.

  Le gouvernement doit...gouverner.

  le socialiste.

  Parbleu! mais qu’entendez-vous par gouverner? N’est-ce pas diriger les intérêts, les accorder?

  l’économiste.

  Les intérêts n’ont besoin ni d’être dirigés ni d’être accordés. Ils se dirigent et s’accordent bien sans que personne s’en mêle.

  le socialiste.

  S’il en est ainsi, que doit faire le gouvernement?

  l’économiste.

  Il doit garantir à chacun le libre exercice de son activité, la sécurité de sa personne et la conservation de sa propriété. Pour exercer cette industrie particulière, pour rendre ce service spécial à la société, le gouvernement doit disposer d’un certain matériel. Tout ce qu’il possède en sus est inutile.

  le conservateur.

  Mais s’il rend d’autres services encore à la société; s’il donne de l’éducation, s’il salarie des cultes, s’il contribue au transport des hommes et des marchandises par terre et par eau, s’il fabrique du tabac, de la porcelaine, des tapis, de la poudre, du salpêtre....

  l’économiste.

  En un mot, s’il est communiste! Eh bien! il ne faut pas que le gouvernement soit communiste! Comme tout entrepreneur, le gouvernement ne doit faire qu’une seule chose sous peine de faire fort mal ce qu’il fait. Tous les gouvernements ont pour industrie principale, la production de la sécurité. Qu’ils s’en tiennent là.

  le conservateur.

  Voilà une application bien rigoureuse du principe de la division du travail. Vous voudriez donc que le domaine public cessât d’exister, que l’État vendit la plus grande partie de ses propriétés, que toutes choses, en un mot, fussent spécialisées.

  l’économiste.

  Je le voudrais, dans l’intérêt du développement de la production. On a fait récemment, en Angleterre, une enquête sur la gestion des propriétés publiques. Rien d’instructif comme les renseignements recueillis dans cette enquête. Le domaine public se compose, en Angleterre, des anciens fiefs de la couronne, devenus propriétés nationales. Ces propriétés sont vastes et magnifiques. Entre les mains des particuliers, elles donneraient un produit considérable; entre les mains de l’État, elles ne rapportent presque rien.

  Permettez-moi de vous citer un seul détail.

  Les principaux biens du domaine consistent dans les quatre forêts de New-Forest, Walham, Whittlcwood et Whyehwood. Ces forêts sont confiées à des gardiens qui les administrent. Ce sont les ducs de Cambridge et de Grafton, lord Mornington et lord Churchill. Les gardiens ne reçoivent aucune rétribution apparente, mais il leur est alloué une indemnité assez considérable en nature, gibier, bois, etc. Le revenu annuel de la New-Forest s’élève, en moyenne, à 56 ou 57,000 livres sterlings, soit près de 1,500,000 francs. Sur ce revenu, le trésor n’a jamais touché plus de 1,000 livres, et, de 1841 à 1847, l’entretien, de la forêt en a coûté plus de 2,000 à l’État.

  le conservateur.

  Voilà un abus flagrant; mais c’est dans l’aristocratique Angleterre que ces choses se passent, ne l’oubliez pas!

  l’économiste.

  Il s’en passe bien d’autres dans notre France démocratique. On a reconnu depuis bien longtemps, en France comme en Angleterre, que la gestion des biens de l’État est détestable.

  le conservateur.

  Cela n’est que trop vrai. Cependant, il y a des propriétés qui doivent évidemment demeurer entre les mains de l’État, les routes, par exemple.

  l’économiste.

  En Angleterre, les routes se trouvent entre les mains des particuliers et l’on n’en voit, nulle part, de si bien entretenues.

  le conservateur.

  Et les barrières donc? La circulation n’est pas libre en Angleterre, elle est libre en France.

  l’économiste.

  Pardon! elle est beaucoup plus libre dans la Grande-Bretagne, car les voies de communication y sont beaucoup plus nombreuses. Et savez-vous à quoi cela tient? Tout simplement à ce que le gouvernement a laissé les particuliers construire des routes sans se mêler d’en construire lui-même?

  le conservateur.

  Mais, encore une fois, les péages?

  l’économiste.

  Eh! croyez-vous donc qu’en France les routes se construisent et s’entretiennent pour rien? Croyez-vous que le public n’en paye pas la construction et l’entretien, comme en Angleterre? Seulement, voici la différence. En Angleterre, les frais de construction et d’entretien des routes sont couverts par ceux qui s’en servent; en France ils sont couverts par tous les contribuables, y compris les chevriers des Pyrénées et les paysans des Landes qui ne foulent pas deux fois par an le sol d’une route nationale. En Angleterre, c’est le consommateur de transports qui paye directement les routes sous forme de péages; en France, c’est la communauté qui les paye indirectement sous forme d’impôts le plus souvent abusifs et vexatoires. Lequel est préférable?

  le conservateur.

  Et les canaux, ne convient-il pas de les laisser dans le domaine public?

  l’économiste.

  Pas plus que les routes. Dans quels pays les canaux sont-ils le plus nombreux, le mieux construits et le mieux entretenus? Est-ce dans les pays où ils se trouvent entre les mains de l’État? Non! c’est en Angleterre et aux États-Unis où ils ont été construits et où ils sont exploités par des associations particulières.

  le socialiste.

  Les routes et les canaux ne constitueraient-elles point des monopoles oppressifs si elles étaient appropriées?

  l’économiste.

  Vous oubliez qu’elles se font mutuellement concurrence. Je vous démontrerai plus tard, que dans toute entreprise soumise au régime libre de la libre-concurrence, le prix doit nécessairement tomber au niveau des frais réels de production ou d’exploitation, et que les propriétaires d’un canal ou d’une route ne peuvent rien recevoir en sus de l’équitable rémunération de leur capital et de leur travail. C’est une loi économique aussi positive et aussi exacte qu’une loi physique.

  La plupart des cours d’eau naturels, qui exigent certains travaux d’exploitation et d’entretien, pourraient de même être appropriés avec avantage. Vous savez à quelles difficultés inextricables le communisme des cours d’eau donne lieu aujourd’hui. Les barrages occasionnent des myriades de procès et les irrigations se trouvent partout entravées. Il en serait autrement si chaque bassin avait ses propriétaires contre lesquels les riverains pourraient avoir recours en cas de dommages et qui se chargeraient de fournir des chutes d’eau et d’établir des canaux d’irrigation où besoin serait.

  L’État est encore propriétaire de la plupart des sources d’eaux minérales. Aussi sont-elles fort mal administrées, bien que les administrateurs et les inspecteurs ne manquent pas. En outre, sous le prétexte que les eaux minérales factices servent de médicaments on en a mis la fabrication sous la surveillance de l’administration. Autres administrateurs et autres inspecteurs!

  le conservateur.

  Ah! l’administration est notre grande plaie.

  l’économiste.

  Il n’y a qu’un moyen de guérir cette plaie-là, c’est de moins administrer.

  QUATRIÈME SOIRÉE

  SOMMAIRE: Droit de tester.—Législation qui régit l’héritage.—Le droit à l’héritage.—Ses résultats moraux.—Ses résultats matériels.—Comparaison de l’agriculture française avec l’agriculture britannique.—Des substitutions et de leur utilité.—Organisation naturelle des exploitations agricoles sous un régime de propriété libre.

  l’économiste.

  Ceux qui se sont arrogé le droit de limiter la propriété n’ont pas manqué d’en limiter aussi la libre disposition. Le don, le test, le prêt et l’échange ont été soumis à une multitude d’entraves.

  Le don de certaines propriétés est assujetti à des formalités gênantes et coûteuses. Le test est plus entravé encore. Au lieu de laisser au père de famille la libre disposition de ses biens, la loi lui enjoint de les léguer par portions à peu près égales à ses enfants légitimes. Si l’un des enfants se trouve lésé dans le partage, il a le droit de faire casser le testament1 .

  le conservateur.

  Vous attaquez donc aussi cette loi protectrice de la famille et de la propriété?

  l’economiste.

  J’attaque cette loi destructive de la famille et de la propriété. C’est au nom d’un droit supérieur à celui des pères de famille, que la société a réglé les héritages, n’est-il pas vrai? Mais pourquoi donc n’userait-elle pas de ce droit supérieur pour s’attribuer demain cette propriété dont elle a disposé hier? Si elle a pu dire au père de famille: tu ne disposeras pas de tes biens selon ta volonté, mais selon la mienne; ne peut-elle pas bien lui dire aussi: il me convient désormais que tu disposes de ta propriété en ma faveur. L’abolition de l’héritage, c’est-à-dire la suppression de la propriété individuelle, n’estelle pas contenue dans une loi qui attribue à la société le droit de disposer souverainement de l’héritage?

  L’annihilation de l’autorité paternelle, c’est-à-dire la destruction de la famille, n’est-elle pas contenue de même, dans une loi qui retire au père de famille la libre disposition de ses biens pour accorder aux enfants un véritable droit à l’héritage.

  le conservateur.

  Un droit à l’héritage, dites-vous?

  l’économiste.

  Dire aux enfants: vous avez le droit d’exiger de votre père des parts à peu près égales d’héritage, quelle qu’ait été votre conduite, quels que soient vos sentiments à son égard; vous avez le droit de faire casser son testament si vous vous trouvez lésés dans le partage, n’est-ce pas consacrer le droit à l’héritage? n’est-ce pas donner à l’enfant une action sur la propriété de son père? n’est-ce pas lui permettre de considérer et d’exiger comme une dette, ce qu’il regardait et ce qu’il recevait naguère comme un bienfait? Où la nature avait mis un fils, votre loi ne met-elle pas un créancier?

  le conservateur.

  Mais n’est-ce rien d’obliger le père à partager équitablement son héritage entre ses enfants? Sans la loi qui règle les partages, les enfants ne seraient-ils pas incessamment frustrés de leur légitime par des fraudes ou des captations? La loi n’a-t-elle pas prévenu toutes les fraudes, tranché toutes les difficultés.

  l’économiste.

  En brisant le lien des familles; en rendant illusoire l’autorité du père. Si le droit de tester était libre, le père pourrait sans doute mal disposer de sa fortune. Mais n’est-il pas retenu toujours par ces freins puissants qu’aucune loi fabriquée de main d’homme ne saurait remplacer, l’amour paternel et le sentiment de la justice? Si ces deux sentiments se taisent au dedans de lui-même, croyez-vous que votre loi les fera parler? croyez-vous que le père ne trouvera point quelque moyen détourné de disposer de sa fortune au détriment de ses enfants? S’ils y sont vivaces, à quoi bon votre loi? Et puis, vous posez en principe l’égalité des partages comme l’idéal de l’équité, mais êtes-vous bien sûr que cette égalité brutale soit toujours de la justice? Êtes-vous bien sûr qu’un père ne puisse favoriser un de ses enfants sans spolier les autres? En admettant même que le fils ait virtuellement quelque droit sur les biens de son père...

  le conservateur.

  Quoi! le fils n’aurait aucun droit sur l’héritage paternel? Mais s’il en était ainsi, on pourrait donc le dépouiller, en l’absence d’un testament.

  l’économiste.

  La conséquence est fausse. Le droit des enfants se fonde, en ce cas, sur la probabilité du legs. L’héritage doit leur revenir, non parce qu’ils possèdent un droit virtuel sur cet héritage, mais parce que le père le leur aurait probablement légué.

  En donnant naissance à un enfant, le père contracte envers lui l’obligation morale de le nourrir et de le mettre en état de vivre de son travail, rien de plus, rien de moins. S’il lui plaît de donner quelque chose en sus à son enfant, c’est un effet de son bon plaisir.

  Mais en admettant même votre prétendu droit à l’héritage, croyez-vous qu’un mauvais fils ait sur l’héritage paternel le même droit qu’un bon fils? croyez-vous qu’un père soit tenu, au point de vue de l’équité naturelle, de léguer une partie de son bien au misérable qui aura fait le désespoir et la honte de sa famille? croyez-vous qu’il ne sera pas tenu, au contraire, de priver cet être dégradé des moyens d’assouvir ses passions malfaisantes? L’usage du droit de déshériter ne peut-il être quelquefois utile et juste?

  Mais aux yeux de vos législateurs, le père est un être dépourvu à la fois de la notion de la justice et du sentiment paternel. C’est une bête féroce qui guette incessamment sa progéniture pour la dévorer. Il faut que la loi intervienne pour la protéger; il faut que la société lie les pieds et les mains à ce barbare sans entrailles qu’on appelle un père, pour l’empêcher de sacrifier son innocente famille à ses immondes appétits.

  Ils n’ont pas vu, ces tristes législateurs, que leur loi n’aurait d’efficacité que pour affaiblir le respect de l’autorité et le sentiment de la famille. Le respect de l’autorité existe-t-il encore en France?

  le conservateur.

  Ah! vous venez de toucher à la plus lamentable plaie de notre époque. La génération actuelle a perdu le respect de l’autorité; oui, cela n’est que trop vrai. Quels admirables articles l’Union a publiés là-dessus. Le respect de l’autorité! qui nous le rendra? Le fils ne respecte plus son père. L’homme fait ne respecte plus rien, pas même Dieu. Le respect de l’autorité, voilà l’ancre de salut de notre société ballottée au sein de la tourmente révolutionnaire comme un navire qui.....

  le socialiste.

  Ah! de grâce, laissez, nous avons lu les articles de l’Union.

  l’économiste.

  Cette ancre de salut, vous l’avez brisée de vos propres mains le jour où vous avez porté atteinte aux droits sacrés des pères de famille; le jour où vous avez donné au fils une action sur la propriété de son père; le jour où, en enlevant à celui-ci l’arme redoutable de l’exhérédation, vous l’avez livré à la merci des rébellions de ses enfants.

  le conservateur.

  Et la maison de correction?

  l’économiste.

  Oui, vous la lui avez donnée en échange. Mais, à moins d’avoir perdu tout sentiment humain, un père peut-il consentir à mettre son fils dans ce grand chemin du bagne? Mieux vaut souffrir une rébellion que d’attirer l’infamie sur soi et sur les siens.

  Je sais bien que le père peut défier votre loi et deshériter en fait son fils rebelle s’il ne le peut en droit; mais il est obligé d’agir dans l’ombre et d’éviter l’œil avide et jaloux de son créancier. Il n’use plus du droit légitime de disposer de son bien; il porte une atteinte immorale au droit de son fils sur ce bien. Sa conduite n’est plus celle d’un propriétaire disposant souverainement d’un domaine libre; c’est la conduite d’un débiteur qui aliène subrepticement une propriété hypothéquée. Ce qui ferait respecter l’autorité paternelle, si le droit à l’héritage n’existait point, ne peut plus aujourd’hui que l’avilir.

  Je ne vous parlerai point des haines qui surgissent dans les familles, lorsqu’un père juge à propos de favoriser un de ses enfants. Dans les pays où le droit à l’héritage n’existe pas, aux États - Unis par exemple, les autres enfants courbent respectueusement la tête devant cet acte souverain de la volonté paternelle et ils ne conçoivent aucun mauvais sentiment contre l’enfant que le père a favorisé; dans les pays où le droit à l’héritage est reconnu, un tel acte devient au contraire une cause profonde de désunion dans la famille. En effet, cet acte si simple et souvent si bien justifié par les circonstances, la faiblesse ou l’incapacité de l’enfant préféré, les soins qu’il a rendus au père, n’est-il pas, au point de vue de votre légalité, une véritable spoliation, un vol? Nouvelle harpie, votre loi a corrompu les sentiments de la famille, en les touchant! Plaignez-vous après cela de ce que le désordre que vous avez jeté dans la famille s’est propagé dans la société?

  le conservateur.

  Mais si les résultats moraux de la loi sur l’égalité des partages laissent quelque chose à désirer, cette loi n’a-t-elle pas eu d’admirables résultats économiques? Tout le monde est devenu propriétaire. Chaque paysan ayant son lopin de terre à cultiver s’est trouvé à l’abri du besoin.

  l’économiste.

  En êtes-vous bien sûr? Pour moi, je tiens qu’aucune loi n’a agi d’une manière plus funeste sur la condition des classes laborieuses, manufacturières ou agricoles?

  le conservateur.

  Aimeriez-vous mieux, par hasard, le droit d’aînesse et les substitutions?

  l’économiste.

  C’est un autre genre d’abus; une autre sorte d’atteintes au droit de propriété; mais, je crois bien, en vérité, que je les préférerais.

  le socialiste.

  Il est certain que le morcellement est la plaie de notre agriculture, que l’Association est notre seule planche de de salut.

  l’économiste.

  Je le pense comme vous.

  le conservateur.

  Comment? Vous préférez le régime féodal du droit d’ainesse et des substitutions à l’égalité des partages, et vous êtes pour l’association. Voilà une contradiction manifeste.

  l’économiste.

  Je ne le pense pas. Quelles sont les conditions essentielles de toute production économique? La stabilité, la sécurité dans la possession d’une part; la concentration de forces productives suffisantes de l’autre. Or, le régime actuel ne comporte ni stabilité ni concentration suffisante des forces productives.

  le conservateur.

  Je conviens avec vous que les baux sont à de trop courts termes, et que notre loi sur l’héritage a rendu la possession indivise d’une exploitation territoriale, singulièrement précaire; je conviens aussi que l’agriculteur manque de capitaux, mais qu’y faire? On a parlé de l’organisation du crédit agricole, et pour ma part, j’y inclinerais assez s’il n’était si difficile de trouver un bon système.

  l’économiste.

  Un système de crédit agricole, si excellent qu’il fut, ne remédierait à rien. Avec le régime actuel de la propriété, c’est à peine si la multiplication des institutions de crédit ferait baisser le taux de l’intérêt dans nos compagnes. Il en serait autrement si nos exploitations agricoles étaient solidement assises, comme elles le sont en Angleterre.

  le socialiste.

  Vous osez nous proposer l’Angleterre pour modèle. Ah! certes, la situation des ilotes de nos campagnes est bien misérable, mais n’est-elle pas mille fois préférable à celle des paysans anglais? Les travailleurs anglais ne sont-ils pas exploités par une aristocratie qui dévore leur substance comme le vautour dévorait le foie de Prométhée? L’Angleterre n’est-elle pas le pays où se jouent les plus tristes scenes du sombre drame de l’exploitation de l’homme par l’homme? L’Angleterre n’est-elle pas la grande prostituée du capital? L’Angleterre! ah! ne me parlez pas de l’Angleterre?

  l’économiste.

  Cependant la condition du paysan anglais, exploité par l’aristocratie, est infiniment supérieure à celle du paysan indépendant, propriétaire de France.

  le conservateur.

  Allons donc!

  l’économiste.

  J’aperçois dans votre bibliothèque deux ouvrages de MM. Mounier et Rubichon sur l’Agriculture en France et en Angleterre, et sur l’Action de la noblesse duns les sociétés modernes, qui me fourniront des preuves irrécusables à l’appui de ce que j’avance.

  le conservateur.

  J’avoue humblement ne les avoir pas lus.

  l’économiste.

  Vous avez eu tort. Vous y auriez trouvé toutes les lumières nécessaires pour vider la question qui nous occupe. C’est un résumé des volumineuses enquêtes publiées par ordre du parlement anglais sur la situation de l’agriculture et la condition des agriculteurs. Je feuillette au hasard Voici un extrait de l’enquête la plus récente (1846).

  Le président s’adresse a M. Robert Baker, fermier dans le comté d’Essex, qui cultive une terre de 230 hectares.

  D. Quelle est la nourriture générale des ouvriers agricoles?

  R. Ils se nourrissent de viande et de pommes de terre; mais si la farine est à bon marché, ils ne consomment point de pommes de terre; cette année (1846) ils mangent le meilleur pain blanc.

  M. Robert Hyde-Gregg, qui est depuis vingt ans un des plus grands manufacturiers de la Grande-Bretagne, donne à son tour les renseignements suivants sur la situation des ouvriers des manufactures.

  D. Quand vous dites qu’il se consomme beaucoup de pommes de terre dans les districts de manufacture, entendez-vous que ces pommes de terre sont, comme en Irlande, le fond de la nourriture du peuple, ou sont-elles mangées avec de la viande?

  R. En général, le diner se compose de pommes de terre et de porc, le déjeuner et le souper de thé et de pain.

  D. Les ouvriers ont-ils, en général, du porc?

  R. Je puis dire que tous mangent de la viande à dîner.

  D. Depuis que vous observez, y a-t-il eu un changement considérable dans la nourriture des ouvriers manufacturiers; ont-ils substitué la farine de froment à la farine d’avoine?

  R. Certainement, ce changement a eu lieu. Je me rappelle que dans toutes les maisons d’ouvriers on voyait des galettes suspendues en l’air; il n’y a plus rien de semblable.

  D. La population d’aujourd’hui a donc, sous le rapport du pain, amélioré sa nourriture, puisqu’elle consomme de la farine de froment au lieu de farine d’avoine?

  R. Oui, complétement.

  Voici maintenant un témoignage relatif à la situation des ouvriers de France et d’Angleterre.

  M. Joseph Cramp, expert pour estimer les terres dans le comté de Kent, et fermier depuis quarante-quatre ans, a été en France et il s’y est appliqué à connaître l’état de l’agriculture. On l’interroge sur la condition des ouvriers agricoles en Normandie.

  D. D’après vos observations sur l’état des ouvriers en Normandie, pensez-vous qu’ils sóient mieux habillés et mieux nourris que les ouvriers dans l’île de Thanet que vous habitez?

  R. Non. J’ai été dans leurs habitations, et je les ai vus à leurs repas qui sont tels que jamais, je l’espère, je ne verrai un Anglais assis à si manvaise table.

  D. Les ouvriers dans l’île de Thanet mangent le meilleur pain blanc, n’est-ce pas?

  R. Toujours.

  D. Et en Normandie, les ouvriers agricoles n’en mangent-ils pas?

  R. Non. Ils mangeaient du pain dont la couleur approchait de celle de cet encrier.

  D. Combien d’hectolitres de froment récolte-t-on par hectare dans l’île de Thanet?

  R. Environ vingt-neuf hectolitres.

  D. Ayant habité et cultivé si longtemps dans l’île de Thanet, pouvez-vous dire si la condition des classes ouvrières s’est améliorée ou s’est empirée, depuis le moment que vous avez connu ce pays?

  R. Elle s’est améliorée.

  D. Sous tous les rapports?

  R. Oui.

  D. Vous pensez donc que les ouvriers sont mieux habillés et mieux élevés.

  R. Mieux nourris, mieux habillés et mieux élevés.

  Vous voyez que la condition des populations agricoles de l’Angleterre est infiniment supérieure à celle des nôtres. Comment ce fait s’explique-t-il? Ces populations ne sont pas propriétaires du sol. La terre de la Grande-Bretagne appartient à trente-cinq ou trente-six mille propriétaires, descendant pour la plupart des anciens conquérants.

  le socialiste.

  Oui, le sol de l’Angleterre appartient à l’aristocratie, et le peuple anglais paye chaque année deux ou trois milliards à cette caste orgueilleuse et fainéante pour avoir le droit de cultiver le sol.

  l’économiste.

  C’est bien un peu cher. Aussi les Anglais ont-ils commencé à rogner la portion de leurs landlords, en supprimant les lois-céréales. Cependant, vous allez voir que, même à ce prix abusivement surélevé, les Anglais ont trouvé un réel avantage à conserver leur aristocratie, tandis que nous commettions la faute de supprimer hâtivement la nôtre.

  le socialiste.

  Oh! oh!

  l’économiste.

  Laissez-moi achever. De quelle manière les Anglais sont-ils parvenus à tirer de leur sol beaucoup plus et de meilleures subsistances que nous n’en tirons du nôtre? C’est en perfectionnant leur agriculture. C’est en faisant subir à leurs exploitations agricoles une série de transformations progressives.

  le conservateur.

  Quelles transformations?

  l’économiste.

  Les propriétaires de la Grande-Bretagne ont successivement substitué à leurs petites fermes, alimentées par des capitaux insuflisants, de grandes fermes alimentées par des capitaux considérables. C’est grâce à cette substitution économique de la manufacture agricole au petit atelier que le progrès s’est accompli. Je trouve dans l’enquête reproduite par MM. Mounier et Rubichon, les renseignements suivants sur la répartition de la population dans la Grande-Bretagne:

  Familles occupées à l’agriculture,	961,134
  Familles employées par l’industrie, le commerce, etc.,	2,453,041

  Ces 961,134 familles employées a l’agriculture fournissent 1,055,982 travailleurs effectifs qui cultivent 13,849,320 hectares de terres et font naître un produit de 4,000,500,000 francs.

  En France, l’agriculture ne donnait en 1840 qu’un produit total de 3,523,861,000 francs, et cependant elle était exercée par une population de dix-huit millions d’individus donnant cinq à six millions de travailleurs effectifs. Ce qui signifie que le travail d’un ouvrier agricole français est quatre à cinq fois moins productif que le travail d’un ouvrier agricole de l’Angleterre. Vous devez comprendre maintenant pourquoi nos populations sont plus mal nourries que celles de la Grande-Bretagne.

  le socialiste.

  Vous ne tenez aucun compte du tribut énorme que les agriculteurs anglais payent à l’aristocratie.

  l’économiste.

  Si, comme l’attestent les statistiques, les populations agricoles de l’Angleterre sont mieux nourries que les nôtres. nonobstant le tribut quelles payent à l’aristocratie, n’est-ce pas une preuve incontestable qu’en preduisant davantage elles reçouvent aussi davantage?

  le conservateur.

  C’est évident.

  l’économiste.

  Et s’il est vrai que c’est au maintien de l’aristocratie, que l’agriculture britannique doit ses immenses et rapides progrès; s’il est vrai que le maintien de l’aristocratie est cause qu’un ouvrier agricole produit et reçoit plus en Angleterre qu’en France, l’Angleterre n’a-t-elle pas eu raison de maintenir son aristocratic?

  le conservateur.

  Mais, au moins, le paysan français est propriétaire du sol.

  l’économiste.

  Est-il préférable de gagner dix sur sa propre terre, ou de gagner vingt sur celle d’un propriétaire étranger?

  le conservateur.

  Il est préférable de gagner vingt, n’importe où.

  le socialiste.

  Fort bien! mais y a-t-il véritablement un rapport essentiel entre ces deux choses, maintien de l’aristocratie et progrès de l’agriculture britannique? N’est-il pas vraisemblable que l’agriculture britannique aurait réalisé de plus grands progrès encore, si l’Angleterre s’était débarrassée de son aristocratie, comme nous nous sommes débarrassés de la nôtre? L’agriculture française n’a-t-elle pas progressé depuis 89?

  l’économiste.

  Je ne le pense pas. MM. Mounier et Rubichon affirment résolument qu’au lieu de progresser, elle a rétrogradé. Un champ qui rendait 10 avant 1789, disent-ils, ne rend plus que 4 aujourd’hui; peut-être exagèrent-ils le mal. Mais voici un fait incontestable: si la quantité des subsistances produites à l’aide d’une même quantité de travail n’a pas diminué, la qualité de la masse générale des subsistances a baissé. La consommation de la viande a notoirement diminué. A Paris même, dans ce foyer où convergent les forces productives de la France, on mange moins de viande qu’en 1789. Selon Lavoisier, la moyenne de la consommation de Paris (volailles et gibier compris) était alors de 81,50 kil. par tête; en 1838, elle n’était plus que de 62,30 kil. La baisse n’a pas été moins sensible dans le reste du pays. D’après d’anciens documents cités par la statistique impériale, la consommation moyenne de chaque habitant de la France (non compris la charcuterie) était, en 1789, de 13,13 kil.; en 1830 elle n’était plus que de 12,36 kil., et en 1840 de 11,29 kil. La consommation d’une viande inférieure, la chair de porc, a, au contraire, augmenté. On en consomme actuellement 8,65 kil. par tête.

  En définitive, la consommation de la viande en France ne va qu’à 20 kil. par tête.

  Aux États-Unis, la moyenne est de	122	kil.
  En Angleterre,	68	—
  En Allemagne,	55	—

  De plus, il est probable que notre consommation ira sans cesse diminuant, si notre régime agricole demeure le même, car le prix de la viande hausse progressivement.

  En divisant la France en neuf régions, le prix de la viande a haussé de 1824 à 1840:

  1Discours prononcé par M. Guizot dans la discussion du traité de commerce avec la Sardaigne.—Séance du 31 mars 1845.
  Dans la première région,	le nord-ouest	de	11	p. %
  Dans la deuxième,	nord	de	22	—
  Dans la troislème région,	le nord-est	de	28	p. %
  Dans la quatrième,	ouest	de	17	—
  Dans la cinquième,	centre	de	19	—
  Dans la sixième,	est	de	21	—
  Dans la septième,	sud-ouest	de	23	—
  Dans la huitième,	sud	de	30	—
  Dans la nèuvieme,	sud-est	de	38	—1

  Or, vous savez que l’élévation du chiffre de la consommation de la viande est le plus sûr indice de la prospérité d’un peuple.

  le socialiste.

  J’en tombe d’accord avec vous, mais encore une fois montrez-nous bien clairement la relation qui existe, selon vous, entre la décadence de notre agriculture et notre loi d’égalité des partages. Comment ceci a-t-il amené cela?

  l’économiste.

  J’ai oublié encore une circonstance c’est que notre sol est naturellement plus fertile que le sol britannique.... Je réponds à votre question. L’Angleterre doit la stabilité de ses exploitations agricoles au maintien de son aristocratie et aux lois qui assurent chez elle, partiellement du moins, la liberté de l’héritage.

  le conservateur.

  La liberté de l’héritage, dites-vous. Et les substitutions, et le droit d’aînesse?...

  l’économiste.

  Sont parfaitement libres en ce sens qu’aucune loi n’oblige le père de famille à les établir. C’est la coutume qui en décide, et cette coutume est fondée sur des nécessités économiques.

  Voici en quoi consistent les substitutions:

  A l’époque du mariage de son fils aîné, le plus souvent, ou à toute autre époque qu’il lui convient de choisir, le propriétaire d’un domaine lègue sa propriété à l’aîné de ses petits-fils, ou, à défaut d’enfants mâles, à l’aînée de ses petites-filles Si, au moment de la substitution, le propriétaire a un fils et un petit-fils vivants, il peut la faire remonter à un degré plus haut et désigner son arrière petit-fils, ou son arrière petite-fille. Mais son droit reconnu n’atteint que la première génération à naître. En Écosse, ce droit est sans limites. Un propriétaire peut substituer son bien à perpétuité.

  L’acte de substitution accompli, le propriétaire et ses héritiers vivants perdent la libre disposition de la terre, ils n’en sont plus que les usufruitiers. Ils ne peuvent ni la grever d’hypothèques ni la vendre en tout ou en partie. Un bien substitué ne peut être ni saisi ni confisqué. On le considère comme un legs sacré qu’il n’est permis à personne de détourner de sa destination.

  A l’âge de vingt-un ans, l’héritier en faveur duquel la substitution a été opérée peut la rompre; mais il ne la rompt communément que pour la renouveler, en y introduisant certaines clauses nécessitées par la situation présente de la famille. Les propriétés passent, de la sorte, indivises, intactes, de génération en génération.

  Voici maintenant à quoi servent les substitutions.

  Elles donnent aux exploitations agricoles ce qui manque aux nôtres, la stabilité. En France tout est viager, en Angleterre tout est perpétuel. Nos exploitations agricoles sont exposées incessamment à être morcelées par un partage; les exploitations britanniques n’ont à courir aucun risque de cette nature.

  le conservateur.

  Ce risque a-t-il bien toute l’importance que vous lui attribuez? Il importe assez peu que la terre soit plus ou moins morcelée, si elle est bien cultivée.

  l’économiste.

  Consultez les agriculteurs, et tous vous diront que les cultures doivent avoir une certaine étendue pour être exploitées avec un maximum d’économie. Cela se conçoit. On ne peut employer les méthodes et les instruments perfectionnés que dans une vaste exploitation En Angleterre, les fermes ordinaires ont trois cent cinquante ou quatre cents hectares. Ces fermes sont munies d’un capital considérable. En France, le nombre de ces grandes exploitations est excessivement restreint.

  le conservateur.

  Pourquoi?

  l’économiste.

  Celui qui fonde une exploitation agricole ignore si elle ne sera point morcelée, détruite à sa mort. Il ne peut rien faire pour la préserver du morcellement. La loi n’a-t-elle pas limité son droit de tester? Il est donc peu excité à appliquer de grands capitaux à l’agriculture. Le fermier l’est-il davantage? En France, les baux sont de très courte durée: c’est merveille de voir un bail de vingt-un ans. Je n’ai pas besoin de vous expliquer la raison de cette courte durée des baux; vous la devinez! Quand la possession même est à courte échéance, il n’est pas possible de stipuler un long bail. Mais lorsqu’un fermier n’occupe une terre que pour trois, six ou neuf ans, il y applique le moins de capital possible; il économise les engrais, il n’élève pas de clôtures, il ne renouvelle pas son matériel; d’un autre côté, il épuise la terre autant que faire se peut.

  En Angleterre, la stabilité que le régime des substitutions a donnée aux exploitations agricoles, a engendré la stabilité des fermages, les baux à long terme. Aussi les fermiers, bien assurés de recueillir eux-mêmes les fruits qu’ils ont semés, appliquent-ils généralement leurs économies à féconder le sol.

  le socialiste.

  Cependant le fermier est soumis, en Angleterre comme en France, à la tyrannie des propriétaires.

  l’économiste.

  Oui, mais cette tyrannie est fort douce. Il y a, en Angleterre, des fermiers qui tiennent la même ferme, de père en fils, depuis un temps immémorial. La plupart n’ont point de bail, tant est profonde la confiance que leur inspirent les propriétaires du sol. Rarement cette confiance est trompée, rarement un propriétaire se décide à expulser un fermier que des liens séculaires attachent à sa famille. Il y a toutefois, en Angleterre comme ailleurs, différents modes de tenure. Dans le nord, le système des baux pour la vie de trois personnes est généralement usité; le fermier se désigne lui-même, ainsi que deux de ses enfants, et le bail court jusqu’à la mort du dernier des trois. La durée moyenne de ces baux est estimée à cinquante-quatre ans. Lorsqu’un des enfants désignés vient à mourir, le fermier obtient ordinairement l’autorisation de substituer un autre nom à celui du défunt, et de prolonger ainsi la durée du bail.

  Quand le bail est à terme fixe, la durée en est communément déterminée par celle des assolements. Pour les assolements de six et neuf elle est de dix-neuf ans, mais il est rare que le bail ne soit point renouvelé.

  Les fluctuations considérables auxquelles le prix du blé se trouve exposé depuis quelque temps ont donné naissance à une nouvelle espèce de baux; je veux parler des baux mobiles, variant d’année en année selon le cours des céréales. Une ferme se louera, par exemple, pour la valeur de mille quarters de blé; si, en 1845, le prix du blé est de 56 shell. le quarter, le fermier payera 2,800 liv. sterl. de fermage; si, en 1846, le prix monte à 60 schell., il payera 3,000 liv. sterl. On choisit pour ces évaluations le prix moyen du blé dans le comté.

  On conçoit que les fermiers hasardent sans crainte leurs capitaux dans des entreprises si solidement assises. On conçoit aussi que les capitalistes leur en prêtent volontiers. Les gros fermiers trouvent généralement à emprunter à quatre pour cent, et même à trois. On ne court, en effet, presque aucun risque à placer ses capitaux sur la terre. Les exploitations ne sont pas exposées à perdre de leur valeur par le morcellement ou la vente pour sortir de l’indivision. Fermiers et propriétaires étant établis, pour ainsi dire, à perpétuité, offrent un maximum de garanties aux prêteurs. De là la modicité du taux de l’intérêt agricole; de là aussi le nombre considérable de banques qui se sont établies pour servir d’intermédiaires entre les capitalistes et les entrepreneurs d’industrie agricole, propriétaires ou fermiers.

  Le peuple anglais, qu’on vous représente sans cesse comme privé de la propriété de la terre de la Grande-Bretagne, possède, en réalité, beaucoup plus de valeurs territoriales que le peuple français lui-même. S’il n’emploie pas ses capitaux à acheter des fonds de terre, il les place sur ces fonds mêmes, dont il augmente ainsi les forces productives.

  En France, au contraire, on achète de la terre, mais on ne place guère ses capitaux sur la terre. Il n’en saurait être autrement. On ne prête pas volontiers à un petit fermier, dont l’existence n’est à demi assurée que pour quelques années; on hésite même à prêter au petit propriétaire dont la faible parcelle de terrain peut, du jour au lendemain, être morcelée de nouveau entre plusieurs héritiers. Ajoutez à cela les formalités coûteuses, les lenteurs et l’insécurité du prêt hypothécaire, et vous aurez l’explication de l’élévation du taux de l’intérêt agricole.

  le conservateur.

  Oui, l’usure ronge nos campagnes.

  l’économiste.

  L’usure soit! Mais examinez de quoi se composent les dix ou quinze pour cent que nos agriculteurs payent aux usuriers, pesez les risques de perte et les menus frais, et vous vous convaincrez que cette usure n’a rien d’illégitime, vous vous convainerez qu’eu égard à l’étendue et à l’intensité des risques agricoles, l’intérêt des prèts faits à l’agriculture ne dépasse aucunement l’intérêt des prêls ordinaires. Or, comme les banques agricoles dont on s’est engoué ne détruiront pas ces risques, elles ne contribueront que faiblement à abaisser le taux de l’intérêt agricole.

  le conservateur.

  Qu’y a-t-il donc à faire pour restituer à nos exploitations territoriales la sécurité qu’elles ont perdue? Faut-il rétablir les substitutions?

  l’économiste.

  A Dieu ne plaise! il faut, avant tout, restituer aux propriétaires le droit de disposer librement de leurs propriétés. On ralentira ainsi le morcellement, et l’on donnera aux exploitations un peu de cette stabilité précieuse qui leur manque aujourd’hui. Les capitaux viendront alors plus aisément à l’agriculture, et ils se feront payer moins cher. Si en même temps on débarrasse le sol des lourds impôts qui le grèvent, si l’on améliore notre régime hypothécaire, si l’on affranchit les associations industrielles et agricoles des entraves auxquelles la législation impériale les a soumises, on verra s’opérer bientôt une véritable révolution dans notre agriculture. Des compagnies nombreuses se formeront pour l’exploitation du sol, comme il s’en est formé pour l’exploitation des chemins de fer, des mines, etc. Or, ces associations ayant intérêt à s’établir à long terme, les exploitations territoriales acquerront une stabilité presque immuable. Divisée en actions, la propriété de la terre s’échangera, se partagera sans que des cultures en reçoivent la moindre atteinte. L’agriculture se constituera de la manière la plus économique possible.

  le socialiste.

  Oui, l’Association appliquée à l’agriculture mettra fin à nos maux.

  l’économiste.

  Nous n’entendons peut-être pas l’association de la même manière. Quoi qu’il en soit, je pense que l’avenir de notre agriculture et de notre industrie appartient à la société anonyme perpétuelle. En dehors de cette forme d’exploitation, à la fois élastique et stable, je ne vois aucun moyen de proportionner toujours l’effort du travail à la résistance de la nature. Mais, en attendant qu’elle puisse s’établir, on s’est trop pressé d’en finir avec les institutions anciennes. En détruisant hâtivement les substitutions, en entravant ensuite l’établissement des associations agricoles, on a livré l’agriculture à toutes les misères du morcellement. Exécutée dans des ateliers de plus en plus bornés, la production a rétrogradé au lieu d’avancer. Le travail de l’ouvrier agricole est devenu de moins en moins productif. Tandis que l’ouvrier anglais, aidé des machines perfectionnées de la grande industrie agricole, produit cinq, l’ouvrier français ne produit qu’un ou un et demi, et la plus grande partie de ce faible resultat va aux capitalistes qui aventurent leurs capitaux dans nos pauvres ateliers agricoles.

  Voilà l’explication de la misère qui ronge les campagnes de la France. Voilà comment il se fait que nous soyons menacés d’une nouvelle Jacquerie. Cette Jacquerie, ne l’imputez pas au socialisme, imputez-la aux tristes législateurs, qui, en décrétant d’une main l’égalité des partages, entravaient de l’autre la formation des sociétés industrielles, et accablaient d’impôts les exploitations agricoles. Ceux-là sont les vrais coupables!

  Peut-être réussirons-nous à éviter les catastrophes que de si lamentables fautes ont préparées, mais il faut se hâter. De jour en jour le mal s’aggrave; de jour en jour, la situation de la France se rapproche davantage de celle de l’Irlande. Or, nos paysans n’ont pas la longanimité des paysans irlandais.....

  le conservateur.

  Ah! nous vivons dans de bien tristes temps. Les campagnes sont pourries.

  l’économiste.

  A qui la faute, si ce n’est aux législateurs qui ont porté atteinte à la stabilité de la propriété et à la sainteté de la famille? Les prédicateurs socialistes auront beau attaquer ces deux institutions sacrées, ils ne leur feront jamais un mal comparable à celui que vous leur avez fait vousmêmes en inscrivant dans vos Codes le droit à l’héritage.

  CINQUIÈME SOIRÉE

  SOMMAIRE: Droit de prêter.—Législation qui régit le prêt à intérêt.—Définition du capital.—Mobiles qui poussent l’homme à former des capitaux.—Du crédit.—De l’intérêt.—Éléments qui le composent.—Travail.—Privation.—Risques.—Comment ces éléments peuvent être réduits.—Qu’ils ne peuvent l’être par des lois.—Résultats désastreux de la législation limitative du taux de l’intérêt.

  le conservateur.

  Chien d’usurier! prêter à un écervelé qui dissipe d’avance son héritage avec des demoiselles de l’Opéra, et à quel taux, juste ciel?

  l’économiste.

  A qui donc en avez-vous?

  le conservateur.

  A un usurier maudit, qui s’est avisé de prêter une grosse somme à l’un de mes fils.

  l’économiste.

  A quel taux?

  le conservateur.

  A deux pour cent par mois, vingt-quatre pour cent par an, ni plus ni moins!

  l’économiste.

  Ce n’est pas trop cher. Songez que vous êtes encore dans la fleur de l’âge, robuste et bien portant. Songez ensuite que la loi interdit formellement l’usure. L’intérêt légal est de cinq pour cent en matière civile, et de six pour cent en matière commerciale.

  le conservateur.

  Eh! c’est précisément parce que l’intérêt légal est de cinq et six pour cent, qu’on ne devrait pas prêter à vingtquatre.

  l’économiste.

  On prête cependant. Et s’il faut tout vous dire, je tiens pour sûr que la loi est pour quelque chose dans ces vingtquatre pour cent.

  le conservateur.

  Comment? Mais la loi ne m’autorise-t-elle pas à poursuivre cet infâme usurier.....

  le socialiste.

  Ce vampire du capital.....

  l’économiste.

  Qui prête au dessus du taux légal. Eh! c’est à cause de cela même. Voici ce qui va arriver: Vous allez poursuivre l’usurier chez qui votre fils s’est permis d’escompter son droit à l’héritage. Il sera obligé de se défendre. Le procès sera jugé, et il le gagnera faute de preuves suffisantes. Mais ce procès ne lui aura pas moins coûté quelque argent. De plus, sa réputation aura reçu un nouvel accroc. Tous risques auxquels il ne serait point exposé, si la législation qui limite le taux de l’intérêt n’existait point. Or il faut bien qu’un prêteur couvre ses risques.

  le conservateur.

  Oui, mais vingt quatre pour cent?

  l’économiste.

  Si l’on considère combien les capitaux sont rares aujourd’hui, combien les placements sont chanceux, surtout quand l’emprunteur est un habitué de Breda-Street, combien encore le régime réglementaire a exagéré le prix des procès, on trouvera, en fin de compte, que vingtquatre pour cent, ce n’est pas trop cher.

  le conservateur.

  Vous plaisantez. S’il en était ainsi, pourquoi le législateur aurait-il limité à cinq et six pour cent le taux légal de l’intérêt?

  l’économiste.

  Parce que ce législateur-là était un pauvre économiste.

  le conservateur.

  Vous voulez donc que l’usure soit désormais permise.

  le socialiste.

  Vous voulez que le travail soit livré sans merci à la tyrannie du capital.

  l’économiste.

  Je veux, au contraire, que le taux de l’intérêt soit toujours le plus bas possible; et voilà pourquoi je supplie le législateur de ne plus s’en occuper.

  le conservateur.

  Mais si l’on ne met aucun frein à la cupidité des usuriers, où donc s’arrêtera l’exploitation des pères de famille?

  le socialiste.

  Mais si la loi ne borne point la puissance des capitalistes, où s’arrêtera l’exploitation des travailleurs?

  l’économiste.

  Ouf!

  le conservateur.

  Justifiez donc cette doctrine anarchique et immorale du laisser-faire.

  le socialiste.

  Oui, justifiez cette doctrine bancocratique et malthusienne du laisser-faire.

  l’économiste.

  Que cet accord me charme..... Dites-moi donc, ô digne et excellent conservateur, n’avez-vous pas applaudi à la fameuse proposition de M. Proudhon, relative à la suppression graduelle de l’intérêt?

  le conservateur.

  Moi!!! Mais je l’ai flétrie de toute mon indignation.

  l’économiste.

  Vous avez eu tort. Vous vous êtes montré souverainement illogique en la flétrissant. Que voulait M. Proudhon? Il voulait faire descendre, par l’action du gouvernement, l’intérêt à zéro.

  le conservateur.

  L’abominable utopiste!

  l’économiste.

  Cet utopiste se contentait pourtant de suivre les traces de vos législateurs. Seulement, au lieu de s’en tenir à votre limite légale de cinq à six pour cent, il demandait que la limite fût abaissée à zéro.

  le conservateur.

  N’y a-t-il donc aucune différence entre ces deux limites? Certes, on peut bien dire aux gens: Vous ne prêterez pas au dessus de cinq ou six pour cent. C’est un taux raisonnable, honnête! Mais les obliger à prêter pour rien, n’est-ce pas les spolier, les..... Ah! les brigands de socialistes!

  l’économiste.

  J’en suis bien fâché; mais c’est vous qui les avez engendrés, ces brigands-là. Le socialisme n’est autre chose qu’une exagération radicale, mais parfaitement logique de vos lois et règlements. Vous avez décidé, dans l’intérêt de la société, que la loi disposerait de l’héritage du père de famille; le socialisme décide, dans l’intérêt de la société, que la loi attribuera à la communauté, l’héritage du père de famille. Vous avez décidé que diverses industries seraient exercées ou salariées par l’État, le socialisme décide que toutes les industries seront exercées ou salariées par l’Etat. Vous avez décidé que l’intérêt serait limité à cinq et à six pour cent, le socialisme décide que l’intérêt sera réduit à zéro.

  Si vous aviez le droit de limiter le taux de l’intérêt, c’est-à-dire de supprimer partiellement l’intérêt, le socialisme a bien le droit, ce me semble, de le supprimer totalement.

  le socialiste.

  C’est incontestable. Nous avons pour nous le droit, de l’aveu même de nos adversaires, et nous en usons jusqu’au bout. En quoi donc sommes-nous blâmables?

  Que les conservateurs gardent des ménagements à l’égard du capital, cela se conçoit. Ils en vivent. Cependant ils ont senti eux-mêmes la nécessité de mettre des limites à l’exploitation capitaliste; et ils se sont protégés contre les plus habiles ou les plus avides de leur bande. Les capitalistes ont proscrit le prêt à gros intérêt en le flétrissant du nom d’usure. Mais, à notre tour, nous sommes venus, et reconnaissant l’insuffisance de cette loi, nous avons entrepris de couper le mal à sa racine et nous avons dit: Que le taux légal de l’intérêt soit désormais abaissé de cinq et six pour cent à zéro. Vous réclamez! Mais si les capitalistes ont pu légitimement demander la suppression de la grosse usure, pourquoi commettrions-nous un crime en demandant la suppression de la petite? En quoi l’une est-elle plus légitime que l’autre?

  l’économiste.

  Vos prétentions sont parfaitement logiques. Seulement, vous ne réussiriez pas plus à réduire le taux de l’intérêt à zéro que les législateurs du régime impérial n’ont réussi à l’abaisser à un maximum de cinq et six pour cent. Vous n’aboutiriez comme eux qu’à le faire hausser davantage.

  le socialiste.

  Qu’en savez-vous?

  l’économiste.

  Je pourrais invoquer l’histoire de toutes les lois de maximum, et vous prouver, pièces en main, que chaque fois qu’on a voulu limiter le prix des choses, travail, capitaux ou produits, on l’a invariablement fait hausser. Mais j’aime vous faire voir le pourquoi de cette hausse. J’aime mieux vous expliquer comment il se fait que l’intérêt soit naturellement, tantôt à dix, quinze, vingt et trente pour cent, tantôt à cinq, quatre, trois, deux pour cent et même au-dessous; comment il se fait encore qu’aucune loi ad hoc ne puisse le faire baisser.

  Savez-vous de quoi se compose le prix des choses?

  le socialiste.

  Vous autres économistes, vous dites communément que le prix des choses se compose de leurs frais de production.

  le conservateur.

  Et de quoi se composent les frais de production?

  le socialiste.

  Selon les économistes encore, les frais de production se composent de la quantité de travail qu’il faut dépenser pour produire une marchandise et la mettre au marché.

  le conservateur.

  Oui, mais le prix auquel les choses se vendent représente-t-il toujours exactement la quantité de travail qu’elles ont coûté, ou leurs frais de production?

  le socialiste.

  Non! pas toujours. Les frais de production constituent ce qu’Adam Smith a nommé, assez judicieusement à mon avis, le prix naturel des choses. Or, le même Adam Smith constate que le prix auquel les choses se vendent, le prix courant ne coïncide pas toujours avec le prix naturel.

  l’économiste.

  Oui, mais Adam Smith constate aussi que le prix naturel est comme le point central autour duquel le prix courant gravite sans cesse, et auquel il est irrésistiblement ramené.

  le conservateur.

  D’où cela vient-il?

  l’économiste.

  Quand le prix d’une marchandise dépasse ses frais de production, ceux qui la produisent ou qui la vendent réalisent un bénéfice exceptionnel. L’appât de ce bénéfice extraordinaire attire la concurrence, et à mesure que la concurrence augmente, le prix s’abaisse.

  le conservateur.

  A quelle limite s’arrête-t-il?

  l’économiste.

  A la limite des frais de production. Quelquefois aussi il tombe au dessous. Mais dans ce dernier cas, la production cessant de donner un bénéfice suffisant se ralentit d’elle-même, le marché se dégarnit et les prix remontent. Grâce à cette gravitation économique, les prix tendent toujours, irrésistiblement, à prendre leur niveau naturel; c’est-à-dire à représenter exactement la quantité de travail que la marchandise a coûté. J’aurai occasion de revenir encore sur cette loi, qui est véritablement la clef de voûte de l’édifice économique.

  Je reprends. L’intérêt se compose de frais de production. Autour de ces frais de production gravite incessamment le prix courant de l’intérêt.

  le socialiste.

  Et de quoi, je vous prie, se composent les frais de production de l’intérêt?

  l’économiste.

  Ils se composent de travail et de risques de pertes ou de dommages, dont il faut déduire...

  le conservateur.

  Quoi donc?

  l’économiste.

  Du travail et des risques de pertes ou de dommages.

  le conservateur.

  Voilà qui n’est pas clair.

  l’économiste.

  Cela s’éclaircira tout à l’heure. Et d’abord que prêtet-on?

  le conservateur.

  Eh! mais on prête des choses qui ont une valeur.

  l’économiste.

  Avoir une valeur, c’est, vous le savez, être propre à satisfaire l’un ou l’autre des besoins de l’homme. Cette propriété, comment les choses l’acquièrent-elles? Tantôt elles la possèdent naturellement, tantôt on la leur donne par le travail.

  La valeur que la nature donne aux choses est gratuite. La nature travaille pour rien. L’homme seul fait payer son travail, ou pour mieux dire il échange son travail contre le travail d’autrui. Les choses s’échangent en raison de leurs frais de production, c’est-à-dire en raison des quantités de travail qu’elles contiennent. Ces quantités de travail sont le fondement de leur valeur échangeable. Plus on a de choses contenant du travail et plus on est riche: mieux, en effet, on peut satisfaire à ses besoins, soit en consommant ces choses, soit en les échangeant contre d’autres choses consommables. Si l’on ne veut pas les consommer immédiatement on peut encore les garder ou les prêter.

  Ces choses qui contiennent du travail utile s’appellent des capitaux.

  Les capitaux s’accumulent par l’épargne.

  Deux mobiles excitent l’homme à épargner.

  Le premier dérive de la nature même de l’homme. La période du travail ne s’étend guère au delà des deux tiers de la vie humaine. Dans son enfance et dans sa vieillesse l’homme consomme sans produire. Il est donc obligé de mettre en réserve une partie de son travail de chaque jour afin d’élever sa famille et de pourvoir à sa propre subsistance dans sa vieillesse. Tel est le premier mobile qui pousse l’homme à ne pas consommer immédiatement tout le fruit de son travail, à accumuler des capitaux.

  Il y en a un autre encore.

  A la rigueur, l’homme peut produire sans capitaux...

  le conservateur.

  Où cela s’est-il vu?

  l’économiste.

  Croyez-vous que les premiers hommes soient nés avec un arc et des flèches, une hache et un rabot à leurs côtés? A la rigueur, on peut donc produire sans capitaux, mais on ne peut pas produire grand’chose. Pour créer beaucoup de choses utiles moyennant peu d’efforts, il faut des instruments nombreux et perfectionnés; certaines choses exigent, en outre, beaucoup de temps pour être produites. Or, le producteur ne peut vivre pendant ce temps, s’il ne possède une avance suffisante de subsistances, s’il n’a devers lui un certain capital. On est donc intéressé à épargner du travail, à accumuler des capitaux, afin de pouvoir augmenter sa production tout en diminuant ses efforts, afin de rendre son travail plus fructueux.

  le conservateur.

  C’est cela.

  l’économiste.

  Mais ce deuxième mobile qui porte à accumuler des capitaux est bien moins général que le premier. Il n’agit que sur les entrepreneurs d’industrie et sur ceux qui aspirent à le devenir?

  le conservateur.

  C’est-à-dire sur tout le monde.

  l’économiste.

  Non! il y a beaucoup d’ouvriers de manufactures qui ne songent pas à devenir manufacturiers, beaucoup d’ouvriers laboureurs qui n’ont pas l’ambition de diriger une ferme, beaucoup de commis-banquiers qui n’aspirent pas à fonder une banque. Et à mesure que l’industrie se développera sur une échelle plus vaste, il y en aura de moins en moins.

  Dans l’état actuel des choses, les entrepreneurs de production sont déjà en minorité. Si ces entrepreneurs étaient réduits à leurs seules épargnes de travail, aux capitaux qu’ils peuvent accumuler eux-mêmes, cela serait tout à fait insuffisant.

  le conservateur.

  Sans aucun doute. Si chaque entrepreneur de production, manufacturier, agriculteur ou négociant se trouvait réduit à ses seules ressources; s’il n’avait à sa disposition que ses propres capitaux, la production se trouverait incessamment entravée faute d’avances suffisantes.

  le socialiste.

  Tandis qu’il y aurait entre les mains des non-entrepreneurs une quantité considérable de capitaux inactifs.

  l’économiste.

  On a surmonté cette difficulté au moyen du crédit.

  le socialiste.

  Dites qu’on aurait dû la surmonter. Malheureusement, la société n’a pas su encore organiser le crédit.

  l’économiste.

  Le crédit s’est organisé de lui-même, dès le commencement du monde. Le jour ou, pour la première fois, un homme a prêté à un autre homme un produit de son travail, le crédit a été inventé. Depuis ce jour, il n’a cessé de se développer. Des intermédiaires se sont placés entre les capitalistes et les entrepreneurs. Ces marchands de capitaux, banquiers ou agents d’affaires se sont multipliés à l’infini. On a établi des hourses, où l’on vend des capitaux en gros et en détail.

  le socialiste.

  Ah! les bourses... ces vils repaires, où les proxénètes du capital viennent négocier leurs marchés impurs. Quand donc fermera-t-on ces temples de l’usure?

  l’économiste.

  Fermez donc, en même temps, le marché des lnnocents, car on y vole aussi... Le prêt des capitaux s’est donc organisé sur une échelle immense, et il est destiné à se développer bien plus encore lorsqu’il aura cessé d’être directement et indirectement entravé.

  On accumule des capitaux sous toutes les formes. Mais sous quelle forme les accumule-t-on le plus volontiers? Sous la forme d’objets durables, peu encombrants et facilement échangeables. Certains objets réunissent ces qualités à un plus haut degré que tous les autres, je veux parler des métaux précieux. Le loyer des métaux précieux est devenu, en conséquence, le régulateur de tous les loyers. Lorsqu’on prête son capital sous une forme moins durable et plus aisément dépréciable, on fait payer à l’emprunteur cette différence de durabilité et de dépréciabilité. On loue un mobilier ou une maison plus cher qu’une somme d’argent de même valeur.

  Lorsqu’on prête un capital sous forme de métaux précieux, le prix du prêt prend le nom d’intérêt, lorsque le prêt s’effectue sous une autre forme, lorsqu’on prête des terres, des maisons, des meubles, etc., le prix se nomme loyer.

  L’intérêt, c’est donc la somme que l’on paye pour avoir l’usage d’une certaine quantité de travail accumulé sous la forme la plus durable, la moins encombrante et la plus aisément échangeable.

  Tantôt cet usage se paye plus ou moins cher, tantôt il est gratuit, tantôt aussi les capitalistes payent une prime à ceux à qui ils confient leurs capitaux.

  le conservateur.

  Plaisantez-vous? Où a-t-on vu des prêteurs payer un intérêt à leurs emprunteurs? Ce serait le monde renversé!

  l’économiste.

  Savez-vous à quelles conditions les premières banques de dépôt qui furent établies à Amsterdam, à Hambourg et à Gênes recevaient des capitaux? A Amsterdam, les capitalistes payaient d’abord une prime de 10 florins quand on leur ouvrait un compte; ils payaient ensuite un droit de garde annuel de un pour cent. En outre, les monnaies subissant en ce temps-là des dépréciations considérables, la banque prélevait un agio plus ou moins élevé sur la somme déposée. A Amsterdam, l’agio était communément de cinq pour cent. Eh! bien, malgré la dureté de ces conditions, les capitalistes aimaient mieux confier leurs capitaux a la banque que de les garder ou de les prêter directement aux gens qui en avaient besoin.

  le socialiste.

  L’intérêt était alors en moins.

  l’économiste.

  Vous l’avez dit. Or comme, en tout temps, l’homme qui a accumulé un capital est obligé de se livrer à une certaine surveillance et de courir certains risques en le conservant lui-même; comme il peut arriver qu’il se donne moins de peine et courre moins de risques en le prêtant, l’intérêt peut donc, en tout temps, tomber à zéro ou même au dessous de zéro.

  Mais vous concevez aussi que si cette partie négative des frais de production de l’intérêt venait à s’élever très haut; si la conservation des capitaux était soumise à de très gros risques, par le manque de sécurité ou l’exagération de l’impôt; si le prêt n’offrait de même qu’une sécurité insuffisante, l’accumulation s’arrêterait. On cesserait d’épargner des capitaux, si l’on cessait d’avoir la certitude de les consommer soi-même, du moins en grande partie. L’homme se mettrait à vivre au jour le jour sans souci de sa vieillesse ou de l’avenir de sa famille, sans se préoccuper non plus de perfectionner ou de développer son industrie. La civilisation rétrograderait rapidement sous un tel régime.

  Plus la partie négative de l’intérêt est faible, et plus est énergique le stimulant qui pousse l’homme à épargner.

  Examinons maintenant la partie positive de l’intérêt.

  Celle-ci représente du travail, des dommages et des risques.

  Si vous prenez une certaine peine, si vous subissez certains dommages, et si vous courez certains risques en gardant vos capitaux, vous êtes communément obligé de prendre plus de peine encore, de supporter plus de dommages, et de courir plus de risques en les prêtant.

  Dans quelles circonstances, vous, capitaliste, êtes-vous disposé à prêter un capital?

  C’est lorsque vous n’en avez pas vous-même l’emploi actuellement. Vous le prêtez volontiers jusqu’à l’époque où vous en aurez besoin. Deux emprunteurs, deux hommes qui ont actuellement besoin d’un capital, se présentent à vous: avec lequel des deux ferez-vous affaire? Vous choisirez, n’est-il pas vrai, celui qui vous présentera les meilleures garanties matérielles et morales, le plus riche et le plus probe, c’est-à-dire celui qui vous remboursera le plus sûrement. A moins toutefois que son concurrent ne vous offre une somme plus forte, auquel cas vous apprécierez la différence des risques et celle des offres, et vous prononcerez. Si vous vous décidez pour le second, c’est que le surplus de l’offre vous aura paru balancer, et un peu au delà, la différence des garanties matérielles et morales.

  L’intérêt sert donc à couvrir des risques.

  Vous prêtez votre capital pour une période déterminée; mais êtes-vous bien sûr de n’en avoir pas besoin dans cette période? ne vous peut-il survenir quelque accident qui vous oblige à recourir à votre épargne? n’arrive-t-il pas, aussi fréquemment, que l’on prête un capital dont on a besoin soi-même? Dans le premier cas, le dommage n’est qu’éventuel; dans le second, il est réel; mais éventuel ou réel, ne doit-il pas être compensé?

  L’intérêt sert donc à compenser des dommages.

  Vous conservez votre capital dans un coffre, dans une grange ou ailleurs. Si vous le prêtez, vous serez obligé de prendre une certaine peine, d’exécuter un certain travail, en le déplaçant, en faisant constater le prêt, comme aussi en surveillant l’emploi du capital prêté. Ce travail doit être rémunéré.

  L’intérêt sert donc à salarier un travail.

  Une prime servant à couvrir un risque, une compensation servant à couvrir un dommage, un salaire servant à rémunérer un travail, tels sont les éléments positifs des frais de production de l’intérêt.

  Ces trois éléments se retrouvent, à des degrés différents, dans tous les prêts à intérêt.

  le socialiste.

  On les supprimerait en organisant le crédit.

  l’économiste.

  Voyons! S’agit-il des risques? Vous aurez beau faire, vous prêtcur, que vous soyez un banquier, un intermédiaire, ou un producteur de capitaux, un épargneur, vous courrez toujours des risques en prêtant.

  A moins que:

  1° Vous n’ayez affaire à des gens d’une probité absolue et d’une intelligence parfaite;

  2° A des gens dont l’industrie ne soit exposée, soit directement, soit indirectement, à aucune catastrophe fortuite.

  Jusque-là vous courrez des risques, et on sera obligé de vous payer une prime pour les couvrir.

  le socialiste.

  J’en conviens; mais si l’industrie était moins chanceuse, cette prime pourrait être considérablement réduite.

  l’économiste.

  Oui, considérablement. Étudiez donc les causes réelles qui rendent l’industrie chanceuse au lieu de fonder des banques d’échange. Étudiez encore les causes qui altèrent la moralité des populations ou dépriment leur intelligence.

  le conservateur.

  Voici un point de vue qui me paraît assez neuf. L’intérêt peut donc être plus bas dans un pays où il y a beaucoup de moralité et d’intelligence pratique des affaires que dans un pays où il y en a peu.

  l’économiste.

  Dites qu’il doit être plus bas. Ne prêtez-vous pas plus volontiers à un honnête homme qu’à un demifripon?

  le conservateur.

  Cela va sans dire.

  l’économiste.

  Eh bien! ce que vous faites, tout le monde le fait comme vous. Le taux de l’intérêt monte à mesure que la moralité baisse; il monte encore à mesure que l’intelligence se déprime ou se fausse. Retenez bien ces maximes économiques, et sachez en faire l’application à propos.

  Les risques qui forment indubitablement la partie la plus considérable des frais de production de l’intérêt, peuvent baisser dans une proportion trés forte; mais je doute qu’ils puissent complétement disparaître.

  le socialiste.

  Si j’ai bonne mémoire, l’un des chefs de l’école saint-simonienne, M. Bazard, pensait tout le contraire.

  l’économiste.

  Vous faites confusion. Voici ce que M. Bazard écrivait dans sa préface de la traduction française de la Défense de l’usure de Jérémie Bentham:

  “.... Il est permis de conclure que l’intérêt, en tant que représentant le loyer des instruments de travail, tend à disparaître complétement, et que des parties qui le composent aujourd’hui, la prime d’assurance est la seule qui doive rester en se réduisant elle-même, par suite des progrès de l’organisation industrielle, sur la proportion des seuls risques qui peuvent être considérés comme au-dessus de la prévoyance et de la sagesse humaines1 .”

  Avec M. Bazard, je doute que les risques du prêt disparaissent jamais complétement; car je ne pense pas qu’on réussisse jamais à supprimer tous les accidents, naturels ou autres, qui menacent les capitaux prètés. Les employeurs de capitaux, ceux qui les exposent à être détruits, auront donc toujours une prime d’assurance à payer pour couvrir ce risque.

  le socialiste.

  Cependant la mutualité.....

  l’économiste.

  Aucune mutualité ne saurait empêcher un risque qui existe de tomber sur quelqu’un. Vous prêtez un capital à un fermier dont les bâtiments d’exploitation peuvent être détruits par un incendie, dont les récoltes peuvent être ravagées par la grêle, les charançons, et que sais-je encore? Vous courez en conséquence différents risques. Ces risques doivent être couverts, sinon vous ne prêterez pas.

  le socialiste.

  Mais si le fermier est assuré contre l’incendie, la grêle et les charançons?

  l’économiste.

  Il n’en payera pas moins une prime annuelle sur le capital que vous lui aurez prêté pour augmenter son matériel d’exploitation ou pour développer ses cultures; seulement, au lieu de vous la payer à vous, il la payera à des assureurs. Il la leur payera moins cher, car c’est leur spécialité d’assurer, et ce n’est pas la vôtre; mais il la leur payera. Les parties de l’intérêt qu’il déboursera annuellement pour avoir l’usage de votre capital seront séparées, mais elles n’en subsisteront pas moins.

  le conservateur.

  Et le loyer, pensez-vous avec M. Bazard qu’il puisse disparaître?

  l’économiste.

  Le loyer, tel que le définit M. Bazard, c’est la partie des frais de production de l’intérêt, représentant la compensation du dommage et le salaire du travail.

  Peut-on se dessaisir d’un capital, sans éprouver aucun dommage par suite de son absence? Oui, si l’on est sûr de n’en avoir pas besoin jusqu’à l’époque où il sera remboursé, ou bien encore de pouvoir le récupérer ou le réaliser sans perte. Ces deux circonstances se présenteront-elles un jour d’une manière régulière, normale, permanente? Arrivera-t-il que tout le capital utilisé dans la production soit remboursable ou réalisable sans perte, à la volonté des prêteurs?

  le conservateur.

  Chimère!

  l’économiste.

  Je ne serai point si affirmatif. Il faut bien remarquer que tous les capitaux employés ou même employables dans la production ne constituent pas tout le capital disponible de la société. On ne prête généralement que les capitaux dont on n’a pas besoin actuellement. Eh bien, il pourra arriver qu’on n’en prête plus d’autres. On ne subira plus alors aucun dommage effectif en prêtant. Sera-t-il possible de supprimer, de même, le dommage éventuel? Le roulement des capitaux finira-t-il par s’opérer d’une manière assez parfaite pour que les sorties des capitaux de la production soient régulièrement compensées par les entrées? Voilà ce que je ne saurais dire, mais ce qui est possible. Si la production et la circulation des capitaux n’étaient pas ralenties et troublées par mille entraves, on serait bientôt pleinement édifié à cet égard.

  Reste le salaire rémunérant le travail du prêt, la peine que se donne le prêteur en prêtant. Ce travail est réel, et comme tout travail réel, il mérite salaire.

  Depuis l’invention et la multiplication des banques, ce travail s’est déplacé ou divisé. Le capitaliste qui envoie son argent à une banque ne se donne qu’une très faible peine. En revanche, la banque qui prête cet argent à un entrepreneur d’industrie accomplit un véritable travail et supporte des frais assez considérables. Ce travail doit être rémunéré, ces frais doivent être couverts. Qui doit les payer? Évidemment celui qui emploie le capital, à charge de les rejeter sur le consommateur de la denrée produite à l’aide de ce capital.

  Peut-on supposer que ces frais disparaissent jamais? Non! s’ils peuvent se réduire, par la multiplication du nombre des intermédiaires exerçant spécialement le métier de prêteurs de capitaux, ils ne sauraient s’annuler tout à fait. Une banque doit et devra toujours payer son local, ses employés, etc. Voilà, au moins, une partie des frais de production de l’intérêt qui est indestructible.

  le conservateur.

  Ah! c’est fort heureux.

  l’économiste.

  Pourquoi donc? La société qui consomme les produits du travail n’est-elle pas intéressée à ce qu’ils se vendent au prix le plus bas possible? Or, l’intérêt du capital figure pour une part plus ou moins forte dans le prix de toutes choses. S’il n’existait pas ou s’il était plus faible, on se procurerait ces choses en échange d’une moindre quantité de travail, puisqu’elles en contiendraient moins.

  L’aisance générale des populations croît à mesure que l’intérêt s’abaisse; elle serait à son maximum si l’intérêt venait à tomber naturellement à zéro.

  le socialiste.

  Je saisis parfaitement cette analyse des frais de production de l’intérêt; je vois que l’intérêt se compose de parties réelles qu’il faut couvrir, sans quoi.... sans quoi.....

  l’économiste.

  ... les capitalistes ne prêteraient point leurs capitaux, ou si on les forçait à les prêter, ils cesseraient d’en former, ils cesseraient d’épargner. Or comme les capitaux, sauf peut-être les métaux précieux et quelques autres denrées, sont essentiellement destructibles, les capitaux actuels de la société, champs de blé, pâturages, vignes, maisons, meubles, outils, approvisionnements disparaitraient d’ici à un petit nombre d’années, si l’on ne prenait soin de les entretenir et de les renouveler par le travail et l’épargne.

  le socialiste.

  Vous avez rendu ma pensée. Je vois aussi que ces différentes parties des frais de production tendent naturellement à se réduire. Mais le prix courant de l’intérêt est-il donc toujours la représentation exacte des éléments ou frais de production de l’intérêt?

  l’économiste.

  Il en est du capital comme de toute chose. Lorsqu’on offre plus de capitaux qu’on n’en demande, le prix courant de l’intérêt baisse. Néanmoins il ne saurait jamais tomber beaucoup au-dessous des frais de production, car on aime mieux garder un capital que de le prêter à perte. Il peut monter au-dessus, lorsque la demande des capitaux est plus active que l’offre. Mais si la disproportion devient trop forte, les capitaux attirés par la prime de plus en plus considérable qui leur est offerte, affluent bientôt au marché et l’équilibre se rétablit. Le prix courant se confond alors, de nouveau, avec le prix naturel.

  Cet équilibre s’établit de lui-même, à moins que des obstacles factices ne l’empêchent de s’établir. Je vous parlerai de ces obstacles lorsque nous nous occuperons des banques. Mais c’est principalement sur les frais de production qu’il faut agir pour abaisser d’une manière régulière et permanente le taux de l’intérêt. Or ces frais ne sauraient être supprimés, en tout ou en partie, au moyen d’une loi.

  le conservateur.

  Enfin, nous voici revenus au taux légal!

  l’économiste.

  On ne peut pas plus dire à un capitaliste: “Tu ne céderas point ton capital, au-dessus d’un intérêt maximum de cinq et six pour cent”, qu’on ne peut dire à un marchand: “Tu ne vendras point ton sucre au-dessus d’un prix maximum de huit sous la livre.” Si avec huit sous le marchand ne peut rembourser les frais de fabrication du sucre, et rémunérer son propre travail, il cessera de vendre du sucre. De même, si avec un intérêt maximum de cinq ou six pour cent le capitaliste ne couvre pas les risques du prêt, le dommage résultant de la privation de son capital et la peine qu’il se donne en prêtant, il cessera de prêter.

  le conservateur.

  On ne cesse pas cependant. Mon usurier...

  l’économiste.

  Ou s’il continue à prêter, ne sera-t-il pas obligé d’ajouter à l’intérêt la prime des risques supplémentaires qu’il court en violant la loi? C’est ce que n’a pas manqué de faire votre usurier. Sans la loi limitative du taux de l’intérêt, il n’aurait exigé peut-être que vingt pour cent, ou moins encore.

  le conservateur.

  Quoi! vous pensez que les frais de production de l’intérêt du capital prêté à mon fils s’élèvent bien à vingt pour cent?

  l’économiste.

  Je le pense. On court de gros risques en prêtant aux jeunes habitués de Breda-Street. Ces aimables escompteurs du droit à l’héritage n’offrent pas, avouez-le, des garanties morales bien solides?

  le socialiste.

  Cependant, à tout prendre, la loi prohibitive de l’usure n’a pu avoir des résultats bien funestes. On s’y dérobe si aisément.

  l’économiste.

  Détrompez-vous! Beaucoup d’hommes se trouvent dans une situation telle qu’ils ne peuvent emprunter, à moins de payer un gros intérêt. Or la loi ayant interdit le prêt dit usuraire, les gens qui respectent religieusement la loi existante, qu’elle soit bonne ou mauvaise, s’abstiennent de prêter à ces hommes besoigneux. Ceux-ci sont réduits à s’adresser à certains individus qui n’ont point de ces scrupules, et qui profitent de leur petit nombre et de l’intensité des besoins de leurs clients pour surélever encore le taux de l’intérêt.

  La loi limitative du taux de l’intérêt établit, vous le voyez, un véritable monopole au bénéfice des prèteurs les moins scrupuleux, et au détriment des emprunteurs les plus misérables. C’est grâce à cette loi absurde, que les prêteurs interlopes ou usuriers égorgent les ouvriers et les petits marchands qui empruntent à la petite semaine, les négociants qui viennent d’éprouver un sinistre, et tant d’autres.

  Comprenez-vous maintenant que l’économie politique s’élève, au nom de l’intérêt des masses, contre cette limitation du droit de prêter, et qu’elle entreprenne la défense de l’usure?

  le socialiste.

  Oui, je le comprends. Je vois que la loi n’empêche pas l’usure; je vois, au contraire, qu’elle la rend plus âpre. Je vois que si cette loi restrictive venait à être abolie, les emprunteurs les plus besoigneux payeraient une prime de moins aux prêteurs.

  l’économiste.

  Ce serait un bienfait immense pour les classes les plus misérables de la société. Réclamons donc l’abolition de l’intérêt légal, ce sera le meilleur moyen d’avoir raison des usuriers et d’en finir avec l’usure.

  SIXIÈME SOIRÉE

  SOMMAIRE: Droit d’échanger.—De l’échange du travail.—Lois sur les coalitions.—Articles 414 et 415 du Code pénal.—Coalition des charpentiers parisiens en 1845.—Démonstration de la loi qui fait graviter le prix des choses vers la somme de leurs frais de production.—Son application au travail.—Que l’ouvrier peut quelquefois faire la loi au maître.—Exemple des Antilles anglaises.—Organisation naturelle de la vente du travail.

  l’économiste.

  L’échange est plus entravé encore que le prêt. L’echange du travail est atteint par la législation des passeports et des livrets, par les lois sur les coalitions; l’échange de propriétés immobilières est soumis à des formalités coûteuses et abusives; l’échange des produits est grevé, à l’intérieur, par divers impôts indirects, no-tamment par les droits d’octrois, à l’extérieur par les douanes. Ces différentes atteintes portées à la propriété des échangistes ont uniformément pour résultats de diminuer la Production et de troubler la Distribution équitable de la richesse.

  Occupons-nous d’abord des obstacles apportés au libre échange du travail.

  le socialiste.

  Ne devrions-nous pas, auparavant, achever d’examiner ce qui concerne la propriété extérieure?

  l’économiste.

  On peut considérer le travail comme une propriété extérieure. L’entrepreneur qui achète du travail n’achète pas les facultés, les forces de l’ouvrier; il achète la portion de ces forces que l’ouvrier sépare de lui-même en travaillant. L’échange n’est véritablement conclu ou terminé qu’après que l’ouvrier, qui a séparé de lui-même une partie de ses forces physiques, morales et intellectuelles, a reçu en échange des produits (le plus souvent des métaux précieux) contenant de même une certaine quantité de travail. C’est donc bien un échange de deux propriétés extérieures.

  Tout échange ne peut être équitable qu’à la condition d’être parfaitement libre. Deux hommes qui font un échange ne sont-ils pas les meilleurs juges de leur intéret? un tiers peut-il légitimement intervenir pour obliger l’un des deux contractants à donner plus ou à recevoir moins qu’il n’aurait donné ou reçu si l’échange eût été libre? Si l’un ou l’autre juge que la chose qu’on lui offre est trop chère, il ne l’achète point.

  le socialiste.

  Et s’il est forcé de l’acheter afin de pouvoir vivre? Si un ouvrier, pressé par la faim, est obligé d’aliéner une quantité considérable de son travail en échange d’un faible salaire?

  l’économiste.

  Voilà une objection qui va nous obliger à décrire un bien long circuit.

  le socialiste.

  Mais avouez anssi qu’elle est bien forte...elle contient véritablement tout le socialisme. Les socialistes ont reconnu, constaté qu’il n’y a point et qu’il ne peut y avoir égalité dans le mode actuel d’échange du travail; que le maître est naturellement plus fort que l’ouvrier; qu’il peut, en conséquence, toujours lui faire la loi, et qu’il la lui fait. Après avoir bien constaté cette inégalité manifeste, ils ont recherché les moyens de la faire disparaître. Ils en ont trouvé deux: l’intervention de l’État entre le vendeur et l’acheteur de travail, et l’Association qui supprime la vente du travail.

  l’économiste.

  Êtes-vous bien sûr que l’inégalité dont vous parlez existe?

  le socialiste.

  Si j’en suis sûr? Mais les maîtres de l’économie politique eux-mêmes l’ont reconnue cette-inégalité. Si j’avais les œuvres d’Adam Smith sous la main.....

  le conservateur.

  Les voici dans ma bibliothèqne.

  l’économiste.

  Voici la page.

  le socialiste.

  Prêtez-moi attention, je vous prie:

  “Ce qui décide partout du salaire ordinaire du travail, dit Adam Smith, c’est le contrat passé entre le maître et l’ouvrier, dont les intérêts ne sont pas du tout les mêmes. Les ouvriers veulent gagner le plus, les maîtres donner le moins qu’il se peut. Ils sont disposés à se liguer les uns pour hausser, les autres pour abaisser le prix du travail.

  “Il n’est pas difficile de prévoir de quel côté doit rester ordinairement l’avantage, et quelle est celle des deux parties qui forcera l’autre à se soumettre aux conditions qu’elle impose. Les maîtres étant en plus petit nombre, il leur est bien plus facile de s’entendre. D’ailleurs la loi les autorise, ou du moins ne leur défend pas de se liguer, au lieu qu’elle le défend aux ouvriers. Nous n’avons point d’acte du parlement contre la conspiration de baisser la main-d’œuvre, et nous en avons plusieurs contre celle de la hausser. Ajoutons que dans ces sortes de disputes les maîtres peuvent tenir bien plus longtemps. Un propriétaire, un fermier, un maître manufacturier, un marchand peuvent généralement vivre une année ou deux des fonds qu’ils ont par devers eux, sans employer un seul ouvrier. La plupart des ouvriers ne pourraient pas subsister une semaine, fort peu l’espace d’un mois et presque aucun l’espace d’un an sans travailler. A la longue, le maître ne peut pas plus se passer de l’ouvrier que l’ouvrier du maître; mais le besoin qu’il en a n’est pas si urgent.”

  Écoutez, je vous prie, encore ceci:

  “Il est rare, dit-on, qu’on entende parler d’une ligue de la part des maîtres, et on parle souvent de celles que font les ouvriers. Mais quiconque imagine là-dessus que les maîtres ne s’entendent pas, connaît aussi peu le monde que le sujet dont il s’agit; il y a partout une conspiration tacite, mais constante, parmi les maîtres, pour que le prix actuel du travail ne monte point. S’écarter de cette loi ou convention tacite est partout l’action d’un faux frère et une sorte de tache pour un maître parmi ses voisins et ses égaux. Il est vrai qu’on entend rarement parler de cette ligue, parce qu’elle est d’usage et qu’elle n’est pour ainsi dire que l’état naturel des choses, qui ne fait point sensation. Les maîtres se concertent aussi quelquefois pour faire baisser le salaire du travail au-dessous de son prix actuel. Ce projet est conduit dans le plus grand silence et le plus grand secret jusqu’au moment de l’exécution; et si les ouvriers cèdent sans résistance, comme il arrive quelquefois, quoiqu’ils sentent toute la rigueur du coup, le public n’en parle point. Cependant ils opposent souvent une ligue défensive, et dans certaines occasions ils n’attendent pas qu’on les provoque; ils forment d’eux-mêmes une conspiration pour que les maîtres augmentent leur salaire. Les prétextes ordinaires dont ils se servent sont tantôt la cherté des denrées, tantôt la grandeur des profits que les maîtres font sur leur ouvrage. Mais soit que leurs ligues soient offensives ou défensives, elles font toujours grand bruit. Pour faire décider promptement la question, ils ne manquent jamais de remplir le monde de leurs clameurs, et ils poussent quelquefois la mutinerie jusqu’à la violence et aux outrages les moins pardonnables; ils sont forcenés et agissent avec toute la folie et l’extravagance de gens désespérés, qui se voient dans l’alternative de mourir de faim ou d’obtenir sur-lechamp par la terreur ce qu’ils demandent à leurs maîtres. Ceux-ci, de leur côté, crient tout aussi haut, et ne cessent d’invoquer le magistrat civil et l’exécution rigoureuse des lois portées avec tant de sévérité contre les complots des domestiques, des ouvriers et des journaliers. En conséquence, les ouvriers ne retirent presque jamais aucun avantage de la violence et de ces associations tumultueuses qui, généralement, n’aboutissent à rien qu’à la punition et à la ruine des chefs, tant parce que le magistrat civil interpose son autorité, que parce que la plupart des ouvriers sont dans la nécessité de se soumettre pour avoir du pain.”

  Voilà, n’est-il pas vrai, une condamnation éloquente de votre système de libre concurrence, tracée de la main même du maître de la science économique? Dans les débats du salaire, le maître est plus fort que l’ouvrier, c’est Adam Smith lui-même qui le constate! Après cet aveu du maître, qu’auraient dû faire les disciples? S’ils avaient été véritablement possédés de l’amour de la justice et de l’humanité, n’auraient-ils pas dù rechercher les moyens d’établir l’égalité dans les relations des maîtres avec les ouvriers? Ont-ils rempli ce devoir?... Qu’ont-ils proposé à la place du salariat, cette dernière transformation de la servitude, comme l’a si bien nommé M. de Châteaubriand? Qu’ont-ils proposé à la place de ce laisser-faire inique et sauvage qui asseoit la prospérité du maître sur la ruine de l’ouvrier? qu’ont-ils proposé, je vous le demande?

  l’économiste.

  Rien.

  le socialiste.

  En effet, ils ont dit qu’ils ne pouvaient rien contre les lois naturelles qui gouvernent la société; ils ont avoué honteusement leur impuissance à venir en aide aux travailleurs. Mais ce devoir de justice et d’humanité qu’ils ont méconnu, nous autres socialistes nous l’avons rempli. En substituant l’Association au salariat, nous avons mis fin à l’exploitation de l’homme par l’homme et à la tyrannie du capital.

  l’économiste.

  Je....

  le conservateur.

  Permettez-moi d’abord de faire une simple observation. Dans le passage d’Adam Smith qui vient d’être cité, il est question de lois qui répriment inégalement les coalitions des maîtres et celles des ouvriers. Nous n’avons, Dieu merci, rien de pareil en France. Nos lois sont égales pour tous. Il n’y a plus d’inégalités sur la terre française!

  l’économiste.

  Vous vous trompez. La loi française a établi, au contraire, une inégalité flagrante entre le maître et l’ouvrier. Il me suffira de lire les articles 414 et 415 du Code pénal, pour vous le prouver.

  “Art. 414. Toute coalition entre ceux qui font travailler des ouvriers, tendant à forcer injustement et abusivement l’abaissement des salaires, suivie d’une tentative ou d’un commencement d’exécution, sera punie d’un emprisonnement de six jours à un mois, et d’une amende de deux cents à trois mille francs.

  Art. 415. Toute coalition de la part des ouvriers pour faire cesser, en même temps, de travailler, interdire le travail dans un atelier, empêcher de s’y rendre et d’y rester avant ou après certaines heures, et, en général, pour suspendre, empêcher, enchérir les travaux, s’il y a eu tentative ou commencement d’exécution, sera punie d’un emprisonnement d’un mois au moins et de trois mois au plus.—Les chefs ou moteurs seront punis d’un emprisonnement de deux à cinq ans.”

  Vous le voyez, les maîtres ne peuvent être poursuivis que lorsqu’il y a tentative injuste et abusive de leur part, pour faire baisser le salaire; les ouvriers sout poursuivis pour la tentative pure et simple de coalition; en outre, les pénalités sont monstrueusement inégales.

  le conservateur.

  L’Assemblée nationale n’a-t-elle pas réformé ces deux articles?

  le socialiste.

  Elle les aurait réformés peut-être sans l’opposition d’un économiste. En attendant ils subsistent, et Dieu sait quelle désastreuse influence ils exercent sur le prix du travail. Souvenez-vous de la coalition des charpentiers parisiens en 1845. Les compagnons se coalisèrent pour obtenir une augmentation de 1 fr. sur le salaire qui était de 4 fr. Les patrons se coalisèrent pour résister.

  le conservateur.

  Le fait ne fut pas établi.

  le socialiste.

  Le fait fut au contraire parfaitement établi. A cette époque, où les associations étaient soigneusement interdites, les maîtres charpentiers avaient obtenu l’autorisation de constituer une chambre syndicale pour le perfectionnement de leur industrie; mais, dans cette chambre de perfectionnement, on s’occupait des salaires plus que de toute autre chose.

  le conservateur.

  Qu’en savez-vous?

  le socialiste.

  Les débats du procès l’ont clairement établi. Les délégués des ouvriers s’adressèrent au président de la chambre syndicale pour obtenir l’augmentation du salaire. Le président la leur refusa, après une longue délibération de l’assemblée. Cependant les maîtres ne furent point poursuivis, et, en effet, ils ne pouvaient pas l’être. Ils s’étaient coalisés à la vérité, mais non pour abaisser “injustement et abusivement” le salaire; ils s’étaient coalisés pour empêcher le salaire de hausser.

  l’économiste.

  Ce qui revenait absolument au même.

  le socialiste.

  Mais les législateurs du régime impérial ne l’avaient pas entendu ainsi. Les maîtres furent donc renvoyés absous. Les chefs de la coalition ouvrière furent condamnés, les uns à cinq ans, les autres à trois and d’emprisonnement.

  l’économiste.

  Oui, ce fut une des condamnations les plus déplorables dont les annales judiciaires fassent mention.

  le conservateur.

  Si je ne me trompe, la coalition occasionna des sévices particuliers. Certains ouvriers coalisés maltraitèrent des compagnons qui n’avaient point voulu prendre part à la coalition. Mais votre système de laisser faire autorise peut-être ces procédés-là.

  l’économiste.

  Beaucoup moins que le vôtre. Quand on dit liberté illimitée, on entend liberté égale pour tout le monde, respect égal aux droits de tous et de chacun. Or, lorsqu’un ouvrier empêche par intimidation ou violence un autre ouvrier de travailler, il porte atteinte à un droit, il viole une propriété, il est un tyran, un spoliateur, et il doit être rigoureusement puni comme tel. Les ouvriers qui avaient commis ce genre de délit dans l’affaire des charpentiers n’étaient nullement excusables et l’on fit bien de les condamner. Mais tous ne l’avaient pas commis. Les chefs de la coalition n’avaient ni excercé ni ordonné aucune violence. Cependant ils furent punis plus sévèrement que les autres.

  le conservateur.

  La loi sera réformée.

  l’économiste.

  Tant qu’elle subsistera, ce sera une loi inique.

  le conservateur.

  Quoi? alors même qu’elle n’établirait plus aucune différence entre les maîtres et les ouvriers?

  l’économiste.

  Oui. Que dit Adam Smith? que les maîtres peuvent s’entendre avec beaucoup plus de facilité que les ouvriers, et que la loi peut beaucoup plus difficilement les atteindre. Or, si la loi atteint quatre coalitions d’ouvriers sur une coalition de maîtres, est-ce une loi juste?

  Dans la pratique, l’influence de cette loi est désastreuse pour les ouvriers. Les maîtres, sachant que la loi les atteint difficilement, tandis qu’elle atteint facilement les ouvriers, sont excités à élever et à soutenir des prétentions abusives dans le règlement du prix du travail. Toute loi sur les coalitions, si égale qu’on la fasse, constitue donc une intervention de la société, en faveur du maître. On a fini par s’en convaincre en Angleterre, et l’on a aboli cette loi sur les coalitions, qui excitait les justes réclamations d’Adam Smith.

  le conservateur.

  Mais voyons! Les coalitions sont-elles légitimes ou ne le sont-elles pas? Constituent-elles un accord frauduleux ou un accord licite? Voilà la question! Or, sur cette question, l’opinion de nos grandes assemblées n’a jamais été douteuse. Les membres de notre première Assemblée constituante et de la Convention elle-même, se montraient unanimes pour empêcher toute union, toute entente entre les entrepreneurs ou les ouvriers. Le conventionnel Chapelier écrivait, dans un de ses rapports, cette phrase qui est demeurée célèbre: “Il faut absolument empêcher les entrepreneurs et les ouvriers de se réunir pour se concerter sur leurs prétendus intérêts communs.” Qu’en pensez-vous?

  l’économiste.

  Je pense que le plus subtil criminaliste ne saurait voir aucun délit dans l’action de deux ou de plusieurs hommes qui s’entendent pour obtenir une augmentation sur le prix de leur marchandise; je pense qu’en édictant des lois pour réprimer ce prétendu délit on porte une atteinte injuste et nuisible à la propriété des industriels et des ouvriers.

  Je dis plus. En interdisant les coalitions, on empêche un accord souvent indispensable.

  le socialiste.

  Les économistes n’ont-ils pas toujours considéré les coalitions comme nuisibles ou tout au moins comme inutiles?

  l’économiste.

  Cela dépend des circonstances et de la manière dont les coalitions sont conduites. Mais pour vous faire bien voir dans quelles circonstances une coalition peut être utile, et comment elle doit être conduite pour donner de bons resultats, je suis obligé de rentrer dans le fond du débat. Vous avez affirmé qu’il n’y a point de justice possible sous le régime du salariat; que le maître étant naturellement plus fort que l’ouvrier doit naturellement aussi l’opprimer.

  le conservateur.

  La conséquence n’est pas rigoureuse. Il y a des sentiments philanthropiques qui tempèrent ce que l’intérêt privé peut avoir de trop âpre.

  l’économiste.

  Nullement. J’accepte la conséquence comme rigoureuse et je la crois telle. On ne fait pas de philanthropie dans le domaine des affaires, et l’on a raison, car la philanthropie n’y serait pas à sa place. Nous reviendrons là-dessus plus tard....

  Donc vous êtes d’avis que le maître peut toujours faire la loi à l’ouvrier, partant que le salariat exclut la justice.

  le socialiste.

  Je suis de l’opinion d’Adam Smith.

  l’économiste.

  Adam Smith a dit que le maître peut opprimer l’ouvrier plus aisement que l’ouvrier ne peut opprimer le maître; il n’a pas dit que le maître se trouve toujours nécessairement en position de faire la loi à l’ouvrier.

  le socialiste.

  Il a constaté une inégalité naturelle, qui existe en faveur du maître.

  l’économiste.

  Oui, mais cette inégalité peut ne pas exister. Il peut se rencontrer telle situation où l’ouvrier soit plus fort que le maître.

  le socialiste.

  S’il y a coalition entre les ouvriers?

  l’économiste.

  Non, sans coalition. Je vous en citerai un exemple tout à l’heure. Or, si l’inégalité ne se produit pas toujours, ne peut-il pas se faire qu’elle ne se produise jamais?

  le socialiste.

  Bon! vous allez arriver à l’organisation du travail.

  l’économiste.

  Dieu m’en préserve!

  En venant ici, j’ai passé devant la boutique de Fossin. Il y avait, à l’étalage, de fort belles parures de diamants. Sur le trottoir en face, une marchande d’oranges débitait sa marchandise. Elle avait des oranges de deux ou trois qualités, et, dans un coin de son éventaire, un paquet d’oranges moisies qu’elle offrait à vil prix.

  le conservateur.

  Quel est ce logogriphe?

  l’économiste.

  Remarquez bien, je vous prie, la différence des deux industries. Fossin vend des diamants, c’est-à-dire une marchandise essentiellement durable. Que l’acheteur vienne ou non, le marchand de diamants peut attendre, sans craindre que sa marchandise subisse le moindre déchet. Mais que la marchande d’oranges ne réussisse pas à se défaire de sa provision, et bientôt il ne lui restera plus une seule orange saine. Elle sera obligée de jeter sa marchandise sur le fumier.

  Voilà, certes, une différence notable entre les deux industries. Fossin peut attendre longtemps des acheteurs, sans craindre que sa marchandise se gâte, la marchande d’oranges ne le peut pas. Est-ce à dire que la marchande d’oranges soit exposée plus que Fossin à recevoir la loi de ses acheteurs?

  le socialiste.

  C’est selon! si la marchande d’oranges n’a pas soin de proportionner exactement la quantité de sa marchandise au nombre de ses acheteurs, elle sera obligée de réduire ses prix ou de perdre une partie de ses oranges.

  le conservateur.

  Elle fera, ma foi! un fort mauvais commerce.

  l’économiste.

  Aussi toute marchande d’oranges qui entend son métier évite-t-elle soigneusement de se charger de plus de marchandise qu’elle n’en peut vendre au prix rémunérateur?

  le conservateur.

  Qu’entendez-vous par prix rémunérateur?

  l’économiste.

  J’entends le prix qui couvre les frais de production de la denrée, y compris le bénéfice naturel de la marchande.

  le socialiste.

  Vous ne résolvez pas la difficulté. Dans une année où la récolte des oranges est surabondante, que fera-t-on du surplus, si les marchandes n’en demandent pas plus que de coutume? Faudra-t-il laisser pourrir les oranges surabondantes?

  l’économiste.

  Si l’on récolte plus d’oranges, on en offrira davantage, et le prix baissera. Le prix venant à baisser, la demande augmentera, et le surplus de la récolte trouvera ainsi à se placer.

  le socialiste.

  Dans quelle proportion la baisse aura-t-elle lieu?

  l’économiste.

  D’après toutes les observations qui ont été jusqu’à présent recueillies, on peut affirmer que:

  Lorsque l’offre dépasse la demande en progression arithmétique, le prix baisse en progression géométrique, et, de même, lorsque la demande dépasse l’offre en progression arithmétique, le prix hausse en progression géomètrique.

  Vous ne tarderez pas à apercevoir les résultats bienfaisants de cette loi économique.

  le socialiste.

  Si une telle loi existe, ne doit-elle pas avoir, au contraire, des résultats essentiellement funestes? Supposez, par exemple, qu’un propriétaire d’orangers recueille communément cinq cent mille oranges par année et qu’il trouve à les vendre à raison de deux centimes piece. Cela lui fait une somme de dix mille francs avec laquelle il paye ses ouvriers, rémunère son travail de directeur d’exploitation, couvre, en un mot, ses frais de production. Survient une année abondante. Au lieu de cinq cent mille oranges, il en récolte un million. Il offre, en conséquence, deux fois plus d’oranges au marché. En vertu de votre loi économique, le prix tombe de deux centimes à un demi-centime, et le malheureux propriétaire, victime de l’abondance, ne reçoit que cinq mille francs pour un million d’oranges, tandis que l’année précédente, il avait reçu dix mille francs pour une quantité de moitié moindre.

  le conservateur.

  Il est certain que la surabondance des biens est quelquefois nuisible. Demandez plutôt à nos fermiers laquelle ils préfèrent d’une année d’abondance ou d’une année moyenne, d’une année où le blé est à vingt-deux francs ou d’une année où il tombe à dix francs.

  l’économiste.

  Voilà des phénomènes économiques que la loi qui vient d’être formulée peut seule expliquer. Mais il ne résulte pas du tout de cette loi que le doublement d’une récolte doive amener une baisse des trois quarts dans le prix, car la demande augmente toujours, plus ou moins, à mesure que le prix baisse. Reprenons l’exemple du propriétaire d’orangers. A deux centimes pièce, ce propriétaire couvrait les frais de production de cinq cent mille oranges. Si la récolte vient à doubler, les frais de production n’augmenteront pas dans la même proportion. Toutefois ils augmenteront. Il faut plus de travail pour récolter un million d’oranges que pour en récolter cinq cent mille. En outre, les propriétaires seront obligés de payer ce travail plus cher, car le salaire hausse toujours lorsque la demande du travail augmente. Les frais de production s’élèveront donc de moitié peut-être. Ils monteront de dix mille à quinze mille francs. Pour couvrir cette dernière somme, qui représente ses frais de production, le propriétaire devra vendre sa récolte d’oranges à raison de un centime et demi pièce.

  La question est de savoir si, de même qu’il réussissait à vendre cinq cent mille oranges en les offrant à deux centimes, il réussira à en vendre un million, en les offrant à un centime et demi; la question est de savoir si un demicentime de baisse suffira pour faire doubler la demande.

  Si cette baisse ne suffit point, notre propriétaire sera obligé de réduire encore son prix, sous peine de garder une partie de sa marchandise. Mais alors il sera en perte. S’il ne vend que neuf cent mille oranges à un centime et demi, il ne couvrira pas ses frais; s’il en vend un million à un centime et un quart, il les couvrira encore moins.

  L’expérience seule peut servir de guide, dans ce cas. Une certaine baisse dans le prix n’augmente pas également la consommation de toutes les denrées. Une baisse de moitié dans le prix du sucre, par exemple, pourra en doubler la consommation. Une baisse de moitié dans le prix de l’avoine ou du sarrasin pourra n’augmenter que d’une quantité assez faible la demande de ces deux denrées. Dans une année où la récolte a dépassé les prévisions habituelles, c’est donc une question difficile de savoir s’il convient d’élever l’offre en proportion de l’augmentation de la récolte ou s’il vaut mieux conserver une partie de la denrée afin d’en maintenir le prix.

  le socialiste.

  Et si la denrée n’est point de nature à se conserver on pourra donc trouver avantage à la laisser se perdre.

  l’économiste.

  Oui, ou ce qui revient économiquement au même, à la distribuer gratis à des gens qui ne l’eussent achetée à aucun prix. Mais il y a fort peu de denrées que l’on ne puisse conserver sous une forme ou sous une autre.

  S’il vous reste quelque doute sur l’existence de la loi économique que je viens de signaler, examinez ce qui s’est passé récemment dans le commerce du blé. En 1847, notre récolte de blé a été en déficit; au lieu de récolter soixante millions d’hectolitres de blé, on n’en a récolté que cinquante millions environ. Vous savez quel a été le résultat commercial de ce déficit de la récolte. De vingt ou vingt-deux francs, son cours ordinaire, le blé a monté à quarante ou cinquante francs. L’année suivante, au contraire, la moisson a été abondante, on a récolté huit ou dix millions d’hectolitres de plus que de coutume. De quarante ou cinquante francs, le prix est tombé alors, par gradations successives, à quinze francs et, dans certaines localités, jusqu’à dix francs. Dans la première de ces deux années, une diminution d’un quart dans l’offre a rapidement amené le doublement du prix; dans la seconde, une augmentation d’un quart dans l’offre, a fait descendre successivement le prix à la moitié de son taux ordinaire.

  La même loi gouverne les prix de toutes les denrées. Seulement, il faut toujours bien tenir compte, en l’observant, de l’augmentation de la demande qui résulte de la diminution du prix, et vice versâ.

  le socialiste.

  Si une faible diminution dans l’offre peut amener une augmentation si considérable dans le prix, je m’explique un fait qui était demeuré jusqu’à présent fort obscur pour moi. A la fin du siècle dernier, la disette régnait à Marseille. Le prix du blé était monté fort haut... pas assez cependant au gré de certains marchands qui entreprirent de le faire hausser encore. Ils imaginèrent, en conséquence, de jeter à la mer une partie de leur approvisionnement. Cette idée heureuse leur valut de gros bénéfices. Mais un enfant avait été témoin de leur action impie et criminelle. Sa jeune àme en conçut une indignation profonde. Il se demanda quelle était donc cette société, où il était utile aux uns d’affamer les autres, et il déclara une immortelle guerre à une civilisation qui enfantait de si abominables excès. Il consacra sa vie à combiner une Organisation nouvelle... Cet enfant, ce réformateur, vous le connaissez, c’est Fourier.

  l’économiste.

  L’anecdote peut être vraie, car le fait s’est produit fréquemment dans les années de disette, comme aussi dans les années d’abondance; mais, à mes yeux, elle ne prouve qu’une seule chose: c’est que Fourier était un fort mauvais observateur.

  le socialiste.

  Par exemple!

  l’économiste.

  Fourier voyait l’effet, mais il ne voyait pas la cause. A cette époque, les achats de blé à l’extérieur étaient entravés, à la fois, par la difficulté des communications et par les lois de douanes. Aussi les détenteurs de blé à l’intérieur jouissaient-ils d’un véritable monopole. Pour rendre ce monopole plus fructueux encore, ils ne mettaient au marché, ils n’offraient qu’une partie de leur approvisionnement. Si la loi ne s’était pas mêlée de leurs affaires, ils auraient gardé le reste en magasin, car le blé est une des denrées qui se conservent le plus longtemps. Malheureusement il y avait, en ce temps-là, des lois contre les accapareurs. Ces lois interdisaient aux négociants de garder en magasin au dela d’une certaine quantité de substances alimentaires. Placés dans l’alternative de mettre tout leur blé au marché ou d’en détruire une partie, ceux-ci trouvaient souvent plus d’avantage à adopter ce dernier parti. C’était barbare, c’était odieux, si vous voulez; mais à qui la faute?

  Sous un régime de pleine liberté économique, rien de pareil ne pourrait avoir lieu. Sous ce régime, le prix de toutes choses tend naturellement à tomber au taux le plus bas possible. Par cela même, en effet, qu’une faible différence entre les deux niveaux de l’offre et de la demande amène un écart considérable dans les prix, l’équilibre doit nécessairement s’établir. Aussitôt que l’approvisionnement d’une denrée ne suffit pas à la demande, le prix monte avec une rapidité telle, qu’on trouve bientôt grand profit à apporter au marché un supplément de cette denrée. Or, les hommes étant naturellement à l’affût de toutes les affaires qui leur présentent quelque avantage, les concurrents affluent pour combler le déficit.

  Aussitôt que le déficit est comblé et l’équilibre rétabli, les expéditions s’arrêtent d’elles-mêmes; car les prix tendant a baisser progressivement à mesure que les approvisionnements augmentent, les expéditeurs ne tarderaient pas à être en perte.

  Si donc on laisse aux producteurs ou aux marchands pleine liberté de porter toujours leur denrée où le besoin s’en fait sentir, les approvisionnements seront toujours aussi justement proportionnés que possible aux exigences de la consommation; si, au contraire, on porte atteinte, d’une manière ou d’une autre, à la liberté des communications, si on entrave les négociants dans le libre exercice de leur industrie, l’équilibre sera longtemps à s’établir, et, dans l’intervalle, les producteurs maîtres du marché pourront réaliser d’énormes bénéfices, aux dépens des malheureux consommateurs.

  Remarquons encore que ces bénéfices croissent d’autant plus qu’on peut moins se passer de la denrée. Supposons qu’une compagnie obtienne le monopole de la vente des oranges dans un pays. Si cette compagnie profite de son monopole pour diminuer de moitié la quantité des oranges précédemment offertes, dans l’espoir d’en quadrupler le prix, elle pourra fort bien éprouver un mécompte. Les oranges n’étant pas, en effet, une denrée de première nécessité, à mesure que la diminution de l’offre fera croître le prix, la demande décroîtra de même. L’écart entre l’offre et la demande demeurant en conséquence, toujours très faible, le prix courant des oranges ne pourra s’élever beaucoup au-dessus du prix naturel.

  Il n’en sera pas de même, si une compagnie réussit à accaparer le monopole de la production ou de la vente des céréales. Le blé étant une denrée de première nécessité, une diminution de moitié dans l’offre et, par suite, une hausse progressionnelle dans le prix n’entraînerait qu’une assez faible réduction dans la demande. Telle diminution de l’offre, qui ferait hausser à peine le prix des oranges, aurait pour résultat de doubler ou de tripler le prix du blé.

  Quand une denrée est de toute première nécessité, comme le blé, la demande ne diminue qu’avec l’extinction d’une partie de la population ou l’épuisement de ses moyens.

  Enfin, dans certaines circonstances, telle denrée, dont le prix ne pouvait monter bien haut dans un milieu ordinaire, acquiert tout à coup une valeur inusitée. Transportez, par exemple, une marchande d’oranges au milieu d’une caravane qui traverse le désert. Dans les premiers jours, elle est obligée de débiter sa marchandise à un taux modéré, sous peine de n’en pas vendre. Mais l’eau vient à manquer: aussitôt la demande des oranges se double, se triple, se quadruple. Le prix monte progressivement à mesure que la demande s’éleve. Il ne tarde guère à dépasser les ressources des voyageurs les moins fortunés, et à atteindre celles des voyageurs les plus riches: en quelques heures, la valeur d’une orange peut s’élever de la sorte à un million. Si la marchande, souffrant elle-même de la soif, diminue son offre à mesure que son propre besoin devient plus intense, un moment arrive où le prix des oranges dépasse toutes les ressources disponibles de ses compagnons de la caravane, fussent-ils des nababs.

  En observant bien cette loi économique, vous vous rendrez compte d’une multitude de phénomènes qui ont dû jusqu’à présent vous échapper. Vous saurez au juste pourquoi les producteurs ont toujours visé à obtenir le privilége exclusif ou monopole de la vente de leurs produits dans certaines circonscriptions; pourquoi ils se montrent par-dessus tout friands des monopoles qui affectent les denrées de première nécessité; pourquoi enfin ces monopoles ont été de tout temps la terreur des populations.

  Je reviens maintenant à ma marchande d’oranges et à Fossin.

  le conservateur.

  Enfin!

  l’économiste.

  Grâce à la nature particulière de sa marchandise, qui est durable, Fossin peut sans trop d’inconvénient, élever son approvisionnement de pierres précieuses au delà des besoins du moment. Rien ne l’oblige à offrir immédiatement le surplus. La marchande d’oranges se trouve dans une situation bien différente. Si elle a acheté plus d’oranges qu’elle n’en peut vendre à un prix rémunérateur, elle n’a point la ressource de tenir indéfiniment le surplus en réserve, car les oranges sont sujettes à se gâter. Mais en offrant toute sa provision, elle s’expose à faire baisser le prix des oranges au point de perdre au delà même de la valeur de l’excédant. Que fera-t-elle donc? Détruira-t-elle cet excédant dont elle s’est maladroitement chargée? Non! elle le vendra en dehors de son marché ordinaire, ou bien elle attendra qu’une partie de ses oranges soient légèrement gâtées pour les vendre à une catégorie particulière d’acheteurs, de manière à ne point faire concurrence au reste de sa provision. Voilà ce qui vous explique la présence de ces petits tas d’oranges à moitié gâtées, au coin de l’éventaire des marchandes.

  le conservateur.

  Que nous importe?

  l’économiste.

  Vous allez voir. Ces tas sont d’autant plus considérables que les marchandes entendent plus mal leur métier, ou que la consommation des oranges subit des fluctuations plus fortes. Mais on ne les verrait point encombrer les éventaires, si les marchandes savaient exactement proportionner leurs achats à leurs ventes, si encore la consommation n’éprouvait jamais de variations subites. Si les choses se passaient ainsi les marchandes d’oranges pourraient comme Fossin proportionner toujours leur offre à la demande, sans éprouver aucun dommage; elles cesseraient de vendre à perte une partie de leur marchandise dans la crainte que l’excédant ne vienne à se gâter, ou d’attendre que cet excédant se gâte afin de s’en débarrasser à vil prix.

  le conservateur.

  Sans doute!

  l’économiste.

  Eh! bien, si vous examinez de près la situation des ouvriers vis-à-vis des entrepreneurs d’industrie, vous la trouverez parfaitement analogue à celle des marchandes d’oranges vis-à-vis de leurs acheteurs.

  Si vous examinez de même la situation des entrepreneurs vis-à-vis des ouvriers, vous la trouverez absolument semblable à celle de Fossin vis-à-vis de sa clientèle.

  Le travail, en effet, est une denrée essentiellement périssable, en ce sens que le travailleur, dénué de ressources, est exposé à périr dans un bref délai, s’il ne trouve point à placer sa marchandise. Aussi le prix du travail peut-il tomber excessivement bas, dans les moments où l’offre du travail est considérable et où la demande est faible.

  Heureusement, la bienfaisance s’interpose alors, en enlevant du marché pour les nourrir gratis une partie des travailleurs qui offrent inutilement leurs bras. Si la bienfaisance est insuffisante, le prix du travail continue à baisser jusqu’à ce qu’une partie du travail inutilement offert périsse. Alors l’équilibre commence de nouveau à se rétablir.

  L’entrepreneur qui offre des salaires aux ouvriers n’est pas obligé, communément du moins, de se hâter si fort. Lorsque le travail est rare sur le marché il peut tenir en réserve une partie de ses salaires, et proportionner, comme Fossin, son offre à la demande.

  Cependant, il y a des exceptions à cette règle. Il arrive parfois que les entrepreneurs sont obligés de vendre leurs salaires à vil prix, de céder de gros salaires en échange de faibles quantités de travail, ou, pour me servir de l’expression commune, de recevoir la loi des ouvriers. Cela arrive lorsqu’ils ont un besoin urgent de plus de bras qu’il ne s’en offre sur le marché.

  Cela est arrivé notamment aux Antilles anglaises, à l’époque de l’émancipation. Lorsque l’esclavage retenait les travailleurs sur les plantations, les colons disposaient d’une quantité de travail à peu près suffisante pour mettre leurs exploitations en valeur. Mais lorsque l’esclavage vint à être aboli, un grand nombre d’esclaves se mirent à travailler pour leur propre compte. Le nombre de ceux qui continuèrent à s’employer à la culture des cannes se trouva insuffisant. A l’instant même la loi économique de l’offre et de la demande fit sentir son influence sur les prix du travail. A la Jamaïque, où la journée d’un esclave revenait à peine à 1 fr., la même quantité de travail libre se vendit successivement 3, 5, 10 et même jusqu’à 15 et 16 fr.1 . La plus grande partie de l’indemnité accordée aux colons y passa. Mais bientôt une foule de colons ayant abandonné leurs plantations, faute de pouvoir payer ces salaires exorbitants, la demande diminua; d’un autre côté, l’appât de ces salaires ayant attiré des travailleurs de tous les pays, même de la Chine, l’offre s’augmenta. Grâce à ce double mouvement qui rapprochait incessamment et irrésistiblement l’offre de la demande, les salaires baissèrent, et, aujourd’hui, le prix du travail aux Antilles anglaises a pris à peu près son niveau naturel.

  le socialiste.

  Qu’entendez-vous par le niveau naturel du salaire?

  l’économiste.

  J’entends par là la somme nécessaire pour couvrir les frais de production du travail. Je vous expliquerai cela plus au long dans un prochain entretien.

  Vous voyez, en définitive, que les entrepreneurs ne peuvent pas plus se soustraire à la loi de l’offre et de la demande que les ouvriers eux-mêmes. Lorsque l’équilibre est rompu contre eux, lorsque la balance du travail est en faveur des ouvriers, ils peuvent sans doute tenir en réserve,—le plus souvent du moins,—une partie de leurs salaires, et empêcher ainsi le prix du travail de monter trop haut; ils peuvent imiter les joailliers qui gardent leurs bijoux et leurs pierreries plutôt que de les vendre au-dessous du prix rémunérateur; mais, en fin de compte, un moment arrive où, sous peine de faire banqueroute ou de renoncer à leur industrie, ils sont obligés de mettre leurs salaires au marché.

  Lorsque l’équilibre est rompu contre les ouvriers, lorsque la balance du travail est en faveur des entrepreneurs, les ouvriers sont communément obligés de vendre leur travail quand même, à moins que la Charité ne vienne à leur secours, ou qu’ils ne réussissent, d’une manière ou d’une autre, à retirer du marché le travail surabondant. Leur situation est alors plus mauvaise que celle des entrepreneurs manquant de travail, car ils vendent, comme les marchandes d’oranges, une denrée peu durable, prompte à s’avarier ou à se détruire.

  Mais si, connaissant bien la nature de leur denrée, ils avaient assez de prudence pour ne jamais en surcharger les marchés, pour proportionner toujours leur offre à la demande, ne pourraient-ils pas aussi, comme les marchandes d’oranges qui savent leur métier, vendre toujours leur marchandise à un prix rémunérateur?

  le socialiste.

  Est-il bien possible de proportionner toujours l’offre du travail à la demande? Les ouvriers sont-ils les maîtres d’empêcher les Crises de bouleverser l’industrie? Peuvent-ils encore transporter aisément d’un lieu à un autre un excédant de travail, comme on transporte des ballots de marchandises? Cet équilibre, qui permettrait aux ouvriers de vendre leur travail à un prix rémunérateur, ne doit-il pas, en vertu de la nature même des choses, être incessamment rompu contre eux? Et alors le prix du travail, comme celui de toute marchandise peu durable, ne doit-il pas baisser d’une manière effrayante?

  l’économiste.

  Les obstacles que vous attribuez à la nature des choses sont le plus souvent artificiels. Étudiez mieux les crises industrielles, et vous verrez qu’elles ont presque toujours leur origine dans les lois qui entravent la production ou la circulation des richesses sur les différents points du globe. Recherchez mieux aussi pourquoi les ouvriers réussissent si malaisément à proportionner leur offre à la demande, et vous trouverez que cela vient principalement, d’une part, des institutions de charité légale, qui les excitent à se multipher sans mesure; d’une autre part, des obstacles apportés à la facile entente des travailleurs et à la libre circulation du travail, lois économiques sur les coalitions, sur l’apprentissage, sur les livrets, sur les passeports, lois civiles refusant aux étrangers des droits égaux à ceux des nationaux. Si faible que soit l’action de ces obstacles artificiels sur le mouvement de l’offre et de la demande, elle devient considérable, énorme sur le prix, puisque la progression arithmétique d’un côté engendre une progression géométrique de l’autre.

  Je vous ai démontré déjà que les lois sur les coalitions font nécessairement, inevitablement pencher la balance du côté du maître dans le débat du salaire. Sans ces lois funestes, les ouvriers auraient, en outre, des facilités qui leur manquent aujourd’hui pour proportionner toujours promptement l’offre des bras à la demande du travail. Voici comment.

  Je reprends l’exemple de la marchande d’oranges: elle vend, je suppose, journellement une centaine d’oranges. Un jour la demande baisse de moitié, on ne lui en demande plus que cinquante. Si elle persiste ce jour-là à en vouloir vendre cent, elle sera obligée d’abaisser notablement son prix, et elle éprouvera une perte sensible. Il y aura avantage pour elle à retirer du marché l’excédant de cinquante oranges, dussent ces oranges réservées pourrir dans la journée.

  Eh bien! la situation est absolument la même pour les ouvriers marchands de travail.

  le conservateur.

  Je le veux bien, mais qui consentira à jouer le rôle des oranges destinées à moisir en magasin?

  l’économiste.

  Individuellement, personne! maîs si les ouvriers sont intelligents et si la loi ne les empêche pas de s’entendre, savez-vous ce qu’ils feront? au lieu de laisser le salaîre tomber progressivement à mesure que la demande baîssera, ils retireront du marché l’excédant dont la présence motive cette baisse.

  le conservateur.

  Mais, encore une fois, qui consentira à se laisser retirer du marché?

  l’économiste.

  Personne sans doute, si la masse n’indemnise pas ceux qui se retireront; mais il y aura concurrence pour quitter le marché, si elle alloue aux ouvriers retirés une indemnité égale au salaire qu’ils recevaient en travaillant.

  le conservateur.

  Croyez-vous que les ouvriers occupés trouveraient leur compte à cette combinaison?

  l’économiste.

  Je le crois. Prenons un exemple. Cent ouvriers reçoivent un salaire de 4 fr. par jour. La demande vient à baisser d’un dixième. Si nos cent ouvriers persistent néanmoins à offrir leurs bras, de combien baissera le salaire? Il baissera, non d’un dixième, mais de près d’un cinquième (ce serait exactement d’un cinquième, si la baisse du prix n’augmentait pas toujours quelque peu la demande), il sera réduit à 3 fr. 20. La somme totale des salaires tombera de 400 fr. à 320 fr. Mais si les ouvriersunis retirent du marché les dix travailleurs surabondants, en leur attribuant une indemnité égale au salaire, soit 40 fr.; au lieu de ne recevoir plus que 320 fr. (100 × 3 fr. 20), ils recevront 360 fr. (90 × 4). Au lieu de perdre 80 fr., ils ne perdront que 40 fr.

  Vous voyez que les coalitions peuvent avoir leur utilité, qu’elles sont nécessitées même, accidentellement, par la nature de la marchandise que l’ouvrier met au marché. C’est donc commettre un acte de spoliation véritable à l’égard de la masse des travailleurs que de les interdire.

  Si les unions d’ouvriers étaient permises, si, en même temps, les lois sur les livrets et les passeports ne gênaient point les mouvements des travailleurs, vous verriez la circulation du travail se développer rapidement sur une échelle immense. Adam Smith, examinant les causes de l’abaissement excessif des salaires dans certaines localités, disait: “Après tout ce qui s’est dit de la légèreté et de l’inconstance de la nature humaine, il paraît évidemment par l’expérience que, de toutes les espèces de bagages, l’homme est le plus difficile à transporter.” Mais les moyens de communication sont bien plus perfectionnés aujourd’hui qu’ils ne l’étaient du temps d’Adam Smith. Avec les chemins de fer, aidés des télégraphes électriques, on peut transporter rapidement et à bas prix une masse de travailleurs, d’un lieu où le travail surabonde dans un lieu où il manque.

  Vous comprenez, toutefois, que ce commerce de travail ne saurait prendre le développement dont il est susceptible aussi longtemps que la loi continuera de l’entraver.

  le socialiste.

  Le gouvernement devrait même guider les travailleurs dans leurs recherches, il devrait leur indiquer les endroits où le travail abonde et ceux où il est rare.

  l’économiste.

  Laissez faire l’industrie privée, elle servira beaucoup mieux les travailleurs que ne pourrait le faire le gouvernement. Donnez pleine liberté de mouvement et d’accord aux ouvriers, et ils sauront bien chercher les endroits où la vente du travail s’opère avec le plus d’avantages; des intermédiaires actifs et intelligents les seconderont au plus bas prix possible (pourvu toutefois qu’on ne s’avise pas de limiter le nombre de ces intermédiaires et de réglementer leur industrie). L’offre et la demande du travail qui gravitent naturellement l’une vers l’autre, s’équilibreront alors sans obstacles.

  Laissez faire les travailleurs, laissez passer le travail, voilà toute la solution du problème du salariat1 .

  SEPTIÈME SOIRÉE

  SOMMAIRE: Droit d’échanger, suite.—Échanges internationaux.—Système protecteur.—Son but.—Aphorismes de M. de Bourrienne.—Origine du système protecteur.—Système mercantile.—Arguments en faveur de la protection.—Épuisement du numéraire.—Indépendance de l’étranger.—Augmentation de la production intérieure.—Que le système protecteur a diminué la production générale.—Qu’il a rendu la production précaire et la distribution inique.

  l’économiste.

  Le libre échange des produits est plus entravé encore que le libre échange du travail. Le commerce des biens immobiliers est soumis à des formalités vexatoires et coûteuses, le commerce des objets mobiliers est grevé ou totalement empêché par divers impôts indirects, notamment par les octrois et les douanes.

  Permettez-moi de laisser de côté, pour le moment, les lois restrictives qui ont l’impôt pour objet, et de m’occuper de celles qui ont été établies principalement pour entraver.

  Je veux parler des douanes.

  le conservateur.

  Les douanes n’ont-elles pas été établies en vue de l’impôt?

  l’économiste.

  Quelquefois, mais rarement. Le plus souvent, les douanes ont été instituées uniquement pour faire obstacle aux échanges.

  le socialiste.

  C’est le système protecteur.

  l’économiste.

  Or le système protecteur prédomine dans tous les pays civilisés, sauf peut-être en Angleterre et aux États-Unis, où la douane tend à devenir purement fiscale.

  Partout les douanes fiscales, celles qui n’ont d’autre but que de remplir les coffres du Trésor public sont violemment combattues par les partisans du système protecteur. Ceux-ci veulent qu’on écarte l’intérêt du Trésor dans la question des douanes pour s’occuper exclusivement de ce qu’ils appellent les intérêts de l’industrie.

  le conservateur.

  Ces deux intérêts sont-ils donc contradictoires?

  l’économiste.

  Quand on se place au point de vue du système protecteur, oui. En 1822, M. de Bourrienne, rapporteur de la loi relative à l’importation des fers étrangers, signalait clairement et acceptait pleinement cette opposition.

  “Un pays, disait-il, où les droits de douane ne seraient qu’un objet de fiscalité, marcherait à grands pas vers sa décadence; si l’intérêt du fisc l’emportait sur l’intérêt général, il n’en résulterait qu’un avantage momentané que l’on payerait cher un jour.

  Un pays peut jouir d’une grande prospérité et avoir peu de produits de douane; il pourrait avoir de grandes recettes de douanes et être dans un état de gêne et de dépérissement; peut-être pourrait-on prouver que l’un est la conséquence de l’autre.

  Les droits de douane ne sont pas un impôt c’est une prime d’encouragement pour l’agriculture, le commerce et l’industrie; et les lois qui les établissent doivent être des lois quelquefois de politique, toujours de protection, jamais d’intérêt fiscal.

  Les douanes ne devant pas être dans l’intérêt du fisc, l’impôt qui résulte du droit n’est qu’accessoire.

  Une preuve que l’impôt en fait de douane n’est qu’accessoire, c’est que le droit à l’exportation est presque nul, et que le législateur, en frappant d’un droit à l’importation, certains objets, a pour but qu’il n’en entre point ou le moins possible. L’augmentation ou la diminution du produit ne doit jamais l’arrêter.

  ... Si la loi qui vous est soumise amène une diminution dans le produit des douanes, vous devez vous en féliciter. Ce sora la preuve que vous aurez atteint le but que vous vous proposez, de ralentir des importations dangereuses et de favoriser des exportations utiles.”

  Le but dont parle M. de Bourrienne a été parfaitement atteint en France. Notre tarif est essentiellement protecteur. Nos lois de douanes ont été établies de manière à empêcher, autant que possible, les marchandises étrangères d’entrer en France. Or, des marchandises qui n’entrent pas ne payent pas de droit, comme l’a spirituellement prouvé l’auteur des Sophismes économiques, M. Bastiat. Un tarif protecteur doit être le moins productif possible, pour atteindre le but qu’il se propose.

  Un tarif fiscal doit être, au contraire, le plus productif possible.

  le conservateur.

  Mais si un tarif protecteur nuit d’un côté aux intérêts du Trésor, d’un autre côté il les sert bien davantage en protégeant l’industrie nationale contre la concurrence étrangère. La protection comble la différence qui existe naturellement entre les prix de revient de certaines denrées à l’intérieur et les prix de leurs similaires à l’étranger.

  l’économiste.

  C’est la doctrine de M. de Bourrienne. Nous verrons bien tout à l’heure si elle remplit son objet. Mais d’abord je remarquerai que les douanes n’ont été établies, dans les trois derniers siècles, ni pour remplir les coffres du Trésor ni pour égaliser les prix de revient des produits nationaux avec ceux des produits étrangers.

  Pendant longtemps, ça été une opinion généralement répandue que la richesse résidait seulement dans l’or et l’argent. Chaque pays s’est donc ingénié à rechercher les moyens d’attirer l’or étranger, et, après l’avoir attiré, de l’empêcher de sortir. On a imaginé pour cela d’encourager l’exportation des denrées nationales, et d’entraver l’importation des denrées étrangères. Aux yeux des théoriciens du système, la différence devait inévitablement se payer en or ou en argent. Plus cette différence était forte, plus la nation s’enrichissait.

  Lorsque les exportations dépassaient les importations (ou du moins lorsqu’on croyait qu’elles les dépassaient) on disait qu’on avait la balance du commerce en sa faveur.

  Le système se nommait système mercantile.

  le conservateur.

  Vous prenez les choses de bien haut. Sachez donc que les partisans éclairés du système protecteur répudient aujourd’hui, comme vous, les illusions de la balance du commerce. Vous ne verrez jamais, en Angleterre, les défenseurs de la protection s’appuyer sur la balance du commerce. Si nous confondions le système protecteur avec le système mercantile, ferions-nous donc une distinction entre les produits similaires et les produits non similaires? Si nous nous proposions pour but d’attirer les métaux précieux dans le pays et de les empêcher d’en sortir, ne prohiberions-nous pas indistinctement toutes les denrées étrangères, afin de recevoir seulement de l’or et de l’argent en échange?—Nous nous contentons, vous le savez, de faire la guerre aux similaires, et encore pas à tous! Nous admettons volontiers les produits inférieurs aux nôtres.

  l’économiste.

  La générosité n’est pas grande, avouez-le. Je ne vous ai pas dit que le système mercantile se confondît avec le système protecteur, je vous ai dit qu’il en était le point de départ. On commença par entraver l’importation des marchandises étrangères, afin d’importer plus d’or et d’argent. Plus tard on pensa que ce but serait plus promptement atteint encore, si l’on excitait le développement des industries d’exportation. On favorisa, en conséquence, par des prohibitions et des primes, cette catégorie d’industries. On employa les mêmes procédés pour implanter de nouvelles industries dans le pays.

  le conservateur.

  C’est cela.

  l’économiste.

  On voulait délivrer la nation du tribut qu’elle payait à l’étranger pour les produits de ces industries. Ce fut Colbert qui développa et perfectionna de la sorte le système mercantile.

  le conservateur.

  Le grand Colbert! le restaurateur de l’industrie française!

  l’économiste.

  Je dirais plus volontiers le destructeur de l’industrie française.

  Vous voyez donc que le système mercantile a engendré la protection. Le plus souvent, à la vérité, la théorie de la balance du commerce n’a été invoquée que comme un prétexte. Si la protection appauvrissait les masses, elle enrichissait certains industriels...

  le socialiste.

  Cela se conçoit. Si le prix des choses augmente en progression géométrique lorsque l’approvisionnement diminue en progression arithmétique, les industriels qui obtenaient l’exclusion des produits de leurs concurrents étrangers, devaient réaliser des bénéfices considérables.

  l’économiste.

  Ils les réalisaient en effet. Aussi, la plupart de nos grandes fortunes industrielles datent-elles de l’établissement des principaux droits protecteurs.

  le conservateur.

  Selon vous, nos industriels seraient donc redevables de leur fortune à la seule protection de la loi. Leur travail ne méritait apparemment aucune rémunération.

  le socialiste.

  Leur travail méritait la rémunération qu’il obtenait naturellement avant l’établissement des droits protecteurs. On n’attaque point ce bénéfice légitime; on attaque le gain réalisé abusivement, frauduleusement, grâce aux droits protecteurs.

  le conservateur.

  Frauduleusement!

  l’économiste.

  Le mot est trop vif1 . Sans doute les industriels qui invequaient la théorie de la balance du commerce se preoccupaient, en réalité, fort peu des résultats généraux de cette théorie. Ils n’avaient guère en vue que les avantages particuliers qu’ils pouvaient en tirer...

  le conservateur.

  Qu’en savez-vous?

  l’économiste.

  Je vous en fais juge. Vous aviseriez-vous jamais de solliciter une loi qui ne favoriserait point votre intérêt particulier.

  le conservateur.

  Non, sans doute. Mais je ne solliciterais pas non plus une loi qui favoriserait mon intérêt particulier aux dépens de l’intérêt général.

  l’économiste.

  J’en suis convaincu. Voilà pourquoi je repousse ce mot frauduleusement. Les industriels d’antrefois demandaient des droits protecteurs en vue d’augmenter leurs profits; mais le système mercantile, en recommandant la protection, ne les mettait-il pas en règle avec leurs consciences?

  le socialiste.

  Si le système mercantile était faux, la masse de la nation s’en trouvait-elle moins spoliée?

  l’économiste.

  Mon Dieu! combien de gens seraient spoliés si les théories du socialisme venaient à être appliquées. Cependant il y a de fort honnêtes gens parml les socialistes.

  le socialiste.

  Je n’admets pas cette assimilation. Les industriels qui invoquaient les sophismes du système mercantile se préoccupaient uniquement de leur intérêt privé; à leurs yeux l’intérêt général n’était qu’un prétexte ou une formule vide de sens. Nous autres, au contraire, nous n’avons en vue que l’intérêt général.

  l’économiste.

  S’il en est ainsi, si l’intérêt de l’humanité seul vous pousse à réclamer des mesures, dont l’application serait funeste à l’humanité, vous ètes, en effet, plus excusables que les industriels en question. Mais oseriez-vous bien affirmer que vous n’obéissez à aucune impulsion de la vanité, de l’orgueil, de l’ambition ou de la haine? Vos apôtres, sont-ils tous également doux et humbles de cœur?...

  Les industriels qui réclamaient l’établissement des droits protecteurs s’appuyaient sur le système mercantile. Si l’on m’abandonne ce système, on convient donc qu’ils étaient dans le faux?

  le conservateur.

  Entendons-nous. Je condamne, en effet, le système mercantile. Je ne crois pas à la balance du commerce. C’est une vieille erreur économique. Mais résulte-t-il de la que les industriels eussent tort de demander des droits protecteurs?

  l’économiste.

  La conséquence me paraît assez logique. Si ces industriels quémandeurs de protection avaient eu de bonnes raisons à mettre en avant, pourquoi se seraient-ils servis d’une mauvaise?

  le socialiste.

  C’est juste!

  le conservateur.

  Doucement. Je n’admets pas le système mercantile dans toutes ses exagérations, mais ce système ne contient-il pas aussi quelques vérités? Le numéraire ne constitue pas toute la richesse, sans doute, mais n’est-ce pas une partie importante de la richesse? Une nation ne s’exposet-elle point à des catastrophes épouvantables, lorsqu’elle se laisse épuiser de numéraire? Le système protecteur la préserve de ces sinistres désastreux, en empèchant des importations exagérées de produits étrangers.

  Selon vous, la protection a pour résultat unique de permettre aux industriels nationaux de vendre à gros bénéfice des marchandises qu’ils vendaient auparavant à petit bénéfice. Mais vous avez oublié de dire que la protection, en implantant de nouvelles industries dans le pays, affermit l’indépendance nationale, et donne un emploi fructueux à des capitaux et à des bras auparavant inactifs; vous avez oublié de dire que la protection accroît la puissance et la richesse d’un pays.

  l’économiste.

  Vous venez d’exposer les trois principaux arguments du système protecteur. Permettez-moi de laisser le premier de côté; je le reprendrai lorsque nous nous occuperons de la monnaie. Quant à l’argument de la dépendance de l’étranger, il a été cent fois percé à jour. Et vous-même, si vous repoussez la théorie de la balance du commerce, si vous admettez que les produits s’achètent avec des produits, ne devez-vous pas admettre aussi qu’entre deux nations, trafiquant ensemble, la dépendance est mutuelle?

  le conservateur.

  Il faut tenir compte de la nature des denrées échangées. Est-il prudent, par exemple, de dépendre de l’étranger pour une denrée de première nécessité?

  l’économiste.

  L’Angleterre est, vous en conviendrez, une nation essentiellement prudente. Cependant l’Angleterre s’est volontairement exposée à dépendre de la Russie et de l’Union américaine, ses deux grandes rivales, pour ses approvisionnements de blé. C’est apparemment qu’elle n’a pas considéré l’argument de la dépendance de l’étranger comme bien valable. Je crois inutile d’insister sur ce point1 .

  Je passe à votre troisième argument qui a beaucoup plus de valeur, et dont la réfutation est bien plus difficile. Vous dites que le système protecteur, en déterminant l’importation de certaines industries, a augmenté l’emploi des capitaux et des bras, et développé ainsi la richesse nationale.

  le conservateur.

  Cela me paraît incontestable, et puisque vous aimez les exemples je vais vous en citer un. L’Angleterre tirait autrefois ses cotonnades de l’Inde. Un jour, elle imagina de prohiber les indiennes. Qu’arriva-t-il? Le marché se trouvant dégarni de la plus grande partie de ses approvisionnements ordinaires, la fabrication et la vente des cotonnades indigènes donnèrent aussitôt de gros bénéfices. Les capitaux et les bras s’y portèrent en masse. L’Angleterre, qui produisait naguère à peine quelques milliers de yards de cotonnades, en fabriqua des milliards. Au lieu de quelques centaines de fileurs et de tisserands en chambre, elle en eut des milliers qui peuplèrent d’immenses manufactures. Sa richesse et sa puissance s’accrurent soudainement dans des proportions énormes. Oserez-vous prétendre, après cela, que la prohibition des fils et des cotonnades de l’Inde ne lui a pas été avantageuse?

  le socialiste.

  Mais, d’un autre côté, les Indiens, qui perdirent le débouché de l’Angleterre, furent ruinés. Des millions d’hommes se trouvèrent privés d’ouvrage sur les rives de l’Indus et du Gange. Tandis que les manufacturiers de Manchester jetaient les assises de leurs fortunes colossales, tandis que les ouvriers attirés par des salaires inusités, affluaient vers cette métropole nouvelle de la manufacture de coton, les ateliers de l’Inde tombaient en ruine, et les ouvriers indous étaient moissonnés par la misère et la famine.

  l’économiste.

  Le fait est vrai. Le débouché des fileurs et des tisserands de l’Inde venant à se fermer, ces ouvriers furent obligés de se rabattre sur les autres branches d’industrie. Malheureusement, celles-ci se trouvaient déjà suffisamment pourvues de bras. Le taux des salaires dans l’Inde baissa donc au-dessous des frais de production du travail, c’est-à-dire au-dessous de la somme nécessaire à l’ouvrier pour se maintenir et se perpétuer. Il baissa... jusqu’à ce que la misère, la famine et les épidémies, qui sont leurs inséparables compagnes, ayant fait leur office, l’équilibre entre l’offre et la demande des bras commença à se rétablir et le salaire à remonter.

  le socialiste.

  Ainsi la prospérité des manufacturiers anglais eut pour marche-pied les cadavres des travailleurs de l’Inde.

  le conservateur.

  Que voulez-vous? Le proufict de l’un fait le dommage de l’autre, disait Montaigne.

  le socialiste.

  Si le système protecteur ne peut s’établir sans ce funèbre cortége de ruines et de misères, c’est un système immoral, odieux. Je le repousse.

  le conservateur.

  Mon Dieu! si la Providence n’avait fait de l’humanité tout entière qu’une seule nation, un système qui abaisserait certains membres de cette nation immense pour en élever d’autres, qui ruinerait les Indous pour enrichir les Anglais, ce système pourrait être, en effet, qualifié d’immoral et d’odieux. Mais la Providence n’a pas placé qu’un seul peuple dans le monde; elle a semé les nations comme des grains de blé, en leur disant: Croissez et prospérez!—Maintenant que les intérêts de ces nations diverses soient divers ou opposés, c’est un malheur, mais qu’y faire? Chaque peuple doit naturellement s’attacher à augmenter sa puissance et sa richesse. Le système protecteur est un des moyens les plus énergiques et les plus sûrs qu’on puisse employer pour obtenir ce double résultat. On se sert donc du système protecteur! Sans doute, il est fâcheux de dépouiller les ouvriers étrangers de leurs moyens d’existence. Mais l’intérêt du Travail National ne doit-il pas passer avant tout le reste? S’il suffit d’une simple mesure legislative pour donner du travail et du pain aux travailleurs nationaux, le législateur n’est-il pas tenu d’adopter cette mesure sans rechercher si les habitants des bords du Gange ou de l’Indus en souffriront? Chacun ne doit-il pas s’occuper de ses pauvres avant de songer à ceux d’autrui? Et si cet exemple est universellement suivi, si chaque nation adopte la législation qui convient le mieux à ses intérêts particuliers, toutes choses n’iront-elles pas, en définitive, le mieux possible? Tous les peuples ne jouiront-ils pas de toute la somme de prospérité dont ils peuvent jouir?... Vous voyez donc que le système protecteur n’est immoral et odieux que lorsqu’on l’examine à la superficie. Vous voyez que les hommes d’État auraient grandement tort de prêter les mains à votre faux cosmopolitisme.

  l’économiste.

  M. Huskisson prononça un jour, au sein du Parlement anglais, ces paroles remarquables: “Le système protecteur est une invention dont le brevet commence à expirer; il a déjà perdu une grande partie de sa valeur, depuis que toutes les nations s’en sont emparées.” Il me suffira de commenter ces paroles de l’un des plus illustres promoteurs de la liberté commerciale en Angleterre pour détruire vos objections.

  Qu’arriva-t-il, en effet, lorsque l’Angleterre eut ravi, au profit des fabricants de Manchester et de leurs ouvriers, l’industrie des tisserands de Surate, de Madras et de Bombay? Il arriva que toutes les autres nations, séduites par cet avantage apparent, voulurent à leur tour, ravir des industries à l’étranger. La France, qui ne produisait qu’une partie du coton, de la laine, du fer, de la poterie, etc., nécessaires à sa consommation, voulut produire tout le coton, toute la laine, tout le fer, toute la poterie qu’elle pouvait consommer. L’Allemagne et la Russie de même. Il n’y eut pas jusqu’aux plus petits pays, la Belgique, la Hollande et le Danemark, qui ne cherchassent à ravir des industries à l’étranger. Bref, l’entrainement vers le système protecteur fut général.

  Ce qui en résulta, vous le savez! Il en résulta que les ravisseurs d’industries se virent, à leur tour, ravir leur propre travail. L’Angleterre, qui avait enlevé à l’Inde l’industrie des cotonnades, perdit, avec une partie de cette industrie même, plusieurs de ses autres branches de production. La France, qui avait ravi, à l’exemple de l’Angleterre, plusieurs industries étrangères, se vit ravir aussi une partie des siennes. L’Allemagne notamment se protégea, en guise de représailles, contre ses soieries, ses articles de modes et ses vins.... Vous enleviez à votre voisin une partie de ses débouchés, il vous enlevait une partie des vôtres. C’était un pillage universel.

  A l’époque où ce pillage d’industries s’opérait avec le plus d’activité, une brochure fort spirituelle fut publiée en Angleterre. On voyait, au frontispice, une vignette représentant une barraque de singes. Une demi-douzaine de singes, logés dans des compartiments séparés, avaient devant eux leur pitance du jour. Mais, au lieu de manger en paix la portion que le maître de la ménagerie leur avait libéralement servie, chacun de ces malfaisants animaux s’efforçait de dévaliser la part de ses voisins, sans s’apercevoir que ceux-ci lui rendaient la pareille. Chacun se donnait beaucoup de peine pour ravir à ses voisins une subsistance qu’il pouvait prendre aisément devant lui, et une grande quantité d’aliments se perdaient dans la bagarre.

  le conservateur.

  Mais les plus forts ne devaient-ils pas avoir l’avantage dans la lutte? Ne pouvaient-ils pas s’emparer de la part d’autrui, tout en préservant la leur?

  l’économiste.

  Entre singes, la chose est possible; elle ne l’est pas entre nations. Aucune nation n’est assez puissante pour dire aux autres: Je me protégerai contre vos industries, mais je vous défends de vous protéger contre les miennes; je vous ravirai une partie de vos débouchés, mais je vous défends de toucher aux miens. Si une nation s’avisait de tenir un semblable langage, toutes les autres s’uniraient pour la mettre en interdit, et la coalition demeurerait certainement la plus forte.

  le socialiste.

  De sorte qu’en fin de compte personne ne gagne à ces déprédations mutuelles, et que les pillards y gagnent d’autant moins que le pillage devient plus géneral.

  l’économiste.

  Précisément.

  le conservateur.

  Mais lorsque le système protecteur a été adopté par une nation, toutes les autres ne sont-elles pas tenues de l’adopter aussi? Doivent-elles laisser piller leurs industries sans user de représailles?

  l’économiste.

  Ceci est un point à debattre.

  Mais je tiens, avant tout, à complétement vous démontrer que le système protecteur a été nuisible au développement général de la production.

  Examinons donc comment les choses se passaient à l’époque où fut établi le système protecteur. Chaque nation se procurait chez ses voisins une partie des choses nécessaires à sa consommation et leur fournissait d’autres produits en retour.

  Quels produits fournissait-elle, et quels produits recevait-elle?

  Elle fournissait les choses que la nature du sol et le génie particulier de ses producteurs lui permettaient de produire avec le moins d’efforts; elle recevait les choses qu’elles n’aurait pu produire sans y consacrer plus d’efforts.

  Voilà, n’est-il pas vrai, quel devait être l’état des échanges internationaux avant la naissance du système producteur?

  le socialiste.

  C’est la marche naturelle des choses.

  l’économiste.

  Que fit le système protecteur? Augmenta-t-il la somme totale de la production? Pas plus que les singes pillards de la brochure anglaise n’augmentaient la somme de leurs provisions, en se dérobant mutuellement leurs pitances. Jugez-en.

  L’Angleterre dérobait à l’Inde l’industrie du coton; si l’Angleterre produisait d’autant plus, l’Inde produisait d’autant moins. La France dérobait à l’Angleterre une partie de l’industrie du lin; si la France produisait d’autant plus, l’Angleterre produisait d’autant moins. L’Allemagne dérobait à la France une partie de l’industrie des soies; si l’Allemagne produisait d’autant plus, la France produisait d’autant moins... Le système protecteur n’avait donc et ne pouvait avoir pour résultat d’augmenter la masse générale de la production.

  Je dis, maintenant, que ce système a eu et a dû avoir pour résultat d’abaisser la masse générale de la production.

  Voici comment:

  Pourquoi l’Angleterre se protégeait-elle contre les cotonnades de l’Inde, les soieries de la France et les draps de la Belgique? Parce que ces denrées étrangères envahissaient une partie de son marché. Pourquoi l’envahissaient-elles? Parce qu’elles étaient, toutes différences de qualité compensées, à meilleur marché que leurs similaires anglais. Si elles n’avaient point été à meilleur marché, elles ne seraient pas entrées en Angleterre.

  Cela posé, quel fut le premier résultat de la loi qui interdit à ces denrées l’accès du marché anglais? Ce fut de creuser un déficit factice dans l’approvisionnement intérieur. Plus large était ce déficit, plus haut devait naturellement s’élever le prix des marchandises indigènes.

  Avant l’établissement du système producteur, la consommation annuelle du drap en Angleterre était, je suppose, de vingt millions d’aunes, dont l’étranger fournissait la moitié.

  le socialiste.

  Comment l’Angleterre pouvait-elle fournir le reste, si les draps étrangers étaient à plus bas prix que les siens?

  l’économiste.

  Il y a une multitude de variétés de la même denrée. Il y a, par exemple, un grand nombre de qualités de draps. L’Angleterre fabrique certaines de ces qualités à plus bas prix que la Belgique; la Belgique en fabrique d’autres à plus bas prix que l’Angleterre.

  Je reprends. Les draps étrangers viennent à être prohibés en Angleterre. L’approvisionnement étant réduit de moitié, de combien le prix va-t-il hausser? Il haussera en progression géométrique. S’il était de 15 fr. l’aune, il pourra monter jusqu’à 60 fr.

  Mais lorsque le prix d’une denrée vient tout à coup à hausser, qu’arrive-t-il? A moins que cette denrée ne soit de toute première nécessité, auquel cas la demande ne saurait sensiblement baisser, la hausse du prix amène dans la consommation une réduction plus ou moins considérable, selon la nature de la denrée. Si la demande de draps était de vingt millions d’aunes à quinze francs, elle ne sera guère que de quatre ou cinq millions d’aunes à soixante francs. Le prix baissant alors, la demande haussera de nouveau. Ces fluctuations se prolongeront presque indéfiniment. Toutefois, après avoir parcouru les degrés extrêmes de l’échelle, elles se rapprocheront successivement d’un point central, qui est la somme des frais de production du drap en Angleterre.

  Vous savez déjà pourquoi les prix ne sauraient demeurer longtemps en dessus, ni en dessous des frais de production d’une denrée.

  Mais les frais de production des draps anglais sont plus élevés que ceux des draps étrangers. Ils le sont et doivent l’être, sinon la protection serait parfaitement inutile. Quand on peut vendre à plus bas prix que ses concurrents on n’a pas besoin de protection pour les écarter du marché; ils se retirent d’eux-mêmes. Les frais de production des draps étrangers étant de 15 fr., ceux des draps anglais seront, je suppose, de 18 fr. C’est donc vers ce niveau que le prix du drap gravitera désormais en Angleterre. Mais, au prix de 18 fr. on consomme moins de draps qu’au prix de 15 fr. Si l’on en consommait vingt millions d’aunes à l’époque de la libre introduction, on n’en consommera plus que seize ou dix-sept millions après la prohibition.

  le conservateur.

  Soit! mais l’augmentation de la production nationale qui aura monté de dix millions d’aunes à dix-sept millions ne compensera-t-elle pas, et au delà, la légère diminution de la consommation?

  l’économiste.

  La question n’est pas là pour le moment. Le système producteur a-t-il pour résultat de diminuer ou d’augmenter la production générale, voilà la question. Or, si la production des draps anglais s’est augmentée de sept millions, en revanche celle des draps étrangers a baissé de dix, ce qui fait bien, je pense, une diminution de trois millions dans la production générale.

  le conservateur.

  Oui, mais cette diminution n’est que temporaire. L’augmentation d’une industrie dans un pays amène toujours un perfectionnement dans les procédés de fabrication. Où le prix de revient était de 18 fr., il tombe promptement à 17, 16, 15 fr., ét même au-dessous. La consommation se relève alors au niveau où elle était avant la prohibition; elle finit même par le dépasser.

  l’économiste.

  En attendant, je constate qu’il y a eu hausse dans le prix, diminution corrélative de la consommation, partant baisse de la production générale. Je constate que le système protecteur a eu et dû avoir pour premier résultat de diminuer la production générale. C’est un fait désormais acquis à la discussion.

  Je prétends, en outre, que la baisse générale de la production n’est pas accidentelle, temporaire, je prétends qu’elle est perpétuelle... entendons-nous, qu’elle dure autant que la protection même.

  Pourquoi les industriels anglais ne produisaient-ils pas les vingt millions d’aunes de draps consommés dans leur pays? Parce que l’étranger produisait à meilleur marché, à moins de frais, la moitié de ces vingt millions d’aunes.

  Où est la raison de cette différence des frais de production d’une même denrée d’un pays à un autre? Elle est dans les différences naturelles du climat, du sol, du génie des peuples. Or, ces différences naturelles une loi de douanes les supprime-t-elle? Parce qu’on aura décrété que les draps belges ou français n’entreront plus en Angleterre, aura-t-on donné aux producteurs anglais les moyens de fabriquer à aussi bas prix et aussi bien ces qualités particulières de draps? La loi aura-t-elle doté le climat, les eaux, le sol, les travailleurs eux-mêmes, des qualités ou des aptitudes nécessaires à ce genre particulier de production?... Mais si la loi de douanes n’a pas opéré cette transformation merveilleuse, les variétés de draps que l’Angleterre retirait de la France et de la Belgique ne seront-elles pas produites plus chèrement et plus mal par les Anglais?

  le conservateur.

  Souvent, ces différences sont peu sensibles. Le progrès résultant du développement instantané d’une industrie sur le sol national suffit alors pour les compenser, et au delà.

  l’économiste.

  Voyons comment les choses se passent dans la pratique.

  On interdit brusquement le marché national à une certaine catégorie de produits étrangers. L’Allemagne, par exemple, établit un droit prohibitif sur les bronzes et la quincaillerie de Paris. Les fabricants de bronze et les quincailliers de l’Allemagne se mettent, en conséquence, a fabriquer des articles dont ils ne s’étaient point occupés jusque-là. Avant d’avoir achevé leur apprentissage de cette fabrication nouvelle, ils font une foule d’écoles et ils livrent aux consommateurs des produits imparfaits et chers. Des années se passent avant qu’ils n’atteignent le niveau de l’industrie étrangère, quand ils l’atteignent.

  Je suppose, maintenant, que la prohibition n’eût pas été établie; la quincaillerie et l’industrie des bronzes seraient-elles demeurées stationnaires à Paris?

  Quelle a été l’influence de la loi de douane allemande sur ces deux industries parisiennes? En les privant d’une partie de leur débouché, cette loi les a fait rétrograder ou du moins elle a ralenti leurs progrès. Vous savez, en effet, comment procède le progrès industriel. Il procède par la division du travail. Plus le travail se divise, plus les produits se perfectionnent et se multiplient.

  Or, dans quelle circonstance la division du travail peut-elle être portée à son maximum? N’est-ce pas lors-que le marché est le plus étendu possible?

  Lorsqu’un debouché vient à se fermer, lorsque l’étendue du marché vient à se réduire, peu de fabricants cessent tout à fait de travailler, mais la plupart réduisent leur fabrication. Réduisant leur fabrication ils ne peuvent plus autant diviser le travail; ils sont obligés d’employer des procédés moins économiques

  Le progrès de la quincaillerie et de l’industrie des bronzes s’est donc ralenti en France. S’est-il activé en Allemagne, de manière à compenser cette perte dans la production générale? Voyons. Plusieurs années se sont écoulées avant que les quincailliers et les bronziers allemands aient atteint le niveau où se trouvaient leurs rivaux français, à l’époque de l’établissement de la prohibition. Pendant ce temps, l’industrie française aurait continué de progresser. Naturellement plus favorisée que sa rivale, n’aurait-elle pas progressé davantage, au grand profit de la consommation générale?

  Voulez-vous une dernière preuve.

  Le système protecteur est universellement en vigueur depuis un demi-siècle. A coup sûr, les industries augmentées à coup de tarif ont eu le temps d’égaler et de dépasser leurs anciennes rivales. Les ont-elles dépassées? Les ont-elles même égalees? Sont-elles en état de braver la concurrence étrangère? Consultez-les, et vous verrez quelle sera leur réponse?

  le socialiste.

  Oh! elles vous répondront unanimement, comme elles l’ont fait en 1834, qu’elles ont plus que jamais besoin de protection.

  l’économiste.

  Ce qui signifie qu’elles ne peuvent produire encore a aussi bas prix et aussi bien que leurs rivales, malgré une protection d’un demi-siècle.

  En déplaçant une foule d’industries à contre-sens de la nature, le système protecteur a donc eu et dû avoir pour résultat d’augmenter les frais de production de toutes choses, ou, ce qui revient au même, de retarder l’abaissement naturel de ces frais.

  Or, c’est une loi de la nature que le prix courant des choses tende toujours à s’équilibreŕ avec les frais de production, et c’est une autre loi de la nature que la consommation diminue à mesure que le prix s’élêve.

  Que le système protecteur ait augmenté les frais de production des choses, je vous l’ai, je crois, mathématiquement prouvé. Que l’augmentation des frais de production entraîne celle des prix, et celle-ci la diminution de la consommation, partant de la production, cela n’est pas moins exactement établi. Je suis donc fondé à conclure que le système protecteur a diminué la richesse générale du monde.

  le conservateur.

  Cette démonstration me paraît, je l’avoue, difficile à réfuter. Mais enfin, la richesse générale a pu être diminuée et la richesse particulière de certains pays être augmentée. Cette éventualité admise, les pays favorisés n’ont-ils pas eu raison d’adopter le système protecteur?

  l’économiste.

  Mais l’éventualité dont vous parlez n’est guère admissible, convenez-en. Si l’adoption du système protecteur a nécessairement occasionné une diminution, une perte dans la richesse de l’ensemble des nations, cette perte générale a dû, nécessairement aussi, se résoudre en des pertes particulières. Si tout le monde a perdu, il est difficile que quelques-uns aient gagné.

  L’Angleterre, que vous avez en vue, a ravi sans doute beaucoup d’industries à l’étranger, mais l’étranger lui en a ravi beaucoup aussi. Si l’Angleterre n’avait pas adopté le système protecteur, elle aurait produit peut-être moins de blé, de cotonnades et de soieries, mais elle aurait produit plus de fer, d’acier, d’étain, de machines, etc. Sa part dans le dividende général serait peut-être relativement plus faible, mais le dividende étant plus élevé cette part serait effectivement plus forte.

  Mais le système protecteur n’a pas seulement diminué l’abondance de la richesse, il a rendu encore la production nécessairement instable et la répartition nécessairement inique.

  Si ce système était appliqué partout d’une manière complète et stable, si une barrière infranchissable séparait à jamais chaque nation de ses voisines, on réussirait peut-être à éviter les perturbations dans ces marchés toujours les mêmes. Mais le système protecteur n’est nulle part appliqué d’une manière stable et complète, et il ne saurait l’être. Toutes les nations ont des relations au dehors, et elles ne peuvent se passer d’en avoir.

  Or, ces relations indispensables sont journellement troublées par les modifications apportées aux douanes des quarante ou cinquante nations qui ont des douanes. Tantôt c’est un droit que l’on élève, tantôt c’est un droit que l’on abaisse; tantôt c’est une prime que l’on établit, tantôt c’est une prime que l’on retire. Quel est le résultat de ces modifications incessantes des tarifs? Une diminution de travail d’un côté, une augmentation de travail d’un autre. Toute loi qui ferme ou rétrécit un débouché ravit leurs moyens d’existence à des centaines ou à des milliers de travailleurs, en édifiant, ailleurs, des fortunes colossales... Et ces lois, on les compte par milliers depuis l’établissement du système protecteur.

  Soumise à ces perturbations incessantes, l’industrie devient essentiellement précaire. On a consacré un capital considérable à fonder une manufacture de draps ou de soieries. Des centaines d’ouvriers y trouvent des moyens d’existence. Soudain, l’exhaussement d’un tarif étranger ferme le débouché. On est obligé de renvoyer les ouvriers et de laisser rouiller le matériel, ou de le vendre au prix du vieux fer. Mais le mal ne s’arrête pas là. Lorsqu’une manufacture vient à se fermer, toutes les industries qui l’alimentaient sont atteinte à leur tour. Celles-ci étant frappées répandent autour d’elles la contagion du mal. La perturbation venue d’un point isolé, se prolonge successivement sur toute la surface du monde industriel. On est frappé et, le plus souvent, on ignore même d’où est parti le coup.

  Si un tarif est abaissé, la production générale étant augmentée, il y a bénéfice définitif; mais si un tarif est relevé, il y a, de même, perte définitive. Cette perte se rêsout en une diminution des profits et des salaires. Le capitaliste perd son capital, le travailleur perd son travail; l’un est inévitablement voué à la ruine, l’autre à la mort.

  le socialiste.

  C’est affreux.

  l’économiste.

  Tout en produisant de ces résultats d’un côté, la loi enrichit de l’autre, rapidement, comme d’un coup de dé, les industriels devenus maîtres du marché. A la vérité, leur prospérité ne dure guère. Les capitaux et les bras se portent en foule vers les industries protégées. Souvent même, ils s’y portent avec excès. Autres perturbations, autres ruines!

  Sous ce régime, l’industrie n’est plus qu’un jeu de hasard où les uns s’enrichissent, où les autres se ruinent selon les caprices de la fortune; où le laborieux entrepreneur, naguère ouvrier, voit se dissiper soudainement le fruit de toute une vie de travail et d’épargne, tandis qu’ailleurs de riches capitalistes voient se doubler ou se tripler leurs capitaux.

  Mais on ne meurtrit jamais impunément l’humanité. Un long cri d’amertume, de colère retentit, un jour, aux oreilles des rares privilégiés de ce systême. Malheureusement ceux qui le poussèrent et ceux qui s’en firent les échos n’aperçurent point la cause du mal. M. de Sismondi qui, le premier, exprima éloquemment la plainte universelle, ne sut point remonter à la source de tant de perturbations désastreuses. Ses successeurs socialistes firent pis encore: ils attribuèrent le mal à des causes apparentes qui étaient précisément l’opposé des causes réelles; ils imputèrent à la propriété des maux qui provenaient précisément d’atteintes portées au libre exercice ou à la libre disposition de la propriété.

  le socialiste.

  Oui, ce système a dû causer de grands maux, et nous n’en avons, peut-être, pas assez tenu compte.

  le conservateur.

  On aurait mieux fait de s’en passer, j’en conviens. Mais puisqu’on l’a adopté ne faut-il pas bien le conserver? La plupart de nos industries ont grandi sous l’aile de la protection, ne l’oublions pas? Ne serait-il pas imprudent de la leur ravir?

  l’économiste.

  Si le système protecteur est mauvais, il faut évidemment y renoncer. Déjà l’Angleterre nous a donné l’exemple du retour à la liberté commerciale. Imitons-la!1

  le socialiste.

  Par quoi remplaceriez-vous les tarifs protecteurs?

  le conservateur.

  Par des tarifs fiscaux, sans doute?

  le socialiste

  Au point de vue de la stabilité de la production, les tarifs fiscaux ne sont guère préférables aux autres. On les modifie tout aussi fréquemment. En outre, un tarif fiscal est toujours plus ou moins protecteur.

  l’économiste.

  Je ne l’ignore pas. Aussi n’accepterais-je un tarif fiscal que comme un pis-aller. C’est moins mauvais qu’un tarif protecteur, mais c’est encore mauvais. Il faut arriver à la suppression de toute espèce de tarifs, à la pleine liberté des échanges, au respect absolu du droit d’échanger, si l’on veut donner à la production toute la fécondité et toute la stabilité possibles.

  Remarquez bien, du reste, que ce résultat ne pourra être complétement atteint avant la suppression entière de toutes les douanes. Aussi longtemps qu’une douane restera debout, elle occasionnera des perturbations et des ruines dans toute l’étendue de l’arène de la production.

  Cependant, que les principales nations industrielles renoncent à ces vieux instruments de guerre, et l’amélioration sera déjà sensible.

  le socialiste.

  Que de réformes à faire!

  l’économiste.

  Oui, que de réformes véritables!

  HUITIÈME SOIRÉE

  SOMMAIRE: Atteintes portées à la propriété intérieure.—Industries monopolisées ou subventionnées par l’État.—Fabrication de la monnaie.—Nature et usage de la monnaie.—Pourquoi un pays ne saurait être épuisé de numéraire.—Voies de communication.—Exploitées chèrement et mal par l’État.—Transport des lettres.—Maîtres de postes.—Que l’intervention du gouvernement dans la production est toujours nécessairement nuisible.—Subventions et priviléges des théâtres.—Bibliothèques publiques.—Subvention des cultes.—Monopole de l’enseignement.—Ses résultats funestes.

  l’économiste.

  On n’atteint pas seulement la propriété extérieure, ou atteint encore la propriété de l’homme sur sa personne, sur ses facultés, sur ses forces, la propriété intérieure.

  On viole la propriété intérieure, lorsqu’on défend à l’homme d’utiliser ses facultés comme bon lui semble, lorsqu’on lui dit: Tu n’exerceras point telle industrie, ou, si tu l’exerces, tu seras assujetti à certaines gênes, tu seras tenu d’observer certains règlements. Le droit naturel que tu possèdes d’employer tes facultés de la manière la plus utile à toi et aux tiens, ce droit sera diminué ou réglementé.—En vertu de quel droit?—En vertu du droit supérieur de la société.—Mais si je ne fais de mes facultés aucun usage nuisible?—La société est convaincue que tu ne saurais exercer librement certaines industries sans lui nuire.—Mais si la société se trompe? Si en appliquant librement mes facultés à n’importe quelle branche de la production je ne lui porte point dommage?—Eh bien, tant pis pour toi! la société ne saurait avoir tort.

  Cependant, en se trompant ainsi, la société ne s’inflige-t-elle pas, à elle-même, un dommage? Des règlements qui entravent l’activité du producteur n’ont-ils pas pour résultat inévitable, certain, de diminuer la production en augmentant le prix des produits? Si une industrie est réglementée, vexée, en présence d’autres industries demeurées libres, ne se portera-t-on pas de préférence dans celles-ci? ou, si l’on se résigne à exercer l’industrie réglementée, ne rejettera-t-on pas sur les consommateurs une partie du fardeau des vexations et des règlements?

  Laissons de côté les régimes où toutes les industries sont réglementées, ceux encore où aucun travailleur ne peut disposer librement de ses facultés, où le travail est encore esclave. Grâce à Dieu, ces monstruosités commencent à devenir rares. Occupons-nous seulement de ces régimes bâtards où certaines industries sont libres, où d’autres sont réglementées, où d’autres encore sont accaparées par l’État.

  Tel est le régime déplorable qui prévaut actuellement en France.

  le conservateur.

  Vous prétendez que le gouvernement nuit à la société en réglementant certaines branches de la production, et en exerçant, lui-même, certaines industries?

  l’économiste.

  Je le prétends.

  Toute réglementation, aussi bien que tout monopole, se traduisent en une augmentation directe ou indirecte du prix des produits, partant en une diminution de la production.

  Le gouvernement produit plus chèrement et plus mal que les particuliers; en premier lieu, parce qu’en exerçant plusieurs industries, il méconnaît, sinon dans les détails, du moins dans la direction supérieure, le principe économique de la division du travail; en second lieu, parce qu’en s’attribuant, directement ou indirectement, le monopole d’une industrie, il méconnaît le principe économique de la libre concurrence.

  le conservateur.

  Ainsi donc, le gouvernement fabrique la monnaie, construit les routes et les chemins de fer, distribue l’enseignement plus chèrement et plus mal que ne feraient les particuliers.

  l’économiste.

  Sans aucun doute.

  le conservateur.

  Même la monnaie!

  l’économiste.

  La monnaie comme toute autre denrée.

  le conservateur.

  N’est-ce pas un attribut de la souveraineté que de battre monnaie?

  l’économiste.

  Pas plus que de fabriquer des clous ou des boutons de guêtres. Pourquoi la fabrication de la monnaie serait-elle un attribut de la souveraineté? Qu’est-ce que la monnaie? un instrument à l’aide duquel l’échange des valeurs s’opère.....

  le socialiste.

  Il y a des échanges directs. Une multitude d’échanges s’opèrent aussi avec du papier.

  l’économiste.

  Il y a fort peu d’échanges directs, et il y en aura de moins en moins, à mesure que la division du travail s’etendra davantage. Un homme qui passe sa vie à fabriquer la dixième partie d’unc épingle ne saurait échanger directement ce produit contre les choses dont il a besoin. Il est obligé de le troquer d’abord contre une marchandise intermédiaire, laquelle puisse toujours aisément s’échanger contre toutes choses. Cette marchandise intermédiaire doit être durable, facile à diviser et à transporter. Divers métaux, l’or, l’argent, le cuivre, réunissent, à différents degrés, ces qualités. Voilà pourquoi on en a fait des instruments d’échanges, de la monnaie.

  Quant au papier, il peut aussi faire office de monnaie, mais à la condition de représenter une valeur positive, une valeur déjà créée, une valeur concrétée dans un objet existant, disponible, et pouvant servir de monnaie.

  le conservateur.

  Voilà ce que ne comprennent pas malheureusement les partisans du papier-monnaie.

  l’économiste.

  Mais vous-même, vous me faites l’effet de n’avoir pas une idée bien juste de la monnaie, lorsque vous dites que la fabrication de ce véhicule des échanges est un attribut de la souveraineté. Ce n’est point parce qu’un souverain a marqué une pièce d’or on d’argent à son effigie, que cette pièce a une valeur, c’est parce qu’elle contient une certaine quantité de travail. Qu’elle soit fabriquée et marquée par un gouvernement ou par un particulier, cela importe peu. Je me trompe! des particuliers la fabriqueraient mieux, à meilleur marché; ils auraient soin aussi de mieux pourvoir le marché de l’assortiment de monnaies que réclament les besoins de la circulation. En outre, si, dès l’origine, la monnaie avait été fabriquée par des particuliers, les falsifications eussent été plus rares.

  le socialiste.

  Qu’en pouvez-vous savoir?

  l’économiste.

  Les falsifications étant commises autrefois par ceux-là mêmes qui avaient le droit exclusif de réprimer toute espèce de rapines et de fraudes, demeuraient nécessairement impunies. A quoi il faut ajouter que le public n’avait aucun moyen de s’y soustraire, puisque les souverains s’attribuaient aussi le droit exclusif de battre monnaie.

  Si la fabrication des monnaies était demeurée libre, des particuliers l’auraient entreprise comme on entreprend toute industrie qui peut donner un bénéfice.

  le conservateur.

  La fabrication des monnaies peut-elle donner un bénéfice?

  l’économiste.

  Comme toute autre fabrication. En France, le gouvernement fait payer trois francs le monnayage d’un kilogramme d’argent, et neuf francs le monnayage d’un kilogramme d’or. Il couvre à peu pres les frais de production de la monnaie. En Angleterre, le monnayage est gratuit.

  le conservateur.

  Ah! trouvez-moi donc un particulier qui consente à travailler gratis?

  l’économiste.

  Défiez-vous, de grâce, de ces mots gratis, gratuit, gratuité. Rien de ce qui coûte du travail n’est gratuit; seulement, il y a différentes manières de rémunérer ce travail. En France, les consommateurs de monnaie en payent directement la fabrication; en Angleterre, les contribuables payent ces frais de fabrication, indirectement, sous forme d’impôts.

  Laquelle de ces deux manières de rémunérer un travail est la plus économique et la plus équitable? C’est évidemment la première. En France, la fabrication de la monnaie coûte annuellement une certaine somme, un million par exemple. Les particuliers qui font transformer des lingots en monnaie remboursent directement ce million. Si le monnayage était gratuit comme en Angleterre, les frais de production en seraient payés par les contribuables. Mais la perception des impôts ne s’opère pas pour rien; en France, elle ne s’élève pas à moins de treize pour cent du principal. Si donc notre monnayage etait gratuit, il coûterait non pas un million, mais onze cent trente mille francs.

  Voilà pour l’économie de la gratuité.

  Voici maintenant pour l’équité de la production gratuite. Qui doit payer une denrée? Celui qui la consomme, n’est-il pas vrai?—Qui doit, en conséquence, supporter les frais de fabrication de la monnaie? Ceux qui se servent de la monnaie.

  le conservateur.

  Mais tout le monde s’en sert.

  l’économiste.

  Avec cette différence que certains individus, les plus riches, s’en servent beaucoup; et que d’autres, les plus pauvres, s’en servent peu. Quand le monnayage se paye directement, il est remboursé par les consommateurs de numéraire en proportion de leur consommation; quand il se paye indirectement, quand il est gratuit, il est remboursé par tout le monde, par les petits consommateurs comme par les gros, souvent par les uns plus que par les autres. Cela dépend de l’assiette de l’impôt. Estce de la justice?

  Si le gouvernement monnaye gratis, les frais de production de la monnaie se trouvent portés à leur maximum; s’il se fait rembourser directement le monnayage, il fabrique tout de même plus cher que l’industrie privée, parce que ce n’est pas sa spécialité de fabriquer de la monnaie.

  Si le monnayage était demeuré libre, il aurait vraisemblablement été exécuté par de grandes maisons d’orfévrerie. Sous ce régime, les consommateurs pouvant refuser la monnaie des falsificateurs, et, de plus, leur faire infliger une punition exemplaire, les falsifications eussent été excessivement rares.

  le socialiste.

  Mais, en se coalisant pour rendre l’approvisionnement de monnaie inférieur à la demande, vos fabricants libres n’auraient-ils point réalisé des bénéfices énormes aux dépens du public?

  l’économiste.

  Non. D’abord parce qu’on peut, à la rigueur, se servir de lingots à défaut de monnaie; ensuite, parce que la concurrence libre ne tarde guère à briser les coalitions les plus fortes. Lorsque l’équilibre entre l’approvisionnement et la demande vient à être rompu, les prix donnent bientôt un bénéfice tel que la concurrence s’en mêle. On se met alors à produire en dehors de la coalition, jusqu’à ce que le prix courant retombe au niveau des frais de production.

  le socialiste.

  Ah! c’est toujours la même loi.

  l’économiste.

  Toujours. Et cette loi explique aussi pourquoi un pays ne saurait jamais être épuisé de numéraire. Quand les besoins de la circulation viennent à dépasser l’approvisionnement du numéraire, le prix des métaux croît progressivement. On cesse alors d’exporter des lingots; on trouve, au contraire, avantage à en importer, jusqu’à ce que l’équilibre soit rétabli.

  le socialiste.

  Voilà qui détruit un des gros arguments des protectionnistes.

  Une objection encore. Si la fabrication des monnaies était libre, serait-il possible d’arriver à l’unité monétaire? Chaque fabricant ne fournirait-il pas une monnaie particulière? On ne s’y reconnaîtrait plus.

  l’économiste.

  Il y a des milliers de fabricants de calicots, et cependant il n’y a qu’un petit nombre de variétés de calicots. A Manchester, vingt ou trente manufacturiers tissent des pièces de qualité et de dimensions pareilles. Il en serait de même pour la monnaie; on ne frapperait que les pièces dont le public trouverait commode et avantageux de se servir. Si tous les peuples voulaient se servir de la même monnaie, on arriverait naturellement à l’unité monétaire. S’ils préféraient des monnaies et des mesures différentes, appropriées à leurs habitudes et à leurs besoins particuliers, pourquoi, je vous prie, s’aviserait-on de leur imposer une unité monétaire?

  le socialiste.

  Vous pourriez bien avoir raison. Je conçois, jusqu’à un certain point, qu’on abandonne la fabrication des monnaies à l’industrie privée. Les fabricants peuvent, en effet, se faire concurrence de manière à rendre impossible la constitution d’un monopole. Mais en est-il de même pour toutes les industries dont le gouvernement s’est emparé? les voies de communication, par exemple, ne constituent-elles pas des monopoles naturels?

  l’économiste.

  Il n’y a pas de monopoles naturels. Comment les constructeurs et les exploitateurs des voies de communication pourraient-ils réaliser des bénéfices de monopole? En élevant le prix des transports au-dessus des frais de production. Mais aussitôt que le prix courant dépasse les frais de production, la concurrence est irrésistiblement attirée...

  le socialiste.

  On construirait donc deux ou trois routes parallèles d’un point à un autre?

  l’économiste.

  Cela ne serait pas nécessaire. La concurrence des voies de communication, notamment des voies perfectionnées, chemins de fer, canaux, etc., s’exerce dans un rayon considérable. Que le chemin de fer du Havre à Strasbourg surélève, par exemple, ses prix de transport, et aussitôt le transit des voyageurs et des marchandises vers le centre de l’Europe se déplacera en faveur d’Anvers ou d’Amsterdam. Pour les points intermédiaires, il y a la concurrence des canaux, des rivières, des tronçons à peu près parallèles ou des routes ordinaires, concurrence qui devient plus active, en présence d’une tentative de monopole... à la condition bien entendu que la concurrence demeure libre.

  A cette condition, le prix courant des transports ne saurait jamais en dépasser longtemps les frais de production.

  Or, vous m’accorderez bien, je pense, que les particuliers construisent et exploitent les routes à meilleur marché et mieux que les gouvernements. Comparez les routes de l’Angleterre avec celles de la France?

  le socialiste.

  Le fait ne saurait être contesté. Mais n’est-il pas essentiel que la circulation demeure libre et gratuite?

  l’économiste.

  N’avons-nous pas approfondi déjà le mystère de la gratuité? Avez-vous oublié qu’une denrée quelconque, monnaie, enseignement, transport, ne saurait être fournie gratis par le gouvernement à moins d’être payée par les contribuables? Avez-vous oublié qu’en ce cas la denrée coûte, en sus des frais de production ordinaires, les frais de perception de l’impôt? Si donc nos routes n’étaient point gratuites, elles seraient payées par ceux qui s’en servent, en proportion de ce qu’ils s’en servent, et elles seraient moins chères.

  Ce qui est vrai des grandes voies de communication ne l’est pas moins des petites. Ces gouvernements au petit pied qu’on nomme des départements et des communes construisent des routes à leurs frais, sauf toutefois l’approbation du gouvernement central. Votées par les majorités des conseils communaux ou départementaux, ces routes sont construites et exploitées aux frais de tous les contribuables. Sous le régime monarchique, lorsque les contribuables riches avaient seuls voix dans les conseils de la commune, des départements et de l’État, les pauvres paysans étaient tenus de contribuer pour une large part à des travaux décrétés... au profit de qui? je vous le laisse à penser. Les corvées de l’ancien régime avaient reparu déguisées sous le titre benin de prestations en nature.

  Le seul moyen de mettre fin à ces scandaleuses iniquités c’est d’abandonner à l’industrie privée les voies de communication grandes ou petites, aussi bien que toute espèce de transports.

  le conservateur.

  Sans en excepter le transport des lettres?

  l’économiste.

  Sans un excepter le transport des lettres.

  le socialiste.

  Allons donc!

  l’économiste.

  La poste n’a pas toujours été entre les mains du gouvernement. Avant la révolution de 89, le transport des lettres était affermé à des compagnies particulières. En 1788, ce bail rapportait douze millions à l’État. Mais, comme bien vous pensez, le tarif des lettres était fort élevé. Les gros fermiers savaient distribuer à propos des pots-de-vin aux administrateurs chargés de débattre et de régler les tarifs. Ils florissaient sous ce régime. Mais le public payait largement leur embonpoint.

  Qu’y avait-il à faire pour remédier aux abus criants de ce système de fermages? Il y avait tout simplement à abandonner le service des postes à la libre concurrence. Le transport des lettres serait promptement descendu au prix le plus bas possible, sous ce nouveau régime. On aima mieux remettre les postes entre les mains de l’État. Le public n’y gagna rien, au contraire! Le transport des lettres continua de coûter fort cher, et il devint beaucoup moins sûr. Vous n’ignorez pas que les abus de confiance et les infidélités se sont effroyablement multipliés dans le service des postes.

  le conservateur.

  Cela n’est que trop vrai.

  l’économiste.

  Pendant longtemps, le gouvernement s’arrogea, en outre, le droit de violer le secret des correspondances. Il n’y a pas bien longtemps que le cabinet noir a été supprimé, et aucuns prétendent qu’il existe encore. Le pis c’est qu’on n’est pas le maître de se soustraire à ces risques et à ces avanies. Il est sévèrement interdit aux particuliers de transporter des lettres. Le transport interlope des correspondances est soumis à des pénalités rigoureuses.

  le socialiste.

  Quelle barbarie!

  l’économiste.

  Voilà les avantages du communisme.... Si le transport des lettres était libre, vous pourriez rendre les transporteurs responsables de la violation de vos correspondances et des vols commis à votre préjudice. Avec le monopole communiste du gouvernement, rien de tout cela n’est praticable. Vous êtes à la merci de l’administration.

  le socialiste.

  Au moins, on a fini par nous donner la réforme postale.

  l’économiste.

  Oui, mais la réforme postale n’a détruit un abus que pour le remplacer par un autre. En Angleterre, elle a occasionné, pendant plusieurs années, un déficit considérable dans les recettes; on avait tellement abaissé le tarif que la moitié des frais de transport des lettres tombait à la charge des contribuables. Il y avait demi-gratuité. Or, n’est-il pas juste que les frais de tout correspondance soient payés par les correspondants? Pourquoi un pauvre paysan illettré qui n’écrit ni ne reçoit lettres en sa vie contribuerait-il à payer le port des lourdes missives de M. Turcaret ou des billets doux de M. Lovelace son voisin? Est-il un communisme plus inique et plus odieux que celui-là?

  Parlerai-je des priviléges de la poste aux chevaux? Autrefois les maîtres de poste institués par Louis XI jouissaient du monopole du transport des voyageurs. Peu a peu, ils furent obligés de partager ce monopole avec les messageries royales, et, enfin, de laisser une place aux entreprises libres. Mais, sur leurs réclamations pressantes, on obligea les nouveaux entrepreneurs à payer aux maîtres de relais, dont ils n’employaient pas les chevaux, une indemnité de vingt-cinq centimes par poste et par cheval attelé (loi du 15 ventôse an xiii). L’indemnité s’est élevé jusqu’au chiffre de six millions par an. Mais les chemins de fer ont diminué considérablement cette aubaine. De là les grandes clameurs des maîtres de postes. Ils ont voulu obliger les compagnies de chemins de fer à les subventionner aussi. Les compagnies ont résisté. L’affaire est pendante.

  Il faut dire, à la décharge des maîtres de postes, que des règlements datant du règne de Louis XI, les obligent à tenir sur pied des relais de chevaux dans des endroits où ces relais sont parfaitement inutiles. Mais n’est-il pas absurde de pensionner une industrie, qui ne fonctionne plus, aux dépens d’une industrie qui fonctionne? N’est-il pas absurde et grotesque à la fois, de contraindre les entrepreneurs de diligences à fournir une rente aux chevaux oisifs des maîtres de postes?

  le socialiste.

  C’est absurde et grotesque, en effet. Mais si le gouvernement, les départements et les communes cessaient complétement d’intervenir dans l’industrie des transports, dans la construction des routes, des canaux, des ponts, des rues, s’ils cessaient d’établir des communications entre les diverses parties du pays et de veiller à ce que les communications établies fussent maintenues, les particuliers se chargeraient-ils de cette tâche indispensable?

  l’économiste.

  Croyez-vous que la pierre lancée dans les airs finira par tomber?

  le socialiste.

  C’est une loi physique!

  l’économiste.

  Eh! bien, c’est en vertu de la même loi physique que toutes les choses utiles, routes, ponts, canaux, pain, viande, etc., se produisent aussitôt que la société en a besoin. Lorsqu’une chose utile est demandée, la production de cette chose tend naturellement à s’opérer avec une intensité de mouvement égale à celle de la pierre qui tombe.

  Lorsqu’une chose utile est demandée sans être produite encore, le prix idéal, le prix qu’on y mettrait si elle était produite croît en progression géométrique à mesure que la demande croît en progression arithmétique1 . Un moment arrive où ce prix s’élève assez haut pour surmonter toutes les résistances ambiantes et où la production s’opère.

  Cela étant, le gouvernement ne saurait se mêler d’aucune affaire de production sans causer un dommage à la société.

  S’il produit une chose utile après que les particuliers l’eussent produite, il nuit à la société, en la privant de cette chose, dans l’intervalle.

  S’il la produit au moment même où les particuliers l’eussent produite, son intervention est encore nuisible, car il produit à plus haut prix que les particuliers.

  Si, enfin, il la produit plus tôt, la société n’est pas moins lésée... vous vous récriez. Je vais vous le prouver.

  Avec quoi produit-on? Avec du travail actuel et du travail ancien ou capital. Comment un particulier qui entreprend une industrie nouvelle se procure-t-il du travail et du capital? En allant chercher des travailleurs et des capitaux dans les endroits où les services de ces agents de la production sont le moins utiles, où, en conséquence, on les paye le moins cher.

  Lorsqu’un produit nouveau est plus faiblement demandé que les produits anciens, lorsqu’on ne couvrirait pas encore ses frais en le créant, les particuliers s’abstiennent soigneusement de le créer. Ils n’en commencent la production qu’au moment où ils sont assurés de couvrir leurs frais.

  Où le gouvernement qui les devance, va-t-il puiser le travail et le capital dont il a besoin? Il les puise où les particuliers les auraient puisés eux-mêmes, dans la société. Mais en commençant une production avant que les frais n’en puissent encore être couverts, ou bien avant que les profits naturels de cette entreprise nouvelle ne soient au niveau de ceux des industries existantes, le gouvernement ne détourne-t-il pas les capitaux et les bras d’un emploi plus utile que celui qu’il leur donne? N’appauvrit-il pas la société au lieu de l’enrichir?

  Le gouvernement a entrepris trop tôt, par exemple, certaines lignes de canaux qui traversent des déserts. Le travail et le capital qu’il a consacrés à la construction de ces canaux, encore inachevés après un quart de siècle, étaient certainement mieux employés où il les a pris. En revanche, il a commencé trop tard et trop peu multiplié les télégraphes, dont il s’est réservé le monopole ou la concession. Nous ne possédons que deux ou trois lignes de télégraphes électriques; encore sont-elles à l’usage exclusif du gouvernement et des compagnies de chemins de fer. Aux États-Unis, où cette industrie est libre, les télégraphes électriques se sont multipliés à l’infini et ils servent à tout le monde.

  le socialiste.

  J’admets ces observations pour les industries purement matérielles; mais vous serez bien forcé d’accorder, je pense, que le gouvernement doit se préoccuper un peu du développement intellectuel et moral de la société. N’a-t-il pas le droit, que dis-je? le devoir d’imprimer une direction salutaire aux arts et aux lettres, à l’enseignement et d’intervenir dans le service des cultes? peut-il abandonner ces nobles branches de la production à tous les vents de la spéculation privée?

  l’économiste.

  Sans doute, il aurait ce droit et il serait tenu de remplir ce devoir, si son intervention, dans cette partie du domaine de la production, n’était pas toujours et nécessairement nuisible aussi bien que dans l’autre?

  S’agit-il des beaux-arts? Le gouvernement pensionne quelques hommes de lettres et subventionne certains théâtres. Je crois vous avoir prouvé que les gens de lettres se passeraient aisément de la misérable subvention qu’on leur alloue, si leurs droits de propriété étaient pleinement reconnus et respectés.

  Les subventions accordées aux théâtres sont un des abus les plus criants et les plus scandaleux de notre époque.

  le conservateur.

  Il a été prouvé maintes fois que le Théâtre-Français et l’Opéra ne sauraient subsister sans subventions. Voudriez-vous, par hasard, qu’on supprimàt le Théâtre-Français et l’Opéra?

  l’économiste.

  Remarquez d’abord quelle profonde iniquité se cache sous ce régime des subventions. L’État dépense chaque année plus de deux millions pour soutenir deux ou trois théâtres de Paris. Ces théâtres sont précisément ceux que fréquente la portion la plus aisée de la bourgeoisie parisienne. Qui paye ces deux millions? Tous les contribuables, le pauvre paysan bas-breton, qui de sa vie n’est entré et n’entrera dans une salle de spectacle, comme le riche habitué de l’orchestre de l’Opéra. Est-ce de la justice? est-il juste d’obliger un pauvre laboureur, qui passe sa vie courbé sur le manche de sa charrue, à contribuer aux menus plaisirs des riches hourgeois de Paris?

  le socialiste.

  C’est de l’exploitation!

  le conservateur.

  Mais, encore une fois, aimeriez-vous mieux qu’il n’y eût ni Opéra, ni Théâtre-Français? Et les intérêts de notre gloire nationale!

  l’économiste.

  Quand Louis XIV écrasait les peuples d’impôts pour bâtir son froid et lamentable château de Versailles; quand il réduisait les misérables habitants des campagnes à vivre d’herbes, pour subvenir aux fastueuses dépenses de sa cour, n’invoquait-il pas aussi la gloire de la France? La gloire! en quoi donc la faites-vous consister?

  le conservateur.

  Dans les grandes choses qu’un peuple sait accomplir.

  l’économiste.

  Rien n’est plus grand, rien n’est plus splendide que la justice. Le siècle où l’on cessera de spolier le grand nombre au bénéfice du petit, où la justice deviendra la loi souveraine des sociétés, sera le plus grand des siècles.

  Mais je ne crois pas que les subventions soient nécessaires aux théâtres; je suis convaincu, au contraire, qu’elles leur sont nuisibles. Les théâtres subventionnés sont ceux qui font le plus mal leurs affaires. Pourquoi? Je vais vous le dire.

  Remarquez d’abord qu’une partie de leurs subventions leur est ravie sous différentes formes. Un théâtre subventionné est tenu d’accorder des entrées gratuites aux ministres, aux représentants influents, à une foule de membres de l’administration haute ou basse. La subvention sert donc, en premier lieu, à procurer gratuitement le plaisir du spectacle à une foule de gens...

  le socialiste.

  Qui sont fort en état de payer leur place.

  l’économiste.

  Beaucoup plus, à coup sûr, que ceux qui la leur payent. En second lieu, les subventions servent à enrichir les directeurs les moins scrupuleux. Un théâtre est en déficit de cinquante mille francs, le directeur demande cent cinquante mille francs de subvention. On les lui accorde. Il comble le déficit, cède son privilége, et s’en va jouir paisiblement des rentes que l’État lui a faites.

  Les théâtres subventionnés sont continuellement en déficit. Est-ce malgré la subvention ou à cause de la subvention? Vous allez en juger.

  Une entreprise libre, une entreprise qui est obligée de couvrir elle-même tous ses frais, accomplit des efforts prodigieux pour atteindre ce but. Elle améliore la qualité de sa denrée, elle en diminue le prix, elle invente tous les jours quelque nouveau procédé pour attirer la clientèle. C’est pour elle une question de vie ou de mort. Une entreprise privilégiée et subventionnée ne fait pas de ces efforts. Assurée de vivre, alors même que sa clientèle la déserterait tout à fait, alors même que son déficit annuel serait égal au montant total de ses frais, elle prend naturellement ses aises vis-à-vis du public.—Si Tortoni recevait une subvention du gouvernement pour vendre ses glaces, continuerait-il à se donner autant de peine pour faire aller son commerce? Ses glaces ne finiraient-elles pas par devenir détestables comme certaines pièces d’un certain théâtre, et le public, amateur de bonnes glaces, ne déserterait-il pas en masse son établissement? Voilà à quoi aurait servi la subvention accordée à l’industrie des glaces nationales!

  Mais il y a pis encore que les subventions, il y a les priviléges. L’industrie des théâtres n’est pas libre en France. Il n’est pas permis au premier venu d’ouvrir un théâtre, ni même aucun établissement qui en approche. Récemment, lorsque les cafés lyriques commencèrent à prendre faveur, les théâtres privilégiés s’émurent. Les directeurs pétitionnèrent collectivement pour obtenir la suppression de cette industrie rivale. Le ministre refusa de faire droit à la pétition des directeurs, mais il défendit au cafés lyriques: 1° de jouer des pièces de théâtre; 2° de costumer leurs chanteurs. L’arrêt n’est-il pas digne du moyen-âge?

  le conservateur.

  J’avoue que c’est burlesque.

  l’économiste.

  Ceci s’est passé en l’an 1849 et chez le peuple le plus spirituel de la terre. Cependant les directeurs ne sont pas si coupables! Ils obéissent à des nécessités que le privilége a créées.

  Le régime du privilége est essentiellement précaire. Tous les priviléges sont temporaires. Or la première condition de toute production économique, c’est un possession sûre et illimitée. Il y a dans toute industrie des frais généraux qui exigent un long délai pour être couverts. Tels sont les frais de construction, d’amélioration ou d’embellissement des locaux. Que ces frais soient répartis sur une longue période d’exploitation et ils deviendront à peu près insensibles. Qu’ils soient concentrés, au contraire, dans une courte période et ils élèveront considérablement le chiffre de la dépense. Sous un régime de jouissance temporaire, on fait le moins possible de ces sortes de frais. Peu de salles sont plus mal construites et plus mal entretenues que les salles de spectacle de Paris. Néanmoins les frais d’embellissement grèvent encore très lourdement les budgets des directeurs.

  En outre, les théâtres ont, comme toute industrie, leur bonne et leur mauvaise saison. Dans les industries libres, on travaille moins dans la mauvaise saison que dans la bonne, afin de ne pas travailler à perte. Les théâtres sont obligés de travailler en toute saison, qu’ils fassent des bénéfices ou qu’ils n’en fassent point. C’est une condition expresse de leurs priviléges.

  le socialiste.

  Quelle inconcevable absurdité!

  l’économiste.

  Leurs frais de production s’augmentent donc de toute la somme qu’ils sont obligés de perdre dans la mauvaise saison. Ajoutez à cela un impôt exorbitant au profit des établissements de bienfaisance et vous vous rendrez compte de l’élévation excessive du prix des spectacles1 . Vous comprendrez aussi pourquoi les directeurs poursuivent avec tant d’acharnement les concurrences.

  Si l’industrie des théâtres était libre, on pourrait répartir les frais de construction et d’entretien des salles sur une période indéfinie. On pourrait aussi proportionner toujours la production aux exigences de la consommation. On jouerait beaucoup dans la bonne saison, on jouerait moins dans la mauvaise. Les frais de production tomberaient alors au taux le plus bas possible, et la concurrence se chargerait de niveler toujours le prix courant avec les frais de production. L’abaissement des prix augmenterait la consommation, partant la production. Il y aurait plus de théâtres, plus d’acteurs, plus d’auteurs.

  le conservateur.

  L’art ne s’abaisserait-il pas en se vulgarisant?

  l’économiste.

  Je suis convaincu, au contraire, qu’il s’élèverait et s’élargirait. Chaque fois que la production se développe, elle se perfectionne. On se plaint aujourd’hui de ce que l’art dramatique languit et s’abaisse. Fiez-vous à la liberté pour le relever et le vivifier.

  Ce qui est vrai pour les théâtres, ne l’est pas moins pour les bibliothèques, les musées, les expositions, les académies.

  le socialiste.

  Quoi! vous voudriez que l’État cessât d’ouvrir librement ses bibliothèques au public?

  l’économiste.

  Je suis d’avis qu’il faudrait fermer les bibliothèques publiques dans l’intérêt de la diffusion des lumières.

  le conservateur.

  Ah! le paradoxe est par trop violent. Je m’insurge à la fin.

  l’économiste.

  Insurgez-vous, mais écoutez. L’État possède un certain nombre de bibliothèques. Le gouvernement en ouvre quelques-unes gratuitement au public. Il ne les ouvre pas toutes, notez-le bien. Certaines bibliothèques ne sont que des prétextes à bibliothécaires. Les dépenses de gestion des bibliothèques publiques, en y comprenant l’entretien des bâtiments s’élèvent annuellement à plus d’un million. Ce qui signifie que tous les contribuables sont imposés, taxés, pour que certains individus puissent aller étudier ou lire gratis à la Bibliothèque nationale, à la bibliothèque Mazarine et ailleurs. Si les bibliothèques publiques étaient exploitées par des particuliers, on économiserait d’abord tout le montant des frais de perecption de l’impôt. Les consommateurs de livres débourseraient une somme inférieure à celle qui est aujourd’hui payée par la nation.

  le conservateur.

  Oui, mais ils payeraient quelque chose, et, aujourd’hui, ils ne payent rien. Et n’est-ce pas une détestable économie que celle qui consiste à lésiner avec la science?

  l’économiste.

  C’est une détestable économie, en effet. Mais recherchez bien, je vous prie, comment on emploie ce million dont les contribuables font annuellement cadeau aux consommateurs de livres. Examinez les établissements particuliers de France, et si vous en trouvez un seul dont l’administration soit aussi mauvaise que celle de la Bibliothèque nationale, par exemple, un seul où la richesse soit aussi mal utilisée et le public aussi mal servi, je vous donne gain de cause.

  le socialiste.

  Le service de la Bibliothèque nationale est déplorablement organisé, cela est certain. Il n’y a pas en France un seul établissement industriel qui ne fasse chaque année son inventaire; la Bibliothèque n’a pu réussir encore à achever le sien. Commencé depuis un temps immémorial, son catalogue n’est point terminé. Mais on pourrait administrer mieux ce grand établissement national.

  l’économiste.

  Je ne le pense pas. Aussi longtemps qu’elle demeurera enclavée dans le vaste communisme de l’État, la Bibliothèque nationale ne saurait être bien administrée.

  En réalité donc, la gestion communiste des bibliothèques publiques a pour résultat de soustraire au public, la plus grande partie des trésors de la science. Mettez ce capital entre les mains de l’industrie particulière et vous verrez quel parti elle en saura tirer. Vous verrez combien les richesses scientifiques aujourd’hui si lentes et si difficiles deviendront rapides et faciles. On ne perdra plus de longues heures et souvent de longues journées à attendre vainement un livre ou un manuscrit; on sera servi tout de suite. L’industrie privée ne fait pas attendre.

  La science y perdrait-elle?

  le conservateur.

  Un moyen-terme n’est-il pas possible? Les bibliothèques ne peuvent-elles subsister auprès des bibliothèques exploitées par l’industrie privée?

  l’économiste.

  C’est le régime bâtard qui existe actuellement. D’un côté, vous avez des bibliothèques publiques, où des richesses innombrables demeurent à peu près improductives; de l’autre, des cabinets de lecture chers et mal pourvus.

  Si les bibliothèques gratuites n’existaient point, les cabinets de lecture prendraient des proportions considérables; toutes les richesses de la science et des lettres viendraient s’y accumuler utilement; chaque catégorie de connaissances aurait bientôt sa bibliothèque spéciale, où rien ne manquerait aux faiseurs de recherches; où les richesses scientifiques et littéraires seraient mises à la disposition du public aussitôt qu’elles seraient produites. La concurrence libre obligerait, en même temps, ces établissements à abaisser leurs prix au taux le plus bas possible.

  le socialiste.

  N’importe! Les étudiants pauvres et les savants besoigneux seruient à plaindre sous ce régime.

  l’économiste.

  Les frais de bibliothèque ou de cabinet de lecture forment la moindre partie des dépenses d’une éducation. Quant aux savants pauvres, ils travaillent généralement pour des libraires qui leur tiennent compte de leurs frais de recherches. Une partie de ces frais retombent aujour-d’hui à la charge des contribuables. Ne serait-il pas plus juste qu’ils fussent exclusivement à la charge des acheteurs de livres? Ceux-ci, du reste, n’y perdraient rien, car les livres deviendraient plus substantiels, si les recherches devenaient plus faciles.

  Je n’ai donc pas fait le moindre paradoxe, en disant qu’il faut fermer les bibliothèques publiques dans l’intérêt de la diffusion des lumières. La gratuité des bibliothèques c’est du communisme; et, qu’il s’agisse de science ou d’industrie, le communisme c’est de la barbarle.

  Ce communisme détestable se retrouve encore dans le régime de l’enseignement et des cultes.

  le conservateur.

  Attaquez l’université tant qu’il vous plaira, mais, de grâce, respectez les cultes. La Religion est notre dernière ancre de salut.

  l’économiste.

  C’est dans l’intérêt même de la Religion que l’État devrait cesser de subventionner les cultes.

  Est-il juste qu’un homme qui ne pratique aucun des cultes reconnus par l’État, soit tenu néanmoins de leur fournir un salaire? Est-il juste que l’on paye une chose dont on ne se sert point? Toute morale religieuse ne condamne-t-elle point un abus, une spoliation de cette nature? Cependant cette spoliation, cet abus sont commis tous les jours en France, au profit des cultes reconnus. Tant pis pour les contribuables qui pratiquent des cultes que l’État ne reconnaît point1 !

  Croyez-vous que cette iniquité flagrante soit profitable à la Religion?

  Croyez-vous encore que les cultes ne seraient pas mieux administrés si l’État ne les subventionnait point? Croyez-vous que les services religieux ne seraient point distribués avec plus d’intelligence et de zèle, si l’État cessait d’assurer aux ecclésiastiques une rémunération quand même? Au reste, l’expérience a déjà prononcé à cet égard. Nulle part les services religieux ne sont mieux distribués qu’aux États-Unis, où les cultes ne reçoivent aucune subvention. Beaucoup d’ecclésiastiques éclairés sont convaincus que le même régime donnerait en France les mêmes résultats.

  le socialiste.

  C’est une expérience à faire.

  l’économiste.

  Le régime actuel de l’enseignement est plus vicieux encore que le régime des cultes. La nation alloue annuellement une somme de dix-sept millions à une entreprise qui distribue de l’enseignement au nom de l’État, et qui a la haute mam sur les entreprises rivales.

  Sous l’ancien régime, l’enseignement se trouvait, comme toutes les autres industries, entre les mains de certaines corporations privilégiées. La révolution détruisit ces priviléges. Malheureusement l’Assemblée co stituante et la Convention se hâtèrent de décréter l’établissement d’écoles publiques, aux frais de l’État, des départements ou des communes. Napoléon étendit et aggrava cette conception communiste en fondant l’Université.

  Greffée sur les traditions de l’ancien régime, élevée sous l’œil jaloux du despotisme, l’Université distribua, au dix-neuvième siècle, l’enseignement du quinzième ou du seizième. Elle se mit à enseigner les langues mortes comme on les enseignait alors, sans se douter le moins du monde que ce qui pouvait être utile au seizième siècle, pouvait aussi ne l’être plus au dix-neuvième.

  le conservateur.

  Pourquoi donc?

  l’économiste.

  Je conçois qu’on ait généralement enseigné les langues anciennes à l’époque de la renaissance. Les peuples, à peine sortis des ténèbres du moyen âge, avaient peu cultivé encore les sciences et les lettres. Pour se procurer des connaissances, des idées, des images, il fallait aller puiser dans le vaste magasin de l’antiquité, dont les richesses venaient d’être mises au jour. L’instrument indispensable pour s’assimiler ces richesses, c’était la langue. On ne pouvait apprendre ce que savaient les anciens, sans connaître le grec et le latin.

  Au dix-neuvième siècle, la situation a changé. Toutes les idées, toutes les connaissances de l’antiquité ont passé dans les langues modernes. On peut apprendre tout ce que savaient les ancieus sans posséder les langues anciennes. Les langues modernes sont un passe-partout universel qui ouvrent le passé comme le présent. Les langues mortes ressemblent aujourd’hui à ces antiques et respectables machines qu’on met au Conservatoire des Arts et Métiers, mais dont on ne se sert plus dans les manufactures.

  On a prétendu, je ne l’ignore pas, qu’il est essentiel de connaître les langues mortes pour bien apprendre les langues vivantes. Mais, s’il en était ainsi, ne serions-nous pas obligés d’apprendre une demi-douzaine de vieilles langues pour savoir le français, car Dieu sait de combien d’aggrégats notre langue s’est formée! Une vie entière n’y suffirait pas. Combien de pédants de collége écrivent d’ailleurs couramment en latin, et ne savent pas mettre l’orthographe en français? Voltaire était certainement moins fort en latin que le Jésuite Patouillet ou le Père Nonotte. Les langues mortes sont des instruments qui encombrent inutilement le cerveau et souvent l’oblitèrent.

  le conservateur.

  Que voulez-vous dire?

  l’économiste.

  Je dis qu’en enseignant le grec et le latin aux enfants, on leur communique prématurément les idées, les sentiments, les passions de deux peuples, fort civilisés sans doute pour l’époque où ils vivaient, mais qui seraient aujourd’hui de véritables barbares. Cela est vrai surtout au point de vue des sentiments moraux. En mettant les enfants modernes au régime du grec et du latin, on fait passer dans leurs âmes les préjugés et les vices d’une civilisation à peine ébauchée, au lieu de leur communiquer les connaissances et les notions morales d’une civilisation avancée; on en fait de petits barbares passablement immoraux...

  Si l’enseignement avait joui du blenfait de la liberté, au lieu de passer du détestable régime du privilége au régime plus détestable encore du monopole communiste, il aurait rejeté depuis longtemps ce vieux outillage des langues mortes, comme les industriés de libre concurrence se sont débarrassées de leurs vieilles machines. On enseignerait aux enfants ce qui peut leur servir; on cesserait de leur enseigner ce qui leur est inutile ou nuisible. Le latin et le grec seraient relégués dans les cerveaux de ces hommes-musées qu’on appelle des polyglottes.

  le conservateur.

  Il y a des réformes considérables à opérer dans le régime de l’Université, j’en conviens avec vous. Il était odieux, par exemple, d’obliger les institutions rivales de l’Université à lui payer une rétribution annuelle; il ne l’était guère moins d’empêcher ces établissements de s’ouvrir sans une autorisation spéciale, et de leur imposer l’inspection des agents de l’Université. Mais ne serait-il pas bon de laisser subsister, à côté des institutions particulières désormais pleinement libres, les institutions de l’État et des communes? Cette rivalité salutaire ne servirait-elle pas admirablement les progrès de l’enseignement?

  l’économiste.

  Ce régime ne serait guère préférable au régime actuel. Voici pourquoi:

  Les établissements d’éducation appartenant à l’État et aux communes ne font pas leurs frais et ne sont pas tenus de les faire. Le trésor public et les caisses communales se chargent de combler leurs déficits. Les contribuables, ceux qui ne font pas d’enfants, comme ceux qui en font, supportent une partie des frais de cette éducation communiste. Or, je vous le demande, l’industrie privée peut-elle lutter d’une manière régulière contre des établissements à moitié gratuits. Cette demi-gratuité est, à la vérité, souvent fort chère, soit à cause de la mauvaise qualité de l’enseignement, soit à cause de l’élévation totale des frais. Mais les établissements de l’État et des communes n’ont-ils pas la ressource d’abaisser indéfiniment leurs prix? N’a-t-il pas été question même de rendre l’enseignement tout-à fait gratuit? Ce serait, en réalité, le rendre le plus cher possible, mais ce serait, en même temps, rendre toute concurrence impraticable. Si l’État se chargeait de fournir libéralement du drap à moitié prix ou gratis, qui s’aviserait de fabriquer encore du drap? L’industrie libre du drap prendrait-elle jamais des proportions bien vastes, en présence d’un concurrent qui donnerait sa marchandise pour rien?

  La liberté de l’enseignement sera une pure illusion jusqu’à ce que l’État, les départements et les communes cessent complétement, absolument de se mèler de l’éducation publique.

  le socialiste.

  Les établissements de l’État et des communes ne pourraient-ils donc faire leurs frais aussi bien que ceux de l’industrie privée?

  l’économiste.

  Qu’ils l’essaient! Que l’ou supprime le budget de l’instruction publique, que l’on oblige les établissements de l’Université et des communes à couvrir tous leurs frais et vous m’en donnerez bientôt des nouvelles.

  le conservateur.

  Au moins, vous m’accorderez que l’État doit conserver la surveillance des établissements d’éducation?

  l’économiste.

  Je n’y vois pas d’inconvénient. Mais je pense que la surveillance de l’État, deviendrait promptement inutile sous un régime de liberté véritable.

  Ce qui empêche aujourd’hui les établissements d’éducation de s’améliorer au double point de vue de la qualité et du prix, c’est l’existence précaire que leur a faite la concurrence inégale de l’Université. La liberté leur donnerait la stabilité. L’enseignement s’organiserait alors sur un plan immense comme s’organise et se développe toute industrie dont l’avenir est assuré. Intéressés à faire connaître les progrès réalisés dans leurs établissements, les directeurs d’institutions, en ouvriraient les portes au public. Les pères de famille pourraient apprécier, par eux-mêmes, la qualité des aliments matériels, intellectuels et moraux qui seraient distribués à leurs enfants. Cette surveillance-là vaudrait bien, je pense, celle des inspecteurs de l’Université.

  le socialiste.

  Cette publicité de l’instruction publique me plairait assez; mais encore une fois, croyez-vous que l’industrie privée puisse satisfaire à tous les besoins de l’éducation?

  l’économiste.

  Fiez-vous pour cela à la loi de l’offre et de la demande. Aussitôt qu’un besoin d’enseignement se ferait véritablement sentir, on aurait intérêt à le satisfaire. Sous ce régime, la production de l’enseignement, que les entraves du système réglementaire ont emprisonnée dans des limites trop étroites, ne tarderait pas à prendre ses proportions utiles. L’enseignement serait meilleur et à plus bas prix, partant plus étendu. Enfin, il serait équitablement distribué. Le pauvre ne contribuerait plus à payer les frais d’éducation de l’enfant du riche, le célibataire ne serait plus taxé au profit de l’homme marié. Il y aurait une production plus abondante et une répartition plus juste. Que pourriez-vous demander de plus?

  NEUVIÈME SOIRÉE

  SOMMAIRE: Suite des atteintes portées à la propriété intérieure.—Droit d’association.—Législation qui régit, en France, les sociétés commerciales.—La société anonyme et ses avantages.—Du monopole des banques.—Fonctions des banques.—Résultats de l’intervention du gouvernement dans les affaires des banques.—Cherté de l’escompte.—Banqueroutes légales.—Autres industries privilégiées ou réglementées.—La boulangerie.—La boucherie.—L’imprimerie.—Les notaires.—Les agents de change et les courtiers.—La prostitution.—Les pompes funèbres.—Les cimetières.—Le barreau.—La médecine.—Le professorat.—Article 3 de la loi des 7–9 juillet 1833.

  le socialiste.

  J’ai cru jusqu’à présent que la révolution de 1789 avait complétement affranchi le travail et que nous vivions sous un régime de laisser-faire absolu. Je commence à revenir de mon erreur.

  l’économiste.

  Non seulement le travail n’a pas été complétement affranchi, mais, dans certaines branches de la production, on a rétrogradé au-delà des compagnies privilégiées. Au lieu de rendre libres des industries qui étaient privilégiées, on en a fait des monopoles de l’État. Or, le monopole de l’État, c’est l’enfance de toute société. Aux institutions du moyen âge, on a substitué, quoi? les institutions de l’ancienne Égypte. Cela n’a pas empêché toutefois de conserver des industries privilégiées, car notre système économique est une étrange bigarrure d’industries monopolisées, privilégiées et libres.

  le conservateur.

  Où donc voyez-vous des industries privilégiées? D’après M. Thiers, tous les priviléges n’ont-ils pas été abolis dans la fameuse nuit du 4 août?

  l’économiste.

  D’après M. Thiers, oui; d’après la vérité, non. Il existe encore en France une multitude d’industries privilégiées ou réglementées. En première ligne, il faut placer les banques. Viennent ensuite la boulangerie, la boucherie, l’imprimerie, les théâtres, les assurances, le commerce des effets publics, la médecine, le barreau, les offices ministériels, la prostitution, et plusieurs autres que j’oublie.

  Ajoutons encore que l’Association, ce véhicule indispensable du progrès industriel, n’est pas libre en France.

  le conservateur.

  Ah! cette fois je vous prends en flagrant délit d’inexactitude. Je connais ma Constitution.

  ART. 8. Les citoyens ont le droit de s’associer, de s’assembler paisiblement et sans armes, de pétitionner, de manifester leurs pensées par la voie de la presse ou autrement.

  L’exercice de ces droits n’a pour limites que les droits ou la liberté d’autrui et la sécurité publique.”

  Vous voyez donc que le droit de s’associer existe en France. Peut-être même n’existe-t-il que trop?

  l’économiste.

  Les associations politiques sont libres en France...plus ou moins. Il n’en est pas de même des associations commerciales. L’association comporte, vous le savez, un nombre presque infini de variétés. Or, la loi française ne reconnaît que trois sortes d’associations: la société en nom collectif, la société en commandite et la société anonyme. Sauf quelques formalités gênantes, les deux premières sont libres; mais la troisième, qui est la plus parfaite, celle qui s’adapte le mieux aux grandes entreprises industrielles, est soumise à l’autorisation préalable.

  le conservateur.

  Eh bien! on demande l’autorisation, et, après un mûr examen, le gouvernement l’accorde s’il y a lieu.

  l’économiste.

  Oui, s’il y a lieu. Et vous oubliez de dire que l’autorisation n’arrive fréquemment qu’après six mois, un an, deux ans, c’est-à-dire trop tard. Vous connaissez assez l’industrie pour savoir qu’un retard de six mois suffit pour faire avorter le plus grand nombre des entreprises.

  Les socialistes se plaignent de la lenteur avec laquelle l’association s’implante en France. Ils ne voient pas que le Code de commerce y a mis bon ordre, en emprisonnant étroitement le droit d’association. Singulier aveuglement!

  La société en nom collectif ne comporte pas de grandes accumulations de capitaux, surtout dans un pays où les fortunes sont très divisées; la société en commandite, telle qu’elle est actuellement réglementée, met les actionnaires à la merci d’un gérant, et vous savez ce qui en résulte.... La société anonyme seule comporte d’immenses agglomérations de capitaux par petites fractions, et la meilleure gestion possible.

  le conservateur.

  Ceci n’est pas prouvé.

  l’économiste.

  Décomposez l’entrepreneur d’industrie et que trouverez-vous? Un capitaliste et un directeur de travail, un homme qui reçoit un intérêt pour son capital et un salaire pour son travail. Décomposez la société anonyme et que trouverez-vous? Des travailleurs qui fournissent du travail et reçoivent un salaire, des capitalistes qui fournissent des capitaux et reçoivent un intérêt. Ce qui est réuni dans l’entrepreneur d’industrie est séparé dans la société anonyme. Cette séparation est un pas de plus, fait dans la voie de la division du travail; c’est un progrès.

  Je vous en donnerai la preuve en vous signalant quelques-uns des avantages propres aux sociétés anonymes.

  Le premier de tous c’est de pouvoir effectuer des entreprises de production sur une échelle immense; c’est de pouvoir toujours proportionner la puissance de l’effort à celle de la résistance, et de réduire ainsi les frais de production au minimum.

  Le second avantage des sociétés anonymes réside dans la meilleure administration qu’elles comportent. Un entrepreneur d’industrie n’a de responsabilité qu’envers lui-même. Un directeur de compagnie est responsable vis-à-vis de ses actionnaires. Il est tenu de leur rendre compte de ses actes et de les justifier. Cette obligation inherente à la nature même de la société anonyme entraîne pour le directeur la nécessité d’agir toujours avec intelligence et probité. S’il ne dirigeait point l’entreprise avec intelligence, les actionnaires ne manqueraient point de le destituer; s’il s’engageait dans des opérations véreuses oserait-il bien en rendre un compte public à une assemblée d’actionnaires? Or, avec le système de comptabilité actuellement en usage il ne pourrait laisser secrète aucune de ses opérations.

  Sous le régime de la société anonyme, les entreprises industrielles seraient nécessairement conduites avec intelligence et probité. L’industrie serait nécessairement dirigée par les hommes les plus capables et les plus probes.

  Les fraudes industrielles disparaîtraient sous ce régime. Dans quelles industries les fraudes sont-elles le plus fréquentes? Dans les industries les plus fractionnées et les plus précaires. Lorsqu’on ne peut compter sur l’avenir ni se faire une grande existence commerciale, on cherche, par tous les moyens possibles, à gagner beaucoup d’argent en peu de temps. On altère la qualité des produits. On vend, comme bonne, une marchandise que l’on sait être mauvaise. Lorsqu’on a, devant soi, au contraire, une période d’existence illimitée, et lorsqu’on met en œuvre un capital considérable, on est intéressé à acquérir une bonne réputation, afin de conserver sa clientèle. On fournit donc de bons produits et l’on se montre loyal en affaires.

  Dans les industries organisées largement et d’une manière stable, il y a plus de probité que dans les industries chétives et précaires. Observez et comparez les diverses branches de la production en France, en Angleterre, en Hollande, etc., et vous vous convaincrez de l’entière exactitude de ce fait. Les falsifications et les fraudes n’ont pas leur origine dans la liberté industrielle; elles proviennent, au contraire, d’obstacles apportés au libre et plein développement de l’industrie.

  Le troisième avantage des sociétés anonymes et le plus considérable peut-être, c’est de rendre publique la situation de chaque industrie; c’est d’indiquer journellement l’état de prospérité ou de souffrance des diverses branches de la production.

  le conservateur.

  Comment cela?

  l’économiste.

  Lorsqu’une industrie réussit à vendre ses produits à un prix exactement rémunérateur, on dit qu’elle est au pair; lorsque les frais de production ne sont pas couverts, l’industrie est en perte; lorsque les frais de production sont dépassés, elle est en bénéfice. Sous le régime de la production individualisée, il est fort difficile de connaître au juste ces différentes situations industrielles, et de savoir quand on peut utilement porter ses capitaux dans une industrie et quand on ne le peut. On s’expose souvent à grossir une branche exubérante de la production, alors que d’autres branches appellent vainement les capitaux et les bras. Ces erreurs cessent d’être possibles sous le régime de la société anonyme. Chaque compagnie ayant intérêt à publier le cours de ses actions afin d’en faciliter la négociation, on est informé jour par jour de la situation des différentes branches de la production. En jetant un coup d’œil sur le cours de la Bourse, on sait quelle industrie est en perte, quelle industrie est en gain, quelle autre est au pair. On sait, au juste, dans laquelle il faut placer ses capitaux pour réaliser les plus gros profits. Si, par exemple, le cours des hauts-fourneaux est supérieur à celui des exploitations de calamines, on portera ses capitaux dans l’industrie du fer plutôt que dans celle du zinc. On augmentera ainsi la production du fer. Qu’en résultera-t-il? que le prix courant du fer tombera jusqu’à ce qu’il réponde exactement aux frais de production: le cours des actions descendant alors au pair, on cessera de se porter vers cette branche de la production, dans la crainte de ne plus couvrir ses frais.

  Grâce à cette publicité du cours des actions industrielles, la production se régularise d’elle-même, d’une manière pour ainsi dire mathématique. On n’est plus exposé à produire trop d’une chose et trop peu d’une autre, à laisser certains prix s’exagérer et d’autres s’abaisser sans mesure. Une cause sans cesse agissante de perturbation disparaît de l’arène de la production.

  Remarquez enfin le caractère singulièrement démocratique des compagnies anonymes. L’entrepreneur d’industrie c’est le monarque irresponsable, absolu; la société anonyme gouvernée par des actionnaires et administrée par un directeur et un comité responsables, c’est la république. Après avoir été monarchique la production devient républicaine. Ceci vous prouye, une fois de plus, que la monarchie s’en va.

  le socialiste.

  La société se fractionnne en une multitude de petites républiques, ayant chacune un objet spécial et économiquement limité. Voilà une transformation bien remarquable.

  l’économiste.

  Et que l’on ne remarque pas assez. Malheureusement la législation barbare du Code impérial fait obstacle à cette transformation salutaire.....

  le conservateur.

  Mais la transformation dont vous parlez n’est-elle pas circonscrite naturellement à certaines industries? N’y aurait-il pas de graves inconvénients à ce que le régime de la société anonyme fût appliqué à l’exploitation du sol, par exemple?

  l’économiste.

  Quels inconvénients? La société anonyme résoudrait le double problème de la diffusion de la propriété territoriale, et de la concentration économique des exploitations agricoles. La société anonyme permettrait d’exécuter les travaux agricoles sur une échelle immense, et de rendre les exploitations perpétuelles, tout en divisant à l’infini, en actions de mille francs, de cinq cents francs; en coupons de cent francs, de cinquante francs, de dix francs, la propriété territoriale. Au point de vue de l’économie de l’exploitation, ce changement aurait une portée incalculable. Quels inconvénients y verriez-vous? Une société anonyme h’aurait-elle pas intérêt à cultiver le sol, le mieux possible? Si elle le cultivait mal, ne serait-elle pas obligée de se dissoudre, après avoir dévoré son capital, et de laisser la place, soit à d’autres associations, soit à des individus isolés? Si vous ne voyez aucun inconvénient à ce qu’une terre soit possédée à perpétulté par un seul individu, pourquoi en verriez-vous à ce qu’elle le fût par une collection d’individus? Le propriétaire isolé ne se continue-t-il point aussi bien que l’association de propriétaires?

  le socialiste.

  C’est fort juste. Je ne conçois pas, en vérité, que la société anonyme n’ait pas encore été appliquée à l’exploitation du sol?

  l’économiste.

  Pourquoi l’agriculture est-elle en France, comme ailleurs, la plus grevée des industries? Pourquoi la société anonyme est-elle si étroitement reglementée?

  le conservateur.

  Peut-être l’autorisation préalable exigée pour la constitution d’une société anonyme est-elle inutile; mais avouez que le gouvernement ne saurait se dispenser d’exercer une surveillance rigoureuse sur cette sorte d’association?

  l’économiste.

  Il serait bien plus nécessaire de surveiller les entreprises individuelles. Les sociétés anonymes publient le compte-rendu de leurs opérations, elles fonctionnent à ciel ouvert, tandis que les entreprises individuelles tiennent leurs opérations secrètes.....

  Savez-vous à quoi sert la surveillance du gouvernement sur les sociétés anonymes? Elle sert d’abord à endormir la vigilance des actionnaires, qui se fient bénévolement à la surveillance du gouvernement. Elle sert ensuite à entraver la marche des opérations industrielles. Elle sert enfin à procurer des emplois confortables aux créatures du gouvernement.

  le socialiste.

  Voilà le fin de l’affaire!

  l’économiste.

  Les commissaires impériaux, royaux ou nationaux près les compagnies d’assurances, de chemins de fer et autres, ne sont ni plus ni moins inutiles, ni plus ni moins abusifs que ces fameux conseillers langueyeurs de porcs, conseillers préposés aux empilements de bois, etc., qui florissaient sous l’ancien régime.

  Vous voilà édifiés, je pense, sur l’utilité des entraves apportées au droit d’association1 .

  Outre ces restrictions qui s’appliquent, d’une manière générale, aux associations industrielles et commerciales, il y en a d’autres qui s’appliquent spécialement à diverses associations, notamment à celles qui s’adonnent au commerce de banque.

  Nos banques publiques sont encore soumises au régime du privilége.

  le conservateur.

  Je vous ferai sur ce chapitre une opposition à outrance, je vous en avertis. Je ne suis point partisan de la liberté des banques et je ne le serai jamais. Je ne puis concevoir que le gouvernement permette à tout le monde de battre de la monnaie de papier, de fabriquer des assignats et de les lancer librement dans la circulation. Au reste, cette belle utopie de la liberté des banques s’est réalisée déjà...

  l’économiste.

  Où?

  le conservateur.

  Aux États-Unis, et l’on sait ce qu’elle y a produit. Ça été une banqueroute générale. Dieu nous préserve d’une calamité semblable! Mieux vaut un peu moins de liberté et un peu plus de sécurité.

  l’économiste.

  Il n’y a qu’un malheur, c’est que vos renseignements sont parfaitement faux. Les banques ne sont libres aux États-Unis, que dans six États particuliers, Rhode-Island, Massachussets, Connecticut, New-Hampshire, Maine et Vermont, et ces six États sont précisément demeurés seuls en dehors de la banqueroute générale.

  Si vous en doutez, lisez, je vous prie, les remarquables ouvrages de MM. Carey et Coquelin sur les banques1 . Vous y apprendrez que les banques libres de l’Amérique ont causé moins de sinistres que les banques privilégiées de l’Europe.

  le conservateur.

  J’ai pourtant entendu affirmer souvent tout le contraire.

  l’économiste.

  Par des gens aussi bien informés que vous, par des esprits imbus des préjugés du régime réglementaire, qui ne manquent jamais, à priori, avant toute information, de mettre les désordres industriels sur le compte du laisser-faire.

  le conservateur.

  Convenez au moins que ce serait commettre une imprudence rare d’autoriser le premier venu à battre monnaie avec du papier.

  l’économiste.

  En vérité, vous n’y songez pas! Est-ce que tout le monde, vous, moi, monsieur, ne bat pas monnaie avec du papier? Ne donnons-nous pas tous les jours à nos créanciers des promesses de payer à telle date, telle somme en espèces?—Nous leur donnerions des billets payables en autres marchandises, en produits de notre industrie par exemple, s’ils voulaient bien accepter des billets ainsi faits. Malheureusement, ils ne le veulent pas. Pourquoi? Parce qu’ils peuvent toujours échanger du numéraire contre toutes sortes de marchandises, tandis qu’ils ne peuvent tirer parti aussi aisément des autres denrées. Que ferait mon bottier, par exemple, avec un article de journal que je m’engagerais à lui livrer à trois mois de date, en échange d’une paire de bottes? Sans doute c’est bien, en définitive, avec des articles de journaux que, moi journaliste, je paye mes bottes; mais il faut d’abord que je réussisse à placer mes articles. Si je donnais à mon bottier une promesse payable en premiers-Paris au lieu d’une promesse payable en argent, ce serait à lui de placer ces premiers-Paris, et Dieu sait s’il y réussirait! Aussi n’accepte-t-il que des billets payables en belle et bonne monnaie.

  A quoi servent ces billets jusqu’à l’échéance? Ils servent, pour la plupart, à la circulation. S’ils n’existaient point, on devrait les remplacer par des sommes d’or et d’argent. Moi particulier, qui émets de ces billets à terme, je bats donc monnaie. Puis-je battre indéfiniment de cette monnaie de papier? J’en ai le droit; je puis faire, si bon me semble, des millions de promesses de payer, je puis en entasser une chambre pleine. Mais la question n’est pas de les faire, la question est de les échanger contre des valeurs existantes, des valeurs concrétées sous forme de numéraire, d’habits, de bottes, de meubles, etc. Or, me sera-t-il possible d’échanger indéfiniment mes promesses de payer contre de ces valeurs réelles? Non pas! je n’en pourrai guère échanger que la somme qu’on me supposera en état de payer. Avant d’accepter mes billets, on s’enquerra de ma position, de mes moyens d’existence, de mon intelligence, de ma probité, de ma santé, et d’après tout cela on jugera si ma promesse de payer est valable ou non. Il y a des gens habiles qui réussissent à placer de leurs billets plus qu’ils n’en peuvent payer; il y a, en revanche, des maladroits qui ne réussissent point à en placer autant; mais, en général, le crédit de chacun se proportionne à ses facultés.

  le socialiste.

  C’est pourtant d’une appréciation bien difficile.

  l’économiste.

  Aussi faut-il un tact exquis pour faire cette appréciation. Ce tact, les banquiers l’acquièrent et le développent par une longue habitude. Ceux qui ne le possèdent point se ruinent. Si le gouvernement s’avisait de faire la banque comme il fait tant d’autres choses, vous verriez promptement disparaître les capitaux de ce banquier omnibus.... Heureusement, le gouvernement n’est pas devenu encore le banquier universel. Aussi ne peut-on guère lancer dans la circulation plus de promesses qu’on n’en peut rembourser.

  Quelle différence y a-t-il entre la promesse de payer d’une banque et celle d’un particulier? Aucune, si ce n’est que l’une est payable à vue, tandis que l’autre est payable à terme. L’une et l’autre doivent également s’appuyer sur des valeurs réelles pour être acceptées. On n’accepte votre promesse que si l’on présume qu’elle sera payée à l’échéance; on n’accepte un billet de banque que si l’on a la certitude d’en obtenir toujours le remboursement en espèces.

  Lorsque les billets de banque ne sont point remboursables en espèces, c’est-à-dire en une marchandise toujours aisément échangeable, circulable, lorsqu’ils sont remboursables en terres ou en maisons par exemple, ils subissent une dépréciation précisément équivalente à la difficulté d’échanger ces terres ou ces maisons contre une denrée parfaitement circulable; lorsqu’ils ne sont remboursables, ni à vue, ni à terme en aucune valeur réelle, espèces, maisons, terres, meubles, etc., ils perdent toute valeur, ils ne sont plus que des chiffons de papier.

  le conservateur.

  Comment donc se fait-il qu’on accepte des billets de banque, au lieu d’exiger du numéraire?

  l’économiste.

  Parce qu’ils sont des instruments de circulation plus commodes, plus faciles à transporter et moins coûteux, voilà tout!

  le conservateur.

  Mais, encore une fois, le gouvernement n’a-t-il pas raison d’intervenir pour empêcher les banques d’émettre plus de billets qu’elles n’en pourraient rembourser?

  l’économiste.

  Il devrait donc intervenir aussi pour empêcher les particuliers de souscrire plus de promesses qu’ils n’en peuvent payer. Pourquoi ne le fait-il point? parce que c’est impossible d’abord, parce que c’est inutile ensuite. Je n’ai pas besoin de vous démontrer que c’est impossible, je vous démontrerai, en deux mots, que c’est inutile. Vos émissions particulières ne sont pas limitées par votre volonté, à vous; elles sont limitées par la volonté d’autrui. Lorsqu’on juge que vous avez dépassé vos moyens de payer, on refuse d’accepter vos promesses de payement, et votre émission se trouve ainsi arrêtée. Aucun gouvernement ne pourrait certes apprécier aussi justement que les intéressés eux-mêmes, le moment où un particulier dépasse ses moyens de payer. L’intervention du gouvernement pour régler le crédit des particuliers, à supposer qu’elle fût possible, serait donc parfaitement inutile.

  Ce qui est vrai pour les particuliers qui émettent des billets à terme, ne l’est pas moins pour les banques qui émettent des billets à vue.

  Quelle est la fonction des banques, ou du moins quelle est leur fonction principale? C’est d’escompter des billets. C’est de donner en échange d’une valeur réalisable à terme une valeur réalisée ou immédiatement réalisable, et parfaitement circulable. C’est d’acheter des billets à terme contre du numéraire ou des billets représentant du numéraire.

  Si une banque se sert uniquement de numéraire pour faire l’escompte, ceux qui lui vendent des billets payables à terme ne courrent aucun risque, à moins que la monnaie ne soit fausse. Or les détenteurs de billets payables à terme ne sont pas assez imbéciles pour les céder contre de la fausse monnaie.

  Si la banque donne en échange de ces billets payables à terme, non point du numéraire, mais des billets payables à vue, la situation n’est plus la même, j’en conviens. Il peut arriver que la banque, alléchée par les bénéfices de l’escompte, émette une quantité considérable de billets sans s’inquiéter si elle pourra toujours, en toutes circonstances, les rembourser.

  Mais de même que la banque n’accepte point les billets des particuliers, lorsqu’elle n’a pas une foi suffisante dans le remboursement de ces billets, de même les particuliers n’acceptent point les billets de la banque lorsqu’ils n’ont pas la certitude de pouvoir toujours, en toutes circonstances, les réaliser.

  Si les particuliers jugent que la banque n’est pas en état de rembourser ses billets, ils ne les prennent point et demandent du numéraire. Ou bien encore ils les prennent, mais déduction faite des risques de non payement.

  Comment le public peut-il savoir si une banque est en état ou non de rembourser ses billets payables à vue?

  Comme il ne les accepte point s’il n’est pleinement édifié à cet égard, les banques sont intéressées à rendre leur situation publique. Elles publient donc, chaque mois ou chaque semaine, le compte-rendu de leurs opérations.

  Dans ce compte-rendu, le public voit quel est le chiffre des émissions, le montant des réserves en numéraire, des valeurs diverses en portefeuilles, il compare le passif avec l’actif, et il juge, en conséquence, s’il peut continuer ou non à accepter les billets de la banque, et à quel taux.

  le conservateur.

  Et si la banque présente un faux aperçu de sa situation?

  l’économiste.

  En un mot, si elle commet un faux. En ce cas, les détenteurs de billets peuvent ou doivent pouvoir faire punir comme faussaires, faux monnayeurs, les directeurs de cette banque, et se faire rembourser, par les actionnaires responsables, le montant du vol commis à leur préjudice.

  Au reste, le public, guidé par son intérêt, est assez prudent pour ne s’adresser qu’aux banques dont les directeurs et les administrateurs lui offrent des garanties morales suffisantes.

  Vous voyez donc que si le gouvernement peut se passer d’intervenir pour empêcher les particuliers de duper les banques, il pourrait se passer tout aussi bien d’intervenir pour empêcher les banques de duper les particuliers.

  L’expérience s’accorde ici pleinement avec la théorie. Les banques libres des Massachussets, du Vermont, etc., ont causé, je vous l’ai dit, beaucoup moins de sinistres que les banques privilégiées de l’Europe.

  S’il est inutile que le gouvernement intervienne pour régler l’émission des billets de banques, à quoi donc peut servir son intervention?

  Je vais vous exposer brièvement à quoi elle sert.

  L’intervention du gouvernement dans les affaires de crédit se réduit toujours, en définitive, à ceci: à accorder à une banque le privilége exclusif d’émettre des billets payables à vue. Lorsqu’une banque est pourvue de ce privilége, elle peut aisément défier toute concurrence. Les autres entreprises, ne pouvant escompter qu’avec du numéraire ou des billets à terme, se trouvent hors d’état de lutter avec la banque privilégiée:

  En premier lieu, parce que les billets payables à vue sont des instruments de circulation plus parfaits que le numéraire ou les billets à terme.

  En second lieu, parce que la monnaie de papier peut être livrée à plus bas prix que le numéraire. En voici la raison.

  Sans doute, les billets de banque doivent s’appuyer toujours sur des valeurs réelles et circulables. La banque doit toujours être en mesure de les rembourser en espèces. Mais voici ce qui arrive: lorsqu’une banque est solidement assise, on ne lui présente, en temps ordinaire, qu’un petit nombre de billets à rembourser. Elle peut donc se dispenser d’avoir constamment en caisse une somme de numéraire égale à la somme de ses billets en circulation. Qu’elle soit en mesure de se la procurer, dans le cas où l’on viendrait lui demander le remboursement total de ses émissions; qu’elle ait à sa disposition une quantité suffisante de bonnes valeurs aisément réalisables en espèces, voilà tout ce qu’il faut! On ne saurait rien exiger de plus. Mais ces bonnes valeurs, actions de chemins de fer, de compagnies d’assurances, titres de rentes, sont moins chères que le numéraire de tout le montant de l’intérêt qu’elles portent.

  Moins la banque est obligée de conserver de numéraire en réserve, et moins cher elle peut vendre ses billets payables à vue, plus bas elle peut faire descendre le taux de l’escompte. Ordinairement les banques ne conservent pas, en numéraire, plus du tiers de la somme de leurs émissions. Toutefois le chiffre de la réserve du numéraire est complétement subordonné aux circonstances. Une banque doit conserver une proportion d’espèces plus ou moins considérable, selon que les crises monétaires sont plus ou moins à redouter, selon aussi que les autres valeurs composant sa réserve, sont plus ou moins aisément réalisables en espèces. C’est une affaire de tact. La banque est, du reste, bientôt avertie par la diminution de ses escomptes, qu’elle se trouve en-dessous de la limite nécessaire, car le public ne tarde pas à lui acheter moins de billets lorsqu’il a moins de contiance en leur remboursement.

  Une banque autorisée exclusivement à émettre des billets payables à vue, possède donc un double avantage: elle peut fournir un instrument de circulation perfectionné aux demandeurs de monnaie, et cet instrument perfectionné, elle peut le livrer à meilleur marché que les entreprises rivales ne peuvent livrer un instrument plus grossier, le numéraire. Aussi se débarrasse-t-elle aisément de toute concurrence.

  Mais si la banque privilégiée réussit à demeurer seule maîtresse du marché n’imposera-t-elle pas la loi aux acheteurs de monnaie? Ne leur fera-t-elle pas payer ses billets plus cher qu’ils ne les payeraient sous un régime de libre concurrence.

  le socialiste.

  Cela me paraît inévitable. C’est la loi du monopole.

  l’économiste.

  Les actionnaires de la banque privilégiée bénéficieront de la différence. A la vérité, ils seront obligés d’admettre des co-partageants aux profits de leur fructueux monopole.

  Lorsqu’une banque obtient, dans un grand pays, le privilége exclusif de l’émission des billets à vue, toute concurrence venant à succomber devant ce privilége, elle voit s’accroître énormément sa clientèle. Bientôt elle ne peut plus y suffire: elle abandonne alors une partie de sa besogne, partant de ses profits, à un certain nombre de banquiers. Elle n’accepte plus que les billets garantis par trois signatures, et elle entoure l’escompte de formalités et de difficultés telles que les demandeurs de billets sont obligés de recourir à l’intermédiaire des banquiers ayant un compte ouvert à la banque1 .

  Cela simplifie considérablement la besogne de la banque privilégiée. Au lieu d’avoir affaire à plusieurs milliers d’individus, elle n’a plus affaire qu’à un petit nombre de banquiers, dont il lui est facile de surveiller les opérations; mais ces intermédiaires privilégiés font naturellement payer cher leurs services. Grâce à leur petit nombre ils peuvent faire la loi au public. Il se constitue ainsi, sous l’aile de la banque privilégiée, une véritable aristocratie financière qui partage avec elle les bénéfices du privilége.

  Ces bénéfices ne sauraient toutefois dépasser certaines limites. Lorsque la banque et ses intermédiaires élèvent trop haut le prix de l’escompte, le public s’adresse aux banquiers qui escomptent avec du numéraire ou des billets à terme. Malheureusement la concurrence meurtrière de l’établissement privilégié réduisant beaucoup le nombre de ceux-ci, et ne leur laissant qu’une existence précaire, le prix de l’escompte demeure toujours fort exagéré.

  Dans les temps de crise, le privilége des banques a un résultat plus funeste encore.

  Je vous ai dit qu’une banque doit toujours être en mesure de rembourser ses billets en espèces. Qu’arrive-t-il lorsqu’elle se trouve hors d’état de les rembourser tous? Il arrive que les billets dont le remboursement ne peut s’opérer, se déprécient. Par qui la dépréciation est-elle supportée? par les porteurs de billets; ceux-ci subissent une véritable banqueroute.

  Eh! bien, savez-vous à quoi sert le privilége? Il sert à autoriser les banques à commettre impunément, légalement, cette sorte de banqueroute. La Banque de France et la Banque d’Angleterre ont été, à diverses reprises, autorisées à suspendre leurs payements en espèces. La Banque d’Angleterre l’a été notamment en 1797. Les porteurs de billets ont perdu jusqu’à trente pour cent dans le cours de la suspension. La Banque de France a joui du même bénéfice en 1848.

  le conservateur.

  Ses billets ont perdu fort peu de chose.

  l’économiste.

  Le chiffre de la perte ne fait rien à l’affaire. N’eussent-ils perdu qu’un seul jour un millième pour cent, les porteurs n’en auraient pas moins été victimes d’une banqueroute.

  Si ces deux Banques n’avaient pas été privilégiées, leurs actionnaires auraient été obligés de payer jusqu’au dernier sou, les billets présentés au remboursement. Dans cette éventualité, les porteurs de billets n’auraient rien perdu; en revanche, les actionnaires auraient dû s’imposer d’assez durs sacrifices pour satisfaire à tous les engagements de la Banque. Mais c’est là un risque que courent tous les capitalistes dont les fonds sont engagés dans la production... à l’exception toutefois de ceux qui jouissent du privilége de rejeter leurs pertes sur le public.

  le socialiste.

  Je m’explique maintenant pourquoi les actionnaires de la Banque de France ont reçu, en 1848, leurs dividendes accoutumés, tandis que toutes les entreprises industrielles ou commerciales étaient en perte.

  l’économiste.

  Soyons justes toutefois. Il faut accuser bien moins les actionnaires des banques privilégiées que les gouvernements distributeurs de priviléges. En France, comme en Angleterre, le privilége de la Banque a été accordé à titre onéreux. En échange de cette faveur, le gouvernement s’est emparé de tout ou partie du capital versé par les actionnaires. Hors d’état de le leur restituer dans les temps de crise, il s’est tiré de cet embarras, en autorisant la Banque à suspendre ses payements en espèces. Faute de pouvoir s’acquitter de ses engagements envers la Banque, il a autorisé la Banque à manquer à ses engagements envers le public1 .

  Jadis, lorsque les gouvernements se trouvaient hors d’état de payer leurs dettes, ils falsifiaient leurs monnaies, en y ajoutant du cuivre ou du plomb, ou bien encore en diminuant le poids des pièces. De nos jours, ils procèdent autrement: ils empruntent de grosses sommes à des établissements qu’ils autorisent exclusivement à fabriquer de la monnaie de papier. Privée de sa base naturelle et nécessaire, cette monnaie se déprécie dans les moments de crise. Le gouvernement intervient alors pour obliger le public à supporter la dépréciation.

  Ou est la différence des deux procédés?

  Sous un régime de libre concurrence aucune de ces combinaisons spoliatrices ne serait possible.

  Sous ce régime, les banques devraient disposer d’un capital suffisant pour remplir leurs engagements, faute de quoi le public n’accepterait point leurs billets. Dans les temps de crise, elles supporteraient seules la perte naturellement occasionnée par le resserrement de la circulation; il ne leur serait plus permis de la rejeter sur le public.

  Sous ce régime encore, la concurrence des banques ferait promptement descendre le prix de l’escompte, aujourd’hui surélevé, au prix le plus bas possible.

  Sous ce régime enfin, les billets de banque représentant des valeurs réelles et non plus des créances irrécouvrables, se fractionnant selon les besoins du public et non plus selon la convenance des privilégiés, se multiplieraient dans une proportion considérable. La circulation presque entière se ferait économiquement en papier au lieu de se faire chèrement en numéraire.

  le socialiste.

  Vous avez singulièrement ébranlé mes convictions, je l’avoue. Quoi! cette féodalité financière, dont j’attribuais l’existence à la libre concurrence, s’est élevée grâce au monopole. Quoi! la cherté de l’escompte et les perturbations désastreuses de notre circulation monétaire proviennent du privilége et non de la liberté.

  l’économiste.

  Précisément. Vous autres socialistes, vous vous êtes trompés sur les banques comme sur tout le reste. Vous avez cru que les banques étaient soumises au régime du laisser-faire, et vous avez attribué à la liberté des abus et des maux qui ont leur origine dans le privilége. Ç’a été, en toutes choses, votre grande et déplorable erreur.

  le socialiste.

  Au fait, c’est bien possible.

  l’économiste.

  Si nous avions assez de loisirs pour passer en revue toutes les autres industries privilégiées ou réglementées, la boulangerie, la boucherie, l’imprimerie, le notariat, le courtage, la vente des effets publics, le barreau, la médecine, la prostitution, etc., vous verriez qu’en toutes choses le privilége et la réglementation ont donné les mêmes résultats désastreux: diminution et altération de la production d’une part, perturbation, iniquité de la répartition de l’autre.

  On a limité le nombre des boulangers dans les principaux centres de population. Mais on s’est aperçu que cette limitation mettait les consommateurs à la merci des boulangers, et l’on a établi un maximum pour le prix du pain. On a voulu corriger un règlement par un autre. A-t-on réussi? Les manœuvres qui s’opèrent journellement à la halle aux farines attestent le contraire. Des spéculateurs s’entendent avec les boulangers pour faire hausser d’une manière factice le cours des farines, le maximum est porté au dessus du cours réel du grain, et les auteurs de ces manœuvres immorales empochent la différence.

  Il y a en France quelques villes ou la boulangerie est demeurée libre, à Lunel par exemple, et nulle part on ne mange du pain de meilleur qualité et à aussi bas prix.

  Vous savez combien le privilége des agents de change a été profitable au petit nombre de ceux qui en ont été investis; vous savez aussi combien le privilége des notaires a élevé le prix des actes civils tout en diminuant la sécurité des dépôts. Dans aucune industrie libre, les faillites ne sont aussi nombreuses ni aussi scandaleuses que dans le notariat.

  Le privilége des imprimeurs a eu pour résultat d’augmenter le prix des impressions, en créant de véritables charges d’imprimeurs. A Paris, ces charges ne coûtent pas moins de vingt-cinq mille francs. Les ouvriers imprimeurs aussi bien que les garçons boulangers, bouchers et les clercs de notaire se trouvent cantonnés à vie dans les derniers grades de l’industrie; à moins de posséder un capital suffisant pour acheter un brevet ou une charge, ils ne peuvent devenir entrepreneurs ou directeurs d’industrie. Autre iniquité!

  le conservateur.

  Vous nous avez signalé aussi la prostitution. La limitation du nombre des maisons de tolérance n’est-elle pas commandée par l’intérêt de la moralité publique?

  l’économiste.

  Les entraves apportées à la multiplication des maisons de tolérance ont pour résultat unique d’augmenter les profits des directrices et des commanditaires de ces établissements, tout en diminuant le salaire des malheureuses qui trafiquent de leur beauté et de leur jeunesse. Des fortunes considérables sont sorties de cette exploitation immonde.... Le monopole des maisons de tolérance est renforcé encore par les règlements de police qui interdisent aux prostituées le séjour des maisons garnies. Celles qui n’ont pas les moyens d’acheter des meubles sont obligées de se mettre à la merci des entrepreneurs de prostitution ou de faire de la prostitution interlope.

  le socialiste.

  Ne pensez-vous pas que la prostitution disparaîtra un jour?

  l’économiste.

  Je l’ignore. En tous cas, ce n’est point à coups de règlements qu’on la fera disparaître. On la rendra, au contraire, plus dangereuse!

  Sous un régime où la propriété serait pleinement respectée, où, par conséquent, la misère serait réduite à son minimum, la prostitution diminuerait considérablement, car la misère est la grande et infatigable pourvoyeusede la prostitution. Il n’y aurait plus, sous ce régime, que des prostituées volontaires. Cela étant, il vaut mieux, je pense, que la prostitution se concentre, conformément au principe de la division du travail, plutôt que de s’universaliser. J’aime mieux peu de femmes se prostituant beaucoup, que beancoup de femmes se prostituant un peu.

  Vous ne devineriez guère où le privilége et le communisme sont allés se nicher encore: dans les cercueils où l’on dépose nos tristes dépouilles; dans les cimetières où l’on enfouit la poussière humaine. Pompes funèbres et cimetières sont privilégiés ou communs. On ne peut librement enterrer un mort, on ne peut librement ouvrir un cimetière.

  A Paris, l’administration des pompes funèbres est affermée à une entreprise particulière. Le prix du bail est véritablement excessif; la redevance s’élève aux trois quarts de la recette présumée environ. Et cette redevance est payée non pas à la municipalité, mais aux fabriques des églises reconnues par l’État. Tant pis pour les morts qui appartiennent à des cultes non reconnus! Le montant de cet impôt funéraire sert à couvrir les menues dépenses des paroisses, à salarier les prédicateurs en renom, à payer les décorations somptueuses du mois de Marie, etc. Hérétiques ou orthodoxes, les morts ne réclament guère!

  Ainsi livré à une administration privilégiée et exorbitamment imposée, le service des pompes funèbres ne saurait manquer d’être cher et défectueux. Il coûte huit ou dix fois plus cher qu’il ne coûterait sous un régime de liberté, et son insuffisance est régulièrement constatée à toutes les époques de mortalité extraordinaire.

  Avec ce système, le modeste héritage de l’ouvrier disparaît dans les frais d’enterrement, à moins que les enfants du défunt ne se résignent à recevoir l’aumône du convoi des pauvres. Est-il une inégalité plus monstrueuse?

  Les cimetières, ces vastes hôtelleries de la mort, appartiennent aux municipalités. Il n’est pas permis de leur faire concurrence en ouvrant un cimetière libre. Aussi les places réservées coûtent-elles fort cher. Six pieds carrés du cimetière du père Lachaise coûtent plus cher qu’ailleurs un arpent de terre. Le riche seul peut aller s’agenouiller sur la tombe de ses Pères; le pauvre est réduit à s’incliner sur le bord de la fosse commune où se succèdent, pressées comme des gerbes dans une meule, les générations des misérables. Les hordes les plus sauvages auraient horreur de ce communisme de de la tombe; nous y sommes accoutumés... ou pour mieux dire nous le supportons comme tant d’autres abus qui nous meurtrissent... Avez-vous remarqué quelquefois, dans nos cimetières, des femmes du peuple cherchant de l’œil le lieu où l’on a déposé leur père, leur mari ou leur enfant. Elles y avaient planté une petite croix avec une inscription peinte de blanc. Mais la croix a disparu sous une nouvelle couche de cercueils. Fatiguées d’une recherche vaine, elles s’éloignent le cœur gros, en remportant avec elles la couronne d’immortelles, achetée sur le chétif salaire de la semaine...

  le conservateur.

  Laissons ce sujet lamentable. Dans votre nomenclature d’industries privilégiées vous avez cité le barreau, la médecine, le professorat. Cependant chacun est libre de devenir médecin, avocat, professeur,

  l’économiste.

  Oui, sans doute, mais ces professions sont étroitement réglémentées. Or, tout règlement qui obstrue l’entrée d’une profession ou d’une industrie, ou qui en embarrasse l’exercice, contribue inévitablement à en élever les frais.

  le conservateur.

  Comment! vous voudriez qu’on pût exercer librement la médecine, pratiquer le barreau, enseigner... Mais que deviendrions-nous, bon Dieu?

  l’économiste.

  Ce que nous deviendrions? Nous serions guéris plus promptement et à moins de frais; nos procès nous coûteraient moins cher et nos enfants recevraient une éducation plus substantielle, voilà tout! Fiez-vous pour cela à la loi de l’offre et de la demande, sous un régime de libre-concurrence. Si l’enseignement devenait libre, les entrepreneurs d’éducation cesseraient-ils de demander de bons professeurs? ceux-ci ne seraient-ils pas intéressés, en conséquence, à pouvoir offrir des connaissances solides et vastes? Leur salaire ne se proportionnerait-il pas à leur mérite? Si l’exercice de la médecine venait à être débarrassé des règlements qui l’entravent, les malades n’en continueraient-ils pas moins à s’adresser aux meilleurs médecins? Parmi les études aujourd’hui imposées aux médecins et aux avocats combien sont inutiles dans la pratique? Combien tiennent la place de connaissances indispensables? A quoi servent, je vous le demande, aux avocats et aux médecins le latin et le grec?

  le conservateur.

  Vouloir que les avocats et les médecins cessent d’apprendre le latin et le grec, en vérité c’est trop fort?

  l’économiste.

  Les frais de ce latin et de ce grec sont remboursés en partie par les contribuables, qui soutiennent les établissements universitaires, en partie par les clients des avocats et des médecins. Or, je me demande en vain ce qu’un avocat et un médecin, qui ont à discuter des lois françaises et à guérir des malades français, peuvent faire du latin et du grec. Toutes les lois romaines sont traduites aussi bien qu’Hippocrate et Gallien.

  le conservateur.

  Et la nomenclature médicale donc?

  l’économiste.

  Croyez-vous qu’une maladie nommée en français ne puisse être aussi aisément guérie que la même maladie nommée en latin ou en grec? Quand donc fera-t-on justice de ce mauvais charlatanisme d’étiquettes et de formules que Molière poursuivait de son impitoyable bon sens?...

  Mais il faudrait des volumes pour dénombrer cette armée de priviléges et de règlements qui obstruent l’entrée des professions les plus utiles et qui entravent l’exécution des travaux les plus nécessaires1 .

  Je finis en citant une dernière disposition de ce monument de barbarie qu’on appelle le Code français.

  On se plaint généralement de ce que les grandes entreprises d’utilité publique ont peine à se développer en France. Voulez-vous savoir pourquoi? Lisez cet article de la loi des 7–9 juillet 1833.

  “Art. 3. Tous grands travaux publics, routes royales, docks, entrepris par l’État ou par compagnies particulières, avec ou sans péages, avec ou sans subsides du Trésor, avec ou sans aliénation du domaine public, ne pourront être exécutés qu’en vertu d’une loi qui ne sera rendue qu’après une enquête administrative. Une ordonnance suffira pour autoriser l’exécution des routes, des canaux et chemins de fer d’embranchement de moins de vingt mille mètres de longueur, des ponts et de tous autres travaux de moindre importance. Cette ordonnance devra également être précédée d’une enquête.”

  Or vous savez combien de temps il faut pour faire une enquête administrative, combien pour discuter une loi ou rendre une ordonnance? Plaignez-vous donc, après cela, de ce que l’esprit d’entreprises ne se développe pas en France! Plaignez-vous de ce que les malheureux que vous avez garottés ne marchent pas!

  DIXIÈME SOIRÉE

  SOMMAIRE: De la charité légale et de son influence sur la population.—Loi de Malthus.—Défense de Malthus.—De la population en Irlande.—Moyen de mettre fin aux misères de l’Irlande.—Pourquoi la charité légale provoque un développement factice de la population.—De son influence morale sur les classes ouvrières.—Que la charité légale décourage la charité privée.—De laqualitéde la population.—Moyens de perfectionner la population.—Croisement des races.—Mariages.—Unions sympathiques.—Unions mal assorties.—Leur influence sur la race.—Dans quelle situation, sous quel régime la population se maintiendrait le plus aisément au niveau de ses moyens d’existence.

  l’économiste.

  Je vous entretiendrai aujourd’hui des perturbations et des désastres occasionnés par la charité légale, par les institutions de bienfaisance organisées et entretenues aux frais du gouvernement, des départements et des communes. Ces institutions, dont les frais sont mis à la charge de tous les contribuables indistinetement, constituent une atteinte des plus nuisibles à la propriété. Au point de vue de la population...

  le socialiste.

  Enfin! ecce iterùm Crispinus. Voici revenir le malthusien. Vous allez, je le parie, demander la suppression des établissements de bienfaisance dans l’intérêt des pauvres; mais vous ne serez point écouté, je vous en avertis. La constitution de 1848 a imposé à la Société le devoir de l’assistance.

  le conservateur.

  Et ce devoir la Société saura le remplir.

  l’économiste.

  Tant pis! Comment un gouvernement peut-il assister les pauvres? En leur donnant de l’argent ou des secours en nature. Cet argent ou ces secours, où peut-il les prendre? Dans les poches des contribuables. Le voilà donc conduit à recourir à la Taxe des pauvres, c’est-à-dire à la plus épouvantable machine de guerre qui ait jamais été dirigée contre les misérables.

  le socialiste.

  Malthusien! malthusien! malthusien!

  l’économiste.

  Certes, voilà une injure dont je m’honore. Je suis malthusien quand il s’agit de la population, comme je suis newtonien quand il s’agit de la gravitation, smithien quand il s’agit de la division du travail.

  le socialiste.

  Décidément, nous allons nous brouiller. Je commencais, s’il faut vous l’avouer, à me laisser ébranler par vos doctrines. Je me surprenais à bénir la propriété et à admirer ses résultats si féconds... mais, en vérité, il me serait impossible d’admirer Malthus, et encore moins de le bénir. Quoi! vous oseriez entreprendre de le justifier ce blasphémateur qui a osé dire: “qu’un homme arrivant sans moyens d’existence sur une terre déjà occupée est tenu de s’en alter”, cet économiste sans entrailles qui a fait l’apologie de l’infanticide, de la peste et de la famine. Défendez donc plutôt Attila ou Mandrin.

  le conservateur.

  Vous nous rendrez ce témoignage que nous détestons Malthus autant que vous-mêmes. Le Constitutionnel se montrait dernièrement fort peu respectueux à l’endroit de ce déplorable fétiche de l’économie politique anglaise.

  l’économiste.

  Avez-vous lu Malthus?

  le conservateur.

  J’ai lu les passages cités par le Constitutionnel.

  le socialiste.

  Et moi les passages cités par M. Proudhon.

  l’économiste.

  Ce sont les mêmes, ou, pour mieux dire, c’est le même, car on ne cite jamais que celui-là. Au reste, si barbare que paraisse ce passage il n’en est pas moins l’expression de la vérité.

  le conservateur.

  Abomination!

  le socialiste.

  Infamie!

  l’économiste.

  Et d’une vérité essentiellement humaine, comme je vous le prouverai.

  Dites-moi donc, croyez-vous que la terre puisse fournir toutes les matières premières nécessaires à l’entretien d’un nombre illimité d’hommes?

  le socialiste.

  Non, à coup sûr. La terre ne saurait nourrir qu’un nombre limité d’habitants. Fourier évaluait ce nombre à trois ou cinq milliards. Mais c’est à peine si la terre compte aujourd’hui un milliard d’habitants.

  l’économiste.

  Vous admettez une limite, et, en effet, il serait absurde d’affirmer que la terre peut nourrir deux, trois, quatre ou cinq cents milliards d’hommes.

  Croyez-vous que la force reproductrice de l’espèce humaine soit limitée?

  le socialiste.

  Je ne saurais le dire.

  l’économiste.

  Observez tout ce qui vit ou végète, et vous remarquerez que la nature a prodigué les semences et les germes. Chaque espèce de végétaux répand mille fois plus de semences que la terre n’en féconde. Les espèces animales sont, de même, pourvues d’une surabondance de germes.

  Les choses pouvaient-elles être arrangées autrement? Si les animaux et les végétaux ne possédaient qu’une force reproductrice bornée, ne suffirait-il pas de la moindre catastrophe pour anéantir leurs espèces? L’ordonnateur des choses pouvait-il se dispenser de les pourvoir d’une force reproductrice presque illimitée?

  Cependant, les espèces végétales et animales ne dépassent jamais certaines limites, soit que tous les germes ne reçoivent point de fécondation, soit qu’une partie de ceux qui ont été fécondés, périsse. C’est grâce à la non-fécondation des germes ou à la destruction hâtive des germes fécondés, qu’elles se proportionnent à la quantité d’aliments que leur offre la nature.

  Pourquoi l’homme serait-il soustrait à cette loi qui régit toutes les espèces animales et végétales?

  Supposez que son pouvoir de reproduction eût été limité, supposez que toute union ne pût produire que deux individus, l’humanité se serait-elle, je ne dis pas multipliée mais simplement maintenue? Au lieu de se propager de manière à peupler la terre, les différentes races d’hommes ne se seraient-elles pas successivement éteintes, par l’action des maladies, des guerres, des accidents, etc? N’était-il pas nécessaire que l’homme fût pourvu, comme l’animal ou la plante, d’une puissance reproductrice surabondante?

  Si l’homme possède comme les autres espèces animales et végétales une puissance de reproduction surabondante, que doit-il faire? Doit-il pulluler comme elles, en laissant à la nature le soin de détruire l’excédant de son croît? Doit-il se reproduire sans s’inquiéter plus que l’animal ou la plante du sort de sa progéniture? Non! Être pourvu de raison et de prévoyance, l’homme est tenu d’agir concurrement avec la Providence pour maintenir son espèce dans de justes limites; il est tenu de ne pas donner naissance à des êtres voués d’avance à la destruction.

  le socialiste.

  Voués à la destruction...

  l’économiste.

  Voyons. Si l’homme utilisait toute sa puissance reproductrice comme il n’y est que trop disposé; si le nombre des hommes venait, en conséquence, à dépasser un jour la limite des moyens de subsistance, que deviendraient les individus produits au delà de cette limite? Que deviennent les plantes qui se multiplient au delà des facultés nutritives du sol?

  le conservateur.

  Elles périssent.

  l’économiste.

  Et rien ne peut les sauver?

  le socialiste.

  On peut augmenter les forces productives de la terre.

  l’économiste.

  Jusqu’à une certaine limite. Mais cette limite atteinte, supposez que les plantes se multiplient de manière à la dépasser, que doit-il advenir?

  le socialiste.

  Alors évidemment le surplus doit périr.

  l’économiste.

  Et rien ne peut le sauver?

  le socialiste.

  Rien ne peut le sauver.

  l’économiste.

  Eh! bien, ce qui arrive aux plantes, arrive aussi aux hommes lorsque la limite de leurs moyens d’existence se trouve dépassée. Voilà la loi que Malthus a reconnue, constatée; voilà l’explication de ce fameux passage que vous et les vôtres lui imputez a crime: “Un homme qui arrive dans un monde déjà occupé, etc.” Et comment Malthus a-t-il reconnu cette loi? en observant les faits! en constatant que dans tous les pays où la population a dépassé les moyens de subsistance, le surplus a péri par la famine, les maladies, les infanticides, etc., et que la destruction n’a point cessé de remplir son office funèbre, jusqu’au moment où la population a été ramenéc à son équilibre nécessaire.

  le socialiste.

  A son équilibre nécessaire... Vous pensez donc que les pays où Malthus a observé sa loi n’auraient pu nourrir leur excédant de population; vous pensez que notre belle France, où le mal-être décime les générations des pauvres, ne pourrait nourrir ceux qui meurent hâtivement.

  l’économiste.

  Je suis convaincu que la France pourrait nourrir plus d’habitants et les noùrrir mieux si la multitude des abus économiques que je vous ai signalés avaient cessé d’exister. Mais en attendant que la lumière se soit faite sur ces abus, en attendant qu’ils aient disparu, il est sage de ne point dépasser les moyens de subsistance actuels. Réclamons donc, à la fois, activement les réformes qui doivent reculer les limites des moyens de subsistance, et recommandons, jusque-là, avec Malthus, la prudence, l’abstention, le moral restraint. Plus tard, lorsque l’affranchissement complet de la propriété aura rendu la production plus abondante et la répartition plus juste, l’abstention deviendra moins rigoureuse sans cesser toutefois d’être nécessaire1 .

  le socialiste.

  Cette abstention, ce moral restraint ne cache-t-il pas une grosse immoralité?

  l’économiste.

  Laquelle? Malthus pensait qu’on se rendait coupable d’un véritable crime en donnant le jour a des êtres inévitablement destinés à périr. Il conseillait, en conséquence, de s’abstenir de les créer. Que voyez-vous d’immoral dans ce conseil?

  le socialiste.

  Rien! mais vous savez fort bien que l’abstention complète n’est pas possible dans la pratique, et Dieu sait quel compromis immoral vous avez imaginé.

  l’économiste.

  Nous n’avons rien imaginé du tout, je vous prie de le croire. Le compromis dont vous parlez se pratiquait avant que Malthus s’occupât de la loi de la population. L’économie politique ne l’a jamais recommandé, elle n’a parlé que du moral restraint..... Quant à décider si ce compromis est immoral ou non, ce n’est pas notre affaire à nous autres économistes; adressez-vous pour cela à l’Académie des sciences morales ct politiques (section de morale).

  le socialiste.

  Je n’y manquerai pas.

  le conservateur.

  Je conçois que la population puisse dépasser la limite des moyens de subsistance, mais est-il bien facile de fixer cette limite? Peut-on dire, par exemple, que la population dépasse la subsistance en Irlande?

  l’économiste.

  Oui, et la preuve c’est qu’une partie de la population irlandaise meurt chaque année de faim et de misère.

  le socialiste.

  Tandis que la riche et puissante aristocratie qui exploite l’Irlande mène une existence splendide à Londres et à Paris.

  l’économiste.

  Si vous examiniez de près les causes de cette inégalité monstrueuse, vous les trouveriez encore dans des atteintes portées à la propriété. Pendant plusieurs siècles, la confiscation a été à l’ordre du jour en Irlande. Non seulement les Saxons vainqueurs ont confisqué les terres du peuple irlandais, mais encore ils ont détruit son industrie, en la chargeant d’entraves meurtrières. Ces barbaries ont eu un terme, mais l’état social qu’elles ont établi s’est maintenu et aggravé, au grand dommage de l’Angleterre.

  le socialiste.

  Dites donc à son profit.

  l’économiste.

  Non, car la misère irlandaise est aujourd’hui entretenue et augmentée d’un côté par les taxes extraordinaires que l’Angleterre s’impose pour nourrir les pauvres de l’Irlande, de l’autre par les taxes ordinaires qu’elle prélève pour protéger les personnes et les propriétés de l’aristocratie irlandaise.

  le socialiste.

  Quoi! vous voudriez que l’Angleterre laissât périr sans secours les pauvres de l’Irlande?

  le conservateur.

  Quoi! vous voudriez que l’Angleterre laissât assassiner les propriétaires irlandais et piller leurs propriétés?

  l’économiste.

  Je voudrais que l’Angleterre dît à l’aristocratie propriétaire de l’Irlande: vous possédez la plus grande partie du capital irlandais et de la terre irlandaise, eh bien! défendez vous-même vos propriétés. Je ne veux plus consacrer un homme ni un schelling à ce service. Je ne veux pas continuer davantage à entretenir les pauvres que vous avez laissés pulluler sur la terre d’Irlande. Si les misérables paysans de l’Irlande se liguent pour brûler vos châteaux et se partager vos terres, tant pis pour vous! Je ne veux plus m’occuper de l’Irlande.

  L’Irlande ne demanderait pas mieux, vous le savez. “Par grâce, disait le vieux O’Connell aux membres du parlement britannique, ôtez vos mains de dessus nous. Abandonnez-nous à notre destinée. Permettez-nous de nous gouverner nous-mêmes!”

  Si l’Angleterre satisfaisait à ce vœu constant des grands champions de l’indépendance irlandaise, qu’adviendraitil de l’Irlande? Croyez-vous que l’aristocratie abandonnerait ses riches domaines à la merci des bandes affamées des white-boys? Non, à coup sûr! elle se hâterait de quitter ses splendides habitations du West-End à Londres et du faubourg Saint-Honoré à Paris, pour aller défendre ses propriétés menacées. Elle comprendrait alors la nécessité de guérir les lamentables plaies de l’Irlande. Elle appliquerait ses capitaux à développer et à perfectionner l’agriculture, elle se mettrait à créer des aliments pour ceux qu’elle a réduits aux dernières extrémités de la misère. Si elle ne prenait point ce parti, si elle continuait à dépenser oisivement ses revenus à l’étranger, pendant que la famine fait son œuvre en Irlande, réussirait-elle longtemps à préserver, sans appui extérieur, ses terres et ses capitaux? Ne serait-elle pas promptement dépossédée de ses domaines par les légions de misérables qui couvrent la terre d’Irlande?

  le socialiste.

  Si l’Angleterre lui retirait l’appui de ses forces de terre et de mer, cela changerait singulièrement sa situation; rien n’est plus certain. Mais les Irlandais n’auraient-ils pas intérêt à confisquer purement et simplement les biens de cette aristocratie sans entrailles?

  l’économiste.

  Ce serait appliquer dans toute sa rigueur la peine du talion. J’ignore jusqu’à quel point il est juste, il est moral de faire peser sur une génération la peine des crimes des générations précédentes; j’ignore si les descendants des victimes de Drogheda et de Wexford ont le droit de faire expier aux propriétaires actuels de l’Irlande, les crimes des bandits à la solde d’Henri VIII, d’Élisabeth et de Cromwell. Mais, à envisager la question au simple point de vue de l’utilité, les Irlandais auraient tort de confisquer les biens de leur aristocratie. Que feraient-ils de ces biens? Ils seraient obligés de les répartir entre une multitude innombrable de paysans, qui achèveraient d’épuiser le sol, faute de pouvoir y appliquer un capital suffisant. En respectant, au contraire, les propriétés de l’aristocratie, ils permettraient à cette classe riche, puissante, éclairée, de diriger la transformation des cultures et de contribuer ainsi, pour sa bonne part, à l’extinction de la misère irlandaise. Les pauvres de l’Irlande y gagneraient tous les premiers.

  Mais aussi longtemps que les contribuables anglais se chargeront de fournir de la sécurité aux propriétaires, et des aliments aux pauvres de l’Irlande, soyez bien persuadés que ceux-là continueront à dépenser oisivement leurs revenus à l’étranger, ceux-ci à pulluler au sein d’une effroyable misère; soyez bien persuadés que la situation de l’Irlande ira de mal en pis.

  le socialiste.

  Que les contribuables anglais cessent de pourvoir aux frais du gouvernement de l’Irlande, cela me semble parfaitement juste; mais ne serait-il pas inhumain d’abandonner à leur destinée les pauvres de l’Irlande?

  l’économiste.

  Il faut laisser les propriétaires irlandais se débattre avec eux. Abandonnée à elle-même, l’aristocratie irlandaise s’imposera les plus durs sacrifices pour soulager ses pauvres. Ce sera son intérêt, car la charité coûte, à tout prendre, moins cher que la répression. Cependant elle mesurera exactement ses secours aux besoins réels de la population. A mesure que le développement de la production augmentera les emplois du travail, elle diminuera la somme de ses aumônes. Le jour où le travail sera suffisant pour alimenter toute la population, elle cessera ses distributions régulières de secours. Aucune cause artificielle ne contribuera plus alors à faire pulluler la population en Irlande.

  le socialiste.

  Vous pensez donc que la charité légale provoque un développement factice, anormal de la population.

  l’économiste.

  C’est un fait qui a été clairement établi, à la suite des enquêtes relatives à la Taxe des pauvres en Angleterre. Et ce fait s’explique aisément. Quel office remplissent les institutions dites de bienfaisance? Elles distribuent gratis des moyens de subsistance aux pauvres. Si ces institutions sont établies par des lois, si elles ouvrent une source assurée de revenus, si elles constituent un patrimoine des pauvres, on trouvera toujours des gens pour manger ce revenu, pour jouir de ce patrimoine; on en trouvera d’autant plus, que les institutions de charité seront plus nombreuses, plus riches et plus accessibles.

  Vous verrez alors se détendre le ressort puissant qui pousse l’homme à travailler pour nourrir lui et les siens. Si la paroisse ou la commune accorde à l’ouvrier un supplément de salaire, il réduira d’autant la longueur de sa journée ou la somme de ses efforts; si l’on ouvre des crèches ou des asiles pour l’enfance, il procréera plus d’enfants; si l’on fonde des hospices, si l’on établit des pensions de retraite pour les vieillards, il cessera de s’inquiéter du sort de ses parents et de sa propre vieillesse; si, enfin, on ouvre des hôpitaux pour les malades indigents, il cessera d’économiser pour les jours de maladie. Bientôt vous verrez cet homme que vous aurez déchargé de l’obligation de remplir la plupart de ses devoirs envers les siens et envers lui-même s’adonner, comme une brute, à ses instincts les plus vils. Plus vous ouvrirez d’institutions de bienfaisance, plus vous verrez s’ouvrir aussi de cabarets et de lupanars... Ah! philanthropes benins, socialistes de l’aumône, vous vous chargez de pourvoir aux besoins des pauvres comme le berger se charge de pourvoir à ceux de son troupeau, vous substituez votre responsabilité à la responsabilité individuelle, et vous croyez que l’ouvrier continuera de se montrer laborieux et prévoyant! Vous croyez qu’il travaillera encore pour ses enfants lorsque vous aurez organisé dans vos crèches l’élève économique de ce bétail humain; vous croyez qu’il ne cessera point de soutenir son vieux père lorsque vous aurez ouvert à ses dépens vos hospices gratuits; vous croyez qu’il persistera à économiser pour les mauvais jours lorsque vous aurez mis à son service vos bureaux de bienfaisance et vos hôpitaux. Détrompez-vous! En effaçant la responsabilité, vous aurez détruit la prévoyance. Où la nature avait mis des hommes, votre communisme philanthropique ne laissera bientôt plus que des brutes.

  Et ces brutes que vous aurez faites, ces brutes dépourvues de tout ressort moral, elles pulluleront au point que vous deviendrez impuissants à les nourrir. Vous pousserez alors des cris de détresse en accusant les mauvais penchants de l’âme humaine et les doctrines qui les surexcitent. Vous jetterez l’anathème sur le sensualisme, vous dénoncerez les excitations de la presse quotidienne, et que sais-je encore? Pauvres gens!

  le conservateur.

  L’abus des institutions de bienfaisance peut, sans doute, occasionner de graves désordres dans l’économie de la société; mais est-il bien possible de se passer entièrement de ces institutions? Peut-on laisser expirer sans secours la foule des misérables?

  l’économiste.

  Qui vous dit de les laisser expirer sans secours? Laissez faire la charité privée et elle les secourra mieux que vos institutions officielles! Elle les secourra sans briser le lien des familles, sans séparer la mère de son enfant, sans enlever le vieillard à son fils, sans priver le mari malade des soins de sa femme et de ses filles. La charité privée se fait avec le cœur et elle respecte les attaches du cœur.

  le conservateur.

  La charité légale ne fait pas obstacle à la charité privée.

  l’économiste.

  Vous vous trompez. La charité légale tarit ou décourage la charité privée. Le budget de la charité légale s’élève en France à une centaine de millions. Cette somme est prise sur le revenu de tous les contribuables. Or la charité privée ne puise pas à une autre source. Lorsqu’on augmente le budget de la charité publique, on diminue donc nécessairement celui de la charité privée. Et la diminution d’un côté excède l’augmentation de l’autre. Quand la société se charge de l’entretien des pauvres n’est-on pas naturellement porté à renvoyer les pauvres à la société? On a payé une contribution pour le bureau de bienfaisance, on adresse les pauvres au bureau de bienfaisance. C’est ainsi que le cœur se ferme à la charité!

  Mais on a employé un moyen plus efficace encore pour déraciner des âmes ce sentiment le plus noble et le plus généreux que le Créateur y ait déposé. Si l’on n’a pas osé défendre aux riches de faire l’aumône, on a défendu aux pauvres de la demander. La loi française considère la mendicité comme un délit et elle punit le mendiant comme un voleur. La mendicité est sévèrement interdite dans le plus grand nombre de nos départements. Or, si le pauvre commet un délit en recevant une aumôme, le riche ne se se rend-il pas son complice en la lui donnant. La charité est devenue criminelle de par la loi. Comment donc voulez-vous que cette noble plante demeure vivace, lorsque vous n’épargnez rien pour la dessécher et la flétrir?

  le socialiste.

  Il se peut, en effet, que la charité imposée ait diminué la charité volontaire. Mais d’après vos propres doctrines est-ce un mal? Si la charité provoque le développement factice de la population, si, par conséquent, elle engendre plus de maux qu’elle n’en peut guérir, n’est-il pas souhaitable qu’on la réduise à son minimum, voire même qu’on la supprime tout à fait?

  l’économiste.

  Je vous ai dit que la charité légale a pour résultat nécessaire de provoquer le développement factice de la population, je ne vous ai pas parlé de la charité privée. Ne confondons pas, je vous prie! Si développée que soit la charité privée, elle est essentiellement précaire, elle n’offre point une issue stable et régulière à une certaine partie de la population; en outre, elle n’altere aucun des ressorts moraux de l’âme humaine.

  Celui qui reçoit les dons d’un bureau de bienfaisance ou qui entre dans un hôpital, où il est froidement accueilli, où parfois aussi il sert de chair à expériences, celui-là n’éprouve et ne saurait éprouver aucune reconnaissance pour le service qui lui est rendu. A qui s’adresserait d’ailleurs sa gratitude? A l’administration, aux contribuables? Mais l’administration est représentée par de froids comptables et les contribuables payent avec répugnance leur impôt. L’homme que la société secoure ne saurait se croire moralement obligé envers cette froide idéalité. Il incline plutôt à penser qu’elle acquitte envers lui une dette, et il lui reproche de ne pas s’en acquitter mieux.

  Celui dont une charité active et délicate soulage la misère conserve, au contraire, presque toujours, la mémoire de ce bienfait. En recevant un secours il contracte une obligation morale. Or, riche ou pauvre, l’homme n’aime point à contracter plus d’obligations qu’il n’en peut acquitter moralement ou matériellement. On accepte un bienfait avec reconnaissance, mais on ne consent pas à vivre de bienfaits. On se résignerait aux plus durs sacrifices, on se chargerait des fonctions les plus rudes et les plus répugnantes plutôt que de demeurer toujours à la charge de son bienfaiteur. On mourrait de honte si on augmentait encore le fardeau de sa dette par une imprévoyance coupable. Au lieu de briser le ressort moral de l’âme humaine, la charité privée l’affermit et quelquefois le développe. Elle élève l’homme, au lieu de l’avilir.

  La charité privée ne saurait donc activer le développement de la population. Elle contribuerait bien plutôt à le ralentir.

  Elle ne saurait devenir, non plus, comme la charité légale, une source dangereuse de divisions et de haines. Multipliez en France les institutions dites philanthropiques, continuez à mettre la charité en régie, complétez votre œuvre en interdisant l’aumône à celui qui la donne comme vous la défendez déjà à celui qui la reçoit, et vous verrez quel sera le résultat!

  D’un côté, vous aurez un troupeau immense d’hommes qui recevront comme une dette l’aumône rude et avare du fisc. Ces hommes reprocheront amèrement aux classes riches de trop mesurer leur charité, en présence d’une misère que cette charité même aura rendue sans cesse croissante.

  D’un autre côté, vous aurez des contribuables accablés sous le faix des impôts et qui se garderont d’aggraver un fardeau déjà trop lourd, en ajoutant une aumône volontaire à l’aumône imposée.

  Dans cette situation, la paix publique sera-t-elle long-temps possible? Une société ainsi divisée, une société où aucun lien moral ne rattachera plus les pauvres et les riches, pourra-t-elle subsister sans déchirements? L’Angleterre a failli périr submergée par les misères que la taxe des pauvres avait soulevées. Craignons de nous engager dans la même voie! Faisons de la charité individuelle, cessons de faire de la philanthropie communautaire!...

  le socialiste.

  Oui, j’aperçois clairement la différence des deux charités; mais la charité privée ne devrait-elle pas être dirigée, organisée?...

  l’économiste.

  Laissez-la faire! Elle est assez active et assez ingénieuse pour distribuer ses dons de la manière la plus utile. Son instinct la sert mieux que vos décrets ne pourraient le faire.

  le socialiste.

  J’admets avec vous que la charité libre soit préférable à la charité légale. J’admets même que celle-ci ait pour résultat de faire pulluler la misère. Mais enfin, supposez que la population se soit accrue de manière à dépasser les emplois disponibles de la production et le budget de la charité privée, que faudra-t-il faire alors? Faudra-t-il laisser périr l’excédant de la population?

  l’économiste.

  Il faudra engager la charité privée à redoubler de zèle, et surtout bien se garder de faire de la charité légale, car celle-ci ayant pour résultats inévitables de diminuer le budget total de la misère et d’augmenter le nombre des pauvres, aggraverait le mal au lieu de le soulager.

  Mais je dis que sous un régime où la propriété de tous serait pleinement respectée, sous un régime où les lois économiques qui gouvernent la société cesseraient d’être méconnues et violées, cet excédant ne se produirait point.

  le socialiste.

  Prouvez-le!

  l’économiste.

  Permettez-moi, auparavant, de vous dire quelques mots des causes qui dépriment la qualité de la population, qui diminuent le nombre des hommes propres au travail pour augmenter celui des invalides, idiots, crétins, aveugles, sourds-muets que la charité doit nourrir.

  le conservateur.

  Ah! voilà un côté de la question qui ne manque pas d’intérêt.

  l’économiste.

  Et que l’on a beaucoup trop négligé.

  L’homme est un composé de virtualités ou de forces diverses. Ces virtualités ou ces forces, instincts, sentiments, intelligence, affectent des proportions différentes selon les individus. L’homme le plus complet est celui dont les facultés ont le plus d’énergie; l’homme le plus parfait est celui dont les facultés sont, à la fois, le plus énergiques et le mieux équilibrées.

  le conservateur.

  Je vois à peu pres ou vous en voulez venir; mais pensez-vous donc qu’on puisse agir sur la génération des hommes comme on agit sur celle des animaux?

  l’économiste.

  Les Anglais sont parvenus à perfectionner d’une manière presque merveilleuse leurs races ovines et bovines; ils fabriquent des moutons,—c’est à la lettre,—d’une certaine dimension, d’un certain poids et même d’une certaine couleur. Comment ont-ils obtenu ces résultats? En croisant certaines races, et, en choisissant parmi ces races les individus qui s’accouplent le plus utilement.

  N’est-il pas vraisemblable que les lois qui régissent la génération des espèces animales, gouvernent aussi celle de l’homme? Remarquez que les races ou variétés nombreuses dont se compose l’humanité sont très diversement douées. Chez les races inférieures, les facultés morales et intellectuelles n’existent qu’à l’état embryonaire. Certaines races ont des facultés particulièrement développées, tandis que le reste de leur organisation est arriéré ou déprimé. Les Chinois, par exemple, sont pourvus à un haut degré du sentiment de la couleur; en revanche, ils sont presque entièrement privés de l’instinct de la lutte ou combativité. Les Indiens peaux-rouges de l’Amérique du Nord se distinguent, au contraire, par les instincts de la combativité et de la ruse, comme aussi par la perception harmonieuse des sons1 . Les facultés distinctives des races se transmettent sans modification importante, lorsque les races ne se mêlent point. Les Chinois ont toujours été coloristes; ils ne se sont jamais distingués par leur bravoure. Les Indiens peaux-rouges n’ont jamais cessé d’être braves, rusés, et de parler des dialectes sonores et harmonieux.

  le conservateur.

  Ceci nous conduirait à établir des haras destinés au perfectionnement de la race humaine.

  l’économiste.

  Nullement. Ceci nous conduirait à supprimer les obstacles artificiels qui empêchent les différentes variétés de l’espèce humaine de se rapprocher.

  le socialiste.

  Mais il faudrait diriger, organiser les rapprochements.

  l’économiste.

  Ces rapprochements-là se dirigent, s’organisent bien tout seuls. Les forces diverses qui ont le cerveau humain pour foyer, obéissent, à ce qu’il semble, à la même loi de gravitation qui gouverne la matière. Les facultés les plus énergiques attirent les facultés les plus faibles de même espèce. C’est, par exemple, une observation commune que les caractères les plus doux et les moins personnels sont invinciblement portés vers les caractères les plus altiers et les plus enclins à la lutte. Les grandes forces attirent les petites, la résultante est une moyenne plus rapprochée de l’équilibre idéal de l’organisation humaine.

  Cet équilibre tend à s’établir de lui-même par la manifestation naturelle, spontanée des sympathies ou des affinités individuelles. Et comme toute l’organisation physique dépend de l’ordonnance des facultés physiques, morales et intellectuelles, le corps se perfectionne aussi bien que l’âme.

  Si vous admettez cette théorie, vous devez admettre aussi qu’au milieu de l’immense diversité des especès et des individus, il doit se rencontrer deux êtres qui s’attirent avec un maximum d’intensité, et dont le rapprochement donne, en conséquence, la moyenne la plus utile. Entre ces deux êtres, l’union est nécessaire et éternelle. Cette union s’appelle le mariage.

  le conservateur.

  Ah! vous êtes partisan du mariage.

  l’économiste.

  Je crois que le mariage est d’institution naturelle. Malheureusement voici ce qui est arrivé: par suite des immenses perturbations morales et matérielles que la société a subies, une multitude d’hommes ont cessé de conclure des unions purement sympathiques. Les préjugés de race ou les intérêts d’argent ont été consultés de préférence aux affinités naturelles, dans la grande affaire du mariage. De là, les unions mal assorties, et, à la suite de ces unions, la dégénérescence des individus et des races. Les unions mal faites, étant sujettes à se dissoudre, les législateurs ont proclamé l’indissolubilité du mariage et édicté des pénalités rigoureuses contre les adultères. Mais la nature n’a point cessé d’agir en dépit de la loi. Les mauvais mariages ne s’en sont pas moins dissous en fait.

  Quand une union est mal assortie, quand deux êtres incompatibles se rapprochent, le produit de cet accouplement monstrueux ne saurait être qu’un véritable monstre.

  Tout le monde sait que les races supérieures qui ont gouverné l’Europe depuis la chute de l’empire romain se sont, pour la plupart, abâtardies. Pourquoi? Parce que les affinités naturelles déterminaient rarement leurs unions. Les races royales particulièrement ne s’alliaient guère qu’en vue d’intérêts politiques. Aussi ont-elles dégénéré plus rapidement et plus complétement que les autres. Que serait devenue la race des Bourbons de France après l’imbécile Louis XIII si elle ne s’était retrempée dans le sang généreux des Buckingham? Que sont devenus les Bourbons d’Espagne et de Sicile, les Hapsbourg, les rejetons de la maison de Hanovre? Quelles familles ont fourni autant de crétins, d’idiots, de monomanes et de scrofuleux?

  Examinez, à ce point de vue, l’histoire de la noblesse française. Au moyen âge, les considérations purement matérielles semblent n’avoir exercé qu’une faible influence sur les unions aristocratiques. L’histoire et la littérature du temps en font foi. Aussi la race se maintenait-elle saine et vigoureuse. Plus tard, les mariages devinrent de simples associations de terres et de noms. Les alliances se négocièrent entre les familles au lieu de s’arranger entre les véritables intéressés. On s’épousa sans se connaître. Qu’en résulta-t-il? Que les unions légitimes devinrent purement fictives, et que les adultères se multiplièrent au point de devenir la règle. Une immonde promiscuité finit par envahir la noblesse française et par la gangrener jusqu’à la moelle des os.

  Les mêmes abus renaissent de nos jours. Les fortunes exagérées que les monopoles et les priviléges ont suscitées tendent à s’associer, en dépit des convenances naturelles. La loi civile, en établissant le droit a l’héritage, a contribué encore à transformer les mariages en de pures affaires d’intérêt; enfin, l’instabilité qui menace toutes les existences sous le régime économique actuel, a fait rechercher avec avidité ces accouplements sordides qu’on est convenu d’appeler de bons mariages.

  Les êtres imparfaits et vicieux qui sortent des unions mal assorties ou des liaisons clandestines ne pouvant ni gérer leurs biens ni gagner leur vie, retombent à la charge de leur famille ou de la charité publique. A Sparte, on les noyait dans l’Eurotas. Nos mœurs sont plus douces. On laisse végéter ces apparences humaines, fruits de la cupidité ou du libertinage. Mais si ce serait un crime de les détruire, n’est-ce pas un crime plus grand encore de leur donner le jour?

  Faites bonne justice des lois et des préjugés qui empêchent le rapprochement utile des races ou qui encouragent les accouplements d’intérêts sordides au détriment des unions sympathiques et vous améliorerez sensiblement la qualité de la population, vous déchargerez par là même la charité d’une notable portion de son fardeau.

  Toutes choses se trouvant remises dans leur ordre naturel, un excédant de la population ne serait jamais à redouter.

  J’appelle excédant ce qui dépasse et les emplois disponibles de la production et les ressources ordinaires de la charité.

  le socialiste.

  Vous pensez-donc qu’on sera toujours obligé de recourir à la charité?

  l’économiste.

  Je l’ignore. Cela dépendra absolument des lumières et de la prévoyance des individus. Supposons une société, où la propriété étant pleinement respectée, les emplois du travail seraient portés à leur maximum, ou, en même temps, la publicité des transactions du travail permettrait de savoir toujours s’il y a un excédant de bras offerts ou un excédant de bras demandés, il est évident que dans cette société la proportion utile de la population serait aisément maintenue.

  Lorsque l’offre des bras excède la demande, vous ai-je dit, le prix du travail tombe avec une rapidité telle, que les travailleurs, comme tous les autres marchands, ont intérêt à retirer du marché une partie de leur denrée. S’ils ne la retirent point, si, en même temps, la charité n’agit pas suffisamment, pour secourir ceux qui sont rejetés de l’atelier dans la rue, le prix courant du travail peut tomber beaucoup au-dessous des frais de production....

  le socialiste.

  Qu’entendez-vous par frais de production du travail?

  l’économiste.

  J’entends les frais nécessaires pour que le travail se produise et se perpétue. Ces frais varient essentiellement selon la nature du travail. Un homme qui emploie seulement ses forces physiques peut, à la rigueur, ne consommer que des choses purement matérielles; un homme qui met en activité des forces morales et intellectuelles, ne peut les conserver et les perpétuer, s’il ne les entretient comme ses forces physiques. Les frais de production d’un travail sont d’autant plus élevés que ce travail exige le concours plus actif d’un plus grand nombre de facultés. Les frais de production du travail se proportionnent, pour tout dire, à l’étendue et à l’intensité des efforts.

  Que la rémunération d’un genre de travail cesse d’en couvrir les frais de production, et aussitôt les travailleurs se rejetteront vers les branches de la production qui exigent moins d’efforts à salaire égal. Le prix du travail haussera alors dans l’industrie désertée, et l’équilibre ne tardera pas à se rétablir. C’est ainsi que se dresse naturellement l’immense échelle des salaires depuis la rémunération du monarque jusqu’à celle du plus humble manouvrier. Malheureusement les priviléges et les monopoles rompent souvent cette harmonie naturelle, en établissant au profit de certaines professions ou de certaines industries un salaire exagéré. La liberté seule comporte une distribution équitable des salaires.

  A mesure que l’ouvrier exerce davantage ses facultés intellectuelles et morales en travaillant, les frais de production du travail s’élèvent. Or, dans toutes les branches de la production, le progrès des machines a pour résultat de rendre le travail moins physique et plus intellectuel. A mesure que le progrès se développe on voit donc s’élever aussi les frais de production du travail. En même temps, l’accroissement de la production, fruit du progrès, permet de mieux couvrir ces frais augmentés. A une époque de barbarie, le travail, purement physique, exige peu de chose et obtient moins encore, à une époque de civilisation, le travail, devenu intellectuel, exige beaucoup et peut obtenir davantage.

  Mais c’est à la condition que le nombre des bras ne dépassera pas celui des emplois disponibles, sinon le prix courant du travail baissera irrésistiblement au-dessous des frais de production.

  le socialiste.

  A moins que les travailleurs ne retirent l’excédant du marché.

  l’économiste.

  Ce qu’ils ne manqueraient pas de faire sous un régime de pleine liberté. Cet excédant serait nourri par les travailleurs occupés, avec l’assistance de la charité volontaire. Dans une situation semblable, la population ne tendrait-elle pas d’elle-même à se resserrer? A mesure que les subventions des travailleurs et les aumônes de la charité s’étendraient sur un plus grand nombre de têtes, la difficulté de plus en plus grande qu’on éprouverait à placer ses enfants ne porterait-elle pas à en élever moins? Le moral restraint agirait alors, et l’équilibre naturel de la population se rétablirait sans efforts. Un phénomène opposé se produirait si les bras venaient à manquer aux emplois. Bien assurés de pouvoir nourrir et placer tous leurs enfants, les pères de famille en éleveraient davantage. Les mariages deviendraient plus nombreux et seraient plus féconds jusqu’à ce que l’équilibre de la population et des moyens d’existence se fût de nouveau rétabli.

  Voilà comment se résoudrait le problème de la population sous un régime de pleine liberté économique. C’est ainsi, du reste, qu’il se résout toujours, en définitive. Mais, en attendant, combien de souffrances causées tantôt par les resserrements factices et inopinés du travail, tantôt par l’insuffisance de la charité légale ou les excitations qu’elle donne à l’accroissement de la population! Ces souffrances seraient sinon complétement supprimées sous un régime où le nombre des emplois du travail et les dons de la charité volontaire seraient portés à leur maximum, du moins réduits à la proportion la plus faible possible.

  ONZIÈME SOIRÉE

  SOMMAIRE: Du gouvernement et de sa fonction1 .—Gouvernements de monopole et gouvernements communistes.—De la liberté de gouvernement.—Du droit divin.—Que le droit divin est identique au droit au travail.—Vices des gouvernements de monopole.—La guerre est la conséquence inévitable de ce système.—De la souveraineté du peuple.—Comment on perd sa souveraineté.—Comment on la recouvre.—Solution libérale.—Solution communiste.—Gouvernements communistes.—Leurs vices.—Centralisation et décentralisation.—De l’administration de la justice.—Son ancienne organisation.—Son organisation actuelle.—Insuffisance du jury.—Comment l’administration de la sécurité et celle de la justice pourraient être rendues libres.—Avantages des gouvernements libres.—Ce qu’il faut entendre par nationalité.

  le conservateur.

  Dans votre système d’absolue propriété et de pleine liberté économique, quelle est donc la fonction du gouvernement?

  l’économiste.

  La fonction du gouvernement consiste uniquement à assurer à chacun la conservation de sa propriété.

  le socialiste.

  Bon, c’est l’État-gendarme de J.-B. Say.

  A mon tour, j’ai une question à vous faire:

  Il y a aujourd’hui, dans le monde, deux sortes de gouvernements: les uns font remonter leur origine à un prétendu droit divin.....

  le conservateur.

  Prétendu! prétendu! c’est à savoir.

  le socialiste.

  Les autres sont issus de la souveraineté du peuple. Lesquels préférez-vous?

  l’économiste.

  Je ne veux ni des uns ni des autres. Les premiers sont des gouvernements de monopole, les seconds sont des gouvernements communistes. Au nom du principe de la propriété, au nom du droit que je possède de me pourvoir moi-même de sécurité, ou d’en acheter à qui bon me semble, je demande des gouvernements libres.

  le conservateur.

  Qu’est-ce à dire?

  l’économiste.

  C’est-à-dire, des gouvernements dont je puisse, au gré de ma volonté individuelle, accepter ou refuser les services.

  le conservateur.

  Parlez-vous sérieusement?

  l’économiste.

  Vous allez bien voir. Vous êtes partisan du droit divin, n’est-il pas vrai?

  le conservateur.

  Depuis que nous vivons en république, j’y incline assez, je l’avouc.

  l’économiste.

  Et vous vous croyez un adversaire du droit au travail?

  le conservateur.

  Si je le crois? mais j’en suis sûr. J’atteste.....

  l’économiste.

  N’attestez rien, car vous êtes un partisan avoué du droit au travail.

  le conservateur.

  Mais encore une fois, je.....

  l’économiste.

  Vous êtes partisan du droit divin. Or le principe du droit divin est absolument identique au principe du droit au travail.

  Qu’est-ce que le droit divin? C’est le Droit que possèdent certaines familles au gouvernement des peuples. Qui leur a conféré ce droit? Dieu lui-même. Lisez plutôt les Considérations sur la France, et la brochure sur le Principe générateur des Constitutions politiques, de M. Joseph de Maistre:

  “L’homme ne peut faire de souverain, dit M. de Maistre. Tout au plus il peut servir d’instrument pour déposséder un souverain, et livrer ses États à un autre souverain déjà prince. Du reste, il n’a jamais existé de famille souveraine dont on puisse assigner l’origine plébéïenne. Si ce phénomène paraissait, ce serait une époque du monde.

  ..... Il est écrit: C’est moi qui fais les souverains. Ceci n’est point une phrase d’église, une métaphore de prédicateur; c’est la vérité littérale, simple et palpable. C’est une loi du monde politique. Dieu fait les rois, au pied de la lettre. Il prépare les races royales, il les nourrit au milieu d’un nuage qui cache leur origine. Elles paraissent ensuite couronnées de gloire et d’honneur; elles se placent1 .”

  Ce qui signifie que Dieu a investi certaines familles du droit de gouverner les hommes, et que nul ne peut les priver de l’exercice de ce droit.

  Or, si vous reconnaissez à certaines familles le droit exclusif d’exercer cette espèce particulière d’industrie qu’on appelle le gouvernement, si, encore, vous croyez avec la plupart des théoriciens du droit divin, que les peuples sont tenus de fournir, soit des sujets à gouverner, soit des dotations, en guise d’indemnités de chômages aux membres de ces familles,—et cela pendant toute la durée des siècles,—êtes-vous bien fondé à repousser le Droit au travail? Entre cette prétention abusive d’obliger la société à fournir aux ouvriers le travail qui leur convient, ou une indemnité suffisante, et cette autre prétention abusive d’obliger la société à fournir aux ouvriers des familles royales un travail approprié à leurs facultés et à leur dignité, un travail de gouvernement, ou une Dotation à titre de minimum de subsistances, où est la différence?

  le socialiste.

  En vérité, il n’y en a aucune.

  le conservateur.

  Qu’importe! si la reconnaissance du droit divin est indispensable au maintien de la société.

  l’économiste.

  Les socialistes ne ponrraient-ils pas vous répondre que la reconnaissance du droit au travail n’est pas moins nécessaire au maintien de la société? Si vous admettez le droit au travail pour quelques-uns, ne devez-vous pas l’admettre pour tous? Le droit au travail est-il autre chose qu’une extension du droit divin?

  Vous dites que la reconnaissance du droit divin est indispensable au maintien de la société. Comment donc se fait-il que tous les peuples aspirent à se débarrasser des monarchies de droit divin? Comment se fait-il que les vieux gouvernements de monopole soient les uns ruinés, les autres sur le point de l’être?

  le conservateur.

  Les peuples sont saisis de vertige.

  l’économiste.

  Voilà un vertige bien répandu! Mais, croyez-moi, les peuples ont de bonnes raisons pour se débarrasser de leurs vieux dominateurs. Le monopole du gouvernement ne vaut pas mieux qu’un autre. On ne gouverne pas bien, et surtout on ne gouverne pas à bon marché, lorsqu’on n’a aucune concurrence à redouter, lorsque les gouvernés sont privés du droit de choisir librement leurs gouvernants. Accordez à un épicier la fourniture exclusive d’un quartier, défendez aux habitants de ce quartier d’acheter aucune denrée chez les épiciers voisins, ou bien encore de s’approvisionner eux-mêmes d’épiceries, et vous verrez quelles détestables drogues l’épicier privilégié finira par débiter et à quel prix! Vous verrez de quelle façon il s’engraissera aux dépens des infortunés consommateurs, quel faste royal il étalera pour la plus grande gloire du quartier... Eh bien! ce qui est vrai pour les services les plus infimes ne l’est pas moins pour les services les plus élevés. Le monopole d’un gouvernement ne saurait valoir mieux que celui d’une boutique d’épiceries. La production de la sécurité devient inévitablement coûteuse et mauvaise lorsqu’elle est organisée en monopole.

  C’est dans le monopole de la sécurité que réside la principale cause des guerres qui ont, jusqu’à nos jours, désolé l’humanité.

  le conservateur.

  Comment cela?

  l’économiste.

  Quelle est la tendance naturelle de tout producteur, privilégié ou non? C’est d’élever le chiffre de sa clientèle afin d’accroître ses bénéfices. Or, sous un régime de monopole, quels moyens les producteurs de sécurité peuvent-ils employer pour augmenter leur clientèle?

  Les peuples ne comptant pas sous ce régime, les peuples formant le domaine légitime des oints du Seigneur, nul ne peut invoquer leur volonté pour acquérir le droit de les administrer. Les souverains sont donc obligés de recourir aux procédés suivants pour augmenter le nombre de leurs sujets: 1° acheter à prix d’argent des royaumes ou des provinces; 2° épouser des héritières apportant en dot des souverainetés ou devant en hériter plus tard; 3° conquérir de vive force les domaines de leurs voisins. Première cause de guerre!

  D’un autre côté, les peuples se révoltant quelquefois contre leurs souverains légitimes, comme il est arrivé récemment en Italie et en Hongrie, les oints du Seigneur sont naturellement obligés de faire rentrer dans l’obéissance ce bétail insoumis. Ils forment dans ce but une sainte alliance et ils font grand carnage des sujets révoltés, jusqu’à ce qu’ils aient apaisé leur rébellion. Mais si les rebelles ont des intelligences avec les autres peuples, ceux-ci se mêlent à la lutte, et la conflagration devient générale. Seconde cause de guerre!

  Je n’ai pas besoin d’ajouter que les consommateurs de sécurité, enjeux de la guerre, en payent aussi les frais.

  Tels sont les avantages des gouvernements de monopole.

  le socialiste.

  Vous préférez donc les gouvernements issus de la souveraineté du peuple. Vous mettez les républiques démocratiques au-dessus des monarchies et des aristocraties. A la bonne heure!

  l’économiste.

  Distinguons, je vous prie. Je préfère les gouvernements issus de la souveraineté du peuple. Mais les républiques que vous nommez démocratiques ne sont pas le moins du monde l’expression vraie de la souveraineté du peuple. Ces gouvernements sont des monopoles étendus, des communismes. Or, la souveraineté du peuple est incompatible avec le monopole et le communisme.

  le socialiste.

  Qu’est-ce donc à vos yeux que la souveraineté du peuple?

  l’économiste.

  C’est le droit que possède tout homme de disposer librement de sa personne et de ses biens, de se gouverner lui-même.

  Si l’homme-souverain a le droit de disposer, en maître, de sa personne et de ses biens, il a naturellement aussi le droit de les défendre. Il possède le droit de libre défense.

  Mais chacun peut-il exercer isolément ce droit? Chacun peut-il être son gendarme et son soldat?

  Non! pas plus que le même homme ne peut être son laboureur, son boulanger, son tailleur, son épicier, son médecin, son prêtre.

  C’est une loi économique, que l’homme ne puisse exercer fructueusement plusieurs métiers à la fois. Aussi voit-on, dès l’origine des sociétés, toutes les industries se spécialiser, et les différents membres de la société se tourner vers les occupations que leurs aptitudes naturelles leur désignent. Ils subsistent en échangeant les produits de leur métier spécial contre les divers objets nécessaires à la satisfaction de leurs besoins.

  L’homme isolé jouit, saus conteste, de toute sa souveraineté. Seulement ce souverain, obligé d’exercer lui-même toutes les industries qui pourvoient aux nécessités de la vie, se trouve dans un état fort misérable.

  Lorsque l’homme vit en société, il peut conserver sa souveraineté ou la perdre.

  Comment perd-il sa souveraineté?

  Il la perd lorsqu’il cesse, d’une manière totale ou partielle, directe ou indirecte, de pouvoir disposer de sa personne et de ses biens.

  L’homme ne demeure complétement souverain que sous un régime de pleine liberté. Tout monopole, tout privilége est une atteinte portée à sa souveraineté.

  Sous l’ancien régime, nul n’ayant le droit de disposer librement de sa personne et de ses biens, nul n’ayant le droit d’exercer librement toute industrie, la souveraineté se trouvait étroitement limitée.

  Sous le régime actuel, la souveraineté n’a point cessé d’être atteinte par une multitude de monopoles et de priviléges, restrictifs de la libre activité des individus. L’homme n’a pas encore pleinement recouvré sa souveraineté.

  Comment peut-il la recouvrer?

  Deux écoles sont en présence, qui donnent à ce problème des solutions tout opposées: l’école libérale et l’école communiste.

  L’école libérale dit: Détruisez les monopoles et les priviléges, restituez à l’homme son droit naturel d’exercer librement toute industrie et il jouira pleinement de sa souveraineté.

  L’école communiste dit, au contraire: Gardez-vous d’attribuer à chacun le droit de produire librement toutes choses. Ce serait l’oppression et l’anarchie! Attribuez ce droit à la communauté, à l’exclusion des individus. Que tous se réunissent pour organiser en commun toute industrie. Que l’État soit le seul producteur et le seul distributeur de la richesse.

  Qu’y a-t-il au fond de cette doctrine? On l’a dit souvent: il y a l’esclavage. Il y a l’absorption et l’annulation de la volonté individuelle dans la volonté commune. Il y a la destruction de la souveraineté individuelle.

  Au premier rang des industries organisées en commun figure celle qui a pour objet de protéger, de défendre contre toute agression la propriété des personnes et des choses.

  Comment se sont constituées les communautés dans lesquelles cette industrie s’exerce, la nation et la commune?

  La plupart des nations ont été successivement agglomérées par les alliances des propriétaires d’esclaves ou de serfs et par leurs conquêtes. La France, par exemple, est un produit d’alliances et de conquêtes successives. Par les mariages, par la force ou la ruse, les souverains de l’Ile de France étendirent successivement leur autorité sur les différentes parties des anciennes Gaules. Aux vingt gouvernements de monopole qui occupaient la surface actuelle de la France, succéda un seul gouvernement de monopole. Les rois de Provence, les ducs d’Aquitaine, de Bretagne, de Bourgogne, de Lorraine, les comtes de Flandres, etc., firent place au roi de France.

  Le roi de France était chargé du soin de la défense intérieure et extérieure de l’État. Cependant il ne dirigeait pas seul la défense ou police intérieure.

  Chaque seigneur châtelain faisait originairement la police de son domaine; chaque commune, affranchie de vive force ou à prix d’argent de l’onéreuse tutelle de son seigneur, faisait la police de sa circonscription reconnue.

  Communes et seigneurs contribuaient, dans une certaine mesure, à la défense générale.

  On peut dire que le roi de France avait le monopole de la défense générale, et que les seigneurs chàtelains et les bourgeois des communes avaient celui de la défense locale.

  Dans certaines communes, la police était sous la direction d’une administration élue par les bourgeois de la cité, dans les principales communes des Flandres par exemple. Ailleurs, la police s’était constituée en corporation comme la boulangerie, la boucherie, la cordonnerie, en un mot comme toutes les autres industries.

  En Angleterre, cette dernière forme de la production de la sécurité a subsisté jusqu’à nos jours. Dans la cité de Londres, la police était naguère encore entre les mains d’une corporation privilégiée. Et chose singulière! cette corporation refusait de s’entendre avec les polices des autres quartiers, si bien que la Cité était devenue un véritable lieu de refuge pour les malfaiteurs. Cette anomalie n’a disparu qu’à l’époque de la réforme de sir Robert Peel1 .

  Que fit la Révolution française? Elle déposséda le roi de France du monopole de la défense générale, mais elle ne détruisit pas ce monopole; elle le remit entre les mains de la nation, organisée désormais comme une immense commune.

  Les petites communes dans lesquelles se divisait le territoire de l’ancien royaume de France continuèrent de subsister. On en augmenta même considérablement le nombre. Le gouvernement de la grande commune eut le monopole de la défense générale, les gouvernements des petites communes exercèrent, sous la surveillance du pouvoir central, le monopole de la défense locale.

  Mais on ne se borna pas là. On organisa encore dans la commune générale et dans les communes particulières d’autres industries, notamment l’enseignement, les cultes, les transports, etc., et l’on établit sur les citoyens divers impôts pour subvenir aux frais de ces industries ainsi organisées en commun.

  Plus tard, les socialistes, mauvais observateurs s’il en fut jamais, ne remarquant point que les industries organisées dans la commune générale ou dans les communes particulières, fonctionnaient plus chèrement et plus mal que les industries laissées libres, demandèrent l’organisation en commun de toutes les branches de la production. Ils voulurent que la commune générale et les communes particulières ne se bornassent plus à faire la police, à bâtir des écoles, à construire des routes, à salarier des cultes, à ouvrir des bibliothèques, à subventionner des théâtres, à entretenir des haras, à fabriquer des tabacs, des tapis, de la porcelaine, etc., mais qu’elles se missent à produire toutes choses.

  Le bon sens public se révolta contre cette mauvaise utopie, mais il n’alla pas plus loin. On comprit bien qu’il serait ruineux de produire toutes choses en commun. On ne comprit pas qu’il était ruineux de produire certaines choses en commun. On continua donc de faire du communisme partiel, tout en honnissant les socialistes qui réclamaient à grands cris un communisme complet.

  Cependant les conservateurs, partisans du communisme partiel et adversaires du communisme complet, se trouvent aujourd’hui divisés sur un point important.

  Les uns veulent que le communisme partiel continue à s’exercer principalement dans la commune générale; ils défendent la centralisation.

  Les autres réclament, au contraire, une plus large part d’attributions pour les petites communes. Ils veulent que celles-ci puissent exercer diverses industries, fonder des écoles, construire des routes, bâtir des églises, subventionner des théâtres, etc., sans avoir besoin de l’autorisation du gouvernement central. Ils demandent la décentralisation.

  L’expérience a montré les vices de la centralisation. L’expérience a prouvé que les industries exercées dans la grande commune, dans l’État, fournissent des produits plus chers et plus mauvais que ceux de l’industrie libre.

  Mais est-ce a dire que la décentralisation vaille mieux? Est-ce à dire qu’il soit plus utile d’émanciper les communes, ou, ce qui revient au même, de leur permettre d’établir librement des écoles et des institutions de bienfaisance, de bâtir des théâtres, de subventionner des cultes, ou même encore d’exercer librement d’autres industries?

  Pour subvenir aux dépenses des services dont elles se chargent, que faut-il aux communes? Il leur faut des capitaux. Ces capitaux où peuvent-elles les puiser? Dans les poches des particuliers, non ailleurs. Elles sont obligées, en conséquence, de prélever différents impôts sur les habitants de la commune.

  Ces impôts consistent généralement aujourd’hui dans les centimes additionnels ajoutés aux contributions payées à l’État. Toutefois certaines communes ont obtenu aussi l’autorisation d’établir autour de leurs limites une petite douane sous le nom d’octroi. Cette douane, qui atteint la plupart des industries demeurées libres, augmente naturellement beaucoup les ressources de la commune. Aussi les autorisations d’établir un octroi sont-elles fréquemment demandées au gouvernement central. Celui-ci ne les accorde guère, et en cela il agit sagement; en revanche il permet assez souvent aux communes de s’imposer extraordinairement, autrement dit, il permet à la majorité des administrateurs de la commune d’établir un impôt extraordinaire que tous les administrés sont obligés de payer.

  Que les communes soient émancipées, que, dans chaque localité, la majorité des habitants ait le droit d’établir autant d’industries qu’il lui plaira, et d’obliger la minorité à contribuer aux dépenses de ces industries organisées en commun; que la majorité soit autorisée à établir librement toute espèce de taxes locales, et vous verrez bientôt se constituer en France autant de petits États différents et séparés qu’on y compte de communes. Vous verrez successivement s’élever, pour subvenir aux taxes locales, quarante-quatre mille douanes intérieures sous le nom d’octrois; vous verrez, pour tout dire, se reconstituer le moyen âge.

  Sous ce régime, la liberté du travail et des échanges sera atteint et par les monopoles que les communes s’attribueront de certaines branches de la production, et par les impôts qu’elles prélèveront sur les autres branches pour alimenter les industries exercées en commun. La propriété de tous se trouvera à la merci des majorités.

  Dans les communes où prédomine l’opinion socialiste, que deviendra, je vous le demande, la propriété? Non seulement la majorité lèvera des impôts pour subvenir aux dépenses de la police, de la voirie, du culte, des établissements de bienfaisance, des écoles, etc., mais elle en lèvera aussi pour établir des ateliers communaux, des magasins communaux, des comptoirs communaux, etc. Ces taxes locales, la minorité non socialiste ne sera-t-elle pas obligée de les payer?

  Sous un tel régime, que devient donc la souveraineté du peuple? Ne disparaît-elle pas sous la tyrannie du plus grand nombre?

  Plus directement encore que la centralisation, la décentralisation conduit au communisme complet, c’est-à-dire à la destruction complète de la souveraineté.

  Que faut-il donc faire pour restituer aux hommes cette souveraineté que le monopole leur a ravie dans le passé; et que le communisme, ce monopole étendu, menace de leur ravir dans l’avenir?

  Il faut tout simplement rendre libre les différentes industries jadis constituées en monopoles, et aujourd’hui exercées en commun. Il faut abandonner à la libre activité des individus les industries encore exercées ou réglementées dans l’État ou dans la commune.

  Alors l’homme possédant, comme avant l’établissement des sociétés, le droit d’appliquer librement, sans entrave ni charge aucune, ses facultés à toute espèce de travaux, jouira de nouveau, pleinement, de sa souveraineté.

  le conservateur.

  Vous avèz passé en revue les différentes industries encore monopolisées, privilégiées ou réglementées, et vous nous avez prouvé, avec plus ou moins de succès, que ces industries devraient être-laissées libres pour l’avantage commun. Soit! je ne veux pas revenir sur un thème épuisé. Mais est-il possible d’enlever à l’État et aux communes le soin de la défense générale et de la défense locale.

  le socialiste.

  Et l’administration de la justice donc?

  le conservateur.

  Oui, et l’administration de la justice. Est-il possible que ces industries, pour parler votre langage, soient exercées autrement qu’en commun, dans la nation et dans la commune.

  l’économiste.

  Je glisserais peut-être sur ces deux communismes-là si vous consentiez bien franchement à m’abandonner tous les autres; si vous réduisiez l’État à n’être plus désormais qu’un gendarme, un soldat et un juge. Cépèndant, non!...car le communisme de la sécurité est la clef de voûte du vieux édifice de la servitude. Je ne vois d’ailleurs aucune raison pour vous accorder celui-là plutôt que les autres.

  De deux choses l’une, en effet:

  Ou le communisme vaut mieux que la liberté, et, dans ce cas, il faut organiser toutes les industries en commun, dans l’État ou dans la commune.

  Ou la liberté est préférable au communisme, et, dans ce cas, il faut rendre libres toutes les industries encore organisées en commun, aussi bien la justice et la police que l’enseignement, les cultes, les transports, la fabrication des tabacs, etc.

  le socialiste.

  C’est logique.

  le conservateur.

  Mais est-ce possible?

  l’économiste.

  Voyons! S’agit-il de la justice? Sous l’ancien régime, l’administration de la justice n’était pas organisée et salariée en commun; elle était organisée en monopole, et salariée par ceux qui en faisaient usage.

  Pendant plusieurs siècles, il n’y eut pas d’industrie plus indépendante. Elle formait, comme toutes les autres branches de la production matérielle ou immatérielle, une corporation privilégiée. Les membres de cette corporation pouvaient léguer leurs charges ou maîtrises à leurs enfants, ou bien encore les vendre. Jouissant de ces charges à perpétuité, les juges se faisaient remarquer par leur indépendance et leur intégrité.

  Malheureusement ce régime avait, d’un autre côté, tous les vices inhérents au monopole. La justice monopolisée se payait fort cher.

  le socialiste.

  Et Dieu sait combien de plaintes et de réclamations excitaient les épices. Témoin ces petits vers qui furent crayonnés sur la porte du Palais de Justice après un incendie:

  • Un beau jour dame Justice
  • Se mit le palais tout en feu
  • Pour avoir mangé trop d’épice.

  La justice ne doit-elle pas être essentiellement gratuite? Or, la gratuité n’entraîne-t-elle pas l’organisation en commun?

  l’économiste.

  On se plaignait de ce que la justice mangeait trop d’épices. On ne se plaignait pas de ce qu’elle en mangeait. Si la justice n’avait pas été constituée en monopole; si, en conséquence, les juges n’avaient pu exiger que la rémunération légitime de leur industrie, on ne se serait pas plaint des épices.

  Dans certains pays, où les justiciables avaient le droit de choisir leurs juges, les vices du monopole se trouvaient singulièrement atténués. La concurrence qui s’établissait alors entre les différentes cours, améliorait la justice et la rendait moins chère. Adam Smith attribue à cette cause les progrès de l’administration de la justice en Angleterre. Le passage est curieux et j’espère qu’il dissipera vos doutes:

  “Les honoraires de cour paraissent avoir été originairement le principal revenu des différentes cours de justice en Angleterre. Chaque cour tâchait d’attirer à elle le plus d’affaires qu’elle pouvait, et ne demandait pas mieux que de prendre connaissance de celles mêmes qui ne tombaient point sous sa juridiction. La cour du banc du roi, instituée pour le jugement des seules causes criminelles, connut des procès civils, le demandeur prétendant que le défendeur, en ne lui faisant pas justice, s’était rendu coupable de quelque faute ou malversation. La cour de l’échiquier, préposée pour la levée des dossiers royaux et pour contraindre à les payer, connut aussi des autres engagements pour dettes, le plaignant alléguant que si on ne le payait pas, il ne pourrait payer le roi. Avec ces fictions, il dépendait souvent des parties de se faire juger par le tribunal qu’elles voulaient, et chaque cour s’efforçait d’attirer le plus de causes qu’elle pouvait au sien, par la diligence et l’impartialité qu’elle mettait dans l’expédition des procès. L’admirable constitution actuelle des cours de justice, en Angleterre, fut peut-être originairement, en grande partie le fruit de cette émulation qui animait ces différents juges, chacun s’efforçant à l’envi d’appliquer à toute sorte d’injustices, le remède le plus prompt et le plus efficace que comportait la loi1 .”

  le socialiste.

  Mais, encore une fois, la gratuité n’est-elle pas préférable?

  l’économiste.

  Vous n’êtes donc pas revenu encore de l’illusion de la gratuité. Ai-je besoin de vous démontrer que la justice gratuite coûte plus cher que l’autre, de tout le montant de l’impôt, prélevé pour entretenir les tribunaux gratuits et salarier les juges gratuits. Ai-je besoin de vous démontrer encore que la gratuité de la justice est nécessairement inique, car tout le monde ne se sert pas également de la justice, tout le monde n’a pas également l’esprit processif? Au reste, la justice est loin d’être gratuite sous le régime actuel, vous ne l’ignorez pas.

  le conservateur.

  Les procès sont ruineux. Cependant pouvons-nous nous plaindre de l’administration actuelle de la justice? L’organisation de nos tribunaux n’est-elle pas irréprochable?

  le socialiste.

  Oh! oh! irréprochable. Un Anglais que j’accompagnai un jour à la cour d’assises, sortit de la séance tout indigné. Il ne concevait pas qu’un peuple civilisé permit à un procureur du roi ou de la république, de faire de la rhétorique pour demander une condamnation à mort. Cette éloquence, pourvoyeuse du bourreau, lui faisait horreur. En Angleterre, on se contente d’exposer l’accusation; on ne la passionne pas.

  l’économiste.

  Ajoutez à cela les lenteurs proverbiales de nos cours de justice, les souffrances des malheureux qui attendent leur jugement pendant des mois, et quelquefois pendant des années, tandis que l’instruction pourrait se faire en quelques jours; les frais et les pertes énormes que ces délais entraîent, et vous vous convaincrez que l’administration de la justice n’a guère progressé en France.

  le socialiste.

  N’exagérons rien, toutefois. Nous possédons aujourd’hui, grâce au ciel, l’institution du jury.

  l’économiste.

  En effet, on ne se contente pas d’obliger les contribuables à payer les frais de la justice, on les oblige aussi à remplir les fonctions de juges. C’est du communisme pur: Ab uno disce omnes. Pour moi, je ne pense pas que le jury vaille mieux pour juger, que la garde nationale, une autre institution communiste! pour faire la guerre.

  le socialiste.

  Pourquoi donc?

  l’économiste.

  Parce qu’on ne fait bien que son métier, sa spécialité, et que le métier, la spécialité d’un juré n’est pas d’être juge.

  le conservateur.

  Aussi se contente-t-il de constater le délit, et d’apprécier les circonstances dans lesquelles le délit a été commis.

  l’économiste.

  C’est-à-dire d’exercer la fonction la plus difficile, la plus épineuse du juge. C’est cette fonction si délicate, qui exige un jugement si sain, si exercé, un esprit si calme, si froid, si impartial que l’on confie aux hasards du tirage au sort. C’est absolument comme si l’on tirait au sort les noms des citoyens qui seront chargés, chaque année, de fabriquer des bottes ou d’écrire des tragédies pour la communauté.

  le conservateur.

  La comparaison est forcée.

  l’économiste.

  Il est plus difficile, à mon avis, de rendre un bon jugement que de faire une bonne paire de bottes ou d’aligner convenablement quelques centaines d’alexandrins. Un juge parfaitement éclairé et impartial est plus rare qu’un bottier habile ou un poëte capable d’écrire pour le Théâtre-Français.

  Dans les causes criminelles, l’inhabileté du jury se trahit tous les jours. Mais on ne prête, hélas! qu’une médiocre attention aux erreurs commises en cour d’assises. Que dis-je? on regarde presque comme un délit de critiquer un jugement rendu. Dans les causes politiques, le jury n’a-t-il pas coutume de prononcer selon la couleur de son opinion, blanc ou rouge, plutôt que selon la justice? Tel homme qui est condamné par un jury blanc ne serait-il pas absous par un jury rouge, et vice versâ?

  le socialiste.

  Hélas!

  l’économiste.

  Déjà les minorités sont bien lasses d’être jugées par des jurys appartenant aux majorités. Attendez la fin...

  S’agit-il de l’industrie qui pourvoit à la défense intérieure et extérieure? Croyez-vous qu’elle vaille beaucoup mieux que celle de la justice? Notre police et surtout notre armée ne nous coûtent-elles pas bien cher pour les services réels qu’elles nous rendent?

  N’y a-t-il enfin aucun inconvénient à ce que cette industrie de la défense publique soit aux mains d’une majorité?

  Examinons.

  Dans un système où la majorité établit l’assiette de l’impôt et dirige l’emploi des deniers publics, l’impôt ne doit-il pas peser plus ou moins sur certaines portions de la société, selon les influences prédominantes? Sous la monarchie, lorsque la majorité était purement fictive, lorsque la classe supérieure s’arrogeait le droit de gouverner le pays à l’exclusion du reste de la nation, l’impôt ne pesait-il pas principalement sur les consommations des classes inférieures, sur le sel, sur le vin, sur la viande, etc.? Sans doute, la bourgeoisie payait sa part de ces impôts, mais le cercle de ses consommations étant infiniment plus large que celui des consommations de la classe inféricure, son revenu s’en trouvait, en définitive, beaucoup plus légèrement atteint. A mesure que la classe inférieure, en s’éclairant, acquerra plus d’influence dans l’État, vous verrez se produire une tendance opposée. Vous verrez l’impôt progressif, qui est tourné aujourd’hui contre la classe inférieure, être retourné contre la classe supérieure. Celle-ci résistera sans doute de toutes ses forces à cette tendance nouvelle; elle criera, avec raison, à la spoliation, au vol; mais si l’institution communautaire du suffrage universel est maintenue, si une surprise de la force ne remet pas, de nouveau, le gouvernement de la société aux mains des classes riches à l’exclusion des classes pauvres, la volonté de la majorité prévaudra, et l’impôt progressif sera établi. Une partie de la propriété des riches sera alors légalement confisquée pour alléger le fardeau des pauvres, comme une partie de la propriété des pauvres a été trop longtemps confisquée pour alléger le fardeau des riches.

  Mais il y a pis encore.

  Non seulement la majorité d’un gouvernement communautaire peut établir, comme bon lui semble, l’assiette de l’impôt, mais encore elle peut faire de cet impôt l’usage qu’elle juge convenable, sans tenir compte de la volonté de la minorité.

  Dans certains pays, le gouvernement de la majorité emploie une partie des deniers publics à protéger des propriétés essentiellement illégitimes et immorales. Aux États-Unis, par exemple, le gouvernement garantit aux planteurs du sud la propriété de leurs esclaves. Cependant il y a, aux États-Unis, des abolitionnistes qui considèrent, avec raison, l’esclavage comme un vol. N’importe! le mécanisme communautaire les oblige à contribuer de leurs deniers au maintien de cette espèce de vol. Si les esclaves tentaient un jour de s’affranchir d’un joug inique et odieux, les abolitionnistes seraient contraints d’aller défendre, les armes à la main, la propriété des planteurs. C’est la loi des majorités!

  Ailleurs, il arrive que la majorité, poussée par des intrigues politiques ou par le fanatisme religieux, déclare la guerre à un peuple étranger. La minorité a heau avoir horreur de cette guerre et la maudire, elle est obligée d’y contribuer de son sang et de son argent. C’est encore la loi des majorités!

  Ainsi qu’arrive-t-il? C’est que la majorité et la minorité sont perpétuellement en lutte, et que la guerre descend parfois de l’arène parlementaire dans la rue.

  Aujourd’hui c’est la minorité rouge qui s’insurge. Si cette minorité devenait majorité, et si, usant de ses droits de majorité, elle remaniait la constitution à sa guise, si elle décrétait des impôts progressifs, des emprunts forcés et des papiers-monnaie, qui vous assure que la minorité blanche ne s’insurgerait pas demain?

  Il n’y a point de sécurité durable dans ce système. Et savez-vous pourquoi? Parce qu’il menace incessamment la propriété; parce qu’il met à la merci d’une majorité aveugle ou éclairée, morale ou immorale, les personnes et les biens de tous.

  Si le régime communautaire, au lieu d’être appliqué comme en France à une multitude d’objets, se trouvait étroitement limité comme aux États-Unis, les causes de dissentiment entre la majorité et la minorité étant moins nombreuses, les inconvénients de ce régime seraient moindres. Toutefois ils ne disparaîtraient point entièrement. Le droit reconnu au plus grand nombre de tyranniser la volonté du plus petit pourrait encore, en certaines circonstances, engendrer la guerre civile.

  le conservateur.

  Mais, encore une fois, on ne conçoit pas comment l’industrie qui pourvoit à la sécurité des personnes et des propriétés pourrait être pratiquée si elle était rendue libre. Votre logique vous conduit à des rêves dignes de Charenton.

  l’économiste.

  Voyons! ne nous fâchons pas. Je suppose qu’après avoir bien reconnu que le communisme partiel de l’État et de la commune est décidément mauvais, on laisse libres toutes les branches de la production, à l’exception de la justice et de la défense publique. Jusque-là point d’objection. Mais un économiste radical, un rêveur vient et dit: Pourquoi done, après avoir affranchi les différents emplois de la propriété, n’affranchissez-vous pas aussi ceux qui assurent le maintien de la propriété? Comme les autres, ces industries-là ne seront-elles pas exercées d’une manière plus équitable et plus utile si elles sont rendues libres? Vous affirmez que c’est impraticable. Pourquoi. D’un côté, n’y a-t-il pas, au sein de la société, des hommes spécialement propres, les uns à juger les différends qui surviennent entre les propriétaires et à apprécier les délits commis contre la propriété, les autres à défendre la propriété des personnes et des choses contre les agressions de la violence et de la ruse? N’y a-t-il pas des hommes que leurs aptitudes naturelles rendent spécialement propres à être juges, gendarmes et soldats. D’un autre côté, tous les propriétaires indistinctement n’ont-ils pas besoin de sécurité et de justice? Tous ne sont-ils pas disposés, en conséquence, à s’imposer des sacrifices pour satisfaire à ce besoin urgent, surtout s’ils sont impuissants à y satisfaire eux-mêmes ou s’ils ne le peuvent à moins de dépenser beaucoup de temps et d’argent?

  Or s’il y a d’un côté des hommes propres à pourvoir à un besoin de la société, d’un autre côté, des hommes disposés à s’imposer des sacrifices pour obtenir la satisfaction de ce besoin, ne suffit-il pas de laisser faire les uns et les autres pour que la denrée demandée, matérielle ou immatérielle, se produise, et que le besoin soit satisfait?

  Ce phénomène économique ne se produit-il pas irrésistiblement, fatalement, comme le phénomique physique de la chute des corps?

  Ne suis-je donc pas fondé à dire que si une société renonçait à pourvoir à la sécurité publique, cette industrie particulière n’en serait pas moins exercée? Ne suis-je pas fondé à ajouter qu’elle le serait mieux sous le régime de la liberté qu’elle ne pouvait l’être sous le régime de la communauté?

  le conservateur.

  De quelle manière?

  l’économiste.

  Cela ne regarde pas les économistes. L’économie politique peut dire: si tel besoin existe, il sera satisfait, et il le sera mieux sous un régime d’entière liberté que sous tout autre. A cette règle, aucune exception! mais comment s’organisera cette industrie, quels seront ses procédés techniques, voilà ce que l’économie politique ne saurait dire.

  Ainsi, je puis affirmer que si le besoin de se nourrir se manifeste au sein de la société, ce besoin sera satisfait, et qu’il le sera d’autant mieux que chacun demeurera plus libre de produire des aliments ou d’en acheter à qui bon lui semblera.

  Je puis assurer encore que les choses se passeront absolument de la même manière si, au lieu de l’alimentation, il s’agit de la sécurité.

  Je prétends donc que si une communauté déclarait renoncer, au bout d’un certain délai, un an par exemple, à salarier des juges, des soldats et des gendarmes, au bout de l’année cette communauté n’en posséderait pas moins des tribunaux et des gouvernements prêts à fonctionner; et j’ajoute que si, sous ce nouveau régime, chacun conservait le droit d’exercer librement ces deux industries et d’en acheter librement les services, la sécurité serait produite le plus économiquement et le mieux possible.

  le conservateur.

  Je vous répondrai toujours que cela ne se peut concevoir.

  l’économiste.

  A l’époque où le régime réglementaire retenait l’industrie prisonnière dans l’enceinte des communes, et où chaque corporation était exclusivement maîtresse du marché communal, on disait que la société était menacée chaque fois qu’un novateur audacieux s’efforçait de porter atteinte à ce monopole. Si quelqu’un était venu dire alors qu’à la place des malingres et chétives industries des corporations, la liberté mettrait un jour d’immenses manufactures fournissant des produits moins chers et plus parfaits, on eût traité ce rêveur de la belle manière. Les conservateurs du temps auraient juré leurs grands dieux que cela ne se pouvait concevoir.

  le socialiste.

  Mais voyons! Comment peut-on imaginer que chaque individu ait le droit de se faire gouvernement ou de choisir son gouvernement, ou même de n’en pas choisir... Comment les choses se passeraient-elles en France, si, après avoir rendu libres toutes les autres industries, les citoyens français annonçaient de commun accord, qu’ils cesseront, au bout d’une année, de soutenir le gouvernement de la communauté?

  l’économiste.

  Je ne puis faire que des conjectures à cet égard. Voici cependant à peu près de quelle manière les choses se passeraient. Comme le besoin de sécurité est encore très grand dans notre société, il y aurait profit à fonder des entreprises de gouvernement. On serait assuré de couvrir ses frais. Comment se fonderaient ces entreprises? Des individualités isolées n’y suffiraient pas plus qu’elles ne suffisent pour construire des chemins de fer, des docks, etc. De vastes compagnies se constitueraient donc pour produire de la sécurité; elles se procureraient le matériel et les travailleurs dont elles auraient besoin. Aussitôt qu’elles se trouveraient prêtes à fonctionner, ces compagnies d’assurances sur la propriété appelleraient la clientèle. Chacun s’abounerait à la compagnie qui lui inspirerait le plus de confiance et dont les conditions lui sembleraient le plus favorables.

  le conservateur.

  Nous ferions queue pour aller nous abonner. Assurément, nous ferions queue!

  l’économiste.

  Cette industrie étant libre on verrait se constituer autant de compagnies qu’il pourrait s’en former utilement. S’il y en avait trop peu, si, par conséquent, le prix de la sécurité était surélevé, on trouverait profit à en former de nouvelles; s’il y en avait trop, les compagnies surabondantes ne tarderaient pas à se dissoudre. Le prix de la sécurité serait, de la sorte, toujours ramené au niveau des frais de production.

  le conservateur.

  Comment ces compagnies libres s’entendraient-elles pour pourvoir à la sécurité générale?

  l’économiste.

  Elles s’entendraient comme s’entendent aujourd’hui les gouvernements monopoleurs et communistes, parce qu’elles auraient intérêt à s’entendre. Plus, en effet, elles se donneraient de facilités mutuelles pour saisir les voleurs et les assassins, et plus elles diminueraient leurs frais.

  Par la nature même de leur industrie, les compagnies d’assurances sur la propriété ne pourraient dépasser certaines circonscriptions: elles perdraient à entretenir une police dans les endroits où elles n’auraient qu’une faible clientèle. Dans leurs circonscriptions elles ne pourraient néanmoins opprimer ni exploiter leurs clients, sous peine de voir surgir instantanément des concurrences.

  le socialiste.

  Et si la compagnie existante voulait empêcher les concurrences de s’établir?

  l’économiste.

  En un mot, si elle portait atteinte à la propriété de ses concurrents et à la souveraineté de tous... Oh! alors, tous ceux dont les monopoleurs menaceraient la propriété et l’indépendance se lèveraient pour les châtier.

  le socialiste.

  Et si toutes les compagnies s’entendaient pour se constituer en monopoles. Si elles formaient une sainte-alliance pour s’imposer aux nations, et si fortifiées par cette coalition, elles exploitaient sans merci les malheureux consommateurs de sécurité, si elles attiraient à elles par de lourds impôts la meilleure part des fruits du travail des peuples?

  l’économiste.

  Si, pour tout dire, elles recommençaient à faire ce que les vieilles aristocraties ont fait jusqu’à nos jours... Eh! bien, alors, les peuples suivraient le conseil de Béranger:

  • Peuples, formez une Sainte-Alliance
  • Et donnez-vous la main.

  Ils s’uniraient, à leur tour, et comme ils possèdent des moyens de communication que n’avaient pas leurs ancêtres, comme ils sont cent fois plus nombreux que leurs vieux dominateurs, la sainte-alliance des aristocraties serait bientôt anéantie. Nul ne serait plus tenté alors, je vous jure, de constituer un monopole.

  le conservateur.

  Comment ferait-on sous ce régime pour repousser une invasion étrangère?

  le socialiste.

  Quel serait l’intérêt des compagnies? Ce serait de repousser les envahisseurs, car elles seraient les premières victimes de l’invasion. Elles s’entendraient donc pour les repousser et elles demanderaient à leurs assurés un supplément de prime pour les préserver de ce danger nouveau. Si les assurés préféraient courir les risques de l’invasion, ils refuseraient ce supplément de prime; sinon, ils le payeraient, et ils mettraient ainsi les compagnies en mesure de parer au danger de l’invasion.

  Mais de même que la guerre est inévitable sous un régime de monopole, la paix est inévitable sous un régime de libre gouvernement.

  Sous ce régime, les gouvernements ne peuvent rien gagner par la guerre; ils peuvent, au contraire, tout perdre. Quel intérêt auraient-ils à entreprendre une guerre? serait-ce pour augmenter leur clientèle? Mais, les consommateurs de sécurité étant libres de se faire gouverner à leur guise, échapperaient aux conquérants. Si ceux-ci voulaient leur imposer leur domination, après avoir détruit le gouvernement existant, les opprimés réclameraient aussitôt le secours de tous les peuples....

  Les guerres de compagnie à compagnie ne se feraient d’ailleurs qu’autant que les actionnaires voudraient en avancer les frais. Or, la guerre ne pouvant plus rapporter à personne une augmentation de clientèle, puisque les consommateurs ne se laisseraient plus conquérir, les frais de guerre ne seraient évidemment plus couverts. Qui donc voudrait encore les avancer?

  Je conclus de là que la guerre serait matériellement impossible sous ce régime, car aucune guerre ne se peut faire sans une avance de fonds.

  le conservateur.

  Quelles conditions une compagnie d’assurances sur la propriété ferait-elle à ses clients?

  l’économiste.

  Ces conditions seraient de plusieurs sortes.

  Pour être mises en état de garantie aux assurés, pleine sécurité pour leurs personnes et leurs propriétés, il faudrait:

  1° Que les compagnies d’assurances établissent certaines peines contre les offenseurs des personnes et des propriétés, et que les assurés consentissent à se soumettre à ces peines, dans le cas où ils commettraient euxmêmes des sévices contre les personnes et les propriétés.

  2° Qu’elles imposassent aux assurés certaines gênes ayant pour objet de faciliter la découverte des auteurs de délits.

  3° Qu’elles perçussent régulièrement pour couvrir leurs frais une certaine prime, variable selon la situation des assurés, leurs occupations particulières, l’étendue, la nature et la valeur des propriétés à protéger.

  Si les conditions stipulées convenaient aux consommateurs de sécurité, le marché se conclurait, sinon les consommateurs s’adresseraient à d’autres compagnies ou pourvoiraient eux-mêmes à leur sécurité.

  Poursuivez cette hypothèse dans tous ses détails, et vous vous convaincrez, je pense, de la possibilité de transformer les gouvernements monopoleurs ou communistes en gouvernements libres.

  le conservateur.

  J’y vois bien des difficultés encore. Et la dette, qui la payerait?

  l’économiste.

  Pensez-vous qu’en vendant toutes les propriétés aujourd’hui communes, routes, canaux, rivières, forêts, bâtiments servant à toutes les administrations communes, matériel de tous les services communs, on ne réussirait pas aisément à rembourser le capital de la dette? Ce capital ne dépasse pas six milliards. La valeur des propriétés communes en France s’élève, à coup sûr, bien au delà.

  le socialiste.

  Ce système ne serait-il pas la destruction de toute nationalité? Si plusieurs compagnies d’assurances sur la propriété s’établissaient dans un pays, l’Unité nationale ne serait-elle pas détruite?

  l’économiste.

  D’abord, il faudrait que l’Unité nationale existât pour qu’on pût la détruire. Or, je ne puis voir une unité nationale dans ces informes agglomérations de peuples que la violence a formées, que la violence seule maintient le plus souvent.

  Ensuite, on a tort de confondre ces deux choses, qui sont naturellement fort distinctes: la nation et le gouvernement. Une nation est une lorsque les individus qui la composent ont les mêmes mœurs, la même langue, la même civilisation; lorsqu’ils forment une variété distincte, originale de l’espèce humaine. Que cette nation ait deux gouvernements ou qu’elle n’en ait qu’un, cela importe fort peu. A moins toutefois que chaque gouvernement n’entoure d’une barrière factice les régions soumises à sa domination, et n’entretienne d’incessantes hostilités avec ses voisins. Dans cette dernière éventualité, l’instinct de la nationalité réagira contre ce morcellement barbare et cet antagonisme factice imposés à un même peuple, et les fractions désunies de ce peuple tendront incessamment à se rapprocher.

  Or, les gouvernements ont jusqu’à nos jours divisé les peuples afin de les retenir plus aisément dans l’obéissance; diviser pour régner, telle a été, de tous temps, la maxime fondamentale de leur politique. Les hommes de même race, à qui la communauté de langage offrait un moyen de communication facile, ont énergiquement réagi contre la pratique de cette maxime; de tous temps ils se sont efforcés de détruire les barrières factices qui les séparaient. Lorsqu’ils y sont enfin parvenus, ils ont voulu n’avoir qu’un seul gouvernement afin de n’être plus désunis de nouveau. Mais, remarquez bien qu’ils n’ont jamais demandé à ce gouvernement de les séparer des autres peuples... L’instinct des nationalités n’est donc pas égoïste, comme on l’a si souvent affirmé; il est, au contraire, essentiellement sympathique. Que la diversité des gouvernements cesse d’entrainer la séparation, le morcellement des peuples, et vous verrez la même nationalité en accepter volontiers plusieurs. Un seul gouvernement n’est pas plus nécessaire pour constituer l’unité d’un peuple, qu’une seule banque, un seul établissement d’éducation, un seul culte, un seul magasin d’épiceries, etc.

  le socialiste.

  Voilà, en vérité, une solution bien singulière du problème du gouvernement!

  l’économiste.

  C’est la seule solution conforme à la nature des choses.

  DOUZIÈME ET DERNIÈRE SOIRÉE

  SOMMAIRE: La rente.—Sa nature et son origine.—Résumé et conclusion.

  l’économiste.

  Nos entretiens vont finir. Voulez-vous que je vous présente un résumé de nos travaux, comme on dit à l’Assemblée.

  le socialiste.

  J’ai un éclaircissement à vous demander auparavant.

  Vous nous avez dit que les frais de production de toutes choses se composent du salaire du travail, et de l’intérêt du capital; vous avez ajouté que le prix courant des choses tend naturellement et d’une manière irrésistible à s’équilibrer avec leurs frais de production. Mais vous ne nous avez pas dit un mot de la rente.

  l’économiste.

  La rente ne fait point partie des frais de production des choses.

  le socialiste.

  Que dites-vous là? nierez-vous que des milliers d’individus vivent non d’un intérêt ou d’un salaire, mais d’une rente?

  l’économiste.

  Je ne le nierai pas.

  le socialiste.

  Eh! bien, où donc gît cette rente sinon dans le prix des choses? Si le cultivateur ne payait point de rente à son propriétaire, ne pourrait-il pas vendre son blé moins cher? n’est-il pas obligé de compter la rente dans les frais de production du blé?

  l’économiste.

  Il ne vend pas son blé plus cher parce qu’il paye une rente; il paye une rente parce qu’il vend son blé plus cher. La rente n’agit pas comme cause dans la formation des prix; elle n’est qu’un résultat.

  le socialiste.

  Cause ou résultat, en existe-t-elle moins, et en estelle moins inique? Quoi? voilà un homme qui possède, en vertu d’un héritage, une immense étendue de terre ou ni lui ni les siens n’ont déposé aucun travail. Cette terre lui appartient parce qu’elle est tombée jadis entre les mains d’un de ses ancêtres, chef d’une des hordes barbares qui ont envahi et dévasté le pays. Depuis cette époque, le seigneur de la terre a obligé le paysan à lui remettre le tiers ou la moitié du fruit de son rude labeur, à titre de rente. Des milliers d’hommes ont vécu et vivent encore en prélevant ce tribut sur le travail de leurs semblables. Est-ce juste?

  Les gouvernements ne devraient-ils pas mettre fin à un si monstrueux abus, soit en s’emparant de la terre pour la restituer aux travailleurs, soit en imposant aux propriétaires des obligations qui absorbent la valeur de la rente? Tous les revenus ont leur origine dans le travail, celui-là seul excepté. N’est-il pas temps que l’exception cesse? J.-B. Say, lui-même, ne convenait-il pas que le revenu provenant de la rente était le moins respectable de tous? Abandonnez-moi la rente et je vous accorde la propriété.

  l’économiste.

  Accordez-moi la propriété et je vous garantis que la rente s’en ira d’elle-même.

  le socialiste.

  La rente s’en aller d’elle-même? ce serait curieux!

  l’économiste.

  La rente n’est pas, comme vous avez l’air de le croire, un fruit de la propriété. La rente est, au contraire, le produit des atteintes diverses portées à la propriété, depuis l’origine des sociétés.

  En recherchant les origines de la rente, Ricardo a reconnu qu’elle ne fait point partie des frais de production. Ce qui signifie que si les produits ne se vendaient jamais au dessus de leurs frais de production, au dessus de la quantité de travail qu’ils ont coûté, il n’y aurait pas de rente.

  Si la rente ne fait point partie des frais de production, qu’est-elle donc?

  C’est la différence qui existe entre le prix courant des choses (le prix auquel elles se vendent) et leurs frais de production.

  le socialiste.

  Qu’importe, encore une fois, que la rente ne soit pas comprise dans les frais de production, si elle est comprise dans le prix courant, si, par conséquent, elle est payée.

  l’économiste.

  Cela importe énormément. Les frais de production se composant de la quantité de travail nécessaire à la formation d’un produit, ne peuvent pas ne pas être. Tout ce qui les dépasse peut, au contraire, ne pas être.

  le socialiste.

  Je commence à comprendre.

  le conservateur.

  Et moi je crains d’avoir trop compris.

  l’économiste.

  Ne craignez rien. Si la rente n’est pas comprise dans les frais de production, il en résulte:

  1° Qu’elle ne représente aucun travail accompli ni aucune compensation de pertes subies ou à subir.

  2° Qu’elle est le résultat de circonstances artificielles, lesquelles doivent disparaître avec les causes qui les ont suscitées.

  Quelles sont ces causes? Quelles causes élèvent et maintiennent le prix courant des choses au-dessus de leurs frais de production, ou le font tomber en dessous, en opposition avec la loi naturelle qui agit incessamment pour rapprocher le prix courant des frais de production?

  Voilà comment la question se pose.

  le socialiste.

  Si la loi économique qui rapproche le prix courant des frais de production est identique à la loi physique qui préside à la chute des corps et maintient l’équilibre des surfaces liquides, je ne conçois pas que son action puisse être troublée par des causes artificielles.

  l’économiste.

  Vous ne songez pas aux barrages et aux accidents de terrain qui troublent le cours naturel de l’eau.

  le socialiste.

  Oui, mais le niveau se rétablit toujours.

  l’économiste.

  Vous vous trompez. Il s’établit des niveaux factices. Le niveau naturel ne reparaît qu’après la rupture du barrage. Or, chacun ayant voulu faire affluer les eaux de son côté sans se préoccuper de son voisin, le champ de production a été traversé par une multitude de barrages. Quelques-uns ont eu plus d’eau qu’il ne leur en fallait, mais d’autres ont été mis à sec.

  Ces barrages économiques se nomment des monopoles et des priviléges.

  Voici maintenant de quelle façon agissent les monopoles et les priviléges pour produire la rente.

  Si une industrie est soumise à la loi de la libre concurrence, elle ne pourra longtemps vendre ses produits audessus ni an-dessous de ses frais de production; elle ne donnera donc lieu à aucune rente. Ceux qui l’entreprendront ne recevront que la rémunération légitime de lour travail et les compensations nécessaires pour l’emploi de leur capital.

  Si, au contraire, certains industriels sont investis du privilége exclusif de vendre leur marchandise dans une circonscription déterminée, ces industriels pourront s’entendre pour offrir toujours de cette denrée une quantité inférieure à la quantité demandée. Ils réussiront par ce moyen à en élever le prix courant au-dessus des frais de production. La différence constituera leur rente.

  D’un autre côté, lorsqu’une denrée a été produite en quantité trop considérable, eu égard au nombre de consommateurs qui peuvent en rembourser les frais de production, le prix courant tombe au-dessous de ces frais, et la différence constitue encore une rente. Seulement cette rente, au lieu d’être payée par le consommateur, est payée par le producteur. On conçoit qu’elle ne saurait être qu’accidentelle.

  La production des objets de première nécessité seule peut donner lieu à une rente considérable.

  Si l’on réduit d’une manière factice l’offre des objets de luxe, le prix haussant, la demande diminuera. Le prix baissera alors rapidement, et la rente avec lui.

  Mais il n’en est pas de même pour les objets de première nécessité.

  Supposons qu’il s’agisse du blé. Si l’offre est inférieure à la demande, le prix courant du blé pourra s’élever d’une manière presque illimitée. Examinons comment les choses se passent à cet égard, et comment naît la rente de la terre.

  Une peuplade vit au milieu d’une vaste étendue de terres. Peu nombreuse, elle se contente de mettre en culture les meilleurs terrains, ceux qui donnent un produit considérable, en échange d’une faible quantité de travail. La population de cette peuplade vient à s’augmenter. Si elle ne peut s’étendre davantage, soit à cause du manque de sécurité à l’extérieur, soit à cause des obstacles intérieurement apportés à son expansion naturelle, qu’arrivera-t-il?

  S’il ne lui est pas permis de tirer du dehors, c’est-à-dire des contrées où les bonnes terres suffisent et au delà pour nourrir la population, la portion de subsistances qui lui manque, le déficit intérieur l’obligera a payer le prix du blé au-dessus de ses frais de production. La rente de la terre naîtra alors.

  Mais aussitôt, l’élévation du prix du blé engagera à cultiver en céréales les terres de seconde qualité, ou pour mieux dire, les terres moins propres à cette culture spéciale. La production du blé revenant plus cher sur ces terres, que sur celles de première qualité, leurs propriétaires obtiendront une rente moindre. Il pourra arriver même que l’apport au marché d’une nouvelle quantité de blé, en fasse tomber le prix courant au niveau des frais de production des terres récemment mises en culture, ou bien encore au-dessous. Dans le premier cas, les propriétaires de ces terres couvriront juste le montant de leurs frais de production, et ne recevront aucune rente; dans le second cas, les frais de production ne seront pas même couverts, et la rente tombera en—; ce qui déterminera l’abandon des terres cultivées au delà du nécessaire.

  Si, au contraire, les terres récemment mises en culture ne suffisent pas encore pour combler le déficit de la demande, le prix courant du blé continuant à donner une rente, de nouvelles terres, inférieures aux précédentes, seront consacrées à la culture du blé. Ce mouvement se continuera jusqu’à ce que le prix courant cesse de dépasser les frais de production des céréales sur les terres le plus récemment mises en culture.

  C’est ainsi qu’on voit dans certains pays où la population s’est démesurément accrue sans pouvoir s’étendre, où, en même temps, les denrées alimentaires du dehors ne peuvent pénétrer, des terres à peu près stériles porter de chétives moissons de blé et les bonnes terres donner lieu a une rente énorme.

  le socialiste.

  Croyez-vous que si aucun obstacle factice n’avait été opposé à l’expansion naturelle des populations, si, aucune institution ou aucun préjugé n’avait surexcité le développement de la population, si, enfin, la circulation des aliments avait toujours été libre, la rente de la terre n’eût jamais été créée?

  l’économiste.

  J’en suis convaincu. Dans ce cas, voici ce qui serait arrivé. Les différents peuples de la terre auraient appliqué à chaque qualité de terre la culture qu’elle était le plus propre à recevoir, et ils auraient subsisté en échangeant le superflu de leurs productions naturelles contre les denrées produites dans les mêmes conditions, par les autres peuples. Aussi longtemps que la demande de ces denrées diverses, cultivées sur leurs terrains spéciaux, n’aurait pas dépassé l’offre, il n’y aurait pas eu de rente. Or, avec ce mode naturel d’exploitation, la terre donnant un maximum de production, la population aurait pu aisément se proportionner toujours aux moyens de subsistance disponibles.

  le socialiste.

  Cela serait vrai si les différentes sortes de matériaux dont la terre est le réceptacle et que le travail transforme en produits consommables se trouvaient proportionnés, dans leurs quantités, aux divers besoins de l’homme; si les terres à blé étaient proportionnées en étendue, à la consommation générale du blé; les terres à oliviers et à colzas à la consommation générale de l’huile; les gîtes métallifères et houillers à la consommation générale des métaux et de la houille; mais cette harmonie entre nos divers besoins et la quantité des matériaux propres à les satisfaire existe-t-elle naturellement? Certaines choses ne se rencontrent-elles pas en quantité trop faible, eu égard au besoin qu’on en a, et n’est-on pas obligé, en conséquence, de les payer toujours au-dessus de leurs frais de production? Les terres qui recèlent ces choses à l’état de matière première ou les personnes qui sont pouvues des facultés à l’aide desquelles elles se produisent, ne jouissent-elles pas d’un véritable monopole naturel, en ce sens qu’elles doivent inévitablement donner ou obtenir une rente?

  l’économiste.

  Il n’y a pas de monopoles naturels. La Providence a exactement proportionné à nos besoins divers, les richesses diverses qu’elle a mises à notre disposition. Mais si nous avons employé notre libre-arbitre et nos forces à détruire ou à gaspiller une partie de ces richesses au lieu de les utiliser toutes, si nous avons passé des siècles à nous disputer des lambeaux de territoire au lieu de nous épandre librement sur les immenses espaces, ouverts devantnous; si en nous cantonnant dans des limites étroites, nous avons surexcité directement ou indirectement la multiplication de notre espece, si nous avons refusé les denrées provenant des lieux où elles étaient produites avec le plus d’avantage, pour les produire nous-mêmes à contre-sens de la nature, si, nous avons ainsi faussé, dans notre ignorance, l’ordre essentiel que le créateur avait établi dans sa sagesse, est-ce la faute de la Providence?

  Si, pour ne parler que de la France, nos institutions de charité légale ont encouragé le développement anormal de la population; si, en même temps, nos lois de douanes ont entravé l’entrée des céréales étrangères, de telle sorte qu’il soit devenu avantageux de couper de magnifiques bois d’oliviers pour les remplacer par de maigrès champs de blé, est-ce la faute de la Providence?

  Si notre législation sur les mines en arrêtant le développement de notre production minérale, tandis que nos lois de douanes empêchaient l’introduction des produits minéraux de l’étranger, a créé un vide factice dans notre approvisionnement de fer, de plomb, de cuivre, d’étain, etc., est-ce la faute de la Providence?

  Si un monopole détestable, en détournant l’éducation de ses voies naturelles, a rendu un grand nombre d’hommes inhabiles à remplir divers emplois utiles, tout en les portant avec excès dans d’autres, est-ce la faute de la Providence?

  Si enfin, à la suite de la perversion occasionnée par les monopoles et les priviléges, dans l’ordre essentiel de la société, certains individus devenant les maîtres de satisfaire leurs désirs les plus effrenés, tandis que la masse pouvait à peine subvenir à ses premiers besoins, l’ordre naturel de la consommation a été troublé, si quelques denrées ont été relativement trop demandées et si d’autres l’ont été trop peu, est-ce la faute de la Providence?

  le socialiste.

  Non! vous avez raison, c’est la faute de l’homme!

  l’économiste.

  Mais que ces causes de perturbation disparaissent, et vous verrez bientôt se rétablir l’ordre naturel des sociétés comme on voit se rétablir le cours naturel de l’eau après la destruction d’un barrage; vous verrez la production se concentrer dans les lieux où elle peut s’opérer avec le plus d’avantage et la consommation reprendre ses proportions normales; vous verrez, en conséquence, les oscillations du prix courant et du prix naturel s’atténuer de plus en plus, devenir presque insensibles et finir par disparaître en emportant la rente avec elles. Vous verrez alors la production s’opérer avec un maximum d’abondance et la distribution se faire conformément aux lois de la justice.

  Ceci vous apparaîtra plus visiblement encore lorsque j’aurai résumé la doctrine que je vous ai exposée dans ces causeries.

  le conservateur et le socialiste.

  Ayez donc l’obligeance de nous faire ce résumé.

  l’économiste.

  Volontiers.

  Nous avons pris l’homme pour point de départ. Sous l’empire de ses besoins physiques, moraux et intellectuels, l’homme est excité à produire. Il utilise dans ce but ses facultés physiques, morales et intellectuelles. L’effort qu’il impose à ses facultés pour produire se nomme travail. Chaque effort exige une réparation correspondante, sinon les forces se perdent, les facultés s’altèrent, l’être humain dépérit au lieu de se maintenir ou de progresser.

  Chaque effort impliquant une souffrance, chaque réparation ou consommation une jouissance; l’homme s’attache naturellement, sous l’impulsion de son intérêt, à dépenser moins d’efforts et à recevoir plus de choses propres à sa consommation.

  Ce résultat est atteint au moyen de la division du travail.

  Division du travail implique échanges, relations, société.

  Ici se présente un grave problème.

  Dans l’état d’isolement (à supposer que cet état ait jamais existé) les efforts de l’homme ont un minimum de puissance, mais l’individu qui les accomplit s’en attribue tout le résultat. Il consomme tout ce qu’il produit.

  Dans l’état de société, les efforts de l’homme acquièrent un maximum de puissance, grâce à la division du travail, mais le résultat de ses efforts peut-il être toujours conservé intact à chaque producteur? L’état de société comporte-t-il, à ce point de vue, la même justice que l’état d’isolement? Comment, par exemple, un homme qui passe sa vie à fabriquer la dixième partie d’une épingle peut-il obtenir une rémunération aussi justement proportionnée à ses efforts que le sauvage isolé qui, après avoir abattu un daim, consomme seul ce produit de son travail?

  Comment? Au moyen de la propriété.

  Qu’est-ce que la propriété? C’est le droit naturel de disposer librement de ses facultés et du produit de son travail.

  Comment s’opèrent la production et la distribution de la richesse sous le régime de la propriété?

  L’homme produit toutes les choses dont il a besoin, au moyen de son travail, agissant sur les matières premières fournies par la nature. Sou travail est de deux sortes:

  Lorsque l’homme accomplit un effort en vue de la production, cet effort se nomme simplement travail. Lorsque l’effort est accompli, lorsqu’un produit en a été le résultat, ce produit prend le nom de capital. Tout capital se compose de travail accumulé.

  Or toute production exige le concours de ces deux agents: travail actuel et travail accumulé.

  C’est entre ces deux agents de la production que se partage le produit.

  Comment se partage-t-il? En raison des frais de production de chacun, c’est-à-dire en raison des sacrifices que s’imposent, ou des efforts auxquels se livrent le propriétaire du travail actuel ou ouvrier, et le propriétaire du travail accumulé ou capitaliste.

  De quoi se composent les frais de production à la charge du capitaliste?

  Ils se composent du travail accompli par le capitaliste, en appliquant son capital à une entreprise de production, de la privation qu’il s’impose, et des risques qu’il court en engageant son capital dans la production.

  Ce travail, cette privation et ces risques constituent les éléments de l’intérêt.

  De quoi se composent les frais de production à la charge du travailleur?

  De la somme d’efforts que le travailleur dépense en mettant ses facultés en œuvre. Ces efforts sont de diverses sortes, physiques, moraux ou intellectuels, selon la nature du travail. Ils exigent pour être accomplis, sans altérer les facultés productives du travailleur, une certaine somme de réparations, variable encore selon la nature du travail.

  Ces réparations nécessaires à l’accomplissement du travail constituent les éléments du salaire.

  La réunion de l’intérêt et du salaire compose les frais de production de toute espèce de produits.

  Exemple:

  En quoi consistent les frais de production d’une pièce de calicot?

  Ils consistent, en premier lieu:

  Dans le salaire des ouvriers, des contre-maîtres et des entrepreneurs du tissage.

  Dans l’intérêt du capital mis en œuvre par l’entrepreneur de tissage.—Ce capital se compose de bâtiments, de machines, de matières premières, de numéraire destiné au payement des ouvriers, etc. Le capitaliste qui s’en est dessaisi reçoit un intérêt destiné à couvrir son travail de prêteur ou d’actionnaire, sa privation et ses risques de détérioration ou de perte.

  Premier intérêt et premier salaire.

  Avant d’être tissé, le coton a été filé.—Pour le filer, il a fallu, de même, mettre en œuvre du capital et du travail.—Travail des entrepreneurs, des contre-maîtres, des ouvriers de la filature; capital sous forme de bâtiments, de machines, de combustibles, de matières premières, de numéraire.

  Second intérêt et second salaire.

  Avant d’être filé, le coton a été transporté. Pour le transporter, il a fallu le concours des négociants, des courtiers, des portefaix, des armateurs, des entrepreneurs de roulage.—Travail des négociants, des courtiers, des portefaix, des armateurs, des matelots, des voituriers; capital sous forme de magasins, de bureaux, de chariots, de navires, de provisions pour l’équipage, de voitures ou de wagons, de numéraire.

  Troisième intérêt et troisième salaire.

  Avant d’être transporté, le coton a été cultivé. Pour le cultiver, il a fallu encore du capital et du travail.—Travail des directeurs d’exploitation, des contre-maîtres, des ouvriers; capital sous forme de terres rendues cultivables, de bâtiments, de semences, de machines, de numéraire (Si les travailleurs sont libres, on les paye communément en numéraire; s’ils sont esclaves, on les paye, sans libre débat, en aliments, en vêtements et en logements; dans les deux cas, le prix du coton doit couvrir leur salaire avec celui de l’entrepreneur et des contre-maîtres, comme aussi l’intérêt du capital avancé aux travailleurs avant la réalisation du produit de la récolte).

  Quatrième intérêt et quatrième salaire.

  Ajoutez a cela le salaire des marchands, qui mettent les pièces de calicot à la portée du consommateur et les lui débitent en détail selon ses besoins, et l’intérêt du capital mis en œuvre par ces intermédiaires indispensables, et vous aurez l’ensemble des frais de production du calicot.

  Supposez qu’une plantation ait fourni mille balles de coton, et qu’on ait fabriqué avec ces mille balles de coton vingt-cinq mille pièces de calicot de cinquante aunes chacune. Supposez encore que ces vingt-cinq mille pièces de calicot se soient débitées en écru, à raison de 30 centimes l’aune, vous aurez un total de. . . 375,000 fr.

  Cette somme de 375,000 fr. aura été distribuée à tous ceux qui auront concouru à la production du calicot, depuis l’esclave et le planteur, jusqu’au débitant et à son garçon de boutique.

  Mais, en vertu de quelle loi s’est opérée la distribution de cette valeur de 375,000 fr. entre tous ceux qui ont contribué à la former? Quelle loi a déterminé le juste intérêt des capitalistes et le juste salaire des travailleurs, comme aussi le juste prix du produit qui a fourni cet intérêt et le salaire?

  Cette loi qui est le véritable régulateur du monde économique, je l’ai exprimée ainsi:

  Lorsque l’offre dépasse la demande en progression arithmétique, le prix baisse en progression géométrique, et, de même, lorsque la demande dépasse l’offre en progression arithmétique, le prix hausse en progression géométrique.

  Sous l’empire de cette loi, agissant dans un milieu libre, chacun ne peut vendre un intérêt, un salaire ou un produit au-dessus ni au-dessous de la somme nécessaire pour mettre au marché cet intérêt, ce salaire ou ce produit, c’est-à-dire au-dessus ni au-dessous de la somme des efforts et des sacrifices qu’ils ont réellement coûtés.

  Car, en vertu de cette loi, le prix courant de toutes choses, intérêts, salaires et produits, est incessamment et irrésistiblement ramené au niveau de leurs frais de production.

  Comment?

  A la fois producteur et consommateur, l’homme est incessamment obligé, dans une société où la division du travail a séparé la plupart des actes de la production, d’offrir ce qu’il produit pour demander, en échange, les choses dont il a besoin.

  Quand on demande une chose, on ne consulte que l’étendue et l’intensité du besoin qu’on en a; on ne s’occupe pas de ce qu’elle a pu coûter à produire. Il peut donc arriver qu’on s’impose, pour se la procurer, des sacrifices et des efforts, bien supérieurs à ceux qu’elle a coùtés. Au témoignage de l’expérience, cela arrive lorsqu’un grand nombre d’individus ont besoin d’une denrée, et que peu d’individus la produisent, lorsqu’une denrée est beaucoup demandée et peu offerte. Dans ce cas, l’expérience atteste encore qu’une faible disproportion entre la demande et l’offre engendre un mouvement rapide dans le prix. A mesure que la disproportion s’agrandit en progression arithmétique, le mouvement du prix croît et s’accélère en progression géométrique.

  Mais, à mesure que le prix s’élève davantage, il agit plus fortement aussi pour ramener l’équilibre entre l’offre et la demande.

  Lorsque le prix auquel une chose se vend dépasse de beaucoup la somme des efforts et des sacrifices qu’elle a coutés pour être produite, aussitôt la foule des hommes qui s’adonnent à des productions moins avantageuses, ou dont les capitaux, les intelligences et les bras se trouvent momentanément inactifs, sont excités à produire cette chose. L’excitation est d’autant plus vive que le prix est plus élevé, que l’écart entre la demande et l’offre est plus considérable. Sous l’empire de cette excitation, des concurrents plus ou moins nombreux se présentent donc pour augmenter la production et satisfaire d’une manière plus complète à la demande.

  Cependant l’augmentation de la production aura une limite. Quelle sera cette limite?

  Si le prix hausse en progression géométrique lorsque la demande s’élève au-dessus de l’offre, il s’abaisse de même en progression géométrique, lorsque l’offre dépasse la demande. Si donc, excités par l’appât du bénéfice, les producteurs augmentent l’offre, un moment arrive où le prix courant de la denrée tombe au niveau de ses frais de production. Si l’on continue alors à apporter au marché des quantités de plus en plus considérables de cette denrée et si l’augmentation de la demande n’équivaut pas à celle de l’offre, on voit le prix courant tomber progressivement au-dessous des frais de production.

  Mais, à mesure que la disproportion s’élargit dans ce sens, les producteurs couvrant moins leurs frais ont plus d’intérêt à se rejeter vers les autres branches de la production. A mesure que le prix s’abaisse davantage il agit plus énergiquement pour ralentir le mouvement de l’offre, jusqu’à ce que ce ralentissement le ramène au niveau des frais de production.

  C’est ainsi qu’on voit graviter incessamment et irrésistiblement le prix courant de toutes choses, travail, capitaux et produits, vers la limite des frais de production de ces choses, c’est-à-dire vers la somme des efforts et des sacrifices réels qu’elles ont coûtés pour être produites1

  Mais si le prix de toutes ces choses est incessamment et irrésistiblement ramené à la limite de leurs frais de production, à la somme des efforts et des sacrifices réels qu’elles ont coûtés, chacun doit inévitablement recevoir, dans l’état de société comme dans l’état d’isolement, la juste rémunération de ses efforts et de ses sacrifices.

  Avec cette différence: que l’homme isolé produisant lui-même toutes choses, est obligé de dépenser beaucoup d’efforts pour obtenir un petit nombre de satisfactions, tandis que l’homme en société, jouissant de l’avantage de la division du travail, peut obtenir de nombreuses satisfactions en échange d’un petit nombre d’efforts. Ces satisfactions seront d’autant plus considérables, ces efforts seront d’autant plus faibles, que le progrès aura développé davantage la division du travail, et, par là même, diminué les frais de production des choses.

  Malheureusement, si de nombreux efforts ont été accomplis pour développer économiquement la production, de nombreux obstacles ont été élevés, en même temps, par l’ignorance ou la perversité humaine, pour entraver ce développement comme aussi pour troubler la distribution naturelle et équitable de la richesse.

  C’est dans un milieu libre, dans un milieu où le droit de propriété de chacun sur ses facultés et les résultats de son travail est pleinement respecté, que la production se développe au maximum, et que la distribution de la richesse se proportionne irrésistiblement aux efforts et aux sacrifices accomplis par chacun.

  Or, dès l’origine du monde, les hommes les plus forts ou les plus rusés attentèrent à la propriété intérieure ou extérieure des autres hommes, afin de consommer à leur place une partie des fruits de la production. De là l’esclavage, les monopoles et les priviléges.

  En même temps qu’ils détruisaient l’équitable distribution de la richesse, l’esclavage, les monopoles et les priviléges ralentissaient la production, soit en diminuant l’intérêt que les producteurs avaient à produire, soit en les détournant du genre de production qu’ils pouvaient le plus utilement accomplir. L’oppression engendra la misère.

  Pendant de longs siècles, l’humanité gémit dans les limbes de la servitude. Mais, d’intervalle en intervalle, de sombres clameurs de détresse et de colère retentissaient au sein des masses asservies et exploitées. Les esclaves se soulevaient contre leurs maîtres en demandant la liberté.

  La liberté! c’était le cri des captifs d’Égypte, des esclaves de Spartacus, des paysans du moyen âge, et, plus tard, des bourgeois opprimés par la noblesse et les corporations religieuses, des ouvriers opprimés par les maîtrises et les jurandes. La liberté! c’était le cri d’es pérance de tous ceux dont la propriété se trouvait confisquée par le monopole ou le privilége. La liberté! c’était l’aspiration ardente de tous ceux dont les droits naturels étaient comprimés sous la force.

  Un jour vint où les opprimés se trouvèrent assez forts pour se débarrasser des oppresseurs. C’était à la fin du dix-huitième siècle. Les principales industries qui pour-voyaient aux besoins de tous n’avaient point cessé d’être organisées en corporations fermées, privilégiées. La noblesse qui pourvoyait à la défense intérieure et extérieure, corporation; les parlements qui rendaient la justice, corporation; le clergé qui distribuait les services religieux, corporation; l’université et les ordres religieux qui pourvoyaient à l’enseignement, corporation; la boulangerie, la boucherie, etc., corporations. Ces différents états étaient, pour la plupart, indépendants les uns des autres, mais tous se trouvaient subordonnés au corps armé qui garantissait matériellement les priviléges de chacun.

  Malheureusement, lorsque l’heure sembla venue d’abattre ce régime d’iniquité; on ne sut par quoi le remplacer. Ceux qui avaient quelques notions des lois naturelles qui gouvernent la société opinaient pour le laisser-faire. Ceux qui ne croyaient point à l’existence de ces lois naturelles s’élevaient, au contraire, de toutes leurs forces contre le laisser-faire, et demandaient la substitution d’une organisation nouvelle à la place de l’ancienne. A la tête des partisans du laisser-faire figurait Turgot, à la tête des organisateurs ou nèo-réglementaires figurait Necker.

  Ces deux tendances opposées, sans compter la tendance réactionnaire, se partagèrent la révolution française. L’élément libéral dominait dans l’Assemblée constituante, mais il n’était pas pur. Les libéraux eux-mêmes n’avaient pas encore assez de foi en la liberté pour lui abandonner entièrement la direction des affaires humaines. La plupart des industries matérielles furent affranchies des liens du privilége, mais les industries immatérielles et, en première ligne, la défense de la propriété et la justice, furent organisées en vertu des théories communistes. Moins éclairée que l’Assemblée constituante, la Convention se montra plus communiste encore. Comparez les deux déclarations des Droits de l’homme de 1791 et 1793, et vous en acquerrez la preuve. Enfin, Napoléon, qui réunissait les passions d’un jacobin aux préjugés d’un réactionnaire, sans aucun mélange de libéralisme, essaya de concilier le communisme de la Convention avec les monopoles et les priviléges de l’ancien régime. Il organisa l’enseignement communautaire, subventionna des cultes communautaires, institua un corps des ponts et chaussées dans le but d’établir un vaste réseau de voies de communication communautaires, décréta la conscription, c’est-à-dire l’armée communautaire; en outre, il centralisa la France comme une grande commune, et ce ne fut pas sa faute s’il n’organisa point dans cette commune centralisée toutes les industries sur le modèle de l’Université et de la régie des tabacs1 . Si la guerre ne l’en avait empêché, comme il le déclare lui-même dans ses Mémoires, il aurait certainement accompli ces grandes choses. D’une autre part, il ressuscita dans cette France organisée la plupart des priviléges et des restrictions de l’ancien régime; il reconstitua la noblesse apanagée, rétablit les priviléges de la boucherie, de la boulangerie, de l’imprimerie, des théâtres, des banques, limita la libre disposition du travail par la législation de l’apprentissage, des livrets et des coalitions, le droit de prêter par la loi de 1807, le droit de tester par le Code civil, le droit d’échanger par le blocus continental et la multitude de ses décrets et règlements relatifs aux douanes; il refit, pour tout dire, sous l’influence de deux inspirations venues de points opposés, mais également réglementaires, le vieux réseau d’entraves qui opprimait naguère la propriété.

  Nous avons vécu jusqu’à présent sous ce déplorable régime, encore aggravé par la Restauration (rétablissement de la vénalité des charges, en 1816, exhaussement des barrières douaniàres, en 1822), mais bien loin de lui imputer les iniquités et les misères de la société actuelle, c’est la propriété et la liberté qu’on a accusées. Les docteurs du socialisme méconnaissant l’organisation naturelle de la société, ne voulant point voir les déplorables résultats de la restauration des priviléges de l’ancien régime et de l’instauration du communisme révolutionnaire ou impérialiste, affirmèrent que la vieille société péchait par sa base même, la propriété, et il s’efforcèrent d’organiser sur une autre base une société nouvelle. Cela les conduisit à des utopies, les unes simplement absurdes, les autres immorales et abominables. Au reste, on les a vus à l’œuvre.

  Les conservateurs opposèrent heureusement une digue à l’invasion foudroyante du socialisme; mais n’ayant pas plus que leurs adversaires des notions précises de l’organisation naturelle de la société, ils ne pouvaient les vaincre ailleurs que dans la rue. Partisans du statu quo parce qu’ils y trouvaient profit et sans s’inquiéter du reste, les conservateurs s’opposèrent aux innovations socialistes, comme ils s’étaient, dans le courant des années précédentes, opposés aux innovations propriétaires des partisans de la liberté de l’enseignement et de la liberté du commerce.

  C’est entre ces deux sortes d’adversaires de la propriété, les uns voulant augmenter le nombre des restrictions et des charges qui pèsent déjà sur la propriété, les autres voulant conserver purement et simplement celles qui existent, que le débat se trouve actuellement porté. D’un côté apparaisseut M. Thiers et l’ancien comité de la rue de Poitiers; de l’autre MM. Louis Blanc, Pierre Leroux, Cabet, Considérant, Proudhon. C’est Necker sons les deux espèces. Mais je ne vois plus Turgot.

  le socialiste.

  Si la société est naturellement organisée et s’il suffit de détruire les obstacles apportés au libre jeu de son organisation, c’est-a-dire les atteintes portées à la propriété pour élever le chiffre de la production au maximum que comporte l’état actuel d’avancement des arts et des sciences, et rendre la distribution de la richesse pleinement équitable, il est fort inutile assurément de chercher encore des organisations factices. Il n’y a autre chose à faire qu’à ramener la société a la propriété pure.

  le conservateur.

  Mais combien de changements à opérer pour en venir la? Cela fait trembler!

  l’économiste.

  Non! car toutes les réformes à accomplir ayant un caractère de justice et d’utilité ne sauraient offenser aucun intérêt légitime ni causer aucun dommage à la société.

  le socialiste.

  Au reste, dans un sens ou dans un autre, pour la propriété ou contre la propriété, les réformes ne peuvent manquer de se faire. Deux systèmes, sont en présence: le communisme et la propriété. Il faut aller vers l’un ou vers l’autre. Le régime mi-propriétaire, mi-communiste sous lequel nous vivons ne saurait durer.

  l’économiste.

  Il nous a déjà valu de déplorables catastrophes et peutêtre nous en réserve-t-il de nouvelles.

  le conservateur.

  Hélas!

  l’économiste.

  Il faut donc en sortir. Or, on n’en peut sortir que par la porte du communisme ou par celle de la propriété:

  Choisissez!

  FIN.

  [1 ]Un de nos économistes les plus distingués, M. L. Leclerc, a exposé récemment, sur la source de la propriété extérieure, une théorie qui a beaucoup d’analogie avec celle-ci. Les différences sont dans la forme plutôt que dans le fonds. Au lieu d’une séparation des forces intérieures, M. Leclerc voit dans la propriété extérieure une consommation de la vie et des organes. Je cite:
  
  “Le phénomène de la consommation graduelle et de l’extinction finale, non pas du moi, il est immortel, mais de la vie; cet inconcevable affaissement des facultés et des organes, quand il s’accomplit par suite de l’effort utile appelé travail, me paraît très digne d’attention; car, si ce résultat ést indispensable, soit pour entretenir la force même qui agit, soit pour suppléer à celle qui ne peut agir encore, ou bien à celle qui ne peut plus agir, il est certain que ce résultat est acquis à titre onéreux; il a réellement coûté la portion de durée, el, si cela peut se dire, la portion de facultés et d’organes irrévocablement consommée pour l’obtenir. Cette quotité de ma vie et de ma puissance est perdue sans retour; je ne la recouvrerai jamais; la voici comme déposée dans le résultat de mes efforts; lui seul représente donc ce que je possédais légitimement, et ce que je n’ai plus. Je n’usais pas seulement de mon droit naturel en praliquant cette substitution, j’obéissais à l’instinct conservateur, je me soumettais à la plus impérieuse des nécessités: mon droit de propriété est là! Le travail est donc le fondement certain, la source pure, l’origine sainte du droit de propriété: ou bien le moi n’est point propriété primordiale et originelle, ou bien les facultés, expansion du moi, et les organes mis à son service ne lui appartiennent pas, ce qui serait insoutenable.
  
  Employer son temps, le perdre, en user bien ou mal; se tuer pour vivre; donner une heure, un jour: voilà des paroles familières proférées depuis des siècles, parties intégrantes de tout langage humain, qui lui-même est la pensée visible. Le moi a donc conscience parfaite de la consommation folle ou sage, utile ou improductive de sa propre puissance, et, comme il sait aussi que cette puissance lui appartient, il en conclut sans peine un droit exclusif et virtuel sur les résultats utiles de cette inévitable extinction, quand elle s’est laborieusement et fructueusement accomplie. La conscience publique va droit et d’elle-même à ces graves principes, à ces vérités éclatantes d’évidence, sans se livrer apparemment aux longues dissertations auxquelles nous nous croyons obligés nous autres.
  
  Oui, ma vie m’appartient, avec le droit d’en faire librement le généreux sacrifice à l’humanité, à ma patrie, à mon semblable, à mon ami, à ma femme, à mon enfant! Ma vie m’appartient; j’en consacre une portion pour obtenir ce qui doit la prolonger; ce que j’ai obtenu est donc à moi, et je puis également en faire abandon aux chers objets de ma tendresse. Si l’effort est heureux, ce que la religion explique par la faveur divine; si l’effort est habile, ce que l’économiste peut attribuer au jeu plus parfait des facultés; s’il arrive que le résultat dépasse le besoin, de toute évidence cet excédant m’appartient encore. J’ai donc le droit d’en user pour ajouter d’autres satisfactions à celle de vivre; j’ai droit de le mettre en réserve pour l’enfant qui peut me naître, et pour l’époque terrible de l’impoissante vieillesse. Que je transforme l’excédant, que je l’échange, utilité contre utilité, valeur contre valeur, toujours, c’est toujours mien, car, on ne saurait trop insister, c’est toujours la représentation manifeste d’une portion de mon existence, de mes facultés, de mes organes, usés dans le travail, qui produit cet excédant. Pour posséder à titre honorable et légitime ce qu’en fermant les yeux je lègue à ceux que j’aime, le vêtement, le meuble, la marchandise, la maison, la terre, le contrat, l’argent, qu’importe! n’ai-je point dépensé partie du temps que j’avais à vivre sur la terre? N’est-ce point, en réalité, léguer à ceux que j’aime ma vie et mes facultés? Je pouvais m’épargner quelque effort ou me le rendre moins pénible, ou bien accroître mes satisfactions; ah! combien il m’est plus doux de reporter sur mes bien-aimés ce qui était de mon droit! Pensée généreuse et consolante, qui soutient le courage, charme le cœur, inspire et sauvegarde la vertu, dispose aux nobles dévouements, unit les générations et conduit à l’amélioration du sort de l’humanité, par l’accroissement graduel des capitaux.

  (L. Leclerc.—Simple observation sur le droit de propriété.—Journal des Économistes, n° du 15 octobre 1848.).

  [1 ]La propriété intellectuelle, si déplorablement méconnue par les propriétaires de nos jours, a trouvé un spirituel et persévérant défenseur en M. Jobard, directeur du Musée de Bruxelles. A Paris, un romancier distingué, M. Hip. Castille, avait fondé en 1847 un journal pour défendre cette cause qui intéresse un si grand nombre de travailleurs. Malheureusement, l’entreprise de M. Castille n’oblint point le succès qu’elle méritait si bien. Au bout de quelques mois, le Travail intellectuel cessa de paraître. Je me suis borné à résumer ici divers articles publiés par moi dans ce journal d’un des défenseurs les plus dévoués de la propriété intellectuelle.

  [1 ]Le droit de tester est limité en France, principalement par les articles 913 et 915 du Code civil.
  
  Art. 913. Les libéralités, soit par actes entre vifs, soit par testaments, ne pourront excéder la moitié des biens du disposant, s’il ne laisse à son décès qu’un enfant légitime; le tiers, s’il laisse deux enfants; le quart, s’il en laisse trois ou un plus grand nombre.
  
  Art. 915. Les libéralités par actes entre vifs ou par testaments ne pourront excéder la moitié des biens, si, à défaut d’enfants, le défunt laisse un ou plusieurs ascendants dans chacune des lignes paternelle et maternelle; et les trois quarts, s’il ne laisse d’ascendants que dans une ligne.
  
  Il faut dire toutefois, à la justification des auteurs du Code civil, qu’ils avaient en des prédécesseurs beaucoup moins libéraux encore. Par une loi du 7 mars 1793, la Convention avait complétement supprimé le droit de tester. Cette loi était ainsi conçue:
  
  Disposition unique. La faculté de disposer de ses biens, soit à cause de mort, soit entre vifs, soit par donation contractuelle en ligne directe, est abolie; en conséquence, tous les descendants auront un droit égal à partager les biens de leurs ascendants.
  
  Les auteurs du Code civil furent unanimes à reconnaître que cette loi avait porté une grave atteinte à l’autorité paternelle. Malheureusement, ils n’osèrent la réformer qu’à demi.
  
  Sous la république romaine, le droit illimité de tester avait été consacré par la loi des Douze tables. Mais diverses atteintes furent successivement portées à ce droit. Justinien limita la portion disponible de l’héritage, au tiers quand il y avait quatre enfants, à la moitié quand il y en avait cinq ou plus.
  
  En Angleterre, il est permis de disposer par testament de tous ses immeubles, sans aucune réserve, et du tiers seulement de ses meubles; les deux autres tiers appartiennent à la femme et aux enfants. Les propriétés territoriales ne vont de droit à l’aîné de la famille que lorsqu’il n’y a pas de testament.
  
  Aux Etats-Unis, le droit de tester est entièrement libre.

  [1 ]Préface de la Défense de l’usure, de J. Bentham.—Mélanges d’Économie politique, t. II, p. 518. Edition Guillaumin.

  [1 ]Rapport adressé à M. le duc de Broglie sur les questions coloniales par M. Jules Lechevalier.

  [1 ]Frappé, il y a quelques années, de la difficulté qu’éprouvent les travailleurs à connaître les endroits où ils peuvent obtenir un bon débouché de cette espèce de marchandise qu’on nomme du travail, je demandai l’établissement de bourses du travail avec publicité des cours, à l’exemple de ce qui se pratique pour les capitaux et les denrées de consommation* . Plus tard, j’essayai de réaliser cette idée, et j’adressai, dans le Courrier français, dirigé alors par M. X. Durrieu, l’appel suivant aux ouvriers de Paris:
  
  Depuis longtemps, les capitalistes, les industriels et les négociants se servent de la publicité que leur offre la presse pour placer le plus avantageusement possible leurs capitaux ou leurs marchandises. Tous les journaux publient régulièrement un bulletin de la Bourse, tous ont ouvert aussi leurs colonnes aux annonces industrielles et commerciales.
  
  Si la publicité rend aux capitalistes et aux négociants des services dont on ne saurait plus aujourd’hui nier l’importance, pourquoi ne serait-elle pas mise aussi à la portée des travailleurs? Pourquoi ne serait-elle pas employée à éclairer les démarches des ouvriers qui cherchent de l’ouvrage, comme elle sert déjà à éclairer celles des capitalistes qui cherchent de l’emploi pour leurs capitaux, comme elle sert encore aux négociants pour trouver le placement de leurs marchandises? L’ouvrier qui vit du travail de ses bras et de son intelligence, n’est-il pas aussi intéressé pour le moins à savoir en quels lieux le travail obtient le salaire le plus avantageux, que peuvent l’être le capitaliste et le négoicant à connaître les marchés où les capitaux et les marchandises se vendent le plus cher. Sa force physique et son intelligence sont ses capitaux à lui: c’est en exploitant ces capitaux-là, c’est en les faisant travailler, et en échangeant leur travail contre les produits du travail d’autres ouvriers comme lui qu’il parvient à subsister.
  
  ... C’est la presse qui public le bulletin de la Bourse et les annonces industrielles: ce serait la presse qui publierait le bulletin du travail.
  
  Nous proposons, en conséquence, à tous les corps d’état de la ville de Paris de publier gratuitement chaque semaine le bulletin des engagements d’ouvriers avec l’indication du taux des salaires et de l’état de l’offre et de la demande. Nous répartirons les bulletins des corps d’état entre les différents jours de la semaine, de telle sorte que chaque métier ait sa publication à jour fixe.
  
  Si notre offre est agréée par les corps d’état, nous inviterons nos confrères des départements à publier les bulletins du travail de leurs localités, comme nous publierons le bulletin du travail de Paris. Chaque semaine, nous rassemblerons tous ces bulletins et nous en composerons un bulletin général. Chaque semaine, tous les travailleurs de France pourront avoir de la sorte sons les youx le tableau de la situation du travail dans les différentes parties du pays.
  
  “Nous nous adressons surtout aux ouvriers des corps d’état de la ville de Paris. Déjà ils se trouvent organisés, déjà ils possèdent des bureaux de placement réguliers. Rien ne leur serait plus facile que de livrer à la publicité le bulletin de leurs transactions quotidiennes; rien ne leur serait plus facite que de doter la France de la publicité du travail.” (Courrier français du 26 juillet 1846.)
  
  A la suite de cet appel, je m’abouchai avec quelques-uns des corps de métiers parisiens, entre autres avec la corporation des tailleurs de pierre. On me mit en rapport avec un compagnon surnommé Parisien la Douceur, un des ouvriers les plus intelligents que j’aie rencontrés. Parisien la Douceur goûta fort mon plan, et il me promit de l’exposer à la réunion des tailleurs de pierre. Malheureusement, la réunion ne pariagea pas l’opinion de son délégué: elle craignit que la publication des prix du travail a Paris n’attirât une affluence plus considérable d’ouvrlers dans ce grand centre de population, et elle me refusa son concours. Mes tentatives ne furent pas plus heureuses ailleurs.
  
  Après la révolution de février, j’essayai de remettre cette idée à flot. J’écrivis à M. Flocon, alors ministre de l’agriculture et du commerce, pour l’engager, sinon à faire bâtir une Bourse du travail à Paris, du moins à mettre au service des travailleurs la Bourse déjà bâtie. Les gens d’affaires vont à la Bourse dans l’après-nudi, les ouvriers ne pourraient-ils pas y aller le matin? Telle est la question que je posais à M. Flocon; mais M. Flocon, qui avait bien d’autres affaires, ne me répondit point.
  
  La même idée fut reprise à quelque temps de là, et un projet de Bourse du travail fut même présenté au préfet de police, M. Ducoux, par an architecte, M. Leuiller. M. Emile de Girardin prêta son appui à cette tentative, et il offrit même de consacrer une partie de la quatrième page de la Presse à la publicité des transactions du travail.
  
  Pour donner une idée de l’extension que pourrait prendre celle publicité si nécessaire, et les services qu’elle pourrait rendre aux ouvriers marchands de travail, avec l’auxiliaire des télégraphes électriques et des chemins de fer, je reproduis un extrait d’une brochure où j’ai développé assez longuement cette idée: Examinons de quelle manière la télégraphie électrique devrait être établie pour donner aux travailleurs de toutes les nations les moyens de connaître instantanément les lieux où le travail est demandé aux conditions les plus avantageuses. C’est le long des chemins de fer que s’établissent les lignes télégraphiques. Dans chacun des grands Etats de l’Europe, les principales lignes de chemins de fer se dirigent vers la capitale comme vers un centre commun. Elles rattachent à la métropole toutes les villes secondaires. Celles-ci, à leur leur, deviennent les foyers d’autres voies de communication qui vont aboutir à des centres de population de troisième ordre. Admetions qu’en France, par exemple, il s’établisse, dans une vinglaine de villes secondaires, des marchés, des Bourses, servant à la fois à la vente du travail et au placement des capitaux et des denrées. Admettons aussi que la matinée soit consacrée aux transactions des travailleurs et l’après-midi à celles des capitalistes et des marchands. Voyons ensuite comment se tiendra le marché de travail. Le jour de l’ouverture des vingt Bourses, les ouvriers qui manquent d’emploi et les directeurs industriels qui ont besoin d’ouvriers, se rendent au marché, les uns pour vendre, les autres pour acheter du travail. Il est tenu note du nombre des transactions effectuées, des prix auquels elles l’ont été et de la proportion relative des emplois offerts et des emplois demandés. Le bulletin du marché, rédigé à la fin de la séance, est envoyé à la Bourse centrale par voie télégraphique. Vingt bulletins arrivent en même temps à ce point de réunion où l’on en compose un bulletin général. Ce dernier, qui est adressé aussitôt soit par le chemin de fer, soit par le télégraphe, à chacune des vingt Bourses secondaires, peut être publié partout avant l’ouverture de la Bourse du lendemain. Instruits par le bulletin général du travail de la situation des divers marchés du pays, les travailleurs disponibles dans certains centres de production peuvent envoyer leurs offres dans ceux où il y a des emplois vacants. Supposons, par exemple, que trois charpentiers soient sans ouvrage à Rouen, tandis qu’à Lyon le même nombre d’ouvriers de cet état se trouvent demandés au prix de 4 fr. Après avoir consulté le bulletin de travail publié par le journal du matin, les charpentiers de Rouen se rendent à la Bourse, où vient aboutir la ligne télégraphique, et ils expédient à Lyon une dépêche ainsi conçue: “Rouen—3 charpentiers à 4 50—Lyon.” La dépêche envoyée à Paris est, de là, transmise à Lyon. Si le prix demandé par les charpentiers de Rouen convient aux entrepreneurs de Lyon, ceux-ci répondent immédiatement par un signe d’acceptation convenu. Si le prix est jugé par eux trop élevé, un débat s’engage entre les deux parties. Si enfin elles tombent d’accord, les ouvriers, munis de la réponse d’acceptation timbrée par l’employé au télégraphe, se rendent aussitôt à Lyon par le chemin de fer. La transaction a été conclue aussi rapidement qu’ette aurant pu l’être dans l’enceinte de la Bourse de Rouen. Admettons encore maintenant que Francfort-sur-Mein soil le point de réunion vers lequel convergent les lignes télégraphiques aboutissant aux diverses bourses centrales de l’Europe. C’est a Francfort-sur-Mein que sont adressés les bulletins genéraux de chaque pays, c’est là aussi que l’on en compose un bulletin européen qui est envoyé à toutes les bourses centrales et qui est transmis de celles-ci à toutes les bourses secondaires. Grâce à ce mécanisme de publicité, le nombre des emplois et des bras disponibles avec les prix offerts ou demandés se trouvent connus, d’une manière presque instantanée, sur toute la surface du continent. Supposons donc qu’un marin, sans occupation à Marseille, apprenne, en consultant le bulletin du travail européen, que les matelots manquent à Riga et qu’il leur est offert, dans ce port, un salaire avantageux. Il se rend à la Bourse et envoie à Riga ses offres de services par dépêche télégraphique. De Marseille, la dépêche arrive à Paris, en deux ou trois étapes, selon la force de l’agent de locomotion: de Paris, elle est envoyée à Francfort, de Francfort elle va à Moscou, bourse centrale de la Russie, et de Moscou à Riga. Ce trajet, d’environ 4,000 kilomètres, pent être parcouru en deux ou trois minutes. La réponse est transmise de la même manière Si la correspondance lélégraphique est tarifée à raison de cinq centimes par 100 kilomètres, notre marin payera 4 fr. environ pour la dépêche envoyée et la dépêche reçue. Si sa demande est agrééc, il prend le chemin de fer et arrive à Riga en cinq jours. En supposant que le prix de la locomation se trouve fixé au plus has possible, soit à ½ centime par kilomètre, ses frais de déplacement, poste télégraphique comprise, s’élèveront à 24 fr. L’Europe devient ainsi un vaste marché où les transactions des travailleurs s’effectuent aussi rapidement, aussi aisément que dans le marché de la Cité. Par constantinople, les hourses de l’Europe correspondent avec celles de l’Afrique et de l’Asie. Ainsi la locomotion à la vapeur et la télégraphic électrique sont, en quelque sorte, les instruments matériels de la liberté du travail. En procurant aux individus le moyen de disposer librement d’eux-mêmes, de se porter toujours dans les contrées où l’existence est la plus facile et la plus heureuse, ces véhicules providentiels poussent irrésistiblement les sociétés dans les voies du progrès* .

  [1 ]Quelquefois cependant la protection était due à des manœuvres que l’on ne saurait qualifier trop sévèrement. Voici, par exemple, un renseignement curieux que j’emprunte à l’Enquête sur les houilles (1832), an sujet de la protection accordée aux mines d’Anzin
  
  “La prime dont jouit la compagnie d’Anzin, sur le prix de l’hectolitre de charbon extrait au couchant de Mons (Belgique), est de 75 centimes, ou 7 fr. 50 c. par tonneau Elle a obtenu cette prime, après l’achèvement du canal de Condé, par les droits et péages qu’on a établis et par la position topographique de ses établissements.
  
  Elle l’avait antérieurement, en 1813, par un maximum qu’elle était parvenue à faire imposer sur le prix du fret de la Haine, par un arrêté des consuls du 13 pralrial an xi. A cette èpoque, Cambacérès, second consul, Talleyrand-Pèrigord, Lecouteulx-Canteleu et plusieurs autres personnages marquants et très influents, étaient actionnaires de la compagnie des mines d’Anzin* .”

  [1 ]Un des membres éminents de la Ligue contre les lois-céréales, M. W.-J. Fox, a admirablement réfuté cet argument de la dépendance de l’étranger. Quoique le morceau ait été souvent cité, je cède à la tentation de le reproduire encore. C’est un petit chefd’œuvre.
  
  “Ètre indépendant de l’étranger, c’est le thême favori de l’aristocratic. Mais qu’est-il donc ce grand seigneur, cet avocat de l’indépendance nationale, cet ennemi de toute dépendance étrangère? Examinons sa vie. Voilà un cuisinier français qui prépare le dîner pour le maître, et un valet suisse qui apprête le maître pour lediner.—Mylady qui accepte sa main est toute resplendissante de perles, qu’on ne trouve jamais dans les huîtres britanniques, et la plume qui flotte sur sa tête ne fit jamais partie de la queue d’un dindon anglais. Les viandes de sa table viennent de la Belgique, ses vins du Rhin ou du Rhône. Il repose sa vue sur des fleurs venues de l’Amérique du Sud, et il gratifle son odorat de la fumée d’une feuille venue de l’Amérique du Nord. Son cheval favori est d’origine arabe, et son chien de la race de Saint-Bernard. Sa galerie est riche de tableaux flamands et de statues grecques.—Veut-il se distraire? il va entendre des chanteurs italiens, vociférant de la musique allemande, le tout suivi d’un ballet français. S’élève-t-il aux honneurs judiciaires? l’hermine qui décore ses épaules n’avait jamais figuré jusque-là sur le dos d’une bête britannique.—Son esprit même est une bigarrure de contributions exotiques. Sa philosophie et sa poésie viennent de la Grèce et de Rome; sa géométrie d’Alexandrie; son arithmétique d’Arabie; et sa religion de Palestine. Dès son berceau, il pressa ses dents naissantes sur du corail de l’Océan indien; et lorsqu’il mourra, le marbre de Carare surmontera sa tombe... Et voilà l’homme qui dit: Soyons indépendants de l’etranger!”—Meeting du 26 janvier 1844.—Cobden et la Ligue, de M. F. Bastiat, p. 182.

  [1 ]On sait que c’est principalement aux efforts de la Ligue contre les lois-céréales, dirigée par M. Cobden, que l’Angleterre doit la conquête de la liberté commerciale. Voir, pour l’histoire de cette admirable association, le livre de M. Bastiat, Cobden ou la Ligue et l’Association anglaise; les Études sur l’Angleterre, de M. Léon Faucher; Richard Cobden ou les Ligueurs, par M. Joseph Garnier, et surtout les esquisses pittoresques et colorées de notre excellent et regrettable ami A. Fonteyraud, dans la Revue britannique et dans l’Annuaire de l’Économie politique.

  [1 ]Voir le sixième entrelien.

  [1 ]Dans les départements et dans la banlieue de Paris, les directeurs de spectacles prélèvent en revanche un droit d’un cinquième de la recette brute sur les représentations des saltimbanques, des joueurs de gobelets, etc. Ces plaisirs du pauvre sont taxés au profit des plaisirs du riche. Voilà l’égalité que nous avail faite le régime monarchique.

  [1 ]Les cultes reconnus sont au nombre de quatre, savoir: la religion catholique romaine, la religion protestante (confession d’Augsbourg), la religion luthérienne, la religion juive.

  [1 ]Dans un article sur les Sociétés commerciales en France et en Angleterre, publié dans la Revue des Deux Mondes (1^er août 1843), M. Charles Coquelin a insisté, le premier, sur la nécessité d’accorder une entière liberté aux associations commerciales. Voici quelques extraits de ce travail remarquable: “Il s’est formé de nos jours des écoles philosophiques qui ont eu la prétention de conduire l’humanité, par l’association, à des destinées inconnues. Est-il besoin de les nommer, quand les derniers échos de leurs paroles sonores relentissent encore autour de nous? Que voulaient les chefs de ces écoles? Améliorer l’ordre existant, purger de ses taches cette société humaine que le travail des temps a formée, continuer l’œuvre des générations passées en perfectionnant par degrés ses procédés et ses formes? Tout cela ne suffisait point à l’ambition de ces docteurs. La société actuelle n’était pas assez régulière à leurs yeux; elle n’était pas assez absolue, assez étroite: elle laissait trop de place au libre arbitre de l’homme, et respectait trop l’action spontanée de l’individu. Ce qu’ils voulaient, c’était une société une, avec un seul centre et an seul chef, une société universelle par son étendue, universelle par son objet, où l’individualité humaine disparût dans le courant de l’action sociale, qui n’eût qu’une seule âme, un seul mobile, où l’homme ne connût aussi qu’un seul lien, mais un lien tel qu’il l’étreignit, pour ainsi dire, tout entier. Voilà ce que demandaient ces prétendus apôtres de la sociabilité humaine. Est-ce là ce que l’avenir nous promet? Est-ce ainsi que le progrès doit s’accomplir? Loin de là: l’étude du véritable caractère de l’homme et la connaissance des faits historiques nous montrent au contraire que, dans le cours naturel des choses, le lien social va chaque jour se fractionnant et se multipliant; que l’humanité, dans ses développements normaux, dans ses aspirations réelles vers le progrès, au lieu de ramener l’association à cette unité étroite et misérable, tend sans cesse à la diviser, à diversifler ses formes, à l’éparpiller en quelque sorte sur des objets chaque jour plus nombreux et plus variés. L’homme est un être sociable, dit-on, et sur ce fondement on veut qu’il s’absorbe tout entier dans une société unique, comme si ce penchant social qu’on lui attribue ne pouvait s’exercer que là. Oui, l’homme est un être sociable; il l’est plus que nul être sensible; c’est là son attribut le plus distinctif et son plus noble apanage. Mais avec le sentiment de la sociabilité, il nourrit en lui un besoin impérieux de liberté et une certaine spontanéité dans ses rapports. C’est d’ailleurs un être mobile et divers autant que sociable, et il se porte d’instinct vers un état de société mobile et divers comme sa nature elle-même. Au lieu donc de se lier une fois pour toutes, dans une société unique, par une chaîne lourde qui entraverait la liberté de ses allures, il doit se lier plulôt par des milliers de fils légers qui, en l’attachant, de toutes parts, à ses semblables, respectent pourtant le jeu de sa nature mobile. Voilà ce que la raison commande; là est le progrès. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Dans aucun temps, le principe de l’association n’a été largement appliqué en France. Soit avant, soit depuis la Révolution, on n’y trouve guère qu’un certain nombre de ces sociétés chétives que le niveau commun atteint, peu ou point de ces puissants concours de capitaux ou d’hommes qui mettent le commerce d’un pays à la hauteur des grandes entreprises. Bien des gens s’en prennent au génie du peuple français, peu propre, dit-on, à se prêter aux combinaisons de l’association commerciale. Sans nous arrêter à cette explication, qui nous paraît prématurée, nous essaierons de montrer que la cause du mal est toute dans la loi qui régit nos sociétés. La loi de 1807, qui régit les sociétés commerciales, a subsisté sans altération jusqu’à nos jours: c’est dans ses dispositions et ses tendances qu’il faut chercher la cause de l’état de torpeur où l’association languit parmi nous, aussi bien que des abus et des seandales qui ont suivi ses trop rares applications.—On peut la résumer ainsi: La loi reconnaît trois espèces de sociétés commerciales, la société en nom collectif, la société en commandite et la société anonyme. Dans la société en nom collectif, tous les associés doivent être nominalement désignés dans un acte rendu public, et leurs noms peuvent seuls faire partie de la raison sociale. Ils sont d’ailleurs unis par les liens d’une étroite solidarité, chacun étant indéflniment responsable, sur sa personne et sur ses biens, de tous les engagements contractés par la société, et les engagements sociaux pouvant être contractés par chacun d’eux, pourvu qu’il ait signé sous la raison sociale. La société en commandite se contracte entre un ou plusieurs associés responsables et solidaires, et un ou plusieurs associés simples bailleurs de fonds, que l’on nomme commanditaires ou associés en commandite. Les noms des associés responsables et solidaires figurent seuls dans l’acte de société, et seuls aussi peuvent faire partie de la raison sociale. La gestion leur est exclusivement réservée. Par rapport à eux, la société entraîne tous les effets de la société en nom collectif: quant aux associés commanditaires, ils ne sont passibles des pertes que jusqu’à concurrence des fonds qu’ils ont mis ou dû mettre dans la société. La société anonyme n’existe point sous une raison sociale; elle n’est désignée sous le nom d’aucun des associés; elle est qualifiée par la désignation de l’objet de l’entreprise. Tous les associés indistinctement y joulssent de l’avantage de n’être engagés que jusqu’à concurrence de leur mise convenue. Elle est administrée par des mandataires à temps, révocables, associés ou non associés, salariés ou gratuits, qui ne contractent, à raison de leur gestion, aucune obligation personnelle ni solidaire, relativement aux engagements de la société, et qui ne sont responsables que de l’exécution du mandat qu’ils ont reçu. Quand on considère dans son ensemble le système dont on vient de voir l’exposé, on ne peut s’empêcher d’être frappé de l’esprit restrictif qui le domine, et qui se révèle d’ailleurs dans ces seuls mots: la loi reconnaît trois espèces de sociétés commerciales. L’association n’étant qu’un acte naturel, il semble qu’elle doive être spontanément réglée entre les parties contractantes avec des formes et des conditions librement déterminées par elles, suivant leurs intérêts et leurs besoins. Nous voyons au contraire que la loi se substitue, à certains égards, aux contractants: elle empiète sur leur libre arbitre pour leur dicter le mode d’association, en ne leur laissant que le choix entre les trois formes particulièrement déterminées par elle. Elle fait plus encore, en imposant à chacune des formes qu’elle spécifie, des règles étroites et rigoureuses, qui ne permettent pas même d’en modifier l’application selon les cas. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Qu’est-ce maintenant que la société anonyme en France? Est-ce par hasard une forme d’association que le commerce puisse appliquer à son usage? Évidemment non; c’est une forme réservée par privilége à certaines entreprises extraordinaires qui se recommandent par une grandeur ou un éclat inusités. Celles-là seules, en effet, peuvent se présenter devant le conseil d’État avec des chances raisonnables de succès, sur lesquelles l’opinion publique est formée et qui ont pour elles l’appul des autorités constituées et de quel ques hommes puissants. Les entreprises de ce genre sont rares, et quelle que soit leur importance particulière, elles sont, par leur rareté même, d’un intérêt secondaire pour le pays. Quant à la foule des entreprises de second ordre, ou plutôt dont l’utilité est moins apparente, et ne peut souvent s’apprécier que sur les lieux, la forme de la société anonyme leur est tout à fait interdite. Avec de tels éléments, on comprend que l’association n’a pu faire de grands progrès en France, et que le commerce y doit être presque entièrement privé de ses bienfaits. En effet, jusqu’à ces dernières années, où l’esprit d’association, pressé de se faire jour, a rompu les barrières de la loi, c’est à peine si l’aspect de la France pouvait donner une idée de ce qu’engendre l’union des forces commerciales. Aujourd’hui même, qu’est-ce que ces rares sociétés par actions répandues çà et là autour de nous? En Angleterre, avec des conditions plus favorables, quoique trop rigoureuses encore, l’association s’est propagée depuis longtemps avec une bien autre puissance. Le nombre est incalculable des sociétés par actions que ce pays renferme; l’imagination serait confondue de la masse des capitaux qu’elles représentent, et, avec la mesure de liberté dont elles jouissent, ces sociétés ont enfanté des merveilles. Il en est de même aux États-Unis. Sans compter les innombrables banques fondées par actions, qui peuplent ce pays, chaque place importante de l’Union compte une foule d’associations de tous genres, dont quel-ques-unes sont gigantesques. Les moindres villes, les bourgs, les villages mêmes ont les leurs. Elles soutiennent l’industrie privée: elles la secondent et l’animent, en même temps qu’elles la complètent. Toutes ensemble, soit qu’elles se renferment dans ce rôle de protectrices des établissements particuliers, soit qu’elles s’attachent à des opérations d’une nature exceptionnelle, elles accroissent de leur activité et de leurs immenses ressources la puissance industrielle et la richesse du pays. A quelle distance ne sommes-nous pas de ce merveilleux développement!”

  [1 ]The Credit system in France, Great-Britain and the United-States. Philadelphia, 1838.—What in Currency, by J.-C. Carey.—Du Crèdit et des Banques, par Charles Coquelin. Paris. 1848. Chez Guillaumin et compagnie.

  [1 ]A la Banque de France, les jours d’escompte ont été fixés aux lundi, mercredi et vendredi de chaque semaine, et aux trois derniers jours qui précèdent la fin de chaque mois, quels que soient ces jours. Pour être admis à l’escompte et avoir un compte-courant à la Banque, il faut en faire la demande par écrit au gouverneur, et l’accompagner d’un certificat signé de trois personnes qui déclarent connaître la signature du demandeur et sa fidélité à ses engagements.

  (Dictionnaire du commerce et des marchandises, art. Banques.)

  [1 ]Dans une lettré adressée à M. Napier, à Édimbourg, J.-B. Say a fait un historique intéressant du privilége de la Banque de France. Voici quelques extraits instructifs de cette lettre:
  
  

  “..... La Banque fut reconnue par le gouvernement de Bonaparte et reçut de lui, par une loi du 24 germinal an xi (14 avril 1803), le privilége exclusif de mettre en circulation des billets au porteur.

  Le motif apparent fut de présenter au public une garantie plus respectable des billets en émission. Le motif réel fut de faire payer par la Banque le privilége exclusif d’avoir dans la circulation des billets ne portant point intérêt. Elle acheta ce privilége, comme la Banque d’Angleterre, en faisant des avances au gouvernement.

  Les événements marchèrent. La bataille d’Austerlitz eut lieu. Le public, qui savait que la Banque avait été obligée de prêter à Bonaparte vingt millions de ses billets, et voyant sur les bras de ce prince l’Autriche et la Russie, le crut perdu et se porta en foule à la Banque pour avoir le remboursement de ses billets. Elle en suspendit le payement en décembre 1805. La bataille d’Austerlitz eut lieu le 2 décembre. La capitulation de Presbourg fut la suite de cette victoire. Bonaparte devint maître, plus que jamais, des ressources de la France. Il s’acquitta envers la Banque, qui reprit ses payements au commencement de 1806.

  Bonaparte se prévalut des extrémités où lui-même avait jeté la Banque, et pour prévenir à l’avenir, disait-il, les embarras qui lui avaient fait suspendre le payement de ses billets au porteur, il en changea l’administration par une loi qu’il fit rendre le 22 avril 1806.

  Par cette loi, l’administration de la Banque fut donnée à un gouverneur (Jaubert) et à deux sous-gouverneurs, tous trois à la nomination du chef de l’État, mais qui devaient compte à l’assemblée des actionnaires, représentés par deux cents des plus forts d’entre eux.

  En même temps, le capital de la Banque, qui était composé de quarante-cinq mille actions à mille francs, fut porté à quatre-vingt-dix mille actions formant un capital de quatre-vingt-dix millions.

  Les besoins du public qui, disait-on, réclamaient de plus forts escomptes, et le dessein qu’il manifestait de prendre des actions dans cet établissement, furent le motif apparent. Le motif réel fut, de la part du gouvernement, la facilité que cet accroissement du capital de la Banque lui présentait pour obtenir de plus fortes avances.

  Les nouvelles actions furent vendues avec avantage au profit de l’établissement. Le crédit et la puissance du gouvernement étaient portés au comble par des succès inespérés.

  Le gouverneur de la Banque exerçait une grande influence sur le conseil d’administration, composé de gros négociants, dont les uns obtenaient des décorations, les autres des places pour leurs protégés. Cette influence n’était pas forcée, mais insurmontable. Les caractères fermes et qui méprisaient les avantages qu’on peut retirer du crédit se trouvaient en minorité dans toutes les délibérations. Le capital de la Banque fut, sous différentes formes (soit en cinq pour cent consolidés, soit en obligations du Trésor et des receveurs de contributions), presque entièrement conflé au gouvernement; mais en même temps, on se défendait autant qu’on pouvait de lui prêter des billets au porteur, lesquels n’ayant pour gage que des engagements non exigibles du gouvernement, n’auraient pu être remboursés à présentation.

  ..... En 1814, lorsque la France, divisée d’intérêts et d’opinions fut envahie par toutes les armées de l’Europe, le gouvernement obligea la Banque de lui faire des prêts extraordinaires. A cette époque, ses billets et ses engagements exigibles excédèrent d’environ vingt millions son numéraire et ses effets à courte échéance. En conséquence, le 18 janvier, lorsque les porteurs de billets, poussés par la crainte, se présentèrent en foule pour obtenir le remboursement de leurs billets, elle fut obligée, non d’en suspendre complétement le payement, mais de réduire le remboursement à cinq cent mille francs par jour. On ne payait qu’un seul billet de mille francs à chaque personne. Elle réduisit ses escomptes, fit rentrer ses créances, et, dès le mois de février suivant, elle reprit ses payements à bureau ouvert et pour toutes sommes.

  En ce moment, ses prêts faits au gouvernement sur des bons du Trésor ou des receveurs, ou sous toute autre forme, portant intérêts, s’élèvent à vingt-six millions.

  J.-B. Say. Paris, 14 août 1816.”
  (Mélanges d’Économie politique.—OEuvres de J.-B. Say; collection Guillaumin et compagnie).
  
  On sait que la Banque n’a pas cessé d’être la pourvoyeuse du gouvernement, au grand dommage de ceux qui sont obligés de subir son privilége.

  [1 ]Le privilége qui, en France, résulte de la vénalité des charges instituées à titre onéreux par la loi du 28 avril 1816, et, en divers autres pays, s’appuie sur des règlements qui ont fixé dans un intérêt public, réel ou supposé, le nombre des personnes admises à exercer de certains ministères, n’existe pas aux États-Unis. Chacun est libre de se faire commissaire-priseur, agent de change, huissier, avoué, notaire, autant que ces professions ont leurs analogues en Amérique, car le mécanisme judiciaire et ministériel y est tout différent.
  
  La tendance aujourd’hui est de supprimer même les garanties que la société avait cru devoir exiger de l’homme qui aspire à défendre la veuve et l’orphelin, ou de celui qui prétend instrumenter la vie de ses concitoyens. Dans le Massachussets (je cite de préférence les États les plus éclairés), pour être avocat, il fallait, jusqu’en 1836, avoir été reçu bachelier ès lois dans une université, ou blen avoir effectivement passé un certain nombre d’années dans le cabinet d’un praticien qui présentait ensuite le candidat à la cour. Pour exercer la médecine, ou, ce qui est déjà différent, pour avoir le droit de poursuivre un client en payement d’honoraires, il fallait avoir acquis ses grades au collége médical qui fait partie de l’université de Harvard, voisine de Bosion. Aujourd’hui on est avocat, dans le Massachussets, sous la seule condition de passer un examen public devant un jury d’hommes de loi, choisi à chaque session par le juge. Quant à la médecine, la clause d’un examen n’est plus nécessaire, même pour la revendication des honoraires: depuis 1836, la petite barrière qui séparait l’exercice de cette profession d’une liberté complète a disparu.

  (MichelChevalier. De la Liberté aux États-Unis.—Extrait de la Revue des Deux-Mondes du 1^er juillet 1849, p. 20).

  [1 ]J’emprunte cette partie de mon argumentation au savant et judicieux auteur des Notes sur Malthus, M. Joseph Garnier.

  [1 ]Cours de Phrénologie de M. le docteur Ch. Place.

  [1 ]Pendant longtemps, les économistes ont refusé de s’occuper non seulement du gouvernement, mais encore de toutes les fonctions purement immatérielles. J.-B. Say a fait entrer, le premier, cette nature de services dans le domaine de l’économie politique, en leur appliquant la dénomination commune de produits immatériels. En cela, il a rendu à la science un service plus considérable qu’on ne suppose: “L’industrie d’un médecin, dit-il, et, si l’on veut multiplier les exemples, d’un administrateur de la chose publique, d’un avocat, d’un juge, qui sont du même genre, satisfont à des besoins tellement nécessaires, que, sans leurs travaux, nulle société ne pourrait subsister. Les fruits de ces travaux ne sont-ils pas réels? Ils sont tellement réels qu’on se les procure au prix d’un autre produit matériel, et que, par ces échanges répétés, les producteurs de produits immatériels acquièrent des fortunes.—C’est donc à tort que le comte de Verri prétend que les emplois de princes, de magistrats, de militaires, de prêtres, ne tombent pas immédiatement dans la sphère des objets dont s’occupe l’économie politique.”

  J.-B. Say. Traité d’Économie politique, l. 1, chap. XIII.

  [1 ]Du Principe générateur des Constitutions politiques.—Préface.

  [1 ]Voir les Études sur l’Angleterre, de M. Léon Faucher.

  [1 ]De la Richesse des Nations, liv. 5, chap. I^st.

  [1 ]Sans déterminer cette loi, comme aussi sans bien définir le rôle qu’elle joue dans la production et la distribution de la richesse, Adam Smith l’a clairement indiquée dans ce passage: “Le prix du marché pour chaque marchandise particulière est réglé par la proportion entre la quantité qu’on en apporte au marché et celle qu’en demandent les gens qui veulent en payer le prix naturel, c’est-à-dire toute la valeur de la rente, du travail et du profit qui doivent être payés pour qu’elle vienne au marché. Lorsque la quantité d’une marchandise qu’on apporte au marché est au-dessous de la demande effective, il n’y en aura point assez pour fournir aux besoins de tous ceux qui sont résolus de payer toute la valeur de la rente, du salaire et du profit qui doivent être payés pour qu’elle y vienne. Plutôt que de s’en passer entièrement, quelques-uns des demandeurs en offriront davantage. Dès ce moment, il s’établira parmi eux une concurrence, et le prix du marché s’élèvera plus ou moins, selon que la grandeur du déficit augmentera plus ou moins l’ardeur des compétiteurs. Ce même déficit occasionnera généralement plus ou moins de chaleur dans la concurrence, selon que l’acquisition de la marchandise sera plus ou moins importante pour les compétiteurs. De là le prix exorbitant des choses nécessaires à la vie durant le blocus d’une ville ou dans une famine. Lorsque la quantité qu’on apporte au marché est au-dessus de la demande effective, on ne peut vendre le tout à ceux qui sont disposés à en payer le prix naturel ou toute la valeur de la rente, etc. Il faut en vendre une partie à ceux qui en offrent moins, et le bas prix qu’ils en donnent fait nécessairement une réduction sur le prix du tout. Le prix du marché baissera plus ou moins au-dessous du prix naturel, selon que la grandeur du surabondant augmentera plus ou moins la concurrence des vendeurs, ou selon qu’il sera plus ou moins important pour eux de se défaire de la marchandise. La même surabondance dans l’importation des marchandises qui peuvent se gâter et se perdre, comme les oranges, occasionnera une concurrence bien plus animée que ne le feront celles qui sont durables comme la ferraille. Si la quantité portée au marché suffit juste pour fournir à la demande effective et rien de plus, le prix du marché sera exactement le même que le prix naturel, ou il en approchera le plus possible, autant qu’on en peut juger. Toute la quantité qu’il y en a peut être vendue à ce prix, et pas plus cher. La concurrence des vendeurs les oblige à la donner pour cela et pas davantage. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Ainsi le prix naturel est, pour ainsi dire, le prix central vers lequel gravitent continuellement les prix de toutes les marchandises. Divers accidents peuvent les tenir quelquefois suspendus assez haut au-dessus de ce prix et les faire descendre même quelquefois un peu plus bas. Mais quels que soient les obstacles qui les empêchent de s’établir dans ce centre de repos et de stabilité, elles tendent constamment à s’y mettre.”

  AdamSmith. De la Richesse des Nations, liv. 1, chap. VII.

  [1 ]La fabrication du tabac, rendue libre par l’Assemblée constituante, fut mise en régie par un décret du 29 décembre 1810.

  [1 ]Frappé, il y a quelques années, de la difficulté qu’éprouvent les travailleurs à connaître les endroits où ils peuvent obtenir un bon débouché de cette espèce de marchandise qu’on nomme du travail, je demandai l’établissement de bourses du travail avec publicité des cours, à l’exemple de ce qui se pratique pour les capitaux et les denrées de consommation* . Plus tard, j’essayai de réaliser cette idée, et j’adressai, dans le Courrier français, dirigé alors par M. X. Durrieu, l’appel suivant aux ouvriers de Paris:
  
  Depuis longtemps, les capitalistes, les industriels et les négociants se servent de la publicité que leur offre la presse pour placer le plus avantageusement possible leurs capitaux ou leurs marchandises. Tous les journaux publient régulièrement un bulletin de la Bourse, tous ont ouvert aussi leurs colonnes aux annonces industrielles et commerciales.
  
  Si la publicité rend aux capitalistes et aux négociants des services dont on ne saurait plus aujourd’hui nier l’importance, pourquoi ne serait-elle pas mise aussi à la portée des travailleurs? Pourquoi ne serait-elle pas employée à éclairer les démarches des ouvriers qui cherchent de l’ouvrage, comme elle sert déjà à éclairer celles des capitalistes qui cherchent de l’emploi pour leurs capitaux, comme elle sert encore aux négociants pour trouver le placement de leurs marchandises? L’ouvrier qui vit du travail de ses bras et de son intelligence, n’est-il pas aussi intéressé pour le moins à savoir en quels lieux le travail obtient le salaire le plus avantageux, que peuvent l’être le capitaliste et le négoicant à connaître les marchés où les capitaux et les marchandises se vendent le plus cher. Sa force physique et son intelligence sont ses capitaux à lui: c’est en exploitant ces capitaux-là, c’est en les faisant travailler, et en échangeant leur travail contre les produits du travail d’autres ouvriers comme lui qu’il parvient à subsister.
  
  ... C’est la presse qui public le bulletin de la Bourse et les annonces industrielles: ce serait la presse qui publierait le bulletin du travail.
  
  Nous proposons, en conséquence, à tous les corps d’état de la ville de Paris de publier gratuitement chaque semaine le bulletin des engagements d’ouvriers avec l’indication du taux des salaires et de l’état de l’offre et de la demande. Nous répartirons les bulletins des corps d’état entre les différents jours de la semaine, de telle sorte que chaque métier ait sa publication à jour fixe.
  
  Si notre offre est agréée par les corps d’état, nous inviterons nos confrères des départements à publier les bulletins du travail de leurs localités, comme nous publierons le bulletin du travail de Paris. Chaque semaine, nous rassemblerons tous ces bulletins et nous en composerons un bulletin général. Chaque semaine, tous les travailleurs de France pourront avoir de la sorte sons les youx le tableau de la situation du travail dans les différentes parties du pays.
  
  “Nous nous adressons surtout aux ouvriers des corps d’état de la ville de Paris. Déjà ils se trouvent organisés, déjà ils possèdent des bureaux de placement réguliers. Rien ne leur serait plus facile que de livrer à la publicité le bulletin de leurs transactions quotidiennes; rien ne leur serait plus facite que de doter la France de la publicité du travail.” (Courrier français du 26 juillet 1846.)
  
  A la suite de cet appel, je m’abouchai avec quelques-uns des corps de métiers parisiens, entre autres avec la corporation des tailleurs de pierre. On me mit en rapport avec un compagnon surnommé Parisien la Douceur, un des ouvriers les plus intelligents que j’aie rencontrés. Parisien la Douceur goûta fort mon plan, et il me promit de l’exposer à la réunion des tailleurs de pierre. Malheureusement, la réunion ne pariagea pas l’opinion de son délégué: elle craignit que la publication des prix du travail a Paris n’attirât une affluence plus considérable d’ouvrlers dans ce grand centre de population, et elle me refusa son concours. Mes tentatives ne furent pas plus heureuses ailleurs.
  
  Après la révolution de février, j’essayai de remettre cette idée à flot. J’écrivis à M. Flocon, alors ministre de l’agriculture et du commerce, pour l’engager, sinon à faire bâtir une Bourse du travail à Paris, du moins à mettre au service des travailleurs la Bourse déjà bâtie. Les gens d’affaires vont à la Bourse dans l’après-nudi, les ouvriers ne pourraient-ils pas y aller le matin? Telle est la question que je posais à M. Flocon; mais M. Flocon, qui avait bien d’autres affaires, ne me répondit point.
  
  La même idée fut reprise à quelque temps de là, et un projet de Bourse du travail fut même présenté au préfet de police, M. Ducoux, par an architecte, M. Leuiller. M. Emile de Girardin prêta son appui à cette tentative, et il offrit même de consacrer une partie de la quatrième page de la Presse à la publicité des transactions du travail.
  
  Pour donner une idée de l’extension que pourrait prendre celle publicité si nécessaire, et les services qu’elle pourrait rendre aux ouvriers marchands de travail, avec l’auxiliaire des télégraphes électriques et des chemins de fer, je reproduis un extrait d’une brochure où j’ai développé assez longuement cette idée: Examinons de quelle manière la télégraphie électrique devrait être établie pour donner aux travailleurs de toutes les nations les moyens de connaître instantanément les lieux où le travail est demandé aux conditions les plus avantageuses. C’est le long des chemins de fer que s’établissent les lignes télégraphiques. Dans chacun des grands Etats de l’Europe, les principales lignes de chemins de fer se dirigent vers la capitale comme vers un centre commun. Elles rattachent à la métropole toutes les villes secondaires. Celles-ci, à leur leur, deviennent les foyers d’autres voies de communication qui vont aboutir à des centres de population de troisième ordre. Admetions qu’en France, par exemple, il s’établisse, dans une vinglaine de villes secondaires, des marchés, des Bourses, servant à la fois à la vente du travail et au placement des capitaux et des denrées. Admettons aussi que la matinée soit consacrée aux transactions des travailleurs et l’après-midi à celles des capitalistes et des marchands. Voyons ensuite comment se tiendra le marché de travail. Le jour de l’ouverture des vingt Bourses, les ouvriers qui manquent d’emploi et les directeurs industriels qui ont besoin d’ouvriers, se rendent au marché, les uns pour vendre, les autres pour acheter du travail. Il est tenu note du nombre des transactions effectuées, des prix auquels elles l’ont été et de la proportion relative des emplois offerts et des emplois demandés. Le bulletin du marché, rédigé à la fin de la séance, est envoyé à la Bourse centrale par voie télégraphique. Vingt bulletins arrivent en même temps à ce point de réunion où l’on en compose un bulletin général. Ce dernier, qui est adressé aussitôt soit par le chemin de fer, soit par le télégraphe, à chacune des vingt Bourses secondaires, peut être publié partout avant l’ouverture de la Bourse du lendemain. Instruits par le bulletin général du travail de la situation des divers marchés du pays, les travailleurs disponibles dans certains centres de production peuvent envoyer leurs offres dans ceux où il y a des emplois vacants. Supposons, par exemple, que trois charpentiers soient sans ouvrage à Rouen, tandis qu’à Lyon le même nombre d’ouvriers de cet état se trouvent demandés au prix de 4 fr. Après avoir consulté le bulletin de travail publié par le journal du matin, les charpentiers de Rouen se rendent à la Bourse, où vient aboutir la ligne télégraphique, et ils expédient à Lyon une dépêche ainsi conçue: “Rouen—3 charpentiers à 4 50—Lyon.” La dépêche envoyée à Paris est, de là, transmise à Lyon. Si le prix demandé par les charpentiers de Rouen convient aux entrepreneurs de Lyon, ceux-ci répondent immédiatement par un signe d’acceptation convenu. Si le prix est jugé par eux trop élevé, un débat s’engage entre les deux parties. Si enfin elles tombent d’accord, les ouvriers, munis de la réponse d’acceptation timbrée par l’employé au télégraphe, se rendent aussitôt à Lyon par le chemin de fer. La transaction a été conclue aussi rapidement qu’ette aurant pu l’être dans l’enceinte de la Bourse de Rouen. Admettons encore maintenant que Francfort-sur-Mein soil le point de réunion vers lequel convergent les lignes télégraphiques aboutissant aux diverses bourses centrales de l’Europe. C’est a Francfort-sur-Mein que sont adressés les bulletins genéraux de chaque pays, c’est là aussi que l’on en compose un bulletin européen qui est envoyé à toutes les bourses centrales et qui est transmis de celles-ci à toutes les bourses secondaires. Grâce à ce mécanisme de publicité, le nombre des emplois et des bras disponibles avec les prix offerts ou demandés se trouvent connus, d’une manière presque instantanée, sur toute la surface du continent. Supposons donc qu’un marin, sans occupation à Marseille, apprenne, en consultant le bulletin du travail européen, que les matelots manquent à Riga et qu’il leur est offert, dans ce port, un salaire avantageux. Il se rend à la Bourse et envoie à Riga ses offres de services par dépêche télégraphique. De Marseille, la dépêche arrive à Paris, en deux ou trois étapes, selon la force de l’agent de locomotion: de Paris, elle est envoyée à Francfort, de Francfort elle va à Moscou, bourse centrale de la Russie, et de Moscou à Riga. Ce trajet, d’environ 4,000 kilomètres, pent être parcouru en deux ou trois minutes. La réponse est transmise de la même manière Si la correspondance lélégraphique est tarifée à raison de cinq centimes par 100 kilomètres, notre marin payera 4 fr. environ pour la dépêche envoyée et la dépêche reçue. Si sa demande est agrééc, il prend le chemin de fer et arrive à Riga en cinq jours. En supposant que le prix de la locomation se trouve fixé au plus has possible, soit à ½ centime par kilomètre, ses frais de déplacement, poste télégraphique comprise, s’élèveront à 24 fr. L’Europe devient ainsi un vaste marché où les transactions des travailleurs s’effectuent aussi rapidement, aussi aisément que dans le marché de la Cité. Par constantinople, les hourses de l’Europe correspondent avec celles de l’Afrique et de l’Asie. Ainsi la locomotion à la vapeur et la télégraphic électrique sont, en quelque sorte, les instruments matériels de la liberté du travail. En procurant aux individus le moyen de disposer librement d’eux-mêmes, de se porter toujours dans les contrées où l’existence est la plus facile et la plus heureuse, ces véhicules providentiels poussent irrésistiblement les sociétés dans les voies du progrès* .

  [1 ]Quelquefois cependant la protection était due à des manœuvres que l’on ne saurait qualifier trop sévèrement. Voici, par exemple, un renseignement curieux que j’emprunte à l’Enquête sur les houilles (1832), an sujet de la protection accordée aux mines d’Anzin
  
  “La prime dont jouit la compagnie d’Anzin, sur le prix de l’hectolitre de charbon extrait au couchant de Mons (Belgique), est de 75 centimes, ou 7 fr. 50 c. par tonneau Elle a obtenu cette prime, après l’achèvement du canal de Condé, par les droits et péages qu’on a établis et par la position topographique de ses établissements.
  
  Elle l’avait antérieurement, en 1813, par un maximum qu’elle était parvenue à faire imposer sur le prix du fret de la Haine, par un arrêté des consuls du 13 pralrial an xi. A cette èpoque, Cambacérès, second consul, Talleyrand-Pèrigord, Lecouteulx-Canteleu et plusieurs autres personnages marquants et très influents, étaient actionnaires de la compagnie des mines d’Anzin* .”

  [* ]Journal la Nation, du 2d juillet 1843.—Des Moyens d’améliorer le sort des classes laborieuses.—Brochure, fevrier 1844.

  [* ]Êtudes économiques, p. 56.

  [* ]Enquête, p. 410.

• Back to Top

  5: 5. Herbert Spencer, Social Statics [1851]

  

  Herbert Spencer’s (1820-1903) Social Statics (1851) is one of the earliest efforts at creating a one volume, coherent account of individual liberty in all of its dimensions - philosophical, economic, civic, social, sexual, and international. We take this kind of survey for granted but in 1851 it was probably unique. In the late twentieth century we have Hayek, The Constitution of Liberty (1960), Mises, Liberalism (1962), John Hospers, Libertarianism: A Political Philosophy for Tomorrow (1971), and Rothbard, For a New Liberty (1973) to mention just a few. Spencer’s book is also unusual for exploring the question of the rights of women and children some decades before it became a much more pressing issue with the suffragette movement in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

  One important passage among many in this volume is the following statement of the “law of equal liberty” which is the guiding principle which ties all of his thoughts together into a coherent whole:

  1. Thus are we brought by several routes to the same conclusion. Whether we reason our way from those fixed conditions under which only the Divine Idea—greatest happiness, can be realized—whether we draw our inferences from man’s constitution, considering him as a congeries of faculties—or whether we listen to the monitions of a certain mental agency, which seems to have the function of guiding us in this matter, we are alike taught as the law of right social relationships, that—Every man has freedom to do all that he wills, provided he infringes not the equal freedom of any other man. Though further qualifications of the liberty of action thus asserted may be necessary, yet we have seen (p. 89) that in the just regulation of a community no further qualifications of it can be recognised. Such further qualifications must ever remain for private and individual application. We must therefore adopt this law of equal freedom in its entirety, as the law on which a correct system of equity is to be based.

  Herbert Spencer, Social Statics: or, The Conditions essential to Happiness specified, and the First of them Developed, (London: John Chapman, 1851).

  Accessed from oll.libertyfund.org/title/273 on 2008-01-25

  The text is in the public domain.

  ---

  PREFACE.

  Being somewhat at variance with precedent, the tone and mode of treatment occasionally adopted in the following pages will, perhaps, provoke criticism. Whether, in thus innovating upon established usage, the writer has acted judiciously or otherwise, the event must determine. He has not, however, transgressed without adequate motive; having done so under the belief that, as it is the purpose of a book to influence conduct, the best way of writing a book must be the way best fitted to effect this purpose.

  Should exception be taken to the manifestations of feeling now and then met with, as out of place in a treatise having so scientific a title; it is replied that, in their present phase of progress, men are but little swayed by purely intellectual considerations—that to be operative, these must be enforced by direct or implied appeals to the sentiments—and that, provided such appeals are not in place of, but merely supplementary to, the deductions of logic, no well-grounded objection can be made to them. The reader will find that the several conclusions submitted to him are primarily based on entirely impersonal reasoning, by which alone they may be judged; and if, for the sake of commending these conclusions to the many, the sympathies have been indirectly addressed, the general argument cannot have been thereby weakened, if it has not been strengthened.

  Possibly the relaxations of style in some cases used, will be censured, as beneath the gravity of the subject. In defence of them it may be urged, that the measured movement which custom prescribes for philosophical works, is productive of a monotony extremely repulsive to the generality of readers. That no counterbalancing advantages are obtained, the writer does not assert. But, for his own part, he has preferred to sacrifice somewhat of conventional dignity, in the hope of rendering his theme interesting to a larger number.

  London, December, 1850.

  INTRODUCTION.

  the doctrine of expediency.

  § 1.

  “Give us a guide,” cry men to the philosopher. “We would escape from these miseries in which we are entangled. A better state is ever present to our imaginations, and we yearn after it; but all our efforts to realize it are fruitless. We are weary of perpetual failures; tell us by what rule we may attain our desire.”

  “Whatever is expedient is right;” is one of the last of the many replies to this appeal.

  “True,” rejoin some of the applicants. “With the Deity right and expedient are doubtless convertible terms. For us, however, there remains the question—which is the antecedent, and which is the consequent? Granting your assumption that right is the unknown quantity and expediency the known one, your formula may be serviceable. But we deny your premises; a painful experience has proved the two to be equally indeterminate. Nay, we begin to suspect that the right is the more easily ascertained of the two; and that your maxim would be better if transposed into—whatever is right is expedient.”

  “Let your rule be, the greatest happiness to the greatest number,” interposes another authority.

  “That, like the other, is no rule at all,” it is replied; “but rather an enunciation of the problem to be solved. It is your ‘greatest happiness’ of which we have been so long and so fruitlessly in search; albeit we never gave it a name. You tell us nothing new; you merely give words to our want. What you call an answer, is simply our own question turned the right side up. If this is your philosophy it is surely empty, for it merely echoes the interrogation.”

  “Have a little patience,” returns the moralist, “and I will give you my opinion as to the mode of securing this greatest happiness to the greatest number.”

  “There again,” exclaim the objectors, “you mistake our requirement. We want something else than opinions. We have had enough of them. Every futile scheme for the general good has been based on opinion; and we have no guarantee that your plan will not add one to the list of failures. Have you discovered a means of forming an infallible judgment? If not, you are, for aught we can perceive, as much in the dark as ourselves. True, you have obtained a clearer view of the end to be arrived at; but concerning the route leading to it, your offer of an opinion proves that you know nothing more certain than we do. We demur to your maxim because it is not what we wanted—a guide; because it dictates no sure mode of securing the desideratum; because it puts no veto upon a mistaken policy; because it permits all actions—bad, as readily as good—provided only the actors believe them conducive to the prescribed end. Your doctrines of ‘expediency’ or ‘utility’ or ‘general good’ or ‘greatest happiness to the greatest number’ afford not a solitary command of a practical character. Let but rulers think, or profess to think, that their measures will benefit the community, and your philosophy stands mute in the presence of the most egregious folly, or the blackest misconduct. This will not do for us. We seek a system that can return a definite answer when we ask—‘Is this act good?’ and not like yours, reply—‘Yes, if it will benefit you.’ If you can show us such an one—if you can give us an axiom from which we may develope successive propositions until we have with mathematical certainty solved all our difficulties—we will thank you. If not, we must go elsewhere.”

  In his defence, our philosopher submits that such expectations are unreasonable. He doubts the possibility of a strictly scientific morality. Moreover he maintains that his system is sufficient for all practical purposes. He has definitely pointed out the goal to be attained. He has surveyed the tract lying between us and it. He believes he has discovered the best route. And finally he has volunteered as pioneer. Having done this, he claims to have performed all that can be expected of him, and deprecates the opposition of these critics as factious, and their objections as frivolous. Let us examine this position somewhat more closely.

  § 2.

  Assuming it to be in other respects satisfactory, a rule, principle, or axiom, is valuable only in so far as the words in which it is expressed have a definite meaning. The terms used must be universally accepted in the same sense, otherwise the proposition will be liable to such various constructions, as to lose all claim to the title—a rule. We must therefore take it for granted that when he announced “the greatest happiness to the greatest number” as the canon of social morality, its originator supposed mankind to be unanimous in their definition of “greatest happiness.”

  This was a most unfortunate assumption, for no fact is more palpable than that the standard of happiness is infinitely variable. In all ages—amongst every people—by each class—do we find different notions of it entertained. To the wandering gipsy a home is tiresome; whilst a Swiss is miserable without one. Progress is necessary to the well-being of the Anglo-Saxons; on the other hand the Esquimaux are content in their squalid poverty, have no latent wants, and are still what they were in the days of Tacitus. An Irishman delights in a row; a Chinese in pageantry and ceremonies; and the usually apathetic Javan gets vociferously enthusiastic over a cock-fight. The heaven of the Hebrew is “a city of gold and precious stones, with a supernatural abundance of corn and wine;” that of the Turk—a harem peopled by houris; that of the American Indian—a “happy hunting ground;” in the Norse paradise there were to be daily battles with magical healing of wounds; whilst the Australian hopes that after death he shall “jump up a white fellow, and have plenty of sixpences.” Descending to individual instances, we find Louis XVI. interpreting “greatest happiness” to mean—making locks; instead of which his successor read—making empires. It was seemingly the opinion of Lycurgus that perfect physical development was the chief essential to human felicity; Plotinus, on the contrary, was so purely ideal in his aspirations as to be ashamed of his body. Indeed the many contradictory answers given by Grecian thinkers to the question—What constitutes happiness? have given occasion to comparisons that have now become trite. Nor has greater unanimity been shown amongst ourselves. To a miserly Elwes the hoarding of money was the only enjoyment of life; but Day, the philanthropic author of “Sandford and Merton,” could find no pleasurable employment save in its distribution. Rural quietude, books, and a friend, are the wants of the poet; a tuft-hunter longs rather for a large circle of titled acquaintance, a box at the Opera, and the freedom of Almack’s. The ambitions of the tradesman and the artist are anything but alike; and could we compare the air castles of the ploughman and the philosopher, we should find them of widely-different orders of architecture.

  Generalizing such facts, we see that the standard of “greatest happiness” possesses as little fixity as the other exponents of human nature. Between nations the differences of opinion are conspicuous enough. On contrasting the Hebrew patriarchs with their existing descendants, we observe that even in the same race the beau ideal of existence changes. The members of each community disagree upon the question. Neither, if we compare the wishes of the gluttonous school-boy with those of the earth-scorning transcendentalist into whom he may afterwards grow, do we find any constancy in the individual. So we may say, not only that every epoch and every people has its peculiar conceptions of happiness, but that no two men have like conceptions; and further, that in each man the conception is not the same at any two periods of life.

  The rationale of this is simple enough. Happiness signifies a gratified state of all the faculties. The gratification of a faculty is produced by its exercise. To be agreeable that exercise must be proportionate to the power of the faculty; if it is insufficient discontent arises, and its excess produces weariness. Hence, to have complete felicity is to have all the faculties exerted in the ratio of their several developments; and an ideal arrangement of circumstances calculated to secure this constitutes the standard of “greatest happiness;” but the minds of no two individuals contain the same combination of elements. Duplicate men are not to be found. There is in each a different balance of desires. Therefore the conditions adapted for the highest enjoyment of one, would not perfectly compass the same end for any other. And consequently the notion of happiness must vary with the disposition and character; that is, must vary indefinitely.

  Whereby we are also led to the inevitable conclusion that a true conception of what human life should be, is possible only to the ideal man. We may make approximate estimates, but he only in whom the component feelings exist in their normal proportions is capable of a perfect aspiration. And as the world yet contains none such, it follows that a specific idea of “greatest happiness” is for the present unattainable. It is not then to be wondered at, if Paleys and Benthams make vain attempts at a definition. The question involves one of those mysteries which men are ever trying to penetrate and ever failing. It is the insoluble riddle which Care, Sphinx-like, puts to each new comer, and in default of answer devours him. And as yet there is no Œdipus, nor any sign of one.

  The allegation that these are hypercritical objections, and that for all practical purposes we agree sufficiently well as to what “greatest happiness” means, will possibly be made by some. It were easy to disprove this, but it is unnecessary, for there are plenty of questions practical enough to satisfy such cavillers, and about which men exhibit none of this pretended unanimity. For example:

  — What is the ratio between the mental and bodily enjoyments constituting this “greatest happiness”? There is a point up to which increase of mental activity produces increase of happiness; but beyond which, it produces in the end more pain than pleasure. Where is that point? Some appear to think that intellectual culture and the gratifications deriveable from it can hardly be carried too far. Others again maintain that already amongst the educated classes mental excitements are taken in excess; and that were more time given to a proper fulfilment of the animal functions, a larger amount of enjoyment would be obtained. If “greatest happiness” is to be the rule, it becomes needful to decide which of these opinions is correct; and further to determine the exact boundary between the use and abuse of every faculty.

  — Which is most truly an element in the desired felicity, content or aspiration? The generality assume, as a matter of course, that content is. They think it the chief essential to well-being. There are others, however, who hold that but for discontent we should have been still savages. It is in their eyes the greatest incentive to progress. Nay, they maintain that were content the order of the day, society would even now begin to decay. It is required to reconcile these contradictory theories.

  — And this synonyme for “greatest happiness”—this “utility”—what shall be comprised under it? The million would confine it to the things which directly or indirectly minister to the bodily wants, and in the words of the adage “help to get something to put in the pot.” Others there are who think mental improvement useful in itself, irrespective of so-called practical results, and would therefore teach astronomy, comparative anatomy, ethnology, and the like, together with logic and metaphysics. Unlike some of the Roman writers who held the practice of the fine arts to be absolutely vicious, there are now many who suppose utility to comprehend poetry, painting, sculpture, the decorative arts, and whatever aids the refinement of the taste. Whilst an extreme party maintains that music, dancing, the drama, and what are commonly called amusements, are equally worthy to be included. In place of all which discordance we ought to have agreement.

  — Whether shall we adopt the theory of some that felicity means the greatest possible enjoyment of this life’s pleasures, or that of others, that it consists in anticipating the pleasures of a life to come? And if we compromise the matter, and say it should combine both, how much of each shall go to its composition?

  — Or what must we think of this wealth-seeking age of ours? Shall we consider the total absorption of time and energy in business—the servitude of the mind to the needs of the body—the spending of life in the accumulation of the means to live, as constituting “greatest happiness,” and act accordingly? Or shall we legislate upon the assumption that this is to be regarded as the voracity of a larva assimilating material for the development of the future psyche?

  Similar unsettled questions might be indefinitely multiplied. Not only therefore is an agreement as to the meaning of “greatest happiness” theoretically impossible, but it is also manifest, that men are at issue upon all topics, which for their determination require defined notions of it.

  So that in directing us to this “greatest happiness to the greatest number,” as the object towards which we should steer, our pilot “keeps the word of promise to our ear and breaks it to our hope.” What he shows us through his telescope is a fata morgana, and not the promised land. The real haven of our hopes dips far down below the horizon and has yet been seen by none. It is beyond the ken of seer be he never so farsighted. Faith not sight must be our guide. We cannot do without a compass.

  § 3.

  Even were the fundamental proposition of the expediency system not thus vitiated by the indefiniteness of its terms, it would still be vulnerable. Granting for the sake of argument, that the desideratum, “greatest happiness,” is duly comprehended, its identity and nature agreed upon by all, and the direction in which it lies satisfactorily settled, there yet remains the unwarranted assumption that it is possible for the self-guided human judgment to determine, with something like precision, by what methods it may be achieved. Experience daily proves that just the same uncertainty which exists respecting the specific ends to be obtained, exists likewise respecting the right mode of attaining them when supposed to be known. In their attempts to compass one after another the several items which go to make up the grand total, “greatest happiness,” men have been anything but successful; their most promising measures having commonly turned out the greatest failures. Let us look at a few cases.

  When it was enacted in Bavaria that no marriage should be allowed between parties without capital, unless certain authorities could “see a reasonable prospect of the parties being able to provide for their children,” it was doubtless intended to advance the public weal by checking improvident unions, and redundant population; a purpose most politicians will consider praiseworthy, and a provision which many will think well adapted to secure it. Nevertheless this apparently sagacious measure has by no means answered its end; the fact being that in Munich, the capital of the kingdom, half the births are illegitimate!

  Those too were admirable motives, and very cogent reasons, which led our government to establish an armed force on the coast of Africa for the suppression of the slave trade. What could be more essential to the “greatest happiness” than the annihilation of the abominable traffic? And how could forty ships of war, supported by an expenditure of £700,000 a year, fail to wholly or partially accomplish this? The results have, however, been anything but satisfactory. When the abolitionists of England advocated it, they little thought that such a measure instead of preventing would only “aggravate the horrors, without sensibly mitigating the extent of the traffic;” that it would generate fast-sailing slavers with decks one foot six inches apart, suffocation from close packing, miserable diseases, and a mortality of thirty-five per cent. They dreamed not that when hard pressed a slaver might throw a whole cargo of 500 negroes into the sea; nor that on a blockaded coast the disappointed chiefs would, as at Gallinas, put to death 200 men and women, and stick their heads on poles, along shore, in sight of the squadrona . In short, they never anticipated having to plead as they now do for the abandonment of coercion.

  Again, how great and how self-evident to the artisan mind, were the promised advantages of that trades-union project, whereby master manufacturers were to be dispensed with! If a body of workmen formed themselves into a joint-stock manufacturing company, with elective directors, secretary, treasurer, superintendents, foremen, &c., for managing the concern, and an organization adapted to ensure an equitable division of profits amongst the members, it was clear that the enormous sums previously pocketed by the employers, would be shared amongst the employed to the great increase of their prosperity. Yet all past attempts to act out this very plausible theory have, somehow or other, ended in miserable failures.

  Another illustration is afforded by the fate which befel that kindred plan recommended by Mr. Babbage in his “Economy of Manufactures,” as likely to be to the benefit of the workmen and to the interest of the master; that namely, in which factory hands were to “unite together, and have an agent to purchase by wholesale those articles which are most in demand; as tea, sugar, bacon, &c., and to retail them at prices which will just repay the wholesale cost, together with the expenses of the agent who conducts their sale.” After fourteen years’ trial a concern, established in pursuance of this idea, was “abandoned with the joint consent of all parties;” Mr. Babbage confessing that the opinion he had expressed “on the advantage of such societies was very much modified,” and illustrating by a series of curves “the quick rise and gradual decline” of the experimental association.

  The Spitalfields weavers afford us another case in point. No doubt the temptation which led them to obtain the Act of 1773, fixing a minimum of wages, was a strong one; and the anticipations of greater comfort to be secured by its enforcement must have seemed reasonable enough to all. Unfortunately, however, the weavers did not consider the consequences of being interdicted from working at reduced rates; and little expected that before 1793, some 4000 looms would be brought to a stand in consequence of the trade going elsewhere.

  To mitigate distress appearing needful for the production of the “greatest happiness,” the English people have sanctioned upwards of one hundred acts in Parliament having this end in view, each of them arising out of the failure or incompleteness of previous legislation. Men are nevertheless still discontented with the Poor Laws, and we are seemingly as far as ever from their satisfactory settlement.

  But why cite individual cases? Does not the experience of all nations testify to the futility of these empirical attempts at the acquisition of happiness? What is the statute-book but a record of such unhappy guesses? or history but a narrative of their unsuccessful issues? And what forwarder are we now? Is not our government as busy still as though the work of law-making commenced but yesterday? Has it made any apparent progress toward a final settlement of social arrangements? Does it not rather each year entangle itself still further in the web of legislation, confounding the already heterogeneous mass of enactments into still greater confusion? Nearly every parliamentary proceeding is a tacit confession of incompetency. There is scarcely a bill introduced but is entitled “An Act to amend an Act.” The “Whereas” of almost every preamble heralds an account of the miscarriage of previous legislation. Alteration, explanation, and repeal, form the staple employment of every session. All our great agitations are for the abolition of institutions purporting to be for the public good. Witness those for the removal of the Test and Corporation Acts, for Catholic Emancipation, for the repeal of the Corn Laws; to which may now be added, that for the separation of Church and State. The history of one scheme is the history of all. First comes enactment, then probation, then failure; next an amendment and another failure; and, after many alternate tinkerings and abortive trials, arrives at length repeal, followed by the substitution of some fresh plan, doomed to run the same course, and share a like fate.

  The expediency-philosophy, however, ignores this world full of facts. Though men have so constantly been balked in their attempts to secure, by legislation, any desired constituent of that complex whole, “greatest happiness,” it nevertheless continues to place confidence in the unaided judgment of the statesman. It asks no guide; it possesses no eclectic principle; it seeks no clue whereby the tangled web of social existence may be unravelled and its laws discovered. But, holding up to view the great desideratum, it assumes that after an inspection of the aggregate phenomena of national life, governments are qualified to concoct such measures as shall be “expedient.” It considers the philosophy of humanity so easy, the constitution of the social organism so simple, the causes of a people’s conduct so obvious, that a general examination can give to “collective wisdom,” the insight requisite for law-making. It thinks that man’s intellect is competent, first, to observe accurately the facts exhibited by associated human nature; to form just estimates of general and individual character, of the effects of religions, customs, superstitions, prejudices, of the mental tendencies of the age, of the probabilities of future events, &c., &c.; and then, grasping at once the multiplied phenomena of this ever-agitated, ever-changing sea of life, to derive from them that knowledge of their governing principles which shall enable him to say whether such and such measures will conduce to “the greatest happiness of the greatest number.”

  If without any previous investigation of the properties of terrestrial matter, Newton had proceeded at once to study the dynamics of the universe, and after years spent with the telescope in ascertaining the distances, sizes, times of revolution, inclinations of axes, forms of orbits, perturbations, &c., of the celestial bodies, had set himself to tabulate this accumulated mass of observations, and to educe from them the fundamental laws of planetary and stellar equilibrium, he might have cogitated to all eternity without arriving at a result.

  But absurd as such a method of research would have been, it would have been far less absurd, than is the attempt to find out the principles of public polity, by a direct examination of that wonderfully intricate combination—society. It needs excite no surprise when legislation, based upon the theories thus elaborated, fails. Rather would its success afford matter for extreme astonishment. Considering that men as yet so imperfectly understand man—the instrument by which, and the material on which, laws are to act—and that a complete knowledge of the unit—man, is but a first step to the comprehension of the mass—society, it seems obvious enough that to educe from the infinitely-ramified complications of universal humanity, a true philosophy of national life, and to found thereon a code of rules for the obtainment of “greatest happiness” is a task far beyond the ability of any finite mind.

  § 4.

  Yet another fatal objection to the expediency-philosophy, is to be found in the fact, that it implies the eternity of government. It is a mistake to assume that government must necessarily last for ever. The institution marks a certain stage of civilization—is natural to a particular phase of human development. It is not essential but incidental. As amongst the Bushmen we find a state antecedent to government; so may there be one in which it shall have become extinct. Already has it lost something of its importance. The time was when the history of a people was but the history of its government. It is otherwise now. The once universal despotism was but a manifestation of the extreme necessity of restraint. Feudalism, serfdom, slavery—all tyrannical institutions, are merely the most vigorous kinds of rule, springing out of, and necessary to, a bad state of man. The progress from these is in all cases the same—less government. Constitutional forms mean this. Political freedom means this. Democracy means this. In societies, associations, joint-stock companies, we have new agencies occupying fields filled in less advanced times and countries by the State. With us the legislature is dwarfed by newer and greater powers—is no longer master but slave. “Pressure from without” has come to be acknowledged as ultimate ruler. The triumph of the Anti-Corn-Law League is simply the most marked instance yet, of the new style of government—that of opinion, overcoming the old style—that of force. It bids fair to become a trite remark that the lawmaker is but the servant of the thinker. Daily is statecraft held in less repute. Even the Times can see that “the social changes thickening around us establish a truth sufficiently humiliating to legislative bodies,” and that “the great stages of our progress are determined rather by the spontaneous workings of society, connected as they are with the progress of art and science, the operations of nature, and other such unpolitical causes, than by the proposition of a bill, the passing of an act, or any other event of politics or of state.”a Thus, as civilization advances, does government decay. To the bad it is essential; to the good, not. It is the check which national wickedness makes to itself and exists only to the same degree. Its continuance is proof of still-existing barbarism. What a cage is to the wild beast, law is to the selfish man. Restraint is for the savage, the rapacious, the violent; not for the just, the gentle, the benevolent. All necessity for external force implies a morbid state. Dungeons for the felon; a strait-jacket for the maniac; crutches for the lame; stays for the weak-backed; for the infirm of purpose a master; for the foolish a guide; but for the sound mind, in a sound body, none of these. Were there no thieves and murderers, prisons would be unnecessary. It is only because tyranny is yet rife in the world that we have armies. Barristers, judges, juries—all the instruments of law—exist, simply because knavery exists. Magisterial force is the sequence of social vice; and the policeman is but the complement of the criminal. Therefore it is that we call government “a necessary evil.”

  What then must be thought of a morality which chooses this probationary institution for its basis, builds a vast fabric of conclusions upon its assumed permanence, selects acts of parliament for its materials, and employs the statesman for its architect? The expediency-philosophy does this. It takes government into partnership—assigns to it entire control of its affairs—enjoins all to defer to its judgment—makes it in short the vital principle, the very soul of its system. When Paley teaches that “the interest of the whole society is binding upon every part of it,” he implies the existence of some supreme power by which that “interest of the whole society” is to be determined. And elsewhere he more explicitly tells us, that for the attainment of a national advantage the private will of the subject is to give way; and that “the proof of this advantage lies with the legislature.” Still more decisive is Bentham, when he says that “the happiness of the individuals of whom a community is composed, that is, their pleasures and their security, is the sole end which the legislator ought to have in view; the sole standard in conformity with which each individual ought, as far as depends upon the legislature, to be made to fashion his behaviour.” These positions, be it remembered, are not voluntarily assumed; they are necessitated by the premises. If, as its propounder tells us, “expediency” means the benefit of the mass, not of the individual—of the future as much as of the present, it presupposes some one to judge of what will most conduce to that benefit. Upon the “utility” of this or that measure, the views are so various as to render an umpire essential. Whether protective duties, or established religions, or capital punishments, or poor laws, do or do not minister to the “general good,” are questions concerning which there is such difference of opinion, that were nothing to be done till all agreed upon them, we might stand still to the end of time. If each man carried out, independently of a state power, his own notions of what would best secure “the greatest happiness of the greatest number,” society would quickly lapse into confusion. Clearly, therefore, a morality established upon a maxim of which the practical interpretation is questionable, involves the existence of some authority whose decision respecting it shall be final—that is, a legislature. And without that authority, such a morality must ever remain inoperative.

  See here then the predicament. A system of moral philosophy professes to be a code of correct rules for the control of human beings—fitted for the regulation of the best, as well as the worst members of the race—applicable, if true, to the guidance of humanity in its highest conceivable perfection. Government, however, is an institution originating in man’s imperfection; an institution confessedly begotten by necessity out of evil; one which might be dispensed with were the world peopled with the unselfish, the conscientious, the philanthropic; one, in short, inconsistent with this same “highest conceivable perfection.” How, then, can that be a true system of morality which adopts government as one of its premises?

  § 5.

  Of the expediency-philosophy it must therefore be said, in the first place, that it can make no claim to a scientific character, seeing that its fundamental proposition is not an axiom, but simply an enunciation of the problem to be solved.

  Further, that even supposing its fundamental proposition were an axiom, it would still be inadmissible, because expressed in terms possessing no fixed acceptation.

  Moreover, were the expediency theory otherwise satisfactory, it would be still useless; since it requires nothing less than omniscience to carry it into practice.

  And, waiving all other objections, we are yet compelled to reject a system, which, at the same time that it tacitly lays claim to perfection, takes imperfection for its basis.

  The Doctrine of the Moral Sense.

  § 1.

  There is no way of coming at a true theory of society, but by inquiring into the nature of its component individuals. To understand humanity in its combinations, it is necessary to analyze that humanity in its elementary form—for the explanation of the compound, to refer back to the simple. We quickly find that every phenomenon exhibited by an aggregation of men, originates in some quality of man himself. A little consideration shows us, for instance, that the very existence of society, implies some natural affinity in its members for such a union. It is pretty clear too, that without a certain fitness in mankind for ruling, and being ruled, government would be an impossibility. The infinitely complex organizations of commerce, have grown up under the stimulus of certain desires existing in each of us. And it is from our possession of a sentiment to which they appeal, that religious institutions have been called into existence.

  In fact, on looking closely into the matter, we find that no other arrangement is conceivable. The characteristics exhibited by beings in an associated state cannot arise from the accident of combination, but must be the consequences of certain inherent properties of the beings themselves. True, the gathering together may call out these characteristics; it may make manifest what was before dormant; it may afford the opportunity for undeveloped peculiarities to appear; but it evidently does not create them. No phenomenon can be presented by a corporate body, but what there is a pre-existing capacity in its individual members for producing.

  This fact, that the properties of a mass are dependent upon the attributes of its component parts, we see throughout nature. In the chemical combination of one element with another, Dalton has shown us that the affinity is between atom and atom. What we call the weight of a body, is the sum of the gravitative tendencies of its separate particles. The strength of a bar of metal, is the total effect of an indefinite number of molecular adhesions. And the power of the magnet, is a cumulative result of the polarity of its independent corpuscles. After the same manner, every social phenomenon must have its origin in some property of the individual. And just as the attractions and affinities which are latent in separate atoms, become visible when those atoms are approximated; so the forces that are dormant in the isolated man, are rendered active by juxtaposition with his fellows.

  This consideration, though perhaps needlessly elaborated, has an important bearing on our subject. It points out the path we must pursue in our search after a true social philosophy. It suggests the idea that the moral law of society, like its other laws, originates in some attribute of the human being. It warns us against adopting any fundamental doctrine which, like that of “the greatest happiness to the greatest number,” cannot be expressed without presupposing a state of aggregation. On the other hand it hints that the first principle of a code for the right ruling of humanity in its state of multitude, is to be found in humanity in its state of unitude—that the moral forces upon which social equilibrium depends, are resident in the social atom—man; and that if we would understand the nature of those forces, and the laws of that equilibrium, we must look for them in the human constitution.

  § 2.

  Had we no other inducement to eat than that arising from the prospect of certain advantages to be thereby obtained, it is scarcely probable that our bodies would be so well cared for as now. One can quite imagine, that were we deprived of that punctual monitor—appetite, and left to the guidance of some reasoned code of rules, such rules, were they never so philosophical, and the benefits of obeying them never so obvious, would form but a very inefficient substitute. Or, instead of that powerful affection by which men are led to nourish and protect their offspring, did there exist merely an abstract opinion that it was proper or necessary to maintain the population of the globe, it is questionable whether the annoyance, anxiety, and expense, of providing for a posterity, would not so far exceed the anticipated good, as to involve a rapid extinction of the species. And if, in addition to these needs of the body, and of the race, all other requirements of our nature were similarly consigned to the sole care of the intellect—were knowledge, property, freedom, reputation, friends, sought only at its dictation—then would our investigations be so perpetual, our estimates so complex, our decisions so difficult, that life would be wholly occupied in the collection of evidence, and the balancing of probabilities. Under such an arrangement the utilitarian philosophy would indeed have strong argument in nature; for it would be simply applying to society, that system of governance by appeal to calculated final results, which already ruled the individual.

  Quite different, however, is the method of nature. Answering to each of the actions which it is requisite for us to perform, we find in ourselves some prompter called a desire; and the more essential the action, the more powerful is the impulse to its performance, and the more intense the gratification derived therefrom. Thus, the longings for food, for sleep, for warmth, are irresistible; and quite independent of foreseen advantages. The continuance of the race is secured by others equally strong, whose dictates are followed, not in obedience to reason, but often in defiance of it. That men are not impelled to accumulate the means of subsistence solely by a view to consequences, is proved by the existence of misers, in whom the love of acquirement is gratified to the neglect of the ends meant to be subserved. We find employed a like system of regulating our conduct to our fellows. That we may behave in the public sight in the most agreeable manner, we possess a love of praise. It is desirable that there should be a segregation of those best fitted for each other’s society—hence the sentiment of friendship. And in the reverence felt by men for superiority, we see a provision intended to secure the supremacy of the best.

  May we not then reasonably expect to find a like instrumentality employed in impelling us to that line of conduct, in the due observance of which consists what we call morality? All must admit that we are guided to our bodily welfare by instincts; that from instincts also, spring those domestic relationships by which other important objects are compassed—and that similar agencies are in many cases used to secure our indirect benefit, by regulating social behaviour. Seeing, therefore, that whenever we can readily trace our actions to their origin, we find them produced after this manner, it is, to say the least of it, highly probable that the same mental mechanism is employed in all cases—that as the all-important requirements of our being are fulfilled at the solicitations of desire, so also are the less essential ones—that upright conduct in each being necessary to the happiness of all, there exists in us an impulse towards such conduct; or, in other words, that we possess a “Moral Sense,” the duty of which is to dictate rectitude in our transactions with each other; which receives gratification from honest and fair dealing; and which gives birth to the sentiment of justice.

  In bar of this conclusion it is indeed urged, that did there exist such an agency for controlling the behaviour of man to man, we should see universal evidence of its influence. Men would exhibit a more manifest obedience to its supposed dictates than they do. There would be a greater uniformity of opinion as to the rightness or wrongness of actions. And we should not, as now, find one man, or nation, considering as a virtue, what another regards as a vice—Malays glorying in the piracy abhorred by civilized races—a Thug regarding as a religious act, that assassination at which a European shudders—a Russian piquing himself on his successful trickery—a red Indian in his undying revenge—things which with us would hardly be boasted of.

  Overwhelming as this objection appears, its fallacy becomes conspicuous enough, if we observe the predicament into which the general application of such a test betrays us. As thus:—None deny the universal existence of that instinct already adverted to, which urges us to take the food needful to support life; and none deny that such instinct is highly beneficial, and in all likelihood essential to being. Nevertheless there are not wanting infinite evils and incongruities, arising out of its rule. All know that appetite does not invariably guide men aright in the choice of food, either as to quality or quantity. Neither can any maintain that its dictates are uniform, when reminded of those unnumbered differences in the opinions called “tastes” which it originates in each. The mere mention of “gluttony,” “drunkenness,” reminds us that the promptings of appetite are not always good. Carbuncled noses, cadaverous faces, fœtid breaths, and plethoric bodies, meet us at every turn; and our condolences are perpetually asked for headaches, flatulence, nightmare, heartburn, and endless other dyspeptic symptoms. Again:—equally great irregularities may be found in the workings of that generally recognised feeling—parental affection. Amongst ourselves, its beneficial sway seems tolerably uniform. In the East, however, infanticide is practised now as it ever has been. During the so-called classic times, it was common to expose babes to the tender mercies of wild beasts. And it was the Spartan practice to cast all the newly-born who were not approved by a committee of old men, into a public pit provided for the purpose. If, then, it be argued that the want of uniformity in men’s moral codes, together with the weakness and partiality of their influence, prove the non-existence of a feeling designed for the right regulation of our dealings with each other, it must be inferred from analogous irregularities in men’s conduct as to food and offspring, that there are no such feelings as appetite and parental affection. As, however, we do not draw this inference in the one case, we cannot do so in the other. Hence, notwithstanding all the incongruities, we must admit the existence of a Moral Sense to be both possible and probable.

  § 3.

  But that we possess such a sense, may be best proved by evidence drawn from the lips of those who assert that we have it not. Oddly enough Bentham unwittingly derives his initial proposition from an oracle whose existence he denies, and at which he sneers when it is appealed to by others. “One man,” he remarks, speaking of Shaftesbury, “says he has a thing made on purpose to tell him what is right and what is wrong; and that it is called a moral sense: and then he goes to work at his ease, and says such and such a thing is right, and such and such a thing is wrong. Why? ‘because my moral sense tells me it is.’” Now that Bentham should have no other authority for his own maxim than this same moral sense, is somewhat unfortunate for him. Yet, on putting that maxim into critical hands, we shall soon discover such to be the fact. Let us do this.

  “And so you think,” says the patrician, “that the object of our rule should be ‘the greatest happiness to the greatest number.’”

  “Such is our opinion,” answers the petitioning plebeian.

  “Well now, let us see what your principle involves. Suppose men to be, as they very commonly are, at variance in their desires on some given point; and suppose that those forming the larger party will receive a certain amount of happiness each, from the adoption of one course, whilst those forming the smaller party will receive the same amount of happiness each, from the adoption of the opposite course: then if ‘greatest happiness’ is to be our guide, it must follow, must it not, that the larger party ought to have their way?”

  “Certainly.”

  “That is to say, if you—the people, are a hundred, whilst we are ninety-nine, your happiness must be preferred, should our wishes clash, and should the individual amounts of gratification at stake on the two sides be equal.”

  “Exactly; our axiom involves that.”

  “So then it seems, that as, in such a case, you decide between the two parties by numerical majority, you assume that the happiness of a member of the one party, is equally important with that of a member of the other.”

  “Of course.”

  “Wherefore, if reduced to its simplest form, your doctrine turns out to be the assertion, that all men have equal claims to happiness; or, applying it personally—that you have as good a right to happiness as I have.”

  “No doubt I have.”

  “And pray, sir, who told you that you have as good a right to happiness as I have?”

  “Who told me?—I am sure of it; I know it; I feel it; I—”

  “Nay, nay, that will not do. Give me your authority. Tell me who told you this—how you got at it—whence you derived it.”

  Whereupon, after some shuffling, our petitioner is forced to confess, that he has no other authority but his own feeling—that he has simply an innate perception of the fact; or, in other words, that “his moral sense tells him so.”

  Whether it rightly tells him so, need not now be considered. All that demands present notice is the fact, that when cross-examined, even the disciples of Bentham have no alternative but to fall back upon an intuition of this much derided moral sense, for the foundation of their own system.

  § 4.

  In truth, none but those committed to a preconceived theory, can fail to recognise, on every hand, the workings of such a faculty. From early times downward there have been constant signs of its presence—signs which happily thicken as our own day is approached. The articles of Magna Charta embody its protests against oppression, and its demands for a better administration of justice. Serfdom was abolished partly at its suggestion. It encouraged Wickliffe, Huss, Luther, and Knox, in their contests with Popery; and by it were Huguenots, Covenanters, Moravians, stimulated to maintain freedom of judgment in the teeth of armed Ecclesiasticism. It dictated Milton’s “Essay on the Liberty of Unlicensed Printing.” It piloted the pilgrim fathers to the new world. It supported the followers of George Fox under fines and imprisonment. And it whispered resistance to the Presbyterian clergy of 1662. In latter days it emitted that tide of feeling which undermined and swept away Catholic disabilities. Through the mouths of anti-slavery orators, it poured out its fire, to the scorching of the selfish, to the melting of the good, to our national purification. It was its heat, too, which warmed our sympathy for the Poles, and made boil our indignation against their oppressor. Pent-up accumulations of it, let loose upon a long-standing injustice, generated the effervescence of a reform agitation. Out of its growing flame came those sparks by which Protectionist theories were exploded, and that light which discovered to us the truths of Free-trade. By the passage of its subtle current is that social electrolysis effected, which classes men into parties—which separates the nation into its positive and negative—its radical and conservative elements. At present it puts on the garb of Anti-State-Church Associations, and shows its presence in manifold societies for the extension of popular power. It builds monuments to political martyrs, agitates for the admission of Jews into Parliament, publishes books on the rights of women, petitions against class-legislation; threatens to rebel against militia conscriptions, refuses to pay church-rates, repeals oppressive debtor acts, laments over the distresses of Italy, and thrills with sympathy for the Hungarians. From it, as from a root, spring our aspirations after social rectitude: it blossoms in such expressions as—“Do as you would be done by,” “Honesty is the best policy,” “Justice before Generosity;” and its fruits are Equity, Freedom, Safety.

  § 5.

  But how, it may be asked, can a sentiment have a perception? how can a desire give rise to a moral sense? Is there not here a confounding of the intellectual with the emotional? It is the office of a sense to perceive, not to induce a certain kind of action; whilst it is the office of an instinct to induce a certain kind of action, and not to perceive. But in the foregoing arguments, motor and percipient functions are attributed to the same agent.

  The objection seems a serious one; and were the term sense to be understood in its strictest acceptation, would be fatal. But the word is in this case, as in many others, used to express that feeling with which an instinct comes to regard the deeds and objects it is related to; or rather that judgment which, by a kind of reflex action, it causes the intellect to form of them. To elucidate this we must take an example; and perhaps the love of accumulation will afford us as good a one as any.

  We find, then, that conjoined with the impulse to acquire property, there is what we call a sense of the value of property; and we find the vividness of this sense to vary with the strength of the impulse. Contrast the miser and the spendthrift. Accompanying his constant desire to heap up, the miser has a quite peculiar belief in the worth of money. The most stringent economy he thinks virtuous; and anything like the most ordinary liberality vicious; whilst of extravagance he has an absolute horror. Whatever adds to his store seems to him good: whatever takes from it, bad. And should a passing gleam of generosity lead him on some special occasion to open his purse, he is pretty sure afterwards to reproach himself with having done wrong. On the other hand, whilst the spendthrift is deficient in the instinct of acquisition, he also fails to realize the intrinsic worth of property; it does not come home to him; he has little sense of it. Hence under the influence of other feelings, he regards saving habits as mean; and holds that there is something noble in profuseness. Now it is clear that these opposite perceptions of the propriety or impropriety of certain lines of conduct, do not originate with the intellect, but with the emotional faculties. The intellect, uninfluenced by desire, would show both miser and spendthrift that their habits were unwise; whereas the intellect, influenced by desire, makes each think the other a fool, but does not enable him to see his own foolishness.

  Now this law is at work universally. Every feeling is accompanied by a sense of the rightness of those actions which give it gratification—tends to generate convictions that things are good or bad, according as they bring to it pleasure or pain; and would always generate such convictions, were it unopposed. As however there is a perpetual conflict amongst the feelings—some of them being in antagonism throughout life—there results a proportionate incongruity in the beliefs—a similar conflict amongst these also—a parallel antagonism. So that it is only where a desire is very predominant, or where no adverse desire exists, that this connection between the instincts and the opinions they dictate, becomes distinctly visible.

  Applied to the elucidation of the case in hand, these facts explain how from an impulse to behave in the way we call equitable, there will arise a perception that such behaviour is proper—a conviction that it is good. This instinct or sentiment, being gratified by a just action, and distressed by an unjust action, produces in us an approbation of the one, and a disgust towards the other; and these readily beget beliefs that the one is virtuous, and the other vicious. Or, referring again to the illustration, we may say that as the desire to accumulate property is accompanied by a sense of the value of property, so is the desire to act fairly, accompanied by a sense of what is fair. And thus, limiting the word sense to the expression of this fact, there is nothing wrong in attributing motor and percipient functions to the same agent.

  It will perhaps be needful here to meet the objection, that whereas according to the foregoing statement each feeling tends to generate notions of the rightness or wrongness of the actions towards which it is related; and whereas morality should determine what is correct in all departments of conduct, it is improper to confine the term “moral sense” to that which can afford directions in only one department. This is quite true. Nevertheless, seeing that our behaviour towards each other is the most important part of our behaviour, and that in which we are most prone to err; seeing also that this same faculty is so purely and immediately moral in its purpose; and seeing further, as we shall shortly do, that its dictates are the only ones capable of reduction to an exact form, we may with some show of reason continue to employ that term, with this restricted meaning.

  § 6.

  Assuming the existence in man of such a faculty as this for prompting him to right dealings with his fellows, and assuming that it generates certain intuitionsa respecting those dealings, it seems reasonable enough to seek in such intuitions the elements of a moral code. Attempts to construct a code so founded have from time to time been made. They have resulted in systems based by Shaftesbury and Hutchinson on “Moral Sense,” by Reid and Beattie on “Common Sense,” by Price on “Understanding,” by Clarke on “Fitness of Things,” by Granville Sharpe on “Natural Equity,” by others on “Rule of Right,” “Natural Justice,” “Law of Nature,” “Law of Reason,” “Right Reason,” &c. Unsuccessful as these writers have been in the endeavour to develope a philosophical morality, all of them, if the foregoing reasoning be correct, have consulted a true oracle. Though they have failed to systematize its utterances, they have acted wisely in trying to do this. An analysis of right and wrong so made, is not indeed the profoundest and ultimate one; but, as we shall by-and-by see, it is perfectly in harmony with that in its initial principle, and coincident with it in its results.

  Against codes thus derived, it is indeed alleged, that they are necessarily worthless because unstable in their premises. “If,” say the objectors, “this ‘moral sense,’ to which all these writers directly or indirectly appeal, possesses no fixity, gives no uniform response, says one thing in Europe, and another in Asia—originates different notions of duty in each age, each race, each individual, how can it afford a safe foundation for a systematic morality? What can be more absurd than to seek a definite rule of right, in the answers of so uncertain an authority?”

  Even granting that there is no escape from this difficulty—even supposing no method to exist, by which from this source, a moral philosophy can be drawn free from so fatal an imperfection, there still results merely that same dilemma, in which every other proposed scheme is involved. If such a guide is unfit, because its dictates are variable, then must Expediency also be rejected for the same reason. If Bentham is right in condemning Moral Sense, as an “anarchical and capricious principle, founded solely upon internal and peculiar feelings,” then is his own maxim doubly fallacious. Is not the idea, “greatest happiness,” a capricious one? Is not that also “founded solely upon internal and peculiar feelings?” (See page 3.) And even were the idea “greatest happiness” alike in all, would not his principle be still “anarchical,” in virtue of the infinite disagreement as to the means of realizing this “greatest happiness?” All utilitarian philosophies are in fact liable to this charge of indefiniteness, for there ever recurs the same unsettled question—what is utility?—a question which, as every newspaper shows us, gives rise to endless disputes, both as to the goodness of each desired end, and the efficiency of every proposed means. At the worst therefore, in so far as want of scientific precision is concerned, a philosophy founded on Moral Sense, simply stands in the same category with all other known systems.

  § 7.

  But happily there is an alternative. The force of the objection above set forth may be fully admitted, without in any degree invalidating the theory. Notwithstanding appearances to the contrary, it is still possible to construct upon this basis, a purely synthetic morality proof against all such criticism.

  The error pointed out is not one of doctrine, but of application. Those who committed it did not start from a wrong principle, but rather missed the right way from that principle to the sought-for conclusions. It was not in the oracle to which they appealed, but in their method of interpretation, that the writers of the Shaftesbury school erred. Confounding the functions of feeling and reason, they required a sentiment to do that, which should have been left to the intellect. They were right in believing that there exists some governing instinct generating in us an approval of certain actions we call good, and a repugnance to certain others we call bad. But they were not right in assuming such instinct to be capable of intuitively solving every ethical problem submitted to it. To suppose this, was to suppose that moral sense could supply the place of logic.

  For the better explanation of this point, let us take an analogy from mathematics, or rather some branch of it, as geometry. The human mind possesses a faculty that takes cognizance of measurable quantity, which faculty, to carry out the analogy, let us term a geometric sense. By the help of this we estimate the linear dimensions, surfaces, and bulks of surrounding objects, and form ideas of their relationship to each other. But in the endeavour to reduce the knowledge thus obtained to a scientific form, we find that no reliance can be placed on the unaided decisions of this geometric sense, in consequence of the conflicting judgments it makes in different persons. On comparing notes, however, we discover that there are certain simple propositions upon which we all think alike, such as “Things which are equal to the same thing are equal to one another;” “The whole is greater than its part;” and agreeing upon these axioms as we call them—these fundamental truths recognised by our geometric sense, we find it becomes possible by successive deductions to settle all disputed points, and to solve with certainty, problems of the most complicated naturea . Now if, instead of adopting this method, geometricians had persisted in determining all questions concerning lines, angles, squares, circles, and the like, by the geometric sense—if they had tried to discover whether the three angles of a triangle were, or were not, equal to two right angles, and whether the areas of similar polygons were, or were not, in the duplicate ratio of their homologous sides, by an effort of simple perception, they would have made just the same mistake that moralists make, who try to solve all the problems of morality by the moral sense.

  The reader will at once perceive the conclusion towards which this analogy points; namely, that the perception of the primary laws of quantity bears the same relationship to mathematics, that this instinct of right bears to a moral system; and that as it is the office of the geometric sense to originate a geometric axiom, from which reason may deduce a scientific geometry, so it is the office of the moral sense to originate a moral axiom, from which reason may develope a systematic morality.

  And, varying the illustration, it may be further remarked that just as erroneous notions in mechanics,—for instance, that large bodies fall faster than small onesa ; that water rises in a pump by suction; that perpetual motion is possible, together with the many other mistaken opinions, formed by unaided mechanical sense,—are set aside by the conclusions synthetically deduced from those primary laws of matter which the mechanical sense recognises; so may we expect the multitudes of conflicting beliefs about human duty dictated by unaided moral sense, to disappear before the deductions scientifically drawn from some primary law of man which the moral sense recognises.

  § 8.

  On reviewing the claims of the Moral Sense doctrine, it appears that there is à priori reason for expecting the first principle of social morality to originate in some feeling, power, or faculty of the individual. Quite in harmony with this belief, is the inference that as desire is found to be the incentive to action where motives are readily analyzable, it is probably the universal incentive; and that the conduct we call moral is determined by it as well as other conduct. Moreover we find that even the great maxim of the expediency-philosophy presupposes some tendency in man towards right relationship with his fellow, and some correlative perception of what that right relationship consists in. There are sundry phenomena of social life, both past and present, that well illustrate the influence of this supposed moral sense, and which are not readily explicable upon any other hypothesis. Assuming the existence of such a faculty, there appears reason to think that its monitions afford a proper basis for a systematic morality; and to the demurrer that their variability unfits them for this purpose, it is replied that, to say the least, the foundations of all other systems are equally open to the same objection. Finally, however, we discover that this difficulty is apparent only, and not real: for that whilst the decisions of this moral sense upon the complex cases referred to it are inaccurate and often contradictory, it may still be capable of generating a true fundamental intuition, which can be logically unfolded into a scientific morality.

  LEMMA I.

  § 1.

  It seems at first sight a very rational way of testing any proposed rule of conduct to ask—How will it work? Taking men as we know them, and institutions as they are, what will result from carrying such a theory into practice? This very common-sense style of inquiry is that by which most opinions on morals and politics are formed. People consider of any system, whether it seems feasible, whether it will square with this or the other social arrangement, whether it fits what they see of human nature. They have got certain notions of what man is, and what society must be; and their verdict on any ethical doctrine depends upon its accordance or discordance with these.

  Such a mode of settling moral questions, is clearly open to all the criticisms so fatal to the expediency-philosophy. Incapacity for guiding ourselves in detail by making estimates of consequences, implies incapacity for judging of first principles by that method. But passing over this, there is yet another reason for rejecting an inquiry so pursued as worthless; namely, that it assumes the character of mankind to be constant. If moral systems are adopted or condemned, because of their consistency or inconsistency, with what we know of men and things, then it is taken for granted that men and things will ever be as they are. It would be absurd to measure with a variable standard. If existing humanity is the gauge by which truth must be determined, then must that gauge—existing humanity—be fixed.

  Now that it is not fixed, might have been thought sufficiently obvious without any proving—so obvious indeed as to make proof look ridiculous. But, unfortunately, those whose prejudices make them think otherwise are too numerous to be passed by. Their scepticism needs to be met by facts; and, wearisome though it may be to the philosophic reader, there is no alternative but to go into these.

  § 2.

  And first, let us pause a moment to consider the antecedent improbability of this alleged constancy in human nature. It is a trite enough remark that change is the law of all things: true equally of a single object, and of the universe. Nature in its infinite complexity is ever growing to a new development. Each successive result becomes the parent of an additional influence, destined in some degree to modify all future results. No fresh thread enters into the texture of that endless web, woven in “the roaring loom of Time” but what more or less alters the pattern. It has been so from the beginning. As we turn over the leaves of the earth’s primeval history—as we interpret the hieroglyphics in which are recorded the events of the unknown past, we find this same ever-beginning, neverceasing change. We see it alike in the organic and the inorganic—in the decompositions and recombinations of matter, and in the constantly-varying forms of animal and vegetable life. Old formations are worn down; new ones are deposited. Forests and bogs become coal basins; and the now igneous rock was once sedimentary. With an altering atmosphere, and a decreasing temperature, land and sea perpetually bring forth fresh races of insects, plants, and animals. All things are metamorphosed; infusorial shells into chalk and flint, sand into stone, stone into gravel. Strata get contorted; seas fill up; lands are alternately upheaved and sunk. Where once rolled a fathomless ocean, now tower the snow-covered peaks of a wide-spread, richly-clothed country, teeming with existence; and where a vast continent once stretched, there remain but a few lonely coral islets to mark the graves of its submerged mountains. Thus also is it with systems, as well as with worlds. Orbits vary in their forms, axes in their inclinations, suns in their brightness. Fixed only in name, the stars are incessantly changing their relationships to each other. New ones from time to time suddenly appear, increase and wane; whilst the members of each nebula—suns, planets, and their satellites, sweep for ever onwards into unexplored infinity.

  Strange indeed would it be, if, in the midst of this universal mutation, man alone were constant, unchangeable. But it is not so. He also obeys the law of indefinite variation. His circumstances are ever altering; and he is ever adapting himself to them. Between the naked houseless savage, and the Shakspeares and Newtons of a civilized state, lie unnumbered degrees of difference. The contrasts of races in form, colour, and feature, are not greater than the contrasts in their moral and intellectual qualities. That superiority of sight which enables a Bushman to see further with the naked eye than a European with a telescope, is fully paralleled by the European’s more perfect intellectual vision. The Calmuck in delicacy of smell, and the red Indian in acuteness of hearing, do not excel the white man more than the white man excels them in moral susceptibility. Every age, every nation, every climate, exhibits a modified form of humanity; and in all times, and amongst all peoples, a greater or less amount of change is going on.

  There cannot indeed be a more astounding instance of the tenacity with which men will cling to an opinion in spite of an overwhelming mass of adverse evidence, than is shown in this prevalent belief that human nature is uniform. One would have thought it impossible to use eyes or ears without learning that mankind vary indefinitely, in instincts, in morals, in opinions, in tastes, in rationality, in everything. Even a stroll through the nearest museum would show that some law of modification was at work. Mark the grotesque frescos of the Egyptians, or the shadowless drawings of the Chinese. Does the contrast between these and the works of European artists indicate no difference in the perceptive powers of the races? Compare the sculptures of Athens with those of Hindostan or Mexico. Is not a greater sense of beauty implied by the one than the others? But, passing to the more significant facts supplied by historians and travellers, what are we to think on reading that the Greeks and Romans had a deity to sanction and patronise every conceivable iniquity? or when we hear of Polynesian tribes who believe that their gods feed upon the souls of the departed? Surely the characters indicated by such conceptions of Divinity differ somewhat from ours! Surely too we may claim some essential superiority over those Tartars who leave infirm parents to die of hunger in the desert; and over those Feejee islanders, amongst whom members of the same family have to keep watch against each other’s treachery. It is not the custom of an Englishman to dine, like a Carrib, upon a roasted captive; or even as the Abyssinian, on a quivering slice from the haunch of a live ox. Neither does he, like a red Indian, delight in the writhing of a victim at the stake; nor, like a Hindoo, burn his wife that her spirit may haunt his enemy.

  What one respect is there in which it can be asserted that human nature is always the same? Is it in rationality? Why, Anaxagoras had to fly his country for having blasphemously asserted that the sun was not the chariot of the deity Helios: whilst amongst ourselves a child often puzzles its seniors by the question—Who made God? Is it in justice? No: badly as the moderns have treated slaves, they have never, like the Spartans, encouraged their young warriors to waylay and assassinate helots for practice. Is it in honesty? If so, how come we to read that “piracy was the exercise, the trade, the glory, and the virtue of the Scandinavian youth;” whilst amongst ourselves privateering, even in time of war, is disapproved? Is it in want of mercy? Not so: for much as Austrian butcheries have lately disgraced Europe, they have not paralleled the doings of Gengis Khan, who signalized his first victory by casting seventy prisoners into cauldrons of boiling water; or of Timour, who massacred 100,000 Indian prisoners, and erected a pyramid of 90,000 human heads on the smoking ruins of Bagdad; or of Attila, who totally extirpated and erased seventy cities. Is it in vindictiveness? Why no: for whilst we are told of the Begum Sumroo, that having ordered one of her dancing girls to be bricked up in a vault, she had her bed placed over it, that she might listen to her victim’s dying moans; we find our own Queen requesting, much to her credit, that the man who fired at her should not be flogged. Where now is the sameness? It is not in actions as we see. Is it then in manners and opinions? Certainly not. Society in our day would hardly receive a lady or gentleman known to have poisoned an enemy: in Italy, however, there was a time when disgrace did not attach to such. No family would now follow the example of the Visconti, and choose the viper for an armorial bearing. Nor could we in the nineteenth century, find a match to that German captain of mercenaries, who in silver letters labelled himself—“Duke Werner, Lord of the great Company; the enemy of mercy, of pity, and of God.”

  But why go abroad for illustrations of human variability? have we not plenty at home? In those early days when it was thought “quite sufficient for noblemen to winde their horn, and carry their hawke fair, and leave study and learning to the children of mean people”—in those days when men secured themselves inside thick walls and behind deep moats, and when women wore daggers, character was not just what we now find it. Whilst all nominally held the creed professed by ourselves, the Borderer was most zealous at his prayers when going on a foray; saints’ names were battle cries; bishops led on their retainers to fight; and the highest piety was in the slaying of Saracens. Must not our natures have changed somewhat, when we translate this same religion into peace, into philanthropic effort of all kinds, into missionary enterprise, into advocacy of temperance, into inquiries about “labour and the poor”? Does the agitation for the abolition of death punishment indicate no revolution in men’s feelings since the days when Cromwell’s body was exhumed, and his head stuck on Temple Bar—the days when criminals were drawn and quartered as well as hung—the days when there were murmurs “because Stafford was suffered to die without seeing his bowels burned before his face”—the days when creaking gibbets were scattered over the country—the days when church-doors were covered with the skins of men who had committed sacrilege? And when we read that Sir John Hawkins, in honour of his having been the first to commence the slave-trade, received the addition to his coat of arms of “a demi-moor proper bound with a cord,” does it not seem that the national character has improved between his times and ours, when, out of sympathy for the negroes, 300,000 persons pledged themselves to abstain from all West-India produce?

  But really it is absurd to argue the matter. The very assertors of this fixedness of human nature tacitly disown their belief in it. They constantly stultify themselves by remarks on differences of national character, on peculiarities in their friends’ dispositions, and on their own special tastes and feelings. Admissions thus accidentally made quite invalidate their dogma. Nay, not even these are needed. No comparison between the habits of separate races—between man as he is and as he was—between the tempers and talents of individuals—are necessary for this. To the man of any insight, the mere fact that he himself changes with circumstances, from day to day, and from year to year, in sentiments, capacities, and desires, is sufficient to show that humanity is indefinitely variable.

  § 3.

  And if humanity is indefinitely variable, it cannot be used as a gauge for testing moral truth. When we see that institutions impracticable in one age have flourished in a subsequent one; and that what were once salutary laws and customs have become repugnant; we may shrewdly suspect that the like changes will take place in future. That incongruity with the state of men and things which at present gives to certain proposed principles an appearance of impracticability, may, in a coming age, no longer exist; and those principles that now seem so well adapted to our social condition, may then no longer harmonise with it. Unless, therefore, we assume that human nature, although hitherto variable, will henceforth remain fixed—a somewhat unwarrantable assumption—we must not allow the disagreement between any system of ethics and the present state of mankind, to be taken as evidence against that system.

  Nay more: not only ought we to regard such disagreement, when it appears, without prejudice; but we ought to expect it; and to consider it, if anything, rather an indication of truth than of error. It is preposterous to look for consistency between absolute moral truth, and the defective characters and usages of our existing state! As already said, Morality professes to be a code of rules proper for “the guidance of humanity in its highest conceivable perfection.” A universal obedience to its precepts implies an ideal society. How then can it be expected to harmonise with the ideas, and actions, and institutions of man as he now is? When we say that mankind are sinful, weak, frail, we simply mean that they do not habitually fulfil the appointed law. Imperfection is merely another word for disobedience. So that congruity between a true theory of duty, and an untrue state of humanity, is an impossibility, a contradiction in the nature of things. Whoever, by way of recommending his scheme of ethics, sets forth its immediate and entire practicability, thereby inevitably proves its falsehood. Right principles of action become practicable, only as man becomes perfect; or rather, to put the expressions in proper sequence—man becomes perfect, just in so far as he is able to obey them.

  A total disagreement may therefore be looked for between the doctrines promulgated in the following pages, and the institutions amidst which we live. And the reader will be prepared to view such disagreement not only as consistent with their truth, but as adding to its probability.

  LEMMA II.

  And yet, unable as the imperfect man may be to fulfil the perfect law, there is no other law for him. One right course only is open; and he must either follow that or take the consequences. The conditions of existence will not bend before his perversity; nor relax in consideration of his weakness. Neither, when they are broken, may any exception from penalties be hoped for. “Obey or suffer” are the ever-repeated alternatives. Disobedience is sure to be convicted. And there are no reprieves.

  It is indeed the favourite maxim of a certain popular philosophy, that “there is no rule without an exception,”—a maxim about as respectable as the proverbs along with which it commonly passes current. Applied to conventional usages—to the tenets of state policy—to social regulations—to the precepts of pocket prudence—to the laws of grammar, of art, of etiquette—or to those common aphorisms which roughly classify the experiences of every-day life, it may be true enough; but if affirmed of the essential principles of things, of society, of man, it is utterly false.

  Nature’s rules, on the contrary, have no exceptions. The apparent ones are only apparent; not real. They are indications either that we have not found the true law, or that we have got an imperfect expression of it. Thus, if terrestrial gravitation be defined as “a tendency possessed by all free bodies to descend towards the centre of the earth,” you may triumphantly add—“all free bodies except the balloon.” But your balloon is no exception. Its ascent is just as much a result of gravitation as the falling of a stone. You have merely proved that the definition does not adequately express the law. Again, to the assertion that exercise increases strength—you may answer, that although generally true, it is not true of invalids, to whom exercise is often detrimental; and that it is only true of the healthy within certain limits. Just so. But such qualifications would have been needless, if the law had been completely stated. Had it been said that—so long as the power of assimilation is sufficient to make good the waste consequent upon exercise, exercise increases strength—no limitations could have been discovered. The so-called exceptions are in ourselves, not in nature. They show either that the law eludes our perception, or baffles our power of expression.

  Rightly understood, the progress from deepest ignorance to highest enlightenment, is a progress from entire unconsciousness of law, to the conviction that law is universal and inevitable. Accumulating knowledge and continual induction are ever restricting the old ideas of special causation within narrower limits. Each new discovery in science—every anomaly solved—strengthens men in the belief that phenomena result from general uniform forces. And at length, by dint of constantly-repeated evidence, they begin to perceive that there are no suspensions of these forces even for the avoidance of the most terrific catastrophes. They see that although fleets be sent to the bottom by the resulting storm, yet must atmospheric equilibrium be restored. They see that the earth does not cease its attraction, even to save a village from the impending avalanche. They see that, regardless of the consequent destruction of a church, or blowing up of a vessel, the electric fluid will still follow “the line of least resistance.” They see that chemical affinity must act, notwithstanding it ends in the burning of a city to ashes—in the submergence of half a country by volcanic disturbance—or in the loss of a hundred thousand lives by an epidemic. Every increment of knowledge goes to show that constancy is an essential attribute of the Divine rule: an unvaryingness which renders the eclipse of a hundred years hence predicable to a moment! And for the end of these unbending ordinances of nature—we find it to be the universal good. To render the world habitable; that is the great object. The minor evils due to this persistency of action are as nothing compared with the infinite benefits secured. Whether those evils might or might not have been avoided, we need not now consider. It is enough for us to know that constancy is the law, and we have no alternative but to assume that law to be the best possible one.

  § 2.

  As with the physical, so with the ethical. A belief, as yet fitful and partial, is beginning to spread amongst men, that here also there is an indissoluble bond between cause and consequence, an inexorable destiny, a “law which altereth not.” Confounded by the multiplied and ever-new aspects of human affairs, it is not perhaps surprising that men should fail duly to recognise the systematic character of the Divine rule. Yet in the moral as in the material world, accumulated evidence is gradually generating the conviction, that events are not at bottom fortuitous; but that they are wrought out in a certain inevitable way by unchanging forces. In all ages there has been some glimmering perception of this truth; and experience is ever giving to that perception increased distinctness. Indeed even now all men do, in one mode or other, testify of such a faith. Every known creed is an assertion of it. What are the moral codes of the Mahometan, the Brahmin, the Buddhist, but so many acknowledgments of the inseparable connection between conduct and its results? Do they not all say you shall not do this, and this, because they will produce evil; and you shall do that and that, because they will produce good? No matter that their founders erred in the attempt to refer each effect to its special cause, and so botched their systems of morality; notwithstanding this, they evinced the belief that there is an inevitable law of causation in human affairs, which it is for man to learn and conform to. And is not this the doctrine of the highest known religion? Does not Christianity also teach that such and such deeds shall surely end in such and such issues—evil-doing in punishment, well-doing in reward—and that these things are necessarily and indissolubly connected? We imply such a faith, too, in our every-day conversations; in our maxims and precepts, in our education of children, in our advice to friends. In judging men and things we instinctively refer them to some standard of ascertained principles. We predict good or evil of this or the other scheme, because of its accordance or discordance with certain perceived laws of life. Nay, even the pettifogging red-tapist, with his hand-to-mouth expediency, and professed contempt for “abstract principles,” has really a secret consciousness of some such invariable sequence of events—does really believe in the sway of that “beneficent necessity” which to a given act attaches a fixed result. For what is the true meaning of his “measures”—his “projects of law”? He does not think it a toss-up whether this, or that, effect will be produced by them. If he did, he would be as ready to adopt one plan as another. Evidently he sees that there are constant influences at work, which, from each circumstance, or set of circumstances, educe an unavoidable consequence; and that under like conditions like events will again follow.

  Surely, then, if all believe in the persistency of these secondary laws, much more should they believe in the persistency of those primary ones, which underlie human existence, and out of which our every-day truths grow. We cannot deny the root, if we recognise the branches. And if such is the constitution of things, we are compelled to admit this same “beneficent necessity.” There is no alternative. Either society has laws, or it has not. If it has not, there can be no order, no certainty, no system in its phenomena. If it has, then are they like the other laws of the universe—sure, inflexible, ever active, and having no exceptions.

  § 3.

  How infinitely important is it, that we should ascertain what these laws are; and having ascertained, implicitly obey them! If they really exist, then only by submission to them can anything permanently succeed. Just in so far as it complies with the principles of moral equilibrium can it stand. Our social edifice may be constructed with all possible labour and ingenuity, and be strongly cramped together with cunningly-devised enactments, but if there be no rectitude in its component parts—if it is not built on upright principles, it will assuredly tumble to pieces. As well might we seek to light a fire with ice, feed cattle on stones, hang our hats on cobwebs, or otherwise disregard the physical laws of the world, as go contrary to its equally imperative ethical laws.

  Yes, but there are exceptions, say you. We cannot always be strictly guided by abstract principles. Prudential considerations must have some weight. It is necessary to use a little policy.

  Very specious, no doubt, are your reasons for advocating this or the other exception. But if there be any truth in the foregoing argument, no infraction of the law can be made with impunity. Those cherished schemes by which you propose to attain some desired good by a little politic disobedience, are all delusive. Were any one to tell you that he had invented a mechanical combination, which doubled power without diminishing velocity, or that he had discovered the quadrature of the circle, or that he knew the receipt for the philosopher’s stone, or that he could sell you a child’s caul which would save you from drowning, you would reply, that whilst there were laws of matter, such things could not be—that they were proved impossibilities. Exactly so. But rest satisfied that they are not more complete impossibilities than are your proposed achievements, which similarly conflict with the essential laws of life.

  It may indeed be difficult for those who have but little faith in the invisible, to follow out a principle unflinchingly, in spite of every threatening evil—to give up their own power of judging what seems best, from the belief that that only is best which is abstractedly right—to say, “although appearances are against it, yet will I obey the law.” Nevertheless, this is the true attitude to assume: the conduct which it has been the object of all moral teaching to inculcate; the only conduct which can eventually answera .

  § 4.

  Even supposing for a moment, that a solitary act of disobedience may pass without evil results—nay, may bring beneficial ones: even supposing this, the wisdom of the act is not thereby proved. For consider the probable effects of a wrong precedent. As Paley truly says, “the bad consequences of actions are twofold, particular and general.“ And admitting even that a particular good has been secured, a far greater general evil has been entailed by opening the way to future disobedience. There is no security in this lax creed. One breach of the law leaves a gap for numberless subsequent trespasses. If the first false step has been taken with seeming impunity, it will inevitably be followed by others. School-boy promises of—“only this once” are not to be believed. Make a hole through a principle to admit a solitary exception, and, on one pretence or other, so many other exceptions will by and by be thrust through after it, as to render the principle utterly good-for-nothing. In fact, if its consequences are closely traced, this same plea for licence in special cases turns out to be the source of nearly all the evils that afflict us. Almost every wrong doing is excused by the doer on this ground. He confesses his act is at variance with the moral law, which he admits to be, and in some sort believes to be, the best guide. He thinks, however, that his interest requires him now and then to make exceptions. All men do this;—and see the result.

  § 5.

  But can we ever be sure that an exceptional disobedience will bring the anticipated benefits? Whose would forsake for a time a confessedly-legitimate guide, should remember that he is falling back upon that expediency-hypothesis of which we have already seen the falsity. He is laying claim to a perfect knowledge of man, of society, of institutions, of events, of all the complex, ever-varying phenomena of human existence; and to a grasp of mind that can infer from these how things will go in future. In short, he is assuming that same omniscience, which, as we saw, is requisite for the successful carrying out of such a system. Does he shrink from arrogating as much? Then observe his dilemma. He deserts what he admits to be on the whole a safe rule of conduct, to follow one which is difficult to understand; unsettled in its directions; doubtful in its consequences.

  If the foolishness of such conduct needs illustrating by facts, there are plenty at hand. The constant failure of schemes devised without consulting ethical principles has been already exemplified (see page 8). Let us now, however, take a few cases specially applying to the present point—cases in which benefit has been sought by going in palpable opposition to those principles—cases in which men, dissatisfied with the road whose finger-post declares that “Honesty is the best policy,” have diverged into the by-ways of injustice, in the hope of more readily attaining their ends.

  The enslavement of the negroes serves for a good example. Nothing could have seemed more conclusive than the reasoning of unscrupulous colonists on this matter. Here were rich soils, a splendid climate, and a large market for the sale of produce. Now, could but a sufficiency of labourers be imported and reduced to servitude, what profit they would bring to their possessors! Maintained at a cheap rate; made to work hard, and to keep long at it, what a surplus would they not create! Here was a mine of wealth! Well: the planters acted out their thought—did that which, although it might not be just, was apparently “the best policy,” so far as they were concerned. Their golden visions have been far from realized however. Slave countries are comparatively poverty-stricken all over the world. Though Jamaica at one time sent us a few overgrown nabobs, yet West-Indian history has been a history of distress and complainings, in spite of continual assistance and artificial advantages. The southern states of America are far behind their northern neighbours in prosperity—are in process of abandoning slavery one after another, in consequence of its ruinous results. Somehow the scheme has not answered as was expected. Though worked in some cases sixteen hours out of the twenty-four; though supported on “a pint of flour and one salt herring per day;” though kept to his work by whips, yet did not the slave bring to his owner the large profit calculated upon. Indeed it has turned out that, under like circumstances, free labour is much cheaper. And then, besides the disappointment, there came results that were never looked for. Slavery brought in its train the multiplied curses of a diseased social state; a reign of mutual hatred and terror; of universal demoralization; of sin-begotten recklessness; of extravagant expenditure; of bad cultivation, exhausted soils, mortgaged estates, bankruptcy, beggary. After all, the moral law would have been the safest guide.

  When Philip of Valois swore the officers of his mint to conceal the debasement of the coinage, and to endeavour to make the merchants believe that the gold and silver pieces were of full value, he thought that although perhaps unprincipled, such a measure would be vastly profitable. And so no doubt believed the other kings, who, in the “good old times,” almost universally did the like. They overreached themselves, however, as all such schemers do. It is true that their debts were diminished “in proportion to the reduction in the value of the currency; but their revenues were at the same time reduced in the like ratio. Moreover, the loss of their reputation for honesty made them afterwards unable to borrow money, except at proportionately high rates of interest, to cover the risk ran by the lender.” So that they not only lost on the creditor side of their accounts what they gained on the debtor side, but put themselves at a great disadvantage for the future. After centuries of dearly-bought experience, the practice was reluctantly abandoned, and is now universally exploded as essentially suicidal—just as suicidal in fact as all other infringements of the rule of right.

  Let us remember also, the failure of those attempts to profit at the expense of our American colonies; and the disastrous results to which they led. Our governors thought it would be highly beneficial to the mother country, if the colonies were constrained to become her customers; and in pursuance of this conclusion, not only prohibited the settlers from purchasing certain goods from any other country than England, but actually denied them the right to make those goods for themselves! As usual the manœuvre proved worse than abortive. The outlay required to keep open this national truck-shop was greater than the receipts. Nay, indeed, that outlay was wholly thrown away, and worse than thrown away; for it turns out that artificial trades so obtained entail loss upon both parties. Then too came the punishment, the resistance of the settlers, the war of independence, and the hundred and odd millions added to our national burdens!

  What an astounding illustration of the defeat of dishonesty by the eternal laws of things we have in the history of the East India Company! Selfish, unscrupulous, worldly-wise in policy, and with unlimited force to back it, this oligarchy, year by year, perseveringly carried out its schemes of aggrandisement. It subjugated province upon province; it laid one prince after another under tribute; it made exorbitant demands upon adjacent rulers, and construed refusal into a pretext for aggression; it became sole proprietor of the land, claiming nearly one-half the produce as rent; and it entirely monopolized commerce: thus uniting in itself the character of conqueror, ruler, landowner, and merchant. With all these resources, what could it be but prosperous? From the spoils of victorious war, the rent of millions of acres, the tribute of dependent monarchs, the profits of an exclusive trade, what untold wealth must have poured in upon it! what revenues! what a bursting exchequer! Alas! the Company is some 50,000,000l. in debt.

  Protected trades, too, have afforded many proofs of the impolicy of injustice. The history of the wool business some centuries ago might be quoted as one; but let us take the more recent case of silk. Under the now happily exploded plea of protection to native industry, the silk manufacturers were freed from all foreign competition. Their prices were thus artificially raised, and all the nation was compelled to buy of them. And so, having a large market and high profits, they thought their prosperity ensured. They were doomed to disappointment, however. Instead of a brisk and extensive trade, they obtained a languishing and confined one; and that branch of manufacture, which was to have been a pattern of commercial greatness, became a by-word for whining poverty. How utterly absurd, under such a lamentable state of things, must have appeared the proposal to return towards equitable dealing by lowering the duties! What “impracticables” must those men have been thought, who, because monopoly was unjust, wished to expose the almost ruined manufacturers to the additional difficulty of foreign competition! Could anything be more contrary to common sense? Here surely was a case in which “abstract principles” must give way to “policy.” No: even here, too, obedience to the moral law proved to be the best. Rebellion against it had been punished by accumulated distresses: a partial submission was rewarded by an increase of prosperity. Within fourteen years from the date at which the duties were lowered, the trade had more than doubled itself—had increased more within that period than during the preceding century. And those who, but a short time before, were unable to meet their French compeers in the home-markets, not only began to compete with them in the marts of other nations, but to send large quantities of goods to France itself.

  These are but a few samples from a universal experience. If diligently traced, the results of abandoning the right to pursue the politic will uniformly be found to end thus. Men who are insane enough to think that they may safely violate the fundamental laws of right conduct, may read in such defeats and disasters their own fate. Let them but inquire, and they will find that each petty evil, each great catastrophe, is in some way or other a sequence of injustice. Monetary panics, South-Sea bubbles, Railway manias, Irish rebellions, French revolutions,—these, and the miseries flowing from them, are but the cumulative effects of dishonesty. A bitter experiences teaches all men when it is too late, that, alike in national and individual affairs, entire submission is the wisest course. Even Napoleon, after his seeming success, his triumphs, his profound statesmanship, his far-seeing “policy,” ended in the belief that “There is no power without justice.”

  Yet this commentary on the moral code—this History as we call it—men for ever read in vain! Poring with microscopic eye over the symbols in which it is written, they are heedless of the great facts expressed by them. Instead of collecting evidence bearing upon the all-important question—What are the laws that determine national success or failure, stability or revolution?—they gossip about state intrigues, sieges and battles, court scandal, the crimes of nobles, the quarrels of parties, the births, deaths, and marriages of kings, and other like trifles. Minutiæ, pettifogging details, the vanity and frippery of bygone times, the mere decorations of the web of existence, they examine, analyze, and learnedly descant upon; yet are blind to those stern realities which each age shrouds in its superficial tissue of events—those terrible truths which glare out upon us from the gloom of the past. From the successive strata of our historical deposits, they diligently gather all the highly-coloured fragments, pounce upon everything that is curious and sparkling, and chuckle like children over their glittering acquisitions; meanwhile the rich veins of wisdom that ramify amidst this worthless debris, lie utterly neglected. Cumbrous volumes of rubbish are greedily accumulated, whilst those masses of rich ore, that should have been dug out, and from which golden truths might have been smelted, are left unthought of and unsought.

  § 6.

  But why all this laboured examination into the propriety, or impropriety, of making exceptions to an ascertained ethical law? The very question is absurd. For what does a man really mean by saying of a thing that it is “theoretically just,” or “true in principle,” or “abstractedly right”? Simply that it accords with what he, in some way or other, perceives to be the established arrangements of Divine rule. When he admits that an act is “theoretically just,” he admits it to be that which, in strict duty, should be done. By “true in principle,” he means in harmony with the conduct decreed for us. The course which he calls “abstractedly right,” he believes to be the appointed way to human happiness. There is no escape. The expressions mean this, or they mean nothing. Practically, therefore, when he proposes to disobey, he does so in the hope of improving on this guidance! Though told that such and such are the true roads to happiness, he opines that he knows shorter ones! To the Creator’s silent command—“Do this;” he replies that, all things considered, he thinks he can do better! This is the real Infidelity; the true Atheism: to doubt the foresight and efficiency of the Divine arrangements, and with infinite presumption to suppose a human judgment less fallible! When will man “cease his frantic pretension of scanning this great God’s World in his small fraction of a brain; and know that it has verily, though deep beyond his soundings, a Just Law; that the soul of it is good;—that his part in it is to conform to the Law of the Whole, and in devout silence follow that, not questioning it, obeying it as unquestionable.”a

  § 7.

  Briefly reviewing the argument, we mark first, that physical laws are characterized by constancy and universality, and that there is every reason to believe the like true of ethical once. It is inferred, that if so, there is no safety but in entire obedience, even in spite of threatening appearances. This inference is enforced by the consideration, that any departure from principle to escape some anticipated evil, is a return to the proved errors of expediency. It is again enforced by the fact, that the innumerable attempts of a stiff-necked worldly wisdom to benefit by disobedience have failed. And it is yet further enforced by the reflection, that to think we can better ourselves by deserting the road marked out for us, is an impious assumption of more than divine omniscience.

  The reasons for thus specially insisting on implicit obedience will become apparent as the reader proceeds. Amongst the conclusions inevitably following from an admitted principle, he will most likely find several for which he is hardly prepared. Some of these will seem strange; others impracticable; and, it may be—one or two wholly at variance with his ideas of duty. Nevertheless should he find them logically derived from a fundamental truth, he will have no alternative but to adopt them as rules of conduct, which ought to be followed without exception. If there be any weight in the considerations above set forth, then, no matter how seemingly inexpedient, dangerous, injurious even, may be the course which morality points out as “abstractedly right,” the highest wisdom is in perfect and fearless submission.

  PART I.

  CHAPTER I.

  definition of morality.

  § 1.

  There does not seem to exist any settled idea as to what a Moral Philosophy properly embraces. Moralists have either omitted to prelude their inquiries by any strict definition of the work to be done, or a definition of a very loose and indiscriminating character has been framed. Instead of confining themselves to the discovery and application of certain essential principles of right conduct, they have attempted to give rules for all possible actions, under all possible circumstances. Properly understood the subject matter for investigation lies within comparatively narrow limits; but, overlooking these, they have entered upon a multitude of questions which we shall shortly find to be quite beyond their province.

  § 2.

  As already said (p. 15) the moral law must be the law of the perfect man—the law in obedience to which perfection consists. There are but two propositions for us to choose between. It may either be asserted that morality is a code of rules for the behaviour of man as he is—a code which recognises existing defects of character, and allows for them; or otherwise that it is a code of rules for the regulation of conduct amongst men as they should be. Of the first alternative we must say, that any proposed system of morals which recognises existing defects, and countenances acts made needful by them, stands self-condemned; seeing that, by the hypothesis, acts thus excused are not the best conceivable; that is are not perfectly right—not perfectly moral, and therefore a morality which permits them, is, in so far as it does this, not a morality at all. To escape from this contradiction is impossible, save by adopting the other alternative; namely, that the moral law ignoring all vicious conditions, defects, and incapacities, prescribes the conduct of an ideal humanity. Pure and absolute rectitude can alone be its subject matter. Its object must be to determine the relationships in which men ought to stand to each other—to point out the principles of action in a normal society. By successive propositions it must aim to give a systematic statement of those conditions under which human beings may harmoniously combine; and to this end it requires as its postulate, that those human beings be perfect. Or we may term it the science of social life; a science that, in common with all other sciences, assumes perfection in the elements with which it deals.

  § 3.

  Treating therefore as it does on the abstract principles of right conduct, and the deductions to be made from these, a system of pure ethics cannot recognise evil, or any of those conditions which evil generates. It entirely ignores wrong, injustice, or crime, and gives no information as to what must be done when they have been committed. It knows no such thing as an infraction of the laws, for it is merely a statement of what the laws are. It simply says, such and such are the principles on which men should act; and when these are broken it can do nothing but say that they are broken. If asked what ought any one to do when another has knocked him down, it will not tell; it can only answer that an assault is a trespass against the law, and gives rise to a wrong relationship. It is silent as to the manner in which we should behave to a thief; all the information it affords is, that theft is a disturbance of social equilibrium. We may learn from it that debt implies an infraction of the moral code; but whether the debtor should or should not be imprisoned, cannot be decided by it. To all questions which presuppose some antecedent unlawful action, such as—Should a barrister defend any one whom be believes to be guilty? Ought a man to break an oath which he has taken to do something wrong? Is it proper to publish the misconduct of our fellows? the perfect law can give no reply, because it does not recognise the premises. In seeking to settle such points on purely ethical principles, moralists have attempted impossibilities. As well might they have tried to solve mathematically a series of problems respecting crooked lines and broken-backed curves, or to deduce from the theorems of mechanics the proper method of setting to work a dislocated machine. No conclusions can lay claim to absolute truth, but such as depend upon truths that are themselves absolute. Before there can be exactness in an inference, there must be exactness in the antecedent propositions. A geometrician requires that the straight lines with which he deals shall be veritably straight; and that his circles, and ellipses, and parabolas shall agree with precise definitions—shall perfectly and invariably answer to specified equations. If you put to him a question in which these conditions are not complied with, he tells you that it cannot be answered. So likewise is it with the philosophical moralist. He treats solely of the straight man. He determines the properties of the straight man; describes how the straight man comports himself; shows in what relationship he stands to other straight men; shows how a community of straight men is constituted. Any deviation from strict rectitude he is obliged wholly to ignore. It cannot be admitted into his premises without vitiating all his conclusions. A problem in which a crooked man forms one of the elements is insoluble by him. He may state what he thinks about it—may give an approximate solution; but anything more is impossible. His decision is no longer scientific and authoritative, but is now merely an opinion.

  Or perhaps the point may be most conveniently enforced, by using the science of the animal man, to illustrate that of the moral man. Physiology is defined as a classified statement of the phenomena of bodily life. It treats of the functions of our several organs in their normal states. It explains the relationships in which the members stand to each other—what are their respective duties—how such duties are performed, and why they are necessary. It exhibits the mutual dependence of the vital actions; points out how these are maintained in due balance, and describes the condition of things constituting perfect health. Disease it does not even recognise, and can therefore solve no questions concerning it. To the inquiry—What is the cause of fever? or, what is the best remedy for a cold? it gives no answer. Such matters are out of its sphere. Could it reply it would be no longer Physiology, but Pathology, or Therapeutics. Just so it is with a true morality, which might properly enough be called—Moral Physiology. Its office is simply to expound the principles of moral health. Like its analogue, it has nothing to do with morbid actions and deranged functions. It deals only with the laws of a normal humanity, and cannot recognise a wrong, a depraved, or a disordered condition.

  Hence it appears, that in treating of two such matters as the right of property, and the impropriety of duelling, as parts of the same science, moralists have confounded together subjects that are essentially distinct. The question—What are the right principles of human conduct? is one thing; the question—What must be done when those principles have been broken through? is another, and widely-different thing. Whether this last admits of any solution—whether it is possible to develope scientifically a Moral Pathology and a Moral Therapeutics seems very doubtful. Be this as it may, however, it is very clear that a system of pure Ethics is independent of these. And it will be considered so throughout the ensuing investigations.

  CHAPTER II.

  the evanescence of evil.

  § 1.

  All evil results from the non-adaptation of constitution to conditions. This is true of everything that lives. Does a shrub dwindle in poor soil, or become sickly when deprived of light, or die outright if removed to a cold climate? it is because the harmony between its organization and its circumstances has been destroyed. Those experiences of the farmyard and the menagerie which show that pain, disease, and death, are entailed upon animals by certain kinds of treatment, may all be generalised under the same law. Every suffering incident to the human body, from a headache up to a fatal illness—from a burn or a sprain, to accidental loss of life, is similarly traceable to the having placed that body in a situation for which its powers did not fit it. Nor is the expression confined in its application to physical evil; it comprehends moral evil also. Is the kindhearted man distressed by the sight of misery? is the bachelor unhappy because his means will not permit him to marry? does the mother mourn over her lost child? does the emigrant lament leaving his fatherland? are some made uncomfortable by having to pass their lives in distasteful occupations, and others from having no occupation at all? the explanation is still the same. No matter what the special nature of the evil, it is invariably referable to the one generic cause—want of congruity between the faculties and their spheres of action.

  § 2.

  Equally true is it that evil perpetually tends to disappear. In virtue of an essential principle of life, this non-adaptation of an organism to its conditions is ever being rectified; and modification of one or both, continues until the adaptation is complete. Whatever possesses vitality, from the elementary cell up to man himself, inclusive, obeys this law. We see it illustrated in the acclimatization of plants, in the altered habits of domesticated animals, in the varying characteristics of our own race. Accustomed to the brief arctic summer, the Siberian herbs and shrubs spring up, flower, and ripen their seeds, in the space of a few weeks. If exposed to the rigour of northern winters, animals of the temperate zone get thicker coats, and become white. The greyhound which, when first transported to the high plateaus of the Andes, fails in the chase from want of breath, acquires, in the course of generations, a more efficient pair of lungs. Cattle which in their wild state gave milk but for short periods, now give it almost continuously. Ambling is a pace not natural to the horse; yet there are American breeds that now take to it without training.

  Man exhibits just the same adaptability. He alters in colour according to temperature—lives here upon rice, and there upon whale oil—gets larger digestive organs if he habitually eats innutritious food—acquires the power of long fasting if his mode of life is irregular, and loses it when the supply of food is certain—becomes fleet and agile in the wilderness and inert in the city—attains acute vision, hearing, and scent, when his habits of life call for them, and gets these senses blunted when they are less needful. That such changes are towards fitness for surrounding circumstances no one can question. When he sees that the dweller in marshes lives in an atmosphere which is certain death to a stranger—when he sees that the Hindoo can lie down and sleep under a tropical sun, whilst his white master with closed blinds, and water sprinklings, and punkah, can hardly get a doze—when he sees that the Greenlander and the Neapolitan subsist comfortably on their respective foods—blubber and macaroni, but would be made miserable by an interchange of them—when he sees that in other cases there is still this fitness to diet, to climate, and to modes of life, even the most sceptical must admit that some law of adaptation is at work. Nay, indeed, if he interprets facts aright, he will find that the action of such a law, is traceable down to the minutest ramifications of individual experience. In the drunkard who needs an increasing quantity of spirits to intoxicate him, and in the opium eater, who has to keep taking a larger dose to produce the usual effect, he may mark how the system gradually acquires power to resist what is noxious. Those who smoke, who take snuff, or who habitually use medicines, can furnish like illustrations. Nor in fact, is there any permanent change of bodily state or capability, which is not to be accounted for on the same principle.

  This universal law of physical modification, is the law of mental modification also. The multitudinous differences of capacity and disposition that have in course of time grown up between the Indian, African, Mongolian and Caucasian races, and between the various subdivisions of them, must all be ascribed to the acquirement in each case of fitness for surrounding circumstances. Those strong contrasts between the characters of nations and of times awhile since exemplified (p. 34) admit of no other conceivable explanation. Why all this divergence from the one common original type? If adaptation of constitution to conditions is not the cause, what is the cause?

  There are none, however, who can with anything like consistency combat this doctrine; for all use arguments that presuppose its truth. Even those to whose prejudices the theory of man’s indefinite adaptability is most opposed, are continually betraying their involuntary belief in it. They do this when they attribute differences of national character to differences in social customs and arrangements: and again when they comment on the force of habit: and again when they discuss the probable influence of a proposed measure upon public morality: and again when they recommend practice as a means of acquiring increased aptitude: and again when they describe certain pursuits as elevating and others as degrading: and again when they talk of getting used to anything: and again when they advocate certain systems of mental discipline—when they teach that virtuous conduct eventually becomes pleasurable, and when they warn against the power of a long-encouraged vice.

  In fact, if we consider the question closely, no other arrangement of things can be imagined. For we must adopt one of three propositions. We must either affirm that the human being is wholly unaltered by the influences that are brought to bear upon him—his circumstances as we call them; or that he perpetually tends to become more and more unfitted to those circumstances; or that he tends to become fitted to them. If the first is true, then all schemes of education, of government, of social reform—all instrumentalities by which it is proposed to act upon man, are utterly useless, seeing that he cannot be acted upon at all. If the second is true, then the way to make a man virtuous is to accustom him to vicious practices, and vice versâ. Both of which propositions being absurd, we are compelled to admit the remaining one.

  § 3.

  Keeping in mind then the two facts, that all evil results from the non-adaptation of constitution to conditions; and that where this non-adaptation exists it is continually being diminished by the changing of constitution to suit conditions, we shall be prepared for comprehending the present position of the human race.

  By the increase of population the state of existence we call social has been necessitated. Men living in this state suffer under numerous evils. By the hypothesis it follows that their characters are not completely adapted to such a state.

  In what respect are they not so adapted? what is the special qualification which the social state requires?

  It requires that each individual shall have such desires only, as may be fully satisfied without trenching upon the ability of other individuals to obtain like satisfaction. If the desires of each are not thus limited, then either all must have certain of their desires ungratified; or some must get gratification for them at the corresponding expense of others. Both of which alternatives necessitating pain, imply non-adaptation.

  But why is not man adapted to the social state?

  Simply because he yet partially retains the characteristics that adapted him for an antecedent state. The respects in which he is not fitted to society are the respects in which he is fitted for his original predatory life. His primitive circumstances required that he should sacrifice the welfare of other beings to his own; his present circumstances require that he should not do so; and in as far as his old attribute still clings to him, in so far is he unfit for the social state. All sins of men against each other, from the cannibalism of the Carrib to the crimes and venalities that we see around us; the felonies that fill our prisons, the trickeries of trade, the quarrelings of nation with nation, and of class with class, the corruptness of institutions, the jealousies of caste, and the scandal of drawing-rooms, have their causes comprehended under this generalization.

  Concerning the present position of the human race, we must therefore say, that man needed one moral constitution to fit him for his original state; that he needs another to fit him for his present state; and that he has been, is, and will long continue to be, in process of adaptation. By the term civilization we signify the adaptation that has already taken place. The changes that constitute progress are the successive steps of the transition. And the belief in human perfectibility, merely amounts to the belief, that in virtue of this process, man will eventually become completely suited to his mode of life.

  § 4.

  If there be any conclusiveness in the foregoing arguments, such a faith is well founded. As commonly supported by evidence drawn from history, it cannot be considered indisputable. The inference that as advancement has been hitherto the rule, it will be the rule henceforth, may be called a plausible speculation. But when it is shown that this advancement is due to the working of a universal law; and that in virtue of that law it must continue until the state we call perfection is reached, then the advent of such a state is removed out of the region of probability into that of certainty. If any one demurs to this, let him point out the error. Here are the several steps of the argument.

  All imperfection is unfitness to the conditions of existence.

  This unfitness must consist either in having a faculty or faculties in excess; or in having a faculty or faculties deficient; or in both.

  A faculty in excess, is one which the conditions of existence do not afford full exercise to; and a faculty that is deficient, is one from which the conditions of existence demand more than it can perform.

  But it is an essential principle of life that a faculty to which circumstances do not allow full exercise diminishes; and that a faculty on which circumstances make excessive demands increases.

  And so long as this excess and this deficiency continue, there must continue decrease on the one hand, and growth on the other.

  Finally all excess and all deficiency must disappear; that is, all unfitness must disappear; that is, all imperfection must disappear.

  Thus the ultimate development of the ideal man is logically certain—as certain as any conclusion in which we place the most implicit faith; for instance, that all men will die. For why do we infer that all men will die? Simply because, in an immense number of past experiences, death has uniformly occurred. Similarly then as the experiences of all people in all times—experiences that are embodied in maxims, proverbs, and moral precepts, and that are illustrated in biographies and histories, go to prove that organs, faculties, powers, capacities, or whatever else we call them, grow by use and diminish from disuse, it is inferred that they will continue to do so. And if this inference is unquestionable, then is the one above deduced from it—that humanity must in the end become completely adapted to its conditions—unquestionable also.

  Progress, therefore, is not an accident, but a necessity. Instead of civilization being artificial, it is a part of nature; all of a piece with the development of the embryo or the unfolding of a flower. The modifications mankind have undergone, and are still undergoing, result from a law underlying the whole organic creation; and provided the human race continues, and the constitution of things remains the same, those modifications must end in completeness. As surely as the tree becomes bulky when it stands alone, and slender if one of a group; as surely as the same creature assumes the different forms of cart-horse and race-horse, according as its habits demand strength or speed; as surely as a blacksmith’s arm grows large, and the skin of a labourer’s hand thick; as surely as the eye tends to become long-sighted in the sailor, and short-sighted in the student; as surely as the blind attain a more delicate sense of touch; as surely as a clerk acquires rapidity in writing and calculation; as surely as the musician learns to detect an error of a semitone amidst what seems to others a very babel of sounds; as surely as a passion grows by indulgence and diminishes when restrained; as surely as a disregarded conscience becomes inert, and one that is obeyed active; as surely as there is any efficacy in educational culture, or any meaning in such terms as habit, custom, practice;—so surely must the human faculties be moulded into complete fitness for the social state; so surely must the things we call evil and immorality disappear; so surely must man become perfect.

  CHAPTER III.

  the divine idea, and the conditions of its realization.

  § 1.

  If, instead of proposing it as the rule of human conduct, Bentham had simply assumed “greatest happiness” to be the creative purpose, his position would have been tenable enough. Almost all men do in one way or other assert the same. There have indeed been times when such a faith was far from universal. Had the proposition been made before Simeon Stylites on the top of his column, he would very likely have demurred to it. Probably the Flagellants of the thirteenth century may have thought otherwise. And even now it is possible that the Fakeers of India hold a contrary opinion. But, whilst it may be true that a savage asceticism attributes to the Deity a barbarity equal to its own, and conceives him as delighting in human sacrifices; whilst it may be true that amongst ourselves the same notion yet lingers, under the form of occasional fasts and penances; still there are few if any amongst civilized people who do not agree that human well-being is in accordance with the Divine will. The doctrine is taught by all our religious teachers; it is assumed by every writer on morality: we may therefore safely consider it as an admitted truth.

  It is one thing, however, to hold that greatest happiness is the creative purpose, and a quite different thing to hold that greatest happiness should be the immediate aim of man. It has been the fatal error of the expediency-philosophers to confound these positions. They have not observed that the truth has two sides, a Divine side and a human side; and that it matters much to us which we look at. Greatest Happiness and Morality, are the face and obverse of the same fact; what is written on the one surface is beyond our interpretation: what is written on the other we may read easily enough.

  Or dropping metaphor, and speaking in philosophical language, we may say that it is for us to ascertain the conditions by conforming to which this greatest happiness may be attained. Not to put trust in guesses: not to do this or that, because we think it will be beneficial: but to find out what really is the line of conduct that leads to the desired end. For unquestionably there must be in the nature of things some definite and fixed pre-requisites to success. Man is a visible, tangible entity, having properties. In the circumstances that surround him there are certain unchanging necessities. Life is dependent upon the fulfilment of specific functions; and happiness is a particular kind of life. Surely then if we would know how, in the midst of these appointed circumstances, the being Man must live, so as to achieve the result—greatest happiness, we ought first to determine what the essential conditions are. If we solve the problem, it can only be by consulting these and submitting ourselves to them. To suppose that we may, in ignorance or disregard of them, succeed by some hap-hazard speculation, is sheer folly. Only in one way can the desideratum be reached. What that one way is must depend upon the fundamental necessities of our position. And if we would discover it, our first step must be to ascertain those necessities.

  § 2.

  At the head of them stands this unalterable fact—the social state. In the pre-ordained course of things, men have multiplied until they are constrained to live more or less in presence of each other. That, as being needful for the support of the greatest sum of life, such a condition is preliminary to the production of the greatest sum of happiness, seems highly probable. Be that as it may, however, we find this state established; are henceforth to continue in it; and must therefore set it down as one of those necessities which our rules for the achievement of the greatest happiness must recognise and conform to.

  In this social state the ‘sphere of activity of each individual being limited by the spheres of activity of other individuals, it follows that the men who are to realize this greatest sum of happiness, must be men of whom each can obtain complete happiness within his own sphere of activity, without diminishing the spheres of activity required for the acquisition of happiness by others. For manifestly, if each or any of them cannot receive complete happiness without lessening the spheres of activity of one or more of the rest, he must either himself come short of complete happiness, or must make one or more do so; and hence under such circumstances, the sum total of happiness cannot be as great as is conceivable, or cannot be greatest happiness. Here then is the first of those fixed conditions to the obtainment of greatest happiness, necessitated by the social state. It is the fulfilment of this condition which we express by the word justice.

  To this all-essential pre-requisite there is a supplementary one of kindred nature. We find that without trenching upon each other’s spheres of activity, men may yet behave to one another in such a way as to produce painful emotions. And if any have feelings that lead them to do this, it is clear that the total amount of happiness is not so great as it would be were they devoid of those feelings. Hence, to compass greatest happiness, the human constitution must be such as that each man may perfectly fulfil his own nature, not only without diminishing other men’s spheres of activity, but without giving unhappiness to other men in any direct or indirect way. This condition, as we shall by-and-by see, needs to be kept quite distinct from the foregoing one. The observance of it may be called negative beneficience.

  Yet another requirement is there by fulfilment of which the happiness flowing from compliance with the foregoing ones is indefinitely multiplied. Let a race of beings be so constituted as that each individual may be able to obtain full satisfaction for all his desires, without deducting from the satisfaction obtainable by other individuals, and we have a state of things in which the amount of isolated happiness is the greatest conceivable. But let these beings be so constituted as that each, in addition to the pleasurable emotions personally received by him, can sympathetically participate in the pleasurable emotions of all others, and the sum-total of happiness becomes largely increased. Hence, to the primary requisite that each shall be able to get complete happiness without diminishing the happiness of the rest, we must now add the secondary one that each shall be capable of receiving happiness from the happiness of the rest. Compliance with this requisite implies positive beneficence.

  Lastly there must go to the production of the greatest happiness the further condition, that, whilst duly regardful of the preceding limitations, each individual shall perform all those acts required to fill up the measure of his own private happiness.

  These then are necessities. They are not matters of opinion, but matters of unalterable fact. Denial of them is impossible, for nothing else can be stated but what is self-contradictory. Without any alternative, beings who are to realize the Divine Idea must be thus constituted. Before greatest happiness can be brought about, every man must answer to these definitions; and all approach to greatest happiness, presupposes an approach towards conformity with them. Schemes of government and culture which ignore them, cannot but be essentially absurd. Everything must be good or bad, right or wrong, in virtue of its accordance or discordance with them. We have no need to perplex ourselves with investigations into the expediency of every measure, by trying to trace out its ultimate results in all their infinite ramifications—a task which it is folly to attempt. Our course is to inquire concerning such measure, whether or not it fully recognises these fundamental necessities, and to be sure that it must be proper or improper accordingly. Our whole code of duty is comprehended in the endeavour to live up to these necessities. If we find pleasure in doing this, it is well; if not, our aim must be to acquire that pleasure. Greatest happiness is obtained only when conformity to them is spontaneous; seeing that the restraint of desires inciting to trespass implies pain, or deduction from greatest happiness. Hence it is for us to habituate ourselves to fulfil these requirements as fast as we can. The social state is a necessity. The conditions of greatest happiness under that state are fixed. Our characters are the only things not fixed. They, then, must be moulded into fitness for the conditions. And all moral teaching and discipline, must have for its object, to hasten this process.

  § 3.

  Objection may be taken to the foregoing classification of the conditions needful to greatest happiness, as being in some degree artificial. It will perhaps be said that the distinction between justice and beneficence cannot be maintained, for that the two graduate into each other imperceptibly. Some may argue that it is not allowable to assume any essential difference between right conduct towards others and right conduct towards self, seeing that what are generally considered purely private actions, do eventually affect others to such a degree, as to render them public actions; as witness the collateral effects of drunkenness or suicide. Others again may contend that all morality should be classed as private; because with the rightly-constituted or moral man, correct conduct to others is merely incidental upon the fulfilment of his own nature.

  In each of these allegations there is much truth; and it is not to be denied that under a final analysis, all such distinctions as those above made must disappear. But it should be borne in mind that similar criticisms may be passed upon all classifications whatever. It might after the same fashion be argued that we ought not to separate the laws of heat from those of mechanics, because fire when applied to water generates mechanical force. On like grounds Optics ought to be identified with Chemistry; seeing that in the photographic process, light becomes a chemical agent. Considering that muscles contract when stimulated by a galvanic current, we ought to treat of Physiology and Electricity as forming one science. Nor should we even distinguish between vegetable and animal life; for these are found to have a common root, and it is hardly possible to say of the lowest organisms which division they belong to. So that unless such objectors are prepared to say that Botany and Zoology should be regarded as one, and that all lines of demarcation between the physical sciences should be abolished, they must in consistency tolerate an analogous classification in moral science; and must admit that whilst this is in a certain sense artificial, it may be an essential preliminary to anything like systematic investigation. The same finite power of comprehension which compels us to deal with natural phenomena by separating them into groups and studying each group by itself, may also compel us to separate those actions which place a man in direct relationship with his fellows, from others which do not so place him; although it may be true that such a separation cannot be strictly maintained. And even in dealing with one of these sections—in developing the principles of right conduct to others, it may be further necessary to distinguish, as above, the primary and most imperative principle, from the secondary and less imperative one; notwithstanding that these have a common root.

  § 4.

  The realization of the Divine Idea being reduced to the fulfilment of certain conditions, it becomes the office of a scientific morality, to make a detailed statement of the mode in which life must be regulated so as to conform to them. On each of these axiomatic truths it must be possible to build a series of theorems immediately bearing upon our daily conduct; or, inverting the thought—every act stands in a certain relationship to these truths, and it must be possible in some way or other to solve the problem, whether that relationship is one of accordance or discordance. When such a series of theorems has been elaborated, and solutions have been given to such a series of problems, the task of the moralist is accomplished.

  Each of these axioms, however, may have its own set of consequences separately deduced, or indeed, as already hinted, must have them so deduced. Their respective developments constitute independent departments of moral science, requiring to be dealt with in the order of their natural sequence. For the present, therefore, our attention will be confined to the first and most essential of them. Individual or private morality, as distinguished from social or public morality, is not to be entered upon in the following pages. Neither will there be found in them any statement of that class of moral obligations above comprehended under the terms positive and negative beneficencea . It is with the several inferences to be drawn from that primary condition to greatest happiness, the observance of which is vaguely signified by the word justice, that we have now to deal. Our work will be to unfold that condition into a system of equity; to mark out those limits put to each man’s proper sphere of activity, by the like spheres of other men; to delineate the relationships that are necessitated by a recognition of those limits; or—in other words—to develop the principles of Social Statics.

  PART II.

  CHAPTER IV.

  derivation of a first principle.

  § 1.

  There will possibly be some for whom the à priori considerations set forth in the foregoing chapter, are too abstract for distinct comprehension. It is easy, however, to reason our way to that first principle of ethical science which we are about to follow out to its consequences, without any appeal to these. And it will be desirable now to do this. Starting afresh then, from the admitted truth, that human happiness is the Divine will, let us look at the means appointed for the obtainment of that happiness, and observe what conditions they presuppose.

  Happiness is a certain state of consciousness. That state must be produced by the action upon consciousness of certain modifying influences—by certain affections of it. All affections of consciousness we term sensations. And amongst the rest, those affections of it which constitute happiness must be sensations.

  But how do we receive sensations? Through what are called faculties. It is certain that a man cannot see without eyes. Equally certain is it that he can experience no impression of any kind, unless he is endowed with some power fitted to take in that impression; that is, a faculty. All the mental states which he calls feelings and ideas, are affections of his consciousness received through the faculties—sensations given to it by them.

  There next comes the question—under what circumstances do the faculties yield those sensations of which happiness consists? The reply is—when they are exercised. It is from the activity of one or more of them that all gratification arises. To the healthful performance of each function of mind or body attaches a pleasurable feeling. And this pleasurable feeling is obtainable only by the performance of the function; that is, by the exercise of the correlative faculty. Every faculty in turn affords its special emotion; and the sum of these constitutes happiness.

  Or the matter may be briefly put thus. A desire is the need for some species of sensation. A sensation is producible only by the exercise of a faculty. Hence no desire can be satisfied except through the exercise of a faculty. But happiness consists in the due satisfaction of all the desires; that is, happiness consists in the due exercise of all the faculties.

  § 2.

  Now if God wills man’s happiness, and man’s happiness can be obtained only by the exercise of his faculties, then God wills that man should exercise his faculties; that is, it is man’s duty to exercise his faculties; for duty means fulfilment of the Divine will. That it is man’s duty to exercise his faculties is further proved by the fact, that what we call punishment attaches to the neglect of that exercise. Not only is the normal activity of each faculty productive of pleasure, but the continued suspension of that activity is productive of pain. As the stomach hungers to digest food, so does every bodily and mental agent hunger to perform its appointed action. And as the refusal to satisfy the cravings of the digestive faculty is productive of suffering, so is the refusal to satisfy the cravings of any other faculty also productive of suffering, to an extent proportionate to the importance of that faculty. But as God wills man’s happiness, that line of conduct which produces unhappiness is contrary to his will. Therefore the non-exercise of the faculties is contrary to his will. Either way then, we find that the exercise of the faculties is God’s will and man’s duty.

  But the fulfilment of this duty necessarily presupposes freedom of action. Man cannot exercise his faculties without certain scope. He must have liberty to go and to come, to see, to feel, to speak, to work; to get food, raiment, shelter, and to provide for each and all of the needs of his nature. He must be free to do everything which is directly or indirectly requisite for the due satisfaction of every mental and bodily want. Without this he cannot fulfil his duty or God’s will. But if he cannot fulfil God’s will without it, then God commands him to take it. He has Divine authority, therefore, for claiming this freedom of action. God intended him to have it; that is, he has a right to it.

  From this conclusion there seems no possibility of escape. Let us repeat the steps by which we arrive at it. God wills man’s happiness. Man’s happiness can only be produced by the exercise of his faculties. Then God wills that he should exercise his faculties. But to exercise his faculties he must have liberty to do all that his faculties naturally impel him to do. Then God intends he should have that liberty. Therefore he has a right to that liberty.

  § 3.

  This, however, is not the right of one but of all. All are endowed with faculties. All are bound to fulfil the Divine will by exercising them. All therefore must be free to do those things in which the exercise of them consists. That is, all must have rights to liberty of action.

  And hence there necessarily arises a limitation. For if men have like claims to that freedom which is needful for the exercise of their faculties, then must the freedom of each be bounded by the similar freedom of all. When, in the pursuit of their respective ends, two individuals clash, the movements of the one remain free only in so far as they do not interfere with the like movements of the other. This sphere of existence into which we are thrown not affording room for the unrestrained activity of all, and yet all possessing in virtue of their constitutions similar claims to such unrestrained activity, there is no course but to apportion out the unavoidable restraint equally. Wherefore we arrive at the general proposition, that every man may claim the fullest liberty to exercise his faculties compatible with the possession of like liberty by every other man.

  § 4.

  Upon a partial consideration this statement of the law will perhaps seem open to criticism. It may be thought better to limit the right of each to exercise his faculties, by the proviso that he shall not hurt any one else—shall not inflict pain on any one else. But although at first sight satisfactory, this expression of the law allows of erroneous deductions. It is true that men, answering to those conditions of greatest happiness set forth in the foregoing chapter, cannot exercise their faculties to the aggrieving of one another. It is not, however, that each avoids giving pain by refraining from the full exercise of his faculties; but it is that the faculties of each are such that the full exercise of them offends no one. And herein lies the difference. The giving of pain may have two causes. Either the abnormally-constituted man may do something displeasing to the normal feelings of his neighbours, in which case he acts wrongly; or the behaviour of the normally-constituted man may irritate the abnormal feelings of his neighbours; in which case it is not his behaviour that is wrong, but their characters that are so. Under such circumstances the due exercise of his faculties is right, although it gives pain; and the remedy for the evil lies in the modification of those abnormal feelings to which pain is given.

  To elucidate this distinction let us take a few illustrations. An honest man discovers some friend, of whom he had previously thought well, to be a rogue. He has certain high instincts to which roguery is repugnant; and allowing free play to these, he drops the acquaintanceship of this unworthy one. Now, though in doing so he gives pain, it does not follow that he transgresses the law. The evil must be ascribed, not to an undue exercise of faculties by him, but to the immorality of the man who suffers. Again, a Protestant in a Roman Catholic country, refuses to uncover his head on the passing of the host. In so obeying the promptings of certain sentiments, he annoys the spectators; and were the above modified expression of the law correct, would be blameable. The fault, however, is not with him, but with those who are offended. It is not that he is culpable in thus testifying to his belief, but it is that they ought not to have so tyrannical an intolerance of other opinions than their own. Or again, a son, to the great displeasure of his father and family, marries one who, though in all respects admirable, is dowerless. In thus obeying the dictates of his nature he may entail considerable distress of mind upon his relatives; but it does not follow that his conduct is bad; it follows rather that the feelings which his conduct has wounded are bad.

  Hence we see that in hourly-occurring cases like these, to limit the exercise of faculties by the necessity of not giving pain to others, would be to stop the proper exercise of faculties in some persons, for the purpose of allowing the improper exercise of faculties in the rest. Moreover, the observance of such a rule does not, as at first sight appears, prevent pain. For though he who is restrained by it avoids inflicting suffering on his fellows, he does so at the expense of suffering to himself. The evil must be borne by some one, and the question is by whom. Shall the Protestant, by showing reverence for what he does not revere, tell a virtual lie, and thus do violence to his conscientious feeling that he may avoid vexing the intolerant spirit of his Catholic neighbours? or shall he give the rein to his own healthy sinoerity and independence, and offend their unhealthy bigotry? Shall the honest man repress those sentiments that make him honest, lest the exhibition of them should give pain to a rogue? or shall he respect his own nobler feelings, and hurt the other’s baser ones? Between these alternatives no one can well pause. And here indeed we get down to the root of the matter. For be it remembered the universal law of life is, that the exercise or gratification of faculties strengthens them; whilst, on the contrary, the curbing or inflicting pain upon them, entails a diminution of their power. And hence it follows that when the action of a normal faculty is checked, to prevent pain being given to the abnormal faculties of others, those abnormal faculties remain as active as they were, and the normal one becomes weaker or abnormal. Whereas under converse circumstances the normal one remains strong, and the abnormal ones are weakened, or made more normal. In the one case the pain is detrimental, because it retards the approximation to that form of human nature under which the faculties of each may be fully exercised without displeasure to the like faculties of all. In the other case the pain is beneficial, because it aids the approximation to that form. Thus, that first expression of the law which arises immediately from the conditions of social existence, turns out to be the true one: any such modification of it as the above, necessitating conduct that is in many cases absolutely mischievous.

  And yet, on the other hand, when we seek to express the law by saying that every man has full liberty to exercise his faculties, provided always he does not trench upon the similar liberty of any other, we commit ourselves to an imperfection of an opposite character; and we find that there are many cases in which the above modified expression answers better. Various ways exist in which the faculties may be exercised to the aggrieving of other persons, without the law of equal freedom being overstepped. A man may behave unamiably, may use harsh language, or annoy by disgusting habits; and whoso thus offends the normal feelings of his fellows, manifestly diminishes happiness. If we say that every one is free to exercise his faculties so long only as he does not inflict pain upon any one else, we forbid all such conduct. Whereas if we simply limit the liberty of each by the like liberty of all, we do not forbid it; seeing that he who exercises his faculties in this way, does not hinder others from exercising theirs in the same way, and to the same extent. How then are we to escape from this difficulty? Neither statement of the law quite fulfils our requirement, and yet we must choose one of them. Which must it be, and why?

  It must be the original one, and for a very good reason. Limiting the liberty of each by the like liberty of all, excludes a wide range of improper actions, but does not exclude certain other improper ones. Limiting the liberty of each by the necessity of not giving pain to the rest, excludes the whole of these improper actions, but excludes along with them many others that are proper. The one does not cut off enough; the other cuts off too much. The one is negatively erroneous; the other is positively so. Evidently, then, we must adopt the negatively erroneous one, seeing that its shortcomings may be made good by a supplementary law. And here we find the need for that distinction lately drawn between justice and negative beneficence—a distinction which we habitually make in the affairs of life. Justice imposes upon the exercise of faculties a primary series of limitations, which is strictly true as far as it goes. Negative beneficence imposes a secondary series. It is no defect in the first of these that it does not include the last. The two are, in the main, distinct; and, as we have just seen, the attempt to unite them under one expression leads us into fatal errors.

  § 5.

  Yet another objection will probably be started. By full liberty to exercise the faculties, is meant full liberty to do all that the faculties prompt, or, in other words, to do all that the individual wills; and it may be said, that if the individual is free to do all that he wills, provided he does not trespass upon certain specified claims of others, then he is free to do things that are injurious to himself—is free to get drunk, or to commit suicide. To this it must be in the first place replied, as above, that whilst the law now laid down forbids a certain class of actions as immoral, it does not recognise all kinds of immorality—that the restriction it puts on the free exercise of faculties, though the chief, is not the sole restriction, and must be received without prejudice to further ones. Of the need for such further ones, the difficulty here raised furnishes a second instance.

  Mark now, however, that these supplementary restrictions are of quite inferior authority to the original law. Instead of being, like it, capable of strictly scientific development, they (under existing circumstances) can be unfolded only into superior forms of expediency. The limit put to each man’s freedom, by the like freedom of every other man, is a limit almost always possible of exact ascertainment; for let the condition of things be what it may, the respective amounts of freedom men assume can be compared, and the equality or inequality of those amounts recognised. But when we set about drawing practical deductions from the propositions that a man is not at liberty to do things injurious to himself, and that he is not at liberty (except in cases like those lately cited) to do what may give unhappiness to his neighbours, we find ourselves involved in complicated estimates of pleasures and pains, to the obvious peril of our conclusions. It is very true, that to trace out the consequences a given act will entail upon oneself or another, is incomparably less difficult than to determine the ultimate effects of some public measure upon a whole nation; and hence the being guided by expediency in private life is proportionably less dangerous. Yet it is also true, that even here, trustworthy inferences are attainable in but a minority of cases. In the first place we frequently cannot say whether the bad results will exceed the good ones; and in the second place we frequently cannot say whether the faculties on which suffering will be inflicted, are in normal or abnormal states. For example, though it is very manifest that drunkenness is an injurious exercise of faculties, as being clearly productive of more pain than pleasure, it is by no means manifest how much work is proper for us, and when work becomes detrimental; it is by no means manifest where lies the line between due and undue intellectual activity; it is by no means manifest what amount of advantage will justify a man in submitting to unsuitable climate and mode of life; and yet in each of these cases happiness is at stake, and the wrong course is wrong for the same reason that drunkenness is so. Even were it possible to say of each private action whether the resulting gratification did or did not preponderate over the resulting suffering, there would still present itself this second difficulty, that we cannot with certainty distinguish suffering that is detrimental, from suffering that is beneficial. Whilst we are as yet imperfectly adapted to our conditions, pain must inevitably arise from the repression of faculties that are too active, and from the overtasking of those that are not equal to their duties; and, as being needful to the development of the ultimate man, such pain cannot be held damnatory of the actions causing it. Thus, referring again to the instances just cited, it is self-evident that the ability to work is needful for the production of the greatest happiness; yet is the acquirement of this ability by the uncivilized man so distressing, that only the severest discipline will force him to it. That degree of intelligence which our existing mode of life necessitates, cannot be arrived at without ages of wearisome application; and perhaps cannot get organized in the race without a partial and temporary sacrifice of bodily health. The realization of the Divine Idea implies the peopling of every habitable region; and this implies the adaptation of mankind to a variety of climates—an adaptation which cannot be undergone without great suffering. Here, then, are cases in which men’s liberty must not be limited by the necessity of not injuring themselves; seeing that it cannot be so limited without a suspension of our approach to greatest happiness. Similarly we saw awhile since (p. 79), that there are cases in which for the same reason men’s liberty must not be limited by the necessity of not inflicting pain upon others. And the fact now to be noticed is, that we possess no certain way of distinguishing the two groups of cases thus exemplified from those cases in which the doing what diminishes happiness, either in ourselves or others, is both immediately and ultimately detrimental, and therefore wrong. Not being able to define specifically the constitution of the ideal man, but being able to define it generically only—not being able to determine the ratios of the several faculties composing that constitution, but being able simply to lay down certain laws which their action must conform to—we are quite incompetent to say of every particular deed whether it is or is not accordant with that constitution. Or, putting the difficulty in its simplest form, we may say, that as both of these supplementary limitations involve the term happiness, and as happiness is for the present capable only of a generic and not of a specific definition (p. 5), they do not admit of scientific development. Though abstractedly correct limitations, and limitations which the ideal man will strictly observe, they cannot be reduced to concrete forms until the ideal man exists.

  § 6.

  And now we have arrived at the threshold of an important truth touching this matter; the truth namely, that only by a universal exercise of this alleged liberty of each, limited alone by the like liberty of all, can there ever arise a separation of those acts which, though incidentally and temporarily injurious to ourselves or others, are indirectly beneficial, from those acts which are necessarily and eternally injurious. For manifestly, that non-adaptation of faculties to their functions, from which springs every species of evil, must consist either in excess or defect. And manifestly, in the wide range of cases we are now treating of, there exists no mode but a tentative one of distinguishing that exercise of faculties which produces suffering because it oversteps the conditions of normal existence, from that other exercise of faculties which produces suffering because it falls short of those conditions. And manifestly, the due employment of this tentative mode requires that each man shall have the greatest freedom compatible with the like freedom of all others. Or, turning the proposition the other side up, we may say, that whilst these secondary conditions of greatest happiness are really fixed, yet the practical interpretation of them requiring a detailed knowledge of the ultimate human constitution, bodily and mental, and such detailed knowledge being unattainable, our course is to regard the law of equal freedom as setting up the only recognisable limit to the exercise of faculties, knowing that the other limits will inevitably make themselves felt, and that in virtue of the law of adaptation, there must eventually arise a complete conformity to them.

  That, on this course being pursued, there will happen a gradual cessation of the detrimentally painful actions, whilst the beneficially painful ones will be continued until they have ceased to be painful, may be made clear by a few illustrations. Thus, the change from the impulsive nature of the savage to that nature which enables the civilised man to sacrifice a present gratification for a future greater one, involves much suffering; but the necessities of social life demanding such a change, and continually visiting the lack of a self-restraining power with severe punishment, ensure a constant though irk-some endeavour on the part of all to acquire this power—an endeavour that must surely though slowly succeed. Conversely, the prevalence amongst men of a somewhat undue desire for food, entailing as it perpetually does much bodily, and some mental, affliction, is sure to be therefore accompanied by such attempts at abstemiousness, as must, by constantly curbing it, finally reduce this desire to a normal intensitya . And what so manifestly happens in these simple cases, will with equal certainty happen in those complex ones above exemplified, where the good and bad results are more nearly balanced: for although it may be impossible in such cases for the intellect to estimate the respective amounts of pleasure and pain consequent upon each alternative, yet will experience enable the constitution itself to do this; and will further cause it instinctively to shun that course which produces on the whole most suffering, or, in other words—most sins against the necessities of existence, and to choose that which least sins against them. Turning to those actions which put us in direct relationship to other men, it must in the same manner happen that such of them as give no necessary displeasure to any one, will be persevered in, and the faculties answering to them developed; whilst, on the contrary, actions necessarily displeasing to our neighbours, must, by virtue of the disagreeable reaction which they commonly entail upon ourselves, be, in the average of cases, subject to a certain degree of repression—a repression that must ultimately tell upon the desires they spring from. And now observe what it is the special purpose of the present argument to show, namely, that in the course of this process there must be continually produced a different effect upon conduct which is necessarily painful to others, from that produced upon conduct that is incidentally painful only. Conduct which hurts necessary feelings in others, will, as just explained, inevitably undergo restraint and consequent diminution: conduct which hurts only their incidental feelings, as those of caste, or prejudice, will not inevitably do so; but, if it springs from necessary feelings, will, on the contrary, be continued at the expense of these incidental feelings, and to the final suppression of them. When men mutually behave in a way that offends some essential element in the nature of each, and all in turn have to bear the consequent suffering, there will arise a tendency to curb the desire that makes them so behave. When, instead of this, they keep hurting in each other those non-essential elements of character peculiar to a passing phase of things, and are impelled to do this by impulses that are permanently requisite, then will these non-essential elements be extirpated. Thus, the existing confusion of necessary and conventional feelings, necessary and conventional circumstances, and feelings and circumstances that are partly necessary and partly conventional, will eventually work itself clear. Conventional feelings will give way before necessary circumstances, and conventional circumstances before necessary feelings. And when, as a result of this process, complete adaptation between constitution and conditions has been arrived at, a complete classification of actions into essentially injurious and essentially beneficial, will have been arrived at also.

  If, then, we find that the one thing needful to produce ultimate subordination to these secondary limits of right conduct is, that we should have the opportunity of freely coming in contact with them—should be allowed freely to expand our natures in all directions until the available space has been filled, and the true bounds have made themselves felt—if a development of these secondary limits into practical codes of duty can only thus be accomplished, then does the supreme authority of our first law—the liberty of each limited alone by the like liberty of all—become still more manifest, seeing that that right to exercise the faculties which it asserts, must precede the unfolding of this supplementary morality. Indeed, regarding it from this point of view, we may almost say that the first law is the sole law; for we find that of the several conditions to greatest happiness it is the only one at present capable of a systematic development; and we further find that conformity to it, ensures ultimate conformity to the others.

  § 7.

  Nevertheless, it must still be admitted, that in cases where these secondary limitations to the exercise of faculties are undoubtedly transgressed, the full assertion of this law of equal freedom betrays us into an apparent dilemma. By drunkenness, or by brutality of manner, our own happiness, or the happiness of others, is diminished; and that not in an incidental but in a necessary way. And if by affirming a man’s liberty to do all that he wills so long as he respects the like liberty of every other, we imply that he is at liberty to get drunk or to behave brutally, then we fall into the inconsistency of affirming that he is at liberty to do something essentially destructive of happiness.

  Of this difficulty nothing can be said, save that it seems in part due to the impossibility of making the perfect law recognise an imperfect state, and in part to that defect in our powers of expression elsewhere exemplified (p. 39). As matters stand, however, we must deal with it as best we may. There is clearly no alternative but to declare man’s freedom to exercise his faculties; for without this freedom fulfilment of the Divine will is impossible. There is clearly no alternative but to declare the several limitations of that freedom needful for the achievement of greatest happiness. And there is clearly no alternative but to develop the first and chief of these limitations separately; seeing as we have done that a development of the others is at present impossible. Against the consequence of neglecting these secondary limitations, we must therefore guard ourselves as well as we can; supplying the place of scientific deductions from them, by such inferences as observation and experience enable us to make.

  § 8.

  Finally, however, there is satisfaction in the thought, that no such imperfection as this, can in the least vitiate any of the conclusions we are now about to draw. Liberty of action being the first essential to exercise of faculties, and therefore the first essential to happiness; and the liberty of each limited by the like liberty of all, being the form which this first essential assumes when applied to many instead of one (§ 3), it follows that this liberty of each, limited by the like liberty of all, is the rule in conformity with which society must be organised. Freedom being the pre-requisite to normal life in the individual, equal freedom becomes the pre-requisite to normal life in society. And if this law of equal freedom is the primary law of right relationship between man and man, then no desire to get fulfilled a secondary law can warrant us in breaking it.

  Now we shall find that in the unfolding of this primary limitation to the exercise of faculties into a series of practical regulations, it is impossible to recognise any secondary limitations without committing a breach of the primary one. For, in what must recognition of any secondary limitations consist? It must consist in the establishment in our social organization of certain further restrictions on the exercise of faculties besides those imposed by the law of equal freedom. And how are these further restrictions to be enforced? Manifestly, by men. Now the men who enforce them must necessarily assume in so doing a greater amount of freedom than those on whom they are enforced;—that is to say, they must transgress the primary law to prevent others transgressing secondary ones.

  Hence, in drawing from it deductions respecting the equitable constitution of society, we may safely assert in full this liberty of each limited alone by the like liberty of all—must so assert it. The neglect of other limitations will in no way affect the accuracy of our conclusions, so long as we confine ourselves to deducing from this fundamental law the just relationships of men to each other; whereas we cannot include these other limitations in our premises without vitiating those conclusions. We have no alternative therefore but, for the time being, to ignore such other limitations; leaving that partial interpretation of them which is at present possible to us, for subsequent statement.

  CHAPTER V.

  secondary derivation of a first principle.

  § 1.

  Having inquired how the Divine Idea, greatest happiness, is to be realized—having found that it is to be realized through the exercise of faculties—and having found that, to fulfil its end, such exercise of faculties must be confined within certain limits; let us now pursue the investigation a step further, and see whether there does not exist in man himself an impulse to claim that exercise, and an impulse to respect those limits. Some such provisions are clearly needful for the completion of the creative scheme. It would be quite at variance with the general law of our structure, that there should be nothing to restrain us from the undue exercise of faculties, but abstract considerations like those set forth in the last chapter. As elsewhere pointed out (p. 19), man is ruled by quite other instrumentalities than intellectual ones. The regulation of his conduct is not left to the accident of a philosophical inquiry. We may, therefore, expect to find some special agent by which the distinction between right and wrong exercise of faculties is recognised and responded to.

  § 2.

  From what he has already gathered, the reader will of course infer that this agent is that Moral Sense, in whose existence we elsewhere saw good reason to believe. And possibly he will anticipate the further inference, that this first and all-essential law, declaratory of the liberty of each limited only by the like liberty of all, is that fundamental truth of which the moral sense is to give an intuition, and which the intellect is to develop into a scientific morality.

  Of the correctness of this inference there are various proofs, upon an examination of which we must now enter. And first on the list stands the fact, that, out of some source or other in men’s minds, there keep continually coming utterances more or less completely expressive of this truth. Quite independently of any such analytical examinations as that just concluded, men perpetually exhibit a tendency to assert the equality of human rights. In all ages, but more especially in later ones, has this tendency been visible. In our own history we may detect signs of its presence as early as the time of Edward I., in whose writs of summons it was said to be “a most equitable rule, that what concerns all should be approved of by all.” How our institutions have been influenced by it may be seen in the judicial principle that “all men are equal before the law.” The doctrine that “all men are naturally equal” (of course only in so far as their claims are concerned), has not only been asserted by philanthropists like Granville Sharpe, but as Sir Robert Filmer, a once renowned champion of absolute monarchy, tells us, “Heyward, Blackwood, Barclay, and others that have bravely vindicated the rights of kings, ∗ ∗ ∗ with one consent admitted the natural liberty and equality of mankind.” Again, we find the declaration of American independence affirming that “all men have equal rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness;” and the similar assertion that “every man has an equal right with every other man to a voice in the making of the laws which all are required to obey,” was the maxim of the Complete Suffrage movement. In his essay on Civil Government, Locke, too, expresses the opinion that there is “nothing more evident than that creatures of the same species and rank, promiscuously born to the same advantages of nature, and the use of the same faculties, should also be equal one amongst another without subordination or subjection.” And those who wish for more authorities who have expressed the same conviction, may add the names of Judge Blackstone and “the judicious Hooker.”

  The sayings and doings of daily life continually imply some intuitive belief of this kind. We take for granted its universality, when we appeal to men’s sense of justice. In moments of irritation it shows itself in such expressions as—“How would you like it?” “What is that to you?” “I’ve as good a right as you,” &c. Our praises of liberty are pervaded by it; and it gives bitterness to the invectives with which we assail the oppressors of mankind. Nay, indeed, so spontaneous is this faith in the equality of human rights, that our very language embodies it. Equity and equal are from the same root; and equity literally means equalness.

  It is manifest, moreover, that some such faith is continually increasing in strength. Rightly understood, the advance from a savage to a cultivated state is the advance of its dominion. It is by their greater harmony with it that the laws, opinions, and usages of a civilized society are chiefly distinguished from those of a barbarous one. How instrumental it has been in modifying the events of the past was elsewhere hinted (p. 23). If we call to mind the political agitations that have run a successful course within these few years, and consider likewise those that are going on around us, we shall find them nearly all strongly tinctured by it. Nor can we contemplate the late European revolutions, and read the preambles to the new constitutions that have sprung out of them, without perceiving that a conviction of the equality of human rights is now stronger and more general than ever.

  Not without meaning is the continued life and growth of this conviction. He must indeed have a strange way of interpreting social phenomena, who can believe that the re-appearance of it, with ever-increasing frequency, in laws, books, agitations, revolutions, means nothing. If we analyze them, we shall find all beliefs to be in some way dependent upon mental conformation—temporary ones upon temporary characteristics of our nature—permanent ones upon its permanent characteristics. And when we find that a belief like this in the equal freedom of all men, is not only permanent, but daily gaining ground, we have good reason to conclude that it corresponds to some essential element of our moral constitution: more especially since we find that its existence is in harmony with that chief pre-requisite to greatest happiness lately dwelt upon; and that its growth is in harmony with that law of adaptation by which this greatest happiness is being wrought out.

  Such, at least, is the hypothesis here adopted. From the above accumulation of evidence it is inferred that there exists in man what may be termed an instinct of personal rights—a feeling that leads him to claim as great a share of natural privilege as is claimed by others—a feeling that leads him to repel anything like an encroachment upon what he thinks his sphere of original freedom. By virtue of this impulse, individuals, as units of the social mass, tend to assume like relationships with the atoms of matter, surrounded as these are by their respective atmospheres of repulsion as well as of attraction. And perhaps social stability may ultimately be seen to depend upon the due balance of these forces.

  § 3.

  There exists, however, a dominant sect of so-called philosophical politicians who treat with contempt this belief that men have any claims antecedent to those endorsed by governments. As disciples of Bentham, consistency requires them to do this. Accordingly, although it does violence to their secret perceptions, they boldly deny the existence of “rights” entirely. They nevertheless perpetually betray a belief in the doctrines which they professedly reject. They inadvertently talk about justice, especially when it concerns themselves, in much the same style as their opponents. They draw the same distinction between law and equity that other people do. They applaud fairness, and honour, quite as if they thought them something more than mere words. And when robbed, or assaulted, or wrongly imprisoned, they exhibit the same indignation, the same determination to oppose the aggressor, utter the same denunciations of tyranny, and the same loud demands for redress, as the sternest assertors of the rights of man. By way of explaining such inconsistencies, it is indeed alleged, that the feeling thus manifested is nothing but the result of a gradually-acquired conviction that benefits flow from some kinds of action, and evils from other kinds; and it is said that the sympathies and antipathies respectively contracted towards these, exhibit themselves, as a love of justice, and a hatred of injustice. To which supposition it was by implication elsewhere replied, that it would be equally wise to conclude that hunger springs from a conviction of the benefit of eating; or that love of offspring is the result of a wish to maintain the species!

  But it is amusing when, after all, it turns out that the ground on which these philosophers have taken their stand, and from which with such self-complacency they shower their sarcasms, is nothing but an adversary’s mine, destined to blow the vast fabric of conclusions they have based on it into nonentity. This so solid-looking principle of “the greatest happiness to the greatest number,” needs but to have a light brought near it, and lo! it explodes into the astounding assertion, that all men have equal rights to happiness (p. 22)—an assertion far more sweeping and revolutionary than any of those which are assailed with so much scorn.a .

  When we see, then, that an instinct of personal rights manifests itself unceasingly in opinions and institutions; when further we find that the attempt to trace the monitions of this instinct to experience, betrays us into an absurdity; and when lastly, the dogma of those who most sturdily deny that there is such an instinct, proves to be only another emanation from it—we find ourselves in possession of the strongest possible evidence of its existence—the testimony of all parties. We are therefore justified in considering that existence as sufficiently proved.

  § 4.

  But why, it may be asked, should there need any sentiment leading men to claim the liberty of action requisite for the due exercise of faculties, and prompting them to resist encroachments upon that liberty? Will not the several faculties themselves do this, by virtue of their desires for activity, which cannot otherwise be gratified? Surely there is no necessity for a special impulse to make a man do that which all his impulses conjointly tend to make him do.

  This is not so serious an objection as it appears to be. For although, were there no such sentiment as this supposed one, each faculty in turn might impel its possessor to oppose a diminution of its own sphere of action, yet, during the dormancy of that faculty, there would be nothing to prevent the freedom requisite for its future exercise from being infringed upon. It may, perhaps, be rejoined, that the mere consciousness that there must again occur occasions for the use of such freedom will constitute a sufficient incentive to defend it. But plausible as this supposition looks, it does not tally with facts. We do not find on inquiry, that each faculty has a special foresight—takes thought for its gratifications to come: we find, on the contrary, that to provide for the future gratification of the faculties at large, is the office of faculties appointed solely for that purpose. Thus, referring once more by way of illustration to the acquisitive instinct, we see that, when this is wanting, the desires for food, for clothing, for shelter, together with those many other desires which property minsters to, do not of themselves prompt that accumulation of property on which the continuance of their satisfaction depends. Each of them, when active, impels the individual to take means for its present fulfilment; but does not prompt him to lay by the means for its future fulfilment. To so prompt him there needs a certain amount of this acquisitive instinct, which, in pursuing its own gratification, incidentally secures to other instincts the means of their gratification. Similarly, then, with liberty of action. It is argued, that as each faculty does not look after its own particular fund of necessaries, so neither does it look after its own particular sphere of activity; and that as there is a special faculty to which the providing of a general fund of necessaries is consigned, so likewise is there a special faculty to which the maintenance of a general sphere of activity is consigned. Or perhaps we may most clearly express the relationship in which these two faculties stand to the rest, by saying, that whilst it is the function of the one to accumulate the matter on which the faculties at large are to be exercised, it is the function of the other to preserve the freedom of motion by which that matter is both obtained and made use of.

  § 5.

  Seeing, however, that this instinct of personal rights is a purely selfish instinct, leading each man to assert and defend his own liberty of action, there remains the question—Whence comes our perception of the rights of others?

  The way to a solution of this difficulty has been opened by Adam Smith in his “Theory of Moral Sentiments.” It is the aim of that work to show that the proper regulation of our conduct to one another, is secured by means of a faculty whose function it is to excite in each being the emotions displayed by surrounding ones — a faculty which awakens a like state of sentiment, or, as he terms it, “a fellow feeling with the passions of others”—the faculty, in short, which we commonly call Sympathy. As illustrations of the mode in which this agent acts, he quotes cases like these:—

  “Persons of delicate fibres, and weak constitution of body, complain that in looking on the sores and ulcers which are exposed by beggars in the streets, they are apt to feel an itching or uneasy sensation in the corresponding part of their own bodies.” “Men of most robust make observe, that in looking upon sore eyes they often feel a very sensible soreness in their own.” “Our joy for the deliverance of those heroes of tragedy or romance who interest us, is as sincere as our grief for their distress, and our fellow-feeling for their misery, is not more real than that for their happiness.” “We blush for the impudence and rudeness of another, though he himself appears to have no sense of the impropriety of his behaviour.”

  To these facts cited by Adam Smith, may be added many others of like import; such as that people—women especially—start or shriek on seeing an accident occur to others; that unpractised assistants at surgical operations often faint; that out of the soldiers drawn up to witness a flogging, usually several drop down in the ranks; that a boy has been known to die on witnessing an execution. We have all experienced the uncomfortable feeling of shame produced in us by the blunders and confusion of a nervous speaker; and most likely every one has some time or other been put into a horrible tremor on seeing another at the edge of a precipice. The converse action of the faculty is equally observable. Thus, we find ourselves unable to avoid joining in the merriment of our friends, whilst unaware of its cause; and children, much to their annoyance, are often forced to laugh in the midst of their tears, by witnessing the laughter of those around them. These and many like evidences prove that, as Burke says, “sympathy must be considered as a sort of substitution by which we are put into the place of another man, and affected in many respects as he is affected.”

  In tracing our benevolent actions to the influence of such a faculty—in concluding that we are led to relieve the miseries of others from a desire to rid ourselves of the pain given by the sight of misery, and to make others happy, because we participate in their happiness, Adam Smith puts forth what seems to be a quite satisfactory theory. But he has overlooked one of its most important applications. Not recognising any such impulse as that which urges men to maintain their claims, he did not see that their respect for the claims of others, may be explained in the same way. He did not perceive that the sentiment of justice is nothing but a sympathetic affection of the instinct of personal rights—a sort of reflex function of it. Such, however, must be the case, if that instinct exists, and if this hypothesis of Adam Smith’s be true. Here lies the explanation of those qualms of conscience, as we call them, felt by men who have committed dishonest actions. It is through this instrumentality that we receive satisfaction on paying another what is due to him. And with these two faculties also, originate that indignation which narratives of political oppression excite in us, and that gnashing of the teeth with which we read of the slave-dealer’s barbarities.

  It was elsewhere hinted (p. 71), that though we must keep up the distinction between them, it is nevertheless true that justice and beneficence have a common root, and the reader will now at once perceive that the common root is—Sympathy. All the actions properly classified under the one, and which we describe as fair, equitable, upright, spring from the sympathetic excitement of the instinct of personal rights; whilst those usually grouped under the other, as mercy, charity, good-nature, generosity, amiability, considerateness, are due to the action of Sympathy upon one or more of the other feelings.

  § 6.

  In support of the foregoing theory much detailed evidence can be adduced. If it be true that men’s perceptions of justice are generated in the way alleged, it will follow that, other things equal, those who have the strongest sense of their own rights, will have the strongest sense of the rights of their neighbours. And, by observing whether this is the case or not, we may put the theory to the proof. Let us do this.

  The first illustration that suggests itself is afforded by the Society of Friends. Ever since they appeared in the days of Charles I., the members of that body have been remarkable for their determined assertion of personal liberty. They have shown it in their continued resistance to ecclesiastical power; in the obstinacy with which they successfully defied persecution; in their still-continued refusal to pay church-rates; and even in their creed, which does not permit a priesthood. Observe, now, how the sentiment which these peculiarities imply has manifested itself sympathetically. Penn and his followers were the only emigrants of their age who made any acknowledgment to the aborigines for the land they colonized. Of this same sect were the philanthropists who commenced the agitation for abolishing the slave trade; and who were most energetic in carrying it on. Amongst lunatic asylums, the York Retreat was one of the first, if not the first, in which a non-coercive treatment of the insane was adopted. They were Quakers too, who years ago began publicly to exclaim against the injustice as well as the cruelty of war. And, whilst it may be true that in business they are firm in the assertion of their claims, it is not less true that on the whole they are remarkable for honest dealing.

  The English national character, as contrasted with that of other races, will supply a further illustration. We are universally distinguished for our jealous love of freedom—for the firm maintenance of our rights. At the same time we are not less distinguished for the greater equity of our general conduct. Although our behaviour to the natives of lands on which we have settled has been anything but praiseworthy, it has never been so abominable as that of the Spaniards and others. According to all accounts English merchants are noted everywhere for good faith and straightforwardness. Even amongst the most brutal of our population—even in the prize-ring itself, there is shown in that maxim which forbids the striking of a man when down, a greater sense of what is fair than the people of other countries show. And during these latter times, in which the popular demand for equal political rights has been so loud and so increasing, we have, as a nation, proved our greater regard for the rights of others, by an attempt to put down slavery all over the world.

  Conversely, we find that those who have not a strong sense of what is just to themselves, are likewise deficient in a sense of what is just to their fellow men. This has long been a common remark. As one of our living writers puts it—the tyrant is nothing but a slave turned inside out. In earlier days, when feudal lords were vassals to the king, they were also despots to their retainers. In our own time, the Russian noble is alike a serf to his autocrat, and an autocrat to his serf. It is remarked even by school-boys, that the bully is the most ready of all to knock under to a bigger bully. We constantly observe that those who fawn upon the great are overbearing to their inferiors. That “emancipated slaves exceed all other owners (of slaves) in cruelty and oppression,”a is a truth established on numerous authorities. And that where opportunity offers the submissive nature becomes a tyrannical one, is further illustrated by the fact, that the negroes are frequently caught and sold by their own kings.

  Thus we find the proposed theory to be supported both by direct and converse evidence. One qualification must be made, however. There is no necessary connection between a sense of what is due to self, and a sense of what is due to others. Sympathy and instinct of rights do not always co-exist in equal strength any more than other faculties do. Either of them may be present in normal amount, whilst the other is almost wanting. And, if devoid of sympathy, it is possible for a man who has a sufficient impulse to assert his own claims, to show no corresponding respect for the claims of his fellows. The instinct of rights being of itself entirely selfish, merely impels its possessor to maintain his own privileges. Only by the sympathetic excitement of it, is a desire to behave equitably to others awakened; and when sympathy is absent such a desire is impossible. Nevertheless this does not affect the general proposition, that where there exists the usual amount of sympathy, respect for the rights of others will be great or small, according as the amount of the instinct of personal rights is great or small. And thus in the average of cases, we may safely conclude that a man’s sense of justice to himself, and his sense of justice to his neighbours, bear a constant ratio to each other.

  § 7.

  Further proof that there exists the mental arrangement here described, may be found in the fact, that some of the peculiar moral notions traceable to it are perfectly in harmony with certain of the abstract conclusions arrived at in the preceding chapter. We find in ourselves a conviction, for which we can give no satisfactory reason, that we are free, if we please, to do particular things which it is yet blamable to do. Though it may greatly diminish his happiness, a man feels that he has a right, if he likes, to cut off a limb, or to destroy his property. Whilst we condemn the want of consideration he shows towards some miserable debtor, we yet admit that the hard creditor is, in strict justice, entitled to the uttermost farthing. Notwithstanding our disgust at the selfishness of one who refuses to afford some friendly accommodation, we cannot deny that he is quite at liberty so to refuse. Now these perceptions, which, if the hypothesis be true, are referable to the instinct of personal rights acting in the one case directly, and in the other cases sympathetically, quite accord with foregoing inferences. We found that the law of equal freedom was the fundamental law. We found (p. 82) that no other limitations of activity could be as authoritative as that which it sets up. And we found further (p. 89) that in this, our state of adaptation, it would be wrong to establish any fixed boundary to the liberty of each, save the similar liberty of others. Such a correspondence between our instinctive beliefs, and the conclusions previously arrived at, lends additional probability to the hypothesis here advanced.

  § 8.

  That there exists in us a mental mechanism by which the essential pre-requisite to greatest happiness is recognised and enforced, seems therefore abundantly manifest. We find the general principles of our structure to imply some such provision. In that Moral Sense, of whose existence we elsewhere saw the probability, we have an agent apparently answering to the requirement; and in this first condition to greatest happiness, we discover the axiom which the Moral Sense was to respond to. That man does possess a feeling which responds to this axiom, is evidenced by the more or less complete expression spontaneously given to it in political dogmas, in laws, and in the sayings of daily life: further proof of its existence being found in the fact, that those who nominally repudiate the belief it gives utterance to, themselves profess that belief in a disguised and incorrect form. By an analogy drawn from the impulse to accumulate, we are shown that an impulse to maintain liberty of action, is most likely essential to the completeness of the human constitution. How this impulse to maintain liberty of action can generate regard for the liberty of action of others, is explicable by an extension of Adam Smith’s doctrine of Sympathy; and that our sentiment of justice is really due to a sympathetic excitement of such impulse, numerous facts conspire to prove. Lastly, we find that the convictions originated in us after the manner here supposed, correspond with the results of abstract reasoning, not only as to the possession by each of a right to exercise his faculties, and as to a consequent limit of that right, but as to the peculiar sacredness of that right and this limit.

  CHAPTER VI.

  first principle.

  § 1.

  Thus are we brought by several routes to the same conclusion. Whether we reason our way from those fixed conditions under which only the Divine Idea—greatest happiness, can be realized—whether we draw our inferences from man’s constitution, considering him as a congeries of faculties—or whether we listen to the monitions of a certain mental agency, which seems to have the function of guiding us in this matter, we are alike taught as the law of right social relationships, that—Every man has freedom to do all that he wills, provided he infringes not the equal freedom of any other man. Though further qualifications of the liberty of action thus asserted may be necessary, yet we have seen (p. 89) that in the just regulation of a community no further qualifications of it can be recognised. Such further qualifications must ever remain for private and individual application. We must therefore adopt this law of equal freedom in its entirety, as the law on which a correct system of equity is to be based.

  § 2.

  Some will, perhaps, object to this first principle, that being in the nature of an axiomatic truth—standing towards the inferences to be drawn from it in the position of one, it ought to be recognisable by all; which it is not.

  Respecting the fact thus alleged, that there have been, and are, men impervious to this first principle, there can be no question. Probably it would have been dissented from by Aristotle, who considered it a “self-evident maxim that nature intended barbarians to be slaves.” Cardinal Julian, who “abhorred the impiety of keeping faith with infidels,” might possibly have disputed it. It is a doctrine which would scarcely have suited the abbot Guibert, who, in his sermons, called the free cities of France “those execrable communities, where serfs, against law and justice, withdraw themselves from the power of their lords.” And perhaps the Highlanders, who in 1748 were reluctant to receive their freedom on the abolition of the heritable jurisdictions, would not have admitted it. But the confession that the truth of this first principle is not self-evident to all, by no means invalidates it. The Bushman can only count as high as three; yet arithmetic is a fact: and we have got a Calculus of Functions by the aid of which we find new planets. As, then, the disability of the savage to perceive the elementary truths of number is no argument against their existence, and no obstacle to their discovery and development, so, the circumstance that some do not see the law of equal freedom to be an elementary truth of ethics, does not prevent its being one.

  So far indeed is this difference in men’s moral perceptions from being a difficulty in our way, that it serves to illustrate a doctrine already set forth. As explained in Chapter II., man’s original circumstances “required that he should sacrifice the welfare of other beings to his own;” whereas his present circumstances require that “each individual shall have such desires only as may be fully satisfied without trenching upon the ability of other individuals to obtain like satisfaction.” And it was pointed out that, in virtue of the law of adaptation, the human constitution is changing form the form that fitted it to the first set of conditions to a form fitting it for the last. Now it is by the growth of those two faculties which together originate what we term a Moral Sense, that fitness for these last conditions is secured. In proportion to the strengths of sympathy, and the instinct of personal rights, will be the impulse to conform to the law of equal freedom. And in the mode elsewhere shown (p. 26), the impulse to conform to this law will generate a correlative belief in it. Only, therefore, after the process of adaptation has made considerable advance, can there arise either subordination to this law, or a perception of its truth. And hence any general recognition of it during the earlier stages of social development must not be looked for.

  § 3.

  To the direct evidence that has been accumulated in proof of our first principle, may now, however, be added abundant indirect evidence furnished by the absurdities into which a denial of it betrays us. He who asserts that the law of equal freedom is not true, that is, he who asserts that men have not equal rights, has two alternatives. He may either say that men have no rights at all, or that they have unequal rights. Let us examine these positions.

  Foremost of those who deny rights altogether, stands that same Sir Robert Filmer already named, with his dogma, that “men are not naturally free.” Starting thus, he readily finds his way to the conclusion, that the only proper form of government is an absolute monarchy. For, if men are not naturally free, that is, if men have naturally no rights, then, he only has rights to whom they are specially given by God. From which inference to “the divine right of kings” is an easy step. It has become very manifest in later times, however, that this divine right of kings, means the divine right of any one who can get uppermost. For since, according to its assertors, no man can be supposed to occupy the position of supreme ruler in opposition to the will of the Deity, it follows that whoever attains to that position, whether by fair means or by foul, be he legitimate or be he usurper, has Divine authority on his side. So that to say “men are not naturally free,” is to say that though men have no rights, yet whoever can get power to coerce the rest has a right to do so!

  § 4.

  But this doctrine betrays its supporters into a still more serious dilemma. On referring back to Chapter IV., we shall find that the denial of rights amounts to a libel on the Deity. For, as we there saw, that which a man has a right to, is that which God intended for him. And to say that man has no right to freedom of action, is to say that God did not mean him to have it. Without freedom of action, however, man cannot fulfil his desires. Then God willed that he should not fulfil them. But the non-fulfilment of the desires produces misery. Therefore, God intended that he should be miserable. By which absurdity we may safely consider the position disproved.

  § 5.

  For espousing the other alternative, namely, that men’s rights are unequal, no conceivable motive can be assigned but a desire to ensure the supremacy of the best. There are not a few good sort of people who commonly reply to strictures upon social inequalities by quoting that couplet, which, beginning with the postulate— “Order is heaven’s first law,” ends with the inference— “Some are, and must be, greater than the rest.” And on this maxim, with ludicrous inconsistency, they found a defence of conventional distinctions. Not daring to trust “heaven’s first law” to itself, they wish to help it by artificial classification. They fear that the desired “order” will not be maintained unless it is looked after; and so these “greater than the rest” are picked out by official divination; ranged in tiers; and ticketed with their respective values.

  These people, and others akin to them, who hold that rights are unequal, belong to that large class who believe in nothing but externals—who can recognise no forces but those of prescription—votes, authority, rank, and the like—who “adore an institution, and do not see that it is founded on a thought.” A modicum of penetration, however, would show them that the great need none of this patronage at their hands. Real superiority will assert itself without factitious aid. Do away with disturbing arrangements, and, just in proportion to the force resident in each, will be the influence each exercises upon the rest. Allow things to take their natural course, and if a man have in him that which transcends the common, it must eventually draw to itself respect and obedience.

  § 6.

  But even were it admitted that, to ensure supremacy of the best, liberty of action should be apportioned out to men in the ratio of their merits, the maintainers of unequal rights would be none the forwarder; for there remains the question—how are relative merits to be determined? Where are the standards by which we may test the respective values of different kinds and degrees of ability? We cannot appeal to public opinion, for it is not uniform. And were it uniform, there is no reason to think that it would be correct. On the contrary, if anything is to be gathered from surrounding facts, very erroneous estimates would be formed by it. Can confidence be placed in the judgments of men who subscribe Hudson-testimonials, and yet leave the original projector of railways to die in poverty? Are those fit to decide upon comparative greatness who ornament their drawing-room tables with a copy of Burke’s Peerage; who read through the lists of court presentations, and gossip about the movements of the haut ton—people who would trace back their lineage to some bandit baron—some Front-debœuf, rather than to a Watt or an Arkwright? Is any dependence to be placed on the decision of an authority which has erected half-a-dozen public monuments to its Wellington, and none to its Shakspeare, its Newton, or its Bacon?—an authority that awards to the door-keeper of its House of Commons £74 a year more than to its astronomer royal? According to Johnson, “the chief glory of every people arises from its authors:” yet our literary men are less honoured than people of title; the writers of our leading journals are unknown; and we see much more respect shown to a Rothschild or a Baring than to our Faradays and our Owens.

  If, then, public opinion is so fallible a test of relative merits, where shall a trustworthy test be found? Manifestly, if the freedom to which each is entitled varies with his worth, some satisfactory mode of estimating worth must be discovered before any settlement of men’s right relationships can become possible. Who now will point out such a mode?

  § 7.

  Even were a still further admission made—even were we to assume that men’s respective claims could be fairly rated—it would still be impossible to reduce the theory of unequal rights to practice. We should yet have to find a rule by which to allot these different shares of privilege. Where is the scale that would enable us to mark off the portion proper for each individual? What unit of measure must be used for this kind of division? Supposing a shopkeeper’s rights to be symbolized by ten and a fraction, what number will represent those of a doctor? What multiple are the liberties of a banker of those of a seamstress? Given two artists, one half as clever again as the other, it is required to find the limits within which each may exercise his faculties. As the greatness of a prime minister is to that of a ploughboy, so is full freedom of action to—the desired answer. Here are a few out of numberless like questions. When a method for their solution has been found, it will be time enough to reconsider the theory of unequal rights.

  § 8.

  Thus to the several positive reasons for affirming that every man has freedom to do all that he wills, provided he infringes not the equal freedom of any other man, we must now add the foregoing negative ones. Neither of the alternatives, to which the rejection of this first principle leaves us, is acceptable. The doctrine that men have naturally no rights leads to the awkward inferences, that might makes right, and that the Deity is a malevolent being. Whilst to say that men have unequal rights is to assume two impossibilities; namely, that we are able to determine the ratios of men’s merits; and having done this, to assign to each his due proportion of privilege.

  CHAPTER VII.

  application of this first principle.

  § 1.

  The process by which we may develop this first principle into a system of equity, is sufficiently obvious. We have just to distinguish the actions that are included under its permit, from those which are excluded by it—to find what lies inside the sphere appointed for each individual, and what outside. Our aim must be to discover how far the territory of may extends, and where it borders upon that of may not. We shall have to consider of every deed, whether, in committing it, a man does, or does not, trespass upon the ordained freedom of his neighbour—whether, when placed side by side, the shares of liberty the two parties respectively assume are equal. And by thus separating that which can be done by each without trenching on the privileges of others, from that which cannot be so done, we may classify actions into lawful and unlawful.

  § 2.

  Difficulties may now and then occur in the performance of this process. We shall, perhaps, occasionally find ourselves unable to decide whether a given action does or does not trespass against the law of equal freedom. But such an admission by no means implies any defect in that law. It merely implies human incapacity—an incapacity which puts a limit to our discovery of physical as well as of moral truth. It is for instance, quite beyond the power of any mathematician to state in degrees and minutes, the angle at which a man may lean without falling. Not being able to find accurately the centre of gravity of a man’s body, he cannot say with certainty whether, at a given inclination, the line of direction will or will not fall outside the base. But we do not, therefore, take exception to the first principles of mechanics. We know that, in spite of our inability to follow out those first principles to all their consequences, the stability or instability of a man’s attitude might still be accurately determined by them, were our perceptions competent to take in all the conditions of such a problem. Similarly, it is argued that, although there may possibly arise out of the more complex social relationships, questions that are apparently not soluble by comparing the respective amounts of freedom the concerned parties assume, it must nevertheless be granted that, whether we see it or not, their claims are either equal or unequal, and the dependent actions right or wrong accordingly.

  § 3.

  For those who have faith in the abstract, and who dare to follow wherever an acknowledged doctrine may lead, it will be sufficient to point out the several conclusions which may be drawn from this first principle, and to leave those conclusions to stand or fall by the logicalness of their deduction. It is to be feared, however, that results arrived at by so purely philosophical a process, will weigh but little with the majority. People who “cannot understand a principle until its light falls upon a fact,” are not to be swayed by inferences so deduced. Wedded as they are to the guidance of a superficial experience, they are deaf to the enunciation of those laws, of which the complex phenomena they draw their experience from are the workings out. We have, nevertheless, to deal with such as best we may; and, to meet their case, evidence of a so-called “practical” nature must be adduced. Whenever, therefore, we arrive at inferences conflicting with the general opinion, it is intended to follow up the argument by showing that “experience,” rightly interpreted, enforces these inferences.

  CHAPTER VIII.

  the rights of life and personal liberty.

  § 1.

  These are such self-evident corollaries from our first principle as scarcely to need a separate statement. If every man has freedom to do all that he wills, provided he infringes not the equal freedom of any other man, it is manifest that he has a claim to his life: for without it he can do nothing that he has willed; and to his personal liberty: for the withdrawal of it partially, if not wholly, restrains him from the fulfilment of his will. It is just as clear, too, that each man is forbidden to deprive his fellow of life or liberty: inasmuch as he cannot do this without breaking the law, which, in asserting his freedom, declares that he shall not infringe “the equal freedom of any other.” For he who is killed or enslaved is obviously no longer equally free with his killer or enslaver.

  § 2.

  It is unnecessary to commend these conclusions by any exposition of advantages. All spontaneously assent to them. There are a few simple truths of which the moral sense gives a sufficiently clear perception without the aid of logic; and these are of the number. The time was, indeed, when the law of adaptation having as yet produced but little effect, the feelings that respond to these truths were comparatively undeveloped, and consequently produced no spontaneous recognition of them. And did we live in the old Assyrian days when a subject was the property of his king—were it our custom to chain a porter to his cell on one side of the door, opposite to the kennel of the house-dog on the other, as in Athens and Rome—did we sacrifice men to the gods, or send our prisoners of war to be torn to pieces in an amphitheatre, it might be needful to enforce the doctrines here enunciated, by showing the expediency of acting upon them. But happily we live in better times; and may congratulate ourselves on having reached a phase of civilization, in which the rights of life and personal liberty no longer require inculcating.

  § 3.

  Into such questions as the punishment of death, the perpetual imprisonment of criminals, and the like, we cannot here enter. These implying, as they do, antecedent infractions of the law, and being, as they are, remedial measures for a diseased moral state, belong to what has been elsewhere termed Therapeutical Ethics, with which we have now nothing to do.

  CHAPTER IX.

  the right to the use of the earth.

  § 1.

  Given a race of beings having like claims to pursue the objects of their desires—given a world adapted to the gratification of those desires—a world into which such beings are similarly born, and it unavoidably follows that they have equal rights to the use of this world. For if each of them “has freedom to do all that he wills provided he infringes not the equal freedom of any other,” then each of them is free to use the earth for the satisfaction of his wants, provided he allows all others the same liberty. And conversely, it is manifest that no one, or part of them, may use the earth in such a way as to prevent the rest from similarly using it; seeing that to do this is to assume greater freedom than the rest, and consequently to break the law.

  § 2.

  Equity, therefore, does not permit property in land. For if one portion of the earth’s surface may justly become the possession of an individual, and may be held by him for his sole use and benefit, as a thing to which he has an exclusive right, then other portions of the earth’s surface may be so held; and eventually the whole of the earth’s surface may be so held; and our planet may thus lapse altogether into private hands. Observe now the dilemma to which this leads. Supposing the entire habitable globe to be so enclosed, it follows that if the landowners have a valid right to its surface, all who are not landowners, have no right at all to its surface. Hence, such can exist on the earth by sufferance only. They are all trespassers. Save by the permission of the lords of the soil, they can have no room for the soles of their feet. Nay, should the others think fit to deny them a resting-place, these landless men might equitably be expelled from the earth altogether. If, then, the assumption that land can be held as property, involves that the whole globe may become the private domain of a part of its inhabitants; and if, by consequence, the rest of its inhabitants can then exercise their faculties—can then exist even—only by consent of the landowners; it is manifest, that an exclusive possession of the soil necessitates an infringement of the law of equal freedom. For, men who cannot “live and move and have their being” without the leave of others, cannot be equally free with those others.

  § 3.

  Passing from the consideration of the possible, to that of the actual, we find yet further reason to deny the rectitude of property in land. It can never be pretended that the existing titles to such property are legitimate. Should any one think so, let him look in the chronicles. Violence, fraud, the prerogative of force, the claims of superior cunning—these are the sources to which those titles may be traced. The original deeds were written with the sword, rather than with the pen: not lawyers, but soldiers, were the conveyancers: blows were the current coin given in payment; and for seals, blood was used in preference to wax. Could valid claims be thus constituted? Hardly. And if not; what becomes of the pretensions of all subsequent holders of estates so obtained? Does sale or bequest generate a right where it did not previously exist? Would the original claimants be nonsuited at the bar of reason, because the thing stolen from them had changed hands? Certainly not. And if one act of transfer can give no title, can many? No: though nothing be multiplied for ever, it will not produce one. Even the law recognises this principle. An existing holder must, if called upon, substantiate the claims of those from whom he purchased or inherited his property; and any flaw in the original parchment, even though the property should have had a score intermediate owners, quashes his right.

  “But Time,” say some, “is a great legaliser. Immemorial possession must be taken to constitute a legitimate claim. That which has been held from age to age as private property, and has been bought and sold as such, must now be considered as irrevocably belonging to individuals.” To which proposition a willing assent shall be given when its propounders can assign it a definite meaning. To do this, however, they must find satisfactory answers to such questions as—How long does it take for what was originally a wrong to grow into a right? At what rate per annum do invalid claims become valid? If a title gets perfect in a thousand years, how much more than perfect will it be in two thousand years?—and so forth. For the solution of which they will require a new calculus.

  Whether it may be expedient to admit claims of a certain standing, is not the point. We have here nothing to do with considerations of conventional privilege or legislative convenience. We have simply to inquire what is the verdict given by pure equity in the matter. And this verdict enjoins a protest against every existing pretension to the individual possession of the soil; and dictates the assertion, that the right of mankind at large to the earth’s surface is still valid; all deeds, customs, and laws, notwithstanding.

  § 4.

  Not only have present land tenures an indefensible origin, but it is impossible to discover any mode in which land can become private property. Cultivation is commonly considered to give a legitimate title. He who has reclaimed a tract of ground from its primitive wildness, is supposed to have thereby made it his own. But if his right is disputed, by what system of logic can he vindicate it? Let us listen a moment to his pleadings.

  “Hallo, you Sir,” cries the cosmopolite to some backwoodsman, smoking at the door of his shanty, “by what authority do you take possession of these acres that you have cleared; round which you have put up a snake-fence, and on which you have built this log-house?”

  “By what authority? I squatted here because there was no one to say nay—because I was as much at liberty to do so as any other man. Besides, now that I have cut down the wood, and ploughed and cropped the ground, this farm is more mine than yours, or anybody’s; and I mean to keep it.”

  “Ay, so you all say. But I do not yet see how you have substantiated your claim. When you came here you found the land producing trees—sugar-maples, perhaps; or may be it was covered with prairie-grass and wild strawberries. Well, instead of these, you made it yield wheat, or maize, or tobacco. Now I want to understand how, by exterminating one set of plants, and making the soil bear another set in their place, you have constituted yourself lord of this soil for all succeeding time.”

  “Oh, those natural products which I destroyed were of little or no use; whereas I caused the earth to bring forth things good for food—things that help to give life and happiness.”

  “Still you have not shown why such a process makes the portion of earth you have so modified yours. What is it that you have done? You have turned over the soil to a few inches in depth with a spade or a plough; you have scattered over this prepared surface a few seeds; and you have gathered the fruits which the sun, rain, and air, helped the soil to produce. Just tell me, if you please, by what magic have these acts made you sole owner of that vast mass of matter, having for its base the surface of your estate, and for its apex the centre of the globe? all of which it appears you would monopolise to yourself and your descendants for ever.”

  “Well, if it isn’t mine, whose is it? I have dispossessed nobody. When I crossed the Mississippi yonder, I found nothing but the silent woods. If some one else had settled here, and made this clearing, he would have had as good a right to the location as I have. I have done nothing but what any other person was at liberty to do had he come before me. Whilst they were unreclaimed, these lands belonged to all men—as much to one as to another—and they are now mine simply because I was the first to discover and improve them.”

  “You say truly, when you say that ‘whilst they were unreclaimed these lands belonged to all men.’ And it is my duty to tell you that they belong to all men still; and that your ‘improvements’ as you call them, cannot vitiate the claim of all men. You may plough and harrow, and sow and reap; you may turn over the soil as often as you like; but all your maltipulations will fail to make that soil yours, which was not yours to begin with. Let me put a case. Suppose now that in the course of your wanderings you come upon an empty house, which in spite of its dilapidated state takes your fancy; suppose that with the intention of making it your abode you expend much time and trouble in repairing it—that you paint and paper, and whitewash, and at considerable cost bring it into a habitable state. Suppose further, that on some fatal day a stranger is announced, who turns out to be the heir to whom this house has been bequeathed; and that this professed heir is prepared with all the necessary proofs of his identity: what becomes of your improvements? Do they give you a valid title to the house? Do they quash the title of the original claimant?”

  “No.”

  “Neither then do your pioneering operations give you a valid title to this land. Neither do they quash the title of its original claimants—the human race. The world is God’s bequest to mankind. All men are joint heirs to it; you amongst the number. And because you have taken up your residence on a certain part of it, and have subdued, cultivated, beautified that part—improved it as you say, you are not therefore warranted in appropriating it as entirely private property. At least if you do so, you may at any moment be justly expelled by the lawful owner—Society.”

  “Well, but surely you would not eject me without making some recompense for the great additional value I have given to this tract, by reducing what was a wilderness into fertile fields. You would not turn me adrift and deprive me of all the benefit of those years of toil it has cost me to bring this spot into its present state.”

  “Of course not: just as in the case of the house, you would have an equitable title to compensation from the proprietor for repairs and new fittings, so the community cannot justly take possession of this estate, without paying for all that you have done to it. This extra worth which your labour has imparted to it is fairly yours; and although you have, without leave, busied yourself in bettering what belongs to the community, yet no doubt the community will duly discharge your claim. But admitting this, is quite a different thing from recognising your right to the land itself. It may be true that you are entitled to compensation for the improvements this enclosure has received at your hands; and at the same time it may be equally true that no act, form, proceeding, or ceremony, can make this enclosure your private property.”

  § 5.

  It does indeed at first sight seem possible for the earth to become the exclusive possession of individuals by some process of equitable distribution. “Why,” it may be asked, “should not men agree to a fair subdivision? If all are co-heirs, why may not the estate be equally apportioned, and each be afterwards perfect master of his own share?”

  To this question it may in the first place be replied, that such a division is vetoed by the difficulty of fixing the values of respective tracts of land. Variations in productiveness, different degrees of accessibility, advantages of climate, proximity to the centres of civilisation—these, and other such considerations, remove the problem out of the sphere of mere mensuration into the region of impossibility.

  But, waiving this, let us inquire who are to be the allottees. Shall adult males, and all who have reached twenty-one on a specified day, be the fortunate individuals? If so, what is to be done with those who come of age on the morrow? Is it proposed that each man, woman, and child, shall have a section? If so, what becomes of all who are to be born next year? And what will be the fate of those whose fathers sell their estates and squander the proceeds? These portionless ones must constitute a class already described as having no right to a resting-place on earth—as living by the sufferance of their fellow men—as being practically serfs. And the existence of such a class is wholly at variance with the law of equal freedom.

  Until therefore, we can produce a valid commission authorizing us to make this distribution—until it can be proved that God has given one charter of privileges to one generation, and another to the next—until we can demonstrate that men born after a certain date are doomed to slavery, we must consider that no such allotment is permissible.

  § 6.

  Probably some will regard the difficulties inseparable from individual ownership of the soil, as caused by pushing to excess a doctrine applicable only within rational limits. This is a very favourite style of thinking with some. There are people who hate anything in the shape of exact conclusions; and these are of them. According to such, the right is never in either extreme, but always half way between the extremes. They are continually trying to reconcile Yes and No. Ifs, and buts, and excepts, are their delight. They have so great a faith in “the judicious mean” that they would scarcely believe an oracle, if it uttered a full-length principle. Were you to inquire of them whether the earth turns on its axis from East to West, or from West to East, you might almost expect the reply— “A little of both,” or “Not exactly either.” It is doubtful whether they would assent to the axiom that the whole is greater than its part, without making some qualification. They have a passion for compromises. To meet their taste, Truth must always be spiced with a little Error. They cannot conceive of a pure, definite, entire, and unlimited law. And hence, in discussions like the present, they are constantly petitioning for limitations—always wishing to abate, and modify, and moderate—ever protesting against doctrines being pursued to their ultimate consequences.

  But it behoves such to recollect, that ethical truth is as exact and as peremptory as physical truth; and that in this matter of land-tenure, the verdict of morality must be distinctly yea or nay. Either men have a right to make the soil private property, or they have not. There is no medium. We must choose one of the two positions. There can be no half-and-half opinion. In the nature of things the fact must be either one way or the other.

  If men have not such a right, we are at once delivered from the several predicaments already pointed out. If they have such a right, then is that right absolute, sacred, not on any pretence to be violated. If they have such a right, then is his Grace of Leeds justified in warning-off tourists from Ben Mac Dhui, the Duke of Atholl in closing Glen Tilt, the Duke of Buccleugh in denying sites to the Free Church, and the Duke of Sutherland in banishing the Highlanders to make room for sheep-walks. If they have such a right, then it would be proper for the sole proprietor of any kingdom—a Jersey or Guernsey, for example—to impose just what regulations he might choose on its inhabitants—to tell them that they should not live on his property, unless they professed a certain religion, spoke a particular language, paid him a specified reverence, adopted an authorized dress, and conformed to all other conditions he might see fit to make. If they have such a right, then is there truth in that tenet of the ultra-Tory school, that the landowners are the only legitimate rulers of a country—that the people at large remain in it only by the landowners’ permission, and ought consequently to submit to the landowners’ rule, and respect whatever institutions the landowners set up. There is no escape from these inferences. They are necessary corollaries to the theory that the earth can become individual property. And they can only be repudiated by denying that theory.

  § 7.

  After all, nobody does implicitly believe in landlordism. We hear of estates being held under the king, that is, the State; or of their being kept in trust for the public benefit; and not that they are the inalienable possessions of their nominal owners. Moreover, we daily deny landlordism by our legislation. Is a canal, a railway, or a turnpike road to be made? we do not scruple to seize just as many acres as may be requisite; allowing the holders compensation for the capital invested. We do not wait for consent. An Act of Parliament supersedes the authority of title deeds, and serves proprietors with notices to quit, whether they will or not. Either this is equitable, or it is not. Either the public are free to resume as much of the earth’s surface as they think fit, or the titles of the landowners must be considered absolute, and all national works must be postponed until lords and squires please to part with the requisite slices of their estates. If we decide that the claims of individual ownership must give way, then we imply that the right of the national at large to the soil is supreme—that the right of private possession only exists by general consent—that general consent being withdrawn it ceases—that general consent being withdrawn it ceases—or, in other words, that it is no right at all.

  § 8.

  “But to what does this doctrine, that men are equally entitled to the use of the earth, lead? Must we return to the times of uninclosed wilds, and subsist on roots, berries, and game? Or are we to be left to the management fo Messrs. Fourrier, Owen, Louis Blanc, and Co.?”

  Neither. Such a doctrine is consistent with the highest state of civilization; may be carried out without involving a community of goods; and need cause no very serious revolution in existing arrangements. The change required would simply be a change of landlords. Separate ownerships would merge into the joint-stock ownership of the public. Instead of being in the possession of individuals, the country would be he held by the great corporate body—Society. Instead of leasing his acres from an isolated proprietor, the farmer would lease them from the nation. Instead of paying his rent to the agent of Sir John or his Grace, he would pay it to an agent or deputy-agent of the community. Stewards would be public officials instead of private ones; and tenancy the only land tenure.

  A state of things so ordered would be in perfect harmony with the moral law. Under it all men would be equally landlords; all men would be alike free to become tenants. A, B, C, and the rest, might compete for a vacant farm as now, and one of them might take that farm, without in any way violating the principles of pure equity. All would be equally free to bid; all would be equally free to refrain. And when the farm had been let to A, B, or C, all parties would have done that which they willed—the one in choosing to pay a given sum to his fellow-men for the use of certain lands—the others in refusing to pay that sum. Clearly, therefore, on such a system, the earth might be inclosed, occupied, and cultivated, in entire subordination to the law of equal freedom.

  § 9.

  No doubt great difficulties must attend the resumption, by mankind at large, of their rights to the soil. The question of compensation to existing proprietors is a complicated one—one that perhaps cannot be settled in a strictly-equitable manner. Had we to deal with the parties who originally robbed the human race of its heritage, we might make short work of the matter. But, unfortunately, most of our present landowners are men who have, either mediately or immediately—either by their own acts, or by the acts of their ancestors—given for their estates, equivalents of honestly-earned wealth, believing that they were investing their savings in a legitimate manner. To justly estimate and liquidate the claims of such, is one of the most intricate problems society will one day have to solve. But with this perplexity and our extrication from it, abstract morality has no concern. Men having got themselves into the dilemma by disobedience to the law, must get out of it as well as they can; and with as little injury to the landed class as may be.

  Meanwhile, we shall do well to recollect, that there are others besides the landed class to be considered. In our tender regard for the vested interests of the few, let us not forget that the rights of the many are in abeyance; and must remain so, as long as the earth is monopolised by individuals. Let us remember, too, that the injustice thus inflicted on the mass of mankind, is an injustice of the gravest nature. The fact that it is not so regarded, proves nothing. In early phases of civilization even homicide is thought lightly of. The suttees of India, together with the practice elsewhere followed of sacrificing a hecatomb of human victims at the burial of a chief, show this: and probably cannibals consider the slaughter of those whom “the fortune of war” has made their prisoners, perfectly justifiable. It was once also universally supposed that slavery was a natural and quite legitimate institution—a condition into which some were born, and to which they ought to submit as to a Divine ordination; nay, indeed, a great proportion of mankind hold this opinion still. A higher social development, however, has generated in us a better faith, and we now to a considerable extent recognise the claims of humanity. But our civilization is only partial. It may by-and-by be perceived, that Equity utters dictates to which we have not yet listened; and men may then learn, that to deprive others of their rights to the use of the earth, is to commit a crime inferior only in wickedness to the crime of taking away their lives or personal liberties.

  § 10.

  Briefly reviewing the argument, we see that the right of each man to the use of the earth, limited only by the like rights of his follow-men, is immediately deducible from the law of equal freedom. We see that the maintenance of this right necessarily forbids private property in land. On examination all existing titles to such property turn out to be invalid; those founded on reclamation inclusive. It appears that not even an equal apportionment of the earth amongst its inhabitants could generate a legitimate proprietorship. We find that if pushed to its ultimate consequences, a claim to exclusive possession of the soil involves a landowning despotism. We further find that such a claim is constantly denied by the enactments of our legislature. And we find lastly, that the theory of the co-heirship of all men to the soil, is consistent with the highest civilization; and that, however difficult it may be to embody that theory in fact, Equity sternly commands it to be done.

  CHAPTER X.

  the right of property.

  § 1.

  The moral law, being the law of the social state, is obliged wholly to ignore the ante-social state. Constituting, as the principles of pure morality do, a code of conduct for the perfect man, they cannot be made to adapt themselves to the actions of the uncivilized man, even under the most ingenious hypothetical conditions—cannot be made even to recognise those actions so as to pass any definite sentence upon them. Over-looking this fact, thinkers, in their attempts to prove some of the first theorems of ethics, have commonly fallen into the error of referring back to an imaginary state of savage wildness, instead of referring forward to an ideal civilization, as they should have done; and have, in consequence, entangled themselves in difficulties arising out of the discordance between ethical principles and the assumed premises. To this circumstance is attributable that vagueness by which the arguments used to establish the right of property in a logical manner, are characterized. Whilst possessed of a certain plausibility, they yet cannot be considered conclusive; inasmuch as they suggest questions and objections that admit of no satisfactory answers. Let us take a sample of these arguments, and examine its defects.

  —Though the earth and all inferior creatures,—says Locke,—be common to all men, yet every man has a property in his own person: this nobody has a right to but himself. The labour of his body, and the work of his hands, we may say are properly his. Whatever then he removes out of the state that nature hath provided and left it in, he hath mixed his labour with, and joined to it something that is his own, and thereby makes it his property. It being by him removed from the common state nature hath placed it in, it hath by this labour something annexed to it that excludes the common right of other men. For this labour being the unquestionable property of the labourer, no man but he can have a right to what that is once joined to, at least when there is enough and as good left in common for others.”

  If inclined to cavil, one might in reply to this observe, that as, according to the premises,—the earth and all inferior creatures——all things, in fact, that the earth produces—are—common to all men,—the consent of all men must be obtained before any article can be equitably—removed from the common state nature hath placed it in.—It might be argued that the real question is overlooked, when it is said, that, by gathering any natural product, a man—hath mixed his labour with it, and joined to it something that is his own, and thereby made it his property;—for that the point to be debated is, whether he had any right to gather, or mix his labour with that, which, by the hypothesis, previously belonged to mankind at large. The reasoning used in the last chapter to prove that no amount of labour, bestowed by an individual upon a part of the earth’s surface, can nullify the title of society to that part, might be similarly employed to show that no one can, by the mere act of appropriating to himself any wild unclaimed animal or fruit, supersede the joint claims of other men to it. It may be quite true that the labour a man expends in catching or gathering, gives him a better right to the thing caught or gathered, than any one other man; but the question at issue is, whether by labour so expended, he has made his right to the thing caught or gathered, greater than the pre-existing rights of all other men put together. And unless he can prove that he has done this, his title to possession cannot be admitted as a matter of right, but can be conceded only on the ground of convenience.

  Further difficulties are suggested by the qualification, that the claim to any article of property thus obtained, is valid only—when there is enough and as good left in common for others.—A condition like this gives birth to such a host of queries, doubts, and limitations, as practically to neutralize the general proposition entirely. It may be asked, for example—How is it to be known that enough is—left in common for others?—Who can determine whether what remains is—as good—as what is taken? How if the remnant is less accessible? If there is not enough—left in common for others,—how must the right of appropriation be exercised? Why, in such case, does the mixing of labour with the acquired object, cease to—exclude the common right of other men?—Supposing enough to be attainable, but not all equally good, by what rule must each man choose? Out of which inquisition it seems impossible to liberate the alleged right, without such mutilations as to render it, in an ethical point of view, entirely valueless.

  Thus, as already hinted, we find, that the circumstances of savage life, render the principles of abstract morality inapplicable; for it is impossible, under ante-social conditions, to determine the rightness or wrongness of certain actions by an exact measurement of the amount of freedom assumed by the parties concerned. We must not expect, therefore, that the right of property can be satisfactorily based upon the premises afforded by such a state of existence.

  § 2.

  But, under the system of land tenure pointed out in the last chapter, as the only one that is consistent with the equal claims of all men to the use of the earth, these difficulties disappear; and the right of property obtains a legitimate foundation. We have seen that, without any infraction of the law of equal freedom, an individual may lease from society a given surface of soil, by agreeing to pay in return a stated amount of the produce he obtains from that soil. We found that, in doing this, he does no more than what every other man is equally free with himself to do—that each has the same power with himself to become the tenant—and that the rent he pays accrues alike to all. Having thus hired a tract of land from his fellow-men, for a given period, for understood purposes, and on specified terms—having thus obtained, for a time, the exclusive use of that land by a definite agreement with its owners, it is manifest that an individual may, without any infringement of the rights of others, appropriate to himself that portion of produce which remains after he has paid to mankind the promised rent. He has now, to use Locke’s expression,—mixed his labour with—certain products of the earth; and his claim to them is in this case valid, because he obtained the consent of society before so expending his labour; and having fulfilled the condition which society, imposed in giving that consent—the payment of rent,—society, to fulfil its part of the agreement, must acknowledge his title to that surplus which remains after the rent has been paid.—Provided you deliver to us a stated share of the produce which by cultivation you can obtain from this piece of land, we give you the exclusive use of the remainder of that produce:—these are the words of the contract; and in virtue of this contract, the tenant may equitably claim the supplementary share as his private property: may so claim it without any disobedience to the law of equal freedom; and has therefore a right so to claim it.

  Any doubt that may be felt as to the fact that this is a logical deduction from our first principle, that every man has freedom to do all that he wills provided he infringes not the equal freedom of any other man, may be readily cleared up by comparing the respective degrees of freedom assumed in such a case by the occupier and the members of society with whom he bargains. As was shown in the preceding chapter, if the public altogether deprive any individual of the use of the earth, they allow him less liberty than they themselves claim; and by so breaking the law of equal freedom, commit a wrong. If, conversely, an individual usurps a given portion of the earth, to which, as we have seen, all other men have as good a title as himself, he breaks the law by assuming more liberty than the rest. But when an individual holds land as a tenant of society, a balance is maintained between these extremes, and the claims of both parties are respected. A price is paid by the one, for a certain privilege granted by the other. By the fact of the agreement being made, it is shown that such price and privilege are considered to be equivalents. The lessor and the lessee have both, within the prescribed limits, done that which they willed: the one in letting a certain holding for a specified sum; the other in agreeing to give that sum. And so long as this contract remains intact, the law of equal freedom is duly observed. If, however, any of the prescribed conditions be not fulfilled, the law is necessarily broken, and the parties are involved in one of the predicaments above named. If the tenant refuses to pay the rent, then he tacitly lays claim to the exclusive use and benefit of the land he occupies—practically asserts that he is the sole owner of its produce; and consequently violates the law, by assuming a greater share of freedom than the rest of mankind. If, on the other hand, society take from the tenant that portion of the fruits obtained by the culture of his farm, which remains with him after the payment of rent, they virtually deny him the use of the earth entirely (for by the use of the earth we mean the use of its products), and in so doing, claim for themselves a greater share of liberty than they allow him. Clearly, therefore, this surplus produce equitably remains with the tenant: society cannot take it without trespassing upon his freedom; he can take it without trespassing on the freedom of society. And as, according to the law, he is free to do all that he wills, provided he infringes not the equal freedom of any other, he is free to take possession of such surplus as his property.

  § 3.

  The doctrine that all men have equal rights to the use of the earth, does indeed at first sight, seem to countenance a species of social organization, at variance with that from which the right of property has just been deduced; an organization, namely, in which the public, instead of letting out the land to individual members of their body, shall retain it in their own hands; cultivate it by joint-stock agency; and share the produce: in fact, what is usually termed Socialism or Communism.

  Plausible though it may be, such a scheme is not capable of realization in strict conformity with the moral law. Of the two forms under which it may be presented, the one is ethically imperfect; and the other, although correct in theory, is impracticable.

  Thus, if an equal portion of the earth’s produce is awarded to every man, irrespective of the amount or quality of the labour he has contributed towards the obtainment of that produce, a breach of equity is committed. Our first principle requires, not that all shall have like shares of the things which minister to the gratification of the faculties, but that all shall have like freedom to pursue those things—shall have like scope. It is one thing to give to each an opportunity of acquiring the objects he desires; it is another, and quite a different thing, to give the objects themselves, no matter whether due endeavour has or has not been made to obtain them. The one we have seen to be the primary law of the Divine scheme; the other, by interfering with the ordained connection between desire and gratification, shows its disagreement with that scheme. Nay more, it necessitates an absolute violation of the principle of equal freedom. For when we assert the entire liberty of each, bounded only by the like liberty of all, we assert that each is free to do whatever his desires dictate, within the prescribed limits—that each is free, therefore, to claim for himself all those gratifications, and sources of gratification, attainable by him within those limits—all those gratifications, and sources of gratification which he can procure without trespassing upon the spheres of action of his neighbours. If, therefore, out of many starting with like fields of activity, one obtains, by his greater strength, greater ingenuity, or greater application, more gratifications and sources of gratification than the rest, and does this without in any way trenching upon the equal freedom of the rest, the moral law assigns him an exclusive right to all those extra gratifications and sources of gratification; nor can the rest take them from him without claiming for themselves greater liberty of action than he claims, and thereby violating that law. Whence it follows, that an equal apportionment of the fruits of the earth amongst all, is not consistent with pure justice.

  If, on the other hand, each is to have allotted to him a share of produce proportionate to the degree in which he has aided production, the proposal, whilst it is abstractedly just, is no longer practicable. Were all men cultivators of the soil, it would perhaps be possible to form an approximate estimate of their several claims. But to ascertain the respective amounts of help given by different kinds of mental and bodily labourers, towards procuring the general stock of the necessaries of life, is an utter impossibility. We have no means of making such a division save that afforded by the law of supply and demand, and this means, the hypothesis excludesa .

  § 4.

  An argument fatal to the communist theory, is suggested by the fact, that a desire for property is one of the elements of our nature. Repeated allusion has been made to the admitted truth, that acquisitiveness is an unreasoning impulse quite distinct from the desires whose gratifications property secures—an impulse that is often obeyed at the expense of those desires. And if a propensity to personal acquisition be really a component of man’s constitution, then that cannot be a right form of society which affords it no scope. Socialists do indeed allege that private appropriation is an abuse of this propensity, whose normal function, they say, is to impel us to accumulate for the benefit of the public at large. But in thus attempting to escape from one difficulty, they do but entangle themselves in another. Such an explanation overlooks the fact that the use and abuse of a faculty (whatever the etymology of the words may imply) differ only in degree; whereas their assumption is, that they differ in kind. Gluttony is an abuse of the desire for food; timidity, an abuse of the feeling which in moderation produces prudence; servility, an abuse of the sentiment that generates respect; obstinacy, of that from which firmness springs: in all of which cases we find that the legitimate manifestations differ from the illegitimate ones, merely in quantity, and not in quality. So also with the instinct of accumulation. It may be quite true that its dictates have been, and still are, followed to an absurd excess; but it is also true that no change in the state of society will alter its nature and its office. To whatever extent moderated, it must still be a desire for personal acquisition. Whence it follows that a system affording opportunity for its exercise must ever be retained; which means, that the system of private property must be retained; and this presupposes a right of private property, for by right we mean that which harmonizes with the human constitution as divinely ordained.

  § 5.

  There is, however, a still more awkward dilemma into which M. Proudhon and his party betray themselves. For if, as they assert,—all property is robbery——if no one can equitably become the exclusive possessor of any article—or as we say, obtain a right to it, then, amongst other consequences, it follows, that a man can have no right to the things he consumes for food. And if these are not his before eating them, how can they become his at all? As Locke asks,—when do they begin to be his? when he digests? or when he eats? or when he boils? or when he brings them home?—If no previous acts can make them his property, neither can any process of assimilation do it; not even their absorption into the tissues. Wherefore, pursuing the idea, we arrive at the curious conclusion, that as the whole of his bones, muscles, skin, &c., have been thus built up from nutriment not belonging to him, a man has no property in his own flesh and blood—can have no valid title to himself—has no more claim to his own limbs than he has to the limbs of another—and has as good a right to his neighbour’s body as to his own! Did we exist after the same fashion as those compound polyps, in which a number of individuals are based upon a living trunk common to them all, such a theory would be rational enough. But until Communism can be carried to that extent, it will be best to stand by the old doctrine.

  § 6.

  Further argument appears to be unnecessary. We have seen that the right of property is deducible from the law of equal freedom—that it is presupposed by the human constitution—and that its denial involves absurdities.

  Were it not that we shall frequently have to refer to the fact hereafter, it would be scarcely needful to show that the taking away another’s property is an infringement of the law of equal freedom, and is therefore wrong. If A appropriate to himself something belonging to B, one of two things must take place: either B does the like to A, or he does not. If A has no property, or if his property is inaccessible to B, B has evidently no opportunity of exercising equal freedom with A, by claiming from him something of like value; and A has therefore assumed a greater share of freedom than he allows B, and has broken the law. If again, A’s property is open to B, and A permits B to use like freedom with himself by taking an equivalent, there is no violation of the law; and the affair practically becomes one of barter. But such a transaction will never take place save in theory; for A has no motive to appropriate B’s property with the intention of letting B take an equivalent: seeing that if he really means to let B have what B thinks an equivalent, he will prefer to make the exchange by consent in the ordinary way. The only case simulating this, is one in which A takes from B a thing that B does not wish to part with; that is, a thing for which A can give B nothing that B thinks an equivalent; and as the amount of gratification which B has in the possession of this thing, is the measure of its value to him, it follows that if A cannot give B a thing which affords B equal gratification, or in other words what he thinks an equivalent, then A has taken from B what affords A satisfaction, but does not return to B what affords B satisfaction; and has therefore broken the law by assuming the greater share of freedom. Wherefore we find it to be a logical deduction from the law of equal freedom, that no man can rightfully take property from another against his will.

  CHAPTER XI.

  the right of property in ideas.

  § 1.

  It is tolerably self-evident that no violation of the law of equal freedom is committed in the acquisition of knowledge—that knowledge, at least, which is open to all. A man may read, hear, and observe, to as great an extent as he pleases, without in the least diminishing the liberty of others to do the like—in fact, without affecting the condition of others in any way. It is clear, too, that the knowledge thus obtained may be digested, re-organized, or combined afresh, and new knowledge educed from it by its possessor, without the rights of his fellows being thereby trespassed upon. And it is further manifest, that the moral law permits a man who has by his intellectual labour obtained such new knowledge, to keep it for his own exclusive use, or claim it as his private property. He who does this, in no degree exceeds the prescribed limits of individual freedom. He abridges no one’s liberty of action. Every other person retains as much scope for thought and deed as before. And each is free to acquire the same facts—to elaborate from them, if he can, the same new ideas—and in a similar manner employ those new ideas for his private advantage. Seeing, therefore, that a man may claim the exclusive use of his original ideas without overstepping the boundaries of equal freedom, it follows that he has a right so to claim them; or, in other words, such ideas are his property.

  Of course the argument used in the last chapter to show that material property cannot be taken from its possessor without a breach of the law, is applicable to property of this kind also.

  § 2.

  That a man’s right to the produce of his brain is equally valid with his right to the produce of his hands, is a fact which has yet obtained but a very imperfect recognition. It is true that we have patent laws, a law of copyright, and acts for the registration of designs; but these, or at any rate two of them, have been enacted not so much in obedience to the dictates of justice, as in deference to the suggestions of trade policy.—A patent is not a thing which can be claimed as a right,—we are told by legal authorities, but is intended to—act as a stimulus to industry and talent.—It is not because the piracy of patterns would be wrong that legislators forbid it, but because they wish to afford—encouragement to manufactures.—Similar also are the current opinions. Measures of this nature are commonly considered by the public as giving to inventors a certain—privilege,—a—reward,—a sort of modified—monopoly.—It is on the ground of commercial statesmanship that they are approved; and not as being necessary for the administration of justice.

  The prevalence of such a belief is by no means creditable to the national conscience, and indicates a sad bluntness of moral feeling. To think that the profits which a speculator makes by a rise in the share-market, should be recognised as legally and equitably his property, and yet that some new combination of ideas, which it may have cost an ingenious man years of application to complete, cannot be—claimed as a right—by that man! To think that a sinecurist should be held to have a—vested interest—in his office, and a just title to compensation if it is abolished, and yet that an invention over which no end of mental toil has been spent, and on which the poor mechanic has laid out perhaps his last sixpence—an invention which he has completed entirely by his own labour and with his own materials—has wrought, as it were, out of the very substance of his own mind—should not be acknowledged as his property! To think that his title to it should be admitted merely as a matter of convenience—admitted even then only on payment of some £400—and, after all, quashed on the most trifling pretences! What a thick-skinned perception of justice does this show! What a want of ability to appreciate matters at all removed beyond the sphere of the external senses! One would think that equity afforded no guidance beyond transactions in material things—weights, measures, and money. Let a shop-boy take from his master’s till a visible, tangible, ponderable sovereign, and all can see that the rights of ownership have been violated. Yet those who exclaim with such indignant virtue against theft, will purchase a pirated edition of a book, without any qualms of conscience concerning the receipt of stolen goods. Dishonesty, when shown in house-breaking or sheep-stealing, is held up to eternal infamy, and those convicted of it are for ever excluded from society; but the manufacturer who steals his foreman’s improved plan for the spinning of cotton, or the building of steam engines, continues to be held in high respect. The law is active enough in apprehending the urchin who may have deprived some comfortable citizen of his pocket-handkerchief, and will deal with the young scapegrace at the public expense; but there is no redress for the poverty-stricken schemer who is robbed by some wealthy scamp of that which formed the sole hope of his life. Strong illustrations these of the fact, that the moral sense, when unguided by systematic deduction, fails to find its way through the labyrinth of confused opinion, to a correct code of duty.

  § 3.

  As already remarked, it is a common notion, and one more especially pervading the operative classes, that the exclusive use by its discoverer of any new or improved mode of production, is a species of monopoly, in the sense in which that word is conventionally used. To let a man have the entire benefit accruing from the employment of some more efficient machine, or better process invented by him; and to allow no other person to adopt and apply for his own advantage the same plan, they hold to be an injustice. Nor are there wanting philanthropic and even thinking men, who consider that the valuable ideas originated by individuals—ideas which may be of great national advantage—should be taken out of private hands and thrown open to the public at large.

  —And pray, gentlemen,—an inventor might fairly reply,—why may not I make the same proposal respecting your goods and chattels, your clothing, your houses, your railway shares, and your money in the funds? If you are right in the interpretation you give to the term ‘monopoly,’ I do not see why that term should not be applied to the coats upon your backs and the provisions on your dinner tables. With equal reason I might argue that you unjustly ‘monopolize’ your furniture, and that you ought not in equity to have the ‘exclusive use’ of so many apartments. If ‘national advantage’ is to be the supreme rule, why should we not appropriate your wealth, and the wealth of others like you, to the liquidation of the state debt? True, as you say, you came honestly by all this property: but so did I by my invention. True, as you say, this capital, on the interest of which you subsist, was acquired by years of toil—is the reward of persevering industry: well, I may say the like of this machine. Whilst you were gathering profits, I was collecting ideas; the time you spent in conning the prices current, was employed by me in studying mechanics; your speculations in new articles of merchandise, answer to my experiments, many of which were costly and fruitless; when you were writing out your accounts, I was making drawings; and the same perseverance, patience, thought, and toil, which enabled you to make a fortune, have enabled me to complete my invention. Like your wealth, it represents so much accumulated labour; and I am living upon the profits it produces me, just as you are living upon the interest of your invested savings. Beware, then, how you question my claim. If I am a monopolist, so also are you; so also is every man. If I have no right to these products of my brain, neither have you to those of your hands: no one can become the sole owner of any article whatever; and ‘all property is robbery.’—

  § 4.

  They fall into a serious error, who suppose that the exclusive right assumed by a discoverer, is something taken from the public. He who in any way increases the powers of production, is seen by all, save a few insane Luddites, to be a general benefactor who gives rather than takes. The successful inventor makes a further conquest over nature. By him the laws of matter are rendered still more subservient to the wants of mankind. He economises labour—helps to emancipate men from their slavery to the needs of the body—harnesses a new power to the car of human happiness. He cannot, if he would, prevent society from largely participating in his good fortune. Before he can realize any benefit from his new process or apparatus, he must first confer a benefit on his fellow men—must either offer them a better article at the price usually charged, or the same article at a less price. If he fails to do this, his invention is a dead letter; if he does it, he makes society a partner in the new mine of wealth he has opened. For all the exertion he has had in subjugating a previously unknown region of nature, he simply asks an extra proportion of the fruits. The rest of mankind unavoidably come in for the main advantage—will in a short time have the whole. Meanwhile, they cannot without injustice disregard his claims.

  Let us remember, too, that in this, as in other cases, disobedience to the moral law is ultimately detrimental to all parties—to those who infringe the rights of the individual as well as to the individual himself. It is a well-proved fact, that that insecurity of material property which results from general dishonesty, inevitably reacts to the punishment of all. The rationale of this is obvious. Industrial energy diminishes just in proportion to the uncertainty of its reward. Those who do not know that they shall reap will not sow. Instead of employing it in business, capitalists hoard what they possess, because productive investments are dangerous. Hence arises a universal straitness of means. Every enterprise is crippled by want of confidence. And from general distrust spring general discouragement, apathy, idleness, poverty, and their attendant miseries, involving alike all grades of men. Similar in kind, and less only in degree, is the curse attendant upon insecurity of property in ideas. Just in so far as the benefits likely to accrue to the inventor are precarious, will he be deterred from carrying out his plans.—If,—thinks he to himself,—others are to enjoy the fruits of these wearisome studies and these numberless experiments, why should I continue them? If, in addition to all the possibilities of failure in the scheme itself, all the time, trouble, and expense of my investigations, all the chances of destruction to my claim by disclosure of the plan, all the heavy costs attendant upon obtaining legal protection, I am liable to be deprived of my right by any scoundrel who may infringe it in the expectation that I shall not have money or madness enough to institute a chancery suit against him, I had better abandon the project at once.—And although such reflections may often fail to extinguish the sanguine hopes of an inventor—although he may still prosecute his scheme to the end, regardless of all risks, yet after having once suffered the losses which ten to one society will inflict upon him, he will take good care never again to enter upon a similar undertaking. Whatever other ideas he may then or subsequently entertain—some of them most likely valuable ones—will remain undeveloped and probably die with him. Did mankind know the many important discoveries which the ingenious are prevented from giving to the world by the cost of obtaining legal protection, or by the distrust of that protection if obtained—were people duly to appreciate the consequent check put upon the development of the means of production—and could they properly estimate the loss thereby entailed upon themselves, they would begin to see that the recognition of the right of property in ideas, is only less important than the recognition of the right of property in goods.

  § 5.

  In consequence of the probability, or perhaps we may say the certainty, that the causes leading to the evolution of a new idea in our mind, will eventually produce a like result in some other mind, the claim above set forth must not be admitted without limitation. Many have remarked the tendency that exists for an important invention or discovery to be made by independent investigators nearly at the same time. There is nothing really mysterious in this. A certain state of knowledge, a recent advancement in science, the occurrence of some new social want,—these form the conditions under which minds of similar characters are stimulated to like trains of thought, ending as they are prone to do in the same result. Such being the fact, there arises a qualification to the right of property in ideas, which it seems difficult and even impossible to specify definitely. The laws of patent and copyright, express this qualification by confining the inventor’s or author’s privilege within a certain term of years. But in what way the length of that term may be found with correctness there is no saying. In the mean time, as already pointed out (p. 110), such a difficulty does not in the least militate against the right itself.

  CHAPTER XII.

  the right of property in character.

  § 1.

  Could we accurately analyze the stimulus by which men are usually impelled to action—could we determine the proportions of the several motives which go to make up that stimulus, we should probably find that amongst those classes removed from the absolute pressure of bodily wants, its chief component is a desire for the good opinion, regard, or admiration of others. Whether we observe this feeling as shown by the tattooed savage in his willingness to undergo torture that he may obtain a character for fortitude, and to risk any amount of danger that he may be called brave; or whether, turning to civilized life, we contemplate that ambition so universally exhibited by poets, orators, statesmen, artists, soldiers, and others known to fame; or whether, by taking off its disguises, we discover the true nature of that insane eagerness with which people pursue wealth; we are alike instructed in the fact that, after those instincts immediately connected with the preservation of life, love of approbation exercises the greatest influence over human conduct.

  Reputation therefore, as a thing which men strive so incessantly to acquire and preserve, may be regarded as property. Earned like other property by labour, care, and perseverance—similarly surrounding its owner with facilities for securing his ends, and affording him as it does a constant supply of food for divers of his desires; the esteem of others is a possession, having many analogies with possessions of a more palpable nature. An estate in the general good-will, appears to many of more worth than one in land. By some great action to have bought golden opinions, may be a richer source of gratification than to have obtained bank stock or railway shares. There are those to whom a crown of bay leaves would be a greater treasure than a fat legacy. Titles had once a definite pounds, shillings and pence price; and if they are now becoming depreciated in value when compared with the honours spontaneously awarded by the public voice, it is that they do not represent so large an amount of genuine approbation. Men therefore who cultivate character, and live on the harvests of praise they reap—men who have invested their labour in noble deeds, and receive by way of interest the best wishes and cordial greetings of society, may be considered as having claims to these rewards of good conduct, resembling the claims of others to the rewards of their industry. Of course this is true not only of such as are distinguished by unusual worth; it is true of all. To the degree in which each has shown probity, kindness, truth or other virtue, and has gained amongst his fellows a reputation for it, we must hold him entitled to the character he has thus fairly won, as to a species of property; a species of property too, which, without quoting the hackneyed saying of Iago, may be described as of greater value than property of any other kind.

  Those who hesitate to admit that a good name is property, should remember that it has really a money value. To be accounted honest is to be preferred as one with whom commercial dealings may be most safely carried on. Whose is said to be particularly industrious, is likely, other things being equal, to get better pay than his competitors. The celebrity attending great intellectual capacity, introduces those possessing it to responsible and remunerative situations. It is quite allowable therefore, to classify reputation under this head, seeing that, like capital, it may bring its owner an actual revenue in hard cash.

  § 2.

  The position that a good character is property being granted, a right to the possession of it when fairly earned, is demonstrable by arguments similar to those used in the two preceding chapters. Such character is attainable without any infringement of the freedom of others; is indeed a concrete result of habitual regard for that freedom; and being thus a source of gratification which its owner legitimately obtains—a species of property, as we say—it can no more be taken away from him without a breach of equity, than property of other kinds can. This conclusion manifestly serves as the foundation for a law of libel.

  § 3.

  Possibly this reasoning will be thought inconclusive. The position that character is property may be considered open to dispute; and it must be confessed that the propriety of so classifying it is not proveable with logical precision. Should any urge that this admission is fatal to the argument, they have the alternative of regarding slander as a breach, not of that primary law which forbids us to trench upon each other’s spheres of activity, but of that secondary one which forbids us to inflict pain on each other. If the destruction of a fellow-man’s deserved reputation does not amount to a trespass against the law of equal freedom, then the flagitiousness of such an act remains to be treated of in that supplementary department of morals elsewhere generalized under the term negative beneficence. Of these alternatives each must make his own choice; for there seems to be no way of deciding between them with certainty. And here indeed we meet with an illustration of a remark previously made (p. 70), namely, that the division of morality into separate sections, though needful for our due comprehension of it, is yet artificial; and that the lines of demarcation are not always capable of being maintained.

  CHAPTER XIII.

  the right of exchange.

  § 1.

  Freedom to exchange his property for the property of others, is manifestly included in a man’s general freedom. In claiming this as his right, he in no way transgresses the proper limit put to his sphere of action by the like spheres of action of others. The two parties in a trade transaction, whilst doing all that they will to do, are not assuming more liberty than they leave to others. Indeed their act ends with themselves—does not affect the condition of the bystanders at all—leaves these as much power to pursue the objects of their desires as before. Hence, exchanges may be made in complete conformity with the law of equal freedom.

  Possibly it will be said, that in cases where several men are wishing to deal with the same man, and a bargain is ultimately made between him and one of them, the rest are by this event excluded from a certain prospective field for the fulfilment of their wants, which was previously open to them; and that consequently they have had the liberty to exercise their faculties diminished by the success of their competitor. This, however, is a distorted view of the matter. Let us for a moment turn back to first principles. What is it that we have to do? We have to divide out equally amongst all men, the whole of that freedom which the conditions of social existence afford. Observe, then, in respect of trade relationships, how much falls to the share of each. Evidently each is free to offer; each is free to accept; each is free to refuse; for each may do these to any extent without preventing his neighbours from doing the like to the same extent, and at the same time. But no one may do more; no one may force another to part with his goods; no one may force another to take a specified price; for no one can do so without assuming more liberty of action than the man whom he thus treats. If, therefore, every one is entitled to offer, to accept, and to refuse, but to do nothing more, it is clear that, under the circumstances above put, the closing of an agreement between two of the parties implies no infringement of the claims of the disappointed ones; seeing that each of them remains as free as ever, to offer, accept, and refuse.

  § 2.

  To say that, as a corollary from this, all interference between those who would traffic with each other amounts to a breach of equity, is hardly needful. Nor is there any occasion here to assign reasons why the recognition of liberty of trade is expedient. Harmonizing as it does with the settled convictions of thinking people, the foregoing conclusion may safely be left to stand unsupported. Some remarks upon the limits it puts to legislation are indeed called for. But these will come in more appropriately elsewhere.

  CHAPTER XIV.

  the right of free speech.

  § 1.

  The utterance of thought being one species of action, there arises from the proposition that every man is free within specified bounds to do what he wills, the self-evident corollary, that, with the like qualification, he is free to say what he wills; or, in other words, as the rights of his fellow-men form the only legitimate restraint upon his deeds, so likewise do they form the only legitimate restraint upon his words.

  There are two modes in which speech may exceed the ordained limits. It may be used for the propagation of slander, which, as we have seen in a foregoing chapter, involves a disregard of moral obligation; or it may be used in inciting and directing another to injure a third party. In this last case, the instigator, although not personally concerned in the trespass proposed by him, must be considered as having virtually committed it. We should not exonerate an assassin who pretended that his dagger was guilty of the murder laid to his charge rather than himself. We should reply, that the having moved a dagger with the intention of taking away life, constituted his crime. Following up the idea, we must also assert that he who, by bribes or persuasion, moved the man who moved the dagger, is equally guilty with his agent. He had just the same intention, and similarly used means for its fulfilment; the only difference being that he produced death through a more complicated mechanism. As, however, no one will argue that the interposing of an additional lever between a motive force and its ultimate effect, alters the relationship between the two, so neither can it be said that he who gets a wrong done by proxy, is less guilty than if he had done it himself. Hence, whoso suggests or urges the infraction of another’s rights, must be held to have transgressed the law of equal freedom.

  Liberty of speech, then, like liberty of action, may be claimed by each, to the fullest extent compatible with the equal rights of all. Exceeding the limits thus arising, it becomes immoral. Within them, no restraint of it is permissible.

  § 2.

  A new Areopagitica, were it possible to write one, would surely be needless in our age of the world and in this country. And yet there still prevails, and that too amongst men who plume themselves on their liberality, no small amount of the feeling which Milton combated in his celebrated essay. Not-withstanding the abatement of intolerance, and the growth of free institutions, the repressive policy of the past has occasional advocates even now. Were it put to the vote, probably not a few would say ay to the proposition, that the public safety requires some restriction to be placed on the freedom of speech. The imprisonment of a socialist for blasphemy some few years since, called forth no indignant protest against the violation of—the liberty of unlicensed—speaking, but was even approved by staunch maintainers of religious freedom. Many would like to make it a penal offence to preach discontent to the people; and there are not wanting others who would hang up a few demagogues by way of scarecrows. Let us look at what may be said by the advocates of a mild censorship on behalf of their opinions.

  § 3.

  It is an assertion often made, as of indisputable truth, that government ought to guarantee to its subjects—security and a sense of security.—From which maxim to the inference that it is the duty of the magistrate to keep an ear open to the sayings of popular orators, and to stop violent declamation, as being calculated to create alarm, is an obvious step. Were the premises good, the deduction might pass; but the premises are more than questionable. That it is the special function of the legislator to guard every man in the peaceable possession of his person and property, all admit; but that the legislator is called upon to quiet the fears aroused by every trifling excitement, is a notion almost too ridiculous for serious argument. Consider a moment to what it leads. Coupled as are the ideas—security and a sense of security,—we must suppose that as governors are required to carry home—security—to every individual, so also may every individual claim the—sense of security—at their hands. Here is a pretty prospect for overburdened premiers! If such a doctrine be true, where shall the cares of the statesman end? Must he listen to the apprehensions of every hypochondriac, in whose morbid imagination Reform is pictured as a grim ogre of anthropophagous propensities, with pikes for claws and guillotines for teeth? If not, why not?—Sense of security—in such an one has been destroyed by the violent denunciations of some hot patriot; he wishes his trepidations allayed by the suppression of what he thinks dangerous speaking; and, according to the hypothesis, his wishes ought to be obeyed. On the same grounds all agitation should be extinguished, for there are invariably some—and not a small number either—who regard the discussion of every public question that comes uppermost with dread, and predict all kinds of disasters from its continuance. Old women of both sexes working themselves into a state of great tribulation over the terrible vaticinations of a Standard, or the melancholy wailings of a Herald, would fain have put down the Free Trade propaganda; and if their—sense of security—had been duly consulted, they should have had their way. Religious disabilities too ought, for the like reason, to have been still maintained, for the proposal to repeal them was productive of extreme consternation to multitudes of weak-minded people. Prophecies were rife of the return of papal persecutions; every horror narrated in the Book of Martyrs was expected to be acted over afresh; and an epidemic fright invalided its thousands. Credulous individuals listened with raised eyebrows and pendant jaws to the dismal tales of some incipient Titus Oates, and straightway had visions of fire and faggots; each saw himself in Smithfield with a stake at his back and a torch at his feet; or dreamed he was in the torture-chamber of an inquisition, and awoke in a cold perspiration to find that he had mistaken the squeak of a mouse for the creak of a thumb-screw. Well, here was a woful loss of the—sense of security;—and therefore the authorities ought to have stopped the movement for Catholic emancipation, by gagging all its advocates, fettering its press, and preventing its meetings.

  It is useless to say that these are exaggerations, and that the alarms of nervous valetudinarians or foolish bigots are to be disregarded. If the fears of a hundred are not to be attended to, why those of a thousand? If not those of a thousand, why those of ten thousand? How shall the line be drawn? where is the requisite standard? who shall tell when the sense of insecurity has become general enough to merit respect? Is it to be when the majority participate in it? If so, who shall decide when they do this? Perhaps it will be said that the apprehensions must be reasonable ones. Good; but who is to determine whether they are so or not? Where is the pope who shall give an infallible judgment on such a matter? To all which questions those who would make the preservation of a—sense of security—the limit to liberty of speech, must first find answers.

  § 4.

  Of those animadversions upon state affairs which constitute the legal offence of bringing government into contempt, and of which offence, by the way, all parties might be accused, from a chartist orator, to the leader of the opposition—from the Times, with its burlesques upon the pitiful results of an annual—great talk,—to its facetious contemporary who quizzes the eccentricities of a versatile ex-chancellor—of such animadversions the only needful question to be asked is—are they deserved? Are the allegations contained in them true? If it can be shown that they are not—that is, if it can be shown that the parties referred to have been unjustly aspersed—that is, if it can be shown that a violation of the law has been committed—there is an end of the matter, so far as the moralist is concerned. But, on the other hand, should they prove to be substantially correct, on what grounds shall the suppression of them be defended? That which is really contemptible ought to be exposed to contempt; and, if so, derogatory charges ought to have full publicity. To argue otherwise, is to take up the Machiavellian position, that it is right for the legislature to be an imposture, an—organized hypocrisy——that it is necessary for a nation to be cheated by the semblance of virtue when there is no reality—that public opinion ought to be in error rather than in truth—or that it is well for the people to believe a lie!

  § 5.

  There may be much danger in placing an invalid under the regimen proper to people in robust health. For a dyspeptic, chicken-broth may be in all respects better suited than more substantial fare. And whoso is suffering under an attack of influenza, will do wisely to avoid a blustering north-wester, or even a gentle breeze from the south. But he would be thought more than silly who inferred from such facts that solid food and fresh air are bad things. To ascribe any evil results to these, rather than to the unhealthy condition of the patients, would simply extremely crude ideas of causation.

  Similarly crude, however, are the ideas of those who infer that unlimited liberty of speech is improper, because productive in certain states of society of disastrous results. It is to the abnormal condition of the body politic that all evils arising from an unrestrained expression of opinion must be attributed, and not to the unrestrained expression itself. Under a sound social regime and its accompanying contentment, nothing is to be feared from the most uncontrolled utterance of thought and feeling. On the other hand it may happen that where disease exists, exposure of the sore places of the state to the cold breath of criticism, will superinduce alarming symptoms. But what then? A Louis Philippe, a General Cavaignac, or a Louis Napoleon, may find excuse in a corrupted and disorganized state of things for espionnage, censorships, and the suppression of public meetings. But what then? If a nation cannot be governed on principles of pure equity, so much the worse for the nation. Those principles remain true notwithstanding. As elsewhere pointed out (p. 37), there must necessarily exist incongruity between the perfect law and the imperfect man. And if evils are entailed upon a people by immediate and entire recognition of the law of equal freedom, in the matter of speech as well as in that of action, such evils are merely significant of the incomplete adaptation of that people to the social state, and not of any defect in the law.

  CHAPTER XV.

  further rights.

  § 1.

  Did circumstances demand it, sundry other chapters of the same nature as the preceding ones, could be added. Were this France, it might be needful formally to deduce from the law of equal freedom, the right to move from place to place without leave of a government official. In addressing the Chinese, some proof that a man is at liberty to cut his clothes after whatever fashion may best suit him, would perhaps be called for. And, similarly, there might be found in different times and places, many other directions in which the law of equal freedom required asserting. But it is unnecessary now to repeat over again the reasoning so many times used. These that we call rights, are nothing but artificial divisions of the general claim to exercise the faculties—applications of that general claim to particular cases; and each of them is proved in the same way, by showing that the particular exercise of faculties referred to, is possible without preventing the like exercise of faculties by other persons. The reader has already seen the most important rights thus established; and the establishment of such minor ones as have not been touched upon, may safely be left with himself.

  CHAPTER XVI.

  the rights of women.

  § 1.

  Equity knows no difference of sex. In its vocabulary the word man must be understood in a generic, and not in a specific sense. The law of equal freedom manifestly applies to the whole race—female as well as male. The same à priori reasoning which establishes that law for men (Chaps. III. and IV.), may be used with equal cogency on behalf of women. The Moral Sense, by virtue of which the masculine mind responds to that law, exists in the feminine mind as well. Hence the several rights deducible from that law must appertain equally to both sexes.

  This might have been thought a self-evident truth, needing only to be stated to meet with universal acceptation. There are many, however, who either tacitly, or in so many words, express their dissent from it. For what reasons they do so, does not appear. They admit the axiom, that human happiness is the Divine will; from which axiom, what we call rights are primarily derived. And why the differences of bodily organization, and those trifling mental variations which distinguish female from male, should exclude one half of the race from the benefits of this ordination, remains to be shown. The onus of proof lies on those who affirm that such is the fact; and it would be perfectly in order to assume that the law of equal freedom comprehends both sexes, until the contrary has been demonstrated. But without taking advantage of this, suppose we go at once into the controversy.

  Three positions only are open to us. It may be said that women have no rights at all—that their rights are not so great as those of men—or that they are equal to those of men.

  Whoever maintains the first of these dogmas, that women have no rights at all, must show that the Creator intended women to be wholly at the mercy of men—their happiness, their liberties, their lives, at men’s disposal; or, in other words, that they were meant to be treated as creatures of an inferior order. Few will have the hardihood to assert this.

  From the second proposition, that the rights of women are not so great as those of men, there immediately arise such queries as—If they are not so great, by how much are they less? What is the exact ratio between the legitimate claims of the two sexes? How shall we tell which rights are common to both, and where those of the male exceed those of the female? Who can show us a scale that will serve for the apportionment? Or, putting the question practically, it is required to determine by some logical method, whether the Turk is justified in plunging an offending Circassian into the Bosphorus? whether the rights of women were violated by that Athenian law, which allowed a citizen under certain circumstances to sell his daughter or sister? whether our own statute, which permits a man to beat his wife in moderation, and to imprison her in any room in his house, is morally defensible? whether it is equitable that a married woman should be incapable of holding property? whether a husband may justly take possession of his wife’s earnings against her will, as our law allows him to do?—and so forth. These, and a multitude of similar problems, present themselves for solution. Some principle rooted in the nature of things has to be found, by which they may be scientifically decided—decided, not on grounds of expediency, but in some definite, philosophical way. Does any one holding the doctrine that women’s rights are not so great as men’s, think he can find such a principle?

  If not, there remains no alternative but to take up the third position—that the rights of women are equal with those of men.

  § 2.

  Whoso urges the mental inferiority of women in bar of their claim to equal rights with men, may be met in various ways.

  In the first place, the alleged fact may be disputed. A defender of her sex might name many whose achievements in government, in science, in literature, and in art, have obtained no small share of renown. Powerful and sagacious queens the world has seen in plenty, from Zenobia, down to the empresses Catherine and Maria Theresa. In the exact sciences, Mrs. Somerville, Miss Herschel, and Miss Zornlin, have gained applause; in political economy, Miss Martineau; in general philosophy, Madame de Staël; in politics, Madame Roland. Poetry has its Tighes, its Hemanses, its Landons, its Brownings; the drama its Joanna Baillie; and fiction its Austens, Bremers, Gores, Dudevants, &c., without end. In sculpture, fame has been acquired by a princess; a picture like—The Momentons Question—is tolerable proof of female capacity for painting; and on the stage, it is certain that women are on a level with men, if they do not even bear away the palm. Joining to such facts the important consideration, that women have always been, and are still, placed at a disadvantage in every department of learning, thought, or skill—seeing that they are not admissible to the academies and universities in which men get their training; that the kind of life they have to look forward to, does not present so great a range of ambitions; that they are rarely exposed to that most powerful of all stimuli—necessity; that the education custom dictates for them is one that leaves uncultivated many of the higher faculties; and that the prejudice against blue-stockings, hitherto so prevalent amongst men, has greatly tended to deter women from the pursuit of literary honours;—adding these considerations to the above facts, we shall see good reason for thinking that the alleged inferiority of the feminine mind, is by no means self-evident.

  But, waiving this point, let us contend with the proposition on its own premises. Let it be granted that the intellect of woman is less profound than that of man—that she is more uniformly ruled by feeling, more impulsive, and less reflective, than man is—let all this be granted; and let us now see what basis such an admission affords to the doctrine, that the rights of women are not co-extensive with those of men.

  • 1.If rights are to be meted out to the two sexes in the ratio of their respective amounts of intelligence, then must the same system be acted upon in the apportionment of rights between man and man. Whence must proceed all those multiplied perplexities already pointed out. (See pp. 107 and 108.)
  • 2.In like manner, it will follow, that as there are here and there women of unquestionably greater ability than the average of men, some women ought to have greater rights than some men.
  • 3.Wherefore, instead of a certain fixed allotment of rights to all males and another to all females, the hypothesis itself involves an infinite gradation of rights, irrespective of sex entirely, and sends us once more in search of those unattainable desiderata—a standard by which to measure capacity, and another by which to measure rights.

  Not only, however, does the theory thus fall to pieces under the mere process of inspection; it is absurd on the very face of it, when freed from the disguise of hackneyed phraseology. For what is it that we mean by rights? Nothing else than freedom to exercise the faculties. And what is the meaning of the assertion that woman is mentally inferior to man? Simply that her faculties are less powerful. What then does the dogma, that because woman is mentally inferior to man she has less extensive rights, amount to? Just this,—that because woman has weaker faculties than man, she ought not to have like liberty with him, to exercise the faculties she has!

  § 3.

  Belief always bears the impress of character—is, in fact, its product. Anthropomorphism sufficiently proves this. Men’s wishes eventually get expressed in their faiths—their real faiths, that is; not their nominal ones. Pull to pieces a man’s Theory of Things, and you will find it based upon facts collected at the suggestion of his desires. A fiery passion consumes all evidences opposed to its gratification, and fusing together those that serve its purpose, casts them into weapons by which to achieve its end. There is no deed so vicious but what the actor makes for himself an excuse to justify; and if the deed is often repeated, such excuse becomes a creed. The vilest transactions on record—Bartholomew massacres and the like—have had defenders; nay, have been inculcated as fulfilments of the Divine will. There is wisdom in the fable which represents the wolf as raising accusations against the lamb before devouring it. It is always thus amongst men. No invader ever raised standard, but persuaded himself that he had a just cause. Sacrifices and prayers have preceded every military expedition, from one of Cæsar’s campaigns, down to a border foray. God is on our side, is the universal cry. Each of two conflicting nations consecrates its flags; and whichever conquers sings a Te Deum. Attila conceived himself to have a—divine claim to the dominion of the earth:—the Spaniards subdued the Indians under plea of converting them to Christianity; hanging thirteen refractory ones in honour of Jesus Christ and his apostles: and we English justify our colonial aggressions by saying that the Creator intends the Anglo-Saxon race to people the world! An insatiate lust of conquest transmutes manslaying into a virtue; and, amongst more races than one, implacable revenge has made assassination a duty. A clever theft was praiseworthy amongst the Spartans; and it is equally so amongst Christians, provided it be on a sufficiently large scale. Piracy was heroism with Jason and his followers; was so also with the Norsemen; is so still with the Malays; and there is never wanting some golden fleece for a pretext. Amongst money-hunting people a man is commended in proportion to the number of hours he spends in business; in our day the rage for accumulation has apotheosized work; and even the miser is not without a code of morals by which to defend his parsimony. The ruling classes argue themselves into the belief that property should be represented rather than person—that the landed interest should preponderate. The pauper is thoroughly persuaded that he has a right to relief. The monks held printing to be an invention of the devil; and some of our modern sectaries regard their refractory brethren as under demoniacal possessiona . To the clergy nothing is more obvious than that a state-church is just, and essential to the maintenance of religion. The sinecurist thinks himself rightly indignant at any disregard of his vested interests. And so on throughout society.

  Perhaps the slave-owner’s assertion that negroes are not human beings, and the kindred dogma of the Mahometans, that women have no souls,b , are the strangest samples of convictions so formed. In these, as in the foregoing cases, selfishness finds out a satisfactory reason why it may do what it wills—collects and distorts, exaggerates and suppresses, so as ultimately to cheat itself into the desired conclusion. Does any one doubt that men can really believe things thus palpably opposed to the plainest facts? Does any one assert that those who profess opinions so manifestly absurd must be hypocrites? Let him beware. Let him consider whether selfishness has not deluded him into absurdities almost as gross. The laws of England, and the public opinion of England, countenance doctrines nearly as preposterous as these that look to us inconceivable; nay, the very same doctrines somewhat softened down. For what, when closely examined, is this notion that the rights of women are not equal with those of men? Simply an evanescent form of the theory that women have no souls.

  § 4.

  That a people’s condition may be judged by the treatment which women receive under it, is a remark that has become almost trite. The facts, of which this remark is a generalization, are abundant enough. Look where we will, we find that just as far as the law of the strongest regulates the relationships between man and man, does it regulate the relationships between man and woman. To the same extent that the triumph of might over right is seen in a nation’s political institutions, it is seen in its domestic ones. Despotism in the state is necessarily associated with despotism in the family. The two being alike moral in their origin, cannot fail to co-exist. Turkey, Egypt, India, China, Russia, the feudal states of Europe—it needs but to name these to suggest hosts of facts illustrative of such an accordance.

  Yet, strangely enough, almost all of us who let fall this observation, overlook its application to ourselves. Here we sit over our tea-tables, and pass criticisms upon national character, or philosophize upon the development of civilized institutions, quietly taking it for granted that we are civilized—that the state of things we live under is the right one, or thereabouts. Although the people of every past age have thought the like and have been uniformly mistaken, there are still many to whom it never occurs that we may be mistaken too. Amidst their strictures upon the ill-treatment of women in the East, and the unhealthy social arrangements implied by it, most persons do not see that the same connection between political and domestic oppression exists in this England of ours at the present hour, and that in as far as our laws and customs violate the rights of humanity by giving the richer classes power over the poorer, in so far do they similarly violate those rights by giving the stronger sex power over the weaker. Yet, looking at the matter spart from prejudice, and considering all institutions to be, as they are, products of the popular character, we cannot avoid confessing that such must be the ease. To the same extent that the old leaven of tyranny shows itself in the transactions of the senate, it will creep out in the doings of the household. If injustice sways men’s public acts, it will inevitably sway their private ones also. The mere fact, therefore, that oppression marks the relationships of out-door life, is ample proof that it exists in the relationships of the fireside.

  § 5.

  The desire to command is essentially a barbarous desire. Whether seen in the ukase of a Czar, or in the order of an Eton bully to his fag, it is alike significant of brutality. Command cannot be otherwise than savage, for it implies an appeal to force, should force be needful. Behind its—You shall,—there lies the scarcely hidden—If you won’t, I’ll make you.—Command is the growl of coercion crouching in ambush. Or we might aptly term it—violence in a latent state. All its accessories—its frown, its voice, its gestures, prove it akin to the ferocity of the uncivilized man. Command is the foe of peace, for it breeds war of words and feelings—sometimes of deeds. It is inconsistent with the first law of morality. It is radically wrong.

  All the barbarisms of the past have their types in the present. All the barbarisms of the past grew out of certain dispositions: those dispositions may be weakened, but they are not extinct; and so long as they exist there must be manifestations of them. What we commonly understand by command and obedience, are the modern forms of bygone despotism and slavery. Philosophically considered, they are indentical with these. Despotism may be defined as the making of another’s will bend to the fulfilment of our own: and its counterpart—slavery—as the having our own will subordinated to the will of another. True, we apply the terms only when the rule of one will over another is extreme—when the one wholly, or almost wholly extinguishes the other. But if the subjection of man to man is bad when carried to its full extent, it is bad in any degree. If every man has freedom to exercise his faculties within specified limits; and if, as we have seen (Chap. VIII.), slavery is wrong because it transgresses that freedom, and makes one man use his powers, to satisfy not his own wants, but the wants of another; then, whatsoever involves command, or whatsoever implies obedience, is wrong also; seeing that it too, necessitates the subserviency of one man’s actions to the gratifications of another.—You must do not as you will, but as I will,—is the basis of every mandate, whether used by a planter to his negro, or by a husband to his wife. Not satisfied with being sole ruler over his own doings, the petty autocrat oversteps the boundary dividing his sphere of action from his neighbour’s, and takes upon himself to direct his or her doings also. It matters not, in point of principle, whether such domination is entire or partial. To whatever extent the will of the one is overborne by the will of the other, to that extent the parties are tyrant and slave.

  There are, without doubt, many who will rebel against this doctrine. There are many who hold that the obedience of one human being to another is proper, virtuous, praiseworthy. There are many to whose moral sense command is not repugnant. There are many who think the subjection of the weaker sex to the stronger legitimate and beneficial. Let them not be deceived. Let them remember that a nation’s institutions and beliefs are determined by its character. Let them remember that men’s perceptions are warped by their passions. Let them remember that our social state proves our superior feelings to be very imperfectly developed. And let them remember that, as many customs deemed right by our ancestors, appear detestable to us, so, many customs which we think proper, our more civilized descendants may regard with aversion—even as we loathe those barbarian manners which forbid a woman to sit at table with her lord and master, so may mankind one day loathe that subserviency of wife to husband, which existing laws enjoin.

  As elsewhere shown (page 29), moral sense becomes a trustworthy guide only when it has logic for an interpreter. Nothing but its primary intuition is authoritative. From the fundamental law to which it gives utterance, reason has to deduce the consequences; and from these, when correctly drawn, there is no appeal. It proves nothing, therefore, that there are some who do not feel command to be improper. It is for such to inquire whether command is or is not consistent with that first principle expressive of the Divine will—that axiom to which the Moral Sense responds. And they will find that, thus judged by the law of equal freedom, command is at once pronounced wrong; for whoso commands, manifestly claims more freedom than whoso is commanded.

  § 6.

  A future belief that subordination of sex is inequitable, is clearly prophesied by the change civilization is working in men’s sentiments. The arbitrary rule of one human being over another, no matter in what form it may appear, is fast getting recognised as essentially rude and brutal. In our day, the man of refined feeling does not like to play the despot over his fellow. He is disgusted if one in humble circumstances cringes to him. So far from wishing to elevate himself by depressing his poor and ignorant neighbours, he strives to put them at their ease in his presence—encourages them to behave in a less submissive and more self-respecting manner. He feels that a fellow-man may be enslaved by imperious words and manners as well as by tyrannical deeds; and hence he avoids a dictatorial style of speech to those below him. Even paid domestics, to whose services he has obtained a right by contract, he does not like to address in a tone of authority. He seeks rather to disguise his character of master: to this end wraps up his commands in the shape of requests; and continually employs the phrases,—If you please,—and—Thank you.—

  In the conduct of the modern gentleman to his friend, we have additional signs of this growing respect for another’s dignity. Every one must have observed the carefulness with which those who are on terms of affectionate intimacy, shun anything in the form of supremacy on either side, or endeavour to banish from remembrance, by their behaviour to each other, whatever of supremacy there may exist. Who is there that has not witnessed the dilemma in which the wealthier of two such is sometimes placed, between the wish to confer a benefit on the other, and the fear that in so doing he may offend by assuming the attitude of a patron? And who is there that does not feel how destructive it would be of the sentiment subsisting between himself and his friend, were he to play the master over his friend, or his friend to play the master over him?

  A further increase of this same refinement will show men that there is a fatal incongruity between the matrimonial servitude which our law recognises, and the relationship that ought to exist between husband and wife. Surely if he who possesses any generosity of nature dislikes speaking to a hired domestic in a tone of authority—if he cannot bear assuming towards his friend the behaviour of a superior—how utterly repugnant to him should it be, to make himself ruler over one on whose behalf all his kindly sentiments are specially enlisted; one to whom he is bound by the strongest attachment that his nature is capable of; and for whose rights and dignity he ought to have the most active sympathy!

  § 7.

  Command is a blight to the affections. Whatsoever of refinement—whatsoever of beauty—whatsoever of poetry, there is in the passion that unites the sexes, withers up and dies in the cold atmosphere of authority. Native as they are to such widely-separated regions of our nature, Love and Coercion cannot possibly flourish together. The one grows out of our best feelings: the other has its root in our worst. Love is sympathetic: Coercion is callous. Love is gentle: Coercion is harsh. Love is self-sacrificing: Coercion is selfish. How then can they co-exist? It is the property of the first to attract; whilst it is that of the last to repel: and, conflicting as they thus do, it is the constant tendency of each to destroy the other. Let whoever thinks the two compatible imagine himself acting the master over his betrothed. Does he believe that he could do this without any injury to the subsisting relationship? Does he not know rather that a bad effect would be produced upon the feelings of both parties by the assumption of such an attitude? And confessing this, as he must, is he superstitious enough to suppose that the going through a form of words will render harmless that use of command which was previously hurtful?

  Of all the causes which conspire to produce the disappointment of those glowing hopes with which married life is usually entered upon, none is so potent as this supremacy of sex—this degradation of what should be a free and equal relationship into one of ruler and subject—this supplanting of the sway of affection by the sway of authority. Only as that condition of slavery to which women are condemned amongst barbarous nations is ameliorated, does ideal love become possible; and only when that condition of slavery shall have been wholly abolished, will ideal love attain fulness and permanence. The facts around us plainly indicate this. Where-ever anything worth calling connubial happiness at present exists, we shall find that the subjugation of wife to husband is not enforced; though perhaps still held in theory, it is practically repudiated.

  § 8.

  There are many who think that authority, and its ally compulsion, are the sole agencies by which human beings can be controlled. Anarchy or government are, with them, the only conceivable alternatives. Believing in nothing but what they see, they cannot realize the possibility of a condition of things in which peace and order shall be maintained without force, or the fear of force. By such as these, the doctrine that the reign of man over woman is wrong, will no doubt be combated on the ground that the domestic relationship can only exist by the help of such supremacy. The impracticability of an equality of rights between the sexes will be urged by them in disproof of its rectitude. It will be argued, that were they put upon a level husband and wife would be for ever in antagonism—that as, when their wishes clashed, each would possess a like claim to have his or her way, the matrimonial bond would daily be endangered by the jar of opposing wills, and that, involving as it would a perpetual conflict, such an arrangement of married life must necessarily be an erroneous one.

  A very superficial conclusion this. It has been already pointed out (p. 37), that there must be an inconsistency between the perfect law and an imperfect state. The worse the condition of society, the more visionary must a true code of morality appear. The fact that any proposed principle of conduct is at once fully practicable—requires no reformation of human nature for its complete realization—is not a proof of its truth: is proof rather of its error. And, conversely, a certain degree of incongruity between such a principle and humanity as we know it, though no proof of the correctness of that principle, is at any rate a fact in its favour. Hence the allegation that mankind are not good enough to admit of the sexes living together harmoniously under the law of equal freedom, in no way militates against the validity or sacredness of that law.

  But the never-ceasing process of adaptation will gradually remove this obstacle to domestic rectitude. Recognition of the moral law, and an impulse to act up to it, going hand in hand, as we have seen that they must do (p. 26), equality of rights in the married state will become possible as fast as there arises a perception of its justness. That selfish conflict of claims which, according to the foregoing objection, would reduce a union, founded on the law of equal freedom, to a condition of anarchy, presupposes a deficiency in those feelings with which a belief in the law of equal freedom originates, and would decrease with the growth of those feelings. As elsewhere shown (p. 97), the same sentiment which leads us to maintain our own rights, leads us, by its sympathetic excitement, to respect the rights of our neighbours. Other things equal, the sense of justice to ourselves, and the sense of justice to our fellow-creatures, bear a constant ratio to each other. A state in which every one is jealous of his natural claims, is not therefore a litigious state, because it is one in which there is of necessity a diminished tendency to aggression. Experience proves this. For, as it cannot be denied that there is now a greater disposition amongst men towards the assertion of individual liberty than existed during the feudal ages, so neither can it be denied that there is now a less disposition amongst men to trespass against each other than was then exhibited. The two changes are co-ordinate, and must continue to be so. Hence, whenever society shall have become civilized enough to recognise the equality of rights between the sexes—when women shall have attained to a clear perception of what is due to them, and men to a nobility of feeling which shall make them concede to women the freedom which they themselves claim—humanity will have undergone such a modification as to render an equality of rights practicable.

  Married life under this ultimate state of things will not be characterised by perpetual squabbles, but by mutual concessions. Instead of a desire on the part of the husband to assert his claims to the uttermost, regardless of those of his wife, or on the part of the wife to do the like, there will be a watchful desire on both sides not to transgress. Neither will have to stand on the defensive, because each will be solicitous for the rights of the other. Not encroachment, but self-sacrifice, will be the ruling principle. The struggle will not be which shall gain the mastery, but which shall give way. Committing a trespass will be the thing feared, and not the being trespassed against. And thus, instead of domestic discord, will come a higher harmony than any we yet know.

  There is nothing Utopian in this. We may already trace the beginnings of it. An attitude like that described is not uncommonly maintained in the dealings of honourable men with each other; and if so, why should it not exist between the sexes? Here and there, indeed, may be found, even now, a wedded pair who preserve such a relationship. And what is at present the exception may one day be the rule.

  § 9.

  The extension of the law of equal freedom to both sexes will doubtless be objected to, on the ground that the political privileges exercised by men must thereby be ceded to women also. Of course they must; and why not? Is it that women are ignorant of state affairs? Why then their opinions would be those of their husbands and brothers; and the practical effect would be merely that of giving each male elector two votes instead of one. Is it that they might by-and-by become better informed, and might then begin to act independently? Why, in such case, they would be pretty much as competent to use their power with intelligence as the members of our present constituencies.

  We are told, however, that—woman’s mission—is a domestic one—that her character and position do not admit of her taking a part in the decision of public questions—that politics are beyond her sphere. But this raises the question—Who shall say what her sphere is? Amongst the Pawnees and Sioux it is that of a beast of burden; she has to carry the baggage, to drag home fuel from the woods, and to do everything that is menial and laborious. In slave-countries it is within woman’s sphere to work side by side with men, under the lash of the taskmaster. Clerkships, cashierships, and other responsible business situations, are comprised in her sphere in modern France. Whilst, on the other hand, the sphere of a Turkish or Egyptian lady extends scarcely an inch beyond the walls of the harem. Who now will tell us what woman’s sphere really is? As the usages of mankind vary so much, let us hear how it is to be shown that the sphere we assign her is the true one—that the limits we have set to female activity are just the proper limits. Let us hear why on this one point of our social polity we are exactly right, whilst we are wrong on so many others.

  It is indeed said, that the exercise of political power by women is repugnant to our sense of propriety—conflicts with our ideas of the feminine character—is altogether condemned by our feelings. Granted; but what then? The same plea has been urged in defence of a thousand absurdities, and if valid in one case is equally so in all others. Should a traveller in the East inquire of a Turk why women in his country conceal their faces, he would be told that for them to go unveiled would be considered indecent; would offend the feelings of the spectators. In Russia female voices are never heard in church: women not being thought worthy—to sing the praises of God in the presence of men;—and the disregard of this regulation would be censured as an outrage upon public feeling. There was a time in France when men were so enamoured of ignorance, that a lady who pronounced any but the commonest words correctly, was blushed for by her companions; a tolerable proof that people’s feelings then blamed in a woman that literateness which it is now thought a disgrace for her to be without. In China cramped feet are essential to female refinement; and so strong is the feeling in this matter, that a Chinese will not believe that an Englishwoman who walks naturally, can be one of a superior class. It was once held unfeminine for a lady to write a book; and no doubt those who thought it so, would have quoted feelings in support of their opinion. Yet, with facts like these on every hand, people assume that the enfranchisement of women cannot be right, because it is repugnant to their feelings!

  We have some feelings that are necessary and eternal; we have others that, being the results of custom, are changeable and evanescent. And there is no way of distinguishing those feelings which are natural from those which are conventional, except by an appeal to first principles. If a sentiment responds to some necessity of our condition, its dictates must be respected. If otherwise—if opposed to a necessity, instead of in harmony with one, we must regard that sentiment as the product of circumstances, of education, of habit, and consequently without weight. However much, therefore, the giving of political power to women may disagree with our notions of propriety, we must conclude that, being required by that first pre-requisite to greatest happiness—the law of equal freedom—such a concession is unquestionably right and good.

  § 10.

  Thus it has been shown that the rights of women must stand or fall with those of men; derived as they are from the same authority; involved in the same axiom; demonstrated by the same argument. That the law of equal freedom applies alike to both sexes, has been further proved by the fact that any other hypothesis involves us in inextricable difficulties. The idea that the rights of women are not equal to those of men, has been condemned as akin to the Eastern dogma, that women have no souls. It has been argued that the position at present held by the weaker sex is of necessity a wrong one, seeing that the same selfishness which vitiates our political institutions, must inevitably vitiate our domestic ones also. Subordination of females to males has been also repudiated, because it implies the use of command, and thereby reveals its descent from barbarism. Proof has been given that the attitudes of mastery on the one side, and submission on the other, are essentially at variance with that refined sentiment which should subsist between husband and wife. The argument that married life would be impracticable under any other arrangement, has been met by pointing out how the relationship of equality must become possible as fast as its justness is recognised. And lastly, it has been shown that the objections commonly raised against giving political power to women, are founded on notions and prejudices that will not bear examination.

  CHAPTER XVII.

  the rights of children.

  § 1.

  If we are once sure of our law—sure that it is a Divine ordination—sure that it is rooted in the nature of things, then whithersoever it leads we may safely follow. As elsewhere pointed out (Lemma II.), a true rule has no exceptions. When therefore that first principle from which the rights of adults are derived, turns out to be a source from which we may derive the rights of children, and when the two processes of deduction prove to be identical, we have no choice but to abide by the result, and to assume that the one inference is equally authoritative with the other.

  That the law—Every man has freedom to do all that he wills, provided he infringes not the equal freedom of any other man—applies as much to the young as to the mature, becomes manifest on referring back to its origin. God wills human happiness; that happiness is attainable only through the medium of faculties; for the production of happiness those faculties must be exercised; the exercise of them pre-supposes liberty of action: these are the steps by which we find our way from the Divine will to the law of equal freedom. But the demonstration is fully as complete when used on behalf of the child, as when used on behalf of the man. The child’s happiness, too, is willed by the Deity; the child, too, has faculties to be exercised; the child, too, needs scope for the exercise of those faculties; the child therefore has claims to freedom—rights, as we call them—co-extensive with those of the adult. We cannot avoid this conclusion, if we would. Either we must reject the law altogether, or we must include under it both sexes and all ages.

  The candid thinker will find himself obliged to concede this, when he considers the many perplexities which follow in the train of any other theory. For, if it be asserted that the law of equal freedom applies only to adults; that is, if it be asserted that men have rights, but that children have none, we are immediately met by the question—When does the child become a man? at what period does the human being pass out of the condition of having no rights, into the condition of having rights? None will have the folly to quote the arbitrary dictum of the statute-book as an answer. The appeal is to an authority above that of legislative enactments—demands on what these are to be founded—on what attribute of manhood recognition by the law of equal freedom depends. Shall the youth be entitled to the rights of humanity when the pitch of his voice sinks an octave? or when he begins to shave? or when he ceases growing? or when he can lift a hundred weight? Are we to adopt the test of age, of stature, of weight, of strength, of virility, or of intelligence? Much may no doubt be said in favour of each of these; but who can select the true one? And who can answer the objection, that whichever qualification is chosen, will class many as men who are not at present considered such; whilst it will reject from the list, others who are now by universal consent included in it?

  Nor is this all. For even supposing that, by some undiscovered species of logic, it has been determined on what particular day of his life the human being may equitably claim his freedom, it still remains to define the position he holds previously to this period. Has the minor absolutely no rights at all? If so, there is nothing wrong in infanticide. If so, robbery is justifiable, provided the party robbed be under age. If so, a child may equitably be enslaved. For, as already shown (pp. 112, 134), murder, theft, and the holding of others in bondage are wrong, simply because they are violations of human rights; and if children have no rights, they cannot become the subjects of these crimes. But if, on the other hand, it be held, as it is held, that children have some rights; if it be held that the youth has an equal claim to life with the adult; if it be held that he has something like the same title to liberty; and if it be held (though not by law, yet by public opinion) that he is similarly capable of owning property, then it becomes needful to show why these primary rights must be conceded, but no others. They who assert that children are wholly without rights, and that, like the inferior animals, they exist only by permission of grown men, take up a precise, unmistakable position. But they who suppose children to occupy a place morally above that of brutes, and yet maintain that whilst children have certain rights, their rights are not equal with those of men, are called upon to draw the line, to explain, to define. They must say what rights are common to children and adults, and why. They must say where the rights of adults exceed those of children, and why. And their answers to these queries must be drawn, not from considerations of expediency, but from the original constitution of things.

  Should it be argued, that the relationship in which a parent stands to his child, as supplying it with the necessaries of life, is a different one from that subsisting between man and man, and that consequently the law of equal freedom does not apply, the answer is, that though by so maintaining it a parent establishes a certain claim upon his child—a claim which he may fairly expect to have discharged by a like kindness towards himself should he ever need it, yet he establishes no title to dominion. For if the conferring an obligation establishes a title to dominion in this case, then must it do so in others; whence it will follow that if one man becomes a benefactor to another, he thereby obtains the right to play the master over that other; a conclusion which we do not admit. Moreover, if in virtue of his position a parent may trench upon the liberties of his child, there necessarily arises the question—To what extent may he do this? may he destroy them entirely, as by committing murder? If not, it is required to ascertain the limit up to which he may go, but which he must not exceed; a problem equally insoluble with the similar one just noticed.

  Unless, therefore, the reader can show that the train of reasoning by which the law of equal freedom is deduced from the Divine will, does not recognise children, which he cannot; unless he can show exactly at what time the child becomes a man, which he cannot; unless he can show why a certain share of liberty naturally attaches to both childhood and manhood, and another share to only one, which he cannot; he must admit that the rights of the youth and the adult are co-extensive.

  There is indeed one plausible-looking way of meeting these arguments. It may be urged that in the child many of the faculties of the future man are undeveloped, and that as rights are primarily dependent on faculties, the rights of children cannot be co-extensive with those of adults, because their faculties are not so. A fatal objection this, did it touch the question; but it happens to be wholly beside it. The fullest endowment of rights that any being can possess, is perfect freedom to exercise all his faculties. And if each of two beings possesses perfect freedom to exercise all his faculties, each possesses complete rights; that is, the rights of the two are equal; no matter whether their faculties are equal or not. For, to say that the rights of the one are less than those of the other, because his faculties are fewer, is to say that he has no right to exercise the faculties he has not got!—a curious compound of truism and absurdity.

  § 2.

  Due warning was given (p. 51) that our first principle carried in it the germs of sundry unlocked-for conclusions. We have now met with one of these. We have just found ourselves committed to a proposition at war with the convictions of almost all. Truth, however, must of necessity be consistent. We have therefore no alternative but to re-examine our preconceived opinions, in the expectation of finding them erroneous.

  That we may enter upon this task in a philosophical spirit, it will be well, at the risk even of something like repetition, to glance at the influences by which our beliefs are in danger of being warped. We need constantly reminding of these. As an abstract truth, we all admit that passion distorts judgment; yet never inquire whether our passions are influencing us. We all decry prejudice, yet are all prejudiced. We see how habits, and interests, and likings, mould the theories of those around us; yet forget that our own theories are similarly moulded. Nevertheless, the instances in which our feelings bias us in spite of ourselves are of hourly recurrence. That proprietary passion, which a man has for his ideas, veils their defects to him as effectually as maternal fondness blinds a mother to the imperfections of her offspring. An author cannot, for the life of him, judge correctly of what he has just written; he has to wait until lapse of time enables him to read it as though it were a stranger’s, and he then discerns flaws where all had seemed perfect. It is only when his enthusiasm on its behalf has grown cold, that the artist is able to see the faults of his picture. Whilst they are transpiring, we do not perceive the ultimate bearing of our own acts or the acts of others towards us; only in after years are we able to philosophize upon them. Just so, too, is it with successive generations. Men of the past quite misunderstood the institutions they lived under; they pertinaciously adhered to the most vicious principles, and were bitter in their opposition to right ones, at the dictates of their attachments and antipathies. So difficult is it for man to emancipate himself from the invisible fetters which habit and education cast over his intellect; and so palpable is the consequent incompetency of a people to judge rightly of itself and its deeds or opinions, that the fact has been embodied in the current aphorism——No age can write its own history:—an aphorism sufficiently expressive of the universality of prejudice.

  If we act wisely, we shall assume that the reasonings of modern society are subject to the like disturbing influences. We shall conclude that, even now, as in times gone by, opinion is but the counterpart of condition—merely expresses the degree of civilisation to which we have attained. We shall suspect that many of those convictions which seem the results of dispassionate thinking, have been nurtured in us by circumstances. We shall confess that as, heretofore, fanatical opposition to this doctrine, and bigoted adhesion to that, have been no tests of the truth or falsity of the said doctrines; so neither is the strength of attachment, or dislike which a nation now exhibits towards certain principles, any proof of their correctness or their fallacy. Nay more—we shall not only admit that public opinion may be wrong, but that it must be so. Without a general equilibrium between institutions and ideas society cannot subsist; and hence, if error pervades our institutions, it must similarly pervade our ideas. Just as much as a people falls short of perfection in its state, will it lack of truth in its beliefs.

  Thus much by way of bespeaking a calm hearing. As lately said, the proposition about to be maintained conflicts with the habits, associations, and most cherished convictions of the great majority. That the law of equal freedom applies to children as much as to adults; that consequently the rights of children are co-extensive with those of adults; that, as violating those rights, the use of coercion is wrong; and that the relationship now commonly existing between parents and children is therefore a vicious one—these are assertions which perhaps few will listen to with equanimity. Nevertheless, if there be any weight in the foregoing considerations, we shall do well to disregard all protests of feeling, and place implicit faith in the conclusions of abstract equity.

  § 3.

  We say that a man’s character may be told by the company he keeps. We might similarly say that the truth of a belief may be judged by the morality with which it is associated. Given a theory universally current amongst the most degraded sections of our race—a theory received only with considerable abatements by civilized nations—a theory in which men’s confidence diminishes as fast as society advances—and we may safely pronounce that theory to be a false one. On such, along with other evidence, the subordination of sex was lately condemned. Those commonly-observed facts, that the enslavement of woman is invariably associated with a low type of social life, and that conversely, her elevation towards an equality with man uniformly accompanies progress, were cited in part proof that the subjection of female to male is essentially wrong. If now, instead of women we read children, similar facts may be cited, and a similar deduction may be drawn. If it be true that the dominion of man over woman has been oppressive in proportion to the badness of the age or the people, it is also true that parental authority has been stringent and unlimited in a like proportion. If it be a fact that the emancipation of women has kept pace with the emancipation of society, it is likewise a fact that the once despotic rule of the old over the young has been ameliorated at the same rate. And if in our own day, we find the fast-spreading recognition of popular rights accompanied by a silently-growing perception of the rights of women, we also find it accompanied by a tendency towards systems of non-coercive education—that is, towards a practical admission of the rights of children.

  Whoever wants illustrations of this alleged harmony between the political, connubial, and filial relationships, may discover them anywhere and everywhere. Scanning that aboriginal state of existence during which the aggressive conduct of man to man renders society scarcely possible, he will see not only that wives are slaves and exist by sufferance, but that children hold their lives by the same tenure, and are sacrificed to the gods when fathers so will. He may observe how during classic times, the thraldom of five-sixths of the population was accompanied both by a theory that the child is the property and slave of its male parent, and by a legal fiction which regarded wives, as children similarly owned. That political degradation of the present East-Indian races for whom absolute monarchy seems still the only possible form of rule, he will find accompanied alike by suttees and by infanticide. The same connection of facts will be seen by him in China, where under a government, purely autocratic, there exists a public opinion which deems it an unpardonable offence for a wife to accuse her husband to the magistrate, and which ranks filial disobedience as a crime next in atrocity to murder. Nor is our own history barren of illustrations. On reviewing those times when constitutional liberty was but a name, when men were denied freedom of speech and belief, when the people’s representatives were openly bribed and justice was bought—the times, too, with which the laws enacting the servitude of women were in complete harmony—the observer cannot fail to be struck with the harshness of parental behaviour, and the attitude of humble subjection which sons and daughters had to assume. Between the close of the last century, when our domestic condition was marked by the use of Sir and Madam in addressing parents, and by the doctrine that a child ought unhesitatingly to marry whomsoever a father appointed; and when our political condition was marked by aristocratic supremacy, by the occurrence of church-and-king riots, and by the persecution of reformers—between that day and ours, the decline in the rigour of paternal authority and in the severity of political oppression, has been simultaneous. And, as already remarked, the like companionship of facts is seen in the present rapid growth of democratic feeling, and the equally rapid spread of a milder system of juvenile training.

  Thus, the biography of the race affords ample illustration of the alleged law. That uniformity of moral tone, which it was asserted must necessarily pervade a nation’s arrangements—social, marital, and parental, we see exemplified alike under all phases of civilisation. Indeed this position hardly needed proof, being, as it is, a direct corollary from self-evident truths. As surely as a man’s character shines through all his deeds, so surely does the character of a people shine through all its laws and customs. Having a common root in human nature, cotemporary institutions cannot fail to be equally affected by the imperfection of that nature. They must all be right or wrong together. The evil which taints one must taint all. The change which reforms one must at the same time reform all. The progress which perfects one must eventually perfect all.

  Consequently, whoever admits that injustice is still visible in the dealings of class with class—whoever admits that it similarly exhibits itself in the behaviour of one sex to the other, cannot but admit that it necessarily exists in the conduct of the old to the young. And he must further admit that being most implicitly received amongst the most barbarous nations, and waning as its influence does with the advance of civilisation, the doctrine of filial subjection is entirely condemned by its associations.

  § 4.

  If coercive education be right, it must be productive of good, and if wrong, of evil. By an analysis of its results, therefore, we shall obtain so much evidence for or against the doctrine that the liberties of children are co-extensive with those of adults.

  That coercive education is impolitic, may be strongly suspected from the fact lately adverted to—the evident disposition towards the abandonment of it which modern systems of training evince. Considering what universal attention the culture of the young has lately received—the books written about it, the lectures delivered on it, the experiments made to elucidate it—there is reason for concluding that as the use of brute force for educational purposes has greatly declined, something radically wrong must be involved in it. But without dwelling upon this, which, like all inferences drawn from expediency, is liable to have its premises called in question, let us judge of coercive education not by the effects it is believed to produce, but by those it must produce.

  Education has for its object the formation of character. To curb restive propensities, to awaken dormant sentiments, to strengthen the perceptions, and cultivate the tastes, to encourage this feeling and repress that, so as finally to develop the child into a man of well proportioned and harmonious nature—this is alike the aim of parent and teacher. Those, therefore, who advocate the use of authority, and if need be—force in the management of children, must do so because they think these the best means of compassing the desired object—formation of character. Paternity has to devise some kind of rule for the nursery. Impelled partly by creed, partly by custom, partly by inclination, paternity decides in favour of a pure despotism, proclaims its word the supreme law, anathematizes disobedience, and exhibits the rod as the final arbiter in all disputes. And of course this system of discipline is defended as the one best calculated to curb restive propensities, awaken dormant sentiments, &c., &c., as aforesaid. Suppose, now, we inquire how the plan works. An unamiable little urchin is pursuing his own gratification regardless of the comfort of others—is perhaps annoyingly vociferous in his play; or is amusing himself by teasing a companion; or is trying to monopolize the toys intended for others in common with himself. Well; some kind of interposition is manifestly called for. Paternity with knit brows, and in a severe tone, commands desistance—visits anything like reluctant submission with a sharp—Do as I bid you——if need be, hints at a whipping or the black hole—in short carries coercion, or the threat of coercion, far enough to produce obedience. After sundry exhibitions of perverse feeling, the child gives in; showing, however, by its sullenness the animosity it entertains. Meanwhile paternity pokes the fire and complacently resumes the newspaper under the impression that all is as it should be: most unfortunate mistake!

  If the thing wanted had been the mere repression of noise, or the mechanical transfer of a plaything, perhaps no better course could have been pursued. Had it been of no consequence under what impulse the child acted, so long as it fulfilled a given mandate, nothing would remain to be said. But something else was needed. Character was the thing to be changed rather than conduct. It was not the deeds, but the feeling from which the deeds sprung that required dealing with. Here were palpable manifestations of selfishness—an indifference to the wishes of others, a marked desire to tyrannise, an endeavour to engross benefits intended for all—in short, here were exhibitions on a small scale of that unsympathetic nature to which our social evils are mainly attributable. What, then, was the thing wanted? Evidently an alteration in the child’s disposition. What was the problem to be solved? Clearly to generate a state of mind which had it previously existed would have prevented the offending actions. What was the final end to be achieved? Unquestionably the formation of a character which should spontaneously produce greater generosity of conduct. Or, speaking definitely, it was necessary to strengthen that sympathy to the weakness of which this ill behaviour was traceable.

  But sympathy can be strengthened only by exercise. No faculty whatever will grow, save by the performance of its special function—a muscle by contraction; the intellect by perceiving and thinking; a moral sentiment by feeling. Sympathy, therefore, can be increased only by exciting sympathetic emotions. A selfish child is to be rendered less selfish, only by arousing in it a fellow-feeling with the desires of others. If this is not done, nothing is done.

  Observe, then, how the case stands. A grasping hard-natured boy is to be humanized—is to have whatever germ of better spirit may be in him developed; and to this end it is proposed to use frowns, threats, and the stick! To stimulate that faculty which originates our regard for the happiness of others, we are told to inflict pain, or the fear of pain! The problem is—to generate in a child’s mind a sympathetic feeling; and the answer is—beat it, or send it supperless to bed!

  Thus we have but to reduce the subjection-theory to a definite form to render its absurdity self-evident. Contrasting the means to be employed with the work to be done, we are at once struck with their utter unfitness. Instead of creating a new internal state which shall exhibit itself in better deeds, coercion can manifestly do nothing but forcibly mould externals into a coarse semblance of such a state. In the family, as in society, it can simply restrain; it cannot educate. Just as the recollection of Bridewell, and the dread of a policeman, whilst they serve to check the thief’s depredations, effect no change in his morals, so, although a father’s threats may produce in a child a certain outside conformity with rectitude, they cannot generate any real attachment to it. As some one has well said, the utmost that severity can do is to make hypocrites; it can never make converts.

  § 5.

  Let those who have no faith in any instrumentalities for the rule of human beings, save the stern will and the strong hand, visit the Hanwell Asylum for the insane. Let all self-styled practical men, who, in the pride of their semi-savage theories, shower sarcasms upon the movements for peace, for the abolition of capital punishments and the like, go and witness to their confusion how a thousand lunatics can be managed without the use of force. Let these sneerers at—sentimentalisms—reflect on the horrors of madhouses as they used to be; where was weeping and wailing and gnashing of teeth, where chains clanked dismally, and where the silence of the night was rent by shrieks that made the belated passer-by hurry on shudderingly; let them contrast with these horrors, the calmness, the contentment, the tractability, the improved health of mind and body, and the not unfrequent recoveries, that have followed the abandonment of the strait-jacket regimea : and then let them blush for their creed.

  And shall the poor maniac, with diseased feelings and a warped intellect, persecuted as he constantly is by the suggestions of a morbid imagination, shall a being with a mind so hopelessly chaotic that even the most earnest pleader for human rights would make his case an exception, shall he be amenable to a non-coercive treatment, and shall a child not be amenable to it? Will any one maintain that madmen can be managed by suasion, but not children? that moral-force methods are best for those deprived of reason, but physical-force methods for those possessing it? Hardly. The boldest defender of domestic despotism will not assert so much. If by judicious conduct the confidence even of the insane may be obtained—if even to the beclouded intelligence of a lunatic, kind attentions and a sympathetic manner will carry the conviction that he is surrounded by friends and not by demons—and if, under that conviction, even he, though a slave to every disordered impulse, becomes comparatively docile, how much more under the same influence will a child become so. Do but gain a boy’s trust; convince him by your behaviour that you have his happiness at heart; let him discover that you are the wiser of the two; let him experience the benefits of following your advice, and the evils that arise from disregarding it; and fear not you will readily enough guide him. Not by authority is your sway to be obtained; neither by reasoning; but by inducement. Show in all your conduct that you are thoroughly your child’s friend, and there is nothing that you may not lead him to. The faintest sign of your approval or dissent will be his law. You have won from him the key of all his feelings; and, instead of the vindictive passions that severe treatment would have aroused, you may by a word call forth tears, or blushes, or the thrill of sympathy—may excite any emotion you please—may, in short, effect something worth calling education.

  § 6.

  If we wish a boy to become a good mechanic, we ensure his expertness by an early apprenticeship. The young musician that is to be, passes several hours a day at his instrument. Initiatory courses of outline drawing and shading are gone through by the intended artist. For the future accountant, a through drilling in arithmetic is prescribed. The reflective powers are sought to be developed by the study of mathematics. Thus, all training is founded on the principle that culture must precede proficiency. In such proverbs as——Habit is second nature,—and—Practice makes perfect,—men have expressed those net products of universal observation on which every educational system is ostensibly based. The maxims of a village schoolmistress and the speculations of a Pestalozzi are alike pervaded by the thory that the child should be accustomed to those exertions of body and mind which will in future life be required of it. Education means this or nothing.

  What now is the most important attribute of man as a moral being? What faculty above all others should we be solicitous to cultivate? May we not answer—the faculty of self-control? This it is which forms a chief distinction between the human being and the brute. It is in virtue of this that man is defined as a creature—looking before and after.—It is in their larger endowment of this that the civilized races are superior to the savage. In supremacy of this consists one of the perfections of the ideal man. Not to be impulsive—not to be spurred hither and thither by each desire that in turn comes uppermost; but to be self-restrained, self-balanced, governed by the joint decision of the feelings in council assembled, before whom every action shall have been fully debated and calmly determined—this it is which education—moral education at least—strives to produce.

  But the power of self-government, like all other powers, can be developed only by exercise. Whoso is to rule over his passions in maturity, must be practised in ruling over his passions during youth. Observe, then, the absurdity of the coercive system. Instead of habituating a boy to be a law to himself as he is required in after-life to be, it administers the law for him. Instead of preparing him against the day when he shall leave the paternal roof, by inducing him to fix the boundaries of his actions and voluntarily confine himself within them, it marks out these boundaries for him, and says——cross them at your peril.—Here we have a being who, in a few years, is to become his own master, and, by way of fitting him for such a condition, he is allowed to be his own master as little as possible. Whilst in every other particular it is thought desirable that what the man will have to do, the child should be well drilled in doing, in this most important of all particulars—the controlling of himself—it is thought that the less practice he has the better. No wonder that those who have been brought up under the severest discipline should so frequently turn out the wildest of the wild. Such a result is just what might have been looked for.

  Indeed, not only does the physical-force system fail to fit the youth for his future position; it absolutely tends to unfit him. Were slavery to be his lot—if his after-life had to be passed under the rule of a Russian autocrat, or of an American cotton planter, no better method of training could be devised than one which accustomed him to that attitude of complete subordination he would subsequently have to assume. But just to the degree in which such treatment would fit him for servitude, must it unfit him for being a free man amongst free men.

  § 7.

  But why is education needed at all? Why does not the child grow spontaneously into a normal human being? Why should it be requisite to curb this propensity, to stimulate the other sentiment, and thus by artificial aids to mould the mind into something different from what it would of itself become? Is not there here an anomaly in nature? Throughout the rest of creation we find the seed and the embryo attaining to perfect maturity without external aid. Drop an acorn into the ground, and it will in due time become a healthy oak without either pruning or training. The insect passes through its several transformations unhelped, and arrives at its final form possessed of every needful capacity and instinct. No coercion is needed to make the young bird or quadruped adopt the habits proper to its future life. Its character like its body, spontaneously assumes complete fitness for the part it has to play in the world. How happens it, then, that the human mind alone tends to develop itself wrongly? Must there not be some exceptional cause for this? Manifestly: and if so a true theory of education must recognise this cause.

  It is an indisputable fact that the moral constitution which fitted man for his original predatory state, differs from the one needed to fit him for this social state to which multiplication of the race has led. In a foregoing part of our inquiry (Chap. II.), it was shown that the law of adaptation is effecting a transition from the one constitution to the other. Living then, as we do, in the midst of this transition, we must expect to find sundry phenomena which are explicable only upon the hypothesis that humanity is at present partially adapted to both these states, and not completely to either—has only in a degree lost the dispositions needed for savage life, and has but imperfectly acquired those needed for social life. The anomaly just specified is one of these. The tendency of each new generation to develop itself wrongly, indicates the degree of modification that has yet to take place. Those respects in which a child requires restraint, are just the respects in which he is taking after the aboriginal man. The selfish squabbles of the nursery, the persecution of the play-ground, the lyings and petty thefts, the rough treatment of inferior creatures, the propensity to destroy—all these imply that tendency to pursue gratification at the expense of other beings, which qualified man for the wilderness, and which disqualifies him for civilized life.

  We have seen, however, that this incongruity between man’s attributes and his conditions is in course of being remedied. We have seen that the instincts of the savage must die of inanition—that the sentiments called forth by the social state must grow by exercise, and that if the laws of life remain constant, this modification will continue until our desires are brought into perfect conformity with our circumstances. When now that ultimate state in which morality shall have become organic is arrived at, this anomaly in the development of the child’s character will have disappeared. The young human being will no longer be an exception in nature—will not as now tend to grow into unfitness for the requirements of after-life; but will spontaneously unfold itself into that ideal manhood, whose every impulse coincides with the dictates of the moral law.

  Education therefore, in so far as it seeks to form character, serves only a temporary purpose, and, like other institutions resulting from the non-adaptation of man to the social state, must in the end die out. Hence we see how doubly in congruous with the moral law, is the system of training by coercion. Not only does it necessitate direct violations of that law, but the very work which it so futilely attempts to perform, will not need performing when that law has attained to its final supremacy. Force in the domestic circle, like magisterial force, is merely the complement of immorality: immorality we have found to be resolvable into non-adaptation: non-adaptation must in time cease: and thus the postulate with which this old theory of education starts will eventually become false. Rods and ferules, equally with the staffs and handcuffs of the constable; the gaoler’s keys; the swords, bayonets and cannon, with which nations restrain each other, are the offspring of iniquity—can exist only whilst supported by it, and necessarily share in the badness of their parentage. Born therefore as it is of man’s imperfections—governing as it does by means of those imperfections—and abdicating as it must when Equity begins to reign, Coercion in all its forms—educational or other—is essentially vicious.

  § 8.

  And here we are naturally led to remark once more the necessary incongruity between the perfect law and the imperfect man. Whatsoever of Utopianism there may seem to be in the foregoing doctrines, is due not to any error in them but to faults in ourselves. A partial impracticability must not perplex us; must, on the contrary, be expected. Just in proportion to our distance below the purely moral state, must be our difficulty in acting up to the moral law, either in the treatment of children or in anything else. It is not for us, however, to magnify and ponder over this difficulty. Our course is simple. We have just to fulfil the law as far as in us lies, resting satisfied that the limitations necessitated by our present condition will quite soon enough assert themselves.

  Meanwhile let it be remarked that the main obstacle to the right conduct of education lies rather in the parent than in the child. It is not that the child is insensible to influences higher than that of force, but that the parent is not virtuous enough to use them. Fathers and mothers who enlarge upon the trouble which filial misbehaviour entails upon them, strangely assume that all the blame is due to the evil propensities of their offspring and none to their own. Though on their knees they confess to being miserable sinners, yet to hear their complaints of undutiful sons and daughters you might suppose that they were themselves immaculate. They forget that the depravity of their children is a reproduction of their own depravity. They do not recognise in these much-scolded, often-beaten little ones so many looking-glasses wherein they may see reflected their own selfishness. It would astonish them to assert that they behave as improperly to their children as their children do to them. Yet a little candid self-analysis would show them that half their commands are issued more for their own convenience or gratification than for corrective purposes.—I won’t have that noise!—exclaims a disturbed father to some group of vociferous juveniles: and the noise ceasing, he claims to have done something towards making his family orderly. Perhaps he has; but how? By exhibiting that same evil disposition which he seeks to check in his children—a determination to sacrifice to his own happiness the happiness of others. Observe, too, the impulse under which a refractory child is punished. Instead of anxiety for the delinquent’s welfare, that severe eye and compressed lip denote rather the ire of an offended ruler—express some such inward thought as—You little wretch, we’ll soon see who is to be master.—Uncover its roots, and the theory of parental authority will be found to grow not out of man’s love for his offspring but out of his love of dominion. Let any one who doubts this listen to that common reprimand—How dare you disobey me?—and then consider what the emphasis means. No no, moral-force education is widely practicable even now, if parents were civilized enough to use it.

  But of course the obstacle is in a measure reciprocal. Even the best samples of childhood as we now know it will be occasionally unmanageable by suasion: and when inferior natures have to be dealt with, the difficulty of doing without coercion must be proportionably great. Nevertheless patience, self-denial, a sufficient insight into youthful emotions, and a due sympathy with them, added to a little ingenuity in the choice of means, will usually accomplish all that can be wished. Only let a parent’s actions and words and manner show that his own feeling is a thoroughly right one, and he will rarely fail to awaken a responsive feeling in the breast of his child.

  § 9.

  One further objection remains to be noticed. It will probably be said that if the rights of children are co-extensive with those of adults, it must follow that children are equally entitled with adults to citizenship, and ought to be similarly endowed with political power. This inference looks somewhat alarming; and it is easy to imagine the triumphant air of those who draw it, and the smiles with which they meditate upon the absurdities it suggests. Nevertheless the answer is simple and decisive. There must go two things to originate an incongruity; and, before passing censure, it is needful to say which of the two incongruous things is in fault. In the present case the incongruity is between the institution of government on the one side, and a certain consequence of the law of equal freedom on the other. Which of the two is to be condemned for this? In the above objection it is tacitly assumed that the blame lies with this consequence of the law of equal freedom: whereas the fact is just the other way. It is with the institution of government that the blame lies. Were the institution of government an essentially right one, there would be reason to suppose that our conclusion was fallacious; but being as it is the offspring of immorality, it must be condemned for conflicting with the moral law, and not the moral law for conflicting with it. Were the moral law universally obeyed, government would not exist; and did government not exist, the moral law could not dictate the political enfranchisement of children. Hence the alleged absurdity is traceable to the present evil constitution of society, and not to some defect in our conclusion.

  § 10.

  Concerning the extension of the law of equal freedom to children, we must therefore say, that equity commands it, and that expediency recommends it. We find the rights of children to be deducible from the same axiom, and by the same argument as the rights of adults; whilst denial of them involves us in perplexities out of which there seems to be no escape. The association between filial subservience and barbarism—the evident kinship of filial subservience to social and marital slavery—and the fact that filial subservience declines with the advance of civilization, suggest that such subservience is bad. The viciousness of a coercive treatment of children is further proved by its utter failure to accomplish the chief end of moral education—the culture of the sympathies; by its tendency to excite feelings of antagonism and hate; and by the check which it necessarily puts upon the development of the all-important faculty of self-control. Whilst, on the other hand, a non-coercive treatment being favourable to, and almost necessitating, constant appeals to the higher feelings, must, by exercising those feelings, improve the character; and must, at the same time, accustom the child to that condition of freedom in which its after-life is to be passed. It turns out, too, that the very need for a moral training of children is but temporary, and that, consequently, a true theory of the filial relationship must not presuppose like the command-and-obedience theory that such a need is permanent. Lastly, we find reason to attribute whatever of incompatibility there may be between these conclusions and our daily experience, not to any error in them, but to the necessary incongruity between the perfect law and an imperfect humanity.

  PART III.

  CHAPTER XVIII.

  political rights.

  § 1.

  Our principle is the primordial one. It is the first pre-requisite to the realization of the Divine will. Every mode of interpreting that will points to this as the all-essential condition of its fulfilment. If we start with an à priori view of creative design, we are immediately led to the law of equal freedom (Chap. III). Do we appeal to the general character of the human constitution? the law of equal freedom is its corollary (Chap. IV). And when, pursuing the examination further, we observe the detailed arrangements of that constitution, we discover a faculty by which the law of equal freedom is recognised and responded to (Chap. V.). Otherwise viewed, this law is seen to be a direct deduction from the necessities of existence: as thus. Life depends upon the performance of certain actions. Abrogate entirely the liberty to exercise the faculties, and we have death: abrogate it partially, and we have pain or partial death. This remains true of man whether he be savage or civilized—isolated or social. And as there must be life before there can be society, this first principle of life must take precedence of the first principle of society—must fix or govern it. Or, speaking definitely, as liberty to exercise the faculties is the first condition of individual life, the liberty of each, limited only by the like liberty of all, must be the first condition of social life.

  Derived, therefore, as it is, directly from the Divine will, and underlying as it does the right organization of society, the law of equal freedom is of higher authority than all other laws. The creative purpose demands that everything shall be subordinated to it. Institutions and social forms must just marshal themselves as it commands. It dates from the creation; they are of yesterday. It is constant; they are changeable. It appertains to the perfect; they to the imperfect. It is co-enduring with humanity; they may die to-morrow. As surely then as the incidental must bow before the necessary, so surely must all conventional arrangements be subject to the absolute moral law.

  § 2.

  Allusion has from time to time been made to a school of politicians, especially claiming for themselves the title of philosophical, who demur to this. They do not recognise any such supreme authority to which all human regulations must bend. Practically, if not professedly, they hold, with Archelaus, that nothing is intrinsically right or wrong; but that it becomes either by the dictum of the state. If we are to credit them government determines what shall be morality; and not morality what shall be government. They believe in no oracular principle by whose yea or nay we may be guided: their Delphi is the House of Commons. By their account man lives and moves and has his being by legislative permit. His freedom to do this or that is not natural, but conferred. The question—Has the citizen any claim to the work of his hands? can only be decided by a parliamentary division. If—the ayes have it,—he has; if—the noes,—he has not.

  The reader who has arrived thus far, needs not to have the fallacy of this doctrine pointed out. The expediency-system, of which it forms an essential part, has been repeatedly proved untenable, and with it must fall its dependent propositions. And having, moreover, been collaterally refuted in foregoing chapters, the notion that man has no rights save those of government manufacture, might safely be left where it lies. There are, however, additional evidences of its untruth, which it may be as well to state. And first let us inquire how it has originated.

  § 3.

  Considering society as a corporate body, we may say that man, when he first enters into it, has the repulsive force in excess, whilst in the cohesive force he is deficient. His passions are strong; his sympathies weak. Those propensities which fitted him for savage life necessarily tend to breed war between himself and his neighbours. His condition has been that of perpetual antagonism; and his antagonistic habits must of course accompany him into the social state. Aggression, dispute, anger, hatred, revenge—these are the several stages of the process by which the members of a primitive community are continually being sundered. Hence the smallness of the first communities. Populations burst as fast as they increase. Races split into tribes; tribes into factions. Only as civilization advances do larger unions become possible. And even these have to pass through some such stage as that of feudalism, with its small chieftainships and right of private war, showing that the tendency to repel is still active.

  Now, in proportion to the repulsive force subsisting between atoms of matter, must be the restraint required to keep them from exploding. And in proportion to the repulsive force subsisting between the units of a society must be the strength of the bonds requisite to prevent that society from flying to pieces. Some powerful concentrative influence there must be to produce even these smallest unions: and this influence must be strong in proportion to the savageness of the people; otherwise the unions cannot be maintained. Such an influence we have in the sentiment of veneration, reverence for power, loyalty, or, as Carlyle terms it—hero-worship. By this feeling it is, that society begins to be organized; and where the barbarism is greatest, there is this feeling strongest. Hence the fact that all traditions abound in superhuman beings, in giants and demigods. The mythical accounts of Bacchus and Hercules, of Thor and Odin, and of the various divine and half-divine personages who figure in the early histories of all races, merely prove the intensity of the awe with which superiority was once regarded. In that belief of some of the Polynesian Islanders that only their chiefs have souls, we find a still extant example of the almost incredible influence which this sentiment of reverence has over savage men. Through it only does all authority, whether that of ruler, teacher, or priest, become possible. It was alike the parent of beliefs in the miraculous conception of Gengis Khan, in the prophetic characters of Zoroaster, Confucius, and Mahomet, and in the infallibility of the Pope. Where it no longer deifies power, it associates it with divine attributes. Thus it was death for the Assyrian to enter unbidden into the presence of his monarch. The still stationary Orientals ascribe to their emperors celestial relationships. Schamyl, the prophet-chief of the Circassians, is believed to have entire union with the Divine essence. And the Russian soldiers pray for their Czar as—our God upon earth.—The fealty of vassal to feudal lord—the devotion of Highland Celt to chief—were exhibitions of the same feeling. Loyalty it made the brightest virtue, and treason the blackest crime.

  With the advance of civilization this awe of power diminishes. Instead of looking up to the monarch as a God, it begins to view him as a man reigning by divine authority—as—the Lord’s anointed.—Submission becomes less abject. Subjects no longer prostrate themselves before their rulers, nor do serfs kiss their master’s feet. Obedience ceases to be unlimited: men will choose their own faiths. Gradually, as there grow up those sentiments which lead each to maintain his own rights, and sympathetically to respect the rights of others—gradually as each, thus, by the acquirement of self-restraining power, becomes fitted to live in harmony with his fellow—so gradually do men cease to need external restraint, and so gradually does this feeling which makes them submit to that external restraint decrease. The law of adaptation necessitates this. The feeling must lose power just as fast as it ceases to be needful. As the new regulator grows, the old one must dwindle. The first amelioration of a pure despotism is a partial supplanting of the one by the other. Mixed constitutions exhibit the two acting conjointly. And whilst the one advances to supremacy, the other sinks into decrepitude: divine right of kings is exploded, and monarchical power becomes but a name.

  Although the adaptation of man to the social state has already made considerable progress—although the need for external restraint is less—and although consequently that reverence for authority which makes restraint possible, has greatly diminished—diminished to such an extent that the holders of power are daily caricatured, and men begin to listen to the National Anthem with their hats on—still the change is far from complete. The attributes of the aboriginal man have not yet died out. We still trench upon each other’s claims—still pursue happiness at each other’s expense. Our savage selfishness is seen in commerce, in legislation, in social arrangements, in amusements. The shopkeeper imposes on his lady customer; his lady customer beats down the shopkeeper Classes quarrel about their respective—interests;—and corruption is defended by those who profit from it. The spirit of caste morally tortures its victims with as much coolness as the Indian tortures his enemy. Gamblers pocket their gains with unconcern: and your share-speculator cares not who loses, so that he gets his premium. No matter what their rank, no matter in what they are engaged—whether in enacting a Corn Law, or in struggling with each other at the doors of a theatre—men show themselves as yet, little else than barbarians in broadcloth.

  Hence we still require shackles; rulers to impose them; and power-worship to make those rulers obeyed. Just as much as the love of God’s law is deficient, must the fear of man’s law be called in to supply its place. And to the extent that man’s law is needful there must be reverence for it to ensure the necessary allegiance. Hence, as men are still under the influence of this sentiment, we must expect their customs, creeds, and philosophies to testify of its presence.

  Here, then, we have a rationale of the expediency-idea of government. It is the latest and most refined form assumed by this disposition to exalt the state at the expense of the individual. There have been books written to prove that the monarch’s will should be the subject’s absolute law; and if instead of monarch we read legislature, we have the expediency-theory. It merely modifies—divine right of kings—into divine right of governments. It is despotism democratized. Between that old eastern regime under which the citizen was the private property of his ruler, having no rights at all, and that final state under which his rights will be entire and inviolable, there comes this intermediate state in which he is allowed to possess rights, but only by sufferance of parliament. Thus the expediency-philosophy falls naturally into its place as a phenomenon attending our progress from past slavery to future freedom. It is one of a series of creeds through which mankind have to pass. Like each of its predecessors, it is natural to a certain phase of human development. And it is fated to lose its hold as fast as our adaptation to the social state increases.

  § 4.

  It is only by bearing in mind that a theory of some kind being needful for men they will espouse any absurdity in default of something better, that we can understand how Rousseau’s doctrine of Social Contract ever came to be so widely received. This fact remembered, however, the belief in such a doctrine becomes comprehensible. Here were men combined together under government and law. It seemed clear that the arrangement was on the whole a beneficial one. Hence the very natural, though erroneous, conclusion that state-authority was a moral institute. And state-authority being taken for a moral institute, it became needful to account for it, to defend it, to reconcile it with justice and truth. Under which stimulus there suggested itself this theory of a covenant originally entered into between individuals on the one hand, and the community, or agents acting for it, on the other, by which allegiance was agreed to be exchanged for protection; and in virtue of which supposed covenant governments continue to exercise power and demand obedience.

  That such an explanation should have satisfied the unthinking, is not to be wondered at; but it is passing strange that it should have gained credence amongst educated men. Observe the battery of fatal objections which may be opened upon it.

  In the first place, the assumption is a purely gratuitous one. Before submitting to legislative control on the strength of an agreement alleged to have been made by our forefathers, we ought surely to have some proof that such agreement was made. But no proof is given. On the contrary, the facts, so far as we can ascertain them, rather imply that under the earliest social forms, whether savage, patriarchal, or feudal, obedience to authority was given unconditionally; and that when the ruler afforded protection it was because he resented the attempt to exercise over one of his subjects a power similar to his own—a conclusion quite in harmony with what we know of oaths of allegiance taken in later times.

  Again; even supposing the contract to have been made, we are no forwarder, for it has been repeatedly invalidated by the violation of its terms. There is no people but what has from time to time rebelled; and there is no government but what has, in an infinity of cases, failed to give the promised protection. How, then, can this hypothetical contract be considered binding, when, if ever made, it has been broken by both parties?

  But, granting the agreement, and granting that nothing positive has occurred to vitiate it, we have still to be shown on what principle that agreement, made, no one knows when, by no one knows whom, can be held to tie people now living. Dynasties have changed, and different forms of government have supplanted each other, since the alleged transaction could have taken place; whilst, between the people who are supposed to have been parties to it, and their existing descendants, unnumbered generations have lived and died. So we must assume that this covenant has over and over again survived the deaths of all parties concerned! Truly a strange power this which our forefathers wielded—to be able to fix the behaviour of their descendants for all futurity! What would any one think of being required to kiss the Pope’s toe, because his great- great-great-grandfather promised that he should do so?

  However, there never was such a contract. If there had been, constant breaches must have destroyed it. And even if undestroyed it could not bind us, but only those who made it.

  § 5.

  The self-importance of a Malvolio is sufficiently ludicrous; but we must go far beyond it to parallel the presumption of legislatures. Some steward who, deluded by an intense craving after dominion, and an impudence equal to his craving, should construe his stewardship into proprietorship, would more fitly illustrate it. Were such an one to argue that the estate he was appointed to manage had been virtually resigned into his possession—that to secure the advantages of his administration its owner had given up all title to it—that he now lived on it only by his (the steward’s) sufferance—and that he was in future to receive no emoluments from it, except at his (the steward’s) good pleasure—then should we have an appropriate travesty upon the behaviour of governments to nations; then should we have a doctrine perfectly analogous to this fashionable one, which teaches how men on becoming members of a community, give up, for the sake of certain social advantages, their natural rights. Adherents of this fashionable doctrine will doubtless protest against such an interpretation of it. They have no reasonable cause for doing so, however, as will appear on submitting them to a cross-examination. Suppose we begin it thus:—

  “Your hypothesis that men, when they entered into the social state, surrendered their original freedom, implies that they entered into such state voluntarily, does it not?”

  “It does.”

  “Then they must have considered the social state preferable to that under which they had previously lived?”

  “Necessarily.”

  “Why did it appear preferable?”

  “Because it offered greater security.”

  “Greater security for what?”

  “Greater security for life, for property, for the things that minister to happiness.”

  “Exactly. To get more happiness: that must have been the object. If they had expected to get more unhappiness, they would not have willingly made the change, would they?”

  “No.”

  “Does not happiness consist in the due satisfaction of all the desires? in the due exercise of all the faculties?”

  “Yes.”

  “And this exercise of the faculties is impossible without freedom of action. The desires cannot be satisfied without liberty to pursue and use the objects of them.”

  “True.”

  “Now it is this freedom to exercise the faculties within specific limits, which we signify by the term ‘rights,’ is it not?”(Page 77.)

  “It is.”

  “Well, then, summing up your answers, it seems that, by your hypothesis, man entered the social state voluntarily; which means that he entered it for the sake of obtaining greater happiness; which means that he entered it to obtain fuller exercise of his faculties; which means that he entered it to obtain security for such exercise; which means that he entered it for the guaranteeing of his ‘rights.’”

  “Put your proposition in a more tangible form.”

  “Very good. If this is too abstract a statement for you, let us attempt a simpler one. You say that a state of political combination was preferred mainly because it afforded greater security for life and property than the isolated state, do you not?”

  “Certainly.”

  “Are not a man’s claims to his life and his property amongst what we term his rights; and moreover, the most important of them?”

  “They are.”

  “Then to say that men formed themselves into communities to prevent the constant violation of their claims to life and property, is to say that they did it for the preservation of their rights?”

  “It is.”

  “Wherefore, either way we find that the preservation of rights was the object sought.”

  “So it would seem.”

  “But your hypothesis is that men give up their rights on entering the social state?”

  “Yes.”

  “See now how you contradict yourself. You assert that on becoming members of a society, men give up, what by your own showing they joined it the better to obtain!”

  “Well, perhaps I ought not to have said that they ‘give up’ their rights, but that they place them in trust.”

  “In whose trust?”

  “In that of a government.”

  “A government, then, is a kind of agent employed by the members of a community, to take care of, and administer for their benefit, something given into its charge?”

  “Exactly.”

  “And of course, like all other agents, exercises authority only at the will of those who appoint it—performs all that it is commissioned to do subject to their approval?”

  “Just so.”

  “And the things committed to its charge still belong to the original owners. The title of the people to the rights they have placed in trust continues valid: the people may demand from this agent the full benefit accruing from these rights; and may, if they please, resume possession of them?”

  “Not so.”

  “Not so! What, can they not reclaim their own?”

  “No. Having once consigned their rights into the keeping of a legislature, they must be content with such use of them as that legislature permits.”

  And thus we arrive at the curious doctrine above referred to, that the members of a community having entrusted an estate (their rights) to the care of a steward (their government), thereby lose all proprietorship in such estate, and can have no benefit from it, except what their steward pleases to vouchsafe!

  § 6.

  But it is needless to assault this theory of government-omnipotence from without, for it is betrayed from within. It is self-destructive. It is disproved by its own innermost principle. The very witness called to testify of its truth lets out its falsity. For to what end is this attempted denial of rights? It is to the end of establishing the law of the greatest happiness to the greatest number—a law to carry out which government is said to exist—a law by whose dictates alone government ought to be guided—a law, therefore, of higher authority than government; antecedent to it—a law to which government must be subservient, subordinate. But what, when scrutinized, does this law of the greatest happiness to the greatest number resolve itself into? Why, into the ultrademocratic dogma—all men have equal rights to happiness (page 22). Wherefore it is to carry out the law—all men have equal rights to happiness, that government exists. And thus, even according to the opposition hypothesis, rights are the be-all and end-all of government; and rank above it, as the end above the means.

  CHAPTER XIX.

  the right to ignore the state.

  § 1.

  As a corollary to the proposition that all institutions must be subordinated to the law of equal freedom, we cannot choose but admit the right of the citizen to adopt a condition of voluntary outlawry. If every man has freedom to do all that he wills, provided he infringes not the equal freedom of any other man, then he is free to drop connection with the state—to relinquish its protection, and to refuse paying towards its support. It is self-evident that in so behaving he in no way trenches upon the liberty of others; for his position is a passive one; and whilst passive he cannot become an aggressor. It is equally selfevident that he cannot be compelled to continue one of a political corporation, without a breach of the moral law, seeing that citizenship involves payment of taxes; and the taking away of a man’s property against his will, is an infringement of his rights (p. 134). Government being simply an agent employed in common by a number of individuals to secure to them certain advantages, the very nature of the connection implies that it is for each to say whether he will employ such an agent or not. If any one of them determines to ignore this mutual-safety confederation, nothing can be said except that he loses all claim to its good offices, and exposes himself to the danger of maltreatment—a thing he is quite at liberty to do if he likes. He cannot be coerced into political combination without a breach of the law of equal freedom; he can withdraw from it without committing any such breach; and he has therefore a right so to withdraw.

  § 2.

  “No human laws are of any validity if contrary to the law of nature; and such of them as are valid derive all their force and all their authority mediately or immediately from this original.” Thus writes Blackstone, to whom let all honour be given for having so far outseen the ideas of his time; and, indeed, we may say of our time. A good antidote, this, for those political superstitions which so widely prevail. A good check upon that sentiment of power-worship which still misleads us by magnifying the prerogatives of constitutional governments as it once did those of monarchs. Let men learn that a legislature is not “our God upon earth,” though, by the authority they ascribe to it, and the things they expect from it, they would seem to think it is. Let them learn rather that it is an institution serving a purely temporary purpose, whose power, when not stolen, is at the best borrowed.

  Nay, indeed, have we not seen (p. 13) that government is essentially immoral? Is it not the offspring of evil, bearing about it all the marks of its parentage? Does it not exist because crime exists? Is it not strong, or, as we say, despotic, when crime is great? Is there not more liberty, that is, less government, as crime diminishes? And must not government cease when crime ceases, for very lack of objects on which to perform its function? Not only does magisterial power exist because of evil, but it exists by evil. Violence is employed to maintain it; and all violence involves criminality. Soldiers, policemen, and gaolers; swords, batons, and fetters, are instruments for inflicting pain; and all infliction of pain is in the abstract wrong. The state employs evil weapons to subjugate evil, and is alike contaminated by the objects with which it deals, and the means by which it works. Morality cannot recognise it; for morality, being simply a statement of the perfect law, can give no countenance to anything growing out of, and living by, breaches of that law (Chap. I.). Wherefore, legislative authority can never be ethical—must always be conventional merely.

  Hence, there is a certain inconsistency in the attempt to determine the right position, structure, and conduct of a government by appeal to the first principles of rectitude. For, as just pointed out, the acts of an institution which is in both nature and origin imperfect, cannot be made to square with the perfect law. All that we can do is to ascertain, firstly, in what attitude a legislature must stand to the community to avoid being by its mere existence an embodied wrong;—secondly, in what manner it must be constituted so as to exhibit the least incongruity with the moral law;—and thirdly, to what sphere its actions must be limited to prevent it from multiplying those breaches of equity it is set up to prevent.

  The first condition to be conformed to before a legislature can be established without violating the law of equal freedom, is the acknowledgment of the right now under discussion—the right to ignore the statea .

  § 3.

  Upholders of pure despotism may fitly believe state-control to be unlimited and unconditional. They who assert that men are made for governments and not governments for men, may consistently hold that no one can remove himself beyond the pale of political organization. But they who maintain that the people are the only legitimate source of power—that legislative authority is not original, but deputed—cannot deny the right to ignore the state without entangling themselves in an absurdity.

  For, if legislative authority is deputed, it follows that those from whom it proceeds are the masters of those on whom it is conferred: it follows further, that as masters they confer the said authority voluntarily: and this implies that they may give or withhold it as they please. To call that deputed which is wrenched from men whether they will or not, is nonsense. But what is here true of all collectively is equally true of each separately. As a government can rightly act for the people, only when empowered by them, so also can it rightly act for the individual, only when empowered by him. If A,B, and C, debate whether they shall employ an agent to perform for them a certain service, and if whilst A and B agree to do so, C dissents, C cannot equitably be made a party to the agreement in spite of himself. And this must be equally true of thirty as of three: and if of thirty, why not of three hundred, or three thousand, or three millions?

  § 4.

  Of the political superstitions lately alluded to, none is so universally diffused as the notion that majorities are omnipotent. Under the impression that the preservation of order will ever require power to be wielded by some party, the moral sense of our time feels that such power cannot rightly be conferred on any but the largest moiety of society. It interprets literally the saying that “the voice of the people is the voice of God,” and transferring to the one the sacredness attached to the other, it concludes that from the will of the people, that is, of the majority, there can be no appeal. Yet is this belief entirely erroneous.

  Suppose, for the sake of argument, that, struck by some Malthusian panic, a legislature duly representing public opinion were to enact that all children born during the next ten years should be drowned. Does any one think such an enactment would be warrantable? If not, there is evidently a limit to the power of a majority. Suppose, again, that of two races living together—Celts and Saxons, for example—the most numerous determined to make the others their slaves. Would the authority of the greatest number be in such case valid? If not there is something to which its authority must be subordinate. Suppose, once more, that all men having incomes under £50 a year were to resolve upon reducing every income above that amount to their own standard, and appropriating the excess for public purposes. Could their resolution be justified? If not it must be a third time confessed that there is a law to which the popular voice must defer. What, then, is that law, if not the law of pure equity—the law of equal freedom? These restraints, which all would put to the will of the majority, are exactly the restraints set up by that law. We deny the right of a majority to murder, to enslave, or to rob, simply because murder, enslaving, and robbery are violations of that law—violations too gross to be overlooked. But if great violations of it are wrong, so also are smaller ones. If the will of the many cannot supersede the first principle of morality in these cases, neither can it in any. So that, however insignificant the minority, and however trifling the proposed trespass against their rights, no such trespass is permissible.

  When we have made our constitution purely democratic, thinks to himself the earnest reformer, we shall have brought government into harmony with absolute justice. Such a faith, though perhaps needful for the age, is a very erroneous one. By no process can coercion be made equitable. The freest form of government is only the least objectionable form. The rule of the many by the few we call tyranny: the rule of the few by the many is tyranny also; only of a less intense kind. “You shall do as we will, and not as you will,” is in either case the declaration; and if the hundred make it to the ninety-nine, instead of the ninety-nine to the hundred, it is only a fraction less immoral. Of two such parties, whichever fulfils this declaration necessarily breaks the law of equal freedom: the only difference being that by the one it is broken in the persons of ninety-nine, whilst by the other it is broken in the persons of a hundred. And the merit of the democratic form of government consists solely in this, that it trespasses against the smallest number.

  The very existence of majorities and minorities is indicative of an immoral state. The man whose character harmonizes with the moral law, we found to be one who can obtain complete happiness without diminishing the happiness of his fellows (Chap. III.). But the enactment of public arrangements by vote implies a society consisting of men otherwise constituted—implies that the desires of some cannot be satisfied without sacrificing the desires of others—implies that in the pursuit of their happiness the majority inflict a certain amount of unhappiness on the minority—implies, therefore, organic immorality. Thus, from another point of view, we again perceive that even in its most equitable form it is impossible for government to dissociate itself from evil; and further, that unless the right to ignore the state is recognised, its acts must be essentially criminal.

  § 5.

  That a man is free to abandon the benefits and throw off the burdens of citizenship, may indeed be inferred from the admissions of existing authorities and of current opinion. Unprepared as they probably are for so extreme a doctrine as the one here maintained, the radicals of our day yet unwittingly profess their belief in a maxim which obviously embodies this doctrine. Do we not continually hear them quote Blackstone’s assertion that “no subject of England can be constrained to pay any aids or taxes even for the defence of the realm or the support of government, but such as are imposed by his own consent, or that of his representative in parliament?” And what does this mean? It means, say they, that every man should have a vote. True: but it means much more. If there is any sense in words it is a distinct enunciation of the very right now contended for. In affirming that a man may not be taxed unless he has directly or indirectly given his consent, it affirms that he may refuse to be so taxed; and to refuse to be taxed, is to cut all connection with the state. Perhaps it will be said that this consent is not a specific, but a general one, and that the citizen is understood to have assented to everything his representative may do, when he voted for him. But suppose he did not vote for him; and on the contrary did all in his power to get elected some one holding opposite views—what then? The reply will probably be that, by taking part in such an election, he tacitly agreed to abide by the decision of the majority. And how if he did not vote at all? Why then he cannot justly complain of any tax, seeing that he made no protest against its imposition. So, curiously enough, it seems that he gave his consent in whatever way he acted—whether he said yes, whether he said no, or whether he remained neuter! A rather awkward doctrine this. Here stands an unfortunate citizen who is asked if he will pay money for a certain proffered advantage; and whether he employs the only means of expressing his refusal or does not employ it, we are told that he practically agrees; if only the number of others who agree is greater than the number of those who dissent. And thus we are introduced to the novel principle that A’s consent to a thing is not determined by what A says, but by what B may happen to say!

  It is for those who quote Blackstone to choose between this absurdity and the doctrine above set forth. Either his maxim implies the right to ignore the state, or it is sheer nonsense.

  § 6.

  There is a strange heterogeneity in our political faiths. Systems that have had their day, and are beginning here and there to let the daylight through, are patched with modern notions utterly unlike in quality and colour; and men gravely display these systems, wear them, and walk about in them, quite unconscious of their grotesqueness. This transition state of ours, partaking as it does equally of the past and the future, breeds hybrid theories exhibiting the oddest union of bygone despotism and coming freedom. Here are types of the old organization curiously disguised by germs of the new—peculiarities showing adaptation to a preceding state modified by rudiments that prophecy of something to come—making altogether so chaotic a mixture of relationships that there is no saying to what class these births of the age should be referred.

  As ideas must of necessity bear the stamp of the time, it is useless to lament the contentment with which these incongruous beliefs are held. Otherwise it would seem unfortunate that men do not pursue to the end the trains of reasoning which have led to these partial modifications. In the present case, for example, consistency would force them to admit that, on other points besides the one just noticed, they hold opinions and use arguments in which the right to ignore the state is involved.

  For what is the meaning of Dissent? The time was when a man’s faith and his mode of worship were as much determinable by law as his secular acts; and, according to provisions extant in our statute-book, are so still. Thanks to the growth of a Protestant spirit, however, we have ignored the state in this matter—wholly in theory, and partly in practice. But how have we done so? By assuming an attitude which, if consistently maintained, implies a right to ignore the state entirely. Observe the positions of the two parties. “This is your creed,” says the legislator; “you must believe and openly profess what is here set down for you.” “I shall not do anything of the kind,” answers the nonconformist; “I will go to prison rather.” “Your religious ordinances,” pursues the legislator, “shall be such as we have prescribed. You shall attend the churches we have endowed, and adopt the ceremonies used in them.” “Nothing shall induce me to do so,” is the reply; “I altogether deny your power to dictate to me in such matters, and mean to resist to the uttermost.” “Lastly,” adds the legislator, “we shall require you to pay such sums of money towards the support of these religious institutions, as we may see fit to ask.” “Not a farthing will you have from me,” exclaims our sturdy Independent: “even did I believe in the doctrines of your church (which I do not), I should still rebel against your interference; and if you take my property, it shall be by force and under protest.”

  What now does this proceeding amount to when regarded in the abstract? It amounts to an assertion by the individual of the right to exercise one of his faculties—the religious sentiment—without let or hindrance, and with no limit save that set up by the equal claims of others. And what is meant by ignoring the state? Simply an assertion of the right similarly to exercise all the faculties. The one is just an expansion of the other—rests on the same footing with the other—must stand or fall with the other. Men do indeed speak of civil and religious liberty as different things: but the distinction is quite arbitrary. They are parts of the same whole and cannot philosophically be separated.

  “Yes they can,” interposes an objector; “assertion of the one is imperative as being a religious duty. The liberty to worship God in the way that seems to him right, is a liberty without which a man cannot fulfil what he believes to be Divine commands, and therefore conscience requires him to maintain it.” True enough; but how if the same can be asserted of all other liberty? How if maintenance of this also turns out to be a matter of conscience? Have we not seen that human happiness is the Divine will—that only by exercising our faculties is this happiness obtainable—and that it is impossible to exercise them without freedom? (Chap. IV.) And if this freedom for the exercise of faculties is a condition without which the Divine will cannot be fulfilled, the preservation of it is, by our objector’s own showing, a duty. Or, in other words, it appears not only that the maintenance of liberty of action may be a point of conscience, but that it ought to be one. And thus we are clearly shown that the claims to ignore the state in religious and in secular matters are in essence identical.

  The other reason commonly assigned for nonconformity, admits of similar treatment. Besides resisting state dictation in the abstract, the dissenter resists it from disapprobation of the doctrines taught. No legislative injunction will make him adopt what he considers an erroneous belief; and, bearing in mind his duty towards his fellow-men, he refuses to help through the medium of his purse in disseminating this erroneous belief. The position is perfectly intelligible. But it is one which either commits its adherents to civil nonconformity also, or leaves them in a dilemma. For why do they refuse to be instrumental in spreading error? Because error is adverse to human happiness. And on what ground is any piece of secular legislation disapproved? For the same reason—because thought adverse to human happiness. How then can it be shown that the state ought to be resisted in the one case and not in the other? Will any one deliberately assert that if a government demands money from us to aid in teaching what we think will produce evil, we ought to refuse it; but that if the money is for the purpose of doing what we think will produce evil, we ought not to refuse it? Yet, such is the hopeful proposition which those have to maintain who recognise the right to ignore the state in religious matters, but deny it in civil matters.

  § 7.

  The substance of this chapter once more reminds us of the incongruity between a perfect law and an imperfect state. The practicability of the principle here laid down varies directly as social morality. In a thoroughly vicious community its admission would be productive of anarchy. In a completely virtuous one its admission will be both innoeuous and inevitable. Progress towards a condition of social health—a condition, that is, in which the remedial measures of legislation will no longer be needed, is progress towards a condition in which those remedial measures will be cast aside, and the authority prescribing them disregarded. The two changes are of necessity co-ordinate. That moral sense whose supremacy will make society harmonious and government unnecessary, is the same moral sense which will then make each man assert his freedom even to the extent of ignoring the state—is the same moral sense which, by deterring the majority from coercing the minority, will eventually render government impossible. And as what are merely different manifestations of the same sentiment must bear a constant ratio to each other, the tendency to repudiate governments will increase only at the same rate that governments become needless.

  Let not any be alarmed, therefore, at the promulgation of the foregoing doctrine. There are many changes yet to be passed through before it can begin to exercise much influence. Probably a long time will elapse before the right to ignore the state will be generally admitted, even in theory. It will be still longer before it receives legislative recognition. And even then there will be plenty of checks upon the premature exercise of it. A sharp experience will sufficiently instruct those who may too soon abandon legal protection. Whilst, in the majority of men, there is such a love of tried arrangements, and so great a dread of experiments, that they will probably not act upon this right until long after it is safe to do so.

  CHAPTER XX.

  the constitution of the statea .

  § 1.

  Of the several conclusions deducible from the law of equal freedom there are few more manifest or more generally agreed to than this, that all members of a community have like claims to political power. If every man has freedom to do all that he wills, provided he infringes not the equal freedom of any other man, then each is free to exercise the same authority in legislation as his fellows; and no individual or class can exercise greater authority than the rest without violating the law.

  Evidently, therefore, a purely democratic government is the only one which is morally admissible — is the only one that is not intrinsically criminal. As lately shown, no government can have any ethical authority. The highest form it can assume is that in which the moral law remains passive with regard to it—tolerates it—no longer protests against it. The first condition of that form is that citizenship shall be voluntary; the second—that it shall confer equal privileges.

  § 2.

  It is a tolerably well-ascertained fact that men are still selfish. And that beings answering to this epithet will employ the power placed in their hands for their own advantage is self-evident. Directly or indirectly, either by hook or by crook, if not openly, then in secret, their private ends will be served. Granting the proposition that men are selfish, we cannot avoid the corollary, that those who possess authority will, if permitted, use it for selfish purposes.

  Should any one need facts in proof of this, he may find them at every page in the nearest volume of history. Under the head—Monarchy, he will read of insatiable cravings after more territory; of confiscations of the subjects’ property; of justice sold to the highest bidder; of continued debasements of coinage; and of a greediness which could even descend to share the gains of prostitutes.

  He will find Feudalism exemplifying the same spirit by the cruelties inflicted upon serfs; by the right of private war; by the predatory incursions of borderers; by robberies practised on Jews; and by the extortionate tribute wrung from burghers—all of them illustrations of that motto, so characteristic of the system, “Thou shalt want ere I want.”

  Does he seek like evidence in the conduct of later aristocracies? He may discover it in every state in Europe: in Spain, where the lands of nobles and clergy were long exempted from direct taxation; in Hungary, where, until lately, men of rank were free of all turnpikes, and only the mercantile and working classes paid; in France, before the first revolution, where the tiers-etat had to bear all the state burdens; in Scotland, where less than two centuries ago it was the custom of lairds to kidnap the common people, and export them as slaves; in Ireland, where at the rebellion a band of usurping landowners hunted and shot the Catholics as they would game, for daring to claim their own.

  If more proofs are wanted that power will be made to serve the purposes of its possessors, English legislation can furnish many such. Take, for example, the significantly named “Black Act” (9th of George I.), which declares that any one disguised and in possession of an offensive weapon “appearing in any warren, or place where hares or conies have been, or shall be usually kept, and being thereof duly convicted, shall be adjudged guilty of felony, and shall suffer death, as in cases of felony, without benefit of clergy.” Instance again the Inclosure Laws, by which commons were divided amongst the neighbouring landowners, in the ratios of their holdings, regardless of the claims of the poor cottagers. Notice also the manœuvre by which the land tax has been kept stationary, or has even decreased, whilst other taxes have so enormously increased. Add to these the private monopolies (obtained from the King for “a consideration”), the perversion of the funds of public schools, the manufacture of places, and pensions.

  Nor is the disposition to use power for private ends less manifest in our own day. It shows itself in the assertion that an electoral system should give a preponderance to the landed interest. We see it in the legislation which relieves farmers from sundry assessed taxes, that they may be enabled to pay more rent. It is palpably indicated in the Game Laws. The conduct of the squire, who gets his mansion rated at one-third of its value, bears witness to it. It appears in the law enabling a landlord to anticipate other creditors, and to obtain his rent by immediate seizure of his tenant’s property. We are reminded of it by the often-mentioned legacy and probate duties. It is implied by the fact that whilst no one dreams of compensating the discharged workman, gentlemen sinecurists must have their “vested interests” bought up if their offices are abolished. In the tracts of the Anti-Corn Law League it received abundant illustration. It is seen in the votes of the hundred and fifty military and naval members of Parliament. And lastly, we find this self-seeking of those in authority creeps out, even in the doings of the “Right Reverend Fathers in God” forming the Ecclesiastical Commission, who have appropriated, for the embellishment of their own palaces, funds entrusted to them for the benefit of the Church.

  But it is needless to accumulate illustrations. Though every historian the world has seen should be subpœned as a witness, the fact could not be rendered one whit more certain than it is already. Why ask whether those in power have sought their own advantage in preference to that of others? With human nature as we know it, they must have done so. It is this same tendency in men to pursue gratification at the expense of their neighbours that renders government needful. Were we not selfish, legislative restraint would be unnecessary. Evidently, then, the very existence of a state-authority proves that irresponsible rulers will sacrifice the public good to their personal benefit; all solemn promises, specious professions, and carefully-arranged checks and safeguards, notwithstanding.

  If, therefore, class-legislation is the inevitable consequence of class-power, there is no escape from the conclusion that the interest of the whole society can be secured, only by giving power into the hands of the whole people.

  § 3.

  Against the position that to ensure justice to the nation at large all its members must be endowed with like powers, it is indeed urged that, as the working classes constitute the majority, to endow all with like powers, is practically to make the working classes supreme. And it will probably be added that by virtue of this same self-seeking tendency just insisted upon, legislation in their hands would inevitably be twisted to serve the ends of labour regardless of the claims of property.

  Of course those who raise this objection do not wish to insinuate that the people would use their power after the fashion of brigands. Although in the old Norman day, when the sacking and burning of towns by neighbouring nobles was not unfrequent, a change to popular rule involved retaliatory attacks upon the strongholds of these feudal buccaneers, yet we may fairly conclude that the increased social morality which deters modern aristocracies from direct robbery of the people, would also prevent the people from inflicting any direct injury upon them. The danger this objection points to—the only danger to be rationally feared—is that the same insensible bias by which our present rulers are swayed, would lead the working classes to sacrifice the rights of the rich on the altar of their own desires—would give rise to a code of laws favouring poverty at the expense of wealth.

  Even were there no answer to this, the evidence would still preponderate in favour of popular enfranchisement. For what at the utmost does the argument amount to? Just this:—that the few must continue to trespass against the many, lest the many should trespass against the few. The well fed, the luxuriously housed and clothed, the placemen and pensioners, may perhaps think it better that the masses should suffer for their benefit (as they do) than that they should suffer for the benefit of the masses (as they might). But would a just arbitrator say this? Would he not say, on the contrary, that even if their respective members were blessed with equal advantages, the minority ought to be sacrificed rather than the majority; but that as the most numerous are at the same time the least favoured, their claim becomes still more imperative. Surely, if one of the two parties must submit to injustice, it ought to be the rich hundreds, and not the poor thousands.

  The foregoing objection, however, is not so sound as it looks. It is one thing for a comparatively small class to unite in the pursuit of a common advantage, and it is another thing for a dispersed multitude to do so. Some thousands of individuals having identical interests, moving together in the same circle, brought up with like prejudices, educated in one creed, bound together by family ties, and meeting annually in the same city, may easily enough combine for the obtainment of a desired object. But for half a dozen millions of working men, distributed over a vast area, engaged in various occupations, belonging to different religious sects, and divided into two totally distinct bodies, the one imbued with the feelings and theories of town life, the other retaining all those prejudices of the past which yet linger in the country—for these to act with unanimity is scarcely possible. Their mass is too great, too incongruous, too scattered, for effective combination. We have current proof of this. The Chartist agitation shows us men, who, during the last twenty years, have gradually imbibed ideas of political freedom—men who have been irritated by a sense of injustice—men who have been slighted by their fellow-citizens—men who have been suffering daily privations—men, therefore, who have had an accumulated stimulus to unite in obtaining what they feel themselves entitled to, and what they see reason to believe would greatly benefit them. And how have they prospered in the attempt to carry their point? Disputes, divisions, apathy, adverse influences of every kind, have joined to produce repeated failures. Now if, with the aid of that enthusiasm which a righteous cause always inspires, the masses have not attained to that unity of action needful for the accomplishment of their object, much less would they be able successfully to unite were that object a dishonest one.

  § 4.

  Whoever demurs to the enfranchisement of the working men on the ground that they are immoral, is bound to point out a constituency which is not immoral. When it is alleged that the venality of the people renders them unfit for the possession of votes, it is assumed that some class not chargeable with venality may be found. But no such class exists. Bring them all to trial and not a single section of the community would obtain a verdict of “not guilty.”

  Were the shopkeepers put upon their examination, how would they excuse their trade practices? Is it moral to put potatoes and alum in bread; to add salt, tobacco, and colchicum to beer; to mix lard with butter; to manufacture milk in various known and unknown ways; to adulterate oils, chemicals, colours, wines—in short, everything capable of adulteration? Does the existence of inspectors of weights and measures indicate morality? Or is it honest to sell over the counter, goods whose quality is inferior to that of the samples ticketed in the window?

  Did the manufacturers make any pretension to purity, they might have to encounter some awkward hints as to the practice of tearing up old rags into shoddy to be worked into cloth along with new wool. Disagreeable questions might be asked concerning the proportion of cotton woven into some fabrics, pretended to be wholly of silk. The piracy of patterns, too, would be a delicate subject. And the practice of using gypsum to increase the weight and substance of paper, could hardly be defended on the principles of the Decalogue.

  Not less discreditable would be the sentence deserved by the agriculturists. In spite of the refining effects which poets ascribe to intercourse with nature, it is nevertheless an undoubted fact that the farmers—in Dorsetshire, at least—have been convicted of paying their labourers in damaged wheat, charged at the full price—a habit not altogether conscientious. It is matter of history, too, that before the enactment of the New Poor Law, it was in many districts the custom to give farm servants but half wages; the remainder being made up to them out of the poor-rates, over which their masters exercised the chief control. And to these samples of morality the transactions of the cattle-market and the horse-fair would probably furnish fit companions.

  Neither in such a scrutiny would the professions escape unscathed. Who can hear the word “venality” without straight-way thinking of the law? Attorneys already stand in too bad repute to need their sins hinting at; and even the gentlemen of the bar are not without reproach. The attempt to make a known felon appear innocent denotes rather confused ideas of right and wrong. Then their habit of taking fees to plead in a cause, which other engagements will not permit them to attend, and keeping the pay, although they do not perform the work, scarcely implies that honesty deemed so requisite for the proper use of political power.

  Our members of Parliament, too, were the gauntlet taken up on their behalf, would come off but indifferently. That arrangement which places them beyond the reach of their creditors, is hardly consistent with the moral law; nor does it imply the nicest sense of honour. And then that disease of the representative system—bribery; ought the rich to escape all the odium attaching to it—should all the disgrace fall upon the poor electors?

  Nor can those who move in titled circles boast of superior integrity. In the trickeries of the turf, and in the midnight scenes at gaming-houses, the denizens of Mayfair and Belgravia play a sufficiently conspicuous part. The Huntingtower bankruptcy was not to the credit of the caste, any more than are those acts of outlawry to which, from time to time, members of it are subjected. And did the aristocracy possess strict notions of equity it is probable that a little more respect would be shown by them to the claims of their tradesmen, than is indicated by their proverbially bad character as paymasters.

  Nay, even our highest officers of state participate in the general contamination. Did not the Mazzini affair show some laxity of principle? Was it nothing, as the Westminster Review put it, to teach that theft is permissible when officials wish to steal information from a letter—that lying is permissible if they desire to conceal the theft by re-sealing that letter—that forgery is permissible for the purpose of counterfeiting seals? And then our present ministers—are they any better than their predecessors? If so, how shall we explain away the garbling of some of the West Indian despatches, and the suppression of others?

  No, no; let not any one oppose the enfranchisement of the people on the score of their immorality, lest he be put to the blush by the exposure of his own offences, or the offences of his class. Let him that is guiltless cast the first stone. Vice, dishonesty, venality, pervade all ranks; and if political power must be denied to working men because they are corrupt, it must be denied to all classes whatever for the same reason.

  § 5.

  Some indeed allege that the masses are more vicious than the rest of the community. But those who express this opinion arrive at it very illogically. They glance at assize proceedings, read through the names and occupations in the calendar of prisoners, skim over statistics of crime, and because they meet with an immense preponderance of vagrants, farm-servants, bricklayers, drovers, bargemen, porters, factory hands, and the like, they forthwith set down the peasant and artizan class as greatly inferior in moral character to every other class. They take no account of the fact, that in number, the labouring population is at least six times all the rest put together. They do not inquire whether, if the cases that appear in the police sheets of swindling advertisers, of false-ticketing tradesmen, of embezzling clerks, of young gentlemen concerned in drunken sprees, attacks on the police, insults to women, and so on, were multiplied by six, they would not approach in number the other cases daily reported. Were this done, however—were the crimes committed by each class reduced to a percentage upon the size of that class, there would be found much less inequality than is commonly thought to exist.

  Moreover, it should be remembered that the immorality of the middle and upper ranks assumes a different guise from that worn by the vices of the poor. Men comparatively well off are not likely to be guilty of those grosser offences seen amongst the lower orders, for their circumstances remove them almost beyond temptation to these. But the bad propensities may and do exist in full force notwithstanding; and enough of their workings may any day be seen in courts of law. Fraudulent bankruptcies, actions for debt, suits for the restitution of usurped rights, quarrels about wills—all these show the activity of passions which, under other conditions, might have produced acts technically called crimes. Men who, by legal chicanery, cheat others out of their property, or who refuse to discharge the claims justly made upon them until forced by law, are men who, in a lower walk of life, would have picked pockets or robbed hen-roosts. We must measure morality by motives, not by deeds. And if we thus estimate the characters of the trading and richer grades, taking into account also the consideration above adverted to—number—we shall find that the data on the strength of which we attribute especial immorality to the labouring classes are by no means sufficient.

  § 6.

  It is a pity that those who speak disparagingly of the masses have not wisdom enough, or candour enough, to make due allowance for the unfavourable circumstances in which the masses are placed. Suppose that after carefully weighing the evidence it should turn out that the working men do exhibit greater vices than those more comfortably off; does it therefore follow that they are morally worse? Are the additional temptations under which they labour to be left out of the estimate? Shall as much be expected at their hands as from those born into a more fortunate position? Ought the same demands to be made upon the possessors of five talents as upon the possessors of ten? Surely the lot of the hard-handed labourer is pitiable enough without having harsh judgments passed upon him. To be wholly sacrificed to other men’s happiness; to be made a mere human tool; to have every faculty subordinated to the sole function of work—this, one would say, is alone a misfortune, needing all sympathy for its mitigation. Consider well these endowments of his—these capacities, affections, tastes, and the vague yearnings to which they give birth. Think of him now with his caged-up desires doomed to a daily, weekly, yearly round of painful toil, with scarcely any remission but for food and sleep. Observe how he is tantalized by the pleasures he sees his richer brethren partaking of, but from which he must be for ever debarred. Note the humiliation he suffers from being looked down upon as of no account amongst men. And then remember that he has nothing to look forward to but a monotonous continuance of this till death. Is this a salutary state of things to live under?

  It is very easy for you, O respectable citizen, seated in your easy chair, with your feet on the fender, to hold forth on the misconduct of the people;—very easy for you to censure their extravagant and vicious habits;—very easy for you to be a pattern of frugality, of rectitude, of sobriety. What else should you be? Here are you surrounded by comforts, possessing multiplied sources of lawful happiness, with a reputation to maintain, an ambition to fulfil, and the prospect of a competency for your old age. A shame indeed would it be if with these advantages you were not well regulated in your behaviour. You have a cheerful home, are warmly and cleanly clad, and fare, if not sumptuously every day, at any rate abundantly. For your hours of relaxation there are amusements. A newspaper arrives regularly to satisfy your curiosity; if your tastes are literary, books may be had in plenty: and there is a piano if you like music. You can afford to entertain your friends, and are entertained in return. There are lectures, and concerts, and exhibitions, accessible if you incline to them. You may have a holiday when you choose to take one, and can spare money for an annual trip to the sea-side. And enjoying all these privileges you take credit to yourself for being a well-conducted man! Small praise to you for it! If you do not contract dissipated habits where is the merit? you have few incentives to do so. It is no honour to you that you do not spend your savings in sensual gratification; you have pleasures enough without. But what would you do if placed in the position of the labourer? How would these virtues of yours stand the wear and tear of poverty? Where would your prudence and self-denial be if you were deprived of all the hopes that now stimulate you; if you had no better prospect than that of the Dorsetshire farm-servant with his 7s. a week, or that of the perpetually-straitened stocking-weaver, or that of the mill-hand with his periodical suspensions of work? Let us see you tied to an irksome employment from dawn till dusk; fed on meagre food, and scarcely enough of that; married to a factory girl ignorant of domestic management; deprived of the enjoyments which education opens up; with no place of recreation but the pot-house, and then let us see whether you would be as steady as you are. Suppose your savings had to be made, not, as now, out of surplus income, but out of wages already insufficient for necessaries; and then consider whether to be provident would be as easy as you at present find it. Conceive yourself one of a despised class contemptuously termed “the great unwashed;” stigmatized as brutish, stolid, vicious; suspected of harbouring wicked designs; excluded from the dignity of citizenship; and then say whether the desire to be respectable would be as practically operative on you as now. Lastly, imagine that seeing your capacities were but ordinary, your education next to nothing, and your competitors innumerable, you despaired of ever attaining to a higher station; and then think whether the incentives to perseverance and forethought would be as strong as your existing ones. Realize these circumstances, O comfortable citizen, and then answer whether the reckless, disorderly habits of the people are so inexcusable.

  How offensive is it to hear some pert, self-approving personage, who thanks God that he is not as other men are, passing harsh sentence on his poor hard-worked heavily-burdened fellow-countrymen; including them all in one sweeping condemnation, because in their struggles for existence they do not maintain the same prim respectability as himself. Of all stupidities there are few greater, and yet few in which we more doggedly persist, than this of estimating other men’s conduct by the standard of our own feelings. There is no more mischievous absurdity than this judging of actions from the outside as they look to us, instead of from the inside as they look to the actors; nothing more irrational than to criticize deeds as though the doers of them had the same desires, hopes, fears, and restraints with ourselves. We cannot understand another’s character except by abandoning our own identity, and realizing to ourselves his frame of mind, his want of knowledge, his hardships, temptations, and discouragements. And if the wealthier classes would do this before forming their opinions of the working man, their verdicts would savour somewhat more of that charity which covereth a multitude of sins.

  § 7.

  After all it is a pitiful controversy, this about the relative vices of rich and poor. Two school-boys taunting each other, with faults of which they were equally guilty, would best parody it. Whilst indignant Radicalism denounces “the vile aristocrats,” these in their turn enlarge with horror on the brutality of the mob. Neither party sees its own sins. Neither party recognises in the other, itself in a different dress. Neither party can believe that it would do all the other does if placed in like circumstances. Yet a cool bystander finds nothing to choose between them; knows that these class recriminations are but the inflammatory symptoms of a uniformly-diffused immorality. Label men how you please with titles of “upper,” and “middle,” and “lower,” you cannot prevent them being units of the same society, acted upon by the same spirit of the age, moulded after the same type of character. The mechanical law, that action and reaction are equal, has its moral analogue. The deed of one man to another tends ultimately to produce a like effect upon both, be the deed good or bad. Do but put them in relationship, and no division into castes, no differences of wealth, can prevent men from assimilating. Whoso is placed amongst the savage will in process of time get savage too; let his companions be treacherous, and he will become treacherous in self-defence; surround him with the kind-hearted and he will soften; amidst the refined he will acquire polish; and the same influences which thus rapidly adapt the individual to his society, ensure, though by a slower process, the general uniformity of a national character. This is no unsupported theory. Look when or where we please, thickly-strewn proofs may be gathered. The cruelties of the old Roman rulers were fully paralleled by those over which the populace gloated in their arenas. During the servile wars of the middle ages, barons tortured rebels, and rebels tortured barons, with equally diabolical ferocity. Those massacres which took place a few years since in Gallicia covered with infamy both the people who committed them and the government who paid for them at per head. The Assam chiefs, to whom the East India Company have allowed compensation for abandoning their established right of plunder, are neither better nor worse than the mass of the people, amongst whom joint-stock robbing companies are common. A similar sameness is exhibited in Russia, where all are alike swindlers, from the Prince Marshal who cheats the troops out of their rations, the officers who rob the Emperor of his stores, the magistrates who require bribing before they will act, the police who have secret treaties with the thieves, the shopkeepers who boast of their successful trickeries, down to the postmasters and dhrosky-drivers with their endless impositions. In Ireland, during the last century, whilst the people had their faction fights and secret revenge societies, duelling formed the amusement of the gentry, and was carried to such a pitch that the barrister was bound to give satisfaction to the witness he had bullied, or to the client who was dissatisfied with hima . And let us not forget how completely this unity of character is exhibited by the Irish of to-day, amongst whom Orangemen and Catholics display the same truculent bigotry; amongst whom magistrates and people join in party riots; and amongst whom the improvidence of the peasantry is only to be paralleled by that of the landlords. Our own history furnishes like illustrations in plenty. The time when England swarmed with highwaymen and outlaws, and when the populace had that sneaking kindness for a bold robber still shown in some parts of the Continent, was the time when kings also played the bandit; when they cheated their creditors by debasing the coinage; when they impressed labourers to build their palaces (Windsor Castle, for instance), obliging them under pain of imprisonment to take the wages offered; and when they seized and sold men’s goods, paying the owners less than a third of what the goods realized. During the age of religious persecution, Papists martyred Protestants, and Protestants martyred Papists, with equal cruelty; and Cavaliers and Roundheads treated each other with the same rancour. In the present day dishonesty shows itself not less in the falsification of dockyard accounts, or the “cooking” of railway-reports, than in burglary or sheep-stealing; whilst those who see heartlessness in the dealings of slop-tailors and their sweaters, may also find it in the conduct of rich landlords, who get double rent from poor allotment holdersa , and in that of respectable ladies who underpay half-starved seamstressesb Changes in tastes and amusements are similarly common to all. The contrast between the Squire Westerns and their descendants has its analogy amongst the people. As in Spain a bull fight is still the favourite pastime of both the Queen and her subjects, so in England fifty years ago, the cock-pit and the prize-ring were patronized alike by peer and pauper; and a reference to the sporting papers will show that the lingering instincts of the savage are at this moment exhibited by about an equal percentage of all classes.

  Thus the alleged homogeneity of national character is abundantly exemplified. And so long as the assimilating influences productive of it continue at work, it is folly to suppose any one grade of a community can be morally different from the rest. In whichever rank you see corruption, be assured it equally pervades all ranks—be assured it is the symptom of a bad social diathesis. Whilst the virus of depravity exists in one part of the body politic, no other part can remain healthy.

  § 8.

  When it is urged that the working classes ought not to be admitted within the pale of the constitution because they are ignorant, it is tacitly assumed that the existing electors are enlightened. And, quietly making this assumption, the opponents of popular enfranchisement argue, at their ease, that it would be extremely impolitic to swamp intelligent ten-pound house-holders, freeholders, and tenants at will, by letting in upon them the masses lying in outer darkness.

  Painful as it may be, the pleasing illusion that our present constituency is thus honourably distinguished, must be dispelled. If by ignorance is meant want of information on matters which, for the due performance of his function, the citizen should understand (and no other definition is to the point), then it is a great error to suppose that ignorance is peculiar to the unenfranchised. Were there no other illustrations, sufficient proof that this ignorance is shared by those on the register, might be gathered from their conduct at elections. Much might be inferred from the tuft-hunting spirit exhibited in the choice of aristocratic representatives. It might be asked whether those are intelligent voters whose ears are tickled by the euphony of a title, whose eyes are attracted by heraldic emblazonry, or whose votes are determined by the acreage of a candidate’s estates. Some doubts might be cast on the penetration of men who, whilst they complain of the pressure of taxation, send to parliament hordes of military and naval officers, who have an interest in making that taxation still greater. Or the pretensions of the present monopolists of political power might be tested by quotations from the debates of a farmer’s market-ordinary, and from those of the assembly into which electoral wisdom is distilled. But without dilating upon these general considerations, let us examine a few of the opinions entertained by the mercantile classes upon state questions, and see how far these opinions entitle them to a reputation for enlightenment.

  “Money is wealth,” was the dogma universally held by legislators and economists before the days of Adam Smith, as a self-evident truth; and in conformity with it acts of parliament were, by general consent, framed to attract and retain in the country as much coin as possible. Mr. Mill, in the introduction to his recent elaborate work, assumes that this belief is now extinct. It may be so amongst philosophers, but it is still prevalent in the trading world. We continue to hear acts praised as tending to “circulate money;” and on analyzing the alarm periodically raised that “the money is going out of the country,” we find such an occurrence regarded as a disaster in itself, and not simply as indicating that the country is poor in some essential commodity. Is there not occasion for a little “enlightenment” here?

  Again; no small number of respectable people seeing that increased consumption always accompanies prosperity, infer that consumption is in itself beneficial—is the cause of prosperity, instead of its collateral effect; and hence, on witnessing a fire, or the mad extravagance of some spendthrift, they console themselves with the reflection that such things are “good for trade.” Dangerous voters these, if sound political knowledge is a needful qualification.

  Similarly diffused amongst the middle ranks, is a notion that the withdrawal of a large part of the funds of the community by the non-producing classes is no real detriment to the rest; for that as the money thus abstracted is subsequently spent amongst the rest, it eventually comes to the same thing as though it had not been abstracted at all. Even a professed political economist—Doctor Chalmers—maintains that the revenues of landowners form no deduction from the means of society, seeing that the expenditure of such revenues consists “in a transference to the industrious of sustenance and support for their services:” which proposition amounts to this—that it matters not in the end whether A and his servants B, C, and D, live on the produce of their own industry, or on the produce of other men’s industrya !

  Another mistake current alike amongst rich and poor is, that the speculations of corn-dealers are injurious to the public. So indignant are many well-meaning men at what they conceive to be a practice of intolerable cruelty, that it is scarcely possible to make them see how perfect freedom of trade is nationally advantageous in this, as in all other cases. Their anger blinds them to the fact that were not the price raised immediately after a deficient harvest by the purchases of these large factors, there would be nothing to prevent the people from consuming food at their ordinary rate; which would end in the inadequate supply being eaten up long before the ripening of the next crop. They do not perceive that this mercantile operation is analogous in its effect to putting the crew of a vessel on diminished rations when the stock of provisions is found insufficient to last out the voyage. A somewhat serious error this, for electors to labour under; especially as many of them would prevent the buying up of corn by legal penalties!

  What crude theories prevail also respecting the power of a legislature to encourage different branches of industry—“agricultural interests” and other “interests.” It is not farmers only who labour under the mistake that their occupation can be made permanently more prosperous than the rest by act of parliament: educated towns people, too, participate in the delusion; quite forgetting that the greater profitableness artificially given to any particular trade, inevitably draws into that trade such an increased number of competitors as quickly to reduce its proffered advantages to the general level, and even for a time below that level. Is not the educator wanted behind the counter and on the farm, as well as in the workshop?

  Note again the wild ideas entertained on currency questions. We smile at the simplicity which in times past led a famine-pinched populace to ascribe the high price of bread to the covetousness of bakers and millers; yet there is no little analogy between such a theory and that which attributes national distress to bad monetary arrangements. Just as the poor man, when made to feel the scarcity of food by having to pay double the usual sum for a loaf, straightway taxed the seller of the loaf with the evil; so do many traders to whom commercial depression comes in the shape of a difficulty in getting advances from their bankers, or cash for their bills of exchange, conclude that the “circulating medium” is in fault; being ignorant, like their hungry prototypes, that the primary cause of the mischief is a deficiency in the national stock of food or other commodities. To suppose that a state of general privation can be cured by the issue of bank notes, is to err with the projector of perpetual motion, who hopes to make power out of nothing.

  Thus the tu quoque argument, which we found so completely to neutralize the inference drawn from the alleged immorality of the labouring classes, is a not much less cogent answer to the objection urged against the extension of the suffrage on the ground of popular ignorance. If, because they are deficient in information, the people should continue unenfranchised, then for a like reason should the existing electoral body be disfranchised. If the two classes are to have their relative degrees of competence to wield political power determined by comparing the amounts of their knowledge—their political knowledge, mind—then the advantage on the side of the present holders of such power is quite insufficient to give them an exclusive claim to it. As we have just seen, a great proportion of them are in error on the most important public questions—on the nature of wealth, on what things are “good for trade,” on the relationship of producers and non-producers, on dealings in the people’s food, on the “encouragement” of trade, on the influences of currency, and so forth. Where, then, is their great superiority over the non-electors? Have many artizans mistaken excessive competition for the cause of an evil, instead of taking it for what it is—the symptom of one? why they are countenanced in this error by not a few of the educated. Do working men hold wrong opinions concerning machinery? so likewise do nearly all the farmers and no small number of tradesmen. Is the false impression that manufacturers can raise or lower wages at will, prevalent amongst the masses? it is widely entertained, too, by their richer neighbours. How, then, can the ignorance of the people be urged as a reason for refusing them votes?

  § 9.

  Those who cut short the arguments in favour of democracy by saying that it has been tried and found wanting, would do well to consider whether the governments they refer to really were democratic ones—whether a true democracy has ever been known—whether such a thing can be found even now. Of arrangements simulating it, the world has seen not a few. But that democracy itself has ever existed—existed, that is, for a sufficient length of time to admit of its fruits being judged—or that it was possible for it so to have existed during the past condition of humanity, is denied. A return to definitions settles the matter at once. A democracy, properly so called, is a political organization modelled in accordance with the law of equal freedom. And if so, those cannot be called democracies under which, as under the Greek and Roman governments, from four-fifths to eleven-twelfths of the people were slaves. Neither can those be called democracies, which, like the constitutions of mediæval Italy, conferred power on the burghers and nobles only. Nor can those even be called democracies, which, like the Swiss states, have always treated a certain unincorporated class as political outlaws. Enlarged aristocracies these should be termed; not democracies. No matter whether they be a minority or a majority to whom power is denied; the exclusion of them is in spirit the same, and the definition of a democracy is equally broken. The man who steals a penny we call dishonest, as well as the man who steals a pound; and we do so because his act equally testifies to a certain defect of character. Similarly we must consider a government aristocratic, be the class it excludes large or small.

  They, however, make the strangest mistake who, referring as they commonly do to the United States, urge the existence of slavery as itself an argument against democracy. Put in a definite form, this would aptly serve the logician as a specimen absurdity. A pseudo-democracy is found not democratic enough, and it is therefore inferred that democracy is a bad thing! Whilst some Autolycus is eulogizing honesty and quoting himself as a sample of it, he is detected in the act of picking his neighbour’s pocket; whereupon it is argued that honesty ought forthwith to be repudiated! With his mouth full of “noble sentiments,” and leading a seemingly moral life, a Joseph Surface deceives his friends; and, on its being discovered that he is a villain, there arises the exclamation—“What a shocking thing is this morality!”

  But, passing over what might further be said concerning the alleged failure of democracies, let it be granted that they have failed; let it be granted that there have from time to time been forms of government approaching to the democratic—nay, that in the course of revolutions the thing itself has had a transient existence; let all this be granted, it still proves nothing. For which is it amongst the endeavours of man that does not at first fail? Is not perseverance through a series of defeats the natural history of success? Does not the process we pass through in learning to walk afford us a type of all human experiences? Though we see a child make hundreds of bootless attempts to maintain its balance, we do not conclude that it is doomed to remain for ever upon all-fours. Nor do we, in the conduct of its education, cease telling it to “try again,” because it has many times fallen short of a desired achievement. Doubtless it would be unwise to base an argument upon the assumed analogy between the growth of the individual and of the state (though, both being governed by the same laws of human development, there is probably a genuine analogy between them); but the simile may fairly be employed to hint that the failure of past efforts made by society to preserve the erect attitude of democracy, by no means shows that such attitude is not the proper one.

  And, in fact, our theory anticipates such failures. We have already seen that a high form of government is rendered practicable only by a high type of character—that freedom can increase only as fast as control becomes needless—that the perfect man alone can realize the perfect state. A democracy, therefore, being the highest form that a government can assume—indicative, if not of the ultimate phase of civilization, still of the penultimate one—must of necessity fail in the hands of barbarous and semi-barbarous men.

  Whilst, then, it is maintained that nearly all these alleged failures of democracy are not failures of democracy at all, but of something else, it is argued that the fact of those comparatively genuine democracies set up during revolutions, lapsing rapidly back into pre-existing arrangements, is in nowise at variance with our position.

  § 10.

  Whether in any given case a democracy is practicable, is a question that will always find its own solution. The physiologist shows us that in an animal organism, the soft parts determine the forms of the hard ones; and it is equally true that in the social organism, the seemingly fixed framework of laws and institutions is moulded by the seemingly forceless thing—character. Social arrangements are the bones to that body, of which the national morality is the life; and they will grow into free, healthy shapes, or into sickly and cramped ones, according as that morality, that life, is vigorous or otherwise.

  The vital principle of society we have seen to be the law of equal freedom: and we have further seen that in the compound faculty originating a moral sense, there exists an agent enabling men to appreciate, to love, and to act up to this law (Chaps. IV. and V.). We have seen that to realize the Divine idea—greatest happiness—the human constitution must be such as that each man confining himself within his own sphere of activity, shall leave intact the similar spheres of activity of others (Chap. III.); and we have further seen that an instinct of our own freedom, and a sympathy which makes us respect the like freedom of our fellows, compose a mechanism capable of establishing this state of things. If these feelings are undeveloped, a people’s beliefs, laws, customs, and manners, will be aggressive in their character: let them act with due force, and the organization of the community, equally with the conduct of its members, will be in harmony with the social law. Political forms indicate the degree of efficiency with which this mental mechanism works; are in a manner supplementary to such mechanism; are bad and coercive if it is defective; become ameliorated in proportion as it acts well. And thus democracy, as one of the higher social forms, is of necessity identified, both in origin and practicability, with a dominant moral sense. This fact has been already more than once hinted; but it will be desirable now to examine more attentively than heretofore the grounds on which it is alleged.

  Observe first, then, that in the earlier stages of civilization, before the process of adaptation has yet produced much effect, the desire for political equality does not exist. There were no agitations for representative government amongst the Egyptians, or the Persians, or the Assyrians; with them all disputes were as to who should be tyrant. By the Hindoos a similar state of things is exhibited to the present hour. The Russians, too, are still under this phase; and, in their utter carelessness of civil liberty, shun any one who preaches justice and condemns tyranny, as a perverse malcontent. The like mental condition was shown during the earlier stages of our own progress. In the middle ages fealty to a feudal lord was accounted a duty, and the assertion of personal freedom a crime. Rights of man were not then dreamed of. Revolutions were nothing but dynastic quarrels; not what they have been in later times—attempts to make government more popular. And if, after glancing at the changes that have taken place between the far past and the present, we reflect upon the character of modern ideas and agitations, on declarations of rights, liberty of the press, slave emancipation, removal of religious disabilities, Reform Bills, Chartism, &c., and consider how through all of them there runs a kindred spirit, and how this spirit is manifesting itself with constantly-increasing intensity and universality, we shall see that these facts imply some moral change; and explicable as they are by the growth of this compound faculty responding to the law of equal freedom, it is reasonable to consider them as showing the mode in which such faculty seeks to place social arrangements in harmony with that law; or, in other words, as illustrating the efforts of the moral sense to realize the democratic state.

  If a democracy is produced by this agency, so also is it rendered practicable by it. The popular form of government as contrasted with the monarchical, is professedly one which places less restraint upon the individual. In speaking of it we use such terms as free institutions, civil liberty, self-government, all implying this. But the diminution of external restraint can take place only at the same rate as the increase of internal restraint. Conduct has to be ruled either from without or from within. If the rule from within is not efficient, there must exist a supplementary rule from without. If, on the other hand, all men are properly ruled from within, government becomes needless, and all men are perfectly free. Now the chief faculty of self-rule being the moral sense (Chap. V.), the degree of freedom in their institutions which any given people can bear, will be proportionate to the diffusion of this moral sense amongst them. And only when its influence greatly predominates can so large an instalment of freedom as a democracy become possible.

  Lastly, the supremacy of this same faculty affords the only guarantee for the stability of a democracy. On the part of the people it gives rise to what we call a jealousy of their liberties—a watchful determination to resist anything like encroachment upon their rights: whilst it generates amongst those in power such a respect for these rights as checks any desire they may have to agress. Conversely, let the ruled be deficient in the instinct of freedom, and they will be indifferent to the gradual usurpation of their privileges so long as it entails no immediate inconvenience upon them; and the rulers in such case, being deficient in sympathetic regard for these privileges, will be, to a like extent, unscrupulous in usurping. Let us observe, in detail, the different modes in which men thus contradistinguished comport themselves under a representative form of government. Amongst a people not yet fitted for such a form, citizens, lacking the impulse to claim equal power with each other, become careless in the exercise of their franchise, doubt whether it is of any use to them, and even pride themselves on not interfering in public affairsa . Provided their liberties are but indirectly affected, they will watch the passing of the most insidious measures with vacant unconcern. It is only barefaced aggressions that they can perceive to be aggressions at all. Placing as they do but little value upon their privileges, they are readily bribed. When threatened, instead of assuming that altitude of dogged resistance which the instinct of freedom dictates, they truckle. If tricked out of a right of citizenship, they are quite indifferent about getting it again; and indeed when the exercise of it conflicts with any immediate interest are glad to give it up,—will even petition, as in times past did many of the corporate towns, both in England and Spain, that they may be excused from electing representatives. Meanwhile, in accordance with that law of social homogeneity lately dwelt upon, those in authority are in a like ratio ready to encroach. They intimidate, they bribe, they plot, and by degrees establish a comparatively coercive government. On the other hand, amongst a people sufficiently endowed with the faculty responding to the law of equal freedom, no such retrograde process is possible. The man of genuinely democratic feeling loves liberty as a miser loves gold, for its own sake and quite irrespective of its advantages (p. 95). What he thus highly values he sleeplessly watches; he quickly detects any attempt at diminution of it; and he opposes aggression the moment it commences. Should any assume undue prerogatives, he straightway steps up to them, and demands their authority for so doing. Transactions that seem in the remotest degree underhand awaken his suspicions, which are not be laid so long as anything remains unexplained. He scents out an abuse with instinctive sagacity, and having found one, never rests until it is abolished. If in any proposed arrangement there be a latent danger to the liberties of himself and others—any germ of irresponsible power, he instantly discovers it and refuses his consent. He is alarmed by such a proposal as the disfranchisement of a constituency by the legislature; for it at once occurs to him that the measure thus levelled against one may be levelled against many. To call that responsible government under which a cabinet minister can entangle the nation in a quarrel about some paltry territory before they know anything of it, he sees to be absurd. It needs no chain of reasoning to show him that the assumption, by a delegated assembly, of the power to lengthen its own existence from three years to seven, is an infraction of the representative principle; he feels that it is so; and no plausible professions of patriotism, no boasting of honourable intentions, can check his opposition to the setting up of so dangerous a precedent. Still more excited is he when applied to for grants of public money, with the understanding that on a future occasion he shall be told how they have been spent. Flimsy excuses about “exigencies of the state,” and the like, cannot entrap him into so glaring an act of self-stultification. He listens to them frowningly, and maintaining as he does that the protection of men’s rights is the chief, or rather the sole, “exigency of the state,” sternly negatives the request. Thus is he ever on the watch to extirpate incipient oppression; to nip abuses in the bud; or, if such an expression is allowable, to stop encroachment before it begins. And when a community consists of men animated by the spirit thus exemplified, the continuance of liberal institutions is certain.

  Political freedom, therefore, is, as we say, an external result of an internal sentiment—is alike, in origin, practicability, and permanence, dependent on the moral sense; and it is only when this is supreme in its influence that so high a form of social organization as a democracy can be maintained.

  § 11.

  And thus we arrive at the true answer to that question at present so widely agitated—Is a purely popular form of government practicable now? For, as the sentiment by which a state of perfect political liberty is generated, is also the one by which it is upheld, there immediately suggests itself the corollary that, when the sentiment is strong enough to generate it, it is strong enough to uphold it. Whenever, therefore, a people calmly arrives at the conclusion that democratic institutions are right; whenever they dispassionately determine that they shall be adopted; or, in other words, whenever the circumstances show that the setting up of such institutions is not an accident, but results from the ascendancy of the aforesaid sentiment; then, and then alone, are such institutions permanently possible.

  In the opinion, now happily so prevalent, that the pacific mode of working out political changes is the only efficient one, we have a collateral expression of this truth. Men see that freedom achieved by the sword is uniformly lost again; but that it is lasting when gained by peaceful agitation. Hence they very properly infer the propriety of carrying reforms solely by means which the moral law recognises—means which do not involve violations of it. Right as this conclusion may be, however, it is not philosophically understood. Men do not see why the thing is so. There is no truth in the usual supposition that the loss of liberties obtained by violence is a kind of retribution. It is not that bloodshed vitiates the free institutions it may help to set up; nor is it that when peacefully established such institutions are preserved by virtue of their being so established; but it is that the manner in which the change is wrought indicates the national character, and proves it to be respectively unfit or fit for the new social form. A brief examination of the moral conditions implied by these different kinds of revolution will show this.

  When an old regime is overthrown by force, no guarantee is given that the new one put in its place will satisfy the wants of the age. The occurrence is simply a demonstration that the miseries inflicted under this old regime were no longer bearable. To repeat the saying of Sully, quoted by Burke, and which is perfectly true when applied to convulsions of this nature—“It is never from the desire to attack that the people rise, but from impatience under suffering.” Now anger against an agent inflicting pain is a passion, exhibited by brutes as well as by men; and a social revolution wrought out by such a motive power is not likely to leave behind it a state of things specially adapted to the people’s circumstances. That sudden display of ill-temper with which a man dashes on the ground something that has given him much provocation, and yet the loss of which he will subsequently regret, serves in some measure to illustrate the conduct of a people thus excited. They are irritated, and justly so; the hold which authority has had over them is weakened; that sentiment of power-worship—that loyalty, as we term it—which was but the index of a certain adaptation between their characters and the rule they had lived under, is for the time being in abeyance—is silenced, drowned in the rising tide of their wrath; and when, after they have destroyed the old framework of things, another becomes needful, it is very improbable that the one set up during this temporary state of excitement will be one really in harmony with their natural characters. Nay, indeed, it is sure to be out of harmony with their natural characters; for consider, the institutions they set up will bear the impress of the feeling then prevalent—a feeling widely different from that previously exhibited, and also from that which will come uppermost again by-and-by. Stimulated by transpiring events, the germs of those sentiments destined some day to establish genuine political freedom, assume a precocious activity—seem much stronger and more general than they really are; whilst, on the contrary, those sentiments which upheld the preceding state of things are almost wholly dormant. The improvised form of government exactly answers to this exceptional condition of mind, and might work could that condition be maintained; but as fast as the popular feeling ebbs back into its ordinary channels, so fast does the incongruity between the new arrangements and the old character make itself felt; and so fast is the retrogression.

  On viewing the facts, through the foregoing theory of moral-sense agency, it becomes still more manifest that free institutions obtained by violence are of necessity premature. For what are the requisite antecedents to one of these social convulsions? They are the torments of a wide-spread and deep-seated injustice. And of what character is this injustice the exponent? Evidently a character deficient in those sentiments which deter men from aggression—a character in which the faculties of the social man are as yet imperfectly developed—a character, that is, by which the law of equal freedom is not duly responded to. Hence the unscrupulous trespasses on the one part, and the culpable submission on the other, which, by their accumulated results, have induced so terrible a crisis. Well: though by a revolution the people may re-make their government, they cannot re-make themselves. Slightly changed, perhaps, they may be in the passing through a period of such fiery excitement; but, in the main, they are still the men they were. The old process will consequently repeat itself. The storm of passion having died away, there will again begin these encroachments and this indifference; and they will continue until, by a gradual imposition of fresh bonds, the nation has been reduced, not, indeed, to a condition as bad as before, but to a condition not greatly in advance of it.

  Of political ameliorations pacifically wrought out, exactly the opposite is predicable. These appertain to a higher phase of civilization. In the first place they presuppose the popular suffering to be of a comparatively mild type—no longer unbearable, maddening; and, other things equal, this indicates a diminished amount of injustice; and a diminished amount of injustice implies a more prevalent and energetic moral sense. Thus the very antecedents of a peaceful agitation serve in some measure to ensure the success of the free institutions obtained by it. But it is in the process by which one of these bloodless revolutions is brought about that the existence of the needful popular character is most clearly evinced. For in what consists the vitality of such a movement? What is the secret power that originates it; to which its growth is due; and by the help of which it triumphs? Manifestly this feeling that responds to the law of equal freedom. These pertinacious demands for political equality are simply the signs of its increasing activity. Not hunger, nor the anxiety to escape from torture, nor the desire for vengeance, is now the transforming force, but a calm unswerving determination to get human liberties recognised. The carrying out one of these battles of opinion to a successful issue through long delays and discouragements, through ridicule and misrepresentation, implies a perennial source of energy quite different from mere insurrectionary rage. In place of a passing gust of anger, a persistent and ever-strengthening sentiment is here the acting agent. Agitation is its gymnasium. Men in whom it predominates cultivate it in the rest. They address it in speeches; they write articles to it; they convene meetings for its manifestation. It is aroused by denunciations of injustice; it is appealed to in the name of conscience; it is conjured by all that is fair and upright and equitable. Pictures of the slave and the tyrant are exhibited to excite its abhorrence; a state of pure freedom is described to it as the one to be loved and hoped for; and it is made sensible of the sacredness of human rights. After men’s minds have been for many years thus exercised and stimulated, a sufficiently intense manifestation of feeling is produced, and then comes the reform. But this feeling, mark, proceeds from that same combination of faculties by which, as we have seen, free institutions are upheld and made practicable. One of these agitations, therefore, is a kind of apprenticeship to the liberties obtained by it. The power to get freedom becomes the measure of the power to use it. The law of social forms is that they shall be expressive of national character; they come into existence bearing its impress; and they live only so long as it supplies them with vitality. Now a general dissatisfaction with old arrangements is a sign that the national character requires better ones; and for the people in pursuit of these better ones to have organised associations, maintained lecturers, and for session after session to have wearied the legislature with petitions—to have continued this, too, until the accumulated force of opinion has become irresistible, is to have given conclusive proof that the change brought about is really in harmony with the wants of the age. The new institutions do not now express an exceptional state of the popular mind, but express its habitual state, and hence are certain to be fitted to it.

  § 12.

  Here then is encouragement for timid reformers. Men of true insight need none of these detailed considerations to steady their convictions by. The mathematician does not call for a pair of compasses to test a proved theorem with; nor does the man of healthy faith wait for more evidence after he hears what the moral law says. It is enough for him that a thing is right. He will never believe that the carrying out of what is right by right means, can be injurious. And this is the only spirit worthy to be named religious. But as, unhappily, the many are not endowed with so trusting a belief, it is requisite to back the dictates of equity with supplementary arguments. The moral infidelity of the expediency school requires meeting. And it is to those infected by it that the above considerations are commended, as showing that they need not fear to exhibit whatever sympathy with democratic principles they possess—need not fear to throw their energies at once into the popular cause, for that when equitable institutions are equitably obtained, they must necessarily prosper.

  § 13.

  Thus the claim deducible from the law of equal freedom—the claim possessed by each citizen to like political power with the rest—is not counterbalanced by any of those prudential considerations commonly urged against it. We find that so long as selfishness makes government needful at all, it must make every government corrupt, save one in which all men are represented. The assertion that conceding universal suffrage would be creating a comparatively immoral constituency, proves to be quite unwarrantable; seeing that all classes are immoral, and, when numbers and circumstances are taken into account, apparently in an equal degree. A glance at the evidence shows that popular ignorance also is a two-edged objection; for, in the knowledge which may be supposed needful for the right use of votes, the mass of those inside the pale of the constitution are about as deficient as those outside of it. The argument that purely representative institutions have been tried and have failed, is not only based upon inapplicable instances, but would prove nothing if substantiated. Lastly, in this, as in other cases, it turns out that the possibility of fulfilling the injunctions of the moral law is proportionate to the advance men have made towards the moral state; political arrangements inevitably adjusting themselves to the popular character. So that whilst we may say to the ardent democrats—“Be sure that a democracy will be attained whenever the people are good enough for one”—we may on the other hand say to those of little faith—“Fear not that a democracy, when peacefully attained, can be attained too soon.”

  CHAPTER XXI.

  the duty of the state.

  § 1.

  As already said (pp. 207 and 208), morality stands towards government only in the nature of a limitation—behaves negatively with regard to it, not positively—replies to all inquiries by silently indicating the conditions of existence, constitution, and conduct, under which alone it may be ethically tolerated. And thus, ignoring government altogether, the moral law can give us no direct information as to what a government ought to do—can merely say what it ought not to do. That we are left with no precise knowledge beyond this, may indeed be inferred from a preceding chapter. For if, as was shown, every man has a right to secede from the state, and if, as a consequence, the state must be regarded as a body of men voluntarily associated, there remains nothing to distinguish it in the abstract from any other incorporated society—nothing to determine its specific function; and we may conceive its members assigning to it any function that does not involve a breach of the moral law.

  Immediate guidance in this matter being thus impossible, we must follow such indirect ways of arriving at the truth as are open to us. The question is no longer one of pure ethics, and is therefore incapable of solution by any exact methods: approximative ones only are available. Fortunately there are several of these; and converging as they do to the same conclusion, that conclusion assumes something like the character of certainty. Let us now successively employ them.

  § 2.

  Good, and perfect, and complete, are words applicable to whatever is thoroughly fitted to its purpose; and by the word moral we signify the same property in a man. A thing which entirely answers its end cannot be improved; and a man whose nature leads him to a spontaneous fulfilment of the Divine will cannot be conceived better. To be quite self-sufficing—to have powers exactly commensurate with what ought to be done, is to be organically moral. Given the ordained object—happiness; given the conditions under which this happiness is to be compassed; and perfection consists in the possession of faculties exactly adapted to these conditions: whilst the moral law is simply a statement of that line of conduct by which the conditions are satisfied. Hence to the rightly-constituted man all external help is needless—detrimental even. Just as the healthy body wants no crutch, tonic, or stimulus, but has within itself the means of doing everything required of it, so the normally-developed character asks no artificial aids; and indeed repudiates them as pre-occupying the sphere for the exercise of faculties which the hypothesis supposes it to have. When, on the other hand, man’s constitution and the conditions of his existence are not in harmony there arise external agencies to supply the place of deficient internal faculties. And these temporary substitutes being supplementary to the faculties, and assisting the imperfect man as they do to fulfil the law of his being—the moral law, as we call it—obtain a certain reflex authority from that law, varying with the degree in which they subserve its requirements. Whatever may be its special function, it is clear that government is one of these artificial aids; and the most important of them.

  Or the case may perhaps be more clearly stated thus:—If government has any duty at all, that duty must be to perform a service of some kind—to confer a benefit. But every possible benefit or service which can be rendered to a man is comprehended under the general expression of assisting him to fulfil the law of his being. Whether you feed the hungry, or cure the diseased, or defend the weak, or curb the vicious, you do but enable or constrain them to conform to the conditions of complete happiness more nearly than they would otherwise do. And causing conformity to the conditions of complete happiness is causing conformity to the moral law. If, therefore, all benefits that can be conferred on men are aids to the fulfilment of the moral law, the benefits to be conferred by government must be of this nature.

  So much being conceded, let us next inquire how the moral law may be most essentially subserved. Practicability manifestly underlies performance. That which makes an act feasible must take precedence of the act itself. Before the injunction—Do this, there necessarily comes the postulate—It can be done. Before establishing a code for the right exercise of faculties, there must be established the condition which makes the exercise of faculties possible. Now, this condition which makes the exercise of faculties possible is—power to pursue the objects on which they are to be exercised—the objects of desire; and this is what we otherwise call liberty of action—freedom. But that which makes the exercise of faculties possible, is that which makes the fulfilment of the moral law possible. And freedom being thus the grand pre-requisite to the fulfilment of the moral law, it follows that if a man is to be helped in fulfilling the moral law, the first thing to be done is to secure to him this all-essential freedom. This aid must come before any other aid—is, in fact, that which renders any other aid practicable; for no faculty to which liberty of action is denied can be assisted in the performance of its function until liberty of action has been restored. Of all institutions, therefore, which the imperfect man sets up as supplementary to his nature, the chief one must have for its office to guarantee his freedom. But the freedom that can be guaranteed to each is bounded by the like freedom to be guaranteed to all others. This is necessitated both by the moral law and by the simultaneous claims made upon the institution itself by its clients. Hence we must infer that it is the function of this chief institution which we call a government, to uphold the law of equal freedom.

  To determine the duty of the state by reverting to a supposed understanding entered into by the founders of society—a social contract—we have already seen to be impracticable (p. 200). Men did not deliberately establish political arrangements, but grew into them unconsciously—probably had no conception of an associated condition until they found themselves in it. Moreover, were the hypothesis of an original agreement reasonable, it could not help us; for it would be folly to assume that the duties imposed by a horde of savages on their chief, or council of chiefs, must necessarily be the duties of governments throughout all time. Nevertheless, if, instead of speculating as to what might have happened during the infancy of civilization, we consider what must have happened, something may be learnt. On turning to page 203, the reader will find it argued at length that for men to have remained in the associated state implies that on the whole they found it preferable to the isolated one; which means that they obtained a greater sum total of gratification under it; which means that it afforded them fuller exercise for their faculties; which means that it offered a safer guarantee for such exercise—more security for their claims to life and property; that is, for their rights. But if men could have continued in the associated state only because on the average it insured their rights better than the previous one, then the insurance of their rights becomes the special duty which society in its corporate capacity has to perform towards individuals. That function by which a thing begins to exist we may safely consider its all-essential function. Now, whilst those many aids to gratification which civilization has brought us were yet undeveloped, society must have existed only because it protected its members in the pursuit of those things which afford satisfaction to the faculties. But to protect men in the pursuit of those things which afford satisfaction to the faculties is to maintain their rights. And if it was by maintaining the rights of its members that society began to be, then to maintain their rights must ever be regarded as its primary duty.

  Further confirmation may be drawn from the universal practice of mankind in this matter. Widely as people have differed respecting the proper bounds of legislative superintendence, all have held them to include the defence of the subject against aggression. Whilst, in various countries and times, a hundred different functions have been assigned to the state—whilst there have probably been no two governments that have entirely agreed in the number and nature of their functions—whilst the things specially attended to by some have been wholly neglected by others, and thereby proved non-essential, there is one office—that of protector—which has been common to them all. Did this fact stand alone it might by a stretch of incredulity be construed into an accident. But coinciding as it does with the foregoing inferences drawn from the nature of man’s constitution and the necessary origin of society, we may safely take it as a further evidence that the duty of the state is—to protect—to enforce the law of equal freedom; to maintain men’s rights, or, as we commonly express it—to administer justice.

  § 3.

  The question—What is the thing to be done by a government? being answered, there arises the other—Which is the most efficient mode of doing it? To the proposition—the administration of justice is the special duty of the state, there hangs the corollary—the state ought to employ the best methods of fulfilling that duty; and this brings us to the inquiry—What are they?

  By our hypothesis the connection of each individual with the community as politically organized, must be voluntary. In virtue of its very office an institution which proposes to guarantee a man’s freedom to exercise his faculties, can only tender its services to him; cannot coerce him into the acceptance of them. If it does it becomes self-contradicting—vio. lates that very freedom which it proposes to maintain. Citizenship then being willingly assumed, we must inquire what agreement is thereby tacitly entered into between the state and its members. Two things are conceivable. There may either be an understanding that whoever applies to the judicial power for assistance shall defray the costs thereupon incurred by it on his behalf, or it may be provided that the payment of a constant contribution towards the expenses of this judicial power shall entitle the contributor to its services whenever he needs them. The first of these arrangements does not seem altogether practicable; the other is one to which existing systems partially assimilate. In either case, however, it is taken for granted that the parties will duly fulfil their promises; that equivalents of protection and taxation shall be exchanged; that, on the one side, if the individual chooses to avail himself of state guardianship, he shall not refuse his fair share of state burdens; and on the other, that when the state has imposed the burdens it shall not withhold the guardianship.

  Self-evident as is this interpretation of the agreement, which citizenship presupposes, judicial practice is but little guided by it. Our system of jurisprudence takes a very one-sided view of the matter. It is indeed stringent enough in enforcing the claim of the state against the subject; but as to the reciprocal claim of the subject against the state it is comparatively careless. That it recognises the title of the tax-payer to protection is true; but it is also true that it does this but partially. From certain infringements of rights, arbitrarily classed as criminal, it is ready to defend every complainant; but against others, not so classed, it leaves every one to defend himself. The most trifling injury, if inflicted in a specified manner, is cognizable by the magistrate, and redress may be obtained free of charge; but if otherwise inflicted, the injury, no matter how serious, must be passively borne, unless the sufferer has plenty of money and a sufficiency of daring. Let a man have his hat knocked over his eyes, and the law will zealously espouse his cause—will mulct his assailant in a fine and costs, and will do this without charge. But if, instead of having been bonneted, he has been wrongfully imprisoned, he is politely referred to a solicitor, with the information that the offence committed against him is actionable: which means, that if rich he may play double or quits with Fate; and that if poor he must go without even this chance of compensation. Against picking of pockets, as ordinarily practised, the ruling power grants its lieges gratuitous protection; but pockets may be picked in various indirect ways, and it will idly look on unless costly means are taken to interest it. It will rush to the defence of one who has been deprived of a few turnips by a half-starved tramp; but as to the estate on which these turnips grew, that may be stolen without risk, so long as the despoiled owner is left friendless and pennylessa . Some complaints need only to be whispered, and it forthwith plays the parts of constable, lawyer, judge, and gaoler; whilst to others it turns a deaf ear unless they are made through its bribed hangers-on. Now it is the injured man’s champion; and now it throws down its weapons to sit as umpire, whilst oppressor and oppressed run a tilt at each other. Over such and such portions of a citizen’s rights it mounts guard and cries—“Who goes there?” to every intruder; but upon the rest any one may trample without fear of being challenged by it.

  To a man with perceptions unblunted by custom, this mode of carrying out the agreement subsisting between himself and the state, would seem strange enough. It is not impossible that he might call the transaction a swindle; might argue that his property had been taken from him under false pretences. “To what purpose,” he might ask, “did I submit myself to your laws, if I am now to be denied the advantages promised in return? Have I not complied with all the stipulations? You demanded allegiance, and I gave it. You said money was needful, and I paid the uttermost farthing of your exactions, heavy as they were. You required me to fulfil certain civil functions, and I fulfilled them cheerfully. Yet now when I ask you to give me that for which I made these sacrifices, you shuffle. I supposed you were to act the part of an Arguseyed and Briareus-armed guardian, ever watching over my interests, ever ready to step in and defend them; so that whether sleeping or waking, absorbed in business or immersed in pleasure, I might have the gratifying consciousness of being carefully shielded from injury. Now, however, I find, not only that my rights may be trespassed upon in many ways without attracting your notice, but that even when I tell you I have been wronged, and demand your interposition, you shut the door in my face, and will not listen until I have exorbitantly feed some of the servants who have access to your private ear. What am I to understand by this? Is it that your revenue is insufficient to defray the cost of dispensing justice in all cases? If so, why not say as much, and let us increase it? Is it that you cannot accomplish what you profess? If so, declare candidly what you are able to do, and what not. But at any rate let us have some intelligible understanding, and not this jumble of contradictions—this conflict of promise and performance—this taking of the pay without doing the duty.”

  § 4.

  That men should sit down so apathetically as they do under the present corrupt administration of justice, is not a little remarkable. That we, with all our jealousy of abuses; with all our opportunities of canvassing, blaming, and amending the acts of the legislature; with all our readiness to organize and agitate; with the Anti-Corn-Law, Slavery-Abolition, and Catholic-Emancipation victories fresh in remembrance; that we, the independent, determined, self-ruling English, should daily behold the giant abominations of our judicial system, and yet do nothing to rectify them, is really quite incomprehensible. It is not as though the facts were disputed; all men are agreed upon them. The dangers of law are proverbial. The names of its officers are used as synonymes for trickery and greediness. The decisions of its courts are typical of chance. In all companies you hear but one opinion, and each person confirms it by a fresh illustration. Now you are informed of £300 having been expended in the recovery of forty shillings’ worth of property; and again of a cause that was lost because an affirmation could not be received in place of an oath. A right-hand neighbour can tell you of a judge who allowed an indictment to be objected to, on the plea that the words, “in the year of our Lord,” were not inserted before the date; and another to your left narrates how a thief lately tried for stealing a guinea-pig was acquitted, because a guinea-pig was shown to be a kind of rat, and a rat could not be property. At one moment the story is of a poor man whose rich enemy has deliberately ruined him by tempting him into litigation; and at the next it is of a child who has been kept in prison for six weeks, in default of sureties for her appearance as witness against one who had assaulted hera . This gentleman has been cheated out of half his property, but dared not attempt to recover it for fear of losing more; whilst his less prudent companion can parallel the experience of him who said that he had only twice been on the verge of ruin; once when he had lost a law-suit, and once when he had gained one. On all sides you are told of trickery and oppression, and revenge, committed in the name of justice; of wrongs endured for want of money wherewith to purchase redress; of rights unclaimed because contention with the powerful usurper was useless; of chancery-suits that outlasted the lives of the suitors; of fortunes swallowed up in settling a title; of estates lost by an informality. And then comes a catalogue of victims—of those who have trusted and been deceived; gray-headed men whose hardly-earned savings went to fatten the attorney; threadbare and hollow-cheeked insolvents who lost all in the attempt to get their due; some who had been reduced to subsist on the charity of friends; others who had died the death of a pauper; with not a few whose anxieties had produced insanity, or who in their desperation had committed suicide. Yet, whilst all parties echo each others’ exclamations of disgust, these iniquities continue unchecked!

  § 5.

  There are not wanting, however, men who defend this state of things—who actually argue that government should perform but imperfectly what they allow to be its special function. Whilst, on the one hand, they admit that administration of justice is the vital necessity of civilized life, they maintain, on the other, that justice may be administered too well! “For,” say they, “were law cheap, all men would avail themselves of it. Did there exist no difficulty in obtaining justice, justice would be demanded in every case of violated rights. Ten times as many appeals would be made to the authorities as now. Men would rush into legal proceedings on the slightest provocation; and litigation would be so enormously increased as to make the remedy worse than the disease.”

  Such is the argument; an argument involving either a gross absurdity or an unwarrantable assumption. For observe: when this great multiplication of law proceedings under a gratuitous administration of justice is urged as a reason why things should remain as they are, it is implied that the evils attendant upon the rectification of all wrongs, would be greater than are the evils attendant upon submission to those wrongs. Either the great majority of civil aggressions must be borne in silence as now, or must be adjudicated upon as then; and the allegation is that the first alternative is preferable. But if ten thousand litigations are worse than ten thousand injustices, then one litigation is worse than one injustice. Which means that, as a general principle, an appeal to the law for protection is a greater evil than the trespass complained of. Which means that it would be better to have no administration of justice at all! If for the sake of escaping this absurdity it be assumed that, as things now are, all great wrongs are rectified,—that the costliness of law prevents insignificant ones only from being brought into court, and that consequently the above inference cannot be drawn,—then, either denial is given to the obvious fact that, by the poverty they inflict, many of the greatest wrongs incapacitate their victims from obtaining redress, and to the obvious fact that the civil injuries suffered by the masses, though absolutely small, are relatively great; or else it is taken for granted that on nine-tenths of the population, who are too poor to institute legal proceedings, no civil injuries of moment are ever inflicted!

  Nor is this all. It is not necessarily true that making the law easy of access would increase litigation. An opposite effect might be produced. The prophecy is vitiated by that very common mistake of calculating the result of some new arrangement on the assumption that all other things would remain as they are. It is taken for granted that under the hypothetical regime just as many transgressions would occur as at present. Whereas any candid observer can see that most of the civil offences now committed, are committed in consequence of the inefficiency of our judicial system;

  “For sparing justice feeds iniquity.”

  It is the difficulty that he knows there will be in convicting him which tempts the knave to behave knavishly. Were not the law so expensive and so uncertain, dishonest traders would never risk the many violations of it they now do. The trespasses of the wealthy against the poor would be rare, were it not that the aggrieved have practically no remedy. Mark how, to the man who contemplates wronging his fellow, our legal system holds out promises of impunity. Should his proposed victim be one of small means, there is the likelihood that he will not be able to carry on a law-suit: here is encouragement. Should he possess enough money, why, even then, having, like most people, a great dread of litigation, he will probably bear his loss unresistingly: here is further encouragement. Lastly, our plotter remembers that, should his victim venture an action, judicial decisions are very much matters of accident, and that the guilty are often rescued by clever counsel: here is still more encouragement. And so, all things considered, he determines to chance it. Now, he would never decide thus were legal protection efficient. Were the administration of law prompt, gratuitous, and certain, those probabilities and possibilities which now beckon him on to fraudulent acts would vanish. Civil injuries wittingly committed would almost cease. Only in cases where both parties sincerely believed themselves right, would judicial arbitration be called for; and the number of such cases is comparatively small. Litigation, therefore, so far from increasing on justice being made easy of obtainment, would probably decrease.

  § 6.

  But, after all, it is not the setting up of this or that system of jurisprudence which causes the intercourse of men with each other to be equitable or otherwise. The matter lies deeper. As with forms of government, so with forms of law; it is the national character that decides. The power of an apparatus primarily depends, not on the ingenuity of its design, but on the strength of its materials. Be his plan never so well devised—his arrangement of struts, and ties, and bolts, never so good—his balance of forces never so perfect—yet if our engineer has not considered whether the respective parts of his structure will bear the strain to be put upon them, we must call him a bungler. Similarly with the institution-maker. If the people with whom he has to deal are not of the requisite quality, no cleverness in his contrivance will avail anything. Let us never forget that institutions are made of men; that men are the struts, ties, and bolts, out of which they are framed; and that, dovetail and brace them together as we may, it is their nature which must finally determine whether the institutions can stand. Always there will be some line of least resistance, along which, if the humanity they are wrought out of be not strong enough, they will give way; and having given way, will sink down into a less trying attitude. Thus it is, amongst other things, with judicial mechanisms. No matter how admirably devised, their results will be good only in proportion as the nation is good. The instrumentalities by which they are to act—judges, juries, constables, witnesses, gaolers, and the rest—must be units of the people—will, on the average, be marked by the same imperfections as the people; and though the system they are set to work out be perfect, yet will the badness of their characters degrade its acts down to a level with the general conduct of society.

  That justice can be well administered only in proportion as men become just, is a fact too generally overlooked. “If they had but trial by jury!” says some one, moralizing on the Russians. But they can’t have it. It could not exist amongst them. Even if established it would not work. They lack that substratum of honesty and truthfulness on which alone it can stand. To be of use, this, like any other institution, must be born of the popular character. It is not trial by jury that produces justice, but it is the sentiment of justice that produces trial by jury, as the organ through which it is to act; and the organ will be inert unless the sentiment is there. These social forms which we regard as so potential, are things of quite secondary importance. What mattered it that the Roman plebeians were endowed with certain privileges, when the patricians prevented them from exercising those privileges by ill-treatment carried even to the death? What mattered it that our statute-book contained equitable provisions, and that officers were appointed to enforce them, when there needed a Magna Charta to demand that justice should neither be sold, denied, nor delayed? What matters it even now, that all men are declared equal before the law, when magistrates are swayed by class sympathies, and treat a gentleman more leniently than an artizan? If we think that we can rectify the relationships of men at will, we deceive ourselves. What Sir James Mackintosh says of constitutions—that they are not made, but grow, applies to all social arrangements. It is not true that once upon a time men said—“Let there be law”; and there was law. Administration of justice was originally impracticable, Utopian; and has become more and more practicable only as men have become less savage. The old system of settling disputes by personal contest, and the new system of settling them by state arbitration, have coexisted throughout all ages; the one little by little usurping the place of the other, outgrowing it. It was only after some advance had been made that the civil power could get recognised at all as a maintainer of rights. The feudal baron with castle and retainers maintained his own rights, and would have considered himself disgraced by asking legal aid. Even after he had agreed to regard his suzerain as umpire, it was still in the lists, and by the strength of his arm and his lance, that he made good his cause. And when we remember that equally amongst lords and labourers this practice lingers even now—that we have still duels, which it is thought dishonourable for a gentleman to avoid by applying to a magistrate—that we have still pugilistic fights, which the people try to hide from the police—we are taught that it is impossible for a judicial system to become efficient faster than men become good. It is only after public morality has gained a certain ascendancy, that the civil power gets strong enough to perform its simplest functions. Before this it cannot even put down banditti; border forays continue in spite of it; and it is bearded in its very strongholds, as, amongst ourselves, by the thieves of Whitefriars but two centuries ago. Under early governments the officers of law are less friends than enemies. Legal forms are habitually used for purposes of oppression. Causes are decided by favouritism, bribery, and back-stairs intrigue. The judicial apparatus breaks down under the work it has to do, and shows us in a Jonathan Wild, a Judge Jeffries, and even a Lord Chancellor Bacon, how inevitably its several parts are rendered inoperative by a generally-diffused wickedness.

  Of course the efficiency of present and future systems of jurisprudence must be determined by the same influences. Of our own legal arrangements we may say, what Emerson has well said of institutions generally—that they are about as good as the characters of men permit them to be. When we read of Orange magistrates who become aggressors rather than protectors; of policemen who conspire with each other to obtain convictions that they may be promoted; and of the late Palace Court, whose officers habitually favoured the plaintiff with the view of inducing men to enter suits there, we find that now, as of old, judicial protection is vitiated by the depravity of the age. Nevertheless it is probable that we are ripe for something better than we have. The universal disgust with which law is regarded, may be taken as evidence of this—as evidence, moreover, that a change is at hand. But it is not likely that the mode of administering justice lately pointed out as the proper one is immediately feasible; seeing that men, by not having yet even recognised it as theoretically right, show themselves considerably below the state to which it is natural. This, however, is no reason for not advocating its adoption. For, what was said in the last chapter respecting an equitable form of government, may be here said respecting an equitable system of law; that the power quietly to establish it is the measure of its practicability.

  § 7.

  By dispersing that haze of political superstition through which the state and its appendages loom so large, the foregoing considerations suggest a somewhat startling question. For if when men’s savageness and dishonesty render the administration of justice most necessary, it is impossible; if it becomes possible only in proportion as men themselves become just; and if that same universal uprightness, which permits the administration of justice to become perfect, also makes it needless, as it evidently must, then we may naturally ask—Can the state really administer justice at all? Does it, looking at society as a whole, secure to the people any fuller enjoyment of their rights than they would have without it? May we not conclude that it takes away from men’s liberties in one direction, as much as it gives in another? Is it not a mere dead mechanism worked by a nation’s moral sense; neither adding to, nor deducting from, the force of that moral sense; and consequently unable to alter the sum-total of its effects?

  A strange idea, this, some will think; and so at first sight it seems. We have such a habit of regarding government in its protective character, and forgetting its aggressive one, that to ask whether the rights it secures are not about balanced by the rights it violates, seems almost laughable. Nevertheless we shall find that on drawing up a debtor and creditor account, the absurdity of the doubt disappears. Passing over those ruling powers of the East, which, in return for the small amount of security they guarantee, are in the habit of confiscating, under one pretence or other, any property not efficiently concealed by the unfortunate owners, and which, in some cases, push their exactions so far as to have to give back for seed in the spring a part of that crop they had taken from the husband-man at the previous harvest—passing over, too, those middle-age systems of government under which protection, such as it was, had to be purchased by the resignation of personal freedom, let us institute as favourable a comparison as possible. Let us take the relatively good governments we now know, and setting down on the one side the benefits conferred, and on the other the evils inflicted, let us strike a balance between them. Under the head of obligations may be entered the efficient curb which our police system puts upon offences against person and property; our courts of law, too, with all their defects, afford a partial defence against civil injuries which needs setting down in the estimate; and to these must be added what far outweigh them both—that sense of habitual security, and that consequent ability to fearlessly carry on the business of life, which are produced by the mere presence of an active civil power. Even after deducting from these a heavy discount on the score of shortcomings, there unquestionably remains a large surplus of benefit for which the state may claim credit. Turn we now to the per contra statement. As the first item on the list there stands that gigantic injustice inflicted upon nineteen-twentieths of the community by the usurpation of the soil—by the breach of their rights to the use of the earth (Chap. IX.). For this the civil power is responsible—has itself been a party to the aggression—has made it legal, and still defends it as right. Next comes the trespass committed against the many by subordinating them to the few, and forcing them to obey laws to which their consent was never asked. Note again the tyrannies accompanying national defence—the impressments and militiadrawings, the continuous abnegation of liberty in the persons of soldiers and sailors, ending not unfrequently in the sacrifice of their lives. Remember also how our rights are trenched upon by commercial restrictions; and how men are not only prevented from buying and selling where they please, but are debarred from following certain occupations until they have bought government permits. Nor let us forget the penalties that until lately so seriously transgressed religious freedom—penalties which, as the Anti-State-Church Association can show, have by no means disappeared. And all these, together with the many minor restrictions hedging us about, are accompanied by those never-ceasing incursions made upon our property by the tax-gatherer and the officers of customs and excise, by poorrate collectors and churchwardens. Measuring wrongs, as we must, by the degree in which they limit the exercise of faculties, let us now add up the two accounts and contrast their sum-totals. On the one side government partially saves us (only partially, mind) from those assaults, robberies, murders, cheatings, and kindred injuries, to which, were there no such institution, the existing immorality of men would expose us. These we must imagine to be distributed over the community at large, and over the life of each citizen, and then conceive to what average restriction on the free exercise of faculties they would be equivalent. On the other side government itself transgresses men’s liberties by the monopoly of land, by the usurpation of power, by restrictions on trade, by the slavery and death of thousands of soldiers, by the ruin of hundreds it ought to protect, by favouritism to creeds and classes, by the civil functions it makes imperative, by petty restraints too numerous to name, but above all by a remorseless taxation, which, affecting seven-eighths of the nation as it does by abstracting a large percentage from earnings already insufficient for necessaries, virtually obliterates, in great measure, the spheres needed for the development of their natures. We have now to suppose these manifold limitations to the free exercise of faculties averaged like the others, and then to ask ourselves whether the two averages are, or are not, equal. Is the question after all so very irrational? Is not the answer doubtful?

  Nay, indeed; consider it rightly and the answer is not at all doubtful. It is very certain that government can not alter the total amount of injustice committed. The absurdity is in supposing that it can—in supposing that by some ingenious artifice we may avoid the consequences of our own natures. The civil power no more does what to the careless eye it seems to do, than the juggler really performs his apparent miracles. It is impossible for man to create force. He can only alter the mode of its manifestation, its direction, its distribution. The power that propels his steamboats and locomotives is not of his making; it was all lying latent in the coal. He telegraphs by an agent set free during the oxidation of zinc; but of which no more is obtained than is due to the number of atoms that have combined. The very energy he expends in moving his arm is generated by the chemical affinities of the food he eats. In no case can he do anything but avail himself of dormant forces. This is as true in ethics as in physics. Moral feeling is a force—a force by which men’s actions are restrained within certain prescribed bounds; and no legislative mechanism can increase its results one iota. By how much this force is deficient, by so much must its work remain undone. In whatever degree we lack the qualities needful for our state, in the same degree must we suffer. Nature will not be cheated. Whoso should think to escape the influence of gravitation by throwing his limbs into some peculiar attitude, would not be more deceived than are those who hope to avoid the weight of their depravity by arranging themselves into this or that form of political organization. Every jot of the evil must in one way or other be borne—consciously or unconsciously; either in a shape that is recognised, or else under some disguise. No philosopher’s stone of a constitution can produce golden conduct from leaden instincts. No apparatus of senators, judges, and police, can compensate for the want of an internal governing sentiment. No legislative manipulation can eke out an insufficient morality into a sufficient one. No administrative sleight of hand can save us from ourselves.

  But must not this imply that government is of no use whatever? Not at all. Although unable to alter the sum-total of injustice to be supported, it can still alter its distribution. And this is what it really does. By its aid, men to a considerable extent equalize the evil they have to bear—spread it out more uniformly over the whole community, and over the life of each citizen. Entire freedom to exercise the faculties, interrupted by entire deprivations of it, and marred by the perpetual danger of these deprivations, is exchanged for a freedom on which the restrictions are constant but partial. Instead of those losses of life, of limb, or of the means of subsistence, which, under a state of anarchy, all are liable to, and many suffer, a political organization commits universal aggressions of a comparatively mild type. Wrongs that were before occasional, but crushing, are now unceasing, but bearable. The system is one of mutual assurance against moral disasters. Just as men, whilst they cannot prevent fires and shipwrecks, can yet guarantee each other against ruin from these, by bearing them in common, and distributing the injuries entailed over long periods of time; so, although by uniting together for judicial purposes men cannot diminish the amount of injustice to be borne, they can, and do, insure themselves against its otherwise fatal results.

  § 8.

  When we agreed that it was the essential function of the state to protect—to administer the law of equal freedom—to maintain men’s rights—we virtually assigned to it the duty, not only of shielding each citizen from the trespasses of his neighbours, but of defending him, in common with the community at large, against foreign aggressions. An invading force may violate people’s rights as much as, or far more than, an equal body of felons; and our definition requires that government shall resist transgression in the one case as much as in the other. Protection,—this is what men seek by political combination; and whether it be against internal or external enemies matters not. Unquestionably war is immoral. But so likewise is the violence used in the execution of justice; so is all coercion. Ethical law is as certainly broken by the deeds of judicial authorities as by those of a defensive army. There is, in principle, no difference whatever between the blow of a policeman’s baton and the thrust of a soldier’s bayonet. Both are infractions of the law of equal freedom in the persons of those injured. In either case we have force sufficient to produce submission; and it matters not whether that force be employed by a man in red or by one in blue. Policemen are soldiers who act alone: soldiers are policemen who act in unison. Government employs the first to attack in detail ten thousand criminals who separately make war upon society; and it calls in the last when threatened by a like number of criminals in the shape of drilled troops. Resistance to foreign foes and resistance to native ones having consequently the same object—the maintenance of men’s rights, and being effected by the same means—force, are in their nature identical, and no greater condemnation can be passed upon the one than upon the other. The doings of the battle-field merely exhibit in a concentrated form that immorality which is inherent in government, and attaches to all its functions. What is so manifest in its military acts is true of its civil acts, that it uses wrong to put down wrong.

  Defensive warfare (and of course it is solely to this that the foregoing argument applies) must therefore be tolerated as the least of two evils. There are indeed some who unconditionally condemn it, and would meet invasion by non-resistance. To such there are several replies.

  First, consistency requires them to behave in like fashion to their fellow-citizens. They must not only allow themselves to be cheated, assaulted, robbed, wounded, without offering active opposition, but must refuse help from the civil power; seeing that they who employ force by proxy, are as much responsible for that force as though they employed it themselves.

  Again, such a theory makes pacific relationships between men and nations look needlessly Utopian. If all agree not to aggress, they must as certainly be at peace with each other as though they had all agreed not to resist. So that, whilst it sets up so difficult a standard of behaviour, the rule of non-resistance is not one whit more efficient as a preventive of war, than the rule of non-aggression.

  Moreover this principle of non-resistance is not deducible from the moral law. The moral law says—Do not aggress. It cannot say—Do not resist; for to say this would be to presuppose its own precepts broken. As explained at the outset (Chap. I.), Morality describes the conduct of perfect men; and cannot include in its premises circumstances that arise from imperfection. That rule which attains to universal sway when all men are what they ought to be, must be the right rule, must it not? And that rule which then becomes impossible of fulfilment must be the wrong one? Well; in an ideal state the law of non-aggression is obeyed by all—is the vital principle of every one’s conduct—is fully carried out, reigns, lives; whereas in such a state the law of non-resistance necessarily becomes a dead letter.

  Lastly, it can be shown that non-resistance is absolutely wrong. We may not carelessly abandon our rights. We may not give away our birthright for the sake of peace. If it be a duty to respect other men’s claims, so also is it a duty to maintain our own. That which is sacred in their persons is sacred in ours also. Have we not a faculty which makes us feel and assert our title to freedom of action, at the same time that, by a reflex process, it enables us to appreciate the like title in our fellows? Did we not find that this faculty can act strongly on behalf of others, only when it acts strongly on our own behalf (p. 98)? And must we assume that, whilst its sympathetic promptings are to be diligently listened to, its direct ones are to be disregarded? To suppose this, is to suppose an incurable defect in our moral constitution—is to suppose that the very sentiment intended to lead us will itself mislead us. No: we may not be passive under aggression. In the due maintenance of our claims is involved the practicability of all our duties. Without liberty of action, without rights, we cannot fully exercise our faculties; and if we cannot fully exercise our faculties we cannot fulfil the Divine will; and if we allow ourselves to be deprived of that without which we cannot fulfil the Divine will, we virtually neglect that will.

  But how, if all coercion is immoral? Will it not follow that it is immoral to use violence in opposing a trespasser? Certainly. Then either alternative is wrong? Just so: the law of right conduct has been broken, and this dilemma is the consequence. Action and reaction are equal. The blow dealt at morality in the person of the injured cannot end with itself: there must be a corresponding recoil. The first evil gives rise to an equivalent second, whether it is met by resistance or not. The assertion looks strange—will perhaps be incredible to many; nevertheless it must be made. And all we can say of this seeming paradox is, that it shows how actions lapse into a moral chaos when once the equilibrium of men’s relationships is destroyed.

  Thus we find that the principle of non-resistance is not ethically true, but only that of non-aggression—that hence a government is justified in taking up a defensive attitude towards foreign enemies—and that the abstract criminality undoubtedly attaching to such a proceeding is the same criminality which pervades the administration of justice, is the same criminality of which government is itself a consequence.

  § 9.

  Of international arbitration we must say, as of a free constitution, or a good system of jurisprudence, that its possibility is a question of time. The same causes which once rendered all government impossible have hitherto forbidden this widest extension of it. A federation of peoples—a universal society, can exist only when man’s adaptation to the social state has become tolerably complete. We have already seen (p. 197), that in the earliest stage of civilization, when the repulsive force is strong, and the aggregative force weak, only small communities are possible; a modification of character causes these tribes, and satrapies, and gentes, and feudal lordships, and clans, gradually to coalesce into nations; and a still further modification will allow of a still further union. That the time for this is now drawing nigh, seems probable. We may gather as much from the favour with which such an arrangement is regarded. The recognition of its desirableness foreshadows its realization. In peace societies, in proposals for simultaneous disarmment, in international visits and addresses, and in the frequency with which friendly interventions now occur, we may see that humanity is fast growing towards such a consummation. Though hitherto impracticable, and perhaps impracticable at the present moment, a brotherhood of nations is being made practicable by the very efforts used to bring it about. These philanthropic enthusiasms, which the worldly-wise think so ridiculous, are essential parts of the process by which the desideratum is being wrought out. Perhaps no fact is more significant of the change going on than the spread of that non-resistance theory lately noticed. That we should find sprinkled amongst us, men, who from the desire to receive this ultra-humane doctrine do violence to their perceptions of what is due to themselves, cannot but afford matter for congratulation. Unsound as the idea may be, its origin is good. It is a redundant utterance of that sympathy which transforms the savage man into the social man, the brutal into the benevolent, the unjust into the just; and, taken in conjunction with other signs of the times, prophesies that a better relationship between nations is approaching. Meanwhile, in looking forward to some all-embracing federal arrangement, we must keep in mind that the stability of so complicated a political organization depends, not upon the fitness of one nation but upon the fitness of many.

  CHAPTER XXII.

  the limit of state-duty.

  § 1.

  A function to each organ, and each organ to its own function, is the law of all organization. To do its work well, an apparatus must possess special fitness for that work; and this will amount to unfitness for any other work. The lungs cannot digest, the heart cannot respire, the stomach cannot propel blood. Each muscle and each gland must have its own particular nerve. There is not a fibre in the body but what has a channel to bring it food, a channel to take its food away, an agency for causing it to assimilate nutriment, an agency for stimulating it to perform its peculiar duty, and a mechanism to take away effete matter; not one of which can be dispensed with. Between creatures of the lowest type, and creatures of the highest, we similarly find the essential difference to be, that in the one the vital actions are carried on by a few simple agents, whilst in the other the vital actions are severally decomposed into their component parts, and each of these parts has an agent to itself. In organizations of another order the same principle is apparent. When the manufacturer discovered that by confining each of his employés wholly to one process, he could immensely increase the productive powers of his establishment, he did but act upon this same rule, of one function to one organ. If we compare the mercantile arrangements of a village with those of a city, we shall find that the huxters of the one carry on many trades each, whilst every shopkeeper of the other confines himself to a single trade; showing us how a highly-developed apparatus for the distribution of commodities is similarly distinguished by subdivision of duties. Language, too, exemplifies the same truth. Between its primitive state, in which it consisted of nothing but nouns, used vaguely to indicate all ideas indiscriminately, and its present state, in which it consists of numerous “parts of speech,” the process of growth has been that of gradually separating words into classes serving different purposes; and just as fast as this process has advanced, has language become capable of completely fulfilling its end.

  May we not, then, suspect that the assigning of one function to one organ, is the condition of efficiency in all instrumentalities? If, as far as we can see, such is the law not only of natural organizations, but of what, in a superficial sense, we call artificial ones, does it not seem probable that it is the universal law? Will it not be the law of institutions? Will it not be the law of the state? Must we not expect that with a government also, special adaptation to one end implies non-adaptation to other ends? And is it not likely that by devolving on a government additional functions, the due discharge of its peculiar function will be sacrificed? And would not this imply that a government ought not to undertake such additional functions?

  But laying aside analogy, let us inquire whether it is not the fact, that in assuming any office besides its original one, the state begins to lose the power of fulfilling that original one. What is it that we call the state? Men politically associated. How associated? Voluntarily. For what purpose? For mutual protection. Men voluntarily associated for mutual protection: this then is our definition. Now, when rightly ordered, the conditions on which this voluntary association offers its services, must be such as enable it to afford the greatest amount of protection possible. If otherwise—if it insists on non-essential conditions which prevent some men from accepting its services, or on conditions which unnecessarily compromise the liberty of those men who do accept its services, it manifestly fails to that extent in performing its function. Now the moment the state undertakes a second office it does all this. Men leagued together for a special object will never unanimously agree in the pursuit of any other object. So long as our joint-stock protection-society confines itself to guaranteeing the rights of its members, it is pretty certain to be co-extensive with the nation; for whilst such an organization is needed at all, most men will sacrifice something to secure its guardianship. But let an additional duty be assigned to it, and there will immediately arise more or less schism. The dissenting minority may in such case consist of two parties; the one comprising those who have so great a repugnance to the contemplated arrangement, as to resolve upon seceding rather than consent to it; and a larger party consisting of those who grumble at the imposition of additional charges for the doing what they do not wish to be done, but who think well to submit rather than give up the benefits of protection. Towards both these parties the state fails in its duty. The one it drives away by disadvantageous terms; and from the other it exacts sacrifices beyond what are needful for the performance of its original function; and by so doing becomes an aggressor instead of a protector. Observe how the case stands when put personally.

  “Your taxes are heavier this year than last,” complains a citizen to the government; “how is it?”

  “The sums voted for these new school-houses, and for the salaries of the masters and mistresses, have increased the draught upon our exchequer,” replies the government.

  “School-houses, masters and mistresses—what have I to do with these? you are not charging me with the cost of them, are you?”

  “Yes.”

  “Why, I never authorized you to do so.”

  “True; but parliament, or, in other words, the majority of the nation, has decided that the education of the young shall be entrusted to us, and has authorized us to raise such funds as may be necessary for fulfilling this trust.”

  “But suppose I wish to superintend the education of my children myself?”

  “You may do as you please; but you must pay for the privilege we offer, whether you avail yourself of it or not. Even if you have no children you must still pay.”

  “And what if I refuse?”

  “Why, were we to act up to old precedents, we should punish you; but as things now stand we shall content ourselves with giving notice that you have outlawed yourself.”

  “Nay, I have no wish to do that; I cannot at present dispense with your protection.”

  “Very well, then you must agree to our terms, and pay your share of the new tax.”

  “See, now, what a dilemma you place me in. As I dare not relinquish the protection I entered into political combination to obtain, I must either give you a part of my property for nothing; or, should I make a point of having some equivalent, I must cease to do that which my natural affections prompt. Will you answer me a few questions?”

  “Certainly.”

  “What is it that you, as a national executive, have been appointed for? Is it not to maintain the rights of those who employ you; or, in other words, to guarantee to each the fullest freedom for the exercise of his faculties compatible with the equal freedom of all others?”

  “It has been so decided.”

  “And it has been also decided that you are justified in diminishing this freedom only to such extent as may be needful for preserving the remainder, has it not?”

  “That is evidently a corollary.”

  “Exactly. And now let me ask what is this property, this money, of which in the shape of taxes you are demanding from me an additional amount? Is it not that which enables me to get food, clothing, shelter, recreation, or, to repeat the original expression—that on which I depend for the exercise of most of my faculties?”

  “It is.”

  “Therefore to decrease my property is to decrease my freedom to exercise my faculties, is it not?”

  “Clearly.”

  “Then this new impost of yours will practically decrease my freedom to exercise my faculties?”

  “Yes.”

  “Well, do you not now perceive the contradiction? Instead of acting the part of a protector you are acting the part of an aggressor. What you were appointed to guarantee me and others, you are now taking away. To see that the liberty of each man to pursue the objects of his desires is unrestricted, save by the like liberty of all, is your special function. To diminish this liberty by means of taxes, or civil restraints more than is absolutely needful for performing such function, is wrong, because adverse to the function itself. Now your new impost does so diminish this liberty more than is absolutely needful, and it is consequently unjustifiable.”

  Thus we find, as was foretold, that whenever the state begins to exceed its office of protector, it begins to lose protective power. Not a single supplementary service can it attempt without producing dissent; and in proportion to the amount of dissent so produced by it, the state defeats the end for which it was established. Let it undertake many additional duties, and there will be scarcely a man who does not object to being taxed on account of one or more of them—scarcely a man, therefore, to whom the state does not in some degree do the very opposite of what it is appointed to do. Now this thing which the state is appointed to do is the essential thing—the thing by which society is made possible; and these other things proposed to be done are non-essential, for society is possible without them. And as the essential ought not to be sacrificed to the non-essential, the state ought not to do anything but protect.

  § 2.

  It will perhaps be urged, however, that the evil done by a government, when it thus oversteps its original duty, is only an apparent one; seeing that though it diminishes men’s spheres of action in one direction, it adds to them in another. All such supplementary functions, an objector may say, subserve in some way or other the wants of society; that is, they facilitate the satisfaction of men’s desires; that is, they afford to men greater freedom for the exercise of their faculties. For if you argue that taking away a man’s property diminishes his freedom to exercise his faculties, because it diminishes his means of exercising them, then you must in fairness admit, that by procuring for him certain of the objects he desires, or by taking away the obstacles that lie between him and those objects, or by otherwise helping him to his ends, the state is increasing his power to exercise his faculties, and hence is practically increasing his freedom.

  To all which the answer is, that cutting away men’s opportunities on one side, to add to them on another, is at best accompanied by a loss. Let us remember that the force by which a society, through its government, works out certain results, is never increased by administrative mechanisms, but that part of it escapes in friction. Government evidently cannot create any facilities for the exercise of faculties; all it can do is to redistribute them. It is easy to calculate what one of these artificial arrangements can effect. Set down the amount of power to satisfy his wants, which it takes from a citizen in extra taxes; deduct the serious waste occurring under official manipulations; and the remainder, transformed into some new shape, is all that can be returned to him. The transaction is consequently a losing one. So that, whilst in attempting to serve the public by undertaking supplementary functions, a government fails in its duty towards all who dissent; it does not really compensate for this by additional advantages afforded to the rest; to whom it merely gives, with one hand, less than it takes away with the other.

  § 3.

  But in truth the transaction is a yet more detrimental one than it thus appears, for even the gift is a delusion—has a minus sign before it, unobserved, perhaps, by the many, but sufficiently visible to the analyst. The expediency philosophy of which this general state-superintendence is a practical expression, embodies the belief that government ought not only to guarantee men in the unmolested pursuit of happiness, but should provide the happiness for them and deliver it at their doors. Now no scheme could be more self-defeating, for no scheme could be more completely at variance with the constitution of things. Man, as briefly delineated at the outset, (p. 19) consists of a congeries of faculties, qualifying him for surrounding conditions. Each of these faculties, if normally developed, yields to him, when exercised, a gratification constituting part of his happiness; whilst, in the act of exercising it, some deed is done subserving the wants of the man as a whole, and affording to the other faculties the opportunity of performing in turn their respective functions, and of producing every one its peculiar pleasure: so that, when healthily balanced, each subserves all, and all subserve each. We cannot live at all unless this mechanism works with tolerable efficiency; and we can live entirely—that is can have entire happiness—only when the reciprocity between capacities and requirements is perfect. As before said, the complete man is the self-sufficing man—the man who is in every point fitted to his circumstances—the man in whom there are desires corresponding not only to all the acts which are immediately advantageous, but to those which are remotely so. Evidently, one who is thus rightly constituted cannot be helped. To do anything for him by some artificial agency, is to supersede certain of his powers—is to leave them unexercised, and therefore to diminish his happiness. To healthily-developed citizens, therefore, state aid is doubly detrimental. It injures them both by what it takes and by what it does. By the revenues required to support its agencies it absorbs the means on which certain of the faculties depend for their exercise; and by the agencies themselves it shuts out other faculties from their spheres of action.

  “But men are not complete; they are not healthily developed; they have not capacities in harmony with their wants; and therefore, as matters stand, a government does not by its interpositions preoccupy offices which there are faculties to fill.” Very true; but next to being what we ought to be, the most desirable thing is that we should become what we ought to be as fast as possible. We are undergoing the process of adaptation. We have to lose the characteristics which fitted us for our original state, and to gain those which will fit us for our present state; and the question to be asked, respecting these mechanical remedies for our deficiencies, is—do they facilitate the change? Certainly not. A moment’s thought will convince us that they retard it. No one can need reminding that demand and supply is the law of life as well as the law of trade—that strength will show itself only where strength is called for—that an undeveloped capability can be developed only under the stern discipline of necessity. Would you draw out and increase some too feeble sentiment? Then you must set it to do, as well as it can, the work required of it. It must be kept ever active, ever strained, ever inconvenienced by its incompetency. Under this treatment it will, in the slow lapse of generations, attain to efficiency; and what was once its impossible task will become the source of a healthy, pleasurable, and desired excitement. But let a state-instrumentality be thrust between such faculty and its work, and the process of adaptation is at once suspended. Growth ceases; and in its place commences retrogression. The embryo agency now superseded by some commission—some board and staff of officers, straightway dwindles; for power is as inevitably lost by inactivity as it is gained by activity. Hence, humanity no longer goes on moulding itself into harmony with the natural requirements of the social state; but begins, instead, to assume a form fitting these artificial requirements. It is consequently stopped in its progress towards that self-sufficingness characteristic of the complete man; or, in other words, is prevented from fulfilling the conditions essential to complete happiness. And thus, as before said, not only does a government reverse its function by taking away more property than is needful for protective purposes, but even what it gives, in return for the excess so taken, is in essence a loss.

  § 4.

  There is indeed one faculty, or rather combination of faculties, for whose shortcomings the state, as far as in it lies, may advantageously compensate—that, namely, by which society is made possible. It is clear that any being whose constitution is to be moulded into fitness for new conditions of existence must be placed under those conditions. Or, putting the proposition specifically—it is clear that man can become adapted to the social state, only by being retained in the social state. This granted, it follows that as man has been, and is still, deficient in those feelings which, by dictating just conduct, prevent the perpetual antagonism of individuals and their consequent disunion, some artificial agency is required by which their union may be maintained. Only by the process of adaptation itself can be produced that character which makes social equilibrium spontaneous. And hence, whilst this process is going on, an instrumentality must be employed, firstly to bind men into an associated state, and secondly to check all conduct endangering the existence of that state. Such an instrumentality we have in a government.

  And now mark that whether we consider government from this point of view, or from that previously occupied, our conclusions respecting it are in essence identical. For when government fulfils the function here assigned it, of retaining men in the circumstances to which they are to be adapted, it fulfils the function which we on other grounds assigned it—that of protector. To administer justice,—to mount guard over men’s rights,—to prevent aggression,—is simply to render society possible, to enable men to live together—to keep them in contact with their new conditions. And seeing that the two definitions are thus at root the same, we shall be prepared for the fact that, in whichever way we specify its duty, the state cannot exceed that duty without defeating itself. For, if regarded as a protector, we find that the moment it does anything more than protect, it becomes an aggressor instead of a protector; and, if regarded as a help to adaptation, we find that when it does anything more than sustain the social state, it retards adaptation instead of hastening it.

  § 5.

  Thus much for the positive evidence: let us now enter upon the negative. The expediency-philosophers say that government has other functions to fulfil besides that of upholding men’s rights. If so, what are they? To the assertion that the boundary line of state-duty as above drawn is at the wrong place, the obvious rejoinder is—show us where it should be drawn. This appeal the expediency-philosophers have never yet been able to answer. Their alleged definitions are no definitions at all. As was proved at the outset (p. 3), to say that government ought to do that which is “expedient,” or to do that which will tend to produce the “greatest happiness,” or to do that which will subserve the “general good,” is to say just nothing; for there is infinite disagreement respecting the natures of these desiderata. A definition of which the terms are indefinite is an absurdity. Whilst the practical interpretation of “expediency” remains a matter of opinion, to say that a government should do that which is “expedient,” is to say that it should do, what we think it should do!

  Still then our demand is—a definition. Between the two extremes of its possible power—the everything and the nothing with which a government may be entrusted, where is the proper limitation? Of the innumerable fields of action lying open to an uncontrolled legislature, which shall it occupy? Shall it extend its interference to the fixing of creeds, as in the old times; or to overlooking modes of manufacture, farming operations, and domestic affairs, as it once did; or to commerce, as of late—to education, as now—to public health, as some wish—to dress, as in China—to literature, as in Austria—to charity, to manners, to amusements? If not to all of them, to which of them? Should the perplexed inquirer seek refuge in authority, he will find precedents not only for these but for many more such interferences. If, like those who disapprove of master tailors having their work done off the premises, or like those who want to prevent the produce of industrial prisons displacing that of free artizans, or like those who would restrain charity-school children from competing with seamstresses, he thinks it desirable to meddle with trade arrangements, there are plenty of exemplars for him. There is the law of Henry VII., which directed people at what fairs they should sell their goods; and that of Edward VI., which enacted a fine of £100 for a usurious bargain; and that of James I., which prescribed the quantity of ale to be sold for a penny; and that of Henry VIII., which made it penal to sell any pins but such as are “double headed, and have their head soldered fast to the shank, and well smoothed; the shank well shaven; the point well and round-filed and sharpened.” He has the countenance, too, of those enactments which fixed the wages of labour; and of those which dictated to farmers, as in 1533, when the sowing of hemp and flax was made compulsory; and of those which forbad the use of certain materials, as that now largely-consumed article, logwood, was forbidden in 1597. If he approves of so extended a superintendence, perhaps he would adopt M. Louis Blanc’s idea that “government should be considered as the supreme regulator of production,” and having so adopted it, push state control as far as it was once carried in France, when manufacturers were pilloried for defects in the materials they employed, and in the texture of their fabrics; when some were fined for weaving of worsted a kind of cloth which the law said should be made of mohair, and others because their camlets were not of the specified width; and when a man was not at liberty to choose the place for his establishment, nor to work at all seasons, nor to work for everybody. Is this considered too detailed an interference? Then, perhaps, greater favour will be shown to those German regulations by which a shoemaker is prevented from following his craft until an inspecting jury has certified to his competence; which disable a man who has chosen one calling from ever adopting another; and which forbid any foreign tradesman from settling in a German town without a licence. And if work is to be regulated, is it not proper that work should be provided, and the idle compelled to perform a due amount of it? In which case how shall we deal with our vagrant population? Shall we take a hint from Fletcher of Saltoun, who warmly advocated the establishment of slavery in Scotland as a boon to “so many thousands of our people who are at this day dying for want of bread”? or shall we adopt the analagous suggestion of Mr. Carlyle, who would remedy the distresses of Ireland by organizing its people into drilled regiments of diggers? The hours of labour too—what must be done about these? Having acceded to the petition of the factory workers, ought we not to entertain that of the journeymen bakers? and if that of the journeymen bakers, why not, as Mr. Cobden asks, consider the cases of the glass-blowers, the nightmen, the iron-founders, the Sheffield knife-grinders, and indeed all other classes, including the hardworked M.P.s themselves? And when employment has been provided, and the hours of labour fixed, and trade regulations settled, we must decide how far the state ought to look after peoples’ minds, and morals, and health. There is this education question: having satisfied the prevalent wish for government schools with tax-paid teachers, and adopted Mr. Ewart’s plan for town-libraries and museums, should we not canvass the supplementary proposal to have national lecturers? and if this proposal is assented to, would it not be well to carry out the scheme of Sir David Brewster, who desires to have “men ordained by the State to the undivided functions of science”—“an intellectual priesthood,” “to develop the glorious truths which time and space embosom”?a Then having established “an intellectual priesthood” to keep company with our religious one, a priesthood of physic such as is advocated by certain feeless medical men, and of which we have already the germ in our union doctors, would nicely complete the trio. And when it had been agreed to put the sick under the care of public officials, consistency would of course demand the adoption of Mr. G. A. Walker’s system of government funerals, under which “those in authority” are “to take especial care” that “the poorest of our brethren” shall have “an appropriate and solemn transmission” to the grave, and are to grant in certain cases “gratuitous means of interment.” Having carried out thus far the communist plan of doing everything for everybody, should we not consider the peoples’ amusements, and, taking example from the opera-subsidy in France, establish public ball-rooms, and gratis concerts, and cheap theatres, with state-paid actors, musicians and masters of the ceremonies; using care at the same time duly to regulate the popular taste, as indeed in the case of the Art-Union subscribers our present Government proposed to do? Speaking of taste naturally reminds us of dress, in which sundry improvements might be enforced; for instance—the abolition of hats: we should have good precedent either in Edward IV., who fined those wearing “any gown or mantell” not according to specification, and who limited the superfluity of peoples’ boot toes, or in Charles II., who prescribed the material for his subjects’ grave-clothes. The matter of health, too, would need attending to; and, in dealing with this, might we not profitably reconsider those ancient statutes which protected peoples’ stomachs by restricting the expenses of their tables: or, remembering how injurious are our fashionable late hours, might we not advantageously take a hint from the old Norman practice, and fix the time at which people should put out their fires and go to bed: or might we not with benefit act upon the opinion of M. Beausobre, a statesman, who said it was “proper to watch during the fruit season, lest the people eat that which is not ripe”? And, then, by way of making the superintendence quite complete, would it not be well to follow the example of that Danish king who gave directions to his subjects how they should scour their floors, and polish their furniture?

  Multiply these questions into a volume full; add to them the endless subordinate ones to which in practice they must give rise; and some idea may be formed of the maze through which the expediency-philosopher has to find his way. Where now is his clue? Again comes the inquiry—how does he propose to determine between what should be attempted and what should not? which is his definition? If he would escape the charge of political empiricism, he must show us some scientific test by which he can in each case determine whether or not state-superintendence is desirable. Between the one extreme of entire non-interference, and the other extreme in which every citizen is to be transformed into a grown-up baby, “with bib and pap-spoon,” there lie innumerable stopping places; and he who would have the state do more than protect is required to say where he means to draw the line, and to give us substantial reasons why it must be just there and nowhere else.

  § 6.

  After the difficulty of finding out the thing to be done, there comes the other difficulty of finding out the way to do it. Let us excuse the expediency-philosopher one half of his task—let us for the occasion assume something to be unanimously agreed to as a proper undertaking; and now suppose we enquire of him—How about your means of accomplishing it? Are you quite sure they will answer? Are you quite sure that your apparatus will not break down under its work? quite sure that it will produce the result you wish? quite sure that it will not produce some very different result? quite sure that you will not get into one of those imbroglios that so many have lost themselves in? There is no lack of warnings. “Let us put down usury,” said to themselves the rulers of the middle ages: they tried; and did just the reverse of what they intended; for it has turned out, that “all regulations interfering with the interest of money render its terms more rigorous and burdensome.” “We will exterminate Protestantism,” whispered the continental Catholics to each other: they tried; and instead of doing this they planted in England the germs of a manufacturing organization which has to a great extent superseded their own. “It will be well to give the labouring classes fixed settlements” thought the Poor Law legislators; and having acted out this thought there eventually grew up the clearance system, with its overcrowded cottages, and non-resident labour-gangs. “We must suppress these brothels,” decided the authorities of Berlin in 1845: they did suppress them; and in 1848, the registrar’s books and the hospital returns proved matters to be considerably worse than beforea . “Suppose we compel the London parishes to maintain and educate their pauper children in the country,” said statesmen in the time of George III; “’it would greatly tend to the preservation of the lives of the infant parish poor:’” so they passed the 7 Geo. III., c. 39; and by-and-by there began the business of child-farming, ending in the Tooting tragedy. Are not such warnings worthy of attention? Or does the expediency-philosopher value those facts only which are embodied in Blue-books and Board of Trade tables?

  Then as to his administrative mechanisms—can be answer for the satisfactory working of them? The common remark that public business is worse managed than all other business, is not altogether unfounded. To-day he will find it illustrated in the doings of a department which makes a valuable estate like the New Forest, a loss to the country of £3000 a year; which allowed Salcey Forest to be wholly cut down and made away with by a dishonest agent; and which, in 1848, had its accounts made up to March, 1839, only. To-morrow he may read of Admiralty bunglings—of ships badly built, pulled to pieces, re-built and patched—of nearly a million spent on iron war-steamers which are now found not to stand cannon shot—and of a sluggishness which puts the national dockyards “about seven years” behind all others. Now the exposure is of an extravagance which builds gaols at a cost of £1200 per prisoner; and now of a carelessness which permits important legal records to rot amongst rubbish. Here is a sailor of whom the State demanded sixpence a month towards a hospital which was never provided, and whose pension from the Merchant-Seamen’s Fund is nothing like what it would have been from an ordinary assurance society; and there, on the other hand, is a Mint moneyer who gets more than £4000 a year for doing what a tithe of the amount would amply pay for. Official delay is seen in the snail-paced progress of the Museum Catalogue; official mismanagement in the building of Houses of Parliament not fit for speaking in; and official perversity in the opposition uniformly made to improvement by the Excise, the Customs, and the Post Office authorities. Does the expediency-philosopher feel no apprehensions on contemplating such evidence? Or, as one specially professing to be guided by experience, does he think that on the whole experience is in his favour?

  Perhaps he has not heard that of ten mechanical inventions, usually some nine fail; and that, before the tenth can be made to answer, endless obstacles that had never been dreamed of have to be surmounted. Or, if he has heard this, does he think that the properties of humanity being so much easier to understand than those of iron and brass, and an institution constructed of living men being a simple thing as compared with an inanimate mechanism, legislative schemes are not likely thus to miscarry?

  § 7.

  “It is a gross delusion to believe in the sovereign power of political machinery,” says M. Guizot. True: and it is not only a gross delusion, but a very dangerous one. Give a child exaggerated notions of its parent’s power, and it will by-and-by cry for the moon. Let a people believe in government-omni-potence, and they will be pretty certain to get up revolutions to achieve impossibilities. Between their exorbitant ideas of what the state ought to do for them on the one side, and its miserable performances on the other, there will surely be generated feelings extremely inimical to social order—feelings which, by adding to the dissatisfaction otherwise produced, may occasion outbreaks that would not else have occurred.

  But this belief in “the sovereign power of political machinery” is not born with men; they are taught it. And how are they taught it? Evidently by these preachers of universal legislative superintendence—by the pretensions of statesmen themselves—and by having seen, from their childhood, all kinds of functions undertaken by government officials. The idea which, in his critique upon the late events in France, M. Guizot calls a “gross delusion,” is an idea which he, in common with others, has been practically inculcating. Following in the steps of his predecessors, he has kept in action, and in some cases even extended, that system of official supervision to which this idea owes its birth. Was it not natural that men, living under the regulation of legions of prefects, sub-prefects, inspectors, controllers, intendants, commissaries, and other civil employés to the number of 535,000—men who were educated by the government, and taught religion by it—who had to ask its consent before they could stir from home—who could not publish a handbill without a permit from the authorities, nor circulate a newspaper after the censor’s veto—who daily saw it dictating regulations for railways, inspecting and managing mines, building bridges, making roads, and erecting monuments—who were led to regard it as the patron of science, literature, and the fine arts, and as the dispenser of honours and rewards—who found it undertaking the manufacture of gunpowder, superintending the breeding of horses and sheep, playing the part of public pawnbroker, and monopolizing the sale of tobacco and snuff—who saw it attending to everything, from the execution of public works down to the sanitary inspection of prostitutes—was it not natural that men so circumstanced should acquire exalted ideas of state power? And, having acquired such ideas, were they not likely to desire the state to compass for them unattainable benefits; to get angry because it did not do this; and to attempt by violent means the enforcement of their wishes? Evidently the reply must be affirmative. And if so, it is not too much to say that this overstepping of the proper sphere of government, leading as it does to that “gross delusion,” a belief in “the sovereign power of political machinery,” is the natural forerunner of such schemes as those of Blanc and Cabet, and of that confusion which the attempt to realize them by state-agency must produce.

  There are other modes, too, in which social stability is endangered by this interference system. It is a very expensive system: the further it is carried, the larger become the revenues required: and we all know that beavy taxation is inseparable from discontent. Moreover it is in its nature essentially despotic. In governing everything it unavoidably cramps men; and, by diminishing their liberty of action, angers them. It galls by its infinity of ordinances and restrictions; it offends by professing to help those whom it will not allow to help themselves; and it vexes by its swarms of dictatorial officials, who are for ever stepping in between men and their pursuits. Those regulations by which the French manufacturers were hampered during the last century, when the state decided on the persons to be employed, the articles to be made, the materials to be used, and the qualities of the products—when inspectors broke the looms and burnt the goods that were not made according to law—and when improvements were illegal and inventors were fined—had no small share in producing the great revolution. Nor, amongst the causes which conspired to overthrow the government of Louis Philippe, must we forget the irritation generated by an analogous supervision, under which a mine cannot be opened without the permission of the authorities; under which a bookseller or printer may have his business suspended by the withdrawal of his licence; and under which it is penal to take a bucket of water out of the sea.

  Thus, if we regard government as a means of upholding the social state, we find that, besides suffering a direct loss of power to perform its duty on attempting anything else, there are several subsidiary ways in which the assumption of additional functions endangers the fulfilment of its original function.

  § 8.

  But we have not sufficiently considered the infinite presumption discernible in this attempt at regulating all the doings of men by law. To make up for defects in the original constitution of things—this is the meaning of the scheme, nakedly stated. It is said of a certain personage, that he wished he had been consulted when the world was being made, for that he could have given good advice; and not a little historical celebrity has attached to this personage, in virtue of his so-thought unparalleled arrogance. Shallow, shallow! Why, the great majority of our statesmen and politicians do as much every day. Advice, indeed! they do not stop at advice. They actively interpose, take into their own hands matters that God seems to be mismanaging, and undertake to set them right! It is clear to them that social wants and relationships have been so carelessly provided for, that without their vigilant management all will go wrong. As for any silent influences by which imperfections are in process of being removed, they do not believe in them. But by a commission, a staff of officers, and a parliamentary grant, every deficiency shall be made good, and the errors of Omniscience be rectified!

  In truth it is a sad sight for any one who has been, what Bacon recommends—“a servant and interpreter of nature,” to see these political schemers, with their clumsy mechanisms, trying to supersede the great laws of existence. Such an one, no longer regarding the mere outsides of things, has learned to look for the secret forces by which they are upheld. After patient study, this chaos of phenomena into the midst of which he was born has begun to generalize itself to him; and where there seemed nothing but confusion, he can now discern the dim outlines of a gigantic plan. No accidents, no chance; but everywhere order and completeness. One by one exceptions vanish, and all becomes systematic. Suddenly what had appeared an anomaly answers to some intenser thought, exhibits polarity, and ranges itself along with kindred facts. Throughout he finds the same vital principles, ever in action, ever successful, and embracing the minutest details. Growth is unceasing; and though slow, all powerful: showing itself here in some rapidly-developing outline; and there, where the necessity is less, exhibiting only the fibrils of incipient organization. Irresistible as it is subtle, he sees in the worker of these changes, a power that bears onwards peoples and governments regardless of their theories, and schemes, and prejudices—a power which sucks the life out of their lauded institutions, shrivels up their state-parchments with a breath, paralyzes long-venerated authorities, obliterates the most deeply-graven laws, makes statesmen recant and puts prophets to the blush, buries cherished customs, shelves precedents, and which, before men are yet conscious of the fact, has wrought a revolution in all things, and filled the world with a higher life. Always towards perfection is the mighty movement—towards a complete development and a more unmixed good; subordinating in its universality all petty irregularities and fallings back, as the curvature of the earth subordinates mountains and valleys. Even in evils, the student learns to recognise only a struggling beneficence. But, above all, he is struck with the inherent sufficingness of things, and with the complex simplicity of those principles by which every defect is being remedied—principles that show themselves alike in the self-adjustment of planetary perturbations, and in the healing of a scratched finger—in the balancing of social systems, and in the increased sensitiveness of a blind man’s ear—in the adaptation of prices to produce, and in the acclimatization of a plant. Day by day he sees a further beauty. Each new fact illustrates more clearly some recognised law, or discloses some inconceived completeness: contemplation thus perpetually discovering to him a higher harmony, and cherishing in him a deeper faith.

  And now, in the midst of his admiration and his awe, the student shall suddenly see some flippant red-tapist get upon his legs and tell the world how he is going to put a patch upon nature! Here is a man who, in the presence of all the wonders that encompass him, dares to announce that he and certain of his colleagues have laid their heads together and found out a way to improve upon the Divine arrangements! Scarcely an idea have these meddlers got of what underlies the facts with which they propose to deal; as you shall soon find on sounding their philosophy: and yet, could they carry out their pretensions, we should see them self-appointed nurses to the universe! They have so little faith in the laws of things, and so much faith in themselves, that, were it possible, they would chain earth and sun together, lest centripetal force should fail! Nothing but a parliament-made agency can be depended upon; and only when this infinitely-complex humanity of ours has been put under their ingenious regulations, and provided for by their supreme intelligence, will the world become what it ought to be! Such, in essence, is the astounding creed of these creation-menders.

  § 9.

  Consider it then in what light we may—morally or scientifically, with reference to its practicableness, or as a question of political prudence, or even in its bearings upon religious faith—we find this theory, that a government ought to undertake other offices besides that of protector, to be an untenable theory. It has been shown that if the maintaining of rights be regarded as the special function of the state, the state cannot fulfil any other function without a partial loss of power to fulfil its special one. When, from another point of view, the state is looked upon as an aid to adaptation, we still find that it cannot exceed its duty of guarding men’s liberties, without becoming a hindrance to adaptation, instead of an aid. It turns out that to abolish the limit of legislative interposition now contended for, is in fact to abolish all limits whatever—is to give the civil power a field of action to which no bounds can be fixed, save in some arbitrary and utterly unphilosophical way. Moreover, even could certain supplementary affairs, considered fit for government supervision, be duly distinguished from the rest, there would still be the fact that all experience shows government to be an incompetent manager of such supplementary affairs. It is further urged, that the system of extended official control is bad, because unfavourable to social stability. And, finally, that system is repudiated, as involving an absurd and even impious presumption.

  Such, then, are the general arguments brought forward to prove that whilst the state ought to protect, it ought to do nothing more than protect. By the abstract thinker they may perhaps be deemed conclusive. There are others, however, with whom they will weigh comparatively little; and, for the conviction of these, it will be needful to examine in detail each of the several cases in which legislative superintendence is commonly advocated. Let us now proceed to do this.

  CHAPTER XXIII.

  the regulation of commerce.

  § 1.

  Arrangements which alter the natural course of trade are of two kinds; they may be classed as either artificial stimuli or artificial restraints—bounties or restrictions.

  Of bounties must here be said specially what was said in the last chapter of factitious advantages generally; namely, that a government cannot give them without indirectly reversing its function. Not being requisite for the due maintenance of the citizen’s rights, the taking away of his property for the purpose of encouraging certain branches of production, would be wrong even were collateral benefits given in exchange; and as, instead of affording him collateral benefits, the commercial derangements consequent upon it put additional limits to the exercise of his faculties, such a measure is doubly wrong. Now that the faith in mercantile bribes is nearly extinct, it is needless to enforce this abstract inference by any supplementary reasoning.

  Of restrictions it scarcely needs saying that they are even more directly inequitable than bounties. Deducible as it is from the law of equal freedom, the right of exchange is as sacred as any other right (Chap. XIII.), and exists as much between members of different nations as between members of the same nation. Morality knows nothing of geographical boundaries, or distinctions of race. You may put men on opposite sides of a river or a chain of mountains; may else part them by a tract of salt water; may give them, if you like, distinct languages; and may even colour their skins differently; but you cannot change their fundamental relationships. Originating as these do in the facts of man’s constitution, they are unalterable by the accidents of external condition. The moral law is cosmopolite—is no respecter of nationalities: and between men who are the antipodes of each other, either in locality or anything else, there must still exist the same balance of rights as though they were next-door neighbours in all things.

  Hence, in putting a veto upon the commercial intercourse of two nations, or in putting obstacles in the way of that intercourse, a government trenches upon men’s liberties of action; and by so doing directly reverses its function. To secure for each man the fullest freedom to exercise his faculties, compatible with the like freedom of all others, we find to be the state’s duty. Now trade prohibitions and trade restrictions not only do not secure this freedom, but they take it away. So that in enforcing them the state is transformed from a maintainer of rights into a violator of rights. If it be criminal in a civil power commissioned to shield us from murder to turn murderer itself; if it be criminal in it to play the thief, though set to keep off thieves; then must it be criminal in it to deprive men, in any way, of liberty to pursue the objects of desire, when it was appointed to ensure them that liberty. Whether it kills, or robs, or enslaves, or shackles by trade regulations, its guilt is alike in kind, and differs only in degree. In the one extreme it wholly destroys the power to exercise the faculties; in the other it does this partially. And in strict ethics the same species of condemnation must be visited upon it in both cases.

  § 2.

  Not a few will be startled by this view of the matter. Let such reflect awhile upon the antecedents and associations of this trade-ruling. They will find, on doing so, that it is allied in both origin and practice to all other forms of wrong. More than once it has been pointed out, that as unjust customs and institutions derive their viciousness from a moral defect in the people living under them, they must be uniformly pervaded by that viciousness—that as social laws, creeds, and arrangements consist merely of solidified character, the same character will be shown in all the social laws, creeds, and arrangements which co-exist; and, further, that any process of amelioration will affect them simultaneously. This truth was amply illustrated (pp. 161 and 178). We saw that tyranny in forms of government, tyranny in the conduct of lord to serf, tyranny in religious organizations and discipline, tyranny in the matrimonial relationship, and tyranny in the treatment of children, regularly flourished together and regularly decreased at a like rate. In the same category we must now put—tyranny in commercial laws. Sinking those minor irregularities which pervade all nature’s processes, we shall find that from the days when exportation was a capital crime, down to our own free-trade era, there has been a constant ratio kept between the stringency of mercantile restraints and the stringency of other restraints, as there has between the increase of commercial liberty and the increase of general liberty.

  A few facts will sufficiently exemplify this. Take as one the instance just alluded to, in which associated with autocratic rule in church, in state, and in feudal hall, we find Edward III., for the purpose of making foreigners come and buy in our markets, prohibiting his subjects from sending abroad any staple goods “under penalty of death and confiscation;” and further enacting, “that the law should be unalterable either by himself or his successors.” Observe, too, how this same despotic spirit was exhibited in the regulations requiring these continental traders to reside during their stay with certain inspectors commissioned to see the cargoes sold within a specified time, and the proceeds re-invested in English goods, and charged to transmit to the Exchequer periodical statements of each merchant’s bargains—regulations, by the way, of which the abandonment was in after times lamented by the venerators of ancestral wisdom, much as the abolition of the sliding scale is mourned over by a certain party of our own day. Note again how, under the same regime, labourers were coerced into working for fixed wages; and then how, to keep the balance even, shopkeepers had the prices of provisions dictated to them. Mark further, that when the most tyrannical of these ordinances fell into disuse, there still continued the less burdensome ones, such as those usury laws, orders to farmers, prescribings of the material for grave-clothes, instructions to manufacturers, &c., referred to in the last chapter. But without going into further detail—without enlarging upon the fact that those intolerable restraints once borne by the manufacturing classes of France were contemporary with intense despotism at court, and a still lingering feudalism in the provinces—without tracing the parallelism that exists between the political and commercial bondage, under which, in spite of their revolutions, the French still live—without pointing out at length the same connection of phenomena in Prussia, in Austria, and in other similarly-ruled countries—without doing all this, the evidence adduced sufficiently shows that the oppressiveness of a nation’s mercantile laws varies as the oppressiveness of its general arrangements and government. Whilst, conversely, if we glance over the annals of progress, and then contemplate the changes that have taken place within these few years, or which are yet in progress, we cannot but remark a similar kinship between the manifestations of a juster feeling in political organization, in ecclesiastical affairs, in the family, and in our commercial code.

  Thus, trade restrictions are of the same race with irresponsible government and slavery. An obtuse perception of, and an insufficient sympathy with, the claims of man, are the parents of all tyrannies and dishonesties, bear they what name they may. Interferences with the freedom of exchange are as certainly their progeny as are the worst violations of human rights: they are constantly found in the society of these: and though not popularly classed as crimes, they are in both origin and nature closely related to them.

  § 3.

  There is another aspect under which these trade regulations, in common with many kindred contrivances for the management of social affairs, may be regarded. They are all in essence idolatrous. The worship of dead, powerless things made with human hands is not extinct, as people flatter themselves—cannot be extinct—never will be entirely extinct. The elements of man’s nature are persistent: the change is in their ratios. Typical remains of every disposition must continue traceable even to the remotest future. If, on the one hand, it is an error to suppose that humanity has not altered at all, it is, on the other hand, an error to suppose that it has altered, or even will alter, so completely as to retain no traces of its bygone character.

  Scientifically defined, idolatry is a mode of thought under which all causation is attributed to entities. It results from the first generalization of the undeveloped intellect, which, having constantly seen results produced by visible, tangible objects, infers that all results are so produced. In the mind of the savage every effect is believed to be due to a special worker, because special workers have been observed to precede effects in a multitude of instances. The laws of mental action necessitate that, as all known causes have presented themselves to him as personal agencies, all unknown causes must be conceived by him of the same nature. Hence the original fetishism. A stone thrown by an unseen hand, a piece of wood that, when heated, bursts into flame, or an animal found in the neighbour-hood of some natural catastrophe, is at once assumed to be the acting power. Here is a phenomenon—a visible change of state in some observed object: past experience inevitably suggests that there is a worker of this change: past experience also inevitably suggests that such worker is an entity: the entity to which the character of worker is ultimately ascribed will be that which past experience points out as most probable: and, in the absence of other entities, this character of worker will attach to the wood that gives out the flame, or to the stone that inflicts the blow. Thus the wood and stone, being looked upon as agents of unknown power capable of inflicting injury, are prayed to and propitiated.

  From the very first, however, there begins an accumulation of facts calculated to undermine this theory of things, and certain ultimately to overthrow it. For, whilst he regards all phenomena as the doings of living beings, the primitive man necessarily attributes to such beings qualities similar to those of the beings he sees—men and brutes. Reasoning, as he must, from the known to the unknown, he is obliged to conceive the unknown generators of change to be like the known ones in all things: and we find that he does this; we find that he represents them by forms either human, or bestial, or both, and that he imagines their passions and habits to be like his own. Now an attribute, possessed in common by all the beings known to him, is that of irregular volition. He sees no creature whose acts are so uniform that he can say positively what its future behaviour will be. Hence it happens that when certain natural events, originally ascribed by him to living agents—events such as the rising and setting of the sun and the falling of bodies to the earth—come to be perpetually repeated, and follow the same antecedents without exception, his notion of personal agency is shaken. This perfect uniformity of action is at variance with his knowledge of all known beings—is at variance with his very conception of a being. And thus in respect to the most familiar sequences, experience silently forces upon him the idea of a constant course of procedure—or what we express by the word law; and a belief in impersonal agency slowly supplants the original belief in personal agency. This revolution in his mode of thinking, though at first confined to the every-day instances of causation, extends in process of time to a wider and wider range of cases. The unceasing accumulation of facts which begins when increase of population provides a multitude of observers, continually furnishes new illustrations of that uniformity of sequence which conflicts with the notion of special workers; and thus the domain of the so-called supernatural is step by step usurped by the so-called natural. Still, it is only in as far as uniformity of sequence is made abundantly manifest, that the old theory is superseded. Though, amongst the Greeks, Thales taught that there were laws of matter, he nevertheless considered that a load-stone had a soul. Where the occurrence is unusual—that is, where the connection between antecedent and consequent is not familiar—that is, where circumstances do not discountenance the original belief in special workers, that belief is still held. Hence it happens that, long after all ordinary phenomena have come to be considered as due to the properties of things, or, in other words, to impersonal agency, such an event as an eclipse or an earthquake is explained as a dragon eating the sun, or as a god turning over in his sleep; an epidemic is ascribed to witchcraft; a luminous whiff of marsh-gas is regarded as a “Will o’ the whisp;” a failure in the dairy or brewhouse is set down to fairy malice; and there are myths about Giants’ Causeways and Devils’ Bridges. Where the connection between cause and effect is very remote or obscure, as in matters of fortune and in certain bodily affections, this disposition to attribute power to entities continues even after science has made great progress; and thus we find that in our own day the old fetishism still lingers in the regard shown to crooked sixpences, wart-charms, and omens.

  It lingers, moreover, as already hinted, in less suspected forms. Many much-reverenced social instrumentalities, also, have originated in this primitive necessity of ascribing all causation to special workers—this inability to detach the idea of force from an individual something. Just in proportion as natural phenomena are regarded by any people as of personal instead of impersonal origin, will the phenomena of national life be similarly construed: and, indeed, since moral sequences are less obvious than physical ones, they will be thus construed even more generally. The old belief that a king could fix the value of coinage, and the cry raised at the change of style—“Give us our eleven days,” obviously implied minds incapable of conceiving social affairs to be regulated by other than visible, tangible agencies. That there should be at work some unseen but universally-diffused influence determining the buyings and sellings of citizens and the transactions of merchants from abroad, in a way the most advantageous to all parties, was an idea as foreign to such minds as was that of uniform physical causation to the primitive Greeksa ; and, conversely, as the primitive Greeks could understand the operations of nature being performed by a number of presiding individualities, so to the people of the middle ages it was comprehensible that a proper production and distribution of commodities should be ensured by acts of Parliament and government officials. Whilst the due regulation of trade by a natural indestructible force was inconceivable to them, they could conceive trade to be duly regulated by a force resident in some material instrumentality put together by legislators, clothed in the robes of office, painted by court flatterers, and decorated with “jewels five words long.”b

  But with the complex phenomena of commerce, as with the simpler phenomena of the inorganic world, constancy of sequence has gradually undermined the theory that power dwells in entities. Irresistible evidence is at length establishing a belief in the law of supply and demand, as some thousands of years ago it established a belief in the law of gravitation. And the development of politico-economical science, being thus a further conquest of the faith in impersonal agencies over the faith in personal agencies, must be regarded as one of that series of changes which commenced with the first victory of natural philosophy over superstition.

  § 4.

  Fortunately it is now needless to enforce the doctrine of commercial freedom by any considerations of policy. After making continual attempts to improve upon the laws of trade, from the time of Solon downwards, men are at length beginning to see that such attempts are worse than useless. Political economy has shown us in this matter—what indeed it is its chief mission to show—that our wisest plan is to let things take their own course. An increasing sense of justice, too, has assisted in convincing us. We have here learned, what our forefathers learned in some cases, and what, alas! we have yet to learn in many more, that nothing but evil can arise from inequitable regulations. The necessity of respecting the principles of abstract rectitude—this it is that we have had another lesson upon. Look at it rightly and we shall find that all the Anti-Corn-Law League did, with its lectures, its newspapers, its bazaars, its monster meetings, and its tons of tracts, was to teach people—what should have been very clear to them without any such teaching—that no good can come of violating men’s rights. By bitter experience and a world of talk we have at length been made partially to believe as much. Be it true or not in other cases, we are now quite certain that it is true in trade. In respect to this at least we have declared that, for the future, we will obey the law of equal freedom.

  CHAPTER XXIV.

  religious establishments.

  § 1.

  As a matter of routine, it is needful here to point out what the reader will have inferred from Chap. XXII., that, by devoting a portion of its revenues or a part of the nation’s property to the propagation of Christianity or any other creed, a government necessarily commits a wrong. If, as with ourselves, such government forcibly takes a citizen’s money for the support of a national church, it is guilty of infringing the rights it ought to maintain—of trespassing upon that freedom to exercise the faculties which it was commissioned to guard. For, as already shown, by diminishing a subject’s liberty of action more than is needful for securing the remainder, the civil power becomes an aggressor instead of a protector. If, on the other hand, the right to ignore the state is recognised, as, in considering the question abstractedly, we must suppose it to be, then, by insisting upon conditions which drive some men to abandon its aid, and which unnecessarily restrict the freedom of those who do not, the state fails to that extent in discharging its duty. Hence, specifically applying the principle lately set forth in general terms, we find that a government cannot undertake the teaching of a religious faith without either directly reversing its function, or partially incapacitating itself for the performance of that function.

  § 2.

  In the conduct of English churchmen we have a curious illustration of the way in which men will re-adopt, when it is thinly disguised, a belief they had indignantly cast from them. That same Romish dogmatism, against which our clergy exclaim with such vehemence, they themselves defend when it is exercised on behalf of their own creed. Every state-church is essentially popish. We also have a Vatican—St. Stephen’s. It is true that our arch-priest is a composite one. It is true that with us the triple tiara is separated into its parts—one for monarch, one for peers, and one for commons. But this fact makes no difference. In substance, popery is the assumption of infallibility. It matters not in principle whether this assumption is made by one man, or by an assembly of men. No doubt the astounding announcement—“You must believe what we say is right, and not what you think is right,” comes less offensively from the lips of a parliamentary majority than from those of a single individual. But there still arises the question—By what authority do these men assert this? Whence do they derive their infallibility?

  That in establishing any religion a government does claim to be infallible, scarcely needs proof. Before a church organization can be set to work, a distinct understanding as to a what it is to do must be arrived at. Before state-paid ministers can be set to preach, it must first be decided what they are to preach. And who is to say? Clearly the state. Either it must itself elaborate a creed, or it must depute some man or men to do so. It must in some way sift out truth from error, and cannot escape the responsibility attending this. If it undertakes itself to settle the doctrines to be taught, it is responsible. If it adopts a ready-made set of doctrines, it is equally responsible. And if it selects its doctrines by proxy, it is still responsible; both as appointing those who chose for it, and as approving their choice. Hence, to say that a government ought to set up and maintain a system of religious instruction, is to say that it ought to pick out from amongst the various tenets that men hold or have held, those which are right; and that, when it has done this—when it has settled between the Roman Catholic, the Greek, the Lutheran, and the Anglican creeds, or between the Puseyite, High Church, and Evangelical ones—when it has decided whether we should be baptized during infancy or at a mature age, whether the truth is with Trinitarians or Unitarians, whether men are saved by faith or by works, whether pagans go to hell or not, whether ministers should preach in black or white, whether confirmation is scriptural, whether or not saints’ days should be kept, and (as we have lately seen it debating) whether baptism does or does not regenerate—when, in short, it has settled all those controversies which have split mankind into innumerable sects, it ought to assert that its judgment is incapable of error—is unquestionable—is beyond appeal. There is no alternative. Unless the state says this, it convicts itself of the most absurd inconsistency. Only on the supposition of infallibility can its ecclesiastical doings be made to seem tolerable. How else shall it demand rates and tithes of the dissenter? What answer can it make to his expostulations? “Are you quire sure about these doctrines of yours?” inquires the dissenter. “No,” replies the state; “not quite sure, but nearly so.” “Then it is just possible you may be wrong, is it not?” “Yes.” “And it is just possible that I may be right, is it not?” “Yes.” “Yet you threaten to inflict penalties upon me for nonconformity! You seize my goods; you imprison me if I resist; and all to force from me the means to preach up doctrines which you admit may be false, and by implication to preach down doctrines which you admit may be true! How do you justify this?” No reply. Evidently, therefore, if the state persists, the only position open to it is that its judgment cannot be mistaken—that its doctrines cannot be erroneous. And now observe, that if it says this, it stands committed to the whole Roman Catholic discipline as well as to its theory. Having a creed that is beyond the possibility of doubt, and being commissioned to disseminate that creed, the state is in duty bound to employ the most efficient means of doing this—is bound to put down all adverse teachers, as usurping its function and hindering the reception of its unquestionable doctrine—is bound to use as much force as may be needful for doing this—is bound, therefore, to imprison, to fine, and if necessary, to inflict severer penalties, so that error may be exterminated and truth be triumphant. There is no half-way. Being charged to put men in the way to heaven, it cannot without in permit some to be led the other way. If, rather than punish a few on earth, it allows many to be eternally damned for misbelief, it is manifestly culpable. Evidently it must do all, or it must do nothing. If it does not claim infallibility, it cannot in reason set up a national religion; and if, by setting up a national religion, it does claim infallibility, it ought to coerce all men into the belief of that religion. Thus, as was said, every state-church is essentially popish.

  § 3.

  But there has been gradually dawning upon those who think, the conviction that a state-church is not so much a religious as a political institution. “Who does not see,” inquires Locke, speaking of the clergy, “that these men are more ministers of the government than ministers of the gospel? “Probably in Locke’s time there were few who did see this; but there are now many. Nor, indeed, is the fact altogether denied, as you shall hear from some politic supporter of religious establishments during an after-dinner confidence. “Between ourselves,” will whisper such an one, “these churches and parsons, and all the rest of it, are not for sensible men, such as you and I; we know better; we can do without all that; but there must be something of the kind to keep the people in order.”a And then he will go on to show what influential restraints religious services are; how they encourage subordination and contentment; and how the power which the clergy obtain over their parishioners strengthens the hands of the civil ruler. That some such view widely prevails may be gathered from the acts and proposals of our statesmen. How otherwise can we understand that avowed willingness in the political leaders of all parties to endow the Roman Catholic Church in Ireland if the religious public of England would let them? Or what but a political motive can that States’ lieutenant—the East India Company—have for giving an annual subsidy of 23,000 rupees to the temple of Juggernaut, reimbursing itself by a tax upon the pilgrims? Or why else should the Ceylon government take upon itself to be curator of Buddha’s tooth, and to commission the Buddhist priestsa ?

  § 4.

  Of the clergy who, on the other hand, commonly advocate a state-church as being needful for the upholding of religion, it may be said that by doing this they condemn their own case, pass sentence upon their creed as worthless, and bring themselves in guilty of hypocrisy. What! will they allow this faith, which they value so highly, to die a natural death if they are not paid for propagating it? Must all these people, about whose salvation they profess such anxiety, be left to go to perdition if livings, and canonries, and bishoprics, are abolished? Has that apostolic inspiration, of which they claim to be the inheritors, brought with it so little apostolic zeal that there would be no preaching were it not for parsonages and tithes? Do they who, on ordination, declared themselves “inwardly moved by the Holy Ghost,” now find that they are inwardly moved only by the chink of gold? This would be called slander coming from any but themselves. And then their flocks—what say they of these? Do these care so little for the faith they have been taught, that its maintenance cannot be entrusted to them? After centuries of church-culture, has Christianity got so little root in men’s hearts that but for government watering-pots it must wither away? Are we to understand that these perpetual prayers and sacraments, these homilies and exhortations, these visitings and scripture-readings, have not even generated as much enthusiasm as can keep itself alive? Have ten thousand sermons a week done so little that the hearers will not contribute a sum sufficient for the sustentation of a ministry? Why, if this be true, what is the system good for? These advocates do but open their briefs, and then straightway argue themselves out of court. They labour to prove either how powerless is the faith they teach, or how miserably they teach it! The sum and substance of their plea for the state propagation of this creed is, that it has failed in animating its ministers with its own spirit of self-sacrifice, and failed to arouse in its devotees a spark of its own generosity!

  § 5.

  It is needless, however, in this year of grace 1850, with its Gorham controversies and Puseyite divisions, with its Romish and Rationalist secessions, with confusion inside the church, and a hostile association outside—to debate the question at greater length. Events are proving to most of the reflective—even to many of the clergy themselves—that a state-support of any particular faith is wrong, and that in England at least, it must shortly cease. For those who do not yet see this there are already volumes of argument to which addition is almost superfluous. The conclusions above come to, that the state cannot establish a religion without assuming infallibility, and that to argue an establishment of it needful is to condemn the religion itself, will sufficiently enforce, for present purposes, our abstract proposition.

  CHAPTER XXV.

  poor-laws.

  § 1.

  In common with its other assumptions of secondary offices, the assumption by a government of the office of Reliever-general to the poor, is necessarily forbidden by the principle that a government cannot rightly do anything more than protect. In demanding from a citizen contributions for the mitigation of distress—contributions not needed for the due administration of men’s rights—the state is, as we have seen, reversing its function, and diminishing that liberty to exercise the faculties which it was instituted to maintain. Possibly, unmindful of the explanations already given, some will assert that by satisfying the wants of the pauper, a government is in reality extending his liberty to exercise his faculties, inasmuch as it is giving him something without which the exercise of them is impossible; and that hence, though it decreases the rate-payer’s sphere of action, it compensates by increasing that of the rate-receiver. But this statement of the case implies a confounding of two widely-different things. To enforce the fundamental law—to take care that every man has freedom to do all that he wills, provided he infringes not the equal freedom of any other man—this is the special purpose for which the civil power exists. Now insuring to each the right to pursue within the specified limits the objects of his desires without let or hindrance, is quite a separate thing from insuring him satisfaction. Of two individuals, one may use his liberty of action successfully—may achieve the gratifications he seeks after, or accumulate what is equivalent to many of them—property; whilst the other, having like privileges, may fail to do so. But with these results the state has no concern. All that lies within its commission is to see that each man is allowed to use such powers and opportunities as he possesses; and if it takes from him who has prospered to give to him who has not, it violates its duty towards the one to do more than its duty towards the other. Or, repeating the idea elsewhere expressed (p. 278), it breaks down the vital law of society, that it may effect what social vitality does not call for.

  § 2.

  The notion popularized by Cobbett, that every one has a right to a maintenance out of the soil, leaves those who adopt it in an awkward predicament. Do but ask them to specify, and they are set fast. Assent to their principle; tell them you will assume their title to be valid; and then, as a needful preliminary to the liquidation of their claim, ask for some precise definition of it—inquire “What is a maintenance?” They are dumb. “Is it,” say you, “potatoes and salt, with rags and a mud cabin? or is it bread and bacon, in a two-roomed cottage? Will a joint on Sundays suffice? or does the demand include meat and malt liquor daily? Will tea, coffee, and tobacco be expected? and if so, how many ounces of each? Are bare walls and brick floors all that is needed? or must there be carpets and paper-hangings? Are shoes considered essential? or will the Scotch practice be approved? Shall the clothing be of fustian? if not, of what quality must the broad-cloth be? In short, just point out where, between the two extremes of starvation and luxury, this something called a maintenance lies.” Again they are dumb. You expostulate. You explain that nothing can be done until the question is satisfactorily answered. You show that the claim must be reduced to a detailed, intelligible shape before a step can be taken towards its settlement. “How else,” you ask, “shall we know whether enough has been awarded, or whether too much?” Still they are dumb. And, indeed, there is no possible reply for them. Opinions they may offer in plenty; but not a precise, unanimous answer. One thinks that a bare subsistence is all that can fairly be demanded. Here is another who hints at something beyond mere necessaries. A third maintains that a few of the enjoyments of life should be provided for. And some of the more consistent, pushing the doctrine to its legitimate result, will rest satisfied with nothing short of community of property. Who now shall decide amongst these conflicting notions? Or, rather, how shall their propounders be brought to an agreement? Can any one of them prove that his definition is tenable and the others not? Yet he must do this if he would make out a case. Before he can prosecute his claim against society, in the high court of morality, he must “file his bill of particulars.” If he accomplishes this he is entitled to a hearing. If not, he must evidently be non-suited.

  The right to labour—that French translation of our poor-law doctrine—may be similarly treated. A criticism parallel to the foregoing would place its advocates in a parallel dilemma. But there is another way in which the fallacy of this theory, either in its English or its continental form, may be made manifest—a way that may here be fitly employed.

  And first let us make sure of the meaning wrapped up in this expression—right to labour. Evidently if we would avoid mistakes we must render it literally—right to the labour; for the thing demanded is not the liberty of labouring: this, no one disputes; but it is the opportunity of labouring—the having remunerative employment provided, which is contended for. Now, without dwelling upon the fact that the word right as here used, bears a signification quite different from its legitimate one—that it does not here imply something inherent in man, but something depending upon external circumstances—not something possessed in virtue of his faculties, but something springing out of his relationship to others—not something true of him as a solitary individual, but something which can be true of him only as one of a community—not something antecedent to society, but something necessarily subsequent to it—not something expressive of a claim to do, but of a claim to be done unto—without dwelling upon this, let us take the expression as it stands, and see how it looks when reduced to its lowest terms. When the artizan asserts his right to have work provided for him, he presupposes the existence of some power on which devolves the duty of providing such work. What power is this? The government, he says. But the government is not an original power, it is a deputed one—is subject therefore, to the instruction of its employer—must do that only which its employer directs—and can be held responsible for nothing save the performance of its employer’s behests. Now who is its employer? Society. Strictly speaking, therefore, the assertion of our artizan is, that it is the duty of society to find work for him. But he is himself a member of society—is consequently a unit of that body who ought, as he says, to find work for every man—has hence a share in the duty of finding work for every man. Whilst, therefore, it is the duty of all other men to find work for him, it is his duty to help in finding work for all other men. And hence, if we indicate his fellows alphabetically, his theory is that A, B, C, D, and the rest of the nation, are bound to employ him; that he is bound, in company with B, C, D, and the rest, to employ A; that he is bound, in company with A, C, D, and the rest, to employ B; is bound, with A, B, D, and the rest, to employ C, with A, B C, and the rest, to employ D; and so on with each individual of the half score or score millions, of whom the society may be composed!

  Thus do we see how readily imaginary rights are distinguishable from real ones. They need no disproof: they disprove themselves. The ordeal of a definition breaks the illusion at once. Bubble-like, they will bear a cursory glance; but disappear in the grasp of any one who tries to lay hold of them.

  Meanwhile we must not overlook the fact that, erroneous as are these poor-law and communist theories—these assertions of a man’s right to a maintenance, and of his right to have work provided for him—they are, nevertheless, nearly related to a truth. They are unsuccessful efforts to express the fact, that whoso is born on to this planet of ours thereby obtains some interest in it—may not be summarily dismissed again—may not have his existence ignored by those in possession. In other words, they are attempts to embody that thought which finds its legitimate utterance in the law—all men have equal rights to the use of the Earth (Chap. IX.). The prevalence of these crude ideas is natural enough. A vague perception that there is something wrong about the relationship in which the great mass of mankind stand to the soil and to life, was sure eventually to grow up. After getting from under the grosser injustice of slavery, men could not help beginning in course of time to feel what a monstrous thing it was that nine people out of ten should live in the world on sufferance, not having even standing room, save by allowance of those who claimed the Earth’s surface (p. 114). Could it be right that all these human beings should not only be without claim to the necessaries of life—should not only be denied the use of those elements from which such necessaries are obtainable—but should further be unable to exchange their labour for such necessaries, except by leave of their more fortunate fellows? Could it be that the majority had thus no better title to existence than one based upon the good-will or convenience of the minority? Could it be that these landless men had “been mis-sent to this earth, where all the seats were already taken?” Surely not. And if not, how ought matters to stand? To all which questions, now forced upon men’s minds in more or less definite shapes, there come, amongst other answers, these theories of a right to a maintenance and a right of labour. Whilst, therefore, they must be rejected as untenable, we may still recognise in them the imperfect utterances of the moral sense in its efforts to express equity.

  § 3.

  The wrong done to the people at large by robbing them of their birthright—their heritage in the earth—is, indeed, thought by some a sufficient excuse for a poor-law, which is regarded by such as an instrumentality for distributing compensation. There is much plausibility in this construction of the matter. But as a defence of national organizations for the support of paupers, it will not bear criticism. Even were there no better reason for demurring to the supposed compromise, it might still be objected that to counterbalance one injury by inflicting another, and to perpetuate these mutual injuries without knowing whether they are or are not equivalents, is at best a very questionable policy. Why organize a diseased state? Some time or other this morbid constitution of things, under which the greater part of the body-politic is cut off from direct access to the source of life, must be changed. Difficult, no doubt, men will find it to establish a normal condition. There is no knowing how many generations may pass away before the task is accomplished. But accomplished it will eventually be. All arrangements, however, which disguise the evils entailed by the present inequitable relationship of mankind to the soil, postpone the day of rectification. “A generous poor-law” is openly advocated as the best means of pacifying an irritated people. Workhouses are used to mitigate the more acute symptoms of social unhealthiness. Parish pay is hush-money. Whoever, then, desires the radical cure of national maladies, but especially of this atrophy of one class, and hypertrophy of another, consequent upon unjust land tenure, cannot consistently advocate any kind of compromise.

  But a poor-law is not the means of distributing compensation. Neither in respect of those from whom it comes, nor in respect of those to whom it goes, does pauper-relief fulfil the assumed purpose. According to the hypothesis poors’-rates should bear wholly upon the land. But they do not. And at least that part of them which bears upon the land should come from the usurpers or their descendants. But it does not According to the hypothesis the burden should not fall upon the innocent. But it does; for poors’-rates were imposed after landed property had in many cases changed hands by purchase. According to the hypothesis the burden should not fall upon those already defrauded. But it does; for the majority of rate-payers belong to the non-landowning class. According to the hypothesis all men kept out of their inheritance should receive a share of this so-called compensation. But they do not; for only here and there one, gets any of it. In no way, therefore, is the theory carried out. The original depredators are beyond reach. The guiltless are taxed in their place. A large proportion of those already robbed are robbed afresh. And of the rest, only a few receive the proceeds.

  § 4.

  The usual reason assigned for supporting a poor-law is, that it is an indispensable means of mitigating popular suffering. Given by a churchman such a reason is natural enough; but coming, as it often does, from a dissenter, it is strangely inconsistent. Most of the objections raised by the dissenter to an established religion will tell with equal force against established charity. He asserts that it is unjust to tax him for the support of a creed he does not believe. May not another as reasonably protest against being taxed for the maintenance of a system of relief he disapproves? He denies the right of any bishop or council to choose for him which doctrines he shall accept and which he shall reject. Why does he not also deny the right of any commissioner or vestry to choose for him who are worthy of his charity and who are not? If he dissents from a national church on the ground that religion will be more general and more sincere when voluntarily sustained, should he not similarly dissent from a poor-law on the ground that spontaneous beneficence will produce results both wider and better? Might not the corruption which he points out as neutralizing the effects of a state-taught creed, be paralleled by those evils of pauperism accompanying a state-provision for the poor? Should not his nonconformity in respect to faith be accompanied by non-conformity in respect to good works? Certainly his present opinions are incongruous beyond all reconciling. He resists every attempt to interfere with the choice of his religion, but submits to despotic dictation as to the exercise of that religion. Whilst he denies the right of a legislature to explain the theory, he yet argues the necessity of its direction in the practice. It is inconceivable that these positions can be harmonized. Whoso believes that spiritual destitution is to be remedied only by a national church, may with some show of reason propose to deal with physical destitution by an analogous instrumentality. But the advocate of voluntaryism is bound to stand by his principle in the one case as much as in the other.

  § 5.

  Whether the sufferings of the unfortunate shall be soothed in obedience to the gentle whisperings of benevolence, or whether fear of the harsh threats of law shall be the motive for relieving them, is indeed a question of no small importance. In deciding how misery is best alleviated we have to consider, not only what is done for the afflicted, but what is the reactive effect upon those who do it. The relationship that springs up between benefactor and beneficiary is, for this present state of the world, a refining one. Having power to muzzle awhile those propensities of the savage which yet linger in us—corrective as it is of that cold, hard state of feeling in which the every-day business of life is pursued—and drawing closer as it does those links of mutual dependence which keep society together—charity is in its nature essentially civilizing. The emotion accompanying every generous act adds an atom to the fabric of the ideal man. As no cruel thing can be done without character being thrust a degree back towards barbarism, so no kind thing can be done without character being moved a degree forward towards perfection. Doubly efficacious, therefore, are all assuagings of distress instigated by sympathy; for not only do they remedy the particular evils to be met, but they help to mould humanity into a form by which such evils will one day be precluded.

  Far otherwise is it with law-enforced plans of relief. These exercise just the opposite influence. “The quality of mercy (or pity) is not strained,” says the poet. But a poor-law tries to make men pitiful by force. “It droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven,” continues the poet. By a poor-law it is wrung from the unwilling. “It blesses him that gives, and him that takes,” adds the poet. A poor-law makes it curse both; the one with discontent and recklessness, the other with complainings and often-renewed bitterness.

  This turning of balm into poison must have been remarked by the most careless. Watch a ratepayer when the collector’s name is announced. You shall observe no kindling of the eye at some thought of happiness to be conferred—no relaxing of the mouth as though selfish cares had for the moment been forgotten—no softening of the voice to tell of compassionate emotion: no, none of these; but rather shall you see contracted features, a clouded brow, a sudden disappearance of what habitual kindliness of expression there may be; the tax-paper is glanced over half in fear and half in vexation; there are grumblings about the short time that has elapsed since the last rate; the purse comes slowly from the pocket; every coin is grudgingly parted with; and after the collector (who is treated with bare civility) has made his exit, some little time passes before the usual equanimity is regained. Is there anything in this to remind us of the virtue which is “twice blessed?” Note again how this act-of-parliament charity perpetually supersedes men’s better sentiments. Here is a respectable citizen with enough and to spare: a man of some feeling; liberal, if there is need; generous even, if his pity is excited. A beggar knocks at his door; or he is accosted in his walk by some way-worn tramp. What does he do? Does he listen, investigate, and, if proper, assist? No; he commonly cuts short the tale with—“I have nothing for you, my good man; you must go to your parish.” And then he shuts the door, or walks on, as the case may be, with evident unconcern. Should it strike him the next moment that there was something very wo-begone in the petitioner’s look, this uncomfortable thought is met by the reflection, that so long as there is a poor-law he cannot starve, and that it will be time enough to consider his claims when he applies for relief. Thus does the consciousness that there exists a legal provision for the indigent, act as an opiate to the yearnings of sympathy. Had there been no ready-made excuse, the behaviour would probably have been different. Commiseration, pleading for at least an inquiry into the case, would most likely have prevailed; and, in place of an application to the board of guardians, ending in a pittance coldly handed across the pay-table to be thanklessly received, might have commenced a relationship good for both parties—a generosity humanizing to the one, and a succour made doubly valuable to the other by a few words of consolation and encouragement, followed, it may be, by a lift into some self-supporting position.

  In truth there could hardly be found a more efficient device for estranging men from each other, and decreasing their fellow-feeling, than this system of state-almsgiving. Being kind by proxy!—could anything be more blighting to the finer instincts? Here is an institution through which, for a few shillings periodically paid, the citizen may compound for all kindness owing from him to his poorer brothers. Is he troubled with twinges of conscience? here is an anodyne for him, to be had by subscribing so much in the pound on his rental. Is he indifferent as to the welfare of others? why then in return for punctual payment of rates he shall have absolution for hardness of heart. Look: here is the advertisement. “Gentlemen’s benevolence done for them, in the most business-like manner, and on the lowest terms. Charity doled out by a patent apparatus, warranted to save all soiling of fingers and offence to the nose. Good works undertaken by contract. Infallible remedies for self-reproach always on hand. Tender feelings kept easy at per annum.”

  And thus we have the gentle, softening, elevating intercourse that should be habitually taking place between rich and poor, superseded by a cold, hard, lifeless mechanism, bound together by dry parchment acts and regulations—managed by commissioners, boards, clerks, and collectors, who perform their respective functions as tasks—and kept a-going by money forcibly taken from all classes indiscriminately. In place of the music breathed by feelings attuned to kind deeds, we have the harsh creaking and jarring of a thing that cannot stir without creating discord—a thing whose every act, from the gathering of its funds to their final distribution, is prolific of grumblings, discontent, anger—a thing that breeds squabbles about authority, disputes as to claims, brow-beatings, jealousies, litigations, corruption, trickery, lying, ingratitude—a thing that supplants, and therefore makes dormant, men’s nobler feelings, whilst it stimulates their baser ones.

  And now mark how we find illustrated in detail the truth elsewhere expressed in the abstract, that whenever a government oversteps its duty—the maintaining of men’s rights—it inevitably retards the process of adaptation. For what faculty is it whose work a poor-law so officiously undertakes? Sympathy. The very faculty above all others needing to be exercised. The faculty which distinguishes the social man from the savage. The faculty which originates the idea of justice—which makes men regardful of each other’s claims—which renders society possible. The faculty of whose growth civilization is a history—on whose increased strength the future ameliorations of man’s state mainly depend—and by whose ultimate supremacy, human morality, freedom, and happiness will be secured. Of this faculty poor-laws partially supply the place. By doing which they diminish the demands made upon it, limit its exercise, check its development, and therefore retard the process of adaptation.

  § 6.

  Pervading all nature we may see at work a stern discipline, which is a little cruel that it may be very kind. That state of universal warfare maintained throughout the lower creation, to the great perplexity of many worthy people, is at bottom the most merciful provision which the circumstances admit of. It is much better that the ruminant animal, when deprived by age of the vigour which made its existence a pleasure, should be killed by some beast of prey, than that it should linger out a life made painful by infirmities, and eventually die of starvation. By the destruction of all such, not only is existence ended before it becomes burdensome, but room is made for a younger generation capable of the fullest enjoyment; and, moreover, out of the very act of substitution happiness is derived for a tribe of predatory creatures. Note further, that their carnivorous enemies not only remove from herbivorous herds individuals past their prime, but also weed out the sickly, the malformed, and the least fleet or powerful. By the aid of which purifying process, as well as by the fighting, so universal in the pairing season, all vitiation of the race through the multiplication of its inferior samples is prevented; and the maintenance of a constitution completely adapted to surrounding conditions, and therefore most productive of happiness, is ensured.

  The development of the higher creation is a progress towards a form of being capable of a happiness undiminished by these drawbacks. It is in the human race that the consummation is to be accomplished. Civilization is the last stage of its accomplishment. And the ideal man is the man in whom all the conditions of that accomplishment are fulfilled. Meanwhile the well-being of existing humanity, and the unfolding of it into this ultimate perfection, are both secured by that same beneficent, though severe discipline, to which the animate creation at large is subject: a discipline which is pitiless in the working out of good: a felicity-pursuing law which never swerves for the avoidance of partial and temporary suffering. The poverty of the incapable, the distresses that come upon the imprudent, the starvation of the idle, and those shoulderings aside of the weak by the strong, which leave so many “in shallows and in miseries,” are the decrees of a large, far-seeing benevolence. It seems hard that an unskilfulness which with all his efforts he cannot overcome, should entail hunger upon the artizan. It seems hard that a labourer incapacitated by sickness from competing with his stronger fellows, should have to bear the resulting privations. It seems hard that widows and orphans should be left to struggle for life or death. Nevertheless, when regarded not separately, but in connection with the interests of universal humanity, these harsh fatalities are seen to be full of the highest beneficence—the same beneficence which brings to early graves the children of diseased parents, and singles out the low-spirited, the intemperate, and the debilitated as the victims of an epidemic.

  There are many very amiable people—people over whom in so far as their feelings are concerned we may fitly rejoice—who have not the nerve to look this matter fairly in the face. Disabled as they are by their sympathies with present suffering, from duly regarding ultimate consequences, they pursue a course which is very injudicious, and in the end even cruel. We do not consider it true kindness in a mother to gratify her child with sweetmeats that are certain to make it ill. We should think it a very foolish sort of benevolence which led a surgeon to let his patient’s disease progress to a fatal issue, rather than inflict pain by an operation. Similarly, we must call those spurious philanthropists, who, to prevent present misery, would entail greater misery upon future generations. All defenders of a poor-law must, however, be classed amongst such. That rigorous necessity which, when allowed to act on them, becomes so sharp a spur to the lazy, and so strong a bridle to the random, these paupers’ friends would repeal, because of the wailings it here and there produces. Blind to the fact, that under the natural order of things society is constantly excreting its unhealthy, imbecile, slow, vacillating, faithless members, these unthinking, though well-meaning, men advocate an interference which not only stops the purifying process, but even increases the vitiation—absolutely encourages the multiplication of the reckless and incompetent by offering them an unfailing provision, and discourages the multiplication of the competent and provident by heightening the prospective difficulty of maintaining a family. And thus, in their eagerness to prevent the really salutary sufferings that surround us, these sigh-wise and groan-foolish people bequeath to posterity a continually increasing curse.

  Returning again to the highest point of view, we find that there is a second and still more injurious mode in which lawenforced charity checks the process of adaptation. To become fit for the social state, man has not only to lose his savageness, but he has to acquire the capacities needful for civilized life. Power of application must be developed; such modification of the intellect as shall qualify it for its new tasks must take place; and, above all, there must be gained the ability to sacrifice a small immediate gratification for a future great one. The state of transition will of course be an unhappy state. Misery inevitably results from incongruity between constitution and conditions. All these evils, which afflict us, and seem to the uninitiated the obvious consequences of this or that removable cause, are unavoidable attendants on the adaptation now in progress. Humanity is being pressed against the inexorable necessities of its new position—is being moulded into harmony with them, and has to bear the resulting unhappiness as best it can. The process must be undergone, and the sufferings must be endured. No power on earth, no cunningly-devised laws of statesmen, no world-rectifying schemes of the humane, no communist panaceas, no reforms that men ever did broach or ever will broach, can diminish them one jot. Intensified they may be, and are; and in preventing their intensification, the philanthropic will find ample scope for exertion. But there is bound up with the change a normal amount of suffering, which cannot be lessened without altering the very laws of life. Every attempt at mitigation of this eventuates in exacerbation of it. All that a poor-law, or any kindred institution can do, is to partially suspend the transition—to take off for awhile, from certain members of society, the painful pressure which is effecting their transformation. At best this is merely to postpone what must ultimately be borne. But it is more than this: it is to undo what has already been done. For the circumstances to which adaptation is taking place cannot be superseded without causing a retrogression—a partial loss of the adaptation previously effected; and as the whole process must some time or other be passed through, the lost ground must be gone over again, and the attendant pain borne afresh. Thus, besides retarding adaptation, a poor-law adds to the distresses inevitably attending it.

  At first sight these considerations seem conclusive against all relief to the poor—voluntary as well as compulsory; and it is no doubt true that they imply a condemnation of whatever private charity enables the recipients to elude the necessities of our social existence. With this condemnation, however, no rational man will quarrel. That careless squandering of pence which has fostered into perfection a system of organized begging—which has made skilful mendicancy more profitable than ordinary manual labour—which induces the simulation of palsy, epilepsy, cholera, and no end of diseases and deformities—which has called into existence warehouses for the sale and hire of impostor’s dresses—which has given to pity-inspiring babes a market value of 9d. per day—the unthinking benevolence which has generated all this, cannot but be disapproved by every one. Now it is only against this injudicious charity that the foregoing argument tells. To that charity which may be described as helping men to help themselves, it makes no objection—countenances it rather. And in helping men to help themselves, there remains abundant scope for the exercise of a people’s sympathies. Accidents will still supply victims on whom generosity may be legitimately expended. Men thrown upon their backs by unforeseen events, men who have failed for want of knowledge inaccessible to them, men ruined by the dishonesty of others, and men in whom hope long delayed has made the heart sick, may, with advantage to all parties, be assisted. Even the prodigal, after severe hardship has branded his memory with the unbending conditions of social life to which he must submit, may properly have another trial afforded him. And, although by these ameliorations the process of adaptation must be remotely interfered with, yet in the majority of cases, it will not be so much retarded in one direction as it will be advanced in another.

  § 7.

  Objectionable as we find a poor-law to be, even under the supposition that it does what it is intended to do—diminish present suffering—how shall we regard it on finding that in reality it does no such thing—cannot do any such thing? Yet, paradoxical as the assertion looks, this is absolutely the fact. Let but the observer cease to contemplate so fixedly one side of the phenomenon—pauperism and its relief, and begin to examine the other side—rates and the ultimate contributors of them, and he will discover that to suppose the sum-total of distress diminishable by act-of-parliament bounty is a delusion. A statement of the case in terms of labour and produce will quickly make this clear.

  Here, at any specified period, is a given quantity of food and things exchangable for food, in the hands or at the command of the middle and upper classes. A certain portion of this food is needed by these classes themselves, and is consumed by them at the same rate, or very near it, be there scarcity or abundance. Whatever variation occurs in the sum-total of food and its equivalents must therefore affect the remaining portion, not used by these classes for personal sustenance. This remaining portion is given by them to the people in return for their labour, which is partly expended in the production of a further supply of necessaries, and partly in the production of luxuries. Hence, by how much this portion is deficient, by so much must the people come short. Manifestly a re-distribution by legislative or other agency cannot make that sufficient for them which was previously insufficient. It can do nothing but change the parties by whom the insufficiency is felt. If it gives enough to some who else would not have enough, it must inevitably reduce certain others to the condition of not having enough. And thus, to the extent that a poor-law mitigates distress in one place, it unavoidably produces distress in another.

  Should there be any to whom this abstract reasoning is unsatisfactory, a concrete statement of the case will, perhaps, remove their doubts. A poors’-rate collector takes from the citizen a sum of money equivalent to bread and clothing for one or more paupers. Had not this sum been so taken, it would either have been used to purchase superfluities, which the citizen now does without, or it would have been paid by him into a bank, and lent by the banker to a manufacturer, merchant, or tradesman; that is, it would ultimately have been given in wages either to the producer of the superfluities or to an operative, paid out of the banker’s loan. But this sum having been carried off as poors’-rate, whoever would have received it as wages must now to that extent go without wages. The food which it represented having been taken to sustain a pauper, the artizan to whom that food would have been given in return for work done, must now lack food. And thus, as at first said, the transaction is simply a change of the parties by whom the insufficiency of food is felt.

  Nay, the case is even worse. Already it has been pointed out, that by suspending the process of adaptation, a poor-law increases the distress to be borne at some future day; and here we shall find that it also increases the distress to be borne now. For be it remembered, that of the sum taken in any year to support paupers, a large portion would otherwise have gone to support labourers employed in new reproductive works—land-drainage, machine-building, &c. An additional stock of commodities would by-and-by have been produced, and the number of those who go short would consequently have been diminished. Thus the astonishment expressed by some that so much misery should exist, notwithstanding the distribution of fifteen millions a year by endowed charities, benevolent societies, and poor-law unions, is quite uncalled for; seeing that the larger the sum gratuitously administered, the more intense will shortly become the suffering. Manifestly, out of a given population, the greater the number living on the bounty of others, the smaller must be the number living by labour; and the smaller the number living by labour, the smaller must be the production of food and other necessaries; and the smaller the production of necessaries, the greater must be the distress.

  § 8.

  We find, then, that the verdict given by the law of state-duty against a public provision for the indigent is enforced by sundry independent considerations. A critical analysis of the alleged rights, for upholding which a poor-law is defended, shows them to be fictitious. Nor does the plea that a poor-law is a means of distributing compensation for wrongs done to the disinherited people turn out to be valid. The assumption that only by law-administered relief can physical destitution be met, proves to be quite analogous to the assumption that spiritual destitution necessitates a law-administered religion; and consistency requires those who assert the sufficiency of voluntary effort in the one case to assert it in the other also. The substitution of a mechanical charity for charity prompted by the heart is manifestly unfavourable to the growth of men’s sympathies, and therefore adverse to the process of adaptation. Legal bounty further retards adaptation by interposing between the people and the conditions to which they must become adapted, so as partially to suspend those conditions. And, to crown all, we find, not only that a poor-law must necessarily fail to diminish popular suffering, but that it must inevitably increase that suffering, both directly by checking the production of commodities, and indirectly by causing a retrogression of character, which painful discipline must at some future day make good.

  CHAPTER XXVI.

  national education.

  § 1.

  In the same way that our definition of state-duty forbids the state to administer religion or charity, so likewise does it forbid the state to administer education. Inasmuch as the taking away, by government, of more of a man’s property than is needful for maintaining his rights, is an infringement of his rights, and therefore a reversal of the government’s function towards him; and inasmuch as the taking away of his property to educate his own or other people’s children is not needful for the maintaining of his rights; the taking away of his property for such a purpose is wrong.

  Should it be said that the rights of the children are involved, and that state-interposition is required to maintain these, the reply is that no cause for such interposition can be shown until the children’s rights have been violated, and that their rights are not violated by a neglect of their education. For, as repeatedly explained, what we call rights are merely arbitrary subdivisions of the general liberty to exercise the faculties; and that only can be called an infringement of rights which actually diminishes this liberty—cuts off a previously existing power to pursue the objects of desire. Now the parent who is careless of a child’s education does not do this. The liberty to exercise the faculties is left intact. Omitting instruction in no way takes from a child’s freedom to do whatsoever it wills in the best way it can; and this freedom is all that equity demands. Every aggression, be it remembered—every infraction of rights, is necessarily active; whilst every neglect, carelessness, omission, is as necessarily passive. Consequently, however wrong the non-performance of a parental duty may be—however much it is condemned by that secondary morality—the morality of beneficence (pp. 68 and 69)—it does not amount to a breach of the law of equal freedom, and cannot therefore be taken cognizance of by the state.

  § 2.

  Were there no direct disproof of the frequently alleged right to education at the hands of the state, the absurdities in which it entangles its assertors would sufficiently show its invalidity. Conceding for a moment that the government is bound to educate a man’s children, then, what kind of logic will demonstrate that it is not bound to feed and cloth them? If there should be an act-of-parliament provision for the development of their minds, why should there not be an act-of-parliament provision for the development of their bodies? If the mental wants of the rising generation ought to be satisfied by the state, why not their physical ones? The reasoning which is held to establish the right to intellectual food, will equally well establish the right to material food: nay, will do more—will prove that children should be altogether cared for by government. For if the benefit, importance, or necessity of education be assigned as a sufficient reason why government should educate, then may the benefit, importance, or necessity of food, clothing, shelter, and warmth be assigned as a sufficient reason why government should administer these also. So that the alleged right cannot be established without annulling all parental responsibility whatever.

  Should further refutation be thought needful, there is the ordeal of a definition. We lately found this ordeal fatal to the assumed right to a maintenance; we shall find it equally fatal to this assumed right to education. For what is an education? Where, between the teaching of a dame-school, and the most comprehensive university curriculum, can be drawn the line separating that portion of mental culture which may be justly claimed of the state, from that which may not be so claimed? What peculiar quality is there in reading, writing, and arithmetic, which gives the embryo citizen a right to have them imparted to him, but which quality is not shared in by geography, and history, and drawing, and the natural sciences? Must calculation be taught because it is useful? why so is geometry, as the carpenter and mason will tell us; so is chemistry, as we may gather from dyers and bleachers; so is physiology, as is abundantly proved by the ill-health written in so many faces. Astronomy, mechanics, geology, and the various connate sciences—should not these be taught, too? they are all useful. Where is the unit of measure by which we may determine the respective values of different kinds of knowledge? Or, assuming them determined, how can it be shown that a child may claim from the civil power knowledge of such and such values, but not knowledge of certain less values? When those who demand a state-education can say exactly how much is due—can agree upon what the young have a right to, and what not—it will be time to listen. But until they accomplish this impossibility, their plea cannot be entertained.

  § 3.

  A sad snare would these advocates of legislative teaching betray themselves into, could they substantiate their doctrine. For what is meant by saying that a government ought to educate the people? why should they be educated? what is the education for? Clearly to fit the people for social life—to make them good citizens. And who is to say what are good citizens? The government: there is no other judge. And who is to say how these good citizens may be made? The government: there is no other judge. Hence the proposition is convertible into this—a government ought to mould children into good citizens, using its own discretion in settling what a good citizen; is, and how the child may be moulded into one. It must first form for itself a definite conception of a pattern citizen; and having done this, must elaborate such system of discipline as seems best calculated to produce citizens after that pattern. This system of discipline it is bound to enforce to the uttermost. For if it does otherwise, it allows men to become different from what in its judgment they should become, and therefore fails in that duty it is charged to fulfil. Being thus justified in carrying out rigidly such plans as it thinks best, every government ought to do what the despotic governments of the Continent and of China do. That regulation under which, in France, “private schools cannot be established without a licence from the minister, and can be shut up by a simple ministerial order,” is a step in the right direction, but does not go far enough; seeing that the state cannot permit its mission to be undertaken by others, without endangering the due performance of it. The forbidding of all private schools whatever, as until recently in Prussia, is nearer the mark. Austrian legislation, too, realizes with some consistency the state-education theory. By it a tolerably stringent control over the mental culture of the nation is exercised. Much thinking being held at variance with good citizenship, the teaching of metaphysics, political economy, and the like, is discouraged. Some scientific works are prohibited. And a reward is offered for the apprehension of those who circulate bibles—the authorities in the discharge of their function preferring to entrust the interpretation of that book to their employes the Jesuits. But in China alone is the idea carried out with logical completeness. There the government publishes a list of works which may be read; and considering obedience the supreme virtue, authorizes such only as are friendly to despotism. Fearing the unsettling effects of innovation, it allows nothing to be taught but what proceeds from itself. To the end of producing pattern citizens it exerts a stringent discipline over all conduct. There are “rules for sitting, standing, walking, talking, and bowing, laid down with the greatest precision. Scholars are prohibited from chess, football, flying kites, shuttlecock, playing on wind instruments, training beasts, birds, fishes, or insects—all which amusements, it is said, dissipate the mind and debase the heart.”

  Now a minute dictation like this, which extends to every action, and will brook no nay, is the legitimate realization of this state-education theory. Whether the government has got erroneous conceptions of what citizens ought to be, or whether the methods of training it adopts are injudicious, is not the question. According to the hypothesis it is commissioned to discharge a specified function. It finds no ready-prescribed way of doing this. It has no alternative, therefore, but to choose that way which seems to it most fit. And as there exists no higher authority, either to dispute or confirm its judgment, it is justified in the absolute enforcement of its plans, be they what they may. As from the proposition that government ought to teach religion, there springs the other proposition, that government must decide what is religious truth, and how it is to be taught; so, the assertion that government ought to educate, necessitates the further assertion that it must say what education is, and how it shall be conducted. And the same rigid popery, which we found to be a logical consequence in the one case (p. 307), follows in the other also.

  § 4.

  There are few sayings more trite than this, that love of offspring is one of our most powerful passions. To become a parent is an almost universal wish. The intensity of affection exhibited in the glistening eye, the warm kiss, and the fondling caress—in the untiring patience, and the ever ready alarm of the mother, is a theme on which philosophers have written and poets have sung in all ages. Every one has remarked how commonly the feeling overmasters all others. Observe the self-gratulation with which maternity witnesses her first-born’s unparalleled achievements. Mark the pride with which the performances of each little brat are exhibited to every visitor as indicating a precocious genius. Consider again the deep interest which in later days a father feels in his children’s mental welfare, and the anxiety he manifests to get them on in life; the promptings of his natural affection being ofttimes sharpened by the reflection that the comfort of his old age may, perchance, be dependent upon their success.

  Now “servants and interpreters of nature” have usually supposed these feelings to be of some use. Hitherto they have always thought that the gratification accruing to a mother from the forwardness of her little ones serves as a stimulus to the proper culture of their minds—that the honour which the father expects to derive from the distinction of his sons acts as an incentive to their improvement—and that the anticipation by parents of the distress which ill-trained children may one day entail constitutes an additional spur to the proper management of them. In these strong affections and mutual dependencies observers believed they saw an admirably-arranged chain of influences, calculated to secure the mental and physical development of successive generations; and in the simplicity of their faith had concluded that these divinely-appointed means were fully sufficient for this purpose. It would appear, however, according to the state-educationists, that they have been mistaken. It seems that this apparatus of feelings is wholly insufficient to work out the desideratum—that this combination of affections and interests was not provided for such a purpose, or, what is the same thing, that it has no purpose at all. And so, in default of any natural provision for supplying the exigency, legislators exhibit to us the design and specification of a state-machine, made up of masters, ushers, inspectors, and councils, to be worked by a due proportion of taxes, and to be plentifully supplied with raw material, in the shape of little boys and girls, out of which it is to grind a population of well-trained men and women, who shall be “useful members of the community”!

  § 5.

  But it is argued that parents, and especially those whose children most need instructing, do not know what good instruction is. “In the matter of education,” says Mr. Mill, “the intervention of government is justifiable; because the case is one in which the interest and judgment of the consumer are not sufficient security for the goodness of the commodity.”

  It is strange that so judicious a writer should feel satisfied with such a worn-out excuse. This alleged incompetency on the part of the people has been the reason assigned for all state-interferences whatever. It was on the plea that buyers were unable to tell good fabrics from bad, that those complicated regulations which encumbered the French manufacturers were established. The use of certain dyes here in England was prohibited, because of the insufficient discernment of the people. Directions for the proper making of pins were issued, under the idea that experience would not teach the purchasers which were best. Those examinations as to competency which the German handicraftsmen undergo, are held needful, as safeguards to the consumers. A stock argument for the state-teaching of religion has been that the masses cannot distinguish false religion from true. There is hardly a single department of life over which, for similar reasons, legislative supervision has not been, or may not be, established. Here is Mr. H. Hodson Rugg, M.R.C.S., publishing a pamphlet to point out the injury inflicted upon poor ignorant householders by the adulteration of milk, and proposing as a remedy that there shall be government officers to test the milk, and to confiscate it when not good—police to inspect the ventilation of cow-sheds, and to order away invalid cattle—and a government cow-infirmary, with veterinary surgeon attached. To-morrow some one else may start up to tell us that bad bread is still more injurious than bad milk, equally common, quite as difficult to distinguish, and that, consequently, bakehouses ought to be overlooked by the authorities. Next there will be wanted officials with hydrometers and chemical re-agents, to dabble in the vats of the porter-breweries. In the wake of these must, of course, follow others, commissioned to watch the doings of wine merchants. And so on, until, in the desire to have all processes of production duly inspected, we approach a condition somewhat like that of the slave states, in which, as they say, “one-half of the community is occupied in seeing that the other half does its duty.” And for each additional interference the plea may be, as it always has been, that “the interest and judgment of the consumer are not sufficient security for the goodness of the commodity.”

  Should it be said that the propriety of legislative control depends upon circumstances; that respecting some articles the judgment of the consumer is sufficient, whilst respecting other articles it is not; and that the difficulty of deciding upon its quality, places education amongst these last; the reply again is, that the same has been said on behalf of all meddlings in turn. Plenty of trickeries, plenty of difficulties in the detection of fraud, plenty of instances showing the inability of purchasers to protect themselves, are quoted by the advocates of each proposed recourse to official regulation; and in each case it is urged that here, at any rate, official regulation is required. Yet does experience disprove these inferences one after another, teaching us that, in the long run, the interest of the consumer is not only an efficient guarantee for the goodness of the things consumed, but the best guarantee. Is it not unwise, then, to trust for the hundredth time in one of these plausible but deceptive conclusions? Is it not rational, rather, to infer, that however much appearances are to the contrary, the choice of the commodity—education, like the choice of all other commodities, may be safely left to the discretion of buyers?

  Still more reasonable will this inference appear on observing that the people are not, after all, such incompetent judges of education as they seem. Ignorant parents are generally quick enough to discern the effects of good or bad teaching; will note them in the children of others, and act accordingly. Moreover it is easy for them to follow the example of the better instructed, and choose the same schools. Or they may get over the difficulty by asking advice; and there is generally some one both able and willing to give the uneducated parent a trustworthy answer to his inquiry about teachers. Lastly, there is the test of price. With education, as with other things, price is a tolerably safe index of value; it is one open to all classes; and it is one which the poor instinctively appeal to in the matter of schools; for it is notorious that they look coldly at very cheap or gratuitous instruction.

  But even admitting that, whilst this defect of judgment is not virtually so extreme as is alleged, it is nevertheless great, the need for interference is still denied. The evil is undergoing rectification, as all analogous ones are or have been. The rising generation will better understand what good education is than their parents do, and their descendants will have clearer conceptions of it still. Whoso thinks the slowness of the process a sufficient reason for meddling, must, to be consistent, meddle in all other things; for the ignorance which in every case serves as an excuse for state-interposition is of very gradual cure. The errors both of consumers and producers often take generations to set right. Improvements in the carrying on of commerce, in manufactures, and especially in agriculture, spread almost imperceptibly. Take rotation of crops for an example. And if this tardiness is a valid argument for interference in one case, why not in others? Why not have farms superintended by government, because it may take a century for farmers generally to adopt the plans suggested by modern science?

  Did we duly realize the fact that society is a growth, and not a manufacture—a thing that makes itself, and not a thing that can be artificially made—we should fall into fewer mistakes; and we should see that amongst other imperfections this incompetence of the masses to distinguish good instruction from bad, is being outgrown.

  § 6.

  When in the matter of education “the interest and judgment of the consumer” are said not to be “sufficient security for the goodness of the commodity,” and when it is argued that government superintendence is therefore needful, a very questionable assumption is made: the assumption, namely, that “the interest and judgment” of a government are sufficient security. Now there is good reason to dispute this, nay, even to assert that, taking the future into account, they offer much less security.

  The problem is, how best to develop minds: a problem amongst the most difficult—may we not say, the most difficult? Two things are needful for its solution. First, to know what minds should be fashioned into. Next, to know how they may be so fashioned. From the work to be done, turn we now to the proposed doers of it. Men of education (as the word goes) they no doubt are; well-meaning, many of them; thoughtful, some; philosophical, a few; men, however, for the most part, born with silver spoons in their mouths, and prone to regard human affairs as reflected in these—somewhat distortedly. Very comfortable lives are led by the majority of them, and hence “things as they are” find favour in their eyes. For their tastes—they are shown in the subordination of national business to the shooting of grouse and the chasing of foxes. For their pride—it is in wide estates or long pedigrees; and should the family coat of arms bear some such ancient motto as “Strike hard,” or, “Furth fortune, and fill the fetters,” it is a great happiness. As to their ideal of society, it is either a sentimental feudalism; or it is a state, something like the present, under which the people shall be respectful to their betters, and “content with that station of life to which it has pleased God to call them;” or it is a state arranged with the view of making each labourer the most efficient producing tool, to the end that the accumulation of wealth may be the greatest possible. Add to this, that their notions of moral discipline are shown in the maintenance of capital punishment, and in the sending of their sons to schools where dogging is practised, and where they themselves were brought up. Now could the judgment of such respecting the commodity—education be safely relied on? Certainly not.

  Still less might their “interest” be trusted. Though at variance with that of the people, it would inevitably be followed in preference. The self-seeking which, consciously or unconsciously, sways rulers in other cases, would sway them in this likewise—could not fail to do so, whilst the character of men is what it is. With taxation unequally distributed, with such a glaringly unjust apportionment of representatives to population, with a nepotism that fills lucrative places with Greys and Elliots, with a staff of a hundred admirals more than are wanted, with lavish pensions to the undeserving, with a system of retrenchment which discharges common men and retains officers, and with such votes as those given by the military, the naval, the landed, and the clerically-related members of parliament, we may be quite sure that a state-education would be administered for the advantage of those in power, rather than for the advantage of the nation. To hope for anything else is to fall into the old error of looking for grapes from thorns. Nothing can be more truly Utopian than expecting that, with men and things as they are, the influences which have vitiated all other institutions would not vitiate this one.

  Thus, even were it true that in the matter of education “the interest and judgment of the consumer are not sufficient security for the goodness of the commodity,” the wisdom of superseding them by the “interest and judgment” of a government is by no means obvious. It may, indeed, be said that the argument proves only the unfitness of existing governments to become national teachers, and not the unfitness of a government normally constituted: whereas the object of inquiry being to determine what a government should do, the hypothesis must be that the government is what it should be. To this the reply is, that the nature of the allegation to be met necessitates a descent to the level of present circumstances. It is on the defective “interest and judgment” of the people, as they now are, that the plea for legislative superintendence is based; and, consequently, in criticising this plea we must take government as it now is. We cannot reason as though government were what it should be; since, before it can become so, any alleged deficiency of “interest and judgment” on the part of the people must have disappeared.

  § 7.

  The impolicy of setting up a national organization for cultivating the popular mind, and commissioning the government to superintend this organization, is further seen in the general truth that every such organization is in spirit conservative, and not progressive. All institutions have an instinct of selfpreservation growing out of the selfishness of those connected with them. Being dependent for their vitality upon the continuance of existing arrangements, they naturally uphold these. Their roots are in the past and the present; never in the future. Change threatens them, modifies them, eventually destroys them; hence to change they are uniformly opposed. On the other hand, education, properly so called, is closely associated with change—is its pioneer—is the never-sleeping agent of revolution—is always fitting men for higher things, and unfitting them for things as they are. Therefore, between institutions whose very existence depends upon man continuing what he is, and true education, which is one of the instruments for making him something other than he is, there must always be enmity.

  From the time of the Egyptian priesthood downwards, the conduct of corporations, whether political, ecclesiastical, or educational, has given proof of this. Some 300 years B.C., unlicensed schools were forbidden by the Athenian senate. In Rome, the liberty of teaching was attacked twice before the Christian era; and again, afterwards, by the Emperor Julian. The existing continental governments show, by their analogous policy, how persistent the tendency is. In the universality of censorships we see the same fact further illustrated. The celebrated saying of the Empress Catharine to her prime minister, well exhibits the way in which rulers regard the spread of knowledge. And whenever governments have undertaken to educate, it has been with the view of forestalling that spontaneous education which threatened their own supremacy. Witness the case of China, where diligently-impressed ideas, such as, “O! how magnificent are the affairs of government!” “O! what respect is due to the officers of government!” sufficiently indicate the intention. Witness, again, the case of Austria, where, in accordance with the will of the Emperor Francis, the training of the popular mind was entrusted to the Jesuits, that they might “counteract the propagandism of liberty, by the propagandism of superstition.”a Nor have there been wanting signs of a like spirit here in England. That attempt in Cobbett’s day to put down cheap literature, by an act which prevented weekly publications from being sold for less than sixpence, unmistakably indicated it. It was again exhibited in the reluctance with which the newspaper stamp duty was reduced, when resistance had become useless. And we may still see it in the double-facedness of a legislature which professes to favour popular enlightenment, and yet continues to raise a million and a quarter sterling yearly from “taxes on knowledge.”

  How unfriendly all ecclesiastical bodies have been to the spread of education every one knows. The obstinacy shown by the Brahmin in fighting against the truths of modern science—the fanaticism with which the Mahometan doctor ignores all books but the Koran—and the prejudice fostered by the religious institutions of our own country against the very name of philosophy—are kindred illustrations of the conduct which this self-conserving instinct produces. In that saying of the monks, “We must put down printing, or printing will put down us,” the universal motive was plainly expressed; as it was, again, through the mouth of that French bishop who denounced the Bell and Lancaster systems as inventions of the devil. Nor let any one conclude that the educational zeal latterly manifested by Church clergy indicates a new animus. Those who remember the bitterness with which Sunday schools were at first assailed by them; and those who mark how keenly they now compete with dissenters for the children of the poor, can see clearly enough that they are endeavouring to make the best of a necessity—that, having a more or less defined consciousness of the inevitability of educational progress, they wish to educate the people in allegiance to the Church.

  Still more manifest becomes this obstructive tendency on considering that the very organizations devised for the spreading of knowledge, may themselves act as suppressors of it. Thus it is said, that Oxford was one of the last places in which the Newtonian philosophy was acknowledged. We read again, in the life of Locke, that “there was a meeting of the heads of houses at Oxford, where it was proposed to censure and discourage the reading of this essay (On the Human Understanding); and after various debates, it was concluded that without any public censure each head of a house shall endeavour to prevent its being read in his own college.” At Eton, too, in Shelley’s time, “Chemistry was a forbidden thing,” even to the banishment of chemical treatises. So uniformly has it been the habit of these endowed institutions to close the door against innovations, that they are amongst the last places to which any one looks for improvements in the art of teaching, or a better choice of subjects to be taught. The attitude of the universities towards natural science has been that of contemptuous non-recognition. College authorities have long resisted, either actively or passively, the making of physiology, chemistry, geology, &c., subjects of examination; and only of late, under pressure from without, and under the fear of being supplanted by rival institutions, have new studies been gingerly taken to.

  Now, although vis inertiæ may be very useful in its place—although the resistance of office-holders has its function—although we must not quarrel with this instinct of self-preservation which gives to institutions their vitality, because it also upholds them through a lingering decrepitude—we may yet wisely refuse to increase its natural effect. It is very necessary to have in our social economy a conservative force as well as a reforming one, that there may be progress for the resultant; but it is highly impolitic to afford the one an artificial advantage over the other. To establish a state-education is to do this, however. The teaching organization itself, and the government which directs it, will inevitably lean to things as they are; and to give them control over the national mind, is to give them the means of repressing aspirations after things as they should be. Just that culture which seems compatible with their own preservation will these institutions allow, whilst just that culture which, by advancing society, threatens to sap their own foundations, or, in other words—just that culture which is most valuable, they will oppose.

  The sanguine will perhaps hope that, though this has been the rule hitherto, it will not be the rule in future. Let them not deceive themselves. So long as men pursue private advantage at the expense of the common weal, that is to say—so long as government is needful at all, so long will this be true. Less marked the tendency will no doubt be in proportion as men are less unjustly selfish. But to whatever extent they lack perfect conscientiousness, to the same extent will vested interests sway them, and to the same extent will institutions resist change.

  § 8.

  Did the reader ever watch a boy in the first heat of a gardening fit? The sight is an amusing, and not uninstructive one. Probably a slice of a border—some couple of square yards or so—has been made over to him for his exclusive use. No small accession of dignity, and not a little pride of proprietorship, does he exhibit. So long as the enthusiasm lasts, he never tires of contemplating his territory; and every companion, and every visitor with whom the liberty can be taken, is pretty sure to be met with the request—“Come and see my garden.” Note chiefly, however, with what anxiety the growth of a few scrubby plants is regarded. Three or four times a day will the little urchin rush out to look at them. How provokingly slow their progress seems to him. Each morning on getting up he hopes to find some marked change; and lo, everything appears just as it did the day before. When will the blossoms come out! For nearly a week has some forward bud been promising him the triumph of a first flower, and still it remains closed. Surely there must be something wrong! Perhaps the leaves have stuck fast. Ah! that is the reason, no doubt. And so ten to one you shall some day catch our young florist very busily engaged in pulling open the calyx, and, it may be, trying to unfold a few of the petals.

  Somewhat like this childish impatience is the feeling exhibited by not a few state-educationists. Both they and their type show a lack of faith in natural forces—almost an ignorance that there are such forces. In both there is the same dissatisfaction with the ordained rate of progress. And by both, artificial means are used to remedy what are conceived to be nature’s failures. Within these few years men have all at once been awakened to the importance of instructing the people. That to which they were awhile since indifferent or even hostile has suddenly become an object of enthusiasm. With all the ardour of recent converts—with all a novice’s inordinate expectations—with all the eagerness of a lately-aroused desire—do they await the hoped- for result; and, with the unreasonableness ever attendant upon such a state of mind, are dissatisfied, because the progress from general ignorance to universal enlightenment has not been completed in a generation. One would have thought it sufficiently clear to everybody that the great changes taking place in this world of ours are uniformly slow. Continents are upheaved at the rate of a foot or two in a century. The deposition of a delta is the work of tens of thousands of years. The transformation of barren rock into life-supporting soil takes countless ages. If any think society advances under a different law, let them read. Has it not required the whole Christian era to abolish slavery in Europe? as far at least as it is abolished. Did not a hundered generations live and die while picture-writing grew into printing? Have not science and commerce and mechanical skill increased at a similarly tardy pace? Yet are men disappointed that a pitiful fifty years has not sufficed for thorough popular enlightment! Although within this period an advance has been made far beyond what the calm thinker would have expected—far beyond what the past rate of progress in human affairs seemed to prophesy—yet do these so impatient people summarily condemn the voluntary system as a failure! A natural process—a process spontaneously set up—a process of self-unfolding which the national mind had commenced, is pooh-poohed because it has not wrought a total transformation in the course of what constitutes but a day in the life of humanity! And then, to make up for nature’s incompetency, the unfolding must be hastened by legislative fingerings!

  § 9.

  There is, indeed, one excuse for attempts to spread education by artificial means, namely, the anxiety to diminish crime, of which education is supposed to be a preventive. “We hold,” says Mr. Macaulay, “that whoever has the right to hang has the right to educate.”a And in a letter relative to the Manchester district-system, Miss Martineau writes—“Nor can I see that political economy objects to the general rating for educational purposes. As a mere police-tax this rating would be a very cheap affair. It would cost us much less than we now pay for juvenile depravity.” In both which remarks this prevalent belief is implied.

  Now, with all respect to the many high authorities holding it, the truth of this belief may be disputed. We have no evidence that education, as commonly understood, is a preventive of crime. Those perpetually re-iterated newspaper paragraphs, in which the ratios of instructed to uninstructed convicts are so triumphantly stated, prove just nothing. Before any inference can be drawn, it must be shown that these instructed and uninstructed convicts, come from two equal sections of society, alike in all other respects but that of knowledge—similar in rank and occupation, having similar advantages, labouring under similar temptations. But this is not only not the truth; it is nothing like the truth. The many ignorant criminals belong to a most unfavourably circumstanced class; whilst the few educated ones are from a class comparatively favoured. As things stand it would be equally logical to infer that crime arises from going without animal food, or from living in badly-ventilated rooms, or from wearing dirty shirts; for were the inmates of a goal to be catechised, it would doubtless be found that the majority of them had been placed in these conditions. Ignorance and crime are not cause and effect; they are coincident results of the same cause. To be wholly untaught is to have moved amongst those whose incentives to wrong-doing are strongest; to be partially taught is to have been one of a class subject to less urgent temptations; to be well taught is to have lived almost beyond the reach of the usual motives for transgression. Ignorance, therefore (at least in the statistics reffered to), simply indicates the presence of crime-producing influences, and can no more be called the cause of crime than the falling of a barometer can be called the cause of rain.

  So far indeed from proving that morality is increased by education, the facts prove, if anything, the reverse. Thus we are told, in a report by the Rev. Joseph Kingsmill, head chaplain of Pentonville Prison, that the proportion borne by the educated to the uneducated convicts is fully as high as that which exists between the educated and the uneducated classes in the general population; although, as just explained, we might reasonably expect, that having had fewer temptations, the educated convicts would bear a smaller ratio to their class. Again, it has been shown from government returns—“That the number of juvenile offenders in the metropolis has been steadily increasing every year since the institution of the Ragged School Union; and that whereas the number of criminals who cannot read and write has decreased from 24,856 (in 1844) to 22,968 (in 1848)—or no less than 1888 in that period—the number of those who can read and write imperfectly has increased from 33,337 to 36,229—or 2857—in the same time.”—Morning Chronicle, April 25, 1850. Another contributor to the series of articles on “Labour and the Poor,” from which the above statement is quoted, remarks that “the mining population (in the north) are exceedingly low in point of education and intelligence; and yet they contradict the theories generally entertained upon the connection of ignorance with crime, by presenting the least criminal section of the population of England.”—Morning Chronicle, Dec. 27, 1849. And, speaking of the women employed in the iron-works and collieries throughout South Wales, he says—“their ignorance is absolutely awful; yet the returns show in them a singular immunity from crime.”—Morning Chronicle, March 21, 1850.

  If these testimonies are thought insufficient, they may be enforced by that of Mr. Fletcher, who has entered more elaborately into this question than perhaps any other writer of the day. Summing up the results of his investigations, he says:—

  “1. In comparing the gross commitments for criminal offences with the proportion of instruction in each district, there is found to be a small balance in favour of the most instructed districts in the years of most industrial depression (1842-3-4), but a greater one against them in the years of less industrial depression (1845-6-7); while in comparing the more with the less instructed portions of each district, the final result is against the former at both periods, though fourfold at the latter what it is at the former.

  “2. No correction for the ages of the population in different districts, to meet the excess of criminals at certain younger periods of life, will change the character of this superficial evidence against instruction; every legitimate allowance of the kind having already been made in arriving at these results.

  “3. Down to this period, therefore, the comparison of the criminal and educational returns of this, any more than of any other country of Europe, has afforded no sound statistical evidence in favour, and as little against, the moral effects associated with instruction, as actually disseminated among the people.”a

  To all which evidence may be added that of Messrs. Gurrea and Dupin, who have shown that the most highly-educated districts in France are the most criminal districts.

  The fact is, that scarcely any connection exists between morality and the discipline of ordinary teaching. Mere culture of the intellect (and education as usually conducted amounts to little more) is hardly at all operative upon conduct. Creeds pasted upon the memory, good principles learnt by rote, lessons in right and wrong, will not eradicate vicious propensities, though people, in spite of their experience as parents, and as citizens, persist in hoping they will. All history, both of the race and of individuals, goes to prove that in the majority of cases precepts do not act at all. And where they seem to act, it is not by them, but by pre-existing feelings which respond to them, that the effects are really produced. Intellect is not a power, but an instrument—not a thing which itself moves and works, but a thing which is moved and worked by forces behind it. To say that men are ruled by reason, is as irrational as to say that men are ruled by their eyes. Reason is an eye—the eye through which the desires see their way to gratification. And educating it only makes it a better eye—gives it a vision more accurate and more comprehensive—does not at all alter the desires subserved by it. However far-seeing you make it, the passions will still determine the directions in which it shall be turned—the objects on which it shall dwell. Just those ends which the instincts or sentiments propose will the intellect be employed to accomplish: culture of it having done nothing but increase the ability to accomplish them. Probably some will urge that enlightening men enables them to discern the penalties which naturally attach to wrong-doing; and in a certain sense this is true. But it is only superficially true. Though they may learn that the grosser crimes commonly bring retribution in one shape or other, they will not learn that the subtler ones do. Their sins will merely be made more Machiavellian. If, as Coleridge says, “a knave is a fool with a circumbendibus,” then by instructing the knave you do but make the circumbendibus a wider one. Did much knowledge and piercing intelligence suffice to make men good, then Bacon should have been honest, and Napoleon should have been just. Where the character is defective, intellect, no matter how high, fails to regulate rightly, because predominant desires falsify its estimates. Nay, even a distinct foresight of evil consequences will not restrain when strong passions are at work. How else does it happen that men will get drunk, though they know drunkenness will entail on them suffering, and disgrace, and (as with the poor) even starvation? How else is it that medical students, who know the diseases brought on by dissolute living better than other young men, are just as reckless, and even more reckless? How else is it that the London thief, who has been at the treadmill a dozen times, will steal again as soon as he is at liberty? How else is it that people, who have all their lives long been taught Christianity, will not behave as Christians, though they believe that dire penalties are entailed by behaving otherwise?

  It is, indeed, strange that with the facts of daily life before them in the street, in the counting-house, and in the family, thinking men should still expect education to cure crime. If armies of teachers, regarded with a certain superstitious reverence, have been unable to purify society in all these eighteen centuries, it is hardly likely that other armies of teachers, not so regarded, will be able to do it. If natural persuasion, backed by super-natural authority, will not induce men to do as they would be done by, it is hardly likely that natural persuasion alone will induce them. If hopes of eternal happiness and terrors of eternal damnation fail to make human beings virtuous, it is hardly likely that the commendations and reproofs of the schoolmaster will succeed.

  There is, in fact, a quite sufficient reason for failure—no less a reason than the impossibility of the task. The expectation that crime may presently be cured, whether by state-education, or the silent system, or the separate system, or any other system, is one of those Utopianisms fallen into by people who pride themselves on being practical. Crime is incurable, save by that gradual process of adaptation to the social state which humanity is undergoing. Crime is the continual breaking out of the old unadapted nature—the index of a character unfitted to its conditions—and only as fast as the unfitness diminishes can crime diminish. To hope for some prompt method of putting down crime, is in reality to hope for some prompt method of putting down all evils—laws, governments, taxation, poverty, caste, and the rest; for they and crime have the same root. Reforming men’s conduct without reforming their natures is impossible; and to expect that their natures may be reformed, otherwise than by the forces which are slowly civilizing us, is visionary. Schemes of discipline or culture are of use only in proportion as they organically alter the national character, and the extent to which they do this is by no means great. It is not by humanly-devised agencies, good as these may be in their way, but it is by the never-ceasing action of circumstances upon men—by the constant pressure of their new conditions upon them—that the required change is mainly effected.

  Meanwhile it may be remarked, that whatever moral benefit can be effected by education, must be effected by an education which is emotional rather than preceptive. If, in place of making a child understand that this thing is right and the other wrong, you make it feel that they are so—if you make virtue loved and vice loathed—if you arouse a noble desire, and make torpid an inferior one—if you bring into life a previously dormant sentiment—if you cause a sympathetic impulse to get the better of one that is selfish—if, in short, you produce a state of mind to which proper behaviour is natural, spontaneous, instinctive, you do some good. But no drilling in catechisms, no teaching of moral codes, can effect this. Only by repeatedly awakening the appropriate emotions can character be changed. Mere ideas received by the intellect, meeting no response from within—having no roots there—are quite inoperative upon conduct, and are quickly forgotten upon entering into life.

  Perhaps it will be said that a discipline like this now described as the only efficient one, might be undertaken by the state. No doubt it might. But from all legislative attempts at emotional education may Heaven defend us!

  § 10.

  Yet another objection remains. Just as we found, on close examination, that by poor-laws a government cannot really cure distress, but can only shift it from one section of the community to another (p. 327), so, astounding as the assertion looks, we shall find that a government cannot in fact educate at all, but can only educate some by uneducating others. If, before agitating the matter, men had taken the precaution to define education, they would probably have seen that the state can afford no true help in the matter. But having unfortunately neglected to do this, they have confined their attention solely to the education given at school, and have forgotten to inquire how their plans bear upon the education which commences when school-days end. It is not indeed that they do not know this discipline of daily duty to be valuable—more valuable, in fact, than the discipline of the teacher. You may often hear them remark as much. But, with the eagerness usual amongst schemers, they are so absorbed in studying the action of their proposed mechanism as to overlook its reaction.

  Now of all qualities which is the one men most need? To the absence of what quality are popular distresses mainly attributable? What is the quality in which the improvident masses are so deficient? Self-restraint—the ability to sacrifice a small present gratification for a prospective great one. A labourer endowed with due self-restraint would never spend his Saturday-night’s wages at the public-house. Had he enough self-restraint, the artizan would not live up to his income during prosperous times and leave the future unprovided for. More self-restraint would prevent imprudent marriages and the growth of a pauper population. And were there no drunkenness, no extravagance, no reckless multiplication, social miseries would be trivial.

  Consider next how the power of self-restraint is to be increased. By a sharp experience alone can anything be done. Those in whom this faculty needs drawing out—educating must be left to the discipline of nature, and allowed to bear the pains attendant on their defect of character. The only cure for imprudence is the suffering which imprudence entails. Nothing but bringing him face to face with stern necessity, and letting him feel how unbending, how unpitying, are her laws, can improve the man of ill-governed desires. As already shown (p. 324), all interposing between humanity and the conditions of its existence—cushioning-off consequences by poor-laws or the like—serves but to neutralize the remedy and prolong the evil. Let us never forget that the law is—adaptation to circumstances, be they what they may. And if, rather than allow men to come in contact with the real circumstances of their position, we place them in artificial—in false circumstances, they will adapt themselves to these instead; and will, in the end, have to undergo the miseries of a re-adaptation to the real ones.

  Of all incentives to self-restraint, perhaps none is so strong as the sense of parental responsibility. And if so, to diminish that sense is to use the most effectual means of preventing self-restraint from being developed. We have ample proof of this in the encouragement of improvident marriages by a poor-law; and the effect which a poor-law produces by relieving men from the final responsibility of maintaining their children, must be produced in a smaller degree by taking away the responsibility of educating their children. The more the state undertakes to do for his family, the more are the expenses of the married man reduced, at the cost of the unmarried man, and the greater becomes the temptation to marry. Let not any think that the offer of apparently gratuitous instruction for his offspring would be of no weight with the working man deliberating on the propriety of taking a wife. Whoever has watched the freaks which strong passion plays in the councils of the intellect—has marked how it will bully into silence the weaker feelings that oppose it—how it will treat slightingly the most conclusive adverse evidence, whilst, in urging the goodness of its own cause, “trifles light as air are confirmations strong as proofs of Holy Writ”—whoever has marked this, can hardly doubt that, in the deliberations of such an one, the prospect of public training for children would in no small degree affect the decision. Nay, indeed, it would afford a positive reason for giving way to his desires. Just as a man at an expensive dinner will eat more than he knows is good for him, on the principle of having his money’s worth, so would the artizan find one excuse for marrying in the fact that, unless he did so, he would be paying education-rates for nothing.

  Nor is it only thus that a state-education would encourage men to obey present impulses. An influence unfavourable to the increase of self-control would be exercised by it throughout the whole of parental life. That powerful restraint which the anxiety to give children schooling now imposes upon the improvident tendencies of the poor, would be removed. Many a man who, as things are, can but just keep the mastery over some vicious or extravagant propensity, and whose most efficient curb is the thought that if he gives way it must be at the sacrifice of that book-learning which he is ambitious to give his family, would fall were this curb weakened—would not only cease to improve in power of self-control as he is now doing, but would probably retrograde, and bequeath his offspring to a lower instead of a higher phase of civilization.

  Hence, as was said, a government can educate in one direction only by uneducating in another—can confer knowledge only at the expense of character. It retards the development of a quality universally needed—one in the absence of which poverty, and recklessness, and crime, must ever continue; and all that it may give a smattering of information.

  What a contrast is there between these futile contrivances of men and the admirable, silent-working mechanisms of nature! Nature, with a perfect economy, turns all forces to account. She makes action and re-action alike useful. This strong affection for progeny becomes in her hands the agent of a double culture, serving at once to fashion parent and child into the desired form. And beautiful is it to see how the most powerful of instincts is made the means of holding men under a discipline to which, perhaps, nothing else could make them submit. Yet this skilfully-devised arrangement statesmen propose to dislocate, confidently opining that their own patent apparatus will answer a great deal better!

  § 11.

  Thus, in the present, as in other cases, we find the dictate of the abstract law enforced by secondary considerations. The alleged right to education at the hands of the state proves to be untenable; first, as logically committing its supporters to other claims too absurd for consideration; and again, as being incapable of definition. Moreover, could the claim be established, it would imply the duty of government despotically to enforce its system of discipline, and the duty of the subject to submit. That education ought not to be dealt in after the same manner as other things, because in its case “the interest and judgment of the consumer are not sufficient security for the goodness of the commodity,” is a plea with most suspicious antecedents; having been many times employed in other instances, and many times disproved. Neither is the implied assumption that the “interest and judgment” of a government would constitute a sufficient security admissible. On the contrary, experience proves that the interests of a government, and of all the institutions it may set up, are directly opposed to education of the most important kind. Again, to say that legislative teaching is needful, because other teaching has failed, presupposes a pitiably narrow view of human progress; and further, involves the strange scepticism that, though natural agencies have brought the enlightenment of mankind to its present height, and are even now increasing it at an unparalleled rate, they will no longer answer. The belief that education is a preventive of crime, having no foundation either in theory or fact, cannot be held an excuse for interference. And, to crown all, it turns out that the institution so much longed for is a mere dead machine, which can only give out in one form the power it absorbs in another, minus the friction—a thing which cannot stir towards effecting this kind of education without abstracting the force now accomplishing that—a thing, therefore, which cannot educate at all.

  CHAPTER XXVII.

  government colonization.

  § 1.

  A colony being a community, to ask whether it is right for the state to found and govern colonies, is practically to ask, whether it is right for one community to found and govern other communities. And this question not being one in which the relationships of a society to its own authorities are alone involved, but being one into which there enter the interests of parties external to such society, is in some measure removed out of the class of questions hitherto considered. Nevertheless, our directing principle affords satisfactory guidance in this case as well as in the others.

  That a government cannot undertake to administer the affairs of a colony, and to support for it a judicial staff, a constabulary, a garrison, and so forth, without trespassing against the parent society, scarcely needs pointing out. Any expenditure for these purposes, be it like our own some three and a half millions sterling a year, or but a few thousands, involves a breach of state-duty. The taking from men property beyond what is needful for the better securing of their rights, we have seen to be an infringement of their rights. Colonial expenditure cannot be met without property being so taken. Colonial expenditure is therefore unjustifiable.

  An objector might indeed allege, that by maintaining in a settlement a subordinate legislature, the parent legislature does but discharge towards the settlers its original office of protector, and that the settlers have a claim to protection at its hands. But the duty of a society towards itself, that is, of a government towards its subjects, will not permit the assumption of such a responsibility. For, as it is the function of a government to administer the law of equal freedom, it cannot, without reversing its function, tax one portion of its subjects at a higher rate than is needful to protect them, that it may give protection to another portion below prime cost; and to guard those who emigrate, at the expense of those who remain, is to do this. Manifestly, the guardianship which a nation in its corporate capacity extends to each of its members, is limited by conditions. The citizen must defray his share of the expenses, must agree to perform certain political duties, and must reside within specified geographical boundaries. If he prefers to go elsewhere, it may be presumed that he has duly considered, on the one hand, the benefits promised by his contemplated emigration, and on the other, the evils attending loss of citizenship, and that the prospective advantages of a change preponderate. At any rate he cannot show that, by refusing to send out officers to the antipodes to take care of him, society violates a recognised or implied contract.

  Moreover, colonial government, properly so called, cannot be carried on without transgressing the rights of the colonists. For if, as generally happens, the colonists are dictated to by authorities sent out from the mother country, then the law of equal freedom is broken in their persons, as much as by any other kind of autocratic rule. If, again, they are allowed to administer their own affairs, the parent state retaining only a veto-power, there is still injustice in the assumption of greater freedom by the members of the old community than is conceded to those of the new one. And if the new community is as completely self-governed as the old one, then, politically speaking, it is not a colony at all, but a separate nation. In one way, however, legislative union between a parent state and its colonies may be maintained without breach of the law; namely, by making them integral parts of one empire, severally represented in a united assembly commissioned to govern the whole. But theoretically just as such an arrangement may be, and even carried out though it is by France, it is still too palpably impolitic for serious consideration. To propose that, whilst the English joined in legislating for the people of Australia, of the Cape, of New Zealand, of Canada, of Jamaica, and of the rest, these should in turn legislate for the English, and for each other, is much like proposing that the butcher should superintend the classification of the draper’s goods, the draper draw up a tariff of prices for the grocer, and the grocer instruct the baker in making bread.

  Hence, the political union of a parent state with a colony is inadmissible; seeing that, as usually maintained, such union necessarily infringes the rights of the members of both communities, and seeing that it cannot be made just without at the same time being made absurdly unfit.

  § 2.

  It was exceedingly cool of Pope Alexander VI. to parcel out the unknown countries of the Earth between the Spaniards and Portuguese, granting to Spain all discovered and undiscovered heathen lands lying west of a certain meridian drawn through the Atlantic, and to Portugal those lying east of it. Queen Elizabeth, too, was somewhat cool, when she empowered Sir Humphrey Gilbert “to discover and take possession of remote and heathen countries,” and “to exercise rights, royalties, and jurisdiction, in such countries and seas adjoining.” Nor did Charles II. show less coolness, when he gave to Winthrop, Mason, and others, power to “kill, slay, and destroy, by all fitting ways, enterprises, and means whatsoever, all and every such person or persons as shall at any time hereafter attempt or enterprise the destruction, invasion, detriment, or annoyance of the inhabitants,” of the proposed plantation of Connecticut. Indeed, all colonizing expeditions down to those of our own day, with its American annexations, its French occupations of Algiers and Tahiti, and its British conquests of Scinde, and of the Punjaub, have borne a very repulsive likeness to the doings of buccaneers. As usual, however, these unscrupulous acts have brought deserved retributions. Insatiate greediness—a mere blind impulse to clutch whatever lies within reach—has generated very erroneous beliefs, and betrayed nations into most disastrous deeds. “Men are rich in proportion to their acres,” argued politicians. “An increase of estate is manifestly equivalent to an increase of wealth. What, then, can be clearer than that the acquirement of new territory must be a national advantage?” So, misled by the analogy, and spurred on by acquisitiveness, we have continued to seize province after province, in utter disregard of the losses uniformly entailed by them. In fact, it has been inconceivable that they do entail losses. That the addition of anything must enrich seems so self-evident a truth, that it has never struck men to ask what happens when the thing added is a minus quantity. And even now, though doubt is beginning to dawn upon the public mind, the instinctive desire to keep hold is too strong to permit a change of policy. Our predicament is like that of the monkey in the fable, who, putting his hand into a jar of fruit, grasps so large a quantity that he cannot get his hand out again, and is obliged to drag the jar about with him, never thinking to let go what he has seized. When we shall attain to something more than the ape’s wisdom remains to be seen. Happily the old piratical spirit is on the decline. A conquest is no longer gloried in as a national aggrandizement. Our last Indian annexation was lamented as an unfortunate necessity. Experience is fast teaching us that distant dependencies are burdens, and not acquisitions. And thus this earliest motive for state-colonization—the craving for wider possessions—will very soon be destroyed by the conviction that territorial aggression is as impolitic as it is unjust.

  § 3.

  Whilst the mere propensity to thieve,—commonly known under some grandiloquent alias, disguised by glittering falsehoods, and made sublime in men’s eyes by the largeness of its aims,—has been the real prompter of colonizing invasions, from those of Cortez and Pizarro downwards, the ostensible purpose of them has been either the spread of religion or the extension of commerce. In modern days the latter excuse has been the favourite one. To obtain more markets—this is what people have said aloud to each other, was the object aimed at. And, though second to the widening of empire, it has been to the compassing of this object that colonial legislation has been mainly directed. Let us consider the worth of such legislation.

  Those holy men of whom the middle ages were so prolific, seem to have delighted in exhibiting their supernatural powers on the most trifling occasions. It was a common feat with them, when engaged in church-building, magically to lengthen a beam which the carpenter had made too short. Some were in the constant habit of calling down fire from heaven to light their candles. When at a loss where to deposit his habiliments, St. Goar, of Treves, would transform a sunbeam into a hat-peg. And it is related of St. Columbanus that he wrought a miracle to keep the grubs from his cabbages. Now, although these examples of the use of vast means for the accomplishment of insignificant ends are not quite paralleled by the exertions of governments to secure colonial trade, the absurdity attaching to both differs only in degree. An expenditure of power ridiculously disproportionate to the occasion is their common characteristic. In the one case, as in the other, an unnatural agency is employed to effect what a natural agency would effect as well. Trade is a simple enough thing that will grow up wherever there is room for it. But, according to statesmen, it must be created by a gigantic and costly machinery. That trade only is advantageous to a country which brings in return for what is directly and indirectly given, a greater worth of commodities than could otherwise be obtained. But statesmen recognize no such limit to its benefits. Every new outlet for English goods, kept open at no matter what cost, they think valuable. Here is some scrubby little island, or wild territory—unhealthy, or barren, or inclement, or uninhabited even—which by right of discovery, conquest, or diplomatic manœuvring, may be laid hands on. Possession is forthwith taken; a high salaried governor is appointed; officials collect round him; then follow forts, garrisons, guardships; from these by-and-bye come quarrels with neighbouring peoples, incursions, war; and these again call for more defensive works, more force, more money. And to all protests against this reckless expenditure, the reply is—“Consider how it extends our commerce.” If you grumble at the sinking of £800,000 in fortifying Gibraltar and Malta, at the outlay of £130,000 a year for the defence of the Ionian Islands, at the maintenance of 1200 soldiers in such a good-for-nothing place as the Bermudas, at the garrisoning of St. Helena, Hong Kong, Heligoland, and the rest, you are told that all this is needful for the protection of our commerce. If you object to the expenditure of £110,000 per annum on the government of Ceylon, it is thought a sufficient answer that Ceylon buys manufactures from us to the gross value of £240,000 yearly. Any criticisms you may pass upon the policy of retaining Canada, at an annual cost of £800,000, are met by the fact that this amounts to only 30 per cent. upon the sum which the Canadians spend on our goodsa . Should you, under the fear that the East India Company’s debt may some day be saddled upon the people of England, lament the outlay of £17,000,000 over the Affghan war, the sinking of £1,000,000 a year in Scinde, and the swallowing up of untold treasure in the subjugation of the Punjaub, there still comes the everlasting excuse of more trade. A Bornean jungle, the deserts of Kaffraria, and the desolate hills of the Falkland Islands, are all occupied upon this plea. The most profuse expenditure is forgiven, if but followed by an insignificant demand for merchandise; even though such demand be but for the supply of a garrison’s necessities—glass for barrack windows, starch for officers’ shirts, and lump-sugar for the governor’s table—all of which you shall find carefully included in Board of Trade Tables, and rejoiced over as constituting an increase in our exports.

  § 4.

  But not only do we expend so much to gain so little, we absolutely expend it for nothing; nay, indeed, in some cases to achieve a loss. All profitable trade with colonies will come without the outlay of a penny for colonial administration—must flow to us naturally; and whatever trade will not flow to us naturally, is not profitable, but the reverse. If a given settlement deals solely with us, it does so from one of two causes: either we make the articles its inhabitants consume at a lower rate than any other nation, or we oblige its inhabitants to buy those articles from us, though they might obtain them for less elsewhere. Manifestly, if we can undersell other producers, we should still exclusively supply its markets, were the settlement independent. If we cannot undersell them, it is equally certain that we are indirectly injuring ourselves and the settlers too; for, as M’Culloch says:—“Each country has some natural or acquired capabilities that enable her to carry on certain branches of industry more advantageously than any one else. But the fact of a country being undersold in the markets of her colonies, shows conclusively that, instead of having any superiority, she labours under a disadvantage, as compared with others, in the production of the peculiar articles in demand in them. And hence, in providing a forced market in the colonies for articles that we should not otherwise be able to dispose of, we really engage a portion of the capital and labour of the country in a less advantageous channel than that into which it would naturally have flowed.” And if to the injury we do ourselves by manufacturing goods which we could more economically buy, is added the injury we suffer in pacifying the colonists, by purchasing from them commodities obtainable on better terms elsewhere, we have before us the twofold loss which these much-coveted monopolies entail.

  Thus are we again taught how worthy of all reverence are the injunctions of equity, and how universal is their applicability. Just that commercial intercourse with colonies which may be had without breaking these injunctions, brings gain; whilst just that commercial intercourse which cannot be so had, brings loss.

  § 5.

  Passing from home interests to colonial interests, we still meet nothing but evil results. It is a prettily sounding expression that of mother-country protection, but a very delusive one. If we are to believe those who have known the thing rather than the name, there is but little of the maternal about it. In the Declaration of American Independence we have a candid statement of experience on this point. Speaking of the king—the personification of the parent state, the settlers say:—

  “He has obstructed the administration of justice, by refusing his assent to laws for establishing judiciary powers.

  “He has erected a multitude of new offices, and sent hither swarms of officers to harass our people, and eat out their substance.

  “He has kept among us in times of peace standing armies, without the consent of our legislatures.

  “He has combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our constitution and unacknowledged by our laws; giving his assent to their pretended acts of legislation:—

  “For quartering large bodies of armed troops among us.

  “For protecting them by a mock trial from punishment for any murders which they should commit on the inhabitants of these states.

  “For cutting off our trade with all parts of the world.

  “For imposing taxes upon us without our consent.

  “For depriving us in many cases of the benefits of trial by jury,” &c., &c., &c.

  Now, though tyrannies so atrocious as these do not commonly disgrace colonial legislation in the present day, we have but to glance over the newspapers published in our foreign possessions, to see that the arbitrary rule of the Colonial Office is no blessing. Chronic irritation, varying in intensity from that of which petitions are symptomatic, to that exhibited in open rebellions, is habitually present in these forty-six scattered dependencies which statesmen have encumbered us with. Two outbreaks in fifteen years pretty plainly hint the feeling of the Canadas—a feeling still extant and growing, as recent events testify. Within the same period the Cape Boers have revolted thrice; and we have just had a tumultuous agitation and a violent paper war about convicts. In the West Indies there is universal discontent. Jamaica advices tell of stopped supplies, and state-machinery at a dead lock. Guiana sends like news. Here are quarrels about retrenchment; there, insurrectionary riots; and anger is everywhere. The name of Ceylon calls to mind the insolence of a titled governor on the one side, and on the other the bitterness of insulted colonists. In the Australian settlements, criminal immigration has been the sore subject; whilst from New Zealand there come protests against official despotism. All winds bring the same tale of a negligence caring for no expostulations, impertinence without end, blunderings, disputes, delays, corruption. Canadians complain of having been induced by a proffered privilege to sink their capital in flour-mills, which subsequent legislation made useless. With an ever-varying amount of protection, sugar-planters say they do not know what to be at. South Africa bears witness to a mismanagement that at one time makes enemies of the Griquas, and at another entails a Kaffir war. The emigrants of New Zealand lament over a seat of government absurdly chosen, money thrown away upon useless roads, and needful works left undone. South Australia is made bankrupt by its governor’s extravagance; lands are apportioned so as to barbarize the settlers by dispersion, and labourers are sent out in excess, and left to beg. Our Chinese trade gets endangered by the insulting behaviour of military officers to the natives; and the authorities of Labuan make their first settlement in a pestilential swamp.

  Nevertheless, these odd results of mother-country protection need not surprise us, if we consider by whom the duties of maternity are discharged. Dotted here and there over the earth, at distances varying from one thousand to fourteen thousand miles, and to and from some of which it takes three-quarters of a year to send a question and get back an answer, are forty-six communities, consisting of different races, placed in different circumstances. And the affairs of these numerous, far-removed communities—their commercial, social, political, and religious interests, are to be cared for—by whom? By six functionaries and their twenty-three clerks, sitting at desks in Downing Street! being at the rate of 0.13 of a functionary and half a clerk to each settlement!

  Is is not, then, sufficiently clear that this state-colonization is as indefensible on the score of colonial welfare, as on that of home interests? May we not reasonably doubt the propriety of people on one side of the earth being governed by officials on the other? Would not these transplanted societies probably manage their affairs better than we can do it for them? At any rate our benevolent anxiety on their behalf may be at rest, should it turn out that they would willingly dispense with our superintendence. All that the most romantic generosity can require from us, is the tender of our good offices; and should these be declined, our consciences may feel fully discharged of any assumed duty. Now on polling the inhabitants of each colony on the question whether England should continue legislating for them or not, we should be pretty certain to get the answer that, were it the same thing to us, they would much rather legislate for themselves.

  § 6.

  Great, however, as are the evils entailed by government colonization upon both parent state and settlers, they look insignificant when compared with those it inflicts upon the aborigines of the conquered countries. The people of Java believe that the souls of Europeans pass at death into the bodies of tigers; and it is related of a Hispaniolan chief that he hoped not to go to heaven when he heard there would be Spaniards there. Significant facts these: darkly suggestive of many an unrecorded horror. But they hint nothing worse than history tells of. Whether we think of the extinct West-Indian tribes, who were worked to death in mines; or of the Cape Hottentots, whose masters punished them by shooting small shot into their legs; or of those nine thousand Chinese whom the Dutch massacred one morning in Batavia; or of the Arabs lately suffocated in the caves of Dahra by the French, we do but call to mind solitary samples of the treatment commonly received by subjugated races from so-called Christian nations. Should any one flatter himself that we English are guiltless of such barbarities, he may soon be shamed by a narrative of our doings in the East. The Anglo-Indians of the last century—“birds of prey and of passage,” as they were styled by Burke—showed themselves only a shade less cruel than their prototypes of Peru and Mexico. Imagine how black must have been their deeds, when even the Directors of the Company admitted that “the vast fortunes acquired in the inland trade have been obtained by a scene of the most tyrannical and oppressive conduct that was ever known in any age or country.” Conceive the atrocious state of society described by Vansittart, who tells us that the English compelled the natives to buy or sell at just what rates they pleased, on pain of flogging or confinement. Judge to what a pass things must have come when, in describing a journey, Warren Hastings says, “most of the petty towns and serais were deserted at our approach.” A cold-blooded treachery was the established policy of the authorities. Princes were betrayed into war with each other; and one of them having been helped to overcome his antagonist, was then himself dethroned for some alleged misdemeanor. Always some muddied stream was at hand as a pretext for official wolves. Dependent chiefs holding coveted lands were impoverished by exorbitant demands for tribute; and their ultimate inability to meet these demands was construed into a treasonable offence, punished by deposition. Even down to our own day kindred iniquities are continueda Down to our own day, too, are continued the grievous salt-monopoly, and the pitiless taxation, that wrings from the poor ryots nearly half the produce of the soil. Down to our own day continues the cunning despotism which uses native soldiers to maintain and extend native subjection—a despotism under which, not many years since, a regiment of sepoys was deliberately massacred, for refusing to march without proper clothing. Down to our own day the police authorities league with wealthy scamps, and allow the machinery of the law to be used for purposes of extortion. Down to our own day, so-called gentlemen will ride their elephants through the crops of impoverished peasants; and will supply themselves with provisions from the native villages without paying for them. And down to our own day, it is common with the people in the interior to run into the woods at sight of a European!

  No one can fail to see that these cruelties, these treacheries, these deeds of blood and rapine, for which European nations in general have to blush, are mainly due to the carrying on of colonization under state-management, and with the help of state-funds and state-force. It is quite needless to point to the recent affair at Wairau in New Zealand, or to the Kaffir war, or to our perpetual aggressions in the East, or to colonial history at large, in proof of this, for the fact is self-evident. A schoolboy, made overbearing by the consciousness that there is always a big brother to take his part, typifies the colonist, who sees in his mother-country a bully ever ready to back and defend him. Unprotected emigrants, landing amongst a strange race, and feeling themselves the weaker party, are tolerably certain to behave well, and a community of them is likely to grow up in amicable relationship with the natives. But let these emigrants be followed by regiments of soldiers—let them have a fort built, and cannons mounted—let them feel that they have the upper hand, and they will no longer be the same men. A brutality will come out, which the discipline of civilized life had kept under; and not unfrequently they will prove more vicious than they even knew themselves to be. Various evil influences conspire with their own bad propensities. The military force guarding them has a strong motive to foment quarrels; for war promises prize-money. To the civil employés, conquest holds out a prospect of more berths and quicker promotion—a fact which must bias them in favour of it. Thus an aggressive tendency is encouraged in all—a tendency which is sure to show itself in acts, and to betray the colonists into some of those atrocities that disgrace civilization.

  § 7.

  As though to round off the argument more completely, history presents us with proof that whilst government colonization is accompanied by endless miseries and abominations, colonization naturally carried on is free from these. Notwithstanding the misconduct he is accused of, to William Penn belongs the honour of having shown men that the kindness, justice, and truth of its inhabitants, are better safeguards to a colony than troops and fortifications and the bravery of governors. In all points Pennsylvania illustrates the equitable, as contrasted with the inequitable, mode of colonizing. It was founded not by the state, but by private individuals. It needed no mother-country protection, for it committed no breaches of the moral law. Its treaty with the Indians, described as “the only one ever concluded which was not ratified by an oath, and the only one that was never broken,” served it in better stead than any garrison. For the seventy years during which the Quakers retained the chief power, it enjoyed an immunity from that border warfare, with its concomitant losses, and fears, and bloodshed, to which other settlements were subject. On the other hand, its people maintained a friendly and mutually-beneficial intercourse with the natives; and, as a natural consequence of complete security, made unusually rapid progress in material prosperity.

  That a like policy would have been similarly advantageous in other cases, may reasonably be inferred. No one can doubt, for instance, that had the East India Company been denied military aid and state-conferred privileges, both its own affairs, and the affairs of Hindostan, would have been in a far better condition than they now are. In sane longing for empire would never have burdened the Company with the enormous debt which at present paralyzes it. The energy that has been expended in aggressive wars would have been employed in developing the resources of the country. Unenervated by monopolies, trade would have been much more successful. The native rulers, influenced by a superior race on friendly terms with them, would have facilitated improvements; and we should not have seen, as now, rivers unnavigated, roads not bridged or metalled, and the proved capabilities of the soil neglected. Private enterprise would long ago have opened up these sources of wealth, as in fact it is at length doing, in spite of the discouragements thrown in its way by conquest-loving authorities. And had the settlers thus turned their attention wholly to the development of commerce, and conducted themselves peaceably, as their defenceless state would have compelled them to do, England would have been better supplied with raw materials, the markets for her goods would have enlarged, and something appreciable towards the civilization of the East would have been accomplished.

  § 8.

  In many ways, then, does experience enforce the verdict pronounced by the law of state-duty against state-colonization. It turns out that extension of empire is not synonymous with increase of wealth; but that, on the contrary, aggressions bred of the desire for territorial gain, entail loss. The notion that we secure commercial benefits by legislative connection with colonies, is a proved delusion. At best we throw away the whole sum which colonial government costs us; whilst we may, and often do, incur further loss, by establishing an artificial trade. The plea for protection to the settlers must be abandoned; seeing that this so-called protection is in practice oppression; and seeing that the settlers, from whose judgment on the matter there is no appeal, hint very plainly their wish to dispense with it. As for the aborigines, it is manifest that the cruelties inflicted on them have been mainly due to the backing of emigrants by the parent state. And, lastly, we have conclusive proof not only that voluntary colonization is practicable, but that it is free from those many evils attendant upon colonization managed by a government.

  CHAPTER XXVIII.

  sanitary supervision.

  § 1.

  The current ideas respecting legislative interference in sanitary matters do not seem to have taken the form of a definite theory. The Eastern Medical Association of Scotland does indeed hold “that it is the duty of the state to adopt measures for protecting the health as well as the property of its subjects;” and the Times lately asserted that “the Privy Council is chargeable with the health of the Empire;”a but no considerable political party has adopted either of these dogmas by way of a distinct confession of faith. Nevertheless, the opinions that widely prevail on questions of sewage, watersupply, ventilation, and the like, fully commit their advocates to the belief these dogmas embody.

  That it comes within the proper sphere of government to repress nuisances is evident. He who contaminates the atmosphere breathed by his neighbour, is infringing his neighbour’s rights. Men having equal claims to the free use of the elements—having faculties which need this free use of the elements for their due exercise—and having that exercise more or less limited by whatever makes the elements more or less unusable, are obviously trespassed against by any one who unnecessarily vitiates the elements, and renders them detrimental to health, or disagreeable to the senses; and in the discharge of its function as protector, a government is obviously called upon to afford redress to those so trespassed against.

  Beyond this, however, it cannot lawfully go. As already shown in several kindred cases, for a government to take from a citizen more property than is needful for the efficient defence of that citizen’s rights, is to infringe his rights—is, consequently, to do the opposite of what it, the government, is commissioned to do for him—or, in other words, is to do wrong. And hence all taxation for sanitary superintendence coming, as it does, within this category, must be condemned.

  § 2.

  This theory, of which Boards of Health and the like are embodiments, is not only inconsistent with our definition of state-duty, but is further open to strictures, similar to, and equally fatal with, those made in analogous cases. If by saying “that it is the duty of the state to adopt measures for protecting the health of its subjects,” it is meant (as it is meant by the majority of the medical profession) that the state should interpose between quacks and those who patronize them, or between the druggist and the artizan who wants a remedy for his cold—if it is meant that to guard people against empirical treatment, the state should forbid all unlicensed persons from prescribing—then the reply is, that to do so is directly to violate the moral law. Men’s rights are infringed by these, as much as by all other trade interferences. The invalid is at liberty to buy medicine and advice from whomsoever he pleases; the unlicensed practitioner is at liberty to sell these to whomsoever will buy. On no pretext whatever can a barrier be set up between them, without the law of equal freedom being broken; and least of all may the government, whose office it is to uphold that law, become a transgressor of it.

  Moreover this doctrine, that it is the duty of the state to protect the health of its subjects, cannot be established, for the same reason that its kindred doctrines cannot, namely, the impossibility of saying how far the alleged duty shall be carried out. Health depends upon the fulfilment of numerous conditions—can be “protected” only by ensuring that fulfilment: if, therefore, it is the duty of the state to protect the health of its subjects, it is its duty to see that all the conditions of health are fulfilled by them. Shall this duty be consistently discharged? If so, the legislature must enact a national dietary: prescribe so many meals a day for each individual; fix the quantities and qualities of food, both for men and women; state the proportion of fluids, when to be taken, and of what kind; specify the amount of exercise, and define its character; describe the clothing to be employed; determine the hours of sleep, allowing for the difference of age and sex: and so on with all other particulars, necessary to complete a perfect synopsis, for the daily guidance of the nation: and to enforce these regulations it must employ a sufficiency of duly-qualified officials, empowered to direct every one’s domestic arrangements. If, on the other hand, a universal supervision of private conduct is not meant, then there comes the question—Where, between this and no supervision at all, lies the boundary up to which supervision is a duty? To which question no answer can be given.

  § 3.

  There is a manifest analogy between committing to government-guardianship the physical health of the people, and committing to it their moral health. The two proceedings are equally reasonable, may be defended by similar arguments, and must stand or fall together. If the welfare of men’s souls can be fitly dealt with by acts of parliament, why then the welfare of their bodies can be fitly dealt with likewise. He who thinks the state commissioned to administer spiritual remedies, may consistently think that it should administer material ones. The disinfecting society from vice may naturally be quoted as a precedent for disinfecting it from pestilence. Purifying the haunts of men from noxious vapours may be held quite as legitimate as purifying their moral atmosphere. The fear that false doctrines may be instilled by unauthorized preachers, has its analogue in the fear that unauthorized practitioners may give deleterious medicines or advice. And the persecutions once committed to prevent the one evil, countenance the penalties used to put down the other. Contrariwise, the arguments employed by the dissenter to show that the moral sanity of the people is not a matter for state superintendence, are applicable, with a slight change of terms, to their physical sanity also.

  Let no one think this analogy imaginary. The two notions are not only theoretically related; we have facts proving that they tend to embody themselves in similar institutions. There is an evident inclination on the part of the medical profession to get itself organized after the fashion of the clericy. Moved as are the projectors of a railway, who, whilst secretly hoping for salaries, persuade themselves and others that the proposed railway will be beneficial to the public—moved as all men are under such circumstances, by nine parts of self-interest gilt over with one part of philanthropy—surgeons and physicians are vigorously striving to erect a medical establishment akin to our religious one. Little do the public at large know how actively professional publications are agitating for state-appointed overseers of the public health. Take up the Lancet, and you shall find articles written to show the necessity of making poor-law medical officers independent of Boards of Guardians by appointing them for life, holding them responsible only to central authority, and giving them handsome salaries from the Consolidated Fund. The Journal of Public Health proposes that “every house on becoming vacant be examined by a competent person as to its being in a condition adapted for the safe dwelling in of the future tenants;” and to this end would raise by fees, chargeable on the landlords, “a revenue adequate to pay a sufficient staff of inspectors four or five hundred pounds a year each.” A non-professional publication, echoing the appeal, says—“No reasonable man can doubt that if a proper system of ventilation were rendered imperative upon landlords, not only would the cholera and other epidemic diseases be checked, but the general standard of health would be raised.” Whilst the Medical Times shows its leanings, by announcing, with marked approbation, that “the Ottoman government has recently published a decree for the appointment of physicians to be paid by the state,” who “are bound to treat gratuitously all—both rich and poor—who shall demand advice.”

  More or less distinctly expressed in these passages there is an unmistakable wish to establish an organized, tax-supported class, charged with the health of men’s bodies, as the clergy are charged with the health of their souls. And whoever has watched how institutions grow—how by little and little a very innocent-looking infancy unfolds into a formidable maturity, with vested interests, political influence, and a strong instinct of self-preservation, will see that the germs here peeping forth are quite capable, under favourable circumstances, of developing into such an organization. He will see further, that favourable circumstances are not wanting—that the prevalence of unemployed professional men, with whom these proposals for sanitary inspectors and public surgeons mostly originate, is likely to continue; and that continuing, it will tend to multiply the offices it has created, much in the same way that the superabundance of clergy multiplies churches. He will even anticipate that, as the spread of education is certain to render the pressure upon the intellectual labour-market still more intense than it now is, there will by-and-by be a yet greater stimulus to the manufacture of berths—a yet greater tendency on the part of all who want genteel occupations for their sons, to countenance this manufacture—and, therefore, a yet greater danger of the growth of a medical establishment.

  § 4.

  The most specious excuse for not extending to medical advice the principles of free-trade, is the same as that given for not leaving education to be diffused under them; namely, that the judgment of the consumer is not a sufficient guarantee for the goodness of the commodity. The intolerance shown by orthodox surgeons and physicians, towards unordained followers of their calling, is to be understood as arising from a desire to defend the public against quackery. Ignorant people say they cannot distinguish good treatment from bad, or skilful advisers from unskilful ones: hence it is needful that the choice should be made for them. And then, following in the track of priesthoods, for whose persecutions a similar defence has always been set up, they agitate for more stringent regulations against unlicensed practitioners, and descant upon the dangers to which men are exposed by an unrestricted system. Hear Mr. Wakley. Speaking of a recently-revived law relating to chemists and druggists, he says, “It must have the effect of checking, to a vast extent, that frightful evil called counter practice, exercised by unqualified persons, which has so long been a disgrace to the operation of the laws relating to medicine in this country, and which, doubtless, has been attended with a dreadful sacrifice of human life.” (Lancet, Sept. 11, 1841.) And again, “There is not a chemist and druggist in the empire who would refuse to prescribe in his own shop in medical cases, or who would hesitate day by day to prescribe simple remedies for the ailments of infants and children.” ∗ ∗ ∗ ∗ “We had previously considered the evil to be of enormous magnitude, but it is quite clear that we had under-estimated the extent of the danger to which the public are exposed.” (Lancet, Oct. 16, 1841.)

  Any one may discern through these ludicrous exaggerations much more of the partizan than of the philanthropist. But let that pass. And without dwelling upon the fact, that it is strange a “dreadful sacrifice of human life” should not have drawn the attention of the people themselves to this “frightful evil,”—without doing more than glance at the further fact, that nothing is said of those benefits conferred by “counter practice,” which would at least form a considerable set-off against this “evil of enormous magnitude,”—let it be conceded that very many of the poorer classes are injured by druggists prescriptions and quack medicines. The allegation having been thus, for argument’s sake, admitted in full, let us now consider whether it constitutes a sufficient plea for legal interference.

  Inconvenience, suffering, and death, are the penalties attached by nature to ignorance, as well as to incompetence—are also the means of remedying these. And whoso thinks he can mend matters by dissociating ignorance and its penalties, lays claim to more than Divine wisdom, and more than Divine benevolence. If there seems harshness in those ordinations of things, which, with unfaltering firmness, punish every breach of law—if there seems harshness in those ordinations of things which visit a slip of the foot with a broken limb—which send lingering agonies to follow the inadvertent swallowing of a noxious herb—which go on quietly, age after age, giving fevers and agues to dwellers in marshes—and which, now and then, sweep away by pestilence tens of thousands of unhealthy livers—if there seems harshness in such ordinations, be sure it is apparent only, and not real. Partly by weeding out those of lowest development, and partly by subjecting those who remain to the never-ceasing discipline of experience, nature secures the growth of a race who shall both understand the conditions of existence, and be able to act up to them. It is impossible in any degree to suspend this discipline by stepping in between ignorance and its consequences, without, to a corresponding degree, suspending the progress. If to be ignorant were as safe as to be wise, no one would become wise. And all measures which tend to put ignorance upon a par with wisdom, inevitably check the growth of wisdom. Acts of parliament to save silly people from the evils which putting faith in empirics may entail upon them, do this, and are therefore bad. Unpitying as it looks, it is best to let the foolish man suffer the appointed penalty of his foolishness. For the pain—he must bear it as well as he can: for the experience—he must treasure it up, and act more rationally in future. To others as well as to himself will his case be a warning. And by multiplication of such warnings, there cannot fail to be generated in all men a caution corresponding to the danger to be shunned. Are there any who desire to facilitate the process? Let them dispel error; and, provided they do this in a legitimate way, the faster they do it the better. But to guard ignorant men against the evils of their ignorance—to divorce a cause and consequence which God has joined together—to render needless the intellect put into us for our guidance—to unhinge what is, in fact, the very mechanism of existence—must necessarily entail nothing but disasters.

  Who, indeed, after pulling off the coloured glasses of prejudice, and thrusting out of sight his pet projects, can help seeing the folly of these endeavours to protect men against themselves? A sad population of imbeciles would our schemers fill the world with, could their plans last. A sorry kind of human constitution would they make for us—a constitution lacking the power to uphold itself, and requiring to be kept alive by superintendence from without—a constitution continually going wrong, and needing to be set right again—a constitution even tending to self-destruction. Why the whole effort of nature is to get rid of such—to clear the world of them, and make room for better. Nature demands that every being shall be self-sufficing. All that are not so, nature is perpetually withdrawing by death. Intelligence sufficient to avoid danger, power enough to fulfil every condition, ability to cope with the necessities of existence—these are qualifications invariably insisted on. Mark how the diseased are dealt with. Consumptive patients, with lungs incompetent to perform the duties of lungs, people with assimilative organs that will not take up enough nutriment, people with defective hearts that break down under excitement of the circulation, people with any constitutional flaw preventing the due fulfilment of the conditions of life, are continually dying out, and leaving behind those fit for the climate, food, and habits to which they are born. Even the less-imperfectly organized, who, under ordinary circumstances, can manage to live with comfort, are still the first to be carried off by epidemics; and only such as are robust enough to resist these—that is, only such as are tolerably well adapted to both the usual and incidental necessities of existence, remain. And thus is the race kept free from vitiation. Of course this statement is in substance a truism; for no other arrangement of things is conceivable. But it is a truism to which most men pay little regard. And if they commonly overlook its application to body, still less do they note its bearing upon mind. Yet it is equally true here. Nature just as much insists on fitness between mental character and circumstances, as between physical character and circumstance; and radical defects are as much causes of death in the one case as in the other. He on whom his own stupidity, or vice, or idleness, entails loss of life, must, in the generalizations of philosophy, be classed with the victims of weak viscera or malformed limbs. In his case, as in the others, there exists a fatal non-adaptation; and it matters not in the abstract whether it be a moral, an intellectual, or a corporeal one. Beings thus imperfect are nature’s failures, and are recalled by her laws when found to be such. Along with the rest they are put upon trial. If they are sufficiently complete to live, they do live, and it is well they should live. If they are not sufficiently complete to live, they die, and it is best they should die. Whether the incompleteness be in strength, or agility, or perception, or foresight, or self-control, is not heeded in the rigorous proof they are put to. But if any faculty is unusually deficient, the probabilities are that, in the long run, some disastrous, or, in the worst cases—fatal result will follow. And, however irregular the action of this law may appear—however it may seem that much chaff is left behind which should be winnowed out, and that much grain is taken away which should be left behind, yet due consideration must satisfy every one that the average effect is to purify society from those who are, in some respect or other, essentially faulty.

  Of course, in so far as the severity of this process is mitigated by the spontaneous sympathy of men for each other, it is proper that it should be mitigated: albeit there is unquestionably harm done when sympathy is shown, without any regard to ultimate results. But the drawbacks hence arising are nothing like commensurate with the benefits otherwise conferred. Only when this sympathy prompts to a breach of equity—only when it originates an interference forbidden by the law of equal freedom—only when, by so doing, it suspends in some particular department of life the relationship between constitution and conditions, does it work pure evil. Then, however, it defeats its own end. Instead of diminishing suffering, it eventually increases it. It favours the multiplication of those worst fitted for existence, and, by consequence, hinders the multiplication of those best fitted for existence—leaving, as it does, less room for them. It tends to fill the world with those to whom life will bring most pain, and tends to keep out of it those to whom life will bring most pleasure. It inflicts positive misery, and prevents positive happiness.

  § 5.

  Turning now to consider these impatiently-agitated schemes for improving our sanitary condition by act of parliament, the first criticism to be passed upon them is that they are altogether needless, inasmuch as there are already efficient influences at work gradually accomplishing every desideratum.

  Seeing, as do the philanthropic of our day, like the congenitally blind to whom sight has just been given—looking at things through the newly-opened eyes of sympathy—they form very crude and very exaggerated notions of the evils to be dealt with. Some, anxious for the enlightenment of their fellows, collect statistics exhibiting a lamentable amount of ignorance; publish these; and the lovers of their kind are startled. Others dive into the dens where poverty hides itself, and shock the world with descriptions of what they see. Others, again, gather together information respecting crime, and make the benevolent look grave by their disclosures. Whereupon, in their horror at these revelations, men keep thoughtlessly assuming that the evils have lately become greater, when in reality it is they who have become more observant of them. If few complaints have hitherto been heard about crime, and ignorance, and misery, it is not that in times past these were less widely spread; for the contrary is the fact; but it is, that our forefathers were comparatively indifferent to them—thought little about them, and said little about them. Overlooking which circumstance, and forgetting that social evils have been undergoing a gradual amelioration—an amelioration likely to progress with increasing rapidity—many entertain a needless alarm lest fearful consequences should ensue, if these evils are not immediately remedied, and a visionary hope that immediate remedy of them is possible.

  Such are the now prevalent feelings relative to sanitary reform. We have had a multitude of blue-books, Board of Health reports, leading articles, pamphlets, and lectures, descriptive of bad drainage, overflowing cesspools, festering graveyards, impure water, and the filthiness and humidity of low lodging houses. The facts thus published are thought to warrant, or rather to demand, legislative interference. It seems never to be asked, whether any corrective process is going on. Although every one knows that the rate of mortality has been gradually decreasing, and that the value of life is higher in England than elsewhere—although every one knows that the cleanliness of our towns is greater now than ever before, and that our spontaneously-grown sanitary arrangements are far better than those existing on the Continent, where the stinks of Cologne, the uncovered drains of Paris, the water-tubs of Berlina , and the miserable footways of the German towns, show what state-management effects—although every one knows these things, yet is it perversely assumed that by state-management only can the remaining impediments to public health be removed. Surely the causes which have brought the sewage, the paving and lighting, and the water-supply of our towns, to their present state, have not suddenly ceased. Surely that amelioration, which has been taking place in the condition of London for these two or three centuries, may be expected to continue. Surely the public spirit, which has carried out so many urban improvements since the Municipal Corporations Act gave greater facilities, can carry out other improvements. Surely, if all that has been done towards making cities healthy, has been done, not only without government aid, but in spite of government obstructions—in spite, that is, of the heavy expense of local acts of parliament—we may reasonably suppose, that what remains to be done can be done in the same way, especially if the obstructions are removed. One would have thought that less excuse for meddling existed now than ever. Now that so much has been effected; now that spontaneous advance is being made at an unparalleled rate; now that the laws of health are beginning to be generally studied; now that people are reforming their habits of living; now that the use of baths is spreading; now that temperance, and ventilation, and due exercise are getting thought about—to interfere now, of all times, is surely as rash and uncalled-for a step as was ever taken.

  And then to think that, in their hot haste to obtain by law healthier homes for the masses, men should not see that the natural process already commenced is the only process which can eventually succeed. The Metropolitan Association for Improving the Dwellings of the Labouring Classes is doing all that is possible in the matter. It is endeavouring to show that, under judicious management, the building of salubrious habitations for the poor becomes a profitable employment of capital. If it shows this, it will do all that needs to be done; for capital will quickly flow into investments offering good returns. If it does not show this—if, after due trial, it finds that these Model Lodging Houses do not pay, and that better accommodation than the working people now have can be obtained for them only by diminishing the interest on money sunk in building, then not all the acts of parliament that can be passed between now and doomsday will improve matters one jot. These plans for making good ventilation imperative; insisting upon water-supply, and fixing the price for it, as Lord Morpeth’s Bill would have done; having empty houses cleansed before re-occupation, and charging the owners of them for inspection—these plans for coercing landlords into giving additional advantages for the same money are nothing but repetitions of the old proposal, that “the three-hooped pot shall have ten hoops,” and are just as incapable of realization. The first result of an attempt to carry them out would be a diminution of the profits of house-owners. The interest on capital invested in houses no longer being so high, capital would seek other investments. The building of houses would cease to keep pace with the growth of population. Hence would arise a gradual increase in the number of occupants to each house. And this change in the ratio of houses to people would continue until the demand for houses had raised the profits of the landlord to what they were, and until, by overcrowding, new sanitary evils had been produced to parallel the old onesa . If, by building in larger masses, and to a greater height, such an economy can be achieved in ground-rent, the cost of outer walls, and of roofing, as to give more accommodation at the same expense as now (which happily seems probable), then the fact only needs proving, and, as before said, the competition of capital for investment will do all that can be done; but if not, the belief that legislative coercion can make things better is a fit companion to the belief that it can fix the price of bread and the rate of wages.

  Let those who are anxious to improve the health of the poor, through the indirect machinery of law, bring their zeal to bear directly upon the work to be done. Let them appeal to men’s sympathies, and again to their interests. Let them prove to people of property that the making of these reforms will pay. Let them show that the productive powers of the labourer will be increased by bettering his health, whilst the poors’-rates will be diminished. Above all, let them demand the removal of those obstacles which existing legislation puts in the way of sanitary improvementa . Their efforts thus directed will really promote progress. Whereas their efforts as now directed are either needless or injurious.

  § 6.

  These endeavours to increase the salubrity of town-life by law, are not only open to the criticism that the natural forces already at work render them unnecessary, and to the additional criticism that some of the things strained after are impossible of legislative achievement, but it must further be observed, that even the desiderata which acts of parliament will reach, can be so reached only through very faulty instrumentalities. It is, in this case, as in many others, the peculiarity of what are oddly styled “practical measures,” that they supersede agencies which are answering well by agencies which are not likely to answer well. Here is a heavy charge of inefficiency brought against the drains, cesspools, stink-traps, &c., of England in general, and London in particular. The evidence is voluminous and conclusive, and by common consent a verdict of proven is returned. Citizens look grave and determine to petition parliament about it. Parliament promises to consider the matter; and after the usual amount of debate, says—“Let there be a Board of Health.” Whereupon petitioners rub their hands, and look out for great things. They have unbounded simplicity—these good citizens. Legislation may disappoint them fifty times running, without at all shaking their faith in its efficiency. They hoped that Church abuses would be rectified by the Ecclesiastical Commission: the poor curates can say whether that hope has been realized. Backed by an act of parliament, the Poor-Law Commissioners were to have eradicated able-bodied pauperism: yet, until checked by the recent prosperity, the poors’-rates have been rapidly rising to their old level. The New Building Act was to have given the people of London better homes; whereas, as we lately saw, it has made worse the homes that most wanted improving. Men were sanguine of reforming criminals by the silent system, or the separate system; but, if we are to judge by the disputes of their respective advocates, neither of these plans is very successful. Pauper children were to have been made into good citizens by industrial education; from all quarters, however, come statements that a very large percentage of them get into goal, or become prostitutes, or return to the workhouse. The measures enjoined by the Vaccination Act of 1840 were to have exterminated small-pox; yet the Registrar-General’s reports show that the deaths from small-pox have been increasing. And thus does year after year add to those abortive schemes, of which so many have been quoted (pp. 8, 46,288). Yet scarcely a doubt seems to arise, respecting the competency of legislators to do what they profess. From the times when they tried to fix the value of money down to our own day, when they have but just abandoned the attempt to fix the price of corn, statesmen have been undertaking all kinds of things, from regulating the cut of boot-toes, up to preparing people for Heaven; and have been constantly failing, or producing widely-different results from those intended. Nevertheless such inexhaustible faith have men, that, although they see this, and although they are daily hearing of imbecilities in public departments—of Admiralty Boards that squander three millions a year in building bad ships and breaking them up again—of Woods and Forests Commissioners who do not even know the rental of the estates they manage—of bungling excise-chemists who commit their chiefs to losing prosecutions, for which compensation has to be made—yet government needs but to announce another plausible project, and men straightway hurrah, and throw up their caps, in the full expectation of getting all that is promised.

  But the belief that Boards of Health, and the like, will never effect what is hoped, needs not wholly rest either upon abstract considerations, or upon our experience of state-instrumentalities in general. We have one of these organizations at work, and, as far as may be at present judged, it has done anything but answer people’s expectations. To condemn it, because choked sewers, and open gully-holes, and filthy alleys remain much as they were, would, perhaps, be unreasonable, for time is needed to rectify evils so widely established. But there is one test by which we may fairly estimate its efficiency, viz., its conduct before and during the late pestilence. It had more than a year’s notice that the cholera was on its way here. There were two whole sessions of parliament intervening between the time when a second invasion from that disease was foreseen and the time when the mortality was highest. The Board of Health had, therefore, full opportunity to put forth its powers, and to get greater powers if it wanted them. Well, what was the first step that might have been looked for from it? Shall we not say the suppression of intramural interments? Burying the dead in the midst of the living was manifestly hurtful; the evils attendant on the practice were universally recognised; and to put it down required little more than a simple exercise of authority. If the Board of Health believed itself possessed of authority sufficient for this, why did it not use that authority when the advent of the epidemic was rumoured? If it thought its authority not great enough (which can hardly be, remembering what it ultimately did), then why did it not obtain more? Instead of taking either of these steps, however, it occupied itself in considering future modes of water-supply, and devising systems of sewage. Whilst the cholera was approaching, the Board of Health was cogitating over reforms, from which the most sanguine could not expect any considerable benefit for years to come. And then, when the enemy was upon us, this guardian, in which men were putting their trust, suddenly bestirred itself, and did what, for the time being, made worse the evils to be remedied. As was said by a speaker, at one of the medical meetings held during the height of the cholera, “the Commissioners of Public Health had adopted the very means likely to produce that complaint. Instead of taking their measures years ago, they had stirred up all sorts of abominations now. They had removed dunghills and cesspools, and added fuel tenfold to the fire that existed. (Hear, hear.) Never since he could recollect had there been such accumulations of abominable odours as since the Health of Towns Commission had attempted to purify the atmosphere. (A laugh, and Hear, hear.)” At length, when, in spite of all that had been done (or, perhaps, partly in consequence of it), the mortality continued to increase, the closing of graveyards was decided upon, in the hope, as we must suppose, that the mortality would thereby be checked. As though, when there were hundreds of thousands of bodies decomposing, the ceasing to add to them would immediately produce an appreciable effect!

  If to these facts we add the further one, that, notwithstanding the directions issued for prophylactic treatment, and the system of domiciliary visits, the cholera carried off a greater number than before, we have some reason for thinking that this sanitary guardianship did no good, but, it may be, even harm.

  Should it be said that the Board of Health is badly constituted, or has not sufficient power, and that had a better organization been given to it we should have seen different results, the reply is, that the almost invariable occurrence of some such fatal hitch is one of the reasons for condemning these interferences. There is always some provoking if in the way. If the established clergy were what they should be, a state-church might do some good. If parish relief were judiciously administered, a poor-law would not be so bad thing. And if a sanitary organization could be made to do just what it is intended to do, something might be said in its favour.

  § 7.

  Even could state-agency compass for our towns the most perfect salubrity, it would be in the end better to remain as we are, rather than obtain such a benefit by such means. It is quite possible to give too much even for a great desideratum. However valuable good bodily health may be, it is very dearly purchased when mental health goes in exchange. Whoso thinks that government can supply sanitary advantages for nothing, or at the cost of more taxes only, is woefully mistaken. They must be paid for with character as well as with taxes. A full equivalent must be given in other coin than gold, and even more than an equivalent.

  Let it be again remembered that men cannot make force. All they can do is to avail themselves of force already existing, and employ it for working out this or that purpose. They cannot increase it; they cannot get from it more than its specific effect; and as much as they expend of it for doing one thing, must they lack of it for doing other things. Thus it is now becoming a received doctrine, that what we call chemical affinity, heat, light, electricity, magnetism, and motion, are all manifestations of the same primordial force—that they are severally convertible into each other—and, as a corollary, that it is impossible to obtain in any one form of this force more than its equivalent in the previous form. Now this is equally true of the agencies acting in society. It is quite possible to divert the power at present working out one result, to the working out of some other result. You may transform one kind of influence into another kind. But you cannot make more of it, and you cannot have it for nothing. You cannot, by legislative manæuvring, get increased ability to achieve a desired object, except at the expense of something else. Just as much better as this particular thing is done, so much worse must another thing be done.

  Or, changing the illustration, and regarding society as an organism, we may say that it is impossible artificially to use up social vitality for the more active performance of one function, without diminishing the activity with which other functions are performed. So long as society is let alone, its various organs will go on developing in due subordination to each other. If some of them are very imperfect, and make no appreciable progress towards efficiency, be sure it is because still more important organs are equally imperfect, and because the amount of vital force pervading society being limited, the rapid growth of these involves cessation of growth elsewhere. Be sure, also, that whenever there arises a special necessity for the better performance of any one function, or for the establishment of some new function, nature will respond. Instance in proof of this, the increase of particular manufacturing towns and sea-ports, or the formation of incorporated companies. Is there a rising demand for some commodity of general consumption? Immediately the organ secreting that commodity becomes more active, absorbs more people, begins to enlarge, and secretes in greater abundance. Instrumentalities for the fulfilment of other social requirements—for the supply of religious culture, education, and so forth, are similarly provided: the less needful being postponed to the more needful; just as the several parts of the embryo are developed in the order of their subservience to life. To interfere with this process by producing premature development in any particular direction is inevitably to disturb the due balance of organization, by causing somewhere else a corresponding atrophy. Let it never be forgotten that at any given time the amount of a society’s vital force is fixed. Dependent as is that vital force upon the degree of adaptation that has taken place—upon the extent to which men have acquired fitness for a co-operative life—upon the efficiency with which they can combine as elements of the social organism, we may be quite certain that, whilst their characters remain constant, nothing can increase its total quantity. We may be also certain that this total quantity can produce only its exact equivalent of results; and that no legislators can get more from it; although by wasting it they may, and always do, get less.

  Already, in treating of Poor-Laws and National Education, we have examined in detail the reaction by which these attempts at a multiplication of results are defeated. In the case of sanitary administrations, a similar reaction may be traced; showing itself, amongst other ways, in the checking of all social improvements that demand popular enterprise and perseverance. Under the natural order of things, the unfolding of an intelligent, self-helping character, must keep pace with the amelioration of physical circumstances—the advance of the one with the exertions put forth to achieve the other; so that in establishing arrangements conducive to robustness of body, robustness of mind must be insensibly acquired. Contrariwise, to whatever extent activity of thought and firmness of purpose are made less needful by an artificial performance of their work, to that same extent must their increase, and the dependent social improvements, be retarded.

  Should proof of this be asked for, it may be found in the contrast between English energy and Continental helplessness. English engineers (Manby, Wilson, and Co.) established the first gas-works in Paris, after the failure of a French company; and many of the gas-works throughout Europe have been constructed by Englishmen. An English engineer (Miller) introduced steam navigation on the Rhone; another English engineer (Pritchard) succeeded in ascending the Danube by steam, after the French and Germans had failed. The first steam-boats on the Loire were built by Englishmen (Fawcett and Preston); the great suspension bridge at Pesth has been built by an Englishman (Tierney Clarke); and an Englishman (Vignolles) is now building a still greater suspension bridge over the Dnieper; many continental railways have had Englishmen as consulting engineers; and in spite of the celebrated Mining College at Freyburg, several of the mineral fields along the Rhine have been opened up by English capital employing English skill. Now why is this? Why were our coaches so superior to the diligences and eilwagen of our neighbours? Why did our railway system develop so much faster? Why are our towns better drained, better paved, and better supplied with water? There was originally no greater mechanical aptitude, and no greater desire to progress in us than in the connate nations of northern Europe. If anything, we were comparatively deficient in these respects. Early improvements in the arts of life were imported. The germs of our silk and woollen manufactures came from abroad. The first water-works in London were erected by a Dutchman. How happens it, then, that we have now reversed the relationship? How happens it, that instead of being dependent on continental skill and enterprise, our skill and enterprise are at a premium on the Continent? Manifestly the change is due to difference of discipline. Having been left in a greater degree than others to manage their own affairs, the English people have become self-helping, and have acquired great practical ability. Whilst conversely that comparative helplessness of the paternally-governed nations of Europe, illustrated in the above facts, and commented upon by Laing, in his “Notes of a Traveller,” and by other observers, is a natural result of the state-superintendence policy—is the reaction attendant on the action of official mechanisms—is the atrophy corresponding to some artificial hypertrophy.

  § 8.

  One apparent difficulty accompanying the doctrine now contended for remains to be noticed. If sanitary administration by the state be wrong, because it implies a deduction from the citizen’s property greater than is needful for maintaining his rights, then is sanitary administration by municipal authorities wrong also for the same reason. Be it by general government or by local government, the levying of compulsory rates for drainage, and for paving and lighting, is inadmissible, as indirectly making legislative protection more costly than necessary, or, in other words, turning it into aggression (p. 278); and if so, it follows that neither the past, present, nor proposed methods of securing the health of towns are equitable.

  This seems an awkward conclusion; nevertheless, as deducible from our general principle, we have no alternative but to take to it. How streets and courts are rightly to be kept in order remains to be considered. Respecting sewage there would be no difficulty. Houses might readily be drained on the same mercantile principle that they are now supplied with water. It is highly probable that in the hands of a private company the resulting manure would not only pay the cost of collection, but would yield a considerable profit. But if not, the return on the invested capital would be made up by charges to those whose houses were drained: the alternative of having their connections with the main sewer stopped, being as good a security for payment as the analogous ones possessed by water and gas companies. Paving and lighting would properly fall to the management of house-owners. Were there no public provision for such conveniences, house-owners would quickly find it their interest to furnish them. Some speculative building society having set the example of improvement in this direction, competition would do the rest. Dwellings without proper footway before them, and with no lamps to show the tenants to their doors, would stand empty, when better accommodation was offered. And good paving and lighting having thus become essential, landlords would combine for the more economical supply of them.

  To the objection that the perversity of individual landlords and the desire of others to take unfair advantage of the rest, would render such an arrangement impracticable, the reply is that in new suburban streets not yet taken to by the authorities such an arrangement is, to a considerable extent, already carried out, and would be much better carried out but for the consciousness that it is merely temporary. Moreover, no adverse inference could be drawn, were it even shown that for the present such an arrangement is impracticable. So, also, was personal freedom once. So once was representative government, and is still with many nations. As repeatedly pointed out, the practicability of recognising men’s rights is proportionate to the degree in which men have become moral. That an organization dictated by the law of equal freedom cannot yet be fully realized is no proof of its imperfection: is proof only of our imperfection. And as by diminishing this, the process of adaptation has already fitted us for institutions which were once too good for us, so will it go on to fit us for others that may be too good for us now.

  § 9.

  We find, then, that besides being at variance with the moral law, and besides involving absurdities, the dogma that it is the duty of the state to protect the health of its subjects may be successfully combated on grounds of policy. It turns out, upon examination, to be near akin to the older dogma that it is the duty of the state to provide for the spiritual welfare of its subjects—must, if consistently followed out, necessitate a co-extensive organization—and must, for aught there appears to the contrary, produce analogous results. Of the sufferings consequent upon unrestrained empiricism, it may safely be said that they are not so great as is represented; and that in as far as they do exist, they are amongst the penalties nature has attached to ignorance or imbecility, and which cannot be dissociated from it without ultimately entailing much greater sufferings. The anxiety to improve by legislative measures the salubrity of our towns, is deprecated on the ground that natural causes insure the continuance of progress—insure further sanitary reforms, just as they insure advancement in the arts of life, the development of manufactures and commerce, and the spread of education. Moreover, it appears that such of these measures as are directed to the improvement of habitations, aim at what laws either cannot do, or what is being done much better without them; and to the rest it is objected, that they are not likely to accomplish the proposed end—a belief founded upon the results of all analogous legislation, and confirmed by the little experience we have at present had of sanitary legislation itself. Further it is argued that even could the hoped-for advantages be fully realized they would be purchased at too great a cost; seeing that they could be obtained only by an equivalent retardation in some still more important department of social progress.

  CHAPTER XXIX.

  currency, postal arrangements, etc.

  § 1.

  So constantly have the ideas currency and government been associated—so universal has been the control exercised by lawgivers over monetary systems—and so completely have men come to regard this control as a matter of course, that scarcely any one seems to inquire what would result were it abolished. Perhaps in no case is the necessity of state-superintendence so generally assumed; and in no case will the denial of that necessity cause so much surprise. Yet must the denial be made.

  That laws interfering with currency cannot be enacted without a reversal of state-duty is obvious; for to either forbid the issue or enforce the receipt of certain notes or coin in return for other things, is to infringe the right of exchange—is to prevent men making exchanges which they otherwise would have made, or to oblige them to make exchanges which they otherwise would not have made—is, therefore, to break the law of equal freedom in their persons (Chap. XXIII.). If there be truth in our general principle, it must be impolitic as well as wrong to do this. Nor will those who infer as much be deceived; for it may be shown that all such dictation is not only needless, but necessarily injurious.

  The monetary arrangements of any community are ultimately dependent, like most of its other arrangements, on the morality of its members. Amongst a people altogether dishonest, every mercantile transaction must be effected in coin or goods; for promises to pay cannot circulate at all, where, by the hypothesis, there is no probability that they will be redeemed. Conversely, amongst perfectly honest people paper alone will form the circulating medium; seeing that as no one of such will give promises to pay more than his assets will cover, there can exist no hesitation to receive promises to pay in all cases; and metallic money will be needless, save in nominal amount to supply a measure of value. Manifestly, therefore, during any intermediate state, in which men are neither altogether dishonest nor altogether honest, a mixed currency will exist; and the ratio of paper to coin will vary with the degree of trust individuals can place in each other. There seems no evading this conclusion. The greater the prevalence of fraud, the greater will be the number of transactions in which the seller will part with his goods only for an equivalent of intrinsic value; that is, the greater will be the number of transactions in which coin is required, and the more will the metallic currency preponderate. On the other hand, the more generally men find each other trustworthy, the more frequently will they take payment in notes, bills of exchange, and checks; the fewer will be the cases in which gold and silver are called for, and the smaller will be the quantity of gold and silver in circulation.

  Thus, self-regulating as is a currency when let alone, laws cannot improve its arrangements, although they may, and continually do, derange them. That the state should compel every one who has given promises to pay, be he merchant, private banker, or shareholder in a joint-stock bank, duly to discharge the responsibilities he has incurred, is very true. To do this, however, is merely to maintain men’s rights—to administer justice; and therefore comes within the state’s normal function. But to do more than this—to restrict issues, or forbid notes below a certain denomination, is no less injurious than inequitable. For, limiting the paper in circulation to an amount smaller than it would otherwise reach, inevitably necessitates a corresponding increase of coin; and as coin is locked-up capital, on which the nation gets no interest, a needless increase of it is equivalent to an additional tax equal to the additional interest lost.

  Moreover, even under such restrictions, men must still depend mainly upon each other’s good faith and enlightened self-interest; seeing that only by requiring the banker to keep sufficient specie in his coffers to cash all the notes he has issued, can complete security be given to the holders of them; and to require as much is to destroy the motive for issuing notes. It should be remembered, too, that even now the greater part of our paper currency is wholly unguaranteed. Over the bills of exchange in circulationa which represent liabilities three times as great as are represented by notes, no control is exercised. For the honouring of these there exists no special security, and the multiplication of them is without any limit, save that natural one above mentioned—the credit men find it safe to give each other.

  Lastly, we have experience completely to the point. Whilst in England banking has been perpetually controlled, now by privileging the Bank of England, now by limiting banking partnerships, now by prohibiting banks of issue within a specified circle, and now by restricting the amounts issued—whilst “we have never rested for many years together without some new laws, some new regulations, dictated by the fancy and theory fashionable at particular periods”b —and whilst “by constant interference we have prevented public opinion, and the experience of bankers themselves, adapting and moulding their business to the best and safest course”c —there has existed in Scotland for nearly two centuries a wholly uncontrolled system,—a complete free-trade in currency. And what have been the comparative results? Scotland has had the advantage, both in security and economy. The gain in security is proved by the fact that the proportion of bank failures in Scotland has been far less than in England. Though “by law there has never been any restriction against any one issuing notes in Scotland; yet, in practice, it has ever been impossible for any unsound or unsafe paper to obtain currency.”a And thus the natural guarantee in the one case has been more efficient than the legislative one in the other. The gain in economy is proved by the fact that Scotland has carried on its business with a circulation of £3,500,000, whilst in England the circulation is from £50,000,000 to £60,000,000; or, allowing for difference of population, England has required a currency three times greater than Scotland.

  When, therefore, we find á priori reason for concluding that in any given community the due balance between paper and coin will be spontaneously maintained—when we also find that three-fourths of our own paper circulation is self-regulated—that the restrictions on the other fourth entail a useless sinking of capital—and further, that facts prove a self-regulated system to be both safer and cheaper, we may fairly say, as above, that legislative interference is not only needless, but injurious.

  If evil arises when the state takes upon itself to regulate currency, so also does evil arise when it turns banker. True, no direct breach of duty is committed in issuing notes; for the mere transfer of promises to pay to those who will take them, necessitates neither infringement of men’s rights nor the raising of taxes for illegitimate purposes. And did the state confine itself to this, no harm would result; but when, as in practice, it makes its notes, or, rather, those of its proxy, legal tender, it both violates the law of equal freedom and opens the door to abuses that were else impossible. Having enacted that its agent’s promises to pay shall be taken in discharge of all claims between man and man, there readily follows, when occasion calls, the further step of enacting that these promises to pay shall be taken in discharge of all claims on its agent. This done, further liabilities are incurred without difficulty, for they can be liquidated in paper. Paper continues to be issued without limit, and then comes depreciation; which depreciation is virtually an additional taxation, imposed without the popular consent—a taxation which, if directly imposed, would make men realize the extravagance of their national expenditure, and condemn the war necessitating it. Seeing, then, that there could never occur depreciation, and its concomitant evils, were there no notes made inconvertible by act of parliament—and seeing that there could never exist any motive to make notes legally inconvertible, save for purposes of state-banking—there is good reason to consider state-banking injurious. Should it be urged that, for the occasional evils it entails, state-banking more than compensates by the habitual supply of many millions’ worth of notes, whose place could not be supplied by other notes of equal credit, it is replied that had the Bank of England no alliance with the statea , its notes would still circulate as extensively as now, provided its proprietors continued their solicitude (so constantly shown at the half-yearly meetings) to keep their assets more than three millions above their liabilities.

  There is a third capacity in which a government usually stands related to the currency, viz., as a manufacturer of coins. That in theory a government may carry on the trade of stamping bullion without necessarily reversing its proper function is admitted. Practically, however, it never does so without collaterally transgressing. For the same causes which prevent it from profitably competing with private individuals in other trades, must prevent it from profitably competing with them in this—a truth which inquiry into the management of the mint will sufficiently enforce. And if so, a government can manufacture coins without loss, only by forbidding every one else to manufacture them. By doing this, however, it diminishes men’s liberty of action in the same way as by any other trade restriction—in short, does wrong. And, ultimately, the breach of the law of equal freedom thus committed results in society having to pay more for its metallic currency than would otherwise be necessary.

  Perhaps to many it will seem that by a national mint alone can the extensive diffusion of spurious coinage be prevented. But those who suppose this, forget that under a natural system there would exist the same safeguards against such an evil as at present. The ease with which bad money is distinguished from good, is the ultimate guarantee for genuineness; and this guarantee would be as efficient then as now. Moreover, whatever additional security arises from the punishment of “smashers” would still be afforded; seeing that to bring to justice those who by paying in base coin obtain goods “under false pretences,” comes within the state’s duty. Should it be urged that in the absence of legislative regulations there would be nothing to prevent makers from issuing new mintages of various denominations and degrees of fineness, the reply is that only when some obvious public advantage was to be obtained by it, could a coin differing from current ones get into circulation. Were private mints now permitted, the proprietors of them would be obliged to make their sovereigns like existing ones, because no others would be taken. For the size and weight—they would be tested by gauge and balance, as now (and for a while with great caution). For the fineness—it would be guaranteed by the scrutiny of other makers. Competing firms would assay each other’s issues whenever there appeared the least reason to think them below the established standard, and should their suspicions prove correct, would quickly find some mode of diffusing the information. Probably a single case of exposure and the consequent ruin would ever after prevent attempts to circulate coins of inferior fineness.a

  It is not unlikely that many readers, though unprepared with definite replies to these reasonings, will still doubt their correctness. That the existing monetary system—an actual working system, seemingly kept going by the state—would be benefited by the withdrawal of state-control, is a belief which the strongest arguments will in most cases fail to instil. Custom will bias men in this case, much as in another case it does the vine-growers of France, who, having long been instructed by state-commissioned authorities when to commence the vintage, believe that such dictation is beneficial. So much more does a realized fact influence us than an imagined one, that had the baking and sale of bread been hitherto carried on by government-agents, probably the supply of bread by private enterprise would scarcely be conceived possible, much less advantageous. The philosophical free-trader, however, remembering this effect of habit over the convictions—remembering how innumerable have been the instances in which legislative control was erroneously thought necessary—remembering that in this very matter of currency men once considered it requisite “to use the most ferocious measures to bring as much foreign bullion as possible into the country, and to prevent any going out”—remembering how that interference, like others, proved not only needless but injurious—remembering thus much, the philosophical free-trader will infer that in the present instance also, legislative control is undesirable. Reasons for considering trade in money an exception to the general rule, will weigh but little with him; for he will recollect that similar reasons have been assigned for restricting various trades, and disproved by the results. Rather will he conclude that as, in spite of all prophecies and appearances to the contrary, entire freedom of exchange has been beneficial in other cases, so, despite similar prophecies and adverse appearances, will it be beneficial in this case.

  § 2.

  What was lately said respecting the stamping of bullion may here be repeated respecting the carrying of letters, viz., that it is not intrinsically at variance with state-duty; for it does not in the abstract necessitate any infringement of men’s rights, either directly, or by taxes raised for non-protective purposes. Nevertheless, just as we found reason to think that government could not continue to manufacture coin unless by preventing private individuals from doing the same, we shall also find reason to think that it would cease to carry letters did it not forbid competition. And if so, a government cannot undertake postal functions without reversing its essential function.

  Evidence that private enterprise would supersede state-agency in this matter, were it allowed the opportunity, is deducible not only from our general experience of the inferiority of government in the capacity of manufacturer, trader, or manager of business, but from facts immediately bearing upon the question. Thus we must remember that the efficiency to which our postal system has actually attained is not due to its being under public administration, but is due to pressure from without. Changes have been forced upon the authorities, not introduced by them. The mail-coach system was established, and for a length of time managed, by a private individual, and lived down official opposition. The reform originated by Mr. Rowland Hill was strenuously resisted; and it is generally reported that even now, official perversity prevents his plans from being fully carried out. Whereas, seeing that the speculative spirit of trade is not only ready, but eager to satisfy social wants, it is probable that under a natural state of things modern postal improvements would have been willingly adopted, if not forestalled. Should it be alleged that private enterprize would not be competent to so gigantic an undertaking, it is replied that already there are extensive organizations of analogous character which work well. The establishments of our large carriers ramify throughout the whole kingdom; whilst we have a Parcels’ Delivery Company, co-extensive in its sphere with the London District Post, and quite as efficient. Private agencies for communicating information beat public ones even now, wherever they are permitted to compete with them. The foreign expresses of our daily papers are uniformly before the government expresses. Copies of a royal speech, or statements of an important vote, are diffused throughout the country by the press, with a rapidity exceeding that even achieved by the Post Office; and if expedition is shown in the stamping and sorting of letters, it is far surpassed by the expedition of parliamentary reporting. Moreover, much of the postal service itself is already performed by private agency. Not only are our internal mails carried by contract, but nearly all our external ones also; and where they are carried by government they are carried at a great loss. In proof of which assertion it needs but to quote the fact that the Peninsular and Oriental Steam Navigation Company offers to secure for us a direct monthly communication with Australia; two communications, monthly, from Southampton to Alexandria; two communications, monthly, from Suez to Ceylon, Singapore, and China; and two communications, monthly, from Calcutta to Singapore and China; besides performing the service twice a month between Suez and Bombay, and all for the same sum of money which the latter service alone (Suez to Bombay) now costs the governments of India and Great Britain.

  If, then, public letter-carrying has been brought to its existing efficiency by the thought, enterprize, and urgency of private persons, in spite of official resistance—if organizations similar to our postal ones already exist and work well—if, as conveyers of intelligence by other modes than the mail, trading bodies uniformly excel the state—if much of the mail service itself is performed by such trading bodies, and that, too, on the largest scale, with incomparably greater economy than the state can perform it with—there is nothing unreasonable in the conclusion that, were it permitted, commercial enterprize would generate a letter-carrying system as efficient as, if not more efficient than, our present one. It is true that many obstacles stand in the way of such a result. But because it is now scarcely possible to see our way over these, it does not at all follow that they may not be surmounted. There are moral inventions, as well as physical ones. And it frequently happens that the instrumentalities which ultimately accomplish certain social desiderata, are as little foreseen as are the mechanical appliances of one generation by the previous one. Take the Railway Clearing House for an example. Hence it is not too much to expect that under the pressure of social necessity, and the stimulus of self-interest, satisfactory modes of meeting all such difficulties would be discovered.

  However, any doubts which may still be entertained on the point do not militate against our general principle. It is clear that the restriction put upon the liberty of trade, by forbidding private letter-carrying establishments, is a breach of state-duty. It is also clear that were that restriction abolished, a natural postal system would eventually grow up, could it surpass in efficiency our existing one. And it is further clear that if it could not surpass it, the existing system might rightly continue; for, as at first said, the fulfillment of postal functions by the state is not intrinsically at variance with the fulfillment of its essential function.

  § 3.

  The execution by government of what are commonly called public works, as lighthouses, harbours of refuge, &c., implying, as it does, the imposition of taxes for other purposes than maintaining men’s rights, is as much forbidden by our definition of state-duty as is a system of national education, or a religious establishment. Nor is this unavoidable inference really an inconvenient one; however much it may at first seem so. The agency by which these minor wants of society are now satisfied, is not the only agency competent to satisfy them. Wherever there exists a want, there will also exist an impulse to get it fulfilled, and this impulse is sure, eventually, to produce action. In the present case, as in others, that which is beneficial to the community as a whole, it will become the private interest of some part of the community to accomplish. And as this private interest has been so efficient a provider of roads, canals, and railways, there is no reason why it should not be an equally efficient provider of harbours of refuge, lighthouses, and all analogous appliances. Even were there no classes whose private interests would be obviously subserved by executing such works, this inference might still be defended. But there are such classes. Ship-owners and merchants have a direct and ever-waking motive to diminish the dangers of navigation; and were they not taught by custom to look for state-aid, would themselves quickly unite to establish safeguards. Or, possibly, they would be anticipated by a combination of Marine Insurance Offices (themselves protective institutions, originated by self-interest). But inevitably, in some way or other, the numerousness of the parties concerned, and the largeness of the capital at stake, would guarantee the taking of all requisite precautions. That enterprise which built the docks of London, Liverpool, and Birkenhead—which is enclosing the Wash—which so lately bridged the Atlantic by steam—and which is now laying down the electric telegraph across the Channel—might safely be trusted to provide against the contingencies of coast navigation.

  PART IV.

  CHAPTER XXX.

  general considerations.

  § 1.

  Social philosophy may be aptly divided (as political economy has been) into statics and dynamics; the first treating of the equilibrium of a perfect society, the second of the forces by which society is advanced towards perfection. To determine what laws we must obey for the obtainment of complete happiness is the object of the one, whilst that of the other is to analyze the influences which are making us competent to obey these laws. Hitherto we have concerned ourselves chiefly with the statics, touching upon the dynamics only occasionally for purposes of elucidation. Now, however, the dynamics claim special attention. Some of the phenomena of progress already referred to need further explanation, and many others associated with them remain to be noticed. There are also sundry general considerations not admissible into foregoing chapters, which may here be fitly included.

  § 2.

  And first let us mark, that the course of civilization could not possibly have been other than it has been. Whether a perfect social state might have been at once established; and why, if it might have been, it was not—why for unnumbered ages the world was filled with inferior creatures only—and why mankind were left to make it fit for human life by clearing it of these—are questions that need not be discussed here. But given an unsubdued earth; given the being—man, appointed to overspread and occupy it; given the laws of life what they are; and no other series of changes than that which has taken place, could have taken place.

  For be it remembered, that the ultimate purpose of creation—the production of the greatest amount of happiness—can be fulfilled only under certain fixed conditions (p. 68). Each member of the race fulfilling it, must not only be endowed with faculties enabling him to receive the highest enjoyment in the act of living, but must be so constituted that he may obtain full satisfaction for every desire, without diminishing the power of others to obtain like satisfaction: nay, to fulfil the purpose perfectly, must derive pleasure from seeing pleasure in others. Now, for beings thus constituted to multiply in a world already tenanted by inferior creatures—creatures that must be dispossessed to make room—is a manifest impossibility. By the definition such beings must lack all desire to exterminate the races they are to supplant. They must, indeed, have a repugnance to exterminating them, for the ability to derive pleasure from seeing pleasure, involves the liability to pain from seeing pain: the sympathy by which either of these results is effected, simply having for its function to reproduce observed emotions, irrespective of their kind. Evidently, therefore, having no wish to destroy—to destroy giving them, on the contrary, disagreeable sensations—these hypothetical beings, instead of subjugating and overspreading the earth, must themselves become the prey of pre-existing creatures, in whom destructive desires predominate. How then are the circumstances of the case to be met? Evidently the aboriginal man must have a constitution adapted to the work he has to perform, joined with a dormant capability of developing into the ultimate man when the conditions of existence permit. To the end that he may prepare the earth for its future inhabitants—his descendants, he must possess a character fitting him to clear it of races endangering his life, and races occupying the space required by mankind. Hence he must have a desire to kill, for it is the universal law of life that to every needful act must attach a gratification, the desire for which may serve as a stimulus (p. 19). He must further be devoid of sympathy, or must have but the germ of it, for he would otherwise be incapacitated for his destructive office. In other words, he must be what we call a savage, and must be left to acquire fitness for social life as fast as the conquest of the earth renders social life possible.

  Whoever thinks that a thoroughly-civilized community could be formed out of men qualified to wage war with the pre-existing occupants of the earth—that is, whoever thinks that men might behave sympathetically to their fellows, whilst behaving unsympathetically to inferior creatures, will discover his error on looking at the facts. He will find that human beings are cruel to one another, in proportion as their habits are predatory. The Indian, whose life is spent in the chase, delights in torturing his brother man as much as in killing game. His sons are schooled into fortitude by long days of torment, and his squaw made prematurely old by hard treatment. The treachery and vindictiveness which Bushmen or Australians show to one another and to Europeans, are accompaniments of that neverceasing enmity existing between them and the denizens of the wilderness. Amongst partially-civilized nations the two characteristics have ever borne the same relationship. Thus the spectators in the Roman amphitheatres were as much delighted by the slaying of gladiators as by the death-struggles of wild beasts. The ages during which Europe was thinly peopled, and hunting a chief occupation, were also the ages of feudal violence, universal brigandage, dungeons, tortures. Here in England a whole province depopulated to make game preserves, and a law sentencing to death the serf who killed a stag, show how great activity of the predatory instinct and utter indifference to human happiness coexisted. In later days, when bull-baiting and cock-fighting were common pastimes, the penal code was far more severe than now; prisons were full of horrors; men put in the pillory were maltreated by the populace; and the inmates of lunatic asylums, chained naked to the wall, were exhibited for money, and tormented for the amusement of visitors. Conversely, amongst ourselves a desire to diminish human misery is accompanied by a desire to ameliorate the condition of inferior creatures. Whilst the kindlier feeling of men is seen in all varieties of philanthropic effort, in charitable societies, in associations for improving the dwellings of the labouring classes, in anxiety for popular education, in attempts to abolish capital punishment, in zeal for temperance reformation, in ragged schools, in endeavours to protect climbing boys, in inquiries concerning “labour and the poor,” in emigration funds, in the milder treatment of children, and so on, it also shows itself in societies for the prevention of cruelty to animals, in acts of parliament to put down the use of dogs for purpose of draught, in the condemnation of steeplechases and battues, in the late inquiry why the pursuers of a stag should not be punished as much as the carter who maltreats his horse, and lastly, in vegetarianism. Moreover, to make the evidence complete, we have the fact that men, partially adapted to the social state, retrograde on being placed in circumstances which call forth the old propensities. The barbarizing of colonists, who live under aboriginal conditions, is universally remarked. The back settlers of America, amongst whom unavenged murders, rifle duels, and Lynch law prevail—or, better still, the trappers, who leading a savage life have descended to savage habits, to scalping, and occasionally even to cannibalism—sufficiently exemplify it.

  But, indeed, without collecting from so wide a field, illustrations of the truth that the behaviour of men to the lower animals and their behaviour to each other, bear a constant relationship, it becomes clear that such is the fact, on observing that the same impulses govern in either case. The blind desire to inflict suffering, distinguishes not between the creatures who exhibit that suffering, but obtains gratification indifferently from the agonies of beast and human being—delights equally in worrying a brute, and in putting a prisoner to the rack. Conversely, the sympathy which prevents its possessor from inflicting pain, that he may avoid pain himself, and which tempts him to give happiness that he may have happiness reflected back upon him, is similarly undistinguishing. As already said, its function is simply to reproduce in one being the emotions exhibited by other beings; and every one must have noticed that it extracts pleasure from the friskiness of a newly-unchained dog, or excites pity for an ill-used beast of burden, as readily as it generates fellow feeling with the joys and sorrows of men.

  So that only by giving us some utterly different mental constitution could the process of civilization have been altered. Assume that the creative scheme is to be wrought out by natural means, and it is necessary that the primitive man should be one whose happiness is obtained at the expense of the happiness of other beings. It is necessary that the ultimate man should be one who can obtain perfect happiness without deducting from the happiness of others. After accomplishing its appointed purpose, the first of these constitutions has to be moulded into the last. And the manifold evils which have filled the world for these thousands of years—the murders, enslavings, and robberies—the tyrannies of rulers, the oppressions of class, the persecutions of sect and party, the multiform embodiments of selfishness in unjust laws, barbarous customs, dishonest dealings, exclusive manners, and the like—are simply instances of the disastrous working of this original and once needful constitution, now that mankind have grown into conditions for which it is not fitted—are nothing but symptoms of the suffering attendant upon the adaptation of humanity to its new circumstances.

  § 3.

  But why, it may be asked, has this adaptation gone on so slowly? Judging from the rapidity with which habits are formed in the individual, and seeing how those habits, or rather the latent tendencies towards them, become hereditary, it would seem that the needful modification should have been completed long ago. How, then, are we to understand the delay?

  The answer is that the new conditions to which adaptation has been taking place have themselves grown up but slowly. Only when a revolution in circumstances is at once both marked and permanent, does a decisive alteration of character follow. If the demand for increase of power in some particular faculty is great and unceasing, development will go on with proportionate speed. And, conversely, there will be an appreciable dwindling in a faculty altogether deprived of exercise. But the conditions of human life have undergone no changes sudden enough to produce these immediate results.

  Thus, note in the first place, that the warfare between man and the creatures at enmity with him has continued up to the present time, and over a large portion of the globe is going on now. Note, further, that where the destructive propensities have almost fulfilled their purpose, and are on the eve of losing their gratification, they make to themselves an artificial sphere of exercise by game-preserving, and are so kept in activity after they would otherwise have become dormant. But note, chiefly, that the old predatory disposition is in a certain sense self-maintained. For it generates between men and men a hostile relationship, similar to that which it generates between men and inferior animals; and by doing so provides itself a lasting source of excitement. This happens inevitably. The desires of the savage acting, as we have seen, indiscriminately, necessarily lead him to perpetual trespasses against his fellows, and, consequently, to endless antagonisms—to quarrels of individuals, to fightings of tribes, to feuds of clan with clan, to wars of nations. And thus being by their constitutions made mutual foes, as well as foes to the lower races, men keep alive in each other the old propensities, after the original need for them has in great measure ceased.

  Hitherto, then, human character has changed but slowly, because it has been subject to two conflicting sets of conditions. On the one hand, the discipline of the social state has been developing it into the sympathetic form; whilst on the other hand, the necessity for self-defence partly of man against brute, partly of man against man, and partly of societies against each other, has been maintaining the old unsympathetic form. And only where the influence of the first set of conditions has exceeded that of the last, and then only in proportion to the excess, has modification taken place. Amongst tribes who have kept each other’s anti-social characteristics in full activity by constant conflict, no advance has been possible. But where warfare against man and beast has ceased to be continuous, or where it has become the employment of but a portion of the people, the effects of living in the associated state have become greater than the effects of barbarizing antagonisms, and progress has resulted.

  Regarded thus, civilization no longer appears to be a regular unfolding after a specific plan; but seems rather a development of man’s latent capabilities under the action of favourable circumstances; which favourable circumstances, mark, were certain some time or other to occur. Those complex influences underlying the higher orders of natural phenomena, but more especially those underlying the organic world, work in subordination to the law of probabilities. A plant, for instance, produces thousands of seeds. The greater part of these are destroyed by creatures that live upon them, or fall into places where they cannot germinate. Of the young plants produced by those which do germinate, many are smothered by their neighbours; others are blighted by insects, or eaten up by animals; and in the average of cases, only one of them produces a perfect specimen of its species, which, escaping all dangers, brings to maturity seeds enough to continue the race. Thus is it also with every kind of creature. Thus is it also, as M. Quetelet has shown, with the phenomena of human life. And thus was it even with the germination and growth of society. The seeds of civilization existing in the aboriginal man, and distributed over the earth by his multiplication, were certain in the lapse of time to fall here and there into circumstances fit for their development; and, in spite of all blightings and uprootings, were certain, by sufficient repetition of these occurences, ultimately to originate a civilization which should outlive all disasters and arrive at perfection.

  § 4.

  Whilst the continuance of the old predatory instinct after the fulfilment of its original purpose, has retarded civilization by giving rise to conditions at variance with those of social life, it has subserved civilization by clearing the earth of inferior races of men. The forces which are working out the great scheme of perfect happiness, taking no account of incidental suffering, exterminate such sections of mankind as stand in their way, with the same sternness that they exterminate beasts of prey and herds of useless ruminants. Be he human being, or be he brute, the hindrance must be got rid of. Just as the savage has taken the place of lower creatures, so must he, if he have remained too long a savage, give place to his superior. And, observe, it is necessarily to his superior that, in the great majority of cases, he does give place. For what are the pre-requisites to a conquering race? Numerical strength, or an improved system of warfare; both of which are indications of advancement. Numerical strength implies certain civilizing antecedents. Deficiency of game may have necessitated agricultural pursuits, and so made the existence of a larger population possible; or distance from other tribes may have rendered war less frequent, and so have prevented its perpetual decimations; or accidental superiority over neighbouring tribes, may have led to the final subjugation and enslaving of these: in any of which cases the comparatively peaceful condition resulting, must have allowed progress to commence. Evidently, therefore, from the very beginning, the conquest of one people over another has been, in the main, the conquest of the social man over the anti-social man; or, strictly speaking, of the more adapted over the less adapted.

  In another mode, too, the continuance of the unsympathetic character has indirectly aided civilization whilst it has directly hindered it; namely, by giving rise to slavery. It has been observed—and, as it seems, truly enough—that only by such stringent coercion as is exercised over men held in bondage, could the needful power of continuous application have been developed. Devoid of this, as from his habits of life the aboriginal man necessarily was (and as, indeed, existing specimens show), probably the severest discipline continued for many generations was required to make him submit contentedly to the necessities of his new state. And if so, the barbarous selfishness which maintained that discipline, must be considered as having worked a collateral benefit, though in itself so radically bad.

  Let not the reader be alarmed. Let him not fear that these admissions will excuse new invasions and new oppressions. Nor let any one who fancies himself called upon to take Nature’s part in this matter, by providing discipline for idle negroes or others, suppose that these dealings of the past will serve for precedents. Rightly understood, they will do no such thing. That phase of civilization during which forcible supplantings of the weak by the strong, and systems of savage coercion, are on the whole advantageous, is a phase which spontaneously and necessarily gives birth to these things. It is not in pursuance of any calmly-reasoned conclusions respecting nature’s intention that men conquer and enslave their fellows—it is not that they smother their kindly feelings to subserve civilization; but it is that as yet constituted they care little what suffering they inflict in the pursuit of gratification, and even think the achievement and exercise of mastery honourable. As soon, however, as there arises a perception that these subjugations and tyrannies are not right—as soon as the sentiment to which they are repugnant becomes sufficiently powerful to suppress them, it is time for them to cease. The question altogether hinges upon the amount of moral sense possessed by men; or, in other words, upon the degree of adaptation to the social state they have undergone. Unconsciousness that there is anything wrong in exterminating inferior races, or in reducing them to bondage, presupposes an almost rudimentary state of men’s sympathies and their sense of human rights. The oppressions they then inflict and submit to, are not, therefore, detrimental to their characters—do not retard in them the growth of the social sentiments, for these have not yet reached a development great enough to be offended by such doings. And hence the aids given to civilization by clearing the earth of its least advanced inhabitants, and by forcibly compelling the rest to acquire industrial habits, are given without moral adaptation receiving any corresponding check. Quite otherwise is it, however, when the flagitiousness of these gross forms of injustice begins to be recognised. Then the times give proof that the old regime is no longer fit. Further progress cannot be made until the newly-felt wrong has been done away or diminished. Were it possible under such circumstances to uphold past institutions and practices (which, happily, it is not), it would be at the expense of a continual searing of men’s consciences. The feelings whose predominance gives possibility to an advanced social state would be constantly repressed—kept down on a level with the old arrangements, to the stopping of all further progress; and before those who have grown beyond one of these probationary states could re-institute it, they must resume that inferior character to which it was natural. Before a forced servitude could be again established for the industrial discipline of eight hundred thousand Jamaica blacks, the thirty millions of English whites who established it would have to retrograde in all things—in truthfulness, fidelity, generosity, honesty, and even in material condition; for to diminish men’s moral sense is to diminish their fitness for acting together, and, therefore, to render the best producing and distributing organizations impracticable. Another illustration this of the perfect economy of Nature. Whilst the injustice of conquests and enslavings is not perceived, they are on the whole beneficial; but as soon as they are felt to be at variance with the moral law, the continuance of them retards adaptation in one direction, more than it advances it in another: a fact which our new preacher of the old doctrine, that might is right, may profitably consider a little.

  § 5.

  Contrasted as are their units, primitive communities and advanced ones must essentially differ in the principles of their structure. Like other organisms, the social organism has to pass in the course of its development through temporary forms, in which sundry of its functions are fulfilled by appliances destined to disappear as fast as the ultimate appliances become efficient. Associated humanity has larval appendages analogous to those of individual creatures. As in the common Triton of our ponds, the external lungs or branchiæ dwindle away when the internal lungs have grown to maturity; and as during the embryo stage of the higher vertebrata, temporary organs appear, serve their purpose awhile, and are subsequently re-absorbed, leaving only signs of their having been; so, in the earlier forms of the body politic do there exist institutions which after answering their ends for a time are superseded and become extinct.

  But deciduous institutions imply deciduous sentiments. Dependent as they are upon popular character, established political systems cannot die out until the feeling which upholds them dies out. Hence during man’s apprenticeship to the social state there must predominate in him some impulse corresponding to the arrangements requisite; which impulse diminishes as the probationary organization made possible by it, merges into the ultimate organization. The nature and operation of this impulse now demand our attention.

  § 6.

  “I had so great a respect for the memory of Henry IV.,” said the celebrated French robber and assassin, Cartouche, “that had a victim I was pursuing taken refuge under his statue on the Pont Neuf, I would have spared his life.” An apt illustration, this, of the co-existence of profound hero-worship with the extremest savageness, and of the means hero-worship affords whereby the savage may be ruled. The necessity for some such sentiment to bind men together whilst they are as yet unsympathetic, has been elsewhere shown. For the anti-social man to be transformed into the social man, he must live in the social state. But how can a society be maintained when, by the hypothesis, the aggressive desires of its members are destructive of it? Evidently its members must possess some counterbalancing tendency which shall keep them in the social state despite the incongruity—which shall make them submit to the restraint imposed—and which shall diminish as adaptation to the new circumstances renders restraint less needful. Such counterbalancing tendency we have in this same sentiment of hero-worship; a sentiment which leads men to prostrate themselves before any manifestation of power, be it in chief, feudal lord, king, or constitutional government, and makes them act in subordination to that power.

  Facts illustrating this alleged connection between strength of hero-worship and strength of the aggressive propensities, together with other facts illustrating the simultaneous decline of both, were given when the matter was first discussed (p. 197). Now, however, we may appropriately examine the evidence in detail. The proposition is, that in proportion as the members of a community are barbarous, that is, in proportion as they show a lack of moral sense by seeking gratification at each other’s expense, in the same proportion will they show depth of reverence for authority. What, now, are the several indications of deficient moral sense? First on the list stands disregard of human life; next, habitual violation of personal liberty; next to that, theft, and the dishonesty akin to it. Each of these, if the foregoing theory be true, we ought to find most prevalent where the awe of power is most profound.

  Well, is it not a fact that grovelling submission to despotic rule flourishes side by side with the practice of human sacrifices, infanticide, and assassination? We find suttees and thuggee amongst a race who have ever been abject slaves. In some of the Pacific isles, where the immolation of children to idols, and the burying of parents alive, are common, “so high is the reverence for hereditary chieftainship that it is often connected with the idea of Divine power.” Complete absolutism uniformly co-exists with cannibalism. We read of human hecatombs in connection with the extremest prostration of subjects to rulers. In Madagascar, where men are put to death on the most trifling occasions, and where the coast is decorated with skulls stuck on poles, the people are governed on the severest maxims of feudal law, by absolute chieftains under an absolute monarch. The head-hunting Dyaks of Borneo have petty tyrants over them. There is autocratic government, too, for the bloodthirsty Mongolian races. Both positive and negative proof of this association is given by Mr. Grote, where he says, “In no city of historical Greece did there prevail either human sacrifices or deliberate mutilations, such as cutting off the nose, ears, hands, feet, &c., or castration, or selling of children into slavery, or polygamy, or the feeling of unlimited obedience towards one man; all of them customs, which might be pointed out as existing amongst the contemporary Carthagimians, Egyptians, Persians, Thracians,” &c. If we consult mediæval history, there, along with loyalty strongly manifested, are the judicial combats, right of private war, constant wearing of arms, religious martyrdoms and massacres, &c., to prove that life was held in less respect than now. Glancing over modern Europe, we find the assassinations of Italy, the cruelties of the Croats and Czecks, and the Austrian butcheries, illustrating the relationship. Whilst, amongst ourselves, diminished reverence for authority has occurred simultaneously with diminished sanguinariness in our criminal code.

  That infringements of personal liberty are greatest where awe of power is greatest, is in some sort a truism, seeing that forced servitude, through which alone extensive violations of human liberty can be made, is impossible, unless the sentiment of power-worship is strong. Thus, the ancient Persians could never have allowed themselves to be considered the private property of their monarchs, had it not been for the overwhelming influence of this sentiment. But that such submission is associated with a defect of moral sense, is best seen in the acknowledged truth that readiness to cringe is accompanied by an equal readiness to tyrannize. Satraps lorded it over the people as their king over them. The Helots were not more coerced by their Spartan masters than these in turn by their oligarchy. Of the servile Hindoos we are told that “they indemnify themselves for their passiveness to their superiors by their tyranny, cruelty, and violence to those in their power.” During the feudal ages, whilst the people were bondsmen to the nobles, the nobles were vassals to their kings, their kings to the pope. In Russia, at the present moment, the aristocracy are dictated to by their emperor much as they themselves dictate to their serfs. And when to these facts we add the significant one elsewhere dwelt upon (pp. 161 and 178), that the treatment of women by their husbands, and children by their parents, has been tyrannical in proportion as the servility of subjects to rulers has been extreme, we have sufficient proof that hero-worship is strongest where there is least regard for human freedom.

  Equally abundant evidence exists that the prevalence of theft is similarly associated with a predominance of the loyalty-producing faculty. Books of travels give proof that amongst uncivilized races pilfering and the irresponsible power of chiefs co-exist. The same association of dishonesty and submissiveness is found amongst more advanced peoples. It is so with the Hindoos, with the Cinghalese, and with the inhabitants of Madagascar. The piracy of the Malays, and of the Chinese, and the long-continued predatory habits of the Arab races, both on land and sea, exist in conjunction with obedience to despotic rule. “One quality,” says Kohl, “which the Lettes show, with all enslaved tribes, is a great disposition to thieving.” The Russians, to whom worship of their emperor is a needful luxury, confess openly that they are cheats, and laugh over the confession. The Poles, whose servile salutation is, “I throw myself under your feet,” and amongst whom nobles are cringed to by the Jews and citizens, and these again by the people, are certainly not noted for probity. Turning to the superior races, we find that they, too, have passed through phases in which this same relationship of characteristics was strongly marked. Thus, the times when fealty of serfs to feudal barons was strongest, were times of universal rapine. “In Germany a very large proportion of the rural nobility lived by robbery;” their castles being built with a special view to this occupation, and that even by ecclesiasticsa Burghers were fleeced, towns were now and then sacked, and Jews were tortured for their money. Kings were as much thieves as the rest. They laid violent hands upon the goods of their vassals, like John of England and Philip Augustus of France; they cheated their creditors by debasing the coinage; they impressed men’s horses without paying for them; and they seized the goods of traders, sold them, and pocketed a large part of the proceeds. Meantime, whilst freebooters overran the land, pirates covered the sea, the Cinque Ports and St. Maloe’s being the head quarters of those infesting the English Channel.

  Between these days and ours, the gradual decline of loyalty—as shown in the extinction of feudal relationships, in the abandonment of divine right of kings, in the reduction of monarchical power, and in the comparative leniency with which treason is now punished—has accompanied an equally gradual increase of honesty, and of regard for people’s lives and liberties. By how much men are still deficient in respect for each other’s rights, by so much are they still penetrated with respect for authority; and we may even trace in existing parties the constant ratio preserved between these characteristics. It has been shown, for instance, that the unskilled labourers of the metropolis, who, instead of entertaining violently democratic opinions, appear to have no political opinions whatever, or, if they think at all, rather lean towards the maintenance of “things as they are,” and part of whom (the coalwhippers) are extremely proud of their having turned out to a man on the 10th of April, 1848, and become special constables for the “maintenance of law and order” on the day of the great Chartist Demonstration,—it has been shown that these same unskilled labourers constitute the most immoral class. The Criminal-Returns prove them to be nine times as dishonest, five times as drunken, and nine times as savage (shown by the assaults), as the rest of the community. Of like import is the observation respecting convicts, quoted and confirmed by Captain Maconochie, that “a good prisoner (i. e. a submissive one) is usually a bad man.”a If, again, we turn over the newspapers which circulate amongst court satellites, and chronicle the movements of the haut-ton, which ascribe national calamities to the omission of a royal title from a new coin, and which apologise for continental despots; we read in them excuses for war and standing armies, sneerings at “peace-mongers,” defences of capital punishment, condemnations of popular enfranchisement, diatribes against freedom of exchange, rejoicings over territorial robberies, and vindications of church-rate seizures: showing that, where belief in the sacredness of authority most lingers, belief in the sacredness of life, of liberty, and of property, is least displayed.

  § 7.

  The fact that, during civilization, hero-worship and moral sense vary inversely, is simply the obverse of the fact already hinted, that society is possible so long only as they continue to do this. Where there is insufficient reverence for the Divine Law, there must be supplementary reverence for human law; otherwise there will be complete lawlessness or barbarism. Evidently, if men are to live together, the absence of internal power to rule themselves rightly towards each other, necessitates the presence of external power to enforce such behaviour as may make association tolerable; and this power can become operative only by being held in awe. So that wild races deficient in the allegiance-producing sentiment cannot enter into a civilized state at all; but have to be supplanted by others that can. And it must further follow, that if in any community loyalty diminishes at a greater rate than equity increases, there will arise a tendency towards social dissolution—a tendency which the populace of Paris threaten to illustrate.

  How needful the continuance of a savage selfishness renders the continuance of a proportionate amount of power-worship, may be perceived daily. Listen to the chattings of men about their affairs; examine into trade practices; read over business correspondence; or get a solicitor to detail his conversations with clients:—you will find that in most cases conduct depends, not upon what is right, but upon what is legal. Provided they “keep o’ the windy side of the law,” the great majority are but little restrained by regard for strict rectitude. The question with your every-day man of the world is, not—May the claimant justly require thus much of me? but rather—“Is it so nominated in the bond?” If “an action will lie,” such an one will commonly enough take proceedings to obtain what he knows himself not equitably entitled to; and if “the law allows it and the court awards it,” will pocket all he can get without scruple. When we find doings like these regarded as matters of course, and those guilty of them passing for respectable men—when we thus find that so many will deal fairly by their fellows only on compulsion—we discover how requisite is the sentiment from which the compelling instrumentality derives its power.

  Without doubt this sentiment has begotten many gigantic evils, some of which it still nurtures. The various superstitions that have prevailed, and that still prevail, as to the great things legislatures can do, and the disastrous meddlings growing out of these superstitions, are due to it. The veneration which produces submission to a government, unavoidably invests that government with proportionately high attributes; for being in essence a worship of power, it can be strongly drawn out towards that only which either has great power, or is believed to have it. Hence, the old delusions that rulers can fix the value of money, the rate of wages, and the price of food. Hence, the still current fallacies about mitigating distress, easing monetary pressures, and curing over-population by law. Hence, also, the monstrous, though generally-received doctrine, that a legislature may equitably take people’s property to such extent, and for such purposes, as it thinks fit—for maintaining state-churches, feeding paupers, paying schoolmasters, founding colonies, &c. And hence, lastly, the astounding belief that an act of parliament can abrogate one of Nature’s decrees—can, for instance, render it criminal in a trader to buy goods in France, and bring them here to sell, whilst the moral law says it is criminal to prevent him! As though conduct could be made right or wrong by the votes of some men sitting in a room in Westminster! Yet, in spite of all this—in spite of the false theories and mischievous interferences, the numberless oppressions, disasters, and miseries, in one way or other traceable to it, we must admit that this power-worship has fulfilled, and does still fulfil, a very important function, and that it may advantageously last as long as it can.

  § 8.

  That it cannot last longer than needful may be readily proved. In a way equally simple and perfect it is made to decline as fast as it can be done without. The very feeling, during whose minority it exercises regency over men, becomes the destroyer of its power. Between the temporary ruler and the ultimate rightful one, there is an unceasing conflict, in which the wane of influence on the one side is necessitated by its growth on the other.

  For, as already shown (p. 97), the sense of rights, by whose sympathetic excitement men are led to behave justly towards each other, is the same sense of rights by which they are prompted to assert their own claims—their own liberty of action—their own freedom to exercise their faculties, and to resist every encroachment. This impulse brooks no restraint, save that imposed by fellow feeling; and disputes all assumption of extra privilege by whomsoever made. Consequently, it is in perpetual antagonism with a sentiment which delights in sub-serviency. “Reverence this authority,” suggests power-worship. “Why should I? who set it over me?” demands instinct of freedom. “Obey,” whispers the one. “Rebel,” mutters the other. “I will do what your Highness bids,” says the one with bated breath. “Pray, sir,” shouts the other, “who are you, that you should dictate to me?” “This man is Divinely appointed to rule over us, and we ought therefore to submit,” argues the one. “I tell you, no,” replies the other; “we have Divinely-endorsed claims to freedom, and it is our duty to maintain them.” And thus the controversy goes on: conduct during each phase of civilization being determined by the relative strengths of the two feelings. Whilst yet too feeble to be operative as a social restraint, moral sense, by its scarcely-heard protest, does not hinder a predominant hero-worship from giving possibility to the most stringent despotism. Gradually, as it grows strong enough to deter men from the grosser trespasses upon each other, does it also grow strong enough to struggle successfully against that excess of coercion no longer required. And when it shall finally have attained sufficient power to give men, by its reflex function, so perfect a regard for each other’s rights as to make government needless; then will it also, by its direct function, give men so wakeful a jealousy of their own rights as to make government impossible. A further example, this, of the admirable simplicity of nature. The same sentiment which fits us for freedom, itself makes us free.

  Of course the institutions of any given age exhibit the compromise made by these contending moral forces at the signing of their last truce. Between the state of unlimited government arising from supremacy of the one feeling, and the state of no government arising from supremacy of the other, lie intermediate forms of social organization, beginning with “despotism tempered by assassination,” and ending with that highest development of the representative system, under which the right of constituents to instruct their delegates is fully admitted—a system which, by making the nation at large a deliberative body, and reducing the legislative assembly to an executive, carries self-government to the fullest extent compatible with the existence of a ruling power. Of necessity the mixed constitutions that characterize this transition period, are in the abstract absurd. The two feelings answering to the popular and monarchical elements, being antagonistic, give utterance to antagonistic ideas. And to suppose that these can be consistently united, is to suppose that yes and no can be reconciled. The monarchical theory is, that the people are in duty bound to submit themselves with all humility to a certain individual—ought to be loyal to him—ought to give allegiance to him, that is—ought to subordinate their wills to his will. Contrariwise the democratic theory—either as specifically defined, or as embodied in our own constitution under the form of a power to withhold supplies and in the legal fiction that the citizen assents to the laws he has to obey—is, that the people ought not to be subject to the will of one, but should fulfil their own wills. Now these are flat contradictions, which no reasoning can harmonize. If a king may rightfully claim obedience, then should that obedience be entire; else there starts up the unanswerable question—why must we obey in this and not in that? But if men should mainly rule themselves, then should they rule themselves altogether. Otherwise it may be asked—why are they their own masters in such and such cases, and not in the rest?

  Nevertheless, though these mixed governments, combining as they do two mutually-destructive hypotheses, are utterly irrational in principle, they must of necessity exist, so long as they are in harmony with the mixed constitution of the partially-adapted man. And it seems that the radical incongruity pervading them cannot be recognized by men, whilst there exists a corresponding incongruity in their own natures: a good illustration of the law that opinion is ultimately determined by the feelings, and not by the intellect.

  § 9.

  How completely, indeed, conceptions of right and wrong in these matters depend upon the balance of impulses existing in men, may be worth considering a moment. And first, observe that no tracing out of actions to their final good or bad consequences, is, by itself, capable of generating approbation, or reprobation, of those actions. Could it do this, men’s moral codes would be high or low, according as they made these analyses well or ill, that is—according to their intellectual acuteness. Whence it would follow, that in all ages and nations, men of equal intelligence should have like ethical theories, whilst contemporaries should have unlike ones, if their reflective powers are unlike. But facts do not answer to these inferences. On the contrary, they point to the law above specified. Both history and daily experience prove to us that men’s ideas of rectitude correspond to the sentiments and instincts predominating in them (pp. 25, 159, 350). We constantly read of tyrants defending their claims to unlimited sway as being Divinely authorized. The rights of rival princes were of old asserted by their respective partisans, and are still asserted by modern legitimists, with the same warmth that the most ardent democrat asserts the rights of man. To those living in the feudal times, so unquestionable seemed the duty of serfs to obey their lords, that Luther (no doubt acting conscientiously) urged the barons to vengeance on the rebellious peasants, calling on all who could “to stab them, out them down, and dash their brains out, as if they were mad dogs.” Moreover, we shall find, that absence of the ethical sentiment completely disables the mind from realizing the abstract title of the human being to freedom. Thus, with all his high reasoning powers, Plato could conceive of nothing better for his ideal republic than a system of class despotism; and, indeed, up to his time, and long after it, there seems to have existed no man who saw anything wrong in slavery. It is narrated of Colonel D’Oyley, the first governor of Jamaica, that within a few days after having issued an order “for the distribution to the army of 1701 Bibles,” he signed another order for the “payment of the summe of twenty pounds sterling, out of the impost money, to pay for fifteen doggs, brought by John Hoy, for the hunting of the negroes.” The holding of slaves by ministers of religion in America is a parallel fact. We read that the Chinese cannot understand why European women are treated with respect; and that they attribute the circumstance to the exercise of demoniacal arts by them over the men. Here and there amongst ourselves, analogous phenomena may be detected. For example, Dr. Moberly, of Winchester College, has written a book to defend fagging, which he says, as a system of school-government, gives “more security of essential deep-seated goodness than any other which can be devised.” Again, in a recent pamphlet, signed “A Country Parson,” it is maintained, that “you must convert the Chartist spirit as you would reform the drunkard’s spirit, by showing that it is a rebellion against the laws of God.” But the strangest peculiarity exhibited by those deficient in sense of rights—or rather that which looks the strangest to us—is their inability to recognize their own claims. We are told, for instance, by Lieutenant Bernarda that in the Portuguese settlements on the African coast, the free negroes are “taunted by the slaves as having no white man to look after them, and see them righted when oppressed;” and it is said that in America the slaves themselves look down upon the free blacks, and call them rubbish. Which anomalous-looking facts are, however, easily conceivable when we remember that here in England, in this nineteenth century, most women defend that state of servitude in which they are held by men.

  To account, by any current hypothesis, for the numberless disagreements in men’s ideas of right and wrong here briefly exemplified, seems scarcely possible. But on the theory that opinion is a resultant of moral forces, whose equilibrium varies with every race and epoch—that is, with every phase of adaptation—the rationale is self-evident. Nor, indeed, considering the matter closely, does it appear that society could ever hold together were not opinion thus dependent upon the balance of feelings. For were it otherwise, races yet needing coercive government might reason their way to the conclusion that coercive government was bad, as readily as more advanced races. The Russians might see despotism to be wrong, and free institutions to be right, as clearly as we do. And did they see this, social dissolution would ensue; for it is not conceivable that they would any longer remain contented under that stringent rule needed to keep them in the social state.

  § 10.

  The process by which a change of political arrangements is effected, when the incongruity between them and the popular character becomes sufficient, must be itself in keeping with that character, and must be violent or peaceful accordingly. There are not a few who exclaim against all revolutions wrought out by force of arms, forgetting that the quality of a revolution, like that of an institution, is determined by the natures of those who make it. Moral suasion is very admirable; good for us; good, indeed, for all who can be induced to use it. But to suppose that, in the earlier stages of social growth, moral suasion can be employed, or, if employed, would answer, is to overlook the conditions. Stating the case mechanically, we may say that as, in proportion to their unfitness for associated life, the framework within which men are restrained must be strong, so must the efforts required to break up that framework, when it is no longer fit, be convulsive. The existence of a government which does not bend to the popular will—a despotic government—presupposes several circumstances which make any change but a violent one impossible. First, for coercive rule to have been practicable, implies in the people a predominance of that awe of power ever indicative of still lingering savageness. Moreover, with a large amount of power-worship present, disaffection can take place only when the cumulative evils of mis-government have generated great exasperation. Add to which, that as abundance of the sentiment upholding external rule, involves lack of the sentiments producing internal rule, no such check to excesses as that afforded by a due regard for the lives and claims of others, can be operative. And where there are comparatively active destructive propensities, extreme anger, and deficient self-restraint, violence is inevitable. Peaceful revolutions occur under quite different circumstances. They become possible only when society, no longer consisting of members so antagonistic, begins to cohere from its own internal organization, and needs not be kept together by unyielding external restraints; and when, by consequence, the force required to effect change is less. They become possible only when men, having acquired greater adaptation to the social state, will neither inflict on each other, nor submit to, such extreme oppressions, and when, therefore, the canses of popular indignation are diminished. They become possible only when character has grown more sympathetic, and when, as a result of this, the tendency towards angry retaliation is partially neutralized. Indeed, the very idea that reforms may and ought to be effected peacefully implies a large endowment of the moral sense. Without this, such an idea cannot even be conceived, much less carried out; with this, it may be both.

  Hence, we must look upon social convulsions as upon other natural phenomena, which work themselves out in a certain inevitable, unalterable way. We may lament the bloodshed—may wish it had been avoided; but it is folly to suppose that, the popular character remaining the same, things could have been managed differently. Ifsuch and such events had not occurred, say you, the result would have been otherwise; if this or that man had lived, he would have prevented the catastrophe. Do not be thus deceived. These changes are brought about by a power far above individual wills. Men who seem the prime movers, are merely the tools with which it works; and were they absent, it-would quickly find others. Incongruity between character and institutions is the disturbing force, and a revolution is the act of restoring equilibrium. Accidental circumstances modify the process, but do not perceptibly alter the effect. They precipitate; they retard; they intensify or ameliorate; but, let a few years elapse, and the same end is arrived at, no matter what the special events passed through.

  That these violent overturnings of early institutions fail to do what their originators hope, and that they finally result in the setting up of institutions not much better than those superseded, is very true (p.244). But it is not the less true that the modifications they effect can be effected in no other way. Non-adaptation necessitates a bad mode of making changes, as well as a bad political organization. Not only must the habitual rule it calls for be severe, but even small ameliorations of this cannot be obtained without much suffering. Conversely, the same causes which render a better social state possible, render the successive modifications of it easier. These occur under less pressure; with smaller disturbance; and more frequently: until, by a gradual diminution in the amounts and intervals of change, the process merges into one of uninterrupted growth.

  § 11.

  There is another form under which civilization can be generalized. We may consider it as a progress towards that constitution of man and society required for the complete manifestation of every one’s individuality. To be that which he naturally is—to do just what he would spontaneously do—is essential to the full happiness of each, and therefore to the greatest happiness of all. Hence, in virtue of the law of adaptation, our advance must be towards a state in which this entire satisfaction of every desire, or perfect fulfilment of individual life, becomes possible. In the beginning it is impossible. If uncontrolled, the impulses of the aboriginal man produce anarchy. Either his individuality must be curbed, or society must dissolve. With ourselves, though restraint is still needful, the private will of the citizen, not being so destructive of order, has more play. And further progress must be towards increased sacredness of personal claims, and a subordination of whatever limits them.

  There are plenty of facts illustrating the doctrine that under primitive governments the repression of individuality is greatest, and that it becomes less as we advance. Referring to the people of Egypt, Assyria, China, and Hindostan, as contrasted with those of Greece, Mr. Grote says, “The religious and political sanction, sometimes combined and sometimes separate, determined for every one his mode of life, his creed, his duties, and his place in society, without leaving any scope for the will or reason of the individual himself.” The ownership of people by rulers, from its pure form under Darius, through its various modifications down to the time of “L’etat c’est moi,” and as even still typifed amongst ourselves in the expression, “my subjects,” must be considered as a greater of less merging of many individualities into one. The parallel relationships of slaves or serfs to their master, and of the family to its head, have implied the same thing. In short, all despotisms, whether political or religious, whether of sex, of caste, or of custom, may be generalized as limitations of individuality, which it is in the nature of civilization to remove.

  Of course, in advancing from the one extreme, in which the state is everything and the individual nothing, to the other extreme, in which the individual is everything and the state nothing, society must pass through many intermediate phases. Aristocracy and democracy are not, as they have been called, separate and conflicting principles; but they and their various mixtures with each other and with monarchy mark the stages in this progress towards complete individuality. Nor is it only by amelioration of governmental forms that the growth of private claims as opposed to public ones is shown. It is shown, too, by the alteration in voluntary unions—in political parties, for instance; the manifest tendency of which is towards dissolution, by internal divisions, by diminution of power over their members, by increasing heterogeneity of opinion; that is—by the spread of a personal independence fatal to them. Still better do the changes in religious organizations illustrate this law. That multiplication of sects which has been going on in these latter times with increasing rapidity, and which is now so abundantly exemplified by the severing of the Establishment into Evangelical, High Church, and Puseyite; again, by the Free Church secession; again, by the schism of the Methodists; again, by Unitarian differences; again, by the splitting-off of numberless local congregations not to be classed; and, again, by the preaching that identity of opinion should not be the bond of union—the universal tendency to separate thus exhibited, is simply one of the ways in which a growing assertion of individuality comes out. Ultimately, by continual sub-division, what we call sects will disappear; and in place of that artificial uniformity, obtained by stamping men after an authorized pattern, there will arise one of nature’s uniformities—a general similarity, with infinitesimal differences.

  § 12.

  From the point of view now arrived at, we may discern how what is termed in our artificial classifications to truth, morality, is essentially one with physical truth—is, in fact, a species of transcendental physiology. That condition of things dictated by the law of equal freedom—that condition in which the individuality of each may be unfolded without limit, save the like individualities of each may be others—that condition towards which, as we have just seen, mankind are progressing, is a condition towards which the whole creation tends. Already it has been incidentally pointed out that only by entire fulfilment of the moral law can life become complete (p. 195); and now we shall find that all life whatever may be defined as a quality, of which aptitude to fulfil this law is the highest manifestation.

  A theory of life developed by Coleridge has prepared the way for this generalization. “By life,” says he, “I everywhere mean the true idea of life, or that most general form under which life manifests itself to us, which includes all other forms. This I have stated to be the tendency to individuation; and the degrees or intensities of life to consist in the progressive realizations of this tendency.” To make this definition intelligible, a few of the facts sought to be expressed by it must be specified—facts exemplifying the contrast between low and high types of structure, and low and high degrees of vitality.

  Restricting our illustrations to the animal kingdom, and beginning where the vital attributes are most obscure, we find, for instance, in the genus Porifera, creatures consisting of nothing but amorphous semi-fluid jelly, supported upon horny fibres(sponge). This jelly possesses no sensitiveness, has no organs, absorbs nutriment from the water which permeates its mass, and, if cut in pieces, lives on, in each part, as before. So that this “gelatinous film,” as it has been called, shows little more individuality than a formless lump of inanimate matter; for, like that, it possesses no distinction of parts, and, like that also, has no greater completeness than the pieces it is divided into. In the compound polyps which stand next, and with which Coleridge commences, the progress towards individuality is manifest; for there is now distinction of parts. To the originally uniform gelatinous mass with canals running through it, we have superadded, in the Alcyonidæ, a number of digestive sacks, with accompanying mouths and tentacles. Here is, evidently, a partial segregation into individualities—a progress towards separateness. There is still complete community of nutrition; whilst each polyp has a certain independent sensitiveness and contractility. From this stage onwards, there appear to be several routes; one through the Corallidæ, in which the polyp-bearing mass surrounds a calcareous axis, up to the Tubiporida, in which the polyps, no longer united, inhabit separate cells, seated in a common calcareous framework. But Coleridge has overlooked the remarkable mode in which these communist polyps are linked with higher individual organisms by the transitional arrangement seen in the common Hydra, or fresh-water polyps of our ponds. These creatures (which are in structure similar to the separate members of the compound animal above described), multiply by gemmation, that is, by the budding out of young ones from the body of the parent. “During the first period of the formation of these sprouts, they are evidently continuous with the general substance from which they arise; and even when considerably perfected, and possessed of an internal cavity and tentacula, their stomachs freely communicate with that of their parent…. As soon as the newly-formed hydra is capable of catching prey, it begins to contribute to the support of its parent; the food which it captures passing through the aperture at its base into the body of the original polyp. At length, when the young is fully formed, and ripe for independent existence, the point of union between the two becomes more and more slender, until a slight effort on the part of either is sufficient to detach them, and the process is completed…Sometimes six or seven gemmæ have been observed to sprout at once from the same hydra; and although the whole process is concluded in twenty-four hours, not unfrequently a third generation may be observed springing from the newly-formed polyps even before their separation from their parent; eighteen have in this manner been seen united into one group.”a Now here is a creature which cannot strictly be called either simple or compound. Nominally, it is an individual; practically, it never is so. In the alcyonide polyp many individuals are permanently united together: in this genus they are temporarilyunited, in so far as particular individuals are concerned, but otherwise permanently so; for there is always a group, though that group keeps changing its members. Indeed, may we not say that the “tendency to individuation” is here most visible; seeing that the Hydræ are, as it were, perpetually striving to become individuals, without succeeding? And may we not further say that in the gradually-decreasing recurrence of this budding, and the simultaneous appearance of a higher method of reproduction by ova (which in the Bryozoa co-exists with a comparatively languid gemmation), this “tendency to individuation” is still further manifested?

  After complete separateness of organisms has been arrived at, the law is still seen in successive improvements of structure. By greater individuality of parts—by greater distinctness in the nature and functions of these, are all creatures possessing high vitality distinguished from inferior ones. Those Hydra just referred to, which are mere bags, with tentacles round the orifice, may be turned inside out with impunity: the stomach becomes skin, and the skin stomach. Here, then, is evidently no speciality of character; the duties of stomach and skin are performed by one tissue, which is not yet individualized into two separate parts, adapted to separate ends. The contrast between this state and that in which such a distinction exists, will sufficiently explain what is meant by individuation of organs. How clearly this individuation of organs is traceable throughout the whole range of animal life, may be seen in the successive forms which the nervous system assumes. Thus in the Acrita, a class comprehending all the genera above-mentioned, “no nervous filaments or masses have been discovered, and the neurine or nervous matter is supposed to be diffused in a molecular condition through the body.”a In the class next above this, the Nematoneura, we find the first step towards individuation of the nervous system: “the nervous matter is distinctly aggregated into filaments.”b In the Homogangliata, it is still further concentrated into a number of small equal-sized masses—ganglia. In the Heterogangliata, some of these small masses are collected together into larger ones. Finally, in the Vertebrata, the greater part of the nervous centres are united to form a brain. And with the rest of the body there has simultaneously taken place just the same process of condensation into distinct systems—muscular, respiratory, nutritive, excreting, absorbent, circulatory, &c.—and of these again into separate parts, with special functions.

  The changes of vital manifestation associated with and consequent upon these changes of structure, have the same significance. To possess a greater variety of senses, of instincts, of powers, of qualities—to be more complex in character and attributes, is to be more completely distinguishable from all other created things; or to exhibit a more marked individuality. For, manifestly, as there are some properties which all entities, organic and inorganic, have in common, namely, weight, mobility, inertia, &c.; and as there are additional properties which all organic entities have in common, namely, powers of growth and multiplication; and as there are yet further properties which the higher organic entities have in common, namely, sight, hearing, &c.; then those still higher organic entities possessing characteristics not shared in by the rest, thereby differ from a larger number of entities than the rest, and differ in more points—that is, are more separate, more individual. Observe, again, that the greater power of self-preservation shown by beings of superior type may also be generalized under this same term—a “tendency to individuation”. The lower the organism, the more is it at the mercy of external circumstances. It is continually liable to be destroyed by the elements, by want of food, by enemies; and eventually is so destroyed in nearly all cases. That is, it lacks power to preserve its individuality; and loses this either by returning to the form of inorganic matter, or by absorption into some other individuality. Conversely, where there is strength, sagacity, swiftness (all of them indicative of superior structure), there is corresponding ability to maintain life—to prevent the individuality from being so easily dissolved; and therefore the individuation is more complete.

  In man we see the highest manifestation of this tendency. By virtue of his complexity of structure, he is furthest removed from the inorganic world in which there is least individuality. Again, his intelligence and adaptability commonly enable him to maintain life to old age—to complete the cycle of his existence; that is, to fill out the limits of this individuality to the full. Again, he is self-conscious; that is, he recognizes his own individuality. And, as lately shown, even the change observable in human affairs is still towards a greater development of individuality—may still be described as “a tendency to individuation.”

  But note lastly, and note chiefly, as being the fact to which the foregoing sketch is introductory, that what we call the moral law—the law of equal freedom, is the law under which individuation becomes perfect; and that ability to recognise and act up to this law, is the final endowment of humanity—an endowment now in process of evolution. The increasing assertion of personal rights, is an increasing demand that the external conditions needful to a complete unfolding of the in dividuality shall be respected. Not only is there now a consciousness of individuality, and an intelligence whereby individuality may be preserved; but there is a perception that the sphere of action requisite for due development of the individuality may be claimed; and a correlative desire to claim it. And when the change at present going on is complete—when each possesses an active instinct of freedom, together with an active sympathy—then will all the still existing limitations to individuality, be they governmental restraints, or be they the aggressions of men on one another, cease. Then, none will be hindered from duly unfolding their natures; for whilst every one maintains his own claims, he will respect the like claims of others. Then, there will no longer be legislative restrictions and legislative burdens; for by the same process these will have become both needless and impossible. Then, for the first time in the history of the world, will there exist beings whose individualities can be expanded to the full in all directions. And thus, as before said, in the ultimate man perfect morality, perfect individuation, and perfect life will be simultaneously realized.

  § 13.

  Yet must this highest individuation be joined with the greatest mutual dependence. Paradoxical though the assertion looks, the progress is at once towards complete separateness and complete union. But the separateness is of a kind consistent with the most complex combinations for fulfilling social wants; and the union is of a kind that does not hinder entire development of each personality. Civilization is evolving a state of things and a kind of character, in which two apparently conflicting requirements are reconciled. To achieve the creative purpose—the greatest sum of happiness, there must on the one hand exist an amount of population maintainable only by the best possible system of production; that is, by the most elaborate subdivision of labour; that is, by the extremest mutual dependence: whilst on the other hand, each individual must have the opportunity to do whatever his desires prompt. Clearly these two conditions can be harmonized only by that adaptation humanity is undergoing—that process during which all desires inconsistent with the most perfect social organization are dying out, and other desires corresponding to such an organization are being developed. How this will eventuate in producing at once perfect individuation and perfect mutual dependence, may not be at once obvious. But probably an illustration will sufficiently elucidate the matter. Here are certain domestic affections, which can be gratified only by the establishment of relationships with other beings. In the absence of those beings, and the consequent dormancy of the feelings with which they are regarded, life is incomplete—the individuality is shorn of its fair proportions. Now as the normal unfolding of the conjugal and parental elements of the individuality depends on having a family, so, when civilization becomes complete, will the normal unfolding of all other elements of the individuality depend upon the existence of the civilized state. Just that kind of individuality will be acquired which finds in the most highly-organized community the fittest sphere for its manifestation—which finds in each social arrangement a condition answering to some faculty in itself—which could not, in fact, expand at all, if otherwise circumstanced. The ultimate man will be one whose private requirements coincide with public ones. He will be that manner of man, who, in spontaneously fulfilling his own nature, incidentally performs the functions of a social unit; and yet is only enabled so to fulfil his own nature, by all others doing the like.

  § 14.

  How truly, indeed, human progress is towards greater mutual dependence, as well as towards greater individuation—how truly the welfare of each is daily more involved in the welfare of all—and how, truly, therefore, it is the interest of each to respect the interests of all, may, with advantage, be illustrated at length; for it is a fact of which many seem wofully ignorant. Men cannot break that vital law of the social organism—the law of equal freedom, without penalties in some way or other coming round to them. Being themselves members of the community, they are affected by whatever affects it. Upon the goodness or badness of its state depends the greater or less efficiency with which it administers to their wants; and the less or greater amount of evil it inflicts upon them. Through those vicious arrangements that hourly gall them, they feel the cumulative result of all sins against the social law; their own sins included. And they suffer for these sins, not only in extra restraints and alarms, but in the extra labour and expense required to compass their ends.

  That every trespass produces a reaction, partly general and partly special—a reaction which is extreme in proportion as the trespass is great, has been more or less noticed in all ages. Thus the remark is as old as the time of Thales, that tyrants rarely die natural deaths. From his day to ours, the thrones of the East have been continually stained with the blood of their successive occupants. The early histories of all European states, and the recent history of Russia, illustrate the same fact; and if we are to judge by his habits, the present Czar lives in constant fear of assassination. Nor is it true that those who bear universal sway, and seem able to do as they please, can really do so. They limit their own freedom in limiting that of others: their despotism recoils, and puts them also in bondage. We read, for instance, that the Roman emperors were the puppets of their soldiers. “In the Byzantine palace,” says Gibbon, “the emperor was the first slave of the ceremonies he imposed.” Speaking of the tedious etiquette of the time of Louis le Grand, Madame de Maintenon remarks, “Save those only who fill the highest stations, I know of none more unfortunate than those who envy them. If you could only form an idea of what it is!” The same reaction is felt by slave-owners. Some of the West India planters have acknowledged that before negro emancipation they were the greatest slaves on their estates. The Americans, too, are shackled in various ways by their own injustice. In the south, the whites are self-coerced, that they may coerce the blacks. Marriage with one of the mixed race is forbidden; there is a slave-owning qualification for senators; a man may not liberate his own slaves without leave; and only at the risk of lynching dare any one say a word in favour of abolition.

  It is, indeed, becoming clear to most that these gross transgressions return upon the perpetrators—that “this even-handed justice commends the ingredients of our poisoned chalice to our own lips;” but it is not yet clear to them that the like is true of those lesser transgressions they are themselves guilty of. Probably the modern maintainers of class power can see well enough that their feudal ancestors paid somewhat dearly for keeping the masses in thraldom. They can see that, what with armour and hidden mail, what with sliding panels, secret passages, dimly-lighted rooms, precautions against poison, and constant fears of surprise and treachery, these barons had but uncomfortable lives of it at the best. They can see how delusive was the notion that the greatest wealth was to be obtained by making serfs of the people. They can see that in Jacqueries and Gallician massacres, when bondsmen glut their vengeance by burning castles and slaughtering the inmates, there arrive fatal settlements of long-standing balances. But they cannot see that their own inequitable deeds. in one way or other, come home to them. Just as these feudal nobles mistook the evils they suffered under for unalterable ordinations of nature, never dreaming that they were the reflex results of tyranny, so do their descendants fail to perceive that many of their own unhappinesses are similarly generated.

  And yet, whilst in some cases it is scarcely possible to trace the secret channels through which our misbehaviour to others returns upon us, there are other cases in which the reaction is palpable. An audience rushing out of a theatre on fire, and in their eagerness to get before each other jamming up the doorway so that no one can get through, offers a good example of unjust selfishness defeating itself. An analogous result may be witnessed at the American ordinaries, where the attempts of greedy guests to get more than a fair share, have generated a competition in fast eating which not only frustrates these attempts, but entails on all, immediate loss of enjoyment and permanent ill-health. In such cases it is clear enough, that by trespassing upon the claims of others, men hurt themselves also. The reaction is here direct and immediate. In all other cases, however, reaction is equally sure, though it may come round by some circuitous route, or after a considerable lapse of time, or in an unrecognized form. The country squire who thinks it a piece of profound policy to clear his estate of cottages, that he may saddle some other place with the paupers, forgets that landowners in neighbouring parishes will eventually defeat him by doing the same; or that if he is so situated as to settle his labourers upon towns, the walking of extra miles to and fro must gradually lower the standard of a day’s work, raise the cost of cultivation, and, in the end, decrease rent. Nor does he see that by the overcrowded bedrooms and neglected drainage and repairs to which this policy leads, he is generating debility or disease, and raising his poor’s-rates in one way, whilst he lowers them in another. The Dorsetshire farmer who pays wages in tailings of wheat charged above market price, imagines he is economizing. It never occurs to him that he loses more than the difference by petty thefts, by the destruction of his hedges for fuel, by the consequent pounding of his cattle, and by the increase of county-rates, for the prosecution of robbers and poachers. It seems very clear to the tradesman that all extra profit made by adulterating goods, is so much pure gain; and for a while, perhaps, it may be. By-and-by, however, his competitors do as he does—are in a measure compelled to do so—and the rate of profit is then brought down to what it was before. Meanwhile the general practice of adulteration has been encouraged—has got into other departments—has deteriorated the articles our shopkeeper buys; and thus, in his capacity of consumer, he suffers from the vicious system he has helped to strengthen. When, during negro apprenticeship, the West India planters had to value slaves who wished to buy themselves off, before “the Queen’s free,” they no doubt thought it cunning to make oath to a higher worth per day than the true one. But when, awhile after, having to pay wages, they had their own estimates quoted to them, and found that the negroes would take nothing less, they probably repented of their dishonesty. It is often long before these recoils come; but they do come, nevertheless. See how the Irish landlords are at length being punished for their rack-renting, their evictions, their encouragement of middlemen, and their utter recklessness of popular welfare. Note, too, how for having abetted those who wronged the native Irish, England has to pay a penalty, in the shape of loans which are not refunded, and in the misery produced by the swarms of indigent immigrants, who tend to bring down her own people to their level. Thus, be they committed by many or by few—be they seen in efforts to despoil foreigners by restrictive duties, or in a tradesman’s trickeries—breaches of equity are uniformly self-defeating. Whilst men continue social units, they cannot transgress the life principle of society without disastrous consequences somehow or other coming back upon them.

  § 15.

  Not only does the ultimate welfare of the citizen demand that he should himself conform to the moral law; it equally concerns him that every one should conform to it. This interdependence which the social state necessitates makes all men’s business his business, in a more or less indirect way. To people whose eyes do not wander beyond their ledgers, it seems of no consequence how the affairs of mankind go. They think they know better than to trouble themselves with public matters, making enemies and damaging their trade. Yet if they are indeed so selfish as to care nothing about their fellow-creatures, whilst their own flesh-pots are well filled, let them learn that they have a pounds, shillings, and pence interest at stake. Mere pocket prudence should induce them to further human welfare, if no higher motive will. To help in putting things on a juster footing will eventually pay. The diffusion of sound principles and the improvement of public morality, end in diminishing household expenses. Can they not see that when buying meat and bread and groceries, they have to give something towards maintaining prisons and police? Can they not see that in the price of a coat they are charged a large percentage to cover the tailor’s bad debts? Every transaction of their lives is in some way hampered by the general immorality. They feel it in the rate of interest demanded for capital, which (neglecting temporary variations) is high in proportion as men are bad.a They feel it in the amount of attorneys’ bills; or in having to suffer robbery, lest the law should commit on them greater robbery. They feel it in their share of the two and a half millions a year, which our metallic currency costs. They feel it in those collapses of trade, which follow extensive gambling speculations. It seems to them an absurd waste of time to help in spreading independence amongst men; and yet, did they call to mind how those railway shares, which they bought at a premium, went down to a ruinous discount because the directors cringed to a rich bully, they would learn that the prevalence of a manly spirit may become of money-value to them. They suppose themselves unconcerned in the quarrels of neighbouring nations; and yet, on examination, they will find that a Hungarian war by the loans it calls for, or a Danish blockade by its influence upon our commerce, more or less remotely affects their profits, in whatever secluded nook of England they may live. Their belief is that they are not at all interested in the good government of India; and yet a little reflection would show them that they continually suffer from those fluctuations of trade consequent upon the irregular and insufficient supply of cotton from America—fluctuations which would probably have ceased, had not India been exhausted by its rulers extravagance. Not interested? Why even the better education of the Chinese is of moment to them, for Chinese prejudice shuts out English merchants. Not interested? Why they have a stake in the making of American railways and canals, for these ultimately affect the price of bread in England. Not interested? Why the accumulation of wealth by every people on the face of the earth concerns them; for whilst it is the law of capital to overflow from those places where it is abundant, to those where it is scarce, rich nations can never fully enjoy the fruits of their own labour until other nations are equally rich. The well ordering of human affairs in the remotest and most insignificant communities is beneficial to all men: the ill ordering of them calamitous to all men. And though the citizen may be but slightly acted upon by each particular good or evil influence, at work within his own society, and still more slightly by each of those at work within other societies—although the effect on him may be infinitesimal, yet it is on the cumulative result of myriads of these infinitesimal influences that his happiness or misery depends.

  § 16.

  Still more clearly seen is this ultimate identity of personal interests and social interests, when we discover how essentially vital is the connection between each person and the society of which he is a unit. We commonly enough compare a nation to a living organism. We speak of “the body politic,” of the functions of its several parts, of its growth, and of its diseases, as though it were a creature. But we usually employ these expressions as metaphors, little suspecting how close is the analogy, and how far it will bear carrying out. So completely, however, is a society organized upon the same system as an individual being, that we may almost say there is something more than analogy between them. Let us look at a few of the facts.

  Observe first, that the parallel gains immensely in reasonableness, when we learn that the human body is itself compounded of innumerable microscopic organisms, which possess a kind of independent vitality, which grow by imbibing nutriment from the circulating fluids, and which multiply, as the infusorial monads do, by spontaneous fission. The whole process of development, beginning with the first change in the ovum, and ending with the production of an adult man, is fundamentally a perpetual increase in the number of these cells by the mode of fissiparous generation. On the other hand, that gradual decay witnessed in old age, is in essence a cessation of this increase. During health, the vitality of these cells is subordinated to that of the system at large; and the presence of insubordinate cells implies disease. Thus, small-pox arises from the intrusion of a species of cell, foreign to that community of cells of which the body consists, and which, absorbing nourishment from the blood, rapidly multiplies by spontaneous division, until its progeny have diffused themselves throughout the tissues; and if the excreting energies of the constitution fail to get rid of these aliens, death ensues. In certain states of body, indigenous cells will take on new forms of life, and by continuing to reproduce their like, give origin to parasitic growths, such as cancer. Under the microscope, cancer can be identified by a specific element, known as the cancer-cell. Besides those modifications of cell-vitality, which constitute malignant diseases, there occasionally happens another in which cells, without any change in their essential nature, rebel against the general governing force of the system; and, instead of ceasing to grow, whilst yet invisible to the naked eye, expand to a considerable size, sometimes even reaching several inches in diameter. These are called Hydatids or Acephalocystsa , and have, until lately, been taken for internal parasites or entozoa. Still closer appears the relationship between tissue-cells and the lowest independent organisms, on finding that there exists a creature called the Gregarina, very similar in structure to the Hydatid, but which is admitted to be an entozoon. Consisting as it does of a cell-membrane, inclosing fluid and a solid nucleus, and multiplying as it does by the spontaneous fission of this nucleus and subsequent division of the cell-walls, the Gregarina differs from a tissue-cell merely in size, and in not forming part of the organ containing it.a . Thus there may coexist in the same organism cells of which that organism is constituted, others which should have helped to build it up, but which are insubordinate or partially separate, and others which are naturally separate, and simply reside in its cavities. Hence we are warranted in considering the body as a commonwealth of monads, each of which has independent powers of life, growth, and reproduction; each of which unites with a number of others to perform some function needful for supporting itself and all the rest; and each of which absorbs its share of nutriment from the blood. And when thus regarded, the analogy between an individual being and a human society, in which each man, whilst helping to subserve some public want, absorbs a portion of the circulating stock of commodities brought to his door, is palpable enough.

  A still more remarkable fulfilment of this analogy is to be found in the fact, that the different kinds of organization which society takes on, in progressing from its lowest to its highest phase of development, are essentially similar to the different kinds of animal organization. Creatures of inferior type are little more than aggregations of numerous like parts—are moulded on what Professor Owen terms the principle of vegetative repetition; and in tracing the forms assumed by successive grades above these, we find a gradual diminution in the number of like parts, and a multiplication of unlike ones. In the one extreme there are but few functions, and many similar agents to each function: in the other, there are many functions, and few similar agents to each function. Thus the visual apparatus in a fly consists of two groups of fixed lenses, numbering in some species 20,000. Every one of these lenses produces an image; but as its field of view is extremely narrow, and as there exists no power of adaptation to different distances, the vision obtained is probably very imperfect. Whilst the mammal, on the other hand, possesses but two eyes; each of these includes numerous appendages. It is compounded of several lenses, having different forms and duties. These lenses are capable of various focal adjustments. There are muscles for directing them to the right and to the left, to the ground and to the sky. There is a curtain (the iris) to regulate the quantity of light admitted. There is a gland to secrete, a tube to pour out, and a drain to carry off the lubricating fluid. There is a lid to wipe the surface, and there are lashes to give warning on the approach of foreign bodies. Now the contrast between these two kinds of visual organ is the contrast between all lower and higher types of structure. If we examine the framework employed to support the tissues, we find it consisting in the Annelida (the common worm, for instance) of an extended series of rings. In the Myriapoda, which stand next above the Annelida, these rings are less numerous and more dense. In the higher Myriapoda, they are united into a comparatively few large and strong segments, whilst in the Insecta this condensation is carried still further. Speaking of analogous changes in the crustaceans, the lowest of which is constructed much as the centipede, and the highest of which (the crab) has nearly all its segments united, Professor Jones says—“And even the steps whereby we pass from the Annelidan to the Myriapod, and from thence to the Insect, the Scorpion, and the Spider, seem to be repeated as we thus review the progressive development of the class before us.” Mark again, that these modifications of the exo-skeleton are completely paralleled by those of the endo-skeleton. The vertebra are numerous in fish, and in the ophidian reptiles. They are less numerous in the higher reptiles; less numerous still in the quadrupeds; fewest of all in man: and whilst their number is diminished, their forms and the functions of their appendages are varied, instead of being, as in the eel, nearly all alike. Thus, also, is it with locomotive organs. The spines of the echinus and the suckers of the star-fish are multitudinous. So likewise are the legs of the centipede. In the crustaceans we come down to fourteen, twelve, and ten; in the arachnidans and insects to eight and six; in the lower mammalia to four; and in man to two. The successive modifications of the digestive cavity are of analogous nature. Its lowest form is that of a sack with but one opening. Next it is a tube with two openings, having different offices. And in higher creatures, this tube, instead of being made up of absorbents from end to end—that is, instead of being an aggregation of like parts—is modified into many unlike ones, having different structures adapted to the different stages into which the assimilative function is now divided. Even the classification under which man, as forming the genus Bimana, is distinguished from the most nearly related genus Quadrumana, is based on a diminution in the number of organs that have similar forms and duties.

  Now just this same coalescence of like parts, and separation of unlike ones—just this same increasing subdivision of functions—takes place in the development of society. The earliest social organisms consist almost wholly of repetitions of one element. Every man is a warrior, hunter, fisherman, builder, agriculturist, toolmaker. Each portion of the community performs the same duties with every other portion; much as each portion of the polyp’s body is alike stomach, skin, and lungs. Even the chiefs, in whom a tendency towards separateness of function first appears, still retain their similarity to the rest in economic respects. The next stage is distinguished by a segregation of these social units into a few distinct classes—soldiers, priests, and labourers. A further advance is seen in the sundering of these labourers into different castes, having special occupations, as amongst the Hindoos. And, without further illustration the reader will at once perceive, that from these inferior types of society up to our own complicated and more perfect one, the progress has ever been of the same nature. Whilst he will also perceive that this coalescence of like parts, as seen in the concentration of particular manufactures in particular districts, and this separation of agents having separate functions, as seen in the more and more minute division of labour, are still going on.

  Significant of the alleged analogy is the further fact consequent upon the above, that the sensitiveness exhibited by societies of low and high structure differs in degree, as does the sensitiveness of similarly-contrasted creatures. That peculiar faculty possessed by inferior organisms of living on in each part after being cut in pieces, is a manifest corollary to the other peculiarity just described; namely, that they consist of many repetitions of the same elements. The ability of the several portions into which a polyp has been divided, to grow into complete polyps, obviously implies that each portion contains all the organs needful to life; and each portion can be thus constituted only when those organs recur in every part of the original body. Conversely, the reason why any member of a more highly-organized being cannot live when separated from the rest is, that it does not include all the vital elements, but is dependent for its supplies of nutriment, nervous energy, oxygen, &c., upon the members from which it has been cut off. Of course, then, the earliest and latest forms of society, being similarly distinguished in structure, will be similarly distinguished in susceptibility of injury. Hence it happens that a tribe of savages may be divided and subdivided with little or no inconvenience to the several sections. Each of these contains every element which the whole did—is just as self-sufficing, and quickly assumes the simple organization constituting an independent tribe. Hence, on the contrary, it happens, that in a community like our own no part can be cut off or injured without all parts suffering. Annihilate the agency employed in distributing commodities, and much of the rest would die before another distributing agency could be developed. Suddenly sever the manufacturing portion from the agricultural portion, and the one would expire outright, whilst the other would long linger in grievous distress. This interdependence is daily shown in commercial changes. Let the factory hands be put on short time, and immediately the colonial produce markets of London and Liverpool are depressed. The shopkeeper is busy or otherwise, according to the amount of the wheat crop. And a potato-blight may ruin dealers in consols.

  Thus do we find, not only that the analogy between a society and a living creature is borne out to a degree quite unsuspected by those who commonly draw it, but also, that the same definition of life applies to both. This union of many men into one community—this increasing mutual dependence of units which were originally independent—this gradual segregation of citizens into separate bodies, with reciprocally subservient functions—this formation of a whole, consisting of numerous essential parts—this growth of an organism, of which one portion cannot be injured without the rest feeling it—may all be generalized under the law of individuation. The development of society, as well as the development of man and the development of life generally, may be described as a tendency to individuate—to become a thing. And rightly interpreted, the manifold forms of progress going on around us, are uniformly significant of this tendency.

  Returning now to the point whence we set out, the fact that public interests and private ones are essentially in unison, cannot fail to be more vividly realized, when so vital a connection is found to subsist between society and its members. Though it would be dangerous to place implicit trust in conclusions founded upon the analogy just traced, yet harmonizing as they do with conclusions deducible from every-day experience, they unquestionably enforce these. When, after observing the reactions entailed by breaches of equity, the citizen contemplates the relation in which he stands to the body politic—when he learns that it has a species of life, and conforms to the same laws of growth, organization, and sensibility that a being does—when he finds that one vitality circulates through it and him, and that whilst social health, in a measure, depends upon the fulfilment of some function in which he takes part, his happiness depends upon the normal action of every organ in the social body—when he duly understands this, he must see that his own welfare and all men’s welfare are inseparable. He must see that whatever produces a diseased state in one part of the community, must inevitably inflict injury upon all other parts. He must see that his own life can become what it should be, only as fast as society becomes what it should be. In short, he must become impressed with the salutary truth, that no one can be perfectly free till all are free; no one can be perfectly moral till all are moral; no one can be perfectly happy till all are happy.

  CHAPTER XXXI.

  summary.

  § 1.

  By bringing within narrow compass the evidences that have been adduced in support of the Theory of Equity now before him, the reader will be aided in coming to a final judgment upon it.

  At the head of these evidences stands the fact that, from whatever side we commence the investigation, our paths alike converge towards the principle of which this theory is a development. If we start with an à priori inquiry into the conditions under which alone the Divine Idea—greatest happiness—can be realized, we find that conformity to the law of equal freedom is the first of them (Chap. III.). If, turning to man’s constitution, we consider the means provided for achieving greatest happiness, we quickly reason our way back to this same condition; seeing that these means cannot work out their end, unless the law of equal freedom is submitted to (Chap. IV.). If, pursuing the analysis a step further, we examine how subordination to the law of equal freedom is secured, we discover certain faculties by which that law is responded to (Chap. V.). If, again, we contemplate the phenomena of civilization, we perceive that the process of adaptation under which they may be generalized, can never cease until men have become instinctively obedient to this same law of equal freedom (Chap. II.). To all which positive proofs may also be added the negative one, that to deny this law of equal freedom is to assert divers absurdities (Chap. VI.).

  § 2.

  Further confirmation may be found in the circumstance that pre-existing theories, which are untenable as they stand, are yet absorbed, and the portion of truth contained in them assimilated, by the theory now proposed. Thus the production of the greatest happiness, though inapplicable as an immediate guide for men, is nevertheless the true end of morality, regarded from the Divine point of view; and as such, forms part of the present system (Chap. III.). The moral-sense principle, also, whilst misapplied by its propounders, is still based on fact; and, as was shown, harmonizes, when rightly interpreted, with what seem conflicting beliefs, and unites with them to produce a complete whole. Add to this, that the philosophy now contended for, includes, and affords a wider application to, Adam Smith’s doctrine of sympathy (p. 97); and lastly, that it gives the finishing development to Coleridge’s “Idea of Life” (p. 436).

  § 3.

  The power which the proposed theory possesses of reducing the leading precepts of current morality to a scientific form, and of comprehending them, in company with sundry less acknowledged precepts, under one generalization, may also be quoted as additional evidence in its favour. Not as heretofore by considering whether, on the whole, manslaughter is productive of unhappiness, or otherwise—not by inquiring if theft is, or is not, expedient—not by asking in the case of slavery what are its effects on the common weal—not by any such complex and inexact processes, neither by the disputable decisions of unaided moral sense, are we here guided; but by undeniable inferences from a proved first principle. Nor are only the chief rules of right conduct and the just ordering of the connubial and parental relationships thus determined for us; this same first principle indirectly gives distinct answers respecting the proper constitution of governments, their duties, and the limits to their action. Out of an endless labyrinth of confused debate concerning the policy of these or those public measures, it opens short and easily-discerned ways; and the conclusions it leads to are enforced, both generally, by an abundant experience of the fallacy of expediency decisions, and specially, by numerous arguments bearing on each successive question. Underlying, therefore, as this first principle does, so wide a range of duty, and applied as it is by a process of mental admeasurement nearly related to the geometrical—namely, by ascertaining the equality or inequality of moral quantities (p. 110)—we may consider that a system of ethics synthetically developed from it, partakes of the character of an exact science; and as doing this possesses additional claims to our confidence.

  § 4.

  Again, the injunctions of the moral law, as now interpreted, coincide with and anticipate those of political economy. Political economy teaches that restrictions upon commerce are detrimental: the moral law denounces them as wrong (Chap. XXIII.). Political economy tells us that loss is entailed by a forced trade with colonies: the moral law will not permit such a trade to be established (Chap. XXVII.). Political economy says it is good that speculators should be allowed to operate on the food-markets as they see well: the law of equal freedom (contrary to the current notion) holds them justified in doing this, and condemns all interference with them as inequitable. Penalties upon usury are proved by political economy to be injurious: by the law of equal freedom they are prohibited as involving an infringement of rights. According to political economy, machinery is beneficial to the people, rather than hurtful to them: in unison with this the law of equal freedom forbids all attempts to restrict its use. One of the settled conclusions of political economy is, that wages and prices cannot be artificially regulated: meanwhile it is an obvious inference from the law of equal freedom that no artificial regulation of them is morally permissible. We are taught by political economy that to be least injurious taxation must be direct: coincidently we find that direct taxation is the only kind of taxation against which the law of equal freedom does not unconditionally protest (p. 208). On sundry other questions, such as the hurtfulness of tamperings with currency, the futility of endeavours to permanently benefit one occupation at the expense of others, the impropriety of legislative interference with manufacturing processes, &c., the conclusions of political economy are similarly at one with the dictates of this law. And thus the laboured arguments of Adam Smith and his successors are forestalled, and for practical purposes made needless, by the simplest deductions of fundamental morality: a fact which, perhaps, will not be duly realized until it is seen that the inferences of political economy are true, only because they are discoveries by a roundabout process of what the moral law commands.

  § 5.

  Moreover, the proposed theory includes a philosophy of civilization. Whilst in its ethical aspect it ignores evil, yet in its psychological aspect it shows how evil disappears. Whilst, as an abstract statement of what conduct should be, it assumes human perfection—is, in fact, the law of that perfection—yet, as a rationale of moral phenomena, it explains why conduct is becoming what it should be, and why the process through which humanity has passed was necessary.

  Thus we saw that the possession by the aboriginal man of a constitution enabling him to appreciate and act up to the principles of pure rectitude would have been detrimental, and indeed fatal (p. 410). We saw that in accordance with the law of adaptation, the faculties responding to those principles began to unfold as soon as the conditions of existence called for them. From time to time it has been shown that the leading incidents of progress indicate the continued development of these faculties. That supremacy of them must precede the realization of the perfect state, has been implied in numerous places. And the influence by which their ultimate supremacy is ensured has been pointed out (Chap. II.).

  So that though one side of the proposed theory, in exhibiting the conditions under which alone the Divine Idea may be realized, overlooks the existing defects of mankind; the other side, in exhibiting the mental properties requisite for fulfilling these conditions, shows what civilization essentially is; why it was needful; and explains for us its leading traits.

  § 6.

  Finally, there is the fact lately alluded to, that moral truth, as now interpreted, proves to be a development of physiological truth; for the so-called moral law is in reality the law of complete life. As more than once pointed out, a total cessation in the exercise of faculties is death; whatever partially prevents their exercise, produces pain or partial death; and only when activity is permitted to all of them, does life become perfect. Liberty to exercise the faculties being thus the first condition of life, and the extension of that liberty to the furthest point possible being the condition of the highest life possible, it follows that the liberty of each, limited only by the like liberty of all, is the condition of complete life as applied to mankind at large.

  Nor is this true of mankind in their individual capacities only: it is equally true of them in their corporate capacity; seeing that the vitality which a community exhibits is high or low according as this condition is or is not fulfilled. For, as the reader no doubt observed in the course of our late analysis, those superior types of social organization, characterized by the mutual dependence of their respective parts, are possible only in as far as their respective parts can confide in each other; that is, only in as far as men behave justly to their fellows; that is, only in as far as they obey the law of equal freedom.

  Hence, broadly generalizing, as it does, the prerequisites of existence, both personal and social—being on the one hand the law under which each citizen may attain complete life, and on the other hand being, not figuratively, but literally, the vital law of the social organism—being the law under which perfect individuation, both of man and of society, is achieved—being, therefore, the law of that state towards which creation tends—the law of equal freedom may properly be considered as a law of nature.

  § 7.

  Having now briefly reviewed the arguments—having called to mind that our first principle is arrived at by several independent methods of inquiry—that it unfolds into a system, uniting in one consistent whole, theories, some of which seem conflicting, and others unrelated—that it not only gives a scientific derivation to the leading precepts of morality, but includes them along with the laws of state-duty under one generalization—that it utters injunctions coinciding with those of political economy—that civilization is explicable as the evolution of a being capable of conforming to it—that, as the law of complete life, it is linked with those physical laws of which life is the highest product—and lastly, that it possesses such multiplied relationships, because it underlies the manifestations of life—having called to mind these things, the reader will perhaps find the rays of evidence thus brought to a focus, sufficient to dissipate the doubts that may hitherto have lingered with him.

  CHAPTER XXXII.

  conclusion.

  § 1.

  A few words are needful respecting the attitude to be assumed towards the doctrines that have been enunciated. Probably many will eagerly search out excuses for disregarding the restraints set up by the moral law as herein developed. The old habit of falling back upon considerations of expediency—a habit which men followed long before it was apotheosized by Paley—will still have influence. Although it has been shown that the system of deciding upon conduct by direct calculation of results is a fallacious one—although the plea that, however proper certain rules of action may be, occasional exceptions are necessary, has been found hollow (Lemma II.), yet we may anticipate further apologies for disobedience, on the score of “policy.” Amongst other reasons for claiming latitude, it will very likely be urged that, whereas the perfect moral code is confessedly beyond the fulfilment of imperfect men, some other code is needful for our present guidance. Not what is theoretically retically right, but what is the best course practicable under existing circumstances, will probably be insisted on as the thing to be discovered. Some again may argue, that whichever line of conduct produces the greatest benefit as matters stand, if not positively right, is still relatively so; and is, therefore, for the time being, as obligatory as the abstract law itself. Or it will perhaps be said, that if, with human nature what it now is, a sudden re-arrangement of society upon the principles of pure equity would produce disastrous results, it follows that, until perfection is reached, some discretion must be used in deciding how far these principles shall be carried out. And thus may we expect to have expediency re-asserted as at least the temporary law, if not the ultimate one. Let us examine these positions in detail.

  § 2.

  To say that the imperfect man requires a moral code which recognises his imperfection and allows for it, seems at first sight reasonable. But it is not really so. Wherever such a code differs from the perfect code, it must so differ in being less stringent; for as it is argued that the perfect code requires so modifying as to become possible of fulfilment by existing men, the modification must consist in omitting its hardest injunctions. So that instead of saying—” Do not transgress at all,” it is proposed, in consideration of our weakness, to say—“Transgress only in such and such cases.” Stated thus, the proposition almost condemns itself; seeing that it makes morality countenance acts which are confessedly immoral.

  Passing by this, however, suppose we inquire what advantage is promised by so lowering the standard of conduct. Can it be supposed that men will on the whole come nearer to a full discharge of duty when the most difficult part of this duty is not insisted on? Hardly: for whilst performance so commonly falls below its aim, to bring down its aim to the level of possibility, must be to make performance fall below possibility. Is it that any evil will result from endeavouring after a morality of which we are as yet but partially capable? No; on the contrary, it is only by perpetual aspiration after what has been hitherto beyond our reach, that advance is made. And where is the need for any such modification? Whatever inability exists in us, will of necessity assert itself; and in actual life our code will be virtually lowered in proportion to that inability. If men cannot yet entirely obey the law, why, they cannot, and there is an end of the matter; but it does not follow that we ought therefore to stereotype their incompetency, by specifying how much is possible to them and how much is not. Nor, indeed, could we do this were it desirable. Only by experiment is it to be decided in how far each individual can conform; and the degree of conformity achievable by one is not the same as that achievable by others, so that one specification would not answer for all. Moreover, could an average be struck, it would apply only to the time being; and would be inapplicable to the time immediately succeeding. Hence a system of morals which shall recognise man’s present imperfections and allow for them, cannot be devised; and would be useless if it could be devised.

  § 3.

  Those who, by way of excusing a little politic disobedience, allege their anxiety to be practical, will do well to weigh their words a little. By “practical,” is described some mode of action productive of benefit; and a plan which is specially so designated, as contrasted with others, is one assumed to be, on the whole, more beneficial than such others. Now this that we call the moral law is simply a statement of the conditions of beneficial action. Originating in the primary necessities of things, it is the development of these into a series of limitations within which all conduct conducive to the greatest happiness must be confined. To overstep such limitations is to disregard these necessities of things—to fight against the constitution of nature. In other words, to plead the desire of being practical, as a reason for transgressing the moral law, is to assume that in the pursuit of benefit we must break through the bounds within which only benefit is obtainable.

  What an insane notion is this that we can advantageously devise, and arrange, and alter, in ignorance of the inherent conditions of success; or that knowing these conditions we may slight them! In the field and the workshop we show greater wisdom. We have learnt to respect the properties of the substances with which we deal. Weight, mobility, inertia, cohesion, are universally recognised—are virtually, if not scientifically, understood to be essential attributes of matter; and none but the most hopeless of simpletons disregard them. In morals and legislation, however, we behave as though the things dealt with had no fixed properties, no attributes. We do not inquire respecting this human nature what are the laws under which its varied phenomena may be generalized, and accommodate our acts to them. We do not ask what constitutes life, or wherein happiness properly consists, and choose our measures accordingly. Yet, is it not unquestionable that of man, of life, of happiness, certain primordial truths are predicable which necessarily underlie all right conduct? Is not gratification uniformly due to the fulfilment of their functions by the respective faculties? Does not each faculty grow by exercise, and dwindle from disuse? And must not the issue of every scheme of legislation or culture, primarily depend upon the regard paid to these facts? Surely it is but reasonable, before devising measures for the benefit of society, to ascertain what society is made of. Is human nature constant, or is it not? If so, why? If not, why not? Is it in essence always the same? then what are its permanent characteristics? Is it changing? then what is the nature of the change it is undergoing? what is it becoming, and why? Manifestly the settlement of these questions ought to precede the adoption of “practical measures.” The result of such measures cannot be matter of chance. The success or failure of them must be determined by their accordance or discordance with certain fixed principles of things. What folly is it, then, to ignore these fixed principles! Call you that “practical” to begin your twelfth book before learning the axioms?

  § 4.

  But if we are not as yet capable of entirely fulfilling the perfect law, and if our inability renders needful certain supplementary regulations, then, are not these supplementary regulations, in virtue of their beneficial effects, ethically justifiable? and if the abolition of them, on the ground that they conflict with abstract morality, would be disadvantageous, then, are they not of higher authority, for the time being, than the moral law itself?—must not the relatively right take precedence of the positively right?

  The confident air with which this question seems to claim an affirmative answer is somewhat rashly assumed. It is not true that the arrangement best adapted to the time, possesses, in virtue of its adaptation, any independent authority. Its authority is not original, but derived. Whatsoever respect is due to it, is due to it only as a partial embodiment of the moral law. The whole benefit conferred by it is attributable to the fulfilment of that portion of the moral law which it enforces For consider the essential nature of all advantages obtained by any such arrangement. The use of every institution is to aid men in the achievement of happiness. Happiness consists in the due exercise of faculties. Hence an institution suited to the time, must be one which in some way or other ensures to men more facility for the exercise of faculties—that is, greater freedom for such exercise—than they would enjoy without it. Thus, if it be asserted of a given people that a despotism is at present the best form of government for them, it is meant that the exercise of faculties is less limited under a despotism, than it would be limited under the anarchical state entailed by any other form of government; and that, therefore, despotism gives to such a people an amount of liberty to exercise the faculties greater than they would possess in its absence. Similarly, all apologies that can be made for a narrow suffrage, for censorship of the press, for restraint by passports, and the like, resolve themselves into assertions that the preservation of public order necessitates these restrictions—that social dissolution would ensue on their abolition—that there would arise a state of universal aggression by men on each other—or, in other words, that the law of equal freedom is less violated by the maintenance of these restrictions, than it would be violated were they repealed.

  If, then, the only excuse to be made for measures of temporary expediency is, that they get the commands of the moral law fulfilled better than any other measures can, their authority may no more be compared with that of the moral law itself, than the authority of a servant with that of a master. Whilst a conductor of force is inferior to a generator of it—whilst an instrument is inferior to the will which guides it, so long must an institution be inferior to the law whose ends it subserves, and so long must such institution bend to that law as the agent to his principal.

  And here let it be remarked, that we shall avoid much confusion by ceasing to use the word right in any but its legitimate sense; that, namely, in which it describes conduct purely moral. Rightness expresses of actions, what straightness does of lines; and there can no more be two kinds of right action than there can be two kinds of straight line. If we would keep our conclusions free from ambiguity, we must reserve the term we employ to signify absolute rectitude, solely for this purpose. And when it is needful to express the claims of imperfect, though beneficial, institutions, we must speak of them, not as “relatively right,” or “right for the time being,” but as the least wrong institutions now possible.

  § 5.

  The admission that social arrangement can be conformed to the moral law only in as far as the people are themselves moral, will probably be thought a sufficient plea for claiming liberty to judge how far the moral law may safely be acted upon. For if congruity between political organization and popular character is necessary; and if, by consequence, a political organization in advance of the age will need modification to make it fit the age; and if this process of modification must be accompanied by great inconvenience, and even suffering; then it would seem to follow that for the avoidance of these evils our endeavour should be to at first adapt such organization to the age. That is to say, men’s ambition to realize an ideal excellence must be checked by prudential considerations.

  “Progress, and at the same time resistance,”—that celebrated saying of M. Guizot, with which the foregoing position is in substance identical—no doubt expresses a truth; but not at all the order of truth usually supposed. To look at society from afar off, and to perceive that such and such are the principles of its development, is one thing: to adopt these as rules for our daily government, will turn out on examination to be quite a different thing. Just as we saw that it is very possible for the attainment of greatest happiness to be from one point of view the recognised end of morality, and yet to be of no value for immediate guidance (Chap. III.), so, it is very possible for “progress, and at the same time resistance,” to be a law of social life, without being a law by which individual citizens may regulate their actions.

  That the aspiration after things as they should be, needs restraining by an attachment to things as they are, is fully admitted. The two feelings answer to the two sides of our present mixed nature—the side on which we continue adapted to old conditions of existence, and the side on which we are becoming adapted to new ones. Conservatism defends those coercive arrangements which a still-lingering savageness makes requisite. Radicalism endeavours to realize a state more in harmony with the character of the ideal man. The strengths of these sentiments are proportionate to the necessity for the institutions they respond to. And the social organization proper for a given people at a given time, will be one bearing the impress of these sentiments in the ratio of their prevalence amongst that people at that time. Hence the necessity for a vigorous and constant manifestation of both of them. Whilst, on the one hand, love of what is abstractedly just, indignation against every species of aggression, and enthusiasm on behalf of reform, are to be rejoiced over; we must, on the other hand, tolerate, as indispensable, these displays of an antagonistic tendency; be they seen in the detailed opposition to every improvement, or in the puerile sentimentalisms of Young England, or even in some frantic effort to bring back the age of heroworship. Of all these nature has need, so long as they represent sincere beliefs. From time to time the struggle eventuates in change; and by composition of forces there is produced a resultant, embodying the right amount of movement in the right direction. Thus understood, then, the theory of “progress, and at the same time resistance,” is correct.

  Mark now, however, that for this resistance to be beneficial, it must come from those who think the institutions they defend really the best, and the innovations proposed absolutely wrong. It must not come from those who secretly approve of change, but think a certain opposition to it expedient. For if the true end of this conflict of opinion is to keep social arrangements in harmony with the average character of the people; and if (rejecting that temporary kind of opinion generated by revolutionary passion) the honest opinion held by each man of any given state of things is not an intellectual accident, but indicates a preponderating fitness or unfitness of that state of things to his moral condition (pp. 240. 427); then it follows that only by a universal manifestation of honest opinions can harmony between social arrangements and the average popular character be preserved. If, concealing their real sympathies, some of the movement party join the stationary party, merely with the view of preventing too rapid an advance, they must inevitably disturb turb the adaptation between the community and its institutions. So long as the natural conservatism ever present in society is left to restrain the progressive tendency, things will go right; but add to this natural conservatism an artificial conservatism—a conservatism not founded on love of the old, but on a theory that conservatism is needful—and the proper ratio between the two forces is destroyed; the resultant is no longer in the right direction; and the effect produced by it is more or less vitiated. Whilst, therefore, there is truth in the belief that “progress, and at the same time resistance,” is the law of social change, there is a fatal error in the inference that resistance should be factitiously created. It is a mistake to suppose this the kind of resistance called for; and, as M. Guizot’s own experience testifies, it is a further mistake to suppose that any one can say how far resistance should be carried.

  But, indeed, without entering upon a criticism like this, the man of moral insight sees clearly enough that no such self-contradicting behaviour can answer. Successful methods are always genuine, sincere. The affairs of the universe are not carried on after a system of benign double-dealing. In nature’s doings all things show their true qualities—exert whatsoever of influence is really in them. It is manifest that a globe built up partly of semblances instead of facts, would not be long on this side chaos. And it is certain that a community composed of men whose acts are not in harmony with their innermost beliefs, will be equally unstable. To know in our hearts that some proposed measure is essentially right, and yet to say by our deeds that it is not right, will never prove really beneficial. Society cannot prosper by lies.

  § 6.

  And yet it will still be thought unreasonable to deny discretionary power in this matter. Neglecting prudential considerations in the endeavour to put society on a purely equitable basis, will probably be demurred to, as implying an entire abandonment of private judgment. It must be confessed that it does so. But whoso urges this objection, may properly ask himself how much his private judgment, as applied to such a subject, is worth?

  What is the question he proposes to solve? Whether it is, or is not, the time for some desired change to be made?—whether the people are, or are not, fit for some higher social form than they have hitherto lived under? Where now are his qualifications for answering this question? Has he ever seen the millions for whom he would prescribe? Some tenth part of them perhaps. How many of these does he recognise? Probably of one or two thousand he can tell you the names and occupations. But with how many of these is he acquainted? Several hundreds, it may be. And of what fraction of them does he personally know the characters? They are numbered by tens. Then it must be by what he reads in books and newspapers, witnesses at meetings, and hears in conversation that he judges? Partly so: from the salient points of character thus brought under his notice, he infers the rest. Does he then find his inferences trustworthy? On the contrary, when he goes amongst men he has read of, or heard described, it usually turns out that he has got quite a wrong impression of them. Does this evidence from which he judges lead all persons to like conclusions? No: with the same sources of information open to them, others form opinions of the people widely different from those he holds. Are his own convictions constant? Not at all: he continually meets with facts which prove that he had generalized on insufficient data; and which compel a revision of his estimate. Nevertheless, may it not be that by averaging the characters of those whom he personally knows, he can form a tolerably correct opinion of those whom he does not know? Hardly: seeing that of those whom he personally knows, his judgments are generally incorrect. Very intimate friends occasionally astound him by quite unexpected behaviour; even his nearest relatives—brothers, sisters, and children do so: nay, indeed, he has but a limited acquaintance with himself; for though from time to time he imagines very clearly how he shall act under certain new circumstances, it commonly happens that when placed in these circumstances his conduct is quite different from that which he expected.

  Now of what value is the judgment of so circumscribed an intelligence upon the question—Is the nation ready for such and such measures of reform, or is it not? Here is one who professes to say of some thirty millions of people, how they will behave under arrangements a little freer than existing ones. Yet nine-tenths of these people he has not even seen; can identify only a few thousands of them; personally knows but an infinitesimal fraction; and knows these so imperfectly that on some point or other he finds himself mistaken respecting nearly all of them. Here is one who cannot say even of himself how certain untried conditions will affect him, and yet who thinks he can say of a whole nation how certain untried conditions will affect it! Surely there is in this, a most absurd incongruity between pretension and capability.

  When the contrast between present institutions and projected ones is very great—when, for example, it is proposed to change at once from pure despotism to perfect freedom—we may, indeed, prophesy with certainty that the result will not fulfil expectation. For whilst the success of institutions depends on their fitness to popular character, and whilst it is impossible for popular character to undergo a great change all at once, it must follow that to suddenly substitute for existing institutions others of a quite opposite nature, will necessitate unfitness, and, therefore, failure. But it is not in cases like this that the power of judging is contended for. As elsewhere shown (p. 432), one of these extreme changes is never consequent upon that peaceful expression of opinion presupposed by the hypothesis that the citizen should be cautious in advocating reform; on the contrary, it is always a result of some revolutionary passion which no considerations of policy can control. Only when an amelioration is being peaceably discussed and agitated for—that is, only when the circumstances prove its advent at hand—can the proposed discretion be exercised: and then does the right use of this discretion imply an acquaintance with the people accurate enough to say of them, “Now they are not fit;” and, again, “Now they are fit”—an acquaintance which it is preposterous to assume—an acquaintance which nothing short of omniscience can possess.

  Who, then, is to find out when the time for any given change has arrived? No one: it will find itself out. For us to perplex ourselves with such questions, is both needless and absurd. The due apportionment of the truth to the time is already provided for. That same modification of man’s nature which produces fitness for higher social forms, itself generates the belief that those forms are right (p. 427), and by doing this brings them into existence. And as opinion, being the product of character (pp. 25, 159), must necessarily be in harmony with character, institutions which are in harmony with opinion, must be in harmony with character also.

  § 7.

  The candid reader may now see his way out of the dilemma in which he feels placed, between a conviction, on the one hand, that the perfect law is the only safe guide, and a consciousness, on the other, that the perfect law cannot be fulfilled by imperfect men. Let him but duly realize the fact that opinion is the agency through which character adapts external arrangements to itself—that his opinion rightly forms part of this agency—is a unit of force, constituting, with other such units, the general power which works out social changes—and he will then perceive that he may properly give full utterance to his innermost conviction; leaving it to produce what effect it may. It is not for nothing that he has in him these sympathies with some principles, and repugnance to others. He, with all his capacities, and desires, and beliefs, is not an accident, but a product of the time. Influences that have acted upon preceding generations; influences that have been brought to bear upon him; the education that disciplined his childhood; together with the circumstances in which he has since lived; have conspired to make him what he is. And the result thus wrought out in him has a purpose. He must remember that whilst he is a child of the past, he is a parent of the future. The moral sentiment developed in him, was intended to be instrumental in producing further progress; and to gag it, or to conceal the thoughts it generates, is to balk creative design. He, like every other man, may properly consider himself as an agent through whom nature works; and when nature gives birth in him to a certain belief, she thereby authorizes him to profess and to act out that belief. For—

  • “——nature is made better by no mean,
  • But nature makes that mean: over that art
  • Which you say adds to nature, is an art
  • That nature makes.”

  Not as adventitious, therefore, will the wise man regard the faith that is in him—not as something which may be slighted, and made subordinate to calculations of policy; but as the supreme authority to which all his actions should bend. The highest truth conceivable by him he will fearlessly utter; and will endeavour to get embodied in fact his purest idealisms: knowing that, let what may come of it, he is thus playing his appointed part in the world—knowing that, if he can get done the thing he aims at—well: if not—well also; though not so well.

  § 8.

  And thus, in teaching a uniform unquestioning obedience, does an entirely abstract philosophy become one with all true religion. Fidelity to conscience—this is the essential precept inculcated by both. No hesitation, no paltering about probable results, but an implicit submission to what is believed to be the law laid down for us. We are not to pay lip homage to principles which our conduct wilfully transgresses. We are not to follow the example of those who, taking “Domine dirige nos” for their motto, yet disregard the directions given, and prefer to direct themselves. We are not to be guilty of that practical atheism, which, seeing no guidance for human affairs but its own limited foresight, endeavours itself to play the god, and decide what will be good for mankind, and what bad. But, on the contrary, we are to search out with a genuine humility the rules ordained for us—are to do unfalteringly, without speculating as to consequences, whatsoever these require; and we are to do this in the belief that then, when there is perfect sincerity—when each man is true to himself—when every one strives to realize what he thinks the highest rectitude—then must all things prosper.

  the end

  London, 142, Strand, March 5th, 1851.

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  THE COTTON AND COMMERCE OF INDIA Considered in relation to the Interests of Great Britain; with Remarks on Railway Communication in the Bombay Presidency. By John Chapman Founder and late Manager of the Great Indian Peninsular Railway Company. 8vo, cloth, 12s.

  “Promises to be one of the most useful treatises that have been furnished on this important subject...It is distinguished by a close and logical style, coupled with an accuracy of detail which will, in a great measure, render it a text-book.” —Times, Jan. 22, 1851.

  “This book will go far to forestall the inquiries to be instituted by Mr. Alexander Mackay for the Manchester Chamber of Commerce....Mr. Chapman examinee the subject in detail and gives ample reasons for his deductions...His work is marked, too, by sound good sense, akin to the highest wisdom of the statesman. The author has given to the public the most complete book we have for some time met with on any subject.”—Economist.

  “Mr. Chapman’s great practical knowledge and experience of the subjects upon which he treats has enabled him to collect an amount of information, founded upon facts, such as we believe has never before been laid before the public. The all-important questions of supply, production, and prices of cotton in India, as well as the commercial and financial questions connected with it, are most ably treated.”—Morning Chronicle.

  “Written by an intelligent, painstaking, and well-informed gentleman....Nothing can be more correct than his views, so far as they extend, his survey and character of districts, his conclusions as to the supply the earth can yield, and his assertion that the cost of transit is with Indian cotton the first and ruling element of price.”—Daily News.

  “Mr. Chapman’s work is only appreciable in the fulness of its value and merits by those who are interested in one or other branch of his subject. Full of data for reasoning, replete with facts to which the most implicit credit may be attached, and free from any political bias, the volume is that rara, if not incognita aris, a truthful blue book, a volume of statistics not cooked up to meet a theory or defend a practice,”—Britanna.

  “A most valuable volume.”—Home News

  “The arrangement is clear, and the treatment of the subject in all class masterly.”—Indian News.

  “An extremely valuable work, and will, we have no doubt, claim a large share of public attention Irom the large amount of information it contains, and the careful conscientious manner in which the investigation of the subject has been conducted.”—Anti-Slavery Reporter.

  “This is a comprehensive, practical, careful, and temperate investigation,” &c.—Indian Mail.

  SOCIAL STATICS; or, the Conditions essential to Human Happiness Specified, and the First of them Developed. By Herbert Spencer. 8vo, cloth, 125.

  “It is the most eloquent, the most interesting, the most clearly expressed and logically reasoned work, with views the most original, that has appeared in the science of social polity.“—Literary Gazette.

  “The anthor of the present work is no ordinary thinker, and no ordinary writer; and he gives, in language that sparkles with beauties and reasoning, at once novel and elaborate, precise and logical, a very comprehensive and complete exposition of the rights of men in society. The book will mark an epoch in the literature of scientific morality.”—Economist.

  “We remember no work on ethucs, since that of Spnoza, to be compared with it in the simplicity of its premises, and the logical rigour with which a complete system of scientific ethics is evolved from them. This is high praise, but we give it deliberately.”—Leader.

  “A very interesting and beautifully logical work.”—Nonconformist.

  LETTERS ON THE LAWS OF MAN’S NATURE and Development. By H. G. Atkinson and Harriet Martineau. Post 8vo, cloth, 9s.

  “A curious and valuable contribution to psychological science, and we regard it with interest, as containing the best and fullest development of the new theories of mesmerism, clairvoyance, and the kindred hypotheses. The book is replete with profound reflections thrown out incidentally, is distinguished by a peculiar elegance of style, and in the hands of a calm and philosophical theologian may serve as a useful precis of the most formidable difficulties he has to contend against in the present day.”—Weekly News.

  “A book from the reasonings and conclusions of which we are bound to express our entire dissent, but to which it is impossible to deny the rare merit of strictest honesty of purpose, as an investigation into a subject of the highest importance, upon which the wisest of us is almost entirely ignorant, begun with a sincere desire to penetrate the mystery and ascertain the truth, pursued with a brave resolve to shrink from no results to which that inquiry might lead, and to state them, whatever reception they might have from the world.”—Critic.

  NEW YORK—Continued.

  HEBREW RECORDS: An Historical Enquiry concerning the Age, Authorship, and Authenticity of the Old Testament. By the Rev. Dr Giles. Demy 8vo, cloth, price 10s. 6d.

  “There are evidences of extensive reading, of long and severe study, of much talent and scholarship in Rabbinical lore.”—Weekly Dispatch.

  LECTURES ON SOCIAL SCIENCE, and the Organization of Labour. By James Hole. Demy 8vo, stiff cover, price 2s. 6d.

  THE SIEGE OF DAMASCUS; A Historical Novel. By James Nisbet. In 3 vole, post 8vo, 1l. 11s. 6d.

  THE BISHOP’S WIFE: A Tale of the Papacy. Translated from the German of LEOPOLD SCHEFER. With a Historical Notice of the Life and Times of Hildebrand (Pope Gregory VII.), to which it relates. By Mrs. J. R. Stodart. Fcap. 8vo, 4s.

  “To restore the so-called purity and extend the power of the Church was the great object of Hildebrand’s long and active life, and one of the means he employed was to enforce the celibacy of the Clergy, and compel those who were mamed (of whom at that time there were many) to repudiate their wives, and disgrace them and their offspring. On an incident supposed to have originated from enforcing his decree, mingled with an incident in the Pope’s life, Leopold Schefer has founded the present tale...Though it might have been acceptable at all times as an Historical Novel, referring to a very interesting period in the progress of society, and to a very interesting event of that period, it is doubly acceptable now, and will have a wide circulation.”—Economist.

  “We have here a vindication of one of the first and dearest rights of man and of manhood, by an exhibition of the consequences of its violation...The story is as simple as possible, and, to our taste, It cannot be too simple, if it serves to bring out the characterization —a requirement which, in this case, it perfectly satiasfis....The Historical Sketch is extremely interesting, and possesses a character of ‘thoroughness’ and mastery of the subject which we often look for in vain in works of far greater pretension. Like the translation itself, it is written in a remarkably pure and felicitous style.”—Edinburgh Courant.

  “This able and elegant translation of a popular German work is apt to the times....It has sturring and even thrilling incidents; and of more than equal value with the book (itself, is Mrs. Stodart’s own full and well-written ‘Historical Notice’ of the times and events to which it relates.”—Scotsman.

  “A tale of great temporary Interest...There is shown throughout considerable power of realization of character, and the work depends for its primary interest upon its extreme dissimilarity to present modes of life and principles of action, and to the recalling of what may be truly called the iron age. There is occasionally a grotesque vividness of imagery which is new to most English readers.”—North British Mail

  “There is a peculiar vividness about the manner in which the topographical features of Rome are preserved; and to those who are familiar with the localities, a perusal of the ‘Bishop’s Wife’ will be almost like a fresh visit to the City of the Seven Hills....The historical dissertation possesses an interest far beyond that which frequently belongs to works of much greater pretensions; and as it has reference to a period anterior to that which is treated by Ranke, it will probably have the additional charm of freshness to many readers.”—Edinburgh Witness

  NORICA; or, Tales of Nurnberg from the Olden Time. After a Manuscript of the 16th Century. Translated from the German of August Hager. Fcd. 8vo. in the Press.

  NEW YORK—Continued.

  THE PROGRESS OF THE INTELLECT, as exemplified in the Religious Developments of the Greeks and Hebrews. By R. W. Mackay, M.A. 2 vols. 8vo, cloth, price 24s

  “Mr. Mackay brings forward in support of his views an amount of erudition which will prove formidable to his antagonists. Most of the best German editions of the Greek and Latin classics seem to be perfectly familiar to the author, who knows well how to wield such ponderous materials.....The account of the theosophy of Aristotle, given in the first volume, is evidently the production of a master of the subject.”—Athenaum.

  “‘The Progress of the Intellect’ is incomparably the most important contribution yet made by any English writer to views first broadly put forth by rationalistic German theologians. He has widened their basis—given them freer scope and larger aims—supported them by stores of as various and accumulated learning, and imparted to them all the dignity which can be derived from a sober and weighty style of writing, and from processes of thought to which imagination and reason contribute in almost equal degrees. This is unusual praise; but it is due to unusual powers; and to be offered to Mr. Mackay quite apart from any agreement in the tendency or object of his treatise. We will not even say that we have read it with sufficient care or critical guidance to be entitled to offer an opinion on the soundness of its criticism or reasoning, or on the truth or falsehood of its particular conclusions, or, indeed, on anything but its manifest labour and patience, the rare and indisputable monuments of knowledge which we find in it, and the surprising range of method it includes—logical, philosophical, and imaginative. Not many books have at any time been published with such irresistible claims to attention in these respects; in our own day we remember none.”—Examiner.

  “Over the vast area of cloud-land, bounded on one side by the wars of the Christians, and on the other by the last book of the Odyssey, he has thrown the penetrating electric light of modern science, and found a meaning for every fable and every phantom by which the mysterious region is haunted.”—Atlas.

  “All the views are justified by authorities. The work embraces many important subjects included in and suggested by the religious theories of the Greeks and Hebrews: and from this minute accuracy will be a storehouse for arguments and facts for those disposed to attack the theories, if not for those who have an interest in depending them. For a book so full of learning it is remarkably well written.”—Economist.

  “The work before us exhibits an industry of research which reminds us of Cudworth, and for which, in recent literature, we must seek a parallel in Germany rather than in England, while its philosophy and aims are at once lofty and practical. Scattered through its more abstruse disquisitions are found passages of pre-eminent beauty—gems into which are absorbed the finest rays of intelligence and feeling. We believe Mr. Mackay’s work is unique in its kind .... The analysis and history of the theory of mediation, from its earliest mythical embodiments, are admirable, both from their panoramic breadth and their richness in illustrative details. We can only recommend the reader to resort himself to this treasury of mingled thought and learning,”—Westminster Reverse, Jan. 1, 1851.

  A HISTORICAL ANALYSIS OF CHRISTIAN CIVILIZATION. By L. RaymonddeVericour. In 1 vol. post 8vo, cloth, price 10s. 6d.

  “It is succinct, clearly-written, and may be called a manual of European history.”—Econmist.

  “A useful book of historical reference, being well filled with facts and dates.”—Westminster Review.

  RELIGIOUS SCEPTICISM AND INFIDELITY: their History, Cause, Cure, and Mission. By John Alfred Langford. Post 8vo, cloth, 5s.

  SOCIAL ASPECTS. By John Stores Smith, author of “Mirabean, a Life History.” Post 8vo, cloth, price 6s.

  “This work is the production of a thoughtful mind, and of an ardent and earnest spirit, and is well deserving of a perusal in extenso by all those who reflect on so solemn and important a theme as the future desting of their native country.”—Morning Chronicle.

  THE HISTORY OF ANCIENT ART AMONG THE GREEKS.

  By John Winckelmann. From the German, by G. H. Lodge. Demy 8vo, cloth, with illustrations, price 12s.

  “That Winckelmann was well fitted for the task of writing a History of Ancient Art, no one can deny who is acquainted with, his profound learning and genius....He undoubtedly possessed in the highest degree the power of appreciating artistic skill wherever it was met with, but never more so than when seen in the garb of antiquity.....The work is of ’no common order,’ and a careful study of the great principles embodied in it must necessarily tend to form a pure, correct, and elevated taste.”—Eclectic Review.

  “The work is throughout lucid, and free from the pedantry of technicality. Its clearness constitutes its great charm. It does not discuss any one subject at great length, but aims at a general view of Art,’ with attention to its minute developments. It is, if we may use the phrase, a Grammar of Greek Art, a sine qua non to all who would thoroughly investigate its language of form.”—Literary World.

  “Winckelman is a standard writer to whom most students of art have been more or less indebted. He possessed extensive information, a refined taste, and great zeal. His style is plain, direct, and specific, so that you are never at a loss for his meaning. Some very good outlines, representing fine types of Ancient Greek Art, illustrate the text, and the volume is got up in a style worthy of its subject.”—Spectator.

  “To all lovers of art this volume will furnish the most necessary and safe guide in studying the pure principles of nature and beauty in creative art.....We cannot wish better to English art than for a wide circulation of this invaluable work.”—Standard of Freedom.

  “The mixture of the philosopher and artist in Winckelman’s mind gave it at once an elegance, penetration, and knowledge, which fitted him to a marvel for the task he undertook...Such a work ought to be in the library of every artist and man of taste, and even the most general reader will find in it much to instruct, and much to interest him.”—Atlas.

  THE ARTIST’S MARRIED LIFE: BEING THAT OF ALBERT DURER. For devout Disciples of the Arts, Prudent Maidens, as well as for the Profit and Instruction of all Christendom, given to the light. Translated from the German of Leopold Schefer, by Mrs. J. R. Stodart. 1 vol. fcp. 8vo, ornamental binding, 6s.

  “It is the worthy aim of the novelist to show that even the trials of genius are part of its education—that its very wounds are furrows for its harvest...No one, indeed, would have a right to expect from the author of the ‘Larenbrevier’ (see Ath. No. 437) such a stern and forcible picture of old times and trials as a Meinhold can give—still less the wire-drawn sentimentalities of a Hahn-Hahn; but pure thoughts—high morals—tender feelings—might be looked for....The merits of this story consist in its fine purpose, and its thoughtful, and for the most part just, exposition of man’s inner life. To those who, chiefly appreciating such qualities, can dispense with the stimulants of incident and passion, the book before us will not be unacceptable.”—Athenæum.

  “The work reminds us of the happiest efforts of Tieck.....The design is to show how, hi spite of every obstacle, genius will manifest fiself to the world, and give shape and substance to its beautiful dreams and fancies.....It is a very pure and delightful composition, is tastefully produced in an antique style, and retains in the translation all the peculiarities (without which the book would lose half its merit) of Qerraan thought and idiom.”—Britannia.

  “Simply then we assure our readers that we have been much pleased with this work. The narrative portion is well conceived, and completely illustrates the authors moral while it is interspersed with many passages which are full of beauty and pathos.”—Inquarer.

  HEARTS IN MORTMAIN, AND CORNELIA. A Novel, in 1 vol. post 8vo, price 10s. 6d.

  “To come to such writings as ‘Hearts in Mortmain, and Cornelia’ after the anxieties and roughness of our worldly struggle, is like banthing in fresh waters after the dust and heat of bodily exertion.....To a peculiar and attractive grace they join considerable dramatic power, and one or two of the characters are conceived and executed with real genius.”—Prospective Review.

  “Both stories contain matter of thought and reflection which would set up a dozen common-place circulating library productions.”—Examiner.

  “It is not often now-a-days that two works of such a rare degree of excellence in their class are to be found in one volume; it is rarer still to find two works, each of which contains matter for two volumes, bound up in these times in oue cover.”—Observer.

  “The above is an extremely pleasing book. The first story is written in the antiquated form of letters, but its simplicity and good taste redeem it from the tediousness and appearance of egotism which generally attend that style of composition.”—Economist.

  “Well written and interesting.”—Daily News.

  “Two very pleating and elegant novels. Some passages display descriptive powers of a high order.”—Britannia.

  PHASES OF FAITH, OR PASSAGES FROM THE HISTORY OF MY CREED. By Francis William Newman, Author of “The History of the Hebrew Monarchy,” “The Soul: her Sorrows and her Aspirations.” Post 8vo, cloth, 6s.

  “Besides a style of remarkable fascination, from its perfect simplicity and the absence of all thought of writing, the literary character of this book arises from its display of the writer’s mind, and the narrative of his struggles..... In addition to the religious and metaphysical interest, it contains some more tangible biographical matter, in incidental pictures of the writer’s career, and glimpses of the alienations and social persecutions he underwent in consequence of his opinions.”—Spectator.

  “The book altogether is a most remarkable book, and is destined, we think, to acquire all the notoriety which was attained a few years since by the ‘Vestiges of Creation,’ and to produce a more lasting effect.”—Weekly News.

  “No work in our experience has yet been published so capable of grasping the mind of the reader and carrying him through the tortuous labyrinth of religious controversy; no work so energetically clearing the subject of all its ambiguities and sophistications; no work so capable of making a path for the new reformation to tread securely on. In this history of the conflicts of a deeply religious mind, courageously seeking the truth, and conquering for itself, bit by bit, the right to pronounce dogmatically on that which it had heretofore accepted traditionally, we see reflected, as in a mirror, the history of the last few centuries. Modern spiritualism has reason to be deeply grateful to Mr. Newman: his learning, his plety, his courage, his candour, and his thorough mastery of his subject, render his alliance doubly precious to the cause.”—The Leader.

  “Mr. Newman is a master of style, and his book, written in plain and nervous English, treats of too important a subject to fail in commanding the attention of all thinking men, and particularly of all the ministers of religion.”—Economist.

  “As a narrative of the various doubts and misgivings that beset a religious mind when compelled by conviction to deviate from the orthodox views, and as a history of the conclusions arrived at by an intelligent and educated mind, with the reasons and steps by which such conclusions were gained, this work is most interesting and of great importance.”—Morning Advertiser.

  NEW EDITION, WITH ADDITIONS.

  THE SOUL: HER SORROWS AND HER ASPIRATIONS. An Essay towards the Natural History of the Soul, as the basis of Theology. By Francis William Newman, formerly Fellow of Balliol College, Oxford, and Author of “A History of the Hebrew Monarchy.” Post 8vo, cloth, 6s.

  “The spirit throughout has our warmest sympathy. It contains more of the genuine life of Christianity, than half the books that are coldly elaborated in its defence. The charm of the volume is the tone of faithfulness and sincerity which it breathes—the evidences which it affords in every page, of being drawn direct from the fountains of conviction.”—Prospective Review.

  “On the great ability of the author we need not comment. The force with which he puts his arguments, whether for good or for evil, is obvious on every page.”—Literary Gazette.

  “We have seldom met with so much pregnant and suggestive matter in a small compass, as in this remarkable volume. It is distinguished by a force of thought and freshness of feeling, rare in the treatment of religious subjects.”—Inquirer.

  HISTORY OF THE HEBREW MONARCHY, from the Administration of Samuel to the Babylonish Captivity. By Francis William Newman, formerly Fellow of Balliol College, Oxford, and Author of “The Soul: her Sorrows and Aspirations,” &c. 8vo, cloth, 10s. 6d.

  “It is truly refreshing to find Jewish history treated, as in the volume before us, according to the rules of sound criticism, and good sense..... The publication of such a work will form an epoch in biblical literature in this country.”—Inquirer.

  “The Author has brought a very acute mind, familiar with knowledge that is beyond the range of ordinary scholarship, to the task of combining and interpreting the antique and fragmentary records which contain the only materials for his work.”—Prospective Review.

  “This book must be regarded, we think, as the most valuable contribution ever made in the English Language to our means of understanding that portion of Hebrew History to which it relates..... The Author has not the common superstitious reverence for the Bible, but he shows everywhere a large, humane, and Christian spirit.”—Massachusetts Quarterly Review.

  THE LIFE OF JESUS, CRITICALLY EXAMINED. By Dr. David Friedrich Strauss. 3 vols. 8vo, 1l 16s., cloth.

  “The extraordinary merit of this book ..... Strauss’s dialectic dexterity, his forensic coolness, the even polish of his style, present him to us as the accomplished pleader, too completely master of his work to feel the temptation to unfair advantage or unseemly temper..... We can testify that the translator has achieved a very tough work with remarkable spirit and fidelity. The author, though indeed a good writer, could hardly have spoken better had his country and language been English. The work has evidently fallen into the hands of one who has not only effective command of both languages, but a familiarity with the subject-matter of theological criticism, and an initiation into its technical phraseology.”—Westminster and Foreign Quarterly Review, 1847.

  “Whoever reads these volumes without any reference to the German, must be pleased with the easy, perspicuous, idlomatic, and harmonious force of the English style. But he will be still more satisfied when, on turning to the original, he finds that the rendering is word for word, thought for thought, and sentence for sentence. In preparing so beautiful a rendering as the present, the difficulties can have been neither few nor small in the way of preserving, in various parts of the work, the exactness of the translation, combined with that uniform harmony and clearness of style, which impart to the volumes before us the air and spirit of an original. A modest and kindly care for his reader’s convenience has induced the translator often to supply the rendering into English of a Greek quotation, where there was no corresponding rendering into German in the original. Indeed, Strauss may well say, as he does in the notice, which he writes for this English edition, that as far as be has examined it, the translation is, ”et accurata et perspicua.’”—Prospective Review.

  “In regard to learning, acuteness, and sagacious conjectures, the work resembles Niebuhr’s ‘History of Rome.’ The general manner of treating the subject and arranging the chapters, sections, and parts of the argument, indicates consummate dialectical skill; while the style is clear, the expression direct, and the author’s openness in referring to his sources of information, and stating his conclusions in all their simplicity, is candid and exemplary .... It not only surpasses all its predecessors of its kind in learning, sentences, and thorough investigation, but it is marked by a serious and earnest spirit.”—Christian Examiner.

  “I found in M. Strauss a young man full of candour, gentleness, and modesty—one possessed of a soul that was almost mysterious, and, as it were, saddened by the reputation he had gained. He scarcely seems to be the author of the work under consideration.”—Quinet, Revise des Mondes.

  ENDEAVOURS AFTER THE CHRISTIAN LIFE. first series.

  By James Martineau. Second Edition. 12mo, 7s. 6d., cloth.

  ENDEAVOURS AFTER THE CHRISTIAN LIFE. second series.

  By James Martineau. 12mo, 7s. 6d., cloth.

  “Heartily do we welcome a second volume of ‘Endeavours after the Christian Life,’ because when all that suits not our taste is omitted, we have still left more to instruct, interest, improve, and elevate, than in almost any other volume with which we are acquainted ..... Whatever may be its defects, we regard it as one of the most precious gifts to the religious world in modern times.”—Inquirer.

  “Mr. Martineau is known, much beyond the limits of his own denomination, as a man of great gifts and accomplishments, and his publications have been all marked by subtle and vigorous thought, much beauty of imagination, and certain charms of composition, which are sure to find admirers..... There is a delicacy and othereality of ethical sentiment in these discourses which must commend them, and we may safely say that many of the orthodox in all departments might receive from them intellectual stimulus, moral polish, and in some moods religious edification.”—Nonconformist.

  “One of the most interesting, attractive, and most valuable series of essays which the literature of Christianity has received from priest or layman for many a year.

  “Volumes that have in them both intellect and true eloquence, and which satisfy the understanding while they please the taste and improve the heart.

  “When we say that these Discourses are eminently practical, we mean that they are adapted, not only for man in the abstract—to teach the duties of Christianity everywhere—but also with reference to the circumstances of society—of the age and country in which our lot is cast.”—Critic.

  The Catholic Series.

  UNIFORM POST 8vo.

  ST. PAUL’S EPISTLES TO THE CORINTHIANS: An Attempt to convey their Spirit and Significance, by the Rev. John Hamilton Thom. Nearly Ready.

  RELIGIOUS MYSTERY CONSIDERED. Cloth, price 2s.

  “The author treats his subject both learnedly and philosophically, and the little work is worthy the attention both of the philosopher and the learned.”—Economist.

  GOD IN CHRIST. Discourses by Horace Bushnell. In 1 vol., cloth, 6s.

  CONTENTS.

  • I.—Preliminary dissertation on the nature of language as related to thought and spirit.
  • II.—A discourse on the divinity of Christ.
  • III.—A discourse on the Atonement.
  • IV.—A discourse on Dogma and Spirit; or the true reviving of Religion.

  “Mr. Bushnell’s dissertation is valuable as giving us a perfect theoretical foundation for those practical efforts to secure peace and extend toleration which are now making in the world.”—Economist.

  “The author of the discourses before us is original in that sense in which no faithful follower of Christ ever need fear to be thought so. He is original in having gone himself to the fountain-head of truth, in spite of all imposing creeds and customs.”—Inquirer.

  POPULAR CHRISTIANITY: Its Transition State and probable Development. By Frederick Foxton, A.B., formerly of Pembroke College, Oxford, and perpetual Curate of Stoke Prior and Docklow, Herefordshire. Cloth, 6s.

  “Few writers are bolder, but his manner is singularly considerate towards the very opinions that he combats—his language singularly calm and measured. He is evidently a man who has his purpose sincerely at heart, and indulges in no writing for effect. But what most distinguishes him from many with whom he may be compared is, the positiveness of his doctrine. A prototype for his volume may be found in that of the American, Theodore Parker—the ‘Discourse of Religion.’ There is a great coincidence in the train of ideas. Parker is more copious and eloquent, but Foxton is far more explicit, definite, and comprehensible in his meaning.”—Spectator.

  “He has a penetration into the spiritual desires and wants of the age possible only to one who partakes of them, and he has uttered the most prophetic fact of our religious condition, with a force of conviction which itself gives confidence, that the fact is as he sees it. His book appears to us to contain many just and profound views of the religious character of the present age, and its indications of progress. He often touches a deep and fruitful truth with a power and fulness that leave nothing to be desired.”—Prospective Review, Nov. 1849.

  “It contains many passages that show a warm appreciation of the moral beauty of Christianity, —written with considerable power.”—Inquirer.

  “.... with earnestness and eloquence.”—Critic.

  “We must refer our readers to the work itself, which is most ably written, and evinces a spirit at once earnest, enlightened, and liberal; in a small compass he presents a most lucid exposition of views, many of them original, and supported by arguments which cannot fail to create a deep sensation in the religious world.”—Observer.

  THE CATHOLIC SERIES—Continued.

  REPRESENTATIVE MEN. SEVEN LECTURES. By Ralph Waldo Emerson. Cloth, 5s.

  “Mr. Emerson’s book is for us rather strange than pleasing. Like Mr. Carlyle, he strains after effect by quaint phraseology—the novelty will gain him admirers and readers. At the same time there is good sterling stuff in him; —already possessing a great name in his own country, and being well known to the reading world of Europe, his present work, speaking of men and things with which we are familiar, will extend his fame. It is more real and material than his former volumes; more pointedly written, more terse and pithy, contains many new views, and is on the whole both a good and a readable book.”—Economist.

  “There are many sentences that glitter and sparkle like crystals in the sunlight; and many thoughts, which seem invoked by a stern philosophy from the depths of the heart.”—Weekly News.

  “There is more practical sense and wisdom to be found in it (this Book) than in any of the Books he has given to the world, since his first..... When Emerson keeps within his depth, he scatters about him a great deal of true wisdom, mingled with much genuine poetry. There is also a merit in him which it would be ungrateful not to acknowledge; he has made others think; he has directed the minds of thousands to loftier exercises than they had known before; he has stimulated the reflective faculties of multitudes, and thus led to inquiry, and inquiry certainly will conduct to truth.”—Critic.

  MEMOIR OF JOHANN GOTTLIEB FICHTE. By William Smith. Second Edition, enlarged. Cloth, 4s. 6d.

  “.....A Life of Fichte, full of nobleness and instruction, of grand purpose, tender feeling, and brave effort! ...... the compilation of which is executed with great judgment and fidelity.”—Prospective Review.

  “We state Fichte’s character as it is known and admitted by men of all parties among the Germans, when we say that so robust an intellect, a soul so calm, so lofty, massive, and immoveable, has not mingled in philosophical discussion since the time of Luther..... Fichte’s opinions may be true or false; but his character as a thinker can be slightly valued only by such as know it ill; and as a man, approved by action and suffering, in his life and in his death, he ranks with a class of men who were common only in better ages than ours.”—State of German Literature, by Thomas Carlyle.

  THE WAY TOWARDS THE BLESSED LIFE; or, The Doctrine of Religion. Translated by William Smith. Cloth, 6s.

  WILLIAM VON HUMBOLDT’S LETTERS TO A FEMALE FRIEND. A Complete Edition. Translated from the Second German Edition. By Catherine M. A. Couper, Author of “Visits to Beechwood Farm,” “Lucy’s Half-Crown,” &c. 2 vols., cloth, 10s. 6d.

  “We cordially recommend these volumes to the attention of our readers...... The work is in every way worthy of the ensracter and experience of its distinguished author.”—Daily News.

  “These admirable letters were, we believe, first introduced to notice in England by the ‘Athenseum;’ and perhaps no greater noon was ever conferred upon the English reader than in the publication of the two volumes which contain this excellent translation of William Humboldt’s portion of a lengthened correspondence with his female friend.”—Westminster and Foreign Quarterly Review.

  “The beautiful series of W. Von Humboldt’s letters, now for the first time translated and published complete, possess not only high intrinsic interest, but an interest arising from the very striking circumstances in which they originated...... We wish we had space to verify our remarks. But we should not know where to begin, or where to end; we have therefore no alternative but to recommend the entire book to careful perusal, and to promise a continuance of occasional extracts into our columns from the beauties of thought and feeling with which it abounds.”—Manchester Examiner and Times.

  “It is the only complete collection of these remarkable letters, which has yet been published in English, and the translation is singularly perfect; we have seldom read such a rendering of German thoughts into the English tongue.”—Critic.

  THE CATHOLIC SERIES—Continued.

  THE VOCATION OF MAN. By JOHANN GOTTLIEB FICHTE. Translated from the German, by William Smith. Cloth, 4s. 6d.

  “In the progress of my present work, I have taken a deeper glance into religion than ever I did before. In me the emotions of the heart proceed only from perfect intellectual clearness; —it cannot be but that the clearness I have now attained on this subject shall also take possession of my heart.”—Fichte’s Correspondence.

  “‘The Vocation of Man’ is, as Fichte truly says, intelligible to all readers who are really able to understand a book at all; and as the history of the mind in its various phases of doubt, knowledge, and faith, it is of interest to all. A book of this stamp is sure to teach you much, because it excites thought. If it rouses you to combat his conclusions, it has done a good work; for in that very effort you are stirred to a consideration of points which have hitherto escaped your indolent acquiescence.”—Foreign Quarterly.

  “This is Fichte’s most popular work, and is every way remarkable.”—Atlas.

  “It appears to us the boldest and most emphatic attempt that has yet been made to explain to man his restless and unconquerable desire to win the True and the Eternal.”—Sentinel.

  THE CHARACTERISTICS OF THE PRESENT AGE. By Johann Gottlieb Fichte. Translated from the German, by William Smith. Cloth, 7s.

  “A noble and most notable acquisition to the literature of England.”—Douglas Jerrold’s Weekly Paper.

  “We accept these lectures as a true and most admirable delineation of the present age; and on this ground alone we should bestow on them our heartiest recommendation; but it is because they teach us how we may rise above the age that we bestow on them our most emphatic praise.

  “He makes us think, and perhaps more sublimely than we have ever formerly thought, but it is only in order that we may the more nobly act.

  “As a majestic and most stirring utterance from the lips of the greatest German prophet, we trust that the book will find a response in many an English soul, and potently help to regenerate English society.”—The Critic.

  THE VOCATION OF THE SCHOLAR. By JohannGottliebFichte. Translated from the German, by William Smith. Cloth, 2s.; paper cover, 1s. 6d.

  “‘The Vocation of the Scholar’...... is distinguished by the same high moral tone, and manly, vigorous expression which characterize all Fichte’s works in the German, and is nothing lost in Mr. Smith’s clear, unembarrassed, and thoroughly English translation.”—Douglas Jerrold’s Newspaper.

  “We are glad to see this excellent translation of one of the best of Fichte’s works presented to the public in a very neatform. .... No class needs an earnest and sincere spirit more than the literary class: and therefore the ‘Vocation of the Scholar,’ the ‘Guide of the Human Race,’ written in Fichte’s most earnest, most commanding temper, will be welcomed in its English dress by public writers, and be beneficial to the cause of truth.”—Economist.

  ON THE NATURE OF THE SCHOLAR, AND ITS MANIFESTATIONS. By Johann Gottlieb Fichte. Translated from the German, by William Smith. Second Edition. Cloth, 3s. 6d.

  “With great satisfaction we welcome this first English translation of an author who occupies the most exalted position as a profound and original thinker; as an irresistible orator in the cause of what he believed to be truth; as a thoroughly honest and heroic man..... The appearance of any of his works in our language is, we believe, a perfect novelty.... These orations are admirably fitted for their purpose; so grand is the position taken by the lecturer, and so irresistible their eloquence.”—Examiner.

  “This work must inevitably arrest the attention of the scientific physician, by the grand spirituality of its doctrines, and the pure morality it teaches..... Shall we be presumptuous if we recommend these views to our professional brethren? or if we say to the enlightened, the thoughtful, the serious, This—if you be true scholars—is your Vocation? We know not a higher morality than this, or more noble principles than these: they are full of truth.”—British and Foreign Medico-Chirurgical Review.

  THE CATHOLIC SERIES—Continued.

  THE POPULAR WORKS OF JOHANN GOTTLIEB FICHTE. Cloth, 12s. per volume.

  CONTENTS OF VOL. I.

  • 1.Memoirof theAuthor, by William Smith.
  • 2.The Vocationof theScholar.
  • 3.The Natureof theScholar.
  • 4.The VocationofMan.

  CONTENTS OF VOL. II.

  • 1.The Characteristicsof thePresent Age.
  • 2.The Wattowards theBlessed Life; or, theDoctrineofReligion.

  CHARACTERISTICS OF MEN OF GENIUS; A Series of Biographical, Historical, and Critical Essays, selected by permission, chiefly from the North American Review, with Preface, by John Chapman. 2 vols., cloth, 8s.

  CONTENTS.

  • Gregory VII., Loyola, Pascal.
  • Dante, Petrarch, Shelley, Byron, Goethe, Wordsworth, Milton, Scott, The German Poets.
  • Michael Angelo, Canova.
  • Machiavelli, Louis IX., PetertheGreat.

  “Essays of very high order, which from their novelty, and their intrinsic value, we are sure will receive from the British public a reception commensurate with their merits....They are Essays which would do honour to the literature of any country.”—Westminster Review.

  “Essays of great power and interest.... In freedom of opinion, and occasionally in catholicity of judgment, the writers are superior to our own periodical essayists: but we think there is less brilliancy and point in them; though on that very account there is, perhaps, greater impartiality and justice.”—Douglas Jerrold’s Magazine.

  “Rich as we are in this delightful department of literature, we gladly accept another contribution to critical biography.....The American writers keep more closely to their text than our own reviewers. and are less solicitous to construct a theory of their own, and thereby run the risk of discolouring the facts of history, than to take a calm and dispassionate survey of events and opinions”—Morning Chronicle.

  “Essays well worthy of an European Life.”—Christian Reformer.

  “The collection before us is able and readable, with a good deal of interest in its subjects. They exhibit force, justness of remark, an acquaintance with their subject, beyond the mere book reviewed; much clear-headed pains-taking in the paper itself, where the treatment requires pains, a larger and more liberal spirit than is often found in transatlantic literature, and sometimes a marked and forcible style.”—Spectator.

  THE CATHOLIC SERIES—Continued.

  THE LIFE OF JEAN PAUL FR. RICHTER. Compiled from various sources. Together with his Autobiography, translated from the German. Second Edition. Illustrated with a Portrait engraved on Steel. Cloth, 7s. 6d.

  “The autobiography of Richter, which extends only to his twelfth year, is one of the most interesting studies of a true poet’s childhood ever given to the world.”—Lome’s Edinburgh Magazine.

  “Richter has an intellect vehement, rugged, irresistible, crushing in pieces the hardest problems; piercing into the most hidden combinations of things, and grasping the most distant; an imagination vogue, sombre, splendid, or appalling, brooding over the abysses of being, wandering through infinitude, and summoning before us, in its dim religious light, shapes of brilliancy, solemnity, or terror; a fancy of exuberance literally unexampled, for it pours its treasures with a lavishness which knows no limit, hanging, like the sun, a jewel on every grass-blade, and sowing the earth at large with orient pearls. But deeper than all these lien humour, the ruling quality of Richter—as it were the central fire that pervades and vivifles his whole being. He is a humourist from his inmost soul; he thinks as a humourist; he imagines, acts, feels as a humourist: sport is the element in which his nature lives and works.”—Thomas Carlyle.

  “With such a writer it is no common treat to be intimately acquainted. In the proximity of great and virtuous minds we imbibe a portion of their nature—feel, as mesmerists gay, a healthful contagion, are braced with the same spirit of faith, hope, and patient endurance—are furnished with data for clearing up and working out the intricate problem of life, and are inspired, like them, with the prospect of immortality. No reader of sensibility can rise from the perusal of these volumes without becoming both wiser and better.”—Atlas.

  “Apart from the interest of the work, as the life of Jean Paul, the reader learns something of German life and German thought, and is introduced to Weimar during its most distinguished period—when Goethe, Schiller, Herder, and Wie-land, the great fixed stars of Germany, in conjunction with Jean Paul, were there, surrounded by beautiful and admiring women, of the most refined and exalted natures, and of princely rank. It is full of passages so attractive and valuable that it is difficult to make a selection as examples of its character.”—Inquirer.

  “The work is a useful exhibition of a great and amiable man, who, possessed of the kindliest feelings, and the most brilliant fantasy, turned to a high purpose that humour of which Rabelais is the great grandfather, and Sterne one of the line of ancestors, and contrasted it with an exaltation of feeling and a rhepsodical poetry which are entirely his own. Let us hope that it will complete the work begun by Mr. Carlyle’s Essays, and cause Jean Paul to be really read in this country.”—Examiner.

  “Richter is exhibited in a most amiable light in this biography — industrious, frugal, benevolent, with a child-like simplicity of character, and a heart overflowing with the purest love. His letters to his wife are beautiful memorials of true affection, and the way in which he perpetually speaks of his children shows mat he was the most attached and indulgent of fathers. Whoever came within the sphere of his companionship appears to have contracted an affection for him that death only dissolved: and while his name was resounding through Germany, he remained as meek and humble as if he had still been an unknown adventurer on Parnassus.”—The Apprentice.

  “The life of Jean Paul is a charming piece of biography which draws and rivets the attention. The affections of the reader are fixed on the hero with an intensity rarely bestowed on an historical character. It is impossible to read this biography without a conviction of its integrity and truth; and though Richter’s style is more difficult of translation than that of any other German, yet we feel that his golden thoughts have reached us pure from the mine, to which he has given that impress of genius which makes them current in all countries.”—Christian Reformer.

  THE RATIONALE OF RELIGIOUS INQUIRY; or, the Question stated, of Reason, the Bible, and the Church. By James Martineau. Third Edition. With a Critical Lecture on Rationalism, Miracles, and the Authority of Scripture, by the late Rev. Joseph Blanco White, 4s. paper cover; 4s. 6d. cloth.

  THE CATHOLIC SERIES—Continued.

  THE PHILOSOPHY OF ART. An Oration on the Relation of the Plastic Arts to Nature. Translated from the German of F. W. J. vonSchelling, by A. Johnson. 1s. paper cover; 1s. 6d. cloth.

  “This excellent oration is an application to art of Schelling’s general philosophic principles. Schelling takes the bold course, and declares that what is ordinarily called nature is not the summit of perfection, but is only the inadequate manifestation of a high idea, which it is the office of man to penetrate. The true astronomer is not he who notes down laws and causes which were never revealed to sensuous organs, and which are often opposed to the primafacie influences of sensuous observers. The true artist is not he who merely imitates an isolated object in nature, but he who can penetrate into the unseen essence that lurks behind the visible crust, and afterwards reproduce it in a visible form. In the surrounding world means and ends are clashed and jarred together; in the work of art the heterogeneous is excluded, and a unity is attained not to be found elsewhere. Schelling, in his Oration, chiefly, not exclusively, regards the arts of painting and sculpture; but his remarks will equally apply to others, such as poetry and music. This oration of Schelling’s deserves an extensive perusal. The translation, with the exception of a few trifling inaccuracies, is admirably done by Mr. Johnson; and we know of no work in our language better suited to give a notion of the turn which German philosophy took after it abandoned the subjectivity of Kant and Fichte. The notion will, of course, be a taint one; but it is something to know the latitude and longitude of a mental position.”—Examiner.

  ESSAYS. BY E. W. EMERSON. (Second Series) With a Notice by Thomas Carlyle. 3s. paper cover; 3s. 6d. cloth.

  “The difficulty we find in giving a proper notice of this volume arises from the pervadingness of its excellence, and the compression of its matter. With more learning than Hazlitt, more perspicuity than Carlyle, more vigour and depth of thought than Addison, and with as much originality and fascination as any of them, this volume is a brilliant addition to the Table Talk of intellectual men, be they who or where they may.”—Prospective Review.

  “Mr. Emerson is not a common man, and everything he writes contains suggestive matter of much thought and earnestness.”—Examiner.

  “That Emerson is, in a high degree, possessed of the faculty and vision of the seer, none can doubt who will earnestly and with a kind and reverential spirit peruse these nine Essays. He deals only with the true and the eternal. His piercing gaze at once shoots swiftly, surely, through the outward and the superficial, to the inmost causes and workings. Any one can tell the time who looks on the face of the clock, but he loves to lay bare the machinery and show its moving principle. His words and his thoughts are a fresh spring, that invigorates the soul the - is steeped therein. His mind is ever des*** with the eternal; and those who only to exercise then lower intellectual faculties, and desire only new facts and new images, and those who have not a feeling or an interest in the great question of mind and matter, eternity and nature, will disregard him as unintelligible and uninteresting, as they do Bacon and Plato, and, indeed, philosophy itself.”— Douglas Jerrold’s Magazine.

  “Beyond social science, because beyond and outside social existence, there lies the science of self, the development of man in his individual existence, within himself and for himself. Of this latter science, which may perhaps be called the philosophy of individuality, Mr. Emerson is an able epostle and interpreter.”—League.

  “As regards the particular volume of EMERSON before us, we think it an improvement upon the first series of essays. The subjects are better chosen. They come home more to the experience of the mass of mankind, and are consequently more interesting. Their treatment also indicates un artistic improvement in the composition.”—Spectator.

  “All lovers of literature will read Mr. Emerson’s new volume, as the most of them have read his former one: and if correct taste, and sober views of life, and such ideas on the higher subjects of thought as we have been accustomed to account as truths, are sometimes outraged, we at least meet at every step with originality, imagination, and eloquence.”—Inquirer.

  THE CATHOLIC SERIES—Continued.

  SERMONS OF CONSOLATION. By F. W. P. Greenwood, D.D. 3s. cloth.

  “This a really delightful volume, which we would gladly see producing its purifying and elevating influences in all our families.”—Inquirer.

  “This beautiful volume we are sure will meet with a grateful reception from all who seek instruction on the topics most interesting to a thoughtful mind. There are twenty-seven sermons in the volume.”—Christian Examiner.

  SELF-CULTURE. By William Ellery Channing. 6d. paper cover; 1s. cloth.

  THE CRITICAL AND MISCELLANEOUS WRITINGS OF THEODORE PARKER. Cloth, 6s.

  “It will be seen from these extracts that Theodore Parker is a writer of considerable power and freshness, if not originality. Of the school of Carlyle, or rather taking the same German originals for his models, Parker has a more sober style and a less theatric taste. His composition wants the grotesque animation and richness of Carlyle, but it is vivid, strong, and frequently picturesque, with a tenderness that the great Scotchman does not possess.”—Spectator.

  “Viewing him as a most useful, as well as highly-gifted man, we cordially welcome the appearance of an English reprint of some or his best productions. The Miscellaneous’ Pieces are characterised by the peculiar eloquence which is without a parallel in the works of English writers. His language is almost entirely figurative: the glories of nature are pressed into his service, and convey his most careless thought. This is the principal charm of his writings; his eloquence is altogether unlike that of the English orator or essayist; it partakes of the grandeur of the forests in his native land; and we seem, when listening to his speech, to hear the music of the woods, the rustling of the pine-trees, and the ringing of the woodman’s axe. In this respect he resembles Emerson; but, unlike that celebrated man, he never discourses audibly with himself, in a language u*** -own to the world—he is never obscure; the stream, though deep, reveals the glittering gems which cluster so thickly on its bed.”—Inquirer.

  Charaterisation of th Catholic Series
  BY THE PRESS.

  “The various works composing the ‘Catholic Series,’ should be known to all lovers of literature, and may be recommended as calculated to instruct and elevate by the proposition of noble aims and the inculcation of noble truths, furnishing reflective and cultivated minds with more wholesome food than the nauseous trash which the popular tale-writers of the day set before their readers.”—Morning Chronicle.

  “Too much encouragement cannot be given to enterprising publications like the present. They are directly in the teeth of popular prejudice and popular trash. They are addressed to the higher class of readers—those who think as well as read. They are works at which ordinary publishers shudder as ‘unsaleable,’ but which are really capable of finding a very large public.”—Foreign Quarterly.

  “The works already published embrace a great variety of subjects, and display a great variety of talent. They are not exclusively, nor even chiefly, religious; and they are from the pens of German, French, American, as well as English authors. Without reference to the opinion which they contain, we may safely say that they are generally such as all men of free and philosophical minds would do well to know and ponder.”—Nonconformist.

  “This series deserves attention, both for what it has already given, and for what it promises.”—Tait’s Magazine.

  “A series not intended to represent or maintain a form of opinion, but to bring together some of the works which do honour to our common nature, by the genius they display, or by their ennobling tendency and lofty aspirations.”—Inquirer.

  “It is highly creditable to Mr. Chapman to find his name in connexion with so much well-directed enterprise in the cause of German literature and philosophy. He is the first publisher who seems to have proposed to himself the worthy object of introducing the English reader to the philosophic mind of Germany, uninfluenced by the tradesman’s distrust of the marketable nature of the article. It is a very praiseworthy ambition; and we trust the public will justify his confidence. Nothing could be more unworthy than the attempt to discourage, and indeed punish, such unselfish enterprise, by attaching a bad reputation for orthodoxy to everything connected with German philosophy and theology. This is especially unworthy in the ‘student,” or the ‘scholar,’ to borrow Fichte’s names, who should disdain to set themselves the task of exciting, by their friction, a popular prejudice and clamour on matters on which the populace are no competent judges, and have, indeed, no judgment of their own,—and who should feel, as men themselves devoted to thought, that what makes a good book is not that it should gain its reader’s acquiescence, but that it should multiply his mental experience; that it should acquaint him with the ideas which philosophers and scholars, reared by a training different from their own, have laboriously reached and devoutly entertain; that, in a word, it should enlarge his materials and his sympathies as a man and a thinker.”—Prospective Renew.

  “A series of serious and manly publications.”—Economist.

  ITALY: PAST AND PRESENT. Or, General Views of its History, Religion, Politics, Literature, and Art. By L. Mariotti. 2 vols. post 8vo, cloth, 10s. 6d.

  “This is a useful book, informed with lively feeling and sound judgment. It contains an exhibition of Italian views of matters, social and political, by an Italian who has learned to speak through English thoughts as well as English words. Particularly valuable are the sketches of recent Italian history; for the prominent characters are delineated in a cordial and sympathetic spirit, yet free from enthusiastic ideas, and with unsparing discrimination .... The criticisms on ‘The Past’ will richly repay perusal; it is, however, in ” The Present of Italy that the main interest of the book resides. This volume does not merely possess an interest similar to that of contemporary works; it supplies a desideratum, and is well adapted to aid the English reader in forming a just estimate of the great events now in progress in Italy. Not the least wonderful part of the book is the entire mastery the author has acquired of ourlanguage.”—Examiner, April.

  “Our author has an earnest, nay, enthusiastic, love and admiration of his native country; with the ability and eloquence to render his subject very interesting and attractive.”—Morning Advertiser.

  The following notices refer to the first volume of the work:—

  “The work is admirable, useful, instructive. I am delighted to find an Italian coming forward with so much noble enthusiasm, to vindicate his country and obtain for it its proper interest in the eyes of Europe. The English is wonderful. . . . I never saw any approach to such a style in a foreigner before—as full of beauty in diction as in thought,”—Sir E. Bulroer Lytton, Bart.

  “I recognise the rare characteristics of genius—a large conception of the topic, a picturesque diction founded on profound thought, and that passionate sensibility which becomes the subject—a subject beautiful as its climate, and inexhaustible as its soil.”—B. Disrasli, Esq., M.P.

  “A very rapid and summary rèsumè of the fortunes of Italy from the fall of the Roman Empire to the present moment.— A work of industry and labour, written with a good purpose.—A bird’s-eye view of the subject that will revive the recollections of the scholar, and seduce the tyro into a longer course of reading.”—Atherusum.

  “This work contains more information on the subject, and more references to the present position of Italy, than we have seen in any recent production.”— Foreign Quarterly Review.

  “In reference to style, the work before us is altogether extraordinary, as that of a foreigner, and in the higher quality of thought we may commend the author for his acute, and often original, criticism, and his quick perception of the grand and beautiful in his native literature.”—Prescott, in the North American Review.

  “The work before us consists of a continuous parallel of the political and literary history of Italy from the earliest period of the middle ages to the present time. The author not only penetrates the inner relations of those dual appearances of national life, but possesses the power of displaying them to the reader with great clearness and effect. We remember no other work in which the civil conditions and literary achievements of a people have been blended in such a series of living pictures, representing successive periods of history.”—Algemeine Zeitung.

  “An earnest and eloquent work.”—Examiner.

  “A work ranking distinctly in the class of belles-lettres, and well deserving of a library place in England.”—Literary Gazette.

  “A work warmly admired by excellent Judges.”—Tait’s Magazine.

  “An admirable work written with great power and beauty.”—Prof. Longfellow. —Poets and Poetry of Europe.

  HISTORICAL SKETCHES OF THE OLD PAINTERS. By the Author of the “Log Cabin.” 2s. 6d., paper cover; 8s., cloth.

  A DISCOURSE OF MATTERS PERTAINING TO RELIGION. By Theodore Parker. Post 8vo, 7s., cloth.

  CONTENTS.

  • Book 1.—Of Religion in General; or, a Discourse of the Sentiment and its Manifestations.
  • Book 2.—The Relation of the Religious Sentiment to God; or, a Discourse of Inspiration.
  • Book 3.—The Relation of the Religious Sentiment to Jesus of Nazareth; or, a Discourse of Christianity.
  • Book 4.—The Relation of the Religious Sentiment to the Greatest of Books; or, a Discourse of the Bible.
  • Book 5.—The Relation of the Religious Sentiment to the Greatest of Human Institutions; or, a Discourse of the Church.

  “Mr. Parker is a very original writer. We recommend the work to our readers as one of a very remarkable kind, which cannot fairly be judged of by detached extracts.”—Edinburgh Review, Oct., 1847.

  “Parker writes like a Hebrew prophet, enriched by the ripest culture of the modern world.....His loftiest theories come thundering down into life with a rapidity and directness of aim which, while they alarm the timid and amaze the insincere, afford proof that he is less eager to be a reformer of men’s thinking, than a thinker for their reformation. Whatever judgment the reader may pronounce on the philosophy of the volume, he will close it, we venture to affirm, with the consciousness that he leaves the presence of a truly great mind; of one who is not only unoppressed by his large store of learning, but seems absolutely to require a massive weight of knowledge to resist and regulate the native force of his thought, and occupy the grasp of his imagination.”—Westminster and Foreign Quarterly Review, 1847.

  “There is a mastery shown over every element of the Great Subject, and the slight treatment of it in parts no reader can help attributing to the plan of the work, rather than to the incapacity of the author. From the resources of a mind singularly exuberant by nature and laboriously enriched by culture, a system of results is here thrown up, and spread out in luminous exposition.”—Prospective Review.

  “Mr. Parker is no ephemeral teacher. ..... His aspirations for the future are not less glowing than his estimate for the past. He revels in warm anticipations of the orient splendours, of which all past systems are but the precursors.....His language is neither narrow nor unattractive; there is a consistency and boldness about it which will strike upon chords which, when they do vibrate, will make the ears more than tingle. We are living in an age which deals in broad and exhaustive theories; which requires a system that will account for everything, and assigns to every fact a place, and that no forced one, in the vast economy of things.”—Christian Remembrancer.

  “It is impossible for any one to read the writings of Theodore Parker without being strongly impressed by them. They abound in passages of fervid eloquence—eloquence as remarkable for the truth of feeling which directs it, as for the genius by which it is inspired. They are distinguished by philosophical thought and learned investigation, no less than by the sensibility to beauty and goodness which they manifest.”—Christian Reformer.

  THE DECAY OF TRADITIONAL FAITH, AND RE-ESTABLISHMENT OF FAITH UPON PHILOSOPHY. Two Lectures delivered at Finsbury Chapel, South Place. By Henry Ierson, M.A. Post 8vo, paper cover, price 1s.

  BY THE SAME AUTHOR.

  RATIONAL FAITH. Three Lectures delivered at Finsbury Chapel, South Place. Post 8vo, paper cover, price 1s.

  AN INTRODUCTION TO THE RELIGION OF NATURE. Being the above Five Lectures delivered at Finsbury Chapel, South Place. By Henry Ierson, M.A. Post 8vo, paper cover, price 2s.

  CHANNING’S WORKS, COMPLETE. Edited by Joseph Barker. In 6 vols. 12mo, 6s. sewed, 8s., cloth.

  GREAT REDUCTION IN PRICE OF THE

  MEMOIR OF WILLIAM ELLERY CHANNING, D.D. With Extracts from his Correspondence and Manuscripts. Edited by his Nephew, William Henry Channing; and embellished by two very superior Portraits of Dr. Channing, engraved on steel, from paintings by the eminent artists Allston and Gambardella. 3 vols. post 8vo, cloth. Published at 1l. 8s., now reduced to 10s. 6d.

  “This is a valuable contribution to literature. The peculiar eminence reached by Dr. Chauning during his life makes a history of himself and of his mind indispensable to the future student of opinion.”—Athenaeum.

  “It is a work of high merit, and of deep interest.”—Examiner.

  “Dr. Channing had none of the narrow intolerance that distinguishes the more rigid sectarians.”—Spectator.

  “It is pleasing to add, that objections to the theological tenets of Dr. Channing, do not prevent our entertaining a high admiration of his general writings; but this admiration rises to a far higher feeling as we study his biography; for we see that, ‘singularly lofty as is the spirit which his writings hreathe, he was true to them in heart and life;’ and we find the secret of his eloquence in the power which elevated ideas and enlarged conceptions of all that is just, pure, true, grand, beautiful, loving, and holy, had in the transformation of his being.”—Chombers’ Journal.

  “The felicitous combination of a chaste and eloquent style with clear and powerful reasoning, placed his writings before his age generally, and far before his age in the United States.”—Tait’s Magazine.

  “He was a remarkable man, and he rendered remarkable service. His mental history is deeply interesting.”—Eclectic Review.

  “We find it difficult to tear ourselves from these deeply-interesting volumes, which we are disposed to rank among the best biographies of the age.”—Christian Reformer.

  THE BEAUTIES OF CHANNING. With an Essay prefixed. By William Mountford. 12mo, cloth, 2s. 6d.

  “This is really a book of beauties. It is no collection of shreds and patches, but a faithful representative of a mind which deserves to have its image reproduced in a thousand forms. It is such a selection from Channing as Channing himself might have made. It is as though we had the choicest passages of those divine discourses read to us by a kindred spirit......Those who have read Martyria will feel that no man can be better qualified than its author, to bring together those passages which are at once most characteristic, and most rich in matter tending to the moral and religious elevation of human beings.”—Inquirer.

  CHRISTIANITY: THE DELIVERANCE OF THE SOUL, AND ITS LIFE By William Mountford, M.A. Fcp. 8vo, cloth, 2s.

  MARTYRIA: A LEGEND. Wherein are contained Homilies, Conversations, and Incidents of the Reign of Edward the Sixth. Written by William Mountford, Clerk. Fcp. 8vo, cloth, 6s.

  A RETROSPECT OF THE RELIGIOUS LIFE OF ENGLAND; or, the Church, Puritanism, and Free Inquiry. By John James Tayler, B.A. Post 8vo, 10s. 6d. cloth.

  “This work is written in a chastely beautiful style, manifests extensive reading and careful research; is full of thought, and decidedly original in its character. It is marked also by the modesty which usually characterises true merit.”—Inquirer.

  “Mr. Tayler is actuated by no sectarian bias, and we heartily thank him for this addition to our religious literature.”—Westminster Review.

  “It is not often our good fortune to meet with a book so well conceived, so well written, and so instructive as this. The various phases of the national mind, described with the clearness and force of Mr. Tayler, furnish inexhaustible material for reflection. Mr. Tayler regards all parties in turn from an equitable point of view, is tolerant towards intolerance, and admires zeal and excuses fanaticism, wherever he sees honesty. Nay, he openly asserts that the religion of mere reason is not the religion to produce a practical effect on a people; and therefore regards his own class only as one element in a better principle church. The clear and comprehensive grasp with which he marshals his facts, is even less admirable than the impartiality, nay, more than that, the general kindliness with which he reflects upon them.—Examiner.

  “The writer of this volume has all the calmness belonging to one who feels himself not mixed up with the struggle he describes. There is about it a tone of great moderation and candour: and we cannot but feel confident that we have here, at least, the product of a thoroughly honest mind.”—Lome’s Edinburgh Magazine.

  THE ELEMENTS OF INDIVIDUALISM, By William Maccall. Post 8vo, 7s. 6d., cloth.

  “It is a book worthy of perusal. Even those who can find no sympathy with its philosophy, will derive pleasure and improvement from the many exquisite touches of feeling, and the many pictures of beauty which mark its pages.

  “The expansive philosophy, the penetrative intellect, and the general humanity of the author, have rendered The Elements of Individualism a book of strong and general interest.”—Critic.

  “We have been singularly interested by this book.....Here is a speaker and thinker whom we may securely feel to be a lover of truth, exhibiting in his work a form and temper of mind very rare and peculiar in our time.”—Manchester Examiner.

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  • No. I.—RELATIVE RANK OF OUR EARTH AMONG STELLAR WORLDS.
  • No. II.—THE INNER KINGDOM.
  • No. III.—SALVATION.
  • No. IV.—SCHOLASTIC THEOLOGY.

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  [a]See Anti-Slavery Society’s Report for 1847; and Evidence before Parliamentary Committee, 1848.

  [a]See Times of October 12, 1846.

  [a]As here used, this word is of course to be understood in a popular, and not in a metaphysical sense.

  [a]Whether we adopt the views of Locke or of Kant as to the ultimate nature of what is here, for analogy’s sake, called geometric sense, does not affect the question. However originated, the fundamental perceptions attaching to it form the undecomposable basis of exact science. And this is all that is now assumed.

  [a]A doctrine held by Aristotle and his followers.

  [a]Coleridge clearly expresses such a belief. He says—“This is indeed the main characteristic of the moral system taught by the Friend throughout; that the distinct foresight of consequences belongs exclusively to the Infinite Wisdom which is one with the Almighty Will, on which all consequences depend; but that for man—to obey the simple unconditional commandment of eschewing every act that implies a self-contradiction, or, in other words, to produce and maintain the greatest possible harmony in the component impulses and faculties of his nature, involves the effects of prudence.”—The Friend.

  [a]Advice, by the way, which in these latter days the giver might properly enough take home to himself.

  [a]These other divisions of the subject may be taken up on a future occasion, should circumstances favour.

  [a]Why the appetite for food should now be greater than is proper, seems at first difficult to understand. On calling to mind, however, the conditions of the aboriginal man, we shall find an explanation of this apparent anomaly in the fact, that the irregularity in his supplies of food necessitated an ability to eat largely when food was attainable, and necessitated, therefore, a corresponding desire. Now that the supplies of food have become regular, and no contingent periods of long fasting have to be provided against, the desire is in excess and has to be abated.

  [a]We need not here debate the claims of this maxim. It is sufficient for present purposes to remark, that were it true it would be utterly useless as a first principle; both from the impossibility of determining specifically what happiness is, and from the want of a measure by which equitably to mete it out, could we define it.

  [a]Four Years in the Pacific. By Lieut. Walpole.

  [a]These inferences do not at all militate against joint-stock systems of production and living, which are in all probability what Socialism prophesies.

  [a]Speech of Mr. Garland, one of the Conference Methodists.

  [b]Though Washington Irving has pointed out that the Koran does not teach this, he has not shown that Mahomet’s followers do not hold it. Most likely the Mahometan faith has undergone corruptions similar to those suffered by Christianity.

  [a]See Dr. Conolly on Lunatic Asylums.

  [a]Hence may be drawn an argument for direct taxation; seeing that only when taxation is direct does repudiation of state burdens become possible

  [a]The immediate interest of the subject will sufficiently explain the length to which this chapter is extended; and if the style of argument used in it is somewhat too popular for a work like the present, the same consideration must serve as an excuse. Two of the sections have already appeared in print.

  [a]“It is time,” said a veteran of this school, “to retire from the bar, since this new-fangled special pleading has superseded the use of gunpowder.”—Sketches of Ireland Sixty Years Ago.

  [a]“Allotments are generally given on poor and useless pieces of land, but the thorough cultivation they receive soon raises them to a high pitch of fertility. The more fertile they become the more the rent of each portion is increased, and we were informed that there are at present allotments on the Duke’s property which, under the influence of the same competition which exists with reference to farms, bring his Grace a rent of 2l., 3l., and even 4l. an acre.”—Times Agricultural Commissioner on the Blenheim Estates.

  [b]See Letters on “Labour and the Poor.” An officer’s widow says:—“Generally, the ladies are much harder as to their terms than the tradespeople; oh, yes, the tradespeople usually show more lemty towards the needlewomen than the ladies. I know the mistress of an institution who refused some chemises of a lady who wanted to have them made at 9d. She said she would not impose upon the poor workpeople so much as to get them made at that price.”—Morning Chronicle, November 16, 1849. A vendor of groundsel and turfs for singing birds says:—“The ladies are very hard with a body. They tries to beat me down, and particular in the matter of turfs. They tell me they can buy half-a-dozen for Id., so I’m obligated to let’em have three or four.”—Morning Chronicle, November 20, 1849.

  [a]No doubt the belief which Dr. Chalmers combats, viz., that the landlord’s revenue is wholly consumed by him, is an erroneous one; for, as he points out, the greater portion of it goes to maintain those who directly or indirectly minister to the landlord’s wants: but Dr. Chalmers overlooks the fact that did the landlord not exist, the services which such now render to him in return for “sustenance and support,” would be rendered to those producers from whom the landlord’s revenue originally came; and that in the loss of these services society suffers.

  [a]Instance the behaviour of the Prussian electors since the late revolution.

  [a]It is true that a plaintiff who can swear that he is not worth £5 may sue in formâ pauperis. But this privilege is almost a dead letter. Actions so instituted are usually found to fail, because those who conduct them, having to plead gratuitously, plead carelessly.

  [a]The case occurred at Winchester in July, 1849.

  [a]See Address to the British Association at Edinburgh, in 1850.

  [a]Reports of Dr. Fr. J. Behrend. See Medical Times, March 16, 1850.

  [a]See Grote’s History.

  [b]A metaphor that has been used to denote the pride with which the German officials regard their titles.

  [a]The writer has himself been thus addressed.

  [a]See letter of Sir Colin Campbell to Lord Stanley, May 2, 1845.

  [a]And not without success, according to Mr. Wilde, who (writing before the late revolution) tells us, by way of panegyric upon the Austrian system of education, that the people “sigh not for a state of political liberty about which they know nothing. The government wisely preventing their minds from being inflamed by those blisters upon society that have written and preached our own countrymen into the fever of discontent and disaffection, the effects of which are now so visible in Great Britain.”(!)

  [a]Quoted from a speech at Edinburgh

  [a]Summary of the Moral Statistics of England and Wales. By Joseph Fletcher, Esq., Barrister-at-Law, one of Her Majesty’s Inspectors of Schools.

  [a]For these and other such facts, see Sir W. Molesworth’s speeches delivered during the sessions of 1848 and 1849.

  [a]See Sir Alexander Burns dispatches.

  [a]See Times, Oct. 17, 1848.

  [a]For putting out fires in Berlin they depend on open tubs of water that stand about the city at certain points, ready to be dragged where they are wanted.

  [a]Such results have actually been brought about by the Metropolitan Buildings Act. Whilst this Act has introduced some reform in the better class of houses (although to nothing like the expected extent, for the surveyors are bribed, and moreover the fees claimed by them for inspecting every trifling alteration operate as penalties on improvement), it has entailed far more evil, just where it was intended to confer benefit. An architect and surveyor describes it as having worked after the following manner. In those districts of London consisting of inferior houses, built in that insubstantial fashion which the New Building Act was to mend, there obtains an average rent, sufficiently remunerative to landlords whose houses were run up economically before the New Building Act passed. This existing average rent fixes the rent that must be charged in these districts for new houses of the same accommodation—that is, the same number of rooms, for the people they are built for do not appreciate the extra safety of living within walls strengthened with hoop-iron bond. Now it turns out upon trial, that houses built in accordance with the present regulations, and let at this established rate, bring in nothing like a reasonable return. Builders have consequently confined themselves to erecting houses in better districts (where the possibility of a profitable competition with pre-existing houses shows that those pre-existing houses were tolerably substantial), and have ceased to erect dwellings for the masses, except in the suburbs where no pressing sanitary evils exist. Meanwhile, in the inferior districts above described, has resulted an increase of overcrowding—half-a-dozen families in a house—a score lodgers to a room. Nay, more than this has resulted. That state of miserable dilapidation into which these abodes of the poor are allowed to fall, is due to the absence of competition from new houses. Landlords do not find their tenants tempted away by the offer of better accommodation. Repairs, being unnecessary for securing the largest amount of profit, are not made. And the fees demanded by the surveyor, even when an additional chimney-pot is put up, supply ready excuses for doing nothing. Thus, whilst the New Building Act has caused some improvement where improvement was not greatly needed, it has caused none where it was needed, but has instead generated evils worse than those it was to remove. In fact, for a large percentage of the very horrors which our sanitary agitators are now trying to cure by law, we have to thank previous agitators of the same school!

  [a]Writing before the repeal of the brick-duty, the Builder says, “It is supposed that one-fourth of the cost of a dwelling which lets for 2s. 6d. or 3s. a week is caused by the expense of the title-deeds and the tax on wood and bricks used in its construction. Of course the owner of such property must be remunerated, and he therefore charges 7 ½d. or 9d. a week to cover these burdens.” Mr. C. Gatliff, secretary to the Society for Improving the Dwellings of the Working Classes, describing the effect of the window-tax, say, “They are now paying upon their institution in St. Pancras the sum of £162 16s. in window-duties, or 1 per cent. per annum upon the original outlay. The average rental paid by the Society’s tenants is 5s. 6d. per week, and the window-duty deducts from this 7 ¼d. per week.”—Deputation to Lord Ashley, see Times, Jan. 31, 1850. Mr. W. Voller, a master-tailor, says, “I lately inserted one of Dr. Arnott’s ventilators in the chimney of the workshop, little thinking I should be called upon by Mr. Badger, our district surveyor, for a fee of 25s.“—Morning Chronicle, Feb. 4, 1850.

  [a]Though not literally currency, bills of exchange, serving in many cases to effect mercantile transactions which would otherwise be effected in money, to that extent perform its function.

  [b]Capital, Currency, and Banking. By James Wilson, Esq., M.P.

  [c]Ibid.

  [a]Capital, Currency, and Banking. By James Wilson, Esq., M.P.

  [a]The alliance consists in this, that on the credit of a standing debt of £14,000,000, due from the Government to the Bank, the Bank is allowed to issue notes to that amount (besides further notes on other security), and hence to the extent of this debt the notes have practically a Government guarantee.

  [a]Whilst these sheets are passing through the press, facts, which he is not now at liberty to quote, have been communicated to the writer, conclusively proving the superior economy of a coin-manufacture conducted by private individuals; together with other facts suggesting the obvious truth that the debasement of coinage, from which our forefathers suffered so much, was made possible only by legal compulsion—would never have been possible had the currency been left to itself.

  [a]“An Archbishop of Cologne having built a fortress of this kind, the governor inquired how he was to maintain himself, no revenue having been assigned for that purpose. The prelate only desired him to remark, that the castle was situated near the junction of four cross roads.”—Hallam’s Middle Ages.

  [a]See pamphlets on the Mark System of Discipline.

  [a]“Three Years’ Crwize in the Mosambique Channel.”

  [a]A General Outline of the Animal Kingdom. By Professor T.R.Jones, F.G.S.

  [a]Jones.

  [b]Ibid.

  [a]When dishonesty and improvidence are extreme, capital cannot be bad under 30 to 40 per cent., as in the Burmese empire, or in England in the time of King John.—See Mill’s Political Economy.

  [a]“The primitive forms of all tissues are free cells, which grow by imbibition, and which develop their like from their nucleus of hyaline. All the animal tissues result from transformations of these cells. It is to such cells that the acephalocyst bears the closest analogies in physical, chemical, and vital properties. ∗ ∗ ∗ ∗ We may, with some truth, say that the human body is primarily composed or built up of acephalocysts; microscopical, indeed, and which, under natural and healthy conditions, are metamorphosed into cartilage, bone, nerve, muscular fibre, &c. When, instead of such change, the organic cells grow to dimensions which make them recognisable to the naked eye, such development of acephalocysts, as they are then called, is commonly connected in the human subject with an enfeeblement of the controlling plastic force, which, at some of the weaker points of the frame, seems unable to direct the metamorphosis of the primitive cells along the right road to the tissues they were destined to form, but permits them to retain, as it were, their embryo condition, and to grow by the imbibition of the surrounding fluid, and thus become the means of injuriously affecting or destroying the tissues which they should have supported and repaired. I regard the different Acephalocysts, therefore, as merely so many forms or species of morbid or dropsical cells.”—Professor Owen’s Hunterian Lectures.

  [a]“Schleiden has viewed these Gregarinæ as essentially single organic cells, and would refer them to the lowest group of plants. And here, indeed, we have a good instance of the essential unity of the organic division of matter. It is only the power of self-contraction of tissue, and its solubility in acetic acid, which turn the scale in favour of the animality of the Gregarinæ they have no mouth and no stomach, which have commonly been deemed the most constant organic characteristics of an animal.”
  
  “1846, Henle and others have questioned the title of the Gregarina to be regarded as an organic species or individual at all, or as anything more than a monstrous cell: thus applying to it my idea, propounded in 1843, of the true nature of the acephalocyst.”
  
  “1848, Kollicker has recently published an elaborate memoir on the genus, in which good and sufficient grounds are given for concluding that the Gregarina not merely resembles, but actually is an animated cell; it stands on the lowest step of the animal series, parallel with that of the single-celled species of the vegetable kingdom. The Gregarina consists, as Schleiden and others have well shown, of a cell-membrane, of the fluid and granular contents of the cell, and of the nucleus with (occasional) nucleoli. The nucleus is the hardest part, resisting pressure longest, like that of the Polygastrian. It divides, and its division is followed by spontaneous fission.”—Professor Owen’s Hunterian Lectures.

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  6: 6. John Stuart Mill, On Liberty and The Subjection of Women (1859, 1869, 1879 ed.)

  

  John Stuart Mill (1806-1873) wrote two of the most important defences of individual liberty during the heyday of classical liberalism of the 19th century. His first was On Liberty (1859) which quite rightly is still read with great interest today. His other great work in the area was *The Subjection of Women *(1869) which was much more controversial as the mostly male classical liberal tradition was not yet ready to hear these arguments. Mill knew this as he repeatedly attempted but failed to get Parliament to seriously consider the right of women to vote. What is interesting about this 1879 edition is that, shortly after Mill’s death, it published the two pieces together in an obvious attempt to show how the two were linked in Mill’s mind. This was not to happen again until the 1970s when the issue of women’s rights became pressing.

  Mill makes his point very clearly in the opening paragraph of chapter 1 and in the very final paragraph of the book:

  THE object of this Essay is to explain as clearly as I am able, the grounds of an opinion which I have held from the very earliest period when I had formed any opinions at all on social or political matters, and which, instead of being weakened or modified, has been constantly growing stronger by the progress of reflection and the experience of life: That the principle which regulates the existing social relations between the two sexes—the legal subordination of one sex to the other—is wrong in itself, and now one of the chief hindrances to human improvement; and that it ought to be replaced by a principle of perfect equality, admitting no power or privilege on the one side, nor disability on the other…

  When we consider the positive evil caused to the disqualified half of the human race by their disqualification—first in the loss of the most inspiriting and elevating kind of personal enjoyment, and next in the weariness, disappointment, and profound dissatisfaction with life, which are so often the substitute for it; one feels that among all the lessons which men require for carrying on the struggle against the inevitable imperfections of their lot on earth, there is no lesson which they more need, than not to add to the evils which nature inflicts, by their jealous and prejudiced restrictions on one another. Their vain fears only substitute other and worse evils for those which they are idly apprehensive of: while every restraint on the freedom of conduct of any of their human fellow creatures, (otherwise than by making them responsible for any evil actually caused by it), dries up pro tanto the principal fountain of human happiness, and leaves the species less rich, to an inappreciable degree, in all that makes life valuable to the individual human being.

  The University of Toronto Press edition of the Collected Works of J.S. Mill did not gather all of Mill’s writings on women into one volume (as they did with his writings on India). On this page we have done so, with links to the online edition.

  John Stuart Mill, On Liberty and The Subjection of Women (New York: Henry Holt and Co. 1879).

  Accessed from oll.libertyfund.org/title/347 on 2008-01-25

  The text is in the public domain.

  ---

  ON LIBERTY

  The grand, leading principle, towards which every argument; unfolded in these pages directly converges, is the absolute and essential importance of human development in its richest diversity.

  — Wilhelm von Humboldt:Sphere and Duties of Government.

  TO the beloved and deplored memory of her who was the inspirer, and in part the author, of all that is best in my writings — the friend and wife whose exalted sense of truth and right was my strongest incitement, and whose approbation was my chief reward — I dedicate this volume. Like all that I have written for many years, it belongs as much to her as to me; but the work as it stands has had, in a very insufficient degree, the inestimable advantage of her revision; some of the most important portions having been reserved for a more careful reëxamination, which they are now never destined to receive. Were I but capable of interpreting to the world one half the great thoughts and noble feelings which are buried in her grave, I should be the medium of a greater benefit to it, than is ever likely to arise from anything that I can write, unprompted and unassisted by her all but unrivalled wisdom.

  CHAPTER I.

  introductory.

  THE subject of this Essay is not the so-called Liberty of the Will, so unfortunately opposed to the misnamed doctrine of Philosophical Necessity; but Civil, or Social Liberty: the nature and limits of the power which can be legitimately exercised by society over the individual. A question seldom stated, and hardly ever discussed, in general terms, but which profoundly influences the practical controversies of the age by its latent presence, and is likely soon to make itself recognized as the vital question of the future. It is so far from being new, that, in a certain sense, it has divided mankind, almost from the remotest ages, but in the stage of progress into which the more civilized portions of the species have now entered, it presents itself under new conditions, and requires a different and more fundamental treatment.

  The struggle between Liberty and Authority is the most conspicuous feature in the portions of history with which we are earliest familiar, particularly in that of Greece, Rome, and England. But in old times this contest was between subjects, or some classes of subjects, and the government. By liberty, was meant protection against the tyranny of the political rulers. The rulers were conceived (except in some of the popular governments of Greece) as in a necessarily antagonistic position to the people whom they ruled. They consisted of a governing One, or a governing tribe or caste, who derived their authority from inheritance or conquest; who, at all events, did not hold it at the pleasure of the governed, and whose supremacy men did not venture, perhaps did not desire, to contest, whatever precautions might be taken against its oppressive exercise. Their power was regarded as necessary, but also as highly dangerous; as a weapon which they would attempt to use against their subjects, no less than against external enemies. To prevent the weaker members of the community from being preyed upon by innumerable vultures, it was needful that there should be an animal of prey stronger than the rest, commissioned to keep them down. But as the king of the vultures would be no less bent upon preying on the flock than any of the minor harpies, it was indispensable to be in a perpetual attitude of defence against his beak and claws. The aim, therefore, of patriots, was to set limits to the power which the ruler should be suffered to exercise over the community; and this limitation was what they meant by liberty. It was attempted in two ways. First, by obtaining a recognition of certain immunities, called political liberties or rights, which it was to be regarded as a breach of duty in the ruler to infringe, and which, if he did infringe, specific resistance, or general rebellion, was held to be justifiable. A second, and generally a later expedient, was the establishment of constitutional checks; by which the consent of the community, or of a body of some sort supposed to represent its interests, was made a necessary condition to some of the more important acts of the governing power. To the first of these modes of limitation, the ruling power, in most European countries, was compelled, more or less, to submit. It was not so with the second; and to attain this, or when already in some degree possessed, to attain it more completely, became everywhere the principal object of the lovers of liberty. And so long as mankind were content to combat one enemy by an other, and to be ruled by a master, on condition of being guaranteed more or less efficaciously against his tyranny, they did not carry their aspirations beyond this point.

  A time, however, came, in the progress of human affairs, when men ceased to think it a necessity of nature that their governors should be an independent power, opposed in interest to themselves. It appeared to them much better that the various magistrates of the State should be their tenants or delegates, revocable at their pleasure. In that way alone, it seemed, could they have complete security that the powers of government would never be abused to their disadvantage. By degrees, this new demand for elective and temporary rulers became the prominent object of the exertions of the popular party, wherever any such party existed; and superseded, to a considerable extent, the previous efforts to limit the power of rulers. As the struggle proceeded for making the ruling power emanate from the periodical choice of the ruled, some persons began to think that too much importance had been attached to the limitation of the power itself. That (it might seem) was a resource against rulers whose interests were habitually opposed to those of the people. What was now wanted was, that the rulers should be identified with the people; that their interest and will should be the interest and will of the nation. The nation did not need to be protected against its own will. There was no fear of its tyrannizing over itself. Let the rulers be effectually responsible to it, promptly removable by it, and it could afford to trust them with power of which it could itself dictate the use to be made. Their power was but the nation’s own power, concentrated, and in a form convenient for exercise. This mode of thought, or rather perhaps of feeling, was common among the last generation of European liberalism, in the Continental section of which, it still apparently predominates. Those who admit any limit to what a government may do, except in the case of such governments as they think ought not to exist, stand out as brilliant exceptions among the political thinkers of the Continent. A similar tone of sentiment might by this time have been prevalent in our own country, if the circumstances which for a time encouraged it had continued unaltered.

  But, in political and philosophical theories, as well as in persons, success discloses faults and infirmities which failure might have concealed from observation. The notion, that the people have no need to limit their power over themselves, might seem axiomatic, when popular government was a thing only dreamed about, or read of as having existed at some distant period of the past. Neither was that notion necessarily disturbed by such temporary aberrations as those of the French Revolution, the worst of which were the work of an usurping few, and which, in any case, belonged, not to the permanent working of popular institutions, but to a sudden and convulsive outbreak against monarchical and aristocratic despotism. In time, however, a democratic republic came to occupy a large portion of the earth’s surface, and made itself felt as one of the most powerful members of the community of nations; and elective and responsible government became subject to the observations and criticisms which wait upon a great existing fact. It was now perceived that such phrases as “self-government,” and “the power of the people over themselves,” do not express the true state of the case. The “people” who exercise the power, are not always the same people with those over whom it is exercised, and the “self-government” spoken of, is not the government of each by himself, but of each by all the rest. The will of the people, moreover, practically means, the will of the most numerous or the most active part of the people; the majority, or those who succeed in making themselves accepted as the majority: the people, consequently, may desire to oppress a part of their number; and precautions are as much needed against this, as against any other abuse of power. The limitation, therefore, of the power of government over individuals, loses none of its importance when the holders of power are regularly accountable to the community, that is, to the strongest party therein. This view of things, recommending itself equally to the intelligence of thinkers and to the inclination of those important classes in European society to whose real or supposed interests democracy is adverse, has had no difficulty in establishing itself; and in political speculations “the tyranny of the majority” is now generally included among the evils against which society requires to be on its guard.

  Like other tyrannies, the tyranny of the majority was at first, and is still vulgarly, held in dread, chiefly as operating through the acts of the public authorities. But reflecting persons perceived that when society is itself the tyrant — society collectively, over the separate individuals who compose it — its means of tyrannizing are not restricted to the acts which it may do by the hands of its political functionaries. Society can and does execute its own mandates: and if it issues wrong mandates instead of right, or any mandates at all in things with which it ought not to meddle, it practises a social tyranny more formidable than many kinds of political oppression, since, though not usually upheld by such extreme penalties, it leaves fewer means of escape, penetrating much more deeply into the details of life, and enslaving the soul itself. Protection, therefore, against the tyranny of the magistrate is not enough; there needs protection also against the tyranny of the prevailing opinion and feeling; against the tendency of society to impose, by other means than civil penalties, its own ideas and practices as rules of conduct on those who dissent from them; to fetter the development, and, if possible, prevent the formation, of any individuality not in harmony with its ways, and compel all characters to fashion themselves upon the model of its own. There is a limit to the legitimate interference of collective opinion with individual independence; and to find that limit, and maintain it against encroachment, is as indispensable to a good condition of human affairs, as protection against political despotism.

  But though this proposition is not likely to be contested in general terms, the practical question, where to place the limit — how to make the fitting adjustment between individual independence and social control — is a subject on which nearly everything remains to be done. All that makes existence valuable to any one, depends on the enforcement of restraints upon the actions of other people. Some rules of conduct, therefore, must be imposed, by law in the first place, and by opinion on many things which are not fit subjects for the operation of law. What these rules should be, is the principal question in human affairs; but if we except a few of the most obvious cases, it is one of those which least progress has been made in resolving. No two ages, and scarcely any two countries, have decided it alike; and the decision of one age or country is a wonder to another. Yet the people of any given age and country no more suspect any difficulty in it, than if it were a subject on which mankind had always been agreed. The rules which obtain among themselves appear to them self-evident and self-justifying. This all but universal illusion is one of the examples of the magical influence of custom, which is not only, as the proverb says, a second nature, but is continually mistaken for the first. The effect of custom, in preventing any misgiving respecting the rules of conduct which mankind impose on one another, is all the more complete because the subject is one on which it is not generally considered necessary that reasons should be given, either by one person to others, or by each to himself. People are accustomed to believe, and have been encouraged in the belief by some who aspire to the character of philosophers, that their feelings, on subjects of this nature, are better than reasons, and render reasons unnecessary. The practical principle which guides them to their opinions on the regulation of human conduct, is the feeling in each person’s mind that everybody should be required to act as he, and those with whom he sympathizes, would like them to act. No one, indeed, acknowledges to himself that his standard of judgment is his own liking; but an opinion on a point of conduct, not supported by reasons, can only count as one person’s preference; and if the reasons, when given, are a mere appeal to a similar preference felt by other people, it is still only many people’s liking instead of one. To an ordinary man, however, his own preference, thus supported, is not only a perfectly satisfactory reason, but the only one he generally has for any of his notions of morality, taste, or propriety, which are not expressly written in his religious creed; and his chief guide in the interpretation even of that. Men’s opinions, accordingly, on what is laudable or blameable, are affected by all the multifarious causes which influence their wishes in regard to the conduct of others, and which are as numerous as those which determine their wishes on any other subject. Sometimes their reason — at other times their prejudices or superstitions: often their social affections, not seldom their antisocial ones, their envy or jealousy, their arrogance or contemptuousness: but most commonly, their desires or fears for themselves — their legitimate or illegitimate self-interest. Wherever there is an ascendant class, a large portion of the morality of the country emanates from its class interests, and its feelings of class superiority. The morality between Spartans and Helots, between planters and negroes, between princes and subjects, between nobles and roturiers, between men and women, has been for the most part the creation of these class interests and feelings: and the sentiments thus generated, react in turn upon the moral feelings of the members of the ascendant class, in their relations among themselves. Where, on the other hand, a class, formerly ascendant, has lost its ascendency, or where its ascendency is unpopular, the prevailing moral sentiments frequently bear the impress of an impatient dislike of superiority Another grand determining principle of the rules of conduct, both in act and forbearance which have been enforced by law or opinion, has been the servility of mankind towards the supposed preferences or aversions of their temporal masters, or of their gods. This servility, though essentially selfish, is not hypocrisy; it gives rise to perfectly genuine sentiments of abhorrence; it made men burn magicians and heretics. Among so many baser influences, the general and obvious interests of society have of course had a share, and a large one, in the direction of the moral sentiments: less, however, as a matter of reason, and on their own account, than as a consequence of the sympathies and antipathies which grew out of them: and sympathies and antipathies which had little or nothing to do with the interests of society, have made themselves felt in the establishment of moralities with quite as great force.

  The likings and dislikings of society, or of some powerful portion of it, are thus the main thing which has practically determined the rules laid down for general observance, under the penalties of law or opinion. And in general, those who have been in advance of society in thought and feeling, have left this condition of things unassailed in principle, however they may have come into conflict with it in some of its details. They have occupied themselves rather in inquiring what things society ought to like or dislike, than in questioning whether its likings or dislikings should be a law to individuals. They preferred endeavoring to alter the feelings of mankind on the particular points on which they were themselves heretical, rather than make common cause in defence of freedom, with heretics generally. The only case in which the higher ground has been taken on principle and maintained with consistency, by any but an individual here and there, is that of religious belief: a case instructive in many ways, and not least so as forming a most striking instance of the fallibility of what is called the moral sense: for the odium theologicum, in a sincere bigot, is one of the most unequivocal cases of moral feeling. Those who first broke the yoke of what called itself the Universal Church, were in general as little willing to permit difference of religious opinion as that church itself. But when the heat of the conflict was over, without giving a complete victory to any party, and each church or sect was reduced to limit its hopes to retaining possession of the ground it already occupied; minorities, seeing that they had no chance of becoming majorities, were under the necessity of pleading to those whom they could not convert, for permission to differ. It is accordingly on this battle-field, almost solely, that the rights of the individual against society have been asserted on broad grounds of principle, and the claim of society to exercise authority over dissentients openly controverted. The great writers to whom the world owes what religious liberty it possesses, have mostly asserted freedom of conscience as an indefeasible right, and denied absolutely that a human being is accountable to others for his religious belief Yet so natural to mankind is intolerance in whatever they really care about, that religious freedom has hardly anywhere been practically realized, except where religious indifference, which dislikes to have its peace disturbed by theological quarrels, has added its weight to the scale. In the minds of almost all religious persons, even in the most tolerant countries, the duty of toleration is admitted with tacit reserves. One person will bear with dissent in matters of church government, but not of dogma; another can tolerate everybody, short of a Papist or an Unitarian; another, every one who believes in revealed religion; a few extend their charity a little further, but stop at the belief in a God and in a future state. Wherever the sentiment of the majority is still genuine and intense, it is found to have abated little of its claim to be obeyed.

  In England, from the peculiar circumstances of our political history, though the yoke of opinion is perhaps heavier, that of law is lighter, than in most other countries of Europe; and there is considerable jealousy of direct interference, by the legislative or the executive power with private conduct; not so much from any just regard for the independence of the individual, as from the still subsisting habit of looking on the government as representing an opposite interest to the public. The majority have not yet learnt to feel the power of the government their power, or its opinions their opinions. When they do so, individual liberty will probably be as much exposed to invasion from the government, as it already is from public opinion. But, as yet, there is a considerable amount of feeling ready to be called forth against any attempt of the law to control individuals in things in which they have not hitherto been accustomed to be controlled by it; and this with very little discrimination as to whether the matter is, or is not, within the legitimate sphere of legal control; insomuch that the feeling, highly salutary on the whole, is perhaps quite as often misplaced as well grounded in the particular instances of its application. There is, in fact, no recognized principle by which the propriety or impropriety of government interference is customarily tested. People decide according to their personal preferences. Some, whenever they see any good to be done, or evil to be remedied, would willingly instigate the government to undertake the business; while others prefer to bear almost any amount of social evil, rather than add one to the departments of human interests amenable to governmental control. And men range themselves on one or the other side in any particular case, according to this general direction of their sentiments; or according to the degree of interest which they feel in the particular thing which it is proposed that the government should do; or according to the belief they entertain that the government would, or would not, do it in the manner they prefer; but very rarely on account of any opinion to which they consistently adhere, as to what things are fit to be done by a government. And it seems to me that, in consequence of this absence of rule or principle, one side is at present as often wrong as the other; the interference of government is, with about equal frequency, improperly invoked and improperly condemned.

  The object of this Essay is to assert one very simple principle, as entitled to govern absolutely the dealings of society with the individual in the way of compulsion and control, whether the means used be physical force in the form of legal penalties, or the moral coercion of public opinion. That principle is, that the sole end for which mankind are warranted, individually or collectively, in interfering with the liberty of action of any of their number, is self-protection. That the only purpose for which power can be rightfully exercised over any member of a civilized community, against his will, is to prevent harm to others. His own good, either physical or moral, is not a sufficient warrant. He cannot rightfully be compelled to do or forbear because it will be better for him to do so, because it will make him happier, because, in the opinions of others, to do so would be wise, or even right These are good reasons for remonstrating with him, or reasoning with him, or persuading him or entreating him, but not for compelling him, or visiting him with any evil, in case he do other wise. To justify that, the conduct from which it is desired to deter him must be calculated to produce evil to some one else. The only part of the conduct of any one, for which he is amenable to society, is that which concerns others. In the part which merely concerns himself, his independence is, of right, absolute. Over himself, over his own body and mind, the individual is sovereign.

  It is, perhaps, hardly necessary to say that this doctrine is meant to apply only to human beings in the maturity of their faculties. We are not speaking of children, or of young persons below the age which the law may fix as that of manhood or womanhood. Those who are still in a state to require being taken care of by others, must be protected against their own actions as well as against external injury. For the same reason, we may leave out of consideration those backward states of society in which the race itself may be considered as in its nonage. The early difficulties in the way of spontaneous progress are so great, that there is seldom any choice of means for overcoming them; and a ruler full of the spirit of improvement is warranted in the use of any expedients that will attain an end, perhaps otherwise unattainable. Despotism is a legitimate mode of government in dealing with barbarians, provided the end be their improvement, and the means justified by actually effecting that end. Liberty, as a principle, has no application to any state of things anterior to the time when mankind have become capable of being improved by free and equal discussion. Until then, there is nothing for them but implicit obedience to an Akbar or a Charlemagne, if they are so fortunate as to find one. But as soon as mankind have attained the capacity of being guided to their own improvement by conviction or persuasion (a period long since reached in all nations with whom we need here concern ourselves), compulsion, either in the direct form or in that of pains and penalties for non-compliance, is no longer admissible as a means to their own good, and justifiable only for the security of others.

  It is proper to state that I forego any advantage which could be derived to my argument from the idea of abstract right, as a thing independent of utility. I regard utility as the ultimate appeal on all ethical questions; but it must be utility in the largest sense, grounded on the permanent interests of man as a progressive being. Those interests, I contend, authorize the subjection of individual spontaneity to external control, only in respect to those actions of each, which concern the interest of other people. If any one does an act hurtful to others, there is a primâ facie case for punishing him, by law, or, where legal penalties are not safely applicable, by general disapprobation. There are also many positive acts for the benefit of others, which he may rightfully be compelled to perform; such as, to give evidence in a court of justice; to bear his fair share in the common defence, or in any other joint work necessary to the interest of the society of which he enjoys the protection; and to perform certain acts of individual beneficence, such as saving a fellow creature’s life, or interposing to protect the defenceless against ill-usage, things which whenever it is obviously a man’s duty to do, he may rightfully be made responsible to society for not doing A person may cause evil to others not only by his actions but by his inaction, and in either case he is justly accountable to them for the injury. The latter case, it is true, requires a much more cautious exercise of compulsion than the former. To make any one answerable for doing evil to others, is the rule; to make him answerable for not preventing evil, is, comparatively speaking, the exception. Yet there are many cases clear enough and grave enough to justify that exception. In all things which regard the external relations of the individual, he is de jure amenable to those whose interests are concerned, and if need be, to society as their protector. There are often good reasons for not holding him to the responsibility; but these reasons must arise from the special expediencies of the case: either because it is a kind of case in which he is on the whole likely to act better, when left to his own discretion, than when controlled in any way in which society have it in their power to control him; or because the attempt to exercise control would produce other evils, greater than those which it would prevent. When such reasons as these preclude the enforcement of responsibility, the conscience of the agent himself should step into the vacant judgment-seat, and protect those interests of others which have no external protection; judging himself all the more rigidly, because the case does not admit of his being made accountable to the judgment of his fellow-creatures.

  But there is a sphere of action in which society, as distinguished from the individual, has, if any, only an indirect interest; comprehending all that portion of a person’s life and conduct which affects only himself, or, if it also affects others, only with their free, voluntary, and undeceived consent and participation. When I say only himself, I mean directly, and in the first instance: for whatever affects himself, may affect others through himself; and the objection which may be grounded on this contingency, will receive consideration in the sequel. This, then, is the appropriate region of human liberty. It comprises, first, the inward domain of consciousness; demanding liberty of conscience, in the most comprehensive sense; liberty of thought and feeling; absolute freedom of opinion and sentiment on all subjects, practical or speculative, scientific, moral, or theological. The liberty of expressing and publishing opinions may seem to fall under a different principle, since it belongs to that part of the conduct of an individual which concerns other people; but, being almost of as much importance as the liberty of thought itself, and resting in great part on the same reasons, is practically inseparable from it. Secondly, the principle requires liberty of tastes and pursuits; of framing the plan of our life to suit our own character; of doing as we like, subject to such consequences as may follow; without impediment from our fellow-creatures, so long as what we do does not harm them, even though they should think our conduct foolish, perverse, or wrong. Thirdly, from this liberty of each individual, follows the liberty, within the same limits, of combination among individuals; freedom to unite, for any purpose not involving harm to others: the persons combining being supposed to be of full age, and not forced or deceived.

  No society in which these liberties are not, on the whole, respected, is free, whatever may be its form of government; and none is completely free in which they do not exist absolute and unqualified. The only freedom which deserves the name, is that of pursuing our own good in our own way, so long as we do not attempt to deprive others of theirs, or impede their efforts to obtain it. Each is the proper guardian of his own health, whether bodily, or mental and spiritual. Mankind are greater gainers by suffering each other to live as seems good to themselves, than by compelling each to live as seems good to the rest.

  Though this doctrine is anything but new, and, to some persons, may have the air of a truism, there is no doctrine which stands more directly opposed to the general tendency of existing opinion and practice. Society has expended fully as much effort in the attempt (according to its lights) to compel people to conform to its notions of personal, as of social excellence. The ancient commonwealths thought themselves entitled to practise, and the ancient philosophers countenanced, the regulation of every part of private conduct by public authority, on the ground that the State had a deep interest in the whole bodily and mental discipline of every one of its citizens; a mode of thinking which may have been admissible in small republics surrounded by powerful enemies, in constant peril of being subverted by foreign attack or internal commotion, and to which even a short interval of relaxed energy and self-command might so easily be fatal, that they could not afford to wait for the salutary permanent effects of freedom. In the modern world, the greater size of political communities, and above all, the separation between the spiritual and temporal authority (which placed the direction of men’s consciences in other hands than those which controlled their worldly affairs), prevented so great an interference by law in the details of private life; but the engines of moral repression have been wielded more strenuously against divergence from the reigning opinion in self-regarding, than even in social matters; religion, the most powerful of the elements which have entered into the formation of moral feeling, having almost always been governed either by the ambition of a hierarchy, seeking control over every department of human conduct, or by the spirit of Puritanism. And some of those modern reformers who have placed themselves in strongest opposition to the religions of the past, have been noway behind either churches or sects in their assertion of the right of spiritual domination: M. Comte, in particular, whose social system, as unfolded in his Traité de Politique Positive, aims at establishing (though by moral more than by legal appliances) a despotism of society over the individual, surpassing anything contemplated in the political ideal of the most rigid disciplinarian among the ancient philosophers.

  Apart from the peculiar tenets of individual thinkers, there is also in the world at large an increasing inclination to stretch unduly the powers of society over the individual, both by the force of opinion and even by that of legislation: and as the tendency of all the changes taking place in the world is to strengthen society, and diminish the power of the individual, this encroachment is not one of the evils which tend spontaneously to disappear, but, on the contrary, to grow more and more formidable. The disposition of mankind, whether as rulers or as fellow-citizens, to impose their own opinions and inclinations as a rule of conduct on others, is so energetically supported by some of the best and by some of the worst feelings incident to human nature, that it is hardly ever kept under restraint by anything but want of power; and as the power is not declining, but growing, unless a strong barrier of moral conviction can be raised against the mischief, we must expect, in the present circumstances of the world, to see it increase.

  It will be convenient for the argument, if, instead of at once entering upon the general thesis, we confine ourselves in the first instance to a single branch of it, on which the principle here stated is, if not fully, yet to a certain point, recognized by the current opinions. This one branch is the Liberty of Thought: from which it is impossible to separate the cognate liberty of speaking and of writing. Although these liberties, to some considerable amount, form part of the political morality of all countries which profess religious toleration and free institutions, the grounds, both philosophical and practical, on which they rest, are perhaps not so familiar to the general mind, nor so thoroughly appreciated by many even of the leaders of opinion, as might have been expected. Those grounds, when rightly understood, are of much wider application than to only one division of the subject, and a thorough consideration of this part of the question will be found the best introduction to the remainder. Those to whom nothing which I am about to say will be new, may therefore, I hope, excuse me, if on a subject which for now three centuries has been so often discussed, I venture on one discussion more.

  CHAPTER II.

  of the liberty of thought and discussion.

  THE time, it is to be hoped, is gone by when any defence would be necessary of the “liberty of the press” as one of the securities against corrupt or tyrannical government. No argument, we may suppose, can now be needed, against permitting a legislature or an executive, not identified in interest with the people, to prescribe opinions to them, and determine what doctrines or what arguments they shall be allowed to hear. This aspect of the question, besides, has been so often and so triumphantly enforced by preceding writers, that it needs not be specially insisted on in this place. Though the law of England, on the subject of the press, is as servile to this day as it was in the time of the Tudors, there is little danger of its being actually put in force against political discussion, except during some temporary panic, when fear of insurrection drives ministers and judges from their propriety;* and, speaking generally, it is not, in constitutional countries, to be apprehended, that the government, whether completely responsible to the people or not, will often attempt to control the expression of opinion, except when in doing so it makes itself the organ of the general intolerance of the public. Let us suppose, therefore, that the government is entirely at one with the people, and never thinks of exerting any power of coercion unless in agreement with what it conceives to be their voice. But I deny the right of the people to exercise such coercion, either by themselves or by their government. The power itself is illegitimate. The best government has no more title to it than the worst. It is as noxious, or more noxious, when exerted in accordance with public opinion, than when in opposition to it. If all mankind minus one, were of one opinion, and only one person were of the contrary opinion, mankind would be no more justified in silencing that one person, than he, if he had the power, would be justified in silencing mankind. Were an opinion a personal possession of no value except to the owner; if to be obstructed in the enjoyment of it were simply a private injury, it would make some difference whether the injury was inflicted only on a few persons or on many. But the peculiar evil of silencing the expression of an opinion is, that it is robbing the human race; posterity as well as the existing generation; those who dissent from the opinion, still more than those who hold it. If the opinion is right, they are deprived of the opportunity of exchanging error for truth: if wrong, they lose, what is almost as great a benefit, the clearer perception and livelier impression of truth, produced by its collision with error.

  It is necessary to consider separately these two hypotheses, each of which has a distinct branch of the argument corresponding to it. We can never be sure that the opinion we are endeavoring to stifle is a false opinion; and if we were sure, stifling it would be an evil still.

  First: the opinion which it is attempted to suppress by authority may possibly be true. Those who desire to suppress it, of course deny its truth; but they are not infallible. They have no authority to decide the question for all mankind, and exclude every other person from the means of judging. To refuse a hearing to an opinion, because they are sure that it is false, is to assume that their certainty is the same thing as absolute certainty. All silencing of discussion is an assumption of infallibility. Its condemnation may be allowed to rest on this common argument, not the worse for being common.

  Unfortunately for the good sense of mankind, the fact of their fallibility is far from carrying the weight in their practical judgment, which is always allowed to it in theory; for while every one well knows himself to be fallible, few think it necessary to take any precautions against their own fallibility, or admit the supposition that any opinion, of which they feel very certain, may be one of the examples of the error to which they acknowledge themselves to be liable. Absolute princes, or others who are accustomed to unlimited deference, usually feel this complete confidence in their own opinions on nearly all subjects. People more happily situated, who sometimes hear their opinions disputed, and are not wholly unused to be set right when they are wrong, place the same unbounded reliance only on such of their opinions as are shared by all who surround them, or to whom they habitually defer: for in proportion to a man’s want of confidence in his own solitary judgment, does he usually repose, with implicit trust, on the infallibilty of “the world” in general. And the world, to each individual, means the part of it with which he comes in contact; his party, his sect, his church, his class of society: the man may be called, by comparison, almost liberal and large-minded to whom it means anything so comprehensive as his own country or his own age. Nor is his faith in this collective authority at all shaken by his being aware that other ages, countries, sects, churches, classes, and parties have thought, and even now think, the exact reverse. He devolves upon his own world the responsibility of being in the right against the dissentient worlds of other people; and it never troubles him that mere accident has decided which of these numerous worlds is the object of his reliance, and that the same causes which make him a Churchman in London, would have made him a Buddhist or a Confucian in Pekin. Yet it is as evident in itself, as any amount of argument can make it, that ages are no more infallible than individuals; every age having held many opinions which subsequent ages have deemed not only false but absurd; and it is as certain that many opinions, now general, will be rejected by future ages, as it is that many, once general, are rejected by the present.

  The objection likely to be made to this argument, would probably take some such form as the following. There is no greater assumption of infallibility in forbidding the propagation of error, than in any other thing which is done by public authority on its own judgment and responsibility. Judgment is given to men that they may use it. Because it may be used erroneously, are men to be told that they ought not to use it at all? To prohibit what they think pernicious, is not claiming exemption from error, but fulfilling the duty incumbent on them, although fallible, of acting on their conscientious conviction. If we were never to act on our opinions, because those opinions may be wrong, we should leave all our interests uncared for, and all our duties unperformed. An objection which applies to all conduct, can be no valid objection to any conduct in particular. It is the duty of governments, and of individuals, to form the truest opinions they can; to form them carefully, and never impose them upon others unless they are quite sure of being right. But when they are sure (such reasoners may say), it is not conscientiousness but cowardice to shrink from acting on their opinions, and allow doctrines which they honestly think dangerous to the welfare of mankind, either in this life or in another, to be scattered abroad without restraint, because other people, in less enlightened times, have persecuted opinions now believed to be true. Let us take care, it may be said, not to make the same mistake: but governments and nations have made mistakes in other things, which are not denied to be fit subjects for the exercise of authority: they have laid on bad taxes, made unjust wars. Ought we therefore to lay on no taxes, and, under whatever provocation, make no wars? Men, and governments, must act to the best of their ability. There is no such thing as absolute certainty, but there is assurance sufficient for the purposes of human life. We may, and must, assume our opinion to be true for the guidance of our own conduct: and it is assuming no more when we forbid bad men to pervert society by the propagation of opinions which we regard as false and pernicious.

  I answer, that it is assuming very much more. There is the greatest difference between presuming an opinion to be true, because, with every opportunity for contesting it, it has not been refuted, and assuming its truth for the purpose of not permitting its refutation. Complete liberty of contradicting and disproving our opinion, is the very condition which justifies us in assuming its truth for purposes of action; and on no other terms can a being with human faculties have any rational assurance of being right.

  When we consider either the history of opinion, or the ordinary conduct of human life, to what is it to be ascribed that the one and the other are no worse than they are? Not certainly to the inherent force of the human understanding; for, on any matter not self-evident, there are ninety-nine persons totally incapable of judging of it, for one who is capable; and the capacity of the hundredth person is only comparative; for the majority of the eminent men of every past generation held many opinions now known to be erroneous, and did or approved numerous things which no one will now justify. Why is it, then, that there is on the whole a preponderance among mankind of rational opinions and rational conduct? If there really is this preponderance — which there must be, unless human affairs are, and have always been, in an almost desperate state — it is owing to a quality of the human mind, the source of everything respectable in man either as an intellectual or as a moral being, namely, that his errors are corrigible. He is capable of rectifying his mistakes, by discussion and experience. Not by experience alone There must be discussion, to show how experience is to be interpreted. Wrong opinions and practices gradually yield to fact and argument: but facts and arguments, to produce any effect on the mind, must be brought before it. Very few facts are able to tell their own story, without comments to bring out their meaning. The whole strength and value, then, of human judgment, depending on the one property, that it can be set right when it is wrong, reliance can be placed on it only when the means of setting it right are kept constantly at hand. In the case of any person whose judgment is really deserving of confidence, how has it become so? Because he has kept his mind open to criticism of his opinions and conduct. Because it has been his practice to listen to all that could be said against him; to profit by as much of it as was just, and expound to himself, and upon occasion to others, the fallacy of what was fallacious. Because he has felt, that the only way in which a human being can make some approach to knowing the whole of a subject, is by hearing what can be said about it by persons of every variety of opinion, and studying all modes in which it can be looked at by every character of mind. No wise man ever acquired his wisdom in any mode but this; nor is it in the nature of human intellect to become wise in any other manner. The steady habit of correcting and completing his own opinion by collating it with those of others, so far from causing doubt and hesitation in carrying it into practice, is the only stable foundation for a just reliance on it: for, being cognizant of all that can, at least obviously, be said against him, and having taken up his position against all gainsayers Blank in MS. knowing that he has sought for objections and difficulties, instead of avoiding them, and has shut out no light which can be thrown upon the subject from any quarter — he has a right to think his judgment better than that of any person, or any multitude, who have not gone through a similar process.

  It is not too much to require that what the wisest of mankind, those who are best entitled to trust their own judgment, find necessary to warrant their relying on it, should be submitted to by that miscellaneous collection of a few wise and many foolish individuals, called the public. The most intolerant of churches, the Roman Catholic Church, even at the canonization of a saint, admits, and listens patiently to, a “devil’s advocate.” The holiest of men, it appears, cannot be admitted to posthumous honors, until all that the devil could say against him is known and weighed. If even the Newtonian philosophy were not permitted to be questioned, mankind could not feel as complete assurance of its truth as they now do. The beliefs which we have most warrant for, have no safeguard to rest on, but a standing invitation to the whole world to prove them unfounded. If the challenge is not accepted, or is accepted and the attempt fails, we are far enough from certainty still; but we have done the best that the existing state of human reason admits of; we have neglected nothing that could give the truth a chance of reaching us: if the lists are kept open, we may hope that if there be a better truth, it will be found when the human mind is capable of receiving it; and in the mean time we may rely on having attained such approach to truth, as is possible in our own day. This is the amount of certainty attainable by a fallible being, and this the sole way of attaining it.

  Strange it is, that men should admit the validity of the arguments for free discussion, but object to their being “pushed to an extreme;” not seeing that unless the reasons are good for an extreme case, they are not good for any case. Strange that they should imagine that they are not assuming infallibility, when they acknowledge that there should be free discussion on all subjects which can possibly be doubtful, but think that some particular principle or doctrine should be forbidden to be questioned because it is so certain, that is, because they are certain that it is certain. To call any proposition certain, while there is any one who would deny its certainty if permitted, but who is not permitted, is to assume that we ourselves, and those who agree with us, are the judges of certainty, and judges without hearing the other side.

  In the present age — which has been described as “destitute of faith, but terrified at scepticism,” — in which people feel sure, not so much that their opinions are true, as that they should not know what to do without them — the claims of an opinion to be protected from public attack are rested not so much on its truth, as on its importance to society. There are, it is alleged, certain beliefs, so useful, not to say indispensable to well-being, that it is as much the duty of governments to uphold those beliefs, as to protect any other of the interests of society. In a case of such necessity, and so directly in the line of their duty, something less than infallibility may, it is maintained, warrant, and even bind, governments, to act on their own opinion, confirmed by the general opinion of mankind. It is also often argued, and still oftener thought, that none but bad men would desire to weaken these salutary beliefs; and there can be nothing wrong, it is thought, in restraining bad men, and prohibiting what only such men would wish to practise. This mode of thinking makes the justification of restraints on discussion not a question of the truth of doctrines, but of their usefulness; and flatters itself by that means to escape the responsibility of claiming to be an infallible judge of opinions. But those who thus satisfy themselves, do not perceive that the assumption of infallibility is merely shifted from one point to another. The usefulness of an opinion is itself matter of opinion: as disputable, as open to discussion and requiring discussion as much, as the opinion itself. There is the same need of an infallible judge of opinions to decide an opinion to be noxious, as to decide it to be false, unless the opinion condemned has full opportunity of defending itself. And it will not do to say that the heretic may be allowed to maintain the utility or harmlessness of his opinion, though forbidden to maintain its truth. The truth of an opinion is part of its utility. If we would know whether or not it is desirable that a proposition should be believed, is it possible to exclude the consideration of whether or not it is true? In the opinion, not of bad men, but of the best men, no belief which is contrary to truth can be really useful: and can you prevent such men from urging that plea, when they are charged with culpability for denying some doctrine which they are told is useful, but which they believe to be false? Those who are on the side of received opinions, never fail to take all possible advantage of this plea; you do not find them handling the question of utility as if it could be completely abstracted from that of truth: on the contrary, it is, above all, because their doctrine is “the truth,” that the knowledge or the belief of it is held to be so indispensable. There can be no fair discussion of the question of usefulness, when an argument so vital may be employed on one side, but not on the other. And in point of fact, when law or public feeling do not permit the truth of an opinion to be disputed, they are just as little tolerant of a denial of its usefulness. The utmost they allow is an extenuation of its absolute necessity, or of the positive guilt of rejecting it.

  In order more fully to illustrate the mischief of denying a hearing to opinions because we, in our own judgment, have condemned them, it will be desirable to fix down the discussion to a concrete case; and I choose, by preference, the cases which are least favorable to me — in which the argument against freedom of opinion, both on the score of truth and on that of utility, is considered the strongest. Let the opinions impugned be the belief in a God and in a future state, or any of the commonly received doctrines of morality. To fight the battle on such ground, gives a great advantage to an unfair antagonist; since he will be sure to say (and many who have no desire to be unfair will say it internally), Are these the doctrines which you do not deem sufficiently certain to be taken under the protection of law? Is the belief in a God one of the opinions, to feel sure of which, you hold to be assuming infallibility? But I must be permitted to observe, that it is not the feeling sure of a doctrine (be it what it may) which I call an as sumption of infallibility. It is the undertaking to decide that question for others, without allowing them to hear what can be said on the contrary side. And I denounce and reprobate this pretension not the less, if put forth on the side of my most solemn convictions. How ever positive any one’s persuasion may be, not only of the falsity, but of the pernicious consequences — not only of the pernicious consequences, but (to adopt expressions which I altogether condemn) the immorality and impiety of an opinion; yet if, in pursuance of that private judgment, though backed by the public judgment of his country or his cotemporaries, he prevents the opinion from being heard in its defence, he assumes infallibility. And so far from the assumption being less objectionable or less dangerous because the opinion is called immoral or impious, this is the case of all others in which it is most fatal. These are exactly the occasions on which the men of one generation commit those dreadful mistakes, which excite the astonishment and horror of posterity. It is among such that we find the instances memorable in history, when the arm of the law has been employed to root out the best men and the noblest doctrines; with deplorable success as to the men, though some of the doctrines have survived to be (as if in mockery) invoked, in defence of similar conduct towards those who dissent from them, or from their received interpretation.

  Mankind can hardly be too often reminded, that there was once a man named Socrates, between whom and the legal authorities and public opinion of his time, there took place a memorable collision. Born in an age and country abounding in individual greatness, this man has been handed down to us by those who best knew both him and the age, as the most virtuous man in it; while we know him as the head and prototype of all subsequent teachers of virtue, the source equally of the lofty inspiration of Plato and the judicious utilitarianism of Aristotle, “i maëstri di color che sanno,” the two headsprings of ethical as of all other philosophy. This acknowledged master of all the eminent thinkers who have since lived — whose fame, still growing after more than two thousand years, all but outweighs the whole remainder of the names which make his native city illustrious — was put to death by his countrymen, after a judicial conviction, for impiety and immorality. Impiety, in denying the gods recognized by the State; indeed his accuser asserted (see the “Apologia”) that he believed in no gods at all. Immorality, in being, by his doctrines and instructions, a “corruptor of youth.” Of these charges the tribunal, there is every ground for believing, honestly found him guilty, and condemned the man who probably of all then born had deserved best of mankind, to be put to death as a criminal.

  To pass from this to the only other instance of judicial iniquity, the mention of which, after the condemnation of Socrates, would not be an anti-climax: the event which took place on Calvary rather more than eighteen hundred years ago. The man who left on the memory of those who witnessed his life and conversation, such an impression of his moral grandeur, that eighteen subsequent centuries have done homage to him as the Almighty in person, was ignominiously put to death, as what? As a blasphemer. Men did not merely mistake their benefactor; they mistook him for the exact contrary of what he was, and treated him as that prodigy of impiety, which they themselves are now held to be, for their treatment of him. The feelings with which mankind now regard these lamentable transactions, especially the later of the two, render them extremely un just in their judgment of the unhappy actors These were, to all appearance, not bad men — not worse than men commonly are, but rather the contrary; men who possessed in a full, or somewhat more than a full measure, the religious, moral, and patriotic feelings of their time and people: the very kind of men who, in all times, our own included, have every chance of passing through life blameless and respected. The high-priest who rent his garments when the words were pronounced, which, according to all the ideas of his country, constituted the blackest guilt, was in all probability quite as sincere in his horror and indignation, as the generality of respectable and pious men now are in the religious and moral sentiments they profess; and most of those who now shudder at his conduct, if they had lived in his time, and been born Jews, would have acted precisely as he did. Orthodox Christians who are tempted to think that those who stoned to death the first martyrs must have been worse men than they themselves are, ought to remember that one of those persecutors was Saint Paul.

  Let us add one more example, the most striking of all, if the impressiveness of an error is measured by the wisdom and virtue of him who falls into it. If ever any one, possessed of power, had grounds for thinking himself the best and most enlightened among his cotemporaries, it was the Emperor Marcus Aurelius. Absolute monarch of the whole civilized world, he preserved through life not only the most unblemished justice, but what was less to be expected from his Stoical breeding, the tenderest heart. The few failings which are attributed to him, were all on the side of indulgence: while his writings, the highest ethical product of the ancient mind, differ scarcely perceptibly, if they differ at all, from the most characteristic teachings of Christ. This man, a better Christian in all but the dogmatic sense of the word, than almost any of the ostensibly Christian sovereigns who have since reigned, persecuted Christianity. Placed at the summit of all the previous attainments of humanity, with an open, unfettered intellect, and a character which led him of himself to embody in his moral writings the Christian ideal, he yet failed to see that Christianity was to be a good and not an evil to the world, with his duties to which he was so deeply penetrated. Existing society he knew to be in a deplorable state. But such as it was, he saw or thought he saw, that it was held together and prevented from being worse, by belief and reverence of the received divinities. As a ruler of mankind, he deemed it his duty not to suffer society to fall in pieces; and saw not how, if its existing ties were removed, any others could be formed which could again knit it together. The new religion openly aimed at dissolving these ties: unless, therefore, it was his duty to adopt that religion, it seemed to be his duty to put it down. Inasmuch then as the theology of Christianity did not appear to him true or of divine origin; inasmuch as this strange history of a crucified God was not credible to him, and a system which purported to rest entirely upon a foundation to him so wholly unbelievable, could not be foreseen by him to be that renovating agency which, after all abatements, it has in fact proved to be; the gentlest and most amiable of philosophers and rulers, under a solemn sense of duty, authorized the persecution of Christianity. To my mind this is one of the most tragical facts in all history. It is a bitter thought, how different a thing the Christianity of the world might have been, if the Christian faith had been adopted as the religion of the empire under the auspices of Marcus Aurelius instead of those of Constantine. But it would be equally unjust to him and false to truth, to deny, that no one plea which can be urged for punishing anti-Christian teaching, was wanting to Marcus Aurelius for punishing, as he did, the propagation of Christianity. No Christian more firmly believes that Atheism is false, and tends to the dissolution of society, than Marcus Aurelius believed the same things of Christianity; he who, of all men then living, might have been thought the most capable of appreciating it. Unless any one who approves of punishment for the promulgation of opinions, flatters himself that he is a wiser and better man than Marcus Aurelius — more deeply versed in the wisdom of his time, more elevated in his intellect above it — more earnest in his search for truth, or more single-minded in his devotion to it when found; — let him abstain from that assumption of the joint infallibility of himself and the multitude, which the great Antoninus made with so unfortunate a result.

  Aware of the impossibility of defending the use of punishment for restraining irreligious opinions, by any argument which will not justify Marcus Antoninus, the enemies of religious freedom, when hard pressed, occasionally accept this consequence, and say, with Dr. Johnson, that the persecutors of Christianity were in the right; that persecution is an ordeal through which truth ought to pass, and always passes successfully, legal penalties being, in the end, powerless against truth, though sometimes beneficially effective against mischievous errors. This is a form of the argument for religious intolerance, sufficiently remarkable not to be passed without notice.

  A theory which maintains that truth may justifiably be persecuted because persecution cannot possibly do it any harm, cannot be charged with being intentionally hostile to the reception of new truths; but we cannot commend the generosity of its dealing with the persons to whom mankind are indebted for them. To discover to the world something which deeply concerns it, and of which it was previously ignorant; to prove to it that it had been mistaken on some vital point of temporal or spiritual interest, is as important a service as a human being can render to his fellow-creatures, and in certain cases, as in those of the early Christians and of the Reformers, those who think with Dr. Johnson believe it to have been the most precious gift which could be bestowed on mankind. That the authors of such splendid benefits should be requited by martyrdom; that their reward should be to be dealt with as the vilest of criminals, is not, upon this theory, a deplorable error and misfortune, for which humanity should mourn in sackcloth and ashes, but the normal and justifiable state of things. The propounder of a new truth according to this doctrine, should stand, as stood, in the legislation of the Locrians, the proposer of a new law, with a halter round his neck, to be instantly tightened if the public assembly did not, on hearing his reasons, then and there adopt his proposition. People who defend this mode of treating benefactors, cannot be supposed to set much value on the benefit; and I believe this view of the subject is mostly confined to the sort of persons who think that new truths may have been desirable once, but that we have had enough of them now.

  But, indeed, the dictum that truth always triumphs over persecution, is one of those pleasant falsehoods which men repeat after one another till they pass into commonplaces, but which all experience refutes. History teems with instances of truth put down by persecution. If not suppressed forever, it may be thrown back for centuries. To speak only of religious opinions: the Reformation broke out at least twenty times before Luther, and was put down. Arnold of Brescia was put down Fra Dolcino was put down. Savonarola was put down. The Albigeois were put down. The Vaudois were put down. The Lollards were put down. The Hussites were put down. Even after the era of Luther, wherever persecution was persisted in, it was successful. In Spain, Italy, Flanders, the Austrian empire, Protestanism was rooted out; and, most likely, would have been so in England, had Queen Mary lived, or Queen Elizabeth died. Persecution has always succeeded, save where the heretics were too strong a party to be effectually persecuted. No reasonable person can doubt that Christianity might have been extirpated in the Roman empire. It spread, and became predominant, because the persecutions were only occasional, lasting but a short time, and separated by long intervals of almost undisturbed propagandism. It is a piece of idle sentimentality that truth, merely as truth, has any inherent power denied to error, of prevailing against the dungeon and the stake. Men are not more zealous for truth than they often are for error, and a sufficient application of legal or even of social penalties will generally succeed in stopping the propagation of either. The real advantage which truth has, consists in this, that when an opinion is true, it may be extinguished once, twice, or many times, but in the course of ages there will generally be found persons to rediscover it, until some one of its reappearances falls on a time when from favorable circumstances it escapes persecution until it has made such head as to withstand all subsequent attempts to suppress it.

  It will be said, that we do not now put to death the introducers of new opinions: we are not like our fathers who slew the prophets, we even build sepulchres to them. It is true we no longer put heretics to death; and the amount of penal infliction which modern feeling would probably tolerate, even against the most obnoxious opinions, is not sufficient to extirpate them. But let us not flatter ourselves that we are yet free from the stain even of legal persecution. Penalties for opinion, or at least for its expression, still exist by law; and their enforcement is not, even in these times, so unexampled as to make it at all incredible that they may some day be revived in full force. In the year 1857, at the summer assizes of the county of Cornwall, an unfortunate man,* said to be of unexceptionable conduct in all relations of life, was sentenced to twenty-one months imprisonment, for uttering, and writing on a gate, some offensive words concerning Christianity. Within a month of the same time, at the Old Bailey, two persons, on two separate occasions,† were rejected as jurymen, and one of them grossly insulted by the judge and by one of the counsel, because they honestly declared that they had no theological belief; and a third, a foreigner,‡ for the same reason, was denied justice against a thief. This refusal of redress took place in virtue of the legal doctrine, that no person can be allowed to give evidence in a court of justice, who does not profess belief in a God (any god is sufficient) and in a future state; which is equivalent to declaring such persons to be outlaws, excluded from the protection of the tribunals; who may not only be robbed or assaulted with impunity, if no one but themselves, or persons of similar opinions, be present but any one else may be robbed or assaulted with impunity, if the proof of the fact depends on their evidence. The assumption on which this is grounded, is that the oath is worthless, of a person who does not believe in a future state; a proposition which betokens much ignorance of history in those who assent to it (since it is historically true that a large proportion of infidels in all ages have been persons of distinguished integrity and honor); and would be maintained by no one who had the smallest conception how many of the persons in greatest repute with the world, both for virtues and for attainments, are well known, at least to their intimates, to be unbelievers. The rule, besides, is suicidal, and cuts away its own foundation. Under pretence that atheists must be liars, it admits the testimony of all atheists who are willing to lie, and rejects only those who brave the obloquy of publicly confessing a detested creed rather than affirm a falsehood. A rule thus self-convicted of absurdity so far as regards its professed purpose, can be kept in force only as a badge of hatred, a relic of persecution; a persecution, too, having the peculiarity, that the qualification for undergoing it, is the being clearly proved not to deserve it. The rule, and the theory it implies, are hardly less insulting to believers than to infidels. For if he who does not believe in a future state necessarily lies, it follows that they who do believe are only prevented from lying, if prevented they are, by the fear of hell. We will not do the authors and abettors of the rule the injury of supposing, that the conception which they have formed of Christian virtue is drawn from their own consciousness.

  These, indeed, are but rags and remnants of persecution, and may be thought to be not so much an indication of the wish to persecute, as an example of that very frequent infirmity of English minds, which makes them take a preposterous pleasure in the assertion of a bad principle, when they are no longer bad enough to desire to carry it really into practice. But unhappily there is no security in the state of the public mind, that the suspension of worse forms of legal persecution, which has lasted for about the space of a generation, will continue. In this age the quiet surface of routine is as often ruffled by attempts to resuscitate past evils, as to introduce new benefits. What is boasted of at the present time as the revival of religion, is always, in narrow and uncultivated minds, at least as much the revival of bigotry; and where there is the strong permanent leaven of intolerance in the feelings of a people, which at all times abides in the middle classes of this country, it needs but little to provoke them into actively persecuting those whom they have never ceased to think proper objects of persecution.* For it is this — it is the opinions men entertain, and the feelings they cherish, respecting those who disown the beliefs they deem important, which makes this country not a place of mental freedom. For a long time past, the chief mischief of the legal penalties is that they strengthen the social stigma. It is that stigma which is really effective, and so effective is it, that the profession of opinions which are under the ban of society is much less common in England, than is, in many other countries, the avowal of those which incur risk of judicial punishment. In respect to all persons but those whose pecuniary circumstances make them independent of the good will of other people, opinion, on this subject, is as efficacious as law; men might as well be imprisoned, as excluded from the means of earning their bread. Those whose bread is already secured, and who desire no favors from men in power, or from bodies of men, or from the public, have nothing to fear from the open avowal of any opinions, but to be ill-thought of and ill-spoken of, and this it ought not to require a very heroic mould to enable them to bear. There is no room for any appeal ad misericordiam in behalf of such persons. But though we do not now inflict so much evil on those who think differently from us, as it was formerly our custom to do, it may be that we do ourselves as much evil as ever by our treatment of them. Socrates was put to death, but the Socratic philosophy rose like the sun in heaven, and spread its illumination over the whole intellectual firmament. Christians were cast to the lions, but the Christian Church grew up a stately and spreading tree, overtopping the older and less vigorous growths, and stifling them by its shade. Our merely social intolerance, kills no one, roots out no opinions, but induces men to disguise them, or to abstain from any active effort for their diffusion. With us, heretical opinions do not perceptibly gain, or even lose, ground in each decade or generation; they never blaze out far and wide, but continue to smoulder in the narrow circles of thinking and studious persons among whom they originate, without ever lighting up the general affairs of mankind with either a true or a deceptive light. And thus is kept up a state of things very satisfactory to some minds, because, without the unpleasant process of fining or imprisoning anybody, it maintains all prevailing opinions outwardly undisturbed, while it does not absolutely interdict the exercise of reason by dissentients afflicted with the malady of thought. A convenient plan for having peace in the intellectual world, and keeping all things going on therein very much as they do already. But the price paid for this sort of intellectual pacification, is the sacrifice of the entire moral courage of the human mind. A state of things in which a large portion of the most active and inquiring intellects find it advisable to keep the genuine principles and grounds of their convictions within their own breasts, and attempt, in what they address to the public, to fit as much as they can of their own conclusions to premises which they have internally renounced, cannot send forth the open, fearless characters, and logical, consistent intellects who once adorned the thinking world. The sort of men who can be looked for under it, are either mere conformers to commonplace, or time-servers for truth whose arguments on all great subjects are meant for their hearers, and are not those which have convinced themselves. Those who avoid this alternative, do so by narrowing their thoughts and interest to things which can be spoken of without venturing within the region of principles, that is, to small practical matters, which would come right of themselves, if but the minds of mankind were strengthened and enlarged, and which will never be made effectually right until then; while that which would strengthen and enlarge men’s minds, free and daring speculation on the highest subjects, is abandoned.

  Those in whose eyes this reticence on the part of heretics is no evil, should consider in the first place, that in consequence of it there is never any fair and thorough discussion of heretical opinions; and that such of them as could not stand such a discussion, though they may be prevented from spreading, do not disappear. But it is not the minds of heretics that are deteriorated most, by the ban placed on all inquiry which does not end in the orthodox conclusions. The greatest harm done is to those who are not heretics, and whose whole mental development is cramped, and their reason cowed, by the fear of heresy. Who can compute what the world loses in the multitude of promising intellects combined with timid characters, who dare not follow out any bold, vigorous, independent train of thought, lest it should land them in something which would admit of being considered irreligious or immoral? Among them we may occasionally see some man of deep conscientiousness, and subtile and refined understanding, who spends a life in sophisticating with an intellect which he cannot silence, and exhausts the resources of ingenuity in attempting to reconcile the promptings of his conscience and reason with orthodoxy, which yet he does not, perhaps, to the end succeed in doing. No one can be a great thinker who does not recognize, that as a thinker it is his first duty to follow his intellect to whatever conclusions it may lead. Truth gains more even by the errors of one who, with due study and preparation, thinks for himself, than by the true opinions of those who only hold them because they do not suffer themselves to think. Not that it is solely, or chiefly, to form great thinkers, that freedom of thinking is required. On the contrary, it is as much, and even more indispensable, to enable average human beings to attain the mental stature which they are capable of. There have been, and may again be, great individual thinkers, in a general atmosphere of mental slavery. But there never has been, nor ever will be, in that atmosphere, an intellectually active people. Where any people has made a temporary approach to such a character, it has been because the dread of heterodox speculation was for a time suspended. Where there is a tacit convention that principles are not to be disputed; where the discussion of the greatest questions which can occupy humanity is considered to be closed, we cannot hope to find that generally high scale of mental activity which has made some periods of history so remarkable. Never when controversy avoided the subjects which are large and important enough to kindle enthusiasm, was the mind of a people stirred up from its foundations, and the impulse given which raised even persons of the most ordinary intellect to something of the dignity of thinking beings. Of such we have had an example in the condition of Europe during the times immediately following the Reformation; another, though limited to the Continent and to a more cultivated class, in the speculative movement of the latter half of the eighteenth century; and a third, of still briefer duration, in the intellectual fermentation of Germany during the Goethian and Fichtean period. These periods differed widely in the particular opinions which they developed; but were alike in this, that during all three the yoke of authority was broken. In each, an old mental despotism had been thrown off, and no new one had yet taken its place. The impulse given at these three periods has made Europe what it now is. Every single improvement which has taken place either in the human mind or in institutions, may be traced distinctly to one or other of them. Appearances have for some time indicated that all three impulses are well-nigh spent; and we can expect no fresh start, until we again assert our mental freedom.

  Let us now pass to the second division of the argument, and dismissing the supposition that any of the received opinions may be false, let us assume them to be true, and examine into the worth of the manner in which they are likely to be held, when their truth is not freely and openly canvassed. However unwillingly a person who has a strong opinion may admit the possibility that his opinion may be false, he ought to be moved by the consideration that however true it may be, if it is not fully, frequently, and fearlessly discussed, it will be held as a dead dogma, not a living truth.

  There is a class of persons (happily not quite so numerous as formerly) who think it enough if a person assents undoubtingly to what they think true, though he has no knowledge whatever of the grounds of the opinion, and could not make a tenable defence of it against the most superficial objections. Such persons, if they can once get their creed taught from authority, naturally think that no good, and some harm, comes of its being allowed to be questioned. Where their influence prevails, they make it nearly impossible for the received opinion to be rejected wisely and considerately, though it may still be rejected rashly and ignorantly; for to shut out discussion entirely is seldom possible, and when it once gets in, beliefs not grounded on conviction are apt to give way before the slightest semblance of an argument. Waiving, however, this possibility — assuming that the true opinion abides in the mind, but abides as a prejudice, a belief independent of, and proof against, argument — this is not the way in which truth ought to be held by a rational being. This is not knowing the truth. Truth, thus held, is but one superstition the more, accidentally clinging to the words which enunciate a truth.

  If the intellect and judgment of mankind ought to be cultivated, a thing which Protestants at least do not deny, on what can these faculties be more appropriately exercised by any one, than on the things which concern him so much that it is considered necessary for him to hold opinions on them? If the cultivation of the understanding consists in one thing more than in another, it is surely in learning the grounds of one’s own opinions. Whatever people believe, on subjects on which it is of the first importance to believe rightly, they ought to be able to defend against at least the common objections. But, some one may say, “Let them be taught the grounds of their opinions. It does not follow that opinions must be merely parroted because they are never heard controverted. Persons who learn geometry do not simply commit the theorems to memory, but understand and learn likewise the demonstrations; and it would be absurd to say that they remain ignorant of the grounds of geometrical truths, because they never hear any one deny, and attempt to disprove them.” Undoubtedly: and such teaching suffices on a subject like mathematics, where there is nothing at all to be said on the wrong side of the question. The peculiarity of the evidence of mathematical truths is, that all the argument is on one side. There are no objections, and no answers to objections. But on every subject on which difference of opinion is possible, the truth depends on a balance to be struck between two sets of conflicting reasons. Even in natural philosophy, there is always some other explanation possible of the same facts; some geocentric theory instead of heliocentric, some phlogiston instead of oxygen; and it has to be shown why that other theory cannot be the true one: and until this is shown, and until we know how it is shown, we do not understand the grounds of our opinion. But when we turn to subjects infinitely more complicated, to morals, religion, politics, social relations, and the business of life, three-fourths of the arguments for every disputed opinion consist in dispelling the appearances which favor some opinion different from it. The greatest orator, save one, of antiquity, has left it on record that he always studied his adversary’s case with as great, if not with still greater, intensity than even his own. What Cicero practised as the means of forensic success, requires to be imitated by all who study any subject in order to arrive at the truth. He who knows only his own side of the case, knows little of that. His reasons may be good, and no one may have been able to refute them. But if he is equally unable to refute the reasons on the opposite side; if he does not so much as know what they are, he has no ground for preferring either opinion. The rational position for him would be suspension of judgment, and unless he contents himself with that, he is either led by authority, or adopts, like the generality of the world, the side to which he feels most inclination. Nor is it enough that he should hear the arguments of adversaries from his own teachers, presented as they state them, and accompanied by what they offer as refutations. That is not the way to do justice to the arguments, or bring them into real contact with his own mind. He must be able to hear them from persons who actually believe them; who defend them in earnest, and do their very utmost for them. He must know them in their most plausible and persuasive form; he must feel the whole force of the difficulty which the true view of the subject has to encounter and dispose of; else he will never really possess himself of the portion of truth which meets and removes that difficulty. Ninety-nine in a hundred of what are called educated men are in this condition, even of those who can argue fluently for their opinions. Their conclusion may be true, but it might be false for anything they know: they have never thrown themselves into the mental position of those who think differently from them, and considered what such persons may have to say; and consequently they do not, in any proper sense of the word, know the doctrine which they themselves profess. They do not know those parts of it which explain and justify the remainder; the considerations which show that a fact which seemingly conflicts with another is reconcilable with it, or that, of two apparently strong reasons, one and not the other ought to be preferred. All that part of the truth which turns the scale, and decides the judgment of a completely informed mind, they are strangers to; nor is it ever really known, but to those who have attended equally and impartially to both sides, and endeavored to see the reasons of both in the strongest light. So essential is this discipline to a real understanding of moral and human subjects, that if opponents of all important truths do not exist, it is indispensable to imagine them, and supply them with the strongest arguments which the most skilful devil’s advocate can conjure up.

  To abate the force of these considerations, an enemy of free discussion may be supposed to say, that there is no necessity for mankind in general to know and understand all that can be said against or for their opinions by philosophers and theologians. That it is not needful for common men to be able to expose all the misstatements or fallacies of an ingenious opponent. That it is enough if there is always somebody capable of answering them, so that nothing likely to mislead uninstructed persons remains unrefuted. That simple minds, having been taught the obvious grounds of the truths inculcated on them, may trust to authority for the rest, and being aware that they have neither knowledge nor talent to resolve every difficulty which can be raised, may repose in the assurance that all those which have been raised have been or can be answered, by those who are specially trained to the task.

  Conceding to this view of the subject the utmost that can be claimed for it by those most easily satisfied with the amount of understanding of truth which ought to accompany the belief of it; even so, the argument for free discussion is no way weakened. For even this doctrine acknowledges that mankind ought to have a rational assurance that all objections have been satisfactorily answered; and how are they to be answered if that which requires to be answered is not spoken? or how can the answer be known to be satisfactory, if the objectors have no opportunity of showing that it is unsatisfactory? If not the public, at least the philosophers and theologians who are to resolve the difficulties, must make themselves familiar with those difficulties in their most puzzling form; and this cannot be accomplished unless they are freely stated, and placed in the most advantageous light which they admit of. The Catholic Church has its own way of dealing with this embarrassing problem. It makes a broad separation between those who can be permitted to receive its doctrines on conviction, and those who must accept them on trust. Neither, indeed, are allowed any choice as to what they will accept; but the clergy, such at least as can be fully confided in, may admissibly and meritoriously make themselves acquainted with the arguments of opponents, in order to answer them, and may, therefore, read heretical books; the laity, not unless by special permission, hard to be obtained. This discipline recognizes a knowledge of the enemy’s case as beneficial to the teachers, but finds means, consistent with this, of denying it to the rest of the world: thus giving to the élite more mental culture, though not more mental freedom, than it allows to the mass. By this device it succeeds in obtaining the kind of mental superiority which its purposes require; for though culture without freedom never made a large and liberal mind, it can make a clever nisi prius advocate of a cause. But in countries professing Protestantism, this resource is denied; since Protestants hold, at least in theory, that the responsibility for the choice of a religion must be borne by each for himself, and cannot be thrown off upon teachers. Besides, in the present state of the world, it is practically impossible that writings which are read by the instructed can be kept from the uninstructed. If the teachers of mankind are to be cognizant of all that they ought to know, everything must be free to be written and published without restraint.

  If, however, the mischievous operation of the absence of free discussion, when the received opinions are true, were confined to leaving men ignorant of the grounds of those opinions, it might be thought that this, if an intellectual, is no moral evil, and does not affect the worth of the opinions, regarded in their influence on the character. The fact, however, is, that not only the grounds of the opinion are forgotten in the absence of discussion, but too often the meaning of the opinion itself. The words which convey it, cease to suggest ideas, or suggest only a small portion of those they were originally employed to communicate. Instead of a vivid conception and a living belief, there remain only a few phrases retained by rote; or, if any part, the shell and husk only of the meaning is retained, the finer essence being lost. The great chapter in human history which this fact occupies and fills, cannot be too earnestly studied and meditated on.

  It is illustrated in the experience of almost all ethical doctrines and religious creeds. They are all full of meaning and vitality to those who originate them, and to the direct disciples of the originators. Their meaning continues to be felt in undiminished strength, and is perhaps brought out into even fuller consciousness, so long as the struggle lasts to give the doctrine or creed an ascendency over other creeds. At last it either prevails, and becomes the general opinion, or its progress stops; it keeps possession of the ground it has gained, but ceases to spread further. When either of these results has become apparent, controversy on the subject flags, and gradually dies away. The doctrine has taken its place, if not as a received opinion, as one of the admitted sects or divisions of opinion: those who hold it have generally inherited, not adopted it; and conversion from one of these doctrines to another, being now an exceptional fact, occupies little place in the thoughts of their professors. Instead of being, as at first, constantly on the alert either to defend themselves against the world, or to bring the world over to them, they have subsided into acquiescence, and neither listen, when they can help it, to arguments against their creed, nor trouble dissentients (if there be such) with arguments in its favor. From this time may usually be dated the decline in the living power of the doctrine. We often hear the teachers of all creeds lamenting the difficulty of keeping up in the minds of believers a lively apprehension of the truth which they nominally recognize, so that it may penetrate the feelings, and acquire a real mastery over the conduct. No such difficulty is complained of while the creed is still fighting for its existence: even the weaker combatants then know and feel what they are fighting for, and the difference between it and other doctrines; and in that period of every creed’s existence, not a few persons may be found, who have realized its fundamental principles in all the forms of thought, have weighed and considered them in all their important bearings, and have experienced the full effect on the character, which belief in that creed ought to produce in a mind thoroughly imbued with it. But when it has come to be an hereditary creed, and to be received passively, not actively — when the mind is no longer compelled, in the same degree as at first, to exercise its vital powers on the questions which its belief presents to it, there is a progressive tendency to forget all of the belief except the formularies, or to give it a dull and torpid assent, as if accepting it on trust dispensed with the necessity of realizing it in consciousness, or testing it by personal experience; until it almost ceases to connect itself at all with the inner life of the human being. Then are seen the cases, so frequent in this age of the world as almost to form the majority, in which the creed remains as it were outside the mind, encrusting and petrifying it against all other influences addressed to the higher parts of our nature; manifesting its power by not suffering any fresh and living conviction to get in, but itself doing nothing for the mind or heart, except standing sentinel over them to keep them vacant.

  To what an extent doctrines intrinsically fitted to make the deepest impression upon the mind may remain in it as dead beliefs, without being ever realized in the imagination, the feelings, or the understanding, is exemplified by the manner in which the majority of believers hold the doctrines of Christianity. By Christianity I here mean what is accounted such by all churches and sects — the maxims and precepts contained in the New Testament. These are considered sacred, and accepted as laws, by all professing Christians. Yet it is scarcely too much to say that not one Christian in a thousand guides or tests his individual conduct by reference to those laws. The standard to which he does refer it, is the custom of his nation, his class, or his religious profession. He has thus, on the one hand, a collection of ethical maxims, which he believes to have been vouchsafed to him by infallible wisdom as rules for his government; and on the other, a set of every-day judgments and practices, which go a certain length with some of those maxims, not so great a length with others, stand in direct opposition to some, and are, on the whole, a compromise between the Christian creed and the interests and suggestions of worldly life. To the first of these standards he gives his homage; to the other his real allegiance. All Christians believe that the blessed are the poor and humble, and those who are ill-used by the world; that it is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven; that they should judge not, lest they be judged; that they should swear not at all that they should love their neighbor as themselves; that if one take their cloak, they should give him their coat also; that they should take no thought for the morrow; that if they would be perfect, they should sell all that they have and give it to the poor. They are not insincere when they say that they believe these things. They do believe them, as people believe what they have always heard lauded and never discussed. But in the sense of that living belief which regulates conduct, they believe these doctrines just up to the point to which it is usual to act upon them. The doctrines in their integrity are serviceable to pelt adversaries with; and it is understood that they are to be put forward (when possible) as the reasons for whatever people do that they think laudable. But any one who reminded them that the maxims require an infinity of things which they never even think of doing, would gain nothing but to be classed among those very unpopular characters who affect to be better than other people. The doctrines have no hold on ordinary believers — are not a power in their minds. They have an habitual respect for the sound of them, but no feeling which spreads from the words to the things signified, and forces the mind to take them in, and make them conform to the formula. Whenever conduct is concerned, they look round for Mr. A and B to direct them how far to go in obeying Christ.

  Now we may be well assured that the case was not thus, but far otherwise, with the early Christians. Had it been thus, Christianity never would have expanded from an obscure sect of the despised Hebrews into the religion of the Roman empire. When their enemies said, “See how these Christians love one another” (a remark not likely to be made by anybody now), they assuredly had a much livelier feeling of the meaning of their creed than they have ever had since. And to this cause, probably, it is chiefly owing that Christianity now makes so little progress in extending its domain, and after eighteen centuries, is still nearly confined to Europeans and the descendants of Europeans. Even with the strictly religious, who are much in earnest about their doctrines, and attach a greater amount of meaning to many of them than people in general, it commonly happens that the part which is thus comparatively active in their minds is that which was made by Calvin, or Knox, or some such person much nearer in character to themselves. The sayings of Christ coexist passively in their minds, producing hardly any effect beyond what is caused by mere listening to words so amiable and bland. There are many reasons, doubtless, why doctrines which are the badge of a sect retain more of their vitality than those common to all recognized sects, and why more pains are taken by teachers to keep their meaning alive; but one reason certainly is, that the peculiar doctrines are more questioned, and have to be oftener defended against open gainsayers. Both teachers and learners go to sleep at their post, as soon as there is no enemy in the field.

  The same thing holds true, generally speaking, of all traditional doctrines — those of prudence and knowledge of life, as well as of morals or religion. All languages and literatures are full of general observations on life, both as to what it is, and how to conduct oneself in it; observations which everybody knows, which everybody repeats, or hears with acquiescence, which are received as truisms, yet of which most people first truly learn the meaning, when experience, generally of a painful kind, has made it a reality to them. How often, when smarting under some unforeseen misfortune or disappointment, does a person call to mind some proverb or common saying, familiar to him all his life, the meaning of which, if he had ever before felt it as he does now, would have saved him from the calamity. There are indeed reasons for this, other than the absence of discussion: there are many truths of which the full meaning cannot be realized, until personal experience has brought it home. But much more of the meaning even of these would have been understood and what was understood would have been far more deeply impressed on the mind, if the man had been accustomed to hear it argued pro and con by people who did understand it. The fatal tendency of mankind to leave off thinking about a thing when it is no longer doubtful, is the cause of half their errors. A cotemporary author has well spoken of “the deep slumber of a decided opinion.”

  But what! (it may be asked) Is the absence of unanimity an indispensable condition of true knowledge? Is it necessary that some part of mankind should persist in error, to enable any to realize the truth? Does a belief cease to be real and vital as soon as it is generally received — and is a proposition never thoroughly understood and felt unless some doubt of it remains? As soon as mankind have unanimously accepted a truth, does the truth perish within them? The highest aim and best result of improved intelligence, it has hitherto been thought, is to unite mankind more and more in the acknowledgment of all important truths: and does the intelligence only last as long as it has not achieved its object? Do the fruits of conquest perish by the very completeness of the victory?

  I affirm no such thing. As mankind improve, the number of doctrines which are no longer disputed or doubted will be constantly on the increase: and the well-being of mankind may almost be measured by the number and gravity of the truths which have reached the point of being uncontested. The cessation, on one question after another, of serious controversy, is one of the necessary incidents of the consolidation of opinion; a consolidation as salutary in the case of true opinions, as it is dangerous and noxious when the opinions are erroneous. But though this gradual narrowing of the bounds of diversity of opinion is necessary in both senses of the term, being at once inevitable and indispensable, we are not therefore obliged to conclude that all its consequences must be beneficial. The loss of so important an aid to the intelligent and living apprehension of a truth, as is afforded by the necessity of explaining it to, or defending it against, opponents, though not sufficient to outweigh, is no trifling drawback from, the benefit of its universal recognition. Where this advantage can no longer be had, I confess I should like to see the teachers of mankind endeavoring to provide a substitute for it; some contrivance for making the difficulties of the question as present to the learner’s consciousness, as if they were pressed upon him by a dissentient champion, eager for his conversion.

  But instead of seeking contrivances for this purpose, they have lost those they formerly had. The Socratic dialectics, so magnificently exemplified in the dialogues of Plato, were a contrivance of this description. They were essentially a negative discussion of the great questions of philosophy and life, directed with consummate skill to the purpose of convincing any one who had merely adopted the commonplaces of received opinion, that he did not understand the subject — that he as yet attached no definite meaning to the doctrines he professed; in order that, becoming aware of his ignorance, he might be put in the way to attain a stable belief, resting on a clear apprehension both of the meaning of doctrines and of their evidence. The school disputations of the Middle Ages had a somewhat similar object. They were intended to make sure that the pupil understood his own opinion, and (by necessary correlation) the opinion opposed to it, and could enforce the grounds of the one and confute those of the other. These last-mentioned contests had indeed the incurable defect, that the premises appealed to were taken from authority, not from reason; and, as a discipline to the mind, they were in every respect inferior to the powerful dialectics which formed the intellects of the “Socratici viri:” but the modern mind owes far more to both than it is generally willing to admit, and the present modes of education contain nothing which in the smallest degree supplies the place either of the one or of the other. A person who derives all his instruction from teachers or books, even if he escape the besetting temptation of contenting himself with cram, is under no compulsion to hear both sides; accordingly it is far from a frequent accomplishment, even among thinkers, to know both sides; and the weakest part of what everybody says in defence of his opinion, is what he intends as a reply to antagonists. It is the fashion of the present time to disparage negative logic — that which points out weaknesses in theory or errors in practice, without establishing positive truths. Such negative criticism would indeed be poor enough as an ultimate result; but as a means to attaining any positive knowledge or conviction worthy the name, it cannot be valued too highly; and until people are again systematically trained to it, there will be few great thinkers, and a low general average of intellect, in any but the mathematical and physical departments of speculation. On any other subject no one’s opinions deserve the name of knowledge, except so far as he has either had forced upon him by others, or gone through of himself the same mental process which would have been required of him in carrying on an active controversy with opponents. That, therefore, which when absent, it is so indispensable, but so difficult, to create, how worse than absurd is it to forego, when spontaneously offering itself! If there are any persons who contest a received opinion, or who will do so if law or opinion will let them, let us thank them for it, open our minds to listen to them, and rejoice that there is some one to do for us what we otherwise ought, if we have any regard for either the certainty or the vitality of our convictions, to do with much greater labor for ourselves.

  It still remains to speak of one of the principal causes which make diversity of opinion advantageous, and will continue to do so until mankind shall have entered a stage of intellectual advancement which at present seems at an incalculable distance. We have hitherto considered only two possibilities: that the received opinion may be false, and some other opinion, consequently, true; or that, the received opinion being true, a conflict with the opposite error is essential to a clear apprehension and deep feeling of its truth. But there is a commoner case than either of these; when the conflicting doctrines, instead of being one true and the other false, share the truth between them; and the nonconforming opinion is needed to supply the remainder of the truth, of which the received doctrine embodies only a part. Popular opinions, on subjects not palpable to sense, are often true, but seldom or never the whole truth. They are a part of the truth; sometimes a greater, sometimes a smaller part, but exaggerated, distorted, and disjoined from the truths by which they ought to be accompanied and limited. Heretical opinions, on the other hand, are generally some of these suppressed and neglected truths, bursting the bonds which kept them down, and either seeking reconciliation with the truth contained in the common opinion, or fronting it as enemies, and setting themselves up, with similar exclusiveness, as the whole truth. The latter case is hitherto the most frequent, as, in the human mind, one-sidedness has always been the rule, and many-sidedness the exception. Hence, even in revolutions of opinion, one part of the truth usually sets while another rises. Even progress, which ought to superadd, for the most part only substitutes one partial and incomplete truth for another; improvement consisting chiefly in this, that the new fragment of truth is more wanted, more adapted to the needs of the time, than that which it displaces. Such being the partial character of prevailing opinions, even when resting on a true foundation; every opinion which embodies somewhat of the portion of truth which the common opinion omits, ought to be considered precious, with whatever amount of error and confusion that truth may be blended. No sober judge of human affairs will feel bound to be indignant because those who force on our notice truths which we should otherwise have overlooked, overlook some of those which we see. Rather, he will think that so long as popular truth is one-sided, it is more desirable than otherwise that unpopular truth should have one-sided asserters too; such being usually the most energetic, and the most likely to compel reluctant attention to the fragment of wisdom which they proclaim as if it were the whole.

  Thus, in the eighteenth century, when nearly all the instructed, and all those of the uninstructed who were led by them, were lost in admiration of what is called civilization, and of the marvels of modern science, literature, and philosophy, and while greatly overrating the amount of unlikeness between the men of modern and those of ancient times, indulged the belief that the whole of the difference was in their own favor; with what a salutary shock did the paradoxes of Rousseau explode like bombshells in the midst, dislocating the compact mass of one-sided opinion, and forcing its elements to recombine in a better form and with additional ingredients. Not that the current opinions were on the whole farther from the truth than Rousseau’s were; on the contrary, they were nearer to it; they contained more of positive truth, and very much less of error. Nevertheless there lay in Rousseau’s doctrine, and has floated down the stream of opinion along with it, a considerable amount of exactly those truths which the popular opinion wanted; and these are the deposit which was left behind when the flood subsided. The superior worth of simplicity of life, the enervating and demoralizing effect of the trammels and hypocrisies of artificial society, are ideas which have never been entirely absent from cultivated minds since Rousseau wrote; and they will in time produce their due effect, though at present needing to be asserted as much as ever, and to be asserted by deeds, for words, on this subject, have nearly exhausted their power.

  In politics, again, it is almost a commonplace, that a party of order or stability, and a party of progress or reform, are both necessary elements of a healthy state of political life; until the one or the other shall have so enlarged its mental grasp as to be a party equally of order and of progress, knowing and distinguishing what is fit to be preserved from what ought to be swept away. Each of these modes of thinking derives its utility from the deficiencies of the other; but it is in a great measure the opposition of the other that keeps each within the limits of reason and sanity. Unless opinions favorable to democracy and to aristocracy, to property and to equality, to coöperation and to competition, to luxury and to abstinence, to sociality and individuality, to liberty and discipline, and all the other standing antagonisms of practical life, are expressed with equal freedom, and enforced and defended with equal talent and energy, there is no chance of both elements obtaining their due; one scale is sure to go up, and the other down. Truth, in the great practical concerns of life, is so much a question of the reconciling and combining of opposites, that very few have minds sufficiently capacious and impartial to make the adjustment with an approach to correctness, and it has to be made by the rough process of a struggle between combatants fighting under hostile banners. On any of the great open questions just enumerated, if either of the two opinions has a better claim than the other, not merely to be tolerated, but to be encouraged and countenanced, it is the one which happens at the particular time and place to be in a minority. That is the opinion which, for the time being, represents the neglected interests, the side of human well-being which is in danger of obtaining less than its share. I am aware that there is not, in this country, any intolerance of differences of opinion on most of these topics. They are adduced to show, by admitted and multiplied examples, the universality of the fact, that only through diversity of opinion is there, in the existing state of human intellect, a chance of fair play to all sides of the truth. When there are persons to be found, who form an exception to the apparent unanimity of the world on any subject, even if the world is in the right, it is always probable that dissentients have something worth hearing to say for themselves, and that truth would lose something by their silence.

  It may be objected, “But some received principles, especially on the highest and most vital subjects, are more than half-truths. The Christian morality, for instance, is the whole truth on that subject, and if any one teaches a morality which varies from it, he is wholly in error.” As this is of all cases the most important in practice, none can be fitter to test the general maxim. But before pronouncing what Christian morality is or is not, it would be desirable to decide what is meant by Christian morality. If it means the morality of the New Testament, I wonder that any one who derives his knowledge of this from the book itself, can suppose that it was announced, or intended, as a complete doctrine of morals. The Gospel always refers to a preëxisting morality, and confines its precepts to the particulars in which that morality was to be corrected, or superseded by a wider and higher; expressing itself, moreover, in terms most general, often impossible to be interpreted literally, and possessing rather the impressiveness of poetry or eloquence than the precision of legislation. To extract from it a body of ethical doctrine, has never been possible without eking it out from the Old Testament, that is, from a system elaborate indeed, but in many respects barbarous, and intended only for a barbarous people. St. Paul, a declared enemy to this Judaical mode of interpreting the doctrine and filling up the scheme of his Master, equally assumes a preëxisting morality, namely, that of the Greeks and Romans; and his advice to Christians is in a great measure a system of accommodation to that; even to the extent of giving an apparent sanction to slavery. What is called Christian, but should rather be termed theological, morality, was not the work of Christ or the Apostles, but is of much later origin, having been gradually built up by the Catholic Church of the first five centuries, and though not implicitly adopted by moderns and Protestants, has been much less modified by them than might have been expected. For the most part, indeed, they have contented themselves with cutting off the additions which had been made to it in the Middle Ages, each sect supplying the place by fresh additions, adapted to its own character and tendencies. That mankind owe a great debt to this morality, and to its early teachers, I should be the last person to deny; but I do not scruple to say of it, that it is, in many important points, incomplete and one-sided, and that unless ideas and feelings, not sanctioned by it, had contributed to the formation of European life and character, human affairs would have been in a worse condition than they now are. Christian morality (so called) has all the characters of a reaction it is, in great part, a protest against Paganism. Its ideal is negative rather than positive; passive rather than active; Innocence rather than Nobleness; Abstinence from Evil, rather than energetic Pursuit of Good: in its precepts (as has been well said) “thou shalt not” predominates unduly over “thou shalt.” In its horror of sensuality, it made an idol of asceticism, which has been gradually compromised away into one of legality. It holds out the hope of heaven and the threat of hell, as the appointed and appropriate motives to a virtuous life: in this falling far below the best of the ancients, and doing what lies in it to give to human morality an essentially selfish character, by disconnecting each man’s feelings of duty from the interests of his fellow-creatures, except so far as a self-interested inducement is offered to him for consulting them. It is essentially a doctrine of passive obedience; it inculcates submission to all authorities found established; who indeed are not to be actively obeyed when they command what religion forbids, but who are not to be resisted, far less rebelled against, for any amount of wrong to ourselves. And while, in the morality of the best Pagan nations, duty to the State holds even a disproportionate place, infringing on the just liberty of the individual; in purely Christian ethics, that grand department of duty is scarcely noticed or acknowledged. It is in the Koran, not the New Testament, that we read the maxim — “A ruler who appoints any man to an office, when there is in his dominions an other man better qualified for it, sins against God and against the State.” What little recognition the idea of obligation to the public obtains in modern morality, is derived from Greek and Roman sources, not from Christian; as, even in the morality of private life, whatever exists of magnanimity, high-mindedness, personal dignity, even the sense of honor, is derived from the purely human, not the religious part of our education, and never could have grown out of a standard of ethics in which the only worth, professedly recognized, is that of obedience.

  I am as far as any one from pretending that these defects are necessarily inherent in the Christian ethics, in every manner in which it can be conceived, or that the many requisites of a complete moral doctrine which it does not contain, do not admit of being reconciled with it. Far less would I insinuate this of the doctrines and precepts of Christ himself. I believe that the sayings of Christ are all, that I can see any evidence of their having been intended to be; that they are irreconcilable with nothing which a comprehensive morality requires; that everything which is excellent in ethics may be brought within them, with no greater violence to their language than has been done to it by all who have attempted to deduce from them any practical system of conduct whatever. But it is quite consistent with this, to believe that they contain, and were meant to contain, only a part of the truth; that many essential elements of the highest morality are among the things which are not provided for, nor intended to be provided for in the recorded deliverances of the Founder of Christianity, and which have been entirely thrown aside in the system of ethics erected on the basis of those deliverances by the Christian Church. And this being so, I think it a great error to persist in attempting to find in the Christian doctrine that complete rule for our guidance, which its author intended it to sanction and enforce, but only partially to provide. I believe, too, that this narrow theory is becoming a grave practical evil, detracting greatly from the value of the moral training and instruction, which so many well-meaning persons are now at length exerting themselves to promote. I much fear that by attempting to form the mind and feelings on an exclusively religious type, and discarding those secular standards (as for want of a better name they may be called) which heretofore coexisted with and supplemented the Christian ethics, receiving some of its spirit, and infusing into it some of theirs, there will result, and is even now resulting, a low, abject, servile type of character, which, submit itself as it may to what it deems the Supreme Will, is incapable of rising to or sympathizing in the conception of Supreme Goodness. I believe that other ethics than any which can be evolved from exclusively Christian sources, must exist side by side with Christian ethics to produce the moral regeneration of mankind; and that the Christian system is no exception to the rule, that in an imperfect state of the human mind, the interests of truth require a diversity of opinions. It is not necessary that in ceasing to ignore the moral truths not contained in Christianity, men should ignore any of those which it does contain. Such prejudice, or oversight, when it occurs, is altogether an evil; but it is one from which we cannot hope to be always exempt, and must be regarded as the price paid for an inestimable good. The exclusive pretension made by a part of the truth to be the whole, must and ought to be protested against, and if a reactionary impulse should make the protestors unjust in their turn, this one-sidedness, like the others, may be lamented, but must be tolerated. If Christians would teach infidels to be just to Christianity, they should themselves be just to in fidelity. It can do truth no service to blink the fact, known to all who have the most ordinary acquaintance with literary history, that a large portion of the noblest and most valuable moral teaching has been the work, not only of men who did not know, but of men who knew and rejected, the Christian faith.

  I do not pretend that the most unlimited use of the freedom of enunciating all possible opinions would put an end to the evils of religous or philosophical sectarianism. Every truth which men of narrow capacity are in earnest about, is sure to be asserted, inculcated, and in many ways even acted on, as if no other truth existed in the world, or at all events none that could limit or qualify the first. I acknowledge that the tendency of all opinions to become sectarian is not cured by the freest discussion, but is often heightened and exacerbated thereby; the truth which ought to have been, but was not, seen, being rejected all the more violently because proclaimed by persons regarded as opponents. But it is not on the impassioned partisan, it is on the calmer and more disinterested by-stander, that this collision of opinions works its salutary effect. Not the violent conflict between parts of the truth, but the quiet suppression of half of it, is the formidable evil: there is always hope when people are forced to listen to both sides; it is when they attend only to one that errors harden into prejudices, and truth itself ceases to have the effect of truth, by being exaggerated into falsehood. And since there are few mental attributes more rare than that judicial faculty which can sit in intelligent judgment between two sides of a question, of which only one is represented by an advocate before it, truth has no chance but in proportion as every side of it, every opinion which embodies any fraction of the truth, not only finds advocates, but is so advocated as to be listened to.

  We have now recognized the necessity to the mental well-being of mankind (on which all their other well-being depends) of freedom of opinion, and freedom of the expression of opinion, on four distinct grounds; which we will now briefly recapitulate.

  First, if any opinion is compelled to silence, that opinion may, for aught we can certainly know, be true. To deny this is to assume our own infallibility.

  Secondly, though the silenced opinion be an error, it may, and very commonly does, contain a portion of truth; and since the general or prevailing opinion on any subject is rarely or never the whole truth, it is only by the collision of adverse opinions that the remainder of the truth has any chance of being supplied.

  Thirdly, even if the received opinion be not only true, but the whole truth; unless it is suffered to be, and actually is, vigorously and earnestly contested, it will, by most of those who receive it, be held in the manner of a prejudice, with little comprehension or feeling of its rational grounds. And not only this, but, fourthly, the meaning of the doctrine itself will be in danger of being lost, or enfeebled, and deprived of its vital effect on the character and conduct: the dogma becoming a mere formal profession, inefficacious for good, but cumbering the ground, and preventing the growth of any real and heartfelt conviction, from reason or personal experience.

  Before quitting the subject of freedom of opinion, it is fit to take some notice of those who say, that the free expression of all opinions should be permitted, on condition that the manner be temperate, and do not pass the bounds of fair discussion. Much might be said on the impossibility of fixing where these supposed bounds are to be placed; for if the test be offence to those whose opinion is attacked, I think experience testifies that this offence is given whenever the attack is telling and powerful, and that every opponent who pushes them hard, and whom they find it difficult to answer, appears to them, if he shows any strong feeling on the subject, an intemperate opponent. But this, though an important consideration in a practical point of view, merges in a more fundamental objection. Undoubtedly the manner of asserting an opinion, even though it be a true one, may be very objectionable, and may justly incur severe censure. But the principal offences of the kind are such as it is mostly impossible, unless by accidental self-betrayal, to bring home to conviction. The gravest of them is, to argue sophistically, to suppress facts or arguments, to misstate the elements of the case, or misrepresent the opposite opinion. But all this, even to the most aggravated degree, is so continually done in perfect good faith, by persons who are not considered, and in many other respects may not deserve to be considered, ignorant or incompetent, that it is rarely possible on adequate grounds conscientiously to stamp the misrepresentation as morally culpable; and still less could law presume to interfere with this kind of controversial misconduct. With regard to what is commonly meant by intemperate discussion, namely, invective, sarcasm, personality, and the like, the denunciation of these weapons would deserve more sympathy if it were ever proposed to interdict them equally to both sides; but it is only desired to restrain the employment of them against the prevailing opinion: against the unprevailing they may not only be used without general disapproval, but will be likely to obtain for him who uses them the praise of honest zeal and righteous indignation. Yet whatever mischief arises from their use, is greatest when they are employed against the comparatively defenceless; and whatever unfair advantage can be derived by any opinion from this mode of asserting it, accrues almost exclusively to received opinions. The worst offence of this kind which can be committed by a polemic, is to stigmatize those who hold the contrary opinion as bad and immoral men. To calumny of this sort, those who hold any unpopular opinion are peculiarly exposed, because they are in general few and uninfluential, and nobody but themselves feels much interest in seeing justice done them; but this weapon is, from the nature of the case, denied to those who attack a prevailing opinion: they can neither use it with safety to themselves, nor, if they could, would it do anything but recoil on their own cause. In general, opinions contrary to those commonly received can only obtain a hearing by studied moderation of language, and the most cautious avoidance of unnecessary offence, from which they hardly ever deviate even in a slight degree without losing ground: while unmeasured vituperation employed on the side of the prevailing opinion, really does deter people from professing contrary opinions, and from listening to those who profess them. For the interest, therefore, of truth and justice, it is far more important to restrain this employment of vituperative language than the other; and, for example, if it were necessary to choose, there would be much more need to discourage offensive attacks on infidelity, than on religion. It is, however, obvious that law and authority have no business with restraining either, while opinion ought, in every instance, to determine its verdict by the circumstances of the individual case; condemning every one, on whichever side of the argument he places himself, in whose mode of advocacy either want of candor, or malignity, bigotry, or intolerance of feeling manifest themselves; but not inferring these vices from the side which a person takes, though it be the contrary side of the question to our own: and giving merited honor to every one, whatever opinion he may hold, who has calmness to see and honesty to state what his opponents and their opinions really are, exaggerating nothing to their discredit, keeping nothing back which tells, or can be supposed to tell, in their favor. This is the real morality of public discussion; and if often violated, I am happy to think that there are many controversialists who to a great extent observe it, and a still greater number who conscientiously strive towards it.

  CHAPTER III.

  of individuality, as one of the elements of well-being.

  SUCH being the reasons which make it imperative that human beings should be free to form opinions, and to express their opinions without reserve; and such the baneful consequences to the intellectual, and through that to the moral nature of man, unless this liberty is either conceded, or asserted in spite of prohibition; let us next examine whether the same reasons do not require that men should be free to act upon their opinions — to carry these out in their lives, without hindrance, either physical or moral, from their fellow-men, so long as it is at their own risk and peril. This last proviso is of course indispensable. No one pretends that actions should be as free as opinions. On the contrary, even opinions lose their immunity, when the circumstances in which they are expressed are such as to constitute their expression a positive instigation to some mischievous act. An opinion that corn-dealers are starvers of the poor, or that private property is robbery, ought to be unmolested when simply circulated through the press, but may justly incur punishment when delivered orally to an excited mob assembled before the house of a corn-dealer, or when handed about among the same mob in the form of a placard. Acts, of whatever kind, which, without justifiable cause, do harm to others, may be, and in the more important cases absolutely require to be, controlled by the unfavorable sentiments, and, when needful, by the active interference of mankind. The liberty of the individual must be thus far limited; he must not make himself a nuisance to other people. But if he refrains from molesting others in what concerns them, and merely acts according to his own inclination and judgment in things which concern himself, the same reasons which show that opinion should be free, prove also that he should be allowed, without molestation, to carry his opinions into practice at his own cost. That mankind are not infallible; that their truths, for the most part, are only half-truths; that unity of opinion, unless resulting from the fullest and freest comparison of opposite opinions, is not desirable, and diversity not an evil, but a good, until mankind are much more capable than at present of recognizing all sides of the truth, are principles applicable to men’s modes of action, not less than to their opinions. As it is useful that while mankind are imperfect there should be different opinions, so is it that there should be different experiments of living; that free scope should be given to varieties of character, short of injury to others; and that the worth of different modes of life should be proved practically, when any one thinks fit to try them. It is desirable, in short, that in things which do not primarily concern others, individuality should assert itself. Where, not the person’s own character, but the traditions or customs of other people are the rule of conduct, there is wanting one of the principal ingredients of human happiness, and quite the chief ingredient of individual and social progress.

  In maintaining this principle, the greatest difficulty to be encountered does not lie in the appreciation of means towards an acknowledged end, but in the indifference of persons in general to the end itself. If it were felt that the free development of individuality is one of the leading essentials of well-being; that it is not only a coördinate element with all that is designated by the terms civilization, instruction, education, culture, but is itself a necessary part and condition of all those things; there would be no danger that liberty should be undervalued, and the adjustment of the boundaries between it and social control would present no extraordinary difficulty. But the evil is, that individual spontaneity is hardly recognized by the common modes of thinking as having any intrinsic worth, or deserving any regard on its own account. The majority, being satisfied with the ways of mankind as they now are (for it is they who make them what they are), cannot comprehend why those ways should not be good enough for everybody; and what is more, spontaneity forms no part of the ideal of the majority of moral and social reformers, but is rather looked on with jealousy, as a troublesome and perhaps rebellious obstruction to the general acceptance of what these reformers, in their own judgment, think would be best for mankind. Few persons, out of Germany, even comprehend the meaning of the doctrine which Wilhelm von Humboldt, so eminent both as a savant and as a politician, made the text of a treatise — that “the end of man, or that which is prescribed by the eternal or immutable dictates of reason, and not suggested by vague and transient desires, is the highest and most harmonious development of his powers to a complete and consistent whole;” that, therefore, the object “towards which every human being must ceaselessly direct his efforts, and on which especially those who design to influence their fellow-men must ever keep their eyes, is the individuality of power and development;” that for this there are two requisites, “freedom, and a variety of situations;” and that from the union of these arise “individual vigor and manifold diversity,” which combine themselves in “originality.”*

  Little, however, as people are accustomed to a doctrine like that of Von Humboldt, and surprising as it may be to them to find so high a value attached to individuality, the question, one must nevertheless think, can only be one of degree. No one’s idea of excellence in conduct is that people should do absolutely nothing but copy one another. No one would assert that people ought not to put into their mode of life, and into the conduct of their concerns, any impress whatever of their own judgment, or of their own individual character. On the other hand, it would be absurd to pretend that people ought to live as if nothing whatever had been known in the world before they came into it; as if experience had as yet done nothing towards showing that one mode of existence, or of conduct, is preferable to another. Nobody denies that people should be so taught and trained in youth, as to know and benefit by the ascertained results of human experience. But it is the privilege and proper condition of a human being, arrived at the maturity of his faculties, to use and interpret experience in his own way. It is for him to find out what part of recorded experience is properly applicable to his own circumstances and character. The traditions and customs of other people are, to a certain extent, evidence of what their experience has taught them; presumptive evidence, and as such, have a claim to his deference: but, in the first place, their experience may be too narrow; or they may not have interpreted it rightly. Secondly, their interpretation of experience may be correct but unsuitable to him. Customs are made for customary circumstances, and customary characters: and his circumstances or his character may be uncustomary. Thirdly, though the customs be both good as customs, and suitable to him, yet to conform to custom, merely as custom, does not educate or develop in him any of the qualities which are the distinctive endowment of a human being. The human faculties of perception, judgment, discriminative feeling, mental activity, and even moral preference, are exercised only in making a choice. He who does anything because it is the custom, makes no choice. He gains no practice either in discerning or in desiring what is best. The mental and moral, like the muscular powers, are improved only by being used. The faculties are called into no exercise by doing a thing merely because others do it, no more than by believing a thing only because others believe it. If the grounds of an opinion are not conclusive to the person’s own reason, his reason cannot be strengthened, but is likely to be weakened by his adopting it: and if the inducements to an act are not such as are consentaneous to his own feelings and character (where affection, or the rights of others, are not concerned), it is so much done towards rendering his feelings and character inert and torpid, instead of active and energetic.

  He who lets the world, or his own portion of it, choose his plan of life for him, has no need of any other faculty than the ape-like one of imitation. He who chooses his plan for himself, employs all his faculties. He must use observation to see, reasoning and judgment to foresee, activity to gather materials for decision, discrimination to decide, and when he has decided, firmness and self-control to hold to his deliberate decision. And these qualities he requires and exercises exactly in proportion as the part of his conduct which he determines according to his own judgment and feelings is a large one. It is possible that he might be guided in some good path, and kept out of harm’s way, without any of these things. But what will be his comparative worth as a human being? It really is of importance, not only what men do, but also what manner of men they are that do it. Among the works of man, which human life is rightly employed in perfecting and beautifying, the first in importance surely is man himself. Supposing it were possible to get houses built, corn grown, battles fought, causes tried, and even churches erected and prayers said, by machinery — by automatons in human form — it would be a considerable loss to exchange for these automatons even the men and women who at present inhabit the more civilized parts of the world, and who assuredly are but starved specimens of what nature can and will produce. Human nature is not a machine to be built after a model, and set to do exactly the work prescribed for it, but a tree, which requires to grow and develop itself on all sides, according to the tendency of the inward forces which make it a living thing.

  It will probably be conceded that it is desirable people should exercise their understandings, and that an intelligent following of custom, or even occasionally an intelligent deviation from custom, is better than a blind and simply mechanical adhesion to it. To a certain extent it is admitted, that our understanding should be our own: but there is not the same willingness to admit that our desires and impulses should be our own likewise; or that to possess impulses of our own, and of any strength, is anything but a peril and a snare. Yet desires and impulses are as much a part of a perfect human being, as beliefs and restraints: and strong impulses are only perilous when not properly balanced; when one set of aims and inclinations is developed into strength, while others, which ought to coexist with them, remain weak and inactive. It is not because men’s desires are strong that they act ill; it is because their consciences are weak. There is no natural connection between strong impulses and a weak conscience. The natural connection is the other way. To say that one person’s desires and feelings are stronger and more various than those of another, is merely to say that he has more of the raw material of human nature, and is therefore capable, perhaps of more evil, but certainly of more good. Strong impulses are but another name for energy. Energy may be turned to bad uses; but more good may always be made of an energetic nature, than of an indolent and impassive one. Those who have most natural feeling, are always those whose cultivated feelings may be made the strongest. The same strong susceptibilities which make the personal impulses vivid and powerful, are also the source from whence are generated the most passionate love of virtue, and the sternest self-control. It is through the cultivation of these, that society both does its duty and protects its interests: not by rejecting the stuff of which heroes are made, because it knows not how to make them. A person whose desires and impulses are his own — are the expression of his own nature, as it has been developed and modified by his own culture — is said to have a character. One whose desires and impulses are not his own, has no character, no more than a steam-engine has a character. If, in addition to being his own, his impulses are strong, and are under the government of a strong will, he has an energetic character. Whoever thinks that individuality of desires and impulses should not be encouraged to unfold itself, must maintain that society has no need of strong natures — is not the better for containing many persons who have much character — and that a high general average of energy is not desirable.

  In some early states of society, these forces might be, and were, too much ahead of the power which society then possessed of disciplining and controlling them. There has been a time when the element of spontaneity and individuality was in excess, and the social principle had a hard struggle with it. The difficulty then was, to induce men of strong bodies or minds to pay obedience to any rules which required them to control their impulses. To overcome this difficulty, law and discipline, like the Popes struggling against the Emperors, asserted a power over the whole man, claiming to control all his life in order to control his character — which society had not found any other sufficient means of binding. But society has now fairly got the better of individuality; and the danger which threatens human nature is not the excess, but the deficiency, of personal impulses and preferences. Things are vastly changed, since the passions of those who were strong by station or by personal endowment were in a state of habitual rebellion against laws and ordinances, and required to be rigorously chained up to enable the persons within their reach to enjoy any particle of security. In our times, from the highest class of society down to the lowest every one lives as under the eye of a hostile and dreaded censorship. Not only in what concerns others, but in what concerns only themselves, the individual, or the family, do not ask themselves — what do I prefer? or, what would suit my character and disposition? or, what would allow the best and highest in me to have fair play, and enable it to grow and thrive? They ask themselves, what is suitable to my position? what is usually done by persons of my station and pecuniary circumstances? or (worse still) what is usually done by persons of a station and circumstances superior to mine? I do not mean that they choose what is customary, in preference to what suits their own inclination. It does not occur to them to have any inclination, except for what is customary. Thus the mind itself is bowed to the yoke: even in what people do for pleasure, conformity is the first thing thought of; they like in crowds; they exercise choice only among things commonly done: peculiarity of taste, eccentricity of conduct, are shunned equally with crimes: until by dint of not following their own nature, they have no nature to follow: their human capacities are withered and starved: they become incapable of any strong wishes or native pleasures, and are generally without either opinions or feelings of home growth, or properly their own. Now is this, or is it not, the desirable condition of human nature?

  It is so, on the Calvinistic theory. According to that, the one great offence of man is Self-will. All the good of which humanity is capable, is comprised in Obedience. You have no choice; thus you must do, and no otherwise: “whatever is not a duty is a sin.” Human nature being radically corrupt, there is no redemption for any one until human nature is killed within him. To one holding this theory of life, crushing out any of the human faculties, capacities, and susceptibilities, is no evil: man needs no capacity, but that of surrendering himself to the will of God: and if he uses any of his faculties for any other purpose but to do that supposed will more effectually, he is better without them. That is the theory of Calvinism; and it is held, in a mitigated form, by many who do not consider themselves Calvinists; the mitigation consisting in giving a less ascetic interpretation to the alleged will of God; asserting it to be his will that mankind should gratify some of their inclinations; of course not in the manner they themselves prefer, but in the way of obedience, that is, in a way prescribed to them by authority; and, therefore, by the necessary conditions of the case, the same for all.

  In some such insidious form there is at pressent a strong tendency to this narrow theory of life, and to the pinched and hidebound type of human character which it patronizes. Many persons, no doubt, sincerely think that human beings thus cramped and dwarfed, are as their Maker designed them to be; just as many have thought that trees are a much finer thing when clipped into pollards, or cut out into figures of animals, than as nature made them. But if it be any part of religion to believe that man was made by a good Being, it is more consistent with that faith to believe, that this Being gave all human faculties that they might be cultivated and unfolded, not rooted out and consumed, and that he takes delight in every nearer approach made by his creatures to the ideal conception embodied in them, every increase in any of their capabilities of comprehension, of action, or of enjoyment. There is a different type of human excellence from the Calvinistic; a conception of humanity as having its nature bestowed on it for other purposes than merely to be abnegated. “Pagan self-assertion” is one of the elements of human worth, as well as “Christian self-denial.”* There is a Greek ideal of self-development, which the Platonic and Christian ideal of self-government blends with, but does not supersede. It may be better to be a John Knox than an Alcibiades, but it is better to be a Pericles than either; nor would a Pericles, if we had one in these days, be without anything good which belonged to John Knox.

  It is not by wearing down into uniformity all that is individual in themselves, but by cultivating it and calling it forth, within the limits imposed by the rights and interests of others, that human beings become a noble and beautiful object of contemplation; and as the works partake the character of those who do them, by the same process human life also becomes rich, diversified, and animating, furnishing more abundant aliment to high thoughts and elevating feelings, and strengthening the tie which binds every individual to the race, by making the race infinitely better worth belonging to. In proportion to the development of his individuality, each person becomes more valuable to himself, and is therefore capable of being more valuable to others. There is a greater fulness of life about his own existence, and when there is more life in the units there is more in the mass which is composed of them. As much compression as is necessary to prevent the stronger specimens of human nature from encroaching on the rights of others, cannot be dispensed with; but for this there is ample compensation even in the point of view of human development. The means of development which the individual loses by being prevented from gratifying his inclinations to the injury of others, are chiefly obtained at the expense of the development of other people. And even to himself there is a full equivalent in the better development of the social part of his nature, rendered possible by the restraint put upon the selfish part. To be held to rigid rules of justice for the sake of others, develops the feelings and capacities which have the good of others for their object. But to be restrained in things not affecting their good, by their mere displeasure, developes nothing valuable, except such force of character as may unfold itself in resisting the restraint. If acquiesced in, it dulls and blunts the whole nature. To give any fair play to the nature of each, it is essential that different persons should be allowed to lead different lives. In proportion as this latitude has been exercised in any age, has that age been noteworthy to posterity. Even despotism does not produce its worst effects, so long as Individuality exists under it; and whatever crushes individuality is despotism, by whatever name it may be called, and whether it professes to be enforcing the will of God or the injunctions of men.

  Having said that Individuality is the same thing with development, and that it is only the cultivation of individuality which produces, or can produce, well-developed human beings, I might here close the argument: for what more or better can be said of any condition of human affairs, than that it brings human beings themselves nearer to the best thing they can be? or what worse can be said of any obstruction to good, than that it prevents this? Doubtless, however, these considerations will not suffice to convince those who most need convincing; and it is necessary further to show, that these developed human beings are of some use to the undeveloped — to point out to those who do not desire liberty, and would not avail themselves of it, that they may be in some intelligible manner rewarded for allowing other people to make use of it without hindrance.

  In the first place, then, I would suggest that they might possibly learn something from them. It will not be denied by anybody, that originality is a valuable element in human affairs. There is always need of persons not only to discover new truths, and point out when what were once truths are true no longer, but also to commence new practices, and set the example of more enlightened conduct, and better taste and sense in human life. This cannot well be gainsaid by anybody who does not believe that the world has already attained perfection in all its ways and practices. It is true that this benefit is not capable of being rendered by everybody alike: there are but few persons, in comparison with the whole of mankind, whose experiments, if adopted by others, would be likely to be any improvement on established practice. But these few are the salt of the earth; without them, human life would become a stagnant pool. Not only is it they who introduce good things which did not before exist; it is they who keep the life in those which already existed. If there were nothing new to be done, would human intellect cease to be necessary? Would it be a reason why those who do the old things should forget why they are done, and do them like cattle, not like human beings? There is only too great a tendency in the best beliefs and practices to degenerate into the mechanical; and unless there were a succession of persons whose ever-recurring originality prevents the grounds of those beliefs and practices from becoming merely traditional, such dead matter would not resist the smallest shock from anything really alive, and there would be no reason why civilization should not die out, as in the Byzantine Empire. Persons of genius, it is true, are, and are always likely to be, a small minority; but in order to have them, it is necessary to preserve the soil in which they grow. Genius can only breathe freely in an atmosphere of freedom. Persons of genius are, ex vi termini, more individual than any other people — less capable, consequently, of fitting themselves, without hurtful compression, into any of the small number of moulds which society provides in order to save its members the trouble of forming their own character. If from timidity they consent to be forced into one of these moulds, and to let all that part of themselves which cannot expand under the pressure remain unexpanded, society will be little the better for their genius. If they are of a strong character, and break their fetters, they become a mark for the society which has not succeeded in reducing them to commonplace, to point at with solemn warning as “wild,” “erratic,” and the like; much as if one should complain of the Niagara river for not flowing smoothly between its banks like a Dutch canal.

  I insist thus emphatically on the importance of genius, and the necessity of allowing it to unfold itself freely both in thought and in practice, being well aware that no one will deny the position in theory, but knowing also that almost every one, in reality, is totally indifferent to it. People think genius a fine thing if it enables a man to write an exciting poem, or paint a picture. But in its true sense, that of originality in thought and action, though no one says that it is not a thing to be admired, nearly all, at heart, think that they can do very well without it. Unhappily this is too natural to be wondered at. Originality is the one thing which unoriginal minds cannot feel the use of. They cannot see what it is to do for them: how should they? If they could see what it would do for them, it would not be originality. The first service which originality has to render them, is that of opening their eyes: which being once fully done, they would have a chance of being themselves original. Meanwhile, recollecting that nothing was ever yet done which some one was not the first to do, and that all good things which exist are the fruits of originality, let them be modest enough to believe that there is something still left for it to accomplish, and assure themselves that they are more in need of originality, the less they are conscious of the want.

  In sober truth, whatever homage may be professed, or even paid, to real or supposed mental superiority, the general tendency of things throughout the world is to render mediocrity the ascendant power among mankind. In ancient history, in the Middle Ages, and in a diminishing degree through the long transition from feudality to the present time, the individual was a power in himself; and if he had either great talents or a high social position, he was a considerable power. At present individuals are lost in the crowd. In politics it is almost a triviality to say that public opinion now rules the world. The only power deserving the name is that of masses, and of governments while they make themselves the organ of the tendencies and instincts of masses. This is as true in the moral and social relations of private life as in public transactions. Those whose opinions go by the name of public opinion, are not always the same sort of public: in America, they are the whole white population in England, chiefly the middle class. But they are always a mass, that is to say, collective mediocrity. And what is a still greater novelty, the mass do not now take their opinions from dignitaries in Church or State, from ostensible leaders, or from books. Their thinking is done for them by men much like themselves, addressing them or speaking in their name, on the spur of the moment, through the newspapers. I am not complaining of all this. I do not assert that anything better is compatible, as a general rule, with the present low state of the human mind. But that does not hinder the government of mediocrity from being mediocre government. No government by a democracy or a numerous aristocracy, either in its political acts or in the opinions, qualities, and tone of mind which it fosters, ever did or could rise above mediocrity, except in so far as the sovereign Many have let themselves be guided (which in their best times they always have done) by the counsels and influence of a more highly gifted and instructed One or Few. The initiation of all wise or noble things, comes and must come from individuals; generally at first from some one individual. The honor and glory of the average man is that he is capable of following that initiative; that he can respond internally to wise and noble things, and be led to them with his eyes open. I am not countenancing the sort of “hero-worship” which applauds the strong man of genius for forcibly seizing on the government of the world and making it do his bidding in spite of itself. All he can claim is, freedom to point out the way. The power of compelling others into it, is not only inconsistent with the freedom and development of all the rest, but corrupting to the strong man himself. It does seem, however, that when the opinions of masses of merely average men are everywhere become or becoming the dominant power, the counterpoise and corrective to that tendency would be, the more and more pronounced individuality of those who stand on the higher eminences of thought. It is in these circumstances most especially, that exceptional individuals, instead of being detered, should be encouraged in acting differently from the mass. In other times there was no advantage in their doing so, unless they acted not only differently, but better. In this age the mere example of non-conformity, the mere refusal to bend the knee to custom, is itself a service. Precisely because the tyranny of opinion is such as to make eccentricity a reproach, it is desirable, in order to break through that tyranny, that people should be eccentric. Eccentricity has always abounded when and where strength of character has abounded; and the amount of eccentricity in a society has generally been proportional to the amount of genius, mental vigor, and moral courage which it contained. That so few now dare to be eccentric, marks the chief danger of the time.

  I have said that it is important to give the freest scope possible to uncustomary things, in order that it may in time appear which of these are fit to be converted into customs. But independence of action, and disregard of custom are not solely deserving of encouragement for the chance they afford that better modes of action, and customs more worthy of general adoption, may be struck out; nor is it only persons of decided mental superiority who have a just claim to carry on their lives in their own way. There is no reason that all human existences should be constructed on some one, or some small number of patterns. If a person possesses any tolerable amount of common sense and experience, his own mode of laying out his existence is the best, not because it is the best in itself, but because it is his own mode. Human beings are not like sheep; and even sheep are not undistinguishably alike. A man cannot get a coat or a pair of boots to fit him, unless they are either made to his measure, or he has a whole warehouseful to choose from: and is it easier to fit him with a life than with a coat, or are human beings more like one another in their whole physical and spiritual conformation than in the shape of their feet? If it were only that people have diversities of taste, that is reason enough for not attempting to shape them all after one model. But different persons also require different conditions for their spiritual development; and can no more exist healthily in the same moral, than all the variety of plants can in the same physical, atmosphere and climate. The same things which are helps to one person towards the cultivation of his higher nature, are hindrances to another. The same mode of life is a healthy excitement to one, keeping all his faculties of action and enjoyment in their best order, while to another it is a distracting burden, which suspends or crushes all internal life. Such are the differences among human beings in their sources of pleasure, their susceptibilities of pain, and the operation on them of different physical and moral agencies, that unless there is a corresponding diversity in their modes of life, they neither obtain their fair share of happiness, nor grow up to the mental, moral, and æsthetic stature of which their nature is capable. Why then should tolerance, as far as the public sentiment is concerned, extend only to tastes and modes of life which extort acquiescence by the multitude of their adherents? Nowhere (except in some monastic institutions) is diversity of taste entirely unrecognized; a person may without blame, either like or dislike rowing, or smoking, or music, or athletic exercises, or chess, or cards, or study, because both those who like each of these things, and those who dislike them, are too numerous to be put down. But the man, and still more the woman, who can be accused either of doing “what nobody does,” or of not doing “what everybody does,” is the subject of as much depreciatory remark as if he or she had committed some grave moral delinquency. Persons require to possess a title, or some other badge of rank, or the consideration of people of rank, to be able to indulge somewhat in the luxury of doing as they like without detriment to their estimation. To indulge somewhat, I repeat: for whoever allow themselves much of that indulgence, incur the risk of something worse than disparaging speeches — they are in peril of a commission de lunatico, and of having their property taken from them and given to their relations.*

  There is one characteristic of the present direction of public opinion, peculiarly calculated to make it intolerant of any marked demonstration of individuality. The general average of mankind are not only moderate in intellect, but also moderate in inclinations: they have no tastes or wishes strong enough to incline them to do anything unusual, and they consequently do not understand those who have, and class all such with the wild and intemperate whom they are accustomed to look down upon. Now, in addition to this fact which is general, we have only to suppose that a strong movement has set in towards the improvement of morals, and it is evident what we have to expect. In these days such a movement has set in; much has actually been effected in the way of increased regularity of conduct, and discouragement of excesses; and there is a philanthropic spirit abroad, for the exercise of which there is no more inviting field than the moral and prudential improvement of our fellow-creatures. These tendencies of the times cause the public to be more disposed than at most former periods to prescribe general rules of conduct, and endeavor to make every one conform to the approved standard. And that standard, express or tacit, is to desire nothing strongly. Its ideal of character is to be without any marked character; to maim by compression, like a Chinese lady’s foot, every part of human nature which stands out prominently, and tends to make the person markedly dissimilar in outline to commonplace humanity.

  As is usually the case with ideals which exclude one half of what is desirable, the present standard of approbation produces only an inferior imitation of the other half. Instead of great energies guided by vigorous reason, and strong feelings strongly controlled by a conscientious will, its result is weak feelings and weak energies, which therefore can be kept in outward conformity to rule without any strength either of will or of reason. Already energetic characters on any large scale are becoming merely traditional. There is now scarcely any outlet for energy in this country except business. The energy expended in that may still be regarded as considerable. What little is left from that employment, is expended on some hobby; which may be a useful, even a philanthropic hobby, but is always some one thing, and generally a thing of small dimensions. The greatness of England is now all collective: individually small, we only appear capable of anything great by our habit of combining; and with this our moral and religious philanthropists are perfectly contented. But it was men of another stamp than this that made England what it has been; and men of another stamp will be needed to prevent its decline.

  The despotism of custom is everywhere the standing hindrance to human advancement, being in unceasing antagonism to that disposition to aim at something better than customary, which is called, according to circumstances, the spirit of liberty, or that of progress or improvement. The spirit of improvement is not always a spirit of liberty, for it may aim at forcing improvements on an unwilling people; and the spirit of liberty, in so far as it resists such attempts, may ally itself locally and temporarily with the opponents of improvement; but the only unfailing and permanent source of improvement is liberty, since by it there are as many possible independent centres of improvement as there are individuals. The progressive principle, however, in either shape, whether as the love of liberty or of improvement, is antagonistic to the sway of Custom, involving at least emancipation from that yoke; and the contest between the two constitutes the chief interest of the history of mankind. The greater part of the world has, properly speaking, no history, because the despotism of Custom is complete. This is the case over the whole East. Custom is there, in all things, the final appeal; justice and right mean conformity to custom; the argument of custom no one, unless some tyrant intoxicated with power, thinks of resisting. And we see the result. Those nations must once have had originality; they did not start out of the ground populous, lettered, and versed in many of the arts of life they made themselves all this, and were then the greatest and most powerful nations in the world. What are they now? The subjects or dependents of tribes whose forefathers wandered in the forests when theirs had magnificent palaces and gorgeous temples, but over whom custom exercised only a divided rule with liberty and progress. A people, it appears, may be progressive for a certain length of time, and then stop: when does it stop? When it ceases to possess individuality. If a similar change should befall the nations of Europe, it will not be in exactly the same shape: the despotism of custom with which these nations are threatened is not precisely stationariness. It proscribes singularity, but it does not preclude change, provided all change together. We have discarded the fixed costumes of our fore-fathers; every one must still dress like other people, but the fashion may change once or twice a year. We thus take care that when there is change, it shall be for change’s sake, and not from any idea of beauty or convenience; for the same idea of beauty or convenience would not strike all the world at the same moment, and be simultaneously thrown aside by all at another moment. But we are progressive as well as changeable: we continually make new inventions in mechanical things, and keep them until they are again superseded by better; we are eager for improvement in politics, in education, even in morals, though in this last our idea of improvement chiefly consists in persuading or forcing other people to be as good as ourselves. It is not progress that we object to; on the contrary, we flatten ourselves that we are the most progressive people who ever lived. It is individuality that we war against: we should think we had done wonders if we had made ourselves all alike; forgetting that the unlikeness of one person to another is generally the first thing which draws the attention of either to the imperfection of his own type, and the superiority of another, or the possibility, by combining the advantages of both, of producing something better than either. We have a warning example in China — a nation of much talent, and, in some respects, even wisdom, owing to the rare good fortune of having been provided at an early period with a particularly good set of customs, the work, in some measure, of men to whom even the most enlightened European must accord, under certain limitations, the title of sages and philosophers. They are remarkable, too, in the excellence of their apparatus for impressing, as far as possible, the best wisdom they possess upon every mind in the community, and securing that those who have appropriated most of it shall occupy the posts of honor and power. Surely the people who did this have discovered the secret of human progressiveness, and must have kept themselves steadily at the head of the movement of the world. On the contrary, they have become stationary — have remained so for thousands of years; and if they are ever to be farther improved, it must be by foreigners. They have succeeded beyond all hope in what English philanthropists are so industriously working at — in making a people all alike, all governing their thoughts and conduct by the same maxims and rules; and these are the fruits. The modern régime of public opinion is, in an unorganized form, what the Chinese educational and political systems are in an organized; and unless individuality shall be able successfully to assert itself against this yoke, Europe, notwithstanding its noble antecedents and its professed Christianity, will tend to become another China.

  What is it that has hitherto preserved Europe from this lot? What has made the European family of nations an improving, instead of a stationary portion of mankind? Not any superior excellence in them, which when it exists, exists as the effect, not as the cause; but their remarkable diversity of character and culture. Individuals, classes, nations, have been extremely unlike one another: they have struck out a great variety of paths, each leading to something valuable; and although at every period those who travelled in different paths have been intolerant of one another, and each would have thought it an excellent thing if all the rest could have been compelled to travel his road, their attempts to thwart each other’s development have rarely had any permanent success, and each has in time endured to receive the good which the others have offered. Europe is, in my judgment, wholly indebted to this plurality of paths for its progressive and many-sided development. But it already begins to possess this benefit in a considerably less degree. It is decidedly advancing towards the Chinese ideal of making all people alike. M. de Tocqueville, in his last important work, remarks how much more the Frenchmen of the present day resemble one another, than did those even of the last generation. The same remark might be made of Englishmen in a far greater degree. In a passage already quoted from Wilhelm von Humboldt, he points out two things as necessary conditions of human development, because necessary to render people unlike one another; namely, freedom, and variety of situations. The second of these two conditions is in this country every day diminishing. The circumstances which surround different classes and individuals, and shape their characters, are daily becoming more assimilated. Formerly, different ranks, different neighborhoods, different trades and professions, lived in what might be called different worlds at present, to a great degree in the same Comparatively speaking, they now read the same things, listen to the same things, see the same things, go to the same places, have their hopes and fears directed to the same objects, have the same rights and liberties, and the same means of asserting them. Great as are the differences of position which remain, they are nothing to those which have ceased. And the assimilation is still proceeding. All the political changes of the age promote it, since they all tend to raise the low and to lower the high. Every extension of education promotes it, because education brings people under common influences, and gives them access to the general stock of facts and sentiments. Improvements in the means of communication promote it, by bringing the inhabitants of distant places into personal contact, and keeping up a rapid flow of changes of residence between one place and another. The increase of commerce and manufactures promotes it, by diffusing more widely the advantages of easy circumstances, and opening all objects of ambition, even the highest, to general competition, whereby the desire of rising becomes no longer the character of a particular class, but of all classes. A more powerful agency than even all these, in bringing about a general similarity among mankind, is the complete establishment, in this and other free countries, of the ascendency of public opinion in the State. As the various social eminences which enabled persons entrenched on them to disregard the opinion of the multitude, gradually become levelled; as the very idea of resisting the will of the public, when it is positively known that they have a will, disappears more and more from the minds of practical politicians; there ceases to be any social support for non-conformity — any substantive power in society, which, itself opposed to the ascendancy of numbers, is interested in taking under its protection opinions and tendencies at variance with those of the public.

  The combination of all these causes forms so great a mass of influences hostile to Individuality, that it is not easy to see how it can stand its ground. It will do so with increasing difficulty, unless the intelligent part of the public can be made to feel its value — to see that it is good there should be differences, even though not for the better, even though, as it may appear to them, some should be for the worse. If the claims of Individuality are ever to be asserted, the time is now, while much is still wanting to complete the enforced assimilation. It is only in the earlier stages that any stand can be successfully made against the encroachment. The demand that all other people shall resemble ourselves, grows by what it feeds on. If resistance waits till life is reduced nearly to one uniform type, all deviations from that type will come to be considered impious, immoral, even monstrous and contrary to nature. Mankind speedily become unable to conceive diversity, when they have been for some time unaccustomed to see it.

  CHAPTER IV.

  of the limits to the authority of society over the individual.

  WHAT, then, is the rightful limit to the sovereignty of the individual over himself? Where does the authority of society begin? How much of human life should be assigned to individuality, and how much to society?

  Each will receive its proper share, if each has that which more particularly concerns it. To individuality should belong the part of life in which it is chiefly the individual that is interested; to society, the part which chiefly interests society.

  Though society is not founded on a contract, and though no good purpose is answered by inventing a contract in order to deduce social obligations from it, every one who receives the protection of society owes a return for the benefit, and the fact of living in society renders it indispensable that each should be bound to observe a certain line of conduct towards the rest. This conduct consists, first, in not injuring the interests of one another; or rather certain interests, which, either by express legal provision or by tacit understanding, ought to be considered as rights; and secondly, in each person’s bearing his share (to be fixed on some equitable principle) of the labors and sacrifices incurred for defending the society or its members from injury and molestation. These conditions society is justified in enforcing, at all costs to those who endeavor to withhold fulfilment. Nor is this all that society may do. The acts of an individual may be hurtful to others, or wanting in due consideration for their welfare, without going the length of violating any of their constituted rights. The offender may then be justly punished by opinion, though not by law. As soon as any part of a person’s conduct affects prejudicially the interests of others, society has jurisdiction over it, and the question whether the general welfare will or will not be promoted by interfering with it, becomes open to discussion. But there is no room for entertaining any such question when a person’s conduct affects the interests of no persons besides himself, or needs not affect them unless they like (all the persons concerned being of full age, and the ordinary amount of understanding). In all such cases there should be perfect freedom, legal and social, to do the action and stand the consequences.

  It would be a great misunderstanding of this doctrine, to suppose that it is one of selfish indifference, which pretends that human beings have no business with each other’s conduct in life, and that they should not concern themselves about the well-doing or well-being of one another, unless their own interest is involved. Instead of any diminution, there is need of a great increase of disinterested exertion to promote the good of others. But disinterested benevolence can find other instruments to persuade people to their good, than whips and scourges, either of the literal or the metaphorical sort. I am the last person to undervalue the self-regarding virtues; they are only second in importance, if even second, to the social. It is equally the business of education to cultivate both. But even education works by conviction and persuasion as well as by compulsion, and it is by the former only that, when the period of education is past, the self-regarding virtues should be inculcated Human beings owe to each other help to distinguish the better from the worse, and encouragement to choose the former and avoid the latter. They should be forever stimulating each other to increased exercise of their higher faculties, and increased direction of their feelings and aims towards wise instead of foolish, elevating instead of degrading, objects and contemplations. But neither one person, nor any number of persons, is warranted in saying to another human creature of ripe years, that he shall not do with his life for his own benefit what he chooses to do with it. He is the person most interested in his own well-being the interest which any other person, except in cases of strong personal attachment, can have in it, is trifling, compared with that which he himself has; the interest which society has in him individually (except as to his conduct to others) is fractional, and altogether indirect: while, with respect to his own feelings and circumstances, the most ordinary man or woman has means of knowledge immeasurably surpassing those that can be possessed by any one else. The interference of society to overrule his judgment and purposes in what only regards himself, must be grounded on general presumptions; which may be altogether wrong, and even if right, are as likely as not to be misapplied to individual cases, by persons no better acquainted with the circumstances of such cases than those are who look at them merely from without. In this department, therefore, of human affairs, Individuality has its proper field of action. In the conduct of human beings towards one another, it is necessary that general rules should for the most part be observed, in order that people may know what they have to expect; but in each person’s own concerns, his individual spontaneity is entitled to free exercise. Considerations to aid his judgment, exhortations to strengthen his will, may be offered to him, even obtruded on him, by others; but he, himself, is the final judge. All errors which he is likely to commit against advice and warning, are far outweighed by the evil of allowing others to constrain him to what they deem his good.

  I do not mean that the feelings with which a person is regarded by others, ought not to be in any way affected by his self-regarding qualities or deficiencies. This is neither possible nor desirable. If he is eminent in any of the qualities which conduce to his own good, he is, so far, a proper object of admiration. He is so much the nearer to the ideal perfection of human nature. If he is grossly deficient in those qualities, a sentiment the opposite of admiration will follow. There is a degree of folly, and a degree of what may be called (though the phrase is not unobjectionable) lowness or depravation of taste, which, though it cannot justify doing harm to the person who manifests it, renders him necessarily and properly a subject of distaste, or, in extreme cases, even of contempt: a person could not have the opposite qualities in due strength without entertaining these feelings. Though doing no wrong to any one, a person may so act as to compel us to judge him, and feel to him, as a fool, or as a being of an inferior order: and since this judgment and feeling are a fact which he would prefer to avoid, it is doing him a service to warm him of it beforehand, as of any other disagreeable consequence to which he exposes himself. It would be well, indeed, if this good office were much more freely rendered than the common notions of politeness at present permit, and if one person could honestly point out to another that he thinks him in fault, without being considered unmannerly or presuming. We have a right, also, in various ways, to act upon our unfavorable opinion of any one, not to the oppression of his individuality, but in the exercise of ours. We are not bound, for example, to seek his society; we have a right to avoid it (though not to parade the avoidance), for we have a right to choose the society most acceptable to us. We have a right, and it may be our duty to caution others against him, if we think his example or conversation likely to have a pernicious effect on those with whom he associates. We may give others a preference over him in optional good offices, except those which tend to his improvement. In these various modes a person may suffer very severe penalties at the hands of others, for faults which directly concern only himself; but he suffers these penalties only in so far as they are the natural, and, as it were, the spontaneous consequences of the faults themselves, not because they are purposely inflicted on him for the sake of punishment. A person who shows rashness, obstinacy, self-conceit — who cannot live within moderate means — who cannot restrain himself from hurtful indulgences — who pursues animal pleasures at the expense of those of feeling and intellect — must expect to be lowered in the opinion of others, and to have a less share of their favorable sentiments, but of this he has no right to complain, unless he has merited their favor by special excellence in his social relations, and has thus established a title to their good offices, which is not affected by his demerits towards himself.

  What I contend for is, that the inconveniences which are strictly inseparable from the unfavorable judgment of others, are the only ones to which a person should ever be subjected for that portion of his conduct and character which concerns his own good, but which does not affect the interests of others in their relations with him. Acts injurious to others require a totally different treatment. Encroachment on their rights; infliction on them of any loss or damage not justified by his own rights; falsehood or duplicity in dealing with them; unfair or ungenerous use of advantages over them; even selfish abstinence from defending them against injury — these are fit objects of moral reprobation, and, in grave cases, of moral retribution and punishment. And not only these acts, but the dispositions which lead to them, are properly immoral, and fit subjects of disapprobation which may rise to abhorrence. Cruelty of disposition; malice and ill-nature; that most anti-social and odious of all passions, envy; dissimulation and insincerity; irascibility on insufficient cause, and resentment disproportioned to the provocation; the love of domineering over others; the desire to engross more than one’s share of advantages (the πλεονεξία of the Greeks); the pride which derives gratification from the abasement of others; the egotism which thinks self and its concerns more important than everything else, and decides all doubtful questions in his own favor; — these are moral vices, and constitute a bad and odious moral character: unlike the self-regarding faults previously mentioned, which are not properly immoralities, and to whatever pitch they may be carried, do not constitute wickedness. They may be proofs of any amount of folly, or want of personal dignity and self-respect; but they are only a subject of moral reprobation when they involve a breach of duty to others, for whose sake the individual is bound to have care for himself. What are called duties to ourselves are not socially obligatory, unless circumstances render them at the same time duties to others. The term duty to oneself, when it means anything more than prudence, means self-respect or self-development; and for none of these is any one accountable to his fellow-creatures, because for none of them is it for the good of mankind that he be held accountable to them.

  The distinction between the loss of consideration which a person may rightly incur by defect of prudence or of personal dignity, and the reprobation which is due to him for an offence against the rights of others, is not a merely nominal distinction. It makes a vast difference both in our feelings and in our conduct towards him, whether he displeases us in things in which we think we have a right to control him, or in things in which we know that we have not. If he displeases us, we may express our distaste, and we may stand aloof from a person as well as from a thing that displeases us; but we shall not therefore feel called on to make his life uncomfortable. We shall reflect that he already bears, or will bear, the whole penalty of his error; if he spoils his life by mismanagement, we shall not, for that reason, desire to spoil it still further: instead of wishing to punish him, we shall rather endeavor to alleviate his punishment, by showing him how he may avoid or cure the evils his conduct tends to bring upon him. He may be to us an object of pity, perhaps of dislike, but not of anger or resentment; we shall not treat him like an enemy of society: the worst we shall think ourselves justified in doing is leaving him to himself, if we do not interfere benevolently by showing interest or concern for him. It is far otherwise if he has infringed the rules necessary for the protection of his fellow-creatures, individually or collectively. The evil consequences of his acts do not then fall on himself, but on others; and society, as the protector of all its members, must retaliate on him; must inflict pain on him for the express purpose of punishment, and must take care that it be sufficiently severe. In the one case, he is an offender at our bar, and we are called on not only to sit in judgment on him, but, in one shape or another, to execute our own sentence: in the other case, it is not our part to inflict any suffering on him, except what may incidentally follow from our using the same liberty in the regulation of our own affairs, which we allow to him in his.

  The distinction here pointed out between the part of a person’s life which concerns only himself, and that which concerns others, many persons will refuse to admit. How (it may be asked) can any part of the conduct of a member of society be a matter of indifference to the other members? No person is an entirely isolated being; it is impossible for a person to do anything seriously or permanently hurtful to himself, without mischief reaching at least to his near connections, and often far beyond them. If he injures his property, he does harm to those who directly or indirectly derived support from it, and usually diminishes, by a greater or less amount, the general resources of the community. If he deteriorates his bodily or mental faculties, he not only brings evil upon all who depended on him for any portion of their happiness, but disqualifies himself for rendering the services which he owes to his fellow-creatures generally; perhaps becomes a burden on their affection or benevolence; and if such conduct were very frequent, hardly any offence that is committed would detract more from the general sum of good. Finally, if by his vices or follies a person does no direct harm to others, he is nevertheless (it may be said) injurious by his example; and ought to be compelled to control himself, for the sake of those whom the sight or knowledge of his conduct might corrupt or mislead.

  And even (it will be added) if the consequences of misconduct could be confined to the vicious or thoughtless individual, ought society to abandon to their own guidance those who are manifestly unfit for it? If protection against themselves is confessedly due to children and persons under age, is not society equally bound to afford it to persons of mature years who are equally incapable of self-government? If gambling, or drunkenness, or incontinence, or idleness, or uncleanliness, are as injurious to happiness, and as great a hindrance to improvement, as many or most of the acts prohibited by law, why (it may be asked) should not law, so far as is consistent with practicability and social convenience, endeavor to repress these also? And as a supplement to the unavoidable imperfections of law, ought not opinion at least to organize a powerful police against these vices, and visit rigidly with social penalties those who are known to practise them? There is no question here (it may be said) about restricting individuality, or impeding the trial of new and original experiments in living. The only things it is sought to prevent are things which have been tried and condemned from the beginning of the world until now; things which experience has shown not to be useful or suitable to any person’s individuality. There must be some length of time and amount of experience, after which a moral or prudential truth may be regarded as established: and it is merely desired to prevent generation after generation from falling over the same precipice which has been fatal to their predecessors.

  I fully admit that the mischief which a person does to himself, may seriously affect, both through their sympathies and their interests, those nearly connected with him, and in a minor degree, society at large. When, by conduct of this sort, a person is led to violate a distinct and assignable obligation to any other person or persons, the case is taken out of the self-regarding class, and becomes amenable to moral disapprobation in the proper sense of the term. If, for example, a man, through intemperance or extravagance, becomes unable to pay his debts, or, having undertaken the moral responsibility of a family, becomes from the same cause incapable of supporting or educating them, he is deservedly reprobated, and might be justly punished; but it is for the breach of duty to his family or creditors, not for the extravagance. If the resources which ought to have been devoted to them, had been diverted from them for the most prudent investment, the moral culpability would have been the same. George Barnwell murdered his uncle to get money for his mistress, but if he had done it to set himself up in business, he would equally have been hanged. Again, in the frequent case of a man who causes grief to his family by addiction to bad habits, he deserves reproach for his unkindness or ingratitude; but so he may for cultivating habits not in themselves vicious, if they are painful to those with whom he passes his life, or who from personal ties are dependent on him for their comfort. Whoever fails in the consideration generally due to the interests and feelings of others, not being compelled by some more imperative duty, or justified by allowable self-preference, is a subject of moral disapprobation for that failure, but not for the cause of it, nor for the errors, merely personal to himself, which may have remotely led to it. In like manner, when a person disables himself, by conduct purely self-regarding, from the performance of some definite duty incumbent on him to the public, he is guilty of a social offence. No person ought to be punished simply for being drunk; but a soldier or a policeman should be punished for being drunk on duty. Whenever, in short, there is a definite damage, or a definite risk of damage, either to an individual or to the public, the case is taken out of the province of liberty, and placed in that of morality or law.

  But with regard to the merely contingent, or, as it may be called, constructive injury which a person causes to society, by conduct which neither violates any specific duty to the public, nor occasions perceptible hurt to any assignable individual except himself; the inconvenience is one which society can afford to bear, for the sake of the greater good of human freedom. If grown persons are to be punished for not taking proper care of themselves, I would rather it were for their own sake, than under pretence of preventing them from impairing their capacity of rendering to society benefits which society does not pretend it has a right to exact. But I cannot consent to argue the point as if society had no means of bringing its weaker members up to its ordinary standard of rational conduct, except waiting till they do something irrational, and then punishing them, legally or morally, for it. Society has had absolute power over them during all the early portion of their existence: it has had the whole period of childhood and nonage in which to try whether it could make them capable of rational conduct in life. The existing generation is master both of the training and the entire circumstances of the generation to come; it cannot indeed make them perfectly wise and good, because it is itself so lamentably deficient in goodness and wisdom; and its best efforts are not always, in individual cases, its most successful ones; but it is perfectly well able to make the rising generation, as a whole, as good as, and a little better than, itself. If society lets any considerable number of its members grow up mere children, incapable of being acted on by rational consideration of distant motives, society has itself to blame for the consequences. Armed not only with all the powers of education, but with the ascendency which the authority of a received opinion always exercises over the minds who are least fitted to judge for themselves; and aided by the natural penalties which cannot be prevented from falling on those who incur the distaste or the contempt of those who know them; let not society pretend that it needs, besides all this, the power to issue commands and enforce obedience in the personal concerns of individuals, in which, on all principles of justice and policy, the decision ought to rest with those who are to abide the consequences. Nor is there anything which tends more to discredit and frustrate the better means of influencing conduct, than a resort to the worse. If there be among those whom it is attempted to coerce into prudence or temperance, any of the material of which vigorous and independent characters are made, they will infallibly rebel against the yoke. No such person will ever feel that others have a right to control him in his concerns, such as they have to prevent him from injuring them in theirs; and it easily comes to be considered a mark of spirit and courage to fly in the face of such usurped authority, and do with ostentation the exact opposite of what it enjoins; as in the fashion of grossness which succeeded, in the time of Charles II., to the fanatical moral intolerance of the Puritans With respect to what is said of the necessity of protecting society from the bad example set to others by the vicious or the self-indulgent; it is true that bad example may have a pernicious effect, especially the example of doing wrong to others with impunity to the wrongdoer. But we are now speaking of conduct which, while it does no wrong to others, is supposed to do great harm to the agent himself: and I do not see how those who believe this, can think otherwise than that the example, on the whole, must be more salutary than hurtful, since, if it displays the misconduct, it displays also the painful or degrading consequences which, if the conduct is justly censured, must be supposed to be in all or most cases attendant on it.

  But the strongest of all the arguments against the interference of the public with purely personal conduct, is that when it does interfere, the odds are that it interferes wrongly, and in the wrong place. On questions of social morality, of duty to others, the opinion of the public, that is, of an overruling majority, though often wrong, is likely to be still oftener right; because on such questions they are only required to judge of their own interests; of the manner in which some mode of conduct, if allowed to be practised, would affect themselves. But the opinion of a similar majority, imposed as a law on the minority, on questions of self-regarding conduct, is quite as likely to be wrong as right; for in these cases public opinion means, at the best, some people’s opinion of what is good or bad for other people; while very often it does not even mean that; the public, with the most perfect indifference, passing over the pleasure or convenience of those whose conduct they censure, and considering only their own preference. There are many who consider as an injury to themselves any conduct which they have a distaste for, and resent it as an outrage to their feelings; as a religious bigot, when charged with disregarding the religious feelings of others, has been known to retort that they disregard his feelings, by persisting in their abominable worship or creed. But there is no parity between the feeling of a person for his own opinion, and the feeling of another who is offended at his holding it; no more than between the desire of a thief to take a purse, and the desire of the right owner to keep it. And a person’s taste is as much his own peculiar concern as his opinion or his purse. It is easy for any one to imagine an ideal public, which leaves the freedom and choice of individuals in all uncertain matters undisturbed, and only requires them to abstain from modes of conduct which universal experience has condemned. But where has there been seen a public which set any such limit to its censorship? or when does the public trouble itself about universal experience? In its interferences with personal conduct it is seldom thinking of anything but the enormity of acting or feeling differently from itself; and this standard of judgment, thinly disguised, is held up to mankind as the dictate of religion and philosophy, by nine tenths of all moralists and speculative writers. These teach that things are right because they are right; because we feel them to be so. They tell us to search in our own minds and hearts for laws of conduct binding on ourselves and on all others. What can the poor public do but apply these instructions, and make their own personal feelings of good and evil, if they are tolerably unanimous in them, obligatory on all the world?

  The evil here pointed out is not one which exists only in theory; and it may perhaps be expected that I should specify the instances in which the public of this age and country improperly invests its own preferences with the character of moral laws. I am not writing an essay on the aberrations of existing moral feeling. That is too weighty a subject to be discussed parenthetically, and by way of illustration. Yet examples are necessary, to show that the principle I maintain is of serious and practical moment, and that I am not endeavoring to erect a barrier against imaginary evils. And it is not difficult to show, by abundant instances, that to extend the bounds of what may be called moral police, until it encroaches on the most unquestionably legitimate liberty of the individual, is one of the most universal of all human propensities.

  As a first instance, consider the antipathies which men cherish on no better grounds than that persons whose religious opinions are different from theirs, do not practise their religious observances, especially their religious abstinences. To cite a rather trivial example, nothing in the creed or practice of Christians does more to envenom the hatred of Mahomedans against them, than the fact of their eating pork. There are few acts which Christians and Europeans regard with more unaffected disgust, than Mussulmans regard this particular mode of satisfying hunger. It is, in the first place, an offence against their religion; but this circumstance by no means explains either the degree or the kind of their repugnance; for wine also is forbidden by their religion, and to partake of it is by all Mussulmans accounted wrong, but not disgusting. Their aversion to the flesh of the “unclean beast” is, on the contrary, of that peculiar character, resembling an instinctive antipathy, which the idea of uncleanness, when once it thoroughly sinks into the feelings, seems always to excite even in those whose personal habits are anything but scrupulously cleanly, and of which the sentiment of religious impurity, so intense in the Hindoos, is a remarkable example. Suppose now that in a people, of whom the majority were Mussulmans, that majority should insist upon not permitting pork to be eaten within the limits of the country. This would be nothing new in Mahomedan countries.* Would it be a legitimate exercise of the moral authority of public opinion? and if not, why not? The practice is really revolting to such a public. They also sincerely think that it is forbidden and abhorred by the Deity. Neither could the prohibition be censured as religious persecution. It might be religious in its origin, but it would not be persecution for religion, since nobody’s religion makes it a duty to eat pork. The only tenable ground of condemnation would be, that with the personal tastes and self-regarding concerns of individuals the public has no business to interfere.

  To come somewhat nearer home: the majority of Spaniards consider it a gross impiety, offensive in the highest degree to the Supreme Being, to worship him in any other manner than the Roman Catholic; and no other public worship is lawful on Spanish soil. The people of all Southern Europe look upon a married clergy as not only irreligious, but unchaste, indecent, gross, disgusting. What do Protestants think of these perfectly sincere feelings, and of the attempt to enforce them against non-Catholics? Yet, if mankind are justified in interfering with each other’s liberty in things which do not concern the interests of others, on what principle is it possible consistently to exclude these cases? or who can blame people for desiring to suppress what they regard as a scandal in the sight of God and man? No stronger case can be shown for prohibiting anything which is regarded as a personal immorality, than is made out for suppressing these practices in the eyes of those who regard them as impieties; and unless we are willing to adopt the logic of persecutors, and to say that we may persecute others because we are right, and that they must not persecute us because they are wrong, we must beware of admitting a principle of which we should resent as a gross injustice the application to ourselves.

  The preceding instances may be objected to, although unreasonably, as drawn from contingencies impossible among us: opinion, in this country, not being likely to enforce abstinence from meats, or to interfere with people for worshipping, and for either marrying or not marrying, according to their creed or inclination. The next example, however, shall be taken from an interference with liberty which we have by no means passed all danger of. Wherever the Puritans have been sufficiently powerful, as in New England, and in Great Britain at the time of the Commonwealth, they have endeavored, with considerable success, to put down all public, and nearly all private, amusements: especially music, dancing, public games, or other assemblages for purposes of diversion, and the theatre. There are still in this country large bodies of persons by whose notions of morality and religion these recreations are condemned; and those persons belonging chiefly to the middle class, who are the ascendant power in the present social and political condition of the kingdom, it is by no means impossible that persons of these sentiments may at some time or other command a majority in Parliament. How will the remaining portion of the community like to have the amusements that shall be permitted to them regulated by the religious and moral sentiments of the stricter Calvinists and Methodists? Would they not, with considerable peremptoriness, desire these intrusively pious members of society to mind their own business? This is precisely what should be said to every government and every public, who have the pretension that no person shall enjoy any pleasure which they think wrong. But if the principle of the pretension be admitted, no one can reasonably object to its being acted on in the sense of the majority, or other preponderating power in the country; and all persons must be ready to conform to the idea of a Christian commonwealth, as understood by the early settlers in New England, if a religious profession similar to theirs should ever succeed in regaining its lost ground, as religions supposed to be declining have so often been known to do.

  To imagine another contingency, perhaps more likely to be realized than the one last mentioned. There is confessedly a strong tendency in the modern world towards a democratic constitution of society, accompanied or not by popular political institutions. It is affirmed that in the country where this tendency is most completely realized — where both society and the government are most democratic — the United States — the feeling of the majority, to whom any appearance of a more showy or costly style of living than they can hope to rival is disagreeable, operates as a tolerably effectual sumptuary law, and that in many parts of the Union it is really difficult for a person possessing a very large income, to find any mode of spending it, which will not incur popular disapprobation. Though such statements as these are doubtless much exaggerated as a representation of existing facts, the state of things they describe is not only a conceivable and possible, but a probable result of democratic feeling, combined with the notion that the public has a right to a veto on the manner in which individuals shall spend their incomes. We have only further to suppose a considerable diffusion of Socialist opinions, and it may become infamous in the eyes of the majority to possess more property than some very small amount, or any income not earned by manual labor. Opinions similar in principle to these, already prevail widely among the artisan class, and weigh oppressively on those who are amenable to the opinion chiefly of that class, namely, its own members. It is known that the bad workmen who form the majority of the operatives in many branches of industry, are decidedly of opinion that bad workmen ought to receive the same wages as good, and that no one ought to be allowed, through piecework or otherwise, to earn by superior skill or industry more than others can without it. And they employ a moral police, which occasionally becomes a physical one, to deter skilful workmen from receiving, and employers from giving, a larger remuneration for a more useful service. If the public have any jurisdiction over private concerns, I cannot see that these people are in fault, or that any individual’s particular public can be blamed for asserting the same authority over his individual conduct, which the general public asserts over people in general.

  But, without dwelling upon supposititious cases, there are, in our own day, gross usurpations upon the liberty of private life actually practised, and still greater ones threatened with some expectation of success, and opinions proposed which assert an unlimited right in the public not only to prohibit by law everything which it thinks wrong, but in order to get at what it thinks wrong, to prohibit any number of things which it admits to be innocent.

  Under the name of preventing intemperance, the people of one English colony, and of nearly half the United States, have been interdicted by law from making any use whatever of fermented drinks, except for medical purposes: for prohibition of their sale is in fact, as it is intended to be, prohibition of their use. And though the impracticability of executing the law has caused its repeal in several of the States which had adopted it, including the one from which it derives its name, an attempt has notwithstanding been commenced, and is prosecuted with considerable zeal by many of the professed philanthropists, to agitate for a similar law in this country. The association, or “Alliance” as it terms itself, which has been formed for this purpose, has acquired some notoriety through the publicity given to a correspondence between its Secretary and one of the very few English public men who hold that a politician’s opinions ought to be founded on principles. Lord Stanley’s share in this correspondence is calculated to strengthen the hopes already built on him, by those who know how rare such qualities as are manifested in some of his public appearances, unhappily are among those who figure in political life. The organ of the Alliance, who would “deeply deplore the recognition of any principle which could be wrested to justify bigotry and persecution,” undertakes to point out the “broad and impassable barrier” which divides such principles from those of the association. “All matters relating to thought, opinion, conscience, appear to me,” he says, “to be without the sphere of legislation; all pertaining to social act, habit, relation, subject only to a discretionary power vested in the State itself, and not in the individual, to be within it.” No mention is made of a third class, different from either of these, viz., acts and habits which are not social, but individual; although it is to this class, surely, that the act of drinking fermented liquors belongs. Selling fermented liquors, however, is trading, and trading is a social act. But the infringement complained of is not on the liberty of the seller, but on that of the buyer and consumer; since the State might just as well forbid him to drink wine, as purposely make it impossible for him to obtain it. The Secretary, however, says, “I claim, as a citizen, a right to legislate whenever my social rights are invaded by the social act of another.” And now for the definition of these “social rights.” “If anything invades my social rights, certainly the traffic in strong drink does. It destroys my primary right of security, by constantly creating and stimulating social disorder. It invades my right of equality, by deriving a profit from the creation of a misery, I am taxed to support. It impedes my right to free moral and intellectual development, by surrounding my path with dangers, and by weakening and demoralizing society, from which I have a right to claim mutual aid and intercourse.” A theory of “social rights,” the like of which probably never before found its way into distinct language — being nothing short of this — that it is the absolute social right of every individual, that every other individual shall act in every respect exactly as he ought; that whosoever fails thereof in the smallest particular, violates my social right, and entitles me to demand from the legislature the removal of the grievance. So monstrous a principle is far more dangerous than any single interference with liberty; there is no violation of liberty which it would not justify; it acknowledges no right to any freedom whatever, except perhaps to that of holding opinions in secret, without ever disclosing them: for the moment an opinion which I consider noxious, passes any one’s lips, it invades all the “social rights” attributed to me by the Alliance. The doctrine ascribes to all mankind a vested interest in each other’s moral, intellectual, and even physical perfection, to be defined by each claimant according to his own standard.

  Another important example of illegitimate interference with the rightful liberty of the individual, not simply threatened, but long since carried into triumphant effect, is Sabbatarian legislation. Without doubt, abstinence on one day in the week, so far as the exigencies of life permit, from the usual daily occupation, though in no respect religiously binding on any except Jews, is a highly beneficial custom. And inasmuch as this custom cannot be observed without a general consent to that effect among the industrious classes, therefore, in so far as some persons by working may impose the same necessity on others, it may be allowable and right that the law should guarantee to each, the observance by others of the custom, by suspending the greater operations of industry on a particular day. But this justification, grounded on the direct interest which others have in each individual’s observance of the practice, does not apply to the self-chosen occupations in which a person may think fit to employ his leisure; nor does it hold good, in the smallest degree, for legal restrictions on amusements. It is true that the amusement of some is the day’s work of others; but the pleasure not to say the useful recreation, of many, is worth the labor of a few, provided the occupation is freely chosen, and can be freely resigned. The operatives are perfectly right in thinking that if all worked on Sunday seven days’ work would have to be given for six days’ wages: but so long as the great mass of employments are suspended, the small number who for the enjoyment of others must still work, obtain a proportional increase of earnings; and they are not obliged to follow those occupations, if they prefer leisure to emolument. If a further remedy is sought, it might be found in the establishment by custom of a holiday on some other day of the week for those particular classes of persons. The only ground, therefore, on which restrictions on Sunday amusements can be defended, must be that they are religiously wrong; a motive of legislation which never can be too earnestly protested against. “Deorum injuriæ Diis curæ.” It remains to be proved that society or any of its officers holds a commission from on high to avenge any supposed offence to Omnipotence, which is not also a wrong to our fellow-creatures. The notion that it is one man’s duty that another should be religious, was the foundation of all the religious persecutions ever perpetrated, and if admitted, would fully justify them. Though the feeling which breaks out in the repeated attempts to stop railway travelling on Sunday, in the resistance to the opening of Museums, and the like, has not the cruelty of the old persecutors, the state of mind indicated by it is fundamentally the same. It is a determination not to tolerate others in doing what is permitted by their religion, because it is not permitted by the persecutor’s religion. It is a belief that God not only abominates the act of the misbeliever, but will not hold us guiltless if we leave him unmolested.

  I cannot refrain from adding to these examples of the little account commonly made of human liberty, the language of downright persecution which breaks out from the press of this country, whenever it feels called on to notice the remarkable phenomenon of Mormonism. Much might be said on the unexpected and instructive fact, that an alleged new revelation, and a religion founded on it, the product of palpable imposture, not even supported by the prestige of extraordinary qualities in its founder, is believed by hundreds of thousands, and has been made the foundation of a society, in the age of newspapers, railways, and the electric telegraph. What here concerns us is, that this religion, like other and better religions, has its martys; that its prophet and founder was, for his teaching, put to death by a mob; that others of its adherents lost their lives by the same lawless violence; that they were forcibly expelled, in a body, from the country in which they first grew up; while, now that they have been chased into a solitary recess in the midst of a desert, many in this country openly declare that it would be right (only that it is not convenient) to send an expedition against them, and compel them by force to conform to the opinions of other people. The article of the Mormonite doctrine which is the chief provocative to the antipathy which thus breaks through the ordinary restraints of religious tolerance, is its sanction of polygamy; which, though permitted to Mahomedans, and Hindoos, and Chinese, seems to excite unquenchable animosity when practised by persons who speak English, and profess to be a kind of Christians. No one has a deeper disapprobation than I have of this Mormon institution; both for other reasons, and because, far from being in any way countenanced by the principle of liberty, it is a direct infraction of that principle, being a mere riveting of the chains of one half of the community, and an emancipation of the other from reciprocity of obligation towards them. Still, it must be remembered that this relation is as much voluntary on the part of the women concerned in it, and who may be deemed the sufferers by it, as is the case with any other form of the marriage institution; and however surprising this fact may appear, it has its explanation in the common ideas and customs of the world, which teaching women to think marriage the one thing needful, make it intelligible that many a woman should prefer being one of several wives, to not being a wife at all. Other countries are not asked to recognize such unions, or release any portion of their inhabitants from their own laws on the score of Mormonite opinions. But when the dissentients have conceded to the hostile sentiments of others, far more than could justly be demanded; when they have left the countries to which their doctrines were unacceptable, and established themselves in a remote corner of the earth, which they have been the first to render habitable to human beings; it is difficult to see on what principles but those of tyranny they can be prevented from living there under what laws they please, provided they commit no aggression on other nations, and allow perfect freedom of departure to those who are dissatisfied with their ways. A recent writer, in some respects of considerable merit, proposes (to use his own words,) not a crusade, but a civilizade, against this polygamous community, to put an end to what seems to him a retrograde step in civilization. It also appears so to me, but I am not aware that any community has a right to force another to be civilized. So long as the sufferers by the bad law do not invoke assistance from other communities, I cannot admit that persons entirely unconnected with them ought to step in and require that a condition of things with which all who are directly interested appear to be satisfied, should be put an end to because it is a scandal to persons some thousands of miles distant, who have no part or concern in it. Let them send missionaries, if they please, to preach against it; and let them, by any fair means (of which silencing the teachers is not one,) oppose the progress of similar doctrines among their own people. If civilization has got the better of barbarism when barbarism had the world to itself, it is too much to profess to be afraid lest barbarism, after having been fairly got under, should revive and conquer civilization. A civilization that can thus succumb to its vanquished enemy must first have become so degenerate, that neither its appointed priests and teachers, nor anybody else, has the capacity, or will take the trouble, to stand up for it. If this be so, the sooner such a cizilization receives notice to quit, the better. It can only go on from bad to worse, until destroyed and regenerated (like the Western Empire) by energetic barbarians.

  CHAPTER V.

  applications.

  The principles asserted in these pages must be more generally admitted as the basis for discussion of details, before a consistent application of them to all the various departments of government and morals can be attempted with any prospect of advantage. The few observations I propose to make on questions of detail, are designed to illustrate the principles, rather than to follow them out to their consequences. I offer, not so much applications, as specimens of application; which may serve to bring into greater clearness the meaning and limits of the two maxims which together form the entire doctrine of this Essay, and to assist the judgment in holding the balance between them, in the cases where it appears doubtful which of them is applicable to the case.

  The maxims are, first, that the individual is not accountable to society for his actions, in so far as these concern the interests of no person but himself. Advice, instruction, persuasion, and avoidance by other people, if thought necessary by them for their own good, are the only measures by which society can justifiably express its dislike or disapprobation of his conduct. Secondly, that for such actions as are prejudicial to the interests of others, the individual is accountable, and may be subjected either to social or to legal punishments, if society is of opinion that the one or the other is requisite for its protection.

  In the first place, it must by no means be supposed, because damage, or probability of damage, to the interests of others, can alone justify the interference of society, that therefore it always does justify such interference. In many cases, an individual, in pursuing a legitimate object, necessarily and therefore legitimately causes pain or loss to others, or intercepts a good which they had a reasonable hope of obtaining. Such oppositions of interest between individuals often arise from bad social institutions, but are unavoidable while those institutions last; and some would be unavoidable under any institutions. Whoever succeeds in an overcrowded profession, or in a competitive examination; whoever is preferred to another in any contest for an object which both desire, reaps benefit from the loss of others, from their wasted exertion and their disappointment. But it is, by common admission, better for the general interest of mankind, that persons should pursue their objects undeterred by this sort of consequences. In other words, society admits no right, either legal or moral, in the disappointed competitors, to immunity from this kind of suffering; and feels called on to interfere, only when means of success have been employed which it is contrary to the general interest to permit — namely, fraud or treachery, and force.

  Again, trade is a social act. Whoever undertakes to sell any description of goods to the public, does what affects the interest of other persons, and of society in general; and thus his conduct, in principle, comes within the jurisdiction of society: accordingly, it was once held to be the duty of governments, in all cases which were considered of importance, to fix prices, and regulate the processes of manufacture. But it is now recognized, though not till after a long struggle, that both the cheapness and the good quality of commodities are most effectually provided for by leaving the producers and sellers perfectly free, under the sole check of equal freedom to the buyers for supplying themselves elsewhere. This is the so-called doctrine of Free Trade, which rests on grounds different from, though equally solid with, the principle of individual liberty asserted in this Essay. Restrictions on trade, or on production for purposes of trade, are indeed restraints; and all restraint, quâ restraint, is an evil: but the restraints in question affect only that part of conduct which society is competent to restrain, and are wrong solely because they do not really produce the results which it is desired to produce by them. As the principle of individual liberty is not involved in the doctrine of Free Trade, so neither is it in most of the questions which arise respecting the limits of that doctrine: as for example, what amount of public control is admissible for the prevention of fraud by adulteration; how far sanitary precautions, or arrangements to protect workpeople employed in dangerous occupations, should be enforced on employers. Such questions involve considerations of liberty, only in so far as leaving people to themselves is always better, cæteris paribus, than controlling them: but that they may be legitimately controlled for these ends, is in principle undeniable. On the other hand, there are questions relating to interference with trade, which are essentially questions of liberty; such as the Maine Law, already touched upon; the prohibition of the importation of opium into China; the restriction of the sale of poisons; all cases, in short, where the object of the interference is to make it impossible or difficult to obtain a particular commodity. These interferences are objectionable, not as infringements on the liberty of the producer or seller, but on that of the buyer.

  One of these examples, that of the sale of poisons, opens a new question; the proper limits of what may be called the functions of police; how far liberty may legitimately be invaded for the prevention of crime, or of accident. It is one of the undisputed functions of government to take precautions against crime before it has been committed, as well as to detect and punish it afterwards. The preventive function of government, however, is far more liable to be abused, to the prejudice of liberty, than the punitory function; for there is hardly any part of the legitimate freedom of action of a human being which would not admit of being represented, and fairly too, as increasing the facilities for some form or other of delinquency. Nevertheless, if a public authority, or even a private person, sees any one evidently preparing to commit a crime, they are not bound to look on inactive until the crime is committed, but may interfere to prevent it. If poisons were never bought or used for any purpose except the commission of murder, it would be right to prohibit their manufacture and sale They may, however, be wanted not only for innocent but for useful purposes, and restrictions cannot be imposed in the one case without operating in the other. Again, it is a proper office of public authority to guard against accidents. If either a public officer or any one else saw a person attempting to cross a bridge which had been ascertained to be unsafe, and there were no time to warn him of his danger, they might seize him and turn him back, without any real infringement of his liberty; for liberty consists in doing what one desires, and he does not desire to fall into the river. Nevertheless, when there is not a certainty, but only a danger of mischief, no one but the person himself can judge of the sufficiency of the motive which may prompt him to incur the risk: in this case, therefore, (unless he is a child, or delirious, or in some state of excitement or absorption incompatible with the full use of the reflecting faculty), he ought, I conceive, to be only warned of the danger; not forcibly prevented from exposing himself to it Similar considerations, applied to such a question as the sale of poisons, may enable us to decide which among the possible modes of regulation are or are not contrary to principle. Such a precaution, for example, as that of labelling the drug with some word expressive of its dangerous character, may be enforced without violation of liberty: the buyer cannot wish not to know that the thing he possesses has poisonous qualities. But to require in all cases the certificate of a medical practitioner, would make it sometimes impossible, always expensive, to obtain the article for legitimate uses. The only mode apparent to me, in which difficulties may be thrown in the way of crime committed through this means, without any infringement, worth taking into account, upon the liberty of those who desire the poisonous substance for other purposes, consists in providing what, in the apt language of Bentham, is called “preappointed evidence.” This provision is familiar to every one in the case of contracts. It is usual and right that the law, when a contract is entered into, should require as the condition of its enforcing performance, that certain formalities should be observed, such as signatures, attestation of witnesses, and the like, in order that in case of subsequent dispute, there may be evidence to prove that the contract was really entered into, and that there was nothing in the circumstances to render it legally invalid: the effect being, to throw great obstacles in the way of fictitious contracts, or contracts made in circumstances which, if known, would destroy their validity. Precautions of a similar nature might be enforced in the sale of articles adapted to be instruments of crime. The seller, for example, might be required to enter in a register the exact time of the transaction, the name and address of the buyer, the precise quality and quantity sold; to ask the purpose for which it was wanted, and record the answer he received. When there was no medical prescription, the presence of some third person might be required, to bring home the fact to the purchaser, in case there should afterwards be reason to believe that the article had been applied to criminal purposes. Such regulations would in general be no material impediment to obtaining the article, but a very considerable one to making an improper use of it without detection.

  The right inherent in society, to ward off crimes against itself by antecedent precautions, suggests the obvious limitations to the maxim, that purely self-regarding misconduct cannot properly be meddled with in the way of prevention or punishment. Drunkenness, for example, in ordinary cases, is not a fit subject for legislative interference; but I should deem it perfectly legitimate that a person, who had once been convicted of any act of violence to others under the influence of drink, should be placed under a special legal restriction, personal to himself; that if he were afterwards found drunk, he should be liable to a penalty, and that if when in that state he committed another offence, the punishment to which he would be liable for that other offence should be increased in severity. The making himself drunk, in a person whom drunkenness excites to do harm to others, is a crime against others. So, again, idleness, except in a person receiving support from the public, or except when it constitutes a breach of contract, cannot without tyranny be made a subject of legal punishment; but if either from idleness or from any other avoidable cause, a man fails to perform his legal duties to others, as for instance to support his children, it is no tyranny to force him to fulfil that obligation, by compulsory labor, if no other means are available.

  Again, there are many acts which, being directly injurious only to the agents themselves, ought not to be legally interdicted, but which, if done publicly, are a violation of good manners, and coming thus within the category of offences against others, may rightfully be prohibited. Of this kind are offences against decency; on which it is unnecessary to dwell, the rather as they are only connected indirectly with our subject, the objection to publicity being equally strong in the case of many actions not in themselves condemnable, nor supposed to be so.

  There is another question to which an answer must be found, consistent with the principles which have been laid down. In cases of personal conduct supposed to be blameable, but which respect for liberty precludes society from preventing or punishing, because the evil directly resulting falls wholly on the agent; what the agent is free to do, ought other persons to be equally free to counsel or instigate? This question is not free from difficulty. The case of a person who solicits another to do an act, is not strictly a case of self-regarding conduct. To give advice or offer inducements to any one, is a social act, and may therefore, like actions in general which affect others, be supposed amenable to social control. But a little reflection corrects the first impression, by showing that if the case is not strictly within the definition of individual liberty, yet the reasons on which the principle of individual liberty is grounded, are applicable to it. If people must be allowed, in whatever concerns only themselves, to act as seems best to themselves at their own peril, they must equally be free to consult with one another about what is fit to be so done; to exchange opinions, and give and receive suggestions. Whatever it is permitted to do, it must be permitted to advise to do. The question is doubtful, only when the instigator derives a personal benefit from his advice; when he makes it his occupation, for subsistence or pecuniary gain, to promote what society and the State consider to be an evil. Then, indeed, a new element of complication is introduced; namely, the existence of classes of persons with an interest opposed to what is considered as the public weal, and whose mode of living is grounded on the counteraction of it. Ought this to be interfered with, or not? Fornication, for example, must be tolerated, and so must gambling; but should a person be free to be a pimp, or to keep a gambling-house? The case is one of those which lie on the exact boundary line between two principles, and it is not at once apparent to which of the two it properly belongs. There are arguments on both sides. On the side of toleration it may be said, that the fact of following anything as an occupation, and living or profiting by the practice of it, cannot make that criminal which would otherwise be admissible; that the act should either be consistently permitted or consistently prohibited; that if the principles which we have hitherto defended are true, society has no business, as society, to decide anything to be wrong which concerns only the individual; that it cannot go beyond dissuasion, and that one person should be as free to persuade, as another to dissuade. In opposition to this it may be contended, that although the public, or the State, are not warranted in authoritatively deciding, for purposes of repression or punishment, that such or such conduct affecting only the interests of the individual is good or bad, they are fully justified in assuming, if they regard it as bad, that its being so or not is at least a disputable question: That, this being supposed, they cannot be acting wrongly in endeavoring to exclude the influence of solicitations which are not disinterested, of instigators who cannot possibly be impartial — who have a direct personal interest on one side, and that side the one which the State believes to be wrong, and who confessedly promote it for personal objects only. There can surely, it may be urged, be nothing lost, no sacrifice of good, by so ordering matters that persons shall make their election, either wisely or foolishly, on their own prompting, as free as possible from the arts of persons who stimulate their inclinations for interested purposes of their own. Thus (it may be said) though the statutes respecting unlawful games are utterly indefensible — though all persons should be free to gamble in their own or each other’s houses, or in any place of meeting established by their own subscriptions, and open only to the members and their visitors — yet public gambling-houses should not be permitted. It is true that the prohibition is never effectual, and that whatever amount of tyrannical power is given to the police, gambling-houses can always be maintained under other pretences but they may be compelled to conduct their operations with a certain degree of secrecy and mystery, so that nobody knows anything about them but those who seek them; and more than this, society ought not to aim at. There is considerable force in these arguments. I will not venture to decide whether they are sufficient to justify the moral anomaly of punishing the accessary, when the principal is (and must be) allowed to go free; of fining or imprisoning the procurer, but not the fornicator, the gambling-house keeper, but not the gambler. Still less ought the common operations of buying and selling to be interfered with on analogous grounds. Almost every article which is bought and sold may used in excess, and the sellers have a pecuniary interest in encouraging that excess; but no argument can be founded on this, in favor, for instance, of the Maine Law; because the class of dealers in strong drinks, though interested in their abuse, are indispensably required for the sake of their legitimate use. The interest however, of these dealers in promoting intemperance is a real evil, and justifies the State in imposing restrictions and requiring guarantees which but for that justification would be infringements of legitimate liberty.

  A further question is, whether the State, while it permits, should nevertheless indirectly discourage conduct which it deems contrary to the best interests of the agent; whether, for example, it should take measures to render the means of drunkenness more costly, or add to the difficulty of procuring them, by limiting the number of the places of sale. On this as on most other practical questions, many distinctions require to be made. To tax stimulants for the sole purpose of making them more difficult to be obtained, is a measure differing only in degree from their entire prohibition; and would be justifiable only if that were justifiable. Every increase of cost is a prohibition, to those whose means do not come up to the augmented price; and to those who do, it is a penalty laid on them for gratifying a particular taste. Their choice of pleasures, and their mode of expending their income, after satisfying their legal and moral obligations to the State and to individuals, are their own concern, and must rest with their own judgment. These considerations may seem at first sight to condemn the selection of stimulants as special subjects of taxation for purposes of revenue. But it must be remembered that taxation for fiscal purposes is absolutely inevitable; that in most countries it is necessary that a considerable part of that taxation should be indirect; that the State, therefore, cannot help imposing penalties, which to some persons may be prohibitory, on the use of some articles of consumption. It is hence the duty of the State to consider, in the imposition of taxes, what commodities the consumers can best spare; and à fortiori, to select in preference those of which it deems the use, beyond a very moderate quantity, to be positively injurious. Taxation, therefore, of stimulants, up to the point which produces the largest amount of revenue (supposing that the State needs all the revenue which it yields) is not only admissible, but to be approved of.

  The question of making the sale of these commodities a more or less exclusive privilege, must be answered differently, according to the purposes to which the restriction is intended to be subservient. All places of public resort require the restraint of a police, and places of this kind peculiarly, because offences against society are especially apt to originate there. It is, therefore, fit to confine the power of selling these commodities (at least for consumption on the spot) to persons of known or vouched-for respectability of conduct; to make such regulations respecting hours of opening and closing as may be requisite for public surveillance, and to withdraw the license if breaches of the peace repeatedly take place through the connivance or incapacity of the keeper of the house, or if it becomes a rendezvous for concocting and preparing offences against the law Any further restriction I do not conceive to be, in principle, justifiable. The limitation in number, for instance, of beer and spirit-houses, for the express purpose of rendering them more difficult of access, and diminishing the occasions of temptation, not only exposes all to an inconvenience because there are some by whom the facility would be abused, but is suited only to a state of society in which the laboring classes are avowedly treated as children or savages, and placed under an education of restraint, to fit them for future admission to the privileges of freedom. This is not the principle on which the laboring classes are professedly governed in any free country; and no person who sets due value on freedom will give his adhesion to their being so governed, unless after all efforts have been exhausted to educate them for freedom and govern them as freemen, and it has been definitively proved that they can only be governed as children. The bare statement of the alternative shows the absurdity of supposing that such efforts have been made in any case which needs be considered here. It is only because the institutions of this country are a mass of inconsistencies, that things find admittance into our practice which belong to the system of despotic, or what is called paternal, government, while the general freedom of our institutions precludes the exercise of the amount of control necessary to render the restraint of any real efficacy as a moral education.

  It was pointed out in an early part of this Essay, that the liberty of the individual, in things wherein the individual is alone concerned, implies a corresponding liberty in any number of individuals to regulate by mutual agreement such things as regard them jointly, and regard no persons but themselves. This question presents no difficulty, so long as the will of all the persons implicated remains unaltered; but since that will may change, it is often necessary, even in things in which they alone are concerned, that they should enter into engagements with one another; and when they do, it is fit, as a general rule, that those engagements should be kept. Yet in the laws, probably, of every country, this general rule has some exceptions. Not only persons are not held to engagements which violate the rights of third parties, but it is sometimes considered a sufficient reason for releasing them from an engagement, that it is injurious to themselves. In this and most other civilized countries, for example, an engagement by which a person should sell himself, or allow himself to be sold, as a slave, would be null and void; neither enforced by law nor by opinion. The ground for thus limiting his power of voluntarily disposing of his own lot in life, is apparent, and is very clearly seen in this extreme case. The reason for not interfering, unless for the sake of others, with a person’s voluntary acts, is consideration for his liberty. His voluntary choice is evidence that what he so chooses is desirable, or at the least endurable, to him, and his good is on the whole best provided for by allowing him to take his own means of pursuing it. But by selling himself for a slave, he abdicates his liberty; he foregoes any future use of it, beyond that single act. He therefore defeats, in his own case, the very purpose which is the justification of allowing him to dispose of himself. He is no longer free; but is thenceforth in a position which has no longer the presumption in its favor, that would be afforded by his voluntarily remaining in it. The principle of freedom cannot require that he should be free not to be free. It is not freedom, to be allowed to alienate his freedom. These reasons, the force of which is so conspicuous in this peculiar case, are evidently of far wider application; yet a limit is everywhere set to them by the necessities of life, which continually require, not indeed that we should resign our freedom, but that we should consent to this and the other limitation of it. The principle, however, which demands uncontrolled freedom of action in all that concerns only the agents themselves, requires that those who have become bound to one another, in things which concern no third party, should be able to release one another from the engagement; and even without such voluntary release, there are perhaps no contracts or engagements, except those that relate to money or money’s worth, of which one can venture to say that there ought to be no liberty whatever of retractation. Baron Wilhelm von Humboldt, in the excellent Essay from which I have already quoted, states it as his conviction, that engagements which involve personal relations or services, should never be legally binding beyond a limited duration of time; and that the most important of these engagements, marriage, having the peculiarity that its objects are frustrated unless the feelings of both the parties are in harmony with it, should require nothing more than the declared will of either party to dissolve it. This subject is too important, and too complicated, to be discussed in a parenthesis, and I touch on it only so far as is necessary for purposes of illustration. If the conciseness and generality of Baron Humboldt’s dissertation had not obliged him in this instance to content himself with enunciating his conclusion without discussing the premises, he would doubtless have recognized that the question cannot be decided on grounds so simple as those to which he confines himself. When a person, either by express promise or by conduct, has encouraged another to rely upon his continuing to act in a certain way — to build expectations and calculations, and stake any part of his plan of life upon that supposition, a new series of moral obligations arises on his part towards that person, which may possibly be overruled, but cannot be ignored. And again, if the relation between two contracting parties has been followed by consequences to others; if it has placed third parties in any peculiar position, or, as in the case of marriage, has even called third parties into existence, obligations arise on the part of both the contracting parties towards those third persons, the fulfilment of which, or at all events the mode of fulfilment, must be greatly affected by the continuance or disruption of the relation between the original parties to the contract. It does not follow, nor can I admit, that these obligations extend to requiring the fulfilment of the contract at all costs to the happiness of the reluctant party; but they are a necessary element in the question; and even if, as Von Humboldt maintains, they ought to make no difference in the legal freedom of the parties to release themselves from the engagement (and I also hold that they ought not to make much difference), they necessarily make a great difference in the moral freedom. A person is bound to take all these circumstances into account, before resolving on a step which may affect such important interests of others; and if he does not allow proper weight to those interests, he is morally responsible for the wrong. I have made these obvious remarks for the better illustration of the general principle of liberty, and not because they are at all needed on the particular question, which, on the contrary, is usually discussed as if the interest of children was everything, and that of grown persons nothing.

  I have already observed that, owing to the absence of any recognized general principles, liberty is often granted where it should be withheld, as well as withheld where it should be granted; and one of the cases in which, in the modern European world, the sentiment of liberty is the strongest, is a case where, in my view, it is altogether misplaced. A person should be free to do as he likes in his own concerns; but he ought not to be free to do as he likes in acting for another under the pretext that the affairs of another are his own affairs. The State, while it respects the liberty of each in what specially regards himself, is bound to maintain a vigilant control over his exercise of any power which it allows him to possess over others. This obligation is almost entirely disregarded in the case of the family relations, a case, in its direct influence on human happiness, more important than all others taken together. The almost despotic power of husbands over wives needs not be enlarged upon here, because nothing more is needed for the complete removal of the evil, than that wives should have the same rights, and should receive the protection of law in the same manner, as all other persons; and because, on this subject, the defenders of established injustice do not avail themselves of the plea of liberty, but stand forth openly as the champions of power. It is in the case of children, that misapplied notions of liberty are a real obstacle to the fulfilment by the State of its duties. One would almost think that a man’s children were supposed to be literally, and not metaphorically, a part of himself, so jealous is opinion of the smallest interference of law with his absolute and exclusive control over them; more jealous than of almost any interference with his own freedom of action: so much less do the generality of mankind value liberty than power. Consider, for example, the case of education. Is it not almost a self-evident axiom, that the State should require and compel the education, up to a certain standard, of every human being who is born its citizen? Yet who is there that is not afraid to recognize and assert this truth? Hardly any one indeed will deny that it is one of the most sacred duties of the parents (or, as law and usage now stand, the father), after summoning a human being into the world, to give to that being an education fitting him to perform his part well in life towards others and towards himself. But while this is unanimously declared to be the father’s duty, scarcely anybody, in this country, will bear to hear of obliging him to perform it. Instead of his being required to make any exertion or sacrifice for securing education to the child, it is left to his choice to accept it or not when it is provided gratis! It still remains unrecognized, that to bring a child into existence without a fair prospect of being able, not only to provide food for its body, but instruction and training for its mind, is a moral crime, both against the unfortunate offspring and against society; and that if the parent does not fulfil this obligation, the State ought to see it fulfilled at the charge, as far as possible, of the parent.

  Were the duty of enforcing universal education once admitted, there would be an end to the difficulties about what the State should teach, and how it should teach, which now convert the subject into a mere battle-field for sects and parties, causing the time and labor which should have been spent in educating, to be wasted in quarrelling about education. If the government would make up its mind to require for every child a good education, it might save itself the trouble of providing one. It might leave to parents to obtain the education where and how they pleased, and content itself with helping to pay the school fees of the poorer classes of children, and defraying the entire school expenses of those who have no one else to pay for them. The objections which are urged with reason against State education, do not apply to the enforcement of education by the State, but to the State’s taking upon itself to direct that education: which is a totally different thing. That the whole or any large part of the education of the people should be in State hands, I go as far as any one in deprecating. All that has been said of the importance of individuality of character, and diversity in opinions and modes of conduct, involves, as of the same unspeakable importance, diversity of education. A general State education is a mere contrivance for moulding people to be exactly like one another: and as the mould in which it casts them is that which pleases the predominant power in the government, whether this be a monarch, a priesthood, an aristocracy, or the majority of the existing generation, in proportion as it is efficient and successful, it establishes a despotism over the mind, leading by natural tendency to one over the body. An education established and controlled by the State, should only exist, if it exist at all, as one among many competing experiments, carried on for the purpose of example and stimulus, to keep the others up to a certain standard of excellence. Unless, indeed, when society in general is in so backward a state that it could not or would not provide for itself any proper institutions of education, unless the government undertook the task; then, indeed, the government may, as the less of two great evils, take upon itself the business of schools and universities, as it may that of joint-stock companies, when private enterprise, in a shape fitted for undertaking great works of industry does not exist in the country. But in general, if the country contains a sufficient number of persons qualified to provide education under government auspices, the same persons would be able and willing to give an equally good education on the voluntary principle, under the assurance of remuneration afforded by a law rendering education compulsory, combined with State aid to those unable to defray the expense.

  The instrument for enforcing the law could be no other than public examinations, extending to all children, and beginning at an early age. An age might be fixed at which every child must be examined, to ascertain if he (or she) is able to read. If a child proves unable, the father, unless he has some sufficient ground of excuse, might be subjected to a moderate fine, to be worked out, if necessary, by his labor, and the child might be put to school at his expense. Once in every year the examination should be renewed, with a gradually extending range of subjects, so as to make the universal acquisition, and what is more, retention, of a certain minimum of general knowledge, virtually compulsory. Beyond that minimum, there should be voluntary examinations on all subjects, at which all who come up to a certain standard of proficiency might claim a certificate. To prevent the State from exercising through these arrangements, an improper influence over opinion, the knowledge required for passing an examination (beyond the merely instrumental parts of knowledge, such as languages and their use) should, even in the higher class of examinations, be confined to facts and positive science exclusively. The examinations on religion, politics, or other disputed topics, should not turn on the truth or falsehood of opinions, but on the matter of fact that such and such an opinion is held, on such grounds, by such authors, or schools, or churches. Under this system, the rising generation would be no worse off in regard to all disputed truths, than they are at present; they would be brought up either churchmen or dissenters as they now are, the State merely taking care that they should be instructed churchmen, or instructed dissenters. There would be nothing to hinder them from being taught religion, if their parents chose, at the same schools where they were taught other things. All attempts by the State to bias the conclusions of its citizens on disputed subjects, are evil; but it may very properly offer to ascertain and certify that a person possesses the knowledge, requisite to make his conclusions, on any given subject, worth attending to. A student of philosophy would be the better for being able to stand an examination both in Locke and in Kant, whichever of the two he takes up with, or even if with neither: and there is no reasonable objection to examining an atheist in the evidences of Christianity, provided he is not required to profess a belief in them. The examinations, however, in the higher branches of knowledge should, I conceive, be entirely voluntary. It would be giving too dangerous a power to governments, were they allowed to exclude any one from professions, even from the profession of teacher, for alleged deficiency of qualifications: and I think, with Wilhelm von Humboldt, that degrees, or other public certificates of scientific or professional acquirements, should be given to all who present themselves for examination, and stand the test; but that such certificates should confer no advantage over competitors, other than the weight which may be attached to their testimony by public opinion.

  It is not in the matter of education only, that misplaced notions of liberty prevent moral obligations on the part of parents from being recognized, and legal obligations from being imposed, where there are the strongest grounds for the former always, and in many cases for the latter also. The fact itself, of causing the existence of a human being, is one of the most responsible actions in the range of human life. To undertake this responsibility — to bestow a life which may be either a curse or a blessing — unless the being on whom it is to be bestowed will have at east the ordinary chances of a desirable existence, is a crime against that being. And in a country either over-peopled, or threatened with being so, to produce children, beyond a very small number, with the effect of reducing the reward of labor by their competition, is a serious offence against all who live by the remuneration of their labor. The laws which, in many countries on the Continent, forbid marriage unless the parties can show that they have the means of supporting a family, do not exceed the legitimate powers of the State: and whether such laws be expedient or not (a question mainly dependent on local circumstances and feelings), they are not objectionable as violations of liberty. Such laws are interferences of the State to prohibit a mischievous act — an act injurious to others, which ought to be a subject of reprobation, and social stigma, even when it is not deemed expedient to superadd legal punishment. Yet the current ideas of liberty, which bend so easily to real infringements of the freedom of the individual, in things which concern only himself, would repel the attempt to put any restraint upon his inclinations when the consequence of their indulgence is a life, or lives, of wretchedness and depravity to the offspring, with manifold evils to those sufficiently within reach to be in any way affected by their actions. When we compare the strange respect of mankind for liberty, with their strange want of respect for it, we might imagine that a man had an indispensable right to do harm to others, and no right at all to please himself without giving pain to any one.

  I have reserved for the last place a large class of questions respecting the limits of government interference, which, though closely connected with the subject of this Essay, do not, in strictness, belong to it. These are cases in which the reasons against interference do not turn upon the principle of liberty: the question is not about restraining the actions of individuals, but about helping them: it is asked whether the government should do, or cause to be done, something for their benefit, instead of leaving it to be done by themselves, individually, or in voluntary combination.

  The objections to government interference, when it is not such as to involve infringement of liberty, may be of three kinds.

  The first is, when the thing to be done is likely to be better done by individuals than by the government. Speaking generally, there is no one so fit to conduct any business, or to determine how or by whom it shall be conducted, as those who are personally interested in it. This principle condemns the interferences, once so common, of the legislature, or the officers of government, with the ordinary processes of industry. But this part of the subject has been sufficiently enlarged upon by political economists, and is not particularly related to the principles of this Essay.

  The second objection is more nearly allied to our subject. In many cases, though individuals may not do the particular thing so well, on the average, as the officers of government, it is nevertheless desirable that it should be done by them, rather than by the government, as a means to their own mental education — a mode of strengthening their active faculties, exercising their judgment, and giving them a familiar knowledge of the subjects with which they are thus left to deal. This is a principal, though not the sole, recommendation of jury trial (incases not political); of free and popular local and municipal institutions; of the conduct of industrial and philanthropic enterprises by voluntary associations. These are not questions of liberty, and are connected with that subject only by remote tendencies; but they are questions of development. It belongs to a different occasion from the present to dwell on these things as parts of national education; as being, in truth, the peculiar training of a citizen, the practical part of the political education of a free people, taking them out of the narrow circle of personal and family selfishness, and accustoming them to the comprehension of joint interests, the management of joint concerns — habituating them to act from public or semi-public motives, and guide their conduct by aims which unite instead of isolating them from one another. Without these habits and powers, a free constitution can neither be worked nor preserved, as is exemplified by the too-often transitory nature of political freedom in countries where it does not rest upon a sufficient basis of local liberties. The management of purely local business by the localities, and of the great enterprises of industry by the union of those who voluntarily supply the pecuniary means, is further recommended by all the advantages which have been set forth in this Essay as belonging to individuality of development, and diversity of modes of action. Government operations tend to be everywhere alike. With individuals and voluntary associations, on the contrary, there are varied experiments, and endless diversity of experience. What the State can usefully do, is to make itself a central depository, and active circulator and diffuser, of the experience resulting from many trials. Its business is to enable each experimentalist to benefit by the experiments of others, instead of tolerating no experiments but its own.

  The third, and most cogent reason for restricting the interference of government, is the great evil of adding unnecessarily to its power. Every function superadded to those already exercised by the government, causes its influence over hopes and fears to be more widely diffused, and converts, more and more, the active and ambitious part of the public into hangers-on of the government, or of some party which aims at becoming the government. If the roads, the railways, the banks, the insurance offices, the great joint-stock companies, the universities, and the public charities, were all of them branches of the government; if, in addition, the municipal corporations and local boards, with all that now devolves on them, became departments of the central administration; if the employés of all these different enterprises were appointed and paid by the government, and looked to the government for every rise in life; not all the freedom of the press and popular constitution of the legislature would make this or any other country free otherwise than in name. And the evil would be greater, the more efficiently and scientifically the administrative machinery was constructed — the more skilful the arrangements for obtaining the best qualified hands and heads with which to work it. In England it has of late been proposed that all the members of the civil service of government should be selected by competitive examination, to obtain for those employments the most intelligent and instructed persons procurable; and much has been said and written for and against this proposal. One of the arguments most insisted on by its opponents, is that the occupation of a permanent official servant of the State does not hold out sufficient prospects of emolument and importance to attract the highest talents, which will always be able to find a more inviting career in the professions, or in the service of companies and other public bodies. One would not have been surprised if this argument had been used by the friends of the proposition, as an answer to its principal difficulty. Coming from the opponents it is strange enough. What is urged as an objection is the safety-valve of the proposed system. If indeed all the high talent of the country could be drawn into the service of the government, a proposal tending to bring about that result might well inspire uneasiness. If every part of the business of society which required organized concert, or large and comprehensive views, were in the hands of the government, and if government offices were universally filled by the ablest men, all the enlarged culture and practised intelligence in the country, except the purely speculative, would be concentrated in a numerous bureaucracy, to whom alone the rest of the community would look for all things: the multitude for direction and dictation in all they had to do; the able and aspiring for personal advancement. To be admitted into the ranks of this bureaucracy, and when admitted, to rise therein, would be the sole objects of ambition. Under this régime, not only is the outside public ill-qualified, for want of practical experience, to criticize or check the mode of operation of the bureaucracy, but even if the accidents of despotic or the natural working of popular institutions occasionally raise to the summit a ruler or rulers of reforming inclinations, no reform can be effected which is contrary to the interest of the bureaucracy. Such is the melancholy condition of the Russian empire, as is shown in the accounts of those who have had sufficient opportunity of observation. The Czar himself is powerless against the bureaucratic body; he can send any one of them to Siberia, but he cannot govern without them, or against their will. On every decree of his they have a tacit veto, by merely refraining from carrying it into effect. In countries of more advanced civilization and of a more insurrectionary spirit, the public, accustomed to expect everything to be done for them by the State, or at least to do nothing for themselves without asking from the State not only leave to do it, but even how it is to be done, naturally hold the State responsible for all evil which befalls them, and when the evil exceeds their amount of patience, they rise against the government and make what is called a revolution; whereupon somebody else, with or without legitimate authority from the nation, vaults into the seat, issues his orders to the bureaucracy, and everything goes on much as it did before; the bureaucracy being unchanged, and nobody else being capable of taking their place.

  A very different spectacle is exhibited among a people accustomed to transact their own business. In France, a large part of the people having been engaged in military service, many of whom have held at least the rank of non-commissioned officers, there are in every popular insurrection several persons competent to take the lead, and improvise some tolerable plan of action. What the French are in military affairs, the Americans are in every kind of civil business; let them be left without a government, every body of Americans is able to improvise one, and to carry on that or any other public business with a sufficient amount of intelligence, order, and decision. This is what every free people ought to be: and a people capable of this is certain to be free; it will never let itself be enslaved by any man or body of men because these are able to seize and pull the reins of the central administration. No bureaucracy can hope to make such a people as this do or undergo anything that they do not like. But where everything is done through the bureaucracy, nothing to which the bureaucracy is really adverse can be done at all. The constitution of such countries is an organization of the experience and practical ability of the nation, into a disciplined body for the purpose of governing the rest; and the more perfect that organization is in itself, the more successful in drawing to itself and educating for itself the persons of greatest capacity from all ranks of the community, the more complete is the bondage of all, the members of the bureaucracy included. For the governors are as much the slaves of their organization and discipline, as the governed are of the governors. A Chinese mandarin is as much the tool and creature of a despotism as the humblest cultivator. An individual Jesuit is to the utmost degree of abasement the slave of his order though the order itself exists for the collective power and importance of its members.

  It is not, also, to be forgotten, that the absorption of all the principal ability of the country into the governing body is fatal, sooner or later, to the mental activity and progressiveness of the body itself. Banded together as they are — working a system which, like all systems, necessarily proceeds in a great measure by fixed rules — the official body are under the constant temptation of sinking into indolent routine, or, if they now and then desert that mill-horse round, of rushing into some half-examined crudity which has struck the fancy of some leading member of the corps: and the sole check to these closely allied, though seemingly opposite, tendencies, the only stimulus which can keep the ability of the body itself up to a high standard, is liability to the watchful criticism of equal ability outside the body. It is indispensable, therefore, that the means should exist, independently of the government, of forming such ability, and furnishing it with the opportunities and experience necessary for a correct judgment of great practical affairs. If we would possess permanently a skilful and efficient body of functionaries — above all, a body able to originate and willing to adopt improvements; if we would not have our bureaucracy degenerate into a pedantocracy, this body must not engross all the occupations which form and cultivate the faculties required for the government of mankind.

  To determine the point at which evils, so formidable to human freedom and advancement, begin, or rather at which they begin to predominate over the benefits attending the collective application of the force of society, under its recognized chiefs, for the removal of the obstacles which stand in the way of its well-being, to secure as much of the advantages of centralized power and intelligence, as can be had without turning into governmental channels too great a proportion of the general activity, is one of the most difficult and complicated questions in the art of government. It is, in a great measure, a question of detail, in which many and various considerations must be kept in view, and no absolute rule can be laid down. But I believe that the practical principle in which safety resides, the ideal to be kept in view, the standard by which to test all arrangements intended for overcoming the difficulty, may be conveyed in these words: the greatest dissemination of power consistent with efficiency; but the greatest possible centralization of information, and diffusion of it from the centre. Thus, in municipal administration, there would be, as in the New England States, a very minute division among separate officers, chosen by the localities, of all business which is not better left to the persons directly interested; but besides this, there would be, in each department of local affairs, a central superintendence, forming a branch of the general government. The organ of this superintendence would concentrate, as in a focus, the variety of information and experience derived from the conduct of that branch of public business in all the localities, from everything analogous which is done in foreign countries, and from the general principles of political science. This central organ should have a right to know all that is done, and its special duty should be that of making the knowledge acquired in one place available for others. Emancipated from the petty prejudices and narrow views of a locality by its elevated position and comprehensive sphere of observation, its advice would naturally carry much authority; but its actual power, as a permanent institution, should, I conceive, be limited to compelling the local officers to obey the laws laid down for their guidance. In all things not provided for by general rules, those officers should be left to their own judgment, under responsibility to their constituents. For the violation of rules, they should be responsible to law, and the rules themselves should be laid down by the legislature; the central administrative authority only watching over their execution, and if they were not properly carried into effect, appealing, according to the nature of the case, to the tribunal to enforce the law, or to the constituencies to dismiss the functionaries who had not executed it according to its spirit. Such, in its general conception, is the central superintendence which the Poor Law Board is intended to exercise over the administrators of the Poor Rate throughout the country. Whatever powers the Board exercises beyond this limit, were right and necessary in that peculiar case, for the cure of rooted habits of mal-administration in matters deeply affecting not the localities merely, but the whole community; since no locality has a moral right to make itself by mismanagement a nest of pauperism, necessarily overflowing into other localities, and impairing the moral and physical condition of the whole laboring community. The powers of administrative coercion and subordinate legislation possessed by the Poor Law Board (but which, owing to the state of opinion on the subject, are very scantily exercised by them), though perfectly justifiable in a case of a first-rate national interest, would be wholly out of place in the superintendence of interests purely local. But a central organ of information and instruction for all the localities, would be equally valuable in all departments of administration. A government cannot have too much of the kind of activity which does not impede, but aids and stimulates, individual exertion and development. The mischief begins when, instead of calling forth the activity and powers of individuals and bodies, it substitutes its own activity for theirs; when, instead of informing, advising, and, upon occasion, denouncing, it makes them work in fetters or bids them stand aside and does their work instead of them. The worth of a State, in the long run, is the worth of the individuals composing it; and a State which postpones the interests of their mental expansion and elevation, to a little more of administrative skill, or that semblance of it which practice gives, it the details of business; a State which dwarfs its men, in order that they may be more docile instruments in its hands even for beneficial purposes, will find that with small men no great thing can really be accomplished; and that the perfection of machinery to which it has sacrificed everything, will in the end avail it nothing, for want of the vital power which, in order that the machine might work more smoothly, it has preferred to banish.

  THE SUBJECTION OF WOMEN.

  CHAPTER I.

  THE object of this Essay is to explain as clearly as I am able, the grounds of an opinion which I have held from the very earliest period when I had formed any opinions at all on social or political matters, and which, instead of being weakened or modified, has been constantly growing stronger by the progress of reflection and the experience of life: That the principle which regulates the existing social relations between the two sexes—the legal subordination of one sex to the other—is wrong in itself, and now one of the chief hindrances to human improvement; and that it ought to be replaced by a principle of perfect equality, admitting no power or privilege on the one side, nor disability on the other.

  The very words necessary to express the task I have undertaken, show how arduous it is. But it would be a mistake to suppose that the difficulty of the case must lie in the insufficiency or obscurity of the grounds of reason on which my conviction rests. The difficulty is that which exists in all cases in which there is a mass of feeling to be contended against. So long as an opinion is strongly rooted in the feelings, it gains rather than loses in stability by having a preponderating weight of argument against it. For if it were accepted as a result of argument, the refutation of the argument might shake the solidity of the conviction; but when it rests solely on feeling, the worse it fares in argumentative contest, the more persuaded its adherents are that their feeling must have some deeper ground, which the arguments do not reach; and while the feeling remains, it is always throwing up fresh intrenchments of argument to repair any breach made in the old. And there are so many causes tending to make the feelings connected with this subject the most intense and most deeply-rooted of all those which gather round and protect old institutions and customs, that we need not wonder to find them as yet less undermined and loosened than any of the rest by the progress of the great modern spiritual and social transition; nor suppose that the barbarisms to which men cling longest must be less barbarisms than those which they earlier shake off.

  In every respect the burthen is hard on those who attack an almost universal opinion. They must be very fortunate as well as unusually capable if they obtain a hearing at all. They have more difficulty in obtaining a trial, than any other litigants have in getting a verdict. If they do extort a hearing, they are subjected to a set of logical requirements totally different from those exacted from other people. In all other cases, the burthen of proof is supposed to lie with the affirmative. If a person is charged with a murder, it rests with those who accuse him to give proof of his guilt, not with himself to prove his innocence. If there is a difference of opinion about the reality of any alleged historical event, in which the feelings of men in general are not much interested, as the Siege of Troy for example, those who maintain that the event took place are expected to produce their proofs, before those who take the other side can be required to say anything; and at no time are these required to do more than show that the evidence produced by the others is of no value. Again, in practical matters, the burthen of proof is supposed to be with those who are against liberty; who contend for any restriction or prohibition; either any limitation of the general freedom of human action, or any disqualification or disparity of privilege affecting one person or kind of persons, as compared with others. The à priori presumption is in favour of freedom and impartiality. It is held that there should be no restraint not required by the general good, and that the law should be no respecter of persons, but should treat all alike, save where dissimilarity of treatment is required by positive reasons, either of justice or of policy. But of none of these rules of evidence will the benefit be allowed to those who maintain the opinion I profess. It is useless for me to say that those who maintain the doctrine that men have a right to command and women are under an obligation to obey, or that men are fit for government and women unfit, are on the affirmative side of the question, and that they are bound to show positive evidence for the assertions, or submit to their rejection. It is equally unavailing for me to say that those who deny to women any freedom or privilege rightly allowed to men, having the double presumption against them that they are opposing freedom and recommending partiality, must be held to the strictest proof of their case, and unless their success be such as to exclude all doubt, the judgment ought to go against them. These would be thought good pleas in any common case; but they will not be thought so in this instance. Before I could hope to make any impression, I should be expected not only to answer all that has ever been said by those who take the other side of the question, but to imagine all that could be said by them—to find them in reasons, as well as answer all I find: and besides refuting all arguments for the affirmative, I shall be called upon for invincible positive arguments to prove a negative. And even if I could do all this, and leave the opposite party with a host of unanswered arguments against them, and not a single unrefuted one on their side, I should be thought to have done little; for a cause supported on the one hand by universal usage, and on the other by so great a preponderance of popular sentiment, is supposed to have a presumption in its favour, superior to any conviction which an appeal to reason has power to produce in any intellects but those of a high class.

  I do not mention these difficulties to complain of them; first, because it would be useless; they are inseparable from having to contend through people’s understandings against the hostility of their feelings and practical tendencies: and truly the understandings of the majority of mankind would need to be much better cultivated than has ever yet been the case, before they can be asked to place such reliance in their own power of estimating arguments, as to give up practical principles in which they have been born and bred and which are the basis of much of the existing order of the world, at the first argumentative attack which they are not capable of logically resisting. I do not therefore quarrel with them for having too little faith in argument, but for having too much faith in custom and the general feeling. It is one of the characteristic prejudices of the reaction of the nineteenth century against the eighteenth, to accord to the unreasoning elements in human nature the infallibility which the eighteenth century is supposed to have ascribed to the reasoning elements. For the apotheosis of Reason we have substituted that of Instinct; and we call everything instinct which we find in ourselves and for which we cannot trace any rational foundation. This idolatry, infinitely more degrading than the other, and the most pernicious of the false worships of the present day, of all of which it is now the main support, will probably hold its ground until it gives way before a sound psychology, laying bare the real root of much that is bowed down to as the intention of Nature and the ordinance of God. As regards the present question, I am willing to accept the unfavourable conditions which the prejudice assigns to me. I consent that established custom, and the general feeling, should be deemed conclusive against me, unless that custom and feeling from age to age can be shown to have owed their existence to other causes than their soundness, and to have derived their power from the worse rather than the better parts of human nature. I am willing that judgment should go against me, unless I can show that my judge has been tampered with. The concession is not so great as it might appear; for to prove this, is by far the easiest portion of my task.

  The generality of a practice is in some cases a strong presumption that it is, or at all events once was, conducive to laudable ends. This is the case, when the practice was first adopted, or afterwards kept up, as a means to such ends, and was grounded on experience of the mode in which they could be most effectually attained. If the authority of men over women, when first established, had been the result of a conscientious comparison between different modes of constituting the government of society; if, after trying various other modes of social organization—the government of women over men, equality between the two, and such mixed and divided modes of government as might be invented—it had been decided, on the testimony of experience, that the mode in which women are wholly under the rule of men, having no share at all in public concerns, and each in private being under the legal obligation of obedience to the man with whom she has associated her destiny, was the arrangement most conducive to the happiness and well being of both; its general adoption might then be fairly thought to be some evidence that, at the time when it was adopted, it was the best: though even then the considerations which recommended it may, like so many other primeval social facts of the greatest importance, have subsequently, in the course of ages, ceased to exist. But the state of the case is in every respect the reverse of this. In the first place, the opinion in favour of the present system, which entirely subordinates the weaker sex to the stronger, rests upon theory only; for there never has been trial made of any other: so that experience, in the sense in which it is vulgarly opposed to theory, cannot be pretended to have pronounced any verdict. And in the second place, the adoption of this system of inequality never was the result of deliberation, or forethought, or any social ideas, or any notion whatever of what conduced to the benefit of humanity or the good order of society. It arose simply from the fact that from the very earliest twilight of human society, every woman (owing to the value attached to her by men, combined with her inferiority in muscular strength) was found in a state of bondage to some man. Laws and systems of polity always begin by recognising the relations they find already existing between individuals. They convert what was a mere physical fact into a legal right, give it the sanction of society, and principally aim at the substitution of public and organized means of asserting and protecting these rights, instead of the irregular and lawless conflict of physical strength. Those who had already been compelled to obedience became in this manner legally bound to it. Slavery, from being a mere affair of force between the master and the slave, became regularized and a matter of compact among the masters, who, binding themselves to one another for common protection, guaranteed by their collective strength the private possessions of each, including his slaves. In early times, the great majority of the male sex were slaves, as well as the whole of the female. And many ages elapsed, some of them ages of high cultivation, before any thinker was bold enough to question the rightfulness, and the absolute social necessity, either of the one slavery or of the other. By degrees such thinkers did arise: and (the general progress of society assisting) the slavery of the male sex has, in all the countries of Christian Europe at least (though, in one of them, only within the last few years) been at length abolished, and that of the female sex has been gradually changed into a milder form of dependence. But this dependence, as it exists at present, is not an original institution, taking a fresh start from considerations of justice and social expediency—it is the primitive state of slavery lasting on, through successive mitigations and modifications occasioned by the same causes which have softened the general manners, and brought all human relations more under the control of justice and the influence of humanity. It has not lost the taint of its brutal origin. No presumption in its favour, therefore, can be drawn from the fact of its existence. The only such presumption which it could be supposed to have, must be grounded on its having lasted till now, when so many other things which came down from the same odious source have been done away with. And this, indeed, is what makes it strange to ordinary ears, to hear it asserted that the inequality of rights between men and women has no other source than the law of the strongest.

  That this statement should have the effect of a paradox, is in some respects creditable to the progress of civilization, and the improvement of the moral sentiments of mankind. We now live—that is to say, one or two of the most advanced nations of the world now live—in a state in which the law of the strongest seems to be entirely abandoned as the regulating principle of the world’s affairs: nobody professes it, and, as regards most of the relations between human beings, nobody is permitted to practise it. When any one succeeds in doing so, it is under cover of some pretext which gives him the semblance of having some general social interest on his side. This being the ostensible state of things, people flatter themselves that the rule of mere force is ended; that the law of the strongest cannot be the reason of existence of anything which has remained in full operation down to the present time. However any of our present institutions may have begun, it can only, they think, have been preserved to this period of advanced civilization by a wellgrounded feeling of its adaptation to human nature, and conduciveness to the general good. They do not understand the great vitality and durability of institutions which place right on the side of might; how intensely they are clung to; how the good as well as the bad propensities and sentiments of those who have power in their hands, become identified with retaining it; how slowly these bad institutions give way, one at a time, the weakest first, beginning with those which are least interwoven with the daily habits of life; and how very rarely those who have obtained legal power because they first had physical, have ever lost their hold of it until the physical power had passed over to the other side. Such shifting of the physical force not having taken place in the case of women; this fact, combined with all the peculiar and characteristic features of the particular case, made it certain from the first that this branch of the system of right founded on might, though softened in its most atrocious features at an earlier period than several of the others, would be the very last to disappear. It was inevitable that this one case of a social relation grounded on force, would survive through generations of institutions grounded on equal justice, an almost solitary exception to the general character of their laws and customs; but which, so long as it does not proclaim its own origin, and as discussion has not brought out its true character, is not felt to jar with modern civilization, any more than domestic slavery among the Greeks jarred with their notion of themselves as a free people.

  The truth is, that people of the present and the last two or three generations have lost all practical sense of the primitive condition of humanity; and only the few who have studied history accurately, or have much frequented the parts of the world occupied by the living representatives of ages long past, are able to form any mental picture of what society then was. People are not aware how entirely, in former ages, the law of superior strength was the rule of life; how publicly and openly it was avowed, I do not say cynically or shamelessly—for these words imply a feeling that there was something in it to be ashamed of, and no such notion could find a place in the faculties of any person in those ages, except a philosopher or a saint. History gives a cruel experience of human nature, in shewing how exactly the regard due to the life, possessions, and entire earthly happiness of any class of persons, was measured by what they had the power of enforcing; how all who made any resistance to authorities that had arms in their hands, however dreadful might be the provocation, had not only the law of force but all other laws, and all the notions of social obligation against them; and in the eyes of those whom they resisted, were not only guilty of crime, but of the worst of all crimes, deserving the most cruel chastisement which human beings could inflict. The first small vestige of a feeling of obligation in a superior to acknowledge any right in inferiors, began when he had been induced, for convenience, to make some promise to them. Though these promises, even when sanctioned by the most solemn oaths, were for many ages revoked or violated on the most trifling provocation or temptation, it is probable that this, except by persons of still worse than the average morality, was seldom done without some twinges of conscience. The ancient republics, being mostly grounded from the first upon some kind of mutual compact, or at any rate formed by an union of persons not very unequal in strength, afforded, in consequence, the first instance of a portion of human relations fenced round, and placed under the dominion of another law than that of force. And though the original law of force remained in full operation between them and their slaves, and also (except so far as limited by express compact) between a commonwealth and its subjects, or other independent commonwealths; the banishment of that primitive law even from so narrow a field, commenced the regeneration of human nature, by giving birth to sentiments of which experience soon demonstrated the immense value even for material interests, and which thenceforward only required to be enlarged, not created. Though slaves were no part of the commonwealth, it was in the free states that slaves were first felt to have rights as human beings. The Stoics were, I believe, the first (except so far as the Jewish law constitutes an exception) who taught as a part of morality that men were bound by moral obligations to their slaves. No one, after Christianity became ascendant, could ever again have been a stranger to this belief, in theory; nor, after the rise of the Catholic Church, was it ever without persons to stand up for it. Yet to enforce it was the most arduous task which Christianity ever had to perform. For more than a thousand years the Church kept up the contest, with hardly any perceptible success. It was not for want of power over men’s minds. Its power was prodigious. It could make kings and nobles resign their most valued possessions to enrich the Church. It could make thousands, in the prime of life and the height of worldly advantages, shut themselves up in convents to work out their salvation by poverty, fasting, and prayer. It could send hundreds of thousands across land and sea, Europe and Asia, to give their lives for the deliverance of the Holy Sepulchre. It could make kings relinquish wives who were the object of their passionate attachment, because the Church declared that they were within the seventh (by our calculation the fourteenth) degree of relationship. All this it did; but it could not make men fight less with one another, nor tyrannize less cruelly over the serfs, and when they were able, over burgesses. It could not make them renounce either of the applications of force; force militant, or force triumphant. This they could never be induced to do until they were themselves in their turn compelled by superior force. Only by the growing power of kings was an end put to fighting except between kings, or competitors for kingship; only by the growth of a wealthy and warlike bourgeoisie in the fortified towns, and of a plebeian infantry which proved more powerful in the field than the undisciplined chivalry, was the insolent tyranny of the nobles over the bourgeoisie and peasantry brought within some bounds. It was persisted in not only until, but long after, the oppressed had obtained a power enabling them often to take conspicuous vengeance; and on the Continent much of it continued to the time of the French Revolution, though in England the earlier and better organization of the democratic classes put an end to it sooner, by establishing equal laws and free national institutions.

  If people are mostly so little aware how completely, during the greater part of the duration of our species, the law of force was the avowed rule of general conduct, any other being only a special and exceptional consequence of peculiar ties—and from how very recent a date it is that the affairs of society in general have been even pretended to be regulated according to any moral law; as little do people remember or consider, how institutions and customs which never had any ground but the law of force, last on into ages and states of general opinion which never would have permitted their first establishment. Less than forty years ago, Englishmen might still by law hold human beings in bondage as saleable property: within the present century they might kidnap them and carry them off, and work them literally to death. This absolutely extreme case of the law of force, condemned by those who can tolerate almost every other form of arbitrary power, and which, of all others, presents features the most revolting to the feelings of all who look at it from an impartial position, was the law of civilized and Christian England within the memory of persons now living: and in one half of Anglo-Saxon America three or four years ago, not only did slavery exist, but the slave trade, and the breeding of slaves expressly for it, was a general practice between slave states. Yet not only was there a greater strength of sentiment against it, but, in England at least, a less amount either of feeling or of interest in favour of it, than of any other of the customary abuses of force: for its motive was the love of gain, unmixed and undisguised; and those who profited by it were a very small numerical fraction of the country, while the natural feeling of all who were not personally interested in it, was unmitigated abhorrence. So extreme an instance makes it almost superfluous to refer to any other: but consider the long duration of absolute monarchy. In England at present it is the almost universal conviction that military despotism is a case of the law of force, having no other origin or justification. Yet in all the great nations of Europe except England it either still exists, or has only just ceased to exist, and has even now a strong party favourable to it in all ranks of the people, especially among persons of station and consequence. Such is the power of an established system, even when far from universal; when not only in almost every period of history there have been great and well-known examples of the contrary system, but these have almost invariably been afforded by the most illustrious and most prosperous communities. In this case, too, the possessor of the undue power, the person directly interested in it, is only one person, while those who are subject to it and suffer from it are literally all the rest. The yoke is naturally and necessarily humiliating to all persons, except the one who is on the throne, together with, at most, the one who expects to succeed to it. How different are these cases from that of the power of men over women! I am not now prejudging the question of its justifiableness. I am showing how vastly more permanent it could not but be, even if not justifiable, than these other dominations which have nevertheless lasted down to our own time. Whatever gratification of pride there is in the possession of power, and whatever personal interest in its exercise, is in this case not confined to a limited class, but common to the whole male sex. Instead of being, to most of its supporters, a thing desirable chiefly in the abstract, or, like the political ends usually contended for by factious, of little private importance to any but the leaders; it comes home to the person and hearth of every male head of a family, and of every one who looks forward to being so. The clodhopper exercises, or is to exercise, his share of the power equally with the highest nobleman. And the case is that in which the desire of power is the strongest: for every one who desires power, desires it most over those who are nearest to him, with whom his life is passed, with whom he has most concerns in common, and in whom any independence of his authority is oftenest likely to interfere with his individual preferences. If, in the other cases specified, powers manifestly grounded only on force, and having so much less to support them, are so slowly and with so much difficulty got rid of, much more must it be so with this, even if it rests on no better foundation than those. We must consider, too, that the possessors of the power have facilities in this case, greater than in any other, to prevent any uprising against it. Every one of the subjects lives under the very eye, and almost, it may be said, in the hands, of one of the masters—in closer intimacy with him than with any of her fellow-subjects; with no means of combining against him, no power of even locally overmastering him, and, on the other hand, with the strongest motives for seeking his favour and avoiding to give him offence. In struggles for political emancipation, everybody knows how often its champions are bought off by bribes, or daunted by terrors. In the case of women, each individual of the subject-class is in a chronic state of bribery and intimidation combined. In setting up the standard of resistance, a large number of the leaders, and still more of the followers, must make an almost complete sacrifice of the pleasures or the alleviations of their own individual lot. If ever any system of privilege and enforced subjection had its yoke tightly riveted on the necks of those who are kept down by it, this has. I have not yet shown that it is a wrong system: but every one who is capable of thinking on the subject must see that even if it is, it was certain to outlast all other forms of unjust authority. And when some of the grossest of the other forms still exist in many civilized countries, and have only recently been got rid of in others, it would be strange if that which is so much the deepest-rooted had yet been perceptibly shaken anywhere. There is more reason to wonder that the protests and testimonies against it should have been so numerous and so weighty as they are.

  Some will object, that a comparison cannot fairly be made between the government of the male sex and the forms of unjust power which I have adduced in illustration of it, since these are arbitrary, and the effect of mere usurpation, while it on the contrary is natural. But was there ever any domination which did not appear natural to those who possessed it? There was a time when the division of mankind into two classes, a small one of masters and a numerous one of slaves, appeared, even to the most cultivated minds, to be a natural, and the only natural, condition of the human race. No less an intellect, and one which contributed no less to the progress of human thought, than Aristotle, held this opinion without doubt or misgiving; and rested it on the same premises on which the same assertion in regard to the dominion of men over women is usually based, namely that there are different natures among mankind, free natures, and slave natures; that the Greeks were of a free nature, the barbarian races of Thracians and Asiatics of a slave nature. But why need I go back to Aristotle? Did not the slaveowners of the Southern United States maintain the same doctrine, with all the fanaticism with which men cling to the theories that justify their passions and legitimate their personal interests? Did they not call heaven and earth to witness that the dominion of the white man over the black is natural, that the black race is by nature incapable of freedom, and marked out for slavery? some even going so far as to say that the freedom of manual labourers is an unnatural order of things anywhere. Again, the theorists of absolute monarchy have always affirmed it to be the only natural form of government; issuing from the patriarchal, which was the primitive and spontaneous form of society, framed on the model of the paternal, which is anterior to society itself, and, as they contend, the most natural authority of all. Nay, for that matter, the law of force itself, to those who could not plead any other, has always seemed the most natural of all grounds for the exercise of authority. Conquering races hold it to be Nature’s own dictate that the conquered should obey the conquerors, or, as they euphoniously paraphrase it, that the feebler and more unwarlike races should submit to the braver and manlier. The smallest acquaintance with human life in the middle ages, shows how supremely natural the dominion of the feudal nobility over men of low condition appeared to the nobility themselves, and how unnatural the conception seemed, of a person of the inferior class claiming equality with them, or exercising authority over them. It hardly seemed less so to the class held in subjection. The emancipated serfs and burgesses, even in their most vigorous struggles, never made any pretension to a share of authority; they only demanded more or less of limitation to the power of tyrannizing over them. So true is it that unnatural generally means only uncustomary, and that everything which is usual appears natural. The subjection of women to men being a universal custom, any departure from it quite naturally appears unnatural. But how entirely, even in this case, the feeling is dependent on custom, appears by ample experience. Nothing so much astonishes the people of distant parts of the world, when they first learn anything about England, as to be told that it is under a queen: the thing seems to them so unnatural as to be almost incredible. To Englishmen this does not seem in the least degree unnatural, because they are used to it; but they do feel it unnatural that women should be soldiers or members of parliament. In the feudal ages, on the contrary, war and politics were not thought unnatural to women, because not unusual; it seemed natural that women of the privileged classes should be of manly character, inferior in nothing but bodily strength to their husbands and fathers. The independence of women seemed rather less unnatural to the Greeks than to other ancients, on account of the fabulous Amazons (whom they believed to be historical), and the partial example afforded by the Spartan women; who, though no less subordinate by law than in other Greek states, were more free in fact, and being trained to bodily exercises in the same manner with men, gave ample proof that they were not naturally disqualified for them. There can be little doubt that Spartan experience suggested to Plato, among many other of his doctrines, that of the social and political equality of the two sexes.

  But, it will be said, the rule of men over women differs from all these others in not being a rule of force: it is accepted voluntarily; women make no complaint, and are consenting parties to it. In the first place, a great number of women do not accept it. Ever since there have been women able to make their sentiments known by their writings (the only mode of publicity which society permits to them), an increasing number of them have recorded protests against their present social condition: and recently many thousands of them, headed by the most eminent women known to the public, have petitioned Parliament for their admission to the Parliamentary Suffrage. The claim of women to be educated as solidly, and in the same branches of knowledge, as men, is urged with growing intensity, and with a great prospect of success; while the demand for their admission into professions and occupations hitherto closed against them, becomes every year more urgent. Though there are not in this country, as there are in the United States, periodical Conventions and an organized party to agitate for the Rights of Women, there is a numerous and active Society organized and managed by women, for the more limited object of obtaining the political franchise. Nor is it only in our own country and in America that women are beginning to protest, more or less collectively, against the disabilities under which they labour. France, and Italy, and Switzerland, and Russia now afford examples of the same thing. How many more women there are who silently cherish similar aspirations, no one can possibly know; but there are abundant tokens how many would cherish them, were they not so strenuously taught to repress them as contrary to the proprieties of their sex. It must be remembered, also, that no enslaved class ever asked for complete liberty at once. When Simon de Montfort called the deputies of the commons to sit for the first time in Parliament, did any of them dream of demanding that an assembly, elected by their constituents, should make and destroy ministries, and dictate to the king in affairs of state? No such thought entered into the imagination of the most ambitious of them. The nobility had already these pretensions; the commons pretended to nothing but to be exempt from arbitrary taxation, and from the gross individual oppression of the king’s officers. It is a political law of nature that those who are under any power of ancient origin, never begin by complaining of the power itself, but only of its oppressive exercise. There is never any want of women who complain of ill usage by their husbands. There would be infinitely more, if complaint were not the greatest of all provocatives to a repetition and increase of the ill usage. It is this which frustrates all attempts to maintain the power but protect the woman against its abuses. In no other case (except that of a child) is the person who has been proved judicially to have suffered an injury, replaced under the physical power of the culprit who inflicted it. Accordingly wives, even in the most extreme and protracted cases of bodily ill usage, hardly ever dare avail themselves of the laws made for their protection: and if, in a moment of irrepressible indignation, or by the interference of neighbours, they are induced to do so, their whole effort afterwards is to disclose as little as they can, and to beg off their tyrant from his merited chastisement.

  All causes, social and natural, combine to make it unlikely that women should be collectively rebellious to the power of men. They are so far in a position different from all other subject classes, that their masters require something more from them than actual service. Men do not want solely the obedience of women, they want their sentiments. All men, except the most brutish, desire to have, in the woman most nearly connected with them, not a forced slave but a willing one, not a slave merely, but a favourite. They have therefore put everything in practice to enslave their minds. The masters of all other slaves rely, for maintaining obedience, on fear; either fear of themselves, or religious fears. The masters of women wanted more than simple obedience, and they turned the whole force of education to effect their purpose. All women are brought up from the very earliest years in the belief that their ideal of character is the very opposite to that of men; not self-will, and government by self-control, but submission, and yielding to the control of others. All the moralities tell them that it is the duty of women, and all the current sentimentalities that it is their nature, to live for others; to make complete abnegation of themselves, and to have no life but in their affections. And by their affections are meant the only ones they are allowed to have—those to the men with whom they are connected, or to the children who constitute an additional and indefeasible tie between them and a man. When we put together three things—first, the natural attraction between opposite sexes; secondly, the wife’s entire dependence on the husband, every privilege or pleasure she has being either his gift, or depending entirely on his will; and lastly, that the principal object of human pursuit, consideration, and all objects of social ambition, can in general be sought or obtained by her only through him, it would be a miracle if the object of being attractive to men had not become the polar star of feminine education and formation of character. And, this great means of influence over the minds of women having been acquired, an instinct of selfishness made men avail themselves of it to the utmost as a means of holding women in subjection, by representing to them meekness, submissiveness, and resignation of all individual will into the hands of a man, as an essential part of sexual attractiveness. Can it be doubted that any of the other yokes which mankind have succeeded in breaking, would have subsisted till now if the same means had existed, and had been as sedulously used, to bow down their minds to it? If it had been made the object of the life of every young plebeian to find personal favour in the eyes of some patrician, of every young serf with some seigneur; if domestication with him, and a share of his personal affections, had been held out as the prize which they all should look out for, the most gifted and aspiring being able to reckon on the most desirable prizes; and if, when this prize had been obtained, they had been shut out by a wall of brass from all interests not centering in him, all feelings and desires but those which he shared or inculcated; would not serfs and seigneurs, plebeians and patricians, have been as broadly distinguished at this day as men and women are? and would not all but a thinker here and there, have believed the distinction to be a fundamental and unalterable fact in human nature?

  The preceding considerations are amply sufficient to show that custom, however universal it may be, affords in this case no presumption, and ought not to create any prejudice, in favour of the arrangements which place women in social and political subjection to men. But I may go farther, and maintain that the course of history, and the tendencies of progressive human society, afford not only no presumption in favour of this system of inequality of rights, but a strong one against it; and that, so far as the whole course of human improvement up to this time, the whole stream of modern tendencies, warrants any inference on the subject, it is, that this relic of the past is discordant with the future, and must necessarily disappear.

  For, what is the peculiar character of the modern world—the difference which chiefly distinguishes modern institutions, modern social ideas, modern life itself, from those of times long past? It is, that human beings are no longer born to their place in life, and chained down by an inexorable bond to the place they are born to, but are free to employ their faculties, and such favourable chances as offer, to achieve the lot which may appear to them most desirable. Human society of old was constituted on a very different principle. All were born to a fixed social position, and were mostly kept in it by law, or interdicted from any means by which they could emerge from it. As some men are born white and others black, so some were born slaves and others freemen and citizens; some were born patricians, others plebeians; some were born feudal nobles, others commoners and roturiers. A slave or serf could never make himself free, nor, except by the will of his master, become so. In most European countries it was not till towards the close of the middle ages, and as a consequence of the growth of regal power, that commoners could be ennobled. Even among nobles, the eldest son was born the exclusive heir to the paternal possessions, and a long time elapsed before it was fully established that the father could disinherit him. Among the industrious classes, only those who were born members of a guild, or were admitted into it by its members, could lawfully practise their calling within its local limits; and nobody could practise any calling deemed important, in any but the legal manner—by processes authoritatively prescribed. Manufacturers have stood in the pillory for presuming to carry on their business by new and improved methods. In modern Europe, and most in those parts of it which have participated most largely in all other modern improvements, diametrically opposite doctrines now prevail. Law and government do not undertake to prescribe by whom any social or industrial operation shall or shall not be conducted, or what modes of conducting them shall be lawful. These things are left to the unfettered choice of individuals. Even the laws which required that workmen should serve an apprenticeship, have in this country been repealed: there being ample assurance that in all cases in which an apprenticeship is necessary, its necessity will suffice to enforce it. The old theory was, that the least possible should be left to the choice of the individual agent; that all he had to do should, as far as practicable, be laid down for him by superior wisdom. Left to himself he was sure to go wrong. The modern conviction, the fruit of a thousand years of experience, is, that things in which the individual is the person directly interested, never go right but as they are left to his own discretion; and that any regulation of them by authority, except to protect the rights of others, is sure to be mischievous. This conclusion, slowly arrived at, and not adopted until almost every possible application of the contrary theory had been made with disastrous result, now (in the industrial department) prevails universally in the most advanced countries, almost universally in all that have pretensions to any sort of advancement. It is not that all processes are supposed to be equally good, or all persons to be equally qualified for everything; but that freedom of individual choice is now known to be the only thing which procures the adoption of the best processes, and throws each operation into the hands of those who are best qualified for it. Nobody thinks it necessary to make a law that only a strong-armed man shall be a blacksmith. Freedom and competition suffice to make blacksmiths strong-armed men, because the weak-armed can earn more by engaging in occupations for which they are more fit. In consonance with this doctrine, it is felt to be an overstepping of the proper bounds of authority to fix beforehand, on some general presumption, that certain persons are not fit to do certain things. It is now thoroughly known and admitted that if some such presumptions exist, no such presumption is infallible. Even if it be well grounded in a majority of cases, which it is very likely not to be, there will be a minority of exceptional cases in which it does not hold: and in those it is both an injustice to the individuals, and a detriment to society, to place barriers in the way of their using their faculties for their own benefit and for that of others. In the cases, on the other hand, in which the unfitness is real, the ordinary motives of human conduct will on the whole suffice to prevent the incompetent person from making, or from persisting in, the attempt.

  If the general principle of social and economical science is not true; if individuals, with such help as they can derive from the opinion of those who know them, are not better judges than the law and the government, of their own capacities and vocation; the world cannot too soon abandon this principle, and return to the old system of regulations and disabilities. But if the principle is true, we ought to act as if we believed it, and not to ordain that to be born a girl instead of a boy, any more than to be born black instead of white, or a commoner instead of a nobleman, shall decide the person’s position through all life — shall interdict people from all the more elevated social positions, and from all, except a few, respectable occupations. Even were we to admit the utmost that is ever pretended as to the superior fitness of men for all the functions now reserved to them, the same argument applies which forbids a legal qualification for members of Parliament. If only once in a dozen years the conditions of eligibility exclude a fit person, there is a real loss, while the exclusion of thousands of unfit persons is no gain; for if the constitution of the electoral body disposes them to choose unfit persons, there are always plenty of such persons to choose from. In all things of any difficulty and importance, those who can do them well are fewer than the need, even with the most unrestricted latitude of choice: and any limitation of the field of selection deprives society of some chances of being served by the competent, without ever saving it from the incompetent.

  At present, in the more improved countries, the disabilities of women are the only case, save one, in which laws and institutions take persons at their birth, and ordain that they shall never in all their lives be allowed to compete for certain things. The one exception is that of royalty. Persons still are born to the throne; no one, not of the reigning family, can ever occupy it, and no one even of that family can, by any means but the course of hereditary succession, attain it. All other dignities and social advantages are open to the whole male sex: many indeed are only attainable by wealth, but wealth may be striven for by any one, and is actually obtained by many men of the very humblest origin. The difficulties, to the majority, are indeed insuperable without the aid of fortunate accidents; but no male human being is under any legal ban: neither law nor opinion superadd artificial obstacles to the natural ones. Royalty, as I have said, is excepted: but in this case every one feels it to be an exception—an anomaly in the modern world, in marked opposition to its customs and principles, and to be justified only by extraordinary special expediencies, which, though individuals and nations differ in estimating their weight, unquestionably do in fact exist. But in this exceptional case, in which a high social function is, for important reasons, bestowed on birth instead of being put up to competition, all free nations contrive to adhere in substance to the principle from which they nominally derogate; for they circumscribe this high function by conditions avowedly intended to prevent the person to whom it ostensibly belongs from really performing it; while the person by whom it is performed, the responsible minister, does obtain the post by a competition from which no full-grown citizen of the male sex is legally excluded. The disabilities, therefore, to which women are subject from the mere fact of their birth, are the solitary examples of the kind in modern legislation. In no instance except this, which comprehends half the human race, are the higher social functions closed against any one by a fatality of birth which no exertions, and no change of circumstances, can overcome; for even religious disabilities (besides that in England and in Europe they have practically almost ceased to exist) do not close any career to the disqualified person in case of conversion.

  The social subordination of women thus stands out an isolated fact in modern social institutions; a solitary breach of what has become their fundamental law; a single relic of an old world of thought and practice exploded in everything else, but retained in the one thing of most universal interest; as if a gigantic dolmen, or a vast temple of Jupiter Olympius, occupied the site of St. Paul’s and received daily worship, while the surrounding Christian churches were only resorted to on fasts and festivals. This entire discrepancy between one social fact and all those which accompany it, and the radical opposition between its nature and the progressive movement which is the boast of the modern world, and which has successively swept away everything else of an analogous character, surely affords, to a conscientious observer of human tendencies, serious matter for reflection. It raises a primâ facie presumption on the unfavourable side, far outweighing any which custom and usage could in such circumstances create on the favourable; and should at least suffice to make this, like the choice between republicanism and royalty, a balanced question.

  The least that can be demanded is, that the question should not be considered as prejudged by existing fact and existing opinion, but open to discussion on its merits, as a question of justice and expediency: the decision on this, as on any of the other social arrangements of mankind, depending on what an enlightened estimate of tendencies and consequences may show to be most advantageous to humanity in general, without distinction of sex. And the discussion must be a real discussion, descending to foundations, and not resting satisfied with vague and general assertions. It will not do, for instance, to assert in general terms, that the experience of mankind has pronounced in favour of the existing system. Experience cannot possibly have decided between two courses, so long as there has only been experience of one. If it be said that the doctrine of the equality of the sexes rests only on theory, it must be remembered that the contrary doctrine also has only theory to rest upon. All that is proved in its favour by direct experience, is that mankind have been able to exist under it, and to attain the degree of improvement and prosperity which we now see; but whether that prosperity has been attained sooner, or is now greater, than it would have been under the other system, experience does not say. On the other hand, experience does say, that every step in improvement has been so invariably accompanied by a step made in raising the social position of women, that historians and philosophers have been led to adopt their elevation or debasement as on the whole the surest test and most correct measure of the civilization of a people or an age. Through all the progessive period of human history, the condition of women has been approaching nearer to equality with men. This does not of itself prove that the assimilation must go on to complete equality; but it assuredly affords some presumption that such is the case.

  Neither does it avail anything to say that the nature of the two sexes adapts them to their present functions and position, and renders these appropriate to them. Standing on the ground of common sense and the constitution of the human mind, I deny that any one knows, or can know, the nature of the two sexes, as long as they have only been seen in their present relation to one another. If men had ever been found in society without women, or women without men, or if there had been a society of men and women in which the women were not under the control of the men, something might have been positively known about the mental and moral differences which may be inherent in the nature of each. What is now called the nature of women is an eminently artificial thing—the result of forced repression in some directions, unnatural stimulation in others. It may be asserted without scruple, that no other class of dependents have had their character so entirely distorted from its natural proportions by their relation with their masters; for, if conquered and slave races have been, in some respects, more forcibly repressed, whatever in them has not been crushed down by an iron heel has generally been let alone, and if left with any liberty of development, it has developed itself according to its own laws; but in the case of women, a hot-house and stove cultivation has always been carried on of some of the capabilities of their nature, for the benefit and pleasure of their masters. Then, because certain products of the general vital force sprout luxuriantly and reach a great development in this heated atmosphere and under this active nurture and watering, while other shoots from the same root, which are left outside in the wintry air, with ice purposely heaped all round them, have a stunted growth, and some are burnt off with fire and disappear; men, with that inability to recognise their own work which distinguishes the unanalytic mind, indolently believe that the tree grows of itself in the way they have made it grow, and that it would die if one half of it were not kept in a vapour bath and the other half in the snow.

  Of all difficulties which impede the progress of thought, and the formation of well-grounded opinions on life and social arrangements, the greatest is now the unspeakable ignorance and inattention of mankind in respect to the influences which form human character. Whatever any portion of the human species now are, or seem to be, such, it is supposed, they have a natural tendency to be: even when the most elementary knowledge of the circumstances in which they have been placed, clearly points out the causes that made them what they are. Because a cottier deeply in arrears to his landlord is not industrious, there are people who think that the Irish are naturally idle. Because constitutions can be overthrown when the authorities appointed to execute them turn their arms against them, there are people who think the French incapable of free government. Because the Greeks cheated the Turks, and the Turks only plundered the Greeks, there are persons who think that the Turks are naturally more sincere: and because women, as is often said, care nothing about politics except their personalities, it is supposed that the general good is naturally less interesting to women than to men. History, which is now so much better understood than formerly, teaches another lesson: if only by showing the extraordinary susceptibility of human nature to external influences, and the extreme variableness of those of its manifestations which are supposed to be most universal and uniform. But in history, as in travelling, men usually see only what they already had in their own minds; and few learn much from history, who do not bring much with them to its study.

  Hence, in regard to that most difficult question, what are the natural differences between the two sexes—a subject on which it is impossible in the present state of society to obtain complete and correct knowledge—while almost everybody dogmatizes upon it, almost all neglect and make light of the only means by which any partial insight can be obtained into it. This is, an analytic study of the most important department of psychology, the laws of the influence of circumstances on character. For, however great and apparently ineradicable the moral and intellectual differences between men and women might be, the evidence of their being natural differences could only be negative. Those only could be inferred to be natural which could not possibly be artificial—the residuum, after deducting every characteristic of either sex which can admit of being explained from education or external circumstances. The profoundest knowledge of the laws of the formation of character is indispensable to entitle any one to affirm even that there is any difference, much more what the difference is, between the two sexes considered as moral and rational beings; and since no one, as yet, has that knowledge, (for there is hardly any subject which, in proportion to its importance, has been so little studied), no one is thus far entitled to any positive opinion on the subject. Conjectures are all that can at present be made; conjectures more or less probable, according as more or less authorized by such knowledge as we yet have of the laws of psychology, as applied to the formation of character.

  Even the preliminary knowledge, what the differences between the sexes now are, apart from all question as to how they are made what they are, is still in the crudest and most incomplete state. Medical practitioners and physiologists have ascertained, to some extent, the differences in bodily constitution; and this is an important element to the psychologist: but hardly any medical practitioner is a psychologist. Respecting the mental characteristics of women; their observations are of no more worth than those of common men. It is a subject on which nothing final can be known, so long as those who alone can really know it, women themselves, have given but little testimony, and that little, mostly suborned. It is easy to know stupid women. Stupidity is much the same all the world over. A stupid person’s notions and feelings may confidently be inferred from those which prevail in the circle by which the person is surrounded. Not so with those whose opinions and feelings are an emanation from their own nature and faculties. It is only a man here and there who has any tolerable knowledge of the character even of the women of his own family. I do not mean, of their capabilities; these nobody knows, not even themselves, because most of them have never been called out. I mean their actually existing thoughts and feelings. Many a man thinks he perfectly understands women, because he has had amatory relations with several, perhaps with many of them. If he is a good observer, and his experience extends to quality as well as quantity, he may have learnt something of one narrow department of their nature—an important department, no doubt. But of all the rest of it, few persons are generally more ignorant, because there are few from whom it is so carefully hidden. The most favourable case which a man can generally have for studying the character of a woman, is that of his own wife: for the opportunities are greater, and the cases of complete sympathy not so unspeakably rare. And in fact, this is the source from which any knowledge worth having on the subject has, I believe, generally come. But most men have not had the opportunity of studying in this way more than a single case: accordingly one can, to an almost laughable degree, infer what a man’s wife is like, from his opinions about women in general. To make even this one case yield any result, the woman must be worth knowing, and the man not only a competent judge, but of a character so sympathetic in itself, and so well adapted to hers, that he can either read her mind by sympathetic intuition, or has nothing in himself which makes her shy of disclosing it. Hardly anything, I believe, can be more rare than this conjunction. It often happens that there is the most complete unity of feeling and community of interests as to all external things, yet the one has as little admission into the internal life of the other as if they were common acquaintance. Even with true affection, authority on the one side and subordination on the other prevent perfect confidence. Though nothing may be intentionally withheld, much is not shown. In the analogous relation of parent and child, the corresponding phenomenon must have been in the observation of every one. As between father and son, how many are the cases in which the father, in spite of real affection on both sides, obviously to all the world does not know, nor suspect, parts of the son’s character familiar to his companions and equals. The truth is, that the position of looking up to another is extremely unpropitious to complete sincerity and openness with him. The fear of losing ground in his opinion or in his feelings is so strong, that even in an upright character, there is an unconscious tendency to show only the best side, or the side which, though not the best, is that which he most likes to see: and it may be confidently said that thorough knowledge of one another hardly ever exists, but between persons who, besides being intimates, are equals. How much more true, then, must all this be, when the one is not only under the authority of the other, but has it inculcated on her as a duty to reckon everything else subordinate to his comfort and pleasure, and to let him neither see nor feel anything coming from her, except what is agreeable to him. All these difficulties stand in the way of a man’s obtaining any thorough knowledge even of the one woman whom alone, in general, he has sufficient opportunity of studying. When we further consider that to understand one woman is not necessarily to understand any other woman; that even if he could study many women of one rank, or of one country, he would not thereby understand women of other ranks or countries; and even if he did, they are still only the women of a single period of history; we may safely assert that the knowledge which men can acquire of women, even as they have been and are, without reference to what they might be, is wretchedly imperfect and superficial, and always will be so, until women themselves have told all that they have to tell.

  And this time has not come; nor will it come otherwise than gradually. It is but of yesterday that women have either been qualified by literary accomplishments, or permitted by society, to tell anything to the general public. As yet very few of them dare tell anything, which men, on whom their literary success depends, are unwilling to hear. Let us remember in what manner, up to a very recent time, the expression, even by a male author, of uncustomary opinions, or what are deemed eccentric feelings, usually was, and in some degree still is, received; and we may form some faint conception under what impediments a woman, who is brought up to think custom and opinion her sovereign rule, attempts to express in books anything drawn from the depths of her own nature. The greatest woman who has left writings behind her sufficient to give her an eminent rank in the literature of her country, thought it necessary to prefix as a motto to her boldest work, “Un homme peut braver l’opinion; une femme doit s’y soumettre.”* The greater part of what women write about women is mere sycophancy to men. In the case of unmarried women, much of it seems only intended to increase their chance of a husband. Many, both married and unmarried, overstep the mark, and inculcate a servility beyond what is desired or relished by any man, except the very vulgarest. But this is not so often the case as, even at a quite late period, it still was. Literary women are becoming more freespoken, and more willing to express their real sentiments. Unfortunately, in this country especially, they are themselves such artificial products, that their sentiments are compounded of a small element of individual observation and consciousness, and a very large one of acquired associations. This will be less and less the case, but it will remain true to a great extent, as long as social institutions do not admit the same free development of originality in women which is possible to men. When that time comes, and not before, we shall see, and not merely hear, as much as it is necessary to know of the nature of women, and the adaptation of other things to it.

  I have dwelt so much on the difficulties which at present obstruct any real knowledge by men of the true nature of women, because in this as in so many other things “opinio copiæ inter maximas causas inopiæ est;” and there is little chance of reasonable thinking on the matter, while people flatter themselves that they perfectly understand a subject of which most men know absolutely nothing, and of which it is at present impossible that any man, or all men taken together, should have knowledge which can qualify them to lay down the law to women as to what is, or is not, their vocation. Happily, no such knowledge is necessary for any practical purpose connected with the position of women in relation to society and life. For, according to all the principles involved in modern society, the question rests with women themselves—to be decided by their own experience, and by the use of their own faculties. There are no means of finding what either one person or many can do, but by trying—and no means by which any one else can discover for them what it is for their happiness to do or leave undone.

  One thing we may be certain of—that what is contrary to women’s nature to do, they never will be made to do by simply giving their nature free play. The anxiety of mankind to interfere in behalf of nature, for fear lest nature should not succeed in effecting its purpose, is an altogether unnecessary solicitude. What women by nature cannot do, it is quite superfluous to forbid them from doing. What they can do, but not so well as the men who are their competitors, competition suffices to exclude them from; since nobody asks for protective duties and bounties in favour of women; it is only asked that the present bounties and protective duties in favour of men should be recalled. If women have a greater natural inclination for some things than for others, there is no need of laws or social inculcation to make the majority of them do the former in preference to the latter. Whatever women’s services are most wanted for, the free play of competition will hold out the strongest inducements to them to undertake. And, as the words imply, they are most wanted for the things for which they are most fit; by the apportionment of which to them, the collective faculties of the two sexes can be applied on the whole with the greatest sum of valuable result.

  The general opinion of men is supposed to be, that the natural vocation of a woman is that of a wife and mother. I say, is supposed to be, because, judging from acts—from the whole of the present constitution of society—one might infer that their opinion was the direct contrary. They might be supposed to think that the alleged natural vocation of women was of all things the most repugnant to their nature; insomuch that if they are free to do anything else—if any other means of living, or occupation of their time and faculties, is open, which has any chance of appearing desirable to them—there will not be enough of them who will be willing to accept the condition said to be natural to them. If this is the real opinion of men in general, it would be well that it should be spoken out. I should like to hear somebody openly enunciating the doctrine (it is already implied in much that is written on the subject)—“It is necessary to society that women should marry and produce children. They will not do so unless they are compelled. Therefore it is necessary to compel them.” The merits of the case would then be clearly defined. It would be exactly that of the slaveholders of South Carolina and Louisiana. “It is necessary that cotton and sugar should be grown. White men cannot produce them. Negroes will not, for any wages which we choose to give. Ergo they must be compelled.” An illustration still closer to the point is that of impressment. Sailors must absolutely be had to defend the country. It often happens that they will not voluntarily enlist. Therefore there must be the power of forcing them. How often has this logic been used! and, but for one flaw in it, without doubt it would have been successful up to this day. But it is open to the retort—First pay the sailors the honest value of their labour. When you have made it as well worth their while to serve you, as to work for other employers, you will have no more difficulty than others have in obtaining their services. To this there is no logical answer except “I will not:” and as people are now not only ashamed, but are not desirous, to rob the labourer of his hire, impressment is no longer advocated. Those who attempt to force women into marriage by closing all other doors against them, lay themselves open to a similar retort. If they mean what they say, their opinion must evidently be, that men do not render the married condition so desirable to women, as to induce them to accept it for its own recommendations. It is not a sign of one’s thinking the boon one offers very attractive, when one allows only Hobson’s choice, “that or none.” And here, I believe, is the clue to the feelings of those men, who have a real antipathy to the equal freedom of women. I believe they are afraid, not lest women should be unwilling to marry, for I do not think that any one in reality has that apprehension; but lest they should insist that marriage should be on equal conditions; lest all women of spirit and capacity should prefer doing almost anything else, not in their own eyes degrading, rather than marry, when marrying is giving themselves a master, and a master too of all their earthly possessions. And truly, if this consequence were necessarily incident to marriage, I think that the apprehension would be very well founded. I agree in thinking it probable that few women, capable of anything else, would, unless under an irresistible entrainement, rendering them for the time insensible to anything but itself, choose such a lot, when any other means were open to them of filling a conventionally honourable place in life: and if men are determined that the law of marriage shall be a law of despotism, they are quite right, in point of mere policy, in leaving to women only Hobson’s choice. But, in that case, all that has been done in the modern world to relax the chain on the minds of women, has been a mistake. They never should have been allowed to receive a literary education. Women who read, much more women who write, are, in the existing constitution of things, a contradiction and a disturbing element: and it was wrong to bring women up with any acquirements but those of an odalisque, or of a domestic servant.

  CHAPTER II.

  IT will be well to commence the detailed discussion of the subject by the particular branch of it to which the course of our observations has led us: the conditions which the laws of this and all other countries annex to the marriage contract. Marriage being the destination appointed by society for women, the prospect they are brought up to, and the object which it is intended should be sought by all of them, except those who are too little attractive to be chosen by any man as his companion; one might have supposed that everything would have been done to make this condition as eligible to them as possible, that they might have no cause to regret being denied the option of any other. Society, however, both in this, and, at first, in all other cases, has preferred to attain its object by foul rather than fair means: but this is the only case in which it has substantially persisted in them even to the present day. Originally women were taken by force, or regularly sold by their father to the husband. Until a late period in European history, the father had the power to dispose of his daughter in marriage at his own will and pleasure, without any regard to hers. The Church, indeed, was so far faithful to a better morality as to require a formal “yes” from the woman at the marriage ceremony; but there was nothing to shew that the consent was other than compulsory; and it was practically impossible for the girl to refuse compliance if the father persevered, except perhaps when she might obtain the protection of religion by a determined resolution to take monastic vows. After marriage, the man had anciently (but this was anterior to Christianity) the power of life and death over his wife. She could invoke no law against him; he was her sole tribunal and law. For a long time he could repudiate her, but she had no corresponding power in regard to him. By the old laws of England, the husband was called the lord of the wife; he was literally regarded as her sovereign, inasmuch that the murder of a man by his wife was called treason (petty as distinguished from high treason), and was more cruelly avenged than was usually the case with high treason, for the penalty was burning to death. Because these various enormities have fallen into disuse (for most of them were never formally abolished, or not until they had long ceased to be practised) men suppose that all is now as it should be in regard to the marriage contract; and we are continually told that civilization and Christianity have restored to the woman her just rights. Meanwhile the wife is the actual bondservant of her husband: no less so, as far as legal obligation goes, than slaves commonly so called. She vows a lifelong obedience to him at the altar, and is held to it all through her life by law. Casuists may say that the obligation of obedience stops short of participation in crime, but it certainly extends to everything else. She can do no act whatever but by his permission, at least tacit. She can acquire no property but for him; the instant it becomes hers, even if by inheritance, it becomes ipso facto his. In this respect the wife’s position under the common law of England is worse than that of slaves in the laws of many countries: by the Roman law, for example, a slave might have his peculium, which to a certain extent the law guaranteed to him for his exclusive use. The higher classes in this country have given an analogous advantage to their women, through special contracts setting aside the law, by conditions of pin-money, &c.: since parental feeling being stronger with fathers than the class feeling of their own sex, a father generally prefers his own daughter to a son-in-law who is a stranger to him. By means of settlements, the rich usually contrive to withdraw the whole or part of the inherited property of the wife from the absolute control of the husband: but they do not succeed in keeping it under her own control; the utmost they can do only prevents the husband from squandering it, at the same time debarring the rightful owner from its use. The property itself is out of the reach of both; and as to the income derived from it, the form of settlement most favourable to the wife (that called “to her separate use”) only precludes the husband from receiving it instead of her: it must pass through her hands, but if he takes it from her by personal violence as soon as she receives it, he can neither be punished, nor compelled to restitution. This is the amount of the protection which, under the laws of this country, the most powerful nobleman can give to his own daughter as respects her husband. In the immense majority of cases there is no settlement: and the absorption of all rights, all property, as well as all freedom of action, is complete. The two are called “one person in law,” for the purpose of inferring that whatever is hers is his, but the parallel inference is never drawn that whatever is his is hers; the maxim is not applied against the man, except to make him responsible to third parties for her acts, as a master is for the acts of his slaves or of his cattle. I am far from pretending that wives are in general no better treated than slaves; but no slave is a slave to the same lengths, and in so full a sense of the word, as a wife is. Hardly any slave, except one immediately attached to the master’s person, is a slave at all hours and all minutes; in general he has, like a soldier, his fixed task, and when it is done, or when he is off duty, he disposes, within certain limits, of his own time, and has a family life into which the master rarely intrudes. “Uncle Tom” under his first master had his own life in his “cabin,” almost as much as any man whose work takes him away from home, is able to have in his own family. But it cannot be so with the wife. Above all, a female slave has (in Christian countries) an admitted right, and is considered under a moral obligation, to refuse to her master the last familiarity. Not so the wife: however brutal a tyrant she may unfortunately be chained to—though she may know that he hates her, though it may be his daily pleasure to torture her, and though she may feel it impossible not to loathe him—he can claim from her and enforce the lowest degradation of a human being, that of being made the instrument of an animal function contrary to her inclinations. While she is held in this worst description of slavery as to her own person, what is her position in regard to the children in whom she and her master have a joint interest? They are by law his children. He alone has any legal rights over them. Not one act can she do towards or in relation to them, except by delegation from him. Even after he is dead she is not their legal guardian, unless he by will has made her so. He could even send them away from her, and deprive her of the means of seeing or corresponding with them, until this power was in some degree restricted by Serjeant Talfourd’s Act. This is her legal state. And from this state she has no means of withdrawing herself. If she leaves her husband, she can take nothing with her, neither her children nor anything which is rightfully her own. If he chooses, he can compel her to return, by law, or by physical force; or he may content himself with seizing for his own use anything which she may earn, or which may be given to her by her relations. It is only legal separation by a decree of a court of justice, which entitles her to live apart, without being forced back into the custody of an exasperated jailer—or which empowers her to apply any earnings to her own use, without fear that a man whom perhaps she has not seen for twenty years will pounce upon her some day and carry all off. This legal separation, until lately, the courts of justice would only give at an expense which made it inaccessible to any one out of the higher ranks. Even now it is only given in cases of desertion, or of the extreme of cruelty; and yet complaints are made every day that it is granted too easily. Surely, if a woman is denied any lot in life but that of being the personal body-servant of a despot, and is dependent for everything upon the chance of finding one who may be disposed to make a favourite of her instead of merely a drudge, it is a very cruel aggravation of her fate that she should be allowed to try this chance only once. The natural sequel and corollary from this state of things would be, that since her all in life depends upon obtaining a good master, she should be allowed to change again and again until she finds one. I am not saying that she ought to be allowed this privilege. That is a totally different consideration. The question of divorce, in the sense involving liberty of remarriage, is one into which it is foreign to my purpose to enter. All I now say is, that to those to whom nothing but servitude is allowed, the free choice of servitude is the only, though a most insufficient, alleviation. Its refusal completes the assimilation of the wife to the slave—and the slave under not the mildest form of slavery: for in some slave codes the slave could, under certain circumstances of ill usage, legally compel the master to sell him. But no amount of ill usage without adultery superadded, will in England free a wife from her tormentor.

  I have no desire to exaggerate, nor does the case stand in any need of exaggeration. I have described the wife’s legal position, not her actual treatment. The laws of most countries are far worse than the people who execute them, and many of them are only able to remain laws by being seldom or never carried into effect. If married life were all that it might be expected to be, looking to the laws alone, society would be a hell upon earth. Happily there are both feelings and interests which in many men exclude, and in most, greatly temper, the impulses and propensities which lead to tyranny: and of those feelings, the tie which connects a man with his wife affords, in a normal state of things, incomparably the strongest example. The only tie which at all approaches to it, that between him and his children, tends, in all save exceptional cases, to strengthen, instead of conflicting with, the first. Because this is true; because men in general do not inflict, nor women suffer, all the misery which could be inflicted and suffered if the full power of tyranny with which the man is legally invested were acted on; the defenders of the existing form of the institution think that all its iniquity is justified, and that any complaint is merely quarrelling with the evil which is the price paid for every great good. But the mitigations in practice, which are compatible with maintaining in full legal force this or any other kind of tyranny, instead of being any apology for despotism, only serve to prove what power human nature possesses of reacting against the vilest institutions, and with what vitality the seeds of good as well as those of evil in human character diffuse and propagate themselves. Not a word can be said for despotism in the family which cannot be said for political despotism. Every absolute king does not sit at his window to enjoy the groans of his tortured subjects, nor strips them of their last rag and turns them out to shiver in the road. The despotism of Louis XVI. was not the despotism of Philippe le Bel, or of Nadir Shah, or of Caligula; but it was bad enough to justify the French Revolution, and to palliate even its horrors. If an appeal be made to the intense attachments which exist between wives and their husbands, exactly as much may be said of domestic slavery. It was quite an ordinary fact in Greece and Rome for slaves to submit to death by torture rather than betray their masters. In the proscriptions of the Roman civil wars it was remarked that wives and slaves were heroically faithful, sons very commonly treacherous. Yet we know how cruelly many Romans treated their slaves. But in truth these intense individual feelings nowhere rise to such a luxuriant height as under the most atrocious institutions. It is part of the irony of life, that the strongest feelings of devoted gratitude of which human nature seems to be susceptible, are called forth in human beings towards those who, having the power entirely to crush their earthly existence, voluntarily refrain from using that power. How great a place in most men this sentiment fills, even in religious devotion, it would be cruel to inquire. We daily see how much their gratitude to Heaven appears to be stimulated by the contemplation of fellow-creatures to whom God has not been so merciful as he has to themselves.

  Whether the institution to be defended is slavery, political absolutism, or the absolutism of the head of a family, we are always expected to judge of it from its best instances; and we are presented with pictures of loving exercise of authority on one side, loving submission to it on the other—superior wisdom ordering all things for the greatest good of the dependents, and surrounded by their smiles and benedictions. All this would be very much to the purpose if any one pretended that there are no such things as good men. Who doubts that there may be great goodness, and great happiness, and great affection, under the absolute government of a good man? Meanwhile, laws and institutions require to be adapted, not to good men, but to bad. Marriage is not an institution designed for a select few. Men are not required, as a preliminary to the marriage ceremony, to prove by testimonials that they are fit to be trusted with the exercise of absolute power. The tie of affection and obligation to a wife and children is very strong with those whose general social feelings are strong, and with many who are little sensible to any other social ties; but there are all degrees of sensibility and insensibility to it, as there are all grades of goodness and wickedness in men, down to those whom no ties will bind, and on whom society has no action but through its ultima ratio, the penalties of the law. In every grade of this descending scale are men to whom are committed all the legal powers of a husband. The vilest malefactor has some wretched woman tied to him, against whom he can commit any atrocity except killing her, and, if tolerably cautious, can do that without much danger of the legal penalty. And how many thousands are there among the lowest classes in every country, who, without being in a legal sense malefactors in any other respect, because in every other quarter their aggressions meet with resistance, indulge the utmost habitual excesses of bodily violence towards the unhappy wife, who alone, at least of grown persons, can neither repel nor escape from their brutality; and towards whom the excess of dependence inspires their mean and savage natures, not with a generous forbearance, and a point of honour to behave well to one whose lot in life is trusted entirely to their kindness, but on the contrary with a notion that the law has delivered her to them as their thing, to be used at their pleasure, and that they are not expected to practise the consideration towards her which is required from them towards everybody else. The law, which till lately left even these atrocious extremes of domestic oppression practically unpunished, has within these few years made some feeble attempts to repress them. But its attempts have done little, and cannot be expected to do much, because it is contrary to reason and experience to suppose that there can be any real check to brutality, consistent with leaving the victim still in the power of the executioner. Until a conviction for personal violence, or at all events a repetition of it after a first conviction, entitles the woman ipso facto to a divorce, or at least to a judicial separation, the attempt to repress these “aggravated assaults” by legal penalties will break down for want of a prosecutor, or for want of a witness.

  When we consider how vast is the number of men, in any great country, who are little higher than brutes, and that this never prevents them from being able, through the law of marriage, to obtain a victim, the breadth and depth of human misery caused in this shape alone by the abuse of the institution swells to something appalling. Yet these are only the extreme cases. They are the lowest abysses, but there is a sad succession of depth after depth before reaching them. In domestic as in political tyranny, the case of absolute monsters chiefly illustrates the institution by showing that there is scarcely any horror which may not occur under it if the despot pleases, and thus setting in a strong light what must be the terrible frequency of things only a little less atrocious. Absolute fiends are as rare as angels, perhaps rarer: ferocious savages, with occasional touches of humanity, are however very frequent: and in the wide interval which separates these from any worthy representatives of the human species, how many are the forms and gradations of animalism and selfishness, often under an outward varnish of civilization and even cultivation, living at peace with the law, maintaining a creditable appearance to all who are not under their power, yet sufficient often to make the lives of all who are so, a torment and a burthen to them! It would be tiresome to repeat the commonplaces about the unfitness of men in general for power, which, after the political discussions of centuries, every one knows by heart, were it not that hardly any one thinks of applying these maxims to the case in which above all others they are applicable, that of power, not placed in the hands of a man here and there, but offered to every adult male, down to the basest and most ferocious. It is not because a man is not known to have broken any of the Ten Commandments, or because he maintains a respectable character in his dealings with those whom he cannot compel to have intercourse with him, or because he does not fly out into violent bursts of ill-temper against those who are not obliged to bear with him, that it is possible to surmise of what sort his conduct will be in the unrestraint of home. Even the commonest men reserve the violent, the sulky, the undisguisedly selfish side of their character for those who have no power to withstand it. The relation of superiors to dependents is the nursery of these vices of character, which, wherever else they exist, are an overflowing from that source. A man who is morose or violent to his equals, is sure to be one who has lived among inferiors, whom he could frighten or worry into submission. If the family in its best forms is, as it is often said to be, a school of sympathy, tenderness, and loving forgetfulness of self, it is still oftener, as respects its chief, a school of wilfulness, over-bearingness, unbounded self-indulgence, and a double-dyed and idealized selfishness, of which sacrifice itself is only a particular form: the care for the wife and children being only care for them as parts of the man’s own interests and belongings, and their individual happiness being immolated in every shape to his smallest preferences. What better is to be looked for under the existing form of the institution? We know that the bad propensities of human nature are only kept within bounds when they are allowed no scope for their indulgence. We know that from impulse and habit, when not from deliberate purpose, almost every one to whom others yield, goes on encroaching upon them, until a point is reached at which they are compelled to resist. Such being the common tendency of human nature; the almost unlimited power which present social institutions give to the man over at least one human being—the one with whom he resides, and whom he has always present—this power seeks out and evokes the latent germs of selfishness in the remotest corners of his nature—fans its faintest sparks and smouldering embers—offers to him a license for the indulgence of those points of his original character which in all other relations he would have found it necessary to repress and conceal, and the repression of which would in time have become a second nature. I know that there is another side to the question. I grant that the wife, if she cannot effectually resist, can at least retaliate; she, too, can make the man’s life extremely uncomfortable, and by that power is able to carry many points which she ought, and many which she ought not, to prevail in. But this instrument of self-protection—which may be called the power of the scold, or the shrewish sanction—has the fatal defect, that it avails most against the least tyrannical superiors, and in favour of the least deserving dependents. It is the weapon of irritable and self-willed women; of those who would make the worst use of power if they themselves had it, and who generally turn this power to a bad use. The amiable cannot use such an instrument, the highminded disdain it. And on the other hand, the husbands against whom it is used most effectively are the gentler and more inoffensive; those who cannot be induced, even by provocation, to resort to any very harsh exercise of authority. The wife’s power of being disagreeable generally only establishes a counter-tyranny, and makes victims in their turn chiefly of those husbands who are least inclined to be tyrants.

  What is it, then, which really tempers the corrupting effects of the power, and makes it compatible with such amount of good as we actually see? Mere feminine blandishments, though of great effect in individual instances, have very little effect in modifying the general tendencies of the situation; for their power only lasts while the woman is young and attractive often only while her charm is new, and not dimmed by familiarity; and on many men they have not much influence at any time. The real mitigating causes are, the personal affection which is the growth of time, in so far as the man’s nature is susceptible of it, and the woman’s character sufficiently congenial with his to excite it; their common interests as regards the children, and their general community of interest as concerns third persons (to which however there are very great limitations); the real importance of the wife to his daily comforts and enjoyments, and the value he consequently attaches to her on his personal account, which, in a man capable of feeling for others, lays the foundation of caring for her on her own; and lastly, the influence naturally acquired over almost all human beings by those near to their persons (if not actually disagreeable to them): who, both by their direct entreaties, and by the insensible contagion of their feelings and dispositions, are often able, unless counter-acted by some equally strong personal influence, to obtain a degree of command over the conduct of the superior, altogether excessive and unreasonable. Through these various means, the wife frequently exercises even too much power over the man; she is able to affect his conduct in things in which she may not be qualified to influence it for good—in which her influence may be not only unenlightened, but employed on the morally wrong side; and in which he would act better if left to his own prompting. But neither in the affairs of families nor in those of states is power a compensation for the loss of freedom. Her power often gives her what she has no right to, but does not enable her to assert her own rights. A Sultan’s favourite slave has slaves under her, over whom she tyrannizes; but the desirable thing would be that she should neither have slaves nor be a slave. By entirely sinking her own existence in her husband; by having no will (or persuading him that she has no will) but his, in anything which regards their joint relation, and by making it the business of her life to work upon his sentiments, a wife may gratify herself by influencing, and very probably perverting, his conduct, in those of his external relations which she has never qualified herself to judge of, or in which she is herself wholly influenced by some personal or other partiality or prejudice. Accordingly, as things now are, those who act most kindly to their wives, are quite as often made worse, as better, by the wife’s influence, in respect to all interests extending beyond the family. She is taught that she has no business with things out of that sphere; and accordingly she seldom has any honest and conscientious opinion on them; and therefore hardly ever meddles with them for any legitimate purpose, but generally for an interested one. She neither knows nor cares which is the right side in politics, but she knows what will bring in money or invitations, give her husband a title, her son a place, or her daughter a good marriage.

  But how, it will be asked, can any society exist without government? In a family, as in a state, some one person must be the ultimate ruler. Who shall decide when married people differ in opinion? Both cannot have their way, yet a decision one way or the other must be come to.

  It is not true that in all voluntary association between two people, one of them must be absolute master: still less that the law must determine which of them it shall be. The most frequent case of voluntary association, next to marriage, is partnership in business: and it is not found or thought necessary to enact that in every partnership, one partner shall have entire control over the concern, and the others shall be bound to obey his orders. No one would enter into partnership on terms which would subject him to the responsibilities of a principal, with only the powers and privileges of a clerk or agent. If the law dealt with other contracts as it does with marriage, it would ordain that one partner should administer the common business as if it was his private concern; that the others should have only delegated powers; and that this one should be designated by some general presumption of law, for example as being the eldest. The law never does this: nor does experience show it to be necessary that any theoretical inequality of power should exist between the partners, or that the partnership should have any other conditions than what they may themselves appoint by their articles of agreement. Yet it might seem that the exclusive power might be conceded with less danger to the rights and interests of the inferior, in the case of partnership than in that of marriage, since he is free to cancel the power by withdrawing from the connexion. The wife has no such power, and even if she had, it is almost always desirable that she should try all measures before resorting to it.

  It is quite true that things which have to be decided every day, and cannot adjust themselves gradually, or wait for a compromise, ought to depend on one will: one person must have their sole control. But it does not follow that this should always be the same person. The natural arrangement is a division of powers between the two; each being absolute in the executive branch of their own department, and any change of system and principle requiring the consent of both. The division neither can nor should be pre-established by the law, since it must depend on individual capacities and suitabilities. If the two persons chose, they might pre-appoint it by the marriage contract, as pecuniary arrangements are now often pre-appointed. There would seldom be any difficulty in deciding such things by mutual consent, unless the marriage was one of those unhappy ones in which all other things, as well as this, become subjects of bickering and dispute. The division of rights would naturally follow the division of duties and functions; and that is already made by consent, or at all events not by law, but by general custom, modified and modifiable at the pleasure of the persons concerned.

  The real practical decision of affairs, to whichever may be given the legal authority, will greatly depend, as it even now does, upon comparative qualifications. The mere fact that he is usually the eldest, will in most cases give the preponderance to the man; at least until they both attain a time of life at which the difference in their years is of no importance. There will naturally also be a more potential voice on the side, whichever it is, that brings the means of support. Inequality from this source does not depend on the law of marriage, but on the general conditions of human society, as now constituted. The influence of mental superiority, either general or special, and of superior decision of character, will necessarily tell for much. It always does so at present. And this fact shows how little foundation there is for the apprehension that the powers and responsibilities of partners in life (as of partners in business), cannot be satisfactorily apportioned by agreement between themselves. They always are so apportioned, except in cases in which the marriage institution is a failure. Things never come to an issue of downright power on one side, and obedience on the other, except where the connexion altogether has been a mistake, and it would be a blessing to both parties to be relieved from it. Some may say that the very thing by which an amicable settlement of differences becomes possible, is the power of legal compulsion known to be in reserve; as people submit to an arbitration because there is a court of law in the background, which they know that they can be forced to obey. But to make the cases parallel, we must suppose that the rule of the court of law was, not to try the cause, but to give judgment always for the same side, suppose the defendant. If so, the amenability to it would be a motive with the plaintiff to agree to almost any arbitration, but it would be just the reverse with the defendant. The despotic power which the law gives to the husband may be a reason to make the wife assent to any compromise by which power is practically shared between the two, but it cannot be the reason why the husband does. That there is always among decently conducted people a practical compromise, though one of them at least is under no physical or moral necessity of making it, shows that the natural motives which lead to a voluntary adjustment of the united life of two persons in a manner acceptable to both, do on the whole, except in unfavourable cases, prevail. The matter is certainly not improved by laying down as an ordinance of law, that the superstructure of free government shall be raised upon a legal basis of despotism on one side and subjection on the other, and that every concession which the despot makes may, at his mere pleasure, and without any warning, be recalled. Besides that no freedom is worth much when held on so precarious a tenure, its conditions are not likely to be the most equitable when the law throws so prodigious a weight into one scale; when the adjustment rests between two persons one of whom is declared to be entitled to everything, the other not only entitled to nothing except during the good pleasure of the first, but under the strongest moral and religious obligation not to rebel under any excess of oppression.

  A pertinacious adversary, pushed to extremities, may say, that husbands indeed are willing to be reasonable, and to make fair concessions to their partners without being compelled to it, but that wives are not: that if allowed any rights of their own, they will acknowledge no rights at all in any one else, and never will yield in anything, unless they can be compelled, by the man’s mere authority, to yield in everything. This would have been said by many persons some generations ago, when satires on women were in vogue, and men thought it a clever thing to insult women for being what men made them. But it will be said by no one now who is worth replying to. It is not the doctrine of the present day that women are less susceptible of good feeling, and consideration for those with whom they are united by the strongest ties, than men are. On the contrary, we are perpetually told that women are better than men, by those who are totally opposed to treating them as if they were as good; so that the saying has passed into a piece of tiresome cant, intended to put a complimentary face upon an injury, and resembling those celebrations of royal clemency which, according to Gulliver, the king of Lilliput always prefixed to his most sanguinary decrees. If women are better than men in anything, it surely is in individual self-sacrifice for those of their own family. But I lay little stress on this, so long as they are universally taught that they are born and created for self-sacrifice. I believe that equality of rights would abate the exaggerated self-abnegation which is the present artificial ideal of feminine character, and that a good woman would not be more self-sacrificing than the best man: but on the other hand, men would be much more unselfish and self-sacrificing than at present, because they would no longer be taught to worship their own will as such a grand thing that it is actually the law for another rational being. There is nothing which men so easily learn as this self-worship: all privileged persons, and all privileged classes, have had it. The more we descend in the scale of humanity, the intenser it is; and most of all in those who are not, and can never expect to be, raised above any one except an unfortunate wife and children. The honourable exceptions are proportionally fewer than in the case of almost any other human infirmity. Philosophy and religion, instead of keeping it in check, are generally suborned to defend it; and nothing controls it but that practical feeling of the equality of human beings, which is the theory of Christianity, but which Christianity will never practically teach, while it sanctions institutions grounded on an arbitrary preference of one human being over another.

  There are, no doubt, women, as there are men, whom equality of consideration will not satisfy; with whom there is no peace while any will or wish is regarded but their own. Such persons are a proper subject for the law of divorce. They are only fit to live alone, and no human beings ought to be compelled to associate their lives with them. But the legal subordination tends to make such characters among women more, rather than less, frequent. If the man exerts his whole power, the woman is of course crushed: but if she is treated with indulgence, and permitted to assume power, there is no rule to set limits to her encroachments. The law, not determining her rights, but theoretically allowing her none at all, practically declares that the measure of what she has a right to, is what she can contrive to get.

  The equality of married persons before the law, is not only the sole mode in which that particular relation can be made consistent with justice to both sides, and conducive to the happiness of both, but it is the only means of rendering the daily life of mankind, in any high sense, a school of moral cultivation. Though the truth may not be felt or generally acknowledged for generations to come, the only school of genuine moral sentiment is society between equals. The moral education of mankind has hitherto emanated chiefly from the law of force, and is adapted almost solely to the relations which force creates. In the less advanced states of society, people hardly recognise any relation with their equals. To be an equal is to be an enemy. Society, from its highest place to its lowest, is one long chain, or rather ladder, where every individual is either above or below his nearest neighbour, and wherever he does not command he must obey. Existing moralities, accordingly, are mainly fitted to a relation of command and obedience. Yet command and obedience are but unfortunate necessities of human life: society in equality is its normal state. Already in modern life, and more and more as it progressively improves, command and obedience become exceptional facts in life, equal association its general rule. The morality of the first ages rested on the obligation to submit to power; that of the ages next following, on the right of the weak to the forbearance and protection of the strong. How much longer is one form of society and life to content itself with the morality made for another? We have had the morality of submission, and the morality of chivalry and generosity; the time is now come for the morality of justice. Whenever, in former ages, any approach has been made to society in equality, Justice has asserted its claims as the foundation of virtue. It was thus in the free republics of antiquity. But even in the best of these, the equals were limited to the free male citizens; slaves, women, and the unenfranchised residents were under the law of force. The joint influence of Roman civilization and of Christianity obliterated these distinctions, and in theory (if only partially in practice) declared the claims of the human being, as such, to be paramount to those of sex, class, or social position. The barriers which had begun to be levelled were raised again by the northern conquests; and the whole of modern history consists of the slow process by which they have since been wearing away. We are entering into an order of things in which justice will again be the primary virtue; grounded as before on equal, but now also on sympathetic association; having its root no longer in the instinct of equals for self-protection, but in a cultivated sympathy between them; and no one being now left out, but an equal measure being extended to all. It is no novelty that mankind do not distinctly foresee their own changes, and that their sentiments are adapted to past, not to coming ages. To see the futurity of the species has always been the privilege of the intellectual élite, or of those who have learnt from them; to have the feelings of that futurity has been the distinction, and usually the martyrdom, of a still rarer élite. Institutions, books, education, society, all go on training human beings for the old, long after the new has come; much more when it is only coming. But the true virtue of human beings is fitness to live together as equals; claiming nothing for themselves but what they as freely concede to every one else; regarding command of any kind as an exceptional necessity, and in all cases a temporary one; and preferring, whenever possible, the society of those with whom leading and following can be alternate and reciprocal. To these virtues, nothing in life as at present constituted gives cultivation by exercise. The family is a school of despotism, in which the virtues of despotism, but also its vices, are largely nourished. Citizenship, in free countries, is partly a school of society in equality; but citizenship fills only a small place in modern life, and does not come near the daily habits or inmost sentiments. The family, justly constituted, would be the real school of the virtues of freedom. It is sure to be a sufficient one of everything else. It will always be a school of obedience for the children, of command for the parents. What is needed is, that it should be a school of sympathy in equality, of living together in love, without power on one side or obedience on the other. This it ought to be between the parents. It would then be an exercise of those virtues which each requires to fit them for all other association, and a model to the children of the feelings and conduct which their temporary training by means of obedience is designed to render habitual, and therefore natural, to them. The moral training of mankind will never be adapted to the conditions of the life for which all other human progress is a preparation, until they practise in the family the same moral rule which is adapted to the normal constitution of human society. Any sentiment of freedom which can exist in a man whose nearest and dearest intimacies are with those of whom he is absolute master, is not the genuine or Christian love of freedom, but, what the love of freedom generally was in the ancients and in the middle ages—an intense feeling of the dignity and importance of his own personality; making him disdain a yoke for himself, of which he has no abhorrence whatever in the abstract, but which he is abundantly ready to impose on others for his own interest or glorification.

  I readily admit (and it is the very foundation of my hopes) that numbers of married people even under the present law, (in the higher classes of England probably a great majority,) live in the spirit of a just law of equality. Laws never would be improved, if there were not numerous persons whose moral sentiments are better than the existing laws. Such persons ought to support the principles here advocated; of which the only object is to make all other married couples similar to what these are now. But persons even of considerable moral worth, unless they are also thinkers, are very ready to believe that laws or practices, the evils of which they have not personally experienced, do not produce any evils, but (if seeming to be generally approved of) probably do good, and that it is wrong to object to them. It would, however, be a great mistake in such married people to suppose, because the legal conditions of the tie which unites them do not occur to their thoughts once in a twelvemonth, and because they live and feel in all respects as if they were legally equals, that the same is the case with all other married couples, wherever the husband is not a notorious ruffian. To suppose this, would be to show equal ignorance of human nature and of fact. The less fit a man is for the possession of power—the less likely to be allowed to exercise it over any person with that person’s voluntary consent—the more does he hug himself in the consciousness of the power the law gives him, exact its legal rights to the utmost point which custom (the custom of men like himself) will tolerate, and take pleasure in using the power, merely to enliven the agreeable sense of possessing it. What is more; in the most naturally brutal and morally uneducated part of the lower classes, the legal slavery of the woman, and something in the merely physical subjection to their will as an instrument, causes them to feel a sort of disrespect and contempt towards their own wife which they do not feel towards any other woman, or any other human being, with whom they come in contact; and which makes her seem to them an appropriate subject for any kind of indignity. Let an acute observer of the signs of feeling, who has the requisite opportunities, judge for himself whether this is not the case: and if he finds that it is, let him not wonder at any amount of disgust and indignation that can be felt against institutions which lead naturally to this depraved state of the human mind.

  We shall be told, perhaps, that religion imposes the duty of obedience; as every established fact which is too bad to admit of any other defence, is always presented to us as an injunction of religion. The Church, it is very true, enjoins it in her formularies, but it would be difficult to derive any such injunction from Christianity. We are told that St. Paul said, “Wives, obey your husbands:” but he also said, “Slaves, obey your masters.” It was not St. Paul’s business, nor was it consistent with his object, the propagation of Christianity, to incite any one to rebellion against existing laws. The apostle’s acceptance of all social institutions as he found them, is no more to be construed as a disapproval of attempts to improve them at the proper time, than his declaration, “The powers that be are ordained of God,” gives his sanction to military despotism, and to that alone, as the Christian form of political government, or commands passive obedience to it. To pretend that Christianity was intended to stereotype existing forms of government and society, and protect them against change, is to reduce it to the level of Islamism or of Brahminism. It is precisely because Christianity has not done this, that it has been the religion of the progressive portion of mankind, and Islamism, Brahminism, &c., have been those of the stationary portions; or rather (for there is no such thing as a really stationary society) of the declining portions. There have been abundance of people, in all ages of Christianity, who tried to make it something of the same kind; to convert us into a sort of Christian Mussulmans, with the Bible for a Koran, prohibiting all improvement: and great has been their power, and many have had to sacrifice their lives in resisting them. But they have been resisted, and the resistance has made us what we are, and will yet make us what we are to be.

  After what has been said respecting the obligation of obedience, it is almost superfluous to say anything concerning the more special point included in the general one—a woman’s right to her own property; for I need not hope that this treatise can make any impression upon those who need anything to convince them that a woman’s inheritance or gains ought to be as much her own after marriage as before. The rule is simple: whatever would be the husband’s or wife’s if they were not married, should be under their exclusive control during marriage; which need not interfere with the power to tie up property by settlement, in order to preserve it for children. Some people are sentimentally shocked at the idea of a separate interest in money matters, as inconsistent with the ideal fusion of two lives into one. For my own part, I am one of the strongest supporters of community of goods, when resulting from an entire unity of feeling in the owners, which makes all things common between them. But I have no relish for a community of goods resting on the doctrine, that what is mine is yours but what is yours is not mine; and I should prefer to decline entering into such a compact with any one, though I were myself the person to profit by it.

  This particular injustice and oppression to women, which is, to common apprehensions, more obvious than all the rest, admits of remedy without interfering with any other mischiefs: and there can be little doubt that it will be one of the earliest remedied. Already, in many of the new and several of the old States of the American Confederation, provisions have been inserted even in the written Constitutions, securing to women equality of rights in this respect: and thereby improving materially the position, in the marriage relation, of those women at least who have property, by leaving them one instrument of power which they have not signed away; and preventing also the scandalous abuse of the marriage institution, which is perpetrated when a man entraps a girl into marrying him without a settlement, for the sole purpose of getting possession of her money. When the support of the family depends, not on property, but on earnings, the common arrangement, by which the man earns the income and the wife superintends the domestic expenditure, seems to me in general the most suitable division of labour between the two persons. If, in addition to the physical suffering of bearing children, and the whole responsibility of their care and education in early years, the wife undertakes the careful and economical application of the husband’s earnings to the general comfort of the family; she takes not only her fair share, but usually the larger share, of the bodily and mental exertion required by their joint existence. If she undertakes any additional portion, it seldom relieves her from this, but only prevents her from performing it properly. The care which she is herself disabled from taking of the children and the household, nobody else takes; those of the children who do not die, grow up as they best can, and the management of the household is likely to be so bad, as even in point of economy to be a great drawback from the value of the wife’s earnings. In an otherwise just state of things, it is not, therefore, I think, a desirable custom, that the wife should contribute by her labour to the income of the family. In an unjust state of things, her doing so may be useful to her, by making her of more value in the eyes of the man who is legally her master; but, on the other hand, it enables him still farther to abuse his power, by forcing her to work, and leaving the support of the family to her exertions, while he spends most of his time in drinking and idleness. The power of earning is essential to the dignity of a woman, if she has not independent property. But if marriage were an equal contract, not implying the obligation of obedience; if the connexion were no longer enforced to the oppression of those to whom it is purely a mischief, but a separation, on just terms (I do not now speak of a divorce), could be obtained by any woman who was morally entitled to it; and if she would then find all honourable employments as freely open to her as to men; it would not be necessary for her protection, that during marriage she should make this particular use of her faculties. Like a man when he chooses a profession, so, when a woman marries, it may in general be understood that she makes choice of the management of a household, and the bringing up of a family, as the first call upon her exertions, during as many years of her life as may be required for the purpose; and that she renounces, not all other objects and occupations, but all which are not consistent with the requirements of this. The actual exercise, in a habitual or systematic manner, of outdoor occupations, or such as cannot be carried on at home, would by this principle be practically interdicted to the greater number of married women. But the utmost latitude ought to exist for the adaptation of general rules to individual suitabilities; and there ought to be nothing to prevent faculties exceptionally adapted to any other pursuit, from obeying their vocation notwithstanding marriage: due provision being made for supplying otherwise any falling-short which might become inevitable, in her full performance of the ordinary functions of mistress of a family. These things, if once opinion were rightly directed on the subject, might with perfect safety be left to be regulated by opinion, without any interfenence of law.

  CHAPTER III.

  ON the other point which is involved in the just equality of women, their admissibility to all the functions and occupations hitherto retained as the monopoly of the stronger sex, I should anticipate no difficulty in convincing any one who has gone with me on the subject of the equality of women in the family. I believe that their disabilities elsewhere are only clung to in order to maintain their subordination in domestic life; because the generality of the male sex cannot yet tolerate the idea of living with an equal. Were it not for that, I think that almost every one, in the existing state of opinion in politics and political economy, would admit the injustice of excluding half the human race from the greater number of lucrative occupations, and from almost all high social functions; ordaining from their birth either that they are not, and cannot by any possibility become, fit for employments which are legally open to the stupidest and basest of the other sex, or else that however fit they may be, those employments shall be interdicted to them, in order to be preserved for the exclusive benefit of males. In the last two centuries, when (which was seldom the case) any reason beyond the mere existence of the fact was thought to be required to justify the disabilities of women, people seldom assigned as a reason their inferior mental capacity; which, in times when there was a real trial of personal faculties (from which all women were not excluded) in the struggles of public life, no one really believed in. The reason given in those days was not women’s unfitness, but the interest of society, by which was meant the interest of men: just as the raison d’état, meaning the convenience of the government, and the support of existing authority, was deemed a sufficient explanation and excuse for the most flagitious crimes. In the present day, power holds a smoother language, and whomsoever it oppresses, always pretends to do so for their own good: accordingly, when anything is forbidden to women, it is thought necessary to say, and desirable to believe, that they are incapable of doing it, and that they depart from their real path of success and happiness when they aspire to it. But to make this reason plausible (I do not say valid), those by whom it is urged must be prepared to carry it to a much greater length than any one ventures to do in the face of present experience. It is not sufficient to maintain that women on the average are less gifted than men on the average, with certain of the higher mental faculties, or that a smaller number of women than of men are fit for occupations and functions of the highest intellectual character. It is necessary to maintain that no women at all are fit for them, and that the most eminent women are inferior in mental faculties to the most mediocre of the men on whom those functions at present devolve. For if the performance of the function is decided either by competition, or by any mode of choice which secures regard to the public interest, there needs be no apprehension that any important employments will fall into the hands of women inferior to average men, or to the average of their male competitors. The only result would be that there would be fewer women than men in such employments; a result certain to happen in any case, if only from the preference always likely to be felt by the majority of women for the one vocation in which there is nobody to compete with them. Now, the most determined depreciator of women will not venture to deny, that when we add the experience of recent times to that of ages past, women, and not a few merely, but many women, have proved themselves capable of everything, perhaps without a single exception, which is done by men, and of doing it successfully and creditably. The utmost that can be said is, that there are many things which none of them have succeeded in doing as well as they have been done by some men—many in which they have not reached the very highest rank. But there are extremely few, dependent only on mental faculties, in which they have not attained the rank next to the highest. Is not this enough, and much more than enough, to make it a tyranny to them, and a detriment to society, that they should not be allowed to compete with men for the exercise of these functions? Is it not a mere truism to say, that such functions are often filled by men far less fit for them than numbers of women, and who would be beaten by women in any fair field of competition? What difference does it make that there may be men somewhere, fully employed about other things, who may be still better qualified for the things in question than these women? Does not this take place in all competitions? Is there so great a superfluity of men fit for high duties, that society can afford to reject the service of any competent person? Are we so certain of always finding a man made to our hands for any duty or function of social importance which falls vacant, that we lose nothing by putting a ban upon one-half of mankind, and refusing beforehand to make their faculties available, however distinguished they may be? And even if we could do without them, would it be consistent with justice to refuse to them their fair share of honour and distinction, or to deny to them the equal moral right of all human beings to choose their occupation (short of injury to others) according to their own preferences, at their own risk? Nor is the injustice confined to them: it is shared by those who are in a position to benefit by their services. To ordain that any kind of persons shall not be physicians, or shall not be advocates, or shall not be members of parliament, is to injure not them only, but all who employ physicians or advocates, or elect members of parliament, and who are deprived of the stimulating effect of greater competition on the exertions of the competitors, as well as restricted to a narrower range of individual choice.

  It will perhaps be sufficient if I confine myself, in the details of my argument, to functions of a public nature: since, if I am successful as to those, it probably will be readily granted that women should be admissible to all other occupations to which it is at all material whether they are admitted or not. And here let me begin by marking out one function, broadly distinguished from all others, their right to which is entirely independent of any question which can be raised concerning their faculties. I mean the suffrage, both parliamentary and municipal. The right to share in the choice of those who are to exercise a public trust, is altogether a distinct thing from that of competing for the trust itself. If no one could vote for a member of parliament who was not fit to be a candidate, the government would be a narrow oligarchy indeed. To have a voice in choosing those by whom one is to be governed, is a means of self-protection due to every one, though he were to remain for ever excluded from the function of governing: and that women are considered fit to have such a choice, may be presumed from the fact, that the law already gives it to women in the most important of all cases to themselves: for the choice of the man who is to govern a woman to the end of life, is always supposed to be voluntarily made by herself. In the case of election to public trusts, it is the business of constitutional law to surround the right of suffrage with all needful securities and limitations; but whatever securities are sufficient in the case of the male sex, no others need be required in the case of women. Under whatever conditions, and within whatever limits, men are admitted to the suffrage, there is not a shadow of justification for not admitting women under the same. The majority of the women of any class are not likely to differ in political opinion from the majority of the men of the same class, unless the question be one in which the interests of women, as such, are in some way involved; and if they are so, women require the suffrage, as their guarantee of just and equal consideration. This ought to be obvious even to those who coincide in no other of the doctrines for which I contend. Even if every woman were a wife, and if every wife ought to be a slave, all the more would these slaves stand in need of legal protection: and we know what legal protection the slaves have, where the laws are made by their masters.

  With regard to the fitness of women, not only to participate in elections, but themselves to hold offices or practise professions involving important public responsibilities; I have already observed that this consideration is not essential to the practical question in dispute: since any woman, who succeeds in an open profession, proves by that very fact that she is qualified for it. And in the case of public offices, if the political system of the country is such as to exclude unfit men, it will equally exclude unfit women: while if it is not, there is no additional evil in the fact that the unfit persons whom it admits may be either women or men. As long therefore as it is acknowledged that even a few women may be fit for these duties, the laws which shut the door on those exceptions cannot be justified by any opinion which can be held respecting the capacities of women in general. But, though this last consideration is not essential, it is far from being irrelevant. An unprejudiced view of it gives additional strength to the arguments against the disabilities of women, and reinforces them by high considerations of practical utility.

  Let us at first make entire abstraction of all psychological considerations tending to show, that any of the mental differences supposed to exist between women and men are but the natural effect of the differences in their education and circumstances, and indicate no radical difference, far less radical inferiority, of nature. Let us consider women only as they already are, or as they are known to have been; and the capacities which they have already practically shown. What they have done, that at least, if nothing else, it is proved that they can do. When we consider how sedulously they are all trained away from, instead of being trained towards, any of the occupations or objects reserved for men, it is evident that I am taking a very humble ground for them, when I rest their case on what they have actually achieved. For, in this case, negative evidence is worth little, while any positive evidence is conclusive. It cannot be inferred to be impossible that a woman should be a Homer, or an Aristotle, or a Michael Angelo, or a Beethoven, because no woman has yet actually produced works comparable to theirs in any of those lines of excellence. This negative fact at most leaves the question uncertain, and open to psychological discussion. But it is quite certain that a woman can be a Queen Elizabeth, or a Deborah, or a Joan of Arc, since this is not inference, but fact. Now it is a curious consideration, that the only things which the existing law excludes women from doing, are the things which they have proved that they are able to do. There is no law to prevent a woman from having written all the plays of Shakspeare, or composed all the operas of Mozart. But Queen Elizabeth or Queen Victoria, had they not inherited the throne, could not have been intrusted with the smallest of the political duties, of which the former showed herself equal to the greatest.

  If anything conclusive could be inferred from experience, without psychological analysis, it would be that the things which women are not allowed to do are the very ones for which they are peculiarly qualified; since their vocation for government has made its way, and become conspicuous, through the very few opportunities which have been given; while in the lines of distinction which apparently were freely open to them, they have by no means so eminently distinguished themselves. We know how small a number of reigning queens history presents, in comparison with that of kings. Of this smaller number a far larger proportion have shown talents for rule; though many of them have occupied the throne in difficult periods. It is remarkable, too, that they have, in a great number of instances, been distinguished by merits the most opposite to the imaginary and conventional character of women: they have been as much remarked for the firmness and vigour of their rule, as for its intelligence. When, to queens and empresses, we add regents, and viceroys of provinces, the list of women who have been eminent rulers of mankind swells to a great length.* This fact is so undeniable, that some one, long ago, tried to retort the argument, and turned the admitted truth into an additional insult, by saying that queens are better than kings, because under kings women govern, but under queens, men.

  It may seem a waste of reasoning to argue against a bad joke; but such things do affect people’s minds; and I have heard men quote this saying, with an air as if they thought that there was something in it. At any rate, it will serve as well as anything else for a starting point in discussion. I say, then, that it is not true that under kings, women govern. Such cases are entirely exceptional: and weak kings have quite as often governed ill through the influence of male favourites, as of female. When a king is governed by a woman merely through his amatory propensities, good government is not probable, though even then there are exceptions. But French history counts two kings who have voluntarily given the direction of affairs during many years, the one to his mother, the other to his sister: one of them, Charles VIII., was a mere boy, but in doing so he followed the intentions of his father Louis XI., the ablest monarch of his age. The other, Saint Louis, was the best, and one of the most vigorous rulers, since the time of Charlemagne. Both these princesses ruled in a manner hardly equalled by any prince among their cotemporaries. The emperor Charles the Fifth, the most politic prince of his time, who had as great a number of able men in his service as a ruler ever had, and was one of the least likely of all sovereigns to sacrifice his interest to personal feelings, made two princesses of his family successively Governors of the Netherlands, and kept one or other of them in that post during his whole life, (they were afterwards succeeded by a third). Both ruled very successfully, and one of them, Margaret of Austria, was one of the ablest politicians of the age. So much for one side of the question. Now as to the other. When it is said that under queens men govern, is the same meaning to be understood as when kings are said to be governed by women? Is it meant that queens choose as their instruments of government, the associates of their personal pleasures? The case is rare even with those who are as unscrupulous on the latter point as Catherine II.: and it is not in these cases that the good government, alleged to arise from male influence, is to be found. If it be true, then, that the administration is in the hands of better men under a queen than under an average king, it must be that queens have a superior capacity for choosing them; and women must be better qualified than men both for the position of sovereign, and for that of chief minister; for the principal business of a prime minister is not to govern in person, but to find the fittest persons to conduct every department of public affairs. The more rapid insight into character, which is one of the admitted points of superiority in women over men, must certainly make them, with anything like parity of qualifications in other respects, more apt than men in that choice of instruments, which is nearly the most important business of every one who has to do with governing mankind. Even the unprincipled Catherine de’ Medici could feel the value of a Chancellor de l’Hôpital. But it is also true that most great queens have been great by their own talents for government, and have been well served precisely for that reason. They retained the supreme direction of affairs in their own hands: and if they listened to good advisers, they gave by that fact the strongest proof that their judgment fitted them for dealing with the great questions of government.

  Is it reasonable to think that those who are fit for the greater functions of politics, are incapable of qualifying themselves for the less? Is there any reason in the nature of things, that the wives and sisters of princes should, whenever called on, be found as competent as the princes themselves to their business, but that the wives and sisters of statesmen, and administrators, and directors of companies, and managers of public institutions, should be unable to do what is done by their brothers and husbands? The real reason is plain enough; it is that princesses, being more raised above the generality of men by their rank than placed below them by their sex, have never been taught that it was improper for them to concern themselves with politics; but have been allowed to feel the liberal interest natural to any cultivated human being, in the great transactions which took place around them, and in which they might be called on to take a part. The ladies of reigning families are the only women who are allowed the same range of interests and freedom of development as men; and it is precisely in their case that there is not found to be any inferiority. Exactly where and in proportion as women’s capacities for government have been tried, in that proportion have they been found adequate.

  This fact is in accordance with the best general conclusions which the world’s imperfect experience seems as yet to suggest, concerning the peculiar tendencies and aptitudes characteristic of women, as women have hitherto been. I do not say, as they will continue to be; for, as I have already said more than once, I consider it presumption in any one to pretend to decide what women are or are not, can or cannot be, by natural constitution. They have always hitherto been kept, as far as regards spontaneous development, in so unnatural a state, that their nature cannot but have been greatly distorted and disguised; and no one can safely pronounce that if women’s nature were left to choose its direction as freely as men’s, and if no artificial bent were attempted to be given to it except that required by the conditions of human society, and given to both sexes alike, there would be any material difference, or perhaps any difference at all, in the character and capacities which would unfold themselves. I shall presently show, that even the least contestable of the differences which now exist, are such as may very well have been produced merely by circumstances, without any difference of natural capacity. But, looking at women as they are known in experience, it may be said of them, with more truth than belongs to most other generalizations on the subject, that the general bent of their talents is towards the practical. This statement is conformable to all the public history of women, in the present and the past. It is no less borne out by common and daily experience. Let us consider the special nature of the mental capacities most characteristic of a woman of talent. They are all of a kind which fits them for practice, and makes them tend towards it. What is meant by a woman’s capacity of intuitive perception? It means, a rapid and correct insight into present fact. It has nothing to do with general principles. Nobody ever perceived a scientific law of nature by intuition, nor arrived at a general rule of duty or prudence by it. These are results of slow and careful collection and comparison of experience; and neither the men nor the women of intuition usually shine in this department, unless, indeed, the experience necessary is such as they can acquire by themselves. For what is called their intuitive sagacity makes them peculiarly apt in gathering such general truths as can be collected from their individual means of observation. When, consequently, they chance to be as well provided as men are with the results of other people’s experience, by reading and education, (I use the word chance advisedly, for, in respect to the knowledge that tends to fit them for the greater concerns of life, the only educated women are the self-educated) they are better furnished than men in general with the essential requisites of skilful and successful practice. Men who have been much taught, are apt to be deficient in the sense of present fact; they do not see, in the facts which they are called upon to deal with, what is really there, but what they have been taught to expect. This is seldom the case with women of any ability. Their capacity of “intuition” preserves them from it. With equality of experience and of general faculties, a woman usually sees much more than a man of what is immediately before her. Now this sensibility to the present, is the main quality on which the capacity for practice, as distinguished from theory, depends. To discover general principles, belongs to the speculative faculty: to discern and discriminate the particular cases in which they are and are not applicable, constitutes practical talent: and for this, women as they now are have a peculiar aptitude. I admit that there can be no good practice without principles, and that the predominant place which quickness of observation holds among a woman’s faculties, makes her particularly apt to build over-hasty generalizations upon her own observation; though at the same time no less ready in rectifying those generalizations, as her observation takes a wider range. But the corrective to this defect, is access to the experience of the human race; general knowledge—exactly the thing which education can best supply. A woman’s mistakes are specifically those of a clever self-educated man, who often sees what men trained in routine do not see, but falls into errors for want of knowing things which have long been known. Of course he has acquired much of the pre-existing knowledge, or he could not have got on at all; but what he knows of it he has picked up in fragments and at random, as women do.

  But this gravitation of women’s minds to the present, to the real, to actual fact, while in its exclusiveness it is a source of errors, is also a most useful counteractive of the contrary error. The principal and most characteristic aberration of speculative minds as such, consists precisely in the deficiency of this lively perception and ever-present sense of objective fact For want of this, they often not only overlook the contradiction which outward facts oppose to their theories, but lose sight of the legitimate purpose of speculation altogether, and let their speculative faculties go astray into regions not peopled with real beings, animate or inanimate, even idealized, but with personified shadows created by the illusions of metaphysics or by the mere entanglement of words, and think these shadows the proper objects of the highest, the most transcendant, philosophy. Hardly anything can be of greater value to a man of theory and speculation who employs himself not in collecting materials of knowledge by observation, but in working them up by processes of thought into comprehensive truths of science and laws of conduct, than to carry on his speculations in the companionship, and under the criticism, of a really superior woman. There is nothing comparable to it for keeping his thoughts within the limits of real things, and the actual facts of nature. A woman seldom runs wild after an abstraction. The habitual direction of her mind to dealing with things as individuals rather than in groups, and (what is closely connected with it) her more lively interest in the present feelings of persons, which makes her consider first of all, in anything which claims to be applied to practice, in what manner persons will be affected by it—these two things make her extremely unlikely to put faith in any speculation which loses sight of individuals, and deals with things as if they existed for the benefit of some imaginary entity, some mere creation of the mind, not resolvable into the feelings of living beings. Women’s thoughts are thus as useful in giving reality to those of thinking men, as men’s thoughts in giving width and largeness to those of women. In depth, as distinguished from breadth, I greatly doubt if even now, women, compared with men, are at any disadvantage.

  If the existing mental characteristics of women are thus valuable even in aid of speculation, they are still more important, when speculation has done its work, for carrying out the results of speculation into practice. For the reasons already given, women are comparatively unlikely to fall into the common error of men, that of sticking to their rules in a case whose specialities either take it out of the class to which the rules are applicable, or require a special adaptation of them. Let us now consider another of the admitted superiorities of clever women, greater quickness of apprehension. Is not this pre-eminently a quality which fits a person for practice? In action, everything continually depends upon deciding promptly. In speculation, nothing does. A mere thinker can wait, can take time to consider, can collect additional evidence; he is not obliged to complete his philosophy at once, lest the opportunity should go by. The power of drawing the best conclusion possible from insufficient data is not indeed useless in philosophy; the construction of a provisional hypothesis consistent with all known facts is often the needful basis for further inquiry. But this faculty is rather serviceable in philosophy, than the main qualification for it: and, for the auxiliary as well as for the main operation, the philosopher can allow himself any time he pleases. He is in no need of the capacity of doing rapidly what he does; what he rather needs is patience, to work on slowly until imperfect lights have become perfect, and a conjecture has ripened into a theorem. For those, on the contrary, whose business is with the fugitive and perishable—with individual facts, not kinds of facts—rapidity of thought is a qualification next only in importance to the power of thought itself, He who has not his faculties under immediate command, in the contingencies of action, might as well not have them at all. He may be fit to criticize, but he is not fit to act. Now it is in this that women, and the men who are most like women, confessedly excel. The other sort of man, however pre-eminent may be his faculties, arrives slowly at complete command of them: rapidity of judgment and promptitude of judicious action, even in the things he knows best, are the gradual and late result of strenuous effort grown into habit.

  It will be said, perhaps, that the greater nervous susceptibility of women is a disqualification for practice, in anything but domestic life, by rendering them mobile, changeable, too vehemently under the influence of the moment, incapable of dogged perseverance, unequal and uncertain in the power of using their faculties. I think that these phrases sum up the greater part of the objections commonly made to the fitness of women for the higher class of serious business. Much of all this is the mere overflow of nervous energy run to waste, and would cease when the energy was directed to a definite end. Much is also the result of conscious or unconscious cultivation; as we see by the almost total disappearance of “hysterics” and fainting fits, since they have gone out of fashion. Moreover, when people are brought up, like many women of the higher classes (though less so in our own country than in any other) a kind of hot-house plants, shielded from the wholesome vicissitudes of air and temperature, and untrained in any of the occupations and exercises which give stimulus and development to the circulatory and muscular system, while their nervous system, especially in its emotional department, is kept in unnaturally active play; it is no wonder if those of them who do not die of consumption, grow up with constitutions liable to derangement from slight causes, both internal and external, and without stamina to support any task, physical or mental, requiring continuity of effort. But women brought up to work for their livelihood show none of these morbid characteristics, unless indeed they are chained to an excess of sedentary work in confined and unhealthy rooms. Women who in their early years have shared in the healthful physical education and bodily freedom of their brothers, and who obtain a sufficiency of pure air and exercise in after-life, very rarely have any excessive susceptibility of nerves which can disqualify them for active pursuits. There is indeed a certain proportion of persons, in both sexes, in whom an unusual degree of nervous sensibility is constitutional, and of so marked a character as to be the feature of their organization which exercises the greatest influence over the whole character of the vital phenomena. This constitution, like other physical conformations, is hereditary, and is transmitted to sons as well as daughters; but it is possible, and probable, that the nervous temperament (as it is called) is inherited by a greater number of women than of men. We will assume this as a fact: and let me then ask, are men of nervous temperament found to be unfit for the duties and pursuits usually followed by men? If not, why should women of the same temperament be unfit for them? The peculiarities of the temperament are, no doubt, within certain limits, an obstacle to success in some employments, though an aid to it in others. But when the occupation is suitable to the temperament, and sometimes even when it is unsuitable, the most brilliant examples of success are continually given by the men of high nervous sensibility. They are distinguished in their practical manifestations chiefly by this, that being susceptible of a higher degree of excitement than those of another physical constitution, their powers when excited differ more than in the case of other people, from those shown in their ordinary state: they are raised, as it were, above themselves, and do things with ease which they are wholly incapable of at other times. But this lofty excitement is not except in weak bodily constitutions, a mere flash, which passes away immediately, leaving no permanent traces, and incompatible with persistent and steady pursuit of an object. It is the character of the nervous temperament to be capable of sustained excitement, holding out through long continued efforts. It is what is meant by spirit. It is what makes the highbred racehorse run without slackening speed till he drops down dead. It is what has enabled so many delicate women to maintain the most sublime constancy not only at the stake, but through a long preliminary succession of mental and bodily tortures. It is evident that people of this temperament are particularly apt for what may be called the executive department of the leadership of mankind. They are the material of great orators, great preachers, impressive diffusers of moral influences. Their constitution might be deemed less favourable to the qualities required from a statesman in the cabinet, or from a judge. It would be so, if the consequence necessarily followed that because people are excitable they must always be in a state of excitement. But this is wholly a question of training. Strong feeling is the instrument and element of strong self-control: but it requires to be cultivated in that direction. When it is, it forms not the heroes of impulse only, but those also of self-conquest. History and experience prove that the most passionate characters are the most fanatically rigid in their feelings of duty, when their passion has been trained to act in that direction. The judge who gives a just decision in a case where his feelings are intensely interested on the other side, derives from that same strength of feeling the determined sense of the obligation of justice, which enables him to achieve this victory over himself. The capability of that lofty enthusiasm which takes the human being out of his every-day character, reacts upon the daily character itself. His aspirations and powers when he is in this exceptional state, become the type with which he compares, and by which he estimates, his sentiments and proceedings at other times: and his habitual purposes assume a character moulded by and assimilated to the moments of lofty excitement, although those, from the physical nature of a human being, can only be transient. Experience of races, as well as of individuals, does not show those of excitable temperament to be less fit, on the average, either for speculation or practice, than the more unexcitable. The French, and the Italians, are undoubtedly by nature more nervously excitable than the Teutonic races, and, compared at least with the English, they have a much greater habitual and daily emotional life: but have they been less great in science, in public business, in legal and judicial eminence, or in war? There is abundant evidence that the Greeks were of old, as their descendants and successors still are, one of the most excitable of the races of mankind. It is superfluous to ask, what among the achievements of men they did not excel in. The Romans, probably, as an equally southern people, had the same original temperament: but the stern character of their national discipline, like that of the Spartans, made them an example of the opposite type of national character; the greater strength of their natural feelings being chiefly apparent in the intensity which the same original temperament made it possible to give to the artificial. If these cases exemplify what a naturally excitable people may be made, the Irish Celts afford one of the aptest examples of what they are when left to themselves; (if those can be said to be left to themselves who have been for centuries under the indirect influence of bad government, and the direct training of a Catholic hierarchy and of a sincere belief in the Catholic religion.) The Irish character must be considered, therefore, as an unfavourable case: yet, whenever the circumstances of the individual have been at all favourable, what people have shown greater capacity for the most varied and multifarious individual eminence? Like the French compared with the English, the Irish with the Swiss, the Greeks or Italians compared with the German races, so women compared with men may be found, on the average, to do the same things with some variety in the particular kind of excellence. But, that they would do them fully as well on the whole, if their education and cultivation were adapted to correcting instead of aggravating the infirmities incident to their temperament, I see not the smallest reason to doubt.

  Supposing it, however, to be true that women’s minds are by nature more mobile than those of men, less capable of persisting long in the same continuous effort, more fitted for dividing their faculties among many things than for travelling in any one path to the highest point which can be reached by it: this may be true of women as they now are (though not without great and numerous exceptions), and may account for their having remained behind the highest order of men in precisely the things in which this absorption of the whole mind in one set of ideas and occupations may seem to be most requisite. Still, this difference is one which can only affect the kind of excellence, not the excellence itself, or its practical worth: and it remains to be shown whether this exclusive working of a part of the mind, this absorption of the whole thinking faculty in a single subject, and concentration of it on a single work, is the normal and healthful condition of the human faculties, even for speculative uses. I believe that what is gained in special development by this concentration, is lost in the capacity of the mind for the other purposes of life; and even in abstract thought, it is my decided opinion that the mind does more by frequently returning to a difficult problem, than by sticking to it without interruption. For the purposes, at all events, of practice, from its highest to its humblest departments, the capacity of passing promptly from one subject of consideration to another, without letting the active spring of the intellect run down between the two, is a power far more valuable; and this power women pre-eminently possess, by virtue of the very mobility of which they are accused. They perhaps have it from nature, but they certainly have it by training and education; for nearly the whole of the occupations of women consist in the management of small but multitudinous details, on each of which the mind cannot dwell even for a minute, but must pass on to other things, and if anything requires longer thought, must steal time at odd moments for thinking of it. The capacity indeed which women show for doing their thinking in circumstances and at times which almost any man would make an excuse to himself for not attempting it, has often been noticed: and a woman’s mind, though it may be occupied only with small things, can hardly ever permit itself to be vacant, as a man’s so often is when not engaged in what he chooses to consider the business of his life. The business of a woman’s ordinary life is things in general, and can as little cease to go on as the world to go round.

  But (it is said) there is anatomical evidence of the superior mental capacity of men compared with women: they have a larger brain. I reply, that in the first place the fact itself is doubtful. It is by no means established that the brain of a woman is smaller than that of a man. If it is inferred merely because a woman’s bodily frame generally is of less dimensions than a man’s, this criterion would lead to strange consequences. A tall and large-boned man must on this showing be wonderfully superior in intelligence to a small man, and an elephant or a whale must prodigiously excel mankind. The size of the brain in human beings, anatomists say, varies much less than the size of the body, or even of the head, and the one cannot be at all inferred from the other. It is certain that some women have as large a brain as any man. It is within my knowledge that a man who had weighed many human brains, said that the heaviest he knew of, heavier even than Cuvier’s (the heaviest previously recorded,) was that of a woman. Next, I must observe that the precise relation which exists between the brain and the intellectual powers is not yet well understood, but is a subject of great dispute. That there is a very close relation we cannot doubt. The brain is certainly the material organ of thought and feeling: and (making abstraction of the great unsettled controversy respecting the appropriation of different parts of the brain to different mental faculties) I admit that it would be an anomaly, and an exception to all we know of the general laws of life and organization, if the size of the organ were wholly indifferent to the function; if no accession of power were derived from the greater magnitude of the instrument. But the exception and the anomaly would be fully as great if the organ exercised influence by its magnitude only. In all the more delicate operations of nature—of which those of the animated creation are the most delicate, and those of the nervous system by far the most delicate of these—differences in the effect depend as much on differences of quality in the physical agents, as on their quantity: and if the quality of an instrument is to be tested by the nicety and delicacy of the work it can do, the indications point to a greater average fineness of quality in the brain and nervous system of women than of men. Dismissing abstract difference of quality, a thing difficult to verify, the efficiency of an organ is known to depend not solely on its size but on its activity: and of this we have an approximate measure in the energy with which the blood circulates through it, both the stimulus and the reparative force being mainly dependent on the circulation. It would not be surprising—it is indeed an hypothesis which accords well with the differences actually observed between the mental operations of the two sexes—if men on the average should have the advantage in the size of the brain, and women in activity of cerebral circulation. The results which conjecture, founded on analogy, would lead us to expect from this difference of organization, would correspond to some of those which we most commonly see. In the first place, the mental operations of men might be expected to be slower. They would neither be so prompt as women in thinking, nor so quick to feel. Large bodies take more time to get into full action. On the other hand, when once got thoroughly into play, men’s brain would bear more work. It would be more persistent in the line first taken; it would have more difficulty in changing from one mode of action to another, but, in the one thing it was doing, it could go on longer without loss of power or sense of fatigue. And do we not find that the things in which men most excel women are those which require most plodding and long hammering at a single thought, while women do best what must be done rapidly? A woman’s brain is sooner fatigued, sooner exhausted; but given the degree of exhaustion, we should expect to find that it would recover itself sooner. I repeat that this speculation is entirely hypothetical; it pretends to no more than to suggest a line of enquiry. I have before repudiated the notion of its being yet certainly known that there is any natural difference at all in the average strength or direction of the mental capacities of the two sexes, much less what that difference is. Nor is it possible that this should be known, so long as the psychological laws of the formation of character have been so little studied, even in a general way, and in the particular case never scientifically applied at all; so long as the most obvious external causes of difference of character are habitually disregarded—left unnoticed by the observer, and looked down upon with a kind of supercilious contempt by the prevalent schools both of natural history and of mental philosophy: who, whether they look for the source of what mainly distinguishes human beings from one another, in the world of matter or in that of spirit, agree in running down those who prefer to explain these differences by the different relations of human beings to society and life.

  To so ridiculous an extent are the notions formed of the nature of women, mere empirical generalizations, framed, without philosophy or analysis, upon the first instances which present themselves, that the popular idea of it is different in different countries, according as the opinions and social circumstances of the country have given to the women living in it any speciality of development or non-development. An Oriental thinks that women are by nature peculiarly voluptuous; see the violent abuse of them on this ground in Hindoo writings. An Englishman usually thinks that they are by nature cold. The sayings about women’s fickleness are mostly of French origin; from the famous distich of Francis the First, upward and downward. In England it is a common remark, how much more constant women are than men. Inconstancy has been longer reckoned discreditable to a woman, in England than in France; and Englishwomen are besides, in their inmost nature, much more subdued to opinion. It may be remarked by the way, that Englishmen are in peculiarly unfavourable circumstances for attempting to judge what is or is not natural, not merely to women, but to men, or to human beings altogether, at least if they have only English experience to go upon: because there is no place where human nature shows so little of its original lineaments. Both in a good and a bad sense, the English are farther from a state of nature than any other modern people. They are, more than any other people, a product of civilization and discipline. England is the country in which social discipline has most succeeded, not so much in conquering, as in suppressing, whatever is liable to conflict with it. The English, more than any other people, not only act but feel according to rule. In other countries, the taught opinion, or the requirement of society, may be the stronger power, but the promptings of the individual nature are always visible under it, and often resisting it: rule may be stronger than nature, but nature is still there. In England, rule has to a great degree substituted itself for nature. The greater part of life is carried on, not by following inclination under the control of rule, but by having no inclination but that of following a rule. Now this has its good side doubtless, though it has also a wretchedly bad one; but it must render an Englishman peculiarly ill-qualified to pass a judgment on the original tendencies of human nature from his own experience. The errors to which observers elsewhere are liable on the subject, are of a different character. An Englishman is ignorant respecting human nature, a Frenchman is prejudiced. An Englishman’s errors are negative, a Frenchman’s positive. An Englishman fancies that things do not exist, because he never sees them; a Frenchman thinks they must always and necessarily exist, because he does see them. An Englishman does not know nature, because he has had no opportunity of observing it; a Frenchman generally knows a great deal of it, but often mistakes it, because he has only seen it sophisticated and distorted. For the artificial state superinduced by society disguises the natural tendencies of the thing which is the subject of observation, in two different ways: by extinguishing the nature, or by transforming it. In the one case there is but a starved residuum of nature remaining to be studied; in the other case there is much, but it may have expanded in any direction rather than that in which it would spontaneously grow.

  I have said that it cannot now be known how much of the existing mental differences between men and women is natural, and how much artificial; whether there are any natural differences at all; or, supposing all artificial causes of difference to be withdrawn, what natural character would be revealed. I am not about to attempt what I have pronounced impossible: but doubt does not forbid conjecture, and where certainty is unattainable, there may yet be the means of arriving at some degree of probability. The first point, the origin of the differences actually observed, is the one most accessible to speculation; and I shall attempt to approach it, by the only path by which it can be reached; by tracing the mental consequences of external influences. We cannot isolate a human being from the circumstances of his condition, so as to ascertain experimentally what he would have been by nature; but we can consider what he is, and what his circumstances have been, and whether the one would have been capable of producing the other.

  Let us take, then, the only marked case which observation affords, of apparent inferiority of women to men, if we except the merely physical one of bodily strength. No production in philosophy, science, or art, entitled to the first rank, has been the work of a woman. Is there any mode of accounting for this, without supposing that women are naturally incapable of producing them?

  In the first place, we may fairly question whether experience has afforded sufficient grounds for an induction. It is scarcely three generations since women, saving very rare exceptions, have begun to try their capacity in philosophy, science, or art. It is only in the present generation that their attempts have been at all numerous; and they are even now extremely few, everywhere but in England and France. It is a relevant question, whether a mind possessing the requisites of first-rate eminence in speculation or creative art could have been expected, on the mere calculation of chances, to turn up during that lapse of time, among the women whose tastes and personal position admitted of their devoting themselves to these pursuits. In all things which there has yet been time for—in all but the very highest grades in the scale of excellence, especially in the department in which they have been longest engaged, literature (both prose and poetry)—women have done quite as much, have obtained fully as high prizes and as many of them, as could be expected from the length of time and the number of competitors. If we go back to the earlier period when very few women made the attempt, yet some of those few made it with distinguished success. The Greeks always accounted Sappho among their great poets; and we may well suppose that Myrtis, said to have been the teacher of Pindar, and Corinna, who five times bore away from him the prize of poetry, must at least have had sufficient merit to admit of being compared with that great name. Aspasia did not leave any philosophical writings; but it is an admitted fact that Socrates resorted to her for instruction, and avowed himself to have obtained it.

  If we consider the works of women in modern times, and contrast them with those of men, either in the literary or the artistic department, such inferiority as may be observed resolves itself essentially into one thing: but that is a most material one; deficiency of originality. Not total deficiency; for every production of mind which is of any substantive value, has an originality of its own—is a conception of the mind itself, not a copy of something else. Thoughts original, in the sense of being unborrowed—of being derived from the thinker’s own observations or intellectual processes—are abundant in the writings of women. But they have not yet produced any of those great and luminous new ideas which form an era in thought, nor those fundamentally new conceptions in art, which open a vista of possible effects not before thought of, and found a new school. Their compositions are mostly grounded on the existing fund of thought, and their creations do not deviate widely from existing types. This is the sort of inferiority which their works manifest: for in point of execution, in the detailed application of thought, and the perfection of style, there is no inferiority. Our best novelists in point of composition, and of the management of detail, have mostly been women; and there is not in all modern literature a more eloquent vehicle of thought than the style of Madame de Stael, nor, as a specimen of purely artistic excellence, anything superior to the prose of Madame Sand, whose style acts upon the nervous system like a symphony of Haydn or Mozart. High originality of conception is, as I have said, what is chiefly wanting. And now to examine if there is any manner in which this deficiency can be accounted for.

  Let us remember, then, so far as regards mere thought, that during all that period in the world’s existence, and in the progress of cultivation, in which great and fruitful new truths could be arrived at by mere force of genius, with little previous study and accumulation of knowledge—during all that time women did not concern themselves with speculation at all. From the days of Hypatia to those of the Reformation, the illustrious Heloisa is almost the only woman to whom any such achievement might have been possible; and we know not how great a capacity of speculation in her may have been lost to mankind by the misfortunes of her life. Never since any considerable number of women have began to cultivate serious thought, has originality been possible on easy terms. Nearly all the thoughts which can be reached by mere strength of original faculties, have long since been arrived at; and originality, in any high sense of the word, is now scarcely ever attained but by minds which have undergone elaborate discipline, and are deeply versed in the results of previous thinking. It is Mr. Maurice, I think, who has remarked on the present age, that its most original thinkers are those who have known most thoroughly what had been thought by their predecessors: and this will always henceforth be the case. Every fresh stone in the edifice has now to be placed on the top of so many others, that a long process of climbing, and of carrying up materials, has to be gone through by whoever aspires to take a share in the present stage of the work. How many women are there who have gone through any such process? Mrs. Somerville, alone perhaps of women, knows as much of mathematics as is now needful for making any considerable mathematical discovery: is it any proof of inferiority in women, that she has not happened to be one of the two or three persons who in her lifetime have associated their names with some striking advancement of the science? Two women, since political economy has been made a science, have known enough of it to write usefully on the subject: of how many of the innumerable men who have written on it during the same time, is it possible with truth to say more? If no woman has hitherto been a great historian, what woman has had the necessary erudition? If no woman is a great philologist, what woman has studied Sanscrit and Slavonic, the Gothic of Ulphila and the Persic of the Zendavesta? Even in practical matters we all know what is the value of the originality of untaught geniuses. It means, inventing over again in its rudimentary form something already invented and improved upon by many successive inventors. When women have had the preparation which all men now require to be eminently original, it will be time enough to begin judging by experience of their capacity for originality.

  It no doubt often happens that a person, who has not widely and accurately studied the thoughts of others on a subject, has by natural sagacity a happy intuition, which he can suggest, but cannot prove, which yet when matured may be an important addition to knowledge: but even then, no justice can be done to it until some other person, who does possess the previous acquirements, takes it in hand, tests it, gives it a scientific or practical form, and fits it into its place among the existing truths of philosophy or science. Is it supposed that such felicitous thoughts do not occur to women? They occur by hundreds to every woman of intellect. But they are mostly lost, for want of a husband or friend who has the other knowledge which can enable him to estimate them properly and bring them before the world: and even when they are brought before it, they generally appear as his ideas, not their real author’s. Who can tell how many of the most original thoughts put forth by male writers, belong to a woman by suggestion, to themselves only by verifying and working out? If I may judge by my own case, a very large proportion indeed.

  If we turn from pure speculation to literature in the narrow sense of the term, and the fine arts, there is a very obvious reason why women’s literature is, in its general conception and in its main features, an imitation of men’s. Why is the Roman literature, as critics proclaim to satiety, not original, but an imitation of the Greek? Simply because the Greeks came first. If women lived in a different country from men, and had never read any of their writings, they would have had a literature of their own. As it is, they have not created one, because they found a highly advanced literature already created. If there had been no suspension of the knowledge of antiquity, or if the Renaissance had occurred before the Gothic cathedrals were built, they never would have been built. We see that, in France and Italy, imitation of the ancient literature stopped the original development even after it had commenced. All women who write are pupils of the great male writers. A painter’s early pictures, even if he be a Raffaelle, are undistinguishable in style from those of his master. Even a Mozart does not display his powerful originality in his earliest pieces. What years are to a gifted individual, generations are to a mass. If women’s literature is destined to have a different collective character from that of men, depending on any difference of natural tendencies, much longer time is necessary than has yet elapsed, before it can emancipate itself from the influence of accepted models, and guide itself by its own impulses. But if, as I believe, there will not prove to be any natural tendencies common to women, and distinguishing their genius from that of men, yet every individual writer among them has her individual tendencies, which at present are still subdued by the influence of precedent and example: and it will require generations more, before their individuality is sufficiently developed to make head against that influence.

  It is in the fine arts, properly so called, that the primâ facie evidence of inferior original powers in women at first sight appears the strongest: since opinion (it may be said) does not exclude them from these, but rather encourages them, and their education, instead of passing over this department, is in the affluent classes mainly composed of it. Yet in this line of exertion they have fallen still more short than in many others, of the highest eminence attained by men. This shortcoming, however, needs no other explanation than the familiar fact, more universally true in the fine arts than in anything else; the vast superiority of professional persons over amateurs. Women in the educated classes are almost universally taught more or less of some branch or other of the fine arts, but not that they may gain their living or their social consequence by it. Women artists are all amateurs. The exceptions are only of the kind which confirm the general truth. Women are taught music, but not for the purpose of composing, only of executing it: and accordingly it is only as composers, that men, in music, are superior to women. The only one of the fine arts which women do follow, to any extent, as a profession, and an occupation for life, is the histrionic; and in that they are confessedly equal, if not superior, to men. To make the comparison fair, it should be made between the productions of women in any branch of art, and those of men not following it as a profession. In musical composition, for example, women surely have produced fully as good things as have ever been produced by male amateurs. There are now a few women, a very few, who practise painting as a profession, and these are already beginning to show quite as much talent as could be expected. Even male painters (pace Mr. Ruskin) have not made any very remarkable figure these last centuries, and it will be long before they do so. The reason why the old painters were so greatly superior to the modern, is that a greatly superior class of men applied themselves to the art. In the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries the Italian painters were the most accomplished men of their age. The greatest of them were men of encyclopædical acquirements and powers, like the great men of Greece. But in their times fine art was, to men’s feelings and conceptions, among the grandest things in which a human being could excel; and by it men were made, what only political or military distinction now makes them, the companions of sovereigns, and the equals of the highest nobility. In the present age, men of anything like similar calibre find something more important to do for their own fame and the uses of the modern world, than painting: and it is only now and then that a Reynolds or a Turner (of whose relative rank among eminent men I do not pretend to an opinion) applies himself to that art. Music belongs to a different order of things; it does not require the same general powers of mind, but seems more dependant on a natural gift: and it may be thought surprising that no one of the great musical composers has been a woman. But even this natural gift, to be made available for great creations, requires study, and professional devotion to the pursuit. The only countries which have produced first-rate composers, even of the male sex, are Germany and Italy—countries in which, both in point of special and of general cultivation, women have remained far behind France and England, being generally (it may be said without exaggeration) very little educated, and having scarcely cultivated at all any of the higher faculties of mind. And in those countries the men who are acquainted with the principles of musical composition must be counted by hundreds, or more probably by thousands, the women barely by scores: so that here again, on the doctrine of averages, we cannot reasonably expect to see more than one eminent woman to fifty eminent men; and the last three centuries have not produced fifty eminent male composers either in Germany or in Italy.

  There are other reasons, besides those which we have now given, that help to explain why women remain behind men, even in the pursuits which are open to both. For one thing, very few women have time for them. This may seem a paradox; it is an undoubted social fact. The time and thoughts of every woman have to satisfy great previous demands on them for things practical. There is, first, the superintendence of the family and the domestic expenditure, which occupies at least one woman in every family, generally the one of mature years and acquired experience; unless the family is so rich as to admit of delegating that task to hired agency, and submitting to all the waste and malversation inseparable from that mode of conducting it. The superintendence of a household, even when not in other respects laborious, is extremely onerous to the thoughts; it requires incessant vigilance, an eye which no detail escapes, and presents questions for consideration and solution, foreseen and unforeseen, at every hour of the day, from which the person responsible for them can hardly ever shake herself free. If a woman is of a rank and circumstances which relieve her in a measure from these cares, she has still devolving on her the management for the whole family of its intercourse with others—of what is called society, and the less the call made on her by the former duty, the greater is always the development of the latter: the dinner parties, concerts, evening parties, morning visits, letter writing, and all that goes with them. All this is over and above the engrossing duty which society imposes exclusively on women, of making themselves charming. A clever woman of the higher ranks finds nearly a sufficient employment of her talents in cultivating the graces of manner and the arts of conversation. To look only at the outward side of the subject: the great and continual exercise of thought which all women who attach any value to dressing well (I do not mean expensively, but with taste, and perception of natural and of artificial convenance) must bestow upon their own dress, perhaps also upon that of their daughters, would alone go a great way towards achieving respectable results in art, or science, or literature, and does actually exhaust much of the time and mental power they might have to spare for either.* If it were possible that all this number of little practical interests (which are made great to them) should leave them either much leisure, or much energy and freedom of mind, to be devoted to art or speculation, they must have a much greater original supply of active faculty than the vast majority of men. But this is not all. Independently of the regular offices of life which devolve upon a woman, she is expected to have her time and faculties always at the disposal of everybody. If a man has not a profession to exempt him from such demands, still, if he has a pursuit, he offends nobody by devoting his time to it; occupation is received as a valid excuse for his not answering to every casual demand which may be made on him. Are a woman’s occupations, especially her chosen and voluntary ones, ever regarded as excusing her from any of what are termed the calls of society? Scarcely are her most necessary and recognised duties allowed as an exemption. It requires an illness in the family, or something else out of the common way, to entitle her to give her own business the precedence over other people’s amusement. She must always be at the beck and call of somebody, generally of everybody. If she has a study or a pursuit, she must snatch any short interval which accidentally occurs to be employed in it. A celebrated woman, in a work which I hope will some day be published, remarks truly that everything a woman does is done at odd times. Is it wonderful, then, if she does not attain the highest eminence in things which require consecutive attention, and the concentration on them of the chief interest of life? Such is philosophy, and such, above all, is art, in which, besides the devotion of the thoughts and feelings, the hand also must be kept in constant exercise to attain high skill.

  There is another consideration to be added to all these. In the various arts and intellectual occupations, there is a degree of proficiency sufficient for living by it, and there is a higher degree on which depend the great productions which immortalize a name. To the attainment of the former, there are adequate motives in the case of all who follow the pursuit professionally: the other is hardly ever attained where there is not, or where there has not been at some period of life, an ardent desire of celebrity. Nothing less is commonly a sufficient stimulus to undergo the long and patient drudgery, which, in the case even of the greatest natural gifts, is absolutely required for great eminence in pursuits in which we already possess so many splendid memorials of the highest genius. Now, whether the cause be natural or artificial, women seldom have this eagerness for fame. Their ambition is generally confined within narrower bounds. The influence they seek is over those who immediately surround them. Their desire is to be liked, loved, or admired, by those whom they see with their eyes: and the proficiency in knowledge, arts, and accomplishments, which is sufficient for that, almost always contents them. This is a trait of character which cannot be left out of the account in judging of women as they are. I do not at all believe that it is inherent in women. It is only the natural result of their circumstances. The love of fame in men is encouraged by education and opinion: to “scorn delights and live laborious days” for its sake, is accounted the part of “noble minds,” even if spoken of as their “last infirmity,” and is stimulated by the access which fame gives to all objects of ambition, including even the favour of women; while to women themselves all these objects are closed, and the desire of fame itself considered daring and unfeminine. Besides, how could it be that a woman’s interests should not be all concentrated upon the impressions made on those who come into her daily life, when society has ordained that all her duties should be to them, and has contrived that all her comforts should depend on them? The natural desire of consideration from our fellow creatures is as strong in a woman as in a man; but society has so ordered things that public consideration is, in all ordinary cases, only attainable by her through the consideration of her husband or of her male relations, while her private consideration is forfeited by making herself individually prominent, or appearing in any other character than that of an appendage to men. Whoever is in the least capable of estimating the influence on the mind of the entire domestic and social position and the whole habit of a life, must easily recognise in that influence a complete explanation of nearly all the apparent differences between women and men, including the whole of those which imply any inferiority.

  As for moral differences, considered as distinguished from intellectual, the distinction commonly drawn is to the advantage of women. They are declared to be better than men, an empty compliment, which must provoke a bitter smile from every woman of spirit, since there is no other situation in life in which it is the established order, and considered quite natural and suitable, that the better should obey the worse. If this piece of idle talk is good for anything, it is only as an admission by men, of the corrupting influence of power; for that is certainly the only truth which the fact, if it be a fact, either proves or illustrates. And it is true that servitude, except when it actually brutalizes, though corrupting to both, is less so to the slaves than to the slave-masters. It is wholesomer for the moral nature to be restrained, even by arbitrary power, than to be allowed to exercise arbitrary power without restraint. Women, it is said, seldomer fall under the penal law—contribute a much smaller number of offenders to the criminal calendar, than men. I doubt not that the same thing may be said, with the same truth, of negro slaves. Those who are under the control of others cannot often commit crimes, unless at the command and for the purposes of their masters. I do not know a more signal instance of the blindness with which the world, including the herd of studious men, ignore and pass over all the influences of social circumstances, than their silly depreciation of the intellectual, and silly panegyrics on the moral, nature of women.

  The complimentary dictum about women’s superior moral goodness may be allowed to pair off with the disparaging one respecting their greater liability to moral bias. Women, we are told, are not capable of resisting their personal partialities: their judgment in grave affairs is warped by their sympathies and antipathies. Assuming it to be so, it is still to be proved that women are oftener misled by their personal feelings than men by their personal interests. The chief difference would seem in that case to be, that men are led from the course of duty and the public interest by their regard for themselves, women (not being allowed to have private interests of their own) by their regard for somebody else. It is also to be considered, that all the education which women receive from society inculcates on them the feeling that the individuals connected with them are the only ones to whom they owe any duty—the only ones whose interest they are called upon to care for; while, as far as education is concerned, they are left strangers even to the elementary ideas which are presupposed in any intelligent regard for larger interests or higher moral objects. The complaint against them resolves itself merely into this, that they fulfil only too faithfully the sole duty which they are taught, and almost the only one which they are permitted to practise.

  The concessions of the privileged to the unprivileged are so seldom brought about by any better motive than the power of the unprivileged to extort them, that any arguments against the prerogative of sex are likely to be little attended to by the generality, as long as they are able to say to themselves that women do not complain of it. That fact certainly enables men to retain the unjust privilege some time longer; but does not render it less unjust. Exactly the same thing may be said of the women in the harem of an Oriental: they do not complain of not being allowed the freedom of European women. They think our women insufferably bold and unfeminine. How rarely it is that even men complain of the general order of society; and how much rarer still would such complaint be, if they did not know of any different order existing anywhere else. Women do not complain of the general lot of women; or rather they do, for plaintive elegies on it are very common in the writings of women, and were still more so as long as the lamentations could not be suspected of having any practical object. Their complaints are like the complaints which men make of the general unsatisfactoriness of human life; they are not meant to imply blame, or to plead for any change. But though women do not complain of the power of husbands, each complains of her own husband, or of the husbands of her friends. It is the same in all other cases of servitude, at least in the commencement of the emancipatory movement. The serfs did not at first complain of the power of their lords, but only of their tyranny. The Commons began by claiming a few municipal privileges; they next asked an exemption for themselves from being taxed without their own consent; but they would at that time have thought it a great presumption to claim any share in the king’s sovereign authority. The case of women is now the only case in which to rebel against established rules is still looked upon with the same eyes as was formerly a subject’s claim to the right of rebelling against his king. A woman who joins in any movement which her husband disapproves, makes herself a martyr, without even being able to be an apostle, for the husband can legally put a stop to her apostleship. Women cannot be expected to devote themselves to the emancipation of women, until men in considerable number are prepared to join with them in the undertaking.

  CHAPTER IV.

  THERE remains a question, not of less importance than those already discussed, and which will be asked the most importunately by those opponents whose conviction is somewhat shaken on the main point. What good are we to expect from the changes proposed in our customs and institutions? Would mankind be at all better off if women were free? If not, why disturb their minds, and attempt to make a social revolution in the name of an abstract right?

  It is hardly to be expected that this question will be asked in respect to the change proposed in the condition of women in marriage. The sufferings, immoralities, evils of all sorts, produced in innumerable cases by the subjection of individual women to individual men, are far too terrible to be overlooked. Unthinking or uncandid persons, counting those cases alone which are extreme, or which attain publicity, may say that the evils are exceptional; but no one can be blind to their existence, nor, in many cases, to their intensity. And it is perfectly obvious that the abuse of the power cannot be very much checked while the power remains. It is a power given, or offered, not to good men, or to decently respectable men, but to all men; the most brutal, and the most criminal. There is no check but that of opinion, and such men are in general within the reach of no opinion but that of men like themselves. If such men did not brutally tyrannize over the one human being whom the law compels to bear everything from them, society must already have reached a paradisiacal state. There could be no need any longer of laws to curb men’s vicious propensities. Astræa must not only have returned to earth, but the heart of the worst man must have become her temple. The law of servitude in marriage is a monstrous contradiction to all the principles of the modern world, and to all the experience through which those principles have been slowly and painfully worked out. It is the sole case, now that negro slavery has been abolished, in which a human being in the plenitude of every faculty is delivered up to the tender mercies of another human being, in the hope forsooth that this other will use the power solely for the good of the person subjected to it. Marriage is the only actual bondage known to our law. There remain no legal slaves, except the mistress of every house.

  It is not, therefore, on this part of the subject, that the question is likely to be asked, Cui bono? We may be told that the evil would outweigh the good, but the reality of the good admits of no dispute. In regard, however, to the larger question, the removal of women’s disabilities—their recognition as the equals of men in all that belongs to citizenship—the opening to them of all honourable employments, and of the training and education which qualifies for those employments—there are many persons for whom it is not enough that the inequality has no just or legitimate defence; they require to be told what express advantage would be obtained by abolishing it.

  To which let me first answer, the advantage of having the most universal and pervading of all human relations regulated by justice instead of injustice. The vast amount of this gain to human nature, it is hardly possible, by any explanation or illustration, to place in a stronger light than it is placed by the bare statement, to any one who attaches a moral meaning to words. All the selfish propensities, the self-worship, the unjust self-preference, which exist among mankind, have their source and root in, and derive their principal nourishment from, the present constitution of the relation between men and women. Think what it is to a boy, to grow up to manhood in the belief that without any merit or any exertion of his own, though he may be the most frivolous and empty or the most ignorant and stolid of mankind, by the mere fact of being born a male he is by right the superior of all and every one of an entire half of the human race: including probably some whose real superiority to himself he has daily or hourly occasion to feel; but even if in his whole conduct he habitually follows a woman’s guidance, still, if he is a fool, she thinks that of course she is not, and cannot be, equal in ability and judgment to himself; and if he is not a fool, he does worse—he sees that she is superior to him, and believes that, notwithstanding her superiority, he is entitled to command and she is bound to obey. What must be the effect on his character, of this lesson? And men of the cultivated classes are often not aware how deeply it sinks into the immense majority of male minds. For, among right-feeling and well-bred people, the inequality is kept as much as possible out of sight; above all, out of sight of the children. As much obedience is required from boys to their mother as to their father: they are not permitted to domineer over their sisters, nor are they accustomed to see these postponed to them, but the contrary; the compensations of the chivalrous feeling being made prominent, while the servitude which requires them is kept in the background. Well brought-up youths in the higher classes thus often escape the bad influences of the situation in their early years, and only experience them when, arrived at manhood, they fall under the dominion of facts as they really exist. Such people are little aware, when a boy is differently brought up, how early the notion of his inherent superiority to a girl arises in his mind; how it grows with his growth and strengthens with his strength; how it is inoculated by one schoolboy upon another; how early the youth thinks himself superior to his mother, owing her perhaps forbearance, but no real respect; and how sublime and sultan-like a sense of superiority he feels, above all, over the woman whom he honours by admitting her to a partnership of his life. Is it imagined that all this does not pervert the whole manner of existence of the man, both as an individual and as a social being? It is an exact parallel to the feeling of a hereditary king that he is excellent above others by being born a king, or a noble by being born a noble. The relation between husband and wife is very like that between lord and vassal, except that the wife is held to more unlimited obedience than the vassal was. However the vassal’s character may have been affected, for better and for worse, by his subordination, who can help seeing that the lord’s was affected greatly for the worse? whether he was led to believe that his vassals were really superior to himself, or to feel that he was placed in command over people as good as himself, for no merits or labours of his own, but merely for having, as Figaro says, taken the trouble to be born. The self-worship of the monarch, or of the feudal superior, is matched by the self-worship of the male. Human beings do not grow up from childhood in the possession of unearned distinctions, without pluming themselves upon them. Those whom privileges not acquired by their merit, and which they feel to be disproportioned to it, inspire with additional humility, are always the few, and the best few. The rest are only inspired with pride, and the worst sort of pride, that which values itself upon accidental advantages, not of its own achieving. Above all, when the feeling of being raised above the whole of the other sex is combined with personal authority over one individual among them; the situation, if a school of conscientious and affectionate forbearance to those whose strongest points of character are conscience and affection, is to men of another quality a regularly constituted Academy or Gymnasium for training them in arrogance and overbearingness; which vices, if curbed by the certainty of resistance in their intercourse with other men, their equals, break out towards all who are in a position to be obliged to tolerate them, and often revenge themselves upon the unfortunate wife for the involuntary restraint which they are obliged to submit to elsewhere.

  The example afforded, and the education given to the sentiments, by laying the foundation of domestic existence upon a relation contradictory to the first principles of social justice, must, from the very nature of man, have a perverting influence of such magnitude, that it is hardly possible with our present experience to raise our imaginations to the conception of so great a change for the better as would be made by its removal. All that education and civilization are doing to efface the influences on character of the law of force, and replace them by those of justice, remains merely on the surface, as long as the citadel of the enemy is not attacked. The principle of the modern movement in morals and politics, is that conduct, and conduct alone, entitles to respect: that not what men are, but what they do, constitutes their claim to deference; that, above all, merit, and not birth, is the only rightful claim to power and authority. If no authority, not in its nature temporary, were allowed to one human being over another, society would not be employed in building up propensities with one hand which it has to curb with the other. The child would really, for the first time in man’s existence on earth, be trained in the way he should go, and when he was old there would be a chance that he would not depart from it. But so long as the right of the strong to power over the weak rules in the very heart of society, the attempt to make the equal right of the weak the principle of its outward actions will always be an uphill struggle; for the law of justice, which is also that of Christianity, will never get possession of men’s inmost sentiments; they will be working against it, even when bending to it.

  The second benefit to be expected from giving to women the free use of their faculties, by leaving them the free choice of their employments, and opening to them the same field of occupation and the same prizes and encouragements as to other human beings, would be that of doubling the mass of mental faculties available for the higher service of humanity. Where there is now one person qualified to benefit mankind and promote the general improvement, as a public teacher, or an administrator of some branch of public or social affairs, there would then be a chance of two. Mental superiority of any kind is at present everywhere so much below the demand; there is such a deficiency of persons competent to do excellently anything which it requires any considerable amount of ability to do; that the loss to the world, by refusing to make use of one-half of the whole quantity of talent it possesses, is extremely serious. It is true that this amount of mental power is not totally lost. Much of it is employed, and would in any case be employed, in domestic management, and in the few other occupations open to women; and from the remainder indirect benefit is in many individual cases obtained, through the personal influence of individual women over individual men. But these benefits are partial; their range is extremely circumscribed; and if they must be admitted, on the one hand, as a deduction from the amount of fresh social power that would be acquired by giving freedom to one-half of the whole sum of human intellect, there must be added, on the other, the benefit of the stimulus that would be given to the intellect of men by the competition; or (to use a more true expression) by the necessity that would be imposed on them of deserving precedency before they could expect to obtain it.

  This great accession to the intellectual power of the species, and to the amount of intellect available for the good management of its affairs, would be obtained, partly, through the better and more complete intellectual education of women, which would then improve pari passu with that of men. Women in general would be brought up equally capable of understanding business, public affairs, and the higher matters of speculation, with men in the same class of society; and the select few of the one as well as of the other sex, who were qualified not only to comprehend what is done or thought by others, but to think or do something considerable themselves, would meet with the same facilities for improving and training their capacities in the one sex as in the other. In this way, the widening of the sphere of action for women would operate for good, by raising their education to the level of that of men, and making the one participate in all improvements made in the other. But independently of this, the mere breaking down of the barrier would of itself have an educational virtue of the highest worth. The mere getting rid of the idea that all the wider subjects of thought and action, all the things which are of general and not solely of private interest, are men’s business, from which women are to be warned off—positively interdicted from most of it, coldly tolerated in the little which is allowed them—the mere consciousness a woman would then have of being a human being like any other, entitled to choose her pursuits, urged or invited by the same inducements as any one else to interest herself in whatever is interesting to human beings, entitled to exert the share of influence on all human concerns which belongs to an individual opinion, whether she attempted actual participation in them or not—this alone would effect an immense expansion of the faculties of women, as well as enlargement of the range of their moral sentiments.

  Besides the addition to the amount of individual talent available for the conduct of human affairs, which certainly are not at present so abundantly provided in that respect that they can afford to dispense with one-half of what nature proffers; the opinion of women would then possess a more beneficial, rather than a greater, influence upon the general mass of human belief and sentiment. I say a more beneficial, rather than a greater influence; for the influence of women over the general tone of opinion has always, or at least from the earliest known period, been very considerable. The influence of mothers on the early character of their sons, and the desire of young men to recommend themselves to young women, have in all recorded times been important agencies in the formation of character, and have determined some of the chief steps in the progress of civilization. Even in the Homeric age, αίδώς towards the Τρωάδας ἑλκεσιπέπλους is an acknowledged and powerful motive of action in the great Hector. The moral influence of women has had two modes of operation. First, it has been a softening influence. Those who were most liable to be the victims of violence, have naturally tended as much as they could towards limiting its sphere and mitigating its excesses. Those who were not taught to fight, have naturally inclined in favour of any other mode of settling differences rather than that of fighting. In general, those who have been the greatest sufferers by the indulgence of selfish passion, have been the most earnest supporters of any moral law which offered a means of bridling passion. Women were powerfully instrumental in inducing the northern conquerors to adopt the creed of Christianity, a creed so much more favourable to women than any that preceded it. The conversion of the Anglo-Saxons and of the Franks may be said to have been begun by the wives of Ethelbert and Clovis. The other mode in which the effect of women’s opinion has been conspicuous, is by giving a powerful stimulus to those qualities in men, which, not being themselves trained in, it was necessary for them that they should find in their protectors. Courage, and the military virtues generally, have at all times been greatly indebted to the desire which men felt of being admired by women: and the stimulus reaches far beyond this one class of eminent qualities, since, by a very natural effect of their position, the best passport to the admiration and favour of women has always been to be thought highly of by men. From the combination of the two kinds of moral influence thus exercised by women, arose the spirit of chivalry: the peculiarity of which is, to aim at combining the highest standard of the warlike qualities with the cultivation of a totally different class of virtues—those of gentleness, generosity, and self-abnegation, towards the non-military and defenceless classes generally, and a special submission and worship directed towards women; who were distinguished from the other defenceless classes by the high rewards which they had it in their power voluntarily to bestow on those who endeavoured to earn their favour, instead of extorting their subjection. Though the practice of chivalry fell even more sadly short of its theoretic standard than practice generally falls below theory, it remains one of the most precious monuments of the moral history of our race; as a remarkable instance of a concerted and organized attempt by a most disorganized and distracted society, to raise up and carry into practice a moral ideal greatly in advance of its social condition and institutions; so much so as to have been completely frustrated in the main object, yet never entirely inefficacious, and which has left a most sensible, and for the most part a highly valuable impress on the ideas and feelings of all subsequent times.

  The chivalrous ideal is the acme of the influence of women’s sentiments on the moral cultivation of mankind: and if women are to remain in their subordinate situation, it were greatly to be lamented that the chivalrous standard should have passed away, for it is the only one at all capable of mitigating the demoralizing influences of that position. But the changes in the general state of the species rendered inevitable the substitution of a totally different ideal of morality for the chivalrous one. Chivalry was the attempt to infuse moral elements into a state of society in which everything depended for good or evil on individual prowess, under the softening influences of individual delicacy and generosity. In modern societies, all things, even in the military department of affairs, are decided, not by individual effort, but by the combined operations of numbers; while the main occupation of society has changed from fighting to business, from military to industrial life. The exigencies of the new life are no more exclusive of the virtues of generosity than those of the old, but it no longer entirely depends on them. The main foundations of the moral life of modern times must be justice and prudence; the respect of each for the rights of every other, and the ability of each to take care of himself. Chivalry left without legal check all forms of wrong which reigned unpunished throughout society; it only encouraged a few to do right in preference to wrong, by the direction it gave to the instruments of praise and admiration. But the real dependence of morality must always be upon its penal sanctions—its power to deter from evil. The security of society cannot rest on merely rendering honour to right, a motive so comparatively weak in all but a few, and which on very many does not operate at all. Modern society is able to repress wrong through all departments of life, by a fit exertion of the superior strength which civilization has given it, and thus to render the existence of the weaker members of society (no longer defenceless but protected by law) tolerable to them, without reliance on the chivalrous feelings of those who are in a position to tyrannize. The beauties and graces of the chivalrous character are still what they were, but the rights of the weak, and the general comfort of human life, now rest on a far surer and steadier support; or rather, they do so in every relation of life except the conjugal.

  At present the moral influence of women is no less real, but it is no longer of so marked and definite a character: it has more nearly merged in the general influence of public opinion. Both through the contagion of sympathy, and through the desire of men to shine in the eyes of women, their feelings have great effect in keeping alive what remains of the chivalrous ideal—in fostering the sentiments and continuing the traditious of spirit and generosity. In these points of character, their standard is higher than that of men; in the quality of justice, somewhat lower. As regards the relations of private life it may be said generally, that their influence is, on the whole, encouraging to the softer virtues, discouraging to the sterner: though the statement must be taken with all the modifications dependent on individual character. In the chief of the greater trials to which virtue is subject in the concerns of life—the conflict between interest and principle—the tendency of women’s influence is of a very mixed character. When the principle involved happens to be one of the very few which the course of their religious or moral education has strongly impressed upon themselves, they are potent auxiliaries to virtue: and their husbands and sons are often prompted by them to acts of abnegation which they never would have been capable of without that stimulus. But, with the present education and position of women, the moral principles which have been impressed on them cover but a comparatively small part of the field of virtue, and are, moreover, principally negative; forbidding particular acts, but having little to do with the general direction of the thoughts and purposes. I am afraid it must be said, that disinterestedness in the general conduct of life—the devotion of the energies to purposes which hold out no promise of private advantages to the family—is very seldom encouraged or supported by women’s influence. It is small blame to them that they discourage objects of which they have not learnt to see the advantage, and which withdraw their men from them, and from the interests of the family. But the consequence is that women’s influence is often anything but favourable to public virtue.

  Women have, however, some share of influence in giving the tone to public moralities since their sphere of action has been a little widened, and since a considerable number of them have occupied themselves practically in the promotion of objects reaching beyond their own family and household. The influence of women counts for a great deal in two of the most marked features of modern European life—its aversion to war, and its addiction to philanthropy. Excellent characteristics both; but unhappily, if the influence of women is valuable in the encouragement it gives to these feelings in general, in the particular applications the direction it gives to them is at least as often mischievous as useful. In the philanthropic department more particularly, the two provinces chiefly cultivated by women are religious proselytism and charity. Religious proselytism at home, is but another word for embittering of religious animosities: abroad, it is usually a blind running at an object, without either knowing or heeding the fatal mischiefs—fatal to the religious object itself as well as to all other desirable objects—which may be produced by the means employed. As for charity, it is a matter in which the immediate effect on the persons directly concerned, and the ultimate consequence to the general good, are apt to be at complete war with one another: while the education given to women—an education of the sentiments rather than of the understanding—and the habit inculcated by their whole life, of looking to immediate effects on persons, and not to remote effects on classes of persons—make them both unable to see, and unwilling to admit, the ultimate evil tendency of any form of charity or philanthropy which commends itself to their sympathetic feelings. The great and continually increasing mass of unenlightened and shortsighted benevolence, which, taking the care of people’s lives out of their own hands, and relieving them from the disagreeable consequences of their own acts, saps the very foundations of the self-respect, self-help, and self-control which are the essential conditions both of individual prosperity and of social virtue—this waste of resources and of benevolent feelings in doing harm instead of good, is immensely swelled by women’s contributions, and stimulated by their influence. Not that this is a mistake likely to be made by women, where they have actually the practical management of schemes of beneficence. It sometimes happens that women who administer public charities—with that insight into present fact, and especially into the minds and feelings of those with whom they are in immediate contact, in which women generally excel men—recognise in the clearest manner the demoralizing influence of the alms given or the help afforded, and could give lessons on the subject to many a male political economist. But women who only give their money, and are not brought face to face with the effects it produces, how can they be expected to foresee them? A woman born to the present lot of women, and content with it, how should she appreciate the value of self-dependence? She is not self-dependent; she is not taught self-dependence; her destiny is to receive everything from others, and why should what is good enough for her be bad for the poor? Her familiar notions of good are of blessings descending from a superior. She forgets that she is not free, and that the poor are; that if what they need is given to them unearned, they cannot be compelled to earn it: that everybody cannot be taken care of by everybody, but there must be some motive to induce people to take care of themselves; and that to be helped to help themselves, if they are physically capable of it, is the only charity which proves to be charity in the end.

  These considerations shew how usefully the part which women take in the formation of general opinion, would be modified for the better by that more enlarged instruction, and practical conversancy with the things which their opinions influence, that would necessarily arise from their social and political emancipation. But the improvement it would work through the influence they exercise, each in her own family, would be still more remarkable.

  It is often said that in the classes most exposed to temptation, a man’s wife and children tend to keep him honest and respectable, both by the wife’s direct influence, and by the concern he feels for their future welfare. This may be so, and no doubt often is so, with those who are more weak than wicked; and this beneficial influence would be preserved and strengthened under equal laws; it does not depend on the woman’s servitude, but is, on the contrary, diminished by the disrespect which the inferior class of men always at heart feel towards those who are subject to their power. But when we ascend higher in the scale, we come among a totally different set of moving forces. The wife’s influence tends, as far as it goes, to prevent the husband from falling below the common standard of approbation of the country. It tends quite as strongly to hinder him from rising above it. The wife is the auxiliary of the common public opinion. A man who is married to a woman his inferior in intelligence, finds her a perpetual dead weight, or, worse than a dead weight, a drag, upon every aspiration of his to be better than public opinion requires him to be. It is hardly possible for one who is in these bonds, to attain exalted virtue. If he differs in his opinion from the mass—if he sees truths which have not yet dawned upon them, or if, feeling in his heart truths which they nominally recognise, he would like to act up to those truths more conscientiously than the generality of mankind—to all such thoughts and desires, marriage is the heaviest of drawbacks, unless he be so fortunate as to have a wife as much above the common level as he himself is.

  For, in the first place, there is always some sacrifice of personal interest required; either of social consequence, or of pecuniary means; perhaps the risk of even the means of subsistence. These sacrifices and risks he may be willing to encounter for himself; but he will pause before he imposes them on his family. And his family in this case means his wife and daughters; for he always hopes that his sons will feel as he feels himself, and that what he can do without, they will do without, willingly, in the same cause. But his daughters—their marriage may depend upon it: and his wife, who is unable to enter into or understand the objects for which these sacrifices are made—who, if she thought them worth any sacrifice, would think so on trust, and solely for his sake—who can participate in none of the enthusiasm or the self-approbation he himself may feel, while the things which he is disposed to sacrifice are all in all to her; will not the best and most unselfish man hesitate the longest before bringing on her this consequence? If it be not the comforts of life, but only social consideration, that is at stake, the burthen upon his conscience and feelings is still very severe. Whoever has a wife and children has given hostages to Mrs. Grundy. The approbation of that potentate may be a matter of indifference to him, but it is of great importance to his wife. The man himself may be above opinion, or may find sufficient compensation in the opinion of those of his own way of thinking. But to the women connected with him, he can offer no compensation. The almost invariable tendency of the wife to place her influence in the same scale with social consideration, is sometimes made a reproach to women, and represented as a peculiar trait of feebleness and childishness of character in them: surely with great injustice. Society makes the whole life of a woman, in the easy classes, a continued self-sacrifice; it exacts from her an unremitting restraint of the whole of her natural inclinations, and the sole return it makes to her for what often deserves the name of a martyrdom, is consideration. Her consideration is inseparably connected with that of her husband, and after paying the full price for it, she finds that she is to lose it, for no reason of which she can feel the cogency. She has sacrificed her whole life to it, and her husband will not sacrifice to it a whim, a freak, an eccentricity; something not recognised or allowed for by the world, and which the world will agree with her in thinking a folly, if it thinks no worse! The dilemma is hardest upon that very meritorious class of men, who, without possessing talents which qualify them to make a figure among those with whom they agree in opinion, hold their opinion from conviction, and feel bound in honour and conscience to serve it, by making profession of their belief, and giving their time, labour, and means, to anything undertaken in its behalf. The worst case of all is when such men happen to be of a rank and position which of itself neither gives them, nor excludes them from, what is considered the best society; when their admission to it depends mainly on what is thought of them personally — and however unexceptionable their breeding and habits, their being identified with opinions and public conduct unacceptable to those who give the tone to society would operate as an effectual exclusion. Many a woman flatters herself (nine times out of ten quite erroneously) that nothing prevents her and her husband from moving in the highest society of her neighbourhood—society in which others well known to her, and in the same class of life, mix freely—except that her husband is unfortunately a Dissenter, or has the reputation of mingling in low radical politics. That it is, she thinks, which hinders George from getting a commission or a place, Caroline from making an advantageous match, and prevents her and her husband from obtaining invitations, perhaps honours, which, for aught she sees, they are as well entitled to as some folks. With such an influence in every house, either exerted actively, or operating all the more powerfully for not being asserted, is it any wonder that people in general are kept down in that mediocrity of respectability which is becoming a marked characteristic of modern times?

  There is another very injurious aspect in which the effect, not of women’s disabilities directly, but of the broad line of difference which those disabilities create between the education and character of a woman and that of a man, requires to be considered. Nothing can be more unfavourable to that union of thoughts and inclinations which is the ideal of married life. Intimate society between people radically dissimilar to one another, is an idle dream. Unlikeness may attract, but it is likeness which retains; and in proportion to the likeness is the suitability of the individuals to give each other a happy life. While women are so unlike men, it is not wonderful that selfish men should feel the need of arbitrary power in their own hands, to arrest in limine the life-long conflict of inclinations, by deciding every question on the side of their own preference. When people are extremely unlike, there can be no real identity of interest. Very often there is conscientious difference of opinion between married people, on the highest points of duty. Is there any reality in the marriage union where this takes place? Yet it is not uncommon anywhere, when the woman has any earnestness of character; and it is a very general case indeed in Catholic countries, when she is supported in her dissent by the only other authority to which she is taught to bow, the priest. With the usual barefacedness of power not accustomed to find itself disputed, the influence of priests over women is attacked by Protestant and Liberal writers, less for being bad in itself, than because it is a rival authority to the husband, and raises up a revolt against his infallibility. In England, similar differences occasionally exist when an Evangelical wife has allied herself with a husband of a different quality; but in general this source at least of dissension is got rid of, by reducing the minds of women to such a nullity, that they have no opinions but those of Mrs. Grundy, or those which the husband tells them to have. When there is no difference of opinion, differences merely of taste may be sufficient to detract greatly from the happiness of married life. And though it may stimulate the amatory propensities of men, it does not conduce to married happiness, to exaggerate by differences of education whatever may be the native differences of the sexes. If the married pair are well-bred and well-behaved people, they tolerate each other’s tastes; but is mutual toleration what people look forward to, when they enter into marriage? These differences of inclination will naturally make their wishes different, if not restrained by affection or duty, as to almost all domestic questions which arise. What a difference there must be in the society which the two persons will wish to frequent, or be frequented by! Each will desire associates who share their own tastes: the persons agreeable to one, will be indifferent or positively disagreeable to the other; yet there can be none who are not common to both, for married people do not now live in different parts of the house and have totally different visiting lists, as in the reign of Louis XV. They cannot help having different wishes as to the bringing up of the children: each will wish to see reproduced in them their own tastes and sentiments: and there is either a compromise, and only a half-satisfaction to either, or the wife has to yield—often with bitter suffering; and, with or without intention, her occult influence continues to counterwork the husband’s purposes.

  It would of course be extreme folly to suppose that these differences of feeling and inclination only exist because women are brought up differently from men, and that there would not be differences of taste under any imaginable circumstances. But there is nothing beyond the mark in saying that the distinction in bringing-up immensely aggravates those differences, and renders them wholly inevitable. While women are brought up as they are, a man and a woman will but rarely find in one another real agreement of tastes and wishes as to daily life. They will generally have to give it up as hopeless, and renounce the attempt to have, in the intimate associate of their daily life, that idem velle, idem nolle, which is the recognised bond of any society that is really such: or if the man succeeds in obtaining it, he does so by choosing a woman who is so complete a nullity that she has no velle or nolle at all, and is as ready to comply with one thing as another if anybody tells her to do so. Even this calculation is apt to fail; dulness and want of spirit are not always a guarantee of the submission which is so confidently expected from them. But if they were, is this the ideal of marriage? What, in this case, does the man obtain by it, except an upper servant, a nurse, or a mistress? On the contrary, when each of two persons, instead of being a nothing, is a something; when they are attached to one another, and are not too much unlike to begin with; the constant partaking in the same things, assisted by their sympathy, draws out the latent capacities of each for being interested in the things which were at first interesting only to the other; and works a gradual assimilation of the tastes and characters to one another, partly by the insensible modification of each, but more by a real enriching of the two natures, each acquiring the tastes and capacities of the other in addition to its own. This often happens between two friends of the same sex, who are much associated in their daily life: and it would be a common, if not the commonest, case in marriage, did not the totally different bringing-up of the two sexes make it next to an impossibility to form a really well-assorted union. Were this remedied, whatever differences there might still be in individual tastes, there would at least be, as a general rule, complete unity and unanimity as to the great objects of life. When the two persons both care for great objects, and are a help and encouragement to each other in whatever regards these, the minor matters on which their tastes may differ are not all-important to them; and there is a foundation for solid friendship, of an enduring character, more likely than anything else to make it, through the whole of life, a greater pleasure to each to give pleasure to the other, than to receive it.

  I have considered, thus far, the effects on the pleasures and benefits of the marriage union which depend on the mere unlikeness between the wife and the husband: but the evil tendency is prodigiously aggravated when the unlikeness is inferiority. Mere unlikeness, when it only means difference of good qualities, may be more a benefit in the way of mutual improvement, than a drawback from comfort. When each emulates, and desires and endeavours to acquire, the other’s peculiar qualities, the difference does not produce diversity of interest, but increased identity of it, and makes each still more valuable to the other. But when one is much the inferior of the two in mental ability and cultivation, and is not actively attempting by the other’s aid to rise to the other’s level, the whole influence of the connexion upon the development of the superior of the two is deteriorating: and still more so in a tolerably happy marriage than in an unhappy one. It is not with impunity that the superior in intellect shuts himself up with an inferior, and elects that inferior for his chosen, and sole completely intimate, associate. Any society which is not improving, is deteriorating: and the more so, the closer and more familiar it is. Even a really superior man almost always begins to deteriorate when he is habitually (as the phrase is) king of his company: and in his most habitual company the husband who has a wife inferior to him is always so. While his self-satisfaction is incessantly ministered to on the one hand, on the other he insensibly imbibes the modes of feeling, and of looking at things, which belong to a more vulgar or a more limited mind than his own. This evil differs from many of those which have hitherto been dwelt on, by being an increasing one. The association of men with women in daily life is much closer and more complete than it ever was before. Men’s life is more domestic. Formerly, their pleasures and chosen occupations were among men, and in men’s company: their wives had but a fragment of their lives. At the present time, the progress of civilization, and the turn of opinion against the rough amusements and convivial excesses which formerly occupied most men in their hours of relaxation—together with (it must be said) the improved tone of modern feeling as to the reciprocity of duty which binds the husband towards the wife—have thrown the man very much more upon home and its inmates, for his personal and social pleasures: while the kind and degree of improvement which has been made in women’s education, has made them in some degree capable of being his companions in ideas and mental tastes, while leaving them, in most cases, still hopelessly inferior to him. His desire of mental communion is thus in general satisfied by a communion from which he learns nothing. An unimproving and unstimulating companionship is substituted for (what he might otherwise have been obliged to seek) the society of his equals in powers and his fellows in the higher pursuits. We see, accordingly, that young men of the greatest promise generally cease to improve as soon as they marry, and, not improving, inevitably degenerate. If the wife does not push the husband forward, she always holds him back. He ceases to care for what she does not care for; he no longer desires, and ends by disliking and shunning, society congenial to his former aspirations, and which would now shame his falling-off from them; his higher faculties both of mind and heart cease to be called into activity. And this change coinciding with the new and selfish interests which are created by the family, after a few years he differs in no material respect from those who have never had wishes for anything but the common vanities and the common pecuniary objects.

  What marriage may be in the case of two persons of cultivated faculties, identical in opinions and purposes, between whom there exists that best kind of equality, similarity of powers and capacities with reciprocal superiority in them—so that each can enjoy the luxury of looking up to the other, and can have alternately the pleasure of leading and of being led in the path of development—I will not attempt to describe. To those who can conceive it, there is no need; to those who cannot, it would appear the dream of an enthusiast. But I maintain, with the profoundest conviction, that this, and this only, is the ideal of marriage; and that all opinions, customs, and institutions which favour any other notion of it, or turn the conceptions and aspirations connected with it into any other direction, by whatever pretences they may be coloured, are relics of primitive barbarism. The moral regeneration of mankind will only really commence, when the most fundamental of the social relations is placed under the rule of equal justice, and when human beings learn to cultivate their strongest sympathy with an equal in rights and in cultivation.

  Thus far, the benefits which it has appeared that the world would gain by ceasing to make sex a disqualification for privileges and a badge of subjection, are social rather than individual; consisting in an increase of the general fund of thinking and acting power, and an improvement in the general conditions of the association of men with women. But it would be a grievous understatement of the case to omit the most direct benefit of all, the unspeakable gain in private happiness to the liberated half of the species; the difference to them between a life of subjection to the will of others, and a life of rational freedom. After the primary necessities of food and raiment, freedom is the first and strongest want of human nature. While mankind are lawless, their desire is for lawless freedom. When they have learnt to understand the meaning of duty and the value of reason, they incline more and more to be guided and restrained by these in the exercise of their freedom; but they do not therefore desire freedom less; they do not become disposed to accept the will of other people as the representative and interpreter of those guiding principles. On the contrary, the communities in which the reason has been most cultivated, and in which the idea of social duty has been most powerful, are those which have most strongly asserted the freedom of action of the individual—the liberty of each to govern his conduct by his own feelings of duty, and by such laws and social restraints as his own conscience can subscribe to.

  He who would rightly appreciate the worth of personal independence as an element of happiness, should consider the value he himself puts upon it as an ingredient of his own. There is no subject on which there is a greater habitual difference of judgment between a man judging for himself, and the same man judging for other people. When he hears others complaining that they are not allowed freedom of action—that their own will has not sufficient influence in the regulation of their affairs—his inclination is, to ask, what are their grievances? what positive damage they sustain? and in what respect they consider their affairs to be mismanaged? and if they fail to make out, in answer to these questions, what appears to him a sufficient case, he turns a deaf ear, and regards their complaint as the fanciful querulousness of people whom nothing reasonable will satisfy. But he has a quite different standard of judgment when he is deciding for himself. Then, the most unexceptionable administration of his interests by a tutor set over him, does not satisfy his feelings: his personal exclusion from the deciding authority appears itself the greatest grievance of all, rendering it superfluous even to enter into the question of mismanagement. It is the same with nations. What citizen of a free country would listen to any offers of good and skilful administration, in return for the abdication of freedom? Even if he could believe that good and skilful administration can exist among a people ruled by a will not their own, would not the consciousness of working out their own destiny under their own moral responsibility be a compensation to his feelings for great rudeness and imperfection in the details of public affairs? Let him rest assured that whatever he feels on this point, women feel in a fully equal degree. Whatever has been said or written, from the time of Herodotus to the present, of the ennobling influence of free government—the nerve and spring which it gives to all the faculties, the larger and higher objects which it presents to the intellect and feelings, the more unselfish public spirit, and calmer and broader views of duty, that it engenders, and the generally loftier platform on which it elevates the individual as a moral, spiritual, and social being — is every particle as true of women as of men. Are these things no important part of individual happiness? Let any man call to mind what he himself felt on emerging from bodyhood—from the tutelage and control of even loved and affectionate elders—and entering upon the responsibilities of manhood. Was it not like the physical effect of taking off a heavy weight, or releasing him from obstructive, even if not otherwise painful, bonds? Did he not feel twice as much alive, twice as much a human being, as before? And does he imagine that women have none of these feelings? But it is a striking fact, that the satisfactions and mortifications of personal pride, though all in all to most men when the case is their own, have less allowance made for them in the case of other people, and are less listened to as a ground or a justification of conduct, than any other natural human feelings; perhaps because men compliment them in their own case with the names of so many other qualities, that they are seldom conscious how mighty an influence these feelings exercise in their own lives. No less large and powerful is their part, we may assure ourselves, in the lives and feelings of women. Women are schooled into suppressing them in their most natural and most healthy direction, but the internal principle remains, in a different outward form. An active and energetic mind, if denied liberty, will seek for power: refused the command of itself, it will assert its personality by attempting to control others. To allow to any human beings no existence of their own but what depends on others, is giving far too high a premium on bending others to their purposes. Where liberty cannot be hoped for and power can, power becomes the grand object of human desire; those to whom others will not leave the undisturbed management of their own affairs, will compensate themselves, if they can, by meddling for their own purposes with the affairs of others. Hence also women’s passion for personal beauty, and dress and display; and all the evils that flow from it, in the way of mischievous luxury and social immorality. The love of power and the love of liberty are in eternal antagonism. Where there is least liberty, the passion for power is the most ardent and unscrupulous. The desire of power over others can only cease to be a depraving agency among mankind, when each of them individually is able to do without it: which can only be where respect for liberty in the personal concerns of each is an established principle.

  But it is not only through the sentiment of personal dignity, that the free direction and disposal of their own faculties is a source of individual happiness, and to be fettered and restricted in it, a source of unhappiness, to human beings, and not least to women. There is nothing, after disease, indigence, and guilt, so fatal to the pleasurable enjoyment of life as the want of a worthy outlet for the active faculties. Women who have the cares of a family, and while they have the cares of a family, have this outlet, and it generally suffices for them: but what of the greatly increasing number of women, who have had no opportunity of exercising the vocation which they are mocked by telling them is their proper one? What of the women whose children have been lost to them by death or distance, or have grown up, married, and formed homes of their own? There are abundant examples of men who, after a life engrossed by business, retire with a competency to the enjoyment, as they hope, of rest, but to whom, as they are unable to acquire new interests and excitements that can replace the old, the change to a life of inactivity brings ennui, melancholy, and premature death. Yet no one thinks of the parallel case of so many worthy and devoted women, who, having paid what they are told is their debt to society—having brought up a family blamelessly to manhood and womanhood—having kept a house as long as they had a house needing to be kept—are deserted by the sole occupation for which they have fitted themselves; and remain with undiminished activity but with no employment for it, unless perhaps a daughter or daughter-in-law is willing to abdicate in their favour the discharge of the same functions in her younger household. Surely a hard lot for the old age of those who have worthily discharged, as long as it was given to them to discharge, what the world accounts their only social duty. Of such women, and of those others to whom this duty has not been committed at all—many of whom pine through life with the consciousness of thwarted vocations, and activities which are not suffered to expand—the only resources, speaking generally, are religion and charity. But their religion, though it may be one of feeling, and of ceremonial observance, cannot be a religion of action, unless in the form of charity. For charity many of them are by nature admirably fitted; but to practise it usefully, or even without doing mischief, requires the education, the manifold preparation, the knowledge and the thinking powers, of a skilful administrator. There are few of the administrative functions of government for which a person would not be fit, who is fit to bestow charity usefully. In this as in other cases (pre-eminently in that of the education of children), the duties permitted to women cannot be performed properly, without their being trained for duties which, to the great loss of society, are not permitted to them. And here let me notice the singular way in which the question of women’s disabilities is frequently presented to view, by those who find it easier to draw a ludicrous picture of what they do not like, than to answer the arguments for it. When it is suggested that women’s executive capacities and prudent counsels might sometimes be found valuable in affairs of state, these lovers of fun hold up to the ridicule of the world, as sitting in parliament or in the cabinet, girls in their teens, or young wives of two or three and twenty, transported bodily, exactly as they are, from the drawing-room to the House of Commons. They forget that males are not usually selected at this early age for a seat in Parliament, or for responsible political functions. Common sense would tell them that if such trusts were confided to women, it would be to such as having no special vocation for married life, or preferring another employment of their faculties (as many women even now prefer to marriage some of the few honourable occupations within their reach), have spent the best years of their youth in attempting to qualify themselves for the pursuits in which they desire to engage; or still more frequently perhaps, widows or wives of forty or fifty, by whom the knowledge of life and faculty of government which they have acquired in their families, could by the aid of appropriate studies be made available on a less contracted scale. There is no country of Europe in which the ablest men have not frequently experienced, and keenly appreciated, the value of the advice and help of clever and experienced women of the world, in the attainment both of private and of public objects; and there are important matters of public administration to which few men are equally competent with such women; among others, the detailed control of expenditure. But what we are now discussing is not the need which society has of the services of women in public business, but the dull and hopeless life to which it so often condemns them, by forbidding them to exercise the practical abilities which many of them are conscious of, in any wider field than one which to some of them never was, and to others is no longer, open. If there is anything vitally important to the happiness of human beings, it is that they should relish their habitual pursuit. This requisite of an enjoyable life is very imperfectly granted, or altogether denied, to a large part of mankind; and by its absence many a life is a failure, which is provided, in appearance, with every requisite of success. But if circumstances which society is not yet skilful enough to overcome, render such failures often for the present inevitable, society need not itself inflict them. The injudiciousness of parents, a youth’s own inexperience, or the absence of external opportunities for the congenial vocation, and their presence for an uncongenial, condemn numbers of men to pass their lives in doing one thing reluctantly and ill, when there are other things which they could have done well and happily. But on women this sentence is imposed by actual law, and by customs equivalent to law. What, in unenlightened societies, colour, race, religion, or in the case of a conquered country, nationality, are to some men, sex is to all women; a peremptory exclusion from almost all honourable occupations, but either such as cannot be fulfilled by others, or such as those others do not think worthy of their acceptance. Sufferings arising from causes of this nature usually meet with so little sympathy, that few persons are aware of the great amount of unhappiness even now produced by the feeling of a wasted life. The case will be even more frequent, as increased cultivation creates a greater and greater disproportion between the ideas and faculties of women, and the scope which society allows to their activity.

  When we consider the positive evil caused to the disqualified half of the human race by their disqualification—first in the loss of the most inspiriting and elevating kind of personal enjoyment, and next in the weariness, disappointment, and profound dissatisfaction with life, which are so often the substitute for it; one feels that among all the lessons which men require for carrying on the struggle against the inevitable imperfections of their lot on earth, there is no lesson which they more need, than not to add to the evils which nature inflicts, by their jealous and prejudiced restrictions on one another. Their vain fears only substitute other and worse evils for those which they are idly apprehensive of: while every restraint on the freedom of conduct of any of their human fellow creatures, (otherwise than by making them responsible for any evil actually caused by it), dries up pro tanto the principal fountain of human happiness, and leaves the species less rich, to an inappreciable degree, in all that makes life valuable to the individual human being.

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  [* ]These words had scarcely been written, when, as if to give them an emphatic contradiction, occurred the Government Press Prosecutions of 1858. That ill-judged interference with the liberty of public discussion has not, however, induced me to alter a single word in the text, nor has it at all weakened my conviction that, moments of panic excepted, the era of pains and penalties for political discussion has, in our own country, passed away. For, in the first place, the prosecutions were not persisted in; and, in the second, they were never, properly speaking, political prosecutions. The offence charged was not that of criticizing institutions, or the acts or persons of rulers, but of circulating what was deemed an immoral doctrine, the lawfulness of Tyrannicide.
  
  If the arguments of the present chapter are of any validity, there ought to exist the fullest liberty of professing and discussing, as a matter of ethical conviction, any doctrine, however immoral it may be considered. It would, therefore, be irrelevant and out of place to examine here, whether the doctrine of Tyrannicide deserves that title. I shall content myself with saying, that the subject has been at all times one of the open questions of morals; that the act of a private citizen in striking down a criminal, who, by raising himself above the law, has placed himself beyond the reach of legal punishment or control, has been accounted by whole nations, and by some of the best and wisest of men, not a crime, but an act of exalted virtue; and that, right or wrong, it is not of the nature of assassination, but of civil war. As such, I hold that the instigation to it, in a specific case, may be a proper subject of punishment, but only if an overt act has followed, and at least a probable connection can be established between the act and the instigation. Even then, it is not a foreign government, but the very government assailed, which alone, in the exercise of self-defence, can legitimately punish attacks directed against its own existence.

  [* ]Thomas Pooley, Bodmin Assizes, July 31, 1857. In December following, he received a free pardon from the Crown.

  [† ]George Jacob Holyoake, August 17, 1857; Edward Truelove, July, 1857.

  [‡ ]Baron de Gleichen, Marlborough Street Police Court, August 4, 1857.

  [* ]Ample warning may be drawn from the large infusion of the passions of a persecutor, which mingled with the general display of the worst parts of our national character on the occasion of the Sepoy insurrection. The ravings of fanatics or charlatans from the pulpit may be unworthy of notice; but the heads of the Evangelical party have announced as their principle, for the government of Hindoos and Mahomedans, that no schools be supported by public money in which the Bible is not taught, and by necessary consequence that no public employment be given to any but real or pretended Christians. An Under-Secretary of State, in a speech delivered to his constituents on the 12th of November, 1857, is reported to have said: “Toleration of their faith” (the faith of a hundred millions of British subjects), “the superstition which they called religion, by the British Government, had had the effect of retarding the ascendency of the British name, and preventing the salutary growth of Christianity. . . . Toleration was the great corner-stone of the religious liberties of this country; but do not let them abuse that precious word toleration. As he understood it, it meant the complete liberty to all, freedom of worship, among Christians, who worshipped upon the same foundation. It meant toleration of all sects and denominations of Christians who believed in the one mediation.” I desire to call attention to the fact, that a man who has been deemed fit to fill a high office in the government of this country, under a liberal Ministry, maintains the doctrine that all who do not believe in the divinity of Christ are beyond the pale of toleration. Who, after this imbecile display can indulge the illusion that religious persecution has passed away never to return?

  [* ]The Sphere and Duties of Government, from the German of Baron Wilhelm von Humboldt, pp. 11-13.

  [* ]Sterling’s Essays.

  [* ]There is something both contemptible and frightful in the sort of evidence on which, of late years, any person can be judicially declared unfit for the management of his affairs; and after his death, his disposal of his property can be set aside, if there is enough of it to pay the expenses of litigation — which are charged on the property itself. All the minute details of his daily life are pried into, and whatever is found which, seen through the medium of the perceiving and describing faculties of the lowest of the low, bears an appearance unlike absolute commonplace, is laid before the jury as evidence of insanity, and often with success; the jurors being little, if at all, less vulgar and ignorant than the witnesses; while the judges, with that extraordinary want of knowledge of human nature and life which continually astonishes us in English lawyers, often help to mislead them. These trials speak volumes as to the state of feeling and opinion among the vulgar with regard to human liberty. So far from setting any value on individuality — so far from respecting the rights of each individual to act, in things indifferent, as seems good to his own judgment and inclinations, judges and juries cannot even conceive that a person in a state of sanity can desire such freedom. In former days, when it was proposed to burn atheists, charitable people used to suggest putting them in a madhouse instead: it would be nothing surprising now-a-days were we to see this done, and the doers applauding themselves, because, instead of persecuting for religion, they had adopted so humane and Christian a mode of treating these unfortunates, not without a silent satisfaction at their having thereby obtained their deserts.

  [* ]The case of the Bombay Parsees is a curious instance in point. When this industrious and enterprising tribe, the descendants of the Persian fire-worshippers, flying from their native country before the Caliphs, arrived in Western India, they were admitted to toleration by the Hindoo sovereigns, on condition of not eating beef. When those regions afterwards fell under the dominion of Mahomedan conquerors, the Parsees obtained from them a continuance of indulgence, on condition of refraining from pork. What was at first obedience to authority became a second nature, and the Parsees to this day abstain both from beef and pork. Though not required by their religion, the double abstinence has had time to grow into a custom of their tribe; and custom, in the East, is a religion.

  [* ]Title-page of Mme. de Stael’s “Delphine.”

  [* ]Especially is this true if we take into consideration Asia as well as Europe. If a Hindoo principality is strongly, vigilantly, and economically governed; if order is preserved without oppression; if cultivation is extending, and the people prosperous, in three cases out of four that principality is under a woman’s rule. This fact, to me an entirely unexpected one, I have collected from a long official knowledge of Hindoo governments. There are many such instances: for though, by Hindoo institutions, a woman cannot reign, she is the legal regent of a kingdom during the minority of the heir; and minorities are frequent, the lives of the male rulers being so often prematurely terminated through the effect of inactivity and sensual excesses. When we consider that these princesses have never been seen in public, have never conversed with any man not of their own family except from behind a curtain, that they do not read, and if they did, there is no book in their languages which can give them the smallest instruction on political affairs; the example they afford of the natural capacity of women for government is very striking.

  [* ]“It appears to be the same right turn of mind which enables a man to acquire the truth, or the just idea of what is right, in the ornaments, as in the more stable principles of art. It has still the same centre of perfection, though it is the centre of a smaller circle.—To illustrate this by the fashion of dress, in which there is allowed to be a good or bad taste. The component parts of dress are continually changing from great to little, from short to long; but the general form still remains: it is still the same general dress which is comparatively fixed, though on a very slender foundation; but it is on this which fashion must rest. He who invents with the most success, or dresses in the best taste, would probably, from the same sagacity employed to greater purposes, have discovered equal skill, or have formed the same correct taste, in the highest labours of art.”—Sir Joshua Reynolds’ Discourses, Disc. vii.

• Back to Top

  7: 7. Ludwig von Mises, Socialism: An Economic and Sociological Analysis [1922]

  

  I came across this book for the first time while browsing in a left wing bookshop in a rather shabby part of downtown Sydney in the mid-1970s. I’m not sure why it was on their shelves. Perhaps they thought it was a defence of socialism. I knew who Mises was and that he was a vigorous opponent of socialism, but what I didn’t know was what a devastating critique of central planning and all forms of socialist economic intervention this book would turn out to be. One needs to read the new intellectual biography of Mises by Guido Jorg Hulsmann Mises: The Last Knight of Liberalism (2007) to fully appreciate how hard it was for him to write this book in the aftermath of World War I.

  In Chapter 6 on “Economic Calculation in the Socialist Community” he develops his crushing arguments which destroy the very foundation of socialism in any large, organised community:

  The theory of economic calculation shows that in the socialistic community economic calculation would be impossible… The problem of economic calculation is the fundamental problem of Socialism. That for decades people could write and talk about Socialism without touching this problem only shows how devastating were the effects of the Marxian prohibition on scientific scrutiny of the nature and working of a socialist economy.

  To prove that economic calculation would be impossible in the socialist community is to prove also that Socialism is impracticable. Everything brought forward in favour of Socialism during the last hundred years, in thousands of writings and speeches, all the blood which has been spilt by the supporters of Socialism, cannot make socialism workable. The masses may long for it ever so ardently, innumerable revolutions and wars may be fought for it, still it will never be realised. Every attempt to carry it out will lead to syndicalism or, by some other route, to chaos, which will quickly dissolve the society, based upon the division of labour, into tiny autarkous groups.

  Ludwig von Mises, Socialism: An Economic and Sociological Analysis, trans. J. Kahane, Foreword by F.A. Hayek (Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, 1981).

  Accessed from oll.libertyfund.org/title/1060 on 2008-01-29

  The copyright to this edition, in both print and electronic forms, is held by Liberty Fund, Inc.

  ---

  PUBLISHER’S PREFACE TO THE Liberty Fund EDITION

  Socialism, by Ludwig von Mises, was originally published in German under the title Die Gemeinwirtschaft: Untersuchungen über den Sozialismus (Jena: Gustav Fischer, 1922). A few paragraphs and the appendix were added to the second German edition, published by the same firm in 1932, and a few more paragraphs were included in the first English translation—Socialism: An Economic and Sociological Analysis, translated by J. Kahane (London: Jonathan Cape, 1936).

  An enlarged edition of the Kahane translation was published in 1951 (New Haven: Yale University Press). This edition included an epilogue originally published (and still available) under the title Planned Chaos (Irvington, New York: Foundation for Economic Education, 1947). This enlarged edition was reprinted by Jonathan Cape (London) in 1969, and is here reprinted again, in 1981, by Liberty Fund (Indianapolis).

  This edition leaves the text as translated by Kahane in 1936 and added to by Mises in 1951 undisturbed. The present publisher has, however, undertaken to add certain features to aid the contemporary reader. Translations have been provided for all non-English expressions left untranslated in the Jonathan Cape edition. These translations appear in parentheses after the expressions or passages in question. Chapters have been numbered consecutively throughout the book.

  All footnotes have been checked against the second German edition. When works in languages other than English are cited by Mises, information concerning versions in English has been provided when such versions could be located. The corresponding page references in the English versions are also provided insofar as location of these was possible. Complete information concerning the English version is provided at the first citation of a given work. Only the page references in the English are provided in later citations, but full information is easily located in the Index to Works Cited. All bibliographical information added to the footnotes is clearly labeled as a publisher’s note.

  Having been written in 1922 in Austria and ranging over many fields of learning, Socialism contains a number of references to individuals and events with which many readers will not be familiar. Brief explanations of such references are provided by asterisked footnotes printed below Mises’ notes and clearly labeled as being added by the publisher. Such notes also offer explanations quoted from Mises of his special use of a few English terms.

  In order to facilitate study of the book, two new indexes have been provided. An Index to Works Cited lists all books and authors cited in Socialism. This index also provides English versions of works cited by Mises in German. In cases where no English version has been found, a literal translation of the title has been provided. A general Subject and Name Index is also provided.

  Socialism has been available in English for more than forty years and references to it abound in the scholarly literature. Since Liberty Fund editions are set in new type, the pagination of this new edition differs from the earlier ones. We have, therefore, indicated the pagination of the expanded edition of 1951 in the margins of the Liberty Fund edition.

  The pagination of all previous English language editions was the same from pages 15 through 521. In the enlarged edition of 1951, a Preface was added as pages 13-14, and the Epilogue was added as pages 522-592. By placing the pagination of the 1951 edition in the margins of our edition, we provide a guide to the location of citations of all earlier English editions.

  The publisher wishes to acknowledge with thanks the aid of several persons who helped with this edition. The many aids to study and understanding offered in this edition are due primarily to the work of Bettina Bien Greaves of the Foundation for Economic Education. She performed the monumental task of checking the footnotes against the second German edition. She also undertook the equally difficult task of providing most of the citations to English language versions of works cited in German. She provided most of the material for the asterisked explanations of unfamiliar references. She also did most of the work of preparing the new indexes. If this edition is more easily studied by contemporary readers, most of the credit should go to Mrs. Greaves.

  For aid with translations from Greek, the publisher acknowledges the help of Professors Perry E. Gresham and Burton Thurston of Bethany College. For help with Latin translations, Professor Gresham must be acknowledged again along with Father Laut of Wheeling College. Percy L. Greaves, Jr., of Dobbs Ferry, New York, provided translations from French. Professor H. D. Brueckner of Pomona College provided aid with locating translations and citations of Kant.

  FOREWORD

  By F. A. Hayek

  Not currently available.

  PREFACE TO THE SECOND ENGLISH EDITION

  The world is split today into two hostile camps, fighting each other with the utmost vehemence, Communists and anti-Communists. The magniloquent rhetoric to which these factions resort in their feud obscures the fact that they both perfectly agree in the ultimate end of their programme for mankind’s social and economic organization. They both aim at the abolition of private enterprise and private ownership of the means of production and at the establishment of socialism. They want to substitute totalitarian government control for the market economy. No longer should individuals by their buying or abstention from buying determine what is to be produced and in what quantity and quality. Henceforth the government’s unique plan alone should settle all these matters. ’Paternal’ care of the ’Welfare State’ will reduce all people to the status of bonded workers bound to comply, without asking questions, with the orders issued by the planning authority.

  Neither is there any substantial difference between the intentions of the self-styled ’progressives’ and those of the Italian Fascists and the German Nazis. The Fascists and the Nazis were no less eager to establish all-round regimentation of all economic activities than those governments and parties which flamboyantly advertise their anti-Fascist tenets. And Mr. Peron in Argentina tries to enforce a scheme which is a replica of the New Deal and the Fair Deal and like these will, if not stopped in time, result in full socialism.

  The great ideological conflict of our age must not be confused with the mutual rivalries among the various totalitarian movements. The real issue is not who should run the totalitarian apparatus. The real problem is whether or not socialism should supplant the market economy.

  It is this subject with which my book deals.

  World conditions have changed considerably since the first edition of my essay was published. But all these disastrous wars and revolutions, heinous mass murders and frightful catastrophes have not affected the main issue: the desperate struggle of lovers of freedom, prosperity and civilization against the rising tide of totalitarian barbarism.

  In the Epilogue I deal with the most important aspects of the events of the last decades. A more detailed study of all the problems involved is to be found in three books of mine published by the Yale University Press:

  Omnipotent Government, the Rise of the Total State and Total War;8

  Bureaucracy;9

  Human Action, a Treatise on Economics.10

  LUDWIG VON MISES

  • New York,

  July 1950

  TRANSLATOR’S NOTE

  The following work is translated from the second German edition (published 1932) of the author’s Die Gemeinwirtschaft (originally published in 1922). The author, who has lent assistance at every stage, has inserted certain additions, notably on the problem of economic calculation and on unemployment (pp. 137 ff., 485 ff.), which are not to be found in the German edition, and certain changes have been made in terminology to meet the convenience of English readers.

  PREFACE TO THE SECOND GERMAN EDITION

  It is a matter of dispute whether, prior to the middle of the nineteenth 15 century, there existed any clear conception of the socialist idea—by which is understood the socialization of the means of production with its corollary, the centralized control of the whole of production by one social or, more accurately, state organ. The answer depends primarily upon whether we regard the demand for a centralized administration of the means of production throughout the world as an essential feature in a considered socialist plan. The older socialists looked upon the autarky of small territories as ’natural’ and on any exchange of goods beyond their frontiers as at once ’artificial’ and harmful. Only after the English Free-Traders had proved the advantages of an international division of labour, and popularized their views through the Cobden movement, did the socialists begin to expand the ideas of village and district Socialism into a national and, eventually, a world Socialism. Apart from this one point, however, the basic conception of Socialism had been quite clearly worked out in the course of the second quarter of the nineteenth century by those writers designated by Marxism as “Utopian Socialists.” Schemes for a socialist order of society were extensively discussed at that time, but the discussion did not go in their favour. The Utopians had not succeeded in planning social structures that would withstand the criticisms of economists and sociologists. It was easy to pick holes in their schemes; to prove that a society constructed on such principles must lack efficiency and vitality, and that it certainly would not come up to expectations. Thus, about the middle of the nineteenth century, it seemed that the ideal of Socialism had been disposed of. Science had demonstrated its worthlessness by means of strict logic and its supporters were unable to produce a single effective counter-argument.

  It was at this moment that Marx appeared. Adept as he was in Hegelian dialectic—a system easy of abuse by those who seek to dominate thought by arbitrary flights of fancy and metaphysical verbosity—he was not slow in finding a way out of the dilemma in which socialists found themselves. Since Science and Logic had argued against Socialism, it was imperative to devise a system which could be relied on to defend it against such unpalatable criticism. This was the task which Marxism undertook to perform. It had three lines of procedure. First, it denied that Logic is universally valid for all mankind and for all ages. Thought, it stated, was determined by the class of the thinkers; was in fact an “ideological superstructure” of their class interests. The type of reasoning which had refuted the socialist idea was “revealed” as “bourgeois” reasoning, an apology for Capitalism. Secondly, it laid it down that the dialectical development led of necessity to Socialism; that the aim and end of all history was the socialization of the means of production by the expropriation of the expropriators—the negation of negation. Finally, it was ruled that no one should be allowed to put forward, as the Utopians had done, any definite proposals for the construction of the Socialist Promised Land. Since the coming of Socialism was inevitable, Science would best renounce all attempt to determine its nature.

  At no point in history has a doctrine found such immediate and complete acceptance as that contained in these three principles of Marxism. The magnitude and persistence of its success is commonly underestimated. This is due to the habit of applying the term Marxist exclusively to formal members of one or other of the self-styled Marxist parties, who are pledged to uphold word for word the doctrines of Marx and Engels as interpreted by their respective sects and to regard such doctrines as the unshakable foundation and ultimate source of all that is known about Society and as constituting the highest standard in political dealings. But if we include under the term “Marxist” all who have accepted the basic Marxian principles—that class conditions thought, that Socialism is inevitable, and that research into the being and working of the socialist community is unscientific—we shall find very few non-Marxists in Europe east of the Rhine, and even in Western Europe and the United States many more supporters than opponents of Marxism. Professed Christians attack the materialism of Marxists, monarchists their republicanism, nationalists their internationalism; yet they themselves, each in turn, wish to be known as Christian Socialists, State Socialists, National Socialists. They assert that their particular brand of Socialism is the only true one—that which “shall” come, bringing with it happiness and contentment. The Socialism of others, they say, has not the genuine class origin of their own. At the same time they scrupulously respect Marx’s prohibition of any inquiry into the institutions of the socialist economy of the future, and try to interpret the working of the present economic system as a development leading to Socialism in accordance with the inexorable demand of the historical process. Of course, not Marxists alone, but most of those who emphatically declare themselves anti-Marxists, think entirely on Marxist lines and have adopted Marx’s arbitrary, unconfirmed and easily refutable dogmas. If and when they come into power, they govern and work entirely in the socialist spirit.

  The incomparable success of Marxism is due to the prospect it offers of fulfilling those dream-aspirations and dreams of vengeance which have been so deeply embedded in the human soul from time immemorial. It promises a Paradise on earth, a Land of Heart’s Desire full of happiness and enjoyment, and—sweeter still to the losers in life’s game—humiliation of all who are stronger and better than the multitude. Logic and reasoning, which might show the absurdity of such dreams of bliss and revenge, are to be thrust aside. Marxism is thus the most radical of all reactions against the reign of scientific thought over life and action, established by Rationalism. It is against Logic, against Science and against the activity of thought itself—its outstanding principle is the prohibition of thought and inquiry, especially as applied to the institutions and workings of a socialist economy. It is characteristic that it should adopt the name “Scientific Socialism” and thus gain the prestige acquired by Science, through the indisputable success of its rule over life and action, for use in its own battle against any scientific contribution to the construction of the socialist economy. The Bolshevists persistently tell us that religion is opium for the people. Marxism is indeed opium for those who might take to thinking and must therefore be weaned from it.

  In this new edition of my book, which has been considerably revised, I have ventured to defy the almost universally respected Marxian prohibition by examining the problems of the socialist construction of society on scientific lines, i.e., by the aid of sociological and economic theory. While gratefully recalling the men whose research has opened the way for all work, my own included, in this field, it is still a source of gratification to me to be in a position to claim to have broken the ban placed by Marxism on the scientific treatment of these problems. Since the first publication of this book, problems previously ignored have come into the foreground of scientific interest; the discussion of Socialism and Capitalism has been placed on a new footing. Those who were formerly content to make a few vague remarks about the blessings which Socialism would bring are now obliged to study the nature of the socialist society. The problems have been defined and can no longer be ignored.

  As might be expected, socialists of every sort and description, from the most radical Soviet Bolshevists to the “Edelsozialisten”11 of western civilization, have attempted to refute my reasonings and conclusions. But they have not succeeded, they have not even managed to bring forward any argument that I had not already discussed and disproved. At the present time, scientific discussion of the basic problems of Socialism follows the line of the investigation of this book.

  The arguments by which I demonstrated that, in a socialist community, economic calculation would not be possible have attracted especially wide notice. Two years before the appearance of the first edition of my book I published this section of my investigations in the Archiv für Sozialwissenschaft (Vol. XLVII, No. I),12 where it is worded almost exactly as in both editions of the present work. The problem, which had scarcely been touched before, at once roused lively discussion in German-speaking countries and abroad. It may truly be said that the discussion is now closed; there is today hardly any opposition to my contention.

  Shortly after the first edition appeared, Heinrich Herkner, chief of the Socialists of the Chair (“Kathedersozialisten”) in succession to Gustav Schmoller, published an essay which in all essentials supported my criticism of Socialism.13 His remarks raised quite a storm amongst German socialists and their literary followings. Thus there arose, in the midst of the catastrophic struggle in the Ruhr and the hyper-inflation, a controversy which speedily became known as the crisis of the “Social Reform Policy.” The result of the controversy was indeed meagre. The “sterility” of socialist thought, to which an ardent socialist had drawn attention, was especially apparent on this occasion.14 Of the good results that can be obtained by an unprejudiced scientific study of the problems of Socialism there is proof in the admirable works of Pohle, Adolf Weber, Röpke, Halm, Sulzbach, Brutzkus, Robbins, Hutt, Withers, Benn, and others.

  But scientific inquiry into the problems of Socialism is not enough. We must also break down the wall of prejudice which at present blocks the way to an unbiased scrutiny of these problems. Any advocate of socialistic measures is looked upon as the friend of the Good, the Noble, and the Moral, as a disinterested pioneer of necessary reforms, in short, as a man who unselfishly serves his own people and all humanity, and above all as a zealous and courageous seeker after truth. But let anyone measure Socialism by the standards of scientific reasoning, and he at once becomes a champion of the evil principle, a mercenary serving the egotistical interests of a class, a menace to the welfare of the community, an ignoramus outside the pale. For the most curious thing about this way of thinking is that it regards the question, whether Socialism or Capitalism will better serve the public welfare, as settled in advance—to the effect, naturally, that Socialism is considered as good and Capitalism as evil—whereas in fact of course only by a scientific inquiry could the matter be decided. The results of economic investigations are met, not with arguments, but with that “moral pathos,” which we find in the invitation to the Eisenach Congress15 in 1872 and on which Socialists and Etatists always fall back, because they can find no answer to the criticism to which science subjects their doctrines.

  The older Liberalism, based on the classical political economy, maintained that the material position of the whole of the wage-earning classes could only be permanently raised by an increase of capital, and this none but capitalist society based on private ownership of the means of production can guarantee to find. Modern subjective economics has strengthened and confirmed the basis of the view by its theory of wages. Here modern Liberalism agrees entirely with the older school. Socialism, however, believes that the socialization of the means of production is a system which would bring wealth to all. These conflicting views must be examined in the light of sober science: righteous indignation and jeremiads take us nowhere.

  It is true that Socialism is today an article of faith for many, perhaps for most of its adherents. But scientific criticism has no nobler task than to shatter false beliefs.

  To protect the socialist ideal from the crushing effects of such criticism, attempts have recently been made to improve upon the accepted definition of the concept “Socialism.” My own definition of Socialism, as a policy which aims at constructing a society in which the means of production are socialized, is in agreement with all that scientists have written on the subject. I submit that one must be historically blind not to see that this and nothing else is what has stood for Socialism for the past hundred years, and that it is in this sense that the great socialist movement was and is socialistic. But why quarrel over the wording of it! If anyone likes to call a social ideal which retains private ownership in the means of production socialistic, why, let him! A man may call a cat a dog and the sun the moon if it pleases him. But such a reversal of the usual terminology, which everyone understands, does no good and only creates misunderstandings. The problem which here confronts us is the socialization of ownership in the means of production, i.e. the very problem over which a worldwide and bitter struggle has been waged now for a century, the problem κατ έξοχήν (above all others) of our epoch.

  One cannot evade this defining of Socialism by asserting that the concept Socialism includes other things besides the socialization of the means of production: by saying, for example, that we are actuated by certain special motives when we are socialists, or that there is a second aim—perhaps a purely religious concept bound up with it. Supporters of Socialism hold that the only brand worthy the name is that which desires socialization of the means of production for “noble” motives. Others, who pass for opponents of Socialism, will have it that nationalization of the means of production desired from “ignoble” motives only, has to be styled Socialism also. Religious socialists say that genuine Socialism is bound up with religion; the atheistical socialist insists on abolishing God along with private property. But the problem of how a socialistic society could function is quite separate from the question of whether its adherents propose to worship God or not and whether or not they are guided by motives which Mr. X from his private point of view would call noble or ignoble. Each group of the great socialist movement claims its own as the only true brand and regards the others as heretical; and naturally tries to stress the difference between its own particular ideal and those of other parties. I venture to claim that in the course of my researches I have brought forward all that need be said about these claims.

  In this emphasizing of the peculiarities of particular socialist tendencies, the bearing which they may have on the aims of democracy and dictatorship obviously plays a significant part. Here, too, I have nothing to add to what I have said on the subject in various parts of this book (Chapter 3, Chapter 15, and Chapter 31). It suffices here to say that the planned economy which the advocates of dictatorship wish to set up is precisely as socialistic as the Socialism propagated by the self-styled Social Democrats.

  Capitalist society is the realization of what we should call economic democracy, had not the term—according I believe, to the terminology of Lord Passfield and Mrs. Webb—come into use and been applied exclusively to a system in which the workers, as producers, and not the consumers themselves, would decide what was to be produced and how. This state of affairs would be as little democratic as, say, a political constitution under which the government officials and not the whole people decided how the state was to be governed—surely the opposite of what we are accustomed to call democracy. When we call a capitalist society a consumers’ democracy we mean that the power to dispose of the means of production, which belongs to the entrepreneurs and capitalists, can only be acquired by means of the consumers’ ballot, held daily in the market-place. Every child who prefers one toy to another puts its voting paper in the ballot-box, which eventually decides who shall be elected captain of industry. True, there is no equality of vote in this democracy; some have plural votes. But the greater voting power which the disposal of a greater income implies can only be acquired and maintained by the test of election. That the consumption of the rich weighs more heavily in the balance than the consumption of the poor—though there is a strong tendency to overestimate considerably the amount consumed by the well-to-do classes in proportion to the consumption of the masses—is in itself an ’election result’, since in a capitalist society wealth can be acquired and maintained only by a response corresponding to the consumers’ requirements. Thus the wealth of successful business men is always the result of a consumers’ plebiscite, and, once acquired, this wealth can be retained only if it is employed in the way regarded by consumers as most beneficial to them. The average man is both better informed and less corruptible in the decisions he makes as a consumer than as a voter at political elections. There are said to be voters who, faced with a decision between Free Trade and Protection, the Gold Standard and Inflation, are unable to keep in view all that their decision implies. The buyer who has to choose between different sorts of beer or makes of chocolate has certainly an easier job of it.

  The socialist movement takes great pains to circulate frequently new labels for its ideally constructed state. Each worn-out label is replaced by another which raises hopes of an ultimate solution of the insoluble basic problem of Socialism—until it becomes obvious that nothing has been changed but the name. The most recent slogan is “State Capitalism.” It is not commonly realized that this covers nothing more than what used to be called Planned Economy and State Socialism, and that State Capitalism, Planned Economy, and State Socialism diverge only in non-essentials from the “classic” ideal of egalitarian Socialism. The criticisms in this book are aimed impartially at all the conceivable forms of the socialistic community.

  Only Syndicalism, which differs fundamentally from Socialism, calls for special treatment (Chapter 16, Section 4).

  I hope that these remarks will convince even the cursory and superficial reader that my investigation and criticisms do not apply solely to Marxian Socialism. As, however, all socialistic movements have been strongly stimulated by Marxism I devote more space to Marxian views than to those of other varieties of Socialism. I think I have passed in review everything bearing essentially on these problems and made an exhausting criticism of the characteristic features of non-Marxist programmes too.

  My book is a scientific inquiry, not a political polemic. I have analysed the basic problems and passed over, as far as possible, all the economic and political struggles of the day and the political adjustments of governments and parties. And this will, I believe, prove the best way of preparing the foundation of an understanding of the politics of the last few decades and years: above all, of the politics of tomorrow. Only a complete critical study of the ideas of Socialism will enable us to understand what is happening around us.

  The habit of talking and writing about economic affairs without having probed relentlessly to the bottom of their problems has taken the zest out of public discussions on questions vital to human society and diverted politics into paths that lead directly to the destruction of all civilization. The proscription of economic theory, which began with the German historical school, and today finds expression notably in American Institutionalism, has demolished the authority of qualified thought on these matters. Our contemporaries consider that anything which comes under the heading of Economics and Sociology is fair game to the unqualified critic. It is assumed that the trade union official and the entrepreneur are qualified by virtue of their office alone to decide questions of political economy. “Practical men” of this order, even those whose activities have, notoriously, often led to failure and bankruptcy, enjoy a spurious prestige as economists which should at all costs be destroyed. On no account must a disposition to avoid sharp words be permitted to lead to a compromise. It is time these amateurs were unmasked.

  The solution of every one of the many economic questions of the day requires a process of thought, of which only those who comprehend the general interconnection of economic phenomena are capable. Only theoretical inquiries which get to the bottom of things have any real practical value. Dissertations on current questions which lose themselves in detail are useless, for they are too much absorbed in the particular and the accidental to have eyes for the general and the essential.

  It is often said that all scientific inquiry concerning Socialism is useless, because none but the comparatively small number of people who are able to follow scientific trains of thought can understand it. For the masses, it is said, they will always remain incomprehensible. To the masses the catchwords of Socialism sound enticing and the people impetuously desire Socialism because in their infatuation they expect it to bring full salvation and satisfy their longing for revenge. And so they will continue to work for Socialism, helping thereby to bring about the inevitable decline of the civilization which the nations of the West have taken thousands of years to build up. And so we must inevitably drift on to chaos and misery, the darkness of barbarism and annihilation.

  I do not share this gloomy view. It may happen thus, but it need not happen thus. It is true that the majority of mankind are not able to follow difficult trains of thought, and that no schooling will help those who can hardly grasp the most simple proposition to understand complicated ones. But just because they cannot think for themselves the masses follow the lead of the people we call educated. Once convince these, and the game is won. But I do not want to repeat here what I have already said in the first edition of this book, at the end of the last chapter.16

  I know only too well how hopeless it seems to convince impassioned supporters of the Socialist Idea by logical demonstration that their views are preposterous and absurd. I know too well that they do not want to hear, to see, or above all to think, and that they are open to no argument. But new generations grow up with clear eyes and open minds. And they will approach things from a disinterested, unprejudiced standpoint, they will weigh and examine, will think and act with forethought. It is for them that this book is written.

  Several generations of economic policy which was nearly liberal have enormously increased the wealth of the world. Capitalism has raised the standard of life among the masses to a level which our ancestors could not have imagined. Interventionism and efforts to introduce Socialism have been working now for some decades to shatter the foundations of the world economic system. We stand on the brink of a precipice which threatens to engulf our civilization. Whether civilized humanity will perish forever or whether the catastrophe will be averted at the eleventh hour and the only possible way of salvation retraced—by which we mean the rebuilding of a society based on the unreserved recognition of private property in the means of production—is a question which concerns the generation destined to act in the coming decades, for it is the ideas behind their actions that will decide it.

  • Vienna,

  January 1932

  INTRODUCTION

  1

  The Success of Socialist Ideas

  Socialism is the watchword and the catchword of our day. The socialist idea dominates the modem spirit. The masses approve of it. It expresses the thoughts and feelings of all; it has set its seal upon our time. When history comes to tell our story it will write above the chapter “The Epoch of Socialism.”

  As yet, it is true, Socialism has not created a society which can be said to represent its ideal. But for more than a generation the policies of civilized nations have been directed towards nothing less than a gradual realization of Socialism.17 In recent years the movement has grown noticeably in vigour and tenacity. Some nations have sought to achieve Socialism, in its fullest sense, at a single stroke. Before our eyes Russian Bolshevism has already accomplished something which, whatever we believe to be its significance, must by the very magnitude of its design be regarded as one of the most remarkable achievements known to world history. Elsewhere no one has yet achieved so much. But with other peoples only the inner contradictions of Socialism itself and the fact that it cannot be completely realized have frustrated socialist triumph. They also have gone as far as they could under the given circumstances. Opposition in principle to Socialism there is none. Today no influential party would dare openly to advocate Private Property in the Means of Production. The word “Capitalism” expresses, for our age, the sum of all evil. Even the opponents of Socialism are dominated by socialist ideas. In seeking to combat Socialism from the standpoint of their special class interest these opponents—the parties which particularly call themselves “bourgeois” or “peasant”—admit indirectly the validity of all the essentials of socialist thought. For if it is only possible to argue against the socialist programme that it endangers the particular interests of one part of humanity, one has really affirmed Socialism. If one complains that the system of economic and social organization which is based on private property in the means of production does not sufficiently consider the interests of the community, that it serves only the purposes of single strata, and that it limits productivity; and if therefore one demands with the supporters of the various “social-political” and “social-reform” movements, state interference in all fields of economic life, then one has fundamentally accepted the principle of the socialist programme. Or again, if one can only argue against socialism that the imperfections of human nature make its realization impossible, or that it is inexpedient under existing economic conditions to proceed at once to socialization, then one merely confesses that one has capitulated to socialist ideas. The nationalist, too, affirms socialism, and objects only to its Internationalism. He wishes to combine Socialism with the ideas of Imperialism and the struggle against foreign nations. He is a national, not an international socialist; but he, also, approves of the essential principles of Socialism.18

  The supporters of Socialism therefore are not confined to the Bolshevists and their friends outside Russia or to the members of the numerous socialist parties: all are socialists who consider the socialistic order of society economically and ethically superior to that based on private ownership of the means of production, even though they may try for one reason or another to make a temporary or permanent compromise between their socialistic ideal and the particular interests which they believe themselves to represent. If we define Socialism as broadly as this we see that the great majority of people are with Socialism today. Those who confess to the principles of Liberalism19 and who see the only possible form of economic society in an order based on private ownership of the means of production are few indeed.

  One striking fact illustrates the success of socialist ideas: namely, that we have grown accustomed to designating as Socialism only that policy which aims to enact the socialist programme immediately and completely, while we call by other names all the movements directed towards the same goal with more moderation and reserve, and even describe these as the enemies of Socialism. This can only have come about because few real opponents of Socialism are left. Even in England, the home of Liberalism, a nation which has grown rich and great through its liberal policy, people no longer know what Liberalism really means. The English “Liberals” of today are more or less moderate socialists.20 In Germany, which never really knew Liberalism and which has become impotent and impoverished through its anti-liberal policy, people have hardly a conception of what Liberalism may be.

  It is on the complete victory of the socialist idea in the last decades that the great power of Russian Bolshevism rests. What makes Bolshevism strong is not the Soviets’ artillery and machine-guns but the fact that the whole world receives its ideas sympathetically. Many socialists consider the Bolshevists’ enterprise premature and look to the future for the triumph of Socialism. But no socialist can fail to be stirred by the words with which the Third International summons the peoples of the world to make war on Capitalism. Over the whole earth is felt the urge towards Bolshevism. Among the weak and lukewarm sympathy is mixed with horror and with the admiration which the courageous believer always awakens in the timid opportunist. But bolder and more consistent people greet without hesitation the dawn of a new epoch.

  2

  The Scientific Analysis of Socialism

  The starting-point of socialist doctrine is the criticism of the bourgeois order of society. We are aware that socialist writers have not been very successful in this respect. We know that they have misconceived the working of the economic mechanism, and that they have not understood the function of the various institutions of the social order which is based on division of labour and on private ownership of the means of production. It has not been difficult to show the mistakes socialistic theorists have made in analysing the economic process: critics have succeeded in proving their economic doctrines to be gross errors. Yet to ask whether the capitalist order of society is more or less defective is hardly a decisive answer to the question whether Socialism would be able to provide a better substitute. It is not sufficient to have proved that the social order based on private ownership of the means of production has faults and that it has not created the best of all possible worlds; it is necessary to show further that the socialistic order is better. This only a few socialists have tried to prove, and these have done so for the most part in a thoroughly unscientific, some even in a frivolous, manner. The science of Socialism is rudimentary, and just that kind of Socialism which calls itself “Scientific” is not the last to be blamed for this. Marxism has not been satisfied to present the coming of Socialism as an inevitable stage of social evolution. Had it done only this it could not have exerted that pernicious influence on the scientific treatment of the problems of social life which must be laid to its charge. Had it done nothing except describe the socialistic order of society as the best conceivable form of social life it could never have had such injurious consequences. But by means of sophistry it has prevented the scientific treatment of sociological problems and has poisoned the intellectual atmosphere of the time.

  According to the Marxist conception, one’s social condition determines one’s way of thought. His membership of a social class decides what views a writer will express. He is not able to grow out of his class or to free his thoughts from the prescriptions of his class interests.21 Thus the possibility of a general science which is valid for all men, whatever their class, is contested. It was only another step for Dietzgen to proceed to the construction of a special proletarian logic.22 But truth lies with the proletarian science only: “the ideas of proletarian logic are not party ideas, but the consequences of logic pure and simple.“23 Thus Marxism protects itself against all unwelcome criticism. The enemy is not refuted: enough to unmask him as a bourgeois.24 Marxism criticizes the achievements of all those who think otherwise by representing them as the venal servants of the bourgeoisie. Marx and Engels never tried to refute their opponents with argument. They insulted, ridiculed, derided, slandered, and traduced them, and in the use of these methods their followers are not less expert. Their polemic is directed never against the argument of the opponent, but always against his person. Few have been able to withstand such tactics. Few indeed have been courageous enough to oppose Socialism with that remorseless criticism which it is the duty of the scientific thinker to apply to every subject of inquiry. Only thus is to be explained the fact that supporters and opponents of Socialism have unquestioningly obeyed the prohibition which Marxism has laid on any closer discussion of the economic and social conditions of the socialist community. Marxism declares on the one hand that the socialization of the means of production is the end towards which economic evolution leads with the inevitability of a natural law; on the other hand it represents such socialization as the aim of its political effort. In this way he expounded the first principle of socialist organization. The purpose of the prohibition to study the working of a socialist community, which was justified by a series of threadbare arguments, was really intended to prevent the weaknesses of Marxist doctrines from coming clearly to light in discussions regarding the creation of a practicable socialist society. A clear exposition of the nature of socialist society might have damped the enthusiasm of the masses, who sought in Socialism salvation from all earthly ills. The successful suppression of these dangerous inquiries, which had brought about the downfall of all earlier socialistic theories, was one of Marx’s most skillful tactical moves. Only because people were not allowed to talk or to think about the nature of the socialist community was Socialism able to become the dominant political movement of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.

  These statements can hardly be illustrated better than by a quotation from the writings of Hermann Cohen, one of those who, in the decades immediately preceding the world war,25 exerted the strongest influence on German thought. “Today,” says Cohen, “no want of understanding prevents us from recognizing the kernel of the social question and therefore, even if only furtively, the necessity of social reform policy, but only the evil, or the not sufficiently good, will. The unreasonable demand that it should unveil the picture of the future state for the general view, with which attempts are made to embarrass party Socialism, can be explained only by the fact that such defective natures exist. The state presupposes law, but these people ask what the state would look like rather than what are the ethical requirements of law. By thus reversing the concepts one confuses the ethics of Socialism with the poesy of the Utopias. But ethics are not poetry and the idea has truth without image. Its image is the reality which is only to arise according to its prototype. The socialist idealism can to-day be looked upon as a general truth of public consciousness, though as one which is still, nevertheless, an open secret. Only the egoism implicit in ideals of naked covetousness, which is the true materialism, denies it a faith.”26 The man who wrote and thought thus was widely praised as the greatest and most daring German thinker of his time, and even opponents of his teaching respected him as an intellect. Just for that reason it is necessary to stress that Cohen not only accepts without criticism or reserve the demands of Socialism and acknowledges the prohibition against attempts to examine conditions in the socialist community, but that he represents as a morally inferior being anyone who tries to embarrass “party-Socialism” with a demand for light upon the problems of socialist economies. That the daring of a thinker whose criticism otherwise spares nothing should stop short before a mighty idol of his time is a phenomenon which may be observed often enough in the history of thought—even Cohen’s great exemplar, Kant, is accused of this.27 But that a philosopher should charge with ill-will, defective disposition, and naked covetousness not merely all those of a different opinion but all who even touch on a problem dangerous to those in authority—this, fortunately, is something of which the history of thought can show few examples.

  Anyone who failed to comply unconditionally with this coercion was proscribed and outlawed. In this way Socialism was able from year to year to win more and more ground without anyone being moved to make a fundamental investigation of how it would work. Thus, when one day Marxian Socialism assumed the reins of power, and sought to put its complete programme into practice, it had to recognize that it had no distinct idea of what, for decades, it had been trying to achieve.

  A discussion of the problems of the socialist community is therefore of the greatest importance, and not only for understanding the contrast between liberal and socialist policy. Without such a discussion it is not possible to understand the situations which have developed since the movement towards nationalization and municipalization commenced. Until now economics—with a comprehensible but regrettable onesidedness—has investigated exclusively the mechanism of a society based on private ownership of the means of production. The gap thus created must be filled.

  The question whether society ought to be built up on the basis of private ownership of the means of production or on the basis of public ownership of the means of production is political. Science cannot decide it; Science cannot pronounce a judgment on the relative values of the forms of social organization. But Science alone, by examining the effects of institutions, can lay the foundations for an understanding of society. Though the man of action, the politician, may sometimes pay no attention to the results of this examination, the man of thought will never cease to inquire into all things accessible to human intelligence. And in the long run thought must determine action.

  3

  Alternative Modes of Approach to the Analysis of Socialism

  There are two ways of treating the problems which Socialism sets to Science.

  The cultural philosopher may deal with Socialism by trying to place it in order among all other cultural phenomena. He inquires into its intellectual derivation, he examines its relation to other forms of social life, he looks for its hidden sources in the soul of the individual, he tries to understand it as a mass phenomena. He examines its effects on religion and philosophy, on art and literature. He tries to show the relation in which it stands to the natural and mental sciences of the time. He studies it as a style of life, as an utterance of the psyche, as an expression of ethical and aesthetic beliefs. This is the cultural-historical-psychological way. Ever trodden and retrodden, it is the way of a thousand books and essays.

  We must never judge a scientific method in advance. There is only one touchstone for its ability to achieve results: success. It is quite possible that the cultural-historical-psychological method will also contribute much towards a solution of the problems which Socialism has set to Science. That its results have been so unsatisfactory is to be ascribed not only to the incompetence and political prejudices of those who have undertaken the work, but above all to the fact that the sociological28 -economical treatment of the problems must precede the cultural-historical-psychological. For Socialism is a programme for transforming the economic life and constitution of society according to a defined ideal. To understand its effects in other fields of mental and cultural life one must first have seen clearly its social and economic significance. As long as one is still in doubt about this it is unwise to risk a cultural-historical-psychological interpretation. One cannot speak of the ethics of Socialism before one has cleared up its relation to other moral standards. A relevant analysis of its reactions on religion and public life is impossible when one has only an obscure conception of its essential reality. It is impossible to discuss Socialism at all without having first and foremost examined the mechanism of an economic order based on public ownership of the means of production.

  This comes out clearly at each of the points at which the cultural-historical-psychological method usually starts. Followers of this method regard Socialism as the final consequences of the democratic idea of equality without having decided what democracy and equality really mean or in what relation they stand to each other, and without having considered whether Socialism is essentially or only generally concerned with the idea of equality. Sometimes they refer to Socialism as a reaction of the psyche to the spiritual desolation created by the rationalism inseparable from Capitalism; sometimes again they assert that Socialism aims at the highest rationalization of material life, a rationalization which Capitalism could never attain.29 Those who engulf their cultural and theoretical exposition of Socialism in a chaos of mysticism and incomprehensible phrases need not be discussed here.

  The researches of this book are to be directed above all to the sociological and economic problems of Socialism. We must treat these before we can discuss the cultural and psychological problems. Only on the results of such research can we base studies of the culture and psychology of Socialism. Sociological and economic research alone can provide a firm foundation for those expositions—so much more attractive to the great public—which present a valuation of Socialism in the light of the general aspirations of the human race.

  PART I

  LIBERALISM AND SOCIALISM

  CHAPTER 1

  Ownership

  1

  The Nature of Ownership

  Regarded as a sociological category ownership appears as the power to use economic goods. An owner is he who disposes of an economic good.

  Thus the sociological and juristic concepts of ownership are different. This, of course, is natural, and one can only be surprised that the fact is still sometimes overlooked. From the sociological and economic point of view, ownership is the having of the goods which the economic aims of men require.1 This having may be called the natural or original ownership, as it is purely a physical relationship of man to the goods, independent of social relations between men or of a legal order. The significance of the legal concept of property lies just in this—that it differentiates between the physical has and the legal should have. The Law recognizes owners and possessors who lack this natural having, owners who do not have, but ought to have. In the eyes of the Law ’he from whom has been stolen’ remains owner, while the thief can never acquire ownership. Economically, however, the natural having alone is relevant, and the economic significance of the legal should have lies only in the support it lends to the acquisition, the maintenance, and the regaining of the natural having.

  To the Law ownership is a uniform institution. It makes no difference whether goods of the first order or goods of higher order form its subject, or whether it deals with durable consumption goods or non-durable consumption goods. The formalism of the Law, divorced as it is from any economic basis, is clearly expressed in this fact. Of course, the Law cannot isolate itself completely from economic differences which may be relevant. The peculiarity of land as a means of production is, partly, what gives the ownership of real property its special position in the Law. Such economic differences are expressed, more clearly than in the law of property itself, in relationships which are sociologically equivalent to ownership but juristically allied to it only, e.g., in servitudes and, especially, in usufruct. But on the whole, in Law formal equality covers up material differences.

  Considered economically, ownership is by no means uniform. Ownership in consumption goods and ownership in production goods differ in many ways, and in both cases, again, we must distinguish between durable goods and goods that are used up.

  Goods of the first order, the consumption goods, serve the immediate satisfaction of wants. In so far as they are goods that are used up, goods, that is, which in their nature can be used but once, and which lose their quality as goods when they are used, the significance of ownership lies practically in the possibility of consuming them. The owner may also allow his goods to spoil unenjoyed or even permit them to be destroyed intentionally, or he may give them in exchange or give them away. In every case he disposes of their use, which cannot be divided.

  The position is a little different with goods of lasting use, those consumption goods that can be used more than once. They may serve several people successively. Here, again, those are to be regarded as owners in the economic sense who are able to employ for their own purposes the uses afforded by the goods. In this sense, the owner of a room is he who inhabits it at the time in question; the owners of the Matterhorn, as far as it is part of a natural park, are those who set foot on it to enjoy the landscape; the owners of a picture are those who enjoy looking at it.2 The having of the uses which these goods afford is divisible, so that the natural ownership of them is divisible also.

  Production goods serve enjoyment only indirectly. They are employed in the production of consumption goods. Consumption goods emerge finally from the successful combination of production goods and labour. It is the ability to serve thus indirectly for the satisfaction of wants which qualifies a thing as a production good. To dispose of production goods is to have them naturally. The having of production goods is of economic significance only because and in so far as it leads finally to a having of consumption goods.

  Goods to be used up, which are ripe for consumption, can be had but once—by the person who consumes them. Goods of lasting use, which are ripe for consumption, may be had, in temporal succession, by a number of people; but simultaneous use will disturb the enjoyment of others, even though this enjoyment is not quite excluded by the nature of the commodity. Several people may simultaneously look at a picture, even though the proximity of others, who perhaps keep him from the most favorable viewpoint, may disturb the enjoyment of any individual in the group; but a coat cannot be worn simultaneously by two people. In the case of consumption goods the having which leads to the satisfaction of wants by the goods cannot be further divided than can the uses which arise from the goods. This means that with goods to be used up, natural ownership by one individual completely excludes ownership by all others, while with durable goods ownership is exclusive at least at a given point of time and even in regard to the smallest use arising from it. For consumption goods, any economically significant relationship other than that of the natural having by individuals is unthinkable. As goods to be used up absolutely and as durable goods, at least to the extent of the smallest use arising from them, they can be in the natural ownership of one person only. Ownership here is also private ownership, in the sense that it deprives others of the advantages which depend upon the right of disposing of the goods.

  For this reason, also, it would be quite absurd to think of removing or even of reforming ownership in consumption goods. It is impossible in any way to alter the fact that an apple which is enjoyed is used up and that a coat is worn out in the wearing. In the natural sense consumption goods cannot be the joint property of several or the common property of all. In the case of consumption goods, that which one usually calls joint property has to be shared before consumption. The joint ownership ceases at the moment a commodity is used up or employed. The having of the consumer must be exclusive. Joint property can never be more than a basis for the appropriation of goods out of a common stock. Each individual partner is owner of that part of the total stock which he can use for himself. Whether he is already owner legally, or owner only through the division of the stock, or whether he becomes legal owner at all, and whether or not a formal division of the stock precedes consumption—none of these questions is economically material. The fact is that even without division he is owner of his lot.

  Joint property cannot abolish ownership in consumption goods. It can only distribute ownership in a way which would not otherwise have existed. Joint property restricts itself, like all other reforms which stop short at consumption goods, to effecting a different distribution of the existing stock of consumption goods. When this stock is exhausted its work is done. It cannot refill the empty storehouses. Only those who direct the disposal of production goods and labour can do this. If they are not satisfied with what they are offered, the flow of goods which is to replenish stocks ceases. Therefore, any attempt to alter the distribution of consumption goods must in the last resort depend on the power to dispose of the means of production.

  The having of production goods, contrary to that of consumption goods, can be divided in the natural sense. Under conditions of isolated production the conditions of sharing the having of production goods are the same as the conditions of sharing consumption goods. Where there is no division of labour the having of goods can only be shared if it is possible to share the services rendered by them. The having of non-durable production goods cannot be shared. The having of durable production goods can be shared according to the divisibility of the services they provide. Only one person can have a given quantity of grain, but several may have a hammer successively; a river may drive more than one water wheel. So far, there is no peculiarity about the having of production goods. But in the case of production with division of labour there is a two-fold having of such goods. Here in fact the having is always two-fold: there is a physical having (direct), and a social having (indirect). The physical having is his who holds the commodity physically and uses it productively; the social having belongs to him who, unable to dispose physically or legally of the commodity, may yet dispose indirectly of the effects of its use, i.e. he who can barter or buy its products or the services which it provides. In this sense natural ownership in a society which divides labour is shared between the producer and those for whose wants he produces. The farmer who lives self-sufficiently outside exchange society can call his fields, his plough, his draught animals his own, in the sense that they serve only him. But the farmer whose enterprise is concerned with trade, who produces for and buys in the market, is owner of the means of production in quite a different sense. He does not control production as the self-supporting peasant does. He does not decide the purpose of his production; those for whom he works decide it—the consumers. They, not the producer, determine the goal of economic activity. The producer only directs production towards the goal set by the consumers.

  But further owners of the means of production are unable in these conditions to place their physical having directly into the service of production. Since all production consists in combining the various means of production, some of the owners of such means must convey their natural ownership to others, so that the latter may put into operation the combinations of which production consists. Owners of capital, land, and labour place these factors at the disposal of the entrepreneur, who takes over the immediate direction of production. The entrepreneurs, again, conduct production according to the direction set by the consumers, who are no other than the owners of the means of production: owners of capital, land, and labour. Of the product, however, each factor receives the share to which he is economically entitled, according to the value of his productive contribution in the yield.

  In essence, therefore, natural ownership of production goods is quite different from natural ownership of consumption goods. To have production goods in the economic sense, i.e. to make them serve one’s own economic purposes, it is not necessary to have them physically in the way that one must have consumption goods if one is to use them up or to use them lastingly. To drink coffee I do not need to own a coffee plantation in Brazil, an ocean steamer, and a coffee roasting plant, though all these means of production must be used to bring a cup of coffee to my table. Sufficient that others own these means of production and employ them for me. In the society which divides labour no one is exclusive owner of the means of production, either of the material things or of the personal element, capacity to work. All means of production render services to everyone who buys or sells on the market. Hence if we are disinclined here to speak of ownership as shared between consumers and owners of the means of production, we should have to regard consumers as the true owners in the natural sense and describe those who are considered as the owners in the legal sense as administrators of other people’s property.3 This, however, would take us too far from the accepted meaning of the words. To avoid misinterpretation it is desirable to manage as far as possible without new words and never to employ, in an entirely different sense, words habitually accepted as conveying a particular idea. Therefore, renouncing any particular terminology, let us only stress once more that the essence of the ownership of the means of production in a society which divides labour differs from that found where the division of labour does not take place; and that it differs essentially from the ownership of consumption goods in any economic order. To avoid any misunderstanding we will henceforth use the words, ’ownership of the means of production’ in the generally accepted sense, i.e. to signify the immediate power of disposal.

  2

  Violence and Contract

  The physical having of economic goods, which economically considered constitutes the essence of natural ownership, can only be conceived as having originated through Occupation. Since ownership is not a fact independent of the will and action of man, it is impossible to see how it could have begun except with the appropriation of ownerless goods. Once begun ownership continues, as long as its object does not vanish, until either it is given up voluntarily or the object passes from the physical having of the owner against his will. The first happens when the owner voluntarily gives up his property; the latter when he does it involuntarily—e.g. when cattle stray into the wilds—or when some other person forcibly takes the property from him.

  All ownership derives from occupation and violence. When we consider the natural components of goods, apart from the labour components they contain, and when we follow the legal title back, we must necessarily arrive at a point where this title originated in the appropriation of goods accessible to all. Before that we may encounter a forcible expropriation from a predecessor whose ownership we can in its turn trace to earlier appropriation or robbery. That all rights derive from violence, all ownership from appropriation or robbery, we may freely admit to those who oppose ownership on considerations of natural law. But this offers not the slightest proof that the abolition of ownership is necessary, advisable, or morally justified.

  Natural ownership need not count upon recognition by the owners’ fellow men. It is tolerated, in fact, only as long as there is no power to upset it and it does not survive the moment when a stronger man seizes it for himself. Created by arbitrary force it must always fear a more powerful force. This the doctrine of natural law has called the war of all against all. The war ends when the actual relation is recognized as one worthy to be maintained. Out of violence emerges law.

  The doctrine of natural law has erred in regarding this great change, which lifts man from the state of brutes into human society, as a conscious process; as an action, that is, in which man is completely aware of his motives, of his aims and how to pursue them. Thus was supposed to have been concluded the social contract by which the State and the community, the legal order, came into existence. Rationalism could find no other possible explanation after it had disposed of the old belief which traced social institutions back to divine sources or at least to the enlightenment which came to man through divine inspiration.4 Because it led to present conditions, people regarded the development of social life as absolutely purposeful and rational; how then could this development have come about, except through conscious choice in recognition of the fact that it was purposeful and rational? Today we have other theories with which to explain the matter. We talk of natural selection in the struggle for existence and of the inheritance of acquired characteristics, though all this, indeed, brings us no nearer to an understanding of ultimate riddles than can the theologian or the rationalist. We can ’explain’ the birth and development of social institutions by saying that they were helpful in the struggle for existence, by saying that those who accepted and best developed them were better equipped against the dangers of life than those who were backward in this respect. To point out how unsatisfactory is such an explanation nowadays would be to bring owls5 to Athens. The time when it satisfied us and when we proposed it as a final solution of all problems of being and becoming is long since past. It takes us no further than theology or rationalism. This is the point at which the individual sciences merge, at which the great problems of philosophy begin—at which all our wisdom ends.

  No great insight, indeed, is needed to show that Law and the State cannot be traced back to contracts. It is unnecessary to call upon the learned apparatus of the historical school to show that no social contract can anywhere be established in history. Realistic science was doubtless superior to the Rationalism of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries in the knowledge that can be gained from parchments and inscriptions, but in sociological insight it lagged far behind. For however we may reproach a social philosophy of Rationalism we cannot deny that it has done imperishable work in showing us the effects of social institutions. To it we owe above all our first knowledge of the functional significance of the legal order and of the State.

  Economic action demands stable conditions. The extensive and lengthy process of production is the more successful the greater the periods of time to which it is adapted. It demands continuity, and this continuity cannot be disturbed without the most serious disadvantages. This means that economic action requires peace, the exclusion of violence. Peace, says the rationalist, is the goal and purpose of all legal institutions; but we assert that peace is their result, their function.6 Law, says the rationalist, has arisen from contracts; we say that Law is a settlement, and end to strife, an avoidance of strife. Violence and Law, War and Peace, are the two poles of social life; but its content is economic action.

  All violence is aimed at the property of others. The person—life and health—is the object of attack only in so far as it hinders the acquisition of property. (Sadistic excesses, bloody deeds which are committed for the sake of cruelty and nothing else, are exceptional occurrences. To prevent them one does not require a whole legal system. Today the doctor, not the judge, is regarded as their appropriate antagonist.) Thus it is no accident that it is precisely in the defence of property that Law reveals most clearly its character of peacemaker. In the two-fold system of protection according to having, in the distinction between ownership and possession, is seen most vividly the essence of the law as peacemaker—yes, peacemaker at any price. Possession is protected even though it is, as the jurists say, no title. Not only honest but dishonest possessors, even robbers and thieves, may claim protection for their possession.7

  Some believe that ownership as it shows itself in the distribution of property at a given time may be attacked by pointing out that it has sprung illegally from arbitrary acquisition and violent robbery. According to this view all legal rights are nothing but time-honoured illegality. So, since it conflicts with the eternal, immutable idea of justice, the existing legal order must be abolished and in its place a new one set which shall conform to that idea of justice. It should not be the task of the State “to consider only the condition of possession in which it finds its citizens, without inquiring into the legal grounds of acquisition.” Rather it is “the mission of the State first to give everyone his own, first to put him into his property, and only then to protect him in it.“8 In this case one either postulates an eternally valid idea of justice which it is the duty of the State to recognize and realize; or else one finds the origin of true Law, quite in the sense of the contract theory, in the social contract, which contract can only arise through the unanimous agreement of all individuals who in it divest themselves of a part of their natural rights. At the basis of both hypotheses lies the natural law view of the “right that is born with us.” We must conduct ourselves in accordance with it, says the former; by divesting ourselves of it according to the conditions of the contract the existing legal system arises, says the latter. As to the source of absolute justice, that is explained in different ways. According to one view, it was the gift of Providence to Humanity. According to another, Man created it with his Reason. But both agree that Man’s ability to distinguish between justice and injustice is precisely what marks him from the animal; that this is his “moral nature.”

  Today we can no longer accept these views, for the assumptions with which we approach the problem have changed. To us the idea of a human nature which differs fundamentally from the nature of all other living creatures seems strange indeed; we no longer think of man as a being who has harboured an idea of justice from the beginning. But if, perhaps, we offer no answer to the question how Law arose, we must still make it clear that it could not have arisen legally. Law cannot have begot itself of itself. Its origin lies beyond the legal sphere. In complaining that Law is nothing more or less than legalized injustice, one fails to perceive that it could only be otherwise if it had existed from the very beginning. If it is supposed to have arisen once, then that which at that moment became Law could not have been Law before. To demand that Law should have arisen legally is to demand the impossible. Whoever does so applies to something standing outside the legal order a concept valid only within the order.

  We who only see the effect of Law—which is to make peace—must realize that it could not have originated except through a recognition of the existing state of affairs, however that has arisen. Attempts to do otherwise would have renewed and perpetuated the struggle. Peace can come about only when we secure a momentary state of affairs from violent disturbance and make every future change depend upon the consent of the person involved. This is the real significance of the protection of existing rights, which constitutes the kernel of all Law.

  Law did not leap into life as something perfect and complete. For thousands of years it has grown and it is still growing. The age of its maturity—the age of impregnable peace—may never arrive. In vain have the systematicians of Law sought dogmatically to maintain the division between private and public Law which doctrine has handed down to us and which in practice they think it cannot do without. The failure of these attempts—which indeed has led many to abandon the distinction—must not surprise us. The division is not, as a matter of fact, dogmatic; the system of Law is uniform and cannot comprehend it. The division is historical, the result of the gradual evolution and accomplishment of the idea of Law. The idea of Law is realized at first in the sphere in which the maintenance of peace is most urgently needed to assure economic continuity—that is, in the relations between individuals. Only for the further development of the civilization which rises on this foundation does the maintenance of peace in a more advanced sphere become essential. This purpose is served by Public Law. It does not formally differ from Private Law. But it is felt to be something different. This is because only later does it attain the development vouchsafed earlier to Private Law. In Public Law the protection of existing rights is not yet as strongly developed, as it is in Private Law.9 Outwardly the immaturity of Public Law can most easily be recognized perhaps in the fact that it has lagged behind Private Law in systematization. International Law is still more backward. Intercourse between nations still recognizes arbitrary violence as a solution permissible under certain conditions whereas, on the remaining ground regulated by Public Law, arbitrary violence in the form of revolution stands, even though not effectively suppressed, outside the Law. In the domain of Private Law this violence is wholly illegal except as an act of defence, when it is permitted under exceptional circumstances as a gesture of legal protection.

  The fact that what became Law was formerly unjust or, more precisely expressed, legally indifferent, is not a defect of the legal order. Whoever tries juristically or morally to justify the legal order may feel it to be such. But to establish this fact in no way proves that it is necessary or useful to abolish or alter the system of ownership. To endeavour to demonstrate from this fact that the demands for the abolition of ownership were legal would be absurd.

  3

  The Theory of Violence and the Theory of Contract

  It is only slowly and with difficulty that the idea of Law triumphs. Only slowly and with difficulty does it rebut the principle of violence. Again and again there are reactions; again and again the history of Law has to start once more from the beginning. Of the ancient Germans Tacitus relates: “Pigrum quin immo et iners videtur sudore adquirere quod possis sanguine parare.”10 (It seems feckless, nay more, even slothful, to acquire something by toil and sweat which you could grab by the shedding of blood.) It is a far cry from this view to the views that dominate modern economic life.

  This contrast of view transcends the problems of ownership, and embraces our whole attitude to life. It is the contrast between a feudal and a bourgeois way of thought. The first expresses itself in romantic poetry, whose beauty delights us, though its view of life can carry us away only in passing moments and while the impression of the poetry is fresh.11 The second is developed in the liberal social philosophy into a great system, in the construction of which the finest minds of all ages have collaborated. Its grandeur is reflected in classical literature. In Liberalism humanity becomes conscious of the powers which guide its development. The darkness which lay over the paths of history recedes. Man begins to understand social life and allows it to develop consciously.

  The feudal view did not achieve a similarly closed systematization. It was impossible to think out, to its logical conclusion, the theory of violence. Try to realize completely the principle of violence, even only in thought, and its anti-social character is unmasked. It leads to chaos, to the war of all against all. No sophistry can evade that. All anti-liberal social theories must necessarily remain fragments or arrive at the most absurd conclusions. When they accuse Liberalism of considering only what is earthly, of neglecting, for the petty struggles of daily life, to care for higher things, they are merely picking the lock of an open door. For Liberalism has never pretended to be more than a philosophy of earthly life. What it teaches is concerned only with earthly action and desistance from action. It has never claimed to exhaust the Last or Greatest Secret of Man. The anti-liberal teachings promise everything. They promise happiness and spiritual peace, as if man could be thus blessed from without. Only one thing is certain, that under their ideal social system the supply of commodities would diminish very considerably. As to the value of what is offered in compensation opinions are at least divided.12

  The last resort of the critics of the liberal ideal of society is to attempt to destroy it with the weapons it itself provides. They seek to prove that it serves and wants to serve only the interests of single classes; that the peace, for which it seeks, favours only a restricted circle and is harmful to all others. Even the social order, achieved in the constitutional modern state, is based on violence. The free contracts on which it pretends to rest are really, they say, only the conditions of a peace dictated by the victors to the vanquished, the terms being valid as long as the power from which they sprang continues, and no longer. All ownership is founded on violence and maintained by violence. The free workers of the liberal society are nothing but the unfree of feudal times. The entrepreneur exploits them as a feudal lord exploited his serfs, as a planter exploited his slaves. That such and similar objections can be made and believed will show how far the understanding of liberal theories has decayed. But these objections in no way atone for the absence of a systematic theory for the movement against Liberalism.

  The liberal conception of social life has created the economic system based on the division of labour. The most obvious expression of the exchange economy is the urban settlement, which is only possible in such an economy. In the towns the liberal doctrine has been developed into a dosed system and it is here that it has found most supporters. But the more and the quicker wealth grew and the more numerous therefore were the immigrants from the country into the towns, the stronger became the attacks which Liberalism suffered from the principle of violence. Immigrants soon find their place in urban life, they soon adopt, externally, town manners and opinions, but for a long time they remain foreign to civic thought. One cannot make a social philosophy one’s own as easily as a new costume. It must be earned—earned with the effort of thought. Thus we find, again and again in history, that epochs of strongly progressive growth of the liberal world of thought, when wealth increases with the development of the division of labour, alternate with epochs in which the principle of violence tries to gain supremacy—in which wealth decreases because the division of labour decays. The growth of the towns and of the town life was too rapid. It was more extensive than intensive. The new inhabitants of the towns had become citizens superficially, but not in ways of thought. And so with their ascendancy civic sentiment declined. On this rock all cultural epochs filled with the bourgeois spirit of Liberalism have gone to ruin; on this rock also our own bourgeois culture, the most wonderful in history, appears to be going to ruin. More menacing than barbarians storming the walls from without are the seeming citizens within—those who are citizens in gesture, but not in thought.

  Recent generations have witnessed a mighty revival of the principle of violence. Modern Imperialism, whose outcome was the World War with all its appalling consequences, develops the old ideas of the defenders of the principle of violence under a new mask. But of course even Imperialism has not been able to set in opposition to liberal theory a complete system of its own. That the theory according to which struggle is the motive power of the growth of society should in any way lead to a theory of co-operation is out of the question—yet every social theory must be a theory of co-operation. The theory of modern Imperialism is characterized by the use of certain scientific expressions such as the doctrine of the struggle for existence and the concept of the race. With these it was possible to coin a multitude of slogans, which have proved themselves effective for propaganda but for nothing else. All the ideas paraded by modem Imperialism have long since been exploded by Liberalism as false doctrines.

  Perhaps the strongest of the imperialist arguments is an argument which derives from a total misconception of the essence of the ownership of the means of production in a society dividing labour. It regards as one of its most important tasks the provision of the nation with its own coal mines, own sources of raw material, own ships, own ports. It is clear that such an argument proceeds from the view that natural ownership in these means of production is undivided, and that only those benefit from them who have them physically. It does not realize that this view leads logically to the socialist doctrine with regard to the character of ownership in the means of production. For if it is wrong that Germans do not possess their own German cotton plantations, why should it be right that every single German does not possess his coal mine, his spinning mill? Can a German call a Lorraine iron ore mine his any more when a German citizen possesses it than when a French citizen possesses it?

  So far the imperialist agrees with the socialist in criticism of bourgeois ownership. But the socialist has tried to devise a closed system of a future social order and this the imperialist could not do.

  4

  Collective Ownership of the Means of Production

  The earliest attempts to reform ownership and property can be accurately described as attempts to achieve the greatest possible equality in the distribution of wealth, whether or not they claimed to be guided by considerations of social utility or social justice. All should possess a certain minimum, none more than a certain maximum. All should possess about the same amount--that was, roughly, the aim. The means to this end were always the same. Confiscation of all or part of the property was usually proposed, followed by redistribution. A world populated only by self-sufficient agriculturists, leaving room for at most a few artisans—that was the ideal society towards which one strove. But today we need not concern ourselves with all these proposals. They become impracticable in an economy dividing labour. A railway, a rolling mill, a machine factory cannot be distributed. If these ideas had been put into practice centuries or millenniums ago, we should still be at the same level of economic development as we were then—unless, of course, we had sunk back into a state hardly distinguishable from that of brutes. The earth would be able to support but a small fraction of the multitudes it nourishes today, and everyone would be much less adequately provided for than he is, less adequately even than the poorest member of an industrial state. Our whole civilization rests on the fact that men have always succeeded in beating off the attack of the re-distributors. But the idea of re-distribution enjoys great popularity still, even in industrial countries. In those countries where agriculture predominates the doctrine calls itself, not quite appropriately, Agrarian Socialism, and is the end-all and be-all of social reform movements. It was the main support of the great Russian revolution, which against their will temporarily turned the revolutionary leaders, born Marxists, into the protagonists of its ideal. It may triumph in the rest of the world and in a short time destroy the culture which the effort of millenniums has built up. For all this, let us repeat, one single word of criticism is superfluous. Opinions on the matter are not divided. It is hardly necessary to prove today that it is impossible to found on a “land and homestead communism” a social organization capable of supporting the hundreds of millions of the white race.

  A new social ideal long ago supplanted the naive fanaticism for equality of the distributors, and now not distribution but common ownership is the slogan of Socialism. To abolish private property in the means of production, to make the means of production the property of the community, that is the whole aim of Socialism.

  In its strongest and purest form the socialistic idea has no longer anything in common with the idea of re-distribution. It is equally remote from a nebulous conception of common ownership in the means of consumption. Its aim is to make possible for everyone an adequate existence. But it is not so artless as to believe that this can be achieved by the destruction of the social system which divides labour. True, the dislike of the market, which characterizes enthusiasts of re-distribution, survives; but Socialism seeks to abolish trade otherwise than by abolishing the division of labour and returning to the autarky of the self-contained family economy or at least to the simpler exchange organization of the self-sufficient agricultural district.

  Such a socialistic idea could not have arisen before private property in the means of production had assumed the character which it possesses in the society dividing labour. The interrelation of separate productive units must first reach the point at which production for external demand is the rule, before the idea of common property in the means of production can assume a definite form. The socialist ideas could not be quite clear until the liberal social philosophy had revealed the character of social production. In this sense, but in no other, Socialism may be regarded as a consequence of the liberal philosophy.

  Whatever our view of its utility or its practicability, it must be admitted that the idea of Socialism is at once grandiose and simple. Even its most determined opponents will not be able to deny it a detailed examination. We may say, in fact, that it is one of the most ambitious creations of the human spirit. The attempt to erect society on a new basis while breaking with all traditional forms of social organization, to conceive a new world plan and foresee the form which all human affairs must assume in the future—this is so magnificent, so daring, that it has rightly aroused the greatest admiration. If we wish to save the world from barbarism we have to conquer Socialism, but we cannot thrust it carelessly aside.

  5

  Theories of the Evolution of Property

  It is an old trick of political innovators to describe that which they seek to realize as Ancient and Natural, as something which has existed from the beginning and which has been lost only through the misfortune of historical development; men, they say, must return to this state of things and revive the Golden Age. Thus natural law explained the rights which it demanded for the individual as inborn, inalienable rights bestowed on him by Nature. This was no question of innovation, but of the restoration of the “eternal rights which shine above, inextinguishable and indestructible as the stars themselves.” In the same way the romantic Utopia of common ownership as an institution of remote antiquity has arisen. Almost all peoples have known this dream. In Ancient Rome it was the legend of the Golden Age of Saturn, described in glowing terms by Virgil, Tibullus, and Ovid, and praised by Seneca.13 Those were the carefree, happy days when none had private property and all prospered in the bounty of a generous Nature.14 Modern Socialism, of course, imagines itself beyond such simplicity and childishness, but its dreams differ little from those of the Imperial Romans.

  Liberal doctrine had stressed the important part played in the evolution of civilization by private property in the means of production. Socialism might have contented itself with denying the use of maintaining the institution of ownership any longer, without denying at the same time the usefulness of this ownership in the past. Marxism indeed does this by representing the epochs of simple and of capitalistic production as necessary stages in the development of society. But on the other hand it joins with other socialist doctrines in condemning with a strong display of moral indignation all private property that has appeared in the course of history. Once upon a time there were good times when private property did not exist; good times will come again when private property will not exist.

  In order that such a view might appear plausible the young science of Economic History had to provide a foundation of proof. A theory demonstrating the antiquity of the common land system was constructed. There was a time, it was said, when all land had been the common property of all members of the tribe. At first all had used it communally; only later, while the common ownership was still maintained, were the fields distributed to individual members for separate use. But there were new distributions continually, at first every year, then at longer intervals of time. Private property according to this view was a relatively young institution. How it arose was not quite clear. But one had to assume that it had crept in more or less as a habit through omission in re-distributions—that is, if one did not wish to trace it back to illegal acquisition. Thus it was seen that to give private ownership too much credit in the history of civilization was a mistake. It was argued that agriculture had developed under the rule of common ownership with periodic distribution. For a man to till and sow the fields one needs only to guarantee him the produce of his labour, and for this purpose annual possession suffices. We are told that it is false to trace the origin of ownership in land to the occupation of ownerless fields. The unoccupied land was not for a single moment ownerless. Everywhere, in early times as nowadays, man had declared that it belonged to the State or the community; consequently in early times as little as today the seizing of possession could not have taken place.15

  From these heights of newly-won historical knowledge it was possible to look down with compassionate amusement at the teachings of liberal social philosophy. People were convinced that private property had been proved an historical-legal category only. It had not existed always, it was nothing more than a not particularly desirable outgrowth of culture, and therefore it could be abolished. Socialists of all kinds, but especially Marxists, were zealous in propagating these ideas. They have brought to the writings of their champions a popularity otherwise denied to researches in Economic History.

  But more recent researches have disproved the assumption that common ownership of the agricultural land was an essential stage with all peoples, that it was the primeval form of ownership (“Ureigentum”). They have demonstrated that the Russian Mir arose in modern times under the pressure of serfdom and the head-tax, that the Hauberg co-operatives16 of the Siegen district are not found before the sixteenth century, that the Trier Gehöferschaften17 evolved in the thirteenth, perhaps only in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, and that the South Slav Zadruga came about through the introduction of the Byzantine system of taxation.18 The earliest German agricultural history has still not been made sufficiently clear; here, in regard to the important questions, unanimous opinion has not been possible. The interpretation of the scanty information given by Caesar and Tacitus presents special difficulties. But in trying to understand them one must never overlook the fact that the conditions of ancient Germany as described by these two writers had this characteristic feature—good arable land was so abundant that the question of land ownership was not yet economically relevant. “Superest ager,” (Arable land abounds.) that is the basic fact of German agrarian conditions at the time of Tacitus.19

  In fact, however, it is not necessary to consider the proofs adduced by Economic History, which contradict the doctrine of the “Ureigentum,” in order to see that this doctrine offers no argument against private property in the means of production. Whether or not private property was everywhere preceded by common property is irrelevant when we are forming a judgment as to its historical achievement and its function in the economic constitution of the present and the future. Even if one could demonstrate that common property was once the basis of land law for all nations and that all private property had arisen through illegal acquisition, one would still be far from proving that rational agriculture with intensive cultivation could have developed without private property. Even less permissible would it be to conclude from such premises that private property could or should be abolished.

  CHAPTER 2

  Socialism

  1

  The State and Economic Activity

  It is the aim of Socialism to transfer the means of production from private ownership to the ownership of organized society, to the State.20 The socialistic State owns all material factors of production and thus directs it. This transfer need not be carried out with due observance of the formalities elaborated for property transfers according to the law set up in the historical epoch which is based on private property in the means of production. Still less important in such a process of transfer is the traditional terminology of Law. Ownership is power of disposal, and when this power of disposal is divorced from its traditional name and handed over to a legal institution which bears a new name, the old terminology is essentially unimportant in the matter. Not the word but the thing must be considered. Limitation of the rights of owners as well as formal transference is a means of socialization. If the State takes the power of disposal from the owner piecemeal, by extending its influence over production; if its power to determine what direction production shall take and what kind of production there shall be, is increased, then the owner is left at last with nothing except the empty name of ownership, and property has passed into the hands of the State.

  People often fail to perceive the fundamental difference between the liberal and the anarchistic idea. Anarchism rejects all coercive social organizations, and repudiates coercion as a social technique. It wishes in fact to abolish the State and the legal order, because it believes that society could do better without them. It does not fear anarchical disorder because it believes that without compulsion men would unite for social co-operation and would behave in the manner that social life demands. Anarchism as such is neither liberal nor socialistic: it moves on a different plane from either. Whoever denies the basic idea of Anarchism, whoever denies that it is or ever will be possible to unite men without coercion under a binding legal order for peaceful co-operation, will, whether liberal or socialist, repudiate anarchistic ideals. All liberal and socialist theories based on a strict logical connection of ideas have constructed their systems with due regard to coercion, utterly rejecting Anarchism. Both recognize the necessity of the legal order, though for neither is it the same in content and extent. Liberalism does not contest the need of a legal order when it restricts the field of State activity, and certainly does not regard the State as an evil, or as a necessary evil. Its attitude to the problem of ownership and not its dislike of the “person” of the State is the characteristic of the liberal view of the problem of the State. Since it desires private ownership in the means of production it must, logically, reject all that conflicts with this ideal. As for Socialism, as soon as it has turned fundamentally from Anarchism, it must necessarily try to extend the field controlled by the compulsory order of the State, for its explicit aim is to abolish the “anarchy of production.” Far from abolishing State and compulsion it seeks to extend governmental action to a field which Liberalism would leave free. Socialistic writers, especially those who recommend Socialism for ethical reasons, like to say that in a socialistic society public welfare would be the foremost aim of the State, whereas Liberalism considers only the interests of a particular class. Now one can only judge of the value of a social form of organization, liberal or socialistic, when a thorough investigation has provided a clear picture of what it achieves. But that Socialism alone has the public welfare in view can at once be denied. Liberalism champions private property in the means of production because it expects a higher standard of living from such an economic organization, not because it wishes to help the owners. In the liberal economic system more would be produced than in the socialistic. The surplus would not benefit only the owners. According to Liberalism therefore, to combat the errors of Socialism is by no means the particular interest of the rich. It concerns even the poorest, who would be injured just as much by Socialism. Whether or not one accepts this, to impute a narrow class interest to Liberalism is erroneous. The systems, in fact, differ not in their aims but in the means by which they wish to pursue them.

  2

  The “Fundamental Rights” of Socialist Theory

  The programme of the liberal philosophy of the State was summarized in a number of points which were put forward as the demands of natural law. These are the Rights of Man and of Citizens, which formed the subject of the wars of liberation in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. They are written in brass in the constitutional laws composed under the influence of the political movements of this time. Even supporters of Liberalism might well ask themselves whether this is their appropriate place, for in form and diction they are not so much legal principles—fit subject matter for a law of practical life—as a political programme to be followed in legislation and administration. At any rate it is obviously insufficient to include them ceremoniously in the fundamental laws of states and constitutions; their spirit must permeate the whole State. Little benefit the citizen of Austria has had from the fact that the Fundamental Law of the State gave him the right “to express his opinion freely by word, writing, print, or pictorial representation within the legal limits.” These legal limits prevented the free expression of opinion as much as if that Fundamental Law had never been laid down. England has no Fundamental Right of the free expression of opinion; nevertheless in England speech and press are really free because the spirit which expresses itself in the principle of the freedom of thought permeates all English legislation.

  In imitation of these political Fundamental Rights some antiliberal writers have tried to establish basic economic rights. Here their aim is twofold: on the one hand they wish to show the insufficiency of a social order which does not guarantee even these alleged natural Rights of Man; on the other hand they wish to create a few easily remembered, effective slogans to serve as propaganda for their ideas. The view that it might be sufficient to establish these basic rights legally in order to establish a social order corresponding to the ideals they express, is usually far from the minds of their authors. The majority indeed, especially in recent years, are convinced that they can get what they want only by the socialization of the means of production. The economic basic rights were elaborated only to show what requirements a social order had to satisfy, a critique rather than a programme. Considered from this point of view they give us an insight into what, according to the opinion of its advocates, Socialism should achieve.

  According to Anton Menger, Socialism usually assumes three economic basic rights—the right to the full produce of labour, the right to existence, and the right to work.21

  All production demands the co-operation of the material and personal factors of production: it is the purposeful union of land, capital, and labour. How much each of these has contributed physically to the result of production cannot be ascertained. How much of the value of the product is to be attributed to the separate factors is a question which is answered daily and hourly by buyers and sellers on the market, though the scientific explanation of this process has achieved satisfactory results only in very recent years, and these results are still far from final. The formation of market prices for all factors of production attributes to each a weight that corresponds to its part in production. Each factor receives in the price the yield of its collaboration. The labourer receives in wages the full produce of his labour. In the light of the subjective theory of value therefore that particular demand of Socialism appears quite absurd. But to the layman it is not so. The habit of speech with which it is expressed derives from the view that value comes from labour alone. Whoever takes this view of value will see in the demand for the abolition of private ownership in the means of production a demand for the full produce of labour for the labourer. At first it is a negative demand—exclusion of all income not based on labour. But as soon as one proceeds to construct a system on this principle insurmountable obstacles arise, difficulties which are the consequence of the untenable theories of the formation of value which have established the principle of the right to the full produce of labour. All such systems have been wrecked on this. Their authors have had to confess finally that what they wanted was nothing else than the abolition of the income of individuals not based on labour, and that only socialization of the means of production could achieve this. Of the right to the full produce of labour, which had occupied minds for decades, nothing remains but the slogan—effective for propaganda, of course—demanding that “unearned” non-labour income should be abolished.

  The Right to Existence can be defined in various ways. If one understands by this the claim of people, without means and unfit for work and with no relation to provide for them, to subsistence, then the Right to Existence is a harmless institution which was realized in most communities centuries ago. Certainly the manner in which the principle has been carried into practice may leave something to be desired, as for reasons that arise from its origin in charitable care of the poor, it gives to the necessitous no title recoverable by law. By “Right to Existence,” however, the socialists do not mean this. Their definition is: “that each member of society may claim that the goods and services necessary to the maintenance of his existence shall be assigned to him, according to the measure of existing means, before the less urgent needs of others are satisfied.“22 The vagueness of the concept, “maintenance of existence,” and the impossibility of recognizing and comparing how urgent are the needs of different persons from any objective standpoint, make this finally a demand for the utmost possible equal distribution of consumption goods. The form which the concept sometimes takes—that no one should starve while others have more than enough—expresses that intention even more clearly. Plainly, this claim for equality can be satisfied, on its negative side, only when all the means of production have been socialized and the yield of production is distributed by the State. Whether on its positive side it can be satisfied at all is another problem with which the advocates of the Right to Existence have scarcely concerned themselves. They have argued that Nature herself affords to all men a sufficient existence and only because of unjust social institutions is the provisioning of a great part of humanity insufficient; and that if the rich were deprived of all they are allowed to consume over and above what is “necessary,” everyone would be able to live decently. Only under the influence of the criticism based on the Malthusian Law of Population23 has socialist doctrine been amended. Socialists admit that under non-socialist production not enough is produced to supply all in abundance, but argue that Socialism would so enormously increase the productivity of labour that it would be possible to create an earthly paradise for an unlimited number of persons. Even Marx, otherwise so discreet, says that the socialist society would make the wants of each individual the standard measure of distribution.24

  This much is certain, however: the recognition of the Right to Existence, in the sense demanded by the socialist theorists, could be achieved only by the socialization of the means of production. Anton Menger has, it is true, expressed the opinion that private property and the Right to Existence might well exist side by side. In this case claims of citizens of the State to what was necessary for existence would have to be considered a mortgage on the national income, and these claims would have to be met before favoured individuals received an unearned income. But even he has to confess that were the Right to Existence admitted completely, it would absorb such an important part of the unearned income and would strip so much benefit from private ownership that all property would soon be collectively owned.25 If Menger had seen that the Right to Existence necessarily involved a right to the equal distribution of consumption goods, he would not have asserted that it was fundamentally compatible with private ownership in the means of production.

  The Right to Existence is very closely connected with the Right to Work.26 The basis of the idea is not so much a Right to Work as a duty. The laws which allow the unemployable a sort of claim to maintenance exclude the employable from a like favour. He has only a claim to the allotment of work. Naturally the socialist writers and with them the older socialist policy have a different view of this right. They transform it, more or less clearly, into a claim to a task which is agreeable to the inclinations and abilities of the worker, and which yields a wage sufficient for his subsistence needs. Beneath the Right to Work lies the same idea, that engendered the Right to Existence—the idea that in “natural” conditions—which we are to imagine existing before and outside the social order based on private property but which is to be restored by a socialist constitution when private property has been abolished—every man would be able to procure a sufficient income through work. The bourgeois society which has destroyed this satisfactory state of affairs owes to those thus injured the equivalent of what they have lost. This equivalent is supposed to be represented just by the Right to Work. Again we see the old illusion of the means of subsistence which Nature is supposed to provide irrespective of the historical development of society. But the fact is that Nature grants no rights at all, and just because she dispenses only the scantiest means of subsistence and because wants are practically unlimited, man is forced to take economic action. This action begets social collaboration; its origin is due to the realization that it heightens productivity and improves the standard of living. The notion, borrowed from the most naive theories of natural law, that in society the individual is worse off than “in the freer primitive state of Nature” and that society must first, so to speak, buy his toleration with special rights, is the cornerstone of expositions upon the Right to Work as well as upon the Right to Existence.

  Where production is perfectly balanced there is no unemployment. Unemployment is a consequence of economic change, and where production is unhindered by the interferences of authorities and trade unions, it is always only a phenomenon of transition, which the alteration of wage rates tends to remove. By means of appropriate institutions, by the extension, for example, of labour exchanges, which would evolve out of the economic mechanism in the unimpeded market—i.e. where the individual is free to choose and to change his profession and the place where he works—the duration of separate cases of unemployment could be so much shortened that it would no longer be considered a serious evil.27 But the demand that every citizen should have a right to work in his accustomed profession at a wage not inferior to the wage rates of other labour more in demand is utterly unsound. The organization of production cannot dispense with a means of forcing a change of profession. In the form demanded by the socialist, the Right to Work is absolutely impracticable, and this is not only the case in a society based on private ownership in the means of production. For even the socialist community could not grant the worker the right to be active only in his wonted profession; it, also, would need the power to move labour to the places where it was most needed.

  The three basic economic rights—whose number incidentally could easily be increased—belong to a past epoch of social reform movements. Their importance today is merely, though effectively, propagandistic. Socialization of the means of production has replaced them all.

  3

  Collectivism and Socialism

  The contrast between realism and nominalism which runs through the history of human thought since Plato and Aristotle is revealed also in social philosophy.28 The difference between the attitude of Collectivism and Individualism to the problem of social associations, is not different from the attitude of Universalism and Nominalism to the problem of the concept of species. But in the sphere of social science this contrast—to which in philosophy the attitude towards the idea of God has given a significance which extends far beyond the limits of scientific research—has the highest importance. The powers which are in existence and which do not want to succumb, find in the philosophy of Collectivism weapons for the defence of their rights. But even here Nominalism is a restless force seeking always to advance. Just as in the sphere of philosophy it dissolves the old concepts of metaphysical speculation, so here it breaks up the metaphysics of sociological Collectivism.

  The political misuse of the contrast is clearly visible in the teleological form which it assumes in Ethics and Politics. The problem here is stated otherwise than in Pure Philosophy. The question is whether the individual or the community shall be the purpose.29 This presupposes a contrast between the purposes of individuals and those of the social whole, a contrast which only the sacrifice of the one in favour of the other can overcome. A quarrel over the reality or nominality of the concepts becomes a quarrel over the precedence of purposes. Here there arises a new difficulty for Collectivism. As there are various social collectiva, whose purposes seem to conflict just as much as those of the individuals contrast with those of the collectiva, the conflict of their interests must be fought out. As a matter of fact, practical Collectivism does not worry much about this. It feels itself to be only the apologist of the ruling classes and serves, as it were, as scientific policeman, on all fours with political police, for the protection of those who happen to be in power.

  But the individualist social philosophy of the epoch of enlightenment disposed of the conflict between Individualism and Collectivism. It is called individualistic because its first task was to clear the way for subsequent social philosophy by breaking down the ideas of the ruling Collectivism. But it has not in any way replaced the shattered idols of Collectivism with a cult of the individual. By making the doctrine of the harmony of interests the starting point of sociological thought, it founded modem social science and showed that the conflict of purposes upon which the quarrel turned did not exist in reality. For society is only possible on these terms, that the individual finds therein a strengthening of his own ego and his own will.

  The collectivist movement of the present day derives its strength not from an inner want on the part of modern scientific thought but from the political will of an epoch which yearns after Romanticism and Mysticism. Spiritual movements are revolts of thought against inertia, of the few against the many; of those who because they are strong in spirit are strongest alone against those who can express themselves only in the mass and the mob, and who are significant only because they are numerous. Collectivism is the opposite of all this, the weapon of those who wish to kill mind and thought. Thus it begets the “New Idol,” “the coldest of all cold monsters,” the State.30 By exalting this mysterious being into a sort of idol, decking it out in the extravagance of fantasy with every excellence and purifying it of all dross,31 and by expressing a readiness to sacrifice everything on its altar, Collectivism seeks consciously to cut every tie that unites sociological with scientific thought. This is most clearly discernible in those thinkers who exerted the keenest criticism to free scientific thought from all teleological elements, whilst in the field of social cognition they not only retained traditional ideas and teleological ways of thinking but even, by endeavouring to justify this, barred the way by which sociology could have won for itself the liberty of thought already achieved by natural science. No god and no ruler of Nature lives for Kant’s theory of cognition of nature, but history he regards “as the execution of a hidden plan of nature in order to bring about a state-constitution perfect inwardly—and, for this purpose, outwardly as well—as the only condition in which she can develop all her abilities in humanity.”32 In the words of Kant we can see with especial clearness the fact that modern Collectivism has nothing more to do with the old realism of concepts but rather, having arisen from political and not from philosophical needs, occupies a special position outside science which cannot be shaken by attacks based on the theory of cognition. In the second part of his Ideen zu einer Philosophie der Geschichte der Menschheit (Ideas to a Philosophy of the History of Humanity) Herder violently attacked the critical philosophy of Kant, which appeared to him as “Averroic” hypostasization of the general. Anyone who sought to maintain that the race, and not the individual, was the subject of education and civilization, would be speaking incomprehensibly, “as race and species are only general concepts, except in so far as they exist in the individual being.” Even if one attributed to this general concept all the perfections of humanity—culture and highest enlightenment—which an ideal concept permits, one would have “said just as little about the true history of our race, as I would if, speaking of animality, stoneness, metalness, in general, I were to ascribe to them the most glorious, but in single individuals self-conflicting, attributes.“33 In his reply to this Kant completes the divorce of ethical-political Collectivism from the philosophical concept-realism. “Whoever said that no single horse has horns but the species of horses is nevertheless horned would be stating a downright absurdity. For then species means nothing more than the characteristic in which all individuals must agree. But if the meaning of the expression ’the human species’ is—and this is generally the case—the whole of a series of generations going into the infinite (indefinable), and it is assumed that this series is continuously nearing the line of its destiny, which runs alongside of it, then it is no contradiction to say, that in all its parts it is asymptotic to it, yet on the whole meets it-in other words, that no link of all the generations of the human race but only the species attains its destiny completely. Mathematicians can elucidate this. The philosopher would say: the destiny of the human race as a whole is continuous progress, and the completion of this is a mere idea—but in all intention a useful idea—of the aim towards which we, according to the plan of Providence, have to direct our exertions.”34 Here the teleological character of Collectivism is frankly admitted, and there opens up an unbridgeable chasm between it and the way of thought of pure cognition. The cognition of the hidden intentions of Nature lies beyond all experience and our own thought gives us nothing upon which to form a conclusion as to whether it exists or what it contains. Such behaviour of individual man and of social systems as we are able to observe provides no basis for a hypothesis. No logical connection can be forged between experience and that which we shall or may suppose. We are to believe—because it cannot be proved—that against his will man does that which is ordained by Nature, who knows better; that he does what profits the race, not the individual.35 This is not the customary technique of science.

  The fact is that Collectivism is not to be explained as a scientific necessity. Only the needs of politics can account for it. Therefore it does not stop, as conceptual realism stopped, at affirming the real existence of social associations—calling them organisms and living beings in the proper sense of the words—but idealizes them and makes them Gods. Gierke explains quite openly and unequivocally that one must hold fast to the “idea of the real unity of the community,” because this alone makes possible the demand that the individual should stake strength and life for Nation and State.36 Lessing has said that Collectivism is nothing less than “the cloak of tyranny.”37

  If the conflict between the common interests of the whole and the particular interests of the individual really existed, men would be quite incapable of collaborating in society. The natural intercourse between human beings would be the war of all against all. There could be no peace or mutual sufferance, but only temporary truce, which lasted no longer than the weariness of one or all the parts made necessary. The individual would, at least potentially, be in constant revolt against each and all, in the same way as he finds himself in unceasing war with beasts of prey and bacilli. The collective view of history, which is thoroughly asocial, cannot therefore conceive that social institutions could have arisen in any way except through the intervention of a “world shaper” of the Platonic δημιουργὸξ (one who works for the people). This operates in history through its instruments, the heroes, who lead resistant man to where it wants him. Thus the will of the individual is broken. He who wants to live for himself alone is forced by the representatives of God on earth to obey the moral law, which demands that he shall sacrifice his well-being in the interests of the Whole and its future development.

  The science of society begins by disposing of this dualism. Perceiving that the interests of separate individuals within society are compatible and that these individuals and the community are not in conflict, it is able to understand social institutions without calling gods and heroes to its aid. We can dispense with the Demiurge, which forces the individual into the Collectivism against his will, as soon as we realize that social union gives him more than it takes away. Even without assuming a “hidden plan of nature” we can understand the development to a more closely-knit form of society when we see that every step on this way benefits those who take it, and not only their distant great-grandchildren.

  Collectivism had nothing to oppose to the new social theory. Its continually reiterated accusation, that this theory does not apprehend the importance of the collectiva, especially those of State and Nation, only shows that it has not observed how the influence of liberal sociology has changed the setting of the problem. Collectivism no longer attempts to construct a complete theory of social life; the best it can produce against its opponents is witty aphorism, nothing more. In economics as well as in general sociology it has proved itself utterly barren. It is no accident that the German mind, dominated by the social theories of classical philosophy from Kant to Hegel, for a long time produced nothing important in economics, and that those who have broken the spell, first Thünen and Gossen, then the Austrians Carl Menger, Böhm-Bawerk, and Wieser, were free from any influence of the collectivist philosophy of the State.

  How little Collectivism was able to surmount the difficulties in the way of amplifying its doctrine is best shown by the manner in which it has treated the problem of social will. To refer again and again to the Will of the State, to the Will of the People, and to the Convictions of the People is not in any way to explain how the collective will of the social associations comes into being. As it is not merely different from the will of separate individuals but, in decisive points, is quite opposed to the latter, the collective will cannot originate as the sum or resultant of individual wills. Every collectivist assumes a different source for the collective will, according to his own political, religious and national convictions. Fundamentally it is all the same whether one interprets it as the supernatural powers of a king or priest or whether one views it as the quality of a chosen class or people. Friedrich Wilhelm IV and Wilhelm II were quite convinced that God had invested them with special authority, and this faith doubtless served to stimulate their conscientious efforts and the development of their strength. Many contemporaries believed alike and were ready to spend their last drop of blood in the service of the king sent to them by God. But science is as little able to prove the truth of this belief as to prove the truth of a religion. Collectivism is political, not scientific. What it teaches are judgments of value.

  CHAPTER 3

  The Social Order and the Political Constitution

  1

  The Policy of Violence and the Policy of Contract

  The domination of the principle of violence was naturally not restricted to the sphere of property. The spirit which put its trust in might alone, which sought the fundamentals of welfare, not in agreement, but in ceaseless conflict, permeated the whole of life. All human relations were settled according to the “Law of the Stronger,” which is really the negation of Law. There was no peace; at best there was a truce.

  Society grows out of the smallest associations. The circle of those who combined to keep the peace among themselves was at first very limited. The circle widened step by step through millennia, until the community of international law and the union of peace extended over the greatest part of humanity, excluding the half savage peoples who lived on the lowest plane of culture. Within this community the principle of contract was not everywhere equally powerful. It was most completely recognized in all that was concerned with property. It remained weakest in fields where it touched the question of political domination. Into the sphere of foreign policy it has so far penetrated no further than to limit the principle of violence by setting up rules of combat. Apart from the process of arbitration, which is a recent development, disputes between states are still, in essentials, derided by arms, the most usual of ancient judicial processes; but the deriding combat, like the judicial duels of the most ancient laws, must conform to certain rules. All the same, it would be false to maintain that in the intercourse of states, fear of foreign violence is the one factor that keeps the sword in its sheath.39 Forces which have been active in the foreign policy of states through millennia have set the value of peace above the profit of victorious war. In our time even the mightiest war lord cannot isolate himself completely from the influence of the legal maxim that wars must have valid reasons. Those who wage war invariably endeavour to prove that theirs is the just cause and that they fight in defence or at least in preventive-defence; this is a solemn recognition of the principle of Law and Peace. Every policy which has openly confessed to the principle of violence has brought upon itself a world-coalition, to which it has finally succumbed.

  In the Liberal Social Philosophy the human mind becomes aware of the overcoming of the principle of violence by the principle of peace. In this philosophy for the first time humanity gives itself an account of its actions. It tears away the romantic nimbus with which the exercise of power had been surrounded. War, it teaches, is harmful, not only to the conquered but to the conqueror. Society has arisen out of the works of peace; the essence of society is peacemaking. Peace and not war is the father of all things. Only economic action has created the wealth around us; labour, not the profession of arms, brings happiness. Peace builds, war destroys. Nations are fundamentally peaceful because they recognize the predominant utility of peace. They accept war only in self-defence; wars of aggression they do not desire. It is the princes who want war, because thus they hope to get money, goods, and power. It is the business of the nations to prevent them from achieving their desire by denying them the means necessary for making war.

  The love of peace of the liberal does not spring from philanthropic considerations, as does the pacifism of Bertha Suttner40 and of others of that category. It has none of the woebegone spirit which attempts to combat the romanticism of blood lust with the sobriety of international congresses. Its predilection for peace is not a pastime which is otherwise compatible with all possible convictions. It is the social theory of Liberalism. Whoever maintains the solidarity of the economic interests of all nations, and remains indifferent to the extent of national territories and national frontiers, whoever has so far overcome collectivist notions that such an expression as “Honour of the State” sounds incomprehensible to him, that man will nowhere find a valid cause for wars of aggression. Liberal pacificism is the offspring of the Liberal Social Philosophy. That Liberalism aims at the protection of property and that it rejects war are two expressions of one and the same principle.41

  2

  The Social Function of Democracy

  In internal politics Liberalism demands the fullest freedom for the expression of political opinion and it demands that the State shall be constituted according to the will of the majority; it demands legislation through representatives of the people, and that the government, which is a committee of the people’s representatives, shall be bound by the Laws. Liberalism merely compromises when it accepts a monarchy. Its ideal remains the republic or at least a shadow-principality of the English type. For its highest political principle is the self-determination of peoples as of individuals. It is idle to discuss whether one should call this political ideal democratic or not. The more recent writers are inclined to assume a contrast between Liberalism and Democracy. They seem to have no clear conceptions of either; above all, their ideas as to the philosophical basis of democratic institutions seem to be derived exclusively from the ideas of natural law.

  Now it may well be that the majority of liberal theories have endeavoured to recommend democratic institutions on grounds which correspond to the theories of natural law with regard to the inalienable fight of human beings to self-determination. But the reasons which a political movement gives in justification of its postulates do not always coincide with the reasons which force them to be uttered. It is often easier to act politically than to see clearly the ultimate motives of one’s actions. The old Liberalism knew that the democratic demands rose inevitably from its system of social philosophy. But it was not at all clear what position these demands occupied in the system. This explains the uncertainty it has always manifested in questions of ultimate principle; it also accounts for the measureless exaggeration which certain pseudo-democratic demands have enjoyed at the hands of those who ultimately claimed the name democrat for themselves alone and who thus became contrasted with liberals who did not go so far.

  The significance of the democratic form of constitution is not that it represents more nearly than any other the natural and inborn rights of man; not that it realizes, better than any other kind of government, the ideas of liberty and equality. In the abstract it is as little unworthy of a man to let others govern him as it is to let someone else perform any kind of labour for him. That the citizen of a developed community feels free and happy in a democracy, that he regards it as superior to all other forms of government, and that he is prepared to make sacrifices to achieve and maintain it, this, again, is not to be explained by the fact that democracy is worthy of love for its own sake. The fact is that it performs functions which he is not prepared to do without.

  It is usually argued that the essential function of democracy is the selection of political leaders. In the democratic system the appointment to at least the most important public offices is decided by competition in all the publicity of political life, and in this competition, it is believed, the most capable are bound to win. But it is difficult to see why democracy should necessarily be luckier than autocracy or aristocracy in selecting people for directing the state. In nondemocratic states, history shows, political talents have frequently won through, and one cannot maintain that democracy always puts the best people into office. On this point the enemies and the friends of democracy will never agree.

  The truth is that the significance of the democratic form of constitution is something quite different from all this. Its function is to make peace, to avoid violent revolutions. In non-democratic states, too, only a government which can count on the backing of public opinion is able to maintain itself in the long run. The strength of all governments lies not in weapons but in the spirit which puts the weapons at their disposal. Those in power, always necessarily a small minority against an enormous majority, can attain and maintain power only by making the spirit of the majority pliant to their rule. If there is a change, if those on whose support the government depends lose the conviction that they must support this particular government, then the ground is undermined beneath it and it must sooner or later give way. Persons and systems in the government of non-democratic states can be changed by violence alone. The system and the individuals that have lost the support of the people are swept away in the upheaval and a new system and other individuals take their place.

  But any violent revolution costs blood and money. Lives are sacrificed, and destruction impedes economic activity. Democracy tries to prevent such material loss and the accompanying psychical shock by guaranteeing accord between the will of the state—as expressed through the organs of the state—and the will of the majority. This it achieves by making the organs of the state legally dependent on the will of the majority of the moment. In internal policy it realizes what pacifism seeks to realize in external policy.42

  That this alone is the decisive function of democracy becomes clearly evident when we consider the argument which opponents of the democratic principle most frequently adduce against it. The Russian conservative is undoubtedly right when he points out that Russian Tsarism and the policy of the Tsar was approved by the great mass of the Russian people, so that even a democratic state form could not have given Russia a different system of government. Russian democrats themselves have had no delusions about this. As long as the majority of the Russian people or, better, of that part of the people which was politically mature and which had the opportunity to intervene in policy—as long as this majority stood behind tsardom, the empire did not suffer from the absence of a democratic form of constitution. This lack became fatal, however, as soon as a difference arose between public opinion and the political system of tsardom. State will and people’s will could not be adjusted pacifically; a political catastrophe was inevitable. And what is true of the Russia of the Tsar is just as true of the Russia of the Bolshevists; it is just as true of Prussia, of Germany, and of every other state. How disastrous were the effects of the French Revolution, from which France has psychically never quite recovered! How enormously England has benefited from the fact that she has been able to avoid revolution since the seventeenth century!

  Thus we see how mistaken it is to regard the terms democratic and revolutionary as synonymous or even as similar. Democracy is not only not revolutionary, but it seeks to extirpate revolution. The cult of revolution, of violent overthrow at any price, which is peculiar to Marxism, has nothing whatever to do with democracy. Liberalism, recognizing that the attainment of the economic aims of man presupposes peace, and seeking therefore to eliminate all causes of strife at home or in foreign politics, desires democracy. The violence of war and revolutions is always an evil to liberal eyes, an evil which cannot always be avoided as long as man lacks democracy. Yet even when revolution seems almost inevitable Liberalism tries to save the people from violence, hoping that philosophy may so enlighten tyrants that they will voluntarily renounce rights which are opposed to social development. Schiller speaks with the voice of Liberalism when he makes the Marquis de Posa implore the king for liberty of thought; and the great night of August 4th, 1789, when the French feudal lords voluntarily renounced their privileges, and the English Reform Act of 1832, show that these hopes were not quite vain. Liberalism has no admiration to spare for the heroic grandiosity of Marxism’s professional revolutionaries, who stake the lives of thousands and destroy values which the labour of decades and centuries has created. Here the economic principle holds good: Liberalism wants success at the smallest price.

  Democracy is self-government of the people; it is autonomy. But this does not mean that all must collaborate equally in legislation and administration. Direct democracy can be realized only on the smallest scale. Even small parliaments cannot do all their work in plenary assemblies; committees must be chosen, and the real work is done by individuals; by the proposers, the speakers, the rapporteurs, and above all by the authors of the bills. Here then is final proof of the fact that the masses follow the leadership of a few men. That men are not all equal, that some are born to lead and some to be led is a circumstance which even democratic institutions cannot alter. We cannot all be pioneers: most people do not wish to be nor have they the necessary strength. The idea that under the purest form of democracy people would spend their days in council like the members of a parliament derives from the conception we had of the ancient Greek city State at its period of decay; but we overlook the fact that such communities were not in fact democracies at all, since they excluded from public life the slaves and all who did not possess full citizen rights. Where all are to collaborate, the “pure” ideal of direct democracy becomes impracticable. To want to see democracy realized in this impossible form is nothing less than pedantic natural law doctrinairianism. To achieve the ends for which democratic institutions strive it is only necessary that legislation and administration shall be guided according to the will of the popular majority and for this purpose indirect democracy is completely satisfactory. The essence of democracy is not that everyone makes and administers laws but that lawgivers and rulers should be dependent on the people’s will in such a way that they may be peaceably changed if conflict occurs.

  This defeats many of the arguments, put forward by friends and opponents of popular rule, against the possibility of realizing democracy.43 Democracy is not less democracy because leaders come forth from the masses to devote themselves entirely to politics. Like any other profession in the society dividing labour, politics demand the entire man; dilettante politicians are of no use.44 As long as the professional politician remains dependent on the will of the majority, so that he can carry out only that for which he has won over the majority, the democratic principle is satisfied. Democracy does not demand, either that parliament shall be a copy, on a reduced scale, of the social stratification of the country, consisting, where peasant and industrial labourers form the bulk of the population, mainly of peasants and industrial labourers.45 The gentleman of leisure who plays a great role in the English parliament, the lawyer and journalist of the parliaments of the Latin countries probably represent the people better than the trade union leaders and peasants who have brought spiritual desolation to the German and Slav parliaments. If members of the higher social ranks were excluded from parliaments, those parliaments and the governments emanating from them could not represent the will of the people. For in society these higher ranks, the composition of which is itself the result of a selection made by public opinion, exert on the minds of the people an influence out of all proportion to their mere numbers. If one kept them from parliament and public administration by describing them to the electors as men unfit to rule, a conflict would have arisen between public opinion and the opinion of parliamentary bodies, and this would make more difficult, if not impossible, the functioning of democratic institutions. Non-parliamentary influences make themselves felt in legislation and administration, for the intellectual power of the excluded cannot be stifled by the inferior elements which lead in parliamentary life. Parliamentarism suffers from nothing so much as from this; we must seek here the reason for its much deplored decline. For democracy is not mob rule, and to do justice to its tasks, parliament should include the best political minds of the nation.

  Grave injury has been done to the concept of democracy by those who, exaggerating the natural law notion of sovereignty, conceived it as limitless rule of the volonté générale (general will). There is really no essential difference between the unlimited power of the democratic state and the unlimited power of the autocrat. The idea that carries away our demagogues and their supporters, the idea that the state can do whatever it wishes, and that nothing should resist the will of the sovereign people, has done more evil perhaps than the caesar-mania of degenerate princelings. Both have the same origin in the notion of a state based purely on political might. The legislator feels free of all limitations because he understands from the theory of law that all law depends on his will. It is a small confusion of ideas, but a confusion with profound consequences, when he takes his formal freedom to be a material one and believes himself to be above the natural conditions of social life. The conflicts which arise out of this misconception show that only within the framework of Liberalism does democracy fulfil a social function. Democracy without Liberalism is a hollow form.

  3

  The Ideal of Equality

  Political democracy necessarily follows from Liberalism. But it is often said that the democratic principle must eventually lead beyond Liberalism. Carried out strictly, it is said, it will require economic as well as political rights of equality. Thus logically Socialism must necessarily evolve out of Liberalism, while Liberalism necessarily involves its own destruction.

  The ideal of equality, also, originated as a demand of natural law. It was sought to justify it with religious, psychological, and philosophical arguments; but all these proved to be untenable. The fact is that men are endowed differently by nature; thus the demand that all should be equally treated cannot rest on any theory that all are equal. The poverty of the natural law argument is exposed most clearly when it deals with the principle of equality.

  If we wish to understand this principle we must start with an historical examination. In modern times, as earlier, it has been appealed to as a means of sweeping away the feudal differentiation of individuals’ legal rights. So long as barriers hinder the development of the individual and of whole sections of the people, social life is bound to be disturbed by violent upheavals. People without rights are always a menace to social order. Their common interest in removing such barriers unites them; they are prepared to resort to violence because by peaceable means they are unable to get what they want. Social peace is attained only when one allows all members of society to participate in democratic institutions. And this means equality of All before the Law.

  Another consideration too urges upon Liberalism the desirability of such equality. Society is best served when the means of production are in the possession of those who know how to use them best. The gradation of legal rights according to accident of birth keeps production goods from the best managers. We all know what role this argument has played in liberal struggles, above all in the emancipation of the serfs. The soberest reasons of expediency recommend equality to Liberalism. Liberalism is fully conscious, of course, that equality before the Law can become extremely oppressive for the individual under certain circumstances, because what benefits one may injure another; the liberal idea of equality is however based on social considerations, and where these are to be served the susceptibilities of individuals must give way. Like all other social institutions, the Law exists for social purposes. The individual must bow to it, because his own aims can be served only in and with society.

  The meaning of legal institutions is misunderstood when they are conceived to be anything more than this, and when they are made the basis of new claims which are to be realized at whatever cost to the aim of social collaboration. The equality Liberalism creates is equality before the Law; it has never sought any other. From the liberal point of view, therefore, criticism which condemns this equality as inadequate—maintaining that true equality is full equality of income through equal distribution of commodities—is unjustified.

  But it is precisely in this form that the principle of equality is most acclaimed by those who expect to gain more than they lose from an equal distribution of goods. Here is a fertile field for the demagogue. Whoever stirs up the resentment of the poor against the rich can count on securing a big audience. Democracy creates the most favourable preliminary conditions for the development of this spirit, which is always and everywhere present, though concealed.46 So far all democratic states have foundered on this point. The democracy of our own time is hastening towards the same end.

  It is a strange fact that just that idea of equality should be called unsocial which considers equality only from the point of view of the interests of society as a whole, and which wants to see it achieved only in so far as it helps society to attain its social aims; while the view which insists that equality, regardless of the consequences, implies a claim to an equal quota of the national income is put forward as the only view inspired by consideration for society. In the Greek city State of the fourth century the citizen considered himself lord of the property of all the subjects of the State and he demanded his part imperiously, as a shareholder demands his dividends. Referring to the practice of distributing common property and confiscated private property, Aeschines made the following comment: “The Athenians come out of the Ecclesia not as out of a political assembly but as from the meeting of a company in which the surplus profit has been distributed.”47 It cannot be denied that even to-day the common man is inclined to look on the State as a source from which to draw the utmost possible income.

  But the principle of equality in this form by no means follows necessarily from the democratic idea. It should not be recognized as valid a priori any more than any other principle of social life. Before one can judge it, its effects must be clearly understood. The fact that it is generally very popular with the masses and therefore finds easy recognition in a democratic state neither makes it a fundamental principle of democracy nor protects it from the scrutiny of the theorist.

  4

  Democracy and Social-Democracy

  The view that democracy and Socialism are inwardly related spread far and wide in the decades which preceded the Bolshevist revolution. Many came to believe that democracy and Socialism meant the same thing, and that democracy without Socialism or Socialism without democracy would not be possible.

  This notion sprang principally from a combination of two chains of thought, both of which sprang originally from the Hegelian philosophy of history. For Hegel world history is “progress in the consciousness of freedom.” Progress takes place in this way: “... the Orientals only knew that one is free, the Greek and Roman world that some are free, but we know that all men are free as such, that man is free as man.”48 There is no doubt that the freedom of which Hegel spoke was different from that for which the radical politicians of his day were fighting. Hegel took ideas which were common to the political doctrines of the epoch of enlightenment and intellectualized them. But the radical young Hegelians read into his words what appealed to them. For them it was certain that the evolution to Democracy was a necessity in the Hegelian sense of this term. The historians follow suit. Gervinus sees “by and large in the history of humanity,” as “in the internal evolution of the states,” “a regular progress ... from the spiritual and civil freedom of the single individual to that of the Several and the Many.”49

  The materialist conception of history provides the idea of the “liberty of the many” with a different content. The Many are the proletarians; they must necessarily become socialists because consciousness is determined by the social conditions. Thus evolution to democracy and evolution to Socialism are one and the same thing. Democracy is the means towards the realization of Socialism, but at the same time Socialism is the means towards the realization of democracy. The party title, “Social Democracy,” most clearly expresses this co-ordination of Socialism and democracy. With the name democracy the socialist workers’ party took over the spiritual inheritance of the movements of Young Europe. All the slogans of the pre-March50 radicalism are to be found in the Social-Democratic Party programmes. They recruit, for the party, supporters who feel indifferent to or are even repulsed by the demands of Socialism.

  The relation of Marxist Socialism to the demand for democracy was determined by the fact that it was the Socialism of the Germans, the Russians, and the smaller nations which lived under the Austro-Hungarian monarchy and the empire of the Tsars. Every opposition party in these more or less autocratic states had to demand democracy first of all, so as to create the conditions that must precede the development of political activity. For the Social Democrats this practically excluded democracy from discussion; it would never have done to cast a doubt on the democratic ideology pro foro externo.

  But the question of the relation between the two ideas expressed in its double name could not be completely suppressed within the party. People began by dividing the problem into two parts. When they spoke of the coming socialist paradise they continued to maintain the interdependence of the terms and even went a little farther and said that they were ultimately one. Since one continued to regard democracy as in itself a good thing, one could not—as a faithful socialist awaiting absolute salvation in the paradise-to-be—arrive at any other conclusion. There would be something wrong with the land of promise if it were not the best imaginable from a political point of view. Thus socialist writers did not cease to proclaim that only in a socialist society could true democracy exist. What passed for democracy in the capitalist states was a caricature designed to cover the machinations of exploiters.

  But although it was seen that Socialism and democracy must meet at the goal, nobody was quite certain whether they were to take the same road. People argued over the problem whether the realization of Socialism—and therefore, according to the views just discussed, of democracy too—was to be attempted through the instrumentality of democracy or whether in the struggle one should deviate from the principles of democracy. This was the celebrated controversy about the dictatorship of the proletariat; it was the subject of academic discussion in Marxist literature up to the time of the Bolshevist revolution and has since become a great political problem.

  Like all other differences of opinion which divide Marxists into groups, the quarrel arose from the dualism which cuts right through that bundle of dogmas called the Marxist system. In Marxism there are always two ways at least of looking at anything and everything, and the reconciliation of these views is attained only by dialectic artificialities. The commonest device is to use, according to the needs of the moment, a word to which more than one meaning may be attached. With these words, which at the same time serve as political slogans to hypnotize the mass psyche, a cult suggestive of fetishism is carried on. The Marxist dialectic is essentially word-fetishism. Every article of the faith is embodied in a word fetish whose double or even multiple meaning makes it possible to unite incompatible ideas and demands. The interpretation of these words, as intentionally ambiguous as the words of the Delphic Pythia, eventually brings the different parties to blows, and everyone quotes in his favour passages from the writings of Marx and Engels to which authoritative importance is attached.

  “Revolution” is one of these words. By “industrial revolution” Marxism means the gradual transformation of the pre-capitalist way of production into the capitalist. “Revolution” here means the same as “development,” and the contrast between the terms “evolution” and “revolution” is almost extinguished. Thus the Marxist is able, when it pleases him, to speak of the revolutionary spirit as contemptible “putschism” (“insurrectionism”). The revisionists were quite right when they called many passages in Marx and Engels to their support. But when Marx calls the workers’ movement a revolutionary movement and says that the working class is the only true revolutionary class, he is using the term in the sense that suggests barricades and street fights. Thus syndicalism is also right when it appeals to Marx.

  Marxism is equally obscure in the use of the word State. According to Marxism, the State is merely an instrument of class domination. By acquiring political power the proletariat abolishes class conflict and the State ceases to exist. “As soon as there is no longer any social class to be kept in suppression, and as soon as class domination and the struggle for individual existence based on the hitherto existing anarchy of production are removed, along with the conflicts and excesses which arise from them, then there will be nothing more to repress and nothing that would make necessary a special repressive power, a state. The first act in which the State really appears as representative of the whole society—the taking possession of the means of production in the name of society—is simultaneously its last independent act as a state. The intervention of state power in social affairs becomes superfluous in one field after another until at last it falls asleep of its own accord.”51 However obscure or badly thought out may be its view of the essence of political organization, this statement is so positive in what it says of the proletarian rule that it would seem to leave no room for doubt. But it seems much less positive when we remember Marx’s assertion that between the capitalist and the communist societies must lie a period of revolutionary transformation, in addition to which there will be a corresponding “political period of transition whose state can be no other than the revolutionary dictatorship of the proletariat.”52 If we assume, with Lenin, that this period is to endure until that “higher phase of communist society” is reached, in which “the enslaving subordination of individuals under the division of labour has vanished, and with it the contrast of mental and physical work,” in which “work will have become not only a means to life but itself the first necessity of life,” then of course we come to a very different conclusion with regard to Marxism’s attitude to democracy.53 Obviously the socialist community will have no room for democracy for centuries to come.

  Although it occasionally comments on the historical achievements of Liberalism, Marxism entirely overlooks the importance of liberal ideas. It is at a loss when it comes to deal with the liberal demands for liberty of conscience and expression of opinion, for the recognition on principle of every opposition party and the equal rights of all parties. Wherever it is not in power, Marxism claims all the basic liberal rights, for they alone can give it the freedom which its propaganda urgently needs. But it can never understand their spirit and will never grant them to its opponents when it comes into power itself. In this respect it resembles the Churches and other institutions which rest on the principle of violence. These, too, exploit the democratic liberties when they are fighting their battle, but once in power they deny their adversaries such rights. So, plainly, the democracy of Socialism exposes its deceit. “The party of the communists,” says Bukharin, “demands no sort of liberties for the bourgeois enemies of the people. On the contrary.” And with remarkable cynicism he boasts that the communists, before they were in power, advocated the liberty of expression of opinion merely because it would have been “ridiculous” to demand from the capitalists liberty for the workers’ movement in any other way than by demanding liberty in general.54

  Always and everywhere Liberalism demands democracy at once, for it believes that the function which it has to fulfil in society permits of no postponement. Without democracy the peaceful development of the state is impossible. The demand for democracy is not the result of a policy of compromise or of a pandering to relativism in questions of world-philosophy,55 for Liberalism asserts the absolute validity of its doctrine. Rather, it is the consequence of the Liberal belief that power depends upon a mastery over mind alone and that to gain such a mastery only spiritual weapons are effective. Even where for an indefinite time to come it may expect to reap only disadvantages from democracy, Liberalism still advocates democracy. Liberalism believes that it cannot maintain itself against the will of the majority; and that in any case the advantages which might accrue from a liberal regime maintained artificially and against the feeling of the people would be infinitesimal compared to the disturbances that would stay the quiet course of state development if the people’s will were violated.

  The Social Democrats would certainly have continued to juggle with the catchword democracy, but, by an historical accident, the Bolshevist revolution has compelled them prematurely to discard their mask, and to reveal the violence which their doctrine implies.

  5

  The Political Constitution of Socialist Communities

  Beyond the dictatorship of the proletariat lies the paradise, the “higher phase of the communist society,” in which, “with the all round development of individuals, the productive forces will also have increased, and all the springs of social wealth will flow more freely.”56 In this land of promise “there will remain nothing to repress, nothing which would necessitate a special repressive power, a state ... In place of the government over persons comes the administration of things and the direction of productive processes.”57 An epoch will have begun in which “a generation, grown up in new, free social conditions, will be able to discard the whole lumber of State.”58 The working class will have gone, thanks to “long struggles, a whole series of historical processes,” by which “the men, like the conditions, were completely transformed.”59 Thus society is able to exist without coercion, as once it did in the Golden Age. Of this Engels has much to relate, much that is beautiful and good.60 Only we have read it all before, all better and more beautifully expressed in Virgil, Ovid, and Tacitus!

  • Aurea prima sara est aetas, quae vindice nullo,
  • sponte sua, sine lege fidem rectumque colebat.
  • Poena metusque aberant, nec verba minantia fixo
  • aere legebantur61

  (The first golden age flourished, which begat truth and justice spontaneously; No laws of formal guarantees were needed. Punishment and fear were unheard of; no savage, restrictive decrees were carved on bronze tablets.)

  It follows from all this that the Marxists have no occasion to occupy themselves with problems concerned with the political constitution of the socialist community. In this connection they perceive no problems at all which cannot be dismissed by saying nothing about them. Yet even in the socialist community the necessity of acting in common must raise the question of how to act in common. It will be necessary to decide how to form that which is usually called, metaphorically, the will of the community or the will of the people. Even if we overlooked the fact that there can be no administration of goods which is not administration of men—i.e. the bending one human will to another—and no direction of productive processes which is not the government over persons—i.e. domination of one human will by another62 —even if we overlooked this we should still have to ask who is to administer the goods and direct the productive processes, and on what principles. Thus, once again we are beset by all the political problems of the legally regulated social community.

  All historical attempts to realize the socialist ideal of society have a most pronounced authoritarian character. Nothing in the Empire of the Pharaohs or of the Incas, and nothing in the Jesuit State of Paraguay was suggestive of democracy, of self-determination by the majority of the people. The Utopias of all the older kinds of socialists were equally undemocratic. Neither Plato nor Saint-Simon were democrats. One finds nothing in history or in the literary history of socialist theory which shows an internal connection between the socialist order of society and political democracy.

  If we look closer we find that the ideal of the higher phase of communist society, ripening only in remote distances of the future, is, as the Marxists view it, thoroughly undemocratic.63 Here, too, the socialist intends that eternal peace shall reign—the goal of all democratic institutions. But the means by which this peace is to be gained are very different from those employed by the democrats. It will not rest on the power to change peacefully rulers and ruling policy, but on the fact that the regime is made permanent, and that rulers and policy are unchangeable. This, too, is peace; not the peace of progress which Liberalism strives to attain but the peace of the graveyard. It is not the peace of pacifists but of pacifiers, of men of violence who seek to create peace by subjection. Every absolutist makes such peace by setting up an absolute domination, and it lasts just as long as his domination can be maintained. Liberalism sees the vanity of all this. It sets itself, therefore, to make a peace which will be proof against the perils which threaten it on account of man’s inextinguishable yearning for change.

  CHAPTER 4

  The Social Order and the Family

  1

  Socialism and the Sexual Problem

  Proposals to transform the relations between the sexes have long gone hand in hand with plans for the socialization of the means of production. Marriage is to disappear along with private property, giving place to an arrangement more in harmony with the fundamental facts of sex. When man is liberated from the yoke of economic labour, love is to be liberated from all the economic trammels which have profaned it. Socialism promises not only welfare—wealth for all—but universal happiness in love as well. This part of its programme has been the source of much of its popularity. It is significant that no other German socialist book was more widely read or more effective as propaganda than Bebel’s Woman and Socialism, which is dedicated above all to the message of free love.

  It is not strange that many should feel the system of regulating sexual relations under which we live to be unsatisfactory. This system exerts a far reaching influence in diverting those sexual energies, which are at the bottom of so much human activity, from their purely sexual aspect to new purposes which cultural development has evolved. Great sacrifices have been made to build up this system and new sacrifices are always being made. There is a process which every individual must pass through in his own life if his sexual energies are to cast off the diffuse form they have in childhood and take their final mature shape. He must develop the inner psychic strength which impedes the flow of undifferentiated sexual energy and like a dam alters its direction.

  A part of the energy with which nature has endowed the sexual instinct is in this way turned from sexual to other purposes. Not everyone escapes unscathed from the stress and struggle of this change. Many succumb, many become neurotic or insane. Even the man who remains healthy and becomes a useful member of society is left with scars which an unfortunate accident may re-open.64 And even though sex should become the source of his greatest happiness, it will also be the source of his deepest pain; its passing will tell him that age has come, and that he is doomed to go the way of all transient, earthly things. Thus sex, which seems ever and again to fool man by giving and denying, first making him happy and then plunging him back into misery, never lets him sink into inertia. Waking and dreaming man’s wishes turn upon sex. Those who sought to reform society could not have overlooked it.

  This was the more to be expected since many of them were themselves neurotics suffering from an unhappy development of the sexual instinct. Fourier, for example, suffered from a grave psychosis. The sickness of a man whose sexual life is in the greatest disorder is evident in every line of his writings; it is a pity that nobody has undertaken to examine his life history by the psycho-analytic method. That the crazy absurdities of his books should have circulated so widely and won the highest commendation is due entirely to the fact that they describe with morbid fantasy the erotic pleasures awaiting humanity in the paradise of the “phalanstère.”

  Utopianism presents all its ideals for the future as the reconstruction of a Golden Age which humanity has lost through its own fault. In the same way it pretends that it is demanding for sexual life only a return to an original felicity. The poets of antiquity are no less eloquent in their praises of marvellous, bygone times of free love than when they speak of the saturnian ages when property did not exist.65 Marxism echoes the older Utopians.

  Marxism indeed seeks to combat marriage just as it seeks to justify the abolition of private property, by attempting to demonstrate its origin in history; just as it looked for reasons for abolishing the State in the fact that the State had not existed “from eternity,” that societies had lived without a vestige of “State and State power.”66 For the Marxist, historical research is merely a means of political agitation. Its use is to furnish him with weapons against the hateful bourgeois order of society. The main objection to this method is not that it puts forward frivolous, untenable theories without thoroughly examining the historical material, but that he smuggles an evaluation of this material into an exposition which pretends to be scientific. Once upon a time, he says, there was a golden age. Then came one which was worse, but supportable. Finally, Capitalism arrived, and with it every imaginable evil. Thus Capitalism is damned in advance. It can be granted only a single merit, that thanks to the excess of its abominations, the world is ripe for salvation by Socialism.

  2

  Man and Woman in the Age of Violence

  Recent ethnographical and historical research has provided a wealth of material on which to base a judgment of the history of sexual relations, and the new science of psycho-analysis has laid the foundations for a scientific theory of sexual life. So far sociology has not begun to understand the wealth of ideas and material available from these sources. It has not been able to restate the problems in such a way that they are adjusted to the questions that should be its first study today. What it says about exogamy and endogamy, about promiscuity, not to mention matriarchy and patriarchy, is quite out of touch with the theories one is now entitled to put forward. In fact, sociological knowledge of the earliest history of marriage and the family is so defective that one cannot draw on it for an interpretation of the problems which occupy us here. It is on fairly secure ground where it is dealing with conditions in historical times but nowhere else.

  Unlimited rule of the male characterizes family relations where the principle of violence dominates. Male aggressiveness, which is implicit in the very nature of sexual relations, is here carried to the extreme. The man seizes possession of the woman and holds this sexual object in the same sense in which he has other goods of the outer world. Here woman becomes completely a thing. She is stolen and bought; she is given away, sold away, ordered away; in short, she is like a slave in the house. During life the man is her judge; when he dies she is buried in his grave along with his other possessions.67 With almost absolute unanimity the older legal sources of almost every nation show that this was once the lawful state of affairs. Historians usually try, especially when dealing with the history of their own nations, to soften the painful impression which a description of these conditions leaves on a modern mind. They point out that practice was milder than the letter of the law, that the harshness of the law did not cloud the relations between the married couple. For the rest, they get away as quickly as possible from a subject which does not seem to fit too well into their system, by dropping a few remarks about the ancient severity of morals and purity of family life.68 But these attempts at justification, to which their nationalist point of view and a predilection for the past seduce them, are distorted. The conception afforded by the old laws and law books of the relations between man and woman is not a theoretical speculation of unworldly dreamers. It is a picture direct from life and reproduces exactly what men, and women too, believed of marriage and intercourse between the sexes. That a Roman woman who stood in the “manus” of the husband or under the guardianship of the clan, or an ancient German woman who remained subject to the “munt” all her life, found this relation quite natural and just, that they did not revolt against it inwardly, or make any attempt to shake off the yoke—this does not prove that a broad chasm had developed between law and practice. It only shows that the institution suited the feeling of women; and this should not surprise us. The prevailing legal and moral views of a time are held not only by those whom they benefit but by those, too, who appear to suffer from them. Their domination is expressed in that fact—that the people from whom they claim sacrifices also accept them. Under the principle of violence, woman is the servant of man. In this she too sees her destiny. She shares the attitude to which the New Testament has given the most terse expression:

  Neither was the man created for the woman; but the woman for the man.69

  The principle of violence recognizes only the male. He alone possesses power, hence he alone has rights. Woman is merely a sexual object. No woman is without a lord, be it father or guardian, husband or employer. Even the prostitutes are not free; they belong to the owner of the brothel. The guests make their contracts, not with them, but with him. The vagabond woman is free game, whom everyone may use according to his pleasure. The right to choose a man herself does not belong to the woman. She is given to the husband and taken by him. That she loves him is her duty, perhaps also her virtue; the sentiment will sharpen the pleasure which a man derives from marriage. But the woman is not asked for her opinion. The man has the right to repudiate or divorce her; she herself has no such right.

  Thus in the age of violence, belief in man’s lordship triumphs over all older tendencies to evolve equal rights between the sexes. Legend preserves a few traces of a time when woman enjoyed a greater sexual freedom—the character of Brünhilde, for example—but these are no longer understood. But the dominion of man is so great that it has come into conflict with the nature of sexual intercourse and for sheer sexual reasons man must, in his own interest, eventually weaken this dominion.

  For it is against nature that man should take woman as a will-less thing. The sexual act is a mutual give and take, and a merely suffering attitude in the woman diminishes man’s pleasure. To satisfy himself he must awaken her response. The victor who has dragged the slave into his marriage bed, the buyer who has traded the daughter from her father must court for that which the violation of the resisting woman cannot give. The man who outwardly appears the unlimited master of his woman is not so powerful in the house as he thinks; he must concede a part of his rule to the woman, even though he ashamedly conceals this from the world.

  To this is added a second factor. The sexual act gradually becomes an extraordinary psychic effort which succeeds only with the assistance of special stimuli. This becomes more and more so in proportion as the individual is compelled by the principle of violence, which makes all women owned women and thus renders more difficult sexual intercourse, to restrain his impulses and to control his natural appetites. The sexual act now requires a special psychic attitude to the sexual object. This is love, unknown to primitive man and to the man of violence, who use every opportunity to possess, without selection. The characteristic of love, the overvaluation of the object, cannot exist when women occupy the position of contempt which they occupy under the principle of violence. For under this system she is merely a slave, but it is the nature of love to conceive her as a queen.

  Out of this contrast arises the first great conflict in the relations of the sexes which we can perceive in the full light of history. Marriage and love become contradictory. The forms in which this contrast appears vary, but in essence it always remains the same. Love has entered the feelings and thoughts of men and women and becomes ever more and more the central point of psychic life, giving meaning and charm to existence. But at first it has nothing to do with marriage and the relations between husband and wife. This inevitably leads to grave conflicts, conflicts which are indeed revealed to us in the epic and lyric poetry of the age of chivalry. These conflicts are familiar to us because they are immortalized in imperishable works of art and because they are still treated by epigones and by that art which takes its themes from such primitive conditions as persist at the present day. But we moderns cannot grasp the essence of the conflict. We cannot understand what is to prevent a solution which would satisfy all parties, why the lovers must remain separated and tied to those they do not love. Where love finds love, where man and woman desire nothing except to be allowed to remain forever devoted to each other, there, according to our view of the matter everything should be quite simple. The kind of poetry which deals with no other situation than this can, under the circumstances of present day life, do nothing less than bring Hansel and Gretel70 into each other’s arms, a denouement which is no doubt calculated to delight the readers of novels, but which is productive of no tragic conflict.

  If, without knowledge of the literature of the age of chivalry, and basing our judgment merely on information about the relations of the sexes derived from other sources, we tried to picture for ourselves the psychic conflict of chivalric gallantry, we should probably imagine a situation in which a man is torn between two women: one his wife, to whom is bound the fate of his children; the other the lady to whom belongs his heart. Or we should delineate the position of a wife neglected by her husband, who loves another. Yet nothing would lie farther from an age dominated by the principle of violence. The Greek who divided his time between the hetaeras (prostitutes or courtesans) and love-boys by no means felt that his relationship with his wife was a psychic burden, and she herself did not see in the love given to the courtesan any encroachment on her own rights. Neither the troubadour who devoted himself wholly to the lady of his heart nor his wife who waited patiently at home suffered under the conflict between love and marriage. Both Ulrich von Lichtenstein71 and his good housewife found the chivalrous “Minnedienst” just as it should be. In fact, the conflict in chivalrous love was of an altogether different nature. When the wife granted the utmost favours to another the rights of the husband were injured. However eagerly he himself set out to win the favours of other women, he would not tolerate interference in his property rights, he would not hear of anyone possessing his woman. This is a conflict based on the principles of violence. The husband is offended, not because the love of his wife is directed away from him, but because her body, which he owns, is to belong to others. Where, as so often in antiquity and the orient, the love of man sought not the wives of others but prostitutes, female slaves, and love-boys, all standing outside society, a conflict could not arise. Love forces the conflict only from the side of male jealousy. The man alone, as owner of his wife, can claim to possess completely. The wife has not the same right over her husband. In the essentially different judgment bestowed upon the adultery of a man and the adultery of a woman and in the different manner in which husband and wife regard the adultery of one another, we see today the remnants of that code, which is otherwise already incomprehensible to us.

  Under such circumstances, as long as the principle of violence rules, the impulse to love is denied an opportunity to develop. Banished from the homely hearth it seeks out all manner of hiding places, where it assumes queer forms. Libertinage grows rampant, perversions of the natural instincts become more and more common. Conditions are conducive to the spread of venereal diseases. Whether syphilis was indigenous to Europe or whether it was introduced after the discovery of America is a questionable point. Whatever the truth, we know that it began to ravage Europe like an epidemic about the beginning of the sixteenth century. With the misery it brought, the love play of chivalric romanticism was at an end.

  3

  Marriage Under the Influence of the Idea of Contract

  Nowadays only one opinion is expressed about the influence which the “economic” has exercised on sexual relations; it is said to have been thoroughly bad. The original natural purity of sexual intercourse has, according to this view, been tainted by the interference of economic factors. In no field of human life has the progress of culture and the increase of wealth had a more pernicious effect. Prehistoric men and women paired in purest love; in the pre-capitalist age, marriage and family life were simple and natural, but Capitalism brought money marriages and mariages des convenances on the one hand, prostitution and sexual excesses on the other. More recent historical and ethnographic research has demonstrated the fallacy of this argument and has given us another view of sexual life in primitive times and of primitive races. Modern literature has revealed how far from the realities of rural life was our conception, even only a short while ago, of the simple morals of the countryman. But the old prejudices were too deep-rooted to have been seriously shaken by this. Besides, socialistic literature, with the assistance of its peculiarly impressive rhetoric, sought to popularize the legend by giving it a new pathos. Thus today few people do not believe that the modern view of marriage as a contract is an insult to the essential spirit of sexual union and that it was Capitalism which destroyed the purity of family life.

  For the scientist it is difficult to know what attitude he should take to a method of treating such problems which is founded on high-minded sentiments rather than on a discernment of the facts.

  What is Good, Noble, Moral, and Virtuous the scientist as such is not able to judge. But he must at least correct the accepted view on one important point. The ideal of sexual relations of our age is utterly different from that of early times, and no age has come nearer to attaining its ideal than ours. The sexual relations of the good old times seem thoroughly unsatisfactory when measured by this, our, ideal; therefore, this ideal must have arisen from just that evolution which is condemned by the current theory as being responsible for the fact that we have failed to attain our ideal completely. Hence it is clear that the prevailing doctrine does not represent the facts; that, indeed, it turns the facts upside down and is entirely valueless in an attempt to understand the problem.

  Where the principle of violence dominates, polygamy is universal. Each man has as many wives as he can defend. Wives are a form of property, of which it is always better to have more than few. A man endeavours to own more wives, just as he endeavours to own more slaves or cows; his moral attitude is the same, in fact, for slaves, cows, and wives. He demands fidelity from his wife; he alone may dispose of her labour and her body, himself remaining free of any ties whatever. Fidelity in the male implies monogamy.72 A more powerful lord has the right to dispose also of the wives of his subjects.73 The much discussed Jus Primae Noctis was an echo of these conditions, of which a final development was the intercourse between father-in-law and daughter-in-law in the “joint-family” of the Southern Slavs.

  Moral reformers did not abolish polygamy, neither did the Church at first combat it. For centuries Christianity raised no objections to the polygamy of the barbarian kings. Charlemagne kept many concubines.74 By its nature polygamy was never an institution for the poor man; the wealthy and the aristocratic could alone enjoy it.75 But with the latter it became increasingly complex according to the extent to which women entered marriage as heiresses and owners, were provided with rich dowries, and were endowed with greater rights in disposing of the dowry. Thus monogamy has been gradually enforced by the wife who brings her husband wealth and by her relatives—a direct manifestation of the way in which capitalist thought and calculation has penetrated the family. In order to protect legally the property of wives and their children a sharp line is drawn between legitimate and illegitimate connection and succession. The relation of husband and wife is acknowledged as a contract.76

  As the idea of contract enters the Law of Marriage, it breaks the rule of the male, and makes the wife a partner with equal rights. From a one-sided relationship resting on force, marriage thus becomes a mutual agreement; the servant becomes the married wife entitled to demand from the man all that he is entitled to ask from her. Step by step she wins the position in the home which she holds today. Nowadays the position of the woman differs from the position of the man only in so far as their peculiar ways of earning a living differ. The remnants of man’s privileges have little importance. They are privileges of honour. The wife, for instance, still bears her husband’s name.

  This evolution of marriage has taken place by way of the law relating to the property of married persons. Woman’s position in marriage was improved as the principle of violence was thrust back, and as the idea of contract advanced in other fields of the Law of Property it necessarily transformed the property relations between the married couple. The wife was freed from the power of her husband for the first time when she gained legal rights over the wealth which she brought into marriage and which she acquired during marriage, and when that which her husband customarily gave her was transformed into allowances enforceable by law.

  Thus marriage, as we know it, has come into existence entirely as a result of the contractual idea penetrating into this sphere of life. All our cherished ideals of marriage have grown out of this idea. That marriage unites one man and one woman, that it can be entered into only with the free will of both parties, that it imposes a duty of mutual fidelity, that a man’s violations of the marriage vows are to be judged no differently from a woman’s, that the rights of husband and wife are essentially the same—these principles develop from the contractual attitude to the problem of marital life. No people can boast that their ancestors thought of marriage as we think of it today. Science cannot judge whether morals were once more severe than they are now. We can establish only that our views of what marriage should be are different from the views of past generations and that their ideal of marriage seems immoral in our eyes.

  When panegyrists of the good old morality execrate the institution of divorce and separation they are probably right in asserting that no such things existed formerly. The right to cast off his wife which man once possessed in no way resembles the modern law of divorce. Nothing illustrates more clearly the great change of attitude than the contrast between these two institutions. And when the Church takes the lead in the struggle against divorce, it is well to remember that the existence of the modern marriage ideal of monogamy—of husband and wife with equal rights—in the defence of which the Church wishes to intervene, is the result of capitalist, and not ecclesiastical, development.

  4

  The Problems of Married Life

  In the modern contractual marriage, which takes place at the desire of husband and wife, marriage and love are united. Marriage appears morally justified only when it is concluded for love; without love between the bridal couple it seems improper. We find strange those royal weddings which are arranged at a distance, and in which, as in most of the thinking and acting of the ruling Houses, the age of violence is echoed. The fact that they find it necessary to represent these marriages to the public as love marriages shows that even royal families have not been able to escape the bourgeois marriage ideal.

  The conflicts of modern married life spring first of all from the necessarily limited duration of passion in a contract concluded for life. “Die Leidenschaft flieht, die Liebe muss bleiben” (“Passion flies, love must remain”), says Schiller, the poet of bourgeois married life. In most marriages blessed with children, married love fades slowly and unnoticeably; in its place develops a friendly affection which for a long time is interrupted ever and again by a brief flickering of the old love; living together becomes habitual, and in the children, in whose development they relive their youth, the parents find consolation for the renunciation they have been forced to make as old age deprives them of their strength.

  But this is not so for all. There are many ways by which man may reconcile himself to the transience of the earthly pilgrimage. To the believer, religion brings consolation and courage; it enables him to see himself as a thread in the fabric of eternal life, it assigns to him a place in the imperishable plan of a world creator, and places him beyond time and space, old age and death, high in the celestial pastures. Others find satisfaction in philosophy. They refuse to believe in a beneficent providence, the idea of which conflicts with experience; they disdain the easy solace to be derived from an arbitrary structure of fantasies, from an imaginary scheme designed to create the illusion of a world order different from the order they are forced to recognize around them. But the great mass of men takes another way. Dully and apathetically they succumb to everyday life; they never think beyond the moment, but become slaves of habit and the passions. Between these, however, is a fourth group, consisting of men who do not know where or how to find peace. Such people can no longer believe because they have eaten of the tree of knowledge; they cannot smother their rebellious hearts in apathy; they are too restless and too unbalanced to make the philosophic adjustment to realities. At any price they want to win and hold happiness. With all their might they strain at the bars which imprison their instincts. They will not acquiesce. They want the impossible, seeking happiness not in the striving but in the fulfillment, not in the battle but in victory.

  Such natures cannot tolerate marriage when the wild fire of the first love has begun to die. They make the highest demands upon love itself and they exaggerate the overvaluation of the sexual object. Thus they are doomed, if only for physiological reasons, to experience sooner than more moderate people disappointment in the intimate life of marriage. And this disappointment can easily change to revulsion. Love turns to hate. Life with the once beloved becomes a torment. He who cannot content himself, who is unwilling to moderate the illusions with which he entered a marriage of love, who does not learn to transfer to his children, in sublimated form, those desires which marriage can no longer satisfy—that man is not made for marriage. He will break away from the bonds with new projects of happiness in love, again and again repeating the old experience.

  But all this has nothing to do with social conditions. These marriages are not wrecked because the married couple live in the capitalist order of society and because the means of production are privately owned. The disease germinates not without, but within; it grows out of the natural disposition of the parties concerned. It is fallacious to argue that because such conflicts were lacking in precapitalist society, wedlock must then have provided what is deficient in these sick marriages. The truth is that love and marriage were separate and people did not expect marriage to give them lasting and unclouded happiness. Only when the idea of contract and consent has been imposed on marriage does the wedded couple demand that their union shall satisfy desire permanently. This is a demand which love cannot possibly meet. The happiness of love is in the contest for the favours of the loved one and in fulfillment of the longing to be united with her. We need not discuss whether such happiness can endure when physiological satisfaction is denied. But we know for certain that desire gratified, cools sooner or later and that endeavours to make permanent the fugitive hours of romance would be vain. We cannot blame marriage because it is unable to change our earthly life into an infinite series of ecstatic moments, all radiant with the pleasures of love. We should be equally wrong to blame the social environment.

  The conflicts that social conditions cause in married life are of minor importance. It would be wrong to assume that loveless marriages made for the dowry of the wife or the wealth of the husband, or that marriages made miserable by economic factors are in any way as important an aspect of the question as the frequency with which literature treats of them would suggest. There is always an easy way out if people will only look for it.

  As a social institution marriage is an adjustment of the individual to the social order by which a certain field of activity, with all its tasks and requirements, is assigned to him. Exceptional natures, whose abilities lift them far above the average, cannot support the coercion which such an adjustment to the way of life of the masses must involve. The man who feels within himself the urge to devise and achieve great things, who is prepared to sacrifice his life rather than be false to his mission, will not stifle his urge for the sake of a wife and children. In the life of a genius, however loving, the woman and whatever goes with her occupy a small place. We do not speak here of those great men in whom sex was completely sublimated and turned into other channels—Kant, for example—or of those whose fiery spirit, insatiable in the pursuit of love, could not acquiesce in the inevitable disappointments of married life and hurried with restless urge from one passion to another. Even the man of genius whose married life seems to take a normal course, whose attitude to sex does not differ from that of other people, cannot in the long run feel himself bound by marriage without violating his own self. Genius does not allow itself to be hindered by any consideration for the comfort of its fellows even of those closest to it. The ties of marriage become intolerable bonds which the genius tries to cast off or at least to loosen so as to be able to move freely. The married couple must walk side by side amid the rank and file of humanity. Whoever wishes to go his own way must break away from it. Rarely indeed is he granted the happiness of finding a woman willing and able to go with him on his solitary path.

  All this was recognized long ago. The masses had accepted it so completely that anyone who betrayed his wife felt himself entitled to justify his action in these terms. But the genius is rare and a social institution does not become impossible merely because one or two exceptional men are unable to adjust themselves to it. No danger threatened marriage from this side.

  The attacks launched against it by the Feminism of the Nineteenth Century seemed much more serious. Its spokesmen claimed that marriage forced women to sacrifice personality. It gave man space enough to develop his abilities, but to woman it denied all freedom. This was imputed to the unchangeable nature of marriage, which harnesses husband and wife together and thus debases the weaker woman to be the servant of the man. No reform could alter this; abolition of the whole institution alone could remedy the evil. Women must fight for liberation from this yoke, not only that she might be free to satisfy her sexual desires but so as to develop her individuality. Loose relations which gave freedom to both parties must replace marriage.

  The radical wing of Feminism, which holds firmly to this standpoint, overlooks the fact that the expansion of woman’s powers and abilities is inhibited not by marriage, not by being bound to man, children, and household, but by the more absorbing form in which the sexual function affects the female body. Pregnancy and the nursing of children claim the best years of a woman’s life, the years in which a man may spend his energies in great achievements. One may believe that the unequal distribution of the burden of reproduction is an injustice of nature, or that it is unworthy of woman to be child-bearer and nurse, but to believe this does not alter the fact. It may be that a woman is able to choose between renouncing either the most profound womanly joy, the joy of motherhood, or the more masculine development of her personality in action and endeavour. It may be that she has no such choice. It may be that in suppressing her urge towards motherhood she does herself an injury that reacts through all other functions of her being. But whatever the truth about this, the fact remains that when she becomes a mother, with or without marriage, she is prevented from leading her life as freely and independently as man. Extraordinarily gifted women may achieve fine things in spite of motherhood; but because the functions of sex have the first claim upon woman, genius and the greatest achievements have been denied her.

  So far as Feminism seeks to adjust the legal position of woman to that of man, so far as it seeks to offer her legal and economic freedom to develop and act in accordance with her inclinations, desires, and economic circumstances—so far it is nothing more than a branch of the great liberal movement, which advocates peaceful and free evolution. When, going beyond this, it attacks the institutions of social life under the impression that it will thus be able to remove the natural barriers, it is a spiritual child of Socialism. For it is a characteristic of Socialism to discover in social institutions the origin of unalterable facts of nature, and to endeavour, by reforming these institutions, to reform nature.

  5

  Free Love

  Free love is the socialist’s radical solution for sexual problems. The socialistic society abolishes the economic dependence of woman which results from the fact that woman is dependent on the income of her husband. Man and woman have the same economic rights and the same duties, as far as motherhood does not demand special consideration for the woman. Public funds provide for the maintenance and education of the children, which are no longer the affairs of the parents but of society. Thus the relations between the sexes are no longer influenced by social and economic conditions. Mating ceases to found the simplest form of social union, marriage and the family. The family disappears and society is confronted with separate individuals only. Choice in love becomes completely free. Men and women unite and separate just as their desires urge. Socialism desires to create nothing that is new in all this, but “would only recreate on a higher level of culture and under new social forms what was universally valid on a more primitive cultural level and before private ownership dominated society.”77

  The arguments, sometimes unctuous and sometimes venomous, which are put forward by theologians and other moral teachers, are entirely inadequate as a reply to this programme. And most of the writers who have occupied themselves with the problems of sexual intercourse have been dominated by the monastic and ascetic ideas of the moral theologians. To them the sexual instinct is the absolute evil, sensuality is sin, voluptuousness is a gift of the devil, and even the thought of such things is immoral. Whether or not we uphold this condemnation of the sexual instinct depends entirely on our inclination and scale of values. The moralist’s endeavour to attack or defend it from the scientific point of view is wasted labour. The limits of scientific method are misconceived when one attributes to it the role of judge and valuer; the nature of scientific method is misunderstood when it is expected to influence action not merely by showing the effectiveness of means to ends but also by determining the relative value of the ends themselves. The scientist treating ethical problems should, however, point out that we cannot begin by rejecting the sexual instinct as evil in itself and then go on to give, under certain conditions, our moral approval or toleration to the sexual act. The usual dictum condemning sensual pleasure in sexual intercourse but declaring nevertheless that the dutiful fulfillment of the debitum conjugale (conjugal duty) for the purpose of begetting successors is quite moral, springs from poverty-stricken sophistry. The married couple act in sensuality; no child has ever yet been begotten and conceived out of dutiful consideration for the State’s need of recruits or taxpayers. To be quite logical, an ethical system which branded the act of procreation as shameful would have to demand complete and unconditional abstinence. If we do not wish to see life become extinct we should not call the source from which it is renewed a sink of vice. Nothing has poisoned the morals of modern society more than this ethical system which by neither condemning logically nor approving logically blurs the distinction between good and evil and bestows on sin a glittering allurement. More than anything it is to blame for the fact that the modern man vacillates aimlessly in questions of sexual morality, and is not even capable of properly appreciating the great problems of the relations between the sexes.

  It is clear that sex is less important in the life of man than of woman. Satisfaction brings him relaxation and mental peace. But for the woman the burden of motherhood begins here. Her destiny is completely circumscribed by sex; in man’s life it is but an incident. However fervently and whole-heartedly he loves, however much he takes upon himself for the woman’s sake, he remains always above the sexual. Even women are finally contemptuous of the man who is utterly engrossed by sex. But woman must exhaust herself as lover and as mother in the service of the sexual instinct. Man may often find it difficult, in the face of all the worries of his profession, to preserve his inner freedom and so to develop his individuality, but it will not be his sexual life which distracts him most. For woman, however, sex is the greatest obstacle.

  Thus the meaning of the feminist question is essentially woman’s struggle for personality. But the matter affects men not less than women, for only in co-operation can the sexes reach the highest degree of individual culture. The man who is always being dragged by woman into the lower spheres of psychic bondage cannot develop freely in the long run. To preserve the freedom of inner life for the woman, this is the real problem of women; it is part of the cultural problem of humanity.

  It was failure to solve this problem which destroyed the Orient. There woman is an object of lust, a childbearer and nurse. Every progressive movement which began with the development of personality was prematurely frustrated by the women, who dragged men down again into the miasma of the harem. Nothing separates East and West more decisively today than the position of women and the attitude towards woman. People often maintain that the wisdom of the Orientals has understood the ultimate questions of existence more profoundly than all the philosophy of Europe. At any rate the fact that they have never been able to free themselves in sexual matters has sealed the fate of their culture.

  Midway between Orient and Occident the unique culture of the Greeks grew up. But antiquity also failed to raise woman to the level on which it had placed man. Greek culture excluded the married woman. The wife remained in the woman’s quarters, apart from the world, nothing more than the mother of the man’s heirs and the steward of his house. His love was for the hetaera alone. Eventually he was not satisfied even here, and turned to homosexual love. Plato sees the love of boys transfigured by the spiritual union of the lovers and by joyful surrender to the beauty of soul and body. To him the love of woman was merely gross sensual satisfaction.

  To Western man woman is the companion, to the Oriental she is the bedfellow. European woman has not always occupied the position she occupies today. She has won it in the course of evolution from the principle of violence to the principle of contract. And now man and woman are equal before the law. The small differences that still exist in private law are of no practical significance. Whether, for example, the law obliges the wife to obey her husband is not particularly important; as long as marriage survives one party will have to follow the other and whether husband or wife is stronger is certainly not a matter which paragraphs of the legal code can decide. Nor is it any longer of great significance that the political rights of women are restricted, that women are denied the vote and the right to hold public office. For by granting the vote to women the proportional political strength of the political parties is not on the whole much altered; the women of those parties which must suffer from the changes to be expected (not in any case important ones) ought in their own interests to become opponents of women’s suffrage rather than supporters. The right to occupy public office is denied women less by the legal limitations of their rights than by the peculiarities of their sexual character. Without underestimating the value of the feminists’ fight to extend woman’s civil rights, one can safely risk the assertion that neither women nor the community are deeply injured by the slights to women’s legal position which still remain in the legislation of civilized states.

  The misconception to which the principle of equality before the law is exposed in the field of general social relationships is to be found in the special field of the relations between those sexes. Just as the pseudo-democratic movement endeavours by decrees to efface natural and socially conditioned inequalities, just as it wants to make the strong equal to the weak, the talented to the untalented, and the healthy to the sick, so the radical wing of the women’s movement seeks to make women the equal of men.78 Though they cannot go so far as to shift half the burden of motherhood on to men, still they would like to abolish marriage and family life so that women may have at least all that liberty which seems compatible with childbearing. Unencumbered by husband and children, woman is to move freely, act freely, and live for herself and the development of her personality.

  But the difference between sexual character and sexual destiny can no more be decreed away than other inequalities of mankind. It is not marriage which keeps woman inwardly unfree, but the fact that her sexual character demands surrender to a man and that her love for husband and children consumes her best energies. There is no human law to prevent the woman who looks for happiness in a career from renouncing love and marriage. But those who do not renounce them are not left with sufficient strength to master life as a man may master it. It is the fact that sex possesses her whole personality, and not the facts of marriage and family, which enchains woman. By “abolishing” marriage one would not make woman any freer and happier; one would merely take from her the essential content of her life, and one could offer nothing to replace it.

  Woman’s struggle to preserve her personality in marriage is part of that struggle for personal integrity which characterizes the rationalist society of the economic order based on private ownership of the means of production. It is not exclusively to the interest of woman that she should succeed in this struggle; to contrast the interests of men and women, as extreme feminists try to do, is very foolish. All mankind would suffer if woman should fail to develop her ego and be unable to unite with man as equal, freeborn companions and comrades.

  To take away a woman’s children and put them in an institution is to take away part of her life; and children are deprived of the most far-reaching influences when they are torn from the bosom of the family. Only recently Freud, with the insight of genius, has shown how deep are the impressions which the parental home leaves on the child. From the parents the child learns to love, and so comes to possess the forces which enable it to grow up into a healthy human being. The segregated educational institution breeds homosexuality and neurosis. It is no accident that the proposal to treat men and women as radically equal, to regulate sexual intercourse by the State, to put infants into public nursing homes at birth and to ensure that children and parents remain quite unknown to each other should have originated with Plato; he saw only the satisfaction of a physical craving in the relations between the sexes.

  The evolution which has led from the principle of violence to the contractual principle has based these relations on free choice in love. The woman may deny herself to anyone, she may demand fidelity and constancy from the man to whom she gives herself. Only in this way is the foundation laid for the development of woman’s individuality. By returning to the principle of violence with a conscious neglect of the contractual idea, Socialism, even though it aims at an equal distribution of the plunder, must finally demand promiscuity in sexual life.

  6

  Prostitution

  The Communist Manifesto declares that the “complement” of the “bourgeois family” is public prostitution. “With the disappearance of capital” prostitution would also disappear.79 A chapter in Bebel’s book on woman is headed “Prostitution, a necessary social institution of the bourgeois world.” Here is amplified the theory that prostitution is as necessary to bourgeois society as “police, standing army, church, entrepreneurs, etc.”80 Since its appearance the view that prostitution is a product of Capitalism has gained ground enormously. And as, in addition, preachers still complain that the good old morals have decayed, and accuse modern culture of having led to loose living, everyone is convinced that all sexual wrongs represent a symptom of decadence peculiar to our age.

  In answer to this it is sufficient to point out that prostitution is an extremely ancient institution, unknown to hardly any people that has ever existed.81 It is a remnant of ancient morals, not a symptom of the decay of higher culture. The most powerful influence against it today—the demand for man’s abstinence outside marriage—is one of the principles involved in equal moral fights for man and woman, and is therefore altogether an ideal of the capitalist age. The age of the principle of violence demands sexual purity only from the bride, not from the bridegroom also. All those factors which favour prostitution today have nothing whatever to do with private property and Capitalism. Militarism, which keeps young men from marriage longer than they wish, is anything but a product of peace-loving Liberalism. The fact that government and other officials can only marry when they are rich, as otherwise they would not be able to keep up appearances, is, like all other caste fetishes, a vestige of pre-capitalist thought. Capitalism does not recognize caste or caste customs; under Capitalism everyone lives according to his income.

  Some women prostitute themselves because they want men, some because they want food. With many both motives operate. One may admit without further discussion that in a society where incomes were equal the economic temptation to prostitution would cease completely or dwindle to a minimum. But it would be idle to speculate whether or not, in a society without inequalities of income, other new social sources of prostitution could not arise. At any rate one cannot merely assume that the sexual morality of a socialist society would be more satisfactory than that of capitalist society.

  It is in the study of the relations between sexual life and property, more than in any other field of social knowledge, that our ideas must be clarified and remodelled. Contemporary treatment of this problem is fiddled with prejudices of all kinds. But the eyes with which we look at the matter must not be those of the dreamer envisioning a lost paradise, who sees the future in a blaze of rose-coloured light, and condemns all that goes on around us.

  PART II

  THE ECONOMICS OF A SOCIALIST COMMUNITY

  Section I.

  The Economics of an Isolated Socialist Community

  CHAPTER 5

  The Nature of Economic Activity

  1

  A Contribution to the Critique of the Concept “Economic Activity”

  Economic Science originated in discussion of the money price of goods and services. Its first beginnings are to be found in inquiries about coinage, which developed into investigations of price movements. Money, money prices, and everything concerned with calculation in terms of money—these form the problems in the discussion of which the science of Economics emerged. Those attempts at economic inquiry, which are discernible in works on household management and the organization of production—particularly agricultural—did not develop further in this direction. They became merely the starting point for various departments of technology and natural science. And this was no accident. Only through the rationalization inherent in economic calculation based on the use of money could the human mind come to understand and trace the laws of its action.

  The earlier economists did not ask themselves what the “economic” and “economic activity” really were. They had enough to do with the great tasks presented by the particular problems with which they were then concerned. They were not concerned with methodology. It was quite late before they began to grapple with the methods and ultimate aims of economics, and its place in the general system of knowledge. And then an obstacle was encountered which seemed to be insurmountable—the problem of defining the subject matter of economic activity.

  All theoretical inquiries—those of the classical economists, equally with those of the moderns—start from the economic principle. Yet, as was necessarily soon perceived, this provides no basis for clearly defining the subject matter of economics. The economic principle is a general principle of rational action, and not a specific principle of such action as forms the subject of economic inquiry.1 The economic principle directs all rational action, all action capable of becoming the subject matter of a science. It seemed absolutely unserviceable for separating the “economic” from the “non-economic,” so far as the traditional economic problems were concerned.2

  But, on the other hand, it was equally impossible to divide up rational actions according to the immediate end to which they were directed, and to regard as the subject matter of economics only those actions which were directed to providing mankind with the commodities of the external world. Against such a procedure it is a decisive objection that, in the last analysis, the provision of material goods serves not only those ends which are usually termed economic, but also many other ends.

  Such a division of the motives of rational action involves a dual conception of action—action from economic motives, on the one side, action from non-economic motives, on the other—which is absolutely irreconcilable with the necessary unit of will and action. A theory of rational action must conceive such action as unitary.

  2

  Rational Action

  Action based on reason, action therefore which is only to be understood by reason, knows only one end, the greatest pleasure of the acting individual. The attainment of pleasure, the avoidance of pain—these are its intentions. By this, of course, we do not mean “pleasure” and “pain” in the sense in which these terms used to be used. In the terminology of the modern economist, pleasure is to be understood as embracing all those things which men hold to be desirable, all that they want and strive for. There can therefore be no longer any contrast between the “noble” ethics of duty and the vulgar hedonistic ethics. The modern concept of pleasure, happiness, utility, satisfaction and the like includes all human ends, regardless of whether the motives of action are moral or immoral, noble or ignoble, altruistic or egotistical.3

  In general men act only because they are not completely satisfied. Were they always to enjoy complete happiness, they would be without will, without desire, without action. In the land of the lotus-eaters there is no action. Action arises only from need, from dissatisfaction. It is purposeful striving towards something. Its ultimate end is always to get rid of a condition which is conceived to be deficient—to fulfil a need, to achieve satisfaction, to increase happiness. If men had all the external resources of nature so abundantly at their disposal that they were able to obtain complete satisfaction by action, then they could use them heedlessly. They would only have to consider their own powers and the limited time at their disposal. For, compared with the sum of their needs, they would still have only a limited strength and a limited life-time available. They would still have to economize time and labour. But to economy of materials they would be indifferent. In fact, however, materials are also limited, so that they too have to be used in such a way that the most urgent needs are satisfied first, with the least possible expenditure of materials for each satisfaction.

  The spheres of rational action and economic action are therefore co-incident. All rational action is economic. All economic activity is rational action. All rational action is in the first place individual action. Only the individual thinks. Only the individual reasons. Only the individual acts. How society arises from the action of individuals will be shown in a later part of our discussion.

  3

  Economic Calculation

  All human action, so far as it is rational, appears as the exchange of one condition for another. Men apply economic goods and personal time and labour in the direction which, under the given circumstances, promises the highest degree of satisfaction, and they forgo the satisfaction of lesser needs so as to satisfy the more urgent needs. This is the essence of economic activity—the carrying out of acts of exchange.4

  Every man who, in the course of economic activity, chooses between the satisfaction of two needs, only one of which can be satisfied, makes judgments of value.5 Such judgments concern firstly and directly the satisfactions themselves; it is only from these that they are reflected back upon goods. As a rule anyone in possession of his senses is able at once to evaluate goods which are ready for consumption. Under very simple conditions he should also have little difficulty in forming a judgment upon the relative significance to him of the factors of production. When, however, conditions are at all complicated, and the connection between things is harder to detect, we have to make more delicate computations if we are to evaluate such instruments. Isolated man can easily decide whether to extend his hunting or his cultivation. The processes of production he has to take into account are relatively short. The expenditure they demand and the product they afford can easily be perceived as a whole. But to choose whether we shall use a waterfall to produce electricity or extend coal-mining and better utilize the energy contained in coal, is quite another matter. Here the processes of production are so many and so long, the conditions necessary to the success of the undertaking so multitudinous, that we can never be content with vague ideas. To decide whether an undertaking is sound we must calculate carefully.

  But computation demands units. And there can be no unit of the subjective use-value of commodities. Marginal utility provides no unit of value. The worth of two units of a given commodity is not twice as great as one—although it is necessarily greater or smaller than one. Judgments of value do not measure: they arrange, they grade.6 If he relies only on subjective valuation, even isolated man cannot arrive at a decision based on more or less exact computations in cases where the solution is not immediately evident. To aid his calculations he must assume substitution relations between commodities. As a rule he will not be able to reduce all to a common unit. But he may succeed in reducing all elements in the computation to such commodities as he can evaluate immediately, that is to say, to goods ready for consumption and the disutility of labour and then he is able to base his decision upon this evidence. It is obvious that even this is possible only in very simple cases. For complicated and long processes of production it would be quite out of the question.

  In an exchange economy, the objective exchange value of commodities becomes the unit of calculation. This involves a threefold advantage. In the first place we are able to take as the basis of calculation the valuation of all individuals participating in trade. The subjective valuation of one individual is not directly comparable with the subjective valuation of others. It only becomes so as an exchange value arising from the interplay of the subjective valuations of all who take part in buying and selling. Secondly, calculations of this sort provide a control upon the appropriate use of the means of production. They enable those who desire to calculate the cost of complicated processes of production to see at once whether they are working as economically as others. If, under prevailing market prices, they cannot carry through the process at a profit, it is a clear proof that others are better able to turn to good account the instrumental goods in question. Finally, calculations based upon exchange values enable us to reduce values to a common unit. And since the higgling of the market establishes substitution relations between commodities, any commodity desired can be chosen for this purpose. In a money economy, money is the commodity chosen.

  Money calculations have their limits. Money is neither a yardstick of value nor of prices. Money does not measure value. Nor are prices measured in money: they are amounts of money. And, although those who describe money as a “standard of deferred payments” naively assume it to be so, as a commodity it is not stable in value. The relation between money and goods perpetually fluctuates not only on the “goods side,” but on the “money side” also. As a rule, indeed, these fluctuations are not too violent. They do not too much impair the economic calculus, because under a state of continuous change of all economic conditions, this calculus takes in view only comparatively short periods, in which “sound money” at least does not change its purchasing power to any very great extent.

  The deficiencies of money calculations arise for the most part, not because they are made in terms of a general medium of exchange, money, but because they are based on exchange values rather than on subjective use-values. For this reason all elements of value which are not the subject of exchange elude such computations. If, for example, we are considering whether a hydraulic power-works would be profitable we cannot include in the computation the damage which will be done to the beauty of the waterfalls unless the fall in values due to a fall in tourist traffic is taken into account. Yet we must certainly take such considerations into account when deciding whether the undertaking shall be carried out.

  Considerations such as these are often termed “non-economic.” And we may permit the expression for disputes about terminology gain nothing. But not all such considerations should be called irrational. The beauty of a place or of a building, the health of the race, the honour of individuals or nations, even if (because they are not dealt with on the market) they do not enter into exchange relations, are just as much motives of rational action, provided people think them significant, as those normally called economic. That they cannot enter into money calculations arises from the very nature of these calculations. But this does not in the least lessen the value of money calculations in ordinary economic matters. For all such moral goods are goods of the first order. We can value them directly; and therefore have no difficulty in taking them into account, even though they lie outside the sphere of money computations. That they elude such computations does not make it any more difficult to bear them in mind. If we know precisely how much we have to pay for beauty, health, honour, pride, and the like, nothing need hinder us from giving them due consideration. Sensitive people may be pained to have to choose between the ideal and the material. But that is not the fault of a money economy. It is in the nature of things. For even where we can make judgments of value without money computations we cannot avoid this choice. Both isolated man and socialist communities would have to do likewise, and truly sensitive natures will never find it painful. Called upon to choose between bread and honour, they will never be at a loss how to act. If honour cannot be eaten, eating can at least be forgone for honour. Only such as fear the agony of choice because they secretly know that they could not forgo the material, will regard the necessity of choice as a profanation.

  Money computations are only significant for purposes of economic calculation. Here they are used in order that the disposal of commodities may conform to the criterion of economy. And such calculations take account of commodities only in the proportions in which, under given conditions, they exchange for money. Every extension of the sphere of money calculation is misleading. It is misleading when in historical researches, it is employed as a measure of past commodity values. It is misleading when it is employed to evaluate the capital or national income of nations. It is misleading when it is employed to estimate the value of things which are not exchangeable as, for instance, when people attempt to estimate the loss due to emigration or war.7 All these are dilettantisms—even when they are undertaken by the most competent economists.

  But within these limits—and in practical life they are not overstepped—money calculation does all that we are entitled to ask of it. It provides a guide amid the bewildering throng of economic possibilities. It enables us to extend judgments of value which apply directly only to consumption goods—or at best to production goods of the lowest order—to all goods of higher orders. Without it, all production by lengthy and roundabout processes would be so many steps in the dark.

  Two things are necessary if computations of value in terms of money are to take place. First, not only goods ready for consumption but also goods of higher orders must be exchangeable. If this were not so, a system of exchange relationships could not emerge. It is true that if an isolated man is “exchanging” labour and flour for bread within his own house, the considerations he has to take into account are not different from those which would govern his actions if he were to exchange bread for clothes on the market. And it is, therefore, quite correct to regard all economic activity, even the economic activity of isolated man, as exchange. But no single man, be he the greatest genius ever born, has an intellect capable of deciding the relative importance of each one of an infinite number of goods of higher orders. No individual could so discriminate between the infinite number of alternative methods of production that he could make direct judgments of their relative value without auxiliary calculations. In societies based on the division of labour, the distribution of property rights effects a kind of mental division of labour, without which neither economy nor systematic production would be possible.

  In the second place, there must be a general medium of exchange, a money, in use. And this must serve as an intermediary in the exchange of production goods equally with the rest. If this were not so, it would be impossible to reduce all exchange relationships to a common denominator.

  Only under very simple conditions is it possible to dispense with money calculations. In the narrow circle of a closed household, where the father is able to supervise everything, he may be able to evaluate alterations in methods of production without having recourse to money reckoning. For, in such circumstances, production is carried on with relatively little capital. Few roundabout methods of production are employed. As a rule production is concerned with consumption goods, or goods of higher orders not too far removed from consumption goods. Division of labour is still in its earliest stages. The labourer carries through the production of a commodity from beginning to end. In an advanced society all this is changed. It is impossible to argue from the experience of primitive societies that under modern conditions we can dispense with money.

  In the simple conditions of a closed household, it is possible to survey the whole process of production from beginning to end. It is possible to judge whether one particular process gives more consumption goods than another. But, in the incomparably more complicated conditions of our own day, this is no longer possible. True, a socialistic society could see that 1000 litres of wine were better than 800 litres. It could decide whether or not 1000 litres of wine were to be preferred to 500 litres of oil. Such a decision would involve no calculation. The will of some man would decide. But the real business of economic administration, the adaptation of means to ends only begins when such a decision is taken. And only economic calculation makes this adaptation possible. Without such assistance, in the bewildering chaos of alternative materials and processes the human mind would be at a complete loss. Whenever we had to decide between different processes or different centres of production, we would be entirely at sea.8

  To suppose that a socialist community could substitute calculations in kind for calculations in terms of money is an illusion. In a community that does not practice exchange, calculations in kind can never cover more than consumption goods. They break down completely where goods of higher order are concerned. Once society abandons free pricing of production goods rational production becomes impossible. Every step that leads away from private ownership of the means of production and the use of money is a step away from rational economic activity.

  It was possible to overlook all this because such Socialism as we know at first hand exists only, one might say, in socialistic oases in what, for the rest, is a system based upon free exchange and the use of money. To this extent, indeed, we may agree with the otherwise untenable socialist contention—it is only employed for propagandist purposes—that nationalized and municipalized undertakings within an otherwise capitalist system are not Socialism. For the existence of a surrounding system of free pricing supports such concerns in their business affairs to such an extent that in them the essential peculiarity of economic activity under Socialism does not come to light. In State and municipal undertakings it is still possible to carry out technical improvements, because it is possible to observe the effects of similar improvements in similar private undertakings at home and abroad. In such concerns it is still possible to ascertain the advantages of reorganization because they are surrounded by a society which is still based upon private ownership in the means of production and the use of money. It is still possible for them to keep books and make calculations which for similar concerns in a purely socialist environment would be entirely out of the question.

  Without calculation, economic activity is impossible. Since under Socialism economic calculation is impossible, under Socialism there can be no economic activity in our sense of the word. In small and insignificant things rational action might still persist. But, for the most part, it would no longer be possible to speak of rational production. In the absence of criteria of rationality, production could not be consciously economical.

  For some time possibly the accumulated tradition of thousands of years of economic freedom would preserve the art of economic administration from complete disintegration. Men would preserve the old processes, not because they were rational, but because they were sanctified by tradition. In the meantime, however, changing conditions would make them irrational. They would become uneconomical as the result of changes brought about by the general decline of economic thought. It is true that production would no longer be “anarchical.” The command of a supreme authority would govern the business of supply. Instead of the economy of “anarchical” production the senseless order of an irrational machine would be supreme. The wheels would go round, but to no effect.

  Let us try to imagine the position of a socialist community. There will be hundreds and thousands of establishments in which work is going on. A minority of these will produce goods ready for use. The majority will produce capital goods and semi-manufactures. All these establishments will be closely connected. Each commodity produced will pass through a whole series of such establishments before it is ready for consumption. Yet in the incessant press of all these processes the economic administration will have no real sense of direction. It will have no means of ascertaining whether a given piece of work is really necessary, whether labour and material are not being wasted in completing it. How would it discover which of two processes was the more satisfactory? At best, it could compare the quantity of ultimate products. But only rarely could it compare the expenditure incurred in their production. It would know exactly—or it would imagine it knew—what it wanted to produce. It ought therefore to set about obtaining the desired results with the smallest possible expenditure. But to do this it would have to be able to make calculations. And such calculations must be calculations of value. They could not be merely “technical,” they could not be calculations of the objective use-value of goods and services; this is so obvious that it needs no further demonstration.

  Under a system based upon private ownership in the means of production, the scale of values is the outcome of the actions of every independent member of society. Everyone plays a two-fold part in its establishment first as a consumer, secondly as producer. As consumer, he establishes the valuation of goods ready for consumption. As producer, he guides production-goods into those uses in which they yield the highest product. In this way all goods of higher orders also are graded in the way appropriate to them under the existing conditions of production and the demands of society. The interplay of these two processes ensures that the economic principle is observed in both consumption and production. And, in this way, arises the exactly graded system of prices which enables everyone to frame his demand on economic lines.

  Under Socialism, all this must necessarily be lacking. The economic administration may indeed know exactly what commodities are needed most urgently. But this is only half the problem. The other half, the valuation of the means of production, it cannot solve. It can ascertain the value of the totality of such instruments. That is obviously equal to the value of the satisfactions they afford. If it calculates the loss that would be incurred by withdrawing them, it can also ascertain the value of single instruments of production. But it cannot assimilate them to a common price denominator, as can be done under a system of economic freedom and money prices.

  It is not necessary that Socialism should dispense altogether with money. It is possible to conceive arrangements permitting the use of money for the exchange of consumers goods. But since the prices of the various factors of production (including labour) could not be expressed in money, money could play no part in economic calculations.9

  Suppose, for instance, that the socialist commonwealth was contemplating a new railway line. Would a new railway line be a good thing? If so, which of many possible routes should it cover? Under a system of private ownership we could use money calculations to decide these questions. The new line would cheapen the transportation of certain articles, and, on this basis, we could estimate whether the reduction in transport charges would be great enough to counterweigh the expenditure which the building and running of the line would involve. Such a calculation could be made only in money. We could not do it by comparing various classes of expenditure and savings in kind. If it is out of the question to reduce to a common unit the quantities of various kinds of skilled and unskilled labour, iron, coal, building materials of different kinds, machinery and the other things which the building and upkeep of railways necessitate, then it is impossible to make them the subject of economic calculation. We can make systematic economic plans only when all the commodities which we have to take into account can be assimilated to money. True, money calculations are incomplete. True, they have profound deficiencies. But we have nothing better to put in their place. And under sound monetary conditions they suffice for practical purposes. If we abandon them, economic calculation becomes absolutely impossible.

  This is not to say that the socialist community would be entirely at a loss. It would decide for or against the proposed undertaking and issue an edict. But, at best, such a decision would be based on vague valuations. It could not be based on exact calculations of value.

  A stationary society could, indeed, dispense with these calculations. For there, economic operations merely repeat themselves. So that, if we assume that the socialist system of production were based upon the last state of the system of economic freedom which it superseded, and that no changes were to take place in the future, we could indeed conceive a rational and economic Socialism. But only in theory. A stationary economic system can never exist. Things are continually changing, and the stationary state, although necessary as an aid to speculation, is a theoretical assumption to which there is no counterpart in reality. And, quite apart from this, the maintenance of such a connection with the last state of the exchange economy would be out of the question, since the transition to Socialism with its equalization of incomes would necessarily transform the whole “set” of consumption and production. And then we have a socialist community which must cross the whole ocean of possible and imaginable economic permutations without the compass of economic calculation.

  All economic change, therefore, would involve operations the value of which could neither be predicted beforehand nor ascertained after they had taken place. Everything would be a leap in the dark. Socialism is the renunciation of rational economy.

  4

  The Capitalist Economy

  The terms “Capitalism” and “Capitalistic Production” are political catchwords. They were invented by socialists, not to extend knowledge, but to carp, to criticize, to condemn. Today, they have only to be uttered to conjure up a picture of the relentless exploitation of wage-slaves by the pitiless rich. They are scarcely ever used save to imply a disease in the body-politic. From a scientific point of view, they are so obscure and ambiguous that they have no value whatever. Their users agree only in this, that they indicate the characteristics of the modern economic system. But wherein these characteristics consist is always a matter of dispute. Their use, therefore, is entirely pernicious, and the proposal to extrude them altogether from economic terminology, and to leave them to the matadors of popular agitation, deserves serious consideration.10

  If, nevertheless, we do desire to discover for them a precise application, we should start from the idea of capital calculations. And since we are concerned only with the analysis of actual economic phenomena, and not with economic theory—where “capital” is often used in a sense specially extended for particular purposes—we must first ask what significance is attached to the term in business practice. There we find it used only for purposes of economic calculation. It serves to bring the original properties of a concern under one denomination, whether they consisted of money or were only expressed in money.11 The object of its computations is to enable us to ascertain how much the value of this property has altered in the course of business operations. The concept of capital is derived from economic calculation. Its true home is accountancy—the chief instrument of commercial rationality. Calculation in terms of money is an essential element of the concept of capital.12

  If the term capitalism is used to designate an economic system in which production is governed by capital calculations, it acquires a special significance for defining economic activity. Understood thus, it is by no means misleading to speak of Capitalism and capitalistic methods of production, and expressions such as the capitalistic spirit and the anti-capitalistic disposition acquire a rigidly circumscribed connotation. Capitalism is better suited to be the antithesis of Socialism than Individualism, which is often used in this way. As a rule those who contrast Socialism with Individualism proceed on the tacit assumption that there is a contradiction between the interests of the individual and the interest of society, and that, while Socialism takes the public welfare as its object, individualism serves the interests of particular people. And since this is one of the gravest sociological fallacies we must avoid carefully any form of expression which might allow it secretly to creep in.

  According to Passow, where the term Capitalism is used correctly, the association it is intended to convey is usually bound up with the development and spread of large scale undertakings.13 We may admit this—even if it is rather difficult to reconcile with the fact that people customarily speak of “Grosskapital” and “Grosskapitalist” and then of “Kleinkapitalisten.” But, if we recollect that only capital calculation made the growth of giant enterprise and undertakings possible, this does not in any way invalidate the definitions we propose.

  5

  The Narrower Concept of the “Economic”

  The common habit of economists of distinguishing between “economic” or “purely economic” and “non-economic” action is just as unsatisfactory as the old distinction between ideal and material goods. For willing and acting are unitary. All ends conflict among themselves and it is this conflict which ranges them in one scale. Not only the satisfaction of wishes, desires and impulses that can be attained through interaction with the external world, but the satisfaction also of ideal needs must be judged by one criterion. In life we have to choose between the “ideal” and the “material.” It is, therefore, just as essential to make the former subject to a unitary criterion of values as the latter. In choosing between bread and honour, faith and wealth, love and money, we submit both alternatives to one test.

  It is, therefore, illegitimate to regard the “economic” as a definite sphere of human action which can be sharply delimited from other spheres of action. Economic activity is rational activity. And since complete satisfaction is impossible, the sphere of economic activity is coterminous with the sphere of rational action. It consists firstly in valuation of ends, and then in the valuation of the means leading to these ends. All economic activity depends, therefore, upon the existence of ends. Ends dominate economy and alone give it meaning.

  Since the economic principle applies to all human action, it is necessary to be very careful when distinguishing, within its sphere, between “purely economic” and other kinds of action. Such a division is indeed indispensable for many scientifc purposes. It singles out one particular end and contrasts it with all others. This end—at this point we need not discuss whether it is ultimate or not—is the attainment of the greatest possible product measured in money. It is, therefore, impossible to assign it a specially delimited sphere of action. It is true that for each individual it has such a delimited sphere, but this varies in extent according to the general outlook of the individual concerned. It is one thing for the man to whom honour is dear. It is another for him who sells his friend for gold. Neither the nature of the end nor the peculiarity of the means is what justifies the distinction, but merely the special nature of the methods employed. Only the fact that it uses exact calculation distinguishes “purely economic” from other action.

  The sphere of the “purely economic” is nothing more and nothing less than the sphere of money calculation. The fact that in a certain field of action it enables us to compare means with minute exactitude down to the smallest detail means so much both for thought and action that we tend to invest this kind of action with special importance. It is easy to overlook the fact that such a distinction is only a distinction in the technique of thought and action and in no way a distinction in the ultimate end of action—which is unitary. The failure of all attempts to exhibit the “economic” as a special department of the rational and within that to discover still another sharply defined department, the “purely economic,” is no fault of the analytical apparatus employed. There can be no doubt that great subtlety of analysis has been concentrated on this problem, and the fact that it has not been solved clearly indicates that the question is one to which no satisfactory answer can be given. The sphere of the “economic” is plainly the same as the sphere of the rational: and the sphere of the “purely economic” is nothing but the sphere in which money calculation is possible.

  In the last resort the individual can acknowledge one end, and one end only: the attainment of the greatest satisfaction. This expression includes the satisfying of all kinds of human wants and desires, regardless of whether they are “material” or immaterial (moral). In the place of the word “satisfaction” we could employ the word “happiness,” had we not to fear the misunderstandings, for which the controversy on Hedonism and Eudaemonism was responsible.

  Satisfaction is subjective. Modern social philosophy has emphasized this so sharply in contrast to former theories that there is a tendency to forget that the physiological structure of mankind and the unity of outlook and emotion arising from tradition create a far-reaching similarity of views regarding wants and the means to satisfy them. It is precisely this similarity of views which makes society possible. Because they have common aims, men are able to live together. Against this fact that the majority of ends (and those the most important) are common to the great mass of mankind, the fact that some ends are only entertained by a few is of subordinate importance.

  The customary division between economic and non-economic motives is, therefore, invalidated by the fact that on the one hand, the end of economic activity lies outside the range of economics, and on the other, that all rational activity is economic. Nevertheless, there is good justification for separating “purely economic” activities (that is to say, activity susceptible of valuation in money) from all other forms of activity. For, as we have already seen, outside the sphere of money calculation there remain only intermediate ends which are capable of evaluation by immediate inspection: and once this sphere is left, it is necessary to have recourse to such judgments. It is the recognition of this necessity which provides the occasion for the distinction we have been discussing.

  If, for example, a nation desires to make war, it is illegitimate to regard the desire as necessarily irrational because the motive for making war lies outside those customarily considered as “economic”—as might be the case, e.g. with wars of religion. If the nation decides on the war with complete knowledge of all the facts because it judges that the end in view is more important than the sacrifice involved, and because it regards war as the most suitable means of obtaining it, then war cannot be regarded as irrational. It is not necessary at this point to decide whether this supposition is ever true or if it ever can be true. It is precisely this which has to be examined when one comes to choose between war and peace. And it is precisely with a view to introducing clarity into such an examination that the distinction we have been discussing has been introduced.

  CHAPTER 6

  The Organization of Production Under Socialism

  1

  The Socialization of the Means of Production

  Under Socialism all the means of production are the property of the community. The community alone disposes of them and decides how to use them in production. The community produces, the products accrue to the community, and the community decides how those products are to be used.

  Modern socialists, espcially those of the Marxian persuasion, lay great emphasis on designating the socialist community as Society, and therefore on describing the transfer of the means of production to the control of the community as the “Socialization of the means of production.” In itself the expression is unobjectionable but in the connection in which it is used it is particularly designed to obscure one of the most important problems of Socialism.

  The word “society,” with its corresponding adjective “social,” has three separate meanings. It implies, first, the abstract idea of social interrelationships, and secondly, the concrete conception of a union of the individuals themselves. Between these two sharply different meanings, a third has been interposed in ordinary speech: the abstract society is conceived as personified in such expressions as “human society,” “civil society.”

  Now Marx uses the term with all these meanings. This would not matter as long as he made the distinction quite clear. But he does just the opposite. He interchanges them with a conjurer’s skill whenever it appears to suit him. When he talks of the social character of capitalistic production he is using social in its abstract sense. When he speaks of the society which suffers during crises he means the personified society of mankind. But when he speaks of the society which is to expropriate the expropriators and socialize the means of production he means an actual social union. And all the meanings are interchanged in the links of his argument whenever he has to prove the unprovable. The reason for all this is in order to avoid using the term State or its equivalent, since this word has an unpleasant sound to all those lovers of freedom and democracy, whose support the Marxian does not wish to alienate at the outset. A programme which would give the State the general responsibility and direction of all production has no prospect of acceptance in these circles. It follows that the Marxist must continually find a phraseology which disguises the essence of the programme, which succeeds in concealing the unbridgeable abyss dividing democracy and Socialism. It does not say much for the perception of men who lived in the decades immediately preceding the World War that they did not see through this sophistry.

  The modern doctrine of the state understands by the word “State” an authoritative unit, an apparatus of compulsion characterized not by its aims but by its form. But Marxism has arbitrarily limited the meaning of the word State, so that it does not include the Socialistic State. Only those states and forms of state organization are called the State which arouse the dislike of the socialist writers. For the future organization to which they aspire the term is rejected indignantly as dishonourable and degrading. It is called “Society.” In this way the Marxian social democracy could at one and the same time contemplate the destruction of the existing State machine, fiercely combat all anarchistic movements, and pursue a policy which led directly to an all powerful state.14

  Now it does not matter in the least what particular name is given to the coercive apparatus of the socialistic community. If we use the word “State” we have a term in common use, except in the quite uncritical Marxian literature, an expression which is generally understood and which evokes the idea it is intended to evoke. But there is no disadvantage in avoiding this term if we wish, since it arouses mixed feelings in many people, and in substituting the expression “community.” The choice of terminology is purely a matter of style, and has no practical importance.

  What is important is the problem of the organization of this socialistic State or community. When dealing with the concrete expression of the will of the State, the English language provides a more subtle distinction by permitting us to use the term government instead of the term state. Nothing is better designed to avoid the mysticism which in this connection has been fostered by Marxian usages to the highest degree. For the Marxists talk glibly about expressing the will of society, without giving the slightest hint how ’society’ can proceed to will and act. Yet of course the community can only act through organs which it has created.

  Now it follows from the very conception of the socialistic community that the organ of control must be unitary. A socialist community can have only one ultimate organ of control which combines all economic and other governmental functions. Of course this organ can be subdivided and there can be subordinate offices to which definite instructions are transmitted. But the unitary expression of the common will, which is the essential object of the socialization of the means of production and of production, necessarily implies that all offices entrusted with the supervision of different affairs shall be subordinate to one office. This office must have supreme authority to resolve all variations from the common purpose and unify the executive aim. How it is constituted, and how the general will succeeds in expressing itself in and by it, is of minor importance in the investigation of our particular problem. It does not matter whether this organ is an absolute prince or an assembly of all citizens organized as a direct or indirect democracy. It does not matter how this organ conceives its will and expresses it. For our purpose we must consider this as accomplished and we need not spend any time over the question how it can be accomplished, whether it can be accomplished or whether Socialism is already doomed because it cannot be accomplished.

  At the outset of our inquiry we must postulate that the socialistic community is without foreign relations. It embraces the whole world and its inhabitants. If we conceive it as limited, so that it comprises only a part of the world and the inhabitants therein, we must assume that it has no economic relations with the territories and peoples outside its boundaries. We are to discuss the problem of the isolated socialistic community. The implications of the contemporaneous existence of several socialistic communities will be dealt with when we have surveyed the problem in complete generality.

  2

  Economic Calculation in the Socialist Community

  The theory of economic calculation shows that in the socialistic community economic calculation would be impossible.

  In any large undertaking the individual works or departments are partly independent in their accounts. They can reckon the cost of materials and labour, and it is possible at any time for an individual group to strike a separate balance and to sum up the results of its activity in figures. In this way it is possible to ascertain with what success each separate branch has been operated and thereby to make decisions concerning the reorganization, limitations or extension of existing branches or the establishment of new ones. Some mistakes are of course unavoidable in these calculations. They arise partly from the difficulty of allocating overhead costs. Other mistakes again arise from the necessity of calculating from insufficiently determined data, as, e.g. when in calculating the profitability of a certain process, depreciation of the machinery employed is determined by assuming a certain working life for the machine. But all such errors can be confined within certain narrow limits which do not upset the total result of the calculation. Whatever uncertainty remains is attributed to the uncertainty of future conditions inevitable in any imaginable state of affairs.

  It seems natural then to ask why individual branches of production in a socialistic community should not make separate accounts in the same manner. But this is impossible. Separate accounts for a single branch of one and the same undertaking are possible only when prices for all kinds of goods and services are established in the market and furnish a basis of reckoning. Where there is no market there is no price system, and where there is no price system there can be no economic calculation.

  Some may think that it is possible to permit exchange between the different groups of undertakings so as to establish a system of exchange relations (prices) and in this way create a basis for economic calculation in the socialistic community. Thus within a framework of a unitary economic system which does not recognize private property in the means of production, individual branches of industry with separate administration could be set up, subject of course, to the supreme economic authority, but able to transfer to each other goods and services for a consideration reckoned in a common medium of exchange. This, roughly, is how people conceive the productive organization of socialistic industry when they speak nowadays of complete socialization and the like. But here again the decisive point is evaded. Exchange relations in productive goods can only be established on the basis of private property in the means of production. If the Coal Syndicate delivers coal to the Iron Syndicate a price can be fixed only if both syndicates own the means of production in the industry. But that would not be Socialism but Syndicalism.

  For those socialist writers who accept the labour theory of value the problem is, of course, quite simple.

  “As soon,” says Engels, “as Society has taken possession of the means of production and applies them to direct social production the labour of everyone, however different its specific use may be, will immediately become direct social labour. The amount of social labour inherent in any product does not require to be ascertained in any roundabout way: everyday experience will show how much of it on the average is necessary. Society can easily reckon how many hours of labour inhere in a steam engine, in a hectolitre of wheat of the last harvest, in a hundred square metres of cloth of a certain quality. Of course society will have to find out how much work is required for the manufacture of every article of consumption. It will have to base its plans on a consideration of the means of production at its disposal—and of course the labour force falls into this category. The utility of the different objects of consumption weighed against one another and against the labour necessary for their production will finally determine the plan. The people will decide everything quite easily without the intervention of the much-vaunted value.”15

  It is not part of our business here to restate the critical arguments against the labour theory of value. They interest us at this point only in so far as they enable us to judge the possibility of making labour the basis of economic calculation in a socialistic community.

  At first sight it would appear that calculations based on labour take into account the natural conditions of production, as well as conditions arising from the human element. The Marxian concept of the socially necessary labour time takes the law of diminishing returns into consideration in so far as it results from different natural conditions of production. If the demand for a commodity increases and less favourable natural conditions have to be exploited, then the average socially necessary time for the production of a unit also increases. If more favourable conditions of production are discovered then the necessary quantum of social labour declines.16 But this is not enough. Computation of changes in marginal labour costs only take account of natural conditions in so far as they influence labour costs. Beyond that, the “labour” calculation breaks down. It leaves, for instance, the consumption of material factors of production entirely out of account. Suppose the socially necessary labour time for producing two commodities P and Q is ten hours, and that the production of a unit both of P and of Q requires material A, one unit of which is produced by one hour of socially necessary labour, and that the production of P involves two units of A and eight hours of labour, and of Q one unit of A and nine hours of labour. In a calculation based on labour time P and Q are equivalent, but in a calculation based on value P must be worth more than Q. The former calculation is false. Only the latter corresponds to the essence and object of economic calculation. It is true that this surplus by which the value of P exceeds that of Q, this material substratum, “is furnished by nature without the help of man,”17 but provided it is present only in such quantities that it becomes an economic factor it must also in some form enter into economic calculation.

  The second deficiency of the labour calculation theory is that it disregards differences in the quality of labour. For Marx all human labour is economically homogeneous, because it is always the “productive expenditure of human brain, muscles, nerves, hands, etc.” “Skilled labour is only intensified, or rather multiplied simple labour, so that a small quantity of skilled labour equals a larger quantity of simple labour. Experience shows that this resolution of skilled into simple constantly happens. A commodity may be the product of highly skilled labour, but its value equates it to the product of simple labour and represents only a certain quantity of simple labour.”18 Böhm-Bawerk was justified in describing this argument as a masterpiece of astounding naivety.19 In criticizing it one may conveniently leave undecided whether one can discover a unitary physiological measure of all human labour, physical as well as “mental.” For it is certain that between men themselves there are differences of capability and skill which result in differing qualities of the goods and services produced. What is ultimately decisive for the solution of the problem of the feasibility of using labour as a basis of economic calculation is the question whether one can assimilate different kinds of work to a common denominator without a valuation of the products by the consumer. It is clear that the argument which Marx brings to bear on this point has failed. Experience does indeed show that commodities enter into exchange regardless of the question whether they are the products of skilled or simple labour. But this would only prove that a definite quantity of simple labour is equal to a definite quantity of skilled labour if it were proved that labour is the source of exchange value. But not only is this unproven; it is exactly what Marx originally set out to prove. The fact that in exchange a substitute relation between simple and skilled labour has arisen in the form of wage rates—a point to which Marx does not here allude—is not in the least a proof of this homogeneity. This process of equating is a result of the working of the market, not its presupposition. Calculations based on labour cost rather than on monetary values would have to establish a purely arbitrary relation by which to resolve skilled into simple labour, and this would make them useless as an instrument for the economic organization of resources.

  It was long thought that the labour theory of value provided a necessary ethical basis for the demand to socialize the means of production. We know now that this was an error. Although the majority of socialists have adopted this view and although even Marx with his professedly non-ethical standpoint could not shake it off, it is clear that, on the one hand, the political demands for the introduction of the socialistic method of production neither need nor receive support from the labour theory of value, and, on the other hand, that those who hold different views on the nature and cause of value can also have socialistic tendencies. But from another point of view, the labour theory of value is still an essential dogma for the advocates of the socialistic method of production. For socialistic production in a society based on division of labour seems practicable only if there is an objective recognizable unit of value which would enable economic calculations to be made in an exchangeless and moneyless community and labour seems the only thing to serve this purpose.

  3

  Recent Socialist Doctrines and the Problems of Economic Calculation

  The problem of economic calculation is the fundamental problem of Socialism. That for decades people could write and talk about Socialism without touching this problem only shows how devastating were the effects of the Marxian prohibition on scientific scrutiny of the nature and working of a socialist economy.20

  To prove that economic calculation would be impossible in the socialist community is to prove also that Socialism is impracticable. Everything brought forward in favour of Socialism during the last hundred years, in thousands of writings and speeches, all the blood which has been spilt by the supporters of Socialism, cannot make socialism workable. The masses may long for it ever so ardently, innumerable revolutions and wars may be fought for it, still it will never be realised. Every attempt to carry it out will lead to syndicalism or, by some other route, to chaos, which will quickly dissolve the society, based upon the division of labour, into tiny autarkous groups.

  The discovery of this fact is clearly most inconvenient for the socialist parties, and socialists of all kinds have poured out attempts to refute my arguments and to invent a system of economic calculation for Socialism. They have not been successful. They have not produced a single new argument which I have not already taken account of.21 Nothing has shaken the proof that under Socialism economic calculation is impossible.22

  The attempt of the Russian Bolsheviks to transfer Socialism from a party programme into real life has not encountered the problem of economic calculation under Socialism, for the Soviet Republics exist within a world which forms money prices for all means of production. The rulers of the Soviet Republics base the calculations on which they make their decisions on these prices. Without the help of these prices their actions would be aimless and planless. Only so far as they refer to this price system, are they able to calculate and keep books and prepare their plans. Their position is the same as the position of the state and municipal Socialism of other countries: the problem of socialist economic calculation has not yet arisen for them. State and municipal enterprises calculate with those prices of the means of production and of consumption goods which are formed on the market. Therefore it would be precipitate to conclude from the fact that municipal and state enterprises exist, that socialist economic calculation is possible.

  We know indeed that socialist enterprises in single branches of production are practicable only because of the help they get from their non-socialist environment. State and municipality can carry on their own enterprises because the taxes which capitalist enterprises pay, cover their losses. In a similar manner Russia, which left to herself would long ago have collapsed, has been supported by finance from capitalist countries. But incomparably more important than this material assistance, which the capitalist economy gives to socialist enterprises, is the mental assistance. Without the basis for calculation which Capitalism places at the disposal of Socialism, in the shape of market prices, socialist enterprises would never be carried on, even within single branches of production or individual countries.

  Socialist writers may continue to publish books about the decay of Capitalism and the coming of the socialist millennium: they may paint the evils of Capitalism in lurid colours and contrast with them an enticing picture of the blessings of a socialist society; their writings may continue to impress the thoughtless—but all this cannot alter the fate of the socialist idea.23 The attempt to reform the world socialistically might destroy civilization. It would never set up a successful socialist community.

  4

  The Artificial Market as the Solution of the Problem of Economic Calculation

  Some of the younger socialists believe that the socialist community could solve the problem of economic calculation by the creation of an artificial market for the means of production. They admit that it was an error on the part of the older socialists to have sought to realize Socialism through the suspension of the market and the abolition of pricing for goods of higher orders; they hold that it was an error to have seen in the suppression of the market and of the price system the essence of the socialistic ideal. And they contend that if it is not to degenerate into a meaningless chaos in which the whole of our civilization would disappear, the socialist community equally with the capitalistic community, must create a market in which all goods and services may be priced. On the basis of such arrangements, they think, the socialist community will be able to make its calculations as easily as the capitalist entrepreneurs.

  Unfortunately the supporters of such proposals do not see (or perhaps will not see) that it is not possible to divorce the market and its functions in regard to the formation of prices from the working of a society which is based on private property in the means of production and in which, subject to the rules of such a society, the landlords, capitalists and entrepreneurs can dispose of their property as they think fit. For the motive force of the whole process which gives rise to market prices for the factors of production is the ceaseless search on the part of the capitalists and the entrepreneurs to maximize their profits by serving the consumers’ wishes. Without the striving of the entrepreneurs (including the shareholders) for profit, of the landlords for rent, of the capitalists for interest and the labourers for wages, the successful functioning of the whole mechanism is not to be thought of. It is only the prospect of profit which directs production into those channels in which the demands of the consumer are best satisfied at least cost. If the prospect of profit disappears the mechanism of the market loses its mainspring, for it is only this prospect which sets it in motion and maintains it in operation. The market is thus the focal point of the capitalist order of society; it is the essence of Capitalism. Only under Capitalism, therefore, is it possible; it cannot be “artificially” imitated under Socialism.

  The advocates of the artificial market, however, are of the opinion that an artificial market can be created by instructing the controllers of the different industrial units to act as if they were entrepreneurs in a capitalistic state. They argue that even under Capitalism the managers of joint stock companies work not for themselves but for the companies, that is to say, for the shareholders. Under Socialism, therefore, it would be possible for them to act in exactly the same way as before, with the same circumspection and devotion to duty. The only difference would be that under socialism the product of the manager’s labours would go to the community rather than to the shareholders. In such a way, in contrast to all socialists who have written on the subject hitherto, especially the Marxians, they think it would be possible to construct a decentralized, as opposed to a centralized, Socialism.

  In order to judge properly such proposals, it is necessary in the first place to realize that these controllers of individual industrial units would have to be appointed. Under Capitalism the managers of the joint stock companies are appointed either directly or indirectly by the shareholders. In so far as the shareholders give to the managers power to produce by the means of the company’s (i.e. the shareholders’) stock they are risking their own property or a part of their own property. The speculation (for it is necessarily a speculation) may succeed and bring profit; it may, however, misfire and bring about the loss of the whole or a part of the capital concerned. This committing of one’s own capital to a business whose outcome is uncertain and to men whose future ability is still a matter of conjecture whatever one may know of their past, is the essence of joint stock company enterprise.

  Now it is a complete fallacy to suppose that the problem of economic calculation in a socialist community relates solely to matters which fall into the sphere of the daily business routine of managers of joint stock companies. It is clear that such a belief can only arise from exclusive concentration on the idea of a stationary economic system—a conception which no doubt is useful for the solution of many theoretical problems but which has no counterpart in fact and which, if exclusively regarded, can even be positively misleading. It is clear that under stationary conditions the problem of economic calculation does not really arise. When we think of the stationary society, we think of an economy in which all the factors of production are already used in such a way as, under the given conditions, to provide the maximum of the things which are demanded by consumers. That is to say, under stationary conditions there no longer exists a problem for economic calculation to solve. The essential function of economic calculation has by hypothesis already been performed. There is no need for an apparatus of calculation. To use a popular but not altogether satisfactory terminology we can say that the problem of economic calculation is of economic dynamics: it is no problem of economic statics.

  The problem of economic calculation is a problem which arises in an economy which is perpetually subject to change, an economy which every day is confronted with new problems which have to be solved. Now in order to solve such problems it is above all necessary that capital should be withdrawn from particular lines of production, from particular undertakings and concerns and should be applied in other lines of production, in other undertakings and concerns. This is not a matter for the managers of joint stock companies, it is essentially a matter for the capitalists—the capitalists who buy and sell stocks and shares, who make loans and recover them, who make deposits in the banks and draw them out of the banks again, who speculate in all kinds of commodities. It is these operations of speculative capitalists which create those conditions of the money market, the stock exchanges and the wholesale markets which have to be taken for granted by the manager of the joint stock company, who, according to the socialist writers we are considering, is to be conceived as nothing but the reliable and conscientious servant of the company. It is the speculative capitalists who create the data to which he has to adjust his business and which therefore gives direction to his trading operations.

  It follows therefore that it is a fundamental deficiency of all these socialistic constructions which invoke the “artificial market” and artificial competition as a way out of the problem of economic calculation, that they rest on the belief that the market for factors of production is affected only by producers buying and selling commodities. It is not possible to eliminate from such markets the influence of the supply of capital from the capitalists and the demand for capital by the entrepreneurs, without destroying the mechanism itself.

  Faced with this difficulty, the socialist is likely to propose that the socialist state as owner of all capital and all means of production should simply direct capital to those undertakings which promise the highest return. The available capital, he will contend, should go to those undertakings which offer the highest rate of profit. But such a state of affairs would simply mean that those managers who were less cautious and more optimistic would receive capital to enlarge their undertakings while more cautious and more skeptical managers would go away empty-handed. Under Capitalism, the capitalist decides to whom he will entrust his own capital. The beliefs of the managers of joint stock companies regarding the future prospects of their undertakings and the hopes of project-makers regarding the profitability of their plans are not in any way decisive. The mechanism of the money market and the capital market decides. This indeed is its main task: to serve the economic system as a whole, to judge the profitability of alternative openings and not blindly to follow what the managers of particular concerns, limited by the narrow horizon of their own undertakings, are tempted to propose.

  To understand this completely, it is essential to realise that the capitalist does not just invest his capital in those undertakings which offer high interest or high profit; he attempts rather to strike a balance between his desire for profit and his estimate of the risk of loss. He must exercise foresight. If he does not do so then he suffers losses—losses that bring it about that his disposition over the factors of production is transferred to the hands of others who know better how to weigh the risks and the prospects of business speculation.

  Now if it is to remain socialistic, the socialist State cannot leave to other hands that disposition over capital which permits the enlargement of existing undertakings, the contraction of others and the bringing into being of undertakings that are completely new. And it is scarcely to be assumed that socialists of whatever persuasion would seriously propose that this function should be made over to some group of people who would “simply” have the business of doing what capitalists and speculators do under capitalistic conditions, the only difference being that the product of their foresight should not belong to them but to the community. Proposals of this sort may well be made concerning the managers of joint stock companies. They can never be extended to capitalists and speculators, for no socialist would dispute that the function which capitalists and speculators perform under Capitalism, namely directing the use of capital goods into that direction in which they best serve the demands of the consumer, is only performed because they are under the incentive to preserve their property and to make profits which increase it or at least allow them to live without diminishing their capital.

  It follows therefore that the socialist community can do nothing but place the disposition over capital in the hands of the State or to be exact in the hands of the men who, as the governing authority, carry out the business of the State. And that signifies elimination of the market, which indeed is the fundamental aim of Socialism, for the guidance of economic activity by the market implies organization of production and a distribution of the product according to that disposition of the spending power of individual members of society which makes itself felt on the market; that is to say, it implies precisely that which it is the goal of Socialism to eliminate.

  If the socialists attempt to belittle the significance of the problem of economic calculation in the Socialist community, on the ground that the forces of the market do not lead to ethically justifiable arrangements, they simply show that they do not understand the real nature of the problem. It is not a question of whether there shall be produced cannons or clothes, dwelling houses or churches, luxuries or subsistence. In any social order, even under Socialism, it can very easily be decided which kind and what number of consumption goods should be produced. No one has ever denied that. But once this decision has been made, there still remains the problem of ascertaining how the existing means of production can be used most effectively to produce these goods in question. In order to solve this problem it is necessary that there should be economic calculation. And economic calculation can only take place by means of money prices established in the market for production goods in a society resting on private property in the means of production. That is to say, there must exist money prices of land, raw materials, semimanufactures; that is to say, there must be money wages and interest rates.

  Thus the alternative is still either Socialism or a market economy.

  5

  Profitability and Productivity

  The economic activity of the socialist community is subject to the same external conditions as govern an economic system based on private property in the means of production or indeed any conceivable economic system. The economic principle applies to it in the same way as to any and to all economic systems: that is to say it recognizes an hierarchy of ends, and must therefore strive to achieve the more important before the less important. This is the essence of economic activity.

  lt is obvious that the production activities of the socialist community will involve not only labour but also material instruments of production. According to a very widespread custom, these material instruments of production are called capital. Capitalist production is that which adopts wise roundabout methods in contrast with a non-capitalistic production which goes directly to its end in a hand to mouth manner.24 If we adhere to this terminology, we must admit that the socialist community must also work with capital and will therefore produce capitalistically. Capital conceived as the intermediate products, which arise at the different stages of production by indirect methods, would not, at any rate at first25 be abolished by Socialism. It would merely be transferred from individual to common possession.

  But if, as we have suggested above, we wish to understand by capitalistic production that economic system in which money-calculation is employed, so that we can summarize under the term capital a set of goods devoted to production and evaluated in terms of money, and can attempt to estimate the results of economic activity by the variations in the value of capital, then it is clear that socialist methods of production cannot be termed capitalistic. In quite another sense than the Marxians we can distinguish between socialistic and capitalistic methods of production, and between Socialism and Capitalism.

  The characteristic feature of the capitalistic method of production, as it appears to socialists, is that the producer works to obtain a profit. Capitalistic production is production for profit, socialist production will be production for the satisfaction of needs. That capitalistic production aims at profit is quite true. But to achieve a profit, that is a result greater in value than the costs, must also be the aim of the socialist community. If economic activity is rationally directed, that is if it satisfies more urgent before less urgent needs, it has already achieved profits, since the cost, i.e. the value of the most important of the unsatisfied needs, is less than the result attained. In the capitalistic system profits can only be obtained if production meets a comparatively urgent demand. Whoever produces without attending to the relation between supply and demand fails to achieve the result at which he is aiming. To direct production towards profit simply means to direct it to satisfy other people’s demand: in this sense it may be contrasted with isolated man’s production for personal needs. But he also is working for profit in the sense used above. Between production for profit and production for needs there is no contrast.26

  The contrasting of production for profit and production for needs is closely connected with the common practice of contrasting productivity and profitability or the “social” and “private” economic point of view. An economic action is said to be profitable if in the capitalist system it yields an excess of receipts over costs. An economic action is said to be productive when, seen from the point of view of a hypothetical socialist community, the yield exceeds the cost involved. Now in some cases productivity and profitability do not coincide. Some economic acts which are profitable are not productive and, vice versa, some are productive but not profitable. For those naively biased in favour of Socialism, as is the case even with most economists, this fact is sufficient to condemn the capitalistic order of society. Whatever a socialist community would do seems to them undisputably good and reasonable: that anything different can happen in a capitalistic society is, in their opinion, an abuse which cannot be tolerated. But an examination of the cases in which profitability and productivity are alleged not to coincide will show that this judgment is purely subjective, and that the scientific cloak with which it is invested is a sham.27

  In the majority of cases in which it is usually assumed that there is a contrast between profitability and productivity no such contrast exists. This is true, for example, of profits from speculation. Speculation in the capitalist system performs a function which must be performed in any economic system however organized: it provides for the adjustment of supply and demand over time and space. The source of the profit of speculation is enhanced value which is independent of any particular form of economic organization. When the speculator purchases at a low price products which come on the market in comparatively large quantities and sells them at a higher price when the demand has again increased, his gains represent, from a business and from the economic point of view, an increase of value. That in a socialist order the community and not the individual would get this much grudged and maligned profit we do not deny. But that is not the significance of the problem in which we are interested. The point which concerns us here is that the alleged contrast between profitability and productivity does not exist in this case. Speculation performs an economic service which cannot conceivably be eliminated from any economic system. If it is eliminated, as socialists intend to do, then some other organization must take over its functions: the community itself must become a speculator. Without speculation there can be no economic activity reaching beyond the immediate present.

  A contrast between profitability and productivity is sometimes supposed to be discovered by picking out a particular process and considering it by itself. People may perhaps characterize as unproductive certain features peculiar to the constitution of the capitalistic organization of industry, e.g. selling expenses, advertising costs and the like are characterized as unproductive. This is not legitimate. We must consider the result of the complete process, not the individual stages. We must not consider the constituent expenses without setting against them the result to which they contribute.28

  6

  Gross and Net Product

  The most ambitious attempt to contrast productivity and profitability derives from the examination of the relationship between gross product and net product. It is clear that every entrepreneur in the capitalist system aims at achieving the largest net product. But it is asserted that rightly considered the object of economic activity should be to achieve not the largest net product but the largest gross product.

  This belief, however, is a fallacy based upon primitive speculations regarding valuation. But judged by its widespread acceptance even today it is a very popular fallacy. It is implicit when people say that a certain line of production is to be recommended because it employs a large number of workers, or when a particular improvement in production is opposed because it may deprive people of a living.

  If the advocates of such views were logical they would have to admit that the gross product principle applies not only to labour but also to the material instruments of production. The entrepreneur carries production up to the point where it ceases to yield a net product. Let us assume that production beyond this point requires material instruments only and not labour. Is it in the interest of society that the entrepreneur should extend production so as to obtain a larger gross product? Would society do so if it had the control of production? Both questions must be answered with a decided no. The fact that further production does not pay shows that the instruments of production could be applied to a more urgent purpose in the economic system. If, nevertheless, they are applied to the unprofitable line then they will be lacking in places where they are more urgently needed. This is true under both Capitalism and Socialism. Even a socialist community, supposing it acted rationally, would not push certain lines of production indefinitely and neglect others. Even a socialist community would discontinue a particular line of production when further production would not cover the expense, that is to say, at the point where further production would mean failure to satisfy a more urgent need elsewhere.

  But what is true of the increased use of material instruments is true exactly in the same way of the increased use of labour. If labour is devoted to a particular line of production to the point where it only increases the gross product while the net product declines, it is being withheld from some other line where it could perform more valuable service. And here, again, the only result of neglecting the principle of net product is that more urgent wants remain unsatisfied whilst less urgent ones are met. It is this fact, and no other which is made evident in the mechanism of the capitalist system by the decline in the net product. In a socialist community it would be the duty of the economic administration to see that similar misapplications of economic activity did not occur. Here, therefore, is no discrepancy between profitability and productivity. Even from the socialist standpoint, the largest possible net product and not the largest possible gross product must be the aim of economic activity.

  Nevertheless, people continue to maintain the contrary, sometimes of production in general, sometimes of labour alone and sometimes of agricultural production. That capitalist activity is directed solely toward the attainment of the largest net product is adversely criticized and State intervention is called for to redress the alleged abuse.

  This discussion has a lengthy ancestry. Adam Smith maintained that different lines of production should be regarded as more or less productive according to the greater or smaller amount of labour which they set in motion.29 For this he was adversely criticized by Ricardo who pointed out that welfare of the people increased only through an enlargement of the net product and not of the gross product.30 For this Ricardo was severely attacked. Even J. B. Say misunderstood him and accused him of an utter disregard for the welfare of so many human beings.31 While Sismondi, who was fond of meeting economic arguments by sentimental declamations, thought he could dispose of the problem by witticism: he said that a king who could produce net product by pressing a button would, according to Ricardo, make the nation superfluous.32 Bernhardi followed Sismondi on this point.33 Proudhon went as far as to epitomize the contrast between socialistic and private enterprise in the formula: that although society must strive for the largest gross product the aim of the entrepreneur is the largest net product.34 Marx avoids committing himself on this point, but he fills two chapters of the first book of Das Kapital with a sentimental exposition in which the transition from intensive to extensive agricultural methods is depicted in the darkest colour as, in the words of Sir Thomas More, a system “where sheep eat up men,” and manages in the course of this discussion to confuse the large expropriations achieved by the political power of the nobility, which characterized European agrarian history in the first centuries of modern times, with the changes in the methods of cultivation initiated later on by the landowners.35

  Since then declamations on this scheme have formed the stock equipment of the controversial writings and speeches of the socialists. A German agricultural economist, Freiherr von der Goltz, has tried to prove that the attainment of the largest possible gross product is not only productive from the social point of view but is also profitable from the individual point of view. He thinks that a large gross product naturally presupposes a large net product, and to that extent the interests of the individuals whose main object is to achieve a large net product coincide with those of the State which desires a large gross product.36 But he can offer no proof of this.

  Much more logical than these efforts to overcome the apparent contrast between social and private interests by ignoring obvious facts of agricultural accountancy, is the position taken up by followers of the romantic school of economic thought, particularly the German etatists, viz. that the agriculturist has the status of a civil servant, and is therefore obliged to work in the public interest. Since this is said to require the largest possible gross product it follows that the farmer, uninfluenced by commercial spirit, ideas or interests, and regardless of the disadvantages, which may be entailed, must devote himself to the attainment of this end.37 All these writers take it for granted that the interests of the community are served by the largest gross product. But they do not go out of their way to prove it. When they do try, they only argue from the point of view of Machtpolitik (power politics) or Nationalpolitik (national policy). The State has an interest in a strong agricultural population since the agricultural population is conservative; agriculture supplies the largest number of soldiers; provision must be made for feeding the population in time of war and so on.

  In contrast to this an attempt to justify the gross product principle by economic reasoning has been made by Landry. He will only admit that the effort to attain the greatest net product is socially advantageous in so far as the costs which no longer yield a profit arise from the use of material instruments of production. When the application of labour is involved he thinks quite otherwise. Then, from the economic point of view the application of labour costs nothing: social welfare is not thereby diminished. Wage economies which result in a diminution of the gross product are harmful.38 He arrives at this conclusion by assuming that the labour force thus released could find no employment elsewhere. But this is absolutely wrong. The need of society for labour is never satisfied as long as labour is not a “free good.” The released workers find other employment where they have to supply work more urgent from the economic point of view. If Landry were right it would have been better if all the labour-saving machinery had never existed, and the attitude of those workers who resist all technical innovations which economize labour and who destroy such machinery would be justified. There is no reason why there should be a distinction between the employment of material instruments and of labour. That, in view of the price of the material instruments and the price of their products, an increase of production in the same line is not profitable, is due to the fact that the material instruments are required in some other line to satisfy more urgent needs. But this is equally true of labour. Workers who are employed in unprofitably increasing the gross product are withheld from other lines of production in which they are more urgently required. That their wages are too high for an increase in production involving a larger gross product to be profitable, results indeed from the fact that the marginal productivity of labour in general is higher than in the particular line of production in question, where it is applied beyond the limits determined by the net product principle. There is no contrast whatever here between social and private interests: a socialist organization would not act differently from an entrepreneur in the capitalist organization.

  Of course there are plenty of other arguments which can be adduced to show that adherence to the net product principle may be harmful. They are common to all nationalist-militarist thinking, and are the well-known arguments used to support every protectionist policy. A nation must be populous because its political and military standing in the world depends upon numbers. It must aim at economic self-sufficiency or at least it must produce its food at home and so on. In the end Landry has to fall back on such arguments to support his theory.39 To examine such arguments would be out of place in a discussion of the isolated socialist community.

  But if the arguments we have examined are untrue it follows that the socialist community must adopt net product and not gross product as the guiding principle of economic activity. The socialist community equally with the capitalist society will also transform arable into grass land, if it is possible to put more productive land under the plough elsewhere. In spite of Sir Thomas More, “sheep will eat up men” even in Utopia, and the rulers of the socialist community will act no differently from the Duchess of Sutherland, that “economically instructed person,” as Marx once jeeringly called her.40

  The net product principle is true for every line of production. Agriculture is no exception. The dictum of Thaer, the German pioneer of modern agriculture, that the aim of the agriculturist must be a high net yield “even from the standpoint of the public welfare” still holds good.41

  CHAPTER 7

  The Distribution of Income

  1

  The Nature of Distribution Under Liberalism and Socialism

  On logical grounds, treatment of the problem of income should properly come at the end of any investigation into the life of the socialist community. Production must take place before distribution is possible, therefore, logically, the former should be discussed before the latter. But the problem of distribution is so prominent a feature of Socialism as to suggest the earliest possible discussion of the question. For fundamentally, Socialism is nothing but a theory of “just” distribution; the socialist movement is nothing but an attempt to achieve this ideal. All socialist schemes start from the problem of distribution and all come back to it. For Socialism the problem of distribution is the economic problem.

  The problem of distribution is moreover peculiar to socialism. It arises only in a socialist economy. It is true, we are in the habit of speaking of distribution in an economic society based on private property, and economic theory deals with the problem of income and the determination of the prices of the factors of production under the heading “Distribution.” This terminology is traditional, and it is so firmly established that the substitution of another would be unthinkable. Nevertheless, it is misleading and does not indicate the nature of the theory which it is meant to describe. Under Capitalism incomes emerge as a result of market transactions which are indissolubly linked up with production. We do not first produce things and afterwards distribute them. When products are supplied for use and consumption, incomes for the greater part have already been determined, since they arise during the process of production and are indeed derived from it. Workers, landowners, and capitalists and a large number of the entrepreneurs contributing to production have already received their share before the product is ready for consumption. The prices which are obtained for the final product on the market decide only the income which a section of entrepreneurs obtain from the process of production. (The influence which these prices have on the income of other classes has already been exerted via the anticipations of the entrepreneurs.) As thus in the capitalistic order of society the aggregation of individual incomes to form a total social income is only a theoretical conception, the concept of distribution is only figurative. The reason that this expression has been adopted, instead of the simple and more suitable term formation of income, is that the founders of scientific economics, the Physiocrats and the English classical school, only gradually learned to free themselves from the etatistic outlook of mercantilism. Although precisely this analysis of income formation as a result of market transactions was their principal achievement, they adopted the practice—fortunately without any harm to the content of their teachings—of grouping the chapters dealing with the different kinds of income under the heading “distribution.”42

  Only in the socialist community is there any distribution of consumable goods in the true sense of the word. If in considering capitalistic society we use the term distribution in any but a purely figurative sense then an analogy is being made between the determination of income in a socialist and in a capitalist community. The conception of any actual process of distribution of income must be kept out of any investigation of the mechanism of capitalist society.

  2

  The Social Dividend

  According to the fundamental idea of Socialism only goods which are ripe for consumption are eligible for distribution. Goods of a higher order remain the property of the community for purposes of further production; they must not be distributed. Goods of the first order, on the contrary, are without exception destined to be distributed: they constitute indeed the net social dividend. Since in considering the socialist society we cannot quite get rid of ideas which are only appropriate to the capitalist order, it is usual to say that the society will retain a part of the consumers’ goods for public consumption. We are really thinking of that part of consumption which in the capitalistic society is usually called public expenditure. Where the principle of private property is rigidly applied this public expenditure consists exclusively of the cost of maintaining the apparatus which assures the undisturbed course of things. The only task of the strictly Liberal state is to secure life and property against attacks both from external and internal foes. It is a producer of security, or, as Lassalle mockingly termed it, a night watchman’s state. In a socialist community there will be the corresponding task of securing the socialist order and the peaceful course of socialistic production. Whether the apparatus of coercion and violence which serves this purpose will still be known as the state or be called by some other name, and whether it will be legally given a separate status among the other functions incumbent upon the socialist community, is a matter of complete indifference to us. We have only to make it clear that all expenditure devoted to this end will appear in the socialist community as general costs of production. So far as they involve the use of labour for the purposes of distributing the social dividend, they must be reckoned in such a way that the workers employed get their share.

  But public expenditure includes other outlays. Most states and municipalities provide their citizens with certain utilities in kind, sometimes gratuitously, sometimes at a charge which covers only a part of the expense. As a rule this happens in the case of single services which are yielded by durable commodities. Thus parks, art galleries, public libraries, places of worship, are made available for those who wish to use them. Similarly, roads and streets are accessible to everyone. Moreover, direct distribution of consumption goods takes place, as for example, when medicine and diet are given to the sick and educational apparatus to pupils; personal service is also supplied when medical treatment is given. All this is not Socialism, it is not production on the basis of common ownership of the means of production. Distribution, indeed, occurs here, but what is distributed is first collected by taxation from the citizens. Only so far as this distribution deals with products of state or municipal production can it be described as a piece of Socialism within the framework of an otherwise liberal order of society. We need not stop to inquire how far this branch of state and municipal activity is due to views which have been influenced by the socialist critics of capitalist society and how far it is due to the special nature of certain particularly durable consumption goods which yield almost unlimited service. For us it is only important that in the case of this public expenditure, even in an otherwise capitalistic society, a distribution in the actual sense of the word takes place.

  Moreover, the socialist community will not make a physical distribution of all consumers’ goods. It is not likely to present a copy of every new book to every citizen, but rather to place the books in public reading rooms for the general use. It will do the same with its schools and teaching, its public gardens, playgrounds and assembly halls. The expenditure which all these arrangements necessitate is not deducted from the social dividend; on the contrary, it is a part of the social dividend.

  This part of the social dividend exhibits this one peculiarity, that without prejudice to the principles which determine the distribution of consumable consumers’ goods and part of durable goods, special principles of distribution can be applied to it corresponding to the special nature of the services involved. The way in which art collections and scientific publications are made available for general use is quite independent of the rules which are otherwise applied to the distribution of goods of the first order.

  3

  The Principles of Distribution

  The socialist community is characterized by the fact that in it there is no connection between production and distribution. The magnitude of the share which is assigned for the use of each citizen is quite independent of the value of the service he renders. It would be fundamentally impossible to base distribution on the imputation of value because it is an essential feature of socialistic methods of production that the shares of the different factors of production in the result cannot be ascertained; and any arithmetical test of the relations between effort and result is impossible.

  It would therefore not be possible to base even a part of distribution on an economic calculation of the contribution of the different factors, e.g. by first granting the worker the full product of his labour which under the capitalist system he would receive in the form of wages, and then applying a special form of distribution in the case of the shares which are attributed to the material factors of production and to the work of the entrepreneur. On the whole socialists lack any clear conception of this fact. But a faint suspicion of them pervades the Marxian doctrine that under Socialism the categories wages, profit, and rent would be unthinkable.

  There are four different principles upon which socialistic distribution can conceivably be based: equal distribution per head, distribution according to service rendered to the community, distribution according to needs, and distribution according to merit. These principles can be combined in different ways.

  The principle of equal distribution derives from the old doctrine of natural law of the equality of all human beings. Rigidly applied it would prove absurd. It would permit no distinction between adults and children, between the sick and the healthy, between the industrious and the lazy, or between good and bad. It could be applied only in combination with the other three principles of distribution. It would at least be necessary to take into account the principle of distribution according to needs, so that shares might be graded according to age, sex, health and special occupational needs; it would be necessary to take into account the principle of distribution according to services rendered, so that distinction could be made between industrious and less industrious, and between good and bad workers; and finally, some account would have to be taken of merit, so as to make reward or punishment effective. But even if the principle of equal distribution is modified in these ways the difficulties of socialistic distribution are not removed. In fact, these difficulties cannot be overcome at all.

  We have already shown the difficulties raised by applying the principle of distribution according to value of services rendered. In the capitalist system the economic subject receives an income corresponding to the value of his contribution to the general process of production. Services are rewarded according to their value. It is precisely this arrangement which Socialism wishes to change and to replace by one under which the shares attributed to the material factors of production and to the entrepreneur would be so distributed that no property owner and no entrepreneur would have a standing fundamentally different from that of the rest of the community. But this involves a complete divorce of distribution from economic imputation of value. It has nothing to do with the value of the individual’s service to the community. It could be brought into external relation with the service rendered only if the service of the individual were made the basis of distribution according to some external criteria. The most obvious criterion appears to be the number of hours worked. But the significance to the social dividend of any service rendered is not to be measured by the length of working time. For, in the first place, the value of the service differs according to its use in the economic scheme. The results will differ according to whether the service is used in the right place, that is to say, where it is most urgently required, or in the wrong place. In the socialist organization, however, the worker cannot be made ultimately responsible for this, but only those who assign him the work. Secondly, the value of the service varies according to the quality of the work and according to the particular capability of the worker; it varies according to his strength and his zeal. It is not difficult to find ethical reasons for equal payments to workers of unequal capabilities. Talent and genius are the gifts of God, and the individual is not responsible for them, as is often said. But this does not solve the problem whether it is expedient or practicable to pay all hours of labour the same price.

  The third principle of distribution is according to needs. The formula of each according to his needs is an old slogan of the unsophisticated communist. It is occasionally backed up by referring to the fact that the Early Christians shared all goods in common.43 Others again regard it as practicable because it is supposed to form the basis of distribution within the family. No doubt it could be made universal if the disposition of the mother, who hungers gladly rather than that her children should go without, could be made universal. The advocates of the principle of distribution according to needs overlook this. They overlook much more besides. They overlook the fact that so long as any kind of economic effort is necessary only a part of our needs can be satisfied, and a part must remain unsatisfied. The principle of “to each according to his needs” remains meaningless so long as it is not defined to what extent each individual is allowed to satisfy his needs. The formula is illusory since everyone has to forgo the complete satisfaction of all his needs.44 It could indeed be applied within narrow limits. The sick and suffering can be assigned special medicine, care, and attendance, better attention and special treatment for their special needs, without making this consideration for exceptional cases the general rule.

  Similarly it is quite impossible to make the merit of the individual the general principle of distribution. Who is to decide on merits? Those in power have often had very strange views on the merits or demerits of their contemporaries. And the voice of the people is not the voice of God. Who would the people choose today as the best of their contemporaries? It is not unlikely that the choice would fall on a film star, or perhaps on a prize-fighter. Today the English people would probably be inclined to call Shakespeare the greatest Englishman. Would his contemporaries have done so? And how would they esteem a second Shakespeare if he were among them today? Moreover, why should those be penalized in whose lap Nature has not placed the great gifts of talent and genius? Distribution according to the merits of the individual would open the door wide to mere caprice and leave the individual defenseless before the oppression of the majority. Conditions would be created which would make life unbearable.

  As far as the economics of the problem are concerned it is a matter of indifference which principle or which combination of different people is made a basis for distribution. Whatever principle is adopted the fact remains that each individual will receive an allocation from the community. The citizen will receive a bundle of claims which can be exchanged within a certain time for a definite amount of different goods. In this way he will procure his daily meals, fixed shelter, occasional pleasures, and from time to time new clothing. Whether the satisfaction of needs which he obtains in this way is great or small will depend upon the productivity of the efforts of the community.

  4

  The Process of Distribution

  It is not necessary that each individual should himself consume the whole share allotted to him. He can let some go to waste, give some away, or, as far as the commodity permits, put some aside for later consumption. Some, however, he can exchange. The beer drinker will readily forgo his share of non-alcoholic drink to obtain more beer. The abstainer will be prepared to forgo his claim to spirits if he can acquire other commodities instead. The aesthete will surrender a visit to the cinema for the sake of more opportunities to hear good music; the lowbrow will willingly exchange tickets to art galleries for more congenial pleasures. Everyone will be ready to exchange, but the exchange will be confined to consumers’ goods. Producers’ goods will be res extra commercium (things beyond commerce).

  Such exchange need not be confined to direct barter: it can also take place indirectly within certain narrow limits. The same reasons which have led to indirect exchange in other types of society will make it advantageous to those exchanging in the socialistic community. It follows that even here there will be opportunity for the use of a general medium of exchange—money.

  The role of money in the socialist economy will be fundamentally the same as in a free economic system—that of a general facilitator of exchange. But the significance of this role will be quite different. In a society based on the collective ownership of the means of production, the significance of the role of money will be incomparably narrower than in a society based on private property in the means of production. For in the socialist commonwealth, exchange itself has a much narrower significance, since it is confined to consumers’ goods only. There cannot be money prices of producers’ goods since these do not enter into exchange. The accounting function which money exercises in production in a free economic order will no longer exist in a socialist community. Money calculations of value will be impossible.

  Nevertheless the central administration of production and distribution cannot leave out of consideration the exchange relations which arise in this sort of traffic. Clearly it would have to take them into account if it desired to make different commodities mutually substitutable when assessing the distribution of the social dividend.

  Thus if in the process of exchange the relation of one cigar to five cigarettes was established, the administration could not arbitrarily lay it down that one cigar equalled three cigarettes, so that it might be able on this basis to give one individual only cigars and another only cigarettes. If the tobacco allowance has not been equally distributed, partly in cigars and partly in cigarettes, that is to say, if some—either according to their wishes or by order of the government—received only cigars and others only cigarettes, the exchange relations already established could not be ignored. Otherwise all those who received cigarettes would be unfairly treated, compared with those receiving cigars, since the person who had received a cigar could exchange it for five cigarettes whilst he had obtained it as the equivalent of three cigarettes.

  Alterations of exchange relationships in this traffic among the citizens would consequently compel the administration to make corresponding changes in the substitution ratios of the various commodities. Every such change will indicate that the relations between the various needs of the citizens and their satisfaction had altered, that people now wanted some commodities more than before, others less. The economic administration would presumably endeavor to adjust production to this change. It would endeavour to produce more of the more desired commodity and less of the less desired. But one thing, however, it would not be able to do: it would not be able to permit the individual citizens to redeem their tobacco tickets arbitrarily in cigars or cigarettes. If individuals were allowed free choice of cigars or cigarettes they might demand more cigars or more cigarettes than had been produced, or, on the other hand, cigars or cigarettes might be left on hand at the distributing centers because no one demanded them.

  The labour theory of value appears to offer a simple solution of this problem. For an hour of labour a citizen receives a token which entitles him to the product of one hour of labour, with a deduction to defray the general obligation of the community, e.g. support of the disabled, expenditure on cultural purposes. Allowing for this deduction to cover the expenditure borne by the community as a whole, every worker who has worked one hour will have the right to obtain products on which one hour of labour has been expended. Any one who is ready to pay by giving to the community his own working time corresponding to the working time used to produce them can draw from the supply centers consumers’ goods and services and apply them to his own use.

  But such a principle of distribution would not work, since labour is not uniform or homogeneous. There are qualitative differences between the different forms of labour which, taken in conjunction with variations in the supply and demand of the resulting products, lead to different values. Ceteris paribus the supply of pictures cannot be increased without the quality of the work suffering. The worker who has supplied an hour of simple labour cannot be granted the right to consume the product of an hour of work of a higher quality: and it would be impossible in a socialist community to establish any connection between the importance of work done for the community and the share in the yield of communal production given for the work. Payment for work would be quite arbitrary. For the methods of calculating value used in a free economic society based on private ownership of the means of production would be inaccessible to it since, as we have seen, such imputation is impossible in a socialistic society. Economic facts would clearly limit the power of society to reward the labourer arbitrarily; in the long run the wage total can in no circumstances exceed the income of society. Within this limit, however, the community is free to act. It can decide to pay all work equally, regardless of quality; it can just as easily make a distinction between the various hours of work, according to the quality of the work rendered. But in both cases it must reserve the right to decide the particular distribution of the products.

  Even if we abstract from differences in the quality of labour and its product and accept the possibility of determining how much labour inheres in any product, the community would never allow the individual who had rendered an hour of labour to consume the product of an hour’s labour. For all economic goods entail material costs apart from labour. A product for which more raw material is required must not be made equivalent to a product requiring less raw material.

  5

  The Costs of Distribution

  Socialistic criticism of the capitalist system devotes much space to complaints about the high costs of what can be called the apparatus of distribution. They include under this the cost of all national and political institutions, including expenditure on military purposes and war. They also include the expense to society arising from free competition. All the expenditure on advertisement and the activities of persons involved in the competitive struggle such as agents, commercial travellers, etc., and the costs entailed by the efforts of firms to remain independent instead of amalgamating into larger units or joining cartels which make possible specialization and thereby the cheapening of production, are debited to the distributive process of the capitalist system. The socialistic society will, so the critics think, save enormously by putting an end to this waste.

  The expectation that the socialist community will save that outlay which can properly be termed state expenditure is derived from the doctrine, peculiar to many anarchists and to Marxian socialists, that state compulsion would be superfluous in a society not based on private property in the means of production. They argue that in the socialist community “obedience to the simple fundamental rules governing any form of social life will very soon become of necessity a habit,” but this is backed up by a hint that “evasion of regulation and control enforced by the whole people will undoubtedly be enormously difficult,” and will incur “swift and severe punishment,” since “the armed workers” would not be “sentimental intellectuals” nor “let themselves be mocked.”45 All this is merely playing with words. Control, Arms, Punishment, are not these “a special repressive authority,” and thus according to Engels’ own words a “State”?46 Whether the compulsion is exercised by armed workers—who cannot work while they bear arms—or by the workers’ sons clad in police uniforms, will make no difference to the costs which the compulsion entails.

  But the State is a coercive apparatus not only to its own inhabitants: it applies coercion externally. Only a state comprising the whole universe would need to exert no external coercion and then only because in that event there would be no foreign land, no foreigners and no foreign states. Liberalism, with its fundamental antagonism to warfare, wants to give the whole world some state form of organization. If this can be achieved it is inconceivable without a coercive apparatus. If all the armies of the individual states were abolished we could not dispense with a world apparatus of coercion, a world police to ensure world peace. Whether Socialism unites all states into a single one or whether it leaves them independent of each other, in any case it too will not be able to do without a coercive apparatus.

  The socialist apparatus of coercion too will entail some expense. Whether this will be greater or less than the expense of the state apparatus of the capitalist society naturally we cannot say. We merely need to see that the social dividend will be reduced by the amount involved.

  As for the wastes of distribution under Capitalism, little need be said. Since in capitalist society there is no distribution in the real sense of the word there are no costs of distribution. Trading expenses and similar costs cannot be called distribution costs, not only because they are not the costs of a distribution, which is a special process in itself, but also because the effects of the services devoted to these purposes extend far beyond the mere distribution of goods. Competition is not confined to distribution: that is only a part of its service. It serves equally the process of production, indeed it is essential for any organization of production which is to ensure high productivity. It is not enough therefore to compare these costs with the costs incurred by the apparatus of distribution and management in a socialist community. If socialist methods of production reduce productivity—and we shall speak of this later—it matters little that it saves the work of commercial travellers, brokers and advertisers.

  CHAPTER 8

  The Socialist Community Under Stationary Conditions

  1

  Stationary Conditions

  To assume stationary economic conditions is a theoretical expedient and not an attempt to describe reality. We cannot dispense with this line of thought if we wish to understand the laws of economic change. In order to study movement we must first imagine a condition where it does not exist. The stationary condition is that point of equilibrium to which we conceive all forms of economic activity to be tending and which would actually be attained if new factors did not, in the meantime, create a new point of equilibrium. In the imaginary state of equilibrium all the units of the factors of production are employed in the most economic way, and there is no reason to contemplate any changes in their number or their disposition.

  Even if it is impossible to imagine a living—that is to say a changing—socialist economic order, because economic activity without economic calculation seems inconceivable, it is quite easy to postulate a socialist economic order under stationary conditions. We need only avoid asking how this stationary condition is achieved. If we do this there is no difficulty in examining the statics of a socialist community. All socialist theories and Utopias have always had only the stationary condition in mind.

  2

  The Disutilities and Satisfactions of Labour

  Socialist writers depict the socialist community as a land of heart’s desire. Fourier’s sickly fantasies go farthest in this direction. In Fourier’s state of the future all harmful beasts will have disappeared, and in their places will be animals which will assist man in his labours—or even do his work for him. An anti-beaver will see to the fishing; an anti-whale will move sailing ships in a calm; an anti-hippopotamus will tow the river boats. Instead of the lion there will be an anti-lion, a steed of wonderful swiftness, upon whose back the rider will sit as comfortably as in a well-sprung carriage. “It will be a pleasure to live in a world with such servants.”47 Godwin even thought that men might be immortal after property had been abolished.48 Kautsky tells us that under the socialist society “a new type of man will arise ... a superman ... an exalted man.”49 Trotsky provides even more detailed information: “Man will become incomparably stronger, wiser, finer. His body more harmonious, his movements more rhythmical, his voice more musical ... The human average will rise to the level of an Aristotle, a Goethe, a Marx. Above these other heights new peaks will arise.”50 And writers of this sort of stuff are continually being reprinted and translated into other tongues, and made the subject of exhaustive historical theses!

  Other socialist writers are more circumspect in their pronouncements but they proceed on essentially similar assumptions. Tacitly underlying Marxian theory is the nebulous idea that the natural factors of production are such that they need not be economized. Such a conclusion indeed follows inevitably from a system that reckons labor as the only element in costs, that does not accept the law of diminishing returns, rejects the Malthusian law of population and loses itself in obscure fantasies about the unlimited possibility of increasing productivity.51 We need not go further into these matters. It is sufficient to recognize that even in a socialist community the natural factors of production would be limited in quantity and would therefore have to be economized.

  The second element which would have to be economized is labour. Even if we ignore differences in quality it is obvious that labour is available only to a limited extent: the individual can only perform a certain amount of labour. Even if labour were a pure pleasure it would have to be used economically, since human life is limited in time, and human energy is not inexhaustible. Even the man who lives at his leisure, untrammelled by monetary considerations, has to dispose of his time, i.e. choose between different possible ways of spending it.

  It is clear, therefore, that in the world as we know it, human behaviour must be governed by economic considerations. For while our wants are unlimited, the goods of the first order bestowed by nature are scarce; and, with a given productivity of labour, goods of a higher order can serve to increase the satisfaction of needs only by increasing labour. Now, quite apart from the fact that labour cannot be increased beyond a certain point, an increase of labour is accompanied by increasing disutility.

  Fourier and his school regard the disutility of labour as a result of perverse social arrangements. These alone in their view are to blame for the fact that in accepted usage the words “labour” and “toil” are synonymous. Labour in itself is not unpleasant. On the contrary, all men need to be active. Inactivity entails intolerable boredom. If labour is to be made attractive it must be carried on in healthy, clean workplaces; the joy of labour must be aroused by a happy feeling of union among the workers and cheerful competition between them. The chief cause of the repugnance which labour arouses is its continuity. Even pleasures pall if they last too long. Therefore the workers must be allowed to interchange their occupations at will; work will then be a pleasure and no longer create aversion.52

  It is not difficult to expose the error contained in this argument, though it is accepted by socialists of all schools. Man feels the impulse to activity. Even if need did not drive him to work he would not always be content to roll in the grass and bask in the sun. Even young animals and children whose nourishment is provided by their parents kick their limbs, dance, jump and run so as to exercise powers yet unclaimed by labour. To be stirring is a physical and mental need. Thus, in general, purposeful labour gives satisfaction. Yet only up to a certain point; beyond this it is only toil. In the following diagram the line 0 x along which the product of labour is measured, marks the dividing line between the disutility of labour and the satisfaction the exercise of our powers affords, which may be called immediate satisfaction due to labour. The curve, a, b, c, p represents labour disutility and immediate labour satisfaction in relation to the product. When labour commences it is found disagreeable. After the first difficulties have been overcome and body and mind are better adapted, then the disagreeableness declines. At b neither disagreeableness nor satisfaction predominates. Between b and c direct satisfaction prevails. After c disagreeableness recommences. With other forms of labour the curve may run differently, as in 0 c₁p₁ or 0p₂. That depends on the nature of the work and the personality of the workers. It is different for ditchdiggers and for jockeys: it is different for dull and for energetic men.53

  

  Why is labour continued when the disutility which its continuance occasions exceeds the direct satisfaction deriving from it? Because something else beside direct labour satisfaction comes into account, namely the satisfaction afforded by the product of the labour; we call this indirect labour satisfaction. Labour will be continued so long as the dissatisfaction which it arouses is counterbalanced by the pleasure derived from its product. Labour will only be discontinued at the point at which its continuation would give rise to more disutility than utility.

  The methods by which Fourier wished to deprive labour of its unattractiveness were indeed based upon correct observations, but he greatly overrated the bearing of his argument. It is clear that the amount of work which affords direct labour satisfaction supplies such a small fraction of the needs which men consider imperative that they readily undergo the hardship of performing irksome work. But it is a mistake to assume that any significant change would take place if workers were allowed to change occupations at short intervals. For in the first place the product of labour would be reduced because of the diminished skill acquired by the individual as a result of diminished practice in each of his various occupations; also because every changeover would cause loss of time, and labour would be expended in the shuffling. And in the second place only a very slight part of the excess of labour disutility over direct labour satisfaction is due to weariness with the particular job in hand. Hence the capacity to derive direct satisfaction from another form of labour is not what it would have been if the first job had not been performed. Clearly the greater part of the disutility is due to general fatigue of the organism and to a desire to be released from any further constraint. The man who has worked for hours at a desk will prefer to chop wood for an hour rather than spend another hour at the desk. But what made his labour unpleasant was not only the need for change but rather the length of the work. If the product is not to be diminished the length of the working day can be reduced only by increased productivity. The widespread opinion that there is labour which only tires the body and labour which only tires the mind is incorrect, as everyone can prove for himself. All labour affects the whole organism. We deceive ourselves on this point because in observing other forms of occupation we see only the direct labour satisfaction. The clerk envies the coachman, because he would like a little recreation in driving: but his envy would last only as long as the satisfaction exceeded the pain. Similarly hunting and fishing, mountain climbing, riding and driving are undertaken for sport. But sport is not work in the economic sense. It is the hard fact that men cannot subsist on the small amount of labour yielding direct labour satisfaction which compels them to suffer the irksomeness of toil, not the bad organization of labour.

  It is obvious, that improvements in the conditions under which labour is performed may increase the product with unchanged irksomeness or lessen the irksomeness for the same product. But it would be impossible to improve these conditions more than actually occurs under capitalism without rising cost. That labour is less irksome when performed in company has been known from of old, and where it seems possible to let workers work together without reducing output, it is done.

  There are, of course, exceptional natures that rise above the common level. The great creative genius who perpetuates himself in immortal works and deeds does not when working distinguish the pain from the pleasure. For such men creation is at once the greatest joy and the bitterest torment, an inner necessity. What they create has no value to them as a product: they create for the sake of creation, not for the result. The product costs them nothing because, when working, they forgo nothing dearer to them than their work. And their product only costs society what they could have produced by other labour. In comparison to the value of the service this cost is nothing. Genius is truly a gift of God.

  Now the life history of great men is familiar to all. Thus the social reformer is easily tempted to regard what he has heard of them as common attributes. We continually find people inclined to regard the mode of life of the genius as the typical way of living of a simple citizen of a socialist community. But not every one is a Sophocles or a Shakespeare, and standing behind a lathe is not the same thing as writing Goethe’s poems or founding the Empire of Napoleon.

  It is therefore easy to see the nature of the illusions entertained by Marxians with regard to the satisfactions and toil of the inhabitants of the socialist community. Here, as in everything else it has to say about the socialist community, Marxism moves along the lines set out by the Utopians. With express reference to Fourier’s and Owen’s ideas of restoring to work “the attractiveness lost through division of labour,” by arranging for each form of work to be performed for a short time only, Engels sees in Socialism an organization of production “in which productive labour will be not a means for enslaving but for liberating mankind, which will give every individual the opportunity to develop and to exercise all his capabilities, bodily and mental, in all directions, and will transform a bane into a boon.”54 And Marx talks of “a higher phase of communist society after having done away with the slavish subjection of the individual under the division of labour, a society in which the contrast between mental and physical work has disappeared” and “labour has become not only a means of life but the first need of life itself.”55 Max Adler promises that the socialist society will “at the very least” not assign to anyone any work “which must cause him pain.”56 These statements distinguish themselves from the utterances of Fourier and his school only by the fact that there is nowhere any attempt to provide them with a basis of proof.

  Fourier and his school, however, had another device, apart from changes of occupation, for rendering work more attractive: competition. Men would be capable of the highest achievement if inspired by un sentiment de rivalité joyeuse ou de noble émulation (a feeling of joyous rivalry or noble emulation). Here for once they recognize the advantages of competition, which everywhere else they describe as pernicious. If the workers show a deficiency in achievement it will be sufficient to divide them into groups: immediately a fierce competition will blaze up between the groups, which will double the energy of the individual and suddenly arouse in all un acharnement passioné au travail (A passionate tenacity for work).57

  The observation that competition makes for greater accomplishment is of course correct enough, but it is superficial. Competition is not in itself a human passion. The efforts put forth by men in competition are not made for the sake of the competition but for the end attained thereby. The fight is waged not for its own sake, but for the prize which beckons the victor. But what prizes would spur to emulation the workers in a socialist community? Experience shows that titles and rewards of honour are not estimated too highly. Material goods to increase the satisfaction of wants could not be given as prizes since the principle of distribution would be independent of individual performance, and the increase per head through the increased effort of a single worker would be so insignificant that it would not count. The simple satisfaction from duty performed would not suffice: it is precisely because this incentive cannot be trusted that we seek others. And even if it were so, labour would still be irksome. It would not thereby become attractive in itself.

  The Fourier school, as we have seen, regards it as the main point of their solution of the social problem that work will be made a joy instead of a toil.58 But unfortunately the means which it provides for this are quite impracticable. If Fourier had really been able to show the way to make work attractive he would have deserved the divine honours bestowed on him by his followers.59 But his much lauded doctrines are nothing but the fantasies of a man who was incapable of seeing clearly the world as it really is.

  Even in a socialist community work will arouse feelings of pain and not of pleasure.60

  3

  The “Joy of Labour”

  If this is recognized, one of the main supports of socialist structure of thought collapses. It is therefore only too easy to understand why socialists try stubbornly to maintain that there is in man an innate impulse and striving to work, that work gives satisfaction per se and that only the unsatisfactory conditions under which work is performed in capitalist society could restrict this natural joy of labour and transform it into toil.61

  In proof of this assertion they assiduously collect statements made by workers in modern factories on the pleasurability of the labour. They ask the workers leading questions and are extraordinarily satisfied when the answers are of the kind they want to hear. But because of their prepossession they omit to notice that between the actions and replies of those whom they cross-examine there is a contradiction which demands solution. If work gives satisfaction per se why is the worker paid? Why does he not reward the employer for the pleasure which the employer gives him by allowing him to work? Nowhere else are people paid for the pleasure given to them, and the fact that pleasures are rewarded ought at least to give pause for reflection. By common definition, labour cannot give satisfaction directly. We define labour as just that activity which does not give any direct pleasurable sensations, which is performed only because the produce of the labour yields indirectly pleasurable sensations sufficient to counterbalance the primary sensations of pain.62

  The so-called “joy of labour” which is generally adduced in support of the view that labour awakens feelings of satisfaction, not of pain, is attributable to three quite separate sensations.

  There is first the pleasure which can be obtained from the perversion of work. When the public official abuses his office, often while performing his function in a manner which is formally quite correct, so as to satisfy the instincts of power, or to give free rein to sadistic impulses, or to pander to erotic lusts (and in this one need not always think merely of things condemned by law or morals), the pleasures that follow are undoubtedly not pleasures of work but pleasures derived from certain accompanying circumstances. Similar considerations apply also to other kinds of work. Psychoanalytic literature has repeatedly pointed out how extensively matters of this sort influence the choice of occupation. In so far as these pleasures counterbalance the pain of labour they are reflected also in the rates of pay; the larger supply of labour in the occupations offering the greatest scope for this kind of perversion tending to lower the rate of pay. The worker pays for the “pleasure” with an income lower than he otherwise could have earned.

  By “joy of labour” people mean also the satisfaction of completing a task. But this is pleasure in being free of work rather than pleasure in the work itself. Here we have a special kind of pleasure, which can be shown to exist everywhere, in having got rid of something difficult, unpleasant, painful, the pleasure of “I’ve done it.” Socialist Romanticism and romantic socialists praise the Middle Ages as a time when joy of labour was unrestricted. As a matter of fact we have no reliable information from medieval artisans, peasants, and their assistants about the “joy of labour,” but we may presume that their joy was in having performed their work and begun the hours of pleasure and repose. Medieval monks, who in the contemplative peace of their monasteries copied manuscripts, have bequeathed us remarks which are certainly more genuine and reliable than the assertions of our romantics. At the end of many a fine manuscript we read: Laus tibi sit Christe, quoniam liber explicit iste.63 (Praise be to you, O Christ, for this book is completed.) Not because the work itself has given pleasure.

  But we must not forget the third and most important source of the joy of labour—the satisfaction the worker feels because his work goes so well that through it he can earn a living for himself and his family. This joy of labour is clearly rooted in the pleasure of what we have called the indirect enjoyment of labour. The worker rejoices because in his ability to work and in his skill he sees the basis of his existence and of his social position. He rejoices because he has attained a position better than that of others. He rejoices because he sees in his ability to work the guarantee of future economic success. He is proud because he can do something “good,” that is, something society values and consequently pays for on the labour market. Nothing raises self-respect higher than this feeling, which indeed is often exaggerated to the ridiculous belief that one is indispensable. To the healthy man, however, it gives the strength to console himself for the unalterable fact that he is able to satisfy his wants only by toil and pain. As people say: he makes the best of a bad job.

  Of the three sources of that which we may call the “joy of labour” the first, arising from perversion of the true ends of the work, will undoubtedly exist in the socialist community. As under capitalist society it will naturally be restricted to a narrow circle. The other two sources of the joy of labour will presumably dry up completely. If the connection between the yield of labour and the income of the labourer is dissolved, as it must be in socialist society, the individual will always labour under the impression that proportionately too much work has been piled on him. The over-heated, neurasthenic dislike of work will develop which nowadays we can observe in practically all government offices and public enterprises. In such concerns where the pay depends upon rigid schedules, everyone thinks he is overburdened, that just he is being given too much to do and things which are too unpleasant—that his achievements are not duly appreciated and rewarded. Out of these feelings grows a sullen hate of work which stifles even the pleasure in completing it.

  The socialist community cannot count on the “joy of labour.”

  4

  The Stimulus to Labour

  It is the duty of the citizen of the socialist commonwealth to work for the community according to his powers and his ability: in return he has a claim against the community for a share in the social dividend. He who unjustifiably omits to perform his duty will be recalled to obedience by the usual methods of state coercion. The economic administration would exercise so great a power over individual citizens that it is inconceivable that anyone could permanently withstand it.

  It is not sufficient however that citizens should arrive at their tasks punctually and spend the prescribed number of hours at their posts. They must really work while they are there.

  In the capitalist system the worker receives the value of the product of his labour. The static or natural wage-rate tends to such a level that the worker receives the value of the product of his labour: i.e. all that is attributable to his work.64 The worker himself is therefore concerned that his productivity should be as great as possible. This does not apply to work done for piece rates only. The level of time rates is also dependent upon the marginal productivity of the particular kind of work concerned. The technical form of wage payment which is customary does not alter the level of wages in the long run. The wage rate has always a tendency to return to its static level, and time rates are no exception.

  But even so work done for time wages gives us an opportunity of observing how work is carried on when the worker feels that he is not working for himself, because there is no connection between his output and his remuneration. Under time wages the more skilful worker has no inducement to do more than the minimum expected from every worker. Piece wages are an incentive to the maximum activity, time wages to the minimum. Under Capitalism the graduation of time wages for different kinds of work greatly mitigates these social effects of the system of payment by time. The worker has a motive in finding a position where the minimum work required is as great as he can perform, because the wage increases with the rise in the minimum requirements.

  Only when we depart from the principle of graduating time wages according to the work required does the time wage begin to affect production adversely. This is particularly noticeable in the case of state and municipal employment. Here, in the last few decades, not only has the minimum required from the individual workers been continually reduced, but every incentive to better work—for example, different treatment of the various grades and rapid promotion of industrious and capable workers to better-paid posts—has been removed. The result of this policy has clearly vindicated the principle that the worker only puts forth his best efforts when he knows that he stands to gain by it.

  Under Socialism the usual connection between work performed and its remuneration cannot exist. All attempts to ascertain what the work of the individual has produced and thereby to determine the wage rate, must fail because of the impossibility of calculating the productive contributions of the different factors of production. The socialist community could probably make distribution dependent upon certain external aspects of the work performed. But any such differentiation would be arbitrary. Let us suppose that the minimum requirement is determined for each branch of production. Let us suppose this is done on the basis of Rodbertus’ proposal for a “normal working day.” For each industry there is laid down the time which a worker with average strength and effort can continue to work and the amount of work which an average worker of average skill and industry can perform in this time.65 We will completely ignore the technical difficulties in the way of deciding, in any particular concrete example the question whether this minimum has been achieved or not. Nevertheless it is obvious that any such general determination can only be quite arbitrary. The workers of the different industries would never be made to agree on this point. Everyone would maintain that he had been overtasked and would strive for a reduction of the amount set to him. Average quality of the worker, average skill, average strength, average effort, average industry—these are all vague conceptions that cannot be exactly determined.

  Now it is evident that the minimum performance calculated for the worker of average quality, skill, and strength will be achieved only by a part—say one-half—of the workers. The others will do less. How can the authorities ascertain whether a performance below the minimum is due to laziness or incapacity? Either the unfettered decision of the administration must be allowed free play, or certain general criteria must be established. Doubtless, as a result, the amount of work performed would be continually reduced.

  Under Capitalism everybody who takes an active part in business life is concerned that labour should be paid the whole product. The employer who dismisses a worker who is worth his wage harms himself. The foreman who discharges a good worker and retains a bad one, adversely affects the business results of the department under his charge, and thereby indirectly himself. Here we do not need formal criteria to limit the decisions of those who have to judge the work performed. Under Socialism such criteria would have to be established, because otherwise the powers entrusted to persons in charge could be arbitrarily misused. And so then the worker would have no further interest in the actual performance of work. He would only be concerned to do as much as is prescribed by the formal criteria in order to avoid punishment.

  What kind of results will be achieved by workers, who are not directly interested in the product of the work, can be learnt from the experience of a thousand years of slave labour. Officials and employees of state and municipal undertakings provide new examples. An attempt may be made to weaken the argumentative force of the first example by contending that these workers had no interest in the result of their labour because they did not share in the distribution; in the socialist community everyone would realize that he was working for himself and that would spur him on to the highest activity. But this is just the problem. If the worker exerts himself more at the work then he has so much the more labour disutility to overcome. But he will receive only an infinitesimal fraction of the result of his increased effort. The prospect of receiving a two thousand millionth part of the result of his increased effort will scarcely stimulate him to exert his powers any more than he needs.66

  Socialist writers generally pass over these ticklish questions in silence or with a few inconsequential remarks. They only bring forward a few moralistic phrases and nothing else.67 The new man of Socialism will be free from base self-seeking; he will be morally infinitely above the man of the frightful age of private property and from a profound knowledge of the coherency of things and from a noble perception of duty he will devote all his powers to the general welfare.

  But closer examination shows that these arguments lead to only two conceivable alternatives: free obedience to the moral law with no compulsion save that of the individual conscience, or enforced service under a system of reward and punishment. Neither will achieve the end. The former supplies no sufficient incentive to persist in overcoming the disutility of labour even though it is publicly extolled on every possible occasion and proclaimed in all schools and churches; the latter can only lead to a formal performance of duty, never to performance with the expenditure of all one’s powers.

  The writer who has occupied himself most thoroughly with this problem is John Stuart Mill. All subsequent arguments are derived from his. His ideas are to be encountered everywhere in the literature of the subject and in everyday political discussion; they have even become popular catchwords. Everyone is familiar with them even if he is totally unacquainted with the author.68 They have provided for decades one of the main props of the socialist idea, and have contributed more to its popularity than the hate-inspired and frequently contradictory arguments of socialist agitators.

  One of the main objections, says Mill, that could be urged against the practicability of the socialist idea, is that each person would be incessantly occupied in evading his fair share of work. But those who urge this objection forget to how great an extent the same difficulty exists under the system under which nine-tenths of the business of society is now conducted. The objection supposes that honest and efficient labour is only to be had from those who are themselves individually to reap the benefit of their own exertions. But under the present system only a small fraction of all labour can do this. Time rates or fixed salaries are the prevailing forms of remuneration. Work is performed by people who have less personal interest in the execution of the task than the members of a socialist community, since, unlike the latter, they are not working for an enterprise in which they are partners. In the majority of cases they are not personally superintended and directed by people whose own interests are bound up with the results of the enterprise. For employees paid by time carry out even the supervisory, managing and technical work. It may be admitted that labour would be more productive in a system in which the whole or a large share of the product of extra exertion belongs to the labourer, but under the present system it is precisely this incentive which is lacking. Even if communistic labour might be less vigorous than that of a peasant proprietor, or a workman labouring on his own account, it would probably be more energetic than that of a labourer for hire, who has no personal interest in the matter at all.

  One can easily see the cause of Mill’s mistake. The last representative of the classical school of economists, he did not survive to see the transformation of economics by the subjective theory of value, and he did not know the connection between wage rates and the marginal productivity of labour. He does not perceive that the worker has an interest in doing his utmost because his income depends upon the value of the work which he performs. Without the light of modern economic thought he sees only on the surface and not into the heart of things. Doubtless the individual working for a time wage has no interest in doing more than will keep his job. But if he can do more, if his knowledge, capability and strength permit, he seeks for a post where more is wanted and where he can thus increase his income. It may be that he fails to do this out of laziness, but this is not the fault of the system. The system does all that it can to incite everyone to the utmost diligence, since it ensures to everyone the fruits of his labour. That Socialism cannot do this is the great difference between Socialism and Capitalism.

  In the extreme case of obstinate perseverance in not performing a due share of work, the socialist community, Mill thinks, would have reserve powers which society now has at its disposal: it could submit the workers to the rules of a coercive institution. Dismissal, the only remedy at present, is no remedy when no other labourer who can be engaged does any better than his predecessor. The power to dismiss only enables an employer to obtain from his workman the customary amount of labour; but that customary labour may be of any degree of inefficiency.

  The fallacy of this argument is plain. Mill does not realize that the wage rate is adjusted according to this customary amount of labour, and that the worker who wishes to earn more must do more. It may be admitted straight away that wherever the time wage prevails the individual worker is obliged to seek elsewhere for a job in which the customary amount of labour is greater because he has no chance of increasing his income by doing more work if he remains where he is. In the circumstances he must change over to piece work, take up another occupation, or even emigrate. In this way millions have emigrated from those European countries, where the customary amount of labour is low, to Western Europe or to the United States, where they have to work more but earn more. The inferior workers remain behind, and are content to work less for less wages.

  If this is kept in mind it is also easy to understand the case of supervisory and managerial work performed by employees. Their activities, too, are paid according to the value of the service: they, too, must do as much as they can if they wish to obtain the highest possible income. They can and must be given authority in the name of the entrepreneur to take on and dismiss workers without any fear that they will abuse the power. They perform the social task incumbent upon them of securing that the worker obtains only as much wages as his work is worth, apart from any other consideration whatever.69 The system of economic calculation supplies a sufficient test of the efficacy of their work. This distinguishes their work from the kind of control which could be exercised under Socialism. They harm themselves if from revengeful motives they treat a worker worse than he deserves. (Naturally “deserves” is not used here in any ethical sense.) This authority to dismiss workers and fix their wages which the employer possesses and delegates to subordinates, is considered by socialists to be dangerous in the hands of private individuals. But the socialists overlook the fact that the employer’s ability to exercise this power is limited, that he cannot dismiss and mistreat arbitrarily because the result would be harmful to himself. In endeavouring to purchase labour as cheaply as possible the employer is fulfilling one of his most important social tasks.

  Mill admits that in the present state of society the neglect by the uneducated classes of labourers for hire of the duties which they engage to perform is flagrant. This, he thinks, can only be attributed to a low level of education. Under Socialism, with universal education, all citizens would undoubtedly fulfill their duty towards society as zealously as the majority of those members of the upper and middle classes who are in receipt of salaries, perform it today. It is clear that Mill’s thought repeatedly involves the same error. He does not see that in this case too, there is a correspondence between payment and performance. Finally he is compelled to admit that, there can be no doubt that remuneration by fixed salaries does not produce the maximum of zeal in any class of functionaries. To this extent, Mill says, objection could reasonably be made against the socialist organization of labour. It is, however, according to Mill, by no means certain that this inferiority will continue in a socialist community as is assumed by those whose imaginations are little used to range beyond the state of things with which they are familiar. It is not impossible that under Socialism the public spirit will be so general that disinterested devotion to the common welfare will take the place of self seeking. Here Mill lapses into the dreams of the Utopians and conceives it possible that public opinion will be powerful enough to incite the individual to increased zeal for labour, that ambition and self-conceit will be effective motives, and so on.

  It need only be said that unfortunately we have no reason to assume that human nature will be any different under Socialism from what it is now. And nothing goes to prove that rewards in the shape of distinctions, material gifts, or even the honourable recognition of fellow citizens, will induce the workers to do more than the formal execution of the tasks allotted to them. Nothing can completely replace the motive to overcome the irksomeness of labour which is given by the opportunity to obtain the full value of that labour.

  Many socialists of course think that this argument can be refuted by appeal to the labour which in the past has been performed without the incentive of a wage payment. They instance the case of the labours of scientists and artists, of the doctor who exhausts himself at the sickbed, the soldier who dies the death of a hero, the statesman who sacrifices all for his idea. But the artist and the scientist find their satisfaction in the work itself, and in the recognition which they hope to gain at some time, if only from posterity, even though material gains are not forthcoming. The doctor and the professional soldier are in the same position as many other workers whose work is associated with danger. The supply of workers for these professions reflects their lesser attractiveness, and the wage is adapted correspondingly. But if, in spite of the danger, a man enters the profession for sake of the higher remuneration and other advantages and honours, he cannot evade the dangers without the greatest prejudice to himself. The professional soldier who turned tail, the doctor who refused to treat an infectious case, would endanger their future careers to such an extent that they have virtually no choice in the matter. It cannot be denied that there are doctors who are concerned to do their utmost in cases where no one would detect remissness, and that there are professional soldiers who incur danger when no one would reproach them for avoiding it. But in these exceptional cases, as in the case of the staunch statesman who is ready to die for his principles, man raises himself, as is given to few to do, to the highest peak of manhood, to complete union of will and deed. In his exclusive devotion to a single purpose which sets aside all other desires, thoughts and feelings, removes the instinct of self-preservation and makes him indifferent to pain and suffering, such a man forgets the world, and nothing remains except the one thing to which he sacrifices himself and his life. Of such men it used to be said, according to the estimate set on their aims, that the spirit of the Lord moved them, or that they were possessed of the devil—so incomprehensible were their motives to the ordinary run of mankind.

  It is certain that mankind would not have risen above the beasts if it had not had such leaders; but it is certain that mankind does not in the main consist of such men. The essential social problem is to make useful members of society out of the general masses.

  Socialist writers have for a long time ceased to exercise their ingenuity on this insoluble problem. Kautsky can tell us nothing more than that habit and discipline will provide incentives to work in the future. “Capital has so accustomed the modern labourer to work day in and day out that he cannot endure to be without his work. There are even people who are so accustomed to work that they do not know what to do with their leisure time and are unhappy when they cannot work.” Kautsky does not seem to fear that this habit could be shaken off more easily than other habits such as eating and sleeping but he is not prepared to rely on this incentive alone, and freely admits that “it is the weakest.” He therefore recommends discipline. Naturally not “military discipline” nor “blind obedience to an authority imposed from above,” but “democratic discipline—the free subjection to elected leadership.” But then doubts arise and he endeavours to dispel them with the idea that under Socialism labour will be so attractive “that it will be a pleasure to work,” but finally admits that this will not be sufficient at first, and at last arrives at the conclusion that besides the attractiveness of the work some other incentive must be brought to bear, “that of the wages of labour.”70

  Thus even Kautsky, after many limitations and considerations, arrives at this result, that the irksomeness of labour will only be overcome if the product of labour, and only the product of his own labour, accrues to the worker, in so far as he is not also an owner or an employer. But this is to deny the feasibility of socialistic organization of labour, since private property in the means of production cannot be abolished without abolishing at the same time the possibility of remunerating the labourer according to the product of his labour.

  5

  The Productivity of Labour

  The old “distributivist” theories were based on the assumption that it only needed equal distribution for everyone to have if not riches, at least a comfortable existence. This seemed so obvious, that hardly any trouble was taken to prove it. At the beginning Socialism took over this assumption in its entirety, and expected that comfort for all would be achieved by an equal distribution of the social income. Only when the criticisms of their opponents drew their attention to the fact that equal distribution of the income obtained by the whole economic society would scarcely improve the conditions of the masses at all, did they set up the proposition that capitalist methods of production restrict the productivity of labour, and that Socialism would remove these limitations and multiply production to ensure for everyone a life in comfortable circumstances. Without troubling about the fact that they had not succeeded in disproving the assertion of the liberal school that productivity under Socialism would sink so low that want and poverty would be general, socialist writers began to promulgate fantastic assertions about the increase in productivity to be expected under Socialism.

  Kautsky mentions two ways of achieving increased production by a transition from capitalistic to socialistic methods of production. One is the concentration of all production in the best concerns and the closing down of the less efficient.71 That this is a means of increasing production cannot be denied, but it is a means which operates most effectively under the regime of an exchange-economy. Competition ruthlessly eliminates all inferior productive undertakings and concerns. That it does so is a constant source of complaint from those involved, and because of it the weaker undertakings demand State subsidies, special consideration in public contracts, and in general restriction of freedom of competition in every possible way. Kautsky is forced to admit that trusts formed by private enterprise exploit these means to the utmost, so as to obtain higher productivity, and in fact he frankly regards them as the forerunners of the social revolution. It is more than questionable whether the socialist State would feel the same necessity to carry out similar improvements in production. Would it not continue an unprofitable undertaking rather than provoke local prejudice by its discontinuance? The private entrepreneur closes down without much ado undertakings that no longer pay; and in this way he compels the worker to change his locality and sometimes even his occupation. Undoubtedly this involves initial hardships for the people concerned, but it is to the general advantage, since it makes possible a cheaper and better provisioning of the market. Would the Socialist State do likewise? Would it not, on the contrary, be constrained for political reasons to avoid local discontent? On most state railways all reforms of this kind are frustrated by the attempt to avoid the harm to particular districts which would result from the elimination of superfluous branch offices, workshops, and power stations. Even the army administration has encountered parliamentary opposition when for military reasons it has been desired to withdraw a garrison from a particular place.

  His second method of achieving increased production, viz., “economies of every description,” on his own admission, Kautsky already finds operating under the trust of today. He particularly mentions economies of materials, transport charges, advertisements and publicity costs.72 As far as economies in materials and transport are concerned, experience shows that nothing is operated with less economy and with more waste of labour and material of every kind than public services and undertakings. Private enterprise on the other hand naturally induces the owner to work with the greatest economy in his own interest.

  Of course the Socialist state would save all advertising expenses, all the costs of commercial travellers and agents. But it is more than probable that it would employ many more persons in the service of the apparatus of distribution. Wartime experience has taught us how cumbrous and expensive the social apparatus of distribution can be. Were the costs of bread, flour, meat, sugar, and other cards really less than the costs of advertisement? Has the enormous personnel required to run a rationing system been cheaper than the expenditure on commercial travellers and agents?

  Socialism would eliminate the small retailers. But in their place it must set up distributive centers which would not be cheaper. Co-operative stores do not employ less hands than the retail stores organized on modern lines, and many of them, because of their large expenses, could not compete with the latter if they were not granted privileges of exemption from taxation.

  Speaking generally, it must be said that it is inadmissible to pick out special costs in capitalist society, and then at once to infer from the fact that they would disappear in a socialist society, that the productivity of the latter would surpass that of the former. It is necessary to compare the total costs and the total yields of both systems. The fact that the electromobile needs no gasoline is no proof that it is cheaper to run than the gasoline-powered car.

  The weakness of Kautsky’s argument is evident, when he asserts that “by the application of these two methods a proletarian regime could raise production to such a high level that it would be possible to increase wages considerably and at the same time reduce the hours of labour.” Here he is making an assertion for which he offers no proof whatever.73

  And it is no better with the other arguments that are often brought forward to prove the supposed higher productivity of a socialistic society. When for example people argue that under Socialism everyone capable of work will have to work, they are sadly mistaken as to the number of idlers under Capitalism.

  CHAPTER 9

  The Position of the Individual Under Socialism

  1

  Selection of Personnel and Choice of Occupation

  The Socialist Community is a great authoritarian association in which orders are issued and obeyed. This is what is implied by the words “planned economy” and the “abolition of the anarchy of production.” The inner structure of a socialist community is best understood if we compare it with the inner structure of an army. Many socialists indeed prefer to speak of the “army of labour.” As in an army, so under Socialism, everything depends on the orders of the supreme authority. Everyone has a place to which he is appointed. Everyone has to remain in his place until he is moved to another. It follows that men become pawns of official action. They rise only when they are promoted. They sink only when they are degraded. It would be waste of time to describe such conditions. They are the common knowledge of every citizen of a bureaucratic state.

  It is obvious that, in a state of this sort, all appointments should be based upon personal capacity. Each position should be held by the individual best fitted to hold it—always provided that he is not required for more important work elsewhere. Such is the fundamental principle of all systematically ordered authoritarian organizations—of the Chinese Mandarinate equally with modern bureaucracies.

  In giving effect to this principle the first problem that arises is the appointment of the supreme authority. There are two ways to the solution of this problem, the oligarchical-monarchical and the democratic, but there can be only one solution—the charismatic solution. The supreme rulers (or ruler) are chosen in virtue of the grace with which they are endowed by divine dispensation. They have superhuman powers and capacities lifting them above the other mortals. To resist them is not only to resist the powers that be; it is to defy the commandments of the Deity. Such is the basis of theocracies—of clerical aristocracies of realms of “the Lord’s anointed.” But it is equally the basis of the Bolshevist dictatorship in Russia. Summoned by history to the performance of their sublime task, the Bolsheviks pose as the representatives of humanity, as the tools of necessity, as the consummators of the great scheme of things. Resistance to them is the greatest of all crimes. But against their adversaries they may resort to any expedients. It is the old aristocratic-theocratic idea in a new form.

  Democracy is the other method of solving the problem. Democracy places everything in the hands of the majority. At its head is a ruler, or rulers, chosen by a majority decision. But the basis of this is as charismatic as any other. Only in this case grace is regarded as being granted in equal proportions to all and sundry. Everyone is endowed with it. The voice of the people is the voice of God. This is to be seen especially clearly in Tommaso Campanella’s City of the Sun. The Regent chosen by the national assembly is also priest and his name is “Hoh,” that means “metaphysics.”74 In authoritarian ideology, democracy is valued not for its social functions, but only as a means for the ascertainment of the absolute.75

  According to charismatic theory, in appointing officials the supreme authority transmits to them the grace it possesses itself. An official appointment raises ordinary mortals above the level of the masses. They count for more than others. When on duty their status is especially enhanced. No doubt of their capacity, or of their fitness for office, is permissible. Office makes the man.

  Apart from their polemical value, all these theories are purely formal. They do not tell us anything about how such appointments actually work. They are indifferent to origins. They do not inquire whether the dynasties and the aristocracies concerned attained to power by the chance of war. They give no idea of the mechanism of the party system which brings the leaders of a democracy to the helm. They tell nothing of the actual machinery for selecting officials.

  But since only an omniscient ruler could do without them, special arrangements for the appointment of the officials must be made. Since the supreme authority cannot do everything, appointment to lesser positions at least must be left to subordinate authorities. To prevent this power from degenerating into mere license, it must be hedged about by regulations. In this way selection comes to be based not on genuine capacity but on compliance with certain forms, the passing of certain examinations, attendance at certain schools, having spent a certain number of years in a subordinate position, and so on. Of the shortcomings of such methods there can be only one opinion. The successful conduct of business demands qualities quite other than those necessary for passing examinations—even if the examinations deal with subjects bearing on the work of the position in question. A man who has spent a certain time in a subordinate capacity is far from being, for that reason, fitted for a higher post. It is not true that one learns to command by first learning to obey. Age is no substitute for personal capacity. In short, the system is deficient. Its only justification is that nothing better is known to put in its place.

  Attempts have recently been made to invoke the aid of experimental psychology and physiology, and many promise therefrom results of the highest importance to Socialism. There can be no doubt that under Socialism, something corresponding to medical examination for military service would have to be employed on a larger scale and with more refined methods. Those who feigned bodily deformities to escape difficult and uncongenial work would have to be examined, as would those who attempted work for which they were not properly developed. But the warmest advocates of such methods could scarcely pretend that they could do more than impose a very loose curb upon the grossest abuses of officialdom. For all those kinds of work demanding something more than mere muscular strength and a good development of particular senses they are not applicable at all.

  2

  Art and Literature, Science and Journalism

  Socialist society is a society of officials. The way of living prevailing in it, and the mode of thinking of its members, are determined by this fact. People who are always expecting promotion, people who had always a “chief” on whom they depend, people who, because they receive a fixed salary, never understand the connection between production and their own consumption—the last ten years has witnessed the rise of this type everywhere in Europe. It is in Germany, however, where it is especially at home. The whole psychology of our time derives from it.

  Socialism knows no freedom of choice in occupation. Everyone has to do what he is told to do and to go where he is sent. Anything else is unthinkable. We shall discuss later and in another connection how this will affect the productivity of labour. Here we have to discuss the position of art and science, literature and the press under such conditions.

  Under Bolshevism in Russia and Hungary, the artists, scientists and writers, who were recognized as such by the selectors appointed for this purpose, were exempted from the general obligation to work and given a definite salary. All such as were not recognized remained subject to the general obligation to work and received no support for other activity. The press was nationalized.

  This is the simplest solution of the problem, and one which harmonizes completely with the general structure of socialist society. Officialdom is extended to the sphere of the spirit. Those who do not please the holders of power are not allowed to paint or to sculpt or to conduct an orchestra. Their works are not printed or performed. And if the decision does not depend directly upon the free judgment of the economic administration but is referred to the advice of an expert council the case is not materially altered. On the contrary, expert councils, which are inevitably composed of the old and the established, must be admitted to be even less competent than laymen to assist the rise of young talent with different views and perhaps greater mastery than their own. Even if the choice were referred to the whole nation the rise of independent spirits setting themselves against traditional technique and accepted opinions would not be facilitated. Such methods can only foster a race of epigones.

  In Cabet’s Icaria, only such books which please the republic are to be printed (les ouvrages préférés [the preferred or favored works]). Writings of pre-socialistic times are to be examined by the Republic. Those which are partially useful are to be revised. Those which are regarded as dangerous or useless are to be burnt. The objection, that this would be to do what Omar did by burning the Alexandrian Library, Cabet held to be quite untenable. For, said he, “nous faisons en faveur de l’humanité ce que ces oppresseurs faisaient contre elle. Nous avons fait du feu pour brûler les méchants livres, tandis que des brigands ou des fanatiques allumaient les bûchers pour brûler d’innocents hérétiques.” (“We do on behalf of society what oppressors do against it. We make fires to burn the evil books, while the brigands or fanatics light fires to burn innocent heretics at the stake.”)76 From a point of view such as this, solution of the problem of toleration is impossible. Mere opportunists excepted, everyone is convinced of the rightness of his opinions. But, if such a conviction by itself were a justification for intolerance, then everyone would have a right to coerce and persecute everyone else of another way of thinking.77 In these circumstances, the demand for toleration can only be a prerogative of the weak. With power comes the exercise of intolerance. In such a case there must always be war and enmity between men. Peaceful co-operation is out of the question. It is because it desires peace that Liberalism demands toleration for all opinions.

  Under Capitalism the artist and the scientist have many alternatives open to them. If they are rich they can follow their own inclinations. They can seek out rich patrons. They can work as public officials. They can attempt to live on the sale of their creative work. Each of these alternatives has its dangers, in particular the two latter. It may well be that he who gives new values to mankind, or who is capable of so giving, suffers want and poverty. But there is no way to prevent this effectively. The creative spirit innovates necessarily. It must press forward. It must destroy the old and set the new in its place. It could not conceivably be relieved of this burden. If it were it would cease to be a pioneer. Progress cannot be organized.78 It is not difficult to ensure that the genius who has completed his work shall be crowned with laurel; that his mortal remains shall be laid in a grave of honour and monuments erected to his memory. But it is impossible to smooth the way that he must tread if he is to fulfil his destiny. Society can do nothing to aid progress. If it does not load the individual with quite unbreakable chains, if it does not surround the prison in which it encloses him with quite unsurmountable walls, it has done all that can be expected of it. Genius will soon find a way to win its own freedom.

  The nationalization of intellectual life, which must be attempted under Socialism, must make all intellectual progress impossible. It is possible to deceive oneself about this because, in Russia, new kinds of art have become the fashion. But the authors of these innovations were already working, when the Soviet came into power. They sided with it because, not having been recognized hitherto, they entertained hopes of recognition from the new regime. The great question, however, is whether later innovators will be able to oust them from the position they have now gained.

  In Bebel’s Utopia only physical labour is recognized by society. Art and science are relegated to leisure hours. In this way, thinks Bebel, the society of the future “will possess scientists and artists of all kinds in countless numbers.” These, according to their several inclinations, will pursue their studies and their arts in their spare time.79 Thus Bebel allows himself to be swayed by the manual labourer’s philistine resentment against all those who are not hewers of wood and drawers of water. All mental work he regards as mere dilettantism, as can be seen from the fact that he groups it with “social intercourse.”80 But nevertheless we must inquire whether under these conditions the mind would be able to create that freedom without which it cannot exist.

  Obviously all artistic and scientific work which demands time, travel, technical education and great material expenditure, would be quite out of the question. But we will assume that it is possible to devote oneself to writing or to music, after the day’s work is done. We will assume further that such activities will not be hindered by malicious intervention on the part of the economic administration—by transferring unpopular authors to remote localities, for instance—so that with the aid perhaps of devoted friends, an author or a composer is able to save enough to pay the fee demanded by the state printing works for the publication of a small edition. In this way he may even succeed in bringing out a little independent periodical—perhaps even in procuring a theatrical production.81 But all this would have to overcome the overwhelming competition of the officially supported arts, and the economic administration could at any time suppress it. For we must not forget that as one could not ascertain the cost of printing, the economic administration would be free to decide the business conditions under which publication could take place. No censor, no emperor, no pope, has ever possessed the power to suppress intellectual freedom which would be possessed by a socialist community.

  3

  Personal Liberty

  It is customary to describe the position of the individual under Socialism by saying that he would be unfree, that the socialist community would be a “prison state.” This expression contains a judgment of value which, as such, lies outside the sphere of scientific thought. Science cannot decide whether freedom is a good or an evil or a mere matter of indifference. It can only inquire wherein freedom consists and where freedom resides.

  Freedom is a sociological concept. It is meaningless to apply it to conditions outside society: as can be well seen from the confusions prevailing everywhere in the celebrated free-will controversy. The life of man depends upon natural conditions that he has no power to alter. He lives and dies under these conditions and, because they are not subject to his will, he must subordinate himself to them. Everything he does is subject to them. If he throws a stone it follows a course conditioned by nature. If he eats and drinks the processes within his body are similarly determined. We attempt to exhibit this dependence of the process of events upon definite and permanent functional relationship, by the idea of the conformity of all natural occurrences to unerring and unchangeable laws. These laws dominate man’s life; he is completely circumscribed by them. His will and his actions are only conceivable as taking place within their limits. Against nature and within nature there is no freedom.

  Social life, too, is a part of nature and, within it, unalterable laws of nature hold their sway. Action, and the results of action, are conditioned by these laws. If, with the origin of action in will, and its working out in societies, we associate an idea of freedom, this is not because we conceive that such action takes place independently of natural laws: the meaning of this concept of freedom is quite different.

  It is not here a question of the problem of internal freedom. It is the problem of external freedom with which we are concerned. The former is a problem of the origin of willing, the latter of the working out of action. Every man is dependent upon the attitude of his fellow men. He is affected by their actions in a multitude of ways. If he has to suffer them to treat him as if he had no will of his own, if he cannot prevent them from riding roughshod over his wishes, he must feel a one-sided dependence upon them and will say that he is unfree. If he is weaker, he must accommodate himself to coercion by them.

  Under the social relations that arise from co-operation in common work this one-sided dependence becomes reciprocal. In so far as each individual acts as a member of society he is obliged to adapt himself to the will of his fellows. In this way no one depends more upon others than others depend upon him. This is what we understand by external freedom. It is a disposition of individuals within the framework of social necessity involving, on the one side, limitation of the freedom of the individual in relation to others, and, on the other, limitation of the freedom of others in relation to him.

  An example should make this clear. Under Capitalism the employer appears to have great power over the employee. Whether he engages a man, how he employs him, what wages he gives him, whether he dismisses him—all depend upon his decision. But this freedom on his part and the corresponding unfreedom of the other are only apparent. The conduct of the employer to the employee is part of a social process. If he does not deal with the employee in a manner appropriate to the social valuation of the employee’s service, then there arise consequences which he himself has to bear. He can, indeed, deal badly with the employee, but he himself must pay the costs of his arbitrary behaviour. To this extent therefore the employee is dependent upon him. But this dependence is not greater than the dependence of each one of us upon our neighbour. For even in a state where the laws are enforced everybody of course who is willing to bear the consequences of his action, is free to break our windows or do us bodily harm.

  Strictly speaking, of course, on this view there can be no social action which is entirely arbitrary. Even the oriental despot, who to all appearances is free to do what he likes with the life of the enemy he captures, must consider the results of his action. But there are differences of degree in the way in which the costs of arbitrary action are related to the satisfactions arising therefrom. No laws can afford us protection against the assaults of men whose enmity is such that they are willing to bear all the consequences of their action. But if the laws are sufficiently severe to ensure that, as a general rule, our peace is not disturbed, then we feel ourselves independent of the evil intentions of our fellows, at any rate to a certain extent. The historical relaxation of the penal laws is to be attributed, not to an amelioration of morals, or to decadence on the part of legislators, but simply to the fact that so far as men have learnt to check resentment by considering the consequences of action it has been possible to abate the severity of punishments without weakening their deterrent power. To-day the menace of a short term of imprisonment is more effective protection against crimes against the person than the gallows were at one time.

  There is no place for the arbitrary, where exact money reckoning enables us completely to calculate action. If we allow ourselves to be carried away by the current laments over the stony-heartedness of an age which reckons everything in terms of shillings and pence, we overlook that it is precisely this linking up of action with considerations of money profit which is society’s most effective means of limiting arbitrary action. It is precisely arrangements of this kind which make the consumer, on the one hand, the employer, the capitalist, the landowner and the worker on the other—in short, all concerned in producing for demands other than their own—dependent upon social cooperation. Only complete failure to understand this reciprocity of relationship can lead anyone to ask whether the debtor is dependent on the creditor, or the creditor on the debtor. In fact, each is dependent on the other, and the relationship between buyer and seller, employer and employee, is of the same nature. It is customary to complain that, nowadays, personal considerations are banished from business life and that money. rules everything. But what really is here complained of is simply that, in that department of activity which we call purely economic, whims and favours are banished and only those considerations are valid which social co-operation demands.

  This, then, is freedom in the external life of man—that he is independent of the arbitrary power of his fellows. Such freedom is no natural right. It did not exist under primitive conditions. It arose in the process of social development and its final completion is the work of mature Capitalism. The man of pre-capitalistic days was subject to a “gracious lord” whose favour he had to acquire. Capitalism recognizes no such relation. It no longer divides society into despotic rulers and rightless serfs. All relations are material and impersonal, calculable and capable of substitution. With capitalistic money calculations freedom descends from the sphere of dreams to reality.

  When men have gained freedom in purely economic relationships they begin to desire it elsewhere. Hand in hand with the development of Capitalism, therefore, go attempts to expel from the State all arbitrariness and all personal dependence. To obtain legal recognition of the subjective rights of citizens, to limit the arbitrary action of officials to the narrowest possible field—this is the aim and object of the liberal movement. It demands not grace but rights. And it recognizes from the outset that there is no other way of realizing this demand than by the most rigid suppressing of the powers of the State over the individual. Freedom, in its view, is freedom from the State.

  For the State—the coercive apparatus worked by the persons forming the government—is scathless to freedom only when its actions have to conform to certain clear, unequivocal, universal norms, or when they obey the principles governing all work for profit. The former is the case when it functions judicially; for the judge is bound by laws allowing small play for personal opinion. The latter is the case when under Capitalism the State functions as an entrepreneur working under the same conditions and subject to the same principles as other entrepreneurs working for a profit. What it does beyond this can neither be determined by law or in any other way limited sufficiently to guard against arbitrary action. The individual then has no defence against the decision of officials. He cannot calculate what consequences his actions will have because he cannot tell how they will be regarded by those on whom he depends. This is the negation of freedom.

  It is customary to regard the problem of external freedom as a problem of the greater or less dependence of the individual upon society.82 But political freedom is not the whole of freedom. In order that a man may be free it is not sufficient that he may do anything unharmful to others without hindrance from the government or from the repressive power of custom. He must also be in the position to act without fearing unforeseen social consequences. Only Capitalism guarantees this freedom by explicitly referring all reciprocal relations to the cold impersonal principle of exchange du ut des (I give as you give, or colloquially, give and take).

  Socialists usually attempt to refute the argument for freedom by contending that under Capitalism only the possessor is free. The proletarian is unfree because he must work for his livelihood. It is impossible to imagine a cruder conception of freedom. That man must work, because his desire to consume is greater than that of the beasts of the field, is part of the nature of things. That the possessor is able to live without conforming to this rule is a gain derived from the existence of society which injures no one—not even the possessionless. And the possessionless themselves benefit from the existence of society, in that co-operation makes labour more productive. Socialism could only lessen the dependence of the individual upon natural conditions by increasing this productivity. If it cannot do that, if on the contrary it diminishes productivity, then it will diminish freedom.

  CHAPTER 10

  Socialism Under Dynamic Conditions

  1

  The Nature of the Dynamic Forces

  The idea of a stationary state is an aid to theoretical speculation. In the world of reality there is no stationary state, for the conditions under which economic activity takes place are subject to perpetual alterations which it is beyond human capacity to limit.

  The influences which maintain this perpetual change in the economic system can be grouped into six great classes. First and foremost come changes in external Nature. Under this heading must be classified not only all those changes in climate and other specifically natural conditions which take place independent of human actions, but also changes arising from operations carried out within these conditions, such as exhaustion of the soil, or consumption of standing timber or mineral deposits. Secondly come changes in the quantity and quality of the population, then changes in the quantity and quality of capital goods, then changes in the technique of production, then changes in the organization of labour, and finally changes in demand.83

  Of all these causes of change the first is the most fundamentally important. For the sake of argument let us assume that a socialist community might be able so to regulate the growth of population and demand for commodities as to avert danger to the economic equilibrium from these factors. Were that so, there are other causes of change that could be avoided. But the socialist community would never be able to influence the natural conditions of economic activity. Nature does not adapt itself to man. Man must adapt himself to Nature. Even the socialist community will have to reckon with changes in external nature; it will have to take account of the consequences of elemental disturbances. It will have to take account of the fact that the natural powers and resources at its disposal are not inexhaustible. Disturbances from without will intrude on its peaceful running. No more than Capitalism will it be able to remain stationary.

  2

  Changes in Population

  For the naive socialist there is quite enough in the world to make everybody happy and contented. The dearth of goods is only the result of a perverse social order which, on the one hand limits the extension of productive powers, and on the other, by unequal distribution, lets too much go to the rich and thus too little to the poor.84

  The Malthusian Law of Population and the Law of Diminishing Returns put an end to these illusions. Ceteris Paribus the increase of population beyond a certain point is not accompanied by a proportional increase of wealth: if this point is passed, production per head diminishes. The question whether at any given time production has reached this point is a question of fact which must not be confused with the question of general principle.

  In the light of this knowledge, socialists have adopted various attitudes. Some have simply rejected it. During the whole of the nineteenth century scarcely any author was so vigorously attacked as Malthus. The writings of Marx, Engels, Dühring, and many others, bristle with abuse of “parson” Malthus.85 But they do not refute him. Today, discussion of the Law of Population may be regarded as closed. The Law of Diminishing Returns is not contested nowadays; it is therefore not necessary to deal with those authors who either deny the doctrine or ignore it.

  Other socialists imagine that it is possible to undermine such considerations by pointing to the unprecedented increase in productivity which will take place once the means of production are socialized. It is not necessary at this point to discuss whether in fact such an increase would take place; for even granted that it would, this would not alter the fact that at any given time there is a definite optimal size of population beyond which any increase in numbers must diminish production per head. If it is desired to deny the effectiveness of the Laws of Population and Diminishing Returns under Socialism, then it must be proved that every child born into the world beyond the existing optimum will at the same time bring with it so great an increase of productivity that production per head will not be diminished by its coming.

  A third group of writers content themselves with the reflection that with the spread of civilization and rational living, with the increase of wealth and the desire for a higher standard of life, the growth of population is slackening. But this is to overlook the fact that the birth-rate does not fall because the standard of life is higher but only because of “moral restraint,” and that the incentive to the individual to refrain from procreation disappears the moment it is possible to have a family without economic sacrifice because the children are maintained by society. This is fundamentally the same error that entrapped Godwin when he thought that there was “a principle in human society” which kept the population permanently within the limits set by the means of subsistence. Malthus exhibited the nature of this mysterious “principle.”86

  Without coercive regulation of the growth of population, a socialist community is inconceivable. A socialist community must be in a position to prevent the size of the population from mounting above or falling below certain definite limits. It must attempt to maintain the population always at that optimal number which allows the maximum production per head. Equally with any other order of society it must regard both under- and over-population as an evil. And since in it those motives, which in a society based on private ownership of the means of production harmonize the number of births with the limitations of the means of subsistence, would not exist, it will be obliged to regulate the matter itself. How it will accomplish this need not be here discussed. Nor is it relevant to our purpose to inquire whether its measures will serve eugenic or ethnological ideas. But it is certain that even if a socialist community may bring “free love,” it can in no way bring free birth. The right to existence of every person born can be said to exist only when undesirable births can be prevented. In the socialist community as in any other, there will be those for whom “at the great banquet of Nature no place has been laid” and to whom the order must be given to withdraw themselves as soon as may be. No indignation that these words of Malthus may arouse can alter this fact.

  3

  Changes in Demand

  It follows from the principles which the socialist community must necessarily observe in the distribution of consumption goods, that alterations of demand cannot be allowed free play. If economic calculation and therewith even an approximate ascertainment of the costs of production were possible, then within the limits of the total consumption-units assigned to him, each individual citizen could be allowed to demand what he liked; each would choose what was agreeable to him. It would indeed be possible that as a result of malicious intent on the part of the directors of production certain commodities might be priced higher than they need be. Either they might be made to bear too high a proportion of overhead costs, or they might be made dearer by uneconomic methods of production; and the citizens who suffered would have no defence, except political agitation, against the government. So long as they remained in the minority they themselves would not be able either to rectify the accounts or to improve the methods of production. But at any rate the fact that at least the greater number of the factors concerned could be measured and that, as a result of this, the whole question could be relatively clearly put, would be some support for their point of view.

  Since, under Socialism, no such calculations are possible, all such questions of demand must necessarily be left to the government. The citizens as a whole will have the same influence on them as on other acts of government. The individual will exercise this influence only in so far as he contributes to the general will. The minority will have to bow to the will of the majority. The system of proportional representation, which by its very nature is suitable only for elections and can never be used for decisions with regard to particular acts, will not protect them.

  The general will, i.e. the will of those who happen to be in power, will take over those functions which in a free economic system are discharged by demand. Not individuals but the government would decide which needs are the most urgent and must therefore be satisfied first.

  For this reason demand will be much more uniform, much less changeable than under Capitalism. The forces which under Capitalism are continually bringing about alterations in demand will be lacking under Socialism. How will innovations, ideas deviating from those traditionally accepted, obtain recognition? How will innovators succeed in getting inert masses out of the rut? Will the majority be willing to forsake the well beloved customs of their forefathers for something better, which is yet unknown to them? Under Capitalism where each individual within the limits of his means can decide what he is to consume, it is sufficient for one individual, or a few, to be brought to recognize that the new methods satisfy their needs better than the old. Others will gradually follow their example. This progressive adoption of new modes of satisfaction is especially facilitated by the fact that incomes are not equal. The rich adopt novelties and become accustomed to their use. This sets a fashion which others imitate. Once the richer classes have adopted a certain way of living, producers have an incentive to improve the methods of manufacture so that soon it is possible for the poorer classes to follow suit. Thus luxury furthers progress. Innovation “is the whim of an élite before it becomes a need of the public. The luxury of today is the necessity of tomorrow.”87 Luxury is the roadmaker of progress: it develops latent needs and makes people discontented. In so far as they think consistently, moralists who condemn luxury must recommend the comparatively desireless existence of the wild life roaming in the woods as the ultimate ideal of civilized life.

  4

  Changes in the Amount of Capital

  The capital goods employed in production are sooner or later used up. This is true, not only of those goods which constitute circulating capital, but also of those which constitute fixed capital. Those, too, sooner or later are consumed in production. In order that capital may be maintained in the same proportions, or that it may be increased, constant effort is necessary on the part of those who supervise production. Care must be taken that the capital goods used up in the process of production are replaced; and, beyond that, that new capital is created. Capital does not reproduce itself.

  In a completely stationary economic system, this operation demands no particular foresight. Where everything remains unchanged, it is not very difficult to ascertain what becomes used up, and what must therefore be put aside to replace it. Under changing conditions, it is quite otherwise. Here the direction of production and the different processes involved are continually changing. Here it is not enough to replace the used-up plant and the semi-manufactured products consumed in similar qualities and quantities: others—better or at least better corresponding to the new conditions of demand—have to take their place; or the replacement of capital goods used in one branch of production has to be restricted in order that another branch of production may be extended or commenced. In order to carry out such complicated operations, it is necessary to calculate. Without economic calculations capital calculations are impossible. Thus in the face of one of the most fundamental problems of economic activity, the socialist community—which has no means of economic calculation—must be quite helpless. With the best will in the world it will be quite unable to carry out the operations necessary to bring production and consumption into such a balance, that value of capital is at least maintained and only what is obtained over and above this is consumed.

  But apart from this, in itself quite unsurmountable difficulty, the carrying out of a rational economic policy in a socialist community would encounter other difficulties.

  To maintain and accumulate capital involves costs. It involves sacrificing present satisfactions in order that greater satisfactions may be obtained in the future. Under Capitalism the sacrifice that has to be made by the possessors of the means of production, and those who, by limiting consumption, are on the way to being possessors of the means of production. The advantage which they thereby procure for the future does indeed not entirely accrue to them. They are obliged to share it with those whose incomes are derived from work, since other things being equal, the accumulation of capital increases the marginal productivity of labour and therewith wages. But the fact that, in the main, the gain of not living beyond their means (i.e. not consuming capital) and saving (i.e. increasing capital) does pay them is a sufficient stimulus to incite them to maintain and extend it. And this stimulus is the stronger the more completely their immediate needs are satisfied. For the less urgent are those present needs, which are not satisfied when provision is made for the future, the easier it is to make the sacrifice. Under Capitalism the maintenance and accumulation of capital is one of the functions of the unequal distribution of property and income.

  Under Socialism the maintenance and accumulation of capital are tasks for the organized community—the State. The utility of a rational policy is the same here as under Capitalism. The advantages will be the same for all members of the community: the costs will be the same also. Decisions upon matters of capital policy will be made by the community—immediately by the economic administration, ultimately by all the citizens. They will have to decide whether more production goods or more consumption goods shall be produced—whether methods of production which are shorter but which yield a smaller product or whether methods of production which are longer but which yield a greater product shall be employed. It is impossible to say how these majority decisions will work out. It would be senseless to conjecture. The conditions under which decisions will have to be made are different from what they are under Capitalism. Under Capitalism the decision whether saving shall take place is the concern of the thrifty and the well-to-do. Under Socialism it is the concern of everybody, without distinction-therefore also of the idler and the spendthrift. Moreover, it must be remembered that here the incentive which provides a higher standard of life in return for saving will not be present. The door would therefore be open to demagogues. The opposition will always be ready to prove that more could be assigned to immediate satisfactions, and the government will not be disinclined to maintain itself longer in power by lavish spending. Après nous le déluge (After us, the deluge) is an old maxim of government.

  Experience of the capital policy of public bodies does not inspire much hope of the thriftiness of future socialist governments. In general, new capital is created only when the necessary sums have been raised by loans—that is from the savings of private citizens. It is very seldom that capital is accumulated out of taxes or special public income. On the other hand, numerous examples can be adduced of cases in which the means of production owned by public bodies have depreciated in value, because in order that present costs may be relieved as much as possible, insufficient care has been taken for the maintenance of capital.

  It is true that the governments of the socialist or half-socialist communities existing today are anxious to restrict consumption for the sake of an expenditure which is generally considered as investment and formation of new capital. Both the Soviet Government in Russia and the Nazi Government in Germany are spending great sums for the construction of works of a military character and for the construction of industrial plants whose purpose it is to make the country independent of foreign imports. A part of the capital wanted for this purpose has been provided by foreign loans; but the greater part has been provided by a restriction both of home consumption and of investment of such a type which could serve for the production of consumption goods wanted by the people. Whether we may consider this policy as a policy of saving and forming new capital, or not, depends on the way in which we judge a policy whose aim it is to increase a country’s military equipment and to make its economic system independent of foreign imports. The fact alone that consumption is restricted for the sake of constructing big plants of different kinds is not evidence that new capital is created. These plants will have to prove in the future whether they will contribute to the better supply of commodities wanted for the improvement of the economic situation of the country.

  5

  The Element of Change in the Socialist Economy

  It should be already sufficiently clear from what has been said, that under Socialism, as under any other system, there could be no perfectly stationary state. Not only incessant changes in the natural conditions of production would make this impossible; quite apart from these, incessant dynamic forces would be at work, in changes in the size of the population, in the demand for commodities, and in the quantity of capital goods. One cannot conceive these factors eliminated from the economic system. It is thus unnecessary to inquire whether these changes would also involve changes in the organization of labour and the technical processes of production. For, once the economic system ceases to be in perfect equilibrium it is a matter of indifference whether actual innovations are thought of and put into practice. Once everything is in a state of flux, everything which happens is an innovation. Even when the old is repeated, it is an innovation because, under new conditions, it will have different effects. It is an innovation in its consequences.

  But this is not in the least to say that the socialist system will be a progressive system. Economic change and economic progress are by no means one and the same thing. That an economic system is not stationary is no proof that it is progressing. Economic change is necessitated by the fact of changes in the conditions under which economic activity takes place. When conditions change the economic system must change also. Economic progress, however, consists only in change which takes place in a quite definite direction, towards the goal of all economic activity, e.g. the greatest possible wealth. (This conception of progress is quite free from implications of subjective judgment.) When more, or the same number of people are better provided for, then the economic system is progressive. That the difficulties of measuring value make it impossible to measure progress exactly, and that it is by no means certain that it makes men “happier,” are matters which do not concern us here.

  Progress can take place in many ways. Organization can be improved. The technique of production can be made more efficient, the quantity of capital can be increased. In short, many paths lead to this goal.88 Would socialist society be able to follow them?

  We may assume that it would entrust the most suitable people to direct production. But, however, talented they were, how would they be able to act rationally if they were unable to reckon, to make calculations? On this difficulty alone Socialism must surely founder.

  6

  Speculation

  In any economic system which is in process of change all economic activity is based upon an uncertain future. It is therefore bound up with risk. It is essentially speculation.

  The great majority of people, not knowing how to speculate successfully, and socialist writers of all shades of opinion, speak very ill of speculation. The literateur and the bureaucrat, both alien to an atmosphere of business activity, are filled with envy and rage when they think of fortunate speculators and successful entrepreneurs. To their resentment we owe the efforts of many writers on economics to discover subtle distinctions between speculation on the one hand and “legitimate trade,” “value creating production,” etc., on the other.89 In reality all economic activity outside the stationary state is speculation. Between the work of the humble artisan who promises to deliver a pair of shoes within a week at a fixed price, and the sinking of a coal mine based upon conjectures with regard to the disposal of its products years hence, there is only a difference of degree. Even those who invest in gilt-edged fixed-interest-beating securities speculate—quite apart from the risk of the debtor’s inability to pay. They buy money for future delivery—just as speculators in cotton buy cotton for future delivery. Economic activity is necessarily speculative because it is based upon an uncertain future. Speculation is the link that binds isolated economic action to the economic activity of society as a whole.

  It is customary to attribute the notoriously low productivity of government undertakings to the fact that the persons employed are not sufficiently interested in the success of their labours. If once it were possible to lift each citizen to such a plane that he could realize the connection between his own efforts and the social income, part of which belongs to him, if once his character could be so strengthened that he would remain steadfast in the face of all temptations to idle, then government undertakings would not be less productive than those of the private entrepreneur. The problem of socialization appears thus to be a problem of ethics. To make Socialism possible it is only necessary to raise men sufficiently above the state of ignorance and immorality to which they have been degraded during the terrible epoch of Capitalism. Until this plane has been reached bonuses and so on must be employed to make men more diligent.

  It has already been shown that, under Socialism, the lack of an adequate stimulus to the individual to overcome the disutility of labour must have the effect of lowering productivity. This difficulty would arise even in a stationary state. Under dynamic conditions there arises another, the difficulty of speculation.

  In an economic system based upon private ownership of the means of production, the speculator is interested in the result of his speculation in the highest possible degree. If it succeeds, then, in the first instance, it is his gain. If it fails, then, he is the first to feel the loss. The speculator works for the community, but he himself feels the success or failure of his action proportionately more than the community. As profit or loss, they appear much greater in proportion to his means than to the total resources of society. The more successfully he speculates the more means of production are at his disposal, the greater becomes his influence on the business of society. The less successfully he speculates the smaller becomes his property, the less becomes his influence in business. If he loses everything by speculation he disappears from the ranks of those who are called to the direction of economic affairs.

  Under Socialism it is quite different. Here the leader of industry is interested in profit and loss only in so far as he participates in them as a citizen—one among millions. On his actions depends the fate of all. He can lead the nation to riches. He can just as well lead it to poverty and want. His genius can bring prosperity to the race. His incapacity, or his indifference, can bring it to destruction and decay. In his hands lie happiness and misery as in the hands of a god. And he must indeed be god-like to accomplish what he has to do. His vision must include everything which is of significance to the community. His judgment must be unfailing; he must be able rightly to weigh the conditions of distant parts and future centuries.

  That Socialism would be immediately practicable if an omnipotent and omniscient Deity were personally to descend to take in hand the government of human affairs, is incontestable. But so long as this event cannot definitely be counted upon, it is not to be expected that men will be ready freely to grant such a position to any one out of their midst. One of the fundamental facts of all social life, which all reformers must take into account, is that men have their own thoughts and their own wills. It is not to be supposed that they would suddenly, of their own free will, make themselves for all time the passive tools of anyone out of their midst—even though he were the wisest and best of them all.

  But so long as the possibility of a single individual permanently planning the direction of affairs is excluded, it is necessary to fall back upon the majority decisions of committees, general assemblies and, in the last resort, the whole enfranchised population. But therewith arises the danger on which all collectivist undertakings inevitably come to grief—the crippling of initiative and the sense of responsibility. Innovations are not introduced because the majority of the members of the governing body cannot be induced to consent to them.

  Things would not be made any better by the fact that the impossibility of leaving all decisions to a single man, or a single committee, would lead to the creation of innumerable sub-committees by which decisions would be taken. All such sub-committees would only be delegates of the one supreme authority which, as an economic system working according to a unitary plan, is implied by the very nature of Socialism. They would necessarily be bound by the instructions of the supreme authority and this, in itself, would breed irresponsibility.

  We all know the appearance of the apparatus of socialist administration: a countless multitude of office holders, each zealously bent on preserving his position and preventing anybody from intruding on his sphere of activity—yet at the same time anxiously endeavouring to throw all responsibility of action on to somebody else.

  For all its officiousness, such a bureaucracy offers a classic example of human indolence. Nothing stirs when no external stimulus is present. In the nationalized concerns, existing within a society based for the most part on private ownership of the means of production, all stimulus to improvements in process comes from those entrepreneurs who as contractors for semi-manufactured articles and machines hope to make a profit by them. The heads of the concern itself seldom, if ever, make innovations. They content themselves with imitating what goes on in similar privately-owned undertakings. But where all concerns are socialized there will be hardly any talk of reforms and improvements.

  7

  Joint Stock Companies and the Socialist Economy

  One of the current fallacies of socialism is that joint stock companies are a preliminary stage of the socialist undertaking. The heads of joint stock companies—it is argued—are not owners of the means of production, and yet the undertakings flourish under their direction. If, in place of the shareholders, society should assume the function of ownership, things would not be altered. The directors would not work worse for society than they would for the shareholders.

  This notion, that in the joint stock company the entrepreneur-function is solely the shareholder’s and that all the organs of the company are active only as the shareholders’ employees, pervades also legal theory, and it has been attempted to make it the basis of Company Law. It is responsible for the fact that the business idea, which underlies the creation of the joint stock company, has been falsified, and that up to today people have been unable to find for the joint stock company a legal form which would enable it to work without friction, and that the company system everywhere suffers from grave abuses.

  In fact there have never and nowhere been prosperous joint stock companies corresponding to the ideal etatistic jurists have created. Success has always been attained only by those companies whose directors have predominant personal interest in the prosperity of the company. The vital force and the effectiveness of the joint stock company lie in a partnership between the company’s real managers—who generally have power to dispose over part, if not the majority, of the share-capital—and the other shareholders. Only where these directors have the same interest in the prosperity of the undertaking as every owner, only where their interests coincide with the shareholder’s interests, is the business carried on in the interests of the joint stock company. Where the directors have interests other than those of a part, or of the majority, or of all of the shareholders, business is carried on against the company’s interests. For in all joint stock companies that do not wither in bureaucracy, those who really are in power always manage business in their own interests, whether this coincides with the shareholders’ interests or not. It is an unavoidable presupposition of the prosperity of the companies, that those in power shall receive a large part of the profits of the enterprise and that they shall be primarily affected by the misfortunes of the enterprise. In all flourishing joint stock companies, such men, immaterial of what their legal status is, wield the decisive influence. The type of man to whom joint stock companies owe their success is not the type of general manager who resembles the public official in his ways of thought, himself often an ex-public servant whose most important qualification is good connection with those in political power. It is the manager who is interested himself through his shares, it is the promoter and the founder—these are responsible for prosperity.

  Socialist-etatistic theory of course will not admit this. It endeavours to force the joint stock company into a legal form in which it must languish. It refuses to see in those who guide the company anything except officials, for the etatist wants to think of the whole world as inhabited only by officials. It is allied with the organized employees and workers in their resentment-ridden fight against high sums paid to the management, believing that the profits of the business arise of themselves and are reduced by whatever is paid to the men in charge. Finally, it turns also against the shareholder. The latest German doctrine does not want, “in view of the evolution of the concept of fair play,” to let the shareholder’s self-interest decide, but rather “the interest and well-being of the enterprise, itself, namely its own economic, legal and sociological value, independent of transient majorities of transient shareholders.” It wants to create for the administration of the companies a position of power, which should make them independent of the will of those who have put up the majority of the share-capital.90

  That “altruistic motives” or the like are ever decisive in the administration of successful joint stock companies is a fable. Such attempts to model Company Law after the illusory ideal of etatistic politicians, have not succeeded in making the joint stock company a piece of the illusory “functional economy”; they have however damaged the joint stock company form of enterprise.

  CHAPTER 11

  The Impracticability of Socialism

  1

  The Fundamental Problems of a Socialist Economy Under Conditions of Change

  The preceding investigations have shown the difficulties confronting the establishment of a socialist order of society. In a socialist community the possibility of economic calculations is lacking: it is therefore impossible to ascertain the cost and result of an economic operation or to make the result of the calculation the test of the operation. This in itself would be sufficient to make Socialism impracticable. But, quite apart from that, another insurmountable obstacle stands in its way. It is impossible to find a form of organization which makes the economic action of the individual independent of the co-operation of other citizens without leaving it open to all the risks of mere gambling. These are the two problems, and without their solution the realization of Socialism appears impracticable unless in a completely stationary state.

  Too little attention has hitherto been given to these fundamental questions. The first has generally been almost ignored. The reason for this is that people have not been able to get rid of the idea that labour time can afford an efficient measure of value. But even many of those who recognize that the labour theory of value is untenable continue to believe that value can be measured. The frequent attempts which have been made to discover a standard of value prove this. To understand the problem of economic calculation it was necessary to recognize the true character of the exchange relations expressed in the prices of the market.

  The existence of this important problem could be revealed only by the methods of the modern subjective theory of value. In actual practice although the tendency has been all in the direction of Socialism, the problem has not become so urgent as to attract general attention.

  It is quite otherwise with the second problem. The more communal enterprise extends, the more attention is drawn to the bad business results of nationalized and municipalized undertakings. It is impossible to miss the cause of the difficulty: a child could see where something was lacking. So that it cannot be said that this problem has not been tackled. But the way in which it has been tackled has been deplorably inadequate. Its organic connection with the essential nature of socialist enterprise has been regarded as merely a question of better selection of persons. It has not been realized that even exceptionally gifted men of high character cannot solve the problems created by socialist control of industry.

  2

  Attempted Solutions

  As far as most socialists are concerned, recognition of these problems is obstructed, not only by their rigid adherence to the labour theory of value but also by their whole conception of economic activity. They fail to realize that industry must be constantly changing: their conception of the socialist community is always static. As long as they are criticizing the capitalist order they deal throughout with the phenomena of a progressive economy and they paint in glaring colours the friction caused by economic change. But they seem to regard all change and not only the friction caused by it, as a peculiar attribute of the capitalist order. In the happy kingdom of the future everything will develop without movement or friction.

  We can see this best if we think of the picture of the entrepreneur which is generally drawn by socialists. In such a picture the entrepreneur is characterized only by the special way he derives his income. Clearly any analysis of the capitalist order must take as its central point not capital nor the capitalists but the entrepreneur. But Socialism, including Marxian Socialism, sees in the entrepreneur someone alien to the process of production, someone whose whole work consists in the appropriation of surplus value. It will be sufficient to expropriate these parasites to bring about a socialist society. The recollection of the liberation of the peasants and the abolition of slavery hovers vaguely in Marx’s mind and even more so in the minds of many other socialists. But they fail to see that the position of the feudal lord was quite different from that of the entrepreneur. The feudal lord had no influence on production. He stood outside the process of production: only when it was finished did he step in with a claim to a share in the yield. But in so far as the lord of the manor and the slave owner were also leaders of production they retained their position even after the abolition of serfdom and slavery. The fact that henceforward they had to give the workers the value of their labour did not change their economic function. But the entrepreneur fulfils a task which must be performed even in a socialist community. This the Socialist does not see; or at least refuses to see.

  Socialism’s misunderstanding of the entrepreneur degenerates into idiosyncrasy whenever the word speculator is mentioned. Even Marx, unmindful of the good resolutions which animated him, proceeds entirely along “petty bourgeois” lines in this connection and his school has even surpassed him. All socialists overlook the fact that even in a socialist community every economic operation must be based on an uncertain future, and that its economic consequence remains uncertain even if it is technically successful. They see in the uncertainty which leads to speculation a consequence of the anarchy of production, whilst in fact it is a necessary result of changing economic conditions.

  The great mass of people are incapable of realizing that in economic life nothing is permanent except change. They regard the existing state of affairs as eternal; as it has been so shall it always be. But even if they were in a position to envision the πάντα ΄ρεῑ (everything simple or all so easy) they would be baffled by the problems to be solved. To see and to act in advance, to follow new ways, is always the concern only of the few, the leaders. Socialism is the economic policy of the crowd, of the masses, remote from insight into the nature of economic activity. Socialist theory is the precipitate of their views on economic matters—it is created and supported by those who find economic life alien, and do not comprehend it.

  Among socialists only Saint-Simon realized to some extent the position of the entrepreneurs in the capitalistic economy. As a result he is often denied the name of Socialist. The others completely fail to realize that the functions of entrepreneurs in the capitalist order must be performed in a socialist community also. This is reflected most clearly in the writings of Lenin. According to him the work performed in a capitalist order by those whom he refused to designate as “working” can be boiled down to “Auditing of Production and Distribution” and “keeping the records of labour and products.” This could easily be attended to by the armed workers, “by the whole of the armed people.”91 Lenin quite rightly separates these functions of the “capitalists and clerks” from the work of the technically trained higher personnel, not however missing the opportunity to take a side thrust at scientifically trained people by giving expression to that contempt for all highly skilled work which is characteristic of Marxian proletarian snobbishness. “This recording, this exercise of audit,” he says, “Capitalism has simplified to the utmost and has reduced to extremely simple operations of superintendence and book-entry within the grasp of anyone able to read and write. To control these operations a knowledge of elementary arithmetic and the drawing of correct receipts is sufficient.”92 It is therefore possible straight-way to enable all members of society to do these things for themselves.93 This is all, absolutely all that Lenin had to say on this problem; and no socialist has a word more to say. They have no greater perception of the essentials of economic life than the errand boy, whose only idea of the work of the entrepreneur is that he covers pieces of paper with letters and figures.

  It was for this reason that it was quite impossible for Lenin to realize the causes of the failure of his policy. In his life and his reading he remained so far removed from the facts of economic life that he was as great a stranger to the work of the bourgeoisie as a Hottentot to the work of an explorer taking geographical measurements. When he saw that his work could proceed no further on the original lines he decided to rely no longer on references to “armed workers” in order to compel the “bourgeois” experts to co-operate: instead they were to receive “high remuneration” for “a short transition period” so that they could set the socialist order going and thus render themselves superfluous. He even thought it possible that this would take place within a year.94

  Those socialists who do not think of the socialist community as the strongly centralized organization conceived by their more clearheaded brethren and which alone is logically conceivable, believe that the difficulties confronting the management of industry can be solved by democratic institutions inside undertakings. They believe that individual industries could be allowed to conduct their operations with a certain degree of independence without endangering the uniformity and the correct co-ordination of industry. If every enterprise were placed under the control of a workers’ committee, no further difficulties could exist. In all this there is a whole crop of fallacies and errors. The problem of economic management with which we are here concerned lies much less in the work of individual industries than in harmonizing the work of individual concerns in the whole economic system. It deals with such questions as dissolving, extending, transforming and limiting existing undertakings and establishing new undertakings—matters which can never be decided by the workers of one industry. The problems of conducting an industry stretch far beyond the individual concern.

  State and municipal Socialism have supplied enough unfavourable experience to compel the closest attention to the problem of economic control. But etatists in general have treated this problem no less inadequately than those who have dealt with it in Bolshevik Russia. General opinion seems to regard the main evil of communal undertakings to be due to the fact that they are not run on “business” lines. Now rightly understood this catchword could lead to a correct view on the problem. Communal enterprise does indeed lack the spirit of the business man, and the very problem for Socialism here is to create something to put in its place. But the catchword is not understood in this way at all. It is an offspring of the bureaucratic mind: that is to say it comes from people for whom all human activity represents the fulfillment of formal official and professional duties. Officialdom classifies activity according to the capacity for undertaking it formally acquired by means of examinations and a certain period of service. “Training” and “length of service” are the only things which the official brings to the “job.” If the work of a body of officials appears unsatisfactory, there can be only one explanation: the officials have not had the right training, and future appointments must be made differently. It is therefore proposed that a different training should be required of future candidates. If only the officials of the communal undertaking came with a business training, the undertaking would be more business-like. But for the official who cannot enter into the spirit of capitalist industry this means nothing more than certain external manifestations of business technique: prompter replies to inquiries, the adoption of certain technical office appliances, which have not yet been sufficiently introduced into the departments, such as typewriters, copying machines, etc., the reduction of unnecessary duplication, and other things. In this way “the business spirit” penetrates into the offices of communal enterprise. And people are greatly surprised when these men trained on these lines, also fail, fail even worse than the much-maligned civil servants, who in fact, show themselves superior at least in formal schooling.

  It is not difficult to expose the fallacies inherent in such notions. The attributes of the business man cannot be divorced from the position of the entrepreneur in the capitalist order. “Business” is not in itself a quality innate in a person; only the qualities of mind and character essential to a business man can be inborn. Still less is it an accomplishment which can be acquired by study, though the knowledge and the accomplishments needed by a business man can be taught and learned. A man does not become a business man by passing some years in commercial training or in a commercial institute, nor by a knowledge of book-keeping and the jargon of commerce, nor by a skill in languages and typing and shorthand. These are things which the clerk requires. But the clerk is not a business man, even though in ordinary speech he may be called a “trained business man.”

  When these obvious truths became clear in the end the experiment was tried of making entrepreneurs, who had worked successfully for many years, the managers of public enterprises. The result was lamentable. They did no better than the others; furthermore they lacked the sense for formal routine which distinguishes the life-long official. The reason was obvious. An entrepreneur deprived of his characteristic role in economic life ceases to be a business man. However much experience and routine he may bring to his new task he will still only be an official in it.

  It is just as useless to attempt to solve the problem by new methods of remuneration. It is thought that if the managers of public enterprises were better paid, competition for these posts would arise and make it possible to select the best men. Many go even further and believe that the difficulties will be overcome by granting the managers a share in the profits. It is significant that these proposals have hardly ever been put in practice, although they appear quite practicable as long as public undertakings exist alongside private enterprises, and as long as the possibility of economic calculation permits the ascertainment of the result achieved by the public enterprise which is not the case under pure Socialism. But the problem is not nearly so much the question of the manager’s share in the profit, as of his share in the losses which arise through his conduct of business. Except in a purely moral sense the property-less manager of a public undertaking can be made answerable only for a comparatively small part of the losses. To make a man materially interested in profits and hardly concerned in losses simply encourages a lack of seriousness. This is the experience, not only of public undertakings but also of all private enterprises, which have granted to comparatively poor employees in managerial posts rights to a percentage of the profits.

  It is an evasion of the problem to put one’s faith in the hope that the moral purification of mankind, which the socialists expect to occur when their aims are realized, will of itself make everything perfectly right. Whether Socialism will or will not have the moral effect expected from it may here be conveniently left undecided. But the problems with which we are concerned do not arise from the moral shortcomings of humanity. They are problems of the logic of will and action which must arise at all times and in all places.

  3

  Capitalism the Only Solution

  But let us disregard the fact that up to now all socialist efforts have been baffled by these problems, and let us attempt to trace out the lines on which the solution ought to be sought. Only by making such an attempt can we throw any light on the question whether such a solution is possible in the framework of a socialist order of society.

  The first step which would be necessary would be to form sections inside the socialist community to which the management of definite branches of business would be entrusted. As long as the industry of a socialist community is directed by one single authority which makes all arrangements and bears all the responsibility, a solution of the problems is inconceivable, because all the other workers are only acting instruments without independent delimited spheres of operation and consequently without any special responsibility. What we must aim at is precisely the possibility not only of supervising and controlling the whole process, but of considering and judging separately the subsidiary processes which take place within a narrower sphere.

  In this respect at least, our procedure runs parallel to all past attempts to solve our problem. It is clear to everyone that the desired aim can be achieved only if responsibility is built up from below. We must therefore start from a single industry or from a single branch of industry. It makes no difference whether the unit with which we start is large or small since the same principle which we have once used for our division can be again used when it is necessary to divide too large a unit. Much more important than the question where and how often the division shall be made is the question how in spite of the division of industry into parts we can preserve that unity of cooperation without which a social economy is impossible.

  We imagine then the economic order of the socialist community to be divided into any number of parts each of which is put in the charge of a particular manager. Every manager of a section is charged with the full responsibility for his operations. This means that the profit or a very considerable part of the profit accrues to him; on the other hand the burden of losses falls upon him, insomuch as the means of production which he squanders through bad measures will not be replaced by society. If he squanders all the means of production under his care he ceases to be manager of a section and is reduced to the ranks of the masses.

  If this personal responsibility of the section manager is not to be a mere sham, then his operations must be clearly marked off from that of other managers. Everything he receives from other section managers in the form of raw materials or partly manufactured goods for further working or for use as instruments in his section and all the work which he gets performed in his section will be debited to him; everything he delivers to other sections or for consumption will be credited to him. It is necessary, however, that he should be left free choice to decide what machines, raw materials, partly manufactured goods, and labour forces he will employ in his section and what he will produce in it. If he is not given this freedom he cannot be burdened with any responsibility. For it would not be his fault if at the command of the supreme controlling authority he had produced something for which, under existing conditions, there was no corresponding demand, or if his section was handicapped because it received its material from other sections in an unsuitable condition, or, what comes to the same thing, at too high a charge. In the first event, the failure of his section would be attributable to the dispositions of the supreme control, in the latter to the failures of the sections which produced the material. But on the other hand the community must also be free to claim the same rights which it allows to the section manager. This means that it takes the products which he has produced only according to its requirements, and only if it can obtain them at the lowest rate of charge, and it charges him with the labour, which it supplies to him at the highest rate it is in a position to obtain: that is to say it supplies the labour to the highest bidder.

  Society as a production community now falls into three groups. The supreme direction forms one. Its function is merely to supervise the orderly course of the process of production as a whole, the execution of which is completely detailed to the section managers. The third group is the citizens who are not in the service of the supreme administration and are not section managers. Between the two groups stand the section managers as a special group: they have received from the community once and for all at the beginning of the regime an allotment of the means of production for which they have had to pay nothing, and they continue to receive from it the labour force of the members of the third group, who are assigned to the highest bidders amongst them. The central administration which has to credit each member of the third group with everything it has received from the section managers for his labour power, or, in case it employs him directly in its own sphere of operation, with everything which it might have received from the section managers for his labour power, will then distribute the consumption goods to the highest bidders amongst the citizens of all three groups. The proceeds will be credited to the section managers who have delivered the products.

  By such an arrangement of the community, the section manager can be made fully responsible for his doings. The sphere for which he bears responsibility is sharply delimited from that for which others bear the responsibility. Here we are no longer faced with the total result of the economic activity of the whole industrial community in which the contribution of one individual cannot be distinguished from that of another. The “productive contribution” of each individual section manager is open to separate judgment, as is also that of each individual citizen in the three groups.

  It is clear that the section managers must be permitted to change, extend or contract their section according to the prevailing course of demand on the part of the citizens as indicated in the market for consumption goods. They must therefore be in a position to sell those means of production in their section which are more urgently required in other sections, to these other sections: and they ought to demand as much for them as they can obtain under the existing conditions....

  Section II.

  The Foreign Relations of a Socialist Community

  CHAPTER 12

  National Socialism and World Socialism

  1

  The Spatial Extent of the Socialist Community

  Early Socialism is marked by its predilection for a return to the simpler modes of production of primitive times. Its ideal is the self-sufficing village, or, at most, the self-sufficing province—a town around which a number of villages are grouped. Being averse to all trade and commerce, its protagonists regard foreign trade as something entirely evil which must be abolished. Foreign Trade introduces superfluous commodities into the country. Since it was once possible to do without them, it is obvious that they are unnecessary, and that only the extreme ease with which they can be procured is responsible for the unnecessary expenditure upon them. Foreign Trade undermines morality and introduces foreign ideas and customs. In Utopia the stoic ideal of self-mastery was transmuted into the economic ideal of self-sufficiency. Plutarch found it an admirable thing in Lycurgusan Sparta—as romantically conceived in his day—that no merchant ship ever entered her harbours.1

  This attachment to the ideal of economic self-sufficiency, and their complete incapacity to understand the nature of trade and commerce, led the Utopians to overlook the problem of the territorial limits of the ideal state. Whether the borders of fairyland are to be wider or narrower in extent does not enter into their considerations. In the tiniest village there is space enough to realize their plans. In this way it was possible to think of realizing Utopia tentatively in small instalments. Owen founded the New Harmony community in Indiana. Cabet founded a small Icaria in Texas. Considerant founded a model phalanstery in the same state. “Duodecimo editions of the New Jerusalem,” jeers the Communist Manifesto.

  It was only gradually that socialists came to perceive that the self-sufficiency of a small area could provide no foundation for Socialism. Thompson, a disciple of Owen, remarked that the realization of equality among the members of one community was far from signifying the realization of equality between the members of different communities. Under the influence of this discovery, he turned to centralized Socialism.2 Saint-Simon and his school were thorough centralizers. Pecqueur’s schemes of reform claimed to be national and universal.3

  Thus emerges a problem peculiar to Socialism. Can Socialism exist within limited areas of the earth’s surface? Or is it necessary that the entire inhabited world should constitute a unitary socialistic community?

  2

  Marxian Treatment of this Problem

  For the Marxian, there can be only one solution of this problem—the ecumenical solution.

  Marxism, indeed, proceeds from the assumption that by an inner necessity, Capitalism has already set its mark upon the whole world. Even to-day Capitalism is not limited to a single nation or to a small group of nations. Even today it is international and cosmopolitan. “Instead of the old local and national isolation and self-sufficiency, world trade has developed and the interdependence of nations.” The cheapness of their commodities is the “heavy artillery” of the bourgeoisie. With the aid of this it compels all nations, on pain of extinction, to adopt bourgeois methods of production. “It forces them to adopt so-called civilization, i.e. to become bourgeois. In a word, it creates a world after its own image.” And this is true not only of material but also of intellectual production. “The intellectual productions of one nation become the common property of all. National narrowness and exclusiveness become daily more impossible, and out of the many national and local literatures a world literature arises.”4

  It follows, therefore, from the logic of the materialist interpretation of history that Socialism too can be no national, but only an international phenomenon. It is a phase not merely in the history of a single nation, but in the history of the whole human race. In the logic of Marxism the question whether this or that nation is “ripe” for Socialism cannot even be asked. Capitalism makes the world ripe for Socialism, not a single nation or a single industry. The expropriators, through whose expropriation the last step towards Socialism must be taken, must not be conceived save as major capitalists whose capital is invested throughout the whole world. For the Marxian, therefore, the socialistic experiments of the “Utopians” are just as senseless as Bismarck’s facetious proposal to introduce Socialism experimentally into one of the Polish districts of the Prussian State.5 Socialism is an historical process. It cannot be tested in a retort or anticipated in miniature. For the Marxian, therefore, the problem of the autarky of a socialist community cannot even arise. The only socialist community he can conceive comprehends the entire human race and the entire surface of the globe. For him the economic administration of the world must be unitary.

  Later Marxians have, indeed, recognized that, at any rate for a time, the existence of many independent socialist communities side by side must be anticipated.6 But, once this is conceded one must go further and also take into account the possibility of one or more socialist communities existing within a world which, for the most part, is still capitalistic.

  3

  Liberalism and the Problem of the Frontiers

  When Marx and, with him, the majority of recent writers on Socialism consider Socialism only as realized in a unitary world state, they overlook powerful forces that work against economic unification.

  The levity with which they dispose of all these problems may not unreasonably be attributed to what, as we shall see, was an entirely unjustifiable acceptance of an attitude with regard to the future political organization of the world, which was prevalent at the time when Marxism was taking form.

  At that time, liberals held that all regional and national divisions could be regarded as political atavisms. The liberal doctrine of free trade and protection had been propounded—irrefutable for all time. It had been shown that all limitations on trade were to the disadvantage of all concerned: and, arguing from this, it had been attempted with success to limit the functions of the state to the production of security. For Liberalism the problem of the frontiers of the state does not arise. If the functions of the state are limited to the protection of life and property against murder and theft, it is no longer of any account to whom this or that land belongs. Whether the state extended over a wider or a narrower territory, seemed a matter of indifference to an age which was shattering tariff barriers and assimilating the legal and administrative systems of single states to a common form. In the middle of the nineteenth century, optimistic liberals could regard the idea of a League of Nations, a true world-state, as practicable in the not too far distant future.

  The liberals did not sufficiently consider that greatest of hindrances to the development of universal free trade—the problem of races and nationalities. But the socialists overlooked completely that this constituted an infinitely greater hindrance to the development of a socialistic society. Their incapacity to go beyond Ricardo in all matters of economics, and their complete failure to understand all questions of nationalism, made it impossible for them even to conceive this problem.

  CHAPTER 13

  The Problem of Migration Under Socialism

  1

  Migration and Differences in National Conditions

  If trade were completely free, production would only take place under the most suitable conditions. Raw materials would be produced in those parts which, taking everything into account, would yield the highest product. Manufacture would be localized where the transport charges, including those necessary to place the commodities in the hands of the ultimate consumer, were at a minimum. As labour settles around the centres of production, the geographical distribution of population would necessarily adapt itself to the natural conditions of production.

  Natural conditions, however, are unchanging only in a stationary economic system. The forces of change are continually transforming them. In a changing economy men migrate continually from the places where conditions are less favourable to places where they are more favourable for production. Under Capitalism the stress of competition tends to direct labour and capital to the most suitable places. In a closed socialist community the same result would have to be achieved by administrative decree. In both cases the principle would be the same: men would have to go where the conditions of life were most favourable.7

  These migrations have the closest bearing upon the condition of the different nations. They cause citizens of one nation, the natural conditions of which are less favourable, to move into the territory of other nations more favourably endowed. If the conditions under which migration takes place are such that the immigrants are assimilated to their new surroundings then the nation from which they came is, to that extent, weakened in numbers. If they are such that the immigrants preserve their nationality in their new home—still more if they assimilate the original inhabitants—then the nation receiving them will find immigration a menace to its national position.

  To be a member of a national minority involves multitudinous political disadvantages.8 The wider the functions of the political authority the more burdensome are these disadvantages. They are smallest in the state which is founded upon purely liberal principles. They are greatest in the state which is founded upon Socialism. The more they are felt, the greater become the efforts of each nation to protect its members from the fate of belonging to a national minority. To wax in numbers, to be a majority in rich and extensive territories these become highly desirable political aims. But this is nothing but Imperialism.9 In the last decades of the nineteenth century, and the first decades of the twentieth, the favourite weapons of Imperialism were commercial weapons—protective tariffs, prohibitions of imports, premiums on exports, freight discriminations, and the like. Less attention was paid to the use of another powerful imperialistic weapon—limitations on emigration and immigration. This is becoming more significant now. The ultima ratio of imperialism is, however, war. Beside war, all other weapons that it may use appear merely insufficient auxiliaries.

  Nothing justifies us in assuming that under Socialism the disadvantages of belonging to a national minority would be diminished. On the contrary. The more the individual depended on the State—the more importance political decisions had for the life of the individual—the more would the national minority feel the political impotence to which it was condemned.

  But when we are considering migration under Socialism we need not give special attention to the friction which would arise thereform between nations. For under Socialism there must arise, even between members of one and the same nation, points of difference which make the division of the surface of the earth—which is a matter of indifference to Liberalism—a problem of cardinal importance.

  2

  The Tendency Towards Decentralization Under Socialism

  Under Capitalism, capital and labour move until marginal utilities are everywhere equal. Equilibrium is attained when the marginal productivity of all capital and labour is the same.

  Let us leave the movement of capital on one side and consider first the movement of labour. The migrating workers depress the marginal productivity of labour wherever they betake themselves. The fact that wages, their income, sink, directly damages the workers who were employed in centres of migration before the incursion of new workers took place. They regard the “immigrants” as the enemy of high wages. The particular interest would be served by a prohibition of “immigration.” It becomes a cardinal point of the particularist policy of all such particular groups of workers to keep newcomers out.

  It has been the task of Liberalism to show who bear the costs of such a policy. The first to be injured are the workers in the less favourably situated centres of production, who, on account of the lower marginal productivity of their labour in those centres, have to content themselves with lower wages. At the same time, the owners of the more favourably situated means of production suffer through not being able to obtain the product which they might obtain could they employ a larger number of workers. But this is not the end of the matter. A system that protects the immediate interests of particular groups limits productivity in general and, in the end, injures everybody—even those whom it began by favouring. How protection finally affects the individual, whether he gains or loses, compared with what he would have got under complete freedom of trade, depends on the degrees of protection to him and to others. Although, under protection, the total produce is lower than it would have been under free trade, so that the average income is necessarily lower, it is still quite possible that certain individuals may do better than they would under free trade. The greater the protection afforded to particular interests, the greater the damage to the community as a whole, and to that extent the smaller the probability that single individuals gain thereby more than they lose.

  As soon as it is possible to forward private interests in this way and to obtain special privileges, a struggle for pre-eminence breaks out among those interested. Each tries to get the better of the other. Each tries to get more privileges so as to reap the greater private gain. The idea of perfectly equal protection for all is the fantasy of an ill-thought out theory. For, if all particular interests were equally protected, nobody would reap any advantage: the only result would be that all would feel the disadvantage of the curtailment of productivity equally. Only the hope of obtaining for himself a degree of protection, which will benefit him as compared with the less protected, makes protection attractive to the individual. It is always demanded by those who have the power to acquire and preserve especial privileges for themselves.

  In exposing the effects of protection, Liberalism broke the aggressive power of particular interests. It now became obvious that, at best, only a few could gain absolutely by protection and privileges and that the great majority must inevitably lose. This demonstration deprived such systems of the support of the masses. Privilege fell because it lost popularity.

  In order to rehabilitate protection, it was necessary to destroy Liberalism. This was attempted by a double attack: an attack from the point of view of nationalism, and an attack from the point of view of those special interests of the middle and working classes which were menaced by Capitalism. The one served to mature the movement towards territorial exclusiveness, the other the growth of special privileges for such employers and workmen as are not equal to the stress of competition. Once Liberalism has been completely vanquished, however, and no longer menaces the protective system, there remains nothing to oppose the extension of particular privilege. It was long thought that territorial protection was limited to national areas, that the re-imposition of internal tariffs, limitation of internal migration, and so on, was no longer conceivable. And this is certainly true so long as any regard at all is preserved for Liberalism. But, during the war, even this was abandoned in Germany and Austria, and there sprang up overnight all kinds of regional barriers. In order to secure a lower cost of living for their own population, the districts producing a surplus of agricultural produce cut themselves off from the districts that could support their population only by importing foodstuffs. The cities and industrial areas limited immigration in order to counteract the rise in the price of foodstuffs and rents. Regional particularism broke up that unity of economic area on which national neo-mercantilism had based all its plans.

  Even granting that Socialism is at all practicable, the development of a unitary world socialism would encounter grave difficulties. It is quite possible that the workers in particular districts, or particular concerns, or particular factories, would take the view that the instruments of production which happened to lie within their area were their own property, and that no outsider was entitled to profit by them. In such a case World Socialism would split up into numerous self-independent socialist communities—if, indeed, it did not become completely syndicalized. For Syndicalism is nothing less than the principle of decentralization consistently applied.

  CHAPTER 14

  Foreign Trade Under Socialism

  1

  Autarky and Socialism

  A socialist community, which did not include the whole of mankind, would have no reason to remain isolated from the rest of the world. It is true, that it might be disquieting for the rulers of such a state that foreign ideas would come over the frontiers with foreign products. They might fear for the permanence of their system, if their subjects were able to compare their position with that of foreigners who were not citizens of a socialist community. But these are political considerations, and do not apply if the foreign states are also socialistic. Moreover, a statesman who is convinced of the desirability of Socialism must expect that intercourse with foreigners will make them also socialists: he will not fear lest it undermine the socialism of his own compatriots.

  The theory of Free Trade shows how the closing of the frontiers of a socialist community against the import of foreign commodities would injure its inhabitants. Capital and labour would have to be applied under relatively unfavourable conditions yielding a lower product than otherwise would have been obtained. An extreme example will make this clear. At the expense of an enormous outlay of capital and labour a socialist Germany could grow coffee in greenhouses. But it would obviously be more advantageous to procure it from Brazil in exchange for products for whose production conditions in Germany were more favourable.10

  2

  Foreign Trade Under Socialism

  Such considerations indicate the principles on which a socialist community would have to base its commercial policy. In so far as it aspired to let its actions be guided purely by economic considerations it would have to aim at securing just what under complete freedom of trade would be secured by the unrestricted play of economic forces. The socialist community would limit its activities to the production of those commodities it could produce under comparatively more favourable conditions than existed abroad, and it would exploit each single line of production only so far as this relative advantage justified. It would procure all other commodities from abroad by way of exchange.

  This fundamental principle holds good whether or not trade with abroad is carried out by recourse to a general medium of exchange—by recourse to money—or not. In foreign trade, just as in internal trade—there is no difference between them—no rational production could proceed without money reckoning and the formation of prices for the means of production. On this point, we have nothing to add to what we have said already. But here we wish to consider a socialist community, existing in a world not otherwise socialistic. This community could estimate and compute in money in exactly the same way as a state railway, or a city waterworks, existing in a society otherwise based upon private ownership of the means of production.

  3

  Foreign Investment

  No one can regard what his neighbour does as a matter of mere indifference. Everyone is interested in raising the productivity of labour by the widest division of labour possible under given circumstances. I too am injured if some people maintain a state of economic self-sufficiency: for, if they were to relax their isolation, the division of labour could be made even more comprehensive. If the means of production are in the hands of relatively inefficient agents, the damage is universal.

  Under Capitalism the profit-seeking of individual entrepreneurs harmonizes the interests of the individual with those of the community. On the one hand, the entrepreneur is always seeking for new markets, and under selling with cheaper and better wares the dearer and inferior products of less rationally organized production. On the other, he is always seeking cheaper and more productive sources of raw materials and opening up more favourable sites for production. This is the true nature of that expansive tendency of Capitalism, which neo-Marxian propaganda so completely misrepresents as the “Verwertungsstreben des Kapitals” (“the drive of capital for profit”), and so amazingly involves into an explanation of modern Imperialism.

  The old colonial policy of Europe was mercantilistic, militaristic, and imperialistic. With the defeat of mercantilism by liberal ideas, the character of colonial policy completely changed. Of the old colonial powers, Spain, Portugal and France had lost the greater part of their former possessions. England, who had become the greatest of the colonial powers, managed her possessions according to the principles of free trade theory. It was not cant for English free traders to speak of England’s vocation to evaluate backward people to a state of civilization. England has shown by acts that she has regarded her position in India, in the Crown Colonies, and in the Protectorates, as a general mandatory of European civilization. It is not hypocrisy when English liberals speak of England’s rule in the colonies as being not less useful for the inhabitants and for the rest of the world than it is for England. The mere fact that England preserved Free Trade in India shows that she conceived her colonial policy in a spirit quite different from that of the states who entered, or re-entered the sphere of colonial policy in the last decades of the nineteenth century—France, Germany, the United States, Japan, Belgium and Italy. The wars waged by England during the era of Liberalism to extend her colonial empire and to open up territories which refused to admit foreign trade, laid the foundations of the modern world economy.11 To measure the true significance of these wars one has only to imagine what would have happened if India and China and their hinterland had remained closed to world commerce. Not only each Chinese and each Hindu, but also each European and each American, would be considerably worse off. Were England to lose India today, and were that great land, so richly endowed by nature, to sink into anarchy, so that it no longer offered a market for international trade—or no longer offered so large a market—it would be an economic catastrophe of the first order.

  Liberalism aims to open all doors closed to trade. But it no way desires to compel people to buy or to sell. Its antagonism is confined to those governments which, by imposing prohibition and other limitations on trade, exclude their subjects from the advantages of taking part in world commerce, and thereby impair the standard of life of all mankind. The Liberal policy has nothing in common with Imperialism. On the contrary, it is designed to overthrow Imperialism and expel it from the sphere of international trade.

  A socialist community would have to do the same. It, too, would not be able to allow areas lavishly endowed by nature to be permanently shut off from international trade, nor whole nations to refrain from exchange. But here Socialism would encounter a problem which can only be solved under Capitalism—the problem of ownership of capital abroad.

  Under Capitalism, as Free Traders would have it, frontiers would be without significance. Trade would flow over them unhindered. They would prohibit neither the movement of the most suitable producers towards immobile means of production, nor the investment of mobile means of production in the most suitable places. Ownership of the means of production would be independent of citizenship. Foreign investment would be as easy as investment at home.

  Under Socialism the situation would be different. It would be impossible for a socialist community to possess means of production lying outside its own borders. It could not invest capital abroad even if it would yield a higher product there. A socialist Europe must remain helpless, while a socialist India exploits its resources inefficiently, and thereby brings fewer goods to the world market than it would otherwise have done. New supplies of capital must be utilized under less favourable conditions in Europe, while in India, for want of new capital, more favourable conditions of production are not fully exploited. Thus independent socialist communities existing side by side and exchanging commodities only, would achieve a nonsensical position. Quite apart from other considerations the very fact of their independence would lead to a state of affairs under which productivity would necessarily diminish.

  These difficulties could not be overcome so long as independent socialist communities existed side by side. They could only be surmounted by the amalgamation of the separate communities into a unitary socialist state comprehending the whole world.

  Section III.

  Particular Forms of Socialism and Pseudo-Socialism

  CHAPTER 15

  Particular Forms of Socialism

  1

  The Nature of Socialism

  The essence of Socialism is this: All the means of production are in the exclusive control of the organized community. This and this alone is Socialism. All other definitions are misleading.

  It is possible to believe that Socialism can only be brought about under quite definite political and cultural conditions. Such a belief however is no justification for confining the term to one particular form of Socialism and withholding it from all other conceivable ways of realizing the socialist ideal. Marxian socialists have been very zealous in commending their own particular brand of Socialism as the only true Socialism and in insisting that all other socialist ideals and methods of realizing Socialism have nothing to do with genuine Socialism. Politically this attitude of the socialists has been extremely astute. It would have greatly increased the difficulties of their campaign if they had been prepared to admit that their ideal had anything in common with the ideals advocated by the leaders of other parties. They would never have rallied millions of discontented Germans to their banners if they had openly admitted that their aims were not fundamentally different from those of the governing classes of the Prussian state. If a Marxian had been asked before October 1917 in what way his Socialism differed from the Socialism of other movements, especially from that of the Conservatives, he would have replied that under Marxian Socialism, Democracy and Socialism were indissolubly united, and moreover that Marxian Socialism was a stateless Socialism because it intended to abolish the State.

  We have seen already how much these arguments are worth, and as a matter of fact, since the victory of the Bolsheviks, they have rapidly disappeared from the list of Marxian commonplaces. At any rate the conceptions of democracy and statelessness which the Marxians hold today are quite different from those which they held previously.

  But the Marxians might have answered the question another way. They might have said that their Socialism was revolutionary, as opposed to the reactionary and conservative Socialism of others. Such an answer leads much sooner to a recognition of the difference between Marxian social democracy and other socialist movements. For to a Marxian, revolution does not merely signify a forcible alteration of the existing state of affairs, but, as befits his peculiar fatalism, a process which brings mankind nearer the fulfillment of its destiny.12 For him the impending social revolution which will bring about Socialism is the last step to eternal salvation. Revolutionaries are those whom history has chosen to be the instruments for the realization of its plan. The revolutionary spirit is the sacred fire which has descended upon them and enables them to accomplish this great work. In this sense the Marxian socialist regards it as the most notable characteristic of his party that it is a revolutionary party. In this sense he regards all other parties as a single, uniform, reactionary mass because they are opposed to his methods of achieving ultimate bliss.

  It is obvious that all this has nothing to do with the sociological concept of the socialist community. It is certainly a remarkable thing that a group of persons should claim to be the only people elected to bring us to salvation; but when these persons know of no other road to salvation than one which many others have believed in, the assertion that they exclusively are ordained for the task is not sufficient to differentiate their aim fundamentally from that of others.

  2

  State Socialism

  To understand the concept of State Socialism it is not sufficient to explain the term etymologically. The history of the word reflects only the fact that State Socialism was the Socialism professed by the authorities of the Prussian and other German states. Because they identified themselves with the State and with the form taken by the State and with the idea of the State generally, it suggested calling the Socialism which they adopted State Socialism. The more Marxian teaching about the class character of the State and the decay of the State obscured the fundamental idea of the State, the easier it became to use the term.

  Marxian Socialism was vitally concerned in making a distinction between nationalization and socialization of the means of production. The slogans of the Social Democratic party would never have become popular if they had represented nationalization of the means of production as the ultimate aim of socialist change. For the state known to the people among whom Marxism found its widest acceptance was not such as to inspire much hope from its incursions into economic activity. The German, Austrian and Russian disciples of Marxism lived in open feud with the powers which to them represented the State. In addition they had the opportunity of gauging the results of nationalization and municipalization; and, with the best will in the world, they could not overlook the great shortcomings of state and municipal enterprise. It was quite impossible to arouse enthusiasm for a programme aiming at nationalization. A party of opposition was bound above all things to attack the hated authoritarian state; only in this way could it win over the discontented. From this need of political agitation arose the Marxian doctrine of the withering away of the state. The liberals had demanded the limitation of the authority of the state and the transfer of government to the representatives of the people; they had demanded the free state. Marx and Engels tried to outbid them by unscrupulously adopting the anarchistic doctrine of the abolition of all state authority regardless of the fact that Socialism would not mean the abolition, but rather the unrestricted expansion of the power of the state.

  Equally untenable and absurd as the doctrine of the withering away of the state under Socialism is the academic distinction between nationalization and socialization which is closely bound up with it. The Marxians themselves are so conscious of the weakness of their line of argument that they usually avoid discussing this point and confine themselves to talking of the socialization of the means of production, without any further elaboration of the idea, so as to create the impression that socialization is something different from the nationalization with which everybody is acquainted. When they cannot avoid discussing this ticklish point they are obliged to admit that the nationalization of undertakings is a “preliminary stage in the acquisition of all productive powers by society itself”13 or “the natural jumping-off point in the process leading to the socialist community.”14

  Thus Engels finally contents himself with entering a caveat against accepting without further ado “every” form of nationalization as socialistic. He would not in the first place describe as “steps towards Socialism,” nationalization carried out for purposes of state finance, such as might be adopted “chiefly to provide new sources of revenue independent of Parliamentary sanction.” Nevertheless for these reasons nationalization would also mean, in the Marxian language, that in one branch of production, the appropriation of surplus value by the capitalist was abolished. The same is true of nationalization carried out for political or military reasons which Engels also refused to accept as socialistic. He regards it as the criterion of socialistic nationalization that the means of production and trade taken over “should have actually out-grown the direction by joint stock companies, so that nationalization has become economically inevitable.” This necessity arises first in the case of “the large scale communications: posts, telegraphs and railways.”15 But it is precisely the largest railways in the world—the North American—and the most important telegraph lines—the deep sea cables—that have not been nationalized, whilst small unimportant lines in the etatistic countries have long been nationalized. The nationalization of the postal service moreover was primarily for political reasons and that of the railways for military ones. Can it be said that these nationalizations were “economically inevitable?” And what on earth does “economically inevitable” mean?

  Kautsky, too, contents himself with rejecting the view “that every nationalization of an economic function or of an economic enterprise is a step towards Socialism and that this can be brought about by a general nationalization of the whole economic machine without the need for a fundamental change in the nature of the State.”16 But no one has ever disputed that the fundamental nature of the State would be greatly changed if it were transformed into a socialist community through the nationalization of the whole economic apparatus. Thus Kautsky is unable to say anything more than that “as long as the possessing classes are the governing classes” complete nationalization is impossible. It will be achieved when “the workers become the governing classes in the state.” Only when the proletariat has seized political power will it “transform the state into a great fundamentally self-sufficient economic society.”17 The main question—the question which alone needs an answer—whether complete nationalization carried out by another party than the socialist one would also constitute Socialism, Kautsky carefully avoids.

  There is, of course, a fundamental distinction of the highest importance between the nationalization or municipalization of individual undertakings which are publicly or communally run in a society otherwise maintaining the principle of private property in the means of production, and the complete socialization which tolerates no private ownership by individuals in the means of production alongside that of the socialist community. As long as only a few undertakings are run by the State, prices for the means of production will be established in the market, and it is thus still possible for State undertakings to make calculations. How far the conduct of the undertakings would be based on the results of these calculations is another question; but the very fact that to a certain extent the results of operations can be quantitatively ascertained provides the business administration of such undertakings with a gauge which would not be available to the administration of a purely socialist community. The way in which State undertakings are run may justifiably be called bad business but it is still business. In a socialist community, as we have seen, economy in the strict sense of the word, cannot exist.18

  Nationalization of all the means of production involves complete Socialism. Nationalization of some of the means of production is a step towards complete Socialism. Whether we are to remain satisfied with the first step or whether we desire to proceed further does not alter its fundamental character. In the same way, if we wish to transfer all undertakings to the ownership of the organized community we cannot do otherwise than nationalize every single undertaking, simultaneously or successively.

  The obscurity thrown by Marxism on the idea of socialization was strikingly illustrated in Germany and Austria when the Social Democrats came into power in November 1918. A new and hitherto almost unheard slogan became popular overnight: Socialization (Sozialisierung) was the solution. This was merely the paraphrasing of the German word Vergesellschaftung into a fine-sounding foreign word. The idea that Sozialisierung was nothing more than nationalization or municipalization could not occur to anybody; anyone who maintained this was simply believed to know nothing about it, since it was thought that between the two things yawned an abysmal gap. The Socialization Commissions set up soon after the Social Democrats acquired power were set the problem of defining Sozialisierung in such a way that, ostensibly at least, it could be distinguished from the nationalization and municipalization of the previous regime.

  The first report issued by the German commission dealt with the socialization of the coal industry, and in rejecting the idea of achieving this by the nationalization of the coal mines and the coal trade it emphasized in a striking manner the shortcomings of a national coal industry. But nothing was said as to how socialization differed actually from nationalization. The report professed the opinion that “an isolated nationalization of the coal industry cannot be considered as socialization while capitalist enterprise continues in other branches of production: it would only mean the replacement of one employer by another.” But it left open the question whether an isolated “socialization” such as it intended and proposed could mean anything else under the same conditions.19 It would have been understandable if the commission had gone on to say that in order to fulfil the happy results of a socialist order of society it was not sufficient to nationalize one branch of production, and had recommended that the State should take over all undertakings at one blow, as the Bolsheviks in Russia and Hungary had done and as the Spartacists in Germany wanted to do. But it did not do this. On the contrary, it elaborated proposals for socialization which advocated the isolated nationalization of various branches of production, beginning with coal production and distribution. That the commission avoided using the term nationalization makes no difference. It was mere juristic hair-splitting when the commission proposed that the owners of the socialized German coal industry should not be the German State but a “German public coal trust” and when it went on to assert that this ownership should be conceived “only in a formal juristic sense,” but that “the material position of the private employer and thereby the possibility of exploiting workers and consumers” is denied to this public trust,20 the commission was using the emptiest of gutter catchwords. Indeed the whole report is nothing but a collection of all the popular fallacies about the evils of the capitalist system. The only way in which the coal industry, socialized in accordance with the proposals of the majority, would differ from other public undertakings is the composition of its directorate. At the head of the coal mines there should be no single official but a committee constituted in a certain way. Parturiunt montes, nascetur ridiculus mus! (The mountain labors and a ridiculous mouse is born!)

  State Socialism, therefore, is not distinguished by the fact that the State is the pivot of the communal organization, since Socialism is quite inconceivable otherwise. If we wish to understand its nature we must not look to the term itself. This would take us no further than would an attempt to grasp the concept of metaphysics from an examination of the meaning of the parts that make up the word. We must ask ourselves what ideas have been associated with the expression by those who are generally regarded as the followers of the state socialistic movements, that is, the out-and-out etatists.

  Etatistic Socialism is distinguished from other socialist systems in two ways. In contradistinction to many other socialist movements which contemplate the greatest possible measure of equality in the distribution of the social income between individuals, Etatistic Socialism makes the basis of distribution the merit and rank of the individual. It is obviously superfluous to point out that judgment of merit is purely subjective and cannot in any way be tested from a scientific view of human relations. Etatism has quite definite views about the ethical value of individual classes in the community. It is imbued with a high esteem for the monarchy, the nobility, big landowners, the clergy, professional soldiers, especially the officer class, and officials. With certain reservations it also allots a privileged position to savants and to artists. Peasants and small tradesmen are in a special class and below them come the manual labourers. At the bottom are the unreliable elements which are discontented with the sphere of action and the income allotted to them by the etatist plan and strive to improve their material position. The etatist mentally arranges a hierarchy of the members composing his future state. The more noble will have more power, more honours and more income than the less noble. What is noble and what is ignoble will be decided above all by tradition. To the etatist the worst feature of the capitalist system is that it does not assign income according to his valuation of merit. That a milk dealer or a manufacturer of trouser buttons should draw a larger income than the sprig of a noble family, than a privy councillor or a lieutenant, strikes him as intolerable. In order to remedy this state of affairs the capitalist system must be replaced by the etatistic.

  This attempt on the part of the etatists to maintain the traditional social order of rank and the ethical valuation of different classes, in no way contemplates transferring all property in the means of production to the formal ownership of the State. This indeed, in the etatistic view, would be a complete subversion of all historical rights. Only the large undertakings would be nationalized, and even then an exception would be made in favour of large scale agriculture, especially inherited family property. In agriculture and in small and medium-sized industries private property is to continue in name at least. In the same way the free professions will be allowed scope, with certain limitations. But all enterprises must become essentially state undertakings. The agriculturist will retain the name and title of owner, but he will be forbidden “egotistically to look merely to mercantile profit”; he has the “duty to execute the aims of the State.”21 For agriculture, according to the etatist, is a public office. “The agriculturist is a state official and must cultivate for the needs of the State according to his best knowledge and conscience, or according to state orders. If he gets his interest and sufficient to maintain himself he has everything he is entitled to demand.”22 The same applies to the artisan and the trader. For the independent entrepreneur with free control over the means of production there is as little room in State Socialism as in any other Socialism. The authorities control prices and decide what and how much shall be produced and in what way. There will be no speculation for “excessive” profit. Officials will see to it that no one draws more than the appropriate “fair income,” that is to say an income ensuring him a standard of life appropriate to his rank. Any excess will be “taxed away.”

  Marxian writers are also of the opinion that to bring Socialism about, small undertakings need not necessarily be transferred directly to public ownership. Indeed they have regarded this as quite impossible; the only way in which socialization can be carried out for these small undertakings is to leave them in the formal possession of their owners and simply subject them to the all-embracing supervision of the State. Kautsky himself says that “no socialist worthy of serious consideration has ever demanded that peasants should be expropriated, let alone their property confiscated.”23 Neither does Kautsky propose to socialize small producers by expropriating their property.24 The peasant and the craftsman will be fitted into the machinery of the socialist community in such a way that their production and the valuation of their products will be regulated by the economic administration whilst nominally the property will remain theirs. The abolition of the free market will transform them from independent owners and entrepreneurs into functionaries of the socialist community, distinguished from other citizens only by the form of the remuneration.25 It cannot therefore be regarded as a peculiarity of the etatistic socialist scheme that in this way remnants of private property in the means of production formally persist. The only characteristic peculiarity is the extent to which this method of arranging the social conditions of production is applied. It has already been said that etatism in general proposes in the same way to leave the large landowners—with the exception perhaps of the latifundia owners—in formal possession of their property. What is still more important is that it proceeds upon the assumption that the greater part of the population will find work in agriculture and small concerns, and that comparatively few will enter the direct service of the State as employees in large undertakings. Not only is etatism opposed to orthodox Marxists, as represented by Kautsky, through its theory that small scale agriculture is not less productive than large scale agriculture, but it is also of the opinion that in industry too, small scale undertakings have a great scope for operation at the side of the large concerns. This is the second peculiarity which distinguishes State Socialism from other socialist systems, especially social-democracy.

  It is perhaps unnecessary further to elaborate the picture of the ideal State drawn by the state socialists. Over a large part of Europe it has been for decades the tacit ideal of millions, and everyone knows it even if no one has clearly defined it. It is the Socialism of the peaceful loyal civil servant, of the land-owner, the peasant, the small producer and of countless workers and employees. It is the Socialism of the professors, the famous “socialists of the chair”—the Kathedersozialismus—it is the Socialism of artists, poets, writers in an epoch of the history of art plainly bearing all the signs of decay. It is the Socialism supported by the churches of all denominations. It is the Socialism of Caesarism and of Imperialism, the ideal of the so-called “social monarchy.” It is this that the policy of most European states, especially the German states, envisaged as the distant goal of man’s endeavours. It is the social ideal of the age which prepared the Great War26 and perished with it.

  A Socialism which allots the shares of individuals in the social dividend according to merit and rank can be conceived only in the form of State Socialism. The hierarchy on which it bases its distribution is the only one popular enough not to arouse overwhelming opposition. Although it is less able to withstand rationalist criticism than many others that might be suggested, nevertheless it has the sanction of age. In so far as State Socialism attempts to perpetuate this hierarchy and to prevent any change in the scale of social relationships, the description “conservative socialism,” sometimes applied to it, is justified.27 In fact it is imbued more than any other form of Socialism with ideas that credit the possibility of complete crystallization and changelessness of economic conditions: its followers regard every economic innovation as superfluous and even harmful. And corresponding to this attitude is the method by which Etatism wishes to attain its ends. If Marxian Socialism is the social ideal of those who expect nothing except through a radical subversion of the existing order by bloody revolutions, State Socialism is the ideal of those who call in the police at the slightest sign of trouble. Marxism relies upon the infallible judgment of a proletariat filled with the revolutionary spirit, Etatism upon the infallibility of the reigning authority. They both agree in belief in a political absolutism which does not admit the possibility of error.

  In contrast to State Socialism, Municipal Socialism presents no special form of the socialist ideal. The municipalization of undertakings is not regarded as a general principle on which to base a new arrangement of economic life. It would affect only undertakings with a market limited in space. In a rigorous system of State Socialism the municipal undertakings would be subordinated to the chief economic administration and would be no freer to develop than the agricultural and industrial undertakings nominally remaining in private hands.

  3

  Military Socialism

  Military Socialism is the Socialism of a state in which all institutions are designed for the prosecution of war. It is a State Socialism in which the scale of values for determining social status and the income of citizens is based exclusively or preferably on the position held in the fighting forces. The higher the military rank the greater the social value and the claim on the national dividend.

  The military state, that is the state of the fighting man in which everything is subordinated to war purposes, cannot admit private ownership in the means of production. Standing preparedness for war is impossible if aims other than war influence the life of individuals. All warrior castes whose members have been supported by the assignment of manorial rights or of grants of land, or even by industries based on a supply of unfree labour, have in time lost their warlike nature. The feudal lord became absorbed in economic activity and acquired other interests than waging war and reaping military honours. All over the world the feudal system demilitarized the warrior. The knights were succeeded by the Junkers. Ownership turns the fighting man into the economic man. Only the exclusion of private property can maintain the military character of the State. Only the warrior, who has no other occupation apart from war than preparation for war, is always ready for war. Men occupied in affairs may wage wars of defence but not long wars of conquest.

  The military state is a state of bandits. It prefers to live on booty and tribute. Compared with this source of income the product of economic activity plays only a subordinate role; often it is completely lacking. And if booty and tribute accrue from abroad it is clear that they cannot go direct to individuals but only to the common treasury, which can distribute them only according to military rank. The army which alone assures the continuance of this source of income would not tolerate any other method of distribution. And this suggests that the same principle of distribution should be applied to the products of home production, which similarly accrue to citizens as the tribute and yield of serfdom.

  In this way the communism of the Hellenic pirates of Lipara and all other robber states can be explained.28 It is the “communism of robbers and freebooters,”29 arising from the application of military ideas to all social relationships. Caesar relates of the Suebi, whom he calls gens longe bellicosissima Germanorum omnium (a people long the most warlike of the German tribes), that they sent warriors over the borders every year for plunder. Those who remained behind carried on economic activity for those in the field; in the following year. the roles were exchanged. There was no land in the exclusive ownership of individuals.30 Only by each sharing in the product of the military and economic activity carried on with a common purpose and subject to a common danger, can the warrior state make every citizen a soldier and every soldier a citizen. Once it allows some to remain soldiers and others to remain citizens working with their own property the two callings will soon stand out in contrast. Either the warriors must subjugate the citizens and in that case it would be doubtful if they could set out on plundering expeditions leaving an oppressed population at home—or the citizens will succeed in gaining the upper hand. In the latter event the warriors will be reduced to mercenaries and forbidden to set out in search of plunder because, as a standing danger, they cannot be allowed to grow too powerful. In either case the state must lose its purely military character. Therefore any weakening of “communistic” institutions involves a weakening of the military nature of the state, and the warrior society is slowly transformed into an industrial one.31

  The forces driving a military state to Socialism could be clearly observed in the Great War. The longer the war lasted and the more the states of Europe were transformed into armed camps, the more politically untenable seemed the distinction between the fighting man, who had to endure the hardships and danger of the war, and the man who remained at home to profit from the war boom. The burden was distributed too unequally. If the distinction had been allowed to persist and the war had continued longer the countries would infallibly have been split into two factions and the armies would have finally turned their weapons against their own kinsmen. The Socialism of conscript armies demands for its complement the Socialism of conscript labour at home.

  The fact that they cannot preserve their military character without a communistic organization does not strengthen the warrior states in the war. Communism is for them an evil which they must accept; it produces a weakness by which they eventually perish. Germany in the first years of the war trod the path to Socialism because the military etatistic spirit, which was responsible for the policy leading to the war, drove it towards State Socialism. Towards the end of the war socialization was more and more energetically carried out because, for the reasons just stated, it was necessary to make conditions at home similar to those at the front. State Socialism did not alleviate the situation in Germany, however, but worsened it; it did not stimulate production but restricted it; it did not improve the provisioning of the army and those at home but made it worse.32 And needless to say it was the fault of the etatistic spirit that in the tremendous convulsions of the war and the subsequent revolution not one strong individual arose from the German people.

  The lesser productivity of communistic methods of economic activity is a disadvantage to the communistic warrior state when it comes into clash with the richer and therefore better armed and provisioned members of nations which acknowledge the principle of private property. The destruction of initiative in the individual, unavoidable under Socialism, deprives it in the decisive hour of battle of leaders who can show the way to victory, and subordinates who can carry out their instructions. The great military communist state of the Incas33 was easily overthrown by a handful of Spaniards.

  If the enemy against which the warrior state has to fight is to be found at home then we can speak of a communism of overlords. “Casino communism” was the name given by Max Weber to the social arrangements of the Dorians in Sparta because of their habits of eating together.34 If the ruling caste, instead of adopting communistic institutions assigns land together with its inhabitants to the ownership of individuals sooner or later it will be ethnically absorbed by the conquered. It becomes transformed into a land-owning nobility, which eventually draws even the conquered into military service. In this way the state loses the character based upon the waging of war. This development took place in the kingdoms of the Langobards, the West Goths and the Franks and in all the regions where the Normans appeared as conquerors.

  4

  Christian Socialism

  A theocratic organization of the state demands either a self-sufficing family economy or the socialist organization of industry. It is incompatible with an economic order which allows the individual free play to develop his powers. Simple faith and economic rationalism cannot dwell together. It is unthinkable that priests should govern entrepreneurs.

  Christian Socialism, as it has taken root in the last few decades among countless followers of all Christian churches, is merely a variety of State Socialism. State Socialism and Christian Socialism are so entangled that it is difficult to draw any clear line between them, or to say of individual socialists whether they belong to the one or the other. Even more than etatism, Christian Socialism is governed by the idea that the economic system would be perfectly stationary if the desire for profit and personal gain by men directing their efforts solely to the satisfaction of material interests did not disturb its smooth course. The advantage of progressive improvements in methods of production is admitted, if only with limitations; but the Christian socialist does not clearly understand that it is just these innovations which disturb the peaceful course of the economic system. In so far as this is recognized, the existing state of affairs is preferred to any further progress. Agriculture and handicraft, with perhaps small shopkeeping, are the only admissible occupations. Trade and speculation are superfluous, injurious, and evil. Factories and large scale industries are a wicked invention of the “Jewish spirit”; they produce only bad goods which are foisted on buyers by the large stores and by other monstrosities of modern trade to the detriment of purchasers. It is the duty of legislation to suppress these excesses of the business spirit and to restore to handicraft the place in production from which it has been displaced by the machinations of big capital.35 Large transport undertakings that cannot be abolished should be nationalized.

  The basic idea of Christian Socialism that runs through all the teachings of its representatives is purely stationary in outlook. In the economic system which they have in mind there is no entrepreneur, no speculation, and no “inordinate” profit. The prices and wages demanded and given are “just.” Everyone is satisfied with his lot because dissatisfaction would signify rebellion against divine and human laws. For those incapable of work Christian charity will provide. This ideal it is asserted was achieved in medieval times. Only unbelief could have driven mankind out of this paradise. If it is to be regained mankind must first find the way back to the Church. Enlightenment and liberal thought have created all the evil which afflicts the world today.

  The protagonists of Christian social reform as a rule do not regard their ideal Society of Christian Socialism as in any way socialistic. But this is simply self-deception. Christian Socialism appears to be conservative because it desires to maintain the existing order of property, or more properly it appears reactionary because it wishes to restore and then maintain an order of property that prevailed in the past. It is also true that it combats with great energy the plans of socialists of other persuasions for a radical abolition of private property, and in contradistinction to them asserts that not Socialism but social reform is its aim. But Conservatism can only be achieved by Socialism. Where private property in the means of production exists not only in name but in fact, income cannot be distributed according to an historically determined or an any other way permanently established order. Where private property exists, only market prices can determine the formation of income. To the degree in which this is realized, the Christian social reformer is step by step driven to Socialism, which for him can be only State Socialism. He must see that otherwise there cannot be that complete adherence to the traditional state of affairs which his ideal demands. He sees that fixed prices and wages cannot be maintained, unless deviations from them are menaced by threats of punishment from a supreme authority. He must also realize that wages and prices cannot be arbitrarily determined according to the ideas of a world improver, because every deviation from market prices destroys the equilibrium of economic life. He must therefore progressively move from a demand for price regulation to a demand for a supreme control over production and distribution. It is the same path that practical etatism has followed. At the end in both cases, is a rigid Socialism which leaves private property only in name, and in fact transfers all control over the means of production to the State.

  Only a part of the Christian socialist movement has openly subscribed to this radical programme. The others have shunned an open declaration. They have anxiously avoided drawing the logical conclusions of their premises. They give one to understand that they are combating only the excrescences and abuses of the capitalist order; they protest that they have not the slightest desire to abolish private property; and they constantly emphasize their opposition to Marxian Socialism. But they characteristically perceive that this opposition mainly consists in differences of opinion as to the way in which the best state of society can be attained. They are not revolutionary and expect everything from an increasing realization that reform is necessary. For the rest they constantly proclaim that they do no wish to attack private property. But what they would retain is only the name of private property. If the control of private property is transferred to the State the property owner is only an official, a deputy of the economic administration.

  It can be seen at once how the Christian Socialism of today corresponds to the economic ideal of the medieval Scholastics. The starting point, the demand for “just” wages and prices, that is, for a definite historically attained distribution of income, is common to both. Only the realization that this is impossible, if the economic system retains private property in the means of production, forces the modern Christian reform movement towards Socialism. In order to achieve their demands, they must advocate measures which, even if formally retaining private property, lead to the complete socialization of society.

  It will be shown later that this modern Christian Socialism has nothing to do with the suppositious but often cited Communism of the Early Christians. The socialist idea is new to the Church. This is not altered by the fact that the most recent development of Christian social theory has led the Church36 to recognize the fundamental rightfulness of private property in the means of production, whereas the early church teaching, in view of the command of the gospels condemning all economic activity, had avoided unconditionally accepting even the name of private property. For we must understand what the Church has done in recognizing the rightfulness of private property, only as opposition to the efforts of the socialists to overthrow the existing order forcibly. In reality the Church desires nothing but State Socialism of a particular colour.

  The nature of socialistic methods of production is independent of the concrete methods involved in the attempt to realize it. Every attempt at Socialism, however brought about, must founder on the impracticability of setting up a purely socialistic economy. For that reason, and not because of deficiencies in the moral character of mankind, Socialism must fail.

  It may be granted, that the moral qualities required of the members of a socialist community could best be fostered by the Church. The spirit which must prevail in a socialist community is most akin to that of a religious community. But to overcome the difficulties in the way of establishing a socialist community would require a change in human nature or in the laws of the nature by which we are surrounded, and even faith cannot bring this to pass.

  5

  The Planned Economy

  The so-called planned economy (Planwirtschaft) is a more recent variety of Socialism.

  Every attempt to realize Socialism comes up quickly against insurmountable difficulties. This is what happened to Prussian State Socialism. The failure of nationalization was so striking that it could not be overlooked. Conditions in government undertakings were not such as to encourage further steps along the road to state and municipal control. The blame for this was thrown upon the officials. It had been a mistake to exclude the “business man.” In some way or other the abilities of the entrepreneur must be brought to the service of Socialism. From this notion came the arrangement of “mixed” enterprises. Instead of complete nationalization or municipalization we have the private undertaking in which the state or municipality is interested. In this way, on the one side, regard is paid to the demand of those who think it is not right that the state and municipalities should not share in the yield of undertakings carried on under their august sway. (Of course the State might get and gets its share more effectively by taxation without exposing the public finances to the possibility of loss. On the other hand it is thought by this system to bring all the active powers of the entrepreneur into the service of the common enterprise—a gross error. For as soon as representatives of the government take part in administration all the hindrances which cripple the initiative of public officials come into play. The “mixed” form of undertaking makes it possible to exempt employees and workers from the regulations applying to public officials and thereby to mitigate slightly the harmful effects which the official spirit exerts upon the profitability of undertakings. The mixed undertakings have certainly turned out better on the whole than the purely governmental undertakings. But this no more shows that Socialism is practicable than do the good results occasionally shown by individual public undertakings. That it is possible under certain favourable circumstances to carry on a public enterprise with some success in the midst of an economic society otherwise based on private property in the means of production does not prove that a complete socialization of society is practicable.

  During the Great War the authorities in Germany and Austria tried, under war Socialism, to leave to the entrepreneurs the direction of nationalized undertakings. The haste with which socialist measures were adopted under very difficult war conditions and the fact that at the outset no one had any clear idea of the fundamental implications of the new policy, nor of the lengths to which it was to be carried, left no other means open. The direction of individual branches of production was made over to compulsory associations of employers, who were put under government supervision. Price regulation on the one hand and drastic taxation of profits on the other hand were to ensure that the employer was no more than an employee sharing the yield.37 The system worked very badly. Nevertheless it was necessary to adhere to it, unless all attempts at Socialism were to be abandoned, because no one knew anything better to put in its place. The memorandum of the German Economic Ministry (May 7th, 1919), drawn up by Wissell and Moellendorff, states in plain words, that there was nothing else for a socialist government to do but to maintain the system known during the war as “war economy.” “A socialist government” it says “cannot ignore the fact that, because of a few abuses, public opinion is being poisoned by interested criticisms against a systematic planned economy; it may improve the planned system; it may reorganize the old bureaucracy; it may even in the form of self-government make over the responsibility to the people concerned in the business; but it must proclaim itself an adherent of the compulsory planned economy: that is to say an adherent of the most unpopular concepts of duty and coercion.”38

  Planned economy is a scheme of a socialist community that attempts to solve in a particular way the insoluble problem of the responsibility of the acting organ. Not only is the idea on which this attempt is based deficient, but the solution itself is only a sham, and that the creators and supporters of this scheme should overlook this, is particularly characteristic of the mental attitude of officialdom. The self-government granted to individual areas and to individual branches of production is important only in minor matters, for the centre of gravity of economic activity lies in the adjustment between individual areas and individual branches of production. This adjustment can only proceed uniformly; if this is not provided for, the whole plan would have to be regarded as syndicalist. In fact Wissell and Möllendorff envisage a State Economic Council which has “supreme control of the German economic system in co-operation with the highest competent organs of the State.”39 In essence, therefore, the whole proposal comes to nothing more than that responsibility for the economic administration is to be shared between the ministers and a second authority.

  The Socialism of the planned economy is distinguished from the State Socialism of the Prussian State under the Hohenzollerns chiefly by the fact that the privileged position in business control and in the distribution of income, which the latter allotted to the Junkers and the bureaucrats, is here assigned to the ci-devant entrepreneur. This is an innovation dictated by the change in the political situation resulting from the catastrophe which has overwhelmed the Crown, the nobility, the bureaucracy and the officer class; apart from this it is without significance for the problem of Socialism.

  In the last few years, a new word has been found for that which was covered by the expression “planned economy”: State Capitalism, and no doubt in the future many more proposals for the salvaging of Socialism will be brought forward. We shall learn many new names for the same old thing. But the thing, not its names, is what matters, and all schemes of this sort will not alter the nature of Socialism.

  6

  Guild Socialism

  In the first years after the World War, people in England and on the Continent looked on Guild Socialism as the panacea. It has long since been forgotten. Nevertheless, we must not pass it over in silence, when discussing socialist projects; for it represents the one contribution to modern socialist plans made by the Anglo-Saxons, in economic matters the most advanced of peoples. Guild Socialism is another attempt to surmount the insoluble problem of a socialist direction of industry. It did not need the failure of state socialistic activities to open the eyes of the English people, preserved by the long reign of liberal ideas from that over-valuation of the State which has been prevalent in modern Germany. Socialism in England has never been able to overcome the mistrust of the government’s capacity to regulate all human affairs for the best. The English have always recognized the great problem which other Europeans before 1914 had scarcely grasped.

  In Guild Socialism three different things must be distinguished. It establishes the necessity for replacing the capitalist system by a socialist one; this thoroughly eclectic theory need not worry us further. It also provides a way by which Socialism may be realized; this is only important for us inasmuch as it could very easily lead to Syndicalism instead of Socialism. Finally it draws up the programme of a future socialist order of society. It is with this that we are concerned.

  The aim of Guild Socialism is the socialization of the means of production. We are therefore justified in calling it socialism. Its unique feature is the particular structure which it gives to the administrative organization of the future socialist state. Production is to be controlled by the workers in individual branches of productions. They elect foremen, managers and other business leaders, and they regulate directly and indirectly the conditions of labour and order the methods and aims of production.40 The Guilds as organizations of the producers in the individual branches of industry, face the State as the organization of the consumers. The State has the right to tax the Guilds, and is thus able to regulate their price—and wages-policy.41

  Guild Socialism greatly deceives itself if it believes that in this way it could create a socialist order of society which would not endanger the freedom of the individual and would avoid all those evils of centralized Socialism which the English detest as Prussianism.42 Even in a guild socialist society the whole control of production belongs to the State. The State alone sets the aim of production and determines what must be done in order to achieve this aim. Directly or indirectly through its taxation policy, it determines the conditions of labour, moves capital and labour from one branch of industry to another, makes adjustments and acts as intermediary between the guilds themselves and between producers and consumers. These tasks falling to the State are the only important ones and they constitute the essence of economic control.43 What is left to the individual guilds, and, inside them, to the local unions and individual concerns is the execution of work assigned to them by the State. The whole system is an attempt to translate the political constitution of the English State into the sphere of production; its model is the relation in which local government stands to central government. Guild Socialism expressly describes itself as economic Federalism. But in the political constitution of a liberal state it is not difficult to concede a certain independence to local government. The necessary co-ordination of the parts within the whole is sufficiently ensured by the compulsion enforced on every territorial unit to manage its affairs in accordance with the laws. But in the case of production this is far from sufficient. Society cannot leave it to the workers themselves in individual branches of production to determine the amount and the quality of the labour they perform and how the material means of production thereby involved shall be applied.44 If the workers of a guild work less zealously or use the means of production wastefully, this is a matter which concerns not only them but the whole society. The State entrusted with the direction of production cannot therefore refrain from occupying itself with the internal affairs of the guild. If it is not allowed to exercise direct control by appointing managers and works directors, then in some other way—perhaps by the means which lie at hand in the right of taxation, or the influence it has over the distribution of consumption goods—it must endeavour to reduce the independence of the guilds to a meaningless facade. It is the foremen who are in daily and hourly contact with the individual worker to direct and supervise his work who are hated most by the worker. Social reformers, who take over naively the sentiments of the workers, may believe it possible to replace these organs of control by trustworthy men chosen by the workers themselves. This is not quite as absurd as the belief of the anarchists that everyone would be prepared without compulsion to observe the rules indispensable for communal life; but it is not much better. Social production is a unity in which every part must perform exactly its function in the framework of the whole. It cannot be left to the discretion of the part to determine how it will accommodate itself to the general scheme. If the freely chosen foreman does not display the same zeal and energy in his supervisory work as one not chosen by the workers, the productivity of labour will fall.

  Guild Socialism therefore does not abolish any of the difficulties in the way of establishing a socialist order of society. It makes Socialism more acceptable to the English spirit by replacing the word nationalization, which sounds disagreeable in English ears, by the catchword “Self-Government in Industry.” But in essence it does not offer anything different from what continental socialists recommend today, namely, the proposal to leave the direction of production to committees of the workers and employees engaged in production, and of consumers. We have already seen that this brings us no nearer to solving the problem of Socialism.

  Guild Socialism owes much of its popularity to the syndicalistic elements which many of its adherents believe are to be found in it. Guild Socialism as its literary representatives conceive it, is doubtless not syndicalistic. But the way in which it proposes to attain its end might very easily lead to Syndicalism. If, to begin with, national guilds were established in certain important branches of production which would have to work in an otherwise capitalist system, this would mean the syndicalization of individual branches of industry. As everywhere else, so here too, what appears to be the road to Socialism can in fact easily prove to be really the path to Syndicalism.

  CHAPTER 16

  Pseudo-Socialist Systems

  1

  Solidarism

  In recent decades few have managed to remain uninfluenced by the success of the socialist criticism of the capitalist social order. Even those who did not want to capitulate to Socialism, have tried in many ways to act according to its criticism of private ownership in the means of production. Thus they have originated systems, ill-thought-out, eclectic in theory and weak in politics, which attempted to reconcile the contradictions. They were soon forgotten. Only one of these systems has spread—the system which calls itself Solidarism. This is at home above all in France; it has been called, not unjustly, the official social philosophy of the Third Republic. Outside of France, the term “Solidarism” is less well known, but the theories which make Solidarism are everywhere the social-political creed of all those religiously or conservatively inclined who have not joined Christian or State Socialism. Solidarism is distinguished neither by the depth of its theory, nor the number of its adherents. That which gives it a certain importance is its influence on many of the best and finest men and women of our times.

  Solidarism starts by saying that the interests of all members of society harmonize. Private ownership in the means of production is a social institution the maintenance of which is to the interest of all, not merely of the owners; everyone would be harmed were it replaced by a common ownership endangering the productivity of social labour. So far, Solidarism goes hand in hand with Liberalism. Then, however, their ways separate. For solidarist theory believes that the principle of social solidarity is not realized simply by a social order based on private ownership in the means of production. It denies—without, however, arguing this more closely or bringing to light ideas not put forward before by the socialists, especially the non-Marxists—that merely acting for one’s own property-interests within a legal order guaranteeing liberty and property ensures an interaction of the individual economic actions corresponding to the ends of social co-operation. Men in society, by the very nature of social co-operation, within which alone they can exist, are reciprocally interested in the well-being of their fellow men; their interests are “solidary,” and they ought therefore to act with “solidarity.” But mere private ownership in the means of production has not achieved solidarity in the society dividing labour. To do so, special provisions must be made. The more etatistically inclined wing of Solidarism wants to bring about “solidary” action by State action: laws shall impose obligations on the possessors in favour of the poorer people and in favour of the public welfare. The more ecclesiastically inclined wing of Solidarism wants to achieve the same thing by appeals to the conscience; not by State laws, but by moral prescriptions: Christian love will make the individual fulfil his social duties.

  The representatives of Solidarism have laid down their social-philosophic views in brilliantly written essays, which reveal all the splendour of the French spirit. No one has been better able to paint in beautiful words the mutual dependence of men in society. At the head of them all is Sully Prudhomme. In his famous sonnet he shows the poet on awaking from a bad dream in which he has seen himself, as division of labour has ceased and no one will work for him, seul, abandonné, de tout le genre humain. (Alone, abandoned by all mankind.) This leads him to the knowledge:

  • ... qu’au siècle où nous sommes
  • Nul ne peut se vanter de se passer des hommes;
  • Et depuis ce jour-là, je les ai tous aimés,
  • (... In our century
  • No one can claim to take the place of men;
  • And from that day I have loved everyone of them,)

  They have also known well how to state their case firmly, either by theological45 or juristic arguments.46 But all this must not blind us to the inner weakness of the theory. Solidarist theory is a foggy eclecticism. It demands no special discussion. It interests us here much less than its social ideal, which claims “to avoid the faults of the individualist and socialist systems, to maintain that which is right in both.”47

  Solidarism proposes to leave the private ownership in the means of production. But it places above the owner an authority—indifferent whether Law and its creator, the State, or conscience and its counsellor, the Church—which is to see that the owner uses his property correctly. The authority shall prevent the individual from exploiting “unrestrainedly” his position in the economic process; certain restrictions are to be imposed on property. Thus State or Church, law or conscience, become the decisive factor in society. Property is put under their norms, it ceases to be the basic and ultimate element in the social order. It continues to exist only as far as Law or Ethics allow, that is to say, ownership is abolished, since the owner, in administering his property, must follow principles other than those imposed on him by his property interests. To say that, under all circumstances, the owner is bound to follow the prescription of Law and Ethics, and that no legal order recognizes ownership except within limits drawn by the norms, is by no means a reply. For if these norms aim only at free ownership and to prevent the owner from being disturbed in his right to keep his property as long as it does not pass to others on the basis of contracts he has made, then these norms contain merely recognition of private ownership in the means of production. Solidarism, however, does not regard these norms as alone sufficient to bring together fruitfully the labour of members of society. Solidarism wants to put other norms above them. These other norms thus become society’s fundamental law. No longer private property but legal and moral prescription of a special kind, are society’s fundamental law. Solidarism replaces ownership by a “Higher Law;” in other words, it abolishes it.

  Of course, the solidarists do not really want to go as far. They want, they say, only to limit property, but to maintain it in principle. But when one has gone so far as to set up for property limits other than those resulting from its own nature, one has already abolished property. If the owner may do with his property only that which is prescribed to him, what directs the national economic activity is not property but that prescribing power.

  Solidarism desires, for instance, to regulate competition; it shall not be allowed to lead to “the decay of the middle-class” or to the “oppression of the weak.”48 This merely means that a given condition of social production is to be preserved, even though it would vanish under private property. The owner is told what and how and how much he shall produce and at what conditions and to whom he shall sell. He thus ceases to be owner; he becomes a privileged member of a planned economy, an official drawing a special income.

  Who shall decide in every single case, how far Law or Ethics go in limiting the owner’s rights? Only the Law or Ethics itself.

  Were Solidarism itself clear about the consequences of its postulates, it would certainly have to be called a variety of Socialism. But it is far from clear. It believes itself fundamentally different from State Socialism,49 and the majority of its supporters would be horrified, were they to recognize what their ideal really was. Therefore its social ideal may still be counted one of the pseudo-socialist systems. But it must be realized that what separates it from Socialism is one single step. Only the mental atmosphere of France, generally more favourable to Liberalism and Capitalism, has prevented the French Solidarists and the Jesuit Pesch, an economist under French influence, from overstepping decisively the boundary between Solidarism and Socialism. Many, however, who still call themselves solidarists, must be counted complete etatists. Charles Gide, for example, is one of these.

  2

  Various Proposals for Expropriation

  Precapitalist movements for the reform of property generally culminate in the demand for equality in wealth. All shall be equally rich; no one shall possess more or less than the others. This equality is to be achieved by redividing the land and to be made lasting by prohibiting sale or mortgage of land. Clearly, this is not Socialism, though it is sometimes called Agrarian Socialism.

  Socialism does not want to divide the means of production at all, and wants to do more than merely expropriate; it wants to produce on the basis of common ownership of the means of production. All such proposals, therefore, which aim only to expropriate the means of production are not to be regarded as Socialism; at best, they can be only proposals for a way to Socialism.

  If, for example, they proposed a maximum amount to which one and the same person may own private property, they could be regarded as Socialism only if they intend to make the wealth thus accruing to the State the basis of socialist production. We should then have before us a proposal for socialization. It is not difficult to see that this proposal is not expedient. Whether the amount of the means of production which could thus be socialized is a greater or smaller one will depend on the extent to which private fortunes are still permitted. If this is fixed low, the proposed system is little different from immediate socialization. If it is fixed high, the action against private property will not do much to socialize the means of production. But anyway a whole series of unintended consequences must occur. For just the most energetic and active entrepreneurs will be prematurely excluded from economic activity, whilst those rich men whose fortunes approach the limit will be tempted to extravagant ways of living. The limitation of individual fortunes may be expected to slow down the formation of capital.

  Similar considerations apply to proposals, which one hears in various quarters, to abolish the right of inheritance. To abolish inheritance and the right to make donations intended to circumvent the prohibition, would not bring about complete Socialism, though it would, in a generation, transfer to society a considerable part of all means of production. But it would, above all, slow down the formation of new capital, and a part of the existing capital would be consumed.

  3

  Profit-Sharing

  One school of well-meaning writers and entrepreneurs recommends profit-sharing with wage earners. Profits shall no longer accrue exclusively to the entrepreneur; they shall be divided between the entrepreneurs and the workers. A share in the profits of the undertakings shall supplement the wages of the workers. Engel expects from this no less than “a settlement, satisfying both parties, of the raging fight, and thus, too, a solution of the social question.”50 Most protagonists of the profit-sharing system attach no less importance to it.

  The proposals to transfer to the worker a part of the entrepreneur’s profits proceed from the idea that, under Capitalism, the entrepreneur deprives the worker of a part of that which he could really claim. The basis for the idea is the obscure concept of an inalienable right to the “full” product of labour, the exploitation theory in its popular, most naive, form, here expressed more or less openly. To its advocates the social question appears as a fight for the entrepreneur’s profit. The socialists want to give this to the workers; the entrepreneurs claim it for themselves. Somebody comes along and recommends that the fight be ended by a compromise: each party shall have part of his claim. Both will thus fare well: The entrepreneurs, because their claim is obviously unjust, the workers because they get, without fighting, a considerable increase of income. This train of thought, which treats the problem of the social organization of labour as a problem of rights, and tries to settle a historical dispute as if it were a quarrel between two tradesmen, by splitting the difference, is so wrong that there is no purpose in going into it more closely. Either private ownership in the means of production is a necessary institution of human society or it is not. If it is not, one can or must abolish it, and there is no reason to stop half-way out of regard for the entrepreneur’s personal interests. If, however, private property is necessary, it needs no other justification for existing, and there is no reason why, by partially abolishing it, its social effectiveness should be weakened.

  The friends of profit-sharing think it would spur the worker on to a more zealous fulfillment of his duties than can be expected from a worker not interested in the yield of the undertaking. Here too, they err. Where the efficiency of labour has not been diminished by all kinds of socialist destructionist sabotage, where the worker can be dismissed without difficulty and his wages adjusted to his achievements without regard to collective agreements, no other spur is necessary to make him industrious. There, in such conditions, the worker works fully conscious of the fact that his wages depend on what he does. But where these factors are lacking, the prospect of getting a fraction of the net profit of the undertaking would not induce him to do more than just as much as is formally necessary. Though of a different order of magnitude, it is the same problem we have already considered in examining the inducements in a socialist community to overcome the disutility of labour. Of the product of the extra labour, the burden of which the worker alone has to carry, he receives a fraction not sufficiently large to reward the extra effort.

  If the workers’ profit-sharing is carried out individually, so that each worker participates in the profits of just that undertaking he happens to be working for, there are created without any evident reason, differences in income, which fulfil no economic function, appear to be utterly unjustified, and which all must feel unjust. “It is inadmissible that the turner in one works should earn twenty marks and receive ten marks more as a share of profits, while a turner in a competing works, where business is worse, perhaps worse directed, gets only twenty marks.” This means either that a “rent” is created and perhaps that jobs connected with this “rent” are sold or that the worker tells his entrepreneur: “I don’t care from what fund you pay the thirty marks; if my colleague receives it from the competition I demand it too.”51 Individual profit-sharing must lead straight to Syndicalism, even if it is a Syndicalism where the entrepreneur still keeps part of the entrepreneur’s profit.

  However, another way could be tried. Not the individual workers participate in the profits, but all the citizens; a part of the profits of all undertakings is distributed to all without distinction. This is already realized in taxation. Long before the war, joint stock companies in Austria had to surrender to the State and to other tax-levying authorities from twenty to forty per cent of their net profits; in the first years of the peace this grew from sixty to ninety per cent and more. The “mixed” public enterprise is the attempt to find a form for the community’s participation, which makes the community share the management of the concern, in return for which it has to share in the providing of capital. Here, too, there is no reason why one should be content with half abolishing private property, if society could abolish the institution completely without injuring the productivity of labour. If, however, to abolish private property is disadvantageous, then the half abolition is disadvantageous too. The half-measure may, in fact, be hardly less destructive than the clean sweep. Advocates usually say that the “mixed” undertaking leaves scope for the entrepreneur. However, as we have already shown, state or municipal activity hampers the freedom of the entrepreneur’s decisions. An undertaking forced to collaborate with civil servants is not able to utilize the means of production in such ways as profit making demands.52

  4

  Syndicalism

  As political tactics Syndicalism presents a particular method of attack by organized labour for the attainment of their political ends. This end may also be the establishment of the true Socialism, that is to say, the socialization of the means of production. But the term Syndicalism is also used in a second sense, in which it means a socio-political aim of a special kind. In that sense Syndicalism is to be understood as a movement whose object is to bring about a state of society in which the workers are the owners of the means of production. We are concerned here with Syndicalism only as an aim; with Syndicalism as a movement, as political tactics, we need not deal.

  Syndicalism as an aim and Syndicalism as political tactics do not always go hand in hand. Many groups which have adopted the syndicalist “direct action” as the basis of their proceedings are striving for a genuinely socialist community. On the other hand the attempt to realize Syndicalism as an end can be carried on by methods other than those of violence recommended by Sorel.

  In the minds of the great bulk of workers who call themselves socialists or communists, Syndicalism presents itself, at least as vividly as Socialism, as the aim of the great revolution. The “petty bourgeois” ideas which Marx thought to overcome are very widespread—even in the ranks of the Marxian socialists. The great mass desire not the genuine Socialism, that is, centralized Socialism but Syndicalism. The worker wishes to be the lord of the means of production which are employed in his particular undertaking. The social movement round about us shows more clearly every day that this and nothing else is what the worker desires. In contradistinction to Socialism which is the result of armchair study, syndicalist ideas spring direct from the mind of the ordinary man, who is always hostile to “unearned” income obtained by someone else. Syndicalism like Socialism aims at the abolition of the separation of worker from the means of production, only it proceeds by another method. Not all the workers will become the owners of all the means of production; those in a particular industry or undertaking or the workers engaged in a complete branch of production will obtain the means of production employed in it. The railways to the railway men, the mines to the miners, the factories to the factory hand—this is the slogan.

  We must ignore every freak scheme for enacting Syndicalist ideas and take a thoroughly consistent application of the main principle to the whole economic order as the starting point of our examination. This is not difficult. Every measure which takes the ownership of all the means of production from the entrepreneurs, capitalists, and landlords without transferring it to the whole of the citizens of the economic area, is to be regarded as Syndicalism. It makes no difference in this case, whether in such a society more or less of these associations are formed. It is unimportant whether all branches of production are constituted as separate bodies or only single undertakings, just as they happen to have evolved historically, or single factories of even single workshops. In essence the scheme is hardly affected if the lines drawn through the society are more or less, horizontal or vertical. The only decisive point is that the citizen of such a community is the owner of a share of certain means of production and the non-owner of other means of production, and that in some cases, for example, when he is unable to work, he may own no property at all. The question whether the workers’ incomes will, or will not, be noticeably increased, is unimportant here. Most workers have absolutely fantastic ideas about the increase of wealth they could expect under syndicalist arrangements of property. They believe that just the mere distribution of the share which landlords, capitalists and entrepreneurs draw under capitalist industry must considerably increase the income of each of them. Apart from this they expect an important increase in the product of industry, because they, who regard themselves as particularly expert, will themselves conduct the enterprise, and because every worker will be personally interested in the prosperity of the undertaking. The worker will no longer work for a stranger but for himself. The liberal thinks quite differently about all this. He points out that the distribution of rent and profit incomes among the workers would bring them an insignificant increase in incomes. Above all he maintains that enterprises which are no longer directed by the self-interest of entrepreneurs working on their own account but by labour leaders unfitted for the task will yield less, so that the workers will not only earn no more than under a free economy, but considerably less.

  If syndicalist reform merely handed over to the workers the ownership of the means of production and left the system of property of the capitalist order otherwise unchanged, the result would be no more than a primitive redistribution of wealth. The redistribution of goods with the object of restoring the equality of property and wealth is at the back of the mind of the ordinary man whenever he thinks of reforming social conditions, and it forms the basis for all popular proposals for socialization. This is not incomprehensible in the case of land workers, to whom the object of all ambition is to acquire a homestead and a piece of land large enough to support him and his family; in the village, redistribution, the popular solution of the social problem, is quite conceivable. In industry, in mining, in communications, in trade and in banking where a physical redistribution of the means of production is quite inconceivable, we get instead a desire for the division of the property rights while preserving the unity of the industry or enterprise. To divide in this simple way would be, at best, a method of abolishing for the moment the inequality in the distribution of income and poverty. But after a short time, some would have squandered their shares, and others would have enriched themselves by acquiring the shares of the less economically efficient. Consequently there would have to be constant redistributions, which would simply serve to reward frivolity and waste—in short every form of uneconomic behaviour. There will be no stimulus to economy if the industrious and thrifty are constantly compelled to hand over the fruits of their industry and thrift to the lazy and extravagant.

  Yet even this result—the temporary achievement of equality of income and property—could not be accomplished by syndicalization. For syndicalization is by no means the same for all workers. The value of the means of production in different branches of production is not proportional to the number of workers employed. It is unnecessary to elaborate the fact that there are products which involve more of the productive factor, labour, and less of the productive factor, Nature. Even a division of the means of production at the historical commencement of all human production would have led to inequality; much more so if these means are syndicalized at a highly progressive stage of capital accumulation in which not only natural factors of production but produced means of production are divided. The values of the share falling to individual workers in a redistribution of this kind would be very different: some would obtain more, others less, and as a result some would draw a larger income from property—unearned income—than others. Syndicalization is in no way a means of achieving equality of incomes. It abolishes the existing inequality of incomes and property and replaces it by another. It may be that this syndicalistic inequality is regarded as more just than that of the capitalistic order—but on this point science can give no judgment.

  If syndicalist reform is to mean more than the mere redistribution of productive goods, then it cannot allow the property arrangements of Capitalism to persist in regard to the means of production. It must withdraw productive goods from the market. Individual citizens must not dispose of the shares in the means of production which are allotted to them; for under Syndicalism these are bound up with the person of the owner in a much closer way than is the case in the liberal society. How, in different circumstances, they may be separated from the person can be regulated in various ways.

  The naive logic of the advocates of Syndicalism assumes without any further ado a completely stationary condition of society, and pays no attention to the problem, how the system will adapt itself to changes of economic conditions. If we assume that no changes occur in the methods of production, in the relations of supply and demand, in technique, or in population, then everything seems to be quite in order. Each worker has only one child, and departs out of this world at the moment his successor and sole heir becomes capable of work; the son promptly steps into his place. We can perhaps assume that a change of occupation, a transfer from one branch of production to another or from one independent undertaking to another by a voluntary simultaneous exchange of positions and of shares in the means of production will be permitted. But for the rest the syndicalist state of society necessarily assumes a strictly imposed caste system and the complete end of all changes in industry and, therefore, in life. The mere death of a childless citizen disturbs it and opens up problems which are quite insoluble within the logic of the system.

  In the syndicalist society the income of a citizen is made up of the yield from his portion of property and of the wages from his labour. If the shares in the property in the means of production can be freely inherited, then in a very short time differences in property holding will arise even if no changes occur among the living. Even if at the beginning of the syndicalist era the separation of the worker from the means of production is overcome, so that every citizen is an enterpreneur as well as a worker in his undertaking, it may so happen that later on citizens who do not belong to a particular undertaking inherit shares in it. This would very quickly drive the syndicalist society to a separation of labour and property, without the advantages of the capitalist order of society.53

  Every economic change immediately creates problems on which Syndicalism would inevitably be wrecked. If changes in the direction and extent of demand or in the technique of production cause changes in the organization of the industry, which require the transfer of workers from one concern to another or from one branch of production to another, the question immediately arises what is to be done with the shares of these workers in the means of production. Should the workers and their heirs keep the shares in those industries to which they happened to belong at the actual time of syndicalization and enter the new industries as simple workers earning wages, without being allowed to draw any part of the property income? Or should they lose their share on leaving an industry and in return receive a share per head equal to that possessed by the workers already occupied in the new industry? Either solution would quickly violate the principle of Syndicalism. If, in addition, men were permitted to dispose of their shares, conditions would gradually return to the state prevailing before the reform. But if the worker on his departure from an industry loses his share and on entering another industry acquires a share in that, those workers who stood to lose by the change would, naturally, oppose energetically every change in production. The introduction of a process making for greater productivity of labour would be resisted if it displaced workers or might displace them. On the other hand the workers in an undertaking or branch of industry would oppose any development by the introduction of new workers if it threatened to reduce their income from property. In short, Syndicalism would make every change in production practically impossible. Where it existed there could be no question of economic progress.

  As an aim Syndicalism is so absurd, that speaking generally, it has not found any advocates who dared to write openly and clearly in its favour. Those who have dealt with it under the name of co-partnership have never thought out its problems. Syndicalism has never been anything else than the ideal of plundering hordes.

  5

  Partial Socialism

  Natural ownership of the means of production is divisible. In capitalist society, it generally is divided.54 But the power to dispose which belongs to him who directs production and which alone we call ownership, is indivisible and illimitable. It may belong to several people jointly, but cannot be divided in the sense that the power of disposing itself can be decomposed into separate rights of command. The power to dispose of the use of a commodity in production can only be unitary; that this could in any way be dissolved into elements is unthinkable. Ownership in the natural sense cannot be limited; wherever one speaks of limitation, one means either a curtailment of a too-widely drawn juristic definition or recognition of the fact that ownership in the natural sense belongs concretely to someone other than the person whom the law recognizes as owner.

  All attempts to abolish by a compromise the contrast between common property and private ownership in the means of production are therefore mistaken. Ownership is always where the power to dispose resides.55 Therefore State Socialism and planned economies, which want to maintain private property in name and in law, but in fact, because they subordinate the power of disposing to State orders, want to socialize property, are socialist systems in the full sense. Private property exists only where the individual can deal with his private ownership in the means of production in the way he considers most advantageous. That in doing so he serves other members of society, because in the society based on division of labour everyone is the servant of all and all the masters of each, in no way alters the fact that he himself looks for the way in which he can best perform this service.

  It is not possible to compromise, either, by putting part of the means of production at the disposal of society and leaving the remainder to individuals. Such systems simply stand unconnected, side by side, and operate fully only within the space they occupy. Such mixtures of the social principles of organization must be considered senseless by everyone. No one can believe that the principle which he holds to be right should not be carried through to the end. Nor can anyone assert that one or the other of the systems proves the better only for certain groups of the means of production. Where people seem to be asserting this, they are really asserting that we must demand the one system at least for a group of the means of production or that it should be given at most for a group. Compromise is always only a momentary lull in the fight between the two principles, not the result of a logical thinking-out of the problem. Regarded from the stand-point of each side, half-measures are a temporary halt on the way to complete success.

  The best known and most respected of the systems of compromise believes indeed that it can recommend half-measures as a permanent institution. The land-reformers want to socialize the natural factors of production, but for the rest to leave private ownership in the means of production. They hereby proceed from the assumption, regarded as self-evident, that common property in the means of production gives a higher yield than private property. Because they regard land as the most important means of production, they wish to transfer it to society. With the breakdown of the thesis that public ownership could achieve better results than private ownership, the idea of land reform also falls to the ground. Whoever regards land as the most important means of production must certainly advocate the private ownership of land, if he considers private ownership the superior economic form.

  PART III

  THE ALLEGED INEVITABILITY OF SOCIALISM

  Section I.

  Social Evolution

  CHAPTER 17

  Socialistic Chiliasm

  1

  The Origin of Chiliasm

  Socialism derives its strength from two different sources. On the one hand it is an ethical, political, and economico-political challenge. The socialist order of society, fulfilling the claims of higher morality, is to replace the “immoral” capitalist economy; the “economic rule” of the few over the many is to give way to a co-operative order which alone can make true democracy possible; planned economy, the only rational system working according to uniform principles, is to sweep away the irrational private economic order, the anarchical production for profit. Socialism thus appears as a goal towards which we ought to strive because it is morally and rationally desirable. The task therefore of men of good will is to defeat the resistance to it which is inspired by misunderstanding and prejudice. This is the basic idea of that Socialism which Marx and his school call Utopian.

  On the other hand, however, Socialism is made to appear as the inevitable goal and end of historical evolution. An obscure force from which we cannot escape leads humanity step by step to higher planes of social and moral being. History is a progressive process of purification, with perfection, in the form of Socialism, at the end. This train of thought does not run counter to the ideas of Utopian Socialism. Rather it includes them, for it presupposes, as obviously self-evident, that the socialist condition would be better, nobler, and more beautiful than the non-socialist. But it goes farther; it sees the change to Socialism—envisioned as progress, an evolution to a higher stage—as something independent of human will. A necessity of Nature, Socialism is the inevitable outcome of the forces underlying social life: this is the fundamental idea of evolutionary socialism, which, in its Marxist form, has taken the proud name of “Scientific” Socialism.

  In recent times scholars have been at pains to prove that the main notions of the materialist or economic conception of history had been set forth by pre-Marxian writers, among them some of those whom Marx and his supporters contemptuously call Utopians. These researches and the critique of the materialist conception of history which accompany them, however, tend to set the problem in much too narrow a perspective. They concentrate on the peculiarities of the Marxist theory of evolution, its specifically economic nature, and the importance it gives to the class war, and they forget that it is also a doctrine of perfection, a theory of progress and evolution.

  The materialist conception of history contains three elements, which, though they combine to form a closed system, have each a special significance for the Marxian theory. First, it involves a special method of historical and sociological research. As such it tries to explain the relation between the economic structure and the whole life of a period. Secondly, it is a sociological theory, since it sets up a definite concept of class and class war as a sociological element. Finally, it is a theory of progress, a doctrine of the destiny of the human race, of the meaning and nature, purpose and aim of human life. This aspect of the materialist conception of history has been less noticed than the other two, yet this alone concerns socialist theory as such. Merely as a method of research, an heuristic principle for the cognition of social evolution, the materialist conception of history is obviously in no position to talk about the inevitability of a socialistic order of society. The conclusion that our evolution is tending towards Socialism does not of necessity follow from the study of economic history. The same is true of the theory of the class-war. Once the view has been adopted that the history of all previous society is the history of class struggles, it becomes difficult to see why the struggle of classes should suddenly disappear. Might it not be supposed that what had always been the substance of history will continue to be so to the very end? Only as a theory of progress can the materialist conception of history concern itself with the final goal of historical evolution and assert that the decay of Capitalism and the victory of the proletariat are alike inevitable. Nothing has helped the spread of socialist ideas more than this belief that Socialism is inevitable. Even the opponents of Socialism are for the most part bewitched by it: it takes the heart out of their resistance. The educated person is afraid of appearing unmodern if he does not show that he is actuated by the “social” spirit, for already the age of Socialism, the historic day of the Fourth Estate, is supposed to have dawned and everyone who still clings to Liberalism is in consequence a reactionary. Every triumph of the socialist idea which brings us nearer to the socialist way of production is counted as progress; every measure which protects private property is a setback. The one side looks on with sadness or an even deeper emotion, the other with delight, as the age of private property passes with the changing times, but all are convinced that history has destined it to irrevocable destruction.

  Now as a theory of progress, going beyond experience and what can be experienced, the materialist conception of history is not science but metaphysics. The essence of all metaphysics of evolution and history is the doctrine of the beginning and end, the origin and purpose of things. This is conceived either cosmically, embracing the whole universe, or it is anthropocentric and considers man alone. It can be religious or philosophic. The anthropocentric metaphysical theories of evolution are known as the philosophy of history. The theories of evolution which are of a religious character must always be anthropocentric, for the high significance religion attaches to mankind can be justified only by an anthropocentric doctrine. These theories are based generally on the assumption of a paradisiac origin, a Golden Age, from which man is moving farther and farther away, only to return finally to an equally good, or, if possible, even better, age of perfection. This generally includes the idea of Salvation. The return of the Golden Age will save men from the ills which have befallen them in an age of evil. Thus the whole doctrine is a message of earthly salvation. It must not be confused with that supreme refinement of the religious idea of Salvation developed in those doctrines which transfer salvation from Man’s earthly life into a better world Beyond. According to these doctrines the earthly life of the individual is never the final end. It is merely preparation for a different, better and painless existence which may even be found in a state of non-existence, in dissolution in the All, or in Destruction.

  For our civilization the message of salvation of the Jewish prophets came to have a special importance. The Jewish Prophets promise no salvation in a better world beyond, they proclaim a Kingdom of God on Earth. “Behold, the days come, saith the Lord, that the plowman shall overtake the reaper, and the treader of grapes him that soweth the seed; and the mountains shall drop sweet wine, and all the hills shall melt.”1 “The wolf also shall dwell with the lamb, and the leopard shall lie down with the kid; and the calf and the young lion and the fatling together; and a little child shall lead them. And the cow and the bear shall feed, their young ones shall lie down together: and the lion shall eat straw like the ox. And the suckling child shall play on the hole of the asp, and the weaned child shall put his hand on the cockatrice’ den. They shall not hurt or destroy in all my holy mountain, for the earth shall be full of the knowledge of the Lord, as the waters cover the sea.”2 Only when such a message of salvation is promised for the immediate future will it be joyfully accepted. And in fact Isaiah says that only “yet a very little while” separates men from the promised hour.3 But the longer they have to wait the more impatient must the faithful become. What good to them is a Kingdom of Redemption which they will not live to enjoy! The promise of salvation therefore, must necessarily expand into a doctrine of the Resurrection of the Dead, a Resurrection that brings every individual before the Lord, to be judged good or evil.

  Judaism is full of these ideas at the time when Jesus appears among his people as the Messiah. He comes not only to proclaim an imminent salvation but also, in fulfilment of the prophecy, as the bringer of the Kingdom of God.4 He walks among the people and preaches, but the world goes its way as of old. He dies on the cross, but everything remains as it was. At first this shakes the faith of the disciples profoundly. For the time being they go all to pieces and the first little congregation scatters. Only belief in the Resurrection of Christ crucified reinspires them, filling them with fresh enthusiasm and giving them the strength to win new adherents to their doctrine of salvation.5 The message of salvation they preach is the same that was preached by Christ: the Lord is near and with him the great Day of Judgment, when the world shall be renewed and the Kingdom of God founded in place of the Kingdoms of the world. But as expectation of an imminent Return of Christ vanished and the growing congregations began to settle down to a longer period of waiting, the belief in salvation had also to undergo a change. No lasting world-religion could have been built up on the belief that the Kingdom of God was imminent. Each day that left the prophecy unfulfilled would have impaired the Church’s prestige. The fundamental idea of primitive Christianity that the Kingdom of God was at hand had to be transformed into the Christian cult: into the belief that the heavenly presence of their risen Lord entered into the congregation, and into belief in the salvation of the sinful world by Him. Only thus could the Christian Religious Community be founded. From the moment of this transformation Christian doctrine ceases to expect a Kingdom of God on Earth. The idea of salvation is sublimated into the doctrine that by baptism the faithful become part of the Body of Christ. “Already in Apostolic times the Kingdom of God becomes merged in the Church, and all that is left for the Coming of the Kingdom is the glorification of the Church, the shattering of the earthly vessel, and the liberation of the shining treasure from its mortal frame. For the rest, the Kingdom of God is replaced by the eschatology of Heaven, Hell and Purgatory, Immortality and the Beyond—a contrast to the Gospels which is of the highest significance. But even this end recedes, until at last the Millennium came to mean the Church.”6

  There was, however, another way of meeting the difficulties which arose when fulfilment of the promise had been postponed longer than was originally expected. The faithful could take refuge in the belief which had once sustained the Prophets. According to this doctrine an earthly Kingdom of Salvation lasting one thousand years would be set up. Condemned by the Church as heresy, this doctrine of the Visible Return of Christ is continually revived not only as a religious and political belief, but above all as an idea of social and economic revolution.

  From Christian Chiliasm, which runs through the centuries constantly renewing its strength, a single step leads to the philosophic Chiliasm which in the eighteenth century was the rationalist reinterpretation of Christianity; and thence, through Saint Simon, Hegel, and Weitling to Marx and Lenin.7 Curiously enough, it is this particular Socialism, derived in this way from mystical ideas whose origin is lost in the darkness of history, which has called itself scientific Socialism, while it has tried to disqualify as “Utopian” the Socialism that is derived from the rational considerations of the philosophers.

  The philosophical anthropocentric metaphysics of evolution resembles the religious in every essential. In its prophecy of salvation is found the same strange mixture of ecstatically extravagant phantasy with uninspired commonplace and coarse materialism as is found in the most ancient messianic prophecies. Like Christian literature which seeks to interpret the apocalypse, it tries to prove itself applicable to life by interpreting concrete historical events. In these attempts it often makes itself ridiculous, rushing in on every great occasion with a doctrine which both meets the case and embraces the history of the universe. How many of these philosophies of history arose during the World War!

  2

  Chiliasm and Social Theory

  The metaphysical philosophy of history must be clearly distinguished from the rational. The latter is built up solely on experience, seeking results which are based on logic and empiricism. Wherever rational philosophy has to go beyond this, it tries hypotheses, but it never forgets where experience ceases and hypothetical interpretations begin. Where experience is possible it avoids using conceptual fictions; it never tries to supplant experimental science. Its only aim is to unify our view of social events and of the course of historical evolution. Only thus is it able to establish a law which governs changes in social conditions. By indicating, or attempting to indicate, the force which determines the growth of society, it endeavours to reveal the principle determining social evolution. This principle is assumed to be externally valid, that is, it is active so long as there is any society at all. Were it otherwise, a second principle would have to be placed next to this one, and it would be necessary to show under which conditions the first ruled and under which the second. But this only means that the law governing the interchange of the two principles would be the ultimate Law of Social Life.

  To define a principle according to which society grows, and changes in social conditions take place, is a different thing from defining the course which social evolution takes. Such a course is necessarily limited. It has a beginning and an end. The reign of a law is necessarily unlimited, without beginning or end. It is continuity, not an occurrence. The law is imperfect if it defines only a part of social evolution and leaves us in the lurch after a certain point. In this case it would cease to be a law. The end of social evolution can be no other than that of society itself.

  The teleological view describes the course of evolution in all its windings and deviations. Thus it is typically a theory of stages. It shows us the successive stages of civilization until one is reached which must necessarily be the last, because no other follows it. When this point has been reached it is impossible to see how history is to proceed.8

  The chiliastic philosophy of history takes the “standpoint of Providence, which lies beyond all human wisdom”; it aims at prophesying as only “the eye of a God” could prophesy.9 Whether we call its teaching Poetry, Prophecy, Faith, Hope or anything else whatever, there are two things it can never be: Science or Knowledge. Nor may it be called hypothesis, any more than the utterances of a clairvoyant or a fortune-teller may be called hypotheses. It was an unusually clever trick on the part of the Marxists to call their chiliastic teachings science. Such a step was bound to be effective in an age when people relied on nothing but science, and rejected metaphysics (though, admittedly, only to surrender themselves uncritically to the native metaphysics of Büchner and Moleschott).

  The law of social evolution tells us much less than the metaphysics of evolution. It limits its statements a priori in admitting that its sway can be frustrated by the co-existence of forces other than those it describes. On the other hand, it admits no limits to its applicability. It claims eternal validity, it is without beginning and without end. But it does not evoke a dark fate whose “will-less and impotent bearers” we are. It discloses only the inner driving power of our own will, revealing how it conforms to natural laws and why its existence is necessary. This is insight, not into man’s destiny, but into man’s doings.

  In so far as “scientific” Socialism is metaphysics, a chiliastic promise of salvation, it would be vain and superfluous to argue scientifically against it. It serves no useful purpose to fight mystical dogmas with reason. There is no teaching fanatics. They must break their heads against the wall. But Marxism is not merely chiliasm. It is sufficiently influenced by the scientific spirit of the nineteenth century to attempt to justify its doctrine rationally. With these attempts, and these only, we shall deal in the following chapters.

  CHAPTER 18

  Society

  1

  The Nature of Society

  The idea of human destiny dominates all the more ancient views of social existence. Society progresses towards a goal fore-ordained by the deity. Whoever thinks in this way is logically correct if, in speaking of progress and retrogression, of revolution and counterrevolution, of action and reaction he lays on these concepts the emphasis adopted by so many historians and politicians. History is judged according as it brings mankind nearer to the goal or carries it farther away.

  Social science, however, begins at the point where one frees oneself from such habits, and indeed from all valuation. Social science is indeed teleological in the sense in which every causal study of the will must be. But its concept of purpose is wholly comprised in the causal explanation. For social science causality remains the fundamental principle of cognition, the maintenance of which must not be impaired even by teleology.10 Since it does not evaluate purposes, it cannot speak of evolution to a higher plane, in the sense let us say, of Hegel and Marx. For it is by no means proved that all evolution leads upwards, or that every later stage is a higher one. No more, of course, can it agree with the pessimistic philosophers of history, who see in the historical process a decline, a progressive approach to a bad end. To ask what are the driving forces of historical evolution is to ask what is the nature of society and the origin and causes of the changes in social conditions. What society is, how it originates, how it changes—these alone can be the problems which scientific sociology sets itself.

  That the social life of men resembles the biological process is an observation of ancient date. It lies at the basis of the famous legend of Menenius Agrippa, handed down to us by Livy. Social science did itself little good when, inspired by the triumph of Biology in the nineteenth century, voluminous works developed this analogy to the point of absurdity. What is the use of calling the products of human activity “social intercellular substance”?11 Who was enlightened when scholars disputed which organ of the social body corresponded to the central nervous system? The best comment on this form of sociological study was the remark of an economist, to the effect that anyone who compared money with blood and the circulation of money with the circulation of blood would be making the same contribution to economics as would be made to biology by a man who compared blood with money and the blood-circulation with the circulation of money. Modern biology has borrowed from social science some of its most important concepts—that of evolution, of the division of labour, and of the struggle for existence. But it has not stopped short at metaphorical phrases and conclusions by analogy; rather has it proceeded to make profitable use of what it had gained. On the other hand biological-sociology did nothing but play a futile word-spinning game with the ideas it borrowed back. The romantic movement, with its “organic” theory of the state has done even less to clear up our knowledge of social interrelations. Because it deliberately cold-shouldered the most important achievement of social science up to that date—the system of classical Political Economy—it was unable to utilize the doctrine of the division of labour, that part of the classical system which must be the starting point of all sociology, as it is of modern biology.12

  Comparison with the biological organism should have taught sociology one thing: that the organism can only be conceived as a system of organs. This, however, merely means that the essence of the organism is the division of labour. Only division of labour makes the parts become members; it is in the collaboration of the members that we recognize the unity of the system, the organism.13 This is true of the life of plants and animals as well as of society. As far as the principle of the division of labour is concerned, the social body may be compared with the biological. The division of labour is the tertium comparationis (basis for comparison) of the old simile.

  The division of labour is a fundamental principle of all forms of life.14 It was first detected in the sphere of social life when political economists emphasized the meaning of the division of labour in the social economy. Biology then adopted it, at the instigation in the first place of Milne Edwards in 1827. The fact that we can regard the division of labour as a general law must not, however, prevent us from recognizing the fundamental differences between division of labour in the animal and vegetable organism on the one hand and division of labour in the social life of human beings on the other. Whatever we imagine to be the origin, evolution, and meaning of the physiological division of labour, it clearly does not shed any light on the nature of the sociological division of labour. The process that differentiates and integrates homogeneous cells is completely different from that which led to the growth of human society out of self-sufficient individuals. In the second process, reason and will play their part in the coalescence, by which the previously independent units form a larger unit and become parts of a whole, whereas the intervention of such forces in the first process is inconceivable.

  Even where creatures such as ants and bees come together in “animal communities,” all movements and changes take place instinctively and unconsciously. Instinct may very well have operated at the beginning and in the earliest stages of social formation also. Man is already a member of a social body when he appears as a thinking, willing creature, for the thinking man is inconceivable as a solitary individual. “Only amongst men does man become a man” (Fichte). The development of human reason and the development of human society are one and the same process. All further growth of social relations is entirely a matter of will. Society is the product of thought and will. It does not exist outside thought and will. Its being lies within man, not in the outer world. It is projected from within outwards.

  Society is co-operation; it is community in action.

  To say that Society is an organism, means that society is division of labour.15 To do justice to this idea we must take into account all the aims which men set themselves and the means by which these are to be attained. It includes every inter-relation of thinking and willing man. Modern man is a social being, not only as one whose material needs could not be supplied in isolation, but also as one who has achieved a development of reason and of the perceptive faculty that would have been impossible except within society. Man is inconceivable as an isolated being, for humanity exists only as a social phenomenon and mankind transcended the stage of animality only in so far as co-operation evolved the social relationships between the individuals. Evolution from the human animal to the human being was made possible by and achieved by means of social cooperation and by that alone. And therein lies the interpretation of Aristotle’s dictum that man is the πσλιτιχὸν (the living body politic).

  2

  The Division of Labour as the Principle of Social Development

  We are still far from understanding the ultimate and most profound secret of life, the principle of the origin of organisms. Who knows whether we shall ever discover it? All we know today is that when organisms are formed, something which did not exist before is created out of individuals. Vegetable and animal organisms are more than conglomerations of single cells, and society is more than the sum of the individuals of which it is composed. We have not yet grasped the whole significance of this fact. Our thoughts are still limited by the mechanical theory of the conservation of energy and of matter, which is never able to tell us how one can become two. Here again, if we are to extend our knowledge of the nature of life, understanding of the social organization will have to precede that of the biological.

  Historically division of labour originates in two facts of nature: the inequality of human abilities and the variety of the external conditions of human life on the earth. These two facts are really one: the diversity of Nature, which does not repeat itself but creates the universe in infinite, inexhaustible variety. The special nature of our inquiry, however, which is directed towards sociological knowledge, justifies us in treating these two aspects separately.

  It is obvious that as soon as human action becomes conscious and logical it must be influenced by these two conditions. They are indeed such as almost to force the division of labour on mankind.16 Old and young, men and women co-operate by making appropriate use of their various abilities. Here also is the germ of the geographical division of labour; man goes to the hunt and woman to the spring to fetch water. Had the strength and abilities of all individuals and the external conditions of production been everywhere equal the idea of division of labour could never have arisen. Man would never of himself have hit upon the idea of making the struggle for existence easier by co-operation in the division of labour. No social life could have arisen among men of equal natural capacity in a world which was geographically uniform.17 Perhaps men would have joined together to cope with tasks which were beyond the strength of individuals, but such alliances do not make a society. The relations they create are transient, and endure only for the occasion that brings them about. Their only importance in the origin of social life is that they create a rapprochement between men which brings with it mutual recognition of the difference in the natural capacities of individuals and thus in turn gives rise to the division of labour.

  Once labour has been divided, the division itself exercises a differentiating influence. The fact that labour is divided makes possible further cultivation of individual talent and thus co-operation becomes more and more productive. Through co-operation men are able to achieve what would have been beyond them as individuals, and even the work which individuals are capable of doing alone is made more productive. But all this can only be grasped fully when the conditions which govern increase of productivity under co-operation are set out with analytical precision.

  The theory of the international division of labour is one of the most important contributions of Classical Political Economy. It shows that as long as—for any reasons—movements of capital and labour between countries are prevented, it is the comparative, not the absolute, costs of production which govern the geographical division of labour.18 When the same principle is applied to the personal division of labour it is found that the individual enjoys an advantage in co-operating not only with people superior to himself in this or that capacity but also with those who are inferior to himself in every relevant way. If, through his superiority to B, A needs three hours’ labour for the production of one unit of commodity p compared with B’s five, and for the production of commodity q two hours against B’s four, then A will gain if he confines his labour to producing q and leaves B to produce p. If each gives sixty hours to producing both p and q, the result of A’s labour is 20p + 30q, of B’s 12p + 15q, and for both together 32p + 45q. If however, A confines himself to producing q alone he produces sixty units in 120 hours, whilst B, if he confines himself to producing p, produces in the same time twenty-four units. The result of the activity is then 24p + 60q, which, as p has for A a substitution value of 3 : 2q and for B one of 5 : 4q, signifies a larger production than 32p + 45q. Therefore it is obvious that every expansion of the personal division of labour brings advantages to all who take part in it. He who collaborates with the less talented, less able, and less industrious individuals gains an advantage equally as the man who associated with the more talented, more able, and more industrious. The advantage of the division of labour is mutual; it is not limited to the case where work is done which the solitary individual could never have carried out.

  The greater productivity of work under the division of labour is a unifying influence. It leads men to regard each other as comrades in a joint struggle for welfare, rather than as competitors in a struggle for existence. It makes friends out of enemies, peace out of war, society out of individuals.19

  3

  Organism and Organization

  Organism and organization are as different from each other as life is from a machine, as a flower which is natural from one which is artificial. In the natural plant each cell lives its own life for itself while functioning reciprocally with the others. What we call living is just this self-existence and self-maintenance. In the artificial plant the separate parts are members of the whole only as far as the will of him, who united them, has been effective. Only to the extent to which this will is effective are the parts within the organization inter-related. Each part occupies only the place given to it, and leaves that place, so to speak, only on instructions. Within this framework the parts can live, that is, exist for themselves, only in so far as the creator has put them alive into his creation. The horse which the driver has harnessed to the cart lives as a horse. In the organization, the “team,” the horse is just as foreign to the vehicle as is an engine to the car it drives. The parts may use their life in opposition to the organization, as, for instance, when the horse runs away with the carriage or the tissue out of which the artificial flower is made disintegrates under chemical action. Human organization is no different. Like society it is a result of will. But in this case the will no more produces a living social organism than the flower-maker produces a living rose. The organization holds together as long as the creating will is effective, no longer. The parts which compose the organization merge into the whole only so far as the will of the creator can impose itself upon them and their life can be fixed in the organization. In the battalion on parade there is one will, the will of the commander. Everything else so far as it functions within the organization is lifeless machinery. In this destruction of the will, or that portion of it which does not serve the purpose of the body of troops, lies the essence of military drill. The soldier in the phalangial order, fighting in line, in which the body of troops must be nothing more than an organization—is drilled. Within the mass there is no life. Whatever life the individual lives is by the side of, or outside the body of troops—against it perhaps, but never in it. modern warfare, based on the skirmisher’s personal enterprise, has to make use of the individual soldier, of his thought and his will. So the army no longer simply drills the soldier. It seeks to educate him.

  Organization is an association based on authority, organism is mutuality. The primitive thinker always sees things as having been organized from outside, never as having grown themselves, organically. He sees the arrow which he has carved, he knows how it came into existence and how it was set in motion. So he asks of everything he sees, who made it and who sets it in motion. He inquires after the creation of every form of life, the authors of every change in nature, and discovers an animistic explanation. Thus the Gods are born. Man sees the organized community with its contrast of rulers and ruled, and, accordingly, he tries to understand life as an organization, not as an organism. Hence the ancient conception of the head as the master of the body, and the use of the same term ’head’ for the chief of the organization.

  In recognizing the nature of the organism and sweeping away the exclusiveness of the concept of organization, science made one of its great steps forward. With all deference to earlier thinkers one may say that in the domain of Social Science this was achieved mainly in the eighteenth century, and that Classical Political Economy and its immediate precursors played the chief part. Biology took up the good work, flinging off all animistic and vitalistic beliefs. For modern biology the head is no longer the crown, the ruler of the body. In the living body there is no longer leader and followers, a contrast of sovereign and subjects, of means and purpose. There are only members, organs.

  To seek to organize society is just as crazy as it would be to tear a living plant to bits in order to make a new one out of the dead parts. An organization of mankind can only be conceived after the living social organism has been killed. The collectivist movements are therefore fore-doomed to failure. It may be possible to create an organization embracing all mankind. But this would always be merely an organization, side by side with which social life would continue. It could be altered and destroyed by the forces of social life, and it certainly would be destroyed from the moment it tried to rebel against these forces. To make Collectivism a fact one must first kill all social life, then build up the collectivist state. The Bolshevists are thus quite logical in wishing to dissolve all traditional social ties, to destroy the social edifice built up through countless centuries, in order to erect a new structure on the ruins. Only they overlook the fact that isolated individuals, between whom no kind of social relations exist, can no longer be organized.

  Organizations are possible only as long as they are not directed against the organic or do it any injury. All attempts to coerce the living will of human beings into the service of something they do not want must fail. An organization cannot flourish unless it is founded on the will of those organized and serves their purposes.

  4

  The Individual and Society

  Society is not mere reciprocity. There is reciprocity amongst animals, for example when the wolf eats the lamb or when the wolf and she-wolf mate. Yet we do not speak of animal societies or of a society of wolves. Wolf and lamb, wolf and she-wolf, are indeed members of an organism—the organism of Nature. But this organism lacks the specific characteristic of the social organism: it is beyond the reach of will and action. For the same reason, the relation between the sexes is not, as such, a social relation. When a man and a woman come together they follow the law which assigns to them their place in Nature. Thus far they are ruled by instinct. Society exists only where willing becomes a co-willing and action co-action. To strive jointly towards aims which alone individuals could not reach at all, or not with equal effectiveness—that is society.20

  Therefore, Society is not an end but a means, the means by which each individual member seeks to attain his own ends. That society is possible at all is due to the fact that the will of one person and the will of another find themselves linked in a joint endeavour. Community of work springs from community of will. Because I can get what I want only if my fellow citizen gets what he wants, his will and action become the means by which I can attain my own end. Because my willing necessarily includes his willing, my intention cannot be to frustrate his will. On this fundamental fact all social life is built up.21

  The principle of the division of labour revealed the nature of the growth of society. Once the significance of the division of labour had been grasped, social knowledge developed at an extraordinary pace, as we see from a comparison between Kant and those who came after him. The doctrine of the division of labour as put forward by eighteenth-century economists, was far from fully developed when Kant wrote. It had yet to be made precise by the Ricardian Theory of International Trade. But the Doctrine of the Harmony of Interests had already anticipated its far-reaching application to social theory. Kant was untouched by these ideas. His only explanation of society, therefore, is that there is an impulse in human beings to form a society, and a second contrary impulse that seeks to split up society. The antagonism of these two tendencies is used by Nature to lead men towards the ultimate goal to which it wishes to lead them.22 It is difficult to imagine a more threadbare idea than such an attempt to explain society by the interplay of two impulses, the impulse “to socialize oneself” and the impulse “to isolate oneself.” Obviously it goes no farther than the attempt to explain the effects of opium from the virtus dormitiva, cuius est natura sensus assupire (the sleep-inducing property whose nature is to dull the senses).

  5

  The Development of the Division of Labour

  In so far as the individual becomes a social being under the influence of blind instinct, before thought and will are fully conscious, the formation of society cannot be the subject of sociological inquiry. But this does not mean that Sociology must shift the task of explaining the origins of society on to another science, accepting the social web of mankind as a given fact. For if we decide—and this is the immediate consequence of equating society and division of labour—that the structure of society was incomplete at the appearance of the thinking and willing human being and that the constructive process is continuous throughout history, then we must seek a principle which makes this evolution intelligible to us. The economic theory of the division of labour gives us this principle. It has been said that the happy accident which made possible the birth of civilization was the fact that divided labour is more productive than labour without division. The division of labour extends by the spread of the realization that the more labour is divided the more productive it is. In this sense the extension of the division of labour is economic progress: it brings production nearer to its goal—the greatest possible satisfaction of wants, and this progress is sociological progress also, for it involves the intensification of the social relation.

  It is only in this sense, and if all teleological or ethical valuation is excluded, that it is legitimate to use the expression “progress” sociologically in historical inquiry. We believe that we can observe a certain tendency in the changes of social conditions and we examine each. single change separately, to see whether and how far this assumption is compatible with it. It may be that we make various assumptions of this kind, each of which corresponds in like measure to experience. The problem next arises of the relations between these assumptions, whether they are independent of each other or whether they are connected internally. We should then have to go further, and define the nature of the connection. But all that this amounts to is a study, free from valuation and based on a hypothesis, of the course of successive changes.

  If we disregard those theories of evolution that are naively built up on value judgments, we shall find, in the majority of the theories claiming to interpret social evolution, two outstanding defects which render them unsatisfactory. The first is that their evolutionary principle is not connected with society as such. Neither Comte’s law of the three stages of the human mind nor Lamprecht’s five stages of social-psychical development gives any clue to the inner and necessary connection between evolution of the mind and evolution of society. We are shown how society behaves when it has entered a new stage, but we want to know more, namely by what law society originates and transforms itself. The changes which we see as social changes are treated by such theories as facts acting on society from outside; but we need to understand them as the workings of a constant law. The second defeat is that all these theories are “stage” theories (Stufentheorien). For the stage-theories there is really no such thing as evolution, that is, no continuous change in which we can recognize a definite trend. The statements of these theories do not go beyond establishing a definite sequence of events; they give no proof of the causal connection between the stages constituting the sequence. At best they succeed in establishing parallels between the sequence of events in different nations. But it is one thing to divide human life into childhood, youth, maturity, and old age, it is another to reveal the law which governs the growth and decay of the organism. A certain arbitrariness attaches to every theory of stages. The delimitation of the stages always fluctuates.

  Modern German economic history has undoubtedly done right in making the division of labour the basis of its theory of evolution. But it has not been able to free itself from the old traditional scheme of development by stages. Its theory is still a stage-theory. Thus Bücher distinguishes the stage of the closed domestic economy (pure production for one’s own use, barterless economy), the stage of town economy (production for clients, the stage of direct exchange), and the stage of national economy (production for markets, the stage of the circulation of goods).23 Schmoller differentiates the periods of village economy, town economy, territorial economy, and state economy.24 Philippovich distinguishes closed domestic economy and trade economy, and within trade economy he finds the period of the locally limited trade, the period of trade controlled by the state and limited to the state area, and the period of free trade (developed national economy, Capitalism).25 Against these attempts to force evolution into a general scheme many grave objections have been raised. We need not discuss what value such classification may have in revealing the characteristics of clearly defined historical epochs and how far they may be admitted as aids to description. At any rate they should be used with great discretion. The barren dispute over the economic life of the nations of antiquity shows how easily such classifying may lead to our mistaking the shadow of scholastic word-splitting for the substance of historical reality. For sociological study the stage theories are useless.26 They mislead us in regard to one of the most important problems of history—that of deciding how far historical evolution is continuous. The solution of this problem usually takes the form either of an assumption, that social evolution—which it should be remembered is the development of the division of labour—has moved in an uninterrupted line, or by the assumption that each nation has progressed step-by-step over the same ground. Both assumptions are beside the point. It is absurd to say that evolution is uninterrupted when we can clearly discern periods of decay in history, periods when the division of labour has retrogressed. On the other hand, the progress achieved by individual nations by reaching a higher stage of the division of labour is never completely lost. It spreads to other nations and hastens their evolution. The fall of the ancient world undoubtedly put back economic evolution for centuries. But more recent historical research has shown that the ties connecting the economic civilization of antiquity with that of the Middle Ages were much stronger than people used to assume. The Exchange Economy certainly suffered badly under the storm of the great migration of peoples, but it survived them. The towns on which it depended, were not entirely ruined, and a link was soon made between the remnants of town-life and the new development of traffic by barter.27 In the civilization of the towns a fragment of the social achievements of antiquity was preserved and carried over into the life of the Middle Ages.

  Progress in the division of labour depends entirely on a realization of its advantages, that is, of its higher productivity. The truth of this first became fully evident through the free-trade doctrines of the physiocrats and the classical eighteenth-century political economy. But in rudiments it is found in all arguments favouring peace, wherever peace is praised, or war condemned. History is a struggle between two principles, the peaceful principle, which advances the development of trade, and the militarist-imperialist principle, which interprets human society not as a friendly division of labour but as the forcible repression of some of its members by others. The imperialistic principle continually regains the upper hand. The liberal principle cannot maintain itself against it until the inclination for peaceful labour inherent in the masses shall have struggled through to full recognition of its own importance as a principle of social evolution. Wherever the imperialistic principle is in force peace can only be local and temporary: it never lasts longer than the facts which created it. The mental atmosphere with which Imperialism surrounds itself is little suited to the promotion of the growth of the division of labour within state frontiers; it practically prohibits the extension of the division of labour beyond the political-military barriers which separate the states. The division of labour needs liberty and peace. Only when the modern liberal thought of the eighteenth century had supplied a philosophy of peace and social collaboration was the basis laid for the astonishing development of the economic civilization of that age—an age branded by the latest imperialistic and socialistic doctrines as the age of crass materialism, egotism and capitalism.

  Nothing could be more perverted than the conclusions drawn in this connection by the materialistic conception of history, which represents the development of social ideology as dependent on the stage of technical evolution which has been attained. Nothing is more erroneous than Marx’s well-known saying: “The handmill produces a society with feudal lords, the steam-mill a society with industrial capitalists.”28 It is not even formally correct. To try and explain social evolution through the evolution of technique is merely to side-track the problem without in any way solving it. For on such a conception, how are we to explain technical evolution itself?

  Ferguson showed that the development of technique depends on social conditions, and that each age gets as far in technique as is permitted by the stages it has reached in the social division of labour.29 Technical advances are possible only where the division of labour has prepared the way for their application. The mass manufacturing of shoes presupposes a society in which the production of shoes for hundreds of thousands or millions of human beings can be united in a few enterprises. In a society of self-sufficing peasants there is no possible use for the steam mill. Only the division of labour could inspire the idea of placing mechanical forces at the service of manufacture.30

  To trace the origin of everything concerned with society in the development of the division of labour has nothing in common with the gross and naive materialism of the technological and other materialistic theories of history. Nor does it by any means signify, as disciples of the idealistic philosophy are apt to maintain, an inadmissible limitation of the concept of social relations. Neither does it restrict society to the specifically material. That part of social life which lies beyond the economic is indeed the ultimate aim, but the ways which lead to it are governed by the law of all rational action; wherever they come into question there is economic action.

  6

  Changes in the Individual in Society

  The most important effect of the division of labour is that it turns the independent individual into a dependent social being. Under the division of labour social man changes, like the cell which adapts itself to be part of an organism. He adapts himself to new ways of life, permits some energies and organs to atrophy and develops others. He becomes one-sided. The whole tribe of romantics, the unbending laudatores temporis acti (praisers of time past), have deplored this fact. For them the man of the past who developed his powers “harmoniously” is the ideal: an ideal which alas no longer inspires our degenerate age. They recommend retrogression in the division of labour, hence their praise of agricultural labour, by which they always mean the almost self-sufficing peasant.31

  Here, again the modern socialist outdoes the rest. Marx promises that in the higher phase of the communist society “the enslaving subjection of individuals under the division of labour, and with this also the contrast between mental and bodily labour, shall have disappeared.”32 Account will be taken of the human “need for change.” “Alternation of mental and bodily labour” will “safeguard man’s harmonious development.”33

  We have already dealt with this illusion.34 Were it possible to achieve all human aims with only that amount of labour which does not itself cause any discomfort but at the same time relieves the sensation of displeasure that arises from doing nothing, then labour would not be an economic object at all. To satisfy needs would not be work but play. This, however, is not possible. Even the self-sufficient worker, for the most part, must labour far beyond the point where the effort is agreeable. One may assume that work is less unpleasant to him than to the worker who is tied to a definite task, as he finds at the beginning of each job he tackles fresh sensations of pleasure in the activity itself. If, nevertheless, man has given himself up more and more to the division of labour, it is because he has recognized that the higher productivity of labour thus specialized more than repays him for the loss of pleasure. The extent of the division of labour cannot be curtailed without reducing the productivity of labour. This is true of all kinds of labour. It is an illusion to believe that one can maintain productivity and reduce the division of labour.

  Abolition of the division of labour would be no remedy for the injuries inflicted on the individual, body and soul, by specialized labour, unless we are prepared to set back social development. It is for the individual himself to set about becoming a complete human being. The remedy lies in reforming consumption, not in “reforming” labour. Play and sport, the pleasure of art, reading are the obvious way of escape.

  It is futile to look for the harmoniously developed man at the outset of economic evolution. The almost self-sufficient economic subject as we know him in the solitary peasant of remote valleys shows none of that noble, harmonious development of body, mind, and feeling which the romantics ascribe to him. Civilization is a product of leisure and the peace of mind that only the division of labour can make possible. Nothing is more false than to assume that man first appeared in history with an independent individuality and that only during the evolution which led to the Great Society did he lose, together with material freedom, his spiritual independence. All history, evidence and observation of the lives of primitive peoples is directly contrary to this view. Primitive man lacks all individuality in our sense. Two South Sea Islanders resemble each other far more closely than two twentieth-century Londoners. Personality was not bestowed upon man at the outset. It has been acquired in the course of evolution of society.35

  7

  Social Regression

  Social evolution—in the sense of evolution of the division of labour—is a will-phenomenon: it depends entirely on the human will. We do not consider whether one is justified in regarding every advance in the division of labour and hence in the intensification of the social bond, as a rise to a higher stage; we must ask whether such a development is a necessary phenomenon. Is an ever greater development of society the content of history? Is it possible for society to stand still or retrogress?

  We must reject a priori any assumption that historical evolution is provided with a goal by any “intention,” or “hidden plan” of Nature, such as Kant imagined and Hegel and Marx had in mind; but we cannot avoid the inquiry whether a principle might not be found to demonstrate that continuous social growth is inevitable. The first principle that offers itself to our attention is the principle of natural selection. More highly developed societies attain greater material wealth than the less highly developed; therefore they have more prospect of preserving their members from misery and poverty. They are also better equipped to defend themselves from the enemy. One must not be misled by the observation that richer and more civilized nations were often crushed in war by nations less wealthy and civilized. Nations in an advanced stage of social evolution have always been able at least to resist a superior force of less developed nations. It is only decaying nations, civilizations inwardly disintegrated, which have fallen a prey to nations on the up grade. Where a more highly organized society has succumbed to the attack of a less developed people, the victors have in the end been culturally submerged, accepting the economic and social order, and even the language and faith of the conquered race.

  The superiority of the more highly developed societies lies not only in their material welfare but also quantitatively in the number of their members and qualitatively in the greater solidity of their internal structure. For this, precisely, is the key to higher social development: the widening of the social range, the inclusion in the division of labour of more human beings and its stronger grip on each individual. The more highly developed society differs from the less developed in the closer union of its members; this precludes the violent solution of internal conflict and forms externally a closed defensive front against any enemy. In less developed societies, where the social bond is still weak, and between the separate parts of which there exists a confederation for the purposes of war rather than true solidarity based on joint work and economic co-operation—disagreement breaks out more easily and more quickly than in highly developed societies. For the military confederation has no firm and lasting hold upon its members. By its very nature it is merely a temporary bond which is upheld by the prospect of momentary advantage, but dissolves as soon as the enemy has been defeated and the scramble for the booty sets in. In fighting against the less developed societies the more developed ones have always found that their greatest advantage lay in the lack of unity in the enemy’s ranks. Only temporarily do the nations in a lower state of organization manage to co-operate for great military enterprises. Internal disunity has always dispersed their armies quickly. Take for example the Mongol raids on the Central European civilization of the thirteenth century or the efforts of the Turks to penetrate into the West. The superiority of the industrial over the military type of society, to use Herbert Spencer’s expression, consists largely in the fact that associations which are merely military always fall to pieces through internal disunity.36

  But there is another circumstance which advances further social development. It has been shown that it is to the interest of all members of society that the social range should be extended. For a highly developed social organism it is by no means a matter of indifference whether or not nations outside its range continue to lead a self-sufficient existence on a lower plane of social evolution. It is to the interest of the more advanced organism to draw the less advanced into the area of its economic and social community, even though its persistence in remaining on a lower plane makes it politically and militarily innocuous, and even though no immediate advantages are likely to accrue from the occupation of its territory, in which, presumably, the natural conditions of production are unfavourable. We have seen that it is always an advantage to widen the range of workers in a society that divides labour, so that even a more efficient people may have an interest in co-operating with a less efficient. This is what so often drives nations of a high social development to expand their field of economic activity by absorbing hitherto inaccessible territories. The opening up of the backward regions of the Near and Far East, of Africa and America, cleared the way for a world-wide economic community, so that shortly before the World War we were in sight of realizing the dream of an œcumenical society. Has the war merely interrupted this development for a brief period or has it utterly destroyed it? Is it conceivable that this development can cease, that society can even retrogress?

  This problem cannot be approached except in connection with another: the problem of the death of nations. It is customary to talk of nations aging and dying, of young and old communities. The comparison is lame—as are all comparisons—and in discussing such things we are well advised to discard metaphorical phrases. What is the core of the problem that here presents itself?

  It is clear that we must not confuse it with another not less difficult problem, the problem of the changes of the national quality. A thousand or fifteen hundred years ago the Germans spoke a different language from that of today, but we should not think of saying, on that account, that German medieval culture was “dead.” On the contrary we see in the German culture an uninterrupted evolutionary chain, stretching (without mentioning lost monuments of literature) from the “Heliand,” and Otfried’s Gospels to the present day. We do indeed say of the Pomeranians and Prussians, who in the course of centuries have been assimilated by the German colonists, that they have died out, yet we shall hardly maintain that as nations they grew “old.” To carry through the simile one would have to talk of nations that had died young. We are not concerned with national transformation; our problem is different. Neither does the decay of states come into the question, for this phenomenon sometimes appears as a sequence to the aging nations and sometimes independently of it. The fall of the ancient state of Poland had nothing to do with any decay of Polish civilization or of the Polish people. It did not stop the social development of Poland.

  The facts which are present in practically all the examples brought forward of the aging of a culture are: a decline in population, a diminution of welfare, and the decay of the towns. The historical significance of all these phenomena becomes clear as soon as we conceive of the aging of nations as the retrogression of the social division of labour and of society. The decline of the ancient world for instance, was a social retrogression. The decline of the Roman Empire was only a result of the disintegration of ancient society which after reaching a high level of division of labour sank back into an almost moneyless economy. Thus towns were depopulated and thus, also, did the population of the countryside diminish and want and misery set in simply because an economic order working on a lower level in respect of the social division of labour is less productive. Technical skill was gradually lost, artistic talent decayed, scientific thought was slowly extinguished. The word which most aptly describes this process is disintegration. The Classical culture died because Classical society retrogressed.37

  The death of nations is the retrogression of the social relation, the retrogression of the division of labour. Whatever may have been the cause in individual cases, it has always been the cessation of the disposition to social co-operation which actually effected the decline. This may once have seemed an incomprehensible riddle to us, but now that we watch with terror the process at work in our own experience we come nearer to understanding it, though we still fail to recognize the deepest, most ultimate causes of the change.

  It is the social spirit, the spirit of social co-operation, which forms, develops, and upholds societies. Once it is lost, the society falls apart again. The death of a nation is social retrogression, the decline from the division of labour to self-sufficiency. The social organism disintegrates into the cells from which it began. Man remains, but society dies.38

  There is no evidence that social evolution must move steadily upwards in a straight line. Social standstill and social retrogression are historical facts which we cannot ignore. World history is the graveyard of dead civilizations, and in India and Eastern Asia we see large-scale examples of civilization at a standstill.

  Our literary and artistic cliques whose exaggerated opinion of their own trifling productions contrast so vividly with the modesty and self-criticism of the really great artists, say that it does not matter much whether economic evolution continues so long as inner culture is intensified. But all inner culture requires external means for its realization, and these external means can be attained only by economic effort. When the productivity of labour decays through the retrogression of social co-operation the decay of inner culture follows.

  All the older civilizations were born and grew up without being fully conscious of the basic laws of cultural evolution and the significance of division of labour and co-operation. In the course of their development they had often to combat tendencies and movements inimical to civilization. Often they triumphed over these, but sooner or later they fell. They succumbed to the spirit of disintegration. Through the social philosophy of Liberalism men became conscious of the laws of social evolution for the first time, and for the first time clearly recognized the basis of civilization and cultural progress. Those were days when hopes for the future ran high. Unimagined vistas seemed to be opening up. But it was not to be. Liberalism had to meet the opposition of militaristic-nationalist and, above all, of socialist-communist doctrines which tended to bring about social dissolution. The nationalist theory calls itself organic, the socialist theory calls itself social, but in reality both are disorganizing and anti-social in their effect.

  Of all accusations against the system of Free Trade and Private Property, none is more foolish than the statement that it is anti-social and individualistic and that it atomizes the body social. Trade does not disintegrate, as romantic enthusiasts for the autarky of small portions of the earth’s surface assert; it unites. The division of labour is what first makes social ties: it is the social element pure and simple. Whoever advocates the economic self-sufficiency of nations and states, seeks to disintegrate the ecumenical society; whoever seeks to destroy the social division of labour within a nation by means of class war is anti-social.

  A decline of the ecumenical society, which has been slowly forming itself during the last two hundred years under the influence of the gradual germination of the liberal idea, would be a world catastrophe absolutely without parallel in history as we know it. No nation would be spared. Who then would rebuild the shattered world?

  8

  Private Property and Social Evolution

  The division of individuals into owners and non-owners is an outcome of the division of labour.

  The second great sociological achievement of Classical Political Economy and the “individualistic” social theory of the eighteenth century was to recognize the social function of private property. From the older point of view property was always considered more or less a privilege of the Few, a raid upon the common stock, an institution regarded ethically as an evil, if sometimes as an inevitable one. Liberalism was the first to recognize that the social function of private ownership in the means of production is to put the goods into the hands of those who know best how to use them, into the hands, that is, of the most expert managers. Nothing therefore is more foreign to the essence of property than special privileges for special property and protection for special producers. Any kind of constraint such as exclusive rights and other privileges of producers, are apt to obstruct the working of the social function of property. Liberalism fights such institutions as vigorously as it opposes every attempt to limit the freedom of the worker.

  The owner takes nothing away from anyone. No one can say that he goes short because of another’s abundance. It is flattering the envious instincts of the masses to give them a calculation of how much more the poor man would have to dispose of, if property were equally distributed. What is overlooked is the fact that the volume of production and of the social income are not fixed and unchangeable but depend essentially upon the distribution of property. If this is interfered with, there is danger that property may fall into the hands of those not so competent to maintain it, those whose foresight is less, whose disposal of their means is less productive; this would necessarily reduce the amount produced.39 The ideas of distributive Communism are atavistic, harking back to the times before social relations existed or reached their present stage of development, when the yield of production was correspondingly much lower. The landless man of an economic order based on production without exchange is quite logical in making the redistribution of fields the goal of his ambition. But the modern proletarian misunderstands the nature of social production when he hankers after a similar redistribution.

  Liberalism combats the socialist ideal of transferring the means of production to the hands of organized society with the argument that socialist production would give a lower yield. Against this the Socialism of the Hegelian school seeks to prove that the evolution of history leads inevitably to the abolition of private ownership in the means of production.

  It was the view of Lassalle that “the course of all legal history consists, generally speaking, in an ever greater limitation of the property of the individual, and in placing more and more objects outside private ownership.” The tendency to enlarge the freedom of property which is read into historical evolution is only apparent. However much the “idea of the increasingly rapid reduction of the sphere of private property as a principle working in the cultural and historical development of law could be held to be paradoxical,” yet, according to Lassalle it survived the most detailed examination. Unfortunately Lassalle produced no details of the examination of this idea. According to his own words he “honoured it (the idea) with a few very superficial glances instead.”40 Neither has anyone since Lassalle’s time undertaken to provide a proof. But even if the attempt had been made, this fact would by no means have demonstrated the necessity of the development in question. The conceptual constructions of speculative jurisprudence steeped in the Hegelian spirit serve at best to exhibit historical tendencies of evolution in the past. That the evolutionary tendency thus discovered must necessarily continue to develop is a thoroughly arbitrary assumption. Only if it could be shown that the force behind evolution was still active would the hypothetical proof which is needed be adduced. The Hegelian Lassalle did nothing of the kind. For him, the matter is disposed of when he realizes “that this progressive reduction of the sphere of private property is based on nothing else than the positive development of human liberty.”41 Having fitted his law of evolution into the great Hegelian scheme of historical evolution, he had done all that his school could ask.

  CHAPTER 19

  Conflict as a Factor in Social Evolution

  1

  The Cause of Social Evolution

  The simplest way to depict the evolution of society is to show the distinction between two evolutionary tendencies which are related to each other in the same way as intension and extension. Society develops subjectively and objectively; subjectively by enlarging its membership, objectively by enlarging the aims of its activities. Originally confined to the narrowest circles of people, to immediate neighbours, the division of labour gradually becomes more general until eventually it includes all mankind. This process, still far from complete and never at any point in history completed, is finite. When all men on earth form a unitary system of division of labour, it will have reached its goal. Side by side with this extension of the social bond goes a process of intensification. Social action embraces more and more aims; the area in which the individual provides for his own consumption becomes constantly narrower. We need not pause at this stage to ask whether this process will eventually result in the specialization of all productive activity.

  Social development is always a collaboration for joint action; the social relationship always means peace, never war. Death-dealing actions and war are anti-social.43 All those theories which regard human progress as an outcome of conflicts between human groups have overlooked this truth.

  2

  Darwinism

  The individual’s fate is determined unequivocally by his Being. Everything that is has necessarily proceeded from his Becoming, and everything that will be results necessarily from that which is. The situation at any given moment is the consummation of history.44 He who understood it completely would be able to foresee the whole future. For a long time it was thought necessary to exclude human volition and action from the determination of events, for the special significance of “imputation”—that thought-process peculiar to all rational action—had not been grasped. It was believed that causal explanation was incompatible with imputation. This is no longer so. Economics, the Philosophy of Law, and Ethics have cleared up the problem of imputation sufficiently to remove the old misunderstandings.

  If, to simplify our study, we analyse the unity we call the individual into certain complexes it must be clearly understood that only the heuristic value of the division can justify our doing so. Attempts to separate, according to external characteristics, what is essentially similar can never survive ultimate examination. Only subject to this admission can we proceed to group the determinants of individual life.

  That which man brings into the world at birth, the innate, we call racial inheritance or, for short, the race.45 The innate in man is the precipitate of the history of all his ancestors, their fate, and all their experiences. The life and fate of the individual do not start at birth, but stretch back into the infinite, unimaginable past. The descendant inherits from the ancestors; this fact is outside the sphere of the dispute over the inheritance of acquired characteristics.

  After birth, direct experience begins. The individual begins to be influenced by his environment. Together with what is innate, this influence produces the individual’s Being in each moment of his life. The environment is natural in the form of soil, climate, nourishment, fauna, flora, in short, external natural surroundings. It is social in the shape of society. The social forces acting on the individual are language, his position in the process of work and exchange, ideology and the forces of compulsion: unrestrained and ordered coercion. The ordered organization of coercion we call the State.

  Since Darwin we have been inclined to regard the dependence of human life on natural environment as a struggle against antagonistic forces. There was no objection to this as long as people did not transfer the figurative expression to a field where it was quite out of place and was bound to cause grave errors. When the formulas of Darwinism, which had sprung from ideas taken over by Biology from Social Science, reverted to Social Science, people forgot what the ideas had originally meant. Thus arose that monstrosity, sociological Darwinism, which, ending in a romantic glorification of war and murder, was peculiarly responsible for the overshadowing of liberal ideas and for creating the mental atmosphere which led to the World War and the social struggles of today.

  It is well known that Darwin was under the influence of Malthus’s Essay on the Principle of Population. But Malthus was far from believing struggle to be a necessary social institution. Even Darwin, when he speaks of the struggle for existence, does not always mean the destructive combat of living creatures, the life or death struggle for feeding places and females. He often uses the expression figuratively to show the dependence of living beings on each other and on their surroundings.46 It is a misunderstanding to take the phrase quite literally, for it is a metaphor. The confusion is worse confounded when people equate the struggle for existence with the war of extermination between human beings, and proceed to construct a social theory based on the necessity of struggle.

  The Malthusian Theory of Population is—what its critics, ignorant of sociology, always overlook—merely a part of the social theory of Liberalism. Only within such a framework can it be understood. The core of liberal social theory is the theory of the division of labour. Only side by side with this can one make use of the Law of Population to interpret social conditions. Society is the union of human beings for the better exploitation of the natural conditions of existence; in its very conception it abolishes the struggle between human beings and substitutes the mutual aid which provides the essential motive of all members united in an organism. Within the limits of society there is no struggle, only peace. Every struggle suspends in effect the social community. Society as a whole, as organism, does fight a struggle for existence against forces inimical to it. But inside, as far as society has absorbed individuals completely, there is only collaboration. For society is nothing but collaboration. Within modern society even war cannot break all social ties. Some remain, though loosened, in a war between states which acknowledge the binding force of International Law. Thus a fragment of peace survives even in wartime.

  Private ownership in the means of production is the regulating principle which, within society, balances the limited means of subsistence at society’s disposal with the less limited ability of the consumers to increase. By making the share in the social product which falls to each member of society depend on the product economically imputed to him, that is, to his labour and his property, the elimination of surplus human beings by the struggle for existence, as it rages in the vegetable and animal kingdom, is replaced by a reduction in the birth-rate as a result of social forces. “Moral restraint,” the limitations of offspring imposed by social positions, replaces the struggle for existence.

  In society there is no struggle for existence. It is a grave error to suppose that the logically developed social theory of liberalism could lead to any other conclusion. Certain isolated phrases in Malthus’s essay, which might be interpreted otherwise, are easily accounted for by the fact that Malthus composed the original incomplete draft of his famous first work before he had completely absorbed the spirit of Classical Political Economy. As proof that his doctrine permits of no other interpretation, it may be pointed out that, before Spencer and Darwin, no one thought of looking on the struggle for existence (in the modern sense of the expression) as a principle active within human society. Darwinism first suggested the theories which regard the struggle of individuals, races, nations, and classes as the basic social element; and it was in Darwinism, which had originated in the intellectual circle of liberal social theory, that people now found weapons to fight the Liberalism they abhorred. In Darwin’s hypothesis, long regarded as irrefutable scientific fact, Marxism,47 Racial Mysticism,48 and Nationalism found, as they believed, an unshakable foundation for their teachings. modern Imperialism especially relies on the catchwords coined by popular science out of Darwinism.

  The Darwinian—or more correctly, pseudo-Darwinian-social theories have never realized the main difficulty involved in applying to social relations their catchwords about the struggle for existence. In Nature it is individuals who struggle for existence. It is exceptional to find in Nature phenomena which could be interpreted as struggles between animal groups. There are, of course, the fights between groups of ants—though here we may be one day obliged to adopt explanations very different from those hitherto accepted.49 A social theory that was founded on Darwinism would either come to the point of declaring that the war of all against all was the natural and necessary form of human intercourse, thus denying that any social bonds were possible; or it would have, on the one hand, to show why peace does and must reign within certain groups and yet, on the other, to prove that the principle of peaceful union which leads to the formation of these associations is ineffective beyond the circle of the group, so that the groups among themselves must struggle. This is precisely the rock on which all non-liberal social theories founder. If one recognizes a principle which results in the union of all Germans, all Dolichocephalics or all Proletarians and forms a special nation, race, or class out of individuals, then this principle cannot be proved to be effective only within the collective groups. The anti-liberal social theories skim over the problem by confining themselves to the assumption that the solidarity of interests within the groups is so self-evident as to be accepted without further discussion, and by taking pains only to prove the existence of the conflict of interests between groups and the necessity of conflict as the sole dynamic force of historical development. But if war is to be the father of all things, the fruitful source of historical progress, it is difficult to see why its fruitful activity should be restricted within states, nations, races, and classes. If Nature needs war, why not the war of all against all, why merely the war of all groups against all groups? The only theory which explains how peace is possible between individuals and how society grows out of individuals is the liberal social theory of the division of labour. But the acceptance of this theory makes it impossible to believe the enmity of collective groups to be necessary. If Brandenburgers and Hanoverians live in society peacefully side by side, why cannot Germans and Frenchmen do so too?

  Sociological Darwinism is unable to explain the phenomenon of the rise of society. It is not a social theory, but “a theory of unsociability.”50

  A fact which clearly exposes the decay of sociological thought in recent decades, is that people now begin to combat sociological Darwinism by pointing to examples of mutual aid (symbiosis) which, Biology has only lately discovered in the vegetable and animal kingdoms. Kropotkin, a defiant antagonist of liberal social theory, who never understood what he rejected and combated, found among animals the rudiments of social ties and set these up in opposition to conflict, contrasting the beneficial principle of mutual aid with the harmful principle of war-to-the-knife.51 Kammerer, a biologist enslaved by the ideas of Marxist Socialism, demonstrated that in addition to conflict the principle of aid dominates life in Nature.52 At this point Biology returns to its starting-point, Sociology. It hands back the principle of divided labour given it by Sociology. It teaches Sociology nothing new, nothing essential that had not been included in the theory of the division of labour as defined by the despised Classical Political Economy.

  3

  Conflict and Competition

  The social theories which are based on natural law start from the dogma that human beings are equal. Since all men are equal, they are supposed to have a natural claim to be treated as members of society with full rights, and, because everybody has a natural right to live, it would be a violation of right to try to take his life. Thus are formulated the postulates of the all-inclusiveness of society, of equality within society, and of peace. Liberal theory, on the other hand, deduces these principles from utility. To Liberalism the concepts man and social man are the same. Society welcomes as members all who can see the benefit of peace and social collaboration in work. It is to the personal advantage of every individual that he should be treated as a citizen with equal rights. But the man who, ignoring the advantages of peaceful collaboration, prefers to fight and refuses to fit himself into the social order, must be fought like a dangerous animal. It is necessary to take up this attitude against the anti-social criminal and savage tribes. Liberalism can approve of war only as a defence. For the rest it sees in war the anti-social principle by which social co-operation is annihilated.

  By confusing the fundamental difference between fighting and competition, the anti-liberal social theories sought to discredit the liberal principle of peace. In the original sense of the word, “fight” means the conflict of men and animals in order to destroy each other. Man’s social life begins with the overcoming of instincts and considerations which impel him to fight to the death. History shows us a constant retreat from conflict as a form of human relations. Fights become less intense and less frequent. The defeated opponent is no longer destroyed; if society can find a way of absorbing him, his life is spared. Fighting itself is bound by rules and is thus somewhat mitigated. Nevertheless war and revolution remain the instruments of destruction and annihilation. For this reason Liberalism never ceases to stress the fact that they are anti-social.

  It is merely a metaphor to call competition competitive war, or simply, war. The function of battle is destruction; of competition, construction. Economic competition provides that production shall be carried on in the most rational manner. Here, as everywhere else, its task is the selection of the best. It is a fundamental principle of social collaboration which cannot be thought out of the picture. Even a socialist community could not exist without it in some form, though it might be necessary to introduce it in the guise, say, of examinations. The efficiency of a socialist order of life would depend on its ability to make the competition sufficiently ruthless and keen to be properly selective.

  There are three points of comparison which serve to explain the metaphorical use of the word “fight” for competition. In the first place it is clear that enmity and conflict of interests exist between the opponents in a fight as they do between competitors. The hate which a small shopkeeper feels for his immediate competitor may be no less in degree than the hate which a Moslem inspired in a Montenegrin. But the feelings responsible for men’s actions have no bearing on the social function of these actions. What the individual feels does not matter as long as the limits set by the social order inhibit his actions.

  The second point of comparison is found in the selective function of both fighting and competition. To what extent fighting is capable of making the best selection is open to question; later we shall show that many people ascribe anti-selective effects to wars and revolutions.53 But because they both fulfil a selective function one must not forget that there is an essential difference between fighting and competition.

  The third point of comparison is sought in the consequences which defeat lays on the vanquished. People say that the vanquished are destroyed, not reflecting that they use the word destruction in the one case only figuratively. Whoever is defeated in fight is killed; in modern war, even where the surviving vanquished are spared, blood flows. People say that in the competitive struggle, economic lives are destroyed. This, however, merely means that those who succumb are forced to seek in the structure of the social division of labour a position other than the one they would like to occupy. It does not by any means signify that they are to starve. In the capitalist society there is a place and bread for all. Its ability to expand provides sustenance for every worker. Permanent unemployment is not a feature of free capitalism.

  Fighting in the actual original sense of the word is anti-social. It renders co-operation, which is the basic element of the social relation, impossible among the fighters, and where the co-operation already exists, destroys it. Competition is an element of social collaboration, the ruling principle within the social body. Viewed sociologically, fighting and competition are extreme contrasts.

  The realization of this provides a criterion for judging all those theories which regard social evolution as a fight between conflicting groups. Class struggle, race conflicts, and national wars cannot be the constructive principle. No edifice will ever rise from a foundation of destruction and annihilation.

  4

  National War

  The most important medium for social co-operation is language. Language bridges the chasm between individuals and only with its help can one man communicate to another something at least of what he is feeling. We need not discuss at this point the wider significance of language in relation to thought and will: how it conditions thought and will and how, without it, there could be no thought but only instinct, no will but only impulse.54 Thought also is a social phenomenon; it is not the product of an isolated mind but of the mutual stimulus of men who strive towards the same aims. The work of the solitary thinker, brooding in retirement over problems which few people trouble to consider, is talk too, is conversation with the residue of thought which generations of mental labour have deposited in language in everyday concepts, and in written tradition. Thought is bound up with speech. The thinker’s conceptual edifice is built on the elements of language.

  The human mind works only in language; it is by the Word that it first breaks through from the obscurity of uncertainty and the vagueness of instinct to such clarity as it can ever hope to attain. Thinking and that which is thought cannot be detached from the language to which they owe their origin. Some day we may get a universal language, but certainly not by means of the method employed by the inventors of Volapuk, Esperanto, and other similar devices. The difficulties of a universal language and of the mutual understanding of peoples are not to be solved by hatching out identical combinations of syllables for the terms of every day life and for use by those who speak without overmuch thinking. The untranslatable element in ideas, which vibrates in the words expressing them, is what separates languages quite as much as the variety of sounds in words, which can be transposed intact. If everyone, all the world over, used the same words for “waiter” and “doorstep” we should still not have bridged the gap between languages and nations. But suppose everything expressed in one language could be translated into other languages without losing anything in the process, we should then have achieved unity of language, even though we had not found identical sounds for the syllables. Different languages would then be only different tongues, and our inability to translate a word would no longer impede the passage of thought from nation to nation.

  Until that day comes—and it is possible that it never will come—political friction is bound to arise among members of different nations living together with mixed languages, friction that may lead to serious political antagonism.55 Directly or indirectly, these disputes are responsible for the modern “hate” between nations, on which Imperialism is based.

  Imperialist theory simplifies its task when it limits itself to proving that conflicts between nations exist. To clinch its arguments it would have to show also that there is a solidarity of interests within the nations. The nationalist-imperialist doctrine made its appearance as a reaction against the ecumenical-solidarism of the Free Trade doctrine. At its advent the cosmopolitan idea of world-citizenship and the fraternity of the nations dominated men’s minds. All that seemed necessary, therefore, was to prove that there were conflicting interests between the various nations. The fact, that all the arguments it used to prove the incompatibility of national interests could with equal justification be used to prove the incompatibility of regional interests and finally even of the individual’s personal interests, was quite overlooked. If the Germans suffer from consuming English cloth and Russian corn, the inhabitants of Berlin must, presumably, suffer from consuming Bavarian beer and Rhine wine. If it is not well to let the division of labour pass the frontiers of the state, it would no doubt be best in the end to return to the self-sufficiency of the closed domestic economy. The slogan “Away with foreign goods!” would lead us, if we accepted all its implications, to abolish the division of labour altogether. For the principle that makes the international division of labour seem advantageous is precisely the principle which recommends division of labour in any circumstances.

  It is no accident, that of all nations the German people has least sense of national cohesion, and that among all European nations it was the last to understand the idea of a political union in which one state comprises all members of the nation. The idea of national union is a child of Liberalism, of free trade, and of laissez-faire. The German nation, of which important parts are living as minorities in areas settled by people of different tongues, was among the first to learn the disadvantages of nationalistic oppression. This experience led to a negative attitude to Liberalism. But without Liberalism, it lacked the intellectual equipment necessary to overcome the regional particularism of separate groups. It is no accident that the sentiment of national cohesion is in no other people so strongly developed as among the Anglo-Saxons, the traditional home of Liberalism.

  Imperialists delude themselves fatally when they suppose it possible to strengthen the cohesion of members of a nation by rejecting cosmopolitanism. They overlook the fact that the basic anti-social element of their doctrine must, if logically applied, split up every community.

  5

  Racial War

  Scientific knowledge of the innate qualities of man is still in its infancy. We cannot really say any more about the inherited characteristics of the individual than that some men are more gifted from birth than others. Where the difference between good and bad is to be sought we cannot say. We know that men differ in their physical and psychic qualities. We know that certain families, breeds, and groups of breeds reveal similar traits. We know that we are justified in differentiating between races and in speaking of the different racial qualities of individuals. But so far, attempts to find somatic characteristics of racial relationships have had no result. At one time it was thought that a racial characteristic had been discovered in the cranial index, but now it is clear that those relations between the cranial index and the psychic and mental qualities of the individual on which Lapouge’s anthroposociological school based its system do not exist. More recent measurements have shown that long-headed men are not always blond, good, noble, and cultured, and that the short-headed are not always black, evil, common and uncultured. Amongst the most long-headed races are the Australian aborigines, the Eskimos, and the Kaffirs. Many of the greatest geniuses were round-heads. Kant’s cranial index was 88.56 We have learnt that changes in the cranial index very probably can take place without racial mixture—as the result of the mode of life and geographical environment.57

  It is impossible to condemn too emphatically the procedure of the “race experts.” They set up criteria of race in an entirely uncritical spirit. More anxious to coin catchwords than to advance knowledge, they scoff at all the standards demanded by scientific thought. But the critics of such dilettantism take their job too lightly in directing their attention solely to the concrete form which individual writers give their theories and to the content of their statements about particular races, their physical characteristics and psychic qualities. Though Gobineau and Chamberlain’s arbitrary and contradictory hypotheses are utterly without foundation and have been pooh-poohed as empty chimeras, there still remains a germ of the race theory which is independent of the specific differentiation between noble and ignoble races.

  In Gobineau’s theory the race is a beginning; originating in a special act of creation, it is fitted out with special qualities.58 The influence of environment is estimated to be low: mixture of races creates bastards, in whom the good hereditary qualities of the nobler races deteriorate or are lost. To contest the sociological importance of the race theories, however, it will not suffice to prove that this view is untenable, or to show that race is the outcome of an evolution that has proceeded under the most varied influences. This objection might be overruled by asserting that certain influences, operating over a long period, have bred one race or several, with specially favourable qualities, and that the members of these races had by means of these advantages obtained so long a lead that members of other races could not overtake them within a limited time. In its most modern variations the race theory does, in fact, put forward arguments of this kind. It is necessary to study this form of the race theory and to ask how it stands in relation to the theory of social co-operation which has here been developed.

  We see at once that it contains nothing directly inimical to the doctrine of the division of labour. The two are quite compatible. It may be assumed that races do differ in intelligence and will power, and that, this being so, they are very unequal in their ability to form society, and further that the better races distinguish themselves precisely by their special aptitude for strengthening social co-operation. This hypothesis throws light on various aspects of social evolution not otherwise easily comprehensible. It enables us to explain the development and regression of the social division of labour and the flowering and decline of civilizations. We leave it open whether the hypothesis itself and the hypothesis erected on it are tenable. At the moment this does not concern us. We are solely concerned to show that the race theory is easily compatible with our theory of social co-operation.

  When the race theory combats the natural law postulate of the equality and equal rights of all men, it does not affect the free trade argument of the liberal school. For Liberalism does not advocate the liberty of the workers for reasons of natural law but because it regards unfree labour—the failure to reward the labourer with the whole produce economically imputed to his labour, and the divorce of his income from the productivity of his labour—as being less productive than free labour. In the race theory there are no arguments to refute free trade theory as to the effects of the expanding social division of labour. It may be admitted that the races differ in talent and character and that there is no hope of ever seeing those differences resolved. Still, free trade theory shows that even the more capable races derive an advantage from associating with the less capable and that social co-operation brings them the advantage of higher productivity in the total labour process.59

  The race theory begins to conflict with the liberal social theory at the point where it begins to preach the struggle between races. But it has no better arguments to advance in this connection than those of other militaristic social theories. The saying of Heraclitus “that war is the father of all things” remains unproven dogma. It, too, fails to demonstrate how the social structure could have grown out of destruction and annihilation. Nay, the race theorists too—in so far as they try to judge unbiased and not simply to follow their sympathy for the ideology of militarism and conflict—have to admit that war has to be condemned precisely from the point of view of selection. Lapouge has pointed out that only in the case of primitive peoples does war lead to the selection of the stronger and more gifted, and that among civilized peoples it leads to a deterioration of the race by unfavourable selection.60 The fit are more likely to be killed than the unfit, who are kept longer, if not altogether, away from the front. Those who survive the war find their power to produce healthy children impaired by the various injuries they have received in the fight.

  The results of the scientific study of races cannot in any way refute the liberal theory of social development. Rather they confirm it. The race theories of Gobineau and many others originated in the resentment of a defeated military and noble caste against bourgeois democracy and capitalist economy. For use in the daily politics of modern Imperialism they have taken a form which re-embodies old theories of violence and war. But their critical strictures are applicable only to the catchwords of the old natural law philosophy. They are irrelevant so far as Liberalism is concerned. Even the race theory cannot shake the assertion that civilization is a work of peaceful co-operation.

  CHAPTER 20

  The Clash of Class Interests and the Class War

  1

  The Concept of Class and of Class Conflict

  At any given moment the position of the individual in the social economy determines his relation to all other members of society. He is related to them in respect of exchange, as giver and receiver, as seller and buyer. His position in the society need not necessarily tie him down to one and the same activity. One man may be simultaneously landlord, wage-earner, and capitalist; another simultaneously entrepreneur, employee, and landlord; a third entrepreneur, capitalist, and landlord, etc. One may produce cheese and baskets and hire himself out occasionally as a day labourer. But even the situation of those who find themselves in approximately equal positions differs according to the special circumstances in which they appear on the market. Even as a buyer for his own consumption every man is situated differently from others according to his special needs. On the market there are always only single individuals. In a free economy the market permits the emergence of individual differences: it “atomizes” as is sometimes said-usually somewhat regretfully. Even Marx had to make a point of explaining that “As purchases and sales are made only between single individuals, it is not admissible to look to them for relations between whole social classes.”61

  If we use the term class to denote all those in approximately equal social positions, it is important to remember that the problem whether classes have any special importance in social life is not thereby solved. Schematization and classification per se have no cognitive value. The scientific significance of a concept arises out of its function in the theories to which it belongs; outside the context of these theories it is no more than an intellectual plaything. The usefulness of the class theory is not proved when it is pointed out that since men find themselves in different social positions, the existence of social classes is undeniable. What matters is not the social position of the individual but the significance of this position in the life of society. It has long been recognized that the contrast between rich and poor, like all economic contrasts, plays a great part in politics. Equally well known is the historical importance of differences in rank and caste, that is, differences in legal position, or inequality before the Law. Classical Political Economy did not contest this. But it undertook to show that all these contrasts derived from wrong political institutions. According to Classical Political Economy, correctly understood, the interests of individuals are never incompatible. Belief in conflicts of interest, which formerly was very important, really sprang from ignorance of the natural laws of social life. Once men recognized that, rightly understood, all interests were identical, these issues would cease to influence political discussion.

  But Classical Political Economy, which taught the solidarity of interests, itself laid the foundation stone for a new theory of class conflict. The mercantilists had placed goods in the centre of economics, which in their eyes was a theory of objective wealth. It was the great achievement of the Classics in this respect that beside the goods they set up economic man. They thus prepared the way for modern Economics which puts man and his subjective valuations into the centre of its system. A system in which man and goods are placed, so to speak, on an equal footing falls inevitably into two parts, the one treating of the production of wealth, the other of its distribution. The more Economics becomes a strict science, a system of catallactics, the more this conception tends to recede. But the idea of distribution remains for a time. And this gives rise in turn to the idea of a division between the process of production and that of distribution. The goods are first produced, then distributed. However clear it is that, in the capitalist economy, production and “distribution” are indissolubly interconnected, this unhappy conception tends to confuse the issue.62

  Such misunderstandings are indeed inevitable as soon as this term “distribution” is adopted and the problem of imputation is considered as a problem of distribution. For such a theory of imputation or, to use a term corresponding more closely to the classic setting of the problem, a theory of income, must distinguish between the various categories of factors of production, though in fact the same fundamental principle of value formation are to be applied to all of them. “Labour” is separated from “Capital” and from “Land.” Nothing is easier in such a context, than to regard labourers, capitalists, and landowners as separate classes, as Ricardo first did in the preface to his Principles. The fact that the classic economists do not split up “profit” into its component parts, only increased this tendency and gave us the picture of society divided into three great classes.

  But Ricardo goes still further. By showing how “in different stages of society”63 the proportions of the total produce which will be allotted to each of the three classes are different, he extends the class conflict to dynamics. His successors follow him here. And it is here that Marx steps in with the economic theory that he puts forward in Das Kapital. In his earlier writings, especially in the introductory words of the Communist Manifesto, Marx still conceives class and class conflict in the old sense of a contrast in legal position and the size of fortune. The link between the two notions is provided by a view of modern industrial relations as the domination of capitalists over workers. But even in Das Kapital Marx does not delimit precisely the concept of class, although it is of fundamental importance for his theory. He does not define what class is, but limits himself to enumerating the “great classes” into which modern capitalist society is divided.64 Here he follows Ricardo’s division, neglecting the fact that for Ricardo the division of classes is only of importance for the theory of catallactics.

  The success of the Marxist theory of class and class conflicts has been tremendous. Today the Marxian distinction of classes within society and the theory of the irreconcilable conflict between these classes is almost universally accepted. Even those who desire, and work for, peace between classes do not as a rule contest the view that there are class contrasts and class struggles. But the concept of class remains as uncertain as before. For the followers of Marx, as for Marx himself, the concept coruscates in all the colours of the rainbow.

  If, following the system of Das Kapital, this concept is based on the classical division of the factors of production, then a classification that was invented only for purposes of the theory of exchange and is only justifiable there, is transformed into the basis of general sociological knowledge. The fact is overlooked that the assembling of the factors of production into two, three or four large groups is merely a problem of the arrangement of economic theory, and that it can be valid within this context only. The classification of the factors of production is not a classification of men or groups of men, but of functions; the rationale of the division lies solely in the purpose of the theory of catallactics it is intended to serve. The separation of “Land” for example, owes its special position to the Classical theory of ground-rent. According to this theory, land is that requisite of production which, under certain assumptions, can yield a rent. Similarly, the position of capital as the source of profit, and of labour as the source of wages, is due to the peculiarities of the classical system. In subsequent solutions of the problem of distribution which divided the “profit” of the classical school into entrepreneur’s profit and interest on capital, the grouping of the factors of production was entirely different. In the modern imputation theory on the contrary, the grouping of the factors of production according to the scheme of the classical theory is no longer of any importance. What was formerly called the problem of distribution is now the problem of the formation of prices of goods of higher orders. Only conservatism of scientific classification has tended to retain the old terminology. A grouping more in accordance with the spirit of imputation theory would have to proceed on an entirely different basis—for example, the separation of static and dynamic branches of income.

  But—and this is the essential point—in no system is the basis for the grouping of factors determined by their natural characteristics. It is the failure to perceive this that constitutes the gravest error of the theory of economic classes. This theory began by naively assuming an inner relation (created by natural economic conditions) between those factors of production which have been grouped together for analytical reasons. It constructs a uniform land, which can be used for at least all kinds of agriculture, and a uniform labour, which can work at anything. It makes a concession, an attempt to conform to reality, when it distinguishes between land to be used agriculturally, land to be used for mining, and urban land, and when it differentiates between skilled and unskilled labour. But this concession does not improve matters. Skilled labour is just as much an abstraction as “labour” pure and simple, and agricultural land is just as much an abstraction as “land” pure and simple. And—what is important here—they are abstractions which leave out just those characteristics essential to sociological study. When dealing with the peculiarities of price formation we may, in certain circumstances, be permitted to make the contrast between the three groups: land, capital, and labour. But this does not prove at all that such grouping is permissible when we are dealing with a quite different problem.

  2

  Estates and Classes

  The theory of the class war constantly confuses the notions of Estate (“Stand”) and class.65 Estates were legal institutions, not economically determined facts. Every man was born into an estate and generally remained in it until he died. All through life one possessed estate-membership, the quality of being a member of a certain estate. One was master or serf, freeman or slave, lord of the land or tied to it, patrician or plebeian, not because one occupied a certain position in economic life, but because one belonged to a certain estate. Admittedly the estates were in their origins an economic institution, in the sense that, like every social order, they had arisen ultimately from the need to safeguard social co-operation. But the social theory underlying this institution was fundamentally different from the liberal theory, for human co-operation was conceived only as a “taking” by some and a “giving” by others. That the give and take could be mutual and all parties gain thereby was utterly incomprehensible to such a theory. A later epoch, seeking to justify the estate system which, in the light of the liberal ideas then slowly dawning in the world, had begun to appear unsocial and also unjust, based on a one-sided burdening of the lower orders, fabricated an artificial reciprocity in the relationship: the higher orders gave the lower protection, sustenance, the use of the land, and so on. But the very existence of this doctrine reveals that the decay of the estate ideology had already begun. Such ideas were alien to the institution in its heyday, when the relationship was frankly one of violence, as may be clearly seen in the first essential distinction drawn by estate—the distinction between free and unfree. The reason why the slave looked on slavery as natural, resigning himself to his lot instead of continuing to rebel and run away as long as there was breath in his body, was not that he believed slavery to be a just institution, equally advantageous to master and slave, but simply that he did not want to erdanger his life by insubordination.

  By stressing the historical role of slavery it has been sought to refute the literal view of subjection and of the institution of the estate also. Slavery was said to mark an advance in civilization, when men taken in battle were enslaved instead of being killed. Without slavery a society dividing labour, in which trades are separated from primary production, could not have developed until all free soil had been disposed of; for everyone would have preferred to be free master of his own land rather than a landless worker on raw materials produced by others, let alone a propertyless labourer on someone else’s land. On this view slavery has an historical justification, as higher civilization is inconceivable without the division of labour which gives part of the population a life of leisure, freed from common worries over daily bread.66

  It is only for those who study history with the eyes of the moralist that the question of whether an historical institution can be justified or not can arise at all. The fact that it has appeared in history shows that forces were active to bring it about. The only question that can be asked scientifically is whether the institution actually fulfilled the function ascribed to it. In this instance the answer is definitely in the negative. Slavery did not prepare the way for division of labour. On the contrary it blocked the way. Indeed modern industrial society, with its highly developed division of labour, could not begin to grow until slavery had been abolished. Free, ownerless land has continued to exist for settlement without preventing the rise of special trades or of a class of free wage earners. For the free land had first to be made cultivable. Before it yielded its fruits it needed stock and improvements. Often in its fertility and nearly always in its situation, it was worse than land already under cultivation.67 Private ownership in the means of production is the only necessary condition for the extensive development of the division of labour. The enslavement of the worker was not necessary to create it.

  In the relation between estates, two types are characteristic. One is the relation between feudal lord and the cultivator. The feudal lord stands quite outside the process of production. He appears on the stage only when the crop has been harvested and the process of production has been completed. Then he takes his share. To understand the nature of this relationship we do not need to know whether it originated in the subjection of formerly free peasants or in the settlement of people on land owned by the lord. The one relevant fact is that the relationship is outside production and cannot, therefore, be dissolved through an economic process, such as commutation of rent and tithes by the cultivator. As soon as the rent is commutable it ceases to be a dependent relationship and becomes a property right. The second typical relation is that of master to slave. Here the master demands labour, not goods, and receives what he demands without any counterservice to the slave. For giving food, clothing, and shelter is not a counterservice, but a necessary expenditure unless he is to lose the slave’s labour. Under the strictly developed institution of slavery the slave is fed only so long as his labour brings in a surplus over his subsistence costs.

  Nothing is less reasonable than to compare these two relationships with that of entrepreneur and worker in a free economy. Historically, free wage labour grew to a certain extent out of the labour of slaves and serfs, and it was a long time before it cast off all trace of its origin and became what it is in the capitalist economy. But it is a complete misunderstanding of the capitalist economy to equate economically free labour for wages with the work done by the unfree. One may draw sociological comparisons between the two systems. For both involve division of labour and social co-operation, and in this reveal common features. But sociological study must not overlook the fact that the economic character of the two systems is quite different. Analysis of the economic character of free labour with arguments derived from the study of slave labour is bound to be worthless. The free worker receives in wages what is economically imputed to his labour. The slave owner expends the same amount by providing for the sustenance of the slave and by paying the slave dealer a price for the slave that corresponds to the present value of the amounts by which the wages of free labour are or would be higher than the slave’s sustenance costs. The surplus of the wages of labour over the workers’ sustenance costs thus goes to the man who transforms free men into slaves—to the slave hunter, not to the slave dealer or the slave owner. These two do not derive any specific income in the slave economy. It is clear, therefore, that anyone who tries to support the exploitation theory by referring to conditions of a slave economy completely misunderstands the problem.68

  In a society divided into estates all members of the estates who lack complete rights before the law have one interest in common with other members: they struggle to improve the legal position of their estate. All who are bound to the soil strive to have the burden of rent lightened; all slaves strive for freedom, that is, for a condition under which they can use their labour for themselves. The community of interest of all the members of an estate is stronger, the less the individual is able to raise himself above the legal sphere of his estate. It does not matter very much here that in some rare cases, especially gifted individuals, aided by happy accidents, are able to rise into higher estates. No mass movements are born of the unsatisfied wishes and hopes of isolated individuals. Desire to renew their own strength rather than a wish to smother social discontent is what causes the privileged estates to clear the way for the rise of the talented. Gifted individuals who have been prevented from rising can become dangerous only if their call to violent action finds an echo in wide strata of discontented men.

  3

  Class War

  The settlement of particular conflicts between estates could not remove the distinction between estates, as long as the idea of dividing society in this way remained. Even when the oppressed shook off the yoke, all differences in status were not abolished. Liberalism alone could overcome the fundamental conflict of estates. It did so by abolishing slavery—on the ground that free labour was more productive than unfree—and by proclaiming freedom of movement and choice of occupation as the fundamental desiderata of a rational policy. Nothing exposes more clearly the inability of anti-liberalism to grasp the historical significance of Liberalism than its attempt to represent this achievement as the product of special group “interests.”

  In the struggle between estates all members of an estate stand together because they have a common aim. However much their interests otherwise diverge they meet on this one ground. They want a better legal position for their estate. Economic advantages usually accompany this, for the reason why legal differences are maintained between estates is precisely that they confer economic advantages on some to the economic prejudice of others.

  But the “class” of the theory of the class-war is a different matter altogether. The theory of irreconcilable class conflict is illogical when it stops short at dividing society into three or four large classes. Carried to its logical conclusions, the theory would have to go on dissolving society into groups of interests till it reached groups whose members fulfilled precisely the same function. It is not enough to separate owners into landowners and capitalists. The differentiation must proceed until it reaches such groups as cotton spinners who manufacture the same count of yarn, or the manufacturers of black kid leather, or the brewers of light beer. Such groups have, it is true, one common interest as against the mass of others: they are vitally interested in the favourable sale of their products. But this common interest is narrowly limited. In a free economy a single branch of production cannot in the long run obtain more than an average profit and cannot, on the other hand, work at a loss. The common interest of members of a trade does not extend, therefore, beyond the trend of the market within a limited space of time. For the rest, competition, not immediate solidarity of interest, operates between them. This competition is suspended by special interests only when economic liberty is limited in some way. But if the scheme is to retain its usefulness for the critique of the theory of the solidarity of class interests, evidence must be produced that this competition is suspended under a free economy. The class struggle theory cannot be proved to be sound by a reference to the common interests of landowners as being in conflict with the urban population on tariff policy, or to the conflict between landowners and town dwellers on the matter of political government. Liberal theory does not deny that state interference in trade creates special interests, nor that by this means particular groups can extract privileges for themselves. It merely says that such special favours, when they are exceptional privileges of small groups, lead to violent political conflict, to revolts of the non-privileged many against the privileged few, which by constantly disturbing the peace, hold up social development. It explains further that where these special privileges constitute a general rule, they injure everyone, for they take on the one hand what they give on the other, and leave behind, as a permanent result, only a general decline in the productivity of labour.

  In the long run the community of interests among the members of a group and the contrast between their interests and the interests of other groups arise always from limitations of the right of ownership, of the freedom of trade, of the choice of occupation. Only in the short run can they arise from the condition of the market as such. But if among the groups whose members occupy the same position in the economy there is no community of interest which would place them in opposition to all other groups, there can certainly be no such community within the larger groups whose members occupy not the same but merely a similar position. If there is no community of special interests between the cotton-spinners among themselves, neither is there any within the cotton industry or between the spinners and the machine makers. Between spinner and weaver, machine maker and machine user, the direct contrast of interests is as marked as it can possibly be. A community of interests exists only where competition is ruled out, for example, between the owners of land of a certain quality or situation.

  The theory that the population is divided into three or four large groups, each with a common interest, errs in regarding land owners as a class with unitary interests. No special common interest unites the owners of arable land, of forests, of vineyards, of mines, or of urban real estate, unless it be that they defend the right of private property in land. But that is not the special interest of the owners. Whoever has recognized the significance of private ownership in the means of production must, whether he possesses property or not, advocate the principle in his own as well as the owner’s interest. Landowners have genuine special interests only where the liberty of acquiring property and of trading has been limited.

  There are no common interests among labourers either. Homogeneous Labour is as non-existent as the universal worker. The work of the spinner is different from the work of the miner and the work of the doctor. The theorists of Socialism and of irreconcilable class conflict talk as though there was some kind of abstract labour which everyone was qualified to perform and as though skilled labour hardly came into the question. In reality no such “absolute” labour exists. Nor is unskilled labour homogeneous. A scavenger is different from a porter. Moreover the role of unskilled labour is much smaller, considered purely numerically, than orthodox class theory assumes.

  In deducing the laws of the theory of imputation we are justified in speaking simply of “land” and “labour.” For from this point all goods of the higher order are significant only as economic objects. The reason for simplifying the infinite variety of goods of higher orders into a few large groups is convenience in working out the theory which is of course directed towards a definite aim. It is often complained that economic theory works with abstractions; but precisely those who make this complaint themselves forget that the concepts “labour” and “worker,” “capital” and “capitalist,” and so on, are abstract; and do not hesitate to transplant the “worker” of theoretical Economics into a picture of what is supposed to be actual social life.

  The members of a class are competitors. If the number of workers diminishes, and if the marginal productivity of labour grows accordingly, wages rise, and with them the income and standard of living of the worker. Trade unions cannot alter this. When they, who were supposed to be called into being to fight the entrepreneurs, close their membership like guilds, they implicitly recognize the fact.

  Competition operates among the workers when they compete for higher positions and for promotion to higher ranks. Members of other classes can afford to remain indifferent as to the precise persons who are numbered among the relative minority which rises from the lower to the higher strata, so long as these are the most capable. But for the workers themselves this is an important matter. Each is in competition with the others. Of course each is interested to see that every other foreman’s job shall be occupied by the most suitable man and the best. But each is anxious that that one job which comes within his reach shall fall to him, even though he is not the most suitable man for the job; and the advantage to him outweighs the fraction of the general disadvantages which may eventually also come his way.

  The theory of the solidarity of the interests of all members of society is the only theory which shows how society is possible; and if it is dropped, the social unity dissolves not only into classes, but into individuals confronting each other as opponents. Conflict between individual interests is overcome in society but not in the class. Society knows no components other than individuals. The class united by a community of special interests does not exist; it is the invention of a theory incompletely articulated. The more complicated society is, and the further differentiation has progressed within it, so much the more numerous are the groups of persons similarly placed within the social organism; though necessarily, the number of members in each group diminishes as the number of groups increase. The fact that the members of each group have certain immediate interest in common does not, of itself, create universal equality of interests between them. The equality of position makes them competitors, not people with common aspirations. Nor can any absolute community of interests arise from the incomplete similarity between the positions of allied groups. As far as their positions are similar, competition will operate between them.

  The interests of all cotton mill owners may run parallel in certain directions, but in so far as this is the case, the more are they competitors among themselves. In other respects only those owners of mills who produce the same count of yarn will be in exactly parallel positions. Here again to this extent they are in competition with each other. In other respects however, the common interests are similar over a much wider field; they may comprise all workers in the cotton industry, then, again, all cotton producers, including planters and workers, or further, all industrialists of any kind, etc.: the grouping varies perpetually according to the aim and interests to be pursued. But complete similarity there is rare, and where it does exist, it leads not only to common interests vis-a-vis third parties but, simultaneously, to competition between the parties within the group.

  A theory which made all social development proceed from class struggles would have to show that the position of each individual in the social organism was unequivocally determined by his class position, that is, by his membership of a certain class and the relation of this class to other classes. The fact that in all political struggles certain social groups are in conflict with each other is by no means a proof of this theory. To be correct it must be capable of demonstrating that the grouping is necessarily directed into a certain path and cannot be influenced by ideologies which are independent of the class position; that the way in which the smaller groups combine to form larger groups, and these again form classes which divide the whole of society, is not a way of compromises and alliances formed for temporary cooperation but results from facts created by social necessities, from an unequivocal community of interests.

  Let us consider, for example, the different elements of which an Agrarian Party is composed. In Austria, the wine-growers, the cereal-growers, and the stock-breeders unite to form a common party. But it certainly cannot be asserted that similarity of interest has brought them together. For each of these three groups has different interests. The fusion with a view to securing certain protective policies is a compromise between conflicting interests. Such a compromise is, however, only possible on the basis of an ideology that goes beyond the interests of the class. The class interest of each of these three groups is opposed to that of the other groups. They can meet only by setting certain special interests wholly or partly aside, though they do this so as to fight all the more effectively for other special interests.

  It is the same with the workers, who are contrasted with the owners of the means of production. The special interests of the separate workers’ groups are also not unitary. They have quite different interests according to the knowledge and skill of their members. It is certaintly not in virtue of its class position that the proletariat is that homogeneous class the socialist parties imagine it to be. Only adherence to the socialist ideology, which obliges every individual and every group to give up his or its special interests, brings it about that it is so. The daily work of the trade unions consists precisely in effecting compromises between these conflicts of interest.69

  Coalitions and alliances between group interests, other than existing coalitions and alliances, are always possible. And those which actually exist depend on the ideology, not on the class position, of the groups. Political aims, not identity of interests, is what determines the coherence of the group. The community of special interests is always restricted to a narrow field and is obliterated or counter-vailed by the conflict of other special interests, unless a certain ideology makes the community of interests seem stronger than the conflict of interests.

  The community of class interests does not exist independently of class consciousness, and class consciousness is not merely additional to a community of special interests; it creates such a community. The proletarians are not a special group within the framework of modern society, whose attitude is unequivocally determined by their class position. Individuals are brought together for common political action by the socialist ideology; the unity of the proletariat comes, not from its class position, but from the ideology of the class-war. As a class the proletariat does not exist before Socialism: the socialist idea first created it by combining certain individuals to attain a certain political end. There is nothing in Socialism which makes it especially appropriate to forwarding the real interests of the proletarian classes.

  In principle class ideology is no different from national ideology. In fact there is no contrast between the interests of particular nations and races. It is national ideology which first creates the belief in special interests and turns nations into special groups which fight each other. Nationalist ideology divides society vertically; the socialist ideology divides society horizontally. In this sense the two are mutually exclusive. Sometimes the one has the upper hand, sometimes the other. In Germany in 1914 the nationalist ideology shouldered the socialist ideology into the background—and suddenly there was a nationalist united front. In 1918 the socialist triumphed over the nationalist.

  In a free society no classes are separated by irreconcilably contrasted interests. Society is the solidarity of interests. The union of special groups has always as its safe aim the destruction of this cohesion. Its aim is antisocial. The special community of proletarian interests extends only so far as they pursue one aim—to break up society. It is the same with the special community of interests which is supposed to exist for a whole nation.

  Because Marxian theory does not define its notion of class more closely, people have been able to use it for the expression of the most diverse ideas. When they define the decisive conflict as that between owners and nonowners, or between urban and rural interests, or between bourgeois, peasant, and worker; when they speak of the interests of “armament capital,” of “alcohol capital” of “finance capital”70 when at one moment they talk about the Glorious International and in the next breath explain that Imperialism is due to the conflicts of capital, it is easy to see that these are the merest catchwords of the demagogue, devoid of any real sociological interest. Thus in its most fundamental contentions Marxism has never risen above the level of a doctrine for the soap box orator.71

  4

  The Forms of Class War

  The total national product is divided into wages, rent, interest, and profits. All economic theory considers it definitely settled that this division proceeds, not according to the non-economic power of the individual classes, but according to the importance which the market imputes to individual factors of production. Classical Political Economy and the modern theory of marginal value agree in this. Even Marxian doctrine, which has borrowed its theory of distribution from classical theory, agrees. By deducing in this way the laws according to which the value of labour is determined, it, too, sets up a theory of distribution in which economic elements alone are decisive. The Marxian theory of distribution seems to us full of contradictions and absurdities. Nevertheless it is an attempt to find a purely economic explanation for the way in which the prices of the factors of production are formed. Later on, when Marx was moved for political reasons to recognize the advantages of the trade union movement, he did make certain slight concessions on this point. But the fact that he stuck to his system of economics shows that these were only concessions which left his fundamental views untouched.

  If we were to describe as a “struggle” the effort of all parties on the market to get the best price obtainable, then we might say that there is a constant war of each against each throughout economic life; but not by any means that there is a class-war. The fight is not between class and class but between individuals. When groups of competitors come together for joint action, class does not confront class, but group opposes group. What a single workers’ group has obtained for itself does not benefit all workers; the interests of the workers of different branches of production are as conflicting as those of entrepreneurs and workers. When it speaks of class war, socialist theory cannot have in mind this opposition of the interests of buyers and sellers in the market.72 What it means by class war takes place outside economic life, though as a result of economic motives. When it considers the class war as being analogous to the war between estates it can only refer to a political fight which takes place outside the market. After all this was the only kind of conflict possible between masters and slaves, landowners and serfs; on the market they had no dealings with each other.

  But Marxism goes beyond this. It assumes it to be self-evident that only the owners are interested in maintaining private ownership in the means of production, that the proletarians have the contrary interest, and that both know their interests and act accordingly. We have already seen that this view is acceptable only if we are prepared to swallow the Marxian theory whole. Private ownership in the means of production serves equally the interests of owners and non-owners. It is certainly by no means true that the members of the two great classes into which according to Marxian theory society is divided, are naturally conscious of their interest in the class struggle. The Marxians had to work hard to awaken the class consciousness of the workers, that is, to make the workers support Marxian plans for the socialization of property. What joins the workers for co-operative action against the bourgeois class is precisely the theory of irreconcilable class conflict. Class consciousness, created by the ideology of the class conflict, is the essence of the struggle, and not vice versa. The idea created the class, not the class the idea.

  The weapons of the class struggle are no more economic than its origins. Strikes, sabotage, violent action and terrorism of every kind are not economic means. They are destructive means, designed to interrupt the movement of economic life. They are weapons of war which must inevitably lead to the destruction of society.

  5

  Class War as a Factor in Social Evolution

  From the theory of the class-war, Marxians argue that the socialist order of society is the inevitable future of the human race. In any society based on private property, says Marxism, there must of necessity be an irreconcilable conflict between the interests of separate classes: exploiters oppose the exploited. This contrast of interests, it is assumed, determines the historical position of the classes; it prescribes the policy they must follow. Thus history becomes a chain of class struggles, until finally, in the modern proletariat, there appears a class which can free itself from class rule only by abolishing all class conflicts and all exploitation generally.

  The Marxist theory of class war has extended its influence far beyond socialist circles. That the liberal theory of the solidarity of the ultimate interests of all members of society has been thrust into the background was, of course, not due to this theory only, but also to the revival of imperialist and protectionist ideas. But as the liberal idea lost its glamour, the fascinations of the Marxian promises were bound to be more widely felt. For it has one thing in common with the liberal theory which the other anti-liberal theories lack: it affirms the possibility of social life. All other theories which deny the solidarity of interests deny also by implications social life itself. Whoever argues with the nationalists, the race dogmatists, and even the protectionists, that the conflict of interests between nations and races cannot be reconciled, denies the possibility of peaceful co-operation between nations and thereby the possibility of international organization. Those who, with the implacable champions of peasant or petty bourgeois interests, consider the unflinching pursuit of class interests as the essence of politics, would be only logical if they were to deny all advantages of social co-operation. Compared with these theories, which necessarily lead to very pessimistic views of the future of society, Socialism seems to be an optimistic doctrine. At least for the desired coming social order, it claims the solidarity of the interests of all members of society. The desire for a philosophy, which does not altogether deny the advantages of social co-operation is so intensive, that many people have been driven into the arms of Socialism who would otherwise have avoided it altogether. The only oasis they find in the desert of anti-liberal theories is Socialism.

  But in their readiness to accept the Marxian dogmas, such people overlook the fact that its promise of a classless future for society rests entirely on the assertion, presented as irrefutable, that the productivity of socialistically organized labour would be higher—indeed, limitless. The argument is well known: “The possibility of giving all members of society, by social production, an existence which shall be not merely materially adequate, increasing in wealth from day to day, but which shall guarantee them also the complete freedom to develop and practice their physical and mental abilities—this possibility now exists for the first time, but it exists.”73 Private ownership in the means of production is the Red Sea which bars our path to this Promised Land of general well-being. From being an “evolutionary form of the forces of production” it became their “chains.”74 The liberation of the productive forces from the shackles of capitalism is the “sole presupposition to an uninterrupted development at an ever-increasing pace of the productive forces and, thus, to a practically unlimited increase in production itself.”75 “As the development of modern technique makes possible a sufficient, even abundant, satisfaction of wants for all, on condition that production is directed economically by and for the country, the class conflict now appears, for the first time, not as a condition of social development but as the obstacle to its conscious and planned organization. In the light of this knowledge the class interest of the oppressed proletarians is directed towards abolishing all class interests and setting up a classless society. The old, apparently eternal law of the class struggle practically necessitates by its own logic, by the interest of the last and most numerous class—the proletariat—the abolition of all class contrasts and the creation of a society in which interests are unitary and which is humanly solidary.”76 Ultimately, therefore, the Marxian demonstration is this: Socialism must come, because the socialist way of production is more rational than the capitalist. But in all this the alleged superiority of socialist production is simply taken for granted. Except for a few casual remarks no attempt to prove anything is made.77

  If one assumes that production under Socialism would be higher than under any other system, how can one limit the assertion by saying that it is true only under certain historical conditions and has not always been so? Why must time ripen for Socialism? It would be understandable if the Marxians were to explain why, before the nineteenth century, people did not hit upon this happy idea or why even if it had been conceived earlier, it could not have been realized. But why must a community, to attain Socialism, go through all the stages of evolution, although it is already familiar with the idea of Socialism? One can understand that “a nation is not ripe for Socialism as long as the majority of the masses oppose Socialism and want to have nothing to do with Socialism.” But it is not easy to see why “one cannot say definitely” that the time is ripe “when the proletariat forms the majority of the nation and when the latter in its majority manifests the will to Socialism.”78 Is it not quite illogical, to maintain that the World War79 has put back our evolution and thus retarded the coming of the right moment for Socialism? “Socialism, that is, general well-being within modern civilization, becomes possible only through the enormous development of the productive forces brought about by Capitalism, through the enormous wealth Capitalism has created and concentrated in the hands of the capitalist class. A state which has wasted this wealth in senseless policy, such as an unsuccessful war, offers no favourable opportunity for the quickest spread of well being amongst all classes.”80 But surely those who believe that Socialism will multiply productivity should see in the fact that war has impoverished us one reason more for hastening its coming.

  To this Marx answers: “a social order never succumbs until all the productive forces of which it is capable are developed, and new and higher conditions of production never replace it until the old society itself has conceived within its womb the material conditions of their existence.”81 But this answer assumes that what needs to be demonstrated is proved already: that socialist production would be more productive and that socialist production is a “higher” one, that is, on a higher stage of social development.

  6

  The Theory of the Class War and the Interpretation of History

  The opinion that history leads to Socialism is almost universal today. From Feudalism through Capitalism to Socialism, from the rule of the aristocracy through the rule of the bourgeoisie to proletarian democracy—thus, approximately, people conceive the inevitable evolution. The gospel that Socialism is our inescapable destiny is acclaimed by many with joy, accepted by others with regret, doubted by only the courageous few. This scheme of evolution was known before Marx, but Marx developed it and made it popular. Above all Marx managed to fit it into a philosophic system.

  Of the great systems of German idealist philosophy only those of Schelling and Hegel have had a direct and lasting influence on the formation of the individual sciences. Out of Schelling’s Natural Philosophy grew a speculative school whose achievements, once so much admired, have long been forgotten. Hegel’s Philosophy of History mesmerized the German historians of a whole generation. People wrote Universal History, History of Philosophy, History of Religion, History of Law, History of Art, History of Literature according to the Hegelian scheme. These arbitrary and often eccentric evolutionary hypotheses have also vanished. The disrespect into which the schools of Hegel and Schelling brought philosophy led Natural Science to reject everything that went beyond laboratory experiment and analysis, and caused the Moral Sciences to reject everything except the collection and sifting of sources. Science limited itself to mere facts and rejected all synthesis as unscientific. The impulse to permeate science once more with the philosophic spirit had to come from elsewhere—from biology and sociology.

  Of all the creations of the Hegelian School only one was fated to a longer lease of life—the Marxian Social Theory. But its place was outside scholarship. Marxian ideas have proved utterly useless as guides to historical research. All attempts to write history according to the Marxian scheme have failed lamentably. The historical works of the orthodox Marxists, such as Kautsky and Mehring, made no progress at all in original and exhaustive research. They produced only expositions based on the researches of others, expositions whose only original feature was an effort to see everything through Marxist spectacles. But the influence of Marxist ideas extends far beyond the circle of orthodox disciples. Many historians, by no means to be classed politically as Marxian socialists, approach them closely in their views on the philosophy of history. In their works the Marxian influence is a disturbing element. The use of such indefinite expressions as “exploitation,” “the striving of capital for surplus value,” and “proletariat” dulls the vision that should be kept clear for the impartial scrutiny of the material, and the idea that all history is merely a preliminary to the socialist society prompts the historian to do violence in his interpretation of the sources.

  The notion that the rule of the proletariat must replace the rule of the bourgeoisie is largely based on that grading of the estates and classes which has become general since the French Revolution. People call the French Revolution and the movement it introduced into the various states of Europe and America the emancipation of the Third Estate and think that now the Fourth Estate must have its turn. We may overlook here the fact that a view which regards the victory of liberal ideas as a class triumph of the bourgeoisie and the Free Trade Period as an epoch of the rule of the bourgeoisie, presupposes that all elements of the socialist theory of society are already proved. But another question immediately occurs to us. Must this Fourth Estate, whose turn is now supposed to come, be sought in the proletariat? Might not one look for it with equal or greater justice in the peasantry? Marx, of course, could have no doubts on the subject. In his view it was a settled thing that in agriculture big-scale concerns would oust small-scale enterprises and the peasant make way for the landless labourer of the latifundia. Now, when the theory of the inability of medium and small-scale agricultural enterprise to compete has long been buried, a problem arises which Marxism cannot answer. The evolution which is going on before our eyes would permit us to suppose that domination was passing into the hands of the peasants rather than that of the proletarians.82

  But here, too, our decision must rest on our judgment of the efficiency of the two social orders, the capitalist and the socialist. If Capitalism is not the diabolical scheme shown in socialist caricature, if Socialism is not the ideal order which socialists assert it to be, then the whole doctrine collapses. The discussion always returns to the same point—the fundamental question whether the socialist order of society promises a higher productivity than Capitalism.

  7

  Summary

  Race, nationality, citizenship, estate-rights: these things directly affect action. It does not matter whether a party ideology unites all those belonging to the same race or nation, the same state or estate. The fact that races, nations, states or estates exist determines human action even when there is no ideology to guide members of a group in a certain direction. A German’s thought and actions are influenced by the kind of mind he has acquired as a member of the German language community. Whether or not he is influenced by nationalist party ideology is here unimportant. As a German he thinks and acts differently from the Rumanian whose thought the history of the Rumanian, and not the German, language determines.

  The nationalist party ideology is a factor quite independent of one’s membership of any given nation. Various mutually contradictory nationalist party ideologies can exist concurrently and fight for the individual’s soul; on the other hand there may be no sort of nationalist party ideology in existence. A party ideology is always something specially introduced from outside into the already established membership of a certain social group, and for which it thereafter forms a special source of action. Mere living in a society does not create party doctrine in one’s mind. Party attitudes always arise from a theory of what is and is not advantageous. Social life may, under certain circumstances, predispose one to accept a certain ideology, and occasionally party doctrines are so formed that they specially attract members of a particular social group. But the ideology must always be kept separate from the actual social and natural being.

  Social being itself is ideological in so far as society is a product of human will, and so of human thought. The materialistic conception of history errs profoundly when it regards social life as independent of thought.

  If the position of the individual in the co-operative organism of economic life is considered to be his class position, then what we have said above applies also to the class. But again, one has to differentiate here, too, between the influences to which his class position exposes the individual and the political ideologies which influence him. The fact that he occupies his particular position in society has its influence on the life of the bank clerk. Whether he deduces from this that he ought to advocate the capitalist or the socialist policy depends on the ideas which dominate him.

  But if one conceives “class” in the Marxist sense, as a tripartite division of society into capitalists, land owners, and workers, it loses all definiteness. It becomes nothing more than a fiction to justify a concrete party-political ideology. Thus the concepts Bourgeoisie, Working Class, Proletariat are fictions, the cognitive value of which depends on the theory in the service of which they are applied. This theory is the Marxian doctrine that class conflict is irreconcilable. If we consider this theory inadmissible, then no class differences and no class conflicts in the Marxian sense exist. If we prove that, correctly understood, the interests of all members of society are not in conflict, we have shown not merely that the Marxian idea of a conflict of interests is untenable: we have discarded as valueless the very concept of class as it figures in socialist theory. For only within the framework of this theory has the attempt to classify society into capitalists, landowners, and workers any meaning. Outside this theory it is as purposeless as, for example, any attempt to lump together all fair or all dlark people—unless indeed we propose, with certain race theorists, to give special importance to the colour of the hair, whether as an external characteristic or as a constitutive element.

  CHAPTER 21

  The Materialist Conception of History

  1

  Thought and Being

  It was said by Feuerbach: “thought proceeds from being, but not being from thought.”84 This remark, which was intended to express merely the renunciation of Hegelian Idealism, becomes in the famous aphorism, “Man is what he eats” (“Der Mensch ist was er isst”)85 , the watchword of Materialism, as represented by Büchner and Moleschott. Vogt stiffened the materialist thesis by defending the statement “that thoughts stand in about the same relation to the brain as the gall to the liver or urine to the kidneys.”86 The same naive materialism, which, ignoring all the difficulties, attempts to solve the basic problem of philosophy simply and completely by referring everything concerned with the mind to a physical phenomenon, is revealed also in the economic conception of history of Marx and Engels. The title “Materialist Conception of History” is true to the nature of the theory; it emphasizes, in the striking manner intended by its founders, the epistemological homogeneity between their belief and the materialism of their time.87

  According to the materialist conception of history thought depends on social being. This doctrine has two different versions fundamentally contradictory to each other. The one explains thought as a simple and direct development of the economic environment, of the conditions of production, under which men live. According to this version there is no history of science and no history of the individual sciences as independent evolutionary sequences because the setting of problems and their solutions do not represent a progressive intellectual process, but merely reflect the momentary conditions of production. Descartes, says Marx, regarded the animal as a machine, because he “sees with the eyes of the manufacturing period, as distinguished from the eyes of the Middle Ages, when the animal was regarded as the assistant of man—a position assigned to it also at a later date by Herr von Haller in his Restauration der Staatswissenschaft.”88 In such a passage it is clear that the conditions of production are regarded as facts independent of human thought. They “correspond” in turn to a “definite stage of development” in the “material productive forces,”89 or, what is only another way of putting the same thing, to “a definite stage in the development of the means of production and of transport.”90 The productive forces, the means of work, “result in” a definite order of society.91 “Technology reveals the active conduct of man towards nature, the direct productive process of his life, and consequently his social conditions of life and the spiritual ideas which arise from them.”92 It never seems to have occurred to Marx that the productive forces are themselves a product of human thought, so that one merely moves in a circle when one tries to derive thought from them. He was completely bewitched by the word-fetish, “material production.” Material, materialistic, and materialism were the fashionable philosophic catch-words in his time, and he could not escape their influence. He felt that his foremost task as a philosopher was to remove the “deficiencies of the abstract natural-science materialism which exclude the historical process”; those deficiencies which he thought he could perceive “in the abstract and ideological theories of its spokesmen, as soon as they venture beyond their special sphere.” And that is why he called his procedure “the only materialistic, hence the only scientific method.”93

  According to the second version of the materialist conception of history, class interest determines thought. Marx says of Locke that he “represented the new bourgeoisie in all its forms: the industrialists versus the working classes and paupers, the merchants versus the old-fashioned usurers, high finance versus state debtors, and in one of his own works he even demonstrated the bourgeois intelligence to be the normal human intellect.”94 For Mehring, the most prolific of the Marxian historians, Schopenhauer is “the philosopher of the terrified philistines ... in his sneaking, selfish, and slandering way the spiritual image of the bourgeoisie which, frightened by the clash of arms, trembling like the aspen, retired to live on its revenues and foreswore the ideals of its epoch like the plague.”95 In Nietzsche he sees “the philosopher of the Upper Bourgeoisie.”96

  His judgments in economics represent this point of view most clearly. Marx was the first to divide economists into bourgeois and proletarian, a division which etatism afterwards made its own. Held explains Ricardo’s theory of rent as “dictated simply by the hate of the moneyed capitalists against the landed proprietors,” and thinks that Ricardo’s whole theory of value can only be looked upon “as the attempt to justify, under the semblance of an endeavour to secure natural rights, the domination and profits of Capitalism.”97 The best way to disprove this view is to point out the obvious fact that Marx’s economic theory is nothing more than a product of the Ricardo school. All its essential elements are taken from the Ricardian system, from which it derives also the methodological principle of the separation of theory and politics and the exclusion of the ethical point of view.98 Politically, classical economics was employed both for defending and for attacking Capitalism, for advocating as well as for rejecting Socialism.

  Marxism makes use of the same method with regard to modern subjective economics. Unable to oppose it by a single word of reasonable criticism, the Marxian tries to dispose of it by denouncing it as “bourgeois economics.”99 To show that subjective economics is not “capitalist apologetics” it should be sufficient, surely, to point out that there are socialists who stand firmly by the theory of subjective value.100 The evolution of economics is a process of the mind, independent of the supposed class interests of economists, and has nothing to do with supporting or condemning any particular social institutions. Every scientific theory can be misused for political purpose; the politician does not need to construct a theory to support the aims he happens to pursue.101 The ideas of modern Socialism have not sprung from proletarian brains. They were originated by intellectuals, sons of the bourgeoisie, not of wage-earners.102 Socialism has captured not only the working class; it has supporters, open and secret, even amongst the propertied classes too.

  2

  Science and Socialism

  Abstract thought is independent of the wishes which move the thinker and of the aims for which he strives.103 Only this independence qualifies it as thought. Wishes and purposes regulate action. When it is said that economic life influences thought the facts are reversed. Economy as rational action is dependent on thought, not thought on economy.

  Even if it were wished to admit that thought is determined by class-interest, it could only be done by considering recognized class interests. But the recognition of class interest is already a result of thought. Whether such thought shows that special class interests exist or that the interests of all classes in society harmonize, the process of thought itself has taken place before the idea of class influenced thought.

  For proletarian thought, it is true, Marxism assumes a truth and eternal value, free of all limitations of class interest. Though itself admittedly a class, the proletariat must, transcending class interests, guard the interests of humanity by abolishing the division of society into classes. In the same way, proletarian thought contains in place of the relativity of class-determined thought, the absolute truth content of the pure science which will come to fruition in the future socialist society. In other words, Marxism alone is science. What preceded Marx historically, may be reckoned the pre-history of science. Marxism gives philosophers before Hegel about the same place which Christianity gives to the prophets, and grants Hegel the same position which Christianity assigns to the Baptist in relation to the Redeemer. Since the appearance of Marx, however, all truth is with the Marxist, and everything else is lies, deception, and capitalist apologetics.

  This is a very simple and clear philosophy, and in the hands of Marx’s successors it becomes still simpler and clearer. To them science and Marxian Socialism are identical. Science is the exegesis of the words of Marx and Engels. Proofs are demonstrated by the quotation and interpretation of these words. The protagonists exchange accusations of ignorance of the “Writ.” Thus a real cult of the proletariat arises. Engels says: “Only in the working class does the German theoretic mind persist unstunted. Here it is not to be exterminated. Here no regard is paid to career, profit-making, gracious patronage from above. On the contrary, the more regardlessly and disinterestedly science proceeds the more it finds itself in unison with the workers’ interests and strivings.”104 According to Tönnies “only the proletariat, i.e. its literary spokesmen and leaders,” suscribe, “on principle, to the unscientific view and all its consequences.”105

  To reveal these presumptuous assertions in their proper light we have only to recall the socialist attitude towards all scientific achievements during recent decades. When about a quarter of a century ago, a number of Marxian writers tried to cleanse the party doctrine of its grossest errors, a heresy hunt was instituted to preserve the purity of the system. Revisionism succumbed to Orthodoxy. Within Marxism there is no place for free thought.

  3

  The Psychological Presuppositions of Socialism

  According to Marxism, the proletariat in capitalist society necessarily think socialistically. But why is this the case? It is easy to see why the socialist idea could not arise before there was large scale enterprise in industry, transport, and mining. As long as one could conceive of redistributing the actual physical property of the wealthy, it occurred to no one to devise any other way of securing equality of income. Only when the development of the division of labour had created large scale enterprise, unmistakably indivisible, did it become necessary to invoke the socialistic way of achieving equality. But although this explains why in the capitalist system there can no longer be any question of “dividing up,” it by no means explains why the policy of the proletariat must be Socialism.

  In our day we take it for granted that the workman must think and act socialistically. But we arrive at this conclusion only by assuming that the socialist order of society is either the form of social life most advantageous to the proletariat or, at least, that the proletariat thinks it so. The first alternative has already been discussed in these pages. In view of the undoubted fact that Socialism, though it counts numerous supporters in other classes, is most widespread amongst the workers, there remains only the question why the worker, because of the position he occupies, tends to be the more receptive to the socialist ideology.

  The demagogic flattering of the socialist parties praises the worker of modern Capitalism as a being distinguished by every excellency of mind and character. A sober and less biased study might perhaps arrive at a very different opinion. But this kind of inquiry may safely be left to the party hacks of the various movements. For knowledge of social conditions in general and the sociology of the party system in particular it is quite valueless. Our problem is simply to discover why the worker’s position in production should incline him to the view that the socialist method of production is not only possible in principle, but that it would be more rational than the capitalist method.

  The answer is not difficult. The workman in the large or medium scale capitalist enterprise sees and knows nothing of the connections uniting the individual parts of the work to the economic system as a whole. His horizon as worker and producer does not extend beyond the process which is his task. He holds that he alone is a productive member of society, and thinks that everyone, engineer and overseer equally well as entrepreneur, who does not, like himself, stand at the machine or carry loads, is a parasite. Even the bank clerk believes that he alone is actively productive in banking, that he earns the profit of the undertaking, and that the manager who concludes transactions is a superfluity, easily replaceable without loss. Now from where he stands, the worker cannot see how things hang together. He might find out by means of hard thinking and the aid of books, never from the facts of his own working environment. Just as the average man can only conclude from the facts of daily experience that the earth stands still and the sun moves from east to west, so the worker, judging by his own experience can never arrive at a true knowledge of the nature and functioning of economic life.

  But when the socialist ideology comes to this economically ignorant man and shouts:

  • Working man, awake, awake!
  • Of thy strength full measure take,
  • All the wheels must needs stand still
  • If thy strong arm so doth will, (Herwegh)

  is it any wonder if, dizzy with dreams of power, he follows this invitation? Socialism is the expression of the principle of violence crying from the workers’ soul, just as Imperialism is the principle of violence speaking from the soul of the official and the soldier.

  The masses incline towards Socialism, not because it really tends to their interests but because they believe that it does so.

  Section II.

  The Concentration of Capital and the Formation of Monopolies as Preliminary Steps to Socialism

  CHAPTER 22

  The Problem

  1

  The Marxian Theory of Concentration

  Marx seeks to establish an economic foundation for the thesis that the evolution towards Socialism is inevitable, by demonstrating the progressive concentration of capital. Capitalism has succeeded in depriving the worker of private ownership in the means of production; it has consummated the “expropriation of the direct producers.” As soon as this process is completed “the further socialization of labour and the further transformation of land and other agents into socially exploited and therefore collective means of production, together with the ensuing expropriation of private owners, assume a new form. That which is now to be expropriated is no longer the worker labouring independently but the capitalist exploiting the worker. This expropriation is carried out by the play of the inherent forces of capitalist production itself; by the centralization of capital, each individual capitalist deals the death-blow to a number of others.” Hand in hand with this goes the socialization of production. The number of the “capitalist magnates” is continually decreasing. “The centralization of the means of production and the socialization of labour reach a point where they become incompatible with their capitalist framework. They burst it. The last hour of capitalist private property has arrived. The expropriators are expropriated.” This is the “expropriation of the few usurpers by the mass of the people,” through the “transformation of capitalist ownership, which actually rests already on social production, into social ownership,” a process much less “lengthy, hard, and difficult” than was, in its own time, the process that transformed the private ownership of individuals doing their own work into capitalist ownership.1

  Marx gives a dialectical turn to his contentions. “Capitalist private ownership is the first negation of the individual private ownership created by the workers’ toil. But, with the inevitability of a natural process, capitalist production brings forth its own negation. It is the negation of the negation. This does not re-establish private ownership, by only individual ownership based on the achievements of the capitalist era: co-operation and the collective ownership of land and of the means or production produced by labour.”2 Strip these statements of the dialectic accessories and there remains the fact that the concentration of establishments, enterprises, and fortunes is inevitable. (Marx does not distinguish between these three and obviously regards them as identical.) This concentration would eventually lead to Socialism, as the world, once it was transformed into one single gigantic enterprise, could be taken over by society with perfect ease; but before that stage has been reached, the result will have been achieved by “the revolt of the ever-expanding working class which has been schooled, united, and organized by the very mechanism of the capitalist production.”3

  To Kautsky it is clear that “capitalist production tends to unite the means of production, which have become the monopoly of the capitalist class, into fewer and fewer hands. This evolution finally makes all the means of production of a nation, indeed of the whole world economy, the private property of a single individual or company, which disposes of them arbitrarily. The whole economy will be drawn together into one colossal undertaking, in which everything has to serve one master. In capitalist society private ownership in the means of production ends with all except one person being propertyless. It thus leads to its own abolition, to the lack of property by all and to the enslavement of all.” This is a condition towards which we are rapidly advancing “more rapidly than most people believe.” Of course, we are told, the matter will not go so far. “For the mere approach to this condition must increase the sufferings, conflicts, and contradictions in society to such an extent, that they become intolerable and society bursts its bounds and falls to pieces” unless evolution has previously been given a different direction.4

  It should be observed that, according to this view, the transition from “High” Capitalism to Socialism is to be effected only by the deliberate action of the Masses. The Masses believe that certain evils are to be ascribed to private ownership in the means of production. They believe that socialist production is likely to improve their condition. It is therefore a theoretical insight which guides them. According to the materialist conception of history, however, this theory must itself be the inevitable result of a certain organization of production. Here we observe once more how Marxism moves in a circle when it tries to demonstrate its propositions. A certain condition must arise because evolution leads to it; evolution leads there because thought demands it; but thought is determined by being. This being, however, can be nothing more than that of the existing social condition. From the thinking determined by the existing condition the necessity of another condition follows.

  There are two objections against which this whole chain of reasoning has no defence. It is unable to refute the contention of anyone who, though arguing on the same lines, regards thought as the cause, and society as that which is caused. And it has similarly no reply to the objection that future conditions may very well be misconceived, and that that which now seems so desirable may prove to be less tolerable than existing conditions. This, however, re-opens discussion on the advantages and disadvantages of types of societies, those existing and those sketched out by would-be reformers. But this is the very discussion which Marxism desired to suppress.

  Let no one suppose that the Marxian doctrine of the concentration of capital can be verified by the simple method of consulting the statistics of establishments, incomes, and fortunes. The statistics of incomes and fortunes utterly contradict it. This can be definitely asserted in spite of all the imperfections of present statistical methods and all the difficulties which fluctuations in the value of money place in the way of using the material. With equal confidence one can say that the counterpart of the theory of concentration, the much discussed theory of increasing poverty—in which even orthodox Marxists can hardly continue to believe—is incompatible with the results of statistical investigation.5 The statistics of agricultural holdings also contradict the Marxian assumptions. Those giving the number of the establishments in industry, mining and transport appear to confirm it. But figures that indicate a particular evolution during a limited period cannot be conclusive. The development in this brief span might run contrary to the long term trend. We shall do better, therefore, to leave statistics on both sides, both for and against. For it must not be forgotten that there is a theory underlying every statistical demonstration. Figures alone prove or disprove nothing. Only the conclusions drawn from the collected material can do this. And these are theoretical.

  2

  The Theory of Anti-Monopolistic Policy

  The theory of monopoly goes deeper than the Marxian theory of concentration. According to it, free competition, the life blood of a society based on private ownership in the means of production, is weakened by the steady growth of monopoly. The disadvantages bred within the economy by the unlimited rule of private monopolies are, however, so great that society has no choice but to transform private monopoly by socialization into state ownership. However great an evil Socialism might be, it would be less harmful than private monopoly. Should it prove impossible to counteract the tendency towards monopoly in ever widening fields of production, then private ownership in the means of production is already doomed.6

  It is clear that this doctrine calls for a searching investigation: first, as to whether evolution is really in the direction of monopoly control, and secondly as to what are the economic effects of such monopoly. Here one has to proceed with special care. The time at which this doctrine was first expounded was generally not favourable to the theoretical study of such problems. The emotional judgment of appearances rather than the cool examination of the essence of things was the order of the day. Even the arguments of such an outstanding economist as J. B. Clark are imbued with the popular hatred of the trusts. Utterances typical of contemporary politicians are to be found in the report of the German Socialization Commission of February 15th, 1919, where it was affirmed as “indisputable” that the monopolistic position of the German coal industry “constitutes an independent power which is incompatible with the nature of the modern state, and not merely the socialist one.” It was, in the opinion of the Commission, “unnecessary to discuss anew the question whether and to what degree this power is misused to the detriment of the remaining members of society, those to whom it is raw material, the consumers, and the workers; its existence suffices to make evident the necessity for completely abolishing it.”7

  CHAPTER 23

  The Concentration of Establishments

  1

  The Concentration of Establishments as the Complement of the Division of Labour

  The concentration of establishments comes automatically with the division of labour. In the shoemaker’s workshop the production of footwear, formerly carried on in each individual household, is united in one single establishment. The shoemaking village, the shoe-manufactory, becomes the manufacturing centre for a large area. The shoe factory that is organized for the mass-production of footwear represents a still wider union of establishments, and the basic principle of its internal organization is on the one side, division of labour, and, on the other side, concentration of similar work in special departments. In short, the more the work is split up, the more must similar labour processes be concentrated.

  Neither from the results of the census undertaken in various countries to verify the doctrine of the concentration of productive units, nor from other statistical evidence of changes in the number of establishments, can we learn all there is to be known about them. For what appears in these enumerations as a unit is always, in a certain sense, a unit of business, not a unit of production. Only in certain cases do these investigations count separately works which, whilst united in locality, are conducted separately inside a single enterprise. The conception of the establishment and its evolution has to be elaborated from a point of view other than that which lies at the basis of trade statistics.

  The higher productivity of the division of labour results, above all, from the specialization of processes which it makes possible. The more often a process has to be repeated the more does it pay to install a specially adapted tool. The splitting up of labour goes farther than the specialization of occupations, or at least than the specialization of enterprises. In the shoe factory shoes are produced by various part processes. It is quite conceivable that each part process might take place in a special establishment and in a special enterprise. In fact, there are factories which make only parts of shoes and supply them to the shoe factories. Nevertheless, we usually consider as one productive unit the sum of part processes combined in a single shoe factory which itself produces all the component parts of shoes. If to the shoe factory is joined also a leather factory or a department for producing the boxes in which the shoes are packed, we speak of the union of several productive units for a common enterprise. This is a purely historical distinction which neither the technical circumstances of production nor the peculiarities of business enterprise suffice by themselves to explain.

  When we regard as an establishment that totality of process involved in economic activity which businessmen regard as a unity, we must remember that this unit is by no means an indivisible thing. Each productive unit is itself composed of technical processes already horizontally and vertically combined. The concept of an establishment, therefore, is economic, not technical. Its delimitation in individual cases is determined by economic, not by technical, considerations.

  The size of the productive unit is determined by the complementary quality of the factors of production. The aim is the optimal combination of these factors, i.e. that combination by which the greatest return can be produced economically. Economic development drives industry to ever greater division of labour, involving at once an increase in the size and a limiting of the scope of the unit of production. The actual size of the unit is the result of the interaction of these two forces.

  2

  The Optimal Size of Establishments in Primary Production and in Transport

  The Law of Proportionality in combining the factors of production was first formulated in connection with agricultural production, as the Law of Diminishing Returns. For a long time its general character was misunderstood, and it was regarded as a law of agricultural technique. It was contrasted with a Law of Increasing Returns, which was thought to be valid for industrial production. These errors have since been corrected.8

  The Law of the Optimal Combination of the factors of production indicates the most profitable size of the establishment. Net profit is greater according to the degree to which its size permits all factors of production to be employed without residue. In this way alone is to be estimated the superiority which the size of one particular establishment gives it over another establishment—at the given level of productive technique. It was a mistake to think that enlargement of the industrial establishment must always lead to an economy of costs, a mistake of which Marx and his school have been guilty, although occasional remarks betray the fact that he recognized the true state of affairs. For here, too, there is a limit beyond which enlargement of the establishment does not result in a more economical application of the factors of production. In principle, the same may be said of agriculture and mining; the concrete data only differ. It is merely certain peculiarities of the conditions of agricultural production which cause us to regard the Law of Diminishing Returns as primarily affecting land.

  The concentration of establishments is primarily concentration in space. As the land suitable to agriculture and forestry extends in space, every effort to enlarge the establishment increases the difficulties that spring from distance. Thus an upper limit is set for the size of the agricultural unit of exploitation. Because agriculture and forestry extend in space it is possible to concentrate the establishment only up to a definite point. It is superfluous to enter into the question—often raised in discussion of this problem—whether large or small scale production is the more economical in agriculture. This has nothing to do with the Law of the Concentration of Establishments. Even supposing large scale production to be superior, one cannot deny that there could be no question of a Law of the Concentration of Establishments in agriculture or forestry. The fact that land is owned on a large scale does not mean that it is worked on a large scale. The great estates are always composed of numerous farms.

  This appears even more clearly in a different branch of primary production, mining. Mining enterprise is tied to the place where the ore is found. The establishments are as large as these separate places permit. They can be concentrated only to the degree in which the geographical position of the separate beds of ore make concentration seem profitable. In short, one can see nowhere in primary production any tendency to concentrate productive units. This is equally true of transport.

  3

  The Optimal Size of Establishments in Manufacturing

  The process of manufacture out of raw materials is to a certain extent free from the limitations of space. The working of cotton plantations cannot be concentrated, but the spinning and weaving works may be united. But, here too, it would be rash to derive without further consideration a Law of the Concentration of Establishments from the fact that the larger plant generally proves superior to the smaller.

  For in industry too localization is of importance, quite apart from the fact that (other things being equal, i.e. at a given level of the division of labour) the economic superiority of the larger productive unit exists only in so far as the Law of the Optimal Combination of Factors of Production demands it and that consequently no advantage is to be gained by enlarging the establishment beyond the point where the instruments are most efficiently utilized. Each type of production has a natural location, which depends ultimately on the geographical distribution of primary production. The fact that primary production cannot be concentrated must influence the subsequent process of manufacture. The power of this influence varies with the importance attaching to the transport of raw materials and finished products in the separate branches of production.

  A Law of the Concentration of Establishments operates therefore only in so far as the division of labour leads to progressive division of production into new branches. This concentration is really nothing more than the reverse side of the division of labour. As a result of the division of labour numerous dissimilar establishments, within which uniformity is the rule, replace numerous similar establishments within which various different processes of production are carried out. It causes the number of similar plants to decrease, whilst the circle of persons, for whose needs they work directly or indirectly, grows. If the production of raw materials was not geographically fixed, a circumstance which acts counter to the process initiated by the division of labour, one single plant only would exist for every branch of production.9

  CHAPTER 24

  The Concentration of Enterprises

  1

  The Horizontal Concentration of Enterprises

  The merger of several similar independent establishments into one enterprise may be called horizontal concentration of production. Here we follow broadly the usage of writers on cartels, though their definition is not in complete accord with ours. If the separate establishments do not remain completely independent, if, for example the management or some departments are amalgamated, there is concentration of establishments. A mere concentration of enterprises occurs only when the individual units remain independent in everything except the taking of decisive economic decisions. The typical example of this is a cartel or a syndicate. Everything stays as it was, but, according to whether it is a buying cartel or a selling cartel or both, decisions about purchases and sales are taken unitarily.

  When it is not merely the preliminary step to an amalgamation of establishments, the purpose of these unions is monopolistic domination of the market. Horizontal concentration originates only in the efforts of separate entrepreneurs to derive those advantages enjoyed under certain circumstances by the monopolist.

  2

  The Vertical Concentration of Enterprises

  Vertical concentration is the union into one unitary enterprise of independent enterprises, some of which use the products of the others. This terminology follows the usage of modern economic literature. Examples of vertical concentration are the union of weaving, spinning, bleaching and dyeing works; a printing works to which a paper factory and a newspaper enterprise are joined; the mixed works of the iron industry and of coal mining, etc.

  Each productive unit is a vertical concentration of part processes and of apparatus. Unity of production is created by the fact that part of the means of production—certain machines, buildings, the direction of the works—is jointly held. Such joint holding is lacking in the vertical union of enterprises. Here the essence of the union lies in the will of the entrepreneur to make one enterprise serve another. The mere fact that one man owns two enterprises is not in itself sufficient if this will does not exist. Where a chocolate manufacturer owns also an iron works there is no vertical concentration. Vertical concentration is usually considered to aim at ensuring an outlet for the product or safeguarding the source of raw materials and half finished goods. This is what entrepreneurs reply when questioned as to the advantages of such combinations. Many economists accept it without question, for apparently they do not think it is their job to scrutinize what is said by “practical men”; and after accepting the statement as final they proceed to examine it from the ethical point of view. Still, even if they avoid thinking about it, closer research into facts should show them the truth. There is the fact that managers of plants attached to a vertical combination often have to make complaints. The manager of the paper-mill says: “I could get much better value for my paper if I did not have to supply it to ’our’ printing works.” The manager of the weaving-mill: “If I didn’t have to get the yarn from ’our’ spinning works I could get it cheaper.” Such complaints are the order of the day, and it is not difficult to understand why they must accompany every vertical concentration.

  If the amalgamated establishments were individually so efficient that they did not have to shun competition, vertical combination would serve no special purpose. A paper factory of the best type never needs to ensure its market. A printing works which is on a level with its competitors does not need to ensure its paper supply. The efficient enterprise sells where it gets the best prices, buys where it can do so most economically. Hence, it does not follow that two enterprises, working at different stages of the same branch of production and held by one owner, must necessarily unite in vertical combination. Only when one or other of them shows itself less able to sustain competition does the entrepreneur conceive the idea of supporting it by tying it to the strong one. He looks to the profits of the prosperous business for a fund to cover the deficits of the non-prosperous. Apart from tax remissions and other special advantages, such as those which the mixed works in the German iron industry were able to derive from cartel agreements, union achieves nothing but an apparent profit in one enterprise and an apparent loss in the other.

  The number and importance of vertical concentrations is extraordinarily overestimated. In modern capitalist economic life on the contrary, new branches of enterprise are constantly forming and parts of those existing are constantly breaking away to become independent.

  The progressive tendency to specialization in modern industry shows that development is moving away from vertical concentration, which, except where it is demanded by considerations of productive technique, is always art exceptional phenomenon, generally to be explained by regard for the legal and other political conditions of production. But even here the break-up of such unions and the re-establishment of individual enterprise is to be witnessed over and over again.

  CHAPTER 25

  The Concentration of Fortunes

  1

  The Problem

  A tendency to the concentration of establishments or to the concentration of enterprises is not by any means equivalent to a tendency to the concentration of fortunes. In the same degree in which establishments and enterprises became bigger and bigger modern capitalism has developed forms of enterprise which enable people with small fortunes to undertake big businesses. The proof that there is no tendency to concentrate fortunes lies in the number of these types of enterprises that have come up and are growing daily in importance, while the individual merchant has almost disappeared from large scale industry, mining, and transport. The history of forms of enterprise, from the societas unius acti to the modern joint stock company, is a wholesale contradiction of the doctrine of the concentration of capital so arbitrarily set up by Marx.

  If we wish to prove that the poor are becoming ever more numerous and poorer, and the rich ever less numerous and richer, it is useless to point out that in a period of remote antiquity, as elusive to us as the Golden Age to Ovid and Virgil, the differences of wealth were less than they are today. We must prove that there is an economic cause which leads imperatively to the concentration of fortunes. The Marxians have not even attempted this. Their theory which ascribes to the capitalist age a special tendency towards the concentration of fortunes, is pure invention. The attempt to give it some sort of historical foundation is hopeless and adduces just the contrary of that which Marx asserts to be demonstrable.

  2

  The Foundation of Fortunes Outside the Market Economy

  The desire for an increase of wealth can be satisfied through exchange, which is the only method possible in a capitalist economy, or by violence and petition as in a militarist society, where the strong acquire by force, the weak by petitioning. In the feudal society ownership of the strong endures only so long as they have the power to hold it; that of the weak is always precarious, for having been acquired by grace of the strong it is always dependent on them. The weak hold their property without legal protection. In a militarist society, therefore, there is nothing but power to hinder the strong from extending their wealth. They can go on enriching themselves as long as no stronger men oppose them.

  Nowhere and at no time has the large scale ownership of land come into being through the working of economic forces in the market. It is the result of military and political effort. Founded by violence, it has been upheld by violence and by that alone. As soon as the latifundia are drawn into the sphere of market transactions they begin to crumble, until at last they disappear completely. Neither at their formation nor in their maintenance have economic causes operated. The great landed fortunes did not arise through the economic superiority of large scale ownership, but through violent annexation outside the area of trade. “And they covet fields” complains the prophet Micah,10 “and take them by violence; and houses, and take them away.” Thus comes into existence the property of those who, in the words of Isaiah, “join house to house ... lay field to field, till there be no place, that they may be placed alone in the midst of the earth.”11

  The non-economic origin of landed fortunes is clearly revealed by the fact that, as a rule, the expropriation by which they have been created in no way alters the manner of production. The old owner remains on the soil under a different legal title and continues to carry on production.

  Land ownership may be founded also on gifts. It was in this way that the Church acquired its great possessions in the Frankish kingdom. Not later than the eighth century, these latifundia fell into the hands of the nobility; according to the older theory this was the result of secularizations by Charles Martel and his successors, but recent research is inclined to make “an offensive of the lay aristocrats” responsible.12

  That in a market economy it is difficult even now to uphold the latifundia, is shown by the endeavours to create legislation institutions like the “Fideikommiss” (feoffment in trust) and related legal institutions such as the English “entail.” The purpose of the “Fideikommiss” was to maintain large-scale landed proprietorship, because it could not be kept together otherwise. The Law of Inheritance is changed, mortgaging and alienation are made impossible, and the State is appointed guardian of the indivisibility and inalienability of the property, so that the prestige of family tradition shall not be impaired. If economic circumstances had tended towards the continuous concentration of land ownership such laws would have been superfluous. Legislation would have been enacted against the formation of estates rather than for their protection. But of such laws legal history knows nothing. The regulations against “Bauernlegen,” against enclosing arable land, etc., are directed against movements outside the area of trade, that is, against force. The legal restrictions of mortmain are similar. The lands of the mortmain, which, incidentally, are legally protected in much the same way as the “Fideikommiss,” do not increase by force of economic development but through pious donations.

  Now the highest concentration of fortunes is to be found just in agriculture, where concentration of establishments is impossible and the concentration of enterprises economically purposeless, where the large property appears to be economically inferior to the small and unable to withstand it in free competition. Never was the ownership of the means of production more closely concentrated than at the time of Pliny, when half the province of Africa was owned by six people, or in the days of the Merovingians, when the Church possessed the greater part of all French soil. And in no part of the world is there less large-scale land ownership than in capitalist North America.

  3

  The Formation of Fortunes Within the Market Economy

  The assertion that wealth on the one hand and poverty on the other are ever increasing was maintained at first without any conscious connection with an economic theory. Its supporters think they have derived it from an observation of social relations. But the observer’s judgment is influenced by the idea that the sum of wealth in any society is a given quantity, so that if some possess more others must possess less.13 As, however, in every society the growth of new riches and the coming into existence of new poverty are always to be found in a conspicuous manner whilst the slow decline of ancient fortunes and the slow enrichment of less propertied classes easily escape the eye of the inattentive student, it is easy to arrive at the premature conclusion summed up in the socialist catchword “the rich richer, the poor poorer.”

  No protracted argument is required to prove that the evidence completely fails to substantiate this assertion. It is quite an unfounded hypothesis that in a society based on the division of labour the wealth of some implies the poverty of others. Under certain assumptions it is true of militarist societies, where there is no division of labour. But of a capitalist society it is untrue. Moreover an opinion formed on the basis of casual observations of that narrow section with which the individual is personally acquainted is quite insufficient proof of the theory of concentration.

  The foreigner who visits England equipped with good recommendations has opportunities for learning something of the noble and wealthy families, and their manner of living. If he wants to know more or feels it his duty to make his visit more than a mere pleasure trip, he is allowed to make a flying tour of the works of great enterprises. For the layman, there is nothing particularly attractive about this. At first the noise, the bustle, the activity astonish the visitor, but after inspecting two or three factories the spectacle grows monotonous. Such a study of social relations, on the other hand, as can be undertaken during a short visit to England, is more stimulating. A walk through the slums of London or any other large city produces more vivid impressions, and the effect on the traveller who, when not occupied in this study, will be hurrying from one entertainment to another, is twice as powerful. Thus visits to the slums have become a popular item in the itinerary of the Continental’s obligatory tour of England. In this way the future statesman and economist gathered an impression of the effects of industry on the masses, which became a basis for the social views of a lifetime. He went home firm in the opinion that industry makes few rich and many poor. When later he wrote or spoke about industrial conditions he never forgot to describe the misery he had found in the slums, elaborating the most painful details, often with more or less conscious exaggeration. All the same his picture tells us nothing more than that some people are rich and some poor. But to know this, we do not need the report of people who have seen the suffering with their own eyes. Before they wrote we knew that Capitalism has not yet abolished all misery in the world. What they have to set about proving is that the number of wealthy people is decreasing, while the wealthy individual grows richer, and that the number and the poverty of the poor is steadily on the increase. It would, however, take a theory of economic evolution to prove this.

  Attempts to demonstrate by statistical research the progressive increase of the misery of the masses and the growth of wealth among a numerically diminishing rich class are no better than these mere appeals to emotion. The estimates of money incomes at the disposal of statistical inquiry are unusable because the purchasing power of money alters. This fact alone is enough to show that we lack any basis for comparing arithmetically the distribution of income over a number of years. For where it is not possible to reduce to a common denominator the various goods and services of which incomes are composed, one cannot form any series for historical comparison from known statistics of income and capital.

  The attention of sociologists is often drawn to the fact that mercantile and industrial wealth, that is, wealth not invested in land and mining property, seldom maintains itself in one family for a long period. The bourgeois families rise steadily from poverty to wealth, sometimes so quickly that a man who has been in want a few years previously becomes one of the richest of his time. The history of modern fortunes is full of stories of beggar boys who have made themselves millionaires. Little is said of the decay of fortunes among the well-to-do. This does not usually take place so quickly as to strike the casual observer; closer examination, however, will reveal how unceasing the process is. Seldom does mercantile and industrial wealth maintain itself in one family for more than two or three generations, unless, by investment in land, it has ceased to be wealth of this nature.14 It becomes property in land, no longer used in the business of active acquisition.

  Fortunes invested in capital do not, as the naive economic philosophy of the common man imagines, represent eternal sources of income. That capital yields a profit, that it even maintains itself at all, is by no means a self-evident fact following a priori from the fact of its existence. The capital goods, of which capital is concretely composed, appear and disappear in production; in their place come other goods, ultimately consumption goods, out of the value of which the value of the capital mass must be reconstituted. This is possible only when the production has been successful, that is when it has produced more value than it absorbed. Not only profits of capital, but the reproduction of capital presupposes a successful process of production. The profits of capital and maintenance of capital are always the result of successful enterprise. If this enterprise falls, the investor loses not only the yield on the capital, but his original capital fund as well. One ought carefully to distinguish between produced means of production and the primary factors of production. In agriculture and forestry the original and indestructible forces of the soil are maintained even though production fails, for faulty management cannot dissipate them. They may become valueless through changes in demand, but they cannot lose their inherent capacity to yield produce. This is not so in manufacturing production. There everything can be lost, root and branch. Production must continually replenish capital. The individual capital goods which compose it have a limited life; the existence of capital is prolonged only by the manner in which the owner deliberately reinvests it in production. To own capital one must earn it afresh day by day. In the long run a capital fortune is not a source of income which can be enjoyed in idleness.

  To combat these arguments by pointing to the steady yield from “good” capital investments would be wrong. The point is that the investments must be “good,” and to be that, they must be the result of successful speculation. Arithmetical jugglers have calculated the amount to which a penny, invested at compound interest at the time of Christ, would have grown by now. The result is so striking that one might very well ask why nobody was clever enough to reap a fortune this way. But quite apart from all the other obstacles to such a course of action, there is the crowning disability that to every capital investment is attached the risk of a total or partial loss of the original capital sum. This is true not only of the entrepreneur’s investment, but also of the investment the capitalist makes in lending to the entrepreneur, for his investment naturally depends completely on the entrepreneur’s. His risk is smaller, because the entrepreneur offers him as security that part of his own wealth which is outside the immediate undertaking, but qualitatively the two risks are the same. The moneylender too can, and often does, lose his wealth.15

  An eternal capital investment is as non-existent as a secure one. Every capital investment is speculative; its success cannot be foreseen with absolute assurance. Not even the idea of an “eternal and secure” capital yield could have arisen if the concepts of capital investment had been taken from the sphere of business and capital enterprise. The ideas of eternity and security come from rents secured on landed property and from the related government securities. It corresponds to actual conditions when the law recognizes as trustee investments only those which are in land or in incomes secured on land or afforded by the State or by other public corporations. In capitalist enterprise there is no secure income and no security of wealth. It is obvious that an entail invested in enterprises outside agriculture, forestry, and mining would be senseless.

  If, then, capital sums do not grow of themselves, if for their maintenance alone, quite apart from their fructification and increase, successful speculation is constantly required, there can be no question whatever of a tendency for fortunes to grow bigger and bigger. Fortunes cannot grow; someone has to increase them.16 For this the successful activity of an entrepreneur is needed. The capital reproduces itself, bears fruit and increases only so long as a successful and lucky investment endures. The more rapid the change in economic environment the shorter the time in which an investment is to be considered as good. For the making of new investments, for reorganization of production, for innovations in technique, abilities are needed which only a few possess. If under exceptional circumstances these are inherited from generation to generation, the successors are able to maintain the wealth left by their ancestors, even perhaps to increase it, despite the fact that it may have been split up on inheritance. But if, as is generally the case, the heirs are not equal to the demands which life makes on an entrepreneur, the inherited wealth rapidly vanishes.

  When rich entrepreneurs wish to perpetuate their wealth in the family they take refuge in land. The descendants of the Fuggers and the Welsers17 live even today in considerable affluence, if not luxury, but they have long since ceased to be merchants and have transformed their wealth into landed property. They became members of the German nobility, differing in no way from other South German noble families. Numerous merchant families in other countries have undergone the same development; having become rich in trade and industry they have ceased to be merchants and entrepreneurs and have become landowners, not to increase their fortunes but to maintain them and transmit them to their children and their children’s children. The families which did otherwise soon disappeared in obscure poverty. There are few banking families whose business has existed for a hundred years or more, and a closer glance at the affairs of these few will show that they are generally commercially active only in administering fortunes really invested in land and mines. There are no ancient fortunes which thrive in the sense that they continually increase.

  4

  The Theory of Increasing Poverty

  The theory of increasing poverty among the masses stands at the centre of Marxist thought as well as of older socialist doctrines. The accumulation of poverty parallels the accumulation of capital. It is the “antagonistic character of capitalist production” that “the accumulation of wealth at one pole” is simultaneously “accumulation of misery, work torture, slavery, ignorance, brutalization, and moral degeneracy at the other.”18 This is the theory of the progressive increase in the absolute poverty of the masses. Based on nothing but the tortuous processes of an abstruse system of thought, it need occupy us all the less in that it is gradually receding into the background, even in the writings of orthodox Marxian disciples and the official programmes of the Social-Democratic parties. Even Kautsky, during the revisionism quarrel, was reduced to conceding that, according to all the facts, it was precisely in the most advanced capitalist countries that physical misery was on the decline, and that the working classes had a higher standard of life than fifty years ago.19 The Marxians still cling to the theory of increasing poverty purely on account of its propaganda value, and exploit it today just as much as during the youth of the now aged Party.

  But intellectually the theory of the relative growth of poverty, developed by Rodbertus, has replaced the theory of absolute growth. “Poverty,” says Rodbertus, “is a social, that is, a relative, concept. Now, I maintain that the justifiable needs of the working classes, since these have attained a higher social position, have become considerably more numerous. It would be as wrong, now that they have attained this position, not to speak, even with unchanged wages, of a deterioration in their material condition as it would have been at an earlier stage when their wages fell, and they had not yet attained this position.”20 This thought is derived entirely from the point of view of the State Socialist, which considers a raising of the workers’ claims to be “justified” and assigns them a “higher position” in the social order. Against arbitrary judgments of this kind, no argument is possible.

  The Marxians have taken over the doctrine of the relative growth of poverty. “If in the course of evolution the grandson of a small master weaver, who had lived with his own journeymen, comes to inhabit a palatial, magnificently furnished villa, while the journeyman’s grandson lives in lodgings, which though more comfortable, no doubt, than his grandfather’s garret in the master weaver’s house, yet serves to widen the social gulf between the two, then the journeyman’s grandson will feel his poverty all the more for seeing the comforts that are within his employer’s reach. His own position is better than his ancestor’s, his standard of living has risen, but relatively his situation has become worse. Social misery becomes greater ... the workers relatively more wretched.”21 Assuming that this were true, it would be no indictment against the capitalist system. If Capitalism improves the economic position all round, it is of secondary importance that it does not raise all to the same level. A social order is not bad simply because it helps one more than another. If I am doing better, what can it harm me that others are doing better still? Must one destroy Capitalism which better satisfies from day to day the wants of all people, merely because some individuals become rich and a few of them very rich? How, then, can it be asserted as “logically unassailable” that “a growth in the relative poverty of the masses ... must finally end in catastrophe.”22

  Kautsky tries to make his conception of the Marxian theory of increasing poverty different from that which emerges from an unprejudiced reading of Das Kapital. “The word poverty,” he says, “may mean physical poverty, but it may also mean social poverty. In the first sense it is measured by man’s physiological needs. These are indeed not everywhere and at all times the same, still they do not show differences nearly so great as the social needs, non-satisfaction of which produces social poverty.”23 It is social poverty, says Kautsky, that Marx had in mind. Considering the clarity and precision of Marx’s style this interpretation is a masterpiece of sophistry, and it was accordingly rejected by the revisionists. To the person who does not take Marx’s words as revelation it may, indeed, be a matter of indifference whether the theory of increasing social poverty is contained in the first volume of Das Kapital or is taken from Engels or was first put forward by the neo-Marxists. The important questions are whether it is tenable and what conclusions follow from it.

  Kautsky holds that the growth of poverty in the social sense is “attested by the bourgeoisie themselves, only they have given the matter a different name; they call it covetousness ... The decisive fact is that the contrast between the wage-earners’ needs and the possibility of satisfying them out of wages, the contrast therefore between wage-earning and capital, is becoming greater and greater.”24 Covetousness has always existed, however; it is no new phenomenon. We may even admit that it is more prevalent now than formerly; the general striving after improvement of economic position is a peculiarly characteristic mark of capitalist society. But how one can conclude from this that the capitalist order of society must necessarily change into the socialist, is inexplicable.

  The fact is, that the doctrine of increasing relative social poverty is nothing more than an attempt to give an economic justification to policies based on the resentment of the masses. Growing social poverty means merely growing envy.25 Mandeville and Hume, two of the greatest observers of human nature, have remarked that the intensity of envy depends on the distance between the envier and the envied. If the distance is great one does not compare oneself with the envied, and, in fact, no envy is felt. The smaller the distance, however, the greater the envy.26 Thus one can deduce from the growth of resentment in the masses that inequalities of income are diminishing. The increasing “covetousness” is not, as Kautsky thinks, a proof of the relative growth of poverty; on the contrary, it shows that the economic distance between the classes is becoming less and less.

  CHAPTER 26

  Monopoly and Its Effects

  1

  The Nature of Monopoly and its Significance for the Formation of Prices

  No other part of economic theory has been so much misunderstood as the theory of monopoly. The mere mention of the word monopoly usually stirs up emotions which make clear judgment impossible and provokes, instead of economic arguments, the usual moral indignation evinced in etatistic and other anti-capitalist literature. Even in the United States the controversy raging over the trust problem has supplanted all impartial discussion of the problem of monopoly.

  The widespread view that the monopolist can fix prices at will, that—in common phrase—he can dictate prices, is as erroneous as the conclusion, derived from this view, that he has in his hands the power to do whatever he likes. This could only be the case if the commodity monopolized were, by its very essence, completely outside the range of other goods. A man who could monopolize the atmosphere or drinking water could undoubtedly force all other human beings to obey him blindly. Such a monopoly would be unhampered by any competing economic agency. The monopolist would be able to dispose freely of the lives and property of his fellowmen. Such monopolies, however, do not come under our theory of monopoly. Water and air are free goods, and where they are not free—as in the case of water on a mountain top—one can evade the effect of monopoly by moving to a different place. Perhaps the nearest approach to such a monopoly was the power to administer grace to believers, exercised by the medieval Church. Excommunication and interdict were no less terrible than death from thirst or suffocation. In a socialist community the State as organized society would form such a monopoly. All economic goods would be united in its hands and it would therefore be in a position to force the citizen to fulfil its commands, would in fact confront the individual with a choice between obedience and starvation.

  The only monopolies which concern us here are trade monopolies. They affect only economic goods which, however important and indispensable they may seem, do not of themselves exert any decisive power over human life. When a commodity of which a definite minimum is essential to everyone who wishes to go on living, falls under a monopoly, then indeed do all those consequences popularly assigned to monopolies inevitably follow. But we need not discuss this hypothesis. It is of no practical importance as it lies outside the range of economics, and therefore of price theory—except in the case of strikes in certain enterprises.27 A distinction between goods which are essential to life and those which are not, is sometimes made when the effects of monopoly are being considered. But these supposedly indispensable commodities are, strictly speaking, not what they seem. As the whole argument is based on the strict concept of indispensability, we have first of all to consider whether we have to deal with indispensability in the exact and full meaning of the word. Actually we can dispense with the commodities in question, either by renouncing the services we obtain from them or by procuring those services from some alternative commodity. Bread is certainly an important commodity. Yet one can live without it, by living on potatoes, cakes made from maize, and so on. Coal, so important today that it might be called the bread of industry, is not, in the strict sense of the word, indispensable, for power and heat can be produced without coal too. And this is all that matters. The concept “monopoly” which alone concerns us here is that contained in the theory of price monopoly and is the only one which contributes materially to an understanding of economic conditions; it does not demand that a monopolized commodity shall be indispensable, unique, and without substitute. It assumes only the absence of perfect competition on the side of supply.28

  Such loose concepts of monopoly are, moreover, not merely inappropriate; they are also theoretically misleading. They lead to the supposition that price phenomena can be explained without further investigation by demonstrating a monopolistic condition. Having once laid it down that the monopolist “dictates” prices, that his attempt to raise prices as high as possible could only be restrained by a “power” influencing the market from outside, such theorists proceed to render the concept of monopoly so elastic as to include all commodities not increasable or only increasable with increasing costs. As this already comprises most price phenomena, they are able to avoid the necessity of working out a theory of prices themselves. As a result many come to speak of the monopoly ownership of land and believe that they have solved the problem of rent by pointing out that this monopolistic relation exists. Others go further and seek to explain interest, profit, and even wages as monopoly prices and monopoly profits. Quite apart from other defects in these “explanations,” their authors fail to perceive that, while alleging that a monopoly exists, they say nothing at all about the nature of price formation and that therefore the catchword monopoly is no substitute for a properly developed theory of prices.29

  The laws determining monopoly prices are the same as those which determine other prices. The monopolist cannot ask any price he fancies. The price offers with which he enters the market influence the attitude of the buyers. Demand expands or contracts according to the price he demands, and he has to reckon with this like any other seller. The one and only peculiarity of monopoly is that, assuming a certain shape for the demand curve, the maximum net profit lies at a higher price than would have been the case in competition between sellers.30 If we assume these conditions and if the monopolist cannot so discriminate as to exploit the purchasing power of each class of buyers, it pays him better to sell at the higher monopoly price than at the lower competitive price, even though sales are thereby diminished. Therefore, monopoly under such conditions has three results: the market price is higher, the profit is greater, both the quantity sold and the consumption are smaller than they would have been under free competition.

  The last of these results must be examined more closely. If there is more of the monopolized commodity than can be placed at the monopoly price the monopolist must lock up or destroy so many surplus units that the remainder may attain the price needed. Thus the Dutch East India Company, which monopolized the European coffee market in the seventeenth century, destroyed some of its stocks. Other monopolists have done likewise: the Greek Government, for instance, destroyed currants in order to raise the price. Economically only one verdict on these proceedings is possible: they diminish the stock of wealth which serves to satisfy needs, they reduce welfare, they diminish riches. That goods which could have satisfied wants, and foodstuffs which could have stilled the hunger of the many, should be destroyed is a state of things which the outraged populace and the discerning economist unite, for once, in condemning.

  Even in monopolistic undertakings, however, destruction of economic goods is rare. The far-sighted monopolist does not produce goods for the incinerator. If he wishes to place fewer goods on the market he takes steps to reduce his output. The problem of monopoly must be considered, not from the point of view of goods destroyed, but from that of production restricted.

  2

  The Economic Effects of Isolated Monopolies

  Whether the monopolist can exploit his position at all depends on the shape of the demand curve of the monopolized commodity and on the costs of producing the marginal unit of the commodity at the existing scale of production. Only when the conditions are such that the sale of a smaller quantity at higher prices yields a greater net profit than the sale of a larger quantity at lower prices, is it possible to apply the specific principle of monopolistic policy.31 But even then it is applied only if the monopolist fails to find a method of securing still higher profits. The monopolist serves his interests best if he can separate buyers into classes according to their purchasing power, for he can then exploit the purchasing power of each class separately and exact the highest prices from its members. Railways and other transport undertakings, which grade their tariffs according to what the traffic will bear are in this class. If, following the general method of monopolists, they treated all users of transport uniformly, those less able to pay would be excluded from transport and for those able to stand higher charges transport would be cheapened. The effect of this on the local distribution of industry is clear; amongst the factors determining the localization of individual industries the transport factor would make itself felt in a different way.

  In examining the economic effect of monopoly, we must limit investigation to the type which restricts the production of its commodity. Now the result of this restriction is not that less is produced quantitatively. Capital and labour, set free by the restriction of production, must find employment in other production. For in the long run in the free economy there is neither unemployed capital nor unemployed labour. Thus against the smaller production of the monopolized goods one must set the increased production of other goods. But these, of course, are less important goods, which would not have been produced and consumed if the more pressing demands for a larger quantity of the monopolized commodity could have been satisfied. The difference between the value of these goods and the higher value of the quantity of the monopolized commodity not produced represents the loss of welfare which the monopoly has inflicted on the national economy. Here private profit and social productivity are at variance. A social society under such circumstances would act differently from a capitalist society.

  It has sometimes been pointed out that although the monopoly can prove harmful to the consumer it might, on the other hand, be turned to his advantage. Monopoly could produce more cheaply because it eliminates all the expenses of competition and because, being adapted to large scale operations it enjoys all advantages of the division of labour. But this in no wise alters the fact that monopoly deflects production from more important products to less important ones. It may be as the defender of trusts is fond of repeating, that the monopolist, unable to increase his profit otherwise, endeavours to improve productive technique, but it is difficult to understand why the urge to this should be greater in him than in the competitive producer. Even if this be admitted, however, it does not alter what we have said about the social effects of monopoly.

  3

  The Limits of Monopoly Formation

  The possibility of monopolizing the market varies radically with different goods. Even the producer who is protected from competition need not necessarily be in a position to sell at monopoly prices and obtain monopoly profits. If the quantity sold falls so steeply with the rise of prices that the extra sum obtained does not cover the deficiency in the number sold, then the monopolist is forced to content himself with the price which would have emerged under competitive selling.32

  Apart from the enjoyment of artificial support—the grant of special legal privileges, for example—we shall find that a monopoly can, as a rule, maintain itself only by the exclusive power to dispose of certain natural factors of production. Similar power over reproducible means of production does not as a rule allow permanent monopolization. New enterprises may always spring up. As already pointed out, the progressive division of labour tends towards a condition in which, at the highest specialization of production, everyone will be the sole producer of one or several articles. But this would by no means necessarily involve a monopolized market for all these articles. The attempts of manufacturers to extract monopoly prices would, apart from other circumstances, be checked by the appearance of new competitors.

  Experience of cartels and trusts during the last generation completely confirms this. All enduring monopolistic organizations are built up on the power of the monopoly to dispose of natural resources or of particular land sites. A man who tried to become a monopolist without the control of such resources—and without special legal aids such as tariffs, patents, etc.—had to resort to all sorts of tricks and artifices to secure even a temporary success. The complaints raised against cartels and trusts and investigated by the commissions of inquiry whose published records are so voluminous, deal almost exclusively with these tricks and practices, which aim at creating monopolies artificially where the conditions for them do not exist. Most cartels and trusts would never have been set up had not the governments created the necessary conditions by protectionist measures. Manufacturing and commercial monopolies owe their origin not to a tendency immanent in capitalist economy but to governmental interventionist policy directed against free trade and laisser-faire.

  Without the special power to dispose of natural resources, or of advantageously situated land, monopolies could arise only where the capital required to erect a competing enterprise was not able to count on an adequate return. A railway company can achieve a monopoly where it would not pay to build a competing line, the traffic being too small for two lines to be profitable. The same may be true in other cases. But while this shows that a few monopolies of this kind are possible it does not reveal a general tendency to their formation.

  The effect of such monopolies, e.g. the railway company or the electric power plant, is that the monopolist may be able, according to the circumstances of the case, to absorb a greater or smaller quantity of the ground rents of adjoining properties. The result of this may be a change in the distribution of income and property which is felt to be disagreeable—at least, by those directly affected.

  4

  The Significance of Monopoly in Primary Production

  In an economy based on private ownership in the means of production, specific primary production is the only field liable to monopolization without special protection from the State. Monopolies in certain branches of primary production are possible. Mining, in the widest sense of the word, is their true domain. Where today we have monopolistic structures which do not spring from government intervention, they are—a part from such instances as the railway company and the power works—almost exclusively organizations built up on a power to dispose of certain kinds of natural resources. These natural resources must be such as are found in relatively few places, for this alone makes the monopoly possible. A world monopoly of potato farmers or milk producers is unthinkable.33 Potatoes and milk, or at least substitutes for them, can be produced over the greater part of the earth’s surface. World monopolies of oil, mercury, zinc, nickel, and other materials can occasionally be formed if the owners of the rare places where they exist can combine; examples of this are found in the history of recent years.

  When such a monopoly is formed the higher monopoly price replaces the competitive price. The income of mine owners rises, production and consumption of their product fall. A quantity of capital and labour which would otherwise have been active in this branch of production is diverted to other fields. If we consider the effects of monopoly from the standpoint of the separate branches of world economy we see only the rise in the monopolists’ income and the corresponding decline in the income of all other branches. Considered, however, from the standpoint of world economy and subspecie aeternitatis (from the point of view of eternity), monopolies would appear to economize consumption of irreplaceable natural resources. People come to deal more thriftily with these precious resources when as in mining, the monopoly price occasionally replaces the competitive price and they are driven to do less digging and more working up. Since in every mine in operation nature’s irreplaceable gift to man is being used up, the less we touch this stock the better we provide for the supply of coming generations. We see now what it means when people detect in monopoly a conflict between social productivity and private profit. True, a socialist community would have no occasion to restrict production as Capitalism does under monopolies, but this would only mean that Socialism would deal less thriftily with irreplaceable natural treasures, that it would sacrifice the future to the present.

  When we find that monopoly causes a conflict between profit and productivity which is not to be found anywhere else, we do not necessarily say that the effects of monopoly are pernicious. The naive assumption that the behavior of the socialist community—as typifying the idea of productivity—constitutes the Absolute Good is quite arbitrary. We have no standard on which to base a valid decision between what is good and what is evil in this context.

  If, then, we consider the effects of monopoly without being biased by popular writers on cartels and trusts, we can discover nothing which could justify the assertion that growing monopolization makes the capitalist system intolerable. The monopolist’s scope in a capitalist economy free from state interference is much smaller than this type of writer commonly assumes; and the consequences of monopoly must be judged by other standards than the mere catchwords Price Dictation and the Rule of the Trust Magnates.

  PART IV

  SOCIALISM AS A MORAL IMPERATIVE

  CHAPTER 27

  Socialism and Ethics

  1

  The Socialist Attitude to Ethics

  For pure Marxism Socialism is not a political programme. It does not demand that society shall be transformed into the socialist order, nor does it condemn the liberal order of society. It presents itself as a scientific theory which claims to have discovered in the dynamic laws of historical development a movement towards the socialization of the means of production. To say that pure Marxism pronounces itself in favour of Socialism or that it desires Socialism or wishes to bring it about would be just as absurd as to say that Astronomy wishes or thought it desirable to bring about a solar eclipse which it had predicted. We know that Marx’s life and even many of his writings and sayings sharply contradict his theoretic outlook and that the Socialism of resentment is always showing its cloven hoof. In practical politics at least, his supporters have long since forgotten what they owe strictly to his doctrine. Their words and deeds go far beyond what the “midwife theory” permits.1 This, however, is of secondary importance for our study, which here deals only with the doctrine pure and undefiled.

  Besides the pure Marxist view that Socialism must come of inexorable Necessity, there are two other motives which guide the advocates of Communism. They are socialists either because they expect socialist society to increase productivity, or because they believe that a socialist society would be more just. Marxism is unable to reconcile itself to ethical Socialism. But its attitude to economic-rationalist Socialism is quite different: it is possible to interpret the materialistic conception of history as meaning that the trend of economic development naturally leads to the most productive type of economy, that is to say Socialism. Of course, this view is very different from that held by the majority of Marxists. They are for Socialism, firstly because it is bound to come in any case, secondly because it is morally preferable, and finally because it involves more rational economic organization.

  The two motives of non-Marxian Socialism are mutually exclusive. If a man advocates Socialism because he expects it to increase the productivity of social labour he need not try to bolster up his demands with a higher moral valuation of the socialist order. If he elects to do so, he is open to the question whether he would be prepared to advocate Socialism if he discovered that it was after all not the morally perfect order. On the other hand it is clear that one who advocates the socialistic order for moral reasons would have to go on doing so even if he were convinced that the order based on private ownership in the means of production yielded greater productivity of labour.

  2

  Eudaemonistic Ethics and Socialism

  To eudaemonism, which looks at social phenomena rationalistically, the very way in which ethical Socialism states its problems seems unsatisfactory. Unless Ethics and “Economy” are regarded as two systems of objectivization which have nothing to do with each other, then ethical and economic valuation and judgment cannot appear as mutually independent factors. All ethical ends are merely a part of human aims. This implies that on the one hand the ethical aim is a means, in so far as it assists in the human struggle for happiness, but that on the other hand it is comprised in the process of valuation which unites all intermediate aims into a unitary scale of values and grades them according to their importance. The conception of absolute ethical values, which might be opposed to economic values, cannot therefore be maintained.

  Of course one cannot discuss this point with the ethical apriorist or the intuitionist. Those who uphold the Moral as ultimate fact, and who rule out scientific examination of its elements by referring to a transcendental origin, will never be able to agree with those who are dragging down the concept of Right into the dust of scientific analysis. Ethical ideas of duty and conscience demand nothing less than the blindest submission.2A priori ethics, claiming unconditional validity for its norms, approaches all earthly relations from the outside and aims at transmuting them into its own form with no concern whatever for the consequences. Fiat iustitia, pereat mundus (let justice be done even though the world be destroyed) is its motto, and it is when it becomes honestly indignant about the eternally misunderstood plea, “the end justifies the means,” that it is most sincere.

  Isolated man settles all his ends according to his own law. He sees and knows nothing but himself and arranges his actions accordingly. In society, however, he must temper his actions to the fact that he lives in society and that his actions must affirm the existence and progress of society. From the basic law of social life it follows that he does not do this to achieve aims lying outside his own personal system of ends. In making the social ends his own he does not thereby subordinate his personality and his wishes to those of a higher personality or renounce the fulfilment of any of his own desires in favour of those of a mystical universe. For, from the standpoint of his own valuation, social ends are not ultimate but intermediate in his own scale of values. He must accept society because social life helps him to fulfil his own wishes more completely. If he denied it he would be able to create only transitory advantages for himself; by destroying the social body he would in the long run injure himself.

  The idea of a dualism of motivation assumed by most ethical theorists, when they distinguish between egoistic and altruistic motives of action, cannot therefore be maintained. This attempt to contrast egoistic and altruistic action springs from a misconception of the social interdependence of individuals. The power to choose whether my actions and conduct shall serve myself or my fellow beings is not given to me—which perhaps may be regarded as fortunate. If it were, human society would not be possible. In the society based on division of labour and co-operation, the interests of all members are in harmony, and it follows from this basic fact of social life that ultimately action in the interests of myself and action in the interest of others do not conflict, since the interests of individuals come together in the end. Thus the famous scientific dispute as to the possibility of deriving the altruistic from the egoistic motives of action may be regarded as definitely disposed of.

  There is no contrast between moral duty and selfish interests. What the individual gives to society to preserve it as society, he gives, not for the sake of aims alien to himself, but in his own interest.3 The individual, who is a product of society not only as a thinking, willing, sentient man, but also simply as a living creature, cannot deny society without denying himself.

  This position of social ends in the system of individual ends is perceived by the individual’s reason, which enables him to recognize aright his own interests. But society cannot always trust the individual to see which are his true interests. If it left everyone to judge of his own it would expose itself to the caprice of every foolish, sick, and weak-willed person, leaving him free to put its very existence into question, thus imperilling the continuity of development. This is what led to the creation of powers of social coercion which, vis-à-vis the individual, appear as external constraints because they demand imperative obedience. And here we see the social significance of the State and the Law. They are not something outside the individual, demanding from him actions which run counter to his own interests, forcing him to serve alien purposes. They merely prevent the misguided, asocial individual, blind to his own interests, from injuring his fellow men by a revolt against the social order.

  It is therefore absurd to maintain that Liberalism, Utilitarianism and Eudaemonism are “inimical to the State.” They reject the idea of Etatism, which under the name State adores as God a mysterious being not comprehensible to human understanding; they dissent from Hegel, to whom the State is “divine will”; they reject the Hegelian Marx and his school who have replaced the cult of “State” with the cult of “Society”; they combat all those who want the State or “Society” to perform tasks other than those corresponding to that social order which they themselves believe the most proper to the end in view. Because they favour private ownership in the means of production they demand that the State coercive apparatus shall be directed to maintain this, and they reject all proposals intended to restrict or abolish private property. But never for a moment do they think of “abolishing the State.” The liberal conception of society by no means omits the apparatus of the State; it assigns to this the task of safeguarding life and property. Anybody who calls opposition to State railways, State theatres, or State dairies “enmity to the State” must be deeply enmeshed indeed in the realistic (in the scholastic sense) conception of the State.

  Occasionally society can prevail against the individual even without coercion. Not every social norm requires that the most extreme coercive measures shall at once be put into force. In many things, morals and custom can wring from the individual a recognition of social aims without assistance from the sword of justice. Morals and customs go further than State law in so far as they protect more extensive social aims. In this respect, there may be a difference in extent between them, but no incompatibility of principle. Essential contrasts between the legal order and moral laws occur only where the two derive from different conceptions of the social order, that is, where they appertain to different social systems. The contrast is then dynamic, not static.

  The ethical valuation “good” or “evil” can be applied only in respect of ends towards which action strives. As Epicurus said: “Αδιχία ού χαθ́ ὲαυτην χαχόν” (“Vice without injurious consequences would not be vice.”)4 Since action is never its own end, but rather the means to an end, we call an action good or evil only in respect of the consequences of the action. It is judged according to its place in the system of cause and effect. It is valued as a means. And for the value of the means the valuation of the end is decisive. Ethical, like all other, valuation proceeds from valuation of ends, of the ultimate good. The value of an action is the value of the end it serves. Intention, too, has value in so far as it leads to action.

  Unity of action can exist only when all ultimate values can be brought into a unitary scale of values. If this were not possible, man would always be finding himself in a position where he could not act, that is, work as a creature conscious of his striving towards a goal; he would have to abandon the issue to forces beyond his control. Conscious scaling of values precedes every human action. The man who chooses to attain A while renouncing B, C, D, etc., has decided that in the given circumstances the attainment of A is more valuable to him than the attainment of the others.

  Philosophers had been arguing about this ultimate Good for a long time before it was settled by modern investigation. At the present day Eudaemonism is no longer open to attack. In the long run all the arguments which philosophers from Kant to Hegel brought against it were unable to dissociate the concept Morality from that of Happiness. Never in history has more intellect and ingenuity been expended in defending an untenable position. We are lost in admiration of the magnificent performance of these philosophers. We might almost say that what they have done to prove the impossible elicits more admiration than the achievements of the great thinkers and sociologists who have made Eudaemonism and Utilitarianism a permanent possession of the human mind. Certainly their efforts were not in vain. Their gigantic struggle for anti-eudaemonistic ethics were necessary to expose the problem in all its wide ramifications and so enable a conclusive solution to be reached.

  Since the tenets of intuitionist ethics, which are irreconcilable with scientific method, have been deprived of their very foundations, anyone who recognizes the eudaemonistic character of all ethical valuation is exempt from further discussion of ethical Socialism. For such a one the Moral does not stand outside the scale of values which comprises all values of life. For him no moral ethic is valid per se. He must first be allowed to inquire why it is so rated. He can never reject that which has been recognized as beneficial and reasonable simply because a norm, based on some mysterious intuition, declares it to be immoral—a norm the sense and purpose of which he is not entitled even to investigate.5 His principle is not fiat iustitia, pereat mundus, (let justice be done, though the world perish), but fiat iustitia, ne pereat mundus (let justice be done, lest the world perish).

  If nevertheless it appears not entirely superfluous to discuss separately the arguments of ethical Socialism, this is not merely because it counts many adherents, but, what is more important, because it provides an opportunity of showing how eudaemonistic ideas lie concealed in every train of aprioristic-intuitive ethical thought, and how this system can be traced back, in every one of its utterances, to untenable notions of economic conduct and of social co-operation. Every ethical system built up on the idea of duty, even though it exhibits itself as strictly as Kant’s, is finally obliged to yield so much to Eudaemonism that its principles can no longer be maintained.6 In the same way every single requirement of aprioristic-intuitive ethics displays ultimately an eudaemonistic character.

  3

  A Contribution to the Understanding of Eudaemonism

  Formalist ethics takes its differences with Eudaemonism altogether too lightly when it interprets the happiness of which the latter speaks as satisfaction of sensual desires. More or less consciously, formalistic ethics foists upon Eudaemonism the assertion that all human striving is directed solely towards filling the belly and the basest forms of sensual enjoyment. It is of course not to be denied that the thoughts and endeavors of many, very many people are concentrated on these things. This, however, is no fault of social science, which merely points it out as a fact. Eudaemonism does not advise men to strive after happiness; it merely shows that human striving necessarily tends in this direction. And after all, happiness is not to be found only in sexual enjoyment and a good digestion.

  The energistic conception of the Moral sees the highest good in fulfilling oneself, in the full exercise of one’s own powers, and this is perhaps only another way of saying what eudaemonists have in mind when they speak of happiness. The happiness of the strong and the healthy certainly does not lie in idle dreaming. But when this conception is contrasted with Eudaemonism it becomes untenable. What are we to make of Guyau when he says: “Life is not calculation, but action. In every living being there is a store of strength, a surplus of energy, which strives to spend itself, not for the sake of the accompanying pleasurable sensations but because it must spend itself ... Duty derives from strength, which necessarily urges towards action.”7 Action means working with a conscious end, that is, on a basis of reflection and calculation. Guyau is guilty of a lapse into intuitionism, which he otherwise rejects, when he represents a mysterious urge as the guide of moral action. In the idées-forces of Fouillée the intuitionist element is still more clearly revealed.8 What was thought is supposed to urge towards realization. But presumably this is only when the end, which the action serves, seems desirable. To the question why an end appears good or evil, however, Fouillée offers no reply.

  Nothing is gained when the teacher of morals constructs an absolute ethic without reference to the nature of man and his life. The declamations of philosophers cannot alter the fact that life strives to live itself out, that the living being seeks pleasure and avoids pain. All one’s scruples against acknowledging this as the basic law of human actions fall away as soon as the fundamental principle of social co-operation is recognized. That everyone lives and wishes to live primarily for himself does not disturb social life but promotes it, for the higher fulfilment of the individual’s life is possible only in and through society. This is the true meaning of the doctrine that egoism is the basic law of society.

  The highest demand that Society makes of the individual is the sacrifice of his life. Though all other restrictions of his action which the individual has to accept from society may be considered ultimately in his own interests, this, says the anti-eudaemonistic ethic, can be explained by no method which smooths over the opposition between individual and general interests. The hero’s death may be useful to the community, but that is no great consolation to him. Only an ethic based on duty could help one over this difficulty. On closer considerations we see that this objection may be easily disproved. When society’s existence is threatened, each individual must risk his best to avoid destruction. Even the prospect of perishing in the attempt can no longer deter him. For there is then no choice between either living on as one formerly lived or sacrificing oneself for one’s country, for society, or for one’s convictions. Rather, must the certainty of death, servitude, or insufferable poverty be set against the chance of returning victorious from the struggle. War carried on pro aris et focis (for our altars and our hearths) demands no sacrifice from the individual. One does not engage in it merely to reap benefits for others, but to preserve one’s own existence. This of course, is only true of wars in which individuals fight for their very existence. It is not true of wars which are merely a means of enrichment, such as the quarrels of feudal lords or the cabinet wars of princes. Thus Imperialism, ever covetous of conquests, cannot do without an ethic which demands from the individual “sacrifices” for the “good of the State.”

  The long fight carried on by moralists against the convenient eudaemonistic explanation of the Moral finds its counterpart in the efforts of economists to solve the problem of economic value otherwise than through the utility of consumption goods. Economists had nothing nearer to hand than the idea of value as reflecting in some way the significance of a commodity to human welfare, nevertheless the attempt to explain the phenomena of value with the help of this concept has been given up again and again and other theories of value have been persistently sought. This is because of the difficulties presented by the problem of the quantity of value. There was, for instance, the apparent contradiction that precious stones, satisfying an obviously minor want, have a higher value than bread, which satisfies one of the most important needs, and that air and water, without which man simply cannot live, are generally without value. The basis for erecting a theory of value on the utility of goods was laid only when the idea of a scale of importance of classes of wants was separated from that of the concrete wants themselves, and the fact recognized that the scale according to which the importance of the wants depending on the power to dispose of goods is judged, is that of the concrete wants themselves.9

  The difficulty which the utilitarian-eudaemonistic explanation of the Moral had to overcome was not less than that with which economic theory had to fight in the effort to trace economic values back to utility. No one could discover how to bring eudaemonistic doctrine into harmony with the obvious fact that moral action consists just in the individual’s avoiding actions which seem directly useful to him and doing that which seems directly harmful to him. Liberal social philosophy was the first to find the solution. It showed that by maintaining and developing the social bond each individual serves his highest interest, so that the sacrifices made in the fulfilment of social life are only temporary ones. He exchanges a smaller direct advantage for a considerably greater indirect advantage. Thus duty and interest coincide.10 This is the meaning of the harmony of interests of which the liberal theory of society speaks.

  CHAPTER 28

  Socialism as an Emanation of Asceticism

  1

  The Ascetic Point of View

  Withdrawal from the world and denial of life are, even from the religious point of view, not ultimate ends, pursued for their own sakes, but means to the attainment of certain transcendental ends. But though they appear in the believer’s universe as means, they must be regarded as ultimate ends by an inquiry which cannot go beyond the limits of this life. In what follows, we shall mean by asceticism only that which is inspired by a philosophy of life or by religious motives. With these restrictions, asceticism is the subject of our study. We must not confuse it with that kind of asceticism which is only a means to certain earthly ends. If he is convinced of the poisonous effects of liquor, a man abstains from it either to protect his health generally or to steel his strength for a special effort. He is no ascetic in the sense defined above.

  Nowhere has the idea of withdrawal from the world and denial of life been manifested more logically and completely than in the Indian religion of Jainism, which is able to look back on a history of 2500 years. “Homelessness,” said Max Weber, “is the fundamental idea of salvation in Jainism. It means the breaking off of all earthly relations, and therefore, above all, indifference to general impressions and avoidance of all worldly motives, the ceasing to act, to hope, to desire. A man who has only the capacity left to feel and think ’I am I’ is homeless in this sense. He wishes neither life nor death—because in either case it would mean desire, and that might wake Karma. He neither has friends nor raises objections to the actions of others towards him (for example, to the usual washing of feet which the pious person performs for the saint). He behaves according to the principle that one should not resist evil and that the individual’s state of grace during life must be tested by his capacity to bear trouble and pain.”11 Jainism prohibits most strictly any killing of living beings. Orthodox Jains burn no light during the dark months because it would burn the moths, make no fire because it would kill insects, strain the water before boiling it, wear a mouth and nose veil to prevent themselves from inhaling insects. It is the highest piety to let oneself be tortured by insects without driving them away.12

  Only a section of society can realize the ideal of ascetic living, for the ascetic cannot be a worker. The body that is exhausted by penitential exercises and castigations can do nothing but lie in passive contemplation and let things come to it or consume the rest of its strength in ecstatic trances and thus hasten the end. The ascetic who embarks on work and economic activity to earn for himself only the smallest quantity of the necessities of life abandons his principles. The history of monasticism, not only of Christian monasticism, reveals this. From being abodes of asceticism the monasteries sometimes became the seat of a refined enjoyment of life.

  The non-working ascetic can only exist if asceticism is not obligatory for all. Since he cannot nourish himself without the labour of others, labourers must exist on whom he may live.13 He needs tributary laymen. His sexual abstinence requires laymen who will bear successors. If this necessary complement is lacking, the race of ascetics quickly dies out. As a general rule of conduct asceticism would mean the end of the human race. The holocaust of his own life is the end towards which the individual ascetic strives, and though this principle may not include abstinence from all actions necessary to maintain life with the object of putting a premature end to it, it implies, by suppression of the sexual desire, the destruction of society. The ascetic ideal is the ideal of voluntary death. That no society can be built on the ascetic principle is too obvious to need closer explanation. For it is a destroyer of society and life.

  This fact can be overlooked only because the ascetic ideal is seldom thought out, and still more seldom carried out, to its logical conclusion. The ascetic in the forest who lives like the animals on roots and herbs is the only one who lives and acts according to his principles. This strictly logical behaviour is rare; there are, after all, not many people who are prepared to renounce light-heartedly the fruits of culture, however much they may despise them in thought and abuse them in words, few who are willing to return without more ado to the way of life of the deer and the stag. St. Aegidius, one of St. Francis’s most zealous companions, found fault with the ants because they were too much preoccupied with collecting supplies; he approved only of the birds, because they do not store food in barns. For the birds in the air, the animals on earth, the fish in the sea, are satisfied when they have sufficient nourishment. He himself believed that he lived according to the same ideal when he fed himself with the labour of his hands and the collection of alms. When he went gleaning with the rest of the poor at harvest-time, and people wanted to add to his gleanings, he would refuse saying: “I have no barn for storing. I do not wish for one.” Yet this saint did derive advantages from the economic order he condemned. His life in poverty, possibly only in and by this economic order, was infinitely better off than that of the fishes and birds he believed he was imitating. He received income for his labour out of the stores of an ordered economy. If others had not gathered in barns the saint would have gone hungry. Only if everybody else had taken the fish as their example, could he have known what it was to live like a fish. Critically disposed contemporaries recognized this. The English Benedictine, Matthew Paris, reports that Pope Innocent III advised St. Francis, after listening to his rule, to go to the swine, whom he resembled more than men, to roll with them in the mud, and to teach his rule to them.14

  Ascetic morals can never have universal application as binding principles of life. The ascetic who acts logically passes voluntarily out of the world. Asceticism which seeks to maintain itself on earth does not carry its principles to the logical end; it stops at a certain point. It is immaterial by what sophistry it tries to explain this; it is sufficient that it does so and must do so. Moreover, it is compelled at least to tolerate non-ascetics. By thus developing a double morality, one for saints, one for worldlings, it splits ethics in two. The only truly moral folk are the monks, or whatever else they may be called, who strive for perfection by asceticism. By splitting morality in this way asceticism renounces its claim to rule life. The only demand that it still ventures to make upon laymen is for small donations to keep the saint’s body and soul together.

  As a strict ideal, asceticism knows no satisfaction of wants at all. It is therefore non-economic in the most literal sense. The watered-down ideal of asceticism, conceived by the laymen of a society that reveres the asceticism of the perfect, or by monks living in a self-sufficient community, may demand only the most primitive hand to mouth production, but it by no means opposes the extreme rationalization of economic activity. On the contrary, it demands this. For, since all preoccupation with worldly matters keeps people away from the only purely moral way of life and is to be tolerated at all only as a means to an intermediate—unfortunately unavoidable—purpose, then it is essential that this unholy activity should be as economical as possible, so as to reduce it to a minimum. Rationalization, desirable to the worldling in his efforts to reduce painful and increase pleasant sensations, is imposed upon the ascetic, to whom the painful sensations aroused by work and privation are valuable castigations, because it is his duty to devote himself to the transitory no longer than is absolutely necessary.

  From the ascetic point of view too, therefore, socialistic production cannot be preferred to the capitalistic unless it is held to be more rational. Asceticism may recommend its devotees to limit the activities by which they satisfy their wants because it abhors a too comfortable existence. But within the limits which it leaves for the satisfaction of these wants, it cannot regard as right anything but what rational economy demands.

  2

  Asceticism and Socialism

  Socialist thought at first cold-shouldered all principles of asceticism. It harshly rejected any consoling promise of a life after death and aimed at an earthly paradise for everybody. Neither the world to come nor any other religious inducements have any interest for it. Socialism’s one aim was to guarantee that everyone should reach the highest standard of well-being attainable. Not self-denial, but enjoyment was its criterion. Socialist leaders have always definitely opposed all those who show themselves indifferent to the increase in productivity. They have pointed out that, to lessen the hardships of labour and increase the pleasures of enjoyment, the productivity of human labour must be multiplied. The grandiose gestures of degenerate scions of wealthy families in praise of the charms of poverty and the simple life made no appeal to them.

  But on looking into this more closely, we may detect a gradual change in their attitude. In proportion as the uneconomic nature of socialistic production becomes apparent, socialists are beginning to transform their views on the desirability of a more abundant satisfaction of human wants. Many of them are even beginning to show some sympathy with writers who praise the Middle Ages and look with contempt on the riches which Capitalism adds to the means of existence.15

  The assertion that we could be happy, or even happier, with fewer goods can no more be refuted than it can itself be proved. Of course, most people imagine that they have not enough material goods; and, because they value the increase of well-being that greater exertions on their part can bring more than they value the leisure which they would gain by renouncing it, they exhaust themselves by laborious work. But even if we admit the assertions of those semi-ascetics whose outlook we have been discussing, this by no means commits us to giving the socialist method of production precedence over the capitalist. For supposing too many goods are produced under Capitalism, the matter could be remedied quite simply by reducing the quantity of work to be done. The demand that we should reduce the productivity of labour by adopting a less fruitful way of production cannot be justified by such arguments.

  CHAPTER 29

  Christianity and Socialism

  1

  Religion and Social Ethics

  Religion, not merely as a church but as a philosophy too, is like any other raft of spiritual life, a product of men’s social co-operation. Our thinking is by no means an individual phenomenon independent of all social relations and traditions; it has a social character by reason of the very fact that it follows methods of thought formed during millennia of co-operation between innumerable groups. And we, again, are able to take over these methods of thought only because we are members of society. Now, for exactly the same reasons, we cannot imagine religion as an isolated phenomenon. Even the mystic, who forgets his surroundings in awestruck joy as he experiences communion with his God, has not made his religion by his own efforts. The forms of thought which have led him to it are not his own individual creation; they belong to society. A Kaspar Hauser16 cannot evolve a religion without help from outside. Religion, like everything else, has grown up historically, and is subject to the constant change that affects every social phenomenon.

  But religion is also a social factor in the sense that it regards social relations from a special angle and sets up rules for human conduct in society accordingly. It cannot refuse to state its principles in matters of social ethics. No religion which sets out to give its devotees an answer to the problems of life, and to console them where they most need consolation, can rest content with interpreting the relations of man to Nature, to becoming, and to passing away. If it leaves out the relations of man to man, it can produce no rules for earthly conduct but abandons the believer so soon as he starts thinking about the inadequacy of social conditions. Religion must provide him an answer when he asks why there are rich and poor, violence and justice, war and peace, or it will force him to look for an answer elsewhere. This would mean losing its hold on its adherents and its power over the spirit. Without social ethics religion would be dead.

  Today the Islamic and Jewish religions are dead. They offer their adherents nothing more than a ritual. They know how to prescribe prayers and fasts, certain foods, circumcision and the rest; but that is all. They offer nothing to the mind. Completely despiritualized, all they teach and preach are legal forms and external rule. They lock their follower into a cage of traditional usages, in which he is often hardly able to breathe; but for his inner soul they have no message. They suppress the soul, instead of elevating and saving it. For many centuries in Islam, for nearly two thousand years in Jewry, there have been no new religious movements. Today the religion of the Jews is just as it was when the Talmud was drawn up. The religion of Islam has not changed since the days of the Arab conquests. Their literature, their philosophies continue to repeat the old ideas and do not penetrate beyond the circle of theology. One looks in vain among them for men and movements such as Western Christianity has produced in each century. They maintain their identity only by rejecting everything foreign and “different,” by traditionalism and conservatism. Only their hatred of everything foreign rouses them to great deeds from time to time. All new sects, even the new doctrines which arise with them, are nothing more than echoes of this fight against the foreign, the new, the infidel. Religion has no influence on the spiritual life of the individual, where indeed this is able to develop at all against the stifling pressure of rigid traditionalism. We see this most clearly in the lack of clerical influence. Respect for the clergy is purely superficial. In these religions there is nothing which could be compared to the profound influence which the clergy exercises in the Western Churches—though of a different order in each church; there is nothing to compare to the Jesuit, the Catholic bishop, and the Protestant pastor. There was the same inertia in the polytheistic religions of antiquity and there still is in the Eastern Church. The Greek Church has been dead for over a thousand years.17 Only in the second half of the nineteenth century did it once more produce a man in whom faith and hope flared up like fire. But Tolstoy’s Christianity, however much it may bear a superficially Eastern and Russian hue, is at bottom founded on Western ideas. It is particularly characteristic of this great Gospeller that, unlike the Italian merchant’s son, Francis of Assisi, or the German miner’s son, Martin Luther, he did not come from the people but from the nobility which, by upbringing and education, had been completely Westernized. The Russian Church proper has produced at most men like John of Kronstadt18 or Rasputin.

  These dead churches lack any special ethics. Harnack says of the Greek Church:19 “The real sphere of the working life whose morality is to be regulated by the Faith, falls outside its direct observation. This is left to the state and the nation.” But it is otherwise in the living Church of the West. Here, where faith is not yet extinct, where it is not merely external form that conceals nothing but the priest’s meaningless ritual, where, in a word, it grips the whole man, there is continuous striving after a social ethic. Again and again do its members go back to the Gospels to renew their life in the Lord and His Message.

  2

  The Gospels as a Source of Christian Ethics

  To the believer Holy Writ is the deposit of divine revelation, God’s word to humanity, which must forever be the unshakable foundation of all religion and all conduct controlled by it. This is true not only of the Protestant, who accepts the teaching of the pulpit only in so far as it can be reconciled with Holy Writ; it is true also of the Catholics who, on the one hand, derive the authority of Holy Writ from the Church, but, on the other, ascribe Holy Writ itself to divine origin by teaching that it came into being with the help of the Holy Ghost. The dualism here is resolved by entitling the Church alone to make what is the finally authentic—infallible—interpretation of Holy Writ. Both creeds assume the logical and systematic unity of the whole of the sacred writings; to bridge over the difficulties arising from this assumption must, therefore, be one of the most important tasks of ecclesiastical doctrine and science.

  Scientific research regards the writings of the Old and New Testament as historical sources to be approached in the same manner as all other historical documents. It breaks up the unity of the Bible and tries to give each section its place in the history of literature. Now, modern biblical research of this order is incompatible with theology. The Catholic Church has recognized this fact but the Protestant Church still tries to delude itself. It is senseless to reconstruct the character of an historical Jesus in order to build up a doctrine of faith and morals on the results. Efforts of this kind hamper documentary research of a scientific kind by deflecting it from its real aim and assigning to it tasks which it cannot fulfill without introducing modern scales of value; moreover they are contradictory in themselves. On the one hand they try to explain Christ and the origin of Christianity historically; on the other, to regard these historical phenomena as the eternal source from which spring all the rules of ecclesiastical conduct, even in the totally different world of today. What is it but a contradiction to examine Christianity with the eye of a historian and then to seek a clue to the present in the results of the study. History can never present Christianity in its “pure form,” but only in its “original form.” To confuse the two is to shut one’s eyes to two thousand years of development.20 The error into which many Protestant theologians fall in this matter is the same as that committed by a section of the historical school of law when it attempted to impose the results of its researches into the history of jurisprudence upon present-day legislation and administration of justice. This is not the procedure of the true historian but rather of one who denies all evolution and all possibility of evolution. Contrasted with the absolutism of this point of view, the absolutism of the much condemned “shallow” eighteenth-century rationalists, who stressed precisely this element of progress and evolution, seems genuinely historical in its outlook.

  The relation of Christian ethics to the problem of Socialism must not therefore be viewed through the eyes of Protestant theologians whose research is directed towards an unchangeable and immovable “essence” of Christianity. If one looks on Christianity as a living, and hence a constantly changing, phenomenon—a view not so incompatible with the outlook of the Catholic Church as one might at first imagine—then one must decline a priori to inquire whether Socialism or private property is more in keeping with its idea. The best we can do is to pass the history of Christianity in review and consider whether it has ever shown a bias in favour of this or that form of social organization. The attention we pay to the writings of the Old and New Testament in the process is justified by their importance even today as sources of ecclesiastical doctrine, but not by the supposition that from them alone can one glean what Christianity really is.

  The ultimate aim of research of this kind should be to ascertain whether, both now and in the future, Christianity must necessarily reject an economy based on private property in the means of production. This question cannot be settled merely by establishing the fact, already familiar, that ever since its inception close on two thousand years ago Christianity has found its own ways of coming to terms with private property. For it might happen that either Christianity or “private property” should reach a point in its evolution Which renders the compatibility of the two impossible—supposing that it had ever existed.

  3

  Primitive Christianity and Society

  Primitive Christianity was not ascetic. With a joyful acceptance of life it deliberately pushed into the background the ascetic ideals which permeated many contemporary sects. (Even John the Baptist lived as an ascetic.) Only in the third and fourth centuries was ascetisism introduced into Christianity, from this time dates the ascetic re-interpretation and reformation of Gospel teachings. The Christ of the Gospels enjoys life among his disciples, refreshes himself with food and drink and shares the feasts of the people. He is as far removed from asceticism and a desire to flee the world as he is from intemperance and debauchery.21 Alone his attitude to the relations of the sexes strikes us as ascetic, but we can explain this, as we can explain all practical Gospel Teachings—and they offer no rules of life except practical ones—by the basic conception which gives us our whole idea of Jesus, the conception of the Messiah.

  “The Time is fulfilled, and the Kingdom of God is at hand: repent ye, and believe the gospel.” These are the words with which, in the Gospel of Mark, the Redeemer makes his entry.22 Jesus regards himself as the prophet of the approaching Kingdom of God, the Kingdom which according to ancient prophecy shall bring redemption from all earthly insufficiency, and with it from all economic cares. His followers have nothing to do but to prepare themselves for this Day. The time for worrying about earthly matters is past, for now, in expectation of the Kingdom, men must attend to more important things. Jesus offers no rules for earthly action and struggle; his Kingdom is not of this world. Such rules of conduct as he gives his followers are valid only for the short interval of time which has still to be lived while waiting for the great things to come. In the Kingdom of God there will be no economic cares. There the believers will eat and drink at the Lord’s table.23 For this Kingdom therefore, all economic and political counsel would be superfluous. Any preparations made by Jesus must be regarded as merely transitional expedients.24

  It is only in this way that we can understand why, in the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus recommends his own people to take no thought for food, drink, and clothing; why he exhorts them not to sow or reap or gather in barns, not to labour or spin. It is the only explanation, too, of his and his disciples’ “communism.” This “communism” is not Socialism; it is not production with means of production belonging to the community. It is nothing more than a distribution of consumption goods among the members of the community—”unto each, according as any one had need.”25 It is a communism of consumption goods, not of the means of production, a community of consumers, not of producers. The primitive Christians do not produce, labour, or gather anything at all. The newly converted realize their possessions and divide the proceeds with the brethren and sisters. Such a way of living is untenable in the long run. It can be looked upon only as a temporary order which is what it was in fact intended to be. Christ’s disciples lived in daily expectation of Salvation.

  The primitive Christian’s idea of imminent fulfillment transforms itself gradually into that conception of the Last Judgment which lies at the root of all ecclesiastical movements that have had any prolonged existence. Hand in hand with this transformation went the entire reconstruction of the Christian rules of life. Expectation of the coming of the Kingdom of God could no longer serve as a basis. When the congregations sought to organize themselves for a prolonged life on earth they had to cease demanding that their members should abstain from work and dedicate themselves to the contemplative life in preparation for the Divine Kingdom. Not only did they have to tolerate their brethren’s participation in the world’s work, they had to insist upon it, as otherwise they would have destroyed the conditions necessary to the existence of their religion. And thus, Christianity, which began with complete indifference to all social conditions, practically canonized the social order of the declining Roman Empire once the process of adapting the Church to that order had begun.

  It is an error to speak of the social teachings of primitive Christianity. The historical Christ and his teachings, as the oldest part of the New Testament represents them, are quite indifferent to all social considerations. Not that Christ did not sharply criticize the existing state of affairs, but he did not think it worth while to consider how matters could be improved or even to think about them at all. That was God’s affair. He would set up his own glorious and faultless Kingdom, and its coming would be soon. Nobody knew what this Kingdom would look like, but one thing was certain: in it one would live carefree. Jesus omits all minuter details, and they were not needed; for the Jews of his time did not doubt the splendour of life in the Kingdom of God. The Prophets had announced this Kingdom and their words continued to live in the minds of the people, forming indeed the essential content of their religious thought.

  The expectation of God’s own reorganization when the time came and the exclusive transfer of all action and thought to the future Kingdom of God, made Jesus’s teaching utterly negative. He rejects everything that exists without offering anything to replace it. He arrives at dissolving all existing social ties. The disciple shall not merely be indifferent to supporting himself, shall not merely refrain from work and dispossess himself of all goods, but he shall hate “father, and mother, and wife, and children, and brethren, and sisters, yea, and his own life.”26 Jesus is able to tolerate the worldly laws of the Roman Empire and the prescriptions of the Jewish Law because he is indifferent to them, despising them as things important only within the narrow limits of time and not because he acknowledges their value. His zeal in destroying social ties knows no limits. The motive force behind the purity and power of this complete negation is ecstatic inspiration and enthusiastic hope of a new world. Hence his passionate attack upon everything that exists. Everything may be destroyed because God in His omnipotence will rebuild the future order. No need to scrutinize whether anything can be carried over from the old to the new order, because this new order will arise without human aid. It demands therefore from its adherents no system of ethics, no particular conduct in any positive direction. Faith and faith alone, hope, expectation—that is all he needs. He need contribute nothing to the reconstruction of the future, this God Himself has provided for. The clearest modern parallel to the attitude of complete negation of primitive Christianity is Bolshevism. The Bolshevists, too, wish to destroy everything that exists because they regard it as hopelessly bad. But they have in mind ideas, indefinite and contradictory though they may be, of the future social order. They demand not only that their followers shall destroy all that is, but also that they pursue a definite line of conduct leading towards the future Kingdom of which they have dreamt. Jesus teaching in this respect, on the other hand, is merely negation.27

  Jesus was no social reformer. His teachings had no moral application to life on earth, and his instructions to the disciples only have a meaning in the light of their immediate aim—to await the Lord with girded loins and burning lamps, “that when he cometh and knocketh, they may straightaway open unto him.”28 It is just this that has enabled Christianity to make its triumphant progress through the world. Being neutral to any social system, it was able to traverse the centuries without being destroyed by the tremendous social revolutions which took place. Only for this reason could it become the religion of Roman Emperors and Anglo-Saxon entrepreneurs, of African negroes and European Teutons, medieval feudal lords and modern industrial labourers. Each epoch and every party has been able to take from it what they wanted, because it contains nothing which binds it to a definite social order.

  4

  The Canon Law Prohibition of Interest

  Each epoch has found in the Gospels what it sought to find there, and has overlooked what it wished to overlook. This is best proved by reference to the preponderant importance which ecclesiastical social ethics for many centuries attached to the doctrine of usury.29 The demand made upon Christ’s disciples in the Gospels and other writings of the New Testament is something very different from the renunciation of interest on capital lent out. The canonic prohibition of interest is a product of the medieval doctrine of society and trade, and had originally nothing to do with Christianity and its teachings. Moral condemnation of usury and the prohibition of interest preceded Christianity. They were taken over from the writers and the legislators of antiquity and enlarged as the struggle between agriculturists and the rising merchants and tradesmen developed. Only then did the people try to support them with quotations from Holy Writ. The taking of interest was not opposed because Christianity required it, but rather, because the public condemned it, people tried to read into the Christian writings a condemnation of usury. For this purpose the New Testament seemed at first to be useless, and accordingly the Old Testament was drawn on. For centuries no one thought of quoting any passage from the New Testament in support of the prohibition. It was some time before the scholastic art of interpretation succeeded in reading what it sought into that much quoted passage from Luke, and so finding support in the Gospels from the suppression of usury.30 This was not until the beginning of the twelfth century. Only after the decree of Urban III is that passage quoted as proof of the prohibition.31 The construction then put on Luke’s words was, however, quite untenable. The passage is certainly not concerned with the taking of interest. It is possible that in the context of that passage Μηδὲν ὰπελπίξοντεζ may mean “do not count on the restitution of what is lent.” Or more probably: “you shall lend not only to the well-to-do, who can also lend to you at some time, but also to him from whom there is no prospect of this, to the poor.”32

  The great importance people attached to this passage contrasts sharply with their disregard of other Gospel commands and prohibitions. The medieval Church was intent on carrying the order against usury to its logical conclusion, but it wilfully omitted to enforce many clear and unambiguous commands of the Gospels with a fraction of the energy devoted to stamping out this particular practice. In the very same chapter of Luke other things are ordained or forbidden in precise words. The Church has never, for example, been seriously at pains to forbid a man who has been robbed from demanding back his own, nor has it deprecated resistance to the robber, nor tried to brand an act of judgment as an unchristian act. Other injunctions of the Sermon on the Mount, such as indifference to food and drink, have similarly never been whole-heartedly enforced.33

  5

  Christianity and Property

  Since the third century Christianity has always served simultaneously those who supported the social order and those who wished to overthrow it. Both parties have taken the same false step of appealing to the Gospels and have found Biblical passages to support them. It is the same today: Christianity fights both for and against Socialism.

  But all efforts to find support for the institution of private property generally, and for private ownership in the means of production in particular, in the teachings of Christ are quite vain. No art of interpretation can find a single passage in the New Testament that could be read as upholding private property. Those who look for a Biblical ukase must go back to the Old Testament, or content themselves with disputing the assertion that communism prevailed in the congregation of the early Christians.34 No one has ever denied that the Jewish community was familiar with private property, but this brings us no further towards defining the attitude towards it of primitive Christianity. There is as little proof that Jesus approved the economic and political ideas of the Jewish Law as that he did not. Christ does say, indeed, that he has not come to destroy the Law but to fulfil it.35 But this we should try to understand from the standpoint which alone makes Jesus’ work intelligible. The words can hardly refer to the rules of the Mosaic Law, made for earthly life before the coming of the Kingdom of God, since several of his commands are in sharp contrast to that Law. We may admit that the reference to the “communism” of the first Christians proves nothing in favour of “the collectivist communism according to modern notions,”36 and yet not deduce from this that Christ approved of property.37

  One thing of course is clear, and no skilful interpretation can obscure it. Jesus’ words are full of resentment against the rich, and the Apostles are no meeker in this respect. The Rich Man is condemned because he is rich, the Beggar praised because he is poor. The only reason why Jesus does not declare war against the rich and preach revenge on them is that God has said: “Revenge is mine.” In God’s Kingdom the poor shall be rich, but the rich shall be made to suffer. Later revisers have tried to soften the words of Christ against the rich, of which the most complete and powerful version is found in the Gospel of Luke, but there is quite enough left to support those who incite the world to hatred of the rich, revenge, murder and arson. Up to the time of modern Socialism no movement against private poverty which has arisen in the Christian world has failed to seek authority in Jesus, the Apostles, and the Christian Fathers, not to mention those who, like Tolstoy, made the Gospel resentment against the rich the very heart and soul of their teaching. This is a case in which the Redeemer’s words bore evil seed. More harm has been done, and more blood shed, on account of them than by the persecution of heretics and the burning of witches. They have always rendered the Church defenseless against all movements which aim at destroying human society. The Church as an organization has certainly always stood on the side of those who tried to ward off communistic attack. But it could not achieve much in this struggle. For it was continually disarmed by the words: “Blessed be ye poor: for yours is the Kingdom of God.”

  Nothing, therefore, is less tenable than the constantly repeated assertion that religion, that is, the confession of the Christian Faith, forms a defence against doctrines inimical to property, and that it makes the masses unreceptive to the poison of social incitement. Every church which grows up in a society built on private property must somehow come to terms with private property. But considering the attitude of Jesus to questions of social life, no Christian Church can ever make anything more than a compromise here, a compromise which is effective only as long as nobody insists on a literal interpretation of the words of the Scriptures. It would be foolish to maintain that Enlightenment, by undermining the religious feeling of the masses, had cleared the way for Socialism. On the contrary, it is the resistance which the Church has offered to the spread of liberal ideas which has prepared the soil for the destructive resentment of modern socialist thought. Not only has the Church done nothing to extinguish the fire, it has even blown upon the embers. Christian Socialism grew up in the Catholic and Protestant countries, while the Russian Church witnessed the birth of Tolstoy’s teachings, which are unequalled in the bitterness of their antagonism to society. True, the official Church tried at first to resist these movements, but it had to submit in the end, just because it was defenseless against the words of the Scriptures.

  The Gospels are not socialistic and not communistic. They are, as we have seen, indifferent to all social questions on the one hand, full of resentment against all property and against all owners on the other. So it is that Christian doctrine, once separated from the context in which Christ preached it—expectation of the imminent Kingdom of God—can be extremely destructive. Never and nowhere can a system of social ethics embracing social co-operation be built up on a doctrine which prohibits any concern for sustenance and work, while it expresses fierce resentment against the rich, preaches hatred of the family, and advocates voluntary castration.

  The cultural achievements of the Church in its centuries of development are the work of the Church, not of Christianity. It is an open question how much of this work is due to the civilization inherited from the Roman state and how much to the idea of Christian love completely transformed under the influence of the Stoics and other ancient philosophers. The social ethics of Jesus have no part in this cultural development. The Church’s achievement in this case was to render them harmless, but always only for a limited period of time. Since the Church is obliged to maintain the Gospels as its foundation, it must always be prepared for a revolt on the part of those among its members who put on Christ’s words an interpretation different from that ordained by the Church.

  Social ethics applicable to earthly life can never be derived from the words of the Gospels. It matters little whether they are a true and just report of what, as a matter of history, Jesus taught. For to every Christian Church these, together with the other books of the New Testament, must represent the foundation without which its essential character is destroyed. Even should historical research show, with a high degree of probability, that the historical Jesus thought and spoke about human society otherwise than he is made to do in the New Testament, its doctrines would still remain unaltered for the Church. For the Church, that which is written in the New Testament must forever remain the Word of God. Here, apparently, only two things are possible. Either the Church may renounce, in the manner of the Eastern Church, the responsibility of taking up any attitude to the problems of social ethics, at which point it ceases to be a moral force and limits itself to purely decorative action in life. Or it may follow the other path taken by the Western Church, which has always incorporated in its teachings those social ethics which best served its interests at the moment and its position in state and society. It has allied itself with the feudal lords against the serfs, it has supported the slave-economy of American plantations, but it has also—in the case of Protestantism and especially in Calvinism—made the morals of the rising Rationalism its own. It has promoted the struggle of the Irish tenants against the English aristocrats, it has fought with the Catholic trade unions against the entrepreneurs, and with the conservative governments against social democracy. And in each case it has been able to justify its attitude by quotations from the Bible. This too amounts in fact to an abdication by Christianity in the field of social ethics, for the Church becomes thus a volitionless tool in the hands of time and fashion. But what is worse: it attempts to base each phase of partisanship on the teaching of the Gospels and in this way encourages every movement to seek scriptural justification for its ends. Considering the character of the scriptural passages so exploited, it is clear that the more destructive doctrines are bound to win.

  But even if it is hopeless to try to build up an independent Christian social ethic on the Gospels, might it not be possible to bring Christian doctrines into harmony with a social ethic that promotes social life instead of destroying it, and thus to utilize the great forces of Christianity in the service of Civilization? Such a transformation would not be unprecedented in history. The Church is now reconciled to the fact that modern research has exploded the fallacies of the Old and New Testaments with regard to natural science. It no longer burns at the stake heretics who maintain that the world moves in space, or institutes inquisitional proceedings against the man who dares to doubt the raising of Lazarus and the bodily resurrection of the dead. Even priests of the Church of Rome are today permitted to study astronomy and the history of evolution. Might not the same be possible then in sociology? Might not the Church reconcile itself with the social principle of free cooperation by the division of labour? Might not the very principle of Christian love be interpreted to this end?

  These are questions which interest not only the Church. The fate of Civilization is involved. For it is not as if the resistance of the Church to liberal ideas was harmless. The Church is such a tremendous power that its enmity to the forces which bring society into existence would be enough to break our whole culture into fragments. In the last decades we have witnessed with horror its terrible transformation into an enemy of society. For the Church, Catholic as well as Protestant, is not the least of the factors responsible for the prevalence of destructive ideals in the world today; Christian Socialism has done hardly less than atheist socialism to bring about the present state of confusion.

  6

  Christian Socialism

  Historically it is easy to understand the dislike which the Church has shown for economic liberty and political Liberalism in any form. Liberalism is the flower of that rational enlightenment which dealt a death blow to the regime of the old Church and from which modern historical criticism has sprung. It was Liberalism that undermined the power of the classes that had for centuries been closely bound up with the Church. It transformed the world more than Christianity had ever done. It restored humanity to the world and to life. It awakened forces which shook the foundations of the inert traditionalism on which Church and creed rested. The new outlook caused the Church great uneasiness, and it has not yet adjusted itself to even the externals of the modern epoch. True, the priests in Catholic countries sprinkle holy water on newly laid railways and dynamos of new power stations, but the professed Christian still shudders inwardly at the workings of a civilization which his faith cannot grasp. The Church strongly resented modernity and the modern spirit. What wonder, then, that it allied itself with those whom resentment had driven to wish for the break-up of this wonderful new world, and feverishly explored its well-stocked arsenal for the means to denounce the earthly struggle for work and wealth. The religion which called itself the religion of love became a religion of hatred in a world that seemed ripe for happiness. Any would-be destroyers of the modern social order could count on finding a champion in Christianity.

  It is tragic that it should have been just the greatest minds of the Church, those who realized the significance of Christian love and acted on it, who took part in this work of destruction. Priests and monks who practiced true Christian charity, ministered and taught in hospitals and prisons and knew all there was to know about suffering and sinning humanity—these were the first to be ensnared by the new gospel of social destruction. Only a firm grasp of liberal philosophy could have innoculated them against the infectious resentment which raged among their protégés and was justified by the Gospels. As it was, they became dangerous enemies of society. From the work of charity sprang hatred of society.

  Some of these emotional opponents of the liberal economic orders stopped short at open opposition. Many, however, became socialists—not, of course, atheistical socialists like the proletarian social-democrats, but Christian Socialists. And Christian Socialism is none the less Socialism.

  It was no less a mistake for Socialism to seek a parallel with itself in the early centuries of the Christian Era as in the first congregation. Even the “consumers communism” of that early congregation vanished when expectation of the coming of the Kingdom began to recede into the background. Socialist methods of production did not, however, replace it in the community. What the Christians produced, was produced by the individual within his own farm or shop. The revenues which provided for the needy and met the cost of joint activities came from contributions, voluntary or compulsory, of members of the congregation, who produced on their own account with their own means of production. A few isolated instances of socialist production may have occurred in the Christian congregations of the first centuries, but there is no documentary evidence of it. There was never a teacher of Christianity, whose teachings and writings are known to us, who recommended it. We often find the Apostolic Fathers and the Fathers of the Church, exhorting their followers to return to the communism of the first congregation, but this is always a communism of consumption. They never recommend the socialistic organization of production.38

  The best known of these exhortations in praise of communism is that of John Chrysostom. In the eleventh of his homilies to the Acts of the Apostles the Saint applauds the consumers’ communism of the first Christian congregation, and with all his fiery eloquence advocates its revival. Not only does he recommend this form of communism by reference to the example of the Apostles and their contemporaries, but tries to set forth rationally the advantages of communism as he conceives it. If all the Christians of Constantinople were to hand over their possessions to a common ownership, then so much would be amassed that all the Christian poor could be fed and no one would suffer want, for the costs of joint living are far smaller than those of single households. Here St. Chrysostom adduces arguments similar to those brought forward today by people who advocate one-kitchen houses or communal kitchens and try to prove arithmetically the economies which a concentration of cooking and housekeeping would achieve. The costs, says this Father of the Church, would not be large, and the enormous fund which would be amassed by uniting the goods of individuals would be inexhaustible, especially as God’s blessings would then be poured yet more lavishly on the faithful. Moreover, every newcomer would have to add something to the general fund.39 These sober, matter of fact expositions show us that what Chrysostom had in mind was merely joint consumption. His comments on the economic advantages of unification, culminating in the statement that division into fragments leads to diminution, while unity and co-operation lead to increase, of well-being, do credit to their author’s economic perception. On the whole, however, his proposals reveal a complete lack of understanding of the problem of production. His thoughts are directed exclusively to consumption. That production comes before consumption had never occurred to him. All goods were to be transferred to the community (St. Chrysostom presumably thinks here of their sale, following the example of the Gospels and the Acts of the Apostles) after which the community was to begin consuming in common. He had not realized that this could not go on for ever. He believed that the millions which would be gathered together—he estimates the treasure at between one and three million pounds weight of gold—-could never be used up. One notices that the saint’s economic insight ends just where the wisdom of our social politicians also tends to end, when they try to reorganize the whole national economy in the light of experience gained in charitable work in the field of consumption.

  St. Chrysostom explains that people fear to risk the change to the communism, which he recommends, more than a plunge into the ocean. And so the Church, too, soon dropped the communistic idea.

  For monastic economy cannot be regarded as Socialism. Monasteries which could not subsist on private donations usually lived on the tithes and dues of rent-paying peasants and the yields of farms and other property. Very occasionally the monks themselves worked, on a sort of producers’ cooperative basis. The whole monastic existence is an ideal of life accessible only to the few, and monastic production can never be taken as a standard for the whole commonwealth. Socialism, on the other hand, is a general economic system.

  The roots of Christian Socialism are found neither in the primitive nor in the medieval Church. It was the Christianity that emerged revitalized from the tremendous struggles of faith in the sixteenth century which first adopted it, though only gradually and in the face of strong opposition.

  The modern Church differs from the medieval Church in that it has continually to fight for its existence. The medieval Church ruled unchallenged; all that men thought, taught, or wrote emanated from it and eventually returned to it. The spiritual inheritance of classic antiquity could not shake its dominion, for its ultimate meaning was beyond the understanding of a generation cramped by feudal concepts and ideas. But in proportion as social evolution progressed in the direction of rational thought and action, men’s efforts to shake off the fetters of traditional thought in respect of ultimate truths became more successful. The Renaissance strikes at the root of Christianity. Based on classical reasoning and classical art, its influence inevitably tended to lead away from the Church or at best to leave it out of account. Far from trying to stem the tide, churchmen became the most zealous protagonists of the new spirit. At the beginning of the sixteenth century no one was further removed from Christianity than the Church itself. The last hour of the old faith seemed to have sounded.

  Then came the great revulsion, the Christian counter-revolution. It did not come from above, from the princes of the Church or from the monasteries, in fact it did not come from the Church at all. It was forced upon the Church from outside, springing from the depths of the people where Christianity still survived as an inner force. The assault on the moribund Church with a view to its reformation came thus from outside and below. The Reformation and the Counter-reformation are the two great expressions of this ecclesiastical rebirth. They differ in origin and in method, in their forms of worship and prescribed doctrines, above all in their presuppositions and achievements in political affairs; but they are at one in their ultimate aim: to base the world order once more on the Gospels, to reinstate faith as a power controlling the minds and hearts of men. It is the greatest revolt of faith against thought, of tradition against philosophy known to history. Its successes were enormous, and it created Christianity as we know it today, the religion that has its seat in the heart of the individual, which controls conscience and comforts the soul. But complete victory has been denied it. Though it warded off defeat—the fall of Christianity—it could not destroy the enemy. For ever since the sixteenth century this struggle of ideas has been pursued almost without intermission.

  The Church knows that it cannot win unless it can seal the fount from which its opponent continues to draw inspiration. As long as rationalism and the spiritual freedom of the individual are maintained in economic life, the Church will never succeed in fettering thought and shepherding the intellect in the desired direction. To do this it would first have to obtain supremacy over all human activity. Therefore it cannot rest content to live as a free Church in a free state; it must seek to dominate that state. The Papacy of Rome and the Protestant national churches both fight for such dominion as would enable them to order all things temporal according to their ideals. The Church can tolerate no other spiritual power. Every independent spiritual power is a menace to it, a menace which increases in strength as the rationalization of life progresses.

  Now independent production does not tolerate any spiritual over-lordship. In our day, dominion over the mind can only be obtained through the control of production. All Churches have long been dimly aware of this, but it was first made clear to them when the socialist idea, rising from an independent source, made itself felt as a powerful and rapidly growing force. It then dawned upon the Churches that theocracy is only possible in a socialist community.

  On one occasion this idea was actually realized. This was when the Society of Jesus created that remarkable state in Paraguay, which was not unlike an embodiment of the ideal Republic of Plato. This unique state flourished for more than a century, when it was destroyed by external forces. It is certain that the Jesuits did not found this society with the idea of making a social experiment or of setting up an example for other communities of the world. But ultimately they were aiming in Paraguay at no more than what they have everywhere tried to achieve, but without success, on account of the great resistance encountered. They have tried to bring laymen—as children needing the guardianship of the Church—under the beneficial government of the Church and of their own Order. Neither the Jesuit order nor any other ecclesiastical body has since tried anything like the Paraguayan experiment. But it is plain that all Western Churches, as well as the Roman Catholic Church, are aiming at the same goal. Remove all the obstacles which hamper the Church to-day, and nothing will prevent it from repeating the Paraguayan achievement everywhere.

  That the Church, generally speaking, takes up a negative attitude to socialist ideas does not disprove the truth of these arguments. It opposes any Socialism which is to be effected on any other basis than its own. It is against Socialism as conceived by atheists, for this would strike at its very roots; but it has no hesitation in approaching socialist ideals provided this menace is resumed. The Prussian Church stands at the head of Prussian State Socialism and the Roman Catholic Church everywhere pursues its special Christian social ideal.

  In face of all this evidence, it would seem that only a negative answer can be made to the question asked above: whether it might not be possible to reconcile Christianity with a free social order based on private ownership in the means of production. A living Christianity cannot, it seems, exist side by side with Capitalism. Just as in the case of Eastern religions, Christianity must either overcome Capitalism or go under. Yet, in the fight against Capitalism today, there is no more effective war-cry than Socialism, now that suggestions of a return to the medieval social order find few supporters.

  But there may be an alternative. No one can foresee with certainty how Church and Christianity may change in the future. Papacy and Catholicism now face problems incomparably more difficult than all those they have had to solve for over a thousand years. The world-wide Universal Church is threatened in its very being by Chauvinist nationalism. By refinement of political art it has succeeded in maintaining the principle of Catholicism through all the turmoil of national wars, but it must realize more clearly every day that its continuance is incompatible with nationalist ideas. Unless it is prepared to succumb, and make way for national churches, it must drive out nationalism by an ideology which makes it possible for nations to live and work together in peace. But in so doing the Church would find itself inevitably committed to Liberalism. No other doctrine would serve.

  CHAPTER 30

  Ethical Socialism, Especially That of the New Criticism

  1

  The Categorical Imperative as a Foundation for Socialism

  Engels called the German Labour Movement the heir to the German classical philosophy.41 It would be more correct to say that German (not only Marxian) Socialism represents the decadence of the school of idealist philosophy. Socialism owes the dominion it won over the German mind to the idea of society as conceived by the great German thinkers. Out of Kant’s mysticism of duty and Hegel’s deification of the State it is easy to trace the development of socialist thought; Fichte is already a socialist.

  In recent decades the revival of Kantian criticism, that much praised achievement of German philosophy, has benefited Socialism also. The Neo-Kantians, especially Friedrich Albert Lange and Hermann Cohen, have declared themselves socialists. Simultaneously Marxians have tried to reconcile Marxism with the New Criticism. Ever since the philosophical foundations of Marxism have shown signs of cracking, attempts to find in critical philosophy support for socialist ideas have multiplied.

  The weakest part of Kant’s system is his ethics. Although they are vitalized by his mighty intellect, the grandeur of individual concepts does not blind us to the fact that his starting-point is unfortunately chosen and his fundamental conception a mistaken one. His desperate attempt to uproot Eudaemonism has failed. In ethics, Bentham, Mill, and Feuerbach triumph over Kant. The social philosophy of his contemporaries, Ferguson and Adam Smith, left him untouched. Economics remained foreign to him. All his perception of social problems suffers from these deficiencies.

  In this respect, Neo-Kantians have made no better progress than their master. They, too, lack insight into the fundamental social law of the division of labour. They only see that the distribution of income does not correspond to their ideal, that the largest incomes do not go to those whom they consider the most deserving, but to a class they despise. They see people poor and in want, but do not try to discover whether this is due to the institution of private property or to attempts to restrict it. And they promptly condemn the institution of private ownership itself, for which they—living far away from the troubles of business—never had any sympathies. In social cognition they remain bound to the external and symptomatic. They tackle all other problems without a qualm, but here timidity restrains them. In their embarrassment, they betray their underlying bias. In social philosophy it is often difficult for thinkers who are otherwise quite open-minded to avoid all resentment. Into their thoughts obtrudes the recollection of those more prosperous than themselves; they make comparisons between their own value and the lack of it in others on the one hand, and their own poverty and the wealth of others on the other. In the end anger and envy, rather than reason, guide their pen.

  This alone explains why such lucid thinkers as the Neo-Kantians have not yet clearly thought out the only salient problems in social philosophy. Not even the rudiments of a comprehensive social philosophy are to be found in their works. They make numerous unfounded criticisms of certain social conditions, but omit to discuss the most important systems of sociology. They judge, without having first made themselves familiar with the results of economic science.

  The starting-point of their Socialism is generally the sentence: “Act in such a way that you use your being, equally with the being of anyone else, always as a purpose, never merely as a means.” In these words, says Cohen, “the most profound and powerful meaning of the categoric imperative is expressed; they contain the moral programme of the modern age and of all future world history.”42 And from that to Socialism, he seems to infer, is no great distance. “The idea of the purpose preference of humanity becomes transformed into the idea of Socialism by the definition of every individual as ultimate purpose, an end in himself.”43

  It is evident that this ethical argument for Socialism stands or falls by the assertion that in the economic order based on private ownership in the means of production all men, or some men, are means and not purpose. Cohen considers this to be completely proved. He believes that in such a social order two classes of men exist, owners and non-owners, of whom only the first lead an existence worthy of a human being, while the second merely serve. It is easy to see where this notion comes from. It rests on popular ideas on the relations of rich and poor, and is supported by the Marxian social philosophy, for which Cohen professes great sympathy without, however, making his views about it clear.44 Cohen completely ignores the liberal social theory. He takes it for granted that this is untenable, and thinks that it would be a waste of time to criticize it. Yet only by refuting the liberal views of the nature of society and the function of private property could he justify the assertion that in a society based on private ownership in the means of production men serve as means, not as ends. For liberal social theory proves that each single man sees in all others, first of all, only means to the realization of his purposes, while he himself is to all others a means to the realization of their purposes; that finally, by this reciprocal action, in which each is simultaneously means and end, the highest aim of social life is attained—the achievement of a better existence for everyone. As society is only possible if everyone, while living his own life, at the same time helps others to live, if every individual is simultaneously means and end; if each individual’s well-being is simultaneously the condition necessary to the well-being of the others, it is evident that the contrast between I and thou, means and end, automatically is overcome. This, after all, is just what the simile of the biological organism is supposed to make us perceive. In the organic structure no parts are to be regarded only as means and none only as ends. According to Kant the organism is a being “in which everything is end and reciprocally also means.”45 Now Kant was thoroughly familiar with the nature of the organic, but he did not see—and in this he lagged far behind the great sociologists who were his contemporaries—that human society is formed according to the same principle.

  The teleological view, which differentiates means and end, is permissible only in so far as we make the will and action of individual men or individual human associations the subject of investigation. It ceases to have any meaning as soon as we go further and look at the effects of this action in society. For every individual who acts there exists an ultimate purpose, the purpose which Eudaemonism enables us to understand; in this sense one may say that every man is an end to himself and an end in himself. But as an observation applied to the whole of society, this mode of expression is without any cognitive value. Here we cannot speak of purpose with more justification than of any other phenomenon of nature. When we ask whether, in society, this or that is end or means, we mentally substitute for society—that is, for the structure of human co-operation held together by the superiority of the division of labour over isolated labour—a structure welded together by one will, and then ask what is the aim of this will. This is animistic thought, it is not in any way sociological or scientific.

  Cohen’s special argument for the abolition of private property reveals the obscurity in which he still labours with regard to this fundamental problem of social life. Things, he says, have value. Persons, however, have no value. They have dignity. The market price of the value of labour is incompatible with the dignity of the person.46 This leads us into the abyss of Marxian phraseology and the doctrine of the “commodity-character” of labour and its objectionableness. This is the phrase which found its way into the treaties of Versailles and St. Germain in the form of a demand for the acceptance of the basic principle; “that labour should not be regarded merely as an article of commerce.”47 Enough, however, of these scholastic trivialities.

  After this we need not be surprised to find repeated in Cohen all those catchwords which for thousands of years have been brought to bear against the institution of private property. He rejects property because the owner, by getting control over an isolated action, becomes in fact the owner of the person.48 He rejects property because it withdraws from the worker the produce of his labour.49

  Clearly the argument for Socialism presented by the Kantian school always leads us back to the economic concepts of the various socialistic writers; above all to Marx and the “academic” socialists who followed in his steps. They have no arguments other than economic and sociological arguments, and these prove to be untenable.

  2

  The Duty of Work as a Foundation for Socialism

  “If any would not work, neither should he eat,” says the Second Epistle of the Thessalonians, which was ascribed to the Apostle Paul.50 This admonition to work is directed to those who want to live on their Christianity at the expense of the working members of the congregation; they are to support themselves without burdening their fellows.51 Torn out of its context, this has long been interpreted as a rejection of unearned income.52 It contains a most succinctly expressed moral precept which is continually being advocated with great vigour.

  The train of thought which has led people to this principle can be followed in a saying of Kant: “Man may be as ingenious as he will, yet he cannot force Nature to accept other laws. Either he must work himself or others for him, and his labour will rob others of as much of their happiness as he needs to increase his own above the mean.”53

  It is important to note that Kant cannot base the indirect rejection of private property which lies in these words otherwise than on a utilitarian or eudaemonistic view. The conception from which he proceeds is that through private property more work is laid on some, while others are allowed to idle. This criticism is not proof against the objection that private ownership and the differences in the amount of property do not take anything from anyone, that, rather, in a social order where neither were permitted so much less would be produced, that the per capita quota of the product of labour would amount to less than what the propertyless worker receives as income in a social order based on private property. It collapses as soon as one disproves the statement that the leisure of the possessors is bought by the extra efforts of those without possessions. Such ethical judgments against private property also show clearly that all moral evaluation of economic functions rests ultimately on a view of their economic achievements—on that and nothing else. To reject on “moral grounds” only an institution not considered objectionable from the utilitarian standpoint is, if we look more closely, not the aim of ethical considerations. Actually, in all such cases the only difference of opinion is a difference of opinion about the economic function of such institutions.

  That this fact has been overlooked is because those who tried to refute ethical criticism of private property have used the wrong arguments. Instead of pointing out its social significance they have usually been content to demonstrate the right of ownership or to prove that the owner, too, is not inactive, since he has worked to acquire his property and works to maintain it, and other arguments of this nature. The unsoundness of all this is obvious. It is absurd to refer to existing law when the problem is what the law should be; to refer to work which the owner does or has done when the problem is, not whether a certain kind of work should or should not be paid for, but whether private property in the means of production is to exist at all, and, if it exists, whether inequality of such ownership can be tolerated.

  Therefore, from the ethical point of view, one is not permitted to ask whether a certain price is justified or not. Ethical judgment has to choose between a social order resting on private ownership in the means of production and one based on common ownership. Once it has arrived at this decision—which, for eudaemonistic ethics, can be based only upon an opinion of what each of the two imagined forms of society would achieve—it cannot proceed to call immoral single consequences of the order it has selected. That which is necessary to the social order it has chosen is moral, and everything else is immoral.

  3

  The Equality of Incomes as an Ethical Postulate

  Against the assertion that all men should have equal incomes, as little can be said scientifically as can be said in support of it. Here is an ethical postulate which can only be evaluated subjectively. All science can do is to show what this aim would cost us, what other aims we should have to forgo in striving to attain this one.

  Most people who demand the greatest possible equality of incomes do not realize that what they desire would only be achieved by sacrificing other aims. They imagine that the sum of incomes will remain unchanged and that all they need to do is to distribute it more equally than it is distributed in the social order based on private property. The rich will give as much as they receive over and above the average, and the poor receive as much as is needed to make up their incomes to the average. But the average income itself will remain unchanged. It must be clearly understood, however, that this idea rests on a grave error. It has been shown that, in whatever way one envisages the equalization of incomes this must always and necessarily lead to a very considerable reduction of the total national income and, thus, also, of the average income. On this showing, the matter takes on quite a different complexion. For we have then to decide whether we are in favor of an equal distribution of income at a lower average income, or inequality of incomes at a higher average income.

  The decision will depend, of course, essentially, on how high one estimates the reduction which alteration in the social distribution of income will cause. If we conclude that the average income will be lower than that received today by the poorest, our attitude will probably be quite different from the attitude of most socialists of the sentimental type. If we accept what has been said in the second part of the book about how low productivity under Socialism and especially the contention that economic calculation would be quite impossible, then this argument of ethical Socialism also collapses.

  It is untrue that some are poor because others are rich.54 If an order of society in which incomes were equal replaced the capitalist order, everyone would become poorer. Paradoxical though it may sound, the poor receive what they do because rich people exist.

  And if we reject the argument for the general conscription of labour and for equality of wealth and incomes which is based on the statement that some have their leisure and fortune at the expense of the increased labour and poverty of others, then there remains no basis for these ethical postulates except resentment. No one shall be idle if I have to work; no one shall be rich if I am poor. Thus we see, again and again, that resentment lies behind all socialist ideas.

  4

  The Ethical-Aesthetic Condemnation of the Profit-Motive

  Another reproach which philosophers level against the capitalist economic order is that it encourages rank over-development of the acquisitive instinct. Man, they say, is no longer lord of the economic process, but its slave. That economic activity exists merely to satisfy wants and is a means, not an end in itself, has been forgotten. Life wears itself out in the perpetual hurry and scurry to get rich, and men have no time left for inner composure and real enjoyment. They lay waste their best powers in the exhausting daily struggle of free competition. And the ideologists look back into a distant past, where all is romantically transfigured. They see the Roman patrician at his country seat, meditating peacefully on the problems of the stoa, the medieval monk dividing his hours between devotion and the classics; the prince of the Renaissance at whose court artists and scholars meet, the Rococo lady in whose salon the encyclopedists develop their ideas—marvellous pictures, these, which produce in us a deep longing for the past. And our loathing for the present deepens when we turn from these visions to the life led by those who lack culture in our own time.

  The weakness of this argument, which appeals to the feelings rather than to the mind, is not only that it contrasts the brightest flowers of all times and peoples with the weeds of modern life. It is clear that one cannot compare the life of a Pericles or Maecenas with the life of the ordinary man in the street. But it is still quite untrue that the haste of modern business life has killed man’s sense of the beautiful and the sublime. The wealth of the “bourgeois” civilization is not spent on base enjoyments alone. If argument be necessary, one need only point to the way in which serious music has become popular in the last decades, particularly among that class of the population which is caught in the whirl of business life. There never has been a time when art was closer to the heart of large circles of the people. It is no phenomenon peculiar to our time that coarse and vulgar amusements appeal more to the great mass of the people than nobler forms of enjoyment. It was always so. And we may take it that in the socialist community good taste will not always predominate.

  Modern man has always before his eyes the possibility of growing rich by work and enterprise. In the more rigid economy of the past this was less easy. People were rich or poor from birth, and remained so through their lives unless they were given a change of position through some unforeseen accident, which their own work or enterprise could not have caused or avoided. Accordingly, we had the rich walking on the heights and the poor who stayed in the depths. It is not so in capitalistic society. The rich can more easily become poor and the poor can more easily become rich. And because every individual is not born with, as it were, his own or his family fate sealed, he tries to rise as high as he can. He can never be rich enough, because in capitalist society no wealth is eternal. In the past nobody could touch the feudal landlord. When his lands became less fertile he had less to consume, but as long as he did not get into debt he stayed on his property. The capitalist who lends out his capital and the entrepreneur who produces must stand the test of the market. Whoever invests unwisely, or produces too dearly, is ruined. Unhampered seclusion from the market no longer exists. Even landed fortunes cannot escape its influences; agriculture, too, must produce capitalistically. Today a man must earn or become poor.

  Let those who wish to eliminate this coercion to work and enterprise understand quite clearly that they are proposing to undermine the foundations of our well-being. That in 1914 the earth nourished far more human beings than ever before, and that they all lived far better than their ancestors, was due entirely to the acquisitive instinct. If the diligence of modern industry were replaced by the contemplative life of the past, unnumbered millions would be doomed to death by starvation.

  In the socialist society the lordly ease of government offices will take the place of the keen activity of modern financial houses and factories. The civil servant will supplant the energetic entrepreneur. Whether civilization will gain by it, we leave to the self-constituted judges of the world and its institutions to deride. Is the bureaucrat really the ideal human type, and must we aspire to fill the world with his kind at any price?

  Many socialists describe with great enthusiasm the advantages of a society of civil servants over a society of profit-seekers.55 In a society of the latter kind (the Acquisitive Society), every one pursues only his own advantage; in the society of those devoted to their profession (the Functional Society) everyone does his duty in the service of the whole. This higher evaluation of officialdom, in so far as it does not rest on a misconception of the social order based on private ownership in the means of production, is merely a new form of that contempt for the work of the painstaking citizen in which feudal landowners, soldiers, literary men, and bohemians have always indulged.

  5

  The Cultural Achievements of Capitalism

  The inexactness and untruthfulness of ethical Socialism, its logical inconsistencies and its lack of scientific criticism, characterize it as the philosophic product of a period of decay. It is the spiritual expression of the decline of European civilization at the turn of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Under its sway the German people and with them the whole of humanity were swept from the height of their culture to their deepest degradation. It created the mental premises for the World War and for Bolshevism. Its theories of violence were triumphant in the carnage of 1914-18, which brought to a close the finest flowering of civilization that world history has ever known.

  In Ethical Socialism imperfect understanding of human social co-operation is combined with the resentment of the ne’er-do-well. It is the inability to understand the difficult problems of social life which renders ethical socialists so unsophisticated and so certain that they are competent to solve social problems offhand. Resentment strengthens that indignation which is always sure of a response from those of like mind. But the fire of their language comes from a romantic enthusiasm for unrestraint. In every man there is a deep-rooted desire for freedom from social ties; this is combined with a longing for conditions which fully satisfy all imaginable wishes and needs. Reason teaches us not to give way to the first unless we are prepared to sink back into the deepest misery, and reminds us further that the second cannot be fulfilled. Where reason ceases to function the way to romanticism is open. The anti-social in man triumphs over the mind.

  The romantic movement, which addresses itself above all to the imagination, is rich in words. The colourful splendour of its dreams cannot be surpassed. Its praises awaken infinite longing, its curses breed loathing and contempt. Its longing is directed towards a past envisaged not soberly, but as a trans figured image, and towards a future which it paints with all the bright colours of desire. Between the two it sees the sober, everyday working life of bourgeois society and for this it feels only hatred and abhorrence. In the bourgeois it sees embodied everything that is shameful and petty. It roams the world at will, praises all ages and all lands; but for the conditions of the present day it has neither understanding nor respect.

  The great creative minds, whom we honour above all others as Classics, understood the profound significance of the bourgeois order. The romanticists lack this insight. They are too small to sing the song of bourgeois society. They deride the citizen, despise “shopkeepers’ ethics,” laugh at the law. They are extraordinarily quick to see all the faults of everyday life and as quick to trace them back to defects in social institutions. No romantic has perceived the grandeur of capitalist society. Compare the results achieved by these “shopkeepers’ ethics” with the achievements of Christianity! Christianity has acquiesced in slavery and polygamy, has practically canonized war, has, in the name of the Lord, burnt heretics and devastated countries. The much abused “shopkeepers” have abolished slavery and serfdom, made woman the companion of man with equal rights, proclaimed equality before the law and freedom of thought and opinion, declared war on war, abolished torture, and mitigated the cruelty of punishment. What cultural force can boast of similar achievements? Bourgeois civilization has created and spread a well-being, compared with which all the court life of the past seems meagre. Before the War, even the less favoured classes of the urban population could not only clothe and nourish themselves respectably but could enjoy genuine art and undertake journeys into distant lands. The romantics, however, saw only those who were not so well-off; the reason for their comparative poverty being that bourgeois civilization had not yet created sufficient wealth to make everybody comfortable. The same romantics had no eyes for those who were already comfortably circumstanced.56 What they saw was always only invariably the dirt and the misery capitalist civilization had inherited from the past, not the values which it had already achieved.

  CHAPTER 31

  Economic Democracy

  1

  The Slogan “Economic Democracy”

  One of the more important arguments in favor of Socialism is that contained in the slogan “self-government by industry.” As in the political sphere the King’s absolutism was broken by the peoples’ right to share decisions and later by its sole right to decide, so the absolutism of owners of the means of production and of entrepreneurs is to be abolished by consumers and workers. Democracy is incomplete as long as everyone is obliged to submit to the dictatorship of the owners. The worst part of Capitalism is by no means inequality of income; more unbearable still is the power which it gives the capitalists over their fellow citizens. As long as this state of affairs continues there can be no personal freedom. The People must take the administration of economic matters into their own hands, just as they have taken over the government of the state.57

  There is a double error in this argument. It misconceives on the one hand, the nature and function of political democracy, and on the other, the nature of the social order based on private ownership in the means of production.

  We have already shown that the essence of democracy is to be found neither in the electoral system, nor in the discussions and resolutions of national councils, nor in any sort of committee appointed by these councils. These are merely the technical tools of political democracy. Its real function is to make peace. Democratic institutions make the will of the people effective in political matters, by ensuring that its rulers and administrators are elected by the people’s votes. Thus are eliminated those dangers to peaceful social development which might result from any clash between the will of the rulers and public opinion. Civil war is averted through the operation of institutions which facilitate a peaceful change of the government. In the economic order based on private ownership in the means of production no special institutions, such as political democracy has created for itself, are needed to achieve corresponding success. Free competition does all that is needed. All production must bend to the consumers’ will. From the moment it fails to conform to the consumers’ demands it becomes unprofitable. Thus free competition compels the obedience of the producer to the consumer’s will and also, in case of need, the transfer of the means of production from the hands of those unwilling or unable to achieve what the consumer demands in to the hands of those better able to direct production. The lord of production is the consumer. From this point of view the capitalist society is a democracy in which every penny represents a ballot paper. It is a democracy with an imperative and immediately revocable mandate to its deputies.58

  It is a consumers’ democracy. By themselves the producers, as such, are quite unable to order the direction of production. This is as true of the entrepreneur as of the worker; both must bow ultimately to the consumers’ wishes. And it could not well be otherwise. People produce, not for the sake of production, but for the goods that may be consumed. As producer in an economy based on the division of labour, a man is merely the agent of the community and as such has to obey. Only as a consumer can he command.

  The entrepreneur is thus no more than an overseer of production. He of course exercises power over the worker. But he cannot exercise it arbitrarily. He must use it in accordance with the requirements of that productive activity which corresponds to the consumers’ wishes. To the individual wage-earner whose outlook is enclosed by the narrow horizon of daily work, the entrepreneur’s decisions may seem arbitrary and capricious. Seen from too close up the shape of things lose their true significance. If the entrepreneur’s disposal of production injures the worker’s momentary interest, it is sure to seem to him unfounded and arbitrary. He will not realize that the entrepreneur works under the rule of a strict law. True, the entrepreneur is free to give full rein to his whims, to dismiss workers off hand, to cling stubbornly to antiquated processes, deliberately to choose unsuitable methods of production and to allow himself to be guided by motives which conflict with the demands of consumers. But when and in so far as he does this he must pay for it, and if he does not restrain himself in time he will be driven, by the loss of his property, into a position where he can inflict no further damage. Special means of controlling his behavior are unnecessary. The market controls him more strictly and exactingly than could any government or other organ of society.59

  Every attempt to replace this rule of the consumers by a rule of producers is absurd. It would run contrary to the very nature of the productive process. We have already treated an example of this in greater detail—the example most important for modern conditions—the example of the syndicalist economy. What is true of it, is true of any producers’ policy. All economy must be a consumers’ economy. The absurdity of these endeavours to institute “economic democracy” by the creation of syndicalist institutions becomes apparent if we imagine these institutions transferred to the political field. For example, would it be democracy if judges had to decide what laws should be in force and how they should be administered? Or if soldiers had to decide at whose disposal they would place their arms and how to use them? No, judges and solders have to conform to law if the state is not to become an arbitrary despotism. The catchword “industrial self-government” is the most blatant of all misconceptions of the nature of democracy.

  In the socialist community, too, it is not the workers in separate branches of production who decide what is to be done in their own particular economic territory, but the supreme authority of society. If this were not so, we should have not Socialism but Syndicalism, and between these two there is no possible compromise.

  2

  The Consumer as the Deciding Factor in Production

  People sometimes maintain that in guarding their own interests entrepreneurs force production in a direction opposed to the interests of consumers. The entrepreneurs have no scruples about “creating or intensifying the public’s need for things which provide for merely sensual gratification but inflict harm on health or spiritual welfare.” For instance the fight against alcoholism, the dread menace to national health and welfare, is said to be made more difficult because of the opposition “of the vested interests of alcohol capitalism to all attempts to combat it.” The habit of smoking would not be “so widespread and so greatly on the increase among the young if economic interests played no role in promoting it.” “Luxury articles, baubles and tinsel of all kinds, trashy and obscene publications” are today “forced upon the public because the producers profit by them or hope to do so.”60 It is common knowledge that the large-scale arming of the Powers and therefore, indirectly, war itself are ascribed to the machinations of “armament-capital.”

  Entrepreneurs and capitalists in search of investments turn towards those branches of production from which they hope to obtain the greatest profit. They try to fathom the future wants of consumers so as to gain a general survey of demand. As Capitalism is constantly creating new wealth for all and extending the satisfaction of wants, consumers are frequently in the position of being able to satisfy wants which formerly remained unsatisfied. Thus it becomes a special task of the capitalist entrepreneur to find out what formerly unsatisfied wants can now be provided for. This is what people have in mind when they say that Capitalism creates wants in order to satisfy them.

  The nature of the things demanded by the consumer does not concern the entrepreneur and the capitalist. They are merely the obedient servants of the consumer and it is not their business to prescribe what the consumer shall enjoy. They give him poison and murderous weapons if he wants them. But nothing could be more erroneous than to suppose that products which serve a bad or harmful purpose bring in more than those which serve a good one. The highest profit is obtained from articles for which there is the most urgent demand. The profit-seeker therefore sets about producing those commodities in which there is the greatest disproportion between supply and demand. Of course, once he has invested his capital, it is to his interest to see that the demand for his product increases. He tries to expand sales. But in the long run he cannot prevail against a change of demand. Neither can he obtain much advantage from growth in the demand for his products, for new enterprises turn their attention to his branch of industry and thereby tend to reduce his profits to the average.

  Mankind does not drink alcohol because there are breweries, distilleries, and vineyards; men brew beer, distil spirits, and grow grapes because of the demand for alcoholic drinks. “Alcohol-capital” has not created drinking habits any more than it has created drinking songs. The capitalists who own shares in breweries and distilleries would have preferred shares in publishing firms for devotional books, had the demand been for spiritual and not spirituous substance. “Armament capital” did not create wars; wars created “armament capital.” It was not Krupp and Schneider who incited the nations to war, but imperialist writers and politicians.

  If a man thinks alcohol and nicotine harmful, let him abstain from them. Let him try, if he will, to convert his fellows to his own views on abstinence. What is certain is that he cannot, in a capitalist society, whose basic principle is the self-determination and self-responsibility of each individual, force them against their will to renounce alcohol and nicotine. If this inability to impose his will on others causes him regret, then at least he can console himself with the thought that neither is he at the mercy of the commands of others.

  Some socialists reproach the capitalist social order primarily for the rich variety of its goods. Instead of producing uniform products, which could be brought out on the largest scale, people manufacture hundreds and thousands of types of each commodity, and production is made much more expensive thereby. Socialism would put at the comrades’ disposal only uniform goods; it would unify production and thereby raise national productivity. Simultaneously Socialism would dissolve separate family households, and in their place provide communal kitchens and hotel-like dwellings; this, too, would increase social wealth by eliminating the waste of labour power in tiny kitchens which serve only a few consumers. Many socialist writings, above all those of Walter Rathenau, have dealt with these ideas in great detail.61

  Under Capitalism each buyer has to decide whether he prefers the cheaper uniformity of mass production or the greater expense of articles specially manufactured to suit the taste of the individual or the small group. There is unmistakably a tendency towards progressive uniformity of production and consumption through standardization. Commodities used in the productive process itself are daily becoming more standardized. The shrewd entrepreneur soon discovers the advantage of using the standard type—with its lower purchasing cost, its replaceability and adaptability to other productive processes rather than articles produced by a special process. The movement to standardize the implements of production is impeded today by the fact that numerous enterprises are indirectly or directly socialized. As they are not rationally controlled, no stress is laid on the advantage of using standard types. Army administrations, municipal building departments, State railways, and similar authorities resist, with bureaucratic obstinacy, the adoption of types in universal use. The unification of the production of machines, factory equipment and semi-finished products does not require a change to Socialism. On the contrary, Capitalism does this more quickly of its own accord.

  It is otherwise with goods for use and consumption. If a man satifies his special, personal taste in preference to using the uniform products of mass production and believes that his satisfaction balances the extra cost, then one cannot objectively prove him wrong. If my friend prefers to dress, be housed, and eat as it pleases him and not to do as everyone else does, who can blame him? For his happiness lies in the satisfaction of his wishes; he wants to live as he pleases and not as I or others would live were we in his place. It is his valuation that counts, not mine or other people’s. I may be able to prove to him that the judgments on which he bases his values are false. For example I may demonstrate that the foods he consumes have a smaller nutritional value than he assumed. But if his values have been built, not on untenable views about the relation of cause and effect, but on subjective sentiments and feelings, my arguments cannot change his mind. If, notwithstanding the advantages claimed for hotel life and communal kitchens, he still prefers a separate household because such sentiments as “own home” and “own hearth” weigh with him more than arguments in favour of unitary organization, then nothing further remains to be said. If he wishes to furnish his dwelling according to his personal taste and not according to the public taste which guides the furniture manufacturer, there are no arguments with which to refute him. If, knowing the effects of alcohol, he still drinks it, because he is prepared to pay even dearly for the pleasure it gives him, I may certainly, from the standpoint of my values, call him unwise, but it is his will, his valuation that will decide. If I, as a dictator, or as a member of a despotically ruling majority, prohibit the drinking of alcohol, I do not thus raise the productivity of social production. Those who condemn alcohol would have avoided it without prohibition. For all others, the prohibition of an enjoyment which they value above anything they can obtain by renouncing it means a falling-off in satisfaction.

  The contrast of productivity and profitableness, which, as we see from arguments explained in a previous chapter, is valueless for the understanding of the working of production directed to given ends, must lead definitely to false conclusions if applied to the ends of economic action.62 In dealing with means to a given end, one may call this process or that the more practical, that is, capable of a higher yield. But when we ask whether this or that means gives a greater direct increase of welfare to the individual, we have no objective standards that will serve. Here the subjective will of man is the deciding factor. A man’s preference for water, milk, or wine does not depend on the physiological effects of these drinks, but on his valuation of the effects. If a man drinks wine and not water I cannot say he is acting irrationally. At most I can say that in his place I would not do so. But his pursuit of happiness is his own business, not mine.

  If the socialist community does not supply the comrades with the goods which they themselves want to enjoy, but with those which the rules think they ought to enjoy, the sum of satisfactions is not increased, but diminished. One certainly could not call this violation of the individual will “economic democracy.”

  For it is an essential difference between capitalist and socialist production that under Capitalism men provide for themselves, while under Socialism they are provided for. The socialist wants to feed and house humanity and cover its nakedness. But men prefer to eat, dwell, dress and generally to seek happiness after their own fashion.

  3

  Socialism as Expression of the Will of the Majority

  The number of our contemporaries who decide in favour of Socialism because the majority has already so decided is by no means negligible. “Most people want Socialism; the masses no longer support the capitalist social order, therefore we must socialize.” One hears this constantly. But it is not a convincing argument in the eyes of those who reject Socialism. Certainly if the majority want Socialism, Socialism we shall have. Nobody has shown more clearly than the liberal philosophers that there is no resisting public opinion, and that the majority decides, even when it is in error. If the majority makes a mistake, the minority must also suffer the consequences and cannot complain. Has it not been party to the error in having failed to enlighten the majority?

  But in discussing what is to be, the argument that the great mass of people violently demand Socialism would be valid only if Socialism were desired as an ultimate end for its own sake. But this is by no means so. Like all other forms of social organization Socialism is only a means, not an end in itself. Those who want Socialism, like those who reject it, want well-being and happiness, and they are socialists only because they believe that Socialism is the best way to achieve this. If they were convinced that the liberal order of society was better able to fulfill their wishes they would become liberals. Therefore, the argument that one must be socialist because the masses demand Socialism is the worst possible argument against an enemy of Socialism. The will of the people is the highest law for the representatives of the people who have to execute its commands. But those who seek to direct thought must not bend to this will. Only he is a pioneer who speaks out and attempts to bring his fellow citizens to his ways of thinking, even when they differ from those generally held. This argument that one should defer to the masses is nothing else than a demand that those who still oppose Socialism by reasonable criticism should abdicate reason itself. That such an argument can be put forward only shows how far the socialization of intellectual life has already gone. In the very darkest epochs of early history, such arguments have not been used. Those who opposed the prejudices of the greatest number were never told that their opinions were false simply because the majority thought otherwise.

  If Socialism is inherently impracticable the fact that everyone desires it will not enable us to accomplish it.

  CHAPTER 32

  Capitalist Ethics

  1

  Capitalist Ethics and the Impracticability of Socialism

  In the expositions of Ethical Socialism one constantly finds the assertion that it presupposes the moral purification of men. As long as we do not succeed in elevating the masses morally we shall be unable to transfer the socialist order of society from the sphere of ideas to that of reality. The difficulties in the way of Socialism lie exclusively, or predominantly, in men’s moral shortcomings. Some writers doubt whether this obstacle will ever be overcome; others are content to say that the world will not be able to achieve Socialism for the present or in the immediate future.

  We have been able to show why the socialist economy is impracticable: not because men are morally too base, but because the problems that a socialist order would have to solve present insuperable intellectual difficulties. The impracticability of Socialism is the result of intellectual, not moral, incapacity. Socialism could not achieve its end, because a socialist economy could not calculate value. Even angels, if they were endowed only with human reason, could not form a socialistic community.

  If a socialist community were capable of economic calculation, it could be set up without any change in men’s moral character. In a socialist society different ethical standards would prevail from those of a society based on private ownership in the means of production. The temporary sacrifices demanded of the individual by society would be different. Yet it would be no more difficult to enforce the code of socialist morals than it is to enforce the code of capitalist morals, if there were any possibility of making objective computations within the socialist society. If a socialist society could ascertain separately the product of the labour of each single member of the society, his share in the social product could be calculated and his reward fixed proportionately to his productive contribution. Under such circumstances the socialist order would have no cause to fear that a comrade would fail to work with the maximum of energy for lack of any incentive to sweeten the toil of labour. Only because this condition is lacking, Socialism will have to construct for its Utopia a type of human being totally different from the race which now walks the earth, one to whom labour is not toil and pain, but joy and pleasure. Because such a calculus is out of the question, the Utopian socialist is obliged to make demands on men which are diametrically opposed to nature. This inadequacy of the human type which would cause the breakdown of Socialism, may appear to be of a moral order; on closer examination it turns out to be a question of intellect.

  2

  The Alleged Defects of Capitalist Ethics

  To act reasonably means to sacrifice the less important to the more important. We make temporary sacrifices when we give up small things to obtain bigger things, as when we cease to indulge in alcohol to avoid its physiological after-effects. Men submit to the effort of labour in order that they may not starve.

  Moral behaviour is the name we give to the temporary sacrifices made in the interests of social co-operation, which is the chief means by which human wants and human life generally may be supplied. All ethics are social ethics. (If it be claimed that rational behaviour, directed solely towards one’s own good, should be called ethical too, and that we had to deal with individual ethics and with duties to oneself, we could not dispute it; indeed this mode of expression emphasizes perhaps better than ours, that in the last analysis the hygiene of the individual and social ethics are based on the same reasoning.) To behave morally, means to sacrifice the less important to the more important by making social co-operation possible.

  The fundamental defect of most of the anti-utilitarian systems of ethics lies in the misconstruction of the meaning of the temporary sacrifices which duty demands. They do not see the purpose of sacrifice and foregoing of pleasure, and they construct the absurd hypothesis that sacrifice and renunciation are morally valuable in themselves. They elevate unselfishness and self-sacrifice and the love of compassion, which lead to them, to absolute moral values. The pain that at first accompanies the sacrifice is defined as moral because it is painful—which is very near asserting that all action painful to the performer is moral.

  From the discovery of this confusion we can see why various sentiments and actions which are socially neutral or even harmful come to be called moral. Of course, even reasoning of this sort cannot avoid returning furtively to utilitarian ideas. If we are unwilling to praise the compassion of a doctor who hesitates to undertake a life-saving operation on the ground that he thereby saves the patient pain, and distinguish, therefore, between true and false compassion, we re-introduce the teleological consideration of purpose which we tried to avoid. If we praise unselfish action, then human welfare, as a purpose, cannot be excluded. There thus arises a negative utilitarianism: we are to regard as moral that which benefits, not the person acting, but others. An ethical ideal has been set up which cannot be fitted into the world we live in. Therefore, having condemned the society built up on “self-interest” the moralist proceeds to construct a society in which human beings are to be what his ideal requires. He begins by misunderstanding the world and laws; he then wishes to construct a world corresponding to his false theories, and he calls this the setting up of a moral ideal.

  Man is not evil merely because he wants to enjoy pleasure and avoid pain—in other words, to live. Renunciation, abnegation, and self-sacrifice are not good in themselves. To condemn the ethics demanded by social life under Capitalism and to set up in their place standards for moral behaviour which—it is thought—might be adopted under Socialism is a purely arbitrary procedure.

  PART V

  DESTRUCTIONISM

  CHAPTER 33

  The Motive Powers of Destructionism

  1

  The Nature of Destructionism

  To the socialist, the coming of Socialism means a transition from an irrational to a rational economy. Under Socialism, planned management of economic life takes the place of anarchy of production; society, which is conceived as the incarnation of reason, takes the place of the conflicting aims of unreasonable and self-interested individuals. A just distribution replaces an unjust distribution of goods. Want and misery vanish and there is wealth for all. A picture of paradise is unfolded before us, a paradise which—so the laws of historical evolution tell us—we, or at least our heirs, must at length inherit. For all history leads to that promised land, and all that has happened in the past has only prepared the way for our salvation.

  This is how our contemporaries see Socialism, and they believe in its excellence. It is false to imagine that the socialist ideology dominates only those parties which call themselves socialist or—what is generally intended to mean the same thing—“social.” All present-day political parties are saturated with the leading socialistic ideas. Even the stoutest opponents of Socialism fall within its shadow. They, too, are convinced that the socialist economy is more rational than the capitalist, that it guarantees a more just distribution of income, that historical evolution is driving man inexorably in that direction. When they oppose Socialism they do so with the sense that they are defending selfish private interests and that they are combating a development which from the standpoint of public welfare is desirable and is based upon the only ethically acceptable principle. And in their hearts they are convinced that their resistance is hopeless.

  Yet the socialist idea is nothing but a grandiose rationalization of petty resentments. Not one of its theories can withstand scientific criticism and all its deductions are ill-founded. Its conception of the capitalist economy has long been seen to be false; its plan of a future social order proves to be inwardly contradictory, and therefore impracticable. Not only would Socialism fail to make economic life more rational, it would abolish social cooperation outright. That it would bring justice is merely an arbitrary assertion, arising, as we can show, from resentment and the false interpretation of what takes place under Capitalism. And that historical evolution leaves us no alternative but Socialism turns out to be a prophecy which differs from the chiliastic dreams of primitive Christian sectarians only in its claim to the title “science.”

  In fact Socialism is not in the least what it pretends to be. It is not the pioneer of a better and finer world, but the spoiler of what thousands of years of civilization have created. It does not build; it destroys. For destruction is the essence of it. It produces nothing, it only consumes what the social order based on private ownership in the means of production has created. Since a socialist order of society cannot exist, unless it be as a fragment of Socialism within an economic order resting otherwise on private property, each step leading towards Socialism must exhaust itself in the destruction of what already exists.

  Such a policy of destructionism means the consumption of capital. There are few who recognize this fact. Capital consumption can be detected statistically and can be conceived intellectually, but it is not obvious to everyone. To see the weakness of a policy which raises the consumption of the masses at the cost of existing capital wealth, and thus sacrifices the future to the present, and to recognize the nature of this policy, requires deeper insight than that vouchsafed to statesmen and politicians or to the masses who have put them into power. As long as the walls of the factory buildings stand, and the trains continue to run, it is supposed that all is well with the world. The increasing difficulties of maintaining the higher standard of living are ascribed to various causes, but never to the fact that a policy of capital consumption is being followed.

  In the problem of the capital consumption of a destructionist society we find one of the key problems of the socialist economic policy. The danger of capital consumption would be particularly great in the socialist community; the demagogue would achieve success most easily by increasing consumption per head at the cost of the formation of additional capital and to the detriment of existing capital.

  It is in the nature of capitalist society that new capital is continually being formed. The greater the capital fund becomes, the higher does the marginal productivity of labour rise and the higher, therefore, are wages, absolute and relative. The progressive formation of capital is the only way to increase the quantity of goods which society can consume annually without diminishing production in the future—the only way to increase the workers’ consumption without harm to future generations of workers. Therefore, it has been laid down by Liberalism that progressive capital formation is the only means by which the position of the great masses can be permanently improved. Socialism and destructionism seek to attain this end in a different way. They propose to use up capital so as to achieve present wealth at the expense of the future. The policy of Liberalism is the procedure of the prudent father who saves and builds for himself and his successors. The policy of destructionism is the policy of the spendthrift who dissipates his inheritance regardless of the future.

  2

  Demagogy

  To Marxians, Karl Marx’s supreme achievement lay in the fact that he roused the proletariat to class-consciousness. Before he wrote, socialist ideas had led an academic existence in the writings of the Utopians and in the narrow circles of their disciples. By connecting these ideas with a revolutionary workers’ movement, which till then had only a petty bourgeois aim, Marx created, say the Marxians, the foundations of the proletarian movement. This movement, they believe, will live until it has accomplished its historical mission, the setting up of the socialist order of society.

  Marx is supposed to have discovered the dynamic laws of capitalist society and, with the aid of the theory of historical evolution, to have defined the aims of the modern social movement as inevitable consequences of that evolution. He is said to have shown that the proletariat could free itself as a class only by itself abolishing the class conflict, and so making possible a society in which “the free development of each individual is the condition for the free development of all.”

  Ecstatic enthusiasts see in Marx one of the heroic figures of world history, and class him among the great economists and sociologists, even among the most eminent philosophers. The unbiased observer looks on Karl Marx’s work with different eyes. As an economist Marx entirely lacked originality. He was a follower of the Classical political economists, but he lacked the ability to approach essentially economic problems without a political bias. He saw everything through the spectacles of the agitator, who considers first and foremost the effect made on the popular mind. Even here he was not really original, for the English socialist defenders of the “right to the full produce of labour,” who with their pamphlets in the third and fourth decades of the nineteenth century prepared the way for Chartism, had already anticipated him in all essentials. Moreover, he had the misfortune to be entirely ignorant of the revolution in theoretical economics which was proceeding during the years when he worked out his system, a transformation which made itself known soon after the issue of the first volume of Das Kapital. As a result, the later volumes of Das Kapital, from the day they were published, were quite out of touch with modern science. This was a piece of bad luck which hit his infatuated followers particularly hard. From the beginning, they had to be content with barren expositions of the master’s writings. They have timidly avoided any contact with the modern theory of value. As a sociologist and historical philosopher Marx was never more than an able agitator writing for the daily needs of his party. The materialist conception of history is scientifically worthless; moreover Marx never worked it out exactly but propounded it in various incompatible forms. His philosophic standpoint was that of the Hegelians. He is one of the many writers of his time, now mostly forgotten, who applied the dialectic method to all fields of science. Decades had to pass before people had the face to call him a philosopher and to place him side by side with the great thinkers.

  As a scientific writer Marx was dry, pedantic, and heavy. The gift of expressing himself intelligibly had been denied him. In his political writings alone does he produce powerful effects, and these only by means of dazzling antitheses and of phrases which are easy to remember, sentences which by play of words hide their own vacuity. In his polemics he does not hesitate to distort what his own opponent had said. Instead of refuting he tends to abuse.1 Here, too, his disciples (his school really exists only in Germany and Eastern Europe, especially in Russia) have faithfully imitated the master’s example, reviling their opponents but never attempting to refute them by argument.

  Marx’s originality and historical significance lie entirely in the field of political technique. He recognizes the immense social power that can be achieved by welding out of the great masses of workers, herded together in workshops, a political factor; and he seeks and finds the slogans to unite these masses into a coherent movement. He produces the catchword which leads people otherwise indifferent to politics to attack private property. He preaches a doctrine of salvation which rationalizes their resentment and transfigures their envy and desire for revenge into a mission ordained by world history. He inspires them with consciousness of their mission by greeting them as those who carry in themselves the future of the human race. The rapid expansion of Socialism has been compared to that of Christianity. More appropriate, perhaps, would be a comparison with Islam, which inspired the sons of the desert to lay waste ancient civilizations, cloaked their destructive fury with an ethical ideology and stiffened their courage with rigid fatalism.2

  At the core of Marxism is the doctrine of the identity of interests of all proletarians. As an individual, however, the worker is daily in sharp competitive conflict with his fellow-workers and with those who are quite ready to take his job from him; together with his own comrades in his own trade he competes with workers in other branches of the trade and with the consumers of the products in the production of which he collaborates. In the face of all these facts, all his passions had to be raised to induce him to seek his salvation in union with other workers. But this was not so very difficult; it always pays to rouse what is evil in the human heart. Yet Marx has done more: he has decked out the resentment of the common man with the nimbus of science, and has thus made it attractive to those who live on a higher intellectual and ethical plane. Every socialist movement has borrowed in this respect from Marx, adapting the doctrine slightly for its special needs.

  As a master of demagogic technique Marx was a genius; this cannot be sufficiently emphasized. He found the propitious historical moment for uniting the masses into a single political movement, and was himself on the spot to lead this movement. For him all politics was only the continuation of war by other means; his political art was always political tactics. The socialist parties which trace their origin back to Marx have kept this up, as have those who have taken the Marxist parties for their model. They have elaborated the technique of agitation, the cadging for votes and for souls, the stirring up of electoral excitement, the street demonstrations, and the terrorism. To learn the technique of these things requires years of hard study. At their party conferences and in their party literature, the Marxians give more attention to questions of organization and of tactics than to the most important basic problems of politics. In fact, if one wished to be more precise one would have to admit that nothing interests them at all except from the point of view of party tactics and that they have no interest to spare for anything else.

  This militarist attitude to politics, which reveals the inner affinity of Marxism with Prussian and Russian etatism has quickly found adherents. The modern parties of the continent of Europe have completely accepted the Marxian ideology. Especially the parties which aim to promote particular interests, and which gather together the peasant class, the industrial middle class and the class of employers, make use of the Marxist doctrine of class-war for their own purposes. They have learnt all they know from Marxism.

  The defeat of the liberal ideology could not long be postponed. Liberalism has anxiously avoided all political artifice. It has relied entirely upon the inner vitality of its ideas and their power to convince, and has disdained all other means of political conflict. It has never pursued political tactics, never stooped to demagogy. The old Liberalism was honest through and through and faithful to its principles. Its opponents called this being “doctrinaire.”

  Today the old liberal principles have to be submitted to a thorough reexamination. Science has been completely transformed in the last hundred years, and today the general sociological and economic foundations of the liberal doctrine have to be relaid. On many questions Liberalism did not think logically to the conclusion. There are loose threads to be gathered up.3 But the mode of political activity of Liberalism cannot alter. It regards all social co-operation as an emanation of rationally recognized utility, in which all power is based on public opinion, and can undertake no course of action that would hinder the free decision of thinking men. Liberalism knows that society can advance to a higher stage only by men recognizing the usefulness of social co-operation; that neither God nor veiled destiny determines the future of the human race, but only man himself. When nations rush blindly towards destruction, Liberalism must try to enlighten them. But even if they do not hear, whether because they are deaf or because the warning voice is too feeble, one must not seek to seduce them to the right mode of conduct by tactical and demagogic artifice. It might be possible to destroy society by demagogy. But it can never be built up by that means.

  3

  The Destructionism of the Literati

  The romantic and the social art of the nineteenth century have prepared the way for socialist destructionism. Without the help it got from this direction Socialism would never have gained its hold on people’s minds.

  Romanticism is man’s revolt against reason, as well as against the condition under which nature has compelled him to live. The romantic is a daydreamer; he easily manages in imagination to disregard the laws of logic and of nature. The thinking and rationally acting man tries to rid himself of the discomfort of unsatisfied wants by economic action and work; he produces in order to improve his position. The romantic is too weak—too neurasthenic—for work; he imagines the pleasures of success but he does nothing to achieve them. He does not remove the obstacles; he merely removes them in imagination. He has a grudge against reality because it is not like the dream world he has created. He hates work, economy, and reason.

  The romantic takes all the gifts of a social civilization for granted and desires, in addition, everything fine and beatiful that, as he thinks, distant times and countries had or have to offer. Surrounded by the comforts of European town life he longs to be an Indian rajah, Bedouin, corsair, or troubadour. But he sees only that portion of these people’s lives which seems pleasant to him, never their lack of the things he obtains in such abundance. His horsemen gallop over the plains on fiery steeds, his corsairs capture beautiful women, his knights vanquish their enemies between episodes of love and song. The perilous nature of their existence, the comparative poverty of their circumstances, their miseries and their toils—these things his imagination tactfully overlooks: all is transfigured by a rosy gleam. Compared with this dream ideal, reality appears arid and shallow. There are obstacles to overcome which do not exist in the dream. There are very different tasks to be undertaken. Here are no beautiful women to be rescued from the hands of robbers, no lost treasures to be found, no dragons to kill. Here there is work to do, ceaselessly, assiduously, day after day, year after year. Here one must plough and sow if one wishes to reap. The romantic does not choose to admit all this. Obstinate as a child, he refuses to recognize it. He mocks and jeers; he despises and loathes the bourgeois.

  The spread of capitalist thought produced an attitude of mind unfriendly to Romanticism. The poetic figures of knights and pirates become objects of mirth. Now that the lives of Bedouins, maharajahs, pirates, and other romantic heroes had been observed at close quarters, any desire to emulate them vanished. The achievements of the capitalist social order made it good to be alive and there was a growing feeling that security of life and liberty, peaceful welfare, and richer satisfaction of wants could be expected only from Capitalism. The romantic contempt for what is bourgeois fell into disrepute.

  But the mental attitude from which Romanticism sprang was not so easy to eradicate. The neurasthenic protest against life sought other forms of expression. it found it in the “social” art of the nineteenth century.

  The really great poets and novelists of the period were not social-political propagandist writers. Flaubert, Maupassant, Jacobsen, Strindberg, Konrad Ferdinand Meyer, to name only a few, were far from being followers of the fashionable literature. We do not owe the statement of these social and political problems to the writers whose works have given the nineteenth century its lasting place in the history of literature. This was the task assumed by second- or third-rate writers. It was writers of this class who introduced as literary figures the bloodsucking capitalist entrepreneur and the noble proletarian. To them the rich man is in the wrong because he is rich, and the poor in the right because he is poor.4 “But this is just as if wealth were a crime,” Gerhart Hauptmann makes Frau Dreissiger exclaim in Die Weber. The literature of this period is full of the condemnation of property.

  This is not the place for an aesthetic analysis of these works; our task is to examine their political efforts. They have brought victory to Socialism by enlisting the allegiance of the educated classes. By means of such books Socialism has been carried into the houses of the wealthy, captivating the wives and daughters and causing the sons to turn away from the family business until at last the capitalist entrepreneur himself has begun to believe in the baseness of his activities. Bankers, captains of industry, and merchants have filled the boxes of theatres in which plays of a socialist tendency were given before enthusiastic audiences.

  Social art is tendentious art: all social literature has a thesis to demonstrate.5 It is ever the same thesis: Capitalism is an evil, Socialism is salvation. That such eternal repetition has not led to boredom sooner must be attributed solely to the fact that the various writers have had different forms of Socialism in mind. But they all follow Marx’s example in avoiding detailed exposition of the socialist social order they praise; most of them merely indicate by allusion, though clearly enough, that they desire a socialist order. That the logic of their argument is inadequate and that the conclusions are driven home by an appeal to the emotions rather than to reason is hardly surprising, seeing that the same method is followed by soi-disant scientific authorities on Socialism. Fiction is a favoured vehicle for this kind of procedure, as there is little fear that anyone will try to refute its assertions in detail by logical criticism. It is not the custom to inquire into the accuracy of particular remarks in novels and plays. Even if it were, the author could still find a way out by denying responsibility for the particular words put into the mouth of a hero. The conclusions forced home by character-drawing cannot be invalidated by logic. Even if the “man of property” is always depicted as bad through and through, one cannot reproach the author on account of a simple example. For the total effect of the literature of his time no single writer is responsible.

  In Hard Times Dickens puts into the mouth of Sissy Jupe, the deserted little daughter of a circus clown and dancer, remarks designed to shatter Utilitarianism and Liberalism. He makes Mr. M’Choackumchild, teacher in the model school of the Benthamite capitalist Gradgrind, ask how great is the percentage of victims when, out of 100,000 sea travellers, 500 are drowned. The good child answers, that for the relatives and friends of the victims there is no percentage—and so condemns with quiet simplicity the self-complacency of Manchesterism. Leaving aside the far-fetched improbability of the scene, this is of course all very fine and touching. But it does not diminish the satisfaction which members of a capitalist community may feel when they contemplate the great reduction of the dangers of navigation under Capitalism. And if Capitalism has so contrived that out of 1,000,000 people only twenty-five starve each year, while under more ancient economic systems a much greater proportion starved, then our estimation of this achievement is not impaired by Sissy’s platitude, that for those who starve the ordeal is just as bitter when a million or a million million others are starving at the same time or not. Moreover, we are offered no proof that in a socialist society fewer people would starve. The third observation which Dickens puts into Sissy’s mouth is intended to show that one cannot judge the economic prosperity of a nation by the amount of its wealth, but one must consider also the distribution of that wealth. Dickens was too ignorant of the writings of the utilitarians to know that these views did not contradict the older utilitarianism. Bentham, particularly, maintained with special emphasis that a sum of wealth brings more happiness when it is evenly distributed than when it is so distributed as to endow some richly while others have little.6

  Sissy’s counterpart is the model boy, Bitzer. He gets his mother into the workhouse and then contents himself with giving her half a pound of tea once a year. Even this, says Dickens, is a weakness in the otherwise admirable youth, whom he calls an excellent young economist. For one thing, all almsgiving inevitably tends to pauperize the recipient. Further, Bitzer’s only rational action with regard to tea would have been to buy as cheaply, and sell it as dearly as possible. Have not philosophers demonstrated that in this consists the whole duty of man (the whole, not a part of his duty)? Millions who have read these observations have felt the indignation for the baseness of utilitarian thought which the author meant them to feel. Nevertheless, they are quite unjust. It is true that liberal politicians have striven against the encouragement of beggars by means of indiscriminate almsgiving and have shown the futility of any attempt at bettering the situation of the poor which does not proceed by increasing the productivity of labour. They have exposed the danger to the proletarians themselves of proposals for increasing the birth rate by premature marriages between persons not in a position to take care of their children. But they have never protested against support through the Poor Law of people unable to work. Neither have they contested the moral duty of children to support their parents in old age. The liberal social philosophy has never said that it was a “duty,” let alone the beginning and end of morality, to buy as cheaply as possible and sell as dearly as possible. It has shown that this is the rational behaviour for the individual seeking (by buying and selling) the means for the indirect satisfaction of his wants. But Liberalism has no more called it irrational to give tea to one’s aged mother than it has called tea drinking in itself irrational.

  One glance into the works of the utilitarians is enough to unmask these sophistical distortions. But there is hardly one in every hundred thousand readers of Dickens who has ever read a line of a utilitarian writer. Dickens, with other romantics less gifted as storytellers but following the same tendencies, has taught millions to hate Liberalism and Capitalism. And yet Dickens was not an open and direct champion of destructionism, any more than were William Morris, Shaw, Wells, Zola, Anatole France, Gerhart Hauptmann, Edmondo de Amicis, and many others. They all reject the capitalist social order and combat private ownership in the means of production, without perhaps always being conscious of it. Between the lines they suggest an inspiring picture of a better state of affairs economically and socially. They are recruiting agents for Socialism and, since Socialism must destroy society, are at the same time paving the way for destructionism. But just as political Socialism became finally, in Bolshevism, an open avowal of destructionism, so too did literary Socialism. Tolstoy is the great prophet of a destructionism that goes back to the words of the Gospels. He makes the teachings of Christ, which rested on a belief that the Kingdom of God was imminent, a gospel for all times and all men. Like the communist sects of the Middle Ages and the Reformation he tries to build society on the commands of the Sermon on the Mount. He does not of course go so far as to take literally the exhortation to follow the example of the lilies of the field, which toil not. But in his idea of society there is only room for self-sufficing agriculturists who, with modest means, till a small piece of land, and he is logical enough to demand that everything else shall be destroyed.

  And now the peoples which have hailed with the greatest enthusiasm such writings, which call for the destruction of all cultural values, are themselves on the verge of a great social catastrophe.

  CHAPTER 34

  The Methods of Destructionism

  1

  The Means of Destructionism

  Socialist policy employs two methods to accomplish its purposes: the first aims directly at converting society to Socialism; the second aims only indirectly at this conversion by destroying the social order which is based on private ownership. The parties of social reform and the evolutionary wings of the socialist parties prefer the first means; the second is the weapon of revolutionary Socialism, which is primarily concerned to clear the ground for building up a new civilization by liquidating the old one. To the first category belong municipalization and nationalization of enterprises; to the second, sabotage and revolution.

  The importance of this division is lessened materially by the fact that the effects achieved by both groups do not greatly differ. As we have shown, even the direct method which aims at the creation of a new society can only destroy; it cannot create. Thus the beginning and end of the socialist policy, which has dominated the world for decades, is destruction. In the policy of the communists the will to destroy is so clear that no one can overlook it. But although destructionism is more easily recognized in the actions of the Bolshevists than in other parties, it is essentially just as strong in all other socialist movements. State interference in economic life, which calls itself “economic policy,” has done nothing but destroy economic life. Prohibitions and regulations have by their general obstructive tendency fostered the growth of the spirit of wastefulness. Already during the war period this policy had gained so much ground that practically all economic action of the entrepreneur was branded as violation of the law. That production is still being carried on, even semi-rationally, is to be ascribed only to the fact that destructionist laws and measures have not yet been able to operate completely and effectively. Were they more effective, hunger and mass extinction would be the lot of all civilized nations today.

  Our whole life is so given over to destructionism that one can name hardly a field into which it has not penetrated. “Social” art preaches it, schools teach it, the churches disseminate it. In recent decades the legislation of civilized states has created hardly one important law in which at least a few concessions have not been made to destructionism; some laws it completely dominates. To give a comprehensive account of destructionism one would have to write the history of the years in which the catastrophic World War and the Bolshevist Revolution were prepared and consummated. This cannot be undertaken here. We must content ourselves with a few remarks which may contribute to an understanding of destructionist development.

  2

  Labour Legislation

  Amongst the means destructionist policy has employed, the legal protection of labour is, in its direct effects, the most harmless. Yet this aspect of social policy is specially important as an outcome of destructionist thought.

  The advocates of the protection of labour like to consider the problem as analogous to the situation which led to the measures taken in the eighteenth and the first half of the nineteenth century to protect tied labourers under the manorial system. Just as at that time the peasant’s labour obligations were continually reduced by State intervention in an attempt to free the serf step by step, so labour legislation at the present day is supposed to be no more than the attempt to raise the modern proletarian from wage slavery to an existence worthy of a human being. But this comparison is quite invalid. The restriction of the labour duties of the serf did not diminish, but rather increased the amount of work done in the country. Forced labour, poor in quality and in quantity, was reduced so that the peasant would be free to improve his own bit of land or work for hire. Most of the measures taken in favour of the unfree peasant aimed, on the one hand, at increasing the intensity of agricultural work, and, on the other, at freeing labour power for industrial production. When the peasant-policy finally abolished the forced labour of agricultural workers it did not abolish work but increased its opportunities. The effect is quite different when modern social policy “regulates” working time by restricting the working day to ten, nine, and eight hours a day, or, as in various categories of public officials, to six hours or even less. For this reduces the amount of work done and thus the yield of production.

  The effect of such measures for the limitation of labour have been too obvious to be overlooked. This is why all efforts to extend the legal protection of labour in calling for a radical reconstruction of conditions of work have encountered strong resistance. Etatist writers generally talk as though the general shortening of working time, the gradual elimination of women’s and children’s labour, and the limitation of night work were to be ascribed exclusively to legislative intervention and the activity of trade unions.7 This attitude shows that they are still influenced by the views on the character of industrial wage labour held in circles unsympathetic to modern capitalist industry. According to these views factory industry has a peculiar aversion to using fully trained labour. It is supposed to prefer the unskilled labourer, the weak woman, and the frail child to the all-round trained expert. For on the one hand it wishes to produce only inferior mass commodities, in the manufacture of which it has no use for the skilled employee; on the other, the simplicity of the movements involved in mechanical production enables industry to employ the undeveloped and the physically weak. As the factories are supposed to be profitable only if they under-pay the workers, it is natural that they should employ unskilled workers, women, and children and try to extend the working day as much as possible. It is supposed that this view can be substantiated by referring to the evolution of large scale industry. But in its beginnings large scale industry had to be content with such labour because at that time it could only employ labour outside the guild organization of handicrafts. It had to take the untrained women and children because they were the only ones available, and was forced to arrange its processes so as to manage with inferior labour. Wages paid in the factories were lower than the earnings of handicraft workers because the labour yield was lower. For the same reason the working-day was longer than in the handicrafts. Only when in time these conditions changed, could large scale industry change the conditions of its labour. The factory had no other alternative than to employ women and children in the beginning, fully trained workers not being available; but when, by competition, it had vanquished the older labour systems and had attracted to itself all the workers there employed, it altered its processes so that skilled male workers became the main labour factor and women and children were forced more and more out of industry. Wages rose, because the production of the efficient worker was higher than the production of the factory girl or child. The worker’s family found that the wife and children did not need to earn. Working hours lessened because the more intensive labour of the efficient worker made possible a better exploitation of the machinery than could be achived with the sluggish and unskilled work of inferior labour.8

  The shorter working day and the limitation of woman and child labour, in so far as these improvements were in operation in Germany about the outbreak of the War, were by no means a victory won by the champions of the legal protection of labour from selfish entrepreneurs. They were the result of an evolution in large scale industry which, being no longer compelled to seek its workers on the fringe of economic life, had to transform its working conditions to suit the better quality of labour. On the whole, legislation has only anticipated changes which were maturing, or simply sanctioned those that had already taken place. Certainly it has always tried to go further than the development of industry allowed, but it has not been able to maintain the struggle. It has been obstructed, not so much by the resistance of entrepreneurs, as by the resistance of the workers themselves, a resistance not the less effective for being unvocal and little advertised. For the workers themselves had to pay for every protective regulation, directly as well as indirectly. A restriction on female and child labour burdened the workers’ budget just as much as a limitation of employment in adult labour. The reduction in the supply of labour achieved by such measures does indeed raise the marginal productivity of labour and thus the wage rate corresponding to one unit of production. Whether this rise is sufficient to compensate the worker for the burden of rising commodity prices is questionable. One would have to examine the data of each individual example before forming any conclusions about this. It is probable that the decline of production cannot bring an absolute rise of real income to the worker. But we need not go into this in detail. For one could only speak of a considerable reduction in the supply of labour, brought about by labour laws, if these laws were valid beyond a single country. As long as this was not so, as long as every state proceeded on its own lines, and those countries, whose recently developed industry took every opportunity to supplant the industry of the older industrial states, were backward in promulgating labour-protection, then the worker’s position in the market could not be improved by labour protection. Efforts to generalize labour protection by international treaties were intended to remedy this. But of international labour protection, even more truly than of the national movement, one may say that the process has not gone beyond the stage which would have been reached in the normal evolution of industry.

  This attitude of destructionism emerges more clearly from the theory than from the execution of labour protection, for the danger to industrial development implied in the regulations has to a certain extent limited attempts to carry theory into practice. That the theory of the exploitation of wage earners has spread and been so rapidly accepted is due above all to destructionism, which has not hesitated to use a technique for describing industrial working conditions which can only be called emotional. The popular figures, the hard-hearted entrepreneur and the grasping capitalist on the one side, and the noble poor, the exploited worker on the other side, have, so to speak, been introduced into the presuppositions of the legal system. Legislators have been taught to see in every frustration of the plans of an entrepreneur a victory of public welfare over the selfish interests of parasitic individuals. The worker has been taught to believe that he is toiling thanklessly for the profit of capital, and that it is his duty to his class and to history to perform his work as sluggishly as possible.

  The theory of wages assumed by the advocates of legal labour protection has many defects. They treat Senior’s arguments against the legal regulation of working hours with contempt, but they produce nothing relevant in refutation of the conclusions he reaches on the assumption of stationary conditions. The inability of the “Socialists of the Chair” (“Kathedersozialist”) school to understand economic problems is particularly evident in Brentano. The idea that wages correspond to the efficiency of labour is so far beyond his comprehension that he actually formulates a “law” that a high wage increases the product of labour, whilst a low wage reduces it, although nothing could be more clear than the fact that good work is paid for at a higher rate than bad.9 This mistake is again obvious when he goes on to say that the shortening of working hours is a cause and not a result of greater efficiency of labour.

  Marx and Engels, the fathers of German Socialism, well understood how fundamentally important to the spread of destructionist ideas was the fight for labour legislation. The “Inaugural Address of the International Association of Workers” says that the English ten-hour day was “not only a great practical success; it was the victory of a principle. For the first time the political economy of the bourgeoisie was openly vanquished by the political economy of the working class.”10 Over twenty years before, Engels had made an even more candid admission of the destructionist nature of the Ten Hour Day Bill. He could not help admitting that the counter-arguments of the entrepreneurs were half true. The Bill would, he thought, depress wages and make English industry unable to compete. But this did not alarm him. “Naturally,” he added, “were the Ten Hour Day Bill a final measure, England would be ruined, but because it necessarily involves the passing of subsequent measures, which must lead England into a path quite different from that she has travelled up till now, it will mean progress.”11 If English industry were to succumb to foreign competition the revolution would be unavoidable.12 In a later essay he said of the Ten Hour Day Bill: “It is no longer an isolated attempt to lame industrial development. It is one link in a long chain of measures which will transform the whole present form of society and gradually destroy the former class conflicts. It is not a reactionary but a revolutionary measure.”13

  The fundamental importance of the fight for labour legislation cannot be overestimated. But Marx and Engels and their liberal opponents both over-estimated the immediate destructive effects of the particular measures. Destructionism advanced on other fronts.

  3

  Compulsory Social Insurance

  The essence of the programme of German etatism is social insurance. But people outside the German Empire have also come to look upon social insurance as the highest point to which the insight of the statesman and political wisdom can attain. If some praise the wonderful results of these institutions, others can only reproach them for not going far enough, for not including all classes and for not giving the favoured all that, in their opinion, they should have. Social insurance, it was said, ultimately aimed at giving every citizen adequate care and the best medical treatment in sickness and adequate sustenance if he should become incapable of work through accident, sickness or old age, or if he should fail to find work on conditions he considered necessary.

  No ordered community has callously allowed the poor and incapacitated to starve. There has always been some sort of institution designed to save from destitution people unable to sustain themselves. As general well-being has increased hand in hand with the development of Capitalism, so too has the relief of the poor improved. Simultaneously the legal basis of this relief has changed. What was formerly a charity on which the poor had no claim is now a duty of the community. Arrangements are made to ensure the support of the poor. But at first people took care not to give the individual poor a legally enforceable claim to support or sustenance. In the same way they did not at once think of removing the slight stigma attaching to all who were thus maintained by the community. This was not callousness. The discussions which grew out of the English Poor Law in particular show that people were fully conscious of the great social dangers involved in every extension of poor relief.

  German social insurance and the corresponding institutions of other states are constructed on a very different basis. Maintenance is a claim which the person entitled to it can enforce at law. The claimant suffers no slur on his social standing. He is a State pensioner like the king or his ministers or the receiver of an insurance annuity, like anyone else who has entered into an insurance contract. There is also no doubt that he is entitled to look on what he receives as the equivalent of his own contributions. For the insurance contributions are always at the expense of wages, immaterial of whether they are collected from the entrepreneur or from the workers. What the entrepreneur has to pay for the insurance is a charge on labour’s marginal productivity, it thus tends to reduce the wages of labour. When the costs of maintenance are provided out of taxes the worker clearly contributes towards them, directly or indirectly.

  To the intellectual champions of social insurance, and to the politicians and statesmen who enacted it, illness and health appeared as two conditions of the human body sharply separated from each other and always recognizable without difficulty or doubt. Any doctor could diagnose the characteristics of “health.” “Illness” was a bodily phenomenon which showed itself independently of human will, and was not susceptible to influence by will. There were people who for some reason or other simulated illness, but a doctor could expose the pretence. Only the healthy person was fully efficient. The efficiency of the sick person was lowered according to the gravity and nature of his illness, and the doctor was able, by means of objectively ascertainable physiological tests, to indicate the degree of the reduction of efficiency.

  Now every statement in this theory is false. There is no clearly defined frontier between health and illness. Being ill is not a phenomenon independent of conscious will and of psychic forces working in the subconscious. A man’s efficiency is not merely the result of his physical condition; it depends largely on his mind and will. Thus the whole idea of being able to separate, by medical examination, the unfit from the fit and from the malingerers, and those able to work from those unable to work, proves to be untenable. Those who believed that accident and health insurance could be based on completely effective means of ascertaining illnesses and injuries and their consequences were very much mistaken. The destructionist aspect of accident and health insurance lies above all in the fact that such institutions promote accidents and illness, hinder recovery, and very often create, or at any rate intensify and lengthen, the functional disorders which follow illness or accident.

  A special disease, traumatic neurosis, which had already appeared in some cases as a result of the legal regulation of claims for compensation for injury, has been thus turned into a national disease by compulsory social insurance. No one any longer denies that traumatic neurosis is a result of social legislation. Overwhelming statistics show that insured persons take much longer time to recover from their injuries than other persons, and that they are liable to more extensions and permanent functional disturbances than those of the uninsured. Insurance against diseases breeds disease. Individual observation by doctors as well as statistics prove that recovery from illnesses and injuries is much slower in officials and permanent employees and people compulsorily insured than in members of the professions and those not insured. The desire and the necessity of becoming well again and ready for work as soon as possible assist recuperation to a degree so great as to be capable of demonstration.14

  To feel healthy is quite different from being healthy in the medical sense, and a man’s ability to work is largely independent of the physiologically ascertainable and measurable performances of his individual organs. The man who does not want to be healthy is not merely a malingerer. He is a sick person. If the will to be well and efficient is weakened, illness and inability to work is caused. By weakening or completely destroying the will to be well and able to work, social insurance creates illness and inability to work; it produces the habit of complaining—which is in itself a neurosis—and neuroses of other kinds. In short, it is an institution which tends to encourage disease, not to say accidents, and to intensify considerably the physical and psychic results of accidents and illnesses. As a social institution it makes a people sick bodily and mentally or at least helps to multiply, lengthen, and intensify disease.

  The psychic forces which are active in every living thing, including man, in the form of a will to health and a desire to work, are not independent of social surroundings. Certain circumstances strengthen them; others weaken them. The social environment of an African tribe living by hunting is decidedly calculated to stimulate these forces. The same is true of the quite different environment of the citizens of a capitalist society, based on division of labour and on private property. On the other hand a social order weakens these forces when it promises that if the individual’s work is hindered by illness or the effects of a trauma he shall live without work or with little work and suffer no very noticeable reduction in his income. Matters are not so simple as they appear to the naive pathology of the army or prison doctor.

  Social insurance has thus made the neurosis of the insured a dangerous public disease. Should the institution be extended and developed the disease will spread. No reform can be of any assistance. We cannot weaken or destroy the will to health without producing illness.

  4

  Trade Unions

  The fundamental problem for the appreciation of the economic and social consequences of the trade unionism is the question whether labour can succeed, within a market economy, by association and by collective bargaining, in getting high wages lastingly and for all workers. To this question, economic theory—both the classic (including its Marxist wing), and the modern (including its socialist wing too)—answers categorically in the negative. Public opinion believes that the facts have proved the efficiency of trade unionism to improve the conditions of labour, because the standard of living of the masses has been steadily rising in the last hundred years. But economists explain this fact in an absolutely different way. According to them, this improvement is due to the progress of capitalism, to the progressive accumulation of capital and to its corollary, the increase of the marginal productivity of labour. And there is no doubt that we must give more credit to the views of the economists, substantiated as they are by the actual course of events, than to the naive belief of men who simply argue post hoc ergo propter hoc (after this, therefore, because of it). It is true that this fundamental point has been entirely misunderstood by many thousands of worthy labour leaders, who have devoted their life work to the organization of trade unions, and by many eminent philanthropists who have advocated trade unionism as the cornerstone of future society. It was the true tragedy of the age of capitalism that this attitude was wrong and that trade unionism developed into the most important weapon of destructionist policy. Socialist ideology has so successfully obscured the nature and peculiarity of the trade union that nowadays it is difficult to envisage what trade unions are and what they do. People are still inclined to treat the problem of workers’ associations as if it were a question of the freedom to combine and the right to strike. But there has been no question for decades now of whether the workers shall be granted liberty to form associations or whether they shall have the right to cease work, even in violation of a labour contract. No legislation denies them this right, for the legal damages which might devolve upon individual workers for stopping work in breach of contract have no importance in practice. Thus even the most extreme advocates of destructionism have hardly bothered to claim for the worker the right to break contractual obligations at will. When in recent years some countries, and among them Great Britain, the cradle of modern trade unionism, tried to limit the power of trade union policy, it was not part of their purpose to do away with what they considered the non-political action of trade unionism. The Act of 1927 attempted to outlaw general strikes and sympathetic strikes, but did not in any way interfere either with the freedom of association or with the strike for the sake of obtaining better rates of pay.

  The general strike has always been considered, both by its supporters and by its opponents, as a revolutionary measure, or even as the essence of revolution itself. The vital element in the general strike is the more or less complete paralysis of the economic life of the community in order to bring about certain desired ends. How successful a general strike can be was proved when the Kapp Putsch,15 supported both by the German legal army and by a great illegal armed force which had compelled the Government to flee from the capital, was defeated in a few days by the general strike. In this case the weapon of the general strike was used to defend democracy. But whether one finds the political attitude of organized labour sympathetic or not, is of no consequence. The fact is that in a country where trade unionism is strong enough to set in motion a general strike, the supreme power is in the hands of trade unions and not in the hands of parliament and the government dependent on it. It was the comprehension of the real meaning of trade unionism and its working which inspired the French Syndicalists with their basic idea that violence is the means which political parties must use if they want to come to power. It should never be forgotten that the philosophy of violence, which replaced the conciliatory teaching of liberalism and democracy, started as a philosophy of trade unionism. Syndicalism is nothing else but the French word for trade unionism. The glorification of violence which characterizes the policy of Russian Sovietism, of Italian Fascism and of German Nazism, and which today seriously threatens all democratic governments, sprang from the teachings of revolutionary syndicalists. The essence of the trade union problem is the compulsion to coalesce and to strike. The unions claim the right to force out of employment all those who refuse to combine with them or those to whom they have refused membership. They claim the right to stop work at will, and to prevent anyone from taking the place of the strikers. They claim the right to prevent and punish by violence the contravention of their decisions, and to take all steps to organize this violent action so that its success shall be assured.

  Every association becomes more cumbrous and prudent when the men at its head have grown old. Fighting associations lose the desire to attack and the ability to overcome their opponents by swift action. The armies of military powers, above all the armies of Austria and Prussia have learned over and over again that victory is difficult under old leaders. The Unions are no exception to the rule. So it may come about that some of the older and fully developed trade unions have temporarily lost some of their destructionist lust for attack and readiness for battle. Thus when the aged resist the destructive policy of impetuous youth, an instrument of destruction becomes for the moment an instrument which supports the status quo. It is just on this ground that the radicals have continually reproached the trade unions, and it is just this plea which the trade unions have themselves put forward when they have wanted help from the nonsocialist classes of the community in their work of extending compulsory unionism. These pauses for breath in the trade unions’ destructive fights have always been short. Over and over again those who triumphed were those who advocated an uninterrupted continuation of the fight against the capitalist social order. The violent elements have either pushed out the old trade union leaders or erected new organizations in the place of the old. It could not be otherwise. For, consistently with the idea on which they have developed, the associations of workers in trade unions are only imaginable as a weapon of destruction. We have shown that the solidarity of the members of the trade union can be founded only on the idea of a war to destroy the social order based on private ownership in the means of production. The basic idea and not merely the practice of the trades unions is destructionist.

  The cornerstone of trade unionism is compulsory membership. The workers refuse to work with men who belong to an organization not recognized by themselves. They exclude the non-union men by threatening to strike or, ultimately, by striking. Those who refuse to join the union are sometimes compelled to do so by rough handling. It is not necessary to dilate upon the drastic violation of the liberty of the individual which this implies. Even the sophistries of advocates of trade union destructionism have not succeeded in reassuring public opinion on this point. When from time to time specially gross examples of violence against a non-union worker get publicity, even those newspapers which otherwise stand more or less on the side of the destructionist parties are moved to protest.

  The weapon of the trade union is the strike. It must be borne in mind that every strike is an act of coercion, a form of extortion, a measure of violence directed against all who might act in opposition to the strikers’ intentions. For the purpose of the strike would be defeated if the entrepreneur were able to employ others to do the work of the strikers, or if only a section of the workers joined the strike. The long and the short of trade union rights is in fact the right to proceed against the strike-breaker with primitive violence, and this right the workers have successfully maintained. How this right was established by the trade unions in various countries does not concern us here. It is sufficient to say that in the last decades it has been established everywhere, less by explicit legislative sanction than by the tacit toleration of public authority and the law. For years it has hardly been possible to break a strike in any part of Europe by employing strike-breakers. For a long time it was at least possible to avoid strikes on railways, lighting and water services, and the most important urban food supply enterprises. But here, too, destructionism has at last carried the day.

  No one has seriously contested the destructionist function of trade unionism. There has never yet been a wage-theory from which one could deduce that association by means of trade unions led to a permanent increase in the real income of the workers. Certainly Marx was far from allowing that trade unions had any effect on wages. In a speech made in 1865 before the General Council of the “International”16 Marx tried to win over his comrades to joint action with the trade unions. His introductory words reveal his object in doing so. The view that increase of wages could not be obtained by strikes—a view represented in France by the Proudhonists, in Germany by the Lassallians—was, he said, “most unpopular with the working class.” But his great qualities as a tactitian, which a year before had enabled him in his “Inaugural Address” to weld into one unitary programme the most diverse opinions upon the nature, aims, and tasks of the labour movement, were now again brought into play, and as he was anxious to link up the trade union movement with the International, he produced everything that can be said in favour of trade unions. Nevertheless he is careful not to commit himself to a statement that the workers’ economic position could be directly improved through the trade unions. As he sees it, the foremost task of the trade unions is to lead the fight against Capitalism. The position he assigns to trade unions admits of no doubt as to the results he expects from their intervention. “In place of the conservative motto: ’A just day’s wage for a just day’s work’ they ought to print on their banners, ’Abolition of the wage system’—They generally miss their aim because they limit themselves to carrying on a guerilla war against the consequences of the present system, instead of working at the same time for its transformation and employing their organized power as a lever for the final emancipation of the working classes; that is, for the final abolition of the wage system.”17 Marx could hardly have said more plainly that he could see nothing more in the trade unions than tools for the destruction of the capitalist social order. It remained for the “realistic” economists and revisionist Marxians to assert that the trade unions were able to maintain wages permanently above the level at which they would have stood without trade unionism. There is no need to argue the point, for no attempt was made even to develop a theory from it. It remains an assertion which is always made without any reference to the interdependence of economic factors and without any sort of proof.

  The policy of strike, violence, and sabotage can claim no merit whatever for any improvement in the workers’ position.18 It has helped to shake to the foundations the skillfully constructed edifice of the capitalist economy, in which the lot of everyone down to the poorest worker has been continually rising. And it has operated not in the interests of Socialism but in that of Syndicalism.

  If workers in the so-called non-vital industries succeed in their demand for wages above the level given by the situation on the market, there ensues a dislocation which sets in motion forces that lead finally to a readjustment of the market’s disturbed equilibrium. If, however, the workers in vital industries are able to enforce by strikes or threat of strikes their demands for higher wages, and to claim all those rights claimed in the wage struggle by other workers, the position is altogether different. It would be misleading to say that those workers were then virtually monopolists, for the question here lies outside the concept of economic monopoly. If the employees of all transport undertakings strike and circumvent action which might weaken the intended effect of their strike, they are absolute tyrants of the territories under their dominion. One may say, of course, that they make a sober use of their power, but this does not alter the fact that they have the power. That being so, there are only two classes in the country: members of the trade unions for the branches of production essential to life, and the remainder of the people, who are slaves without rights. We arrive at a position where “the indispensable workers dominate the remaining classes by the rule of violence.”19

  And, speaking once again of power it may be well to inquire at this point on what this power, in common with all other power, is based. The power of the workers organized in trade unions, before which the world now trembles, has precisely the same foundations as the power of any other tyrants at any time; it is nothing more than the product of human ideologies. For decades it was impressed upon people that the association of workers in trade unions was necessary and useful to the individual as well as to the community, that only the wicked selfishness of exploiters could think of combating the unions, that in strikes the strikers were always right, that there could hardly be a worse infamy than strike-breaking, and that attempts to protect those willing to work were anti-social. The generations which grew up in the last decades have been taught from childhood that membership in a trade union was a worker’s most important social duty. A strike came to mean a sort of holy action, a social ordinance. On this ideology rests the power of the workers’ association. It would break down if the theory of its social utility were superseded by other views on the effects of trade unionism. Plainly, therefore, it is precisely the most powerful unions which are obliged to use their power sparingly, since, by putting an undue strain on society, they might cause people to reflect upon the nature and effect of trade unionism and so lead to a re-examination and rejection of these theories. This, of course, is and always has been true of all holders of power and is no peculiarity of the trade unions.

  For this surely is clear: that should there ever be a thorough discussion of the right of the workers in vital industries to strike, the whole theory of trade unionism and compulsory strikes would soon collapse and such strike-breaking associations as the “Technische Nothilfe”20 would receive the applause which today goes to the strikers. It is possible that in the ensuing conflict society would be destroyed. On the other hand, it is certain that a society which aims at preserving trade unionism on its present lines is in a fair way towards destroying itself.

  5

  Unemployment Insurance

  Assistance of the unemployed has proved to be one of the most effective weapons of destructionism.

  The reasoning which brought about unemployment insurance was the same as that which led to the setting up of insurance against sickness and accident. Unemployment was held to be a misfortune which overwhelmed men like an avalanche. It occurred to no one that lack of wages would be a better term than lack of employment, for what the unemployed person misses is not work but the remuneration of work. The point was not that the “unemployed” could not find work, but that they were not willing to work at the wages they could get in the labour market for the particular work they were able and willing to perform.

  The value of health and accident insurance becomes problematic by reason of the possibility that the insured person may himself bring about, or at least intensify, the condition insured against. But in the case of unemployment insurance, the condition insured against can never develop unless the insured persons so will. If they did not act as trade unionists, but reduced their demands and changed their locations and occupations according to the requirements of the labour market, they could eventually find work. For as long as we live in the real world and not in the Land of Heart’s Desire, labour will be a scarce good, that is, there will be an unsatisfied demand for labour. Unemployment is a problem of wages, not of work. It is just as impossible to insure against unemployment as it would be to insure against, say, the unsaleability of commodities.

  Unemployment insurance is definitely a misnomer. There can never be any statistical foundation for such an insurance. Most countries have acknowledged this by dropping the name “insurance,” or at least by ignoring its implications. It has now become undisguised “assistance.” It enables the trade unions to keep wages up to a rate at which only a part of those seeking work can be employed. Therefore, the assistance of the unemployed is what first creates unemployment as a permanent phenomenon. At present many European states are devoting to the purpose sums that considerably exceed the capacity of their public finances.

  The fact that there exists in almost every country permanent mass unemployment is considered by public opinion as conclusive proof that Capitalism is incapable of solving the economic problem, and that therefore government interference, totalitarian planning and Socialism are necessary. And this argument is regarded as irrefutable when people realize that the only big country which does not suffer from the evils of unemployment is communist Russia. The logic of this argument however, is very weak. Unemployment in the capitalist countries is due to the fact that the policy both of the governments and of the trade unions aims at maintaining a level of wages which is out of harmony with the existing productivity of labour. It is true that as far as we can see there is no large scale unemployment in Russia. But the standard of living of the Russian worker is much lower than the standard of living of the unemployed dole receiver in the capitalist countries of the West. If the British or Continental workers were ready to accept wages which would indeed be lower than their present wages but which would still be several times higher than the wages of the Russian worker, unemployment would disappear in these countries too. Unemployment in the capitalist countries is not a proof of the insufficiency of the capitalist system, nor is the absence of unemployment in Russia a proof of the efficiency of the communist system. But the fact that there is unemployment as a mass phenomenon in almost every capitalist country is nevertheless the most formidable menace to the continuance of the capitalist system. Permanent mass unemployment destroys the moral foundations of the social order. The young people, who, having finished their training for work, are forced to remain idle, are the ferment out of which the most radical political movements are formed. In their ranks the soldiers of the coming revolutions are recruited.

  This indeed is the tragedy of our situation. The friends of trade unionism and of the policy of unemployment doles honestly believe that there is no way to ensure the maintenance of fair conditions of life for the masses other than the policy of the trade unions. They do not see that in the long run all efforts to raise wages above a level corresponding to the market reflection of the marginal productivity of the labour concerned must lead to unemployment, and that in the long run unemployment doles can have no other effect than the perpetuation of unemployment. They do not see that the remedies which they recommend for the relief of the victims—doles and public works—lead to consumption of capital, and that finally capital consumption necessitates a lowering of the wage level still further. Under present conditions it is clear that it would not be feasible to abolish the dole and the other less important provisions for the relief of the unemployed, public works and so on, at one single stroke. It is indeed one of the principal drawbacks of every kind of interventionism that it is so difficult to reverse the process—that its abolition gives rise to problems which it is almost impossible to solve in a completely satisfactory way. At the present day the great problem of statesmanship is how to find a way out of this labyrinth of interventionist measures. For what has been done in recent years has been nothing else than a series of attempts to conceal the effects of an economic policy which has lowered the productivity of labour. What is now needed is first of all a return to a policy which ensures the higher productivity of labour. This includes clearly the abandonment of the whole policy of protectionism, import duties and quotas. It is necessary to restore to labour the possibility to move freely from industry to industry and from country to country.

  It is not Capitalism which is responsible for the evils of permanent mass unemployment, but the policy which paralyses its working.

  6

  Socialization

  Under Liberalism, state-owned factories and production by the State were abolished. The postal service was practically the only exception to the general principle that the means of production should be left to private ownership and every economic activity made over to the private citizen. The advocates of etatism have gone to a lot of trouble to set forth the reasons which they suppose to favour the nationalization of the postal and the related telegraph service. In the first place they put forward political arguments. But in such discussions of the pros and cons of state control of the post and telegraph system, two things are generally lumped together which ought to be considered separately: the questions of unifying the service and of transferring it exclusively to the State. No one denies that the post and telegraph systems afford excellent facilities for unification, and that, even if they were left perfectly free, trusts would inevitably be formed, leading to a de facto monopoly of individuals over whole territories at least. With no other enterprises are the advantages of concentration more obvious. But to admit this is not by any means to decide whether the State is to be granted a legally assured monopoly for all branches of such services. It could easily be demonstrated that State management works uneconomically, that it is slow to extend the facilities for the transmission of letters and parcels in accordance with business requirements, and that it can only with difficulty be persuaded to introduce practical improvements. The great progress in this sphere of economic life has been achieved by private enterprise. We owe largely to private enterprise the development on a large scale of overland telegraphy: in England this was nationalized only in 1869, in the U.S.A. it is still in the hands of joint stock companies. Submarine cables are mostly in the hands of private enterprise. Even German etatism showed hesitation in “freeing” the State from collaboration with private enterprise in deep sea telegraphy. The liberals of that time also advocated the principle of full freedom in post and telegraph services and attempted with great success to expose the inadequacy of State enterprise.21 That nevertheless these branches of production have not been denationalized is to be ascribed only to the fact that those holding political power need the post and telegraph to control public opinion.

  The military powers, everywhere ready to hinder the entrepreneur, have acknowledged his superiority by handing over to him the production of arms and munitions. The great advances in war technique date from the moment when private enterprise began to produce war material. The State has had to recognize that the entrepreneur produces better arms than the civil servant; this was proved on the battlefields in a way that enlightened even the most stubborn advocate of state production. In the nineteenth century arsenals and state shipyards disappeared almost completely, or were transformed into mere magazines, and their place was taken by private enterprises. Literary and parliamentary supporters of the nationalization of industry had scant success with their demand for the nationalization of the armaments industry, even in the most flourishing days of etatism in the years immediately preceding the World War. The general staffs knew well the superiority of the private undertaking.

  For reasons of public finance, certain revenue monopolies which had existed from a distant past were not abolished even during the epoch of Liberalism. They remained because they were looked upon as a convenient way of collecting a tax on consumption. But people had no illusions about the uneconomic nature of state enterprise—in the administration of the tobacco monopolies, for example. But before Liberalism could carry its victorious principle into this field, Socialism had already introduced a retrograde movement.

  The ideas from which sprang the first modern nationalizations and municipalizations were not altogether inspired by modern Socialism. In the origins of the movement, ideas of the old police state and purely military and political considerations played a great part. But soon the socialist ideology became dominant. It was a conscious socialization that was carried out by states and municipalities. The slogan was: away with uneconomic private enterprise, away with private ownership.

  At first the economic inferiority of socialist production did not hinder the progress of nationalization and municipalization. The voice of caution was not heard. It was lost in the shouting of etatists, socialists, and all the elements whose interests were at stake. People did not choose to see the faults of government enterprise, and so overlooked them. Only one circumstance restricted the excessive zeal of the enemies of private property—the financial difficulties with which a large number of public undertakings had to contend. For political reasons the government could not completely pass on to consumers the higher costs of State management, and working losses were therefore frequent. Its supporters consoled themselves by stating that the general economic and social political advantages of state and municipal enterprise were well worth the sacrifice. All the same, it became necessary to proceed cautiously with the etatistic policy. The embarrassment in which economists writing on these problems found themselves became evident from their reluctance to ascribe the financial failure of public enterprises to the uneconomic methods of this kind of enterprise. They tried instead to account for it by some special circumstance, such as personal mistakes in the management and errors in organization. And they pointed repeatedly to the Prussian State railways as the most brilliant model of a good administration. Of course the Prussian State railways have yielded good working surpluses. But there were special reasons. Prussia acquired the most important part of its State railway system in the first half of the ’eighties, that was at a time of specially low prices, and the whole system was equipped and expanded to a large extent before the rapid growth of German industrial prosperity which set in during the second half of the ’nineties. Thus there was nothing particularly remarkable in the fact that these railways paid well, for their loads grew from year to year without any solicitation, they ran mostly through plains, they had coal on every hand, and could count on favourable running conditions. Their situation was such that they could yield profits for a while although run by the State. It was the same with the gas, water, and electricity works and with the tramway systems of several large cities. The conclusions generally drawn from this were, however, far from accurate.

  Generally speaking, the result of nationalization and municipalization was that taxation had to contribute to running costs. So it may be said that no catchword has ever been made public at so inappropriate a moment as Goldscheid’s slogan of “the suppression of the taxation state.” Goldscheid thinks that the financial troubles into which the World War and its consequences have landed the State can no longer be remedied by the old methods of public finance. The taxation of private enterprise is failing. Therefore, one must start to “repropriate” the State by expropriating capitalist enterprises, so that the State will be able to cover its expenses out of the profits of its own undertakings.22 Here we have the cart before the horse. The financial difficulties result from the fact that taxation can no longer pay the large contributions required by socialist enterprises. Were all enterprises socialized, the form of the evil would indeed be changed, but far from being abolished it would be intensified. The smaller yield of the public enterprises would no longer be visible in a budget deficit, it is true, but the population would be worse off. Distress and misery would increase, not diminish. To remove the State’s financial troubles Goldscheid proposes to carry socialization to the bitter end. But this financial trouble has come about because socialization has already gone too far. It will vanish only when socialized enterprises are returned to private ownership. Socialism has arrived at a point where the impossibility of carrying out its technique is apparent to all, where even the blind begin to see that it is hastening the decline of all civilization. The effort made in Central Europe to socialize completely at a single stroke was wrecked not by the resistance of the bourgeoisie, but by the fact that further socialization was quite impossible from a financial point of view. The systematic, cool and deliberate socialization practised by states and municipalities up to the war, came to a standstill because the result to which it was leading became all too clear. The attempt to pass it off under a different name, as the socialization commission in Germany and Austria tried to do, could have no success in these circumstances. If the work of socialization had to be carried on, it was not possible to do so by the old methods. The voice of reason which warned men not to venture any further on this path must be silenced, criticism must be obliterated by the intoxication of enthusiasm and fanaticism, opponents must be killed, as there was no other way of refuting them. Bolshevism and Spartacism were the last weapons of Socialism. In this sense they are the inevitable outcome of the policy of destructionism.

  7

  Taxation

  For classical nineteenth-century Liberalism, which assigns to the State the sole task of safeguarding the citizen’s property and person, the problem of raising the means needed for public services is a matter of small importance. The expenditure caused by the apparatus of a liberal community is so small, compared with the total national income, that there is little appreciable difference between meeting it one way or another. If the liberal writers of that period have been concerned to find the best form of taxation, they have done so because they wish to arrange every detail of the social system in the most effective way, not because they think that public finance is one of the main problems of society. They have of course to take into account the fact that nowhere in the world have their ideas been realized, and that the hope of seeing them completely realized in the near future is slender. They see clear evidence of liberal development everywhere, they believe that the distant future belongs to Liberalism; but the forces of the past still seem sufficiently strong to inhibit its progress, though no longer strong enough to stop it completely, let alone suppress it. There still exist schemes for violence and conquest, there are standing armies, secret diplomatic treaties, wars, tariffs, State interference in trade and industry—in short, interventionism of every kind in home and foreign policy. So, for a considerable time to come, the nations must be prepared to allow considerable sums for governmental expenditure. Though questions of taxation would be of minor importance in the purely liberal state, they call for increased attention in the authoritarian state in which liberal politicians of their time have to work. In the first place,therefore, they recommend that State expenditure shall be restricted. But if they do not completely succeed in this they must decide how the necessary funds are to be raised without more harm than is absolutely necessary.

  Liberal taxation proposals must necessarily be misunderstood unless it is realized that liberal politicians look on every tax as an evil—though up to a point an unavoidable one—and that they proceed from the supposition that one must try to keep State expenditure down to a minimum. When they recommend a certain tax, or, to speak more correctly, call it less harmful than other taxes, they always have in mind the raising of only a relatively small sum. A low rate of taxation is an integral part of all liberal programmes of taxation. This alone explains their attitude towards the income tax, which they were the first to introduce into serious discussions on public finance, and their willingness to agree that a modest minimum of subsistence shall be free from taxation and the rate of taxation on small incomes lowered.23

  The socialist financial policy also is only a temporary one, its validity being limited to the period of transition. For the Socialist State, where all means of production belong to society and all income finds its way in the first place to the State coffers, questions of finance and taxation do not exist at all in the sense in which the social order based on private property has to deal with them. Those forms of the socialist community which, like State Socialism, intend to allow private property to continue in name and in outward form, would not really need to levy taxes either, although they might retain the name and legal form of taxation. They would simply decree how much of the social income obtained in the individual enterprises should remain with the nominal owner and how much should be handed over to the State. There would not be any question here of a taxation which imposes certain obstacles in individual businesses, but leaves the market to deal with its effect upon the prices of commodities and wages, on profits, interest, and rents. Questions of public finance and the policy of taxation exist only where there is private ownership in the means of production.

  But for socialists, too, the public finance problems of capitalist society increase in importance as the period of transition becomes more and more prolonged. This is inevitable, seeing that they are continually trying to expand the area of the State’s tasks and that there is consequently an increase in expenditure. They thus take over the responsibility of increasing the income of the State. The socialist policy has become the decisive factor in the development of government expenditure, socialist demands regulate the policy of taxation and in the socialist programme itself public finance comes more and more into the foreground. Whilst in the liberal programme the basic principle is a low rate of taxation, the socialists think a tax is better the heavier it is.

  Classical economics achieved much in the theory of the incidence of taxes. This must be admitted in spite of all the faults of its basic theory of value. When liberal politicians criticized existing conditions and proposed reforms they started from the masterly propositions of Ricardo’s admirable investigations on this subject. Socialist politicians have taken things much more easily. They had no new opinions of their own, and from the Classical writers they took merely what they needed for the politics of the moment—isolated remarks, torn from their context and dealing mainly with the incidence of taxes on consumption. They improvised a rough system which nowhere penetrated to the main problem, but had the virtue of being so simple that the masses could understand it. Taxes were to be paid by the rich, the entrepreneurs, the capitalists, in short, by “the others”; the workers, that is the electors whose votes were what mattered at the moment, should remain tax free. All taxes on mass consumption, even on alcoholic drinks, were to be rejected, because they burdened the people. Direct taxes could be as high as the government wished to make them, as long as the incomes and possessions of the workers were left alone. Not for one moment does it occur to the advocates of this popular taxation policy that direct taxes and taxes on trade may start a chain of events that will force down the standard of living of the very classes whose alleged special interests they claim to represent. Seldom does anyone ask whether the restriction of capital formation, which results from the taxation of property, may not harm the non-propertied members of society as well. More and more the policy of taxation evolves into a policy of confiscation. The aim on which it concentrates is to tax out of existence every kind of fortune and income from property, in which process property invested in trade and industry, in shares and bonds, is generally treated more ruthlessly than property in land. Taxation becomes the favourite weapon of interventionism. Taxation laws no longer aim exclusively or predominantly at increasing State revenues; they are intended to serve other purposes besides fiscal requirements. Sometimes their relation to public finance vanishes completely and they fulfil an entirely different function. Some taxes seem to be inflicted as punishment for behaviour that is considered injurious; the tax on big stores is intended to make it more difficult for big stores to compete with small shops; the taxes on stock exchange transactions are designed to restrict speculation. The dues become so numerous and varied that in making business transactions a man must first of all consider what the effect on his taxation will be. Innumerable economic projects lie fallow because the load of taxation would make them unprofitable. Thus in many states the high duties on founding, maintaining, amalgamating, and liquidating joint stock companies seriously restrict the development of the system.

  Nothing is more calculated to make a demagogue popular than a constantly reiterated demand for heavy taxes on the rich. Capital levies and high income taxes on the larger incomes are extraordinarily popular with the masses, who do not have to pay them. The assessors and collectors go about their business with positive enthusiasm; they are intent upon increasing the taxpayer’s liability by the subtleties of legal interpretation.

  The destructionist policy of taxation culminates in capital levies. Property is expropriated and then consumed. Capital is transformed into goods for use and for consumption. The effect of all this should be plain to see. Yet the whole popular theory of taxation today leads to the same result.

  Confiscations of capital through the legal form of taxation are neither socialistic nor a means to Socialism. They lead, not to socialization of the means of production, but to consumption of capital. Only when they are set within a socialist system, which retains the name and form of private property, are they a part of Socialism. In “War Socialism” they supplemented the compulsory economic system and were instrumental in determining the evolution of the whole system towards Socialism.24 In a socialist system where the means of production are totally and formally socialized, there could in principle be no more taxes on property or income from property. When the socialist community levies dues from its members this in no way alters the disposal of the means of production.

  Marx has spoken unfavourably of efforts to alter the social order by measures of taxation. He emphatically insisted that taxation reform alone could not replace Socialism.25 His views on the effect of taxes within the capitalist order were also different from those of the ordinary run of socialists. He said on one occasion, that to assert that “the income tax does not affect the workers” was “truly absurd.” “In our present social order, where entrepreneurs and workers stand opposed, the bourgeoisie generally compensates itself for higher taxation by reducing wages or raising prices.”26 But the Communist Manifesto had already demanded “a heavy progressive tax” and the Social Democratic Party’s demands in taxation have always been the most radical. In that field also, therefore, it is moving towards destructionism.

  8

  Inflation

  Inflation is the last word in destructionism. The Bolshevists, with their inimitable gift for rationalizing their resentments and interpreting defeats as victories, have represented their financial policy as an effort to abolish Capitalism by destroying the institution of money. But although inflation does indeed destroy Capitalism, it does not do away with private property. It effects great changes of fortune and income, it destroys the whole finely organized mechanism of production based on division of labour, it can cause a relapse into an economy without trade if the use of metal money or at least of barter trade is not maintained. But it cannot create anything, not even a socialist order of society.

  By destroying the basis of reckoning values—the possibility of calculating with a general denominator of prices which, for short periods at least, does not fluctuate too wildly—inflation shakes the system of calculations in terms of money, the most important aid to economic action which thought has evolved. As long as it is kept within certain limits, inflation is an excellent psychological support of an economic policy which lives on the consumption of capital. In the usual, and indeed the only possible, kind of capitalist book-keeping, inflation creates an illusion of profit where in reality there are only losses. As people start off from the nominal sum of the erstwhile cost price, they allow too little for depreciation on fixed capital, and since they take into account the apparent increases in the value of circulating capital as if these increases were real increases of value, they show profits where accounts in a stable currency would reveal losses.27 This is certainly not a means of abolishing the effects of an evil etatistic policy, of war and revolution; it merely hides them from the eye of the multitude. People talk of profits, they think they are living in a period of economic progress, and finally they even applaud the wise policy which apparently makes everyone richer.

  But the moment inflation passes a certain point the picture changes. It begins to promote destructionism, not merely indirectly by disguising the effects of destructionist policy; it becomes in itself one of the most important tools of destructionism. It leads everyone to consume his fortune; it discourages saving, and thereby prevents the formation of fresh capital. It encourages the confiscatory policy of taxation. The depreciation of money raises the monetary expression of commodity values and this, reacting on the book values of changes in capital—which the tax administration regards as increases in income and capital—becomes a new legal justification for confiscation of part of the owners’ fortune. References to the apparently high profits which entrepreneurs can be shown to be making, on a calculation assuming that the value of money remains stable, offers an excellent means of stimulating popular frenzy. In this way, one can easily represent all entrepreneurial activity as profiteering, swindling, and parasitism. And the chaos which follows, the money system collapsing under the avalanche of continuous issues of additional notes, gives a favourable opportunity for completing the work of destruction.

  The destructionist policy of interventionism and Socialism has plunged the world into great misery. Politicians are helpless in the face of the crisis they have conjured up. They cannot recommend any way out except more inflation or, as they call it now, reflation. Economic life is to be “cranked up again” by new bank credits (that is, by additional “circulation” credit) as the moderates demand, or by the issue of fresh government paper money, which is the more radical programme.

  But increases in the quantity of money and fiduciary media will not enrich the world or build up what destructionism has torn down. Expansion of credit does lead to a boom at first, it is true, but sooner or later this boom is bound to crash and bring about a new depression. Only apparent and temporary relief can be won by tricks of banking and currency. In the long run they must land the nation in profounder catastrophe. For the damage such methods inflict on national well-being is all the heavier, the longer people have managed to deceive themselves with the illusion of prosperity which the continuous creation of credit has conjured up.28

  9

  Marxism and Destructionism

  Socialism has not consciously willed the destruction of society. It believed it was creating a higher form of society. But since a socialist society is not a possibility every step towards it must harm society.

  It is the history of Marxian Socialism which shows most clearly that every socialist policy must turn into destructionism. Marxism described Capitalism as the inevitable preliminary to Socialism, and looked forward to the new society only as the result of Capitalism’s fruition. If we take our stand on this part of Marx’s theory—it is true that he has put forward other theories with which this is completely incompatible—then the policy of all the parties that claim Marx’s authority is quite non-Marxian. The Marxians ought to have combated everything that could in any way hinder the development of Capitalism. They should have protested against the trade unions and their methods, against laws protecting labour, against compulsory social insurance, against the taxation of property; they should have fought laws hindering the full working of the stock and produce exchanges, the fixation of prices, the policy which proceeds against cartels and trusts; they should have resisted inflationism. But they have done the reverse of all this, have been content to repeat Marx’s condemnation of the “petty bourgeois” policy, without however drawing the inevitable conclusions. The Marxians who, in the beginning, wished to dissociate themselves definitely from the policy of all parties looking to the pre-capitalist economic idea, arrived in the end at exactly the same point of view.

  The fight between Marxists and the parties calling themselves emphatically anti-Marxists is carried on by both sides with such a violence of expression that one might easily be led into supposing them irreconcilable. But this is by no means the case. Both parties, Marxism and National Socialism, agree in opposing Liberalism and rejecting the capitalist social order. Both desire a socialist order of society. The only difference in their programme lies in slight variations in their respective pictures of the future socialist State; nonessential variations, as we could easily show. The foremost demands of the National Socialist agitation are different from those of the Marxists. While the Marxists speak of abolishing the commodity character of labour, the National Socialists speak of breaking the slavery of interest (Brechung der Zinsknechtschaft). While the Marxists hold the “capitalists” responsible for every evil, the National Socialists think to express themselves more concretely by shouting “Death to the Jews” (Juda verrecke).29

  Marxism, National Socialism, and other anti-capitalist parties are indeed separated, not only by clique enmities, and personal resentments, but also by problems of metaphysics and the conduct of life. But they all agree on the decisive problem of reshaping the social order: they reject private ownership in the means of production and desire a socialist order of society. It is true that the paths by which they hope to reach the common goal run parallel only for short stretches, but even where they diverge they remain on adjacent territories.

  It is not surprising that in spite of this close relationship they fight out their feud with consuming bitterness. In a socialist community the fate of the political minorities would necessarily become unbearable. How would National Socialists fare under a Bolshevist rule or Bolshevists under National Socialism?

  CHAPTER 35

  Overcoming Destructionism

  1

  The “Interest” as an Obstacle to Destructionism

  According to Marx the political faith of the individual depends upon the class to which he belongs; the political faith of his class depends upon its interests as a class. The bourgeoisie is bound to support Capitalism. On the other hand the proletariat can only achieve its purpose, can only free itself from capitalist exploitation, by preparing the way for Socialism. Thus the respective positions of the bourgeoisie and the proletariat in the political arena are defined in advance. Perhaps no doctrine of Marx has made a deeper or more lasting impression on political theory than this. It has found acceptance far beyond the immediate range of Marxism. Liberalism has come to be regarded as the doctrine in which the class interests of the bourgeoisie and of big business find expression. Whoever professes liberal opinions is considered to be a more or less well-meaning representative of the special interests which stand in opposition to the general good. Economists who reject the Marxian doctrine are characterized as the “spiritual bodyguard of the profits of capital—and sometimes also of ground-rents”31 —a remarkably convenient theory which saves the Marxian the trouble of arguing with them.

  Nothing indicates more clearly the widespread recognition which has been accorded to this doctrine of Marx than its acceptance even by the opponents of Socialism. When people suggest that the defeat of socialist effort is a task chiefly or even exclusively for the propertied classes, when they attempt to form a “united front” of all the bourgeois parties in order to oppose Socialism, they then admit that the maintenance of private property in the means of production is the special interest of a certain class, and that it is antagonistic to the public welfare. These strangely short-sighted adversaries of Socialism do not realize that any attempt on the part of a class, which is comparatively small when contrasted with the masses, to defend its particular interests must be futile; they do not recognize that private property is doomed when it is regarded as the privilege of its owners. Still less are they able to perceive that their assumption is radically contradicted by the experience of the formation of actual political parties.

  Liberalism is not a doctrine which serves the class interests of those in possession of property. Whoever conceives it as such has already admitted one of the leading contentions of Socialism; he is no liberal. Liberalism upholds private property not in the interests of the owners, but in the general interest; it believes that the maintenance of the capitalist system is to the advantage not only of the capitalists but of every member of society. It admits that in the socialist community there will, in all probability, be little or no inequality of income. But it urges that owing to the smaller yield of socialist production, the total amount to be shared will be considerably smaller, so that each individual will receive less than the poorest receives today. Whether this thesis is accepted or rejected is another question. This is precisely the point upon which Socialism and Liberalism are in conflict. Whoever rejects it out of hand, rejects Liberalism. Yet it would be unreasonable to do this without careful consideration of the problem and of the arguments of either sides.

  In fact nothing is further from the particular interests of the entrepreneurs, whether as individuals or as a class, than to defend the principle of private property or to resist the principle of Socialism. That the introduction of Socialism must necessarily injure the entrepreneurs and capitalists, or at least their children, cannot be disputed. by those who believe that Socialism implies want and distress for all. To this extent, therefore, the propertied classes are admittedly concerned in resisting Socialism. But their interest is no greater than that of any other member of society and is quite independent of their privileged position. If it were possible to imagine that Socialism would be introduced lock stock and barrel overnight, then it might be said that the entrepreneurs and capitalists had special reasons for wishing to maintain the capitalist system. They would have more to lose. Even if the distress which resulted from the reorganization were the same for all, those would suffer more whose fall had been the greater. But it is not possible to imagine that Socialism will be introduced so rapidly; and if it were, it may be assumed that the entrepreneurs, by reason of their expert knowledge and ability to take responsibility, would occupy, at any rate for a time, privileged positions within the socialist organization.

  The entrepreneur is unable to provide for his grandchildren and great-grandchildren, for it is characteristic of private property in the means of production under the capitalist system that it creates no permanent source of income. Every fortune must be renewed by effort. When the feudal lord supported the feudal system he was defending not only his own property but that of his descendants. But the entrepreneur in the capitalist system knows that his children and grandchildren will only survive in the face of new competition if they can hold their ground as directors of productive enterprise. If he is concerned for the fate of his successors and wants to consolidate his property for them in a way contrary to the interests of the community, he will have to become an enemy of the capitalist social order and demand every kind of restriction on competition. Even the way to Socialism may strike him as the best means for this, provided the transition does not take place too suddenly, for he may expect compensation against expropriation so that, for a longer or shorter time, the expropriated will enjoy a secure income in place of the uncertainty and insecurity that is the lot of owners of an enterprise. Consideration for his own property and for the property of his successors may, therefore, urge the entrepreneurs rather to support than to oppose Socialism. He must welcome all efforts which aim at suppressing newly created and newly developed fortunes, especially all measures intended to limit anything in the nature of economic freedom, because they make secure the income which otherwise must be earned by daily struggle as long as competition is not restricted—because they exclude new competitors.32

  Entrepreneurs have an interest in combining to proceed uniformly in wage negotiations with the workers organized in trade unions.33 And they have an interest in combining to carry through tariff and other restrictions which conflict with the essence and principle of Liberalism or to resist government interference which may injure them. But they have absolutely no special interest in fighting Socialism and socialization as such. They have no special interest in fighting destructionism. The whole purpose of the entrepreneur is to adjust himself to the economic contingencies of any moment. His aim is not to fight Socialism, but to adjust himself to conditions created by a policy directed towards socialization. It is not to be expected that entrepreneurs or any other particular group in the community should, out of self-interest, necessarily make the general principles of well-being the maxim of their own procedure. The necessities of life compel them to make the best of any given circumstances. It is not the business of the entrepreneurs to lead the political fight against Socialism; all that concerns them is to adjust themselves and their enterprises to the situations created by the measures directed towards socialization, so that they will make the greatest profit possible under the conditions prevailing.

  It follows, therefore, that neither associations of entrepreneurs, nor those organizations in which the entrepreneurs’ support counts, are inclined to fight on principle against Socialism. The entrepreneur, the man who seizes the opportunity of the moment, has little interest in the issue of a secular struggle of indefinite duration. His interest is to adjust himself to the circumstances in which he finds himself at the moment. An entrepreneurs’ organization aims solely at repulsing some individual encroachment of the trade unions; or it may oppose acts of legislation, such as special forms of taxation. It carries out the tasks assigned to it by parliaments and governments in cases where it is desired that the organized body of entrepreneurs should co-operate with the organized working class in order to give the destructionist element its say in the national economy. To fight on principle for the maintenance of an economy based on private property in the means of production is no part of the programme of organized entrepreneurs. Its attitude towards Liberalism is one of indifference or even, as in the case of tariff policy, of antagonism.

  Organized interests, as the socialist doctrine depicts them, correspond not to the entrepreneurs’ associations but to the farmers’ unions, which advocate tariff duties on agricultural products, or those associations of small producers, which—above all in Austria—press for the exclusion of competition. These clearly are not efforts on behalf of Liberalism.

  Thus there are no individuals and no classes whose particular interests would lead them to support Capitalism as such. The policy of Liberalism is the policy of the common good, the policy of subjecting particular interests to the public welfare—a process that demands from the individual not so much a renunciation of his own interests as a perception of the harmony of all individual interests. There are, therefore, no individuals and no groups whose interests would ultimately be better guarded by Socialism than by a society based on private ownership in the means of production. But although ultimately no one’s interests would actually be better served by Socialism, there are plenty of people whose particular interests of the moment are better guarded by a policy directed towards socialization than by the maintenance of Liberalism. Liberalism has opposed everything in the nature of a sinecure and has sought to reduce to a minimum the number of public officials. The interventionist policy provides thousands and thousands of people with safe, placid, and not too strenuous jobs at the expense of the rest of society. All nationalization or setting up of a municipal or public enterprise links private interests with the movement against private property. Today Socialism and destructionism find their strongest supporters in the millions for whom a return to a freer economy would be at first and in the short run detrimental to their particular interests.

  2

  Violence and Authority

  The attitude of mind which sees in private property a privilege of the owners is an echo from former periods in the history of property. All property ownership began with appropriation of ownerless things. The history of property passed through a period in which forcible dispossession of the owners was the rule. It is safe to say that the ownership of any piece of ground property can be traced back to seizure by violence. This has of course no application to the social order of Capitalism, as property here is constantly being acquired in the process of market competition. But as the liberal principles have nowhere—in Europe at least—been put into practice in their entirety, and as everywhere, especially in landed property, very much of the old taint of violence survives, the tradition of the feudal owners is still upheld: “Ich lieg und besitze” (I occupy and possess). Criticism of property rights is met with violent abuse. This is the policy the German Junkers adopted against Social Democracy—with what success is well known.34

  Partisans of this order can say nothing in justification of private ownership in the means of production but that it is upheld by force. The fight of the strong is the only fight they can enforce. They boast of their physical force, rely on their armed equipment, and consider themselves entitled to despise any other argument. Only when the ground begins to tremble under their feet, do they produce another argument by taking their stand upon acquired rights. Violation of their property becomes an illegality which must be avoided. We need waste no words in exposing the weakness of this point of view in the struggle against a movement that wants to found new rights. It is quite powerless to change public opinion if that opinion has condemned property. Its beneficiaries recognize this with horror and turn in their distress to the Church, with the odd request that the Church shall keep the misera plebs (wretched masses) modest and humble, fight covetousness and turn the eyes of the propertyless from earthly goods to heavenly things.35 Christianity is to be kept alive so that the people shall not become covetous. But the demand thus made to the Church is monstrous. It is asked to serve the interests, generally assumed to be harmful to the community, of a number of privileged persons. It is obvious that the true servants of the Church have revolted against this presumptuous demand, while enemies of the Church have found it an effective weapon in their war of liberation against religion. What is surprising is that ecclesiastical enemies of Socialism, in their efforts to represent Socialism as a child of Liberalism, of the free school, and of atheism, have taken up just the same attitude towards the work which the Church performs in maintaining existing property relations. Thus the Jesuit Cathrein says: “If one assumes that with this life all is finished, that to man is given no greater destiny than to any other mammal that wallows in the mire, who then will ask of the poor and oppressed, whose life is a constant struggle for existence, that they should bear their hard fate with patience and resignation, and look on while others clothe themselves in silk and purple and have regular and ample meals? Does not the worker too carry in his heart the indestructible impulse towards perfect happiness? If he is robbed of every hope of a better world beyond, by what right is he prevented from seeking his happiness as far as possible on earth and so demanding imperatively, his share of the earth’s riches? Is he not just as much man as his employer? Why should some just manage to exist in want and poverty while others live on the fat of the land, when from their point of view there is no reason why the good things of this world should belong to some rather than to others? If the atheistic-naturalistic standpoint is justified, so also is the Socialist demand: that worldly goods and happiness should be distributed to all as equally as possible, that it is wrong for some to live a life of idle enjoyment in palaces while others live in miserable cellars and attics, barely able in spite of the most strenuous efforts to earn their daily bread.”36 Assuming matters to be just as Cathrein imagines them—that private property is a privilege of the owners, that the others are poorer in proportion as these are rich, that some starve because others carouse, that some live in miserable little rooms because others live in lordly places—does he really believe that it could possibly be a work of the Church to maintain such conditions? Whatever one may read into the Church’s social teaching, one cannot suppose that its founder or his supporters would have approved of its being used to bolster up unjust social institutions that are obviously disadvantageous to the greater part of humanity. Christianity would long since have vanished from the earth, were it that for which, in common with many of its bitterest enemies, Bismarck and Cathrein mistook it: a bodyguard for a social institution injurious to the masses.

  The socialist idea can be suppressed neither by force nor by authority, for both are on the side of Socialism and not of its opponents. If guns and machine-guns are brought into action today they will be in the ranks of Socialism and Syndicalism, and not opposed to them. For the great mass of our contemporaries are imbued with the spirit of Socialism or of Syndicalism. Whatever system is set in authority at the present time, it can certainly not be Capitalism, for the masses do not believe in it.

  3

  The Battle of Ideas

  It is a mistake to think that the lack of success of experiments in Socialism that have been made can help to overcome Socialism. Facts per se can neither prove nor refute anything. Everything is decided by the interpretation and explanation of the facts, by the ideas and the theories.

  The man who clings to Socialism will continue to ascribe all the world’s evil to private property and to expect salvation from Socialism. Socialists ascribe the failures of Russian Bolshevism to every circumstance except the inadequacy of the system. From the socialist point of view, Capitalism alone is responsible for all the misery the world has had to endure in recent years. Socialists see only what they want to see and are blind to anything that might contradict their theory.

  Only ideas can overcome ideas and it is only the ideas of Capitalism and of Liberalism that can overcome Socialism. Only by a battle of ideas can a decision be reached.

  Liberalism and Capitalism address themselves to the cool, well-balanced mind. They proceed by strict logic, eliminating any appeal to the emotions. Socialism, on the contrary, works on the emotions, tries to violate logical considerations by rousing a sense of personal interest and to stifle the voice of reason by awakening primitive instincts.

  Even with those of intellectually higher standing, with the few capable of independent reflection, this seems to give Socialism an advantage. With the others, the great masses who are unable to think, the Socialist position is considered unshakable. A speaker who inflames the passions of the masses is supposed to have a better chance of success than one who appeals to their reason. Thus the prospects of Liberalism in the fight with Socialism are accounted very poor.

  This pessimistic point of view is completely mistaken in its estimate of the influence which rational and quiet reflection can exercise on the masses. It also exaggerates enormously the importance of the part played by the masses, and consequently mass-psychological elements, in creating and forming the predominant ideas of an epoch.

  It is true that the masses do not think. But just for this reason they follow those who do think. The intellectual guidance of humanity belongs to the very few who think for themselves. At first they influence the circle of those capable of grasping and understanding what others have thought; through these intermediaries their ideas reach the masses and there condense themselves into the public opinion of the time. Socialism has not become the ruling idea of our period because the masses first thought out the idea of the socialization of the means of production and then transmitted it to the intellectually higher classes. Even the materialistic conception of history, haunted as it is by “the psyche of the people” as conceived by Romanticism and the historical school of jurisprudence does not risk such an assertion. Of itself the mass psyche has never produced anything but mass crime, devastation, and destruction.37 Admittedly the idea of Socialism is also in its effects nothing more than destruction, but it is nevertheless an idea. It had to be thought out, and this could only be the work of individual thinkers. Like every other great thought, it has penetrated to the masses only through the intellectual middle class. Neither the people nor the masses were the first socialists. Even today they are agrarian socialist and syndicalist rather than socialist. The first socialists were the intellectuals; they and not the masses are the backbone of Socialism.38 The power of Socialism too, is like any other power ultimately spiritual; and it finds its support in ideas proceeding from the intellectual leaders, who give them to the people. If the intelligentsia abandoned Socialism its power would end. In the long run the masses cannot withstand the ideas of the leaders. True, individual demagogues may be ready, for the sake of a career and against their better knowledge, to instil into the people ideas which flatter their baser instincts and which are therefore sure to be well received. But in the end, prophets who in their heart know themselves to be false cannot prevail against those filled with the power of sincere conviction. Nothing can corrupt ideas. Neither by money nor by other rewards can one hire men for the fight against ideas.

  Human society is an issue of the mind. Social co-operation must first be conceived, then willed, then realized in action. It is ideas that make history, not the “material productive forces,” those nebulous and mystical schemata of the materialist conception of history. If we could overcome the idea of Socialism, if humanity could be brought to recognize the social necessity of private ownership in the means of production, then Socialism would have to leave the stage. That is the only thing that counts.

  The victory of the socialist idea over the Liberal idea has only come about through the displacement of the social attitude, which has regard to the social function of the single institution and the total effect of the whole social apparatus, by an anti-social attitude, which considers the individual parts of the social mechanism as detached units. Socialism sees the individuals--the hungry, the unemployed, and the rich—and finds fault on that account; Liberalism never forgets the whole and the interdependence of every phenomenon. It knows well enough that private ownership in the means of production is not able to transform the world into a paradise; it has never tried to establish anything beyond the simple fact that the socialist order of society is unrealizable, and therefore less able than Capitalism to promote the well-being of all.

  No one has understood Liberalism less than those who have joined its ranks during the recent decades. They have felt themselves obliged to fight excrescences” of Capitalism, thereby taking over without a qualm the characteristic anti-social attitude of the socialists. A social order has no excrescences which can be cut off at will. If a phenomenon results inevitably from a social system based on private ownership in the means of production, no ethical or aesthetic caprice can condemn it. Speculation, for example, which is inherent in all economic action, in a socialistic society as well as any other, cannot be condemned for the form it takes under Capitalism merely because the censor of morals mistakes its social function. Nor have these disciples of Liberalism been any more fortunate in their criticisms of Socialism. They have constantly declared that Socialism is a beautiful and noble ideal towards which one ought to strive were it realizable, but that, alas, it could not be so, because it presupposed human beings more perfect morally than those with whom we have to deal. It is difficult to see how people can decide that Socialism is in any way better than Capitalism unless they can maintain that it functions better as a social system. With the same justification it might be said that a machine constructed on the basis of perpetual motion would be better than one worked according to the given laws of mechanics—if only it could be made to function reliably. If the concept of Socialism contains an error which prevents that system from doing what it is supposed to do, then Socialism cannot be compared with the Capitalist system, for this has proved itself workable. Neither can it be called nobler, more beautiful or more just.

  It is true, Socialism cannot be realized, but it is not because it calls for sublime and altruistic beings. One of the things this book set out to prove was that the socialist commonwealth lacks above all one quality which is indispensable for every economic system which does not live from hand to mouth but works with indirect and roundabout methods of production: that is the ability to calculate, and therefore to proceed rationally. Once this has been generally recognized, all socialist ideas must vanish from the minds of reasonable human beings.

  How untenable is the opinion that Socialism must come because social evolution necessarily leads to it, has been shown in earlier sections of this book. The world inclines to Socialism because the great majority of people want it. They want it because they believe that Socialism will guarantee a higher standard of welfare. The loss of this conviction would signify the end of Socialism.

  CONCLUSION
  
  THE HISTORICAL SIGNIFICANCE OF MODERN SOCIALISM

  1

  Socialism in History

  Nothing is more difficult than to get a clear, historical perspective of a contemporary movement. The proximity of the phenomenon makes it difficult to recognize the whole in true proportion. Historical judgment above all demands distance.

  Wherever Europeans or the descendants of European emigrants live, we see Socialism at work today; and in Asia it is the banner round which the antagonists of European civilization gather. If the intellectual dominance of Socialism remains unshaken, then in a short time the whole co-operative system of culture which Europe has built up during thousands of years will be shattered. For a socialist order of society is unrealizable. All efforts to realize Socialism lead only to the destruction of society. Factories, mines, and railways will come to a standstill, towns will be deserted. The population of the industrial territories will die out or migrate elsewhere. The farmer will return to the self-sufficiency of the closed, domestic economy. Without private ownership in the means of production there is, in the long run, no production other than a hand-to-mouth production for one’s own needs.

  We need not describe in detail the cultural and political consequences of such a transformation. Nomad tribes from the Eastern steppes would again raid and pillage Europe, sweeping across it with swift cavalry. Who could resist them in the thinly populated land left defenceless after the weapons inherited from the higher technique of Capitalism had worn out?

  This is one possibility. But there are others. It might so happen that some nations would remain socialistic while others returned to Capitalism. Then the socialist countries alone would proceed towards social decline. The capitalist countries would progress to a higher development of the division of labour until at last, driven by the fundamental social law to draw the greatest number of human beings into the personal division of labour, and the whole earth’s surface into the geographical division of labour, they would impose culture upon the backward nations or destroy them if they resisted. This has always been the historical fate of nations who have eschewed the road of capitalist development or who have halted prematurely upon it.

  It may be that we exaggerate enormously the importance of the present day socialist movement. Perhaps it has no more significance than the outbreaks against private property in the medieval persecution of the Jews, in the Franciscan movement, or in the Reformation period. And the Bolshevism of Lenin and Trotsky is possibly no more important than Knipperdolling’s and Bockelson’s39 anabaptist rule in Münster; it is no greater in proportion to the latter than is modern Capitalism in proportion to the Capitalism of the sixteenth century. Just as civilization overcame those attacks so it may emerge stronger and purer from the upheavals of our time.

  2

  The Crisis of Civilization

  Society is a product of will and action. Only human beings are able to will and act. All the mysticism and symbolism of collectivist philosophy cannot help us over the fact that we can speak only figuratively of the thinking, willing, and acting of communities, and that the conception of sentient thinking, willing, and acting communities is merely anthropomorphism. Society and the individual postulate each other; those collective bodies, which collectivism assumes to have existed logically and historically before individuals, may have been herds and hordes, but they were in no way societies--that is, associations created and existing by means of the collaboration of thinking creatures. Human beings construct society by making their actions a mutually conditioned co-operation.

  The basis and starting point of social co-operation lie in peace-making, which consists in the mutual recognition of the “state of property.” Out of a de facto having, maintained by force, arises the legal concept of ownership, and simultaneously, the legal order and the coercive apparatus to maintain it. All this is the result of conscious willing and awareness of the aims willed. But this willing sees and wills only the most immediate and direct result: of the remoter consequences it knows nothing and can know nothing. Men who create peace and standards of conduct are only concerned to provide for the needs of the coming hours, days, years; that they are, at the same time, working to build a great structure like human society, escapes their notice. Therefore the individual institutions, which collectively support the social organism, are created with no other view in mind than the utility of the moment. They seem individually necessary and useful to their creators; their social function remains unknown to them.

  The human mind ripens slowly to the recognition of social interdependence. At first, society is so mysterious and incomprehensible a formation to man that, to grasp its origin and nature, he continues to assume a divine will guiding human destinies from outside long after he has renounced this concept in the natural sciences. Kant’s Nature, which leads humanity towards a special aim, Hegel’s World Spirit, and the Darwinian Natural Selection are the last great expressions of this method. It remained for the liberal social philosophy to explain society through the actions of mankind without having to draw on metaphysics. It alone succeeds in interpreting the social function of private property. It is not content to accept the Just as a given category which cannot be analysed, or to account for it by an inexplicable predilection for just conduct. It bases its conclusions on the considerations of the consequences of acts and from a valuation of these consequences.

  Judged from the old standpoint, property was sacred. Liberalism destroyed this nimbus, as it destroys all others. It “debased” property into a utilitarian, worldly matter. Property no longer has absolute value; it is valued as a means, that is, for its utility. In philosophy such a change of views involves no special difficulties; an inadequate doctrine is replaced by one more adequate. But a fundamental revolution of the mind cannot be carried out in life and in the consciousness of the masses with the same lack of friction. It is no trifle when an idol before which humanity has trembled and feared for thousands of years is destroyed and the frightened slave gets his freedom. That which was law because God and conscience so ordained, is now to be law because one can oneself make it so at will. What was certain becomes uncertain; right and wrong, good and evil, all these conceptions begin to totter. The old tables of the law are shattered and man is left to make new commandments for himself. This cannot be achieved by means of parliamentary debate or in peaceful voting. A revision of the moral code can only be carried through when minds are deeply stirred and passions unloosed. To recognize the social utility of private property one must first be convinced of the perniciousness of every other system.

  That this is the substance of the great fight between Capitalism and Socialism becomes evident when we realize that the same process is taking place in other spheres of moral life. The problem of property is not the only one which is being discussed today. It is the same with the problem of bloodshed which, in its many aspects—and particularly in connection with war and peace—agitates the whole world. In sexual morality, too, age-old moral precepts are undergoing transformation. Things which were held to be taboo, rules which have been obeyed for moral and almost sacred reasons, are now prescribed or prohibited according to the importance attached to them in respect of the promotion of public welfare. This revaluation of the grounds on which precepts of conduct have been based has inevitably caused a general revision of standards which have been in force up till now. Men ask: are they really useful or might they not really be abolished?

  In the inner life of the individual the fact that the moral equilibrium has not yet been reached causes grave psychological shocks, well known to medicine as neuroses.40 This is the characteristic malady of our time of moral transition, of the spiritual adolescence of the nations. In social life the discord works itself out in conflicts and errors which we witness with horror. Just as it is decisively important in the life of the individual man whether he merges safe and sound from the troubles and fears of adolescence of whether he carries away scars which hinder him permanently from developing his abilities, so is it important in what manner human society will struggle through the vexed problems of organization. A rise to a closer interdependence of individuals and hence to a higher well-being, on the one hand; a decay of co-operation and hence of wealth, on the other: these are the choices before us. There is no third alternative.

  The great social discussion cannot proceed otherwise than by means of the thought, will, and action of individuals. Society lives and acts only in individuals; it is nothing more than a certain attitude on their part. Everyone carries a part of society on his shoulders; no one is relieved of his share of responsibility by others. And no one can find a safe way out for himself if society is sweeping towards destruction. Therefore everyone, in his own interests, must thrust himself vigorously into the intellectual battle. None can stand aside with unconcern; the interests of everyone hang on the result. Whether he chooses or not, every man is drawn into the great historical struggle, the decisive battle into which our epoch has plunged us.

  Neither God nor a mystical “Natural Force” created society; it was created by mankind. Whether society shall continue to evolve or whether it shall decay lies—in the sense in which causal determination of all events permits us to speak of freewill—in the hand of man. Whether Society is good or bad may be a matter of individual judgment; but whoever prefers life to death, happiness to suffering, well-being to misery, must accept society. And whoever desires that society should exist and develop must also accept, without limitation or reserve, private ownership in the means of production.

  APPENDIX
  
  A CONTRIBUTION TO THE CRITIQUE OF ATTEMPTS TO CONSTRUCT A SYSTEM OF ECONOMIC CALCULATION FOR THE SOCIALIST COMMUNITY

  We may divide the various attempts, which have been made to think out a system of economic calculation which would work under Socialism, into two main groups. In so doing we leave out of count works based on the labour theory of value which are misleading from the very outset. The first would contain those which may be designated syndicalist constructions, the second those which try to evade the impossibility of solving the problem by assuming that economic data do not change. The error in both groups of proposals should be clear from what we have said above (pp. 97-130). The following criticism, which I have made of two typical constructions of this kind, is intended to add further elucidations.41

  In an article entitled “Sozialistische Rechnungslegung” (Socialist Accounting)42 Karl Polányi has attempted to solve what he calls “the problem of socialist accounting” which is, according to him, “generally recognized to be the key problem of the socialist economy.” Polányi first admits unreservedly that he considers the solution of the problem impossible “in a central administrative economy.”43 His attempt to solve the problem is designed only for ’a functionally organized socialist transition-economy.” This is the name he gives to a type of society corresponding approximately to the ideal of the English Guild Socialists. But his concept of the nature and possibilities of his system is, unfortunately, no less nebulous and vague than that of the Guild Socialists themselves. The political community “is considered to be ’the owner of the means of production’; but no direct right of disposing of production is implied by this ownership.” This right belongs to associations of producers, elected by workers in the various branches of production. The several individual producers’ associations are to be amalgamated as the Congress of producers’ associations, which “represents the whole of production.” Confronting this is the “Commune,” as the second “functional main association of society.” The Commune is not only the political organ, but also the “real bearer of the community’s higher aims.” Each of these two functional associations exercise “within its own sphere the legislative and executive functions.” Agreements between these functional main associations constitute the highest power in society.44

  Now the defect in this system is the obscurity in which it evades the central problem—Socialism or Syndicalism? With the Guild-Socialists, Polányi expressly assigns to society, to the Commune, ownership of the means of production. In doing so he seems to think he has said enough to save his system from the charge of Syndicalism. But in the next sentence he withdraws what he has said. Ownership is the right of disposal. If the right of disposal belongs not to the Commune, but to the producers’ association, these are the owners, and we have before us a syndicalist community. One or the other it must be; between Syndicalism and Socialism there can be no compromise or reconciliation. Polányi does not see this. He says: “Functional representatives (associations) of one and of the same person can never irreconcilably conflict with each other; this is the fundamental idea of every functional constitution. For the settlement of each conflict, as it arises, either joint committees of the Commune and the Producers’ Association are provided or a kind of Supreme Constitutional Court (co-ordinating organs), which has, however, no legislative power and only limited executive power (guarding law and order, etc.).”45 This fundamental idea of the functional form of constitution is, however, wrong. If the political parliament is to be formed by the votes of all citizens, with equal voting rights for each—and this condition is implied by Polányi and all other similar systems—then the parliament and the congress of producers’ associations, which is the result of an electoral structure quite differently built up, may, easily, conflict. These conflicts cannot be settled by joint committees or by law courts. The committees can settle the quarrel only if one or other of the main associations preponderates within them. If both are equally strong, the committee can come to no decision. If one of the two associations preponderates the ultimate decision lies with it. A law court cannot settle questions of political or economic practice. Law courts can give judgment only on the basis of already existing norms, which they apply to individual cases. If they are to deal with questions of utility, then they are in reality not law courts but supreme political authorities, and everything we have said about the committee is true of them.

  If the final decision rests with neither the Commune nor the Congress of Producers’ Associations, the system cannot live at all. If ultimate decision lies with the Commune, we have to deal with a “central administrative economy,” and this, as even Polányi admits, could not calculate economically. If the Producers’ Associations decide, then we have a syndicalist community.

  Polányi’s obscurity on this fundamental point allows him to accept a merely apparent solution as an actual workable solution of the problem. His associations and sub-associations maintain a mutual exchange-relationship; they receive and give as if they were owners. Thus a market and market-prices are formed. But because he thinks he has surmounted the unbridgeable gulf between Socialism and Syndicalism, Polányi does not perceive that this is incompatible with Socialism. We might say much more about other errors in the details of Polányi’s system. But in view of his fundamental mistake they are of little interest, as they are peculiar to Polányi’s train of thought. That fundamental mistake is, however, no peculiarity of Polányi’s; all guild socialist systems share it. Polányi has the merit of having worked out this system more clearly than most other writers. He has thus exposed its weakness more clearly. He must also be given due credit for having realized that economic calculation would be impossible in a centralized administrative economy with no markets.

  Another contribution to our problem comes from Eduard Heimann.46 Heimann is a believer in an ethical or religious Socialism. But his political views do not blind him to the problem of economic calculation. In treating this, he follows the arguments of Max Weber. Max Weber had seen that this was the “absolutely central” problem for Socialism, and had shown in a detailed discussion, in which he rejected Otto Neurath’s pet dreams of “calculation in kind” (“Naturalrechnung”) that rational economic action was impossible without money and money-accounting.47 Heimann therefore tries to prove that one could calculate in a socialist economy.

  Whilst Polányi proceeds from a system allied to the English guild socialists, Heimann develops proposals parallel to the German ideas for a planned economy. It is characteristic that the arguments, nevertheless, resemble Polányi’s on the only point that matters: they are regrettably vague just where they ought to be explicit about the relationship between the individual productive groups, into which the society organized according to planned economy is to be divided, and society as a whole. Thus he is able to speak of trade taking place as in a market,48 without noticing that the planned economy, completely and logically carried through, is tradeless and that what might be called buying and selling should, according to its nature, be described quite otherwise. Heimann makes this mistake because he thinks that the characteristic mark of the planned economy is above all the monopolistic amalgamation of individual branches of production, instead of the dependence of production on the unitary will of a central organ. This mistake is all the more astonishing as the very name “planned economy” and all the arguments brought forward to support it stress particularly that the economic direction would be unitary. Heimann does indeed see the hollowness of the propaganda which works with the catchword “anarchy of production.”49 But this ought never to have allowed him to forget that just this point and nothing else, is what sharply divides Socialism from Capitalism.

  Like most writers who have dealt with the planned economy, Heimann does not notice that a planned economy logically carried out is nothing more than pure Socialism and differs from the strictly centrally organized socialist community only in externals. That under the unitary direction of the central authority the administration of individual branches of production is entrusted to seemingly independent departments does not alter the fact that only the central authority directs. The relations between the individual departments are settled, not on the market by the competition of buyers and sellers, but the command of authority. The problem is this: that there is no standard by which one may account and calculate the effects of these authoritarian interventions, because the central authority cannot be guided by exchange-relationships formed on a market. The authority may indeed base its calculations on substitution-relations, which it determines itself. But this decision is arbitrary; it is not based, as are market prices, on the subjective valuations of individuals and imputed to the producers’ goods by the cooperation of all those active in production and trade. Rational economic calculation cannot therefore be based upon it.

  Heimann achieves an apparent solution of the problem by invoking the theory of costs. Economic calculation is to be based upon cost computations, prices are to be calculated on the basis of the average costs of production, including wages, of the works attached to the accounting-office.50 This is a solution which might have satisfied us two or three generations ago. It is not enough nowadays. If by costs we mean the loss of utility which a different use of the factors of production could have avoided, it is easy to see that Heimann is moving in a circle. In the socialist community only an order from the central authority could enable industry to use the factors of production elsewhere, and the problem is just whether this authority could calculate so as to decide upon such an order. The competition of entrepreneurs who, in a social order based on private property, try to use goods and services most profitably, is replaced in the planned economy—as in every imaginable form of socialist society—by actions-according-to-plan of the supreme authority. Now it is only by this competition between entrepreneurs, trying to wrest from each other the material means of production and the services of labour, that the prices of the factors of production are formed. Where production is to be carried on “according to plan,” that is, by a central authority to whom everything is subject, the basis of calculation of profitability vanishes; only accounting in kind remains. Heimann says: “As soon as real competition exists on the market for consumers’ goods, the price-relationships thus determined spread from there through all the stages of production, provided that pricing is effected reasonably; and this happens independently of the constitution of the parties in the markets for producers’ goods.”51 This, however, would only be the case if there were genuine competition. Heimann conceives society to be the association of a number of “monopolists,” that is, of departments of the socialist community, to each of which is entrusted the exclusive working of a delimited field of production. If these buy producers’ goods on the “market,” it is not competition, because the central authority has in advance assigned to them the field in which they are to be active and which they must not leave. Competition exists only when everyone produces what seems to promise the best profit. I have tried to show that this can only be ensured by private ownership in the means of production.

  Heimann’s picture of the socialist community considers only the current transformation of raw materials into consumers’ goods; it thus creates the impression that the individual departments could proceed independently. Far more important than this part of the productive process is the renewal of capital and the investment of newly-formed capital. This is the central problem of economic calculation, not the problem of disposing of the circulating capital already in existence. One cannot base decisions of this sort, which are binding for years and decades ahead, on the momentary demand for consumers’ goods. One must look to the future, that is, one must be “speculative.” Heimann’s scheme, which enlarges or restricts production mechanically and automatically, so to speak, according to the present demand for consumers’ goods, fails here entirely. For to solve the problem of value by going back to costs would suffice only for a theoretically conceivable state of equilibrium, imaginatively conceivable but empirically non-existent. Only in such an imaginary state of equilibrium do price and costs coincide, not in a changing economy.

  For this reason, in my judgment, Heimann’s attempt to solve the problem, which I submit I have shown to be unsolvable, breaks down.

  EPILOGUE

  (Originally published in 1947 as Planned Chaos by the Foundation for Economic Education, Inc.)

  Introductory Remarks

  The characteristic mark of this age of dictators, wars and revolutions is its anti-capitalistic bias. Most governments and political parties are eager to restrict the sphere of private initiative and free enterprise. It is an almost unchallenged dogma that capitalism is done for and that the coming of all-round regimentation of economic activities is both inescapable and highly desirable.

  None the less capitalism is still very vigorous in the Western Hemisphere. Capitalist production has made very remarkable progress even in these last years. Methods of production were greatly improved. Consumers have been supplied with better and cheaper goods and with many new articles unheard of a short time ago. Many countries have expanded the size and improved the quality of their manufacturing. In spite of the anti-capitalistic policies of all governments and of almost all political parties, the capitalist mode of production is in many countries still fulfilling its social function in supplying the consumers with more, better and cheaper goods.

  It is certainly not a merit of governments, politicians and labour union officers that the standard of living is improving in the countries committed to the principle of private ownership of the means of production. Not offices and bureaucrats, but big business deserves credit for the fact that most of the families in the United States own a motor car and a radio set. The increase in per capita consumption in America as compared with conditions a quarter of a century ago is not an achievement of laws and executive orders. It is an accomplishment of business men who enlarged the size of their factories or built new ones.

  One must stress this point because our contemporaries are inclined to ignore it. Entangled in the superstitions of statism and government omnipotence, they are exclusively preoccupied with governmental measures. They expect everything from authoritarian action and very little from the initiative of enterprising citizens. Yet, the only means to increase well-being is to increase the quantity of products. This is what business aims at.

  It is grotesque that there is much more talk about the achievements of the Tennessee Valley Authority than about all the unprecedented and unparalleled achievements of American privately operated processing industries. However, it was only the latter which enabled the United Nations to win the war and today enables the United States to come to the aid of the Marshall Plan countries.

  The dogma that the State or the Government is the embodiment of all that is good and beneficial and that the individuals are wretched underlings, exclusively intent upon inflicting harm upon one another and badly in need of a guardian, is almost unchallenged. It is taboo to question it in the slightest way. He who proclaims the godliness of the State and the infallibility of its priests, the bureaucrats, is considered as an impartial student of the social sciences. All those raising objections are branded as biased and narrow-minded. The supporters of the new religion of statolatry are no less fanatical and intolerant than were the Mohammedan conquerors of Africa and Spain.

  History will call our age the age of the dictators and tyrants. We have witnessed in the last years the fall of two of these inflated supermen. But the spirit which raised these knaves to autocratic power survives. It permeates textbooks and periodicals, it speaks through the mouths of teachers and politicians, it manifests itself in party programmes and in plays and novels. As long as this spirit prevails there cannot be any hope of durable peace, of democracy, of the preservation of freedom or of a steady improvement in the nation’s economic well-being.

  1

  The Failure of Interventionism

  Nothing is more unpopular today than the free market economy, i.e., capitalism. Everything that is considered unsatisfactory in present-day conditions is charged to capitalism. The atheists make capitalism responsible for the survival of Christianity. But the papal encyclicals blame capitalism for the spread of irreligion and the sins of our contemporaries, and the Protestant churches and sects are no less vigorous in their indictment of capitalist greed. Friends of peace consider our wars as an offshoot of capitalist imperialism. But the adamant nationalist warmongers of Germany and Italy indicted capitalism for its “bourgeois” pacifism, contrary to human nature and to the inescapable laws of history. Sermonizers accuse capitalism of disrupting the family and fostering licentiousness. But the “progressives” blame capitalism for the preservation of allegedly outdated rules of sexual restraint. Almost all men agree that poverty is an outcome of capitalism. On the other hand many deplore the fact that capitalism, in catering lavishly to the wishes of people intent upon getting more amenities and a better living, promotes a crass materialism. These contradictory accusations of capitalism cancel one another. But the fact remains that there are few people left who would not condemn capitalism altogether.

  Although capitalism is the economic system of modern Western civilization, the policies of all Western nations are guided by utterly anti-capitalistic ideas. The aim of these interventionist policies is not to preserve capitalism, but to substitute a mixed economy for it. It is assumed that this mixed economy is neither capitalism nor socialism. It is described as a third system, as far from capitalism as it is from socialism. It is alleged that it stands midway between socialism and capitalism, retaining the advantages of both and avoiding the disadvantages inherent in each.

  More than half a century ago the outstanding man in the British socialist movement, Sidney Webb, declared that the socialist philosophy is “but the conscious and explicit assertion of principles of social organization which have been already in great part unconsciously adopted.” And he added that the economic history of the nineteenth century was “an almost continuous record of the progress of socialism.”52 A few years later an eminent British statesman, Sir William Harcourt, stated: “We are all socialists now.”53 When in 1913 an American, Elmer Roberts, published a book on the economic policies of the Imperial Government of Germany as conducted since the end of the 1870s, he called them “monarchical socialism.”54

  However, it was not correct simply to identify interventionism and socialism. There are many supporters of interventionism who consider it the most appropriate method of realizing—step by step—full socialism. But there are also many interventionists who are not outright socialists; they aim at the establishment of the mixed economy as a permanent system of economic management. They endeavour to restrain, to regulate and to “improve” capitalism by government interference with business and by labour unionism.

  In order to comprehend the working of interventionism and of the mixed economy it is necessary to clarify two points:

  First: If within a society based on private ownership of the means of production some of these means are owned and operated by the government or by municipalities, this still does not make for a mixed system which would combine socialism and private ownership. As long as only certain individual enterprises are publicly controlled, the characteristics of the market economy determining economic activity remain essentially unimpaired. The publicly owned enterprises, too, as buyers of raw materials, semi-finished goods and labour, and as sellers of goods and services, must fit into the mechanism of the market economy. They are subject to the law of the market; they have to strive after profits or, at least, to avoid losses. When it is attempted to mitigate or to eliminate this dependence by covering the losses of such enterprises with subsidies out of public funds, the only result is a shifting of this dependence somewhere else. This is because the means for the subsidies have to be raised somewhere. They may be raised by collecting taxes. But the burden of such taxes has its effects on the public, not on the government collecting the tax. It is the market, and not the revenue department, which decides upon whom the burden of the tax falls and how it affects production and consumption. The market and its inescapable law are supreme.

  Second: There are two different patterns for the realization of socialism. The one pattern—we may call it the Marxian or Russian pattern—is purely bureaucratic. All economic enterprises are departments of the government just as the administration of the army and the navy or the postal system. Every single plant, shop or farm, stands in the same relation to the superior central organization as does a post office to the office of the Postmaster-General. The whole nation forms one single labour army with compulsory service; the commander of this army is the chief of state.

  The second pattern—we may call it the German or Zwangswirtschaft system55 —differs from the first one in that it, seemingly and nominally, maintains private ownership of the means of production, entrepreneurship, and market exchange. So-called entrepreneurs do the buying and selling, pay the workers, contract debts and pay interest and amortization. But they are no longer entrepreneurs. In Nazi Germany they were called shop managers or Betriebsführer. The government tells these seeming entrepreneurs what and how to produce, at what prices and from whom to buy, at what prices and to whom to sell. The government decrees at what wages labourers should work, and to whom and under what terms the capitalists should entrust their funds. Market exchange is but a sham. As all prices, wages and interest rates are fixed by the authority, they are prices, wages and interest rates in appearance only; in fact they are merely quantitative terms in the authoritarian orders determining each citizen’s income, consumption and standard of living. The authority, not the consumers, directs production. The central board of production management is supreme; all citizens are nothing else but civil servants. This is socialism with the outward appearance of capitalism. Some labels of the capitalistic market economy are retained, but they signify here something entirely different from what they mean in the market economy.

  It is necessary to point out this fact to prevent a confusion of socialism and interventionism. The system of the hampered market economy, or interventionism, differs from socialism by the very fact that it is still market economy. The authority seeks to influence the market by the intervention of its coercive power, but it does not want to eliminate the market altogether. It desires that production and consumption should develop along lines different from those prescribed by the unhindered market, and it wants to achieve its aim by injecting into the working of the market orders, commands and prohibitions for whose enforcement the police power and its apparatus of coercion and compulsion stand ready. But these are isolated interventions; their authors assert that they do not plan to combine these measures into a completely integrated system which regulates all prices, wages and interest rates, and which thus places full control of production and consumption in the hands of the authorities.

  However, all the methods of interventionism are doomed to failure. This means: the interventionist measures must needs result in conditions which from the point of view of their own advocates are more unsatisfactory than the previous state of affairs they were designed to alter. These policies are therefore contrary to purpose.

  Minimum wage rates, whether enforced by government decree or by labour union pressure and compulsion, are useless if they fix wage rates at the market level. But if they try to raise wage rates above the level which the unhampered labour market would have determined, they result in permanent unemployment of a great part of the potential labour force.

  Government spending cannot create additional jobs. If the government provides the funds required by taxing the citizens or by borrowing from the public, it abolishes on the one hand as many jobs as it creates on the other. If government spending is financed by borrowing from the commercial banks, it means credit expansion and inflation. If in the course of such an inflation the rise in commodity prices exceeds the rise in nominal wage rates, unemployment will drop. But what makes unemployment shrink is precisely the fact that real wage rates are falling.

  The inherent tendency of capitalist evolution is to raise real wage rates steadily. This is the effect of the progressive accumulation of capital by means of which technological methods of production are improved. There is no means by which the height of wage rates can be raised for all those eager to earn wages other than through the increase of the per capita quota of capital invested. Whenever the accumulation of additional capital stops, the tendency towards a further increase in real wage rates comes to a standstill. If capital consumption is substituted for an increase in capital available, real wage rates must drop temporarily until the checks on a further increase in capital are removed. Government measures which retard capital accumulation or lead to capital consumption—such as confiscatory taxation—are therefore detrimental to the vital interests of the workers.

  Credit expansion can bring about a temporary boom. But such a fictitious prosperity must end in a general depression of trade, a slump.

  It can hardly be asserted that the economic history of the last decades has run counter to the pessimistic predictions of the economists. Our age has to face great economic troubles. But this is not a crisis of capitalism. It is the crisis of interventionism, of policies designed to improve capitalism and to substitute a better system for it.

  No economist ever dared to assert that interventionism could result in anything else than in disaster and chaos. The advocates of interventionism--foremost among them the Prussian Historical School and the American Institutionalists—were not economists. On the contrary. In order to promote their plans they flatly denied that there is any such thing as economic law. In their opinion governments are free to achieve all they aim at without being restrained by an inexorable regularity in the sequence of economicphenomena Like the German socialist Ferdinand Lassalle, they maintain that the State is God.

  The interventionists do not approach the study of economic matters with scientific disinterestedness. Most of them are driven by an envious resentment against those whose incomes are larger than their own. This bias makes it impossible for them to see things as they really are. For them the main thing is not to improve the conditions of the masses, but to harm the entrepreneurs and capitalists even if this policy victimizes the immense majority of the people.

  In the eyes of the interventionists the mere existence of profits is objectionable. They speak of profit without dealing with its corollary, loss. They do not comprehend that profit and loss are the instruments by means of which the consumers keep a tight rein on all entrepreneurial activities. It is profit and loss that make the consumers supreme in the direction of business. It is absurd to contrast production for profit and production for use. On the unhampered market a man can earn profits only by supplying the consumers in the best and cheapest way with the goods they want to use. Profit and loss withdraw the material factors of production from the hands of the inefficient and place them in the hands of the more efficient. It is their social function to make a man the more influential in the conduct of business the better he succeeds in producing commodities for which people scramble. The consumers suffer when the laws of the country prevent the most efficient entrepreneurs from expanding the sphere of their activities. What made some enterprises develop into “big business” was precisely their success in filling best the demand of the masses.

  Anti-capitalistic policies sabotage the operation of the capitalist system of the market economy. The failure of interventionism does not demonstrate the necessity of adopting socialism. It merely exposes the futility of interventionism. All those evils which the self-styled “progressives” interpret as evidence of the failure of capitalism are the outcome of their allegedly beneficial interference with the market. Only the ignorant, wrongly identifying interventionism and capitalism, believe that the remedy for these evils is socialism.

  2

  The Dictatorial, Anti-Democratic and Socialist Character of Interventionism

  Many advocates of interventionism are bewildered when one tells them that in recommending interventionism they themselves are fostering anti-democratic and dictatorial tendencies and the establishment of totalitarian socialism. They protest that they are sincere believers and opposed to tyranny and socialism. What they aim at is only the improvement of the conditions of the poor. They say that they are driven by considerations of social justice, and favour a fairer distribution of income precisely because they are intent upon preserving capitalism and its political corollary or superstructure, viz., democratic government.

  What these people fail to realize is that the various measures they suggest are not capable of bringing about the beneficial results aimed at. On the contrary they produce a state of affairs which from the point of view of their advocates is worse than the previous state which they were designed to alter. If the government, faced with this failure of its first intervention, is not prepared to undo its interference with the market and to return to a free economy, it must add to its first measure more and more regulations and restrictions. Proceeding step by step on this way it finally reaches a point in which all economic freedom of individuals has disappeared. Then socialism of the German pattern, the Zwangswirtschaft of the Nazis, emerges.

  We have already mentioned the case of minimum wage rates. Let us illustrate the matter further by an analysis of a typical case of price control.

  If the government wants to make it possible for poor parents to give more milk to their children, it must buy milk at the market price and sell it to those poor people with a loss at a cheaper rate; the loss may be covered from the means collected by taxation. But if the government simply fixes the price of milk at a lower rate than the market, the results obtained will be contrary to the aims of the government. The marginal producers will, in order to avoid losses, go out of the business of producing and selling milk. There will be less milk available for the consumers, not more. This outcome is contrary to the government’s intentions. The government interfered because it considered milk as a vital necessity. It did not want to restrict its supply.

  Now the government has to face the alternative: either to refrain from any endeavours to control prices, or to add to its first measure a second one, i.e., to fix the prices of the factors of production necessary for the production of milk. Then the same story repeats itself on a remoter plane: the government has again to fix the prices of the factors of production necessary for the production of those factors of production which are needed for the production of milk. Thus the government has to go further and further, fixing the prices of all the factors of production—both human (labour) and material—and forcing every entrepreneur and every worker to continue work at these prices and wages. No branch of production can be omitted from this all-round fixing of prices and wages and this general order to continue production. If some branches of production were left free, the result would be a shifting of capital and labour to them and a corresponding fall of the supply of the goods whose prices the government had fixed. However, it is precisely these goods which the government considers as especially important for the satisfaction of the needs of the masses.

  But when this state of all-round control of business is achieved, the market economy has been replaced by a system of planned economy, by socialism. Of course, this is not the socialism of immediate state management of every plant by the government as in Russia, but the socialism of the German or Nazi pattern.

  Many people were fascinated by the alleged success of German price control. They said: You have only to be as brutal and ruthless as the Nazis and you will succeed in controlling prices. What these people, eager to fight Nazism by adopting its methods, did not see was that the Nazis did not enforce price control within a market society, but they established a full socialist system, a totalitarian commonwealth.

  Price control is contrary to purpose if it is limited to some commodities only. It cannot work satisfactorily within a market economy. If the government does not draw from this failure the conclusion that it must abandon all attempts to control prices, it must go further and further until it substitutes socialist all-round planning for the market economy.

  Production can either be directed by the prices fixed on the market by the buying and by the abstention from buying on the part of the public. Or it can be directed by the government’s central board of production management. There is no third solution available. There is no third social system feasible which would be neither market economy nor socialism. Government control of only a part of prices must result in a state of affairs which—without any exception—everybody considers as absurd and contrary to purpose. Its inevitable result is chaos and social unrest.

  It is this that the economists have in mind in referring to economic law and asserting that interventionism is contrary to economic law.

  In the market economy the consumers are supreme. Their buying and their abstention from buying ultimately determine what the entrepreneurs produce and in what quantity and quality. It determines directly the prices of the consumers’ goods and indirectly the prices of all producers’ goods, viz., labour and material factors of production. It determines the emergence of profits and losses and the formation of the rate of interest. It determines every individual’s income. The focal point of the market economy is the market, i.e., the process of the formation of commodity prices, wage rates and interest rates and their derivatives, profits and losses. It makes all men in their capacity as producers responsible to the consumers. This dependence is direct with entrepreneurs, capitalists, farmers and professional men, and indirect with people working for salaries and wages. The market adjusts the efforts of all those engaged in supplying the needs of the consumers to the wishes of those for whom they produce, the consumers. It subjects production to consumption.

  The market is a democracy in which every penny gives a right to vote. It is true that the various individuals have not the same power to vote. The richer man casts more ballots than the poorer fellow. But to be rich and to earn a higher income is, in the market economy, already the outcome of a previous election. The only means to acquire wealth and to preserve it, in a market economy not adulterated by government-made privileges and restrictions, is to serve the consumers in the best and cheapest way. Capitalists and landowners who fail in this regard suffer losses. If they do not change their procedure, they lose their wealth and become poor. It is consumers who make poor people rich and rich people poor. It is the consumers who fix the wages of a movie star and an opera singer at a higher level than those of a welder or an accountant.

  Every individual is free to disagree with the outcome of an election campaign or of the market process. But in a democracy he has no other means to alter things than persuasion. If a man were to say: “I do not like the mayor elected by majority vote; therefore I ask the government to replace him by the man I prefer,” one would hardly call him a democrat. But if the same claims are raised with regard to the market, most people are too dull to discover the dictatorial aspirations involved.

  The consumers have made their choices and determined the income of the shoe manufacturer, the movie star and the welder. Who is Professor X to arrogate to himself the privilege of overthrowing their decision? If he were not a potential dictator, he would not ask the government to interfere. He would try to persuade his fellow-citizens to increase their demand for the products of the welders and to reduce their demand for shoes and pictures.

  The consumers are not prepared to pay for cotton prices which would render the marginal farms, i.e., those producing under the least favourable conditions, profitable. This is very unfortunate indeed for the farmers concerned; they must discontinue growing cotton and try to integrate themselves in another way into the whole of production.

  But what shall we think of the statesman who interferes by compulsion in order to raise the price of cotton above the level it would reach on the free market? What the interventionist aims at is the substitution of police pressure for the choice of the consumers. All this talk: the state should do this or that, ultimately means: the police should force consumers to behave otherwise than they would behave spontaneously. In such proposals as: let us raise farm prices, let us raise wage rates, let us lower profits, let us curtail the salaries of executives, the us ultimately refers to the police. Yet the authors of these projects protest that they are planning for freedom and industrial democracy.

  In most non-socialist countries the labour unions are granted special rights. They are permitted to prevent non-members from working. They are allowed to call a strike and, when on strike, are virtually free to employ violence against all those who are prepared to continue working, viz., the strike-breakers. This system assigns an unlimited privilege to those engaged in vital branches of industry. Those workers whose strike cuts off the supply of water, light, food and other necessities are in a position to obtain all they want at the expense of the rest of the population. It is true that in the United States their unions have up to now exercised some moderation in taking advantage of this opportunity. Other American unions and many European unions have been less cautious. They are intent upon enforcing wage increases without bothering about the disaster inevitably resulting.

  The interventionists are not shrewd enough to realize that labour union pressure and compulsion are absolutely incompatible with any system of social organization. The union problem has no reference whatsoever to the right of citizens to associate with one another in assemblies and associations; no democratic country denies its citizens this right. Neither does anybody dispute a man’s right to stop work and to go on strike. The only question is whether or not the unions should be granted the privilege of resorting with impunity to violence. This privilege is no less incompatible with socialism than with capitalism. No social co-operation under the division of labour is possible when some people or unions of people are granted the r ight to prevent by violence and the threat of violence other people from working. When enforced by violence, a strike in vital branches of production or a general strike are tantamount to a revolutionary destruction of society.

  A government abdicates if it tolerates any non-governmental agency’s use of violence. If the government forsakes its monopoly of coercion and compulsion, anarchic conditions result. If it were true that a democratic system of government is unfit to protect unconditionally every individual’s right to work in defiance of the orders of a union, democracy would be doomed. Then dictatorship would be the only means to preserve the division of labour and to avoid anarchy. What generated dictatorship in Russia and Germany was precisely the fact that the mentality of these nations made suppression of union violence unfeasible under democratic conditions. The dictators abolished strikes and thus broke the spine of labour unionism. There is no question of strikes in the Soviet empire.

  It is illusory to believe that arbitration of labour disputes could bring the unions into the framework of the market economy and make their functioning compatible with the preservation of domestic peace. Judicial settlement of controversies is feasible if there is a set of rules available, according to which individual cases can be judged. But if such a code is valid and its provisions are applied to the determination of the height of wage rates, it is no longer the market which fixes them, but the code and those who legislate with regard to it. Then the government is supreme and no longer the consumers buying and selling on the market. If no such code exists, a standard according to which a controversy between employers and employees could be decided is lacking. It is vain to speak of “fair” wages in the absence of such a code. The notion of fairness is nonsensical if not related to an established standard. In practice, if the employers do not yield to the threats of the unions, arbitration is tantamount to the determination of wage rates by the government-appointed arbitrator. Peremptory authoritarian decision is substituted for the market price. The issue is always the same: the government or the market. There is no third solution.

  Metaphors are often very useful in elucidating complicated problems and in making them comprehensible to less intelligent minds. But they become misleading and result in nonsense if people forget that every comparison is imperfect. It is silly to take metaphorical idioms literally and to deduce from their interpretation features of the object one wished to make more easily understandable by their use. There is no harm in the economists’ description of the operation of the market as automatic and in their custom of speaking of the anonymous forces operating on the market. They could not anticipate that anybody would be so stupid as to take these metaphors literally.

  No “automatic” and “anonymous” forces actuate the “mechanism” of the market. The only factors directing the market and determining prices are purposive acts of men. There is no automatism; there are men consciously aiming at ends chosen and deliberately resorting to definite means for the attainment of these ends. There are no mysterious mechanical forces; there is only the will of every individual to satisfy his demand for various goods. There is no anonymity; there are you and I and Bill and Joe and all the rest. And each of us is engaged both in production and consumption. Each contributes his share to the determination of prices.

  The dilemma is not between automatic forces and planned action. It is between the democratic process of the market, in which every individual has his share, and the exclusive rule of a dictatorial body. Whatever people do in the market economy, is the execution of their own plans. In this sense every human action means planning. What those calling themselves planners advocate is not the substitution of planned action for letting things go. It is the substitution of the planner’s own plan for the plans of his fellow-men. The planner is a potential dictator who wants to deprive all other people of the power to plan and act according to their own plans. He aims at one thing only: the exclusive absolute pre-eminence of his own plan.

  It is no less erroneous to declare that a government that is not socialistic has no plan. Whatever a government does is the execution of a plan, i.e., of a design. One may disagree with such a plan. But one must not say that it is not a plan at all. Professor Wesley C. Mitchell maintained that the British liberal government “planned to have no plan.”56 However, the British government in the liberal age certainly had a definite plan. Its plan was private ownership of the means of production, free initiative and market economy. Great Britain was very prosperous indeed under this plan which according to Professor Mitchell is “no plan.”

  The planners pretend that their plans are scientific and that there cannot be disagreement with regard to them among well-intentioned and decent people. However, there is no such thing as a scientific ought. Science is competent to establish what is. It can never dictate what ought to be and what ends people should aim at. It is a fact that men disagree in their value judgments. It is insolent to arrogate to oneself the right to overrule the plans of other people and to force them to submit to the plan of the planner. Whose plan should be executed? The plan of the CIO or those of any other group? The plan of Trotsky or that of Stalin? The plan of Hitler or that of Strasser?

  When people were committed to the idea that in the field of religion only one plan must be adopted, bloody wars resulted. With the acknowledgment of the principle of religious freedom these wars ceased. The market economy safeguards peaceful economic co-operation because it does not use force upon the economic plans of the citizens. If one master plan is to be substituted for the plans of each citizen, endless fighting must emerge. Those who disagree with the dictator’s plan have no other means to carry on than to defeat the despot by force of arms.

  It is an illusion to believe that a system of planned socialism could be operated according to democratic methods of government. Democracy is inextricably linked with capitalism. It cannot exist where there is planning. Let us refer to the words of the most eminent of the contemporary advocates of socialism. Professor Harold Laski declared that the attainment of power by the British Labour Party in the normal parliamentary fashion must result in a radical transformation of parliamentary government. A socialist administration needs “guarantees” that its work of transformation would not be “disrupted” by repeal in event of its defeat at the polls. Therefore the suspension of the Constitution is “inevitable.”57 How pleased would Charles I and George III have been if they had known the books of Professor Laski!

  Sidney and Beatrice Webb (Lord and Lady Passfield) tell us that “in any corporate action a loyal unity of thought is so important that, if anything is to be achieved, public discussion must be suspended between the promulgation of the decision and the accomplishment of the task.” Whilst “the work is in progress” any expression of doubt, or even of fear that the plan will not be successful, is “an act of disloyalty, or even of treachery.”58 Now as the process of production never ceases and some work is always in progress and there is always something to be achieved, it follows that a socialist government must never concede any freedom of speech and the press. “A loyal unity of thought,” what a high-sounding circumlocution for the ideals of Philip II and the Inquisition! In this regard another eminent admirer of the Soviets, Mr. T. G. Crowther, speaks without any reserve. He plainly declares that inquisition is “beneficial to science when it protects a rising class,”59 i.e., when Mr. Crowther’s friends resort to it. Hundreds of similar dicta could be quoted.

  In the Victorian age, when John Stuart Mill wrote his essay On Liberty, such views as those held by Professor Laski, Mr. and Mrs. Webb and Mr. Crowther were called reactionary. Today they are called “progressive” and “liberal.” On the other hand people who oppose the suspension of parliamentary government and of the freedom of speech and the press and the establishment of inquisition are scorned as “reactionaries,” as “economic royalists” and as “Fascists.”

  Those interventionists who consider interventionism as a method of bringing about full socialism step by step are at least consistent. If the measures adopted fail to achieve the beneficial results expected and end in disaster, they ask for more and more government interference until the government has taken over the direction of all economic activities. But those interventionists who look at interventionism as a means of improving capitalism and thereby preserving it are utterly confused.

  In the eyes of these people all the undesired and undesirable effects of government interference with business are caused by capitalism. The very fact that a governmental measure has brought about a state of affairs which they dislike is for them a justification of further measures. They fail, for instance, to realize that the role monopolistic schemes play in our time is the effect of government interference such as tariffs and patents. They advocate government action for the prevention of monopoly. One could hardly imagine a more unrealistic idea. For the governments whom they ask to fight monopoly are the same governments who are devoted to the principle of monopoly. Thus, the American New Deal Government embarked upon a thorough-going monopolistic organization of every branch of American business, by the NRA, and aimed at organizing American farming as a vast monopolistic scheme, restricting farm output for the sake of substituting monopoly prices for the lower market prices. It was a party to various international commodity control agreements the undisguised aim of which was to establish international monopolies of various commodities. The same is true of all other governments. The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics was also a party to some of these intergovernmental monopolistic conventions.60 Its repugnance for collaboration with the capitalistic countries was not so great as to cause it to miss any opportunity for fostering monopoly.

  The programme of this self-contradictory interventionism is dictatorship, supposedly to make people free. But the liberty its supporters advocate is liberty to do the “right” things, i.e., the things they themselves want to be done. They are not only ignorant of the economic problem involved. They lack the faculty of logical thinking.

  The most absurd justification of interventionism is provided by those who look upon the conflict between capitalism and socialism as if it were a contest over the distribution of income. Why should not the propertied classes be more compliant? Why should they not accord to the poor workers a part of their ample revenues? Why should they oppose the government’s design to raise the share of the underprivileged by decreeing minimum wage rates and maximum prices and by cutting profits and interest rates down to a “fairer” level? Pliability in such matters, they say, would take the wind from the sails of the radical revolutionaries and preserve capitalism. The worst enemies of capitalism, they say, are those intransigent doctrinaires whose excessive advocacy of economic freedom, of laisser-faire and Manchesterism renders vain all attempts to come to a compromise with the claims of labour. These adamant reactionaries are alone responsible for the bitterness of contemporary party strife and the implacable hatred it generates. What is needed is the substitution of a constructive programme for the purely negative attitude of the economic royalists. And, of course, “constructive” is in the eyes of these people only interventionism.

  However, this mode of reasoning is entirely vicious. It takes for granted that the various measures of government interference with business will attain those beneficial results which their advocates expect from them. It blithely disregards all that economics says about their futility in attaining the ends sought, and their unavoidable and undesirable consequences. The question is not whether minimum wage rates are fair or unfair, but whether or not they bring about unemployment of a part of those eager to work. By calling these measures just, the interventionist does not refute the objections raised against their expediency by the economists. He merely displays ignorance of the question at issue.

  The conflict between capitalism and socialism is not a contest between two groups of claimants concerning the size of the portions to be allotted to each of them out of a definite supply of goods. It is a dispute concerning what system of social organization best serves human welfare. Those fighting socialism do not reject socialism because they envy the workers the benefits they (the workers) could allegedly derive from the socialist mode of production. They fight socialism precisely because they are convinced that it would harm the masses in reducing them to the status of poor serfs entirely at the mercy of irresponsible dictators.

  In this conflict of opinions everybody must make up his mind and take a definite stand. Everybody must side either with the advocates of economic freedom or with those of totalitarian socialism. One cannot evade this dilemma by adopting an allegedly middle-of-the-road position, namely interventionism. For interventionism is neither a middle way nor a compromise between capitalism and socialism. It is a third system. It is a system the absurdity and futility of which is agreed upon not only by all economists but even by the Marxians.

  There is no such thing as an “excessive” advocacy of economic freedom. On the one hand, production can be directed by the efforts of each individual to adjust his conduct so as to fill the most urgent wants of the consumers in the most appropriate way. This is the market economy. On the other hand, production can be directed by authoritarian decree. If these decrees concern only some isolated items of the economic structure, they fail to attain the ends sought, and their own advocates do not like their outcome. If they come up to all-round regimentation, they mean totalitarian socialism.

  Men must choose between the market economy and socialism. The state can preserve the market economy in protecting life, health and private property against violent or fraudulent aggression; or it can itself control the conduct of all production activities. Some agency must determine what should be produced. If it is not the consumers by means of demand and supply on the market, it must be the government by compulsion.

  3

  Socialism and Communism

  In the terminology of Marx and Engels the words communism and socialism are synonymous. They are alternately applied without any distinction between them. The same was true for the practice of all Marxian groups and sects until 1917. The political parties of Marxism which considered the Communist Manifesto as the unalterable gospel of their doctrine called themselves socialist parties. The most influential and most numerous of these parties, the German party, adopted the name Social Democratic Party. In Italy, in France and in all other countries in which Marxian parties already played a role in political life before 1917, the term socialist likewise superseded the term communist. No Marxian ever ventured, before 1917, to distinguish between communism and socialism.

  In 1875, in his Criticism of the Gotha Programme of the German Social Democratic Party, Marx distinguished between a lower (earlier) and a higher (later) phase of the future communist society. But he did not reserve the name of communism to the higher phase, and did not call the lower phase socialism as differentiated from communism.

  One of the fundamental dogmas of Marx is that socialism is bound to come “with the inexorability of a law of nature.” Capitalist production begets its own negation and establishes the socialist system of public ownership of the means of production. This process “executes itself through the operation of the inherent laws of capitalist production.”61 It is independent of the wills of people.62 It is impossible for men to accelerate it, to delay it or to hinder it. For “no social system ever disappears before all the productive forces are developed for the development of which it is broad enough, and new higher methods of production never appear before the material conditions of their existence have been hatched out in the womb of previous society.”63

  This doctrine is, of course, irreconcilable with Marx’s own political activities and with the teachings he advanced for the justification of these activities. Marx tried to organize a political party which by means of revolution and civil war should accomplish the transition from capitalism to socialism. The characteristic feature of their parties was, in the eyes of Marx and all Marxian doctrinaires, that they were revolutionary parties invariably committed to the idea of violent action. Their aim was to rise in rebellion, to establish the dictatorship of the proletarians and to exterminate mercilessly all bourgeois. The deeds of the Paris Communards in 1871 were considered as the perfect model of such a civil war. The Paris revolt, of course, had lamentably failed. But later uprisings were expected to succeed.64

  However, the tactics applied by the Marxian parties in various European countries were irreconcilably opposed to each of these two contradictory varieties of the teachings of Karl Marx. They did not place confidence in the inevitability of the coming of socialism. Neither did they trust in the success of a revolutionary upheaval. They adopted the methods of parliamentary action. They solicited votes in election campaigns and sent their delegates into the parliaments. They “degenerated” into democratic parties. In the parliaments they behaved like other parties of the opposition. In some countries they entered into temporary alliances with other parties, and occasionally socialist members sat in the cabinets. Later, after the end of the first World War, the socialist parties became paramount in many parliaments. In some countries they ruled exclusively, in others in close co-operation with “bourgeois” parties.

  It is true that these domesticated socialists before 1917 never abandoned lip service to the rigid principles of orthodox Marxism. They repeated again and again that the coming of socialism is unavoidable. They emphasized the inherent revolutionary character of their parties. Nothing could arouse their anger more than when somebody dared to dispute their adamant revolutionary spirit. However, in fact they were parliamentary parties like all other parties.

  From a correct Marxian point of view, as expressed in the later writings of Marx and Engels (but not yet in the Communist Manifesto), all measures designed to restrain, to regulate and to improve capitalism were simply “petty-bourgeois” nonsense stemming from an ignorance of the immanent laws of capitalist evolution. True socialists should not place any obstacles in the way of capitalist evolution. For only the full maturity of capitalism could bring about socialism. It is not only vain, but harmful to the interests of the proletarians to resort to such measures. Even labour-unionism is not an adequate means for the improvement of the conditions of the workers.65 Marx did not believe that interventionism could benefit the masses. He violently rejected the idea that such measures as minimum wage rates, price ceilings, restriction of interest rates, social security and so on are preliminary steps in bringing about socialism. He aimed at the radical abolition of the wages system which can be accomplished only by communism in its higher phase. He would have sarcastically ridiculed the idea of abolishing the “commodity character” of labour within the frame of a capitalist society by the enactment of a law.

  But the socialist parties as they operated in the European countries were virtually no less committed to interventionism than the Sozialpolitik of the Kaiser’s Germany and the American New Deal. It was against this policy that George Sorel and Syndicalism directed their attacks. Sorel, a timid intellectual of a bourgeois background, deprecated the “degeneration” of the socialist parties for which he blamed their penetration by bourgeois intellectuals. He wanted to see the spirit of ruthless aggressiveness, inherent in the masses, revived and freed from the guardianship of intellectual cowards. For Sorel nothing counted but riots. He advocated action directe, i.e., sabotage and the general strike, as initiatory steps towards the final great revolution.

  Sorel had success mostly among snobbish and idle intellectuals and no less snobbish and idle heirs of wealthy entrepreneurs. He did not perceptibly move the masses. For the Marxian parties in Western and Central Europe his passionate criticism was hardly more than a nuisance. His historical importance consisted mainly in the role his ideas played in the evolution of Russian Bolshevism and Italian Fascism.

  In order to understand the mentality of the Bolshevists we must again refer to the dogmas of Karl Marx. Marx was fully convinced that capitalism is a stage of economic history which is not limited to a few advanced countries only. Capitalism has the tendency to convert all parts of the world into capitalist countries. The bourgeoisie forces all nations to become capitalist nations. When the final hour of capitalism sounds, the whole world will be uniformly in the stage of mature capitalism, ripe for the transition to socialism. Socialism will emerge at the same time in all parts of the world.

  Marx erred on this point no less than in all his other statements. Today even the Marxians cannot and do not deny that there still prevail enormous differences in the development of capitalism in various countries. They realize that there are many countries which, from the point of view of the Marxian interpretation of history, must be described as precapitalistic. In these countries the bourgeoisie has not yet attained a ruling position and has not yet set the historical stage of capitalism which is the necessary prerequisite of the appearance of socialism. These countries therefore must first accomplish their “bourgeois revolution” and must go through all phases of capitalism before there can be any question of transforming them into socialist countries. The only policy which Marxians could adopt in such countries would be to support the bourgeois unconditionally, first in their endeavours to seize power and then in their capitalistic ventures. A Marxian party could for a very long time have no other task than to be subservient to bourgeois liberalism. This alone is the mission which historical materialism, if consistently applied, could assign to Russian Marxians. They would be forced to wait quietly until capitalism should have made their nation ripe for socialism.

  But the Russian Marxians did not want to wait. They resorted to a new modification of Marxism according to which it was possible for a nation to skip one of the stages of historical evolution. They shut their eyes to the fact that this new doctrine was not a modification of Marxism, but rather the denial of the last remnant which was left of it. It was an undisguised return to the pre-Marxian and anti-Marxian socialist teachings according to which men are free to adopt socialism at any time if they consider it as a system more beneficial to the commonweal than capitalism. It utterly exploded all the mysticism inwrought into dialectical materialism and in the alleged Marxian discovery of the inexorable laws of mankind’s economic evolution.

  Having emancipated themselves from Marxian determinism, the Russian Marxians were free to discuss the most appropriate tactics for the realization of socialism in their country. They were no longer bothered with economic problems. They had no longer to investigate whether or not the time had come. They had only one task to accomplish, the seizure of the reins of government.

  One group maintained that lasting success could be expected only if the support of a sufficient number of the people, though not necessarily of the majority, could be won. Another group did not favour such a time-consuming procedure. They suggested a bold stroke. A small group of fanatics should be organized as the vanguard of the revolution. Strict discipline and unconditional obedience to the chief should make these professional revolutionists fit for a sudden attack. They should supplant the Czarist government and then rule the country according to the traditional methods of the Czar’s police.

  The terms used to signify these two groups—Bolshevists (majority) for the latter and Mensheviks (minority) for the former—refer to a vote taken in 1903 at a meeting held for the discussion of these tactical issues. The only difference dividing the two groups from one another was this matter of tactical methods. They both agreed with regard to the ultimate end: socialism.

  Both sects tried to justify their respective points of view by quoting passages from Marx’s and Engels’s writings. This is, of course, the Marxian custom. And each sect was in a position to discover in these sacred books dicta confirming its own stand.

  Lenin, the Bolshevist chief, knew his countrymen much better than his adversaries and their leader, Plekhanov, did. He did not, like Plekhanov, make the mistake of applying to Russians the standards of the Western nations. He remembered how foreign women had twice simply usurped supreme power and quietly ruled for a life-time. He was aware of the fact that the terrorist methods of the Czar’s secret police were successful and he was confident that he could considerably improve on these methods. He was a ruthless dictator and he knew that the Russians lacked the courage to resist oppression. Like Cromwell, Robespierre and Napoleon, he was an ambitious usurper and fully trusted the absence of revolutionary spirit in the immense majority. The autocracy of the Romanovs was doomed because the unfortunate Nicholas II was a weakling. The socialist lawyer Kerensky failed because he was committed to the principle of parliamentary government. Lenin succeeded because he never aimed at anything else than his own dictatorship. And the Russians yearned for a dictator, for a successor of the Terrible Ivan.

  The rule of Nicholas II was not ended by a real revolutionary upheaval. It collapsed on the battlefields. Anarchy resulted which Kerensky could not master. A skirmish in the streets of Saint Petersburg removed Kerensky. A short time later Lenin had his eighteenth Brumaire. In spite of all the terror practised by the Bolshevists the Constituent Assembly, elected by universal franchise for men and women, had only about twenty per cent Bolshevist members. Lenin dispelled by force of arms the Constituent Assembly. The short-lived “liberal” interlude was liquidated. Russia passed from the hands of the inept Romanovs into those of a real autocrat.

  Lenin did not content himself with the conquest of Russia. He was fully convinced that he was destined to bring the bliss of socialism to all nations, not only to Russia. The official name which he chose for his government—Union of the Soviet Socialist Republics—does not contain any reference to Russia. It was designed as the nucleus of a world government. It was implied that all foreign comrades by rights owed allegiance to this government and that all foreign bourgeois who dared to resist were guilty of high treason and deserved capital punishment. Lenin did not doubt in the least that all Western countries were on the eve of the great final revolution. He daily expected its outbreak.

  There was in the opinion of Lenin only one group in Europe that might—although without any prospect of success—try to prevent the revolutionary upheaval: the depraved members of the intelligentsia who had usurped the leadership of the socialist parties. Lenin had long hated these men for their addiction to parliamentary procedure and their reluctance to endorse his dictatorial aspirations. He raged against them because he held them responsible for the fact that the socialist parties had supported the war effort of their countries. Already in his Swiss exile, which ended in 1917, Lenin began to split the European socialist parties. Now he set up a new, a Third International which he controlled in the same dictatorial manner in which he directed the Russian Bolshevists. For this new party Lenin chose the name Communist Party. The communists were to fight unto death the various European socialist parties, these “social traitors,” and they were to arrange the immediate liquidation of the bourgeoisie and seizure of power by the armed workers. Lenin did not differentiate between socialism and communism as social systems. The goal which he aimed at was not called communism as opposed to socialism. The official name of the Soviet government is Union of the Socialist (not of the Communist) Soviet Republics. In this regard he did not want to alter the traditional terminology which considered the terms as synonymous. He merely called his partisans, the only sincere and consistent supporters of the revolutionary principles of orthodox Marxism, communists and their tactical methods communism because he wanted to distinguish them from the “treacherous hirelings of the capitalist exploiters,” the wicked Social Democratic leaders like Kautsky and Albert Thomas. These traitors, he emphasized, were anxious to preserve capitalism. They were not true socialists. The only genuine Marxians were those who rejected the name of socialists, irremediably fallen into disrepute.

  Thus the distinction between communists and socialists came into being. Those Marxians who did not surrender to the dictator in Moscow called themselves social democrats or, in short, socialists. What characterized them was the belief that the most appropriate method for the realization of their plans to establish socialism, the final goal common to them as well as to the communists, was to win the support of the majority of their fellow-citizens. They abandoned the revolutionary slogans and tried to adopt democratic methods for the seizure of power. They did not bother about the problem whether or not a socialist regime is compatible with democracy. But for the attainment of socialism they were resolved to apply democratic procedures.

  The communists, on the other hand, were in the early years of the Third International firmly committed to the principle of revolution and civil war. They were loyal only to their Russian chief. They expelled from their ranks everybody who was suspected of feeling himself bound by any of his country’s laws. They plotted unceasingly and squandered blood in unsuccessful riots.

  Lenin could not understand why the communists failed everywhere outside Russia. He did not expect much from the American workers. In the United States, the communists agreed, the workers lacked the revolutionary spirit because they were spoiled by well-being and steeped in the vice of money-making. But Lenin did not doubt that the European masses were class-conscious and therefore fully committed to revolutionary ideas. The only reason why the revolution had not been realized was in his opinion the inadequacy and cowardice of the communist officials. Again and again he deposed his vicars and appointed new men. But he did not succeed any better.

  In the Anglo-Saxon and in the Latin-American countries the socialist voters place confidence in democratic methods. Here the number of people who seriously aim at a communist revolution is very small. Most of those who publicly proclaim their adherence to the principles of communism would feel extremely unhappy if the revolution were to arise and expose their lives and their property to danger. If the Russian armies were to march into their countries or if domestic communists were to seize power without engaging them in the fight, they would probably rejoice in the hope of being rewarded for their Marxian orthodoxy. But they themselves do not long for revolutionary laurels.

  It is a fact that in all these thirty years of passionate pro-Soviet agitation not a single country outside Russia went communist of its citizens’ own accord. Eastern Europe turned to communism only when the diplomatic arrangements of international power politics had converted it into a sphere of exclusive Russian influence and hegemony. It is unlikely that Western Germany, France, Italy and Spain will espouse communism if the United States and Great Britain do not adopt a policy of absolute diplomatic “désintéressement.” What gives strength to the communist movement in these and in some other countries is the belief that Russia is driven by an unflinching “dynamism” while the Anglo-Saxon powers are indifferent and not very much interested in their fate.

  Marx and the Marxians erred lamentably when they assumed that the masses long for a revolutionary overthrow of the “bourgeois” order of society. The militant communists are to be found only in the ranks of those who make a living from their communism or expect that a revolution would further their personal ambitions. The subversive activities of these professional plotters are dangerous precisely on account of the naivety of those who are merely flirting with the revolutionary idea. Those confused and misguided sympathizers who call themselves “liberals” and whom the communists call “useful innocents,” the fellow-travellers and even the majority of the officially registered party members, would be terribly frightened if they were to discover one day that their chiefs mean business when preaching sedition. But then it may be too late to avert disaster.

  For the time being, the ominous peril of the communist parties in the West lies in their stand on foreign affairs. The distinctive mark of all present-day communist parties is their devotion to the aggressive foreign policy of the Soviets. Whenever they must choose between Russia and their own country, they do not hesitate to prefer Russia. Their principle is: Right or wrong, my Russia. They strictly obey all orders issued from Moscow. When Russia was an ally of Hitler, the French communists sabotaged their own country’s war effort and the American communists passionately opposed President Roosevelt’s plans to aid England and France in their struggle against the Nazis. The communists all over the world branded all those who defended themselves against the German invaders as “imperialist warmongers.” But as soon as Hitler attacked Russia, the imperialist war of the capitalists changed over-night into a just war of defence. Whenever Stalin conquers one more country, the communists justify this aggression as an act of self-defence against “Fascists.”

  In their blind worship of everything that is Russian, the communists of Western Europe and the United States by far surpass the worst excesses ever committed by chauvinists. They wax rapturous about Russian movies, Rus sian music and the alleged discoveries of Russian science. They speak in ecstatic words about the economic achievements of the Soviets. They ascribe the victory of the United Nations to the deeds of the Russian armed forces. Russia, they contend, has saved the world from the Fascist menace. Russia is the only free country while all other nations are subject to the dictatorship of the capitalists. The Russians alone are happy and enjoy the bliss of living a full life; in the capitalist countries the immense majority are suffering from frustration and unfulfilled desires. Just as the pious Muslim yearns for a pilgrimage to the Prophet’s tomb at Mecca, so the communist intellectual deems a pilgrimage to the holy shrines of Moscow as the event of his life.

  However, the distinction in the use of the terms communists and socialists did not affect the meaning of the terms communism and socialism as applied to the final goal of the policies common to them both. It was only in 1928 that the programme of the Communist International, adopted by the sixth congress in Moscow,66 began to differentiate between communism and socialism (and not merely between communists and socialists).

  According to this new doctrine there is, in the economic evolution of mankind, between the historical stage of capitalism and that of communism, a third stage, namely that of socialism. Socialism is a social system based on public control of the means of production and full management of all processes of production and distribution by a planning central authority. In this regard it is equal to communism. But it differs from communism in so far as there is no equality of the portions allotted to each individual for his own consumption. There are still wages paid to the comrades and these wage rates are graduated according to economic expediency as far as the central authority deems it necessary for securing the greatest possible output of products. What Stalin calls socialism corresponds by and large to Marx’s concept of the “early phase” of communism. Stalin reserves the term communism exclusively for what Marx called the “higher phase” of communism. Socialism, in the sense in which Stalin has lately used the term, is moving towards communism, but is in itself not yet communism. Socialism will turn into communism as soon as the increase in wealth to be expected from the operation of the socialist methods of production has raised the lower standard of living of the Russian masses to the higher standard which the distinguished holders of important offices enjoy in present-day Russia.67

  The apologetical character of this new terminological practice is obvious. Stalin finds it necessary to explain to the vast majority of his subjects why their standard of living is extremely low, much lower than that of the masses in the capitalist countries and even lower than that of the Russian proletarians in the days of Czarist rule. He wants to justify the fact that salaries and wages are unequal, that a small group of Soviet officials enjoys all the luxuries modern technique can provide, that a second group, more numerous than the first one, but less numerous than the middle class in imperial Russia, lives in “bourgeois” style, while the masses, ragged and barefooted, subsist in congested slums and are poorly fed. He can no longer blame capitalism for this state of affairs. Thus he was compelled to resort to a new ideological makeshift.

  Stalin’s problem was the more burning as the Russian communists in the early days of their rule had passionately proclaimed income equality as a principle to be enforced from the first instant of the proletarians’ seizure of power. Moreover, in the capitalist countries the most powerful demagogic trick applied by the Russia-sponsored communist parties is to excite the envy of those with lower incomes against all those with higher incomes. The main argument advanced by the communists for the support of their thesis that Hitler’s National Socialism was not genuine socialism, but, on the contrary, the worst variety of capitalism, was that there was in Nazi Germany inequality in the standard of living.

  Stalin’s new distinction between socialism and communism is in open contradiction to the policy of Lenin, and no less to the tenets of the propaganda of the communist parties outside the Russian frontiers. But such contradictions do not matter in the realm of the Soviets. The word of the dictator is the ultimate decision, and nobody is so foolhardy as to venture opposition.

  It is important to realize that Stalin’s semantical innovation affects merely the terms communism and socialism. He did not alter the meaning of the terms socialist and communist. The Bolshevist party is just as before called communist. The Russophile parties beyond the borders of the Soviet Union call themselves communist parties and are violently fighting the socialist parties which, in their eyes, are simply social traitors. But the official name of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics remains unchanged.

  4

  Russia’s Aggressiveness

  The German, Italian and Japanese nationalists justified their aggressive policies by their lack of Lebensraum. Their countries are comparatively over populated. They are poorly endowed by nature and depend on the import of foodstuffs and raw materials from abroad. They must export manufactures to pay for these badly needed imports. But the protectionist policies espoused by the countries producing a surplus of foodstuffs and raw materials close their frontiers to import of manufactures. The world is manifestly tending towards a state of full economic autarky of each nation. In such a world, what fate is in store for those nations who can neither feed nor clothe their citizens out of domestic resources?

  The Lebensraum doctrine of the self-styled “have-not” peoples emphasizes that there are in America and in Australia millions of acres of unused land much more fertile than the barren soil which the farmers of the have-not nations are tilling. Natural conditions for mining and manufacturing are likewise much more propitious than in the countries of the have-nots. But the German, Italian and Japanese peasants and workers are barred from access to these areas favoured by nature. The immigration laws of the comparatively underpopulated countries prevent their migration. These laws raise the marginal productivity of labour and thereby wage rates in the underpopulated countries and lower them in the overpopulated countries. The high standard of living in the United States and the British Dominions is paid for by a lowering of the standard of living in the congested countries of Europe and Asia.

  The true aggressors, say these German, Italian and Japanese nationalists, are those nations who by means of trade and migration barriers have arrogated to themselves the lion’s share of the natural riches of the earth. Has not the Pope68 himself declared that the root causes of the World Wars are “that cold and calculating egoism which tends to hoard the economic resources and materials destined for the use of all to such an extent that the nations less favoured by nature are not permitted access to them”?69 The war that Hitler, Mussolini and Hirohito kindled was from this point of view a just war, for its only aim was to give to the have-nots what, by virtue of natural and divine right, belongs to them.

  The Russians cannot venture to justify their aggressive policy by such arguments. Russia is a comparatively underpopulated country. Its soil is much better endowed by nature than that of any other nation. It offers the most advantageous conditions for the growing of all kinds of cereals, fruits, seeds and plants. Russia owns immense pastures and almost inexhaustible forests. It has the richest resources for the production of gold, silver, platinum, iron, copper, nickel, manganese and all other metals, and of oil. But for the despotism of the Czars and the lamentable inadequacy of the communist system, its population could long since have enjoyed the highest standard of living. It is certainly not lack of natural resources that pushes Russia towards conquest.

  Lenin’s aggressiveness was an outgrowth of his conviction that he was the leader of the final world revolution. He considered himself as the legitimate successor of the First International, destined to accomplish the task in which Marx and Engels had failed. The knell of capitalism had sounded, and no capitalist machinations could delay the expropriation of the expropriators any longer. What was needed was only the dictator of the new social order. Lenin was ready to take the burden upon his shoulders.

  Since the days of the Mongol invasions mankind has not had to face such an unflinching and thorough-going aspiration for unlimited world supremacy.In every country the Russian emissaries and the communist fifth columns were fanatically working for the “Anschluss” to Russia. But Lenin lacked the first four columns. Russia’s military forces were at that time contemptible. When they crossed the Russian borders, they were stopped by the Poles. They could not march further West. The great campaign for world conquest petered out.

  It was just idle talk to discuss the problems whether communism in one country only is possible or desirable. The communists had failed utterly outside the Russian frontiers. They were forced to stay at home.

  Stalin devoted all his energy to the organization of a standing army of a size the world had never seen before. But he was not more successful than Lenin and Trotsky had been. The Nazis easily defeated this army and occupied the most important part of Russia’s territory. Russia was saved by the British and, above all, by the American forces. American Lend-Lease enabled the Russians to follow on the heels of the Germans when the scarcity of equipment and the threatening American invasion forced them to withdraw from Russia. They could even occasionally defeat the rearguards of the retreating Nazis. They could conquer Berlin and Vienna when the American airplanes had smashed the German defences. When the Americans had crushed the Japanese, the Russians could quietly stab them in the back.

  Of course, the communists inside and outside of Russia and the fellow-travellers passionately contend that it was Russia that defeated the Nazis and liberated Europe. They pass over in silence the fact that the only reason why the Nazis could not capture Moscow, Leningrad and Stalingrad was their lack of munitions, airplanes and gasoline. It was the blockade that made it impossible for the Nazis to provide their armies with the equipment needed, and to construct in the occupied Russian territory a transport system that could ship this equipment to the far distant front line. The decisive battle of the war was the battle of the Atlantic. The great strategical events in the war against Germany were the conquest of Africa and Sicily and the victory in Normandy. Stalingrad was, when measured by the gigantic standards of this war, hardly more than a tactical success. In the struggle against the Italians and the Japanese, Russia’s share was nil.

  But the spoils of the victory go to Russia alone. While the other United Nations do not seek for territorial aggrandizement, the Russians are in full swing. They have annexed the three Baltic Republics, Bessarabia, Czechoslovakia’s province of Carpatho-Russia,70 a part of Finland, a great part of Poland and huge territories in the Far East. They claim the rest of Poland, Rumania, Hungary, Yugoslavia, Bulgaria, Korea and China as their exclusive sphere of influence. They are anxious to establish in these countries “friendly” governments, i.e. puppet governments. But for the opposition raised by the United States and Great Britain they would rule today in the whole of continental Europe, continental Asia and Northern Africa. Only the American and British garrisons in Germany bar the Russians’ way to the shores of the Atlantic.

  Today, no less than after the first World War, the real menace for the West does not lie in the military power of Russia. Great Britain could easily repel a Russian attack and it would be sheer lunacy for the Russians to undertake a war against the United States. Not the Russian armies, but the communist ideologies threaten the West. The Russians know it very well and place confidence not in their own army, but in their foreign partisans. They want to overthrow the democracies from within, not from without. Their main weapon is the pro-Russian machinations of their Fifth Columns. These are the crack divisions of Bolshevism.

  The communist writers and politicians inside and outside of Russia explain Russia’s aggressive policies as mere self-defence. It is, they say, not Russia that plans aggression but, on the contrary, the decaying capitalist democracies. Russia wants merely to defend its own independence. This is an old and well-tried method of justifying aggression. Louis XIV and Napoleon I, Wilhelm II and Hitler were the most peace-loving of all men. When they invaded foreign countries, they did so only in just self-defence. Russia was as much menaced by Esthonia or Latvia as Germany was by Luxemburg or Denmark.

  An outgrowth of this fable of self-defence is the legend of the cordon sanitaire. The political independence of the small neighbour countries of Russia, it is maintained, is merely a capitalist makeshift designed to prevent the European democracies from being infected with the germ of communism. Hence, it is concluded, these small nations have forfeited their right to independence. For Russia has the inalienable right to claim that its neighbours—and likewise its neighbours’ neighbours—should only be ruled by “friendly,” i.e., strictly communist, governments. What would happen to the world if all great powers were to make the same pretension?

  The truth is that it is not the governments of the democratic nations that aim at overthrowing the present Russian system. They do not foster pro-democratic fifth columns in Russia and they do not incite the Russian masses against their rulers. But the Russians are busy day and night fomenting unrest in every country.

  The very lame and hesitant intervention of the Allied Nations in the Russian Civil War was not a pro-capitalist and anti-communist venture. For the Allied Nations, involved in their struggle for life and death with the Germans, Lenin was at that time merely a tool of their deadly foes. Ludendorff had dispatched Lenin to Russia in order to overthrow the Kerensky regime and to bring about the defection of Russia. The Bolshevists fought by force of arms all those Russians who wanted to continue the alliance with France, Great Britain and the United States. From a military point of view it was impossible for the Western nations to stay neutral while their Russian allies were desperately defending themselves against the Bolshevists. For the Allied Nations the Eastern Front was at stake. The cause of the “White” generals was their own cause.

  As soon as the war against Germany came to an end in 1918, the Allies lost interest in Russian affairs. There was no longer any need for an Eastern Front. They did not care a whit about the internal problems of Russia. They longed for peace and were anxious to withdraw from the fighting. They were, of course, embarrassed because they did not know how to liquidate their venture with propriety. Their generals were ashamed of abandoning companions in arms who had fought to the best of their abilities in a common cause. To leave these men in the lurch was in their opinion nothing short of cowardice and desertion. Such considerations of military honour delayed for some time the withdrawal of the inconspicuous Allied detachments and the termination of deliveries to the Whites. When this was finally accomplished, the Allied statesmen felt relief. From then on they adopted a policy of strict neutrality with regard to Russian affairs.

  It was very unfortunate indeed that the Allied Nations had been willynilly entangled in the Russian Civil War. It would have been better if the military situation of 1917 and 1918 had not compelled them to interfere. But one must not overlook the fact that the abandonment of intervention in Russia was tantamount to the final failure of President Wilson’s policy. The United States had entered the war in order to make “the world safe for democracy.” The victory had crushed the Kaiser and substituted in Germany a republican government for the comparatively mild and limited imperial autocracy. On the other hand, it had resulted in Russia in establishing a dictatorship compared with which the despotism of the Czars could be called liberal. But the Allies were not eager to make Russia safe for democracy as they had tried to do with Germany. After all, the Kaiser’s Germany had parliaments, ministers responsible to the parliaments, trial by jury, freedom of thought, of religion and of the press not much more limited than in the West, and many other democratic institutions. But Soviet Russia was an unlimited despotism.

  The Americans, the French and the British failed to see things from this angle. But the anti-democratic forces in Germany, Italy, Poland, Hungary and the Balkans thought differently. As the nationalists of these countries interpreted it, the neutrality of the Allied Powers with regard to Russia was evidence of the fact that their concern for democracy had been a mere blind. The Allies, they argued, had fought Germany because they envied Germany’s economic prosperity and they spared the new Russian autocracy because they were not afraid of Russian economic power. Democracy, these nationalists concluded, was nothing else than a convenient catchword to delude gullible people. And they became frightened that the emotional appeal of this slogan would one day be used as a disguise for insidious assaults against their own independence.

  Since the abandonment of the intervention Russia had certainly no longer any reason to fear the great Western powers. Neither were the Soviets afraid of a Nazi aggression. The assertions to the contrary, very popular in Western Europe and in America, resulted from complete ignorance of German affairs. But the Russians knew Germany and the Nazis. They had read Mein Kampf. They learned from this book not only that Hitler coveted the Ukraine, but also that Hitler’s fundamental strategical idea was to embark upon the conquest of Russia only after having definitely and forever annihilated France. The Russians were fully convinced that Hitler’s expectation, as expressed in Mein Kampf, that Great Britain and the United States would keep out of this war and would quietly let France be destroyed, was vain. They were certain that such a new world war, in which they themselves planned to stay neutral, would result in a new German defeat. And this defeat, they argued, would make Germany—if not the whole of Europe— safe for Bolshevism. Guided by this opinion, Stalin already in the time of the Weimar Republic aided the then secret German rearmament. The German communists helped the Nazis as much as they could in their endeavours to undermine the Weimar regime. Finally Stalin entered in August 1939 into an open alliance with Hitler, in order to give him a free hand against the West.

  What Stalin—like all other people—did not anticipate was the overwhelming success of the German armies in 1940. Hitler attacked Russia in 1941 because he was fully convinced that not only France but also Great Britain was done for, and that the United States, menaced in the rear by Japan, would not be strong enough to interfere successfully with European affairs.

  The disintegration of the Hapsburg Empire in 1918 and the Nazi defeat in 1945 have opened the gates of Europe to Russia. Russia is today the only military power on the European continent. But why are the Russians so intent upon conquering and annexing? They certainly do not need the resources of these countries. Neither is Stalin driven by the idea that such conquests could increase his popularity with the Russian masses. His subjects are indifferent to military glory.

  It is not the masses whom Stalin wants to placate by his aggressive policy, but the intellectuals. For their Marxian orthodoxy is at stake, the very foundation of the Soviet might.

  These Russian intellectuals were narrow-minded enough to absorb modifications of the Marxian creed which were in fact an abandonment of the essential teachings of dialectical materialism, provided that these modifications flattered their Russian chauvinism. They swallowed the doctrine that their holy Russia could skip one of the inextricable stages of economic evolution as described by Marx. They prided themselves on being the vanguard of the proletariat and the world revolution who, by realizing socialism first in one country only, set up a glorious example for all other nations. But it is impossible to explain to them why the other nations do not finally catch up with Russia. In the writings of Marx and Engels, which one cannot keep out of their hands, they discover that the fathers of Marxism considered Great Britain and France and even Germany as the countries most advanced in civilization and in the evolution of capitalism. These students of the Marxian universities may be too dull to comprehend the philosophical and economic doctrines of the Marxian gospel. But they are not too dull to see that Marx considered those Western countries as much more advanced than Russia.

  Then some of these students of economic policies and statistics begin to suspect that the standard of living of the masses is much higher in the capitalist countries than in their own country. How can this be? Why are conditions much more propitious in the United States which—although foremost in capitalist production—is most backward in awakening class-consciousness in the proletarians?

  The inference from these facts seems inescapable. If the most advanced countries do not adopt communism and fare rather well under capitalism, if communism is limited to a country which Marx considered as backward and does not bring about riches for all, is not perhaps the correct interpretation that communism is a feature of backward countries and results in general poverty? Must not a Russian patriot be ashamed of the fact that his country is committed to this system?

  Such thoughts are very dangerous in a despotic country. Whoever dared to express them would be mercilessly liquidated by the G.P.U. But, even unspoken, they are on the tip of every intelligent man’s tongue. They trouble the sleep of the supreme officials and perhaps even that of the great dictator. He certainly has the power to crush every opponent. But considerations of expediency make it inadvisable to eradicate all somewhat judicious people and to run the country only with stupid blockheads.

  This is the real crisis of Russian Marxism. Every day that passes without bringing the world revolution aggravates it. The Soviets must conquer the world or else they are menaced in their own country by a defection of the intelligentsia. It is concern about the ideological state of Russia’s shrewdest minds that pushes Stalin’s Russia towards unflinching aggression.

  5

  Trotsky’s Heresy

  The dictatorial doctrine as taught by the Russian Bolshevists, the Italian Fascists and the German Nazis tacitly implies that there cannot arise any disagreement with regard to the question who shall be the dictator. The mystical forces directing the course of historical events designate the providential leader. All righteous people are bound to submit to the unfathomable decrees of history and to bend their knees before the throne of the man of destiny. Those who decline to do so are heretics, abject scoundrels who must be “liquidated.”

  In reality the dictatorial power is seized by that candidate who succeeds in exterminating in time all his rivals and their helpers. The dictator paves his way to supreme power by slaughtering all his competitors. He preserves his eminent position by butchering all those who could possibly dispute it. The history of all oriental despotisms bears witness to this, as well as the experience of contemporary dictatorship.

  When Lenin died in 1924, Stalin supplanted his most dangerous rival, Trotsky. Trotsky escaped, spent years abroad in various countries of Europe, Asia and America and was finally assassinated in Mexico City. Stalin remained the absolute ruler of Russia.

  Trotsky was an intellectual of the orthodox Marxian type. As such he tried to represent his personal feud with Stalin as a conflict of principles. He tried to construct a Trotsky doctrine as distinguished from the Stalin doctrine. He branded Stalin’s policies as an apostasy from the sacred legacy of Marx and Lenin. Stalin retorted in the same way. In fact, however, the conflict was a rivalry of two men, not a conflict of antagonistic ideas and principles. There was some minor dissent with regard to tactical methods. But in all essential matters Stalin and Trotsky were in agreement.

  Trotsky had lived, before 1917, many years in foreign countries and was to some degree familiar with the main languages of the Western peoples. He posed as an expert in international affairs. Actually he did not know anything about Western civilization, political ideas and economic conditions. As a wandering exile he had moved almost exclusively in the circles of his fellow-exiles. The only foreigners whom he had met occasionally in coffee-houses and club-rooms of Western and Central Europe were radical doctrinaires, by their Marxian prepossessions precluded from reality. His main reading was Marxian books and periodicals. He scorned all other writings as “bourgeois” literature. He was absolutely unfitted to see events from any other angle than that of Marxism. Like Marx he was ready to interpret every great strike and every small riot as the sign of the outbreak of the final great revolution.

  Stalin is a poorly educated Georgian. He has not the slightest knowledge of any Western language. He does not know Europe or America. Even his achievements as a Marxian author are questionable. But it was precisely the fact that, although an adamant supporter of communism, he was not indoctrinated with Marxian dogmas that made him superior to Trotsky. Stalin was not deluded by the spurious tenets of dialectical materialism. When faced with a problem, he did not search for an interpretation in the writings of Marx and Engels. He trusted his common sense. He was judicious enough to discern the fact that the policy of world revolution as inaugurated by Lenin and Trotsky in 1917 had failed completely outside the borders of Russia.

  In Germany the communists, led by Karl Liebknecht and Rosa Luxemburg, were crushed by detachments of the regular army and by nationalist volunteers in a bloody battle fought in January 1919 in the streets of Berlin. The communist seizure of power in Munich in spring 1919 and the Hölz riot71 in March 1921 ended likewise in disaster. In Hungary, in 1919, the communists were defeated by Horthy and Gömbös and the Rumanian army. In Austria various communist plots failed in 1918 and 1919; a violent upheaval in July 1927 was easily quelled by the Vienna police. In Italy, in 1920, the occupation of the factories was a complete miscarriage. In France and in Switzerland the communist propaganda seemed to be very powerful in the first years following the Armistice of 1918; but it evaporated very soon. In Great Britain, in 1926, the general strike called by the labour unions resulted in lamentable failure.

  Trotsky was so blinded by his orthodoxy that he refused to admit that the Bolshevist methods had failed. But Stalin realized it very well. He did not abandon the idea of instigating revolutionary outbreaks in all foreign countries and of conquering the whole world for the Soviets. But he was fully aware of the fact that it was necessary to postpone the aggression for a few years and to resort to new methods for its execution. Trotsky was wrong in accusing Stalin of strangling the communist movement outside of Russia. What Stalin really did was to apply other means for the attainment of ends which are common to him and all other Marxians.

  As an exegetic of Marxian dogmas Stalin was certainly inferior to Trotsky. But he surpassed his rival by far as a politician. Bolshevism owes its successes in world policies to Stalin, not to Trotsky.

  In the field of domestic policies, Trotsky resorted to the well-tried traditional tricks which Marxians had always applied in criticizing socialist measures adopted by other parties. Whatever Stalin did was not true socialism and communism, but, on the contrary, the very opposite of it, a monstrous perversion of the lofty principles of Marx and Lenin. All the disastrous features of public control of production and distribution as they appeared in Russia were, in Trotsky’s interpretation, brought about by Stalin’s policies. They were not unavoidable consequences of communist methods. They were attendant phenomena of Stalinism, not of communism. It was exclusively Stalin’s fault that an absolutist irresponsible bureaucracy was supreme, that a class of privileged oligarchs enjoyed luxuries while the masses lived on the verge of starvation, that a terrorist regime executed the old guard of revolutionaries and condemned millions to slave labour in concentration camps, that the secret police was omnipotent, that the labour unions were powerless, that the masses were deprived of all rights and liberties. Stalin was not a champion of the egalitarian classless society. He was the pioneer of a return to the worst methods of class rule and exploitation. A new ruling class of about 10 per cent of the population ruthlessly oppressed and exploited the immense majority of toiling proletarians.

  Trotsky was at a loss to explain how all this could be achieved by only one man and his few sycophants. Where were the “material productive forces,” much talked about in Marxian historical materialism, which—“independent of the wills of individuals”—determine the course of human events “with the inexorability of a law of nature”? How could it happen that one man was in a position to alter the “juridical and political superstructure” which is uniquely and inalterably fixed by the economic structure of society? Even Trotsky agreed that there was no longer any private ownership of the means of production in Russia. In Stalin’s empire, production and distribution are entirely controlled by “society.” It is a fundamental dogma of Marxism that the superstructure of such a system must necessarily be the bliss of the earthly paradise. There is in Marxian doctrines no room for an interpretation blaming individuals for a degenerative process which could convert the blessing of public control of business into evil. A consistent Marxian—if consistency were compatible with Marxism—would have to admit that Stalin’s political system was the necessary superstructure of communism.

  All essential items in Trotsky’s programme were in perfect agreement with the policies of Stalin. Trotsky advocated the industrialization of Russia. It was this that Stalin’s Five-Year Plans aimed at. Trotsky advocated the collectivization of agriculture. Stalin established the Kolkhoz and liquidated the Kulaks. Trotsky favoured the organization of a big army. Stalin organized such an army. Neither was Trotsky when still in power a friend of democracy. He was, on the contrary, a fanatical supporter of dictatorial oppression of all “saboteurs.” It is true, he did not anticipate that the dictator could consider him, Trotsky, author of Marxian tracts and veteran of the glorious extermination of the Romanovs, as the most wicked saboteur. Like all other advocates of dictatorship, he assumed that he himself or one of his intimate friends would be the dictator.

  Trotsky was a critic of bureaucratism. But he did not suggest any other method for the conduct of affairs in a socialist system. There is no other alternative to profit-seeking private business than bureaucratic management.72

  The truth is that Trotsky found only one fault with Stalin: that he, Stalin, was the dictator and not himself, Trotsky. In their feud they both were right. Stalin was right in maintaining that his regime was the embodiment of socialist principles. Trotsky was right in asserting that Stalin’s regime had made Russia a hell.

  Trotskyism did not entirely disappear with Trotsky’s death. Boulangerism in France, too, survived for some time the end of General Boulanger. There are still Carlists left in Spain although the line of Don Carlos died out. Such posthumous movements are, of course, doomed.

  But in all countries there are people who, although themselves fanatically committed to the idea of all-round planning, i.e. public ownership of the means of production, become frightened when they are confronted with the real face of communism. These people are disappointed. They dream of a Garden of Eden. For them communism, or socialism, means an easy life in riches and the full enjoyment of all liberties and pleasures. They fail to realize the contradictions inherent in their image of the communist society. They have uncritically swallowed all the lunatic fantasies of Charles Fourier and all the absurdities of Veblen. They firmly believe in Engels’s assertion that socialism will be a realm of unlimited freedom. They indict capitalism for everything they dislike, and are fully convinced that socialism will deliver them from all evil. They ascribe their own failures and frustrations to the unfairness of this “mad” competitive system and expect that socialism will assign them that eminent position and high income which by right are due to them. They are Cinderellas yearning for the prince-saviour who will recognize their merits and virtues. The loathing of capitalism and the worship of communism are consolations for them. They help them to disguise to themselves their own inferiority, and to blame the “system” for their own shortcomings.

  In advocating dictatorship such people always advocate the dictatorship of their own clique. In asking for planning, what they have in mind is always their own plan, not that of others. They will never admit that a socialist or communist regime is true and genuine socialism or communism, if it does not assign to themselves the most eminent position and the highest income. For them the essential feature of true and genuine communism is that all affairs are precisely conducted according to their own will, and that all those who disagree are beaten into submission.

  It is a fact that the majority of our contemporaries are imbued with socialist and communist ideas. However, this does not mean that they are unanimous in their proposals for socialization of the means of production and public control of production and distribution. On the contrary. Each socialist coterie is fanatically opposed to the plans of all other socialist groups. The various socialist sects fight one another most bitterly.

  If the case of Trotsky and the analogous case of Gregor Strasser in Nazi Germany were isolated cases, there would be no need to deal with them. But they are not casual incidents. They are typical. Study of them reveals the psychological causes both of the popularity of socialism and of its unfeasibility.

  6

  The Liberation of the Demons

  The history of mankind is the history of ideas. For it is ideas, theories and doctrines that guide human action, determine the ultimate ends men aim at, and the choice of the means employed for the attainment of these ends. The sensational events which stir the emotions and catch the interest of superficial observers are merely the consummation of ideological changes. There are no such things as abrupt sweeping transformations of human affairs. What is called, in rather misleading terms, a “turning point in history” is the coming on the scene of forces which were already for a long time at work behind the scene. New ideologies, which had already long since superseded the old ones, throw off their last veil and even the dullest people become aware of the changes which they did not notice before.

  In this sense Lenin’s seizure of power in October 1917 was certainly a turning point. But its meaning was very different from that which the communists attribute to it.

  The Soviet victory played only a minor role in the evolution towards socialism. The pro-socialist policies of the industrial countries of Central and Western Europe were of much greater consequence in this regard. Bismarck’s social security scheme was a more momentous pioneering on the way towards socialism than was the expropriation of the backward Russian manufactures. The Prussian National Railways had provided the only instance of a government-operated business which, for some time at least, had avoided manifest financial failure. The British had already before 1914 adopted essential parts of the German social security system. In all industrial countries, the governments were committed to interventionist policies which were bound to result ultimately in socialism. During the war most of them embarked upon what was called war socialism. The German Hindenburg Programme which, of course, could not be executed completely on account of Germany’s defeat, was no less radical but much better designed than the much talked-about Russian Five-Year Plans.

  For the socialists in the predominantly industrial countries of the West, the Russian methods could not be of any use. For these countries, production of manufactures for export was indispensable. They could not adopt the Russian system of economic autarky. Russia had never exported manufactures in quantities worth mentioning. Under the Soviet system it withdrew almost entirely from the world market of cereals and raw materials. Even fanatical socialists could not help admitting that the West could not learn anything from Russia. It is obvious that the technological achievements in which the Bolshevist gloried were merely clumsy imitations of things accomplished in the West. Lenin defined communism as: “the Soviet power plus electrification.” Now, electrification was certainly not of Russian origin, and the Western nations surpass Russia in the field of electrification no less than in every other branch of industry.

  The real significance of the Lenin revolution is to be seen in the fact that it was the bursting forth of the principle of unrestricted violence and oppression. It was the negation of all the political ideals that had for three thousand years guided the evolution of Western civilization.

  State and government are the social apparatus of violent coercion and repression. Such an apparatus, the police power, is indispensable in order to prevent anti-social individuals and bands from destroying social co-operation. Violent prevention and suppression of anti-social activities benefit the whole of society and each of its members. But violence and oppression are none the less evils and corrupt those in charge of their application. It is necessary to restrict the power of those in office lest they become absolute despots. Society cannot exist without an apparatus of violent coercion. But neither can it exist if the office holders are irresponsible tyrants free to inflict harm upon those they dislike.

  It is the social function of the laws to curb the arbitrariness of the police. The rule of law restricts the arbitrariness of the Officers as much as possible. It strictly limits their discretion, and thus assigns to the citizens a sphere in which they are free to act without being frustrated by government interference.

  Freedom and liberty always mean freedom from police interference. In nature there are no such things as liberty and freedom. There is only the adamant rigidity of the laws of nature to which man must unconditionally submit if he wants to attain any ends at all. Neither was there liberty in the imaginary paradisaical conditions which, according to the fantastic prattle of many writers, preceded the establishment of societal bonds. Where there is no government, everybody is at the mercy of his stronger neighbour. Liberty can be realized only within an established state ready to prevent a gangster from killing and robbing his weaker fellows. But it is the rule of law alone which hinders the rulers from turning themselves into the worst gangsters.

  The laws establish norms of legitimate action. They fix the procedures required for the repeal or alteration of existing laws and for the enactment of new laws. They likewise fix the procedures required for the application of the laws in definite cases, the due process of law. They establish courts and tribunals. Thus they are intent upon avoiding a situation in which the individuals are at the mercy of the rulers.

  Mortal men are liable to error, and legislators and judges are mortal men. It may happen again and again that the valid laws or their interpretation by the courts prevent the executive organs from resorting to some measures which could be beneficial. No great harm, however, can result. If the legislators recognize the deficiency of the valid laws, they can alter them. It is certainly a bad thing that a criminal may sometimes evade punishment because there is a loophole left in the law, or because the prosecutor has neglected some formalities. But it is the minor evil when compared with the consequences of unlimited discretionary power on the part of the “benevolent” despot.

  It is precisely this point which anti-social individuals fail to see. Such people condemn the formalism of the due process of law. Why should the laws hinder the government from resorting to beneficial measures? Is it not fetishism to make supreme the laws, and not expediency? They advocate the substitution of the welfare state (Wohlfahrtsstaat) for the state governed by the rule of law (Rechtsstaat). In this welfare state, paternal government should be free to accomplish all things it considers beneficial to the commonweal. No “scraps of paper” should restrain an enlightened ruler in his endeavours to promote the general welfare. All opponents must be crushed mercilessly lest they frustrate the beneficial action of the government. No empty formalities must protect them any longer against their well-deserved punishment.

  It is customary to call the point of view of the advocates of the welfare state the “social” point of view as distinguished from the “individualistic” and “selfish” point of view of the champions of the rule of law. In fact, however, the supporters of the welfare state are utterly anti-social and intolerant zealots. For their ideology tacitly implies that the government will exactly execute what they themselves deem right and beneficial. They entirely disregard the possibility that there could arise disagreement with regard to the question of what is right and expedient and what is not. They advocate enlightened despotism, but they are convinced that the enlightened despot will in every detail comply with their own opinion concerning the measures to be adopted. They favour planning, but what they have in mind is exclusively their own plan, not those of other people. They want to exterminate all opponents, that is, all those who disagree with them. They are utterly intolerant and are not prepared to allow any discussion. Every advocate of the welfare state and of planning is a potential dictator. What he plans is to deprive all other men of all their rights, and to establish his own and his friends’ unrestricted omnipotence. He refuses to convince is fellow-citizens. He prefers to “liquidate” them. He scorns the “bourgeois” society that worships law and legal procedure. He himself worships violence and bloodshed.

  The irreconcilable conflict of these two doctrines, rule of law versus welfare state, was at issue in all the struggles which men fought for liberty. It was a long and hard evolution. Again and again the champions of absolutism triumphed. But finally the rule of law predominated in the realm of Western civilization. The rule of law, or limited government, as safeguarded by constitutions and bills of rights, is the characteristic mark of this civilization. It was the rule of law that brought about the marvelous achievements of modern capitalism and of its—as consistent Marxians should say—“superstructure,” democracy. It secured for a steadily increasing population unprecedented well-being. The masses in the capitalist countries enjoy today a standard of living far above that of the well-to-do of earlier ages.

  All these accomplishments have not restrained the advocates of despotism and planning. However, it would have been preposterous for the champions of totalitarianism to disclose the inextricable dictatorial consequences of their endeavours openly. In the nineteenth century the ideas of liberty and the rule of law had won such a prestige that it seemed crazy to attack them frankly. Public opinion was firmly convinced that despotism was done for and could never be restored. Was not even the Czar of barbarian Russia forced to abolish serfdom, to establish trial by jury, to grant a limited freedom to the press and to respect the laws?

  Thus the socialists resorted to a trick. They continued to discuss the coming dictatorship of the proletariat, i.e., the dictatorship of each socialist author’s own ideas, in their esoteric circles. But to the broad public they spoke in a different way. Socialism, they asserted, will bring true and full liberty and democracy. It will remove all kinds of compulsion and coercion. The state will “wither away.” In the socialist commonwealth of the future there will be neither judges and policemen nor prisons and gallows.

  But the Bolshevists took off the mask. They were fully convinced that the day of their final and unshakable victory had dawned. Further dissimulation was neither possible nor required. The gospel of bloodshed could be preached openly. It found an enthusiastic response among all the degenerate literati and parlour intellectuals who for many years already had raved about the writings of Sorel and Nietzsche. The fruits of the “treason of the intellectuals”73 mellowed to maturity. The youths who had been fed on the ideas of Carlyle and Ruskin were ready to seize the reins.

  Lenin was not the first usurper. Many tyrants had preceded him. But his predecessors were in conflict with the ideas held by their most eminent contemporaries. They were opposed by public opinion because their principles of government were at variance with the accepted principles of right and legality. They were scorned and detested as usurpers. But Lenin’s usurpation was seen in a different light. He was the brutal superman for whose coming the pseudo-philosophers had yearned. He was the counterfeit saviour whom history had elected to bring salvation through bloodshed. Was he not the most orthodox adept of Marxian “scientific” socialism? Was he not the man destined to realize the socialist plans for whose execution the weak statesmen of the decaying democracies were too timid? All well-intentioned people asked for socialism; science, through the mouths of the infallible professors, recommended it; the churches preached Christian socialism; the workers longed for the abolition of the wage system. Here was the man to fulfil all these wishes. He was judicious enough to know that you cannot make an omelet without breaking eggs.

  Half a century ago all civilized people had censured Bismarck when he declared that history’s great problems must be solved by blood and iron. Now the majority of quasi-civilized men bowed to the dictator who was prepared to shed much more blood than Bismarck ever did.

  This was the true meaning of the Lenin revolution. All the traditional ideas of right and legality were overthrown. The rule of unrestrained violence and usurpation was substituted for the rule of law. The “narrow horizon of bourgeois legality,” as Marx had dubbed it, was abandoned. Henceforth no laws could any longer limit the power of the elect. They were free to kill ad libitum. Man’s innate impulses towards violent extermination of all whom he dislikes, repressed by a long and wearisome evolution, burst forth. The demons were unfettered. A new age, the age of the usurpers, dawned. The gangsters were called to action, and they listened to the Voice.

  Of course, Lenin did not mean this. He did not want to concede to other people the prerogatives which he claimed for himself. He did not want to assign to other men the privilege of liquidating their adversaries. Him alone had history elected and entrusted with the dictatorial power. He was the only “legitimate” dictator because—an inner voice had told him so. Lenin was not bright enough to anticipate that other people, imbued with other creeds, could be bold enough to pretend that they also were called by an inner voice. Yet, within a few years too such men, Mussolini and Hitler, became quite conspicuous.

  It is important to realize that Fascism and Nazism were socialist dictatorships. The communists, both the registered members of the communist parties and the fellow-travellers, stigmatize Fascism and Nazism as the highest and last and most depraved stage of capitalism. This is in perfect agreement with their habit of calling every party which does not unconditionally surrender to the dictates of Moscow—even the German Social Democrats, the classical party of Marxism—hirelings of capitalism.

  It is of much greater consequence that the communists have succeeded in changing the semantic connotation of the term Fascism. Fascism, as will be shown later, was a variety of Italian socialism. It was adjusted to the particular conditions of the masses in overpopulated Italy. It was not a product of Mussolini’s mind and will survive the fall of Mussolini. The foreign policies of Fascism and Nazism, from their early beginnings, were rather opposed to one another. The fact that the Nazis and the Fascists closely co-operated after the Ethiopian war, and were allies in the second World War, did not eradicate the differences between these two tenets any more than did the alliance between Russia and the United States eradicate the differences between Sovietism and the American economic system. Fascism and Nazism were both committed to the Soviet principle of dictatorship and violent oppression of dissenters. If one wants to assign Fascism and Nazism to the same class of political systems, one must call this class dictatorial regime and one must not neglect to assign the Soviets to the same class.

  In recent years the communists’ semantic innovations have gone even further. They call everybody whom they dislike, every advocate of the free enterprise system, a Fascist. Bolshevism, they say, is the only really democratic system. All non-communist countries and parties are essentially undemocratic and Fascist.

  It is true that sometimes also non-socialists—the last vestiges of the old aristocracy—toyed with the idea of an aristocratic revolution modelled according to the pattern of Soviet dictatorship. Lenin had opened their eyes. What dupes, they moaned, have we been! We have let ourselves be deluded by the spurious catchwords of the liberal bourgeoisie. We believed that it was not permissible to deviate from the rule of law and to crush mercilessly those challenging our rights. How silly were these Romanovs in granting to their deadly foes the benefits of a fair legal trial! If somebody arouses the suspicion of Lenin, he is done for. Lenin does not hesitate to exterminate, without any trial, not only every suspect, but all his kin and friends too. But the Czars were superstitiously afraid of infringing the rules established by those scraps of paper called laws. When Alexander Ulyanov conspired against the Czar’s life, he alone was executed; his brother Vladimir was spared. Thus Alexander III himself preserved the life of Ulyanov-Lenin, the man who ruthlessly exterminated his son, his daughter-in-law and their children and with them all the other members of the family he could catch. Was this not the most stupid and suicidal policy?

  However, no action could result from the day dreams of these old Tories. They were a small group of powerless grumblers. They were not backed by any ideological forces and they had no followers.

  The idea of such an aristocratic revolution motivated the German Stahlhelm and the French Cagoulards.74 The Stahlhelm was simply dispelled by order of Hitler. The French Government could easily imprison the Cagoulards before they had any opportunity to do harm.

  The nearest approach to an aristocratic dictatorship is Franco’s regime. But Franco was merely a puppet of Mussolini and Hitler, who wanted to secure Spanish aid for the impending war against France or at least Spanish “friendly” neutrality. With his protectors gone, he will either have to adopt Western methods of government or face removal.

  Dictatorship and violent oppression of all dissenters are today exclusively socialist institutions. This becomes clear as we take a closer look at Fascism and Nazism.

  7

  Fascism

  When the war broke out in 1914, the Italian socialist party was divided as to the policy to be adopted.

  One group clung to the rigid principles of Marxism. This war, they maintained, is a war of the capitalists. It is not seemly for the proletarians to side with any of the belligerent parties. The proletarians must wait for the great revolution, the civil war of the united socialists against the united exploiters. They must stand for Italian neutrality.

  The second group was deeply affected by the traditional hatred of Austria. In their opinion the first task of the Italians was to free their unredeemed brethren. Only then would the day of the socialist revolution appear.

  In this conflict Benito Mussolini, the outstanding man in Italian socialism, chose at first the orthodox Marxian position. Nobody could surpass Mussolini in Marxian zeal. He was the intransigent champion of the pure creed, the unyielding defender of the rights of the exploited proletarians, the eloquent prophet of the socialist bliss to come. He was an adamant adversary of patriotism, nationalism, imperialism, monarchical rule and all religious creeds. When Italy in 1911 opened the great series of wars by an insidious assault upon Turkey, Mussolini organized violent demonstrations against the departure of troops for Libya. Now, in 1914, he branded the war against Germany and Austria as an imperialist war. He was then still under the dominating influence of Angelica Balabanoff, the daughter of a wealthy Russian landowner. Miss Balabanoff had initiated him into the subtleties of Marxism. In her eyes the defeat of the Romanovs counted more than the defeat of the Habsburgs. She had no sympathy for the ideals of the Risorgimento.

  But the Italian intellectuals were first of all nationalists. As in all other European countries, most of the Marxians longed for war and conquest. Mussolini was not prepared to lose his popularity. The thing he hated most was not to be on the side of the victorious faction. He changed his mind and became the most fanatical advocate of Italy’s attack on Austria. With French financial aid he founded a newspaper to fight for the cause of the war.

  The anti-Fascists blame Mussolini for this defection from the teachings of rigid Marxism. He was bribed, they say, by the French. Now, even these people should know that the publication of a newspaper requires funds. They themselves do not speak of bribery if a wealthy American provides a man with the money needed for the publication of a fellow-traveller newspaper, or if funds mysteriously flow into the communist publishing firms. It is a fact that Mussolini entered the scene of world politics as an ally of the democracies, while Lenin entered it as a virtual ally of imperial Germany.

  More than anybody else Mussolini was instrumental in achieving Italy’s entry into the first World War. His journalistic propaganda made it possible for the government to declare war on Austria. Only those few people have a right to find fault with his attitude in the years 1914 to 1918 who realize that the disintegration of the Austro-Hungarian Empire spelled the doom of Europe. Only those Italians are free to blame Mussolini who begin to understand that the only means of protecting the Italian-speaking minorities in the littoral districts of Austria against the threatening annihilation by the Slavonic majorities was to preserve the integrity of the Austrian state, whose constitution guaranteed equal rights to all linguistic groups. Mussolini was one of the most wretched figures of history. But the fact remains that his first great political deed still meets with the approval of all his countrymen and of the immense majority of his foreign detractors.

  When the war came to an end, Mussolini’s popularity dwindled. The communists, swept into popularity by events in Russia, carried on. But the great communist venture, the occupation of the factories in 1920, ended in complete failure, and the disappointed masses remembered the former leader of the socialist party. They flocked to Mussolini’s new party, the Fascists. The youth greeted with turbulent enthusiasm the self-styled successor of the Caesars. Mussolini boasted in later years that he had saved Italy from the danger of communism. His foes passionately dispute his claims. Communism, they say, was no longer a real factor in Italy when Mussolini seized power. The truth is that the frustration of communism swelled the ranks of the Fascists and made it possible for them to destroy all other parties. The overwhelming victory of the Fascists was not the cause, but the consequence, of the communist fiasco.

  The programme of the Fascists, as drafted in 1919, was vehemently anti-capitalistic.75 The most radical New Dealers and even communists could agree with it. When the Fascists came to power, they had forgotten those points of their programme which referred to the liberty of thought and the press and the right of assembly. In this respect they were conscientious disciples of Bukharin and Lenin. Moreover they did not suppress, as they had promised, the industrial and financial corporations. Italy badly needed foreign credits for the development of its industries. The main problem for Fascism, in the first years of its rule, was to win the confidence of the foreign bankers. It would have been suicidal to destroy the Italian corporations.

  Fascist economic policy did not—at the beginning—essentially differ from those of all other Western nations. It was a policy of interventionism. As the years went on, it more and more approached the Nazi pattern of socialism. When Italy, after the defeat of France, entered the second World War, its economy was by and large already shaped according to the Nazi pattern. The main difference was that the Fascists were less efficient and even more corrupt than the Nazis.

  But Mussolini could not long remain without an economic philosophy of his own invention. Fascism posed as a new philosophy, unheard of before and unknown to all other nations. It claimed to be the gospel which the resurrected spirit of ancient Rome brought to the decaying democratic peoples whose barbarian ancestors had once destroyed the Roman empire. It was the consummation both of the Rinascimento and the Risorgimento in every respect, the final liberation of the Latin genius from the yoke of foreign ideologies. Its shining leader, the peerless Duce, was called to find the ultimate solution for the burning problems of society’s economic organization and of social justice.

  From the dust-heap of discarded socialist utopias, the Fascist scholars salvaged the scheme of guild socialism. Guild socialism was very popular with British socialists in the last years of the first World War and in the first years following the Armistice. It was so impracticable that it disappeared very soon from socialist literature. No serious statesman ever paid any attention to contradictory and confused plans of guild socialism. It was almost forgotten when the Fascists attached it to a new label, and flamboyantly proclaimed corporativism as the new social panacea. The public inside and outside of Italy was captivated. Innumerable books, pamphlets and articles were written in praise of the stato corporativo. The governments of Austria and Portugal very soon declared that they were committed to the noble principles of corporativism. The papal encyclical Quadragesimo Anno (1931) contained some paragraphs which could be interpreted—but need not be—as an approval of corporativism. In France its ideas found many eloquent supporters.

  It was mere idle talk. Never did the Fascists make any attempt to realize the corporativist programme, industrial self-government. They changed the name of the chambers of commerce into corporative councils. They called corporazione the compulsory organizations of the various branches of industry which were the administrative units for the execution of the German pattern of socialism they had adopted. But there was no question of the corporazione’s self-government. The Fascist cabinet did not tolerate anybody’s interference with its absolute authoritarian control of production. All the plans for the establishment of the corporative system remained a dead letter.

  Italy’s main problem is its comparative overpopulation. In this age of barriers to trade and migration, the Italians are condemned to subsist permanently on a lower standard of living than that of the inhabitants of the countries more favoured by nature. The Fascists saw only one means to remedy this unfortunate situation: conquest. They were too narrow-minded to comprehend that the redress they recommended was spurious and worse than the evil. They were moreover so entirely blinded by self-conceit and vain-glory that they failed to realize that their provocative speeches were simply ridiculous. The foreigners whom they insolently challenged knew very well how negligible Italy’s military forces were.

  Fascism was not, as its advocates boasted, an original product of the Italian mind. It began with a split in the ranks of Marxian socialism, which certainly was an imported doctrine. Its economic programme was borrowed from German non-Marxian socialism and its aggressiveness was likewise copied from Germans, the All-deutsche or Pan-German forerunners of the Nazis. Its conduct of government affairs was a replica of Lenin’s dictatorship. Corporativism, its much advertised ideological adornment, was of British origin. The only home-grown ingredient of Fascism was the theatrical style of its processions, shows and festivals.

  The shortlived Fascist episode ended in blood, misery and ignominy. But the forces which generated Fascism are not dead. Fanatical nationalism is a feature common to all present-day Italians. The communists are certainly not prepared to renounce their principle of dictatorial oppression of all dissenters. Neither do the Catholic parties advocate freedom of thought, of the press or of religion. There are in Italy only very few people indeed who comprehend that the indispensable prerequisite of democracy and the rights of men is economic freedom.

  It may happen that Fascism will be resurrected under a new label and with new slogans and symbols. But if this happens, the consequences will be detrimental. For Fascism is not as the Fascists trumpeted a “new way to life,”76 it is a rather old way towards destruction and death.

  8

  Nazism

  The philosophy of the Nazis, the German National Socialist Labour Party, is the purest and most consistent manifestation of the anticapitalistic and socialistic spirit of our age. Its essential ideas are not German or “Aryan” in origin, nor are they peculiar to the present day Germans. In the genealogical tree of the Nazi doctrine such Latins as Sismondi and Georges Sorel, and such Anglo-Saxons as Carlyle, Ruskin and Houston Stewart Chamberlain, were more conspicuous than any German. Even the best known ideological attire of Nazism, the fable of the superiority of the Aryan master race, was not of German provenance; its author was a Frenchman, Gobineau. Germans of Jewish descent, like Lassalle, Lasson, Stahl and Walter Rathenau, contributed more to the essential tenets of Nazism than such men as Sombart, Spann and Ferdinand Fried. The slogan into which the Nazis condensed their economic philosophy, viz., Gemeinnutz geht vor Eigennutz (i.e., the commonweal ranks above private profit), is likewise the idea underlying the American New Deal and the Soviet management of economic affairs. It implies that profit-seeking business harms the vital interests of the immense majority, and that it is the sacred duty of popular government to prevent the emergence of profits by public control of production and distribution.

  The only specifically German ingredient in Nazism was its striving after the conquest of Lebensraum. And this, too, was an outcome of their agreement with the ideas guiding the policies of the most influential political parties of all other countries. These parties proclaim income equality as the main thing. The Nazis do the same. What characterizes the Nazis is the fact that they are not prepared to acquiesce in a state of affairs in which the Germans are doomed forever to be “imprisoned,” as they say, in a comparatively small and overpopulated area in which the productivity of labour must be smaller than in the comparatively underpopulated countries, which are better endowed with natural resources and capital goods. They aim at a fairer distribution of earth’s natural resources. As a “have-not” nation they look at the wealth of the richer nations with the same feelings with which many people in the Western countries look at the higher incomes of some of their countrymen. The “progressives” in the Anglo-Saxon countries assert that “liberty is not worth having” for those who are wronged by the comparative smallness of their incomes. The Nazis say the same with regard to international relations. In their opinion the only freedom that matters is Nahrungsfreiheit (viz., freedom from importing food). They aim at the acquisition of a territory so large and rich in natural resources that they could live in economic self-sufficiency at a standard not lower than that of any other nation. They consider themselves as revolutionaries fighting for their inalienable natural rights against the vested interests of a host of reactionary nations.

  It is easy for economists to explode the fallacies involved in the Nazi doctrines. But those who disparage economics as “orthodox and reactionary,” and fantically support the spurious creeds of socialism and economic nationalism, were at a loss to refute them. For Nazism was nothing but the logical application of their own tenets to the particular conditions of comparatively overpopulated Germany.

  For more than seventy years the German professors of political science, history, law, geography and philosophy eagerly imbued their disciples with a hysterical hatred of capitalism, and preached the war of “liberation” against the capitalistic West. The German “socialists of the chair,” much admired in all foreign countries, were the pacemakers of the two World Wars. At the turn of the century the immense majority of the Germans were already radical supporters of socialism and aggressive nationalism. They were then already firmly committed to the principles of Nazism. What was lacking and was added later was only a new term to signify their doctrine.

  When the Soviet policies of mass extermination of all dissenters and of ruthless violence removed the inhibitions against wholesale murder, which still troubled some of the Germans, nothing could any longer stop the advance of Nazism. The Nazis were quick to adopt the Soviet methods. They imported from Russia: the one-party system and the pre-eminence of this party in political life; the paramount position assigned to the secret police; the concentration camps; the administrative execution or imprisonment of all opponents; the extermination of the families of suspects and of exiles; the methods of propaganda; the organization of affiliated parties abroad and their employment for fighting their domestic governments and espionage and sabotage; the use of the diplomatic and consular service for fomenting revolution; and many other things besides. There were nowhere more docile disciples of Lenin, Trotsky and Stalin than the Nazis were.

  Hitler was not the founder of Nazism; he was its product. He was, like most of his collaborators, a sadistic gangster. He was uneducated and ignorant; he had failed even in the lower grades of high school. He never had any honest job. It is a fable that he had ever been a paperhanger. His military career in the first World War was rather mediocre. The First Class Iron Cross was given to him after the end of the war as a reward for his activities as a political agent. He was a maniac obsessed by megalomania. But learned professors nourished his self-conceit. Werner Sombart, who once had boasted that his life was devoted to the task of fighting for the ideas of Marx,77 Sombart, whom the American Economic Association had elected to Honorary membership and many non-German universities to honorary degrees, candidly declared that Führertum means a permanent revelation and that the Führer received his orders directly from God, the supreme Führer of the Universe.78

  The Nazi plan was more comprehensive and therefore more pernicious than that of the Marxians. It aimed at abolishing laisser-faire not only in the production of material goods, but no less in the production of men. The Führer was not only the general manager of all industries; he was also the general manager of the breeding-farm intent upon rearing superior men and eliminating inferior stock. A grandiose scheme of eugenics was to be put into effect according to “scientific” principles.

  It is vain for the champions of eugenics to protest that they did not mean what the Nazis executed. Eugenics aims at placing some men, backed by the police power, in complete control of human reproduction. It suggests that the methods applied to domestic animals be applied to men. This is precisely what the Nazis tried to do, The only objection which a consistent eugenist can raise is that his own plan differs from that of the Nazi scholars and that he wants to rear another type of men than the Nazis. As every supporter of economic planning aims at the execution of his own plan only, so every advocate of eugenic planning aims at the execution of his own plan and wants himself to act as the breeder of human stock.

  The eugenists pretend that they want to eliminate criminal individuals. But the qualification of a man as a criminal depends upon the prevailing laws of the country and varies with the change in social and political ideologies. John Huss, Giordano Bruno and Galileo Galilei were criminals from the point of view of the laws which their judges applied. When Stalin robbed the Russian State Bank of several million rubles, he committed a crime. Today it is an offence in Russia to disagree with Stalin. In Nazi Germany sexual intercourse between “Aryans” and the members of an “inferior” race was a crime. Whom do the eugenists want to eliminate, Brutus or Caesar? Both violated the laws of their country. If eighteenth-century eugenists had prevented alcohol addicts from generating children, their planning would have eliminated Beethoven.

  It must be emphasized again: there is no such thing as a scientific ought. Which men are superior and which are inferior can only be decided by personal value judgments not liable to Verification or falsification. The eugenists delude themselves in assuming that they themselves will be called to decide what qualities are to be conserved in the human stock. They are too dull to take into account the possibility that other people might make the choice according to their own value judgments.79 In the eyes of the Nazis the brutal killer, the “fair-haired beast,” is the most perfect specimen of mankind.

  The mass slaughters perpetrated in the Nazi horror camps are too horrible to be adequately described by words. But they were the logical and consistent application of doctrines and policies parading as applied science and proved by some men who in a sector of the natural sciences have displayed acumen and technical skill in laboratory research.

  9

  The Teachings of Soviet Experience

  Many people all over the world assert that the Soviet “experiment” has supplied conclusive evidence in favour of socialism and disproved all, or at least most, of the objections raised against it. The facts, they say, speak for themselves. It is no longer permissible to pay any attention to the spurious aprioristic reasoning of armchair economists criticizing the socialist plans. A crucial experiment has exploded their fallacies.

  It is, first of all, necessary to comprehend that in the field of purposive human action and social relations no experiments can be made and no experiments have ever been made. The experimental method to which the natural sciences owe all their achievements is inapplicable in the social sciences. The natural sciences are in a position to observe in the laboratory experiment the consequences of the isolated change in one element only, while other elements remain unchanged. Their experimental observation refers ultimately to certain isolable elements in sense experience. What the natural sciences call facts are the causal relations shown in such experiments. Their theories and hypotheses must be in agreement with these facts.

  But the experience with which the sciences of human action have to deal is essentially different. It is historical experience. It is an experience of complex phenomena, of the joint effects brought about by the co-operation of a multiplicity of elements. The social sciences are never in a position to control the conditions of change and to isolate them from one another in the way in which the experimenter proceeds in arranging his experiments. They never enjoy the advantage of observing the consequences of a change in one element only, other conditions being equal. They are never faced with facts in the sense in which the natural sciences employ this term. Every fact and every experience with which the social sciences have to deal is open to various interpretations. Historical facts and historical experience can never prove or disprove a statement in the way in which an experiment proves or disproves.

  Historical experience never comments upon itself. It needs to be interpreted from the point of view of theories constructed without the aid of experimental observations. There is no need to enter into an epistemological analysis of the logical and philosophical problems involved. It is enough to refer to the fact that nobody—whether scientist or layman--ever proceeds otherwise when dealing with historical experience. Every discussion of the relevance and meaning of historical facts falls back very soon on a discussion of abstract general principles, logically antecedent to the facts to be elucidated and interpreted. Reference to historical experience can never solve any problem or answer any question. The same historical events and the same statistical figures are claimed as confirmations of contradictory theories.

  If history could prove and teach us anything, it would be that private ownership of the means of production is a necessary requisite of civilization and material well-being. All civilizations have up to now been based on private property. Only nations committed to the principle of private property have risen above penury and produced science, art and literature. There is no experience to show that any other social system could provide mankind with any of the achievements of civilization. Nevertheless, only few people consider this as a sufficient and incontestable refutation of the socialist programme.

  On the contrary, there are even people who argue the other way round. It is frequently asserted that the system of private property is done for precisely because it was the system that men applied in the past. However beneficial a social system may have been in the past, they say, it cannot be so in the future too; a new age requires a new mode of social organization. Mankind has reached maturity; it would be pernicious for it to cling to the principles to which it resorted in the earlier stages of its evolution. This is certainly the most radical abandonment of experimentalism. The experimental method may assert: because a produced in the past the result b, it will produce it in the future also. It must never assert: because a produced in the past the result b, it is proved that it cannot produce it any longer.

  In spite of the fact that mankind has had no experience with the socialist mode of production, the socialist writers have constructed various schemes of socialist systems based on aprioristic reasoning. But as soon as anybody dares to analyse these projects and to scrutinize them with regard to their feasibility and their ability to further human welfare, the socialists vehemently object. These analyses, they say, are merely idle aprioristic speculations. They cannot disprove the correctness of our statements and the expediency of our plans. They are not experimental. One must try socialism and then the results will speak for themselves.

  What these socialists ask for is absurd. Carried to its ultimate logical consequences, their idea implies that men are not free to refute by reasoning any scheme, however nonsensical, self-contradictory and impracticable, that any reformer is pleased to suggest. According to their view, the only method permissible for the refutation of such a—necessarily abstract and aprioristic—plan is to test it by reorganizing the whole of society according to its designs. As soon as a man sketches the plan for a better social order, all nations are bound to try it and to see what will happen.

  Even the most stubborn socialists cannot fail to admit that there are various plans for the construction of the future utopia, incompatible with one another. There is the Soviet pattern of all-round socialization of all enterprises and their outright bureaucratic management; there is the German pattern of Zwangswirtschaft, towards the complete adoption of which the Anglo-Saxon countries are manifestly tending; there is guild socialism, under the name of corporativism still very popular in some Catholic countries. There are many other varieties. The supporters of most of these competing schemes assert that the beneficial results to be expected from their own scheme will appear only when all nations will have adopted it; they deny that socialism in one country only can already bring the blessings they ascribe to socialism. The Marxians declare that the bliss of socialism will emerge only in its “higher phase” which, as they hint, will appear only after the working class will have passed “through long struggles, through a whole series of historical processes, wholly transforming both circumstances and men.”80 The inference from all this is that one must realize socialism and quietly wait for a very long time until its promised benefits come. No unpleasant experiences in the period of transition, no matter how long this period may be, can disprove the assertion that socialism is the best of all conceivable modes of social organization. He that believeth shall be saved.

  But which of the many socialist plans, contradicting one another, should be adopted? Every socialist sect passionately proclaims that its own brand is alone genuine socialism and that all other sects advocate counterfeit, entirely pernicious measures. In fighting one another, the various socialist factions resort to the same methods of abstract reasoning which they stigmatize as vain apriorism whenever they are applied against the correctness of their own statements and the expediency and practicability of their own schemes. There is, of course, no other method available. The fallacies implied in a system of abstract reasoning—such as socialism is—cannot be smashed otherwise than by abstract reasoning.

  The fundamental objection advanced against the practicability of socialism refers to the impossibility of economic calculation. It has been demonstrated in an irrefutable way that a socialist commonwealth would not be in a position to apply economic calculation. Where there are no market prices for the factors of production because they are neither bought nor sold, it is impossible to resort to calculation in planning future action and in determining the result of past action. A socialist management of production would simply not know whether or not what it plans and executes is the most appropriate means to attain the ends sought. It will operate in the dark, as it were. It will squander the scarce factors of production both material and human (labour). Chaos and poverty for all will unavoidably result.

  All earlier socialists were too narrow-minded to see this essential point. Neither did the earlier economists conceive its full importance. When the present writer in 1920 showed the impossibility of economic calculation under socialism, the apologists of socialism embarked upon the search for a method of calculation applicable to a socialist system. They utterly failed in these endeavours. The futility of the schemes they produced could easily be shown. Those communists who were not entirely intimidated by the fear of the Soviet executioners, for instance Trotsky, freely admitted that economic accounting is unthinkable without market relations.81 The intellectual bankruptcy of the socialist doctrine can no longer be disguised. In spite of its unprecedented popularity, socialism is done for. No economist can any longer question its impracticability. The avowal of socialist ideas is today the proof of a complete ignorance of the basic problems of economics. The socialist’s claims are as vain as those of the astrologers and the magicians.

  With regard to this essential problem of socialism, viz., economic calculation, the Russian “experiment” is of no avail. The Soviets are operating within a world the greater part of which still clings to a market economy. They base the calculations on which they make their decisions on the prices established abroad. Without the help of these prices their actions would be aimless and planless. Only as far as they refer to this foreign price system are they able to calculate, keep books and prepare their plans. In this respect one may agree with the statement of various socialist and communist authors that socialism in one or a few countries only is not yet true socialism. Of course, these authors attach a quite different meaning to their assertion. They want to say that the full blessings of socialism can be reaped only in a world-embracing socialist community. Those familiar with the teachings of economics must, on the contrary, recognize that socialism will result in full chaos precisely if it is applied in the greater part of the world.

  The second main objection raised against socialism is that it is a less efficient mode of production than is capitalism and that it will impair the productivity of labour. Consequently, in a socialist commonwealth the standard of living of the masses will be low when compared with conditions prevailing under capitalism. There is no doubt that this objection has not been disproved by the Soviet experience. The only certain fact about Russian affairs under the Soviet regime with regard to which all people agree is: that the standard of living of the Russian masses is much lower than that of the masses in the country which is universally considered as the paragon of capitalism, the United States of America. If we were to regard the Soviet regime as an experiment, we would have to say that the experiment has clearly demonstrated the superiority of capitalism and the inferiority of socialism.

  It is true that the advocates of socialism are intent upon interpreting the lowness of the Russian standard of living in a different way. As they see things, it was not caused by socialism, but was—in spite of socialism—brought about by other agencies. They refer to various factors, e.g., the poverty of Russia under the Czars, the disastrous effects of the wars, the alleged hostility of the capitalist democratic nations, the alleged sabotage of the remnants of the Russian aristocracy and bourgeoisie and of the Kulaks. There is no need to enter into an examination of these matters. For we do not contend that any historical experience could prove or disprove a theoretical statement in the way in which a crucial experiment can verify or falsify a statement concerning natural events. It is not the critics of socialism, but its fanatical advocates, who maintain that the Soviet “experiment” proves something with regard to the effects of socialism. However, what they are really doing in dealing with the manifest and undisputed facts of Russian experience is to push them aside by impermissible tricks and fallacious syllogisms. They disavow the obvious facts by commenting upon them in such a way as to deny their bearing and their significance upon the question to be answered.

  Let us, for the sake of argument, assume that their interpretation is correct. But then it would still be absurd to assert that the Soviet experiment has evidenced the superiority of socialism. All that could be said is: the fact that the masses’ standard of living is low in Russia does not provide conclusive evidence that socialism is inferior to capitalism.

  A comparison with experimentation in the field of the natural sciences may clarify the issue. A biologist wants to test a new patent food. He feeds it to a number of guinea pigs. They all lose weight and finally die. The experimenter believes that their decline and death were not caused by the patent food, but by merely accidental affliction with pneumonia. It would nevertheless be absurd for him to proclaim that his experiment had evidenced the nutritive value of the compound because the unfavourable result is to be ascribed to accidental occurrences, not causally linked with the experimental arrangement. The best he could contend is that the outcome of the experiment was not conclusive, that it does not prove anything against the nutritive value of the food tested. Things are, he could assert, as if no experiment had been tried at all.

  Even if the Russian masses’ standard of living were much higher than that of the capitalist countries, this still would not be conclusive proof of the superiority of socialism. It may be admitted that the undisputed fact that the standard of living in Russia is lower than that in the capitalist West does not conclusively prove the inferiority of socialism. But it is nothing short of idiocy to announce that the experience of Russia has demonstrated the superiority of public control of production.

  Neither does the fact that the Russian armies, after having suffered many defeats, finally—with armament manufactured by American big business and donated to them by the American taxpayers—could aid the Americans in the conquest of Germany prove the pre-eminence of communism. When the British forces had to sustain a temporary reverse in North Africa, Professor Harold Laski, that most radical advocate of socialism, was quick to announce the final failure of capitalism. He was not consistent enough to interpret the German conquest of the Ukraine as the final failure of Russian communism. Neither did he retract his condemnation of the British system when his country emerged victorious from the war. If the military events are to be considered as the proof of any social system’s excellence, it is rather the American than the Russian system for which they bear witness.

  Nothing that has happened in Russia since 1917 contradicts any of the statements of the critics of socialism and communism. Even if one bases one’s judgment exclusively on the writings of communists and fellow-trav ellers, one cannot discover any feature in Russian conditions that tells in favour of the Soviet’s social and political system. All the technological improvements of the last decades originated in the capitalistic countries. It is true that the Russians have tried to copy some of these innovations. But so did all backward oriental peoples too.

  Some communists are eager to have us believe that the ruthless oppression of dissenters and the radical abolition of the freedom of thought, speech and the press are not inherent marks of the public control of business. They are, they argue, only accidental phenomena of communism, its signature in a country which—as was the case with Russia—never enjoyed freedom of thought and conscience. However, these apologists for totalitarian despotism are at a loss to explain how the rights of man could be safeguarded under government omnipotence.

  Freedom of thought and conscience is a sham in a country in which the authorities are free to exile everybody whom they dislike into the Arctic or the desert, and to assign him hard labour for life. The autocrat may always try to justify such arbitrary acts by pretending that they are motivated exclusively by considerations of public welfare and economic expediency. He alone is the supreme arbiter to decide all matters referring to the execution of the plan. Freedom of the press is illusory when the government owns and operates all paper mills, printing offices and publishing houses, and ultimately decides what is to be printed and what not. The right of assembly is vain if the government owns all assembly halls and determines for what purposes they shall be used. And so it is with all other liberties too. In one of his lucid intervals Trotsky—of course Trotsky the hunted exile, not the ruthless commander of the Red army—saw things realistically and declared: “In a country where the sole employer is the State, opposition means death by slow starvation. The old principle: who does not work shall not eat, has been replaced by a new one: who does not obey shall not eat.”82 This confession settles the issue.

  What the Russian experience shows is a very low level of the standard of living of the masses and unlimited dictatorial despotism. The apologists of communism are intent upon explaining these uncontested facts as accidental only; they are, they say, not the fruit of communism, but occurred in spite of communism. But even if one were to accept these excuses for the sake of argument, it would be nonsensical to maintain that the Soviet “experiment” has demonstrated anything in favour of communism and socialism.

  10

  The Alleged Invitability of Socialism

  Many people believe that the coming of totalitarianism is inevitable. The “wave of the future,” they say, “carries mankind inexorably towards a system under which all human affairs are managed by omnipotent dictators. It is useless to fight against the unfathomable decrees of history.”

  The truth is that most people lack the intellectual ability and courage to resist a popular movement, however pernicious and ill-considered. Bismarck once deplored the lack of what he called civilian courage, i.e., bravery in dealing with civic affairs, on the part of his countrymen. But neither did the citizens of other nations display more courage and judiciousness when faced with the menace of communist dictatorship. They either yielded silently, or timidly raised some trifling objections.

  One does not fight socialism by criticizing only some accidental features of its schemes. In attacking many socialists’ stand on divorce and birth control, or their ideas about art and literature, one does not refute socialism. It is not enough to disapprove of the Marxian assertions that the theory of relativity or the philosophy of Bergson or psycho-analysis is “bourgeois” moonshine. Those who find fault with Bolshevism and Nazism only for their anti-Christian leanings implicitly endorse all the rest of these bloody schemes.

  On the other hand, it is sheer stupidity to praise the totalitarian regimes for alleged achievements which have no reference whatever to their political and economic principles. It is questionable whether the observations that in Fascist Italy the railway trains ran on schedule and the bug population of second-rate hotel beds was decreasing, were correct or not; but it is in any case of no importance for the problem of Fascism. The fellow-travellers are enraptured by Russian films, Russian music and Russian caviar. But there lived greater musicians in other countries and under other social systems; good pictures were produced in other countries too; and it is certainly not a merit of Generalissimo Stalin that the taste of caviar is delicious. Neither does the prettiness of Russian ballet dancers or the construction of a great power station on the Dnieper expiate for the mass slaughter of the Kulaks.

  The readers of picture magazines and the movie-fans long for the picturesque. The operatic pageants of the Fascists and the Nazis and the parading of the girl-battalions of the Red army are after their heart. It is more fun to listen to the radio speeches of a dictator than to study economic treatises. The entrepreneurs and technologists who pave the way for economic improvement work in seclusion; their work is not suitable to be visualized on the screen. But the dictators, intent upon spreading death and destruction, are spectacularly in sight of the public. Dressed in military garb they eclipse in the eyes of the movie-goers the colourless bourgeois in plain clothes.

  The problems of society’s economic organization are not suitable for light talk at fashionable cocktail parties. Neither can they be dealt with adequately by demagogues haranguing mass assemblies. They are serious things. They require painstaking study. They must not be taken lightly.

  The socialist propaganda never encountered any decided opposition. The devastating critique by which the economists exploded the futility and impracticability of the socialist schemes and doctrines did not reach the moulders of public opinion. The universities were mostly dominated by socialist or interventionist pedants not only in continental Europe, where they were owned and operated by the governments, but even in the Anglo-Saxon countries. The politicians and the statesmen, anxious not to lose popularity, were lukewarm in their defence of freedom. The policy of appeasement, so much criticized when applied in the case of the Nazis and the Fascists, was practised universally for many decades with regard to all other brands of socialism. It was this defeatism that made the rising generation believe that the victory of socialism is inevitable.

  It is not true that the masses are vehemently asking for socialism and that there is no means to resist them. The masses favour socialism because they trust the socialist propaganda of the intellectuals. The intellectuals, not the populace, are moulding public opinion. It is a lame excuse of the intellectuals that they must yield to the masses. They themselves have generated the socialist ideas and indoctrinated the masses with them. No proletarian or son of a proletarian has contributed to the elaboration of the interventionist and socialist programmes. Their authors were all of bourgeois background. The esoteric writings of dialectical materialism, of Hegel, the father both of Marxism and of German aggressive nationalism, the books of Georges Sorel, of Gentile and of Spengler were not read by the average man; they did not move the masses directly. It was the intellectuals who popularized them.

  The intellectual leaders of the peoples have produced and propagated the fallacies which are on the point of destroying liberty and Western civilization. The intellectuals alone are responsible for the mass slaughters which are the characteristic mark of our century. They alone can reverse the trend and pave the way for a resurrection of freedom.

  Not mythical “material productive forces,” but reason and ideas determine the course of human affairs. What is needed to stop the trend towards socialism and despotism is common sense and moral courage.

  BIOGRAPHICAL NOTE

  Ludwig von Mises (1881-1973) was the acknowledged leader of the Austrian School of economic thought, a prodigious originator in economic theory, and a prolific author. A library of his books would total twenty-one volumes if confined to first editions, forty-eight volumes if all revised editions and translations were included, and still more if the Festschriften and other volumes containing contributions by him were added.

  Von Mises’ writings and lectures encompassed economic theory, history, epistemology, government, and political philosophy. His contributions to economic theory include important clarifications on the quantity theory of money, the theory of the trade cycle, the integration of monetary theory with economic theory in general, and a demonstration that socialism must fail because it cannot solve the problem of economic calculation. Mises was the first scholar to recognize that economics is part of a larger science in human action, a science which Mises called “praxeology”.

  Ludwig von Mises receved doctorates in law and economics from the University of Vienna in 1906. In 1909 he became Economic Advisor to the Austrian Chamber of Commerce (comparable to the U.S. Department of Commerce). After serving in World War I, he became Professor of Economics at the University of Vienna and, in 1934, Professor of International Relations at the Graduate Institute of International Studies in Geneva. In 1945 he became Visiting Professor at New York University where he remained until his retirement in 1969. In a lecturing and teaching career that spanned many continents and more than half a century, Mises numbered among his students one Nobel Laureate, F.A. Hayek, two presidents of the American Economic Association, Gottfried Haberler and Fritz Machlup, and many other economists of international reputation.

  His major works are The Theory of Money and Credit (1912), Socialism (1922), Human Action (1949), Theory and History (1957), Epistemological Problems of Economics (1960), and The Ultimate Foundations of Economic Science (1962).

  [8. ]French translation by M. de Hulster, Librairie de Médicis, Paris; Spanish translation by Pedro Elgoibar, Editorial Hermes, México.

  [9. ]British edition by William Hodge & Company Limited, London; French translation by R. Florin and P. Barbier, Librairie de Médicis, Paris.

  [10. ]British edition by William Hodge & Company Limited, London.

  [11. ]“Edelsozialisten” means pure, or intellectual, socialists, “parlour socialists” of the world of culture, as one would say in colloquial English (Pub.).

  [12. ]“Die Wirtschaftsrechnung im sozialistischen Gemeinwesen.” This article was translated under the title “Economic Calculation in the Socialist Commonwealth” from the German by S. Adler and into English. It is included in the anthology edited by F. A. Hayek, Collectivist Economic Planning (London: Routledge and Kegan, 1935), on pp. 87-130. This collection was reprinted in 1967 by Augustus M. Kelley Publishers of New Jersey (Pub.).

  [13. ]Herkner, “Sozialpolitische Wandlungen in der wissenschaftlichen Nationalökonomie” (Der Arbeitgeber, vol. 13, p. 35).

  [14. ]Cassau, “Die sozialistische Ideenwelt vor und nach dem Kriege” in Die Wirtschaftswissenschaft nach dem Kriege, Festgabe für Lujo Brentano zum 80. Geburtstag (Munich, 1925), vol. 1, pp. 149 ff.

  [15. ]The Eisenach Congress of German Economists was called by Gustav Schmoller and some of his German Historical School colleagues. This Congress led to the founding of the Verein für Sozialpolitik (Society for Social Policy), which advocated government intervention in economic affairs. “Socialists of the chair” who were members of this organization had considerable influence on German policy (Pub.).

  [16. ]pp. 459 ff. of this edition.

  [17. ]“It may now fairly be claimed that the socialist philosophy of today is but the conscious and explicit assertion of principles of social organization which have been already in great part unconsciously adopted. The economic history of the century is an almost continuous record of the progress of Socialism.” (Sidney Webb, Fabian Essays [1889], p. 30.)

  [18. ]Foerster points out particularly that the labour movement has attained its real triumph “in the hearts of the possessing classes”; through this “the moral force for resistance has been taken away from these classes.” (Foerster, Christentum und Klassenkampf [Zurich, 1908], p. 111 ff.) In 1869 Prince-Smith had noted the fact that the socialist ideas had found supporters among employers. He mentions that amongst business men, “however strange this may sound, there are some who understand their own activity in the national economy with so little clarity that they hold the socialist ideas as more or less founded, and, consequently, have a bad conscience really, as if they had to admit to themselves that their profits were actually made at the cost of their workmen. This makes them timid and even more muddled. It is very bad. For our economic civilization would be seriously threatened if its bearers could not draw, from the feeling of complete justification, the courage to defend its foundations with the utmost resolution.” (Prince-Smith’s Gesammelte Schriften [Berlin, 1877], vol. 1, p. 362.) Prince-Smith, however, would not have known how to discuss the socialist theories critically.

  [19. ]The term “liberalism” is used by Mises “in the sense attached to it everywhere in the nineteenth century and still today in the countries of continental Europe. This usage is imperative because there is simply no other term available to signify the great political and intellectual movement that substituted free enterprise and the market economy for the precapitalistic methods of production; constitutional representative government for the absolutism of kings or oligarchies; and freedom of all individuals for slavery, serfdom, and other forms of bondage.” Mises, Human Action: A Treatise on Economics, 3rd ed. (Chicago: Regnery, 1966), p. v. (Pub.).

  [20. ]This is shown clearly in the programme of present-day English Liberals: Britain’s Industrial Future, being the Report of the Liberal Industrial Inquiry (London, 1928).

  [21. ]“Science exists only in the heads of the scientists, and they are products of society. They cannot get out of it and beyond it” (Kautsky, Die soziale Revolution, 3rd ed. [Berlin, 1911], vol. 2, p. 39). Publisher’s Note: In English, see The Social Revolution, trans. J. B. Askew (London, 1907).

  [22. ]Dietzgen, “Briefe über Logik, speziell demokratisch-proletarische Logik,” Internationale Bibliothek, 2d ed. (Stuttgart, 1903), vol. 22, p. 112: “Finally logic deserves the epithet ’proletarian’ also for the reason that to understand it one must have overcome all the prejudices which hold the bourgeoisie.”

  [23. ]Ibid, p. 112.

  [24. ]It is a fine irony of history that even Marx suffered this fate. Untermann finds that “even the mental life of typical proletarian thinkers of the Marxist school” contains “remains of past epochs of thought, if only in rudimentary form. These rudiments will appear all the stronger the more the thought stages lived through before the thinker became Marxist were passed in a bourgeois or feudal milieu. This was notoriously so with Marx, Engels, Plekhanov, Kautsky, Mehring, and other prominent Marxists” (Untermann, Die logischen Mängel des engeren Marxismus [Munich, 1910], p. 125). And De Man believes that to understand “the individuality and variety of the theories” one would have to consider, besides the thinker’s general social background, also his own economic and social life—a “bourgeois” life ... “in the case of the college-trained Marx” (De Man, Zur Psychologie des Sozialismus, new ed. [Jena, 1927], p. 17).

  [25. ]World War I (Pub.).

  [26. ]Cohen, Einleitung mit kritischem Nachtrag zur neunten Auflage der Geschichte des Materialismus von Friedrich Albert Lange, 3rd extended ed. (Leipzig, 1914), P. 115. Also Natorp, Sozialpädagogik, 4th ed. (Leipzig, 1920), p. 201.

  [27. ]Anton Menger, Neue Sittenlehre (Jena, 1905), pp. 45, 62.

  [28. ]Throughout the 1920s, Mises continued to refer to the science of human action as “sociology.” However, he later came to prefer the term “praxeology,” derived from the Greek praxis, meaning action, habit or practice. In his “Foreword” to Epistemological Problems of Economics (Princeton: Van Nostrand, 1960; New York: NYU Press, 1981), he commented on his use of the term “sociology” in a 1929 essay included in that volume: “... in 1929, I still believed that it was unnecessary to introduce a new term to signify the general theoretical science of human action as distinguished from the historical studies dealing with human action performed in the past. I thought that it would be possible to employ for this purpose the term sociology, which in the opinion of some authors was designed to signify such a general theoretical science. Only later did I realize that this was not expedient and adopted the term praxeology.” (Pub.)

  [29. ]Muckle, Das Kulturideal des Sozialismus (Munich, 1918) even expects of socialism that it will bring about both “the highest rationalization of economic life” and “redemption from the most terrible of all barbarisms: capitalist rationalism.”

  [1. ]Böhm-Bawerk, Rechte und Verhältnisse vom Standpunkte der volkswirtschaftlichen Güterlehre (Innsbruck, 1881), p. 37. Publisher’s Note: This has been translated into English by George D. Huncke as “Whether Legal Rights and Relationships Are Economic Goods,” in Shorter Classics of Böhm-Bawerk (South Holland, Ill.: Libertarian Press, 1962), vol. 1, pp. 25-138. Passage cited here is on page 58 of this edition.

  [2. ]Fetter, The Principles of Economics, 3rd ed. (New York, 1913), p. 408.

  [3. ]See the verses of Horace:

  • Si proprium est quod quis libra mercatus et aere est,
  • quaedam, si credis consultis, mancipat usus:
  • qui te pascit ager, tuus est; et vilicus Orbi
  • cum segetes occat tibi mox frumenta daturas,
  • te dominum sentit, das nummos: accipis uvam
  • pullos ova, cadum temeti. [2. Epistol., 2, 158-163]
  • (If that which one buys with formal purchase is one’s own,
  • If usage confers title to things, as the lawyers maintain;
  • Then the farm which feeds you is yours; and the farmer,
  • when he cultivates the field which soon will give you grain, feels you are his master.
  • You pay your money: you get in return grapes, chickens, eggs, a jar of wine.)

  The attention of economists was first drawn to this passage by Effertz (Arbeit und Boden, new ed. [Berlin, 1897], vol. 1, pp. 72, 79).

  [4. ]Etatistic social philosophy, which carries all these institutions back to the “state,” returns to the old theological explanation. In it the state assumes the position which the theologians assign to God.

  [5. ]In Greek mythology, the owl was the favorite bird, and a frequent companion of, Athena, the Goddess of Athens (Pub.).

  [6. ]J.S. Mill, Principles of Political Economy, People’s ed. (London, 1867), p, 124.

  [7. ]Dernburg, Pendekten, 6th ed. (Berlin, 1900), vol. l, pt. 2, p. 12.

  [8. ]Fichte, Der geschlossene Handelsstaat, edited by Medicus (Leipzig, 1910), p. 12.

  [9. ]Liberalism tried to extend the protection of acquired rights by developing the subjective public rights and extending legal protection through the law courts. Etatism and socialism, on the contrary, try to restrict increasingly the sphere of private law in favor of public law.

  [10. ]Tacitus, Germania, p. 14.

  [11. ]A fine poetic mockery of the romantic longing, “Where thou art not, there is happiness,” is to be found in the experience of Counselor Knap in Andersen’s “The Galoshes of Fortune.” Publisher’s Note: (New York: Doubleday, 1974).

  [12. ]Wiese, Der Liberalismus in Vergangenheit und Zukunft (Berlin, 1917), pp. 58 ff.

  [13. ]Poehlmann, Geschichte der sozialen Frage und des Sozialismus in der antiken Welt, 2nd ed. (Munich, 1912), vol. 2, pp. 577 ff.

  [14. ]“Ipsaque tellus omnia liberius nullo poscente ferebat” (Virgil, Georgica, I, 127 ff.) [“And the land itself provided everything spontaneously with a liberal hand.”]

  [15. ]Laveleye, Das Ureigentum, trans. by Bücher from French (Leipzig, 1879), pp. 514 ff.

  [16. ]Hauberg cooperatives were associations of workers in lumbering (Hauberg) and tanning enterprises (Pub.).

  [17. ]Trier Gehöferschaften (German) were rural hereditary associations dating from the Middle Ages, set up to cultivate the lands lying outside the manorial freeholds and maintained until recently in the vicinity of Trier in southwestern Germany (Pub.).

  [18. ]Below, Probleme der Wirtschaftsgeschichte (Tübingen,, 1920), pp. 13 ff.

  [19. ]Germania, 26.

  [20. ]The term “Communism” signifies just the same as “Socialism.” The use of these two words has repeatedly changed during the past decades, but always the question that separated socialists from communists was only political tactics. Both aim to socialize the means of production.

  [21. ]Anton Menger, Das Recht auf den vollen Arbeitsertrag in geschichtlicher Darstellung, 4th ed. (Stuttgart and Berlin, 1910), p. 6. Publisher’s Note: For an English translation, see Right to the Whole Produce of Labor, with an introduction by Foxwell, 1899.

  [22. ]Ibid., p.9

  [23. ]Malthus, An Essay on the Principle of Population, 5th ed. (London, 1817), vol. 3, pp. 154 ff.

  [24. ]Marx, Zur Kritik des sozialdemokratischen Parteiprogramms von Gotha, ed. Kreibich (Reichenberg, 1920), p. 17. Publisher’s Note: For an English translation of this passage, see Critique of the Gotha Programme (New York: International Publishers, 1938), p. 10, or pp. 2-7 of Marx, Capital, the Communist Manifesto and Other Writings, ed. and introd. Max Eastman (New York: Random House, Modern Library, 1932). The passage referred to here concludes: “From each according to his abilities, to each according to needs!”

  [25. ]Anton Menger, op. cit., p. 10.

  [26. ]Ibid., pp. 10 ff. Also Singer-Sieghart, Das Recht auf Arbeit in geschichtlicher Darstellung (Jena, 1895), pp. 1 ff.; Mutasoff, Zur Geschichte des Rechts auf Arbeit mit besonderer Rücksicht auf Charles Fourier (Berne, 1897), pp. 4 ff.

  [27. ]My works: Kritik des Interventionismus (Jena, 1929), pp. 22 ff.; Die Ursachen der Wirtschaftskrise (Tübingen, 1931), pp. 15 ff. Publisher’s Note: These references are now available in English. See A Critique of Interventionism, trans. Hans F. Sennholz (New Rochelle, N.Y.: Arlington House, 1977), pp. 26 ff.; “The Causes of the Economic Crisis,” in On the Manipulation of Money and Credit, trans. Bettina Bien Greaves and ed. Percy L. Greaves, Jr. (Dobbs Ferry, N.Y.: Free Market Books, 1978), pp. 186 ff.

  [28. ]Pribram, Die Entstehung der individualistischen Sozialphilosophie (Leipzig, 1912), pp. 3 ff.

  [29. ]Thus Dietzel (“Individualismus,” Handwörterbuch der Staatswissenschaften, 3rd ed., vol. 5, p. 590) formulates the contrast of the individual principle and the social principle. Similarly Spengler, Preussentum und Sozialismus (Munich, 1920), p. 14.

  [30. ]Nietzsche, “Also Sprach Zarathustra,” vol. 6, Werke (Krönersche Klassikerausgabe), p. 69. Publisher’s Note: In English, see Thus Spake Zarathustra, pp. 103-439 in The Portable Nietzsche, ed. Walter Kaufman (New York: Viking Press, 1954). Reference here is to No. 11, “On the New Idol.”

  [31. ]“L’État étant conçu comme un être ideal, on le pare de toutes les qualités que l’on rêve et on le dépouille de toutes les faiblesses que l’on hait” (“The state, being conceived as an ideal being, is endowed with all the qualities of our dreams and stripped of all those qualities we hate”) (P. Leroy-Beaulieu, L’État moderne et ses fonctions, 3rd ed. [Paris, 1900], p. 11); also, Bamberger, Deutschland und der Sozialismus [Leipzig, 1878], pp. 86 ff.

  [32. ]Kant, Idee zu einer allgemeinen Geschichte in weltbürgerlicher Absicht, vol. 1, Sämtliche Werke, Inselausgabe (Leipzig, 1912), p. 235. Publisher’s Note: In English, “Idea for a Universal History from a Cosmopolitan Point of View” (Complete Works, Insel Edition). In On History. Immanuel Kant, ed. Lewis White Beck and trans. Lewis White Beck, Robert E. Anchor and Emil L. Fackenheim (Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1963), p. 21.

  [33. ]Herder, Ideen zu einer Philosophie der Geschichte der Menschheit, vol. 13, Sämtliche Werke, ed. Suphan (Berlin, 1887) pp. 345 ff.

  [34. ]Kant, Rezension zum zweiten Teil von Herders Ideen zur Philosophie der Geschichte der Menschheit, vol. 1, Werke, p. 267. On this, see Cassirer, Freiheit und Form (Berlin, 1916), pp. 504 ff. Publisher’s Note: In English, “Review on the Second Part of Herder’s Ideas for a Philosophy on the History of Mankind.” In On History. Immanuel Kant, ed. Lewis White Beck (Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1963), p. 51.

  [35. ]Kant, Idee zu einer allgemeinen Geschichte ... p. 228. Publisher’s Note: In English this is page 16 of Idea for a Universal History ... as cited above.

  [36. ]Gierke, Des Wesen der menschlichen Verbände (Leipzig, 1902), pp. 34 ff.

  [37. ]In “Ernst und Falk,” Gespräche für Freimaurer, vol. 5. Werke (Stuttgart, 1873), p. 80.

  [39. ]As, for instance, Lasson maintains (Prinzip und Zukunft des Völkerrechts, Berlin, 1871), p. 35.

  [40. ]Bertha Suttner (1843-1914) was an Austrian author, pacifist, and 1905 Nobel Peace Prize recipient (Pub.).

  [41. ]In their efforts to debit capitalism with all evil, the socialists have tried to describe even modern imperialism and thus world war as products of capitalism. It is probably unnecessary to deal more fully with this theory, put forward for the unthinking masses. But it is not inappropriate to recall that Kant represented the facts correctly when he expected the growing influence of “money power” would gradually diminish warlike tendencies. “It is the spirit of commerce,” he says, “which cannot exist side by side with war” (Kant, “Zum ewigen Frieden,” vol. 5, Sämtliche Werke, p. 688); see also Sulzbach, Nationales Gemeinschaftsgefühl und wirtschaftliches Interesse (Leipzig, 1929), pp. 80 ff. Publisher’s Note: In English, “Perpetual Peace.” In On History. Immanuel Kant, ed. Lewis White Beck (Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1963), p. 114.

  [42. ]In some sense it is, perhaps, not altogether an accident that the writer who, at the threshold of the Renaissance, first raised the democratic demand for legislation by the people—Marsilius of Padua—called his work Defensor Pacis (Atger, Essai sur l’Histoire des Doctrines du Contrat Social [Paris, 1906], p. 75; Scholz, “Marsilius von Padua und die Idee der Demokratie” [Zeitschrift fur Politik, 1908], vol. 1, pp. 66 ff.

  [43. ]See, on the one hand, especially the writings of the advocates of the Prussian authoritarian state; on the other, above all, the syndicalists (Michels, Zur Soziologie des Parteiwesens in der modernen Demokratie, 2nd ed. [Leipzig, 1925]), pp. 463 ff.

  [44. ]Max Weber, Politik als Beruf (Munich and Leipzig, 1920), pp. 17 ff.

  [45. ]The natural-law theories of democracy, which fail to appreciate the essentials of the division of labor, cling to the idea of the “representation” of electors by elected. It was not difficult to show how artificial was this concept. The member of parliament who makes laws for me and controls for me the administration of the postal system, no more “represents” me than the doctor who heals me or the cobbler who makes shoes for me. What differentiates him essentially from the doctor and the cobbler is not that he fulfills services of a different kind for me but that if I am dissatisfied with him I cannot withdraw the care of my affairs from him in the same simple way I can dismiss a doctor or a cobbler. To get that influence in government which I have over my doctor and shoemaker I want to be an elector.

  [46. ]To this extent one can say with Proudhon: “La democratie c’est l’envie” (“Democracy is envy”) (Poehlmann, Geschichte der sozialen Frage und des Sozialismus in der antiken Welt, vol. 1, p. 317, fn. 4).

  [47. ]Ibid., vol. 1, p. 333

  [48. ]Hegel, Vorlesungen über die Philosophie der Weltgeschichte, ed. Lasson (Leipzig, 1917), vol. l, p. 40.

  [49. ]Gervinus, Einleitung in die Geschichte des neunzehnten Jahrhunderts (Leipzig, 1853), p. 13.

  [50. ]i.e., German radicalism before the revolution of 1848 (Trans.).

  [51. ]Engels, Herrn Eugen Dührings Umwälzung der Wissenschaft, 7th ed. (Stuttgart, 1910), p. 302. Publisher’s Note: in English, see Anti-Dühring: Herr Eugen Dühring’s Revolution in Science (Moscow: Foreign Languages Publishing House, 1954), p. 389.

  [52. ]Marx, Zur Kritik des sozialdemokratischen Parteiprogramms von Gotha, ed. Kreibich (Reichenberg, 1920), p. 23. Publisher’s Note: In English, see Critique of the Gotha Programme, rev. trans. (New York: International Publishers, 1938), p. 18, or in Capital, the Communist Manifesto and Other Writings, ed. and introd. Max Eastman (New York: Random House, Modern Library, 1932). p. 355.

  [53. ]Ibid., p. 17; also V. I. Lenin, Staat und Revolution (Berlin, 1918), p. 89. Publisher’s Note: In English, see Marx, Critique of the Gotha Programme, p. 10. or p. 7 in the Eastman anthology; also Lenin, “The State and Revolution,” in Selected Work in Two Volumes (Moscow: Foreign Languages Publishing House, 1952), vol. 2, pt. 1, pp. 199-325. The reference cited here is p. 290 in this English translation.

  [54. ]Bukharin, Das Programm der Kommunisten (Bolschewiki) (Zurich, 1918), pp. 24 ff. Publisher’s Note: For an English translation, see Program of the Communists, Bolshevists, 1918.

  [55. ]As is the opinion of Kelsen, “Vom Wesen und Wert der Demokratie,” in Archiv für Sozialwissenschaft und Sozialpolitik, vol. 47, P. 84; also Menzel, “Demokratie und Weltanschauung,” in Zeitschrift für öffentliches Recht, vol. 2, pp. 701 ff.

  [56. ]Marx, op. cit., p. 17. Publisher’s Note: In English, see Critique of the Gotha Programme, rev. trans. (New York: International Publishers, 1938), p. 10, or Marx, Capital, the Communist Manifesto and Other Writings, ed. and introd. Max Eastman (New York: Random House, Modern Library, 1932), p. 7.

  [57. ]Engels, op. cit., p. 302. Publisher’s Note: In the English, op. cit., p. 389.

  [58. ]“Engels, Preface to Marx, Der Bürgerkrieg in Frankreich, Politische Aktions-Bibliothek (Berlin, 1919), p. 16. Publisher’s Note: In English, see Engels, “Introduction to the German Edition” of Marx’s “The Civil War in France” (1871), in Marx, Capital, the Communist Manifesto and Other Writings, ed. and introd. Max Eastman (New York: Random House, Modern Library, 1932), p. 381.

  [59. ]Marx, Der Bürgerkrieg, p. 54. Publisher’s Note: In English, see p. 408 of Eastman anthology cited in fn. 19.

  [60. ]Engels, Der Ursprung der Familie, des Privateigentums und des Staates, 20th ed. (Stuttgart, 1921), pp. 163 ff. Publisher’s Note: In English, see Engels, The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State (New York: International Publishers, 1972), pp. 162 ff.

  [61. ]Ovid, Metamorphoses, I, pp. 89 ff.; also Virgil, Aeneid, VII, pp. 203 ff.; Tacitus, Annal, III, p. 26; Poehlmann, Geschichte der sozialen Frage und des Sozialismus in der antiken Welt, vol. 2, pp. 583 ff.

  [62. ]Bourguin, Die sozialistischen Systeme und die wirtschaftliche Entwicklung, trans. Katenstein (Tübingen, 1906), pp. 70 ff.; Kelsen, Sozialismus und Staat, 2nd ed. (Leipzig, 1923), p. 105.

  [63. ]Also Bryce, Moderne Demokratien, trans. Loewenstein and Mendelssohn Bartholdy (Munich, 1926), vol. 3, pp. 289 ff. Publisher’s Note: In English, see James Bryce, Modern Democracies (New York: Macmillan, 1921), 2 vols.

  [64. ]Freud, Drei Abhandlungen zur Sexualtheorie, 2nd ed. (Leipzig and Vienna, 1910), pp. 38 ff. Publisher’s Note: In English, see Freud, “Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality,” in The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud (New York: Avon Books, 1965). This citation is found on pp. 53 ff.

  [65. ]Poehlmann, Geschichte der sozialen Frage und des Sozialismus in der antiken Welt, vol. 2, p. 576.

  [66. ]Engels, Der Ursprung der Familie, des Privateigentums und des Staates, p. 182. Publisher’s Note: In English, see Engels, The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State (New York: International Publishers, 1972), p. 232.

  [67. ]Westermarck, Geschichte der menschlichen Ehe, trans. Katscher and Grazer, 2nd ed. (Berlin, 1902), p. 122; Weinhold, Die deutschen Frauen in dem Mittelalter, 3rd ed. (Vienna, 1897), vol. 2, pp. 9 ff. Publisher’s Note: The Westermarck book first appeared in English as The History of Human Marriage (1891).

  [68. ]For example, Weinhold, op. cit., pp. 7 ff.

  [69. ]I Cor xi.9.

  [70. ]The German edition refers to “Hans und Grete,” not Hansel and Gretel, the brother and sister in the Grimm fairy tale. Most likely these names were merely like “John and Mary.” (Pub.)

  [71. ]Ulrich von Lichtenstein, a thirteenth-century poet, caricatured the form of chivalry of a knight’s homage to his mistress, “Minnedienst,” in his Frauendienst (1255).

  [72. ]Weinhold, op. cit., 1st ed. (Vienna, 1851), pp. 292 ff.

  [73. ]Westermarck, op. cit., pp. 74 ff.; Weinhold, op. cit., 3rd ed. (Vienna), vol. 1, p. 273.

  [74. ]Schröder, Lehrbuch der deutschen Rechtsgeschichte, 3rd ed. (Leipzig, 1898), pp. 70, 110; Weinhold, op. cit., vol. 2, pp. 12 ff.

  [75. ]Tacitus, Germania, c. 17.

  [76. ]Marianne Weber, Ehefrau und Mutter in der Rechtsentwicklung (Tübingen, 1907), pp. 53 ff., 217 ff.

  [77. ]August Bebel, Die Frau und der Sozialismus, 16th ed. (Stuttgart, 1892), p. 343. Publisher’s Note: English, see Bebel, Women and Socialism, auth. trans. Meta L. Stern (New York: Socialist Literature, 1910), p. 467.

  [78. ]To examine how far the radical demands of feminism were created by men and women whose sexual character was not normally developed would go beyond the limits set to these expositions.

  [79. ]Marx and Engels, Das Kommunistische Manifest, 7th German ed. (Berlin, 1906), p. 35. Publisher’s Note: In English, see “The Communist Manifesto,” in Marx, Capital, the Communist Manifesto and Other Writings, ed. and introd. Max Eastman (New York: Random House, Modern Library, 1932), pp. 315-355. The reference to prostitution is on page 340 of this English edition.

  [80. ]Bebel, op. cit., pp. 141 ff. Publisher’s Note: In the English edition cited earlier, see pp. 274 ff.

  [81. ]Marianne Weber, op. cit., pp. 6 ff.

  [1. ]It was left to the empirical-realistic school, with its terrible confusion of all concepts, to explain the economic principle as a specific of production under a money economy, e.g., Lexis, Allgemeine Volkswirtschaftslehre (Berlin and Leipzig, 1910), p. 15.

  [2. ]Amonn, Objekt und Grundbegriffe der theoretischen Nationalökonomie (Vienna and Leipzig, 1927), p. 185.

  [3. ]Mill, Das Nützlichkeitsprinzip. Trans. Wahrmund, Gesammelte Werke, German ed. Th. Gomperz (Leipzig, 1869), vol, 1, pp. 125-200. Publisher’s Note: This is a German translation of Utilitarianism.

  [4. ]Schumpeter, Das Wesen und der Hauptinhalt der theoretischen Nationalökonomie, (Leipzig, 1908), pp. 50, 80.

  [5. ]The following remarks reproduce parts of my essay “Die Wirtschaftsrechnung im sozialistischen Gemeinwesen” (Archiv für Sozialwissenschaft, Vol. XLVII, pp. 86-121). Publisher’s Note: Mises’ essay was translated into English by S. Adler and included in Collectivist Economic Planning: Critical Studies on the Possibilities of Socialism by N. G. Pierson, Ludwig yon Mises, Georg Halm, and Enrico Barone; edited, with an Introduction and a Concluding Essay by F. A. Hayek. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul Ltd., 1935. 293 pp. bibl. Mises’ essay, titled “Economic Calculation in the Socialist Commonwealth” in English, appears on pages 87-130.

  [6. ]Cuhel, Zur Lehre yon den Bedürfnissen (Innsbruck, 1907), p. 198.

  [7. ]Wieser, Über den Ursprung und die Hauptgesetze des wirtschaftlichen Wertes, Vienna, 1884, pp. 185 ff.

  [8. ]Gottl-Otthlienfeld, “Wirtschaft und Technik,” Grundriss der Sozialökonomik, II (Tübingen, 1914), p. 216.

  [9. ]Neurath too admitted this. (Durch die Kriegswirtschaft zur Naturalwirtschaft [Munich, 1919], pp. 216 ff.) He asserts that every complete administrative economy (planned economy) is ultimately a natural economy (barter system). “To socialize therefore means to advance the natural economy.” Neurath, however, did not recognize the insurmountable difficulties economic calculation would encounter in the socialist community.

  [10. ]Passow, Kapitalismus, eine begrifflich-terminologische Studie (Jena, 1918), pp. 1 ff. In the 2nd edition, published 1927, Passow expressed the opinion (p. 15, note 2), in view of the most recent literature, that the term “Capitalism” might in time gradually lose the moral colouring.

  [11. ]Carl Menger, “Zur Theorie des Kapitals” (Jahrbücher für Nationalökonomie und Statistik, Vol. XVII), p. 41.

  [12. ]Passow, op. cit. (2nd edition), pp. 49 ff.

  [13. ]Passow, op. cit. (2nd edition), pp. 132 ff.

  [14. ]See the critique of Kelsen, “Staat und Gesellschaft,” in Sozialismus und Staat (Leipzig, 1923), pp. 11 ff. and pp. 20 ff.

  [15. ]Engels, Herrn Eugen Dührings Umwälzung der Wissenschaft, pp. 335 ff. Publisher’s Note: In the English edition, Anti-Dühring: Herrn Eugen Dühring’s Revolution in Science, pp. 429 ff.

  [16. ]Marx, Das Kapital, Vol. 1, pp. 5 ff. Publisher’s Note: In English, see Marx, Karl. Capital: A Critique of Political Economy. 3 volumes. Vol. I. The Process of Capitalist Production. Translated from the 3rd German edition by Samuel Moore and Edward Aveling. Edited by Frederick Engels. Revised and amplified according to the 4th German edition by Ernest Untermann. Chicago: Charles H. Kerr & Co., 1906. (Note: This Volume I also reprinted by Random House as a Modern Library Giant, with same paging as the Kerr edition.) Vol. II. The Process of Circulation of Capital. Vol. III. The Process of Capitalist Production as a Whole. Both Volumes II and III were translated by Ernest Untermann and edited by Frederick Engels. Both were published by the same Charles H. Kerr & Co. of Chicago in 1909. In this footnote, pp. 5 ff. refers to pp. 45 ff. in the English Vol. I.

  [17. ]Ibid., pp. 9 ff. Publisher’s Note: pp. 50 ff. in English translation.

  [18. ]Ibid., pp. 10 ff. Publisher’s Note: pp. 51-52 in English translation.

  [19. ]Böhm-Bawerk, Kapital und Kapitalzins, Vol. I, 3rd ed. (Innsbruck, 1914), p. 531. Publisher’s Note: Böhm-Bawerk’s three volume work in English is: Böhm-Bawerk, Eugen von. Capital and Interest. 3 volumes. (South Holland, Illinois: Libertarian Press, 1959.) Volume I. History and Critique of Interest Theories. Translated by George D. Huncke and Hans F. Sennholz.

  [20. ]We may point out here that as early as 1854 Gossen knew “that only through private property is the measure found for determining the quantity of each commodity which it would be best to produce under given conditions. Therefore, the central authority, proposed by the communists, for the distribution of the various tasks and their reward, would very soon find that it had taken on a job the solution of which far surpasses the abilities of individual men.” (Gossen, Entwicklung der Gesetze des menschlichen Verkehrs, new ed., [Berlin, 1889] p. 231.) Pareto (Cours d’Économie Politique, Vol. II, Lausanne, 1897, pp. 364 ff.) and Barone (“Il Ministro della Produzione nello Stato Coletivista” in Giornale degli Economisti, Vol. XXXVII, 1908, pp. 409 ff.) did not penetrate to the core of the problem. Pierson clearly and completely recognized the problem in 1902. See his Das Wertproblem in der sozialistischen Gesellschaft (German translation by Hayek, Zeitschrift für Volkswirtschaft, New Series, Vol. IV, 1925, pp. 607 ff.) Publisher’s Note: Both the Barone article (“The Ministry of Production in the Collectivist State,” pp. 245-290) and the Pierson article (“The Problem of Value in the Socialist Society,” pp. 41-85) are included in the Hayek edited Collectivist Economic Planning.

  [21. ]I have briefly discussed the most important of these replies in two short essays—”Neue Beiträge zurn Problem der sozialistischen Wirtschaftsrechnung” (Archiv für Sozialwissenschaft, Vol. LI, pp. 488-500) and “Neue Schriften zum Problem der sozialistischen Wirtschaftsrechnung” (Ibid., Vol. LX, pp. 187-90. Publisher’s Note: “Neue Beiträge zum Problem der sozialistischen Wirtschaftsrechnung” appears in part as the Appendix of this book on p. 473. The second essay mentioned by Mises in this footnote was published in 1928 and has not been translated into English. The essay was a review of recent literature on economic calculations under socialism.

  [22. ]In scientific literature there is no more doubt about this. See Max Weber, “Wirtschaft und Gesellschaft” (Grundriss der Sozialökonomik, Vol. III), Tübingen, 1922, pp. 45-59; Adolf Weber, Allgemeine Volkswirtschaftslehre, 4th ed., Munich and Leipzig, 1932, Vol. II, pp. 369 ff.; Brutzkus, Die Lehren des Marxismus im Lichte der russischen Revolution, Berlin, 1928, pp. 21 ff.; C. A. Verrijn Stuart, “Winstbejag versus behoeftenbevrediging” (Overdruk Economist, Vol, 76 No. 1), pp. 28 ff.; Pohle-Halm, Kapitalismus und Sozialismus, 4th ed., Berlin, 1931, pp. 237 ff.

  [23. ]Characteristic of this branch of literature is the recently published work of C. Landauer, Planwirtschaft und Verkehrswirtschaft (Munich and Leipzig, 1931). Here the writer deals with the problem of economic calculation quite naively, at first by asserting that in a socialist society “the individual enterprises...could buy from each other, just as capitalist enterprises buy from each other” (p. 114). A few pages on he explains that “besides this” the socialist state will “have to set up a control accountancy in kind”; the state will be “the only one able to do this because in contrast to Capitalism it controls production itself” (p. 122). Landauer cannot understand that—and why—one is not permitted to add and subtract figures of different denominations. Such a case is, of course, beyond help.

  [24. ]Böhm-Bawerk, Kapital und Kapitalzins, Vol. II, 3rd ed. (Innsbruck, 1912), p. 21. Publisher’s Note: The page in the English (Sennholz/Huncke) translation of Böhm-Bawerk, referred to here is page 14 in Volume II. Böhm-Bawerk, Eugen von. Capital and Interest. 3 volumes. South Holland, Illinois: Libertarian Press, 1959. [Information re Vol. I above.] Volume II. Positive Theory of Capital. Translated by George D. Huncke; Hans F. Sennholz, Consulting Economist. Volume III. Further Essays on Capital and Interest. Translated by Hans F. Sennholz.

  [25. ]The limitation comprised in the words “at first” is not intended to mean that Socialism will later on, say after attaining a “higher stage of the communist society,” intentionally set about abolishing capital in the sense used here. Socialism can never plan the return to the life from hand to mouth. Rather do I want to point out here that Socialism must, by inner necessity, lead to the gradual consumption of capital.

  [26. ]Pohle-Halm, Kapitalismus und Sozialismus, pp. 12 ff.

  [27. ]On Monopoly see pp. 344 ff. and on “uneconomic” consumption see p. 401 ff.

  [28. ]See pp. 140 ff., 160 ff.

  [29. ]A. Smith, An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, Book II, Chap. V (London 1776, Vol. I, pp. 437 ff.).

  [30. ]Ricardo, Principles of Political Economy and Taxation, Chap. XXVI (Works, ed. MacCulloch, 2nd ed. [London 1852] pp. 220 ff.).

  [31. ]Say, in his Notes to Constancio’s French Edition of Ricardo’s works, Vol. II (Paris, 1819), pp. 222 ff.

  [32. ]Sismondi, Nouveaux Principes d’Économie Politique (Paris, 1819), Vol. ii, p. 331 footnote.

  [33. ]Bernhardi, Versuch einer Kritik der Grande, die für grosses und kleines Grundeigentum angeführt werden (Petersburg, 1849), pp. 367 ff.; also Cronbach, Das landwirtschaftliche Betriebsproblem in der deutschen Nationalökonomie bis zur Mitte des 19. Jahrhunderts (Vienna, 1907), pp. 292 ff.

  [34. ]“La société recherche le plus grand produit brut, par consequent la plus grande population possible, parce que pour elle produit brut et produit net son identiques. Le monopole, au contraire, vise constamment au plus grand produit net, dût-il ne l’obtenir qu’au prix de l’extermination du genre humain.” (“Society seeks the largest gross product and thus the largest possible population, because for it gross product and net product are the same thing. On the other hand, monopoly continually aims at the highest net product which it can obtain only at the price of exterminating the human race.”) Proudhon, Système des contradictions économiques ou philosophie de la misère (Paris, 1846), Vol. I, p. 270. In Proudhon’s language “Monopoly” means the same as Private Property. Ibid., Vol. i, p. 236; also Landry, L’utilité sociale de la propriété individuelle (Paris, 1901), p. 76.

  [35. ]Marx, Das Kapital, Vol. I, pp. 613-726. The arguments about “the theory of compensation for the workers displaced by machinery” (ibid., pp. 403-12) are vain in view of the Marginal Utility Theory. Publisher’s Note: The page references cited here are pp. 738-821 and 478-488, respectively, in the English edition.

  [36. ]Goltz, Agrarwesen und Agrarpolitik, 2nd ed. (Jena, 1904), p. 53; also Waltz, Vom Reinertrag in der Landwirtschaft (Stuttgart and Berlin, 1904), pp. 27 ff. Goltz contradicts himself in his arguments, for, to the assertion mentioned above, he adds immediately: “Nevertheless the amount remaining as net profit from the gross product after deducting costs varies considerably. On the average it is greater with extensive than with intensive cultivation.”

  [37. ]See Waltz, op. cit. pp. 19 ff. on Adam Müller, Bülow-Cummerow and Phillipp v. Arnim, and pp. 30 ff. on Rudolf Meyer and Adolf Wagner.

  [38. ]Landry, L’utilité sociale de la propriété individuelle, pp. 109, 127 ff.

  [39. ]Landry, L’utilité sociale de la propriété individuelle, pp. 109, 127 ff.

  [40. ]Marx, Das Kapital, Vol. I, p. 695.

  [41. ]Quoted by Waltz, Vom Reinertrag in der Landwirtschaft, p. 29.

  [42. ]Cannan, A History of the Theories of Production and Distribution in English Political Economy from 1776 to 1848, 3rd ed. (London, 1917), pp. 183 ff. Also p. 294 of Socialism.

  [43. ]Acts of the Apostles, II. 45.

  [44. ]See Pecqueur’s criticism of this formula of distribution in Théorie nouvelle d’Économie sociale et politique (Paris, 1842), pp. 613 ff. Pecqueur shows himself superior to Marx, who unhesitatingly indulges in the illusion that “In a higher stage of the communist society ... the narrow bourgeois legal horizon could be completely surpassed and society could write on its banners: From each according to his abilities, to each according to his needs!” Marx, Zur Kritik des sozialdemokratischen Parteiprogramms von Gotha, p. 17.

  [45. ]Lenin, Staat und Revolution, p. 96. Publisher’s Note: pp. 305-306 in the English edition.

  [46. ]Engels, Herrn Eugen Dührings Umwälzung der Wissenschaft, p. 302. Publisher’s Note: p. 389 in the English edition.

  [47. ]Fourier, Oeuvres complètes, Vol. IV, 2nd ed. (Paris, 1841), pp. 254 ff.

  [48. ]Godwin, Das Eigentum, Bahrfeld’s translation of that part of Political Justice which deals with the problem of property (Leipzig, 1904), pp. 73 ff.

  [49. ]Kautsky, Die soziale Revolution, 3rd ed., (Berlin, 1911), II, p. 48.

  [50. ]Trotsky, Literatur und Revolution (Vienna, 1924), p. 179.

  [51. ]“Today all enterprises ... are first and foremost a question of profitability ... A socialist society knows no other question than of sufficient labour forces, and if it has these the work ... is done.” (Bebel, Die Frau und der Sozialismus, p. 308. Publisher’s Note: p. 427 in the English edition.) “Everywhere it is the social institution and the methods of production and distribution connected with these which produce want and misery, and not the number of people.” (Ibid., p. 368. Publisher’s Note: p. 492 in the English edition.) “We suffer not from a lack but from a superfluity of foodstuffs, just as we have a superfluity of industrial products.” (Ibid., p. 368, p. 429 in the English. Also Engels, Herrn Eugen Dührings Umwälzung der Wissenschaft, p. 305. Publisher’s Note: pp. 390-391 in the English edition.) “We have ... not too many but rather too few people.” (Bebel, op. cit., p. 370; p. 494 in the English edition.)

  [52. ]Considerant, Exposition abrégee du Système Phalanstérien de Fourier, 4th Impression, 3rd ed. (Paris, 1846), pp. 29 ff.

  [53. ]Jevons, The Theory of Political Economy, 3rd ed. (London, 1888), pp. 169, 172 ff.

  [54. ]Engels, Herrn Eugen Dührings Umwälzung der Wissenschaft, p. 327. Publisher’s Note: p. 408 in the English edition.

  [55. ]Marx, Zur Kritik des sozialdemokratischen Parteiprogramms von Gotha, p. 27. Publisher’s Note: This passage can be found on p. 7 of the Eastman edited Modern Library edition and p. 10 of the International Publishers edition.

  [56. ]Max Adler, Die Staatsauffassung des Marxismus (Vienna, 1922), p. 287.

  [57. ]Considerant, Exposition abrégée du Système Phalanstérien de Fourier, p. 33.

  [58. ]Considerant, “Studien über einige Fundamentalprobleme der sozialen Zukunft” (contained in Fouriers System der sozialen Reform, translated by Kaatz, Leipzig 1906), pp. 55 ff. Fourier has the distinction of having introduced the fairies into social science. In his future state the children, organized in “Petites Hordes” (small groups), will perform what the adults do not do. To them will be entrusted, amongst other things, maintenance of the roads. “C’est à leur amour propre que l’Harmonie sera redevable d’avoir, par toute la terre, des chemins plus somptueux que les allées de nos parterres. Ils seront entretenus d’arbres et d’arbustes, même de fleurs, et arrosés au trottoir. Les Petites Hordes courent frénétiquement au travail, qui est exécuté comme oeuvre pie, acte de charité envers la Phalange, service de Dieu et de l’Unité.” (It is to their own self-esteem that “Harmony” will be indebted for having, everywhere, roads more magnificent than the walks in our flower gardens. They will be maintained with trees, shrubs, even flowers, and they will be irrigated along the footpaths. The small groups run frantically to their work, which will be carried out as a pious duty, an act of love [charity] for the Phalanx [community], a service for God and Unity.) By three o’clock in the morning they are up, cleaning the stables, attending to the cattle and horses, and working in the slaughter houses, where they take care that no animal is ever treated cruelly, killing always in the most humane manner. “Elles ont la haute police du règne animal.” (They are the eminent police of the animal kingdom.) When their work is done they wash themselves, dress themselves, and appear triumphantly at the breakfast table. See Fourier, Oeuvres complètes, Vol. V, 2nd Edition (Paris, 1841), pp. 141, 159.

  [59. ]Fabre des Essarts, Odes Phalanstériennes, Montreuil-sous-Bois 1900. Béranger and Victor Hugo also venerated Fourier. The first dedicated to him a poem, reprinted in Bebel (Charles Fourier, Stuttgart 1890, pp. 294 ff.).

  [60. ]Socialist writers are still far from knowing this. Kautsky (Die soziale Revolution, II, pp. 16 ff.) considers that the main task of a proletarian regime is “to make work, which today is a burden, into a pleasure, so that people will enjoy working and the workers go joyfully to work.” He admits that “this is not such a simple matter” and concludes that “it will hardly be possible to make work in factories and mines attractive quickly.” But he cannot naturally bring himself to abandon completely Socialism’s fundamental illusion.

  [61. ]Veblen, The Instinct of Workmanship (New York, 1922), pp. 31 ff.; De Man, Zur Psychologie des Sozialismus, pp. 45 ff.; De Man, Der Kampf um die Arbeitsfreude (Jena, 2927), pp. 249 ff.

  [62. ]We here disregard the above-mentioned pleasure in beginning work, in practice unimportant. See p. 145.

  [63. ]Wattenbach, Das Schriftwesen in Mittelalter, 3rd ed. (Leipzig, 1896), p. 500. Amongst the many similiar sayings and verses quoted by Wattenbach is the still more drastic: Libro completo saltat scriptor pede laeto (Once the book is finished, the author dances with joy).

  [64. ]Clark, Distribution of Wealth (New York, 1907), pp. 257 ff.

  [65. ]Rodbertus, Johann Karl, Briefe und sozialpolitische Aufsätze, ed. R. Meyer (Berlin, 1881), pp. 553 ff. We shall not enter here into Rodbertus’ other proposals for the normal working day. They are throughout based on the untenable view Rodbertus has formed about the problem of value.

  [66. ]Schäffle, Die Quintessenz des Sozialismus, 18th ed. (Gotha, 1919), pp. 30 ff.

  [67. ]Degenfeld-Schonburg, Die Motive des volkswirtschaftlichen Handelns und der deutsche Marxismus (Tübingen, 1920), p. 80.

  [68. ]J. S. Mill, Principles, pp. 226 ff. We cannot here examine how far Mill took over these ideas from others. Their wide diffusion they owe to the brilliant exposition in which Mill has presented them in his much read work.

  [69. ]Competition between the entrepreneurs sees to it that wages do not fall below this level.

  [70. ]Kautsky, Die soziale Revolution, II, pp. 25 ff.

  [71. ]Kautsky, Die soziale Revolution, II, pp. 21 ff.

  [72. ]Kautsky, Die soziale Revolution, II, p. 26.

  [73. ]In the years of controlled economy we heard quite often of frozen potatoes, rotten fruit, spoiled vegetables. Did such things not happen formerly? Certainly. But they happened less often. The merchant whose fruit spoiled suffered monetary loss, and that made him careful in the future. If he did not take better care he was ruined at last. He ceased to direct production and was removed to a place in economic life where he could do no more harm. But it is otherwise with the goods which the state deals in. Here there is no individual interest behind the commodities. Here officials trade, whose responsibility is so divided that no one gets particularly excited about a small misfortune.

  [74. ]Georg Adler, Geschichte des Sozialismus und Kommunismus (Leipzig, 1899), pp. 185 ff.

  [75. ]On the social-dynamic functions of democracy see p. 60 of Socialism.

  [76. ]Cabet, Voyage en Icarie (Paris, 1848), p. 127.

  [77. ]Luther urged the Princes of his party not to tolerate the monastic system and the Mass. According to him it would be irrelevant to answer that, as the Emperor Charles was convinced that the Papist doctrine was true, he would act justly, from his point of view, in destroying the Lutheran teachings as heresy. For we know “that he is not certain of this, nor can he be certain, because we know that he errs and fights against the Gospels. For it is not our duty to believe that he is certain, because he goes without God’s Word and we go with God’s Word; rather it is his duty to recognize God’s Word and to advance it, like us, with all his power.” Dr. Martin Luther’s Briefe, Sendschreiben und Bedenken, ed. de Wette, Part IV (Berlin, 1827), pp. 93 ff.; Paulus, Protestantismus und Toleranz im 16. Jahrhundert (Freiburg, 1911), p. 23.

  [78. ]“It is misleading to say: Progress should be organized. What is really productive cannot be put into forms made in advance; it flourishes only in unrestricted freedom. The followers may then organize themselves, which is also called ’forming a school’.” Spranger, Begabung und Studium (Leipzig, 1917), p. 8. See also Mill, On Liberty, 3rd ed. (London, 1864), pp. 114 ff.

  [79. ]Bebel, Die Frau und der Sozialismus, p. 284. Publisher’s Note: p. 395 in the English edition. See Index to Works Cited for complete citation.

  [80. ]How Bebel pictured to himself life in a socialist community is shown by the following: “Here she (Woman) is active under the same conditions as the man. At one moment a practical worker in some industry she is in the next hour educator, teacher, nurse; in the third part of the day she exercises some art or cultivates a science; and in the fourth part she fulfils some administrative function. She enjoys studies, pleasures and amusement with her like or with men, just as she wishes and as the opportunity offers. In love choice she is free and unfettered like the man. She woos or lets herself be wooed, etc.” (Bebel, op. cit., p. 342). Publisher’s Note: pp. 466-467 in English edition.

  [81. ]This corresponds to Bellamy’s ideas. (Ein Rückblick, translated by Hoops in Meyers Volksbücher, pp. 230 ff.) Publisher’s Note: In English, Looking Backward: If Socialism Comes, 2000-1887 (Boston, 1889); chapter 15; and (W. Foulsham, London), pp. 92-99.

  [82. ]Similarly formulated by J. S. Mill, On Liberty, p. 7.

  [83. ]Clark, Essentials of Economic Theory (New York, 1907), pp. 131 ff.

  [84. ]Bebel, Die Frau und der Sozialismus, p. 340. Bebel quotes therewith the well-known verse of Heine. Publisher’s Note: p. 463 in the English edition.

  [85. ]Heinrich Soetbeer, Die Stellung der Sozialisten zur Malthusschen Bevölkerungslehre (Berlin, 1886), pp. 33 ff.; 52 ff.; 85 ff.

  [86. ]Malthus, An Essay on the Principle of Population, 5th ed. (London, 1817), Vol. II, pp. 245 ff.

  [87. ]Tarde, Die Sozialen Gesetze, German translation by Hammer (Leipzig, 1908), p. 99. Also the numerous examples in Roscher, Ansichten der Volkswirtschaft vom geschichtlichen Standpunkt, 3rd ed. (Leipzig, 1878), Vol. I, pp. 112 ff. Publisher’s Note: The Tarde book in English is Social Laws. Translated by Howard C. Warren, with preface by James Mark Baldwin (New York: Macmillan, 1899).

  [88. ]On the difficulties a socialist economy must put in the way of the invention and, even more, of the realization of technical improvements, see Dietzel, Technischer Fortschritt und Freiheit der Wirtschaft (Bonn and Leipzig, 1922), pp. 47 ff.

  [89. ]See the pertinent criticism of these efforts which are evidence of good intentions rather than of scientific sharpness of thought, in Michaelis, Volkswirtschaftliche Schriften (Berlin, 1873), Vol. II, pp. 3 ff., and by Petritsch, Zur Lehre von der Überwälzung der Steuern mir besonderer Beziehung auf den Börsenverkehr (Graz, 1903), pp. 28 ff. Of Adolf Wagner, Petritsch says that “although he likes to call economic life an ’organism’ and wants to have it considered as such, and although he always stresses the interest of the community against that of individuals, yet in concrete economic problems he does not get beyond the individuals and their more or less moral aims, and wilfully overlooks the organic connection between these and other economic phenomena. Thus he ends where, strictly speaking, should be the starting point, not the end, of every economic investigation” p. 59). The same is true of all writers who have thundered against speculation.

  [90. ]See the criticism of these theories and movements in Passow, Der Strukturwandel der Aktiengesellschaft im Lichte der Wirtschaftsenquete (Jena, 1930), pp. 1 ff.

  [91. ]Lenin, Staat und Revolution, p. 94. Publisher’s Note: p. 304 in the English edition.

  [92. ]Ibid., p. 95. Publisher’s Note: pp. 304-305 in the English edition.

  [93. ]Ibid., p. 96. Publisher’s Note: p. 305 in the English edition.

  [94. ]Lenin, Die nächsten Aufgaben der Sowjetmacht (Berlin, 1918), pp. 16 ff.

  [1. ]Poehlmann, Geschichte der sozialen Frage und des Sozialismus in der antiken Welt, Vol. I, pp. 110 ff.; 123 ff.

  [2. ]Tugan-Baranowsky, Der moderne Sozialismus in seiner geschichtlichen Entwicklung (Dresden, 1908), p. 136.

  [3. ]Pecqueur, Théorie nouvelle d’Économie sociale et politique, p. 699.

  [4. ]Marx-Engels, Das Kommunistische Manifest, p. 26. Publisher’s Note: p. 325 of the Eastman anthology edition.

  [5. ]Bismarck’s speech in the German Reichstag, on February 19, 2878 (Fürst Bismarcks Reden, edited by Stein, Vol. VII, p. 34).

  [6. ]Bauer, Die Nationalitätenfrage und die Sozialdemokratie (Vienna, 2907), p. 519.

  [7. ]See my Nation, Staat und Wirtschaft (Vienna, 1919), pp. 45 ff., and Liberalismus (Jena, 1927), pp. 93 ff. Publisher’s Note: Nation, Staat und Wirtschaft is not in English. Liberalismus is in English as The Free and Prosperous Commonwealth: An Exposition of the Ideas of Classical Liberalism. Translated by Ralph Raico. Edited by Arthur Goddard (Princeton, N.J.: D. Van Nostrand, 1962). This book was republished in 1978 under the title Liberalism: A Socio-Economic Exposition. Foreword to the Second Edition by Louis M. Spadaro. (Kansas City: Sheed Andrews and McMeel, Inc., 1978). The pages in the German work referred to here (93 ff.) are pp. 105 ff. in both English editions.

  [8. ]Nation, Staat und Wirtschaft, pp. 37 ff.

  [9. ]Ibid., pp. 63 ff.; Liberalismus, p. 107 ff. Publisher’s Note: pp. 121 ff. in both the 1962 and 1978 English editions of this work.

  [10. ]It is superfluous to dispute with the autarky plans, which have been most zealously argued by the naive litterateurs of the “Tat” circle (Fried, Das Ende des Kapitalismus, Jena 1931). Autarky would probably depress the standard of life of the German people incomparably more than could the Reparations burden multiplied a hundred-fold.

  [11. ]In judging the English policy for opening up China, people constantly put in the foreground the fact that it was the opium trade which gave the direct, immediate occasion for the outbreak of war complications. But in the wars which the English and French waged against China between 1839 and 1860 the stake was the general freedom of trade and not only the freedom of the opium trade. That from the Free Trade point of view no barriers ought to be put in the way even of the trade in poisons, and that everyone should abstain by his own impulse from enjoyments harmful to his organism, is not so base and mean as socialist and anglophobe writers tend to represent. Rosa Luxemburg, Die Akkumulation des Kapitals (Berlin, 1913), pp. 363 ff. reproaches the English and French that it was no heroic act to defeat with European weapons the Chinese, who were provided only with out of date arms. Ought the French and English also to have taken the field only with ancient guns and spears?

  [12. ]On the other meanings which the term Revolution has for the Marxists see pp. 69 ff.

  [13. ]Engels, Herrn Eugen Dührings Umwälzung der Wissenschaft, p. 299. Publisher’s Note: p. 385 in the English edition.

  [14. ]Kautsky, Das Erfurter Programm, 12th ed. (Stuttgart, 1914), p. 129.

  [15. ]Engels, Herrn Eugen Dührings Umwälzung der Wissenschaft, pp. 298 ff. Publisher’s Note: p. 385n in the English edition.

  [16. ]Kautsky, Das Erfurter Programm, p. 129.

  [17. ]Kautsky, Das Erfurter Programm, p. 130

  [18. ]See, pp. 102 ff.

  [19. ]Bericht der Sozialisierungskommission über die Frage der Sozialisierung des Kohlenbergbaues vom 31 Juli 1920, with appendix: Vorläufiger Bericht vom 15 Februar 1919 2nd ed. (Berlin, 1920), pp. 32 ff.

  [20. ]Bericht der Sozialisierungskommission über die Frage der Sozialisierung des Kohlenbergbaues vom 31 Juli, 1920, with appendix: Vorläufiger Bericht vom 15 Februar 1919, 2nd ed. (Berlin, 1920), p. 37. 216 245

  [21. ]Philipp v. Arnim, Ideen zu einer vollständigen landwirtschaftlichen Buchhaltung, 1805, p. vi (quoted by Waltz, Vom Reinertrag in der Landwirtschaft, p. 20).

  [22. ]Philipp v. Arnim, Ideen zu einer vollständigen landwirtschaftlichen Buchhaltung, 1805, p. 2 (quoted in Waltz, op. cit., p. 21). See also Lenz, Agrarlehre und Agrarpolitik der deutschen Romantik, Berlin, 1912, p. 84. See similar remarks of Prince Alois Liechtenstein, a leader of the Austrian Christian Socialists, quoted in Nitti, Le Socialisme Catholique (Paris, 1894), pp. 370 ff.

  [23. ]Kautsky, Die Soziale Revolution, II, p. 33.

  [24. ]Ibid., p. 35.

  [25. ]Bourguin, Die sozialistischen Systeme, pp. 62 ff.

  [26. ]World War I.

  [27. ]Andler, Les Origines du Socialisme d’Etat en Allemagne, 2nd ed. (Paris, 1911), p. 2, specially stresses this character of state Socialism.

  [28. ]On Lipara see Poehlmann, Geschichte der sozialen Frage und des Sozialismus in der antiken welt, Vol.I, pp. 44 ff.

  [29. ]Max Weber, “Der Streit um den Charakter der altgermanischen Sozialverfassung in der deutschen Literatur des letzten Jahrzehnts,” (Jahrbücher für Nationalökonomie und Statistik, Vol. XXVIII, 1904, p. 445).

  [30. ]Caesar, De bello Gallico, iv, 1.

  [31. ]Herbert Spencer, Die Prinzipien der Soziologie, trans. Vetter, Vol. II (Stuttgart, 1899), pp. 720 ff. Publisher’s Note: In English, The Principles of Sociology (New York: Appleton, 1897), Vol. II, Part V, pp. 610 ff.

  [32. ]See my Nation, Staat und Wirtschaft, pp. 115 ff.; 143 ff.

  [33. ]Wiener, Essai sur les Institutions Politiques, Religieuses, Économiques et Sociales de l’Empire des Incas (Paris, 1874), pp. 64, 90 ff. attributes Pizarro’s easy conquest of Peru to the fact that communism had unnerved the people.

  [34. ]Max Weber, “Der Streit um der Charakter der altgermanischen Sozialverfassung in der deutschen Literatur des letzten Jahrzehnts,” (Jahrbücher für Nationalökonomie und Statistik, Vol. XXVIII, 1904), p. 445.

  [35. ]See the criticism of the economic policy of the Austrian Christian Socialist Party in Sigmund Mayer, Die Aufhebung des Befähigungsnachweises in Österreich (Leipzig, 1894), especially pp. 124 ff.

  [36. ]In the above text we have always spoken only of the Church in general, without considering the differences between the various denominations. This is quite admissible. The evolution towards Socialism is common to all denominations. In Catholicism, Leo XIII’s encyclical, “Rerum Novarum,” of 1891, has recognized the origin of private property in Natural Law; but simultaneously the Church laid down a series of fundamental ethical principles for the distribution of incomes, which could be put into practice only under State Socialism. On this basis stands also Pius XI’s encyclical, “Quadragesimo anno” of 1931. In German Protestantism the Christian Socialist idea is so tied up with State Socialism that the two can hardly be distinguished.

  [37. ]On War Socialism and its consequences, see my Nation, Staat und Wirtschaft, pp. 140 ff.

  [38. ]Denkschrift des Reichswirtschaftsministeriums, reprinted in Wissell, p. 106.

  [39. ]Denkschrift des Reichswirtschaftsministeriums, reprinted in Wissell, p. 116.

  [40. ]“Guildsmen are opposed to private ownership of industry, and strongly in favour of public ownership. Of course, this does not mean that they desire to see industry bureaucratically administered by State departments. They aim at the control of industry by National Guilds including the whole personnel of the industry. But they do not desire the ownership of any industry by the workers employed in it. Their aim is to establish industrial democracy by placing the administration in the hands of the workers, but at the same time to eliminate profit by placing the ownership in the hands of the public. Thus the workers in a Guild will not be working for profit: the prices of their commodities and, indirectly at least, the level of their remuneration will be subject to a considerable measure of public control. The Guild system is one of industrial partnership between the workers and the public, and is thereby sharply distinguished from the proposals described as ’Syndicalist’ ... The governing idea of National Guilds is that of industrial self-government and democracy. Guildsmen hold that democratic principles are fully as applicable to industry as to politics.” Cole, Chaos and Order in Industry (London, 1920), p. 58 ff.

  [41. ]Cole, Self-Government in Industry, 5th ed. (London, 1920), pp. 235 ff.; also Schuster, “Zum englischen Gildensozialismus” (Jahrbücher für Nationalökonomie und Statistik, Vol. CXV), pp. 487 ff.

  [42. ]Cole, Self-Government in Industry, p. 255.

  [43. ]“A moment’s consideration will show that it is one thing to lay drains, another to decide where drains are to be laid; it is one thing to make bread, another to decide how much bread is to be made; it is one thing to build houses, another to decide where the houses are to be built. This list of opposites can be lengthened indefinitely, and no amount of democratic fervour will destroy them. Faced with these facts, the Guild Socialist says that there is need for local and central authorities whose business it shall be to watch over that important part of life that lies outside production. A builder may think it advisable to be forever building, but the same man lives in some locality and has a right to say whether this purely industrial point of view shall have absolutely free play. Everyone, in fact, is not a producer but also a citizen.” G. D. H. Cole and W. Mellor, The Meaning of Industrial Freedom (London, 1918), p. 30.

  [44. ]Tawney, The Acquisitive Society (London, 1921), p. 122, considers that the advantage of the Guild System for the worker is that it puts an end to “the odious and degrading system under which he is thrown aside like unused material whenever his services do not happen to be required.” But just this reveals the gravest defect of the system recommended. If one needs no more building because relatively sufficient buildings exist, yet must build so as to occupy the workers in the building trades who are unwilling to change over to other branches of production that suffer from a comparative scarcity of labour, the position is uneconomic and wasteful. The very fact that Capitalism forces men to change their occupations is its advantage from the standpoint of the General Best, even though it may directly disadvantage the special interests of small groups.

  [45. ]Here one must name before all the Jesuit Pesch, Lehrbuch der Nationalökonomie, Vol. I, 2nd ed. (Freiburg, 1914), pp. 392-438. In France there is a conflict between catholic and freethinking solidarists—about the relation of the Church to the State and to society, rather than about the real principles of social theory and policy—which makes Church circles suspicious of the term “solidarism.” See Haussonville, “Assistance publique et bienfaisance privée” (Revue des Deux Mondes, Vol. CLXII, 1900, pp. 773-808); Bouglé, Le Solidarisme (Paris, 2907), pp. 8 ff.

  [46. ]Bourgeois, Solidarité, 6th ed. (Paris, 1907), pp. 115 ff.; Waha, Die Nationalökonomie in Frankreich (Stuttgart, 1910), pp. 432 ff.

  [47. ]Pesch, op. cit., Vol. I, p. 420.

  [48. ]Ibid., p. 422.

  [49. ]Ibid., p. 420.

  [50. ]Engel, “Der Arbeitsvertrag und die Arbeitsgesellschaft” (in Arbeiterfreund, 5 Year, 1867, pp. 129-154). A survey of the German literature on profit sharing is given in the memorandum of the German “Statistisches Reichsamt”: Untersuchungen and Vorschläge zur Beteiligung der Arbeiter an dem Erträge wirtschaftlicher Unternehmungen, published as a supplement to the Reichs-Arbeitsblatt of March 3, 1920.

  [51. ]See the arguments of Vogelstein at the Regensburg session of the Verein für Sozialpolitik (Schriften des Vereins für Sozialpolitik, Vol. CLIX, pp. 132 ff.).

  [52. ]See pp. 226-227.

  [53. ]It is misleading, therefore, to call Syndicalism “workers’ Capitalism,” as I too have done in Nation, Staat und Wirtschaft, p. 164.

  [54. ]See pp. 29 ff.

  [55. ]On interventionism see my Kritik des Interventionismus, pp. 1 ff. Publisher’s Note: In English, A Critique of Interventionism, trans. Hans F. Sennholz (New York: Arlington House, 1977), pp. 15 ff.

  [1. ]Amos, IX, 13.

  [2. ]Isaiah, XI, 6-9.

  [3. ]Isaiah, XXIX, 17.

  [4. ]Whether or not Jesus held Himself to be the Messiah we need not discuss here. The only important thing for us is that He announced the immediate coming of the Kingdom of God and that the first congregation looked on Him as the Messiah.

  [5. ]Pfleiderer, Das Urchristentum, 2nd ed. (Berlin, 1902), Vol. I, pp. 7 ff. 252 285

  [6. ]Troeltsch, “Die Soziallehren der christlichen Kitchen und Gruppen” in Gesammelte Schriften (Tübingen, 1912), Vol. I, p. 110.

  [7. ]Gerlich, Der Kommunismus als Lehre vom tausendjährigen Reich (Munich, 1920), pp. 27 ff.

  [8. ]Wundt, Ethik, 4th ed. (Stuttgart, 1912), Vol. II, p. 246. One sees in Engels’ survey of the history of warfare a characteristic example of how ready the representatives of this movement are to see the end of all evolution attained. Engels there—1878—expresses the opinion that, with the Franco-German war, “a turning point of quite other importance than all previous ones had occurred” in the history of warfare. “Weapons are so perfected that a fresh process of any revolutionary influence is no longer possible. When one has guns which can hit a battalion as far as the eye can see and rifles which can do the same with a single person as aim, with which loading takes less time than firing, then all further advances are more or less indifferent in field war. Thus the era of evolution on this side is essentially closed.” See Herrn Eugen Dührings Umwälzung der Wissenschaft, p. 176. Publisher’s Note: p. 236 in the English edition. In judging other views, Marx understands well how to find out the weaknesses of the theory of stages. According to their teachings, says Marx, “a history has existed but none exists any longer.” See Das Elend der Philosophie, German translation by Bernstein and Kautsky, 8th ed. (Stuttgart, 1920), p. 104. He merely does not notice that the same will be true of his teachings on the day when the means of production will have been socialized. Publisher’s Note: In English, Marx, The Poverty of Philosophy: Answer to the “Philosophy of Poverty” by M. Proudhon (Moscow: Foreign Language Publishing House), p. 112.

  [9. ]Kant, “Der Streit der Fakultäten” (Collected Works, Vol. I), p. 636.

  [10. ]Cohen, Logik der reinen Erkenntnis, 2nd ed. (Berlin, 1914), p. 359.

  [11. ]As is done by Lilienfeld, La pathologie sociale (Paris, 1896), p. 95. When a government takes a loan from the House of Rothschild organic sociology conceives the process as follows: “La maison Rothschild agit, dans cette occasion, parfaitement en analogie avec l’action d’un groupe de cellules qui, dans le corps humain, coopèrent à la production du sang nécessaire à l’alimentation du cerveau dans l’espoir d’en être indemnisées par une réaction des cellules de la substance grise dont ils ont besoin pour s’activer de nouveau et accumuler de nouvelles énergies.” (“The House of Rothschild’s operation, on such an occasion, is precisely similar to the action of a group of human body cells which cooperate in the production of the blood necessary for nourishing the brain, in the hope of being compensated by a reaction of the gray matter cells which they need to reactivate and to accumulate new energies.”) (Ibid., p. 104.) This is the method which claims that it stands on “firm ground” and explores “the Becoming of Phenomena step by step, proceeding from the simpler to the more complex.” See Lilienfeld, Zur Verteidigung der organischen Methode in der Soziologie (Berlin, 1898), p. 75.

  [12. ]It is characteristic that just the romantics stress excessively society’s organic character, whereas liberal social philosophy has never done so. Quite understandably. A social theory which was genuinely organic did not need to stress obtrusively this attribute of its system.

  [13. ]Cohen, Logik der reinen Erkenntnis, p. 349.

  [14. ]Hertwig, Allgemeine Biologie, 4th ed. (Jena, 1912), pp. 500 ff; Hertwig, Zur Abwehr des ethischen, des sozialen und des politischen Darwinismus (Jena, 1918), pp. 69 ff.

  [15. ]Izoulet, La cité moderne (Paris, 1894), pp. 35 ff.

  [16. ]Durkheim, De la division du travail social (Paris, 1893), pp. 294 ff. endeavours (following Comte and against Spencer) to prove that the division of labour prevails not because, as the economists think, it increases output but as a result of the struggle for existence. The denser the social mass the sharper the struggle for existence. This forces individuals to specialize in their work, as otherwise they would not be able to maintain themselves. But Durkheim overlooks the fact that the division of labour makes this possible only because it makes labour more productive. Durkheim comes to reject the theory of the importance of the greater productivity in the division of labour through a false conception of the fundamental idea of utilitarianism and of the law of the satiation of wants (op. cit., 218 ff., 257 ff.). His view that civilization is called forth by changes in the volume and density of society is untenable. Population grows because labour becomes more productive and is able to nourish more people, not vice versa.

  [17. ]On the important part played by the local variety of productive conditions in the origin of the division of labour see von den Steinen, Unter den Naturvölkern Zentralbrasiliens, 2nd ed. (Berlin, 1897), pp. 196 ff.

  [18. ]Ricardo, Principles of Political Economy and Taxation, pp. 76 ff.; Mill, Principles of Political Economy, pp. 348 if.; Bastable, The Theory of International Trade, 3rd ed. (London, 1900), pp. 16 ff.

  [19. ]“Trade makes the human race, which originally has only the unity of the species, into a really unitary society.” See Steinthal, Allgemeine Ethik (Berlin, 1885), p. 208. Trade, however, is nothing more than a technical aid of the division of labour. On the division of labour in the sociology of Thomas Aquinas see Schreiber, Die volkswirtschaftlichen Anschauungen der Scholastik seit Thomas von Aquin (Jena, 1913), pp. 19 ff.

  [20. ]Therefore, too, one must reject the idea of Guyau, which derives the social bond directly from bi-sexuality. See Guyau, Sittlichkeit ohne Pflicht, translated by Schwarz (Leipzig, 1909), p. 113 ff.

  [21. ]Fouillée argues as follows against the utilitarian theory of society, which calls society a “moyen universal” (“universal means”) (Belot): “Tout moyen n’a qu’une valeur provisoire; le jour oùun instrument dont je me servais me devient inutile ou nuisible, je le mets de côté. Si la société n’ est qu’un moyen, le jour où, exceptionellement, elle se trouvera contraire à mes fins, je me delivrerai des lois sociales et moyens. sociaux.... Aucune considération sociale ne pourra empêcher la révolte de l’individu tant qu’on ne lui aura pas montré que la société est établie pour des fins qui sont d’abord et avant tout ses vraies fins à lui-même et qui, de plus, ne sont pas simplement des fins de plaisir ou d’intérêt, l’intérêt n’étant que le plaisir différé et attendu pour l’avenir ... L’idée d’intérét est précisément ce qui divise les hommes, malgré les rapprochements qu’elle peut produire lorsqu’il y a convergence d’intérêts sur certains points.” (“Every means has only a temporary value; the day when a means ceases to serve me or becomes harmful to me, I cast it aside. If society is only a means, the day when, by some special circumstances, it is found to act contrary to my ends, I will free myself from its social laws and social means.... No social consideration can prevent an individual from rebelling when it has not been demonstrated to him that society exists for ends which are primarily and above all his own true ends and, further, which are not simply for the ends of pleasure or self-interest, self-interest being only pleasure postponed and expected in the future.... The idea of self-interest is precisely what divides men, in spite of the cooperation it can produce when self-interests coincide in certain instances.”) Fouillée, Humanitaires et libertaires au point de vue Sociologique et moral (Paris, 1914), pp. 146 ff.; see also Guyau, Die englische Ethik der Gegenwart, translated by Peusner (Leipzig, 1914), pp. 372 ff. Fouillée does not see that the provisional value which society gets as a means, lasts as long as the conditions of human life, given by nature, continue unchanged and as long as man continues to recognize the advantages of human co-operation. The “eternal,” not merely provisional, existence of society follows from the eternity of the conditions on which it is built up. Those in power may demand of social theory that it should serve them by preventing the individual from revolting against society, but this is by no means a scientific demand. Besides no social theory could, as easily as the utilitarian, induce the social individual to enrol himself voluntarily in the social union. But when an individual shows that he is an enemy of society there is nothing left for society to do but make him harmless.

  [22. ]Kant, “Idee zu einer allgemeinen Geschichte in weltbürgerlicher Absicht” (Collected Works, Vol. I), pp. 227 ff. Publisher’s Note: In English pp. 17 ff. in On History, ed. Lewis White Beck.

  [23. ]Bücher, Die Entstehung der Volkswirtschaft, First collection, 10th ed. (Tübingen, 1917), p. 91.

  [24. ]Schmoller, Grundriss der allgemeinen Volkswirtschaftslehre (Munich, 1920), Vol. II, pp. 760 ff.

  [25. ]Philippovich, Grundriss der politischen Ökonomie, Vol. I, 11th ed. (Tübingen, 1916), pp. 11 ff.

  [26. ]On the stages theory see also my Grundprobleme der Nationalökonomie (Jena, 1933), pp. 106 ff. Publisher’s Note: In English, Epistemological Problems of Economics, trans. George Reisman (Princeton. N.J.: D. Van Nostrand, 1960). The reference to pp. 106 ff. in this footnote in the German book is to the essay “Sociology and History” (pp. 68-129) in the English translation, especially the section starting on p. 108.

  [27. ]Dopsch, Wirtschaftliche und soziale Grundlagen der europäischen Kulturentwicklung (Vienna, 1918), Vol. I, pp. 91 ff.

  [28. ]Marx, Das Elend der Philosophie, p. 92. In the formulations which Marx later on gave to his conception of history he avoided the rigidity of this earliest version. Behind such indefinite expressions as “productive forces” and “conditions of production” are hidden the critical doubts which Marx may meanwhile have experienced. But obscurity, opening the way to multitudinous interpretations, does not make an untenable theory tenable. Publisher’s Note: In the English edition p. 105.

  [29. ]Ferguson, Abhandlung über die Geschichte der bürgerlichen Gesellschaft, trans. Dom (Jena, 1904), pp. 237 ff.; also Barth, Die Philosophie der Geschichte als Soziologie, 2nd ed. (Leipzig, 1915), Part I, pp. 21 578 ff.

  [30. ]All that remains of the materialist conception of history, which appeared with the widest possible claims, is the discovery that all human and social action is decisively influenced by the scarcity of goods and the disutility of labour. But the Marxists can least admit just this, for all they say about the future socialist order of society disregards these two economic conditions.

  [31. ]Adam Müller says about “the vicious tendency to divide labour in all branches of private industry and in government business too,” that man needs “an all round, I might say a sphere-round field of activity.” If the “division of labour in large cities or industrial or mining provinces cuts up man, the completely free man, into wheels, rollers, spokes, shafts, etc., forces on him an utterly one-sided scope in the already one-sided field of the provisioning of one single want, how can one then demand that this fragment should accord with the whole complete life and with its law, or with legality; how should the rhombuses, triangles, and figures of all kinds accord separately with the great sphere of political life and its law?” See Adam Müller, Ausgewählte Abhandlungen, ed. Baxa (Jena, 1921), p. 46.

  [32. ]Marx, Zur Kritik des sozialdemokratischen Parteiprogramms von Gotha, p. 17. Innumerable passages in his writings show how falsely Marx conceived the nature of labour in industry. Thus he thought also that “the division of labour in the mechanical factory” is characterized by “having lost every specialized character ... The automatic factory abolishes the specialist and the one-track mind.” And he blames Proudhon, “who did not understand even this one revolutionary side of the automatic factory.” Marx, Das Elend der Philosophie, p. 129. Publisher’s Note: p. 138 of the English translation.

  [33. ]Bebel, Die Frau und der Sozialismus, pp. 283 ff. Publisher’s Note: In English translation pp. 392-394.

  [34. ]See pp. 144 ff.

  [35. ]Durkheim, De la division du travail social, pp. 452 ff.

  [36. ]The romantic-militarist notion of the military superiority of the nations which have made little progress in Capitalism, completely refuted afresh by the World War, arises from the view that what tells in a fight is man’s physical strength alone. This, however, is not completely true, even of the fights of the Homeric Age. Not physical but mental power decides a fight. On these mental powers depend the fighters’ tactics and the way he is armed. The A B C of the art of warfare is to have the superiority at the decisive moment, though otherwise one may be numerically weaker than the enemy. The A B C of the preparation for war is to set up armies as strong as possible and to provide them with all war materials in the best way. One has to stress this only because people are again endeavouring to obscure these connections, by trying to differentiate between the military and economic-political causes of victory and defeat in war. It always has been and always will be the fact, that victory or defeat is decided by the whole social position of the combatants before their armies meet in battle.

  [37. ]On the decline of Ancient Greek Civilization see Pareto, Les Systèmes Socialistes (Paris, 1902), Vol. I, pp. 155 ff.

  [38. ]Izoulet, La Cité moderne, pp. 488 ff.

  [39. ]“The laws, in creating property, have created wealth, but with respect to poverty, it is not the work of the laws—it is the primitive condition of the human race. The man who lives only from day to day, is precisely the man in a state of nature.... The laws, in creating property, have been benefactors to those who remain in the original poverty. They participate more or less in the pleasures, advantages and resources of civilized society,” Bentham, Principles of the Civil Code, ed. Bowring (Edinburgh, 1843), Vol. I, p. 309.

  [40. ]Lassalle, Das System der erworbenen Rechte, 2nd ed. (Leipzig, 1880), Vol. I, pp. 217 ff:

  [41. ]Lassalle, op. cit., Vol. I, pp. 222 ff.

  [43. ]“La guerre est une dissociation.” (“War is a breakdown of social cooperation.”) See Novicow, La Critique du Darwinisme Social (Paris, 1910), p. 124. See also the refutation of the struggle theories of Gumplowicz, Ratzenhofer, and Oppenheimer by Holsti, The Relation of War to the Origin of the State (Helsingfors, 1913), pp. 276 ff.

  [44. ]Taine, Histoire de la littérature anglaise (Paris, 1863), Vol. I, p. xxv.

  [45. ]Ibid., p. xxiii: “Ce qu’on appelle la race, ce sont ces dispositions innées et héréditaires que l’homme apporte avec lui à la lumière.” (“Race is the innate and hereditary characteristics and tendencies with which man is born.”)

  [46. ]Hertwig, Zur Abwehr des ethischen, des sozialen und des politischen Darwinismus, pp. 10 ff.

  [47. ]Ferri, Sozialismus und moderne Wissenschaft, trans. Kurella (Leipzig, 1895), pp. 65 ff.

  [48. ]Gumplowicz, Der Rassenkampf (Innsbruck, 1883), p. 176. On Gumplowicz’s dependence on Darwinism see Barth, Die Philosophie der Geschichte als Soziologie, p. 253. The “liberal” Darwinism is a badly thought out product of an epoch which could no longer grasp the meaning of the liberal social philosophy.

  [49. ]Novicow, La Critique du Darwinisme Social, p. 45.

  [50. ]Barth, Die Philosophie der Geschichte als Soziologie, p. 243.

  [51. ]Kropotkin, Gegenseitige Hilfe in der Tier und Menschenwelt, German edition by Landauer (Leipzig, 1908), pp. 69 ff.

  [52. ]Kammerer, Genossenschaften von Lebewesen auf Grund gegenseitiger Vorteile (Stuttgart, 1913); Kammerer, Allgemeine Biologie (Stuttgart, 1915), p. 306; Kammerer, Einzeltod, Völkertod, biologische Unsterblichkeit (Vienna, 1918), pp. 29 ff.

  [53. ]See p. 290 of this work.

  [54. ]Cohen, Ethik des reinen Willens (Berlin, 1904), pp. 183 ff.

  [55. ]See my Nation, Staat und Wirtschaft, pp. 31 ff.

  [56. ]Oppenheimer, “Die rassentheoretische Geschichtsphilosophie” in Verhandlungen des Zweiten deutschen Soziologentages (Tübingen, 1913), p. 106; also Hertz, Rasse und Kultur, 3rd ed. (Leipzig, 1925), p. 37; Weidenreich, Rasse und Körperbau (Berlin, 1927), pp. 133 ff.

  [57. ]Nystrom, “Über die Formenveränderungen des menschlichen Schädels und deren Ursachen” (Archiv für Anthropologie, Vol. XXVII, pp. 321 ff., 630 ff., 642).

  [58. ]Oppenheimer, “Die rassentheoretische Geschichtsphilosophie,” pp. 110 ff.

  [59. ]See p. 260.

  [60. ]“Chez les peuples modernes, la guerre et le militarisme sont de véritables fléaux dont le résultat définitif est de déprimer la race.” (“For modern people, war and militarism are true calamities, of which the ultimate result is to debase the human race.”) Lapouge, Les sélections sociales (Paris, 1896), p. 230.

  [61. ]Marx, Das Kapital, Vol. I, p. 550. The passage from which the above quotation is taken was not in the first edition, published 1867. Marx first inserted it in the French version, published 1873, whence Engels took it over into the fourth German edition. Publisher’s Note: p. 643 in the English translation. Masaryk, Die philosophischen und soziologischen Grundlagen des Marxismus (Vienna, 1899), p. 299, justly remarks that the alteration is presumably connected with the change Marx made in his theory in Vol. III of Das Kapital. It can be regarded as a recantation of the Marxist class theory. Significantly the third volume breaks off after a few sentences in the chapter headed “The Classes.” In treating the problem of class Marx got only as far as setting up a dogma without proof, and no further.

  [62. ]On the history of the concept of distribution, see Cannan, A History of the Theories of Production and Distribution, pp. 183 ff.

  [63. ]Ricardo, Principles of Political Economy and Taxation, p. 5.

  [64. ]Marx, Das Kapital, Vol. III Part 2, 3rd ed., p. 421.

  [65. ]Cunow, Die Marxsche Geschichts-,Gesellschafts-und Staatstheorie, Vol. II (Berlin, 1921), pp. 61 ff., tried to protect Marx from the accusation that he has mixed up the concepts class and estate. But his own remarks and the passages he quotes from Marx and Engels show how justified is this accusation. Read, for example, the first six paragraphs of the first part of the Communist Manifesto, headed “Bourgeois and Proletarians” and you will be convinced that there at least the expressions “Stand” and class are used indiscriminately. We have already said that when, later on in London, Marx became familiar with the Ricardian system, he separated his concept class from the concept “stand” and connected it with the three factors of production of the Ricardian system. But he never developed this new concept of class. Neither has Engels or any other Marxist tried to show what really welds the competitors—for these are the people of whom the “uniformity of incomes and of sources of incomes” makes a conceptual unit—into a class inspired by the same special interests.

  [66. ]Bagehot, Physics and Politics (London, 1872), pp. 71 ff.

  [67. ]Even today there is plenty of ownerless land which anyone who wishes can appropriate. Yet the European proletarian does not migrate to the interior of Africa or Brazil, but remains a wage labourer at home.

  [68. ]“The source of the slave owner’s profits,” says Lexis (in discussing Wicksell’s “Über Wert, Kapital, und Rente” in Schmoller’s Jahrbuch, Vol. XIX, pp. 335 ff.) “is unmistakable, and this is probably still true of the ’sweater.’ In the normal relationship between entrepreneur and worker there is no such exploitation, but rather an economic dependence on the part of the worker, which undeniably influences the distribution of the produce of labour. The propertyless worker must absolutely procure ’present goods’ for himself; otherwise he dies. He can generally realize his labour only by collaborating in the production of ’future goods.’ But this is not the decisive factor, for even though he produces, like the baker’s labourer, a commodity to be consumed on the day of its production, yet his share in the yield is conditioned by the circumstances disadvantageous to him, that he cannot make an independent use of his labour, but is forced to sell it against more or less sufficient means of life, renouncing his claim to its product. These are trivial propositions, but I believe that they will always have a convincing force for unprejudiced observers because of their direct self-evidence.” One agrees with Böhm-Bawerk, Einige strittige Fragen der Kapitalstheorie (Vienna and Leipzig, 1900), p. 112; and Engels, Preface to the third volume of Das Kapital, p. xii, that in these ideas, which, by the way, only reproduce the views dominant in German “Popular Economics,” is to be found a recognition dressed up in careful words, of the socialist theory of exploitation. The economic fallacies of the exploitation theory are nowhere exposed more clearly than in this attempt of Lexis to find a basis for it. Publisher’s Note: The reference to page xii in the Engels citation is in Vol. III, pp. 19-21 of the English translation.

  [69. ]Even the Communist Manifesto has to admit: “The organization of the proletarians into a class, and thus into a political party, is ever and again broken up by competition among the workers themselves.” (Marx and Engels: Das Kommunistische Manifest, p. 30). See also Marx, Das Elend der Philosophie, 8th ed. (Stuttgart, 1920), p. 161. Publisher’s Note: pp. 165-166 in the English edition of The Poverty of Philosophy.

  [70. ]At which point people quite illogically overlook the fact that the wage-earner too is interested in the prosperity of the branch of production and of the plant in which he is engaged.

  [71. ]Even Cunow, Die Marxsche Geschichts-, Gesellschafis-und Staatstheorie, Vol. II, p. 53, in his uncritical Marx apology has to admit that Marx and Engels in their political writings speak not only of the three main classes but differentiate between a whole series of minor and side classes.

  [72. ]See Marx’s words quoted on p. 292.

  [73. ]Engels, Herrn Eugen Dührings Umwälzung der Wissenschaft, p. 305. Publisher’s Note: In English translation p. 392.

  [74. ]Marx, Zur Kritik der politischen Ökonomie, ed. Kautsky (Stuttgart, 1897), p. xi. Publisher’s Note: The quote cited in Marx’s Zur Kritik der politischen Ökonomie(A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy) may be found on p. 11 of the Eastman anthology; p. 12 of the Kerr edition.

  [75. ]Engels, Herrn Eugen Dührings Umwälzung der Wissenschaft, p. 304. Publisher’s Note: In English translation, p. 391.

  [76. ]Max Adler, Marx als Denker, 2nd ed. (Vienna, 1921), p. 68.

  [77. ]On Kautsky’s attempted proofs, pp. 159 ff.

  [78. ]Kautsky, Die Diktatur des Proletariats, 2nd ed. (Vienna, 1918), p. 12.

  [79. ]World War I (Pub.).

  [80. ]Ibid., p. 40.

  [81. ]Marx, Zur Kritik der politischen Ökonomie, p. xii. Publisher’s Note: In English, p. 11 of the Eastman anthology; p. 12 of the Kerr edition.

  [82. ]Gerhard Hildebrand, Die Erschütterung der Industrieherrschaft und des lndustriesozialismus (Jena, 1910), pp. 213 ff.

  [84. ]Feuerbach, Vorläufige Thesen zur Reform der Philosophie, 1842, Collected Works, Vol. II (Stuttgart, 1904), p. 239.

  [85. ]Feuerbach, Die Naturwissenschaft und die Revolution, 1850, Vol. X (Stuttgart, 1911), p. 22.

  [86. ]Vogt, Köhlerglaube und Wissenschaft, 2nd ed. (Giessen, 1855), p. 32.

  [87. ]Max Adler, who tries to reconcile Marxism with the Kantian New Criticism, vainly tries to prove that Marxism and philosophic materialism have nothing in common. See especially Marxistische Probleme (Stuttgart, 1913), pp. 60 if., 216 ff., in which he conflicts sharply with other Marxists. See, for example, Plekhanov, Grundprobleme des Marxismus (Stuttgart, 1910).

  [88. ]Marx, Das Kapital, Vol. I, p. 354, note. But between Descartes and Haller stands La Mettrie, with his “homme machine,” whose philosophy Marx has unfortunately omitted to interpret genetically. Publisher’s Note: This is page 426n in the Kerr edition.

  [89. ]Marx, Zur Kritik der politischen Ökonomie, p. xi. Publisher’s Note: p. 11 in the Eastman anthology, p. 12 in the Kerr edition.

  [90. ]Marx and Engels, Das Komnunistische Manifest, p. 27. Publisher’s Note: This quote appears on p. 326 of the Eastman anthology.

  [91. ]Marx, Das Elend der Philosophie, ibid., p. 91. See also p. 269 of the present work. Publisher’s Note: p. l05 in the English translation.

  [92. ]Marx, Das Kapital, Vol. I, p. 336. Publisher’s Note: p. 406n in the English translation.

  [93. ]Ibid.

  [94. ]Marx, Zur Kritik der politischen Ökonomie, p. 62. Barth, Die Philosophie der Geschichte als Soziologie, Vol. I, pp. 658 ff., says rightly that the comparison between the innate privileges of the nobility and the presumably innate ideas can be considered as at most a joke. But the first part of Marx’s characterization of Locke is no less untenable than the second. Publisher’s Note: p. 93 of the Kerr edition. Please note that this particular quotation is not in the excerpt reprinted in the Eastman anthology.

  [95. ]Mehring, Die Lessing-Legende, 3rd ed. (Stuttgart, 1909), p. 422.

  [96. ]Ibid., p. 423.

  [97. ]Held, Zwei Bücher zur sozialen Geschichte Englands (Leipzig, 1881), pp. 176, 183.

  [98. ]Schumpeter, “Epochen der Dogmen und Methodengeschichte,” Grundriss der Sozialökonomik, Pt. I (Tübingen, 1914), pp. 81 ff.

  [99. ]Hilferding, Böhm-Bawerk’s Marx-Kritik (Vienna, 1904), pp. 1, 61. For the Catholic Marxist Hohoff, Warenwert und Kapitalprofit (Paderborn, 1902), p. 57. Böhm-Bawerk is “an indeed well gifted, ordinary economist who could not lift himself out of the capitalistic prejudices among which he grew up.” See my Grundprobleme der Nationalökonomie (Jena, 1933), pp. 170 ff. Publisher’s Note: The Hilferding essay is available in English in Karl Marx and the Close of his System by Eugen Böhm-Bawerk & Böhm-Bawerk’s Criticism of Marx by Rudolf Hilferding, ed. Paul M. Sweezy (New York: Augustus M. Kelly, 1949), pp. 121-196. The pages cited here are pp. 121 and 196. Please also note that Mises’ book, Grundprobleme der Nationalökonomie is in English as Epistemological Problems of Economics (Princeton, N.J.: D. Van Nostrand, 1960). The particular citation here is to the essay entitled “The Psychological Basis of the Opposition to Economic Theory,” essay VI in this collection, pp. 183-203. This was first published in 1931.

  [100. ]See Bernard Shaw, for example, Fabian Essays (1889), pp. 16 ff. In the same way, in sociology and political science, natural law and contract theory have served both to advocate and fight Absolutism.

  [101. ]If one wants to credit the materialist conception of history with having stressed the fact that social relations are dependent on the natural conditions of life and production, one must remember that this can appear as a special merit only in contrast to the excesses of the Hegelian historians and philosophers of history. The liberal philosophy of society and history and the writing of history since the end of the XVIIIth Century (even the German, see Below, Die deutsche Geschichtsschreibung von den Befreiungskriegen bis zu unseren Tagen [Leipzig, 1916], pp. 224 ff.,) Were beforehand with this knowledge.

  [102. ]Of the chief representatives of French and Italian Syndicalism, Sombart, Sozialismus und soziale Bewegung, 7th ed. (Jena, 1919), p. 110, says, “So far as I know them personally—amiable, fine, educated people. Cultured people with clean linen, good manners and elegant wives, whom one meets as gladly as one’s own kind of people, and who certainly do not look as if they represented a movement which turns above all against the increasingly bourgeois nature of Socialism and wants to help the wealed fist, the genuine and true only-manual-workers to their rights.” And De Man, Zur Psychologie des Sozialismus, pp. 16 if., says, “If one accepted the misleading Marxist expression which connects every social ideology with a definite class attachment, one would have to say that Socialism as a doctrine, even Marxism, is of bourgeois origin.”

  [103. ]The wish is father to the thought, says a figure of speech. What it means is that the wish is the father of faith.

  [104. ]Engels, Ludwig Feuerbach und der Ausgang der klassischen deutschen Philosophie, 5th ed. (Stuttgart, 1910), p. 58.

  [105. ]Tönnies, Der Nietzsche-Kultus (Leipzig, 1897), p. 6.

  [1. ]Marx, Das Kapital, Vol. I, pp. 726 ff. Publisher’s Note: p. 837 in the English translation.

  [2. ]Marx, Das Kapital, Vol. I, pp. 728 ff. Publisher’s Note: pp. 837 ff. in the English translation.

  [3. ]Ibid., p. 728. Publisher’s Note: pp. 836-837 in the English translation.

  [4. ]Kautsky, Das Erfurter Programm, pp. 83 ff.

  [5. ]Wolf, Sozialismus und kapitalistische Gesellschaftsordnung (Stuttgart, 1892), pp. 149 ff.

  [6. ]Clark, Essentials of Economic Theory, pp. 374 ff., 397.

  [7. ]Report of the Sozialisierungskommission über die Frage der Sozialisierung des Kohlenbergbaus vom 31 Juli 1920 (Appendix: Vorläufiger Bericht vom 15 Februar 1919), op. cit., p. 32.

  [8. ]Vogelstein, “Die finanzielle Organisation der kapitalistischen Industrie und die Monopolbildungen,” Grundriss der Sozialökonomik, Pt. VI (Tübingen, 1914), pp. 203 ff. Weiss, “Abnehmender Ertrag,” Handwörterbuch der Staatswissenschaften, 4th ed., Vol. I, pp. 11 ff.

  [9. ]See Alfred Weber, “Industrielle Standortslehre,” Grundriss der Sozialiökonomik, Pt. VI (Tübingen, 1914), pp. 54 ff. The remaining factors of localization can be passed over, as the present, or the historically transmitted, distribution of primary production ultimately determines them.

  [10. ]Micah, II, 2.

  [11. ]Isaiah, V, 8.

  [12. ]Schröder, Lehrbuch der deutschen Rechtsgeschichte, pp. 159 ff.; Dopsch, Wirtschaftliche und soziale Grundlagen der europäischen Kulturentwicklung, Part 2 (Vienna, 1920), pp. 289, 309 ff.

  [13. ]Michels, Die Verelendungstheorie (Leipzig, 1928), pp. 19 ff.

  [14. ]Hansen, Die drei Bevölkerungsstufen (Munich, 1889), pp. 181 ff.

  [15. ]This is quite apart from the effects of currency depreciation.

  [16. ]Considerant tries to prove the theory of concentration with a metaphor borrowed from mechanics: “Les capitaux suivent aujourd’hui sans contrepoids la loi de leur propre gravitation; c’est que, s’attirant en raison de leurs masses, les richesses sociales se concentrent de plus en plus entre ks mains des grands possesseurs.” (“Capital today follows, without any opposing force, the law of its own magnetism. Capital attracts capital to itself, by mason of its very size. Social wealth is concentrated more and more in the hands of the largest owners.”) Quoted by Tugan-Baranowsky, Der moderne Sozialismus in seiner geschichtlichen Entwicklung, p. 62. That is word play, nothing more.

  [17. ]The Fuggers and the Welsers were prominent, wealthy German families, descended respectively from Johannes Fugger, a successful weaver of the first half of the 19th century, and Bartholomeus Welser (d.1559), the head of a large banking and commercial firm (Pub.).

  [18. ]Marx, Das Kapital, Vol. I, p. 611. Publisher’s Note: In the English Capital, Vol. I, pp. 736-737.

  [19. ]Kautsky, Bernstein und das Sozialdemokratische Programm (Stuttgart, 1899), p. 116.

  [20. ]Rodbertus, “Erster sozialer Brief an v. Kirchmann” (Ausgabe von Zeller, Zur Erkenntnis unserer staatwirtschaftlichen Zustände, 2nd ed. (Berlin, 1885), p. 273 n.

  [21. ]Herman Müller, Karl Marx und die Gewerkschaften (Berlin, 1918) pp. 82 ff.

  [22. ]As is done by Ballod, Der Zukunftsstaat, 2nd ed. (Stuttgart, 1919), p. 12.

  [23. ]Kautsky, Bernstein und das Sozialdemokratische Programm, p. ll6.

  [24. ]Ibid., p. 120.

  [25. ]Compare the remarks of Weitling, quoted in Sombart, Der proletarische Sozialismus (Jena, 1924), Vol. I, p. 106.

  [26. ]Hume, A Treatise of Human Nature, Philosophical Works, ed. Green and Grose (London, 1874), Vol. II, pp. 162 ff.; Mandeville, Bienenfabel, ed. Bobertag (Munich, 1914), p. 123. Publisher’s Note: In English, Mandeville, The Fable of the Bees, ed. F. B. Kaye (Oxford University Press, 1924), pp. 135-136; Schatz, L’Individualisme économique et social (Paris, 1907), p. 73 n2, calls this an “idée fondamentale pour bien comprendre la cause profonde des antagonismes sociaux.” (“Fundamental idea for a good understanding of the profound cause of social animosities.”)

  [27. ]See p. 437.

  [28. ]As there cannot be any question here of giving a theory of monopoly price, the monopoly of supply alone is examined.

  [29. ]Ely, Monopolies and Trusts (New York, 1900), pp. 11 ff.; Vogelstein, “Die finanzielle Organisation der kapitalistischen Industrie und die Monopolbildungen” (op. cit., p. 231) too, and following him the German Socialization Commission (op. cit., pp. 31 ff.), start from a concept of monopoly which comes very close to the views criticized by Ely and generally abandoned by the price theory of modern science.

  [30. ]Carl Menger, Grundsätze der Volkswirtschaftslehre (Vienna, 1871), p. 195; further Forchheimer, “Theoretisches zum unvollständigen Monopole” (Schmoller’s Jahrbuch XXXII), pp. 3 ff. Publisher’s Note: In English, Menger, Principles of Economics, trans. and ed. James Dingwall and Bert F. Hoselitz (Glencoe, Illinois: The Free Press, 1950), pp. 211 ff.

  [31. ]Compare on this important principle the large literature on the monopoly price. For example, Wieser, “Theorie der gesellschaftlichen Wirtschaft,” in Grundriss für Sozialökonomik, Part I (Tübingen, 1914), p. 276.

  [32. ]According to Wieser, ibid., this is “perhaps even the rule.”

  [33. ]It is different, perhaps, with agricultural productions which flourish only on relatively restricted soils; for example, coffee growing.

  [1. ]How little the Social-Democrats have made this fundamental doctrine of Marxism their own, one sees from a glance at their literature. A leader of German Social-Democracy, the former German Minister of National Economy Wissell, confesses succinctly: “I am Socialist and shall remain Socialist, for I see in socialist economy, with its subordination of the Individual to the Whole, the expression of a higher moral principle than that which lies at the basis of individualistic economy.” Praktische Wirtschaftspolitik (Berlin, 1919), p. 53.

  [2. ]Jodl, Geschichte der Ethik als philosophischer Wissenschaft, Vol. II, 2nd ed. (Stuttgart, 1921), p. 450.

  [3. ]Izoulet, La cité moderne, pp. 413 ff.

  [4. ]Guyau, Die englische Ethik der Gegenwart, trans. Peusner (Leipzig, 1914), p. 20.

  [5. ]Bentham, Deontology or the Science of Morality, ed. Bowring (London, 1834), Vol. I, pp. 8 ff.

  [6. ]Mill, Utilitarianism (London, 1863), pp. 5 ff.; Jodl, Geschichte der Ethik als philosophischer Wissenschaft, Vol. II, p. 36.

  [7. ]Guyau, Sittlichkeit ohne “Pflicht,” pp. 272 ff.

  [8. ]Fouillée, Humanitaires et libertaires au point de vue sociologique et moral, pp. 157 ff.

  [9. ]Böhm-Bawerk, Kapital und Kapitalzins, 3rd ed., Part II (Innsbruck, 1909), pp. 233 ff. Publisher’s Note: This is pp. 135 ff. in Volume II of the English edition.

  [10. ]Bentham, Deontology, Vol. I, p. 87 ff.

  [11. ]Weber, Gesammelte Aufsätze zur Religionssoziologie (Tübingen, 1920), Vol. II, p. 206.

  [12. ]Ibid., p. 211.

  [13. ]Weber, op. cit., Vol. I, p. 262.

  [14. ]Glaser, Die franziskanische Bewegung (Stuttgart and Berlin, 1903), pp. 53 ff., 59.

  [15. ]Heichen, “Sozialismus und Ethik” in Die Neue Zeit, Vol. 38, Vol. l, pp. 312 ff. Specially remarkable in this context are also the remarks of Charles Gide, “Le Matérialisme et l’ Économie Politique” in Le Matérialisme actuel (Paris, 1924).

  [16. ]The first fact known positively about Kaspar Hauser is that he appeared in Nuremberg in 1828 with a letter purporting to give some of his background. According to the letter, he had been found in 1812, when only a few months old, by a German laborer who had raised him. The boy said that he had been confined in a dark room all his life until he was sent forth into the world. In time he was placed in the care of the German poet and philosopher, Georg Friedrich Daumer (1800-1875). Hauser died in 1833 from a wound inflicted, he said, by a stranger who had promised information about his origin. Many myths and romances developed over the years as to Hauser’s true identity and ancestry (Pub.).

  [17. ]Compare the characterization of the Eastern Church given by Harnack, Das Mönchtum, 7th ed. (Giessen, 19o7), p. 32 ff.

  [18. ]John of Kronstadt (1821-1908), real name Ioann Sergiev, an orthodox Russian priest and popular idol, alleged performer of miracles, carried on charitable work and ministered to the poor, sick and needy.

  [19. ]Harnack, Das Mönchtum, p. 33.

  [20. ]Troeltsch, Gesammelte Schriften, Vol. II (Tübingen, 1913), pp. 386 ff.

  [21. ]Harnack, Das Wesen des Christentums (Leipzig, 1907), pp. 50 ff.

  [22. ]Mark, 1, 15.

  [23. ]Luke, XXII, 30.

  [24. ]Harnack, Aus Wissenschaft und Leben, Vol. II (Giessen, 1911), pp. 257 ff.; Troeltsch, Die Soziallehren der christlichen Kirchen und Gruppen, pp. 31 ff.

  [25. ]Acts of the Apostles, IV, 35.

  [26. ]Luke, XIV, 26.

  [27. ]Pfleiderer, Das Urchristentum, Vol. I, pp. 649 ff.

  [28. ]Luke, XII, 35-36.

  [29. ]“The doctrine of the medieval law of trade is rooted in the canonic dogma of the barrenness of money and in the sum of corollaries which are to be understood under the name of the usury law. The history of the trade law of those times cannot be anything except the history of the rule of the doctrine of usury in legal doctrine.” Endemann, Studien in der romanisch-kanonistischen Wirtschafts-und Rechtslehre his gegen Ende des siebzehnten Jahrhunderts (Berlin, 1874-83), Vol. I, p. 2.

  [30. ]Luke, VI, 35.

  [31. ]C. 10. X. De usuris (III, 19). See Schaub, Der Kampf gegen den Zinswucher, ungerechten Preis und unlautern Handel im Mittelalter (Freiburg, 1905), pp. 61 ff.

  [32. ]The passage is thus interpreted by Knies, Geld und Kredit, Part II (Berlin, 1876), pp. 333-5 note.

  [33. ]On the latest legislation of the Church, which in c. 1543, Cod. iur. can., has come to acknowledge conditionally the legality of the taking of interest, see Zehentbauer, Das Zinsproblem nach Moral und Recht (Vienna, 1920), pp. 138 ff.

  [34. ]Pesch, Lehrbuch der Nationalökonomie, pp. 212 ff.

  [35. ]Matthew v, 27.

  [36. ]Pesch, op. cit., p. 212.

  [37. ]Pfleiderer, Das Urchristentum, Vol. I, p. 652, explains Jesus’ pessimistic judgment of earthly possessions by the apocalyptic expectation of the near world catastrophe. “Instead of trying to reinterpret and adapt His rigoristic expressions on this subject in the sense of our modern social ethics, one should make oneself familiar, once and for all, with the idea that Jesus did not appear as a rational moralist but as an enthusiastic prophet of the impending Kingdom of God and has only thus become the source of the religion of salvation. He who wants to make the eschatological enthusiasm of the prophet the direct and permanent authority for social ethics does just as wisely as he who would wish to warm his hearth and cook his soup with the flames of a volcano.” On May 25th, 1525, Luther wrote to the Danzig Council: “The Gospel is a spiritual law by which one cannot well govern.” See Neumann, Geschichte des Wuchers in Deutschland (Halle, 2865), p. 618. Also Traub, Ethik und Kapitalismus, 2nd ed. (Heilbronn, 2909), p. 71.

  [38. ]Seipel, Die wirtschaftsethischen Lehren der Kirchenväter (Vienna, 3907), pp. 84 ff.

  [39. ]Migne, Patrologiae Graecae, Vol. LX, pp. 96 ff.

  [41. ]Engels, Ludwig Feuerbach und der Ausgang der klassischen deutschen Philosophie, 5th ed. (Stuttgart, 1910), p. 58.

  [42. ]Cohen, Ethik des reinen Willens, Berlin, 1904, pp. 303 ff.

  [43. ]Ibid., p. 304.

  [44. ]“The direct purpose of capitalist production is not the production of goods but of surplus value, or of profit in its developed form; not of the product but of the surplus product.... In this view the workers themselves appear as what, in the capitalist production, they are—mere means of production, not ends in themselves, not purpose of production.” Marx, Theorien über den Mehrwert (Stuttgart, 1905), Part 2, pp. 333 ff. That the workers play a role in the economic process as consumers also, Marx never understood. Publisher’s Note: Only a part of the work by Marx, Theorien über den Mehrwert (Stuttgart, 1905) has been translated into English in the book titled Theories of Surplus Value: Selections, translated from the German by G. A. Bonner and Emile Burns (New York: International Publishers, 1952), 432 pp.

  [45. ]Kant, Kritik der Urteilskraft (Works, Vol. VI), p. 265. Publisher’s Note: In English, Critique of Judgment. In Immanuel Kant, The Critique of Judgement. Part II. Critique of Teleological Judgement, trans. James Creed Meredith (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1952).

  [46. ]Cohen, Ethik des reinen Willens, p. 305. See also Steinthai, Allgemeine Ethik, pp. 266 ff.

  [47. ]Art. 427 of the Treaty of Versailles and Art. 372 of the Treaty of Saint Germain.

  [48. ]Cohen, Ethik des reinen Willens, p. 572.

  [49. ]Ibid., p. 578.

  [50. ]II Thessalonians, III, 10. On the letter not being Paul’s see Pfleiderer, Das Urchristentum, Vol. I, PP. 95 ff.

  [51. ]Against this Paul, in the First Epistle to the Corinthians (IX, 6-24), favours on principle the Apostle’s claim to live at the cost of the congregation.

  [52. ]Todt (Der radikale deutsche Sozialismus und die christliche Gesellschaft, 2nd ed. (Wittenberg, 2878), pp. 306—19, is a good example of how, out of this and similar passages, people try to justify from the New Testament modern catchwords of the anti-liberal movement.

  [53. ]Kant, “Fragmente aus dem Nachlass,” Collected works, ed. Hartenstein, Vol. VIII (Leipzig, 1868), p. 622.

  [54. ]This, for example, is also how Thomas Aquinas imagines it. See Schreiber, Die voikswirtschaftlichen Anschauungen der Scholastik seit Thomas yon Aquin (Jena, 1913), p. 18.

  [55. ]Ruskin, Unto this last (Tauchnitz-Ed.), pp. 19 ff.; Steinbach, Erwerb und Beruf (Vienna, 1896), pp.13 ff.; Otto Conrad, Volkswirtschaftspolitik oder Erwerbspolitik? (Vienna, 1918), pp. 5 ff.; Tawney, The Acquisitive Society, p. 38.

  [56. ]English economic history has destroyed the legend which taxed the rise of factory industry with having made the position of the working classes worse. See Hurt, “The Factory System of the Early 19th Century” in Economica, Vol. VI, 1926, p. 78 ff.; Clapham, An Economic History of Modern Britain, 2nd ec. (Cambridge, 1930), pp. 548 ff. Publisher’s Note: The Hutt article, “The Factory System of the Early 19th Century,” was reprinted in Capitalism and the Historians, ed. F. A. Hayek, essays by T. S. Ashton, L. M. Hacker, W. H. Hutt, B. de Jouvenel (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1954), pp. 160-188.

  [57. ]“The central wrong of the Capitalist system is neither the poverty of the poor nor the riches of the rich: it is the power which the mere ownership of the instruments of production gives to a relatively small section of the community over the actions of their fellow-citizens and over the mental and physical environment of successive generations. Under such a system personal freedom becomes, for large masses of the people, little better than a mockery.... What the Socialist aims at is the substitution, for this Dictatorship of the Capitalist, of govermnet of the people by the people and for the people, in all the industries and services by which the people live.” Sidney and Beatrice Webb, A Constitution for the Socialist Commonwealth of Great Britain (London, 1920), pp. xiii ff. See also Cole, Guild Socialism Re-stated (London, 1920), pp. 12 ff.

  [58. ]“The market is a democracy where every penny gives a right to vote.” Fetter, The Principles of Economics, pp. 394, 410. See also Schumpeter, Theorie der wirtschaftlichen Entwicklung (Leipzig, 1912), pp. 32 ff. Nothing is more topsy-turvy than a saying such as: “Who is less questioned at the building of a house in a large city than its future tenants?” Lenz, Macht unt Wirtshaft (Munich, 1915), p. 32. Every buider tries to build in a way that best suits the wishes of the future tenants, so that he may be able to let the buildings as quickly and profitably as possible. See also the striking remarks in Withers, The Case for Capitalism (London, 1920), pp. 41 ff.

  [59. ]People overlook this entirely when, like the Webbs, A Constitution for the Socialist Commonwealth of Great Britain, p. xii, they say that the workers have to obey the orders “of irresponsible masters intent on their own pleasure or their own gain.”

  [60. ]Messer, Ethik (Leipzig, 1918), pp. 111 ff.; Natorp, Sozialidealismus (Berlin, 1920), p. 13.

  [61. ]Rathenau, Die neue Wirtschaft (Berlin, 1918), pp. 41 ff.; also the critique of Wiese, Freie Wirtschaft (Leipzig, 1918).

  [62. ]See pp. 123 ff., 350 ff.

  [1. ]See, for instance, in Das Kapital the remarks on Bentham: “the most homely platitude,” “only copied stupidly,” “trash,” “a genius of bourgeois stupidity,” op. cit., Vol. I, p. 573; on Malthus, “a schoolboyishly superficial and clerically stilted plagiarism,” Ibid., Vol. I, p. 580. Publisher’s Note: In the English edition of Marx, Capital, Volume I, these quotations appear on p. 668 (Bentham) and P. 675 n3 (Malthus).

  [2. ]Thus Marxism finds it easy to ally with Islamic zealotism. Full of pride the Marxist Otto Bauer cries: “In Turkestan and Azerbaijan monuments to Marx stand opposite the mosques, and the Mullah in Persia mingles quotations from Marx with passages from the Koran when he calls the people to the Holy War against European Imperialism.” See Otto Bauer, “Marx als Mahnung” in Der Kampf, XVI, 1923, p. 83.

  [3. ]See my Liberalismus (Jena, 1927). Publisher’s Note: In English as The Free and Prosperous Commonwealth: An Exposition of the Ideas of Classical Liberalism (Princeton: Van Nostrand, 1962).

  [4. ]Cazamian, Le roman social en Angleterre, 1830-50 (Paris, 1904), pp. 267 ff.

  [5. ]On the socialist tendency in painting see Muther, Geschichte der Malerei im 19. Jahrhundert (Munich, 1893), Vol. II. pp. 186 ff.; Coulin, Die sozialistische Weltanschauung in der franzöisischen Malerei (Leipzig, 1909), pp. 85 ff.

  [6. ]Bentham, Principles of the Civil Code, pp. 304 ff.

  [7. ]See the criticism of this legend by Hutt, Economica, Vol. VI, pp. 92 ff.

  [8. ]This even Brentano has to admit, who otherwise boundlessly overvalues the effects of labour legislation. “The imperfect machine had replaced the family father with child labour ... the perfected machine makes the father again the nourisher of family and gives the child back to the school ... Grown-up workers are now needed again and only those can be used who, by their higher standard of living, are equal to the heightened claims of the machines.” Brentano, Über das Verkältnis von Arbeitslohn und Arbeitszeit zur Arbeitsleistung, 2nd ed. (Leipzig, 1893), p. 43.

  [9. ]Brentano, Über das Verhältnis von Arbeitslohn und Arbeitszeit zur Arbeitsleistung, pp. 11, 23 ff.; Brentano, Arbeitszeit und Arbeitslohn nach dem Kriege (Jena, 1919), p. 10; Stucken, “Theorie der Lohnsteigerung” (Schmollers Jahrbuch, 45th year, pp. 1152 ff.).

  [10. ]Die Inauguraladresse der Internationalen Arbeiterassoziation, ed. Kautsky (Stuttgart, 1922), p. 27.

  [11. ]Engels, Die Lage der arbeitenden Klasse in England, 2nd ed. (Stuttgart, 1892), p. 178. Publisher’s Note: In English, The Condition of the Working Class in England in 1844, with a Preface written in 1892 (London, George Allen & Unwin, Ltd., 1892), p. 177.

  [12. ]Ibid., p. 297. Publisher’s Note: In English edition, p. 295.

  [13. ]Engels, “Die englische Zehnstundenbill” in Aus dem literarischen Nachlass von Karl Marx, Friedrich Engels und Ferdinand Lassalle, Vol. III (Stuttgart, 1902), p. 393.

  [14. ]Liek, Der Arzt und seine Sendung, 4th ed. (Munich, 1927), p. 54; Liek, Die Schaden der sozialen Versicherung, 2nd ed. (Munich, 1928), pp. 17 ff., and a steadily growing mass of medical writings.

  [15. ]The Kapp Putsch (March 13, 1920) was both symptom and product of the post World War I revolutionary turmoil in Germany. Gustav Noske’s (1868-1946) new army, organized by the post-war Majority Socialist government to crush the left, revolted against the government and Wolfgang Kapp (1868-1922), founder of the Fatherland Party, was placed in office. Karl Legien (1861-1920) leader of the right wing German trade unions, then called a general strike. Response to this rightwing move was tremendous and the Putsch promptly collapsed. The two competing Socialist Parties then came to terms and formed a coalition administration in April 1920, which excluded the extreme leftists and Communists from political power (Pub.).

  [16. ]The speech, translated into German, has been published by Bernstein under the title Lohn, Preis und Profit. I quote from the third edition, which appeared in Frankfurt in 1910. Publisher’s Note: The speech by Marx was published originally in English as Value, Price and Profit, ed. Eleanor Marx Aveling (Chicago: Charles H. Kerr & Co., 1910).

  [17. ]Ibid., p. 46. Publisher’s Note: In English edition, pp. 126-128.

  [18. ]Adolf Weber, Der Kampf zwischen Kapital und Arbeit, 3rd and 4th eds. (Tüyingen, 1921), pp. 384 ff.; Robbins, Wages (London, 1926), pp. 58 ff.; Hutt, The Theory of Collective Bargaining (London, 1930), pp. 1 ff.; also my Kritik des Interventionismus (Jena, 1929), pp. 12 ff.; 79 ff.; 133 ff. Publisher’s Note: Hutt’s The Theory of Collective Bargaining was reprinted in 1954 by the Free Press of Glencoe, Illinois. Preface to the American edition is by Ludwig von Mises. Please also note that in the English edition of Mises’ A Critique of Interventionism, the page references are pp. 26 ff., 95 ff., and 148 ff., respectively.

  [19. ]Kautsky, quoted by Dietzel, “Ausbeutung der Arbeiterklasse durch Arbeitergruppen” (Deutsche Atbeit, vol. 4, 1929), PP. 145 ff.

  [20. ]Technische Nothilfe, established September 1919 to help provide essential services during strikes, lock-outs and natural cataclysms. A voluntary politically neutral association, under the German Ministry of Interior, with 260,000 members in 1928, converted into a public agency in 1939, dissolved by the Allied Occupational Forces in 1945, then replaced by a government institution, Technisches Hilfswerk, in 1953 to give assistance during catastrophes (Pub.).

  [21. ]Millar, “The Evils of State Trading as Illustrated by the Post Office” in A Plea for Liberty, ed. Mackay, 2nd ed. (London, 1891), pp. 305 ff.

  [22. ]Goldscheid, Staatssozialismus oder Staatskapitalismus (Vienna, 1917); Sozialisierung der Wirtschaft oder Staatsbankerott (Vienna, 1919); against: Schumpeter, Die Krise des Steuerstaates (Graz and Leipzig, 1918).

  [23. ]On the negative attitude of the liberals to the idea of progressive taxes see Thiers, De la Propriété(Paris, 1848), pp. 352 ff.

  [24. ]See my Nation, Staat und Wirtschaft, pp. 134 ff.

  [25. ]Mengelberg, Die Finanzpolitik der sozialdemokratischen Partei in ihren Zusammenhängen mit dem sozialistischen Staatsgedanken (Mannheim, 1919), pp. 30 ff.

  [26. ]Marx-Engels, Gesammelte Schriften, 1852-62 (Collected Writings, 1852-62), ed. Rjasanoff (Stuttgart,1917), Vol. I, p. 127.

  [27. ]See my Nation, Staat und Wirtschaft, pp. 129 ff.

  [28. ]See my Theory of Money and Credit (London, 1934), pp. 339 ff.; also my Geldwertstabilisierung und Konjunkturpolitik (Jena, 1928), pp. 43 ff. Publisher’s Note: Mises’ Theory of Money and Credit has been reprinted since the 1934 edition cited here (Yale, 1953), (FEE, 1971), and (Liberty Press, 1981). Mises’ Geldwertstabilisierung und Konjunkturpolitik is included in the anthology, On the Manipulation of Money and Credit, edited by Percy L. Greaves, Jr., translated by Bettina Bien Graves, under the title “Monetary Stabilization and Cyclical Policy,” pp. 57-171. This particular citation is to pp. 118 ff. of the English translation.

  [29. ]For a criticism of National Socialist doctrine see my Kritik des Interventionismus (Jena, 1929), pp. 91 ff.; also Karl Wagner, “Brechung der Zinsknechtschaft?” in Jahrbücher für Nationalökonomie und Statistik, Third Series, Vol. LXXIX, pp. 790 ff. Publisher’s Note: In the English edition of Kritik des Interventionismus, p. 107.

  [31. ]Thus by Kautsky, quoted by Georg Adler, Grundlagen der Karl Marxschen Kritik der bestehenden Volkswirtschaft (Tübingen, 1887), p. 511

  [32. ]“Beaucoup d’ouvriers, et non les meilleurs, préférent le travail payé à la journée au travail à tache. Beaucoup d’entrepreneurs, et non les meilleurs, préféraient les conditions qu’ils espèrent pouvoir obtenir d’u,i État socialiste à celles que leur fait un régime de libre concurrence. Sous ce régime les entrepreneurs sont des ’fonctionnaires’ payés a la tâche; avec une organisation socialiste ils déviendraient des ’fonctionnaires’ payés à la journée.” (Many workers, and not the best, prefer to be paid by the day and not by the work completed. Many entrepreneurs, and not the best, prefer what they can hope to obtain from a socialist state to that which a free competitive system would award them. Under such a competitive system, entrepreneurs are the “officials” paid for the work completed; under a socialist organization, they would become “officials” paid by the day.) Pareto, Cours d’Economie Politique, Vol. II, p. 97n.

  [33. ]Hutt, The Theory of Collective Bargaining, pp. 25 ff.

  [34. ]The Junker is not concerned with the maintenance of private property as disposal over the means of production, but rather with maintaining it as title to a special source of income. Therefore State Socialism has easily won him over. It is to secure him his privileged income.

  [35. ]This, for example, was Bismarck’s view. See his speech in the Landtag of June 15th, 1847 in Fürst Bismarcks Reden, edited by Stein, Vol. I, p. 24.

  [36. ]Cathrein, Der Sozialismus, 12th and 13th eds. (Freiburg, 1920), pp. 347 ff.

  [37. ]MacIver, Community, London, 1924, pp. 79 ff.

  [38. ]This, of course, is true also of the German nation. Almost the whole intelligentsia of Germany is socialistic: in national circles it is State or, as one usually says today, National Socialism, in Catholic circles, Church Socialism, in other circles, Social-Democracy or Bolshevism.

  [39. ]Johann Bockelson (also spelled Beukelsz, Boockelszoon, Buckholdt or Bockholdt) (c. 1508-1535) was better known as John of Leiden. He and Bernt Knipperdolling (also Bernhardt or Berend Knipperdollinck) (c. 1490-1536) were both Dutch and followers of the Anabaptist Jan, or Johann Matthysz (also Matthisson or Matthyszoon). In 1533 the Anabaptists took over Munster. Bockelson became burgomaster. A charismatic fanatic, Bockelson often engaged in wild excesses, even beheading one of his four wives himself in a fit of frenzy. Anabaptist-held Munster was besieged and Matthysz was killed in 1534. Bockelson succeeded him as “prophet.” Knipperdolling, at first a rival of Bockelson’s, became an abject follower. Munster was taken from the Anabaptists in 1535. Both Bockelson and Knipperdolling were then cruelly executed (Pub.).

  [40. ]Freud, Totem und Tabu (Vienna, 1913), pp. 62 ff. Publisher’s Note: In English, “Totem and Taboo,” in The Standard Edition of The Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud (London: Hogarth; New York: Macmillan, 1953).

  [41. ]Archiv für Sozialwissenschaft, Vol. LI, pp. 490-95. Publisher’s Note: The article Mises cites here is his “Neue Beiträge Zum Problem der sozialistischen Wirtschaftsrechnung.”

  [42. ]Ibid., Vol. XLIX, pp. 377-420.

  [43. ]Ibid., pp. 378 and 419.

  [44. ]Archiv für Sozialwissenschaft, Vol. XLIX, p. 404.

  [45. ]Ibid., p. 404 n20.

  [46. ]Heimann, Mehrwert und Gemeinwirtschaft, kritische und positive Beiträge zur Theorie des Sozialismus (Berlin, 1922).

  [47. ]Max Weber, Wirtschaft und Gesellschaft, op. cit., pp. 45-9.

  [48. ]Heimann, op. cit., pp. 184 ff.

  [49. ]Ibid., p. 174.

  [50. ]Heimann, op. cit., p. 185.

  [51. ]Ibid., pp. 188 ff.

  [52. ]Sidney Webb in Fabian Essays in Socialism, first published in 1889 (American edition, New York, 1891, p. 4).

  [53. ]Cf. G. M. Trevelyan, A Shortened History of England (London, 1942), p. 510.

  [54. ]Elmer Roberts, Monarchical Socialism in Germany (New York, 1913).

  [55. ]Zwang means compulsion, Wirtschaft means economy. The English language equivalent for Zwangswirtschaft is something like compulsory economy.

  [56. ]Wesley C. Mitchell, “The Social Sciences and National Planning” in Planned Society, ed. Findlay Mackenzie (New York, 1937), p. 112

  [57. ]Laski, Democracy in Crisis (Chapel Hill, 1933), pp. 87-8.

  [58. ]Sidney and Beatrice Webb, Soviet Communism: A New Civilization? (New York, 1936), Vol. II, pp. 1038-39.

  [59. ]T. G. Crowther, Social Relations of Science (London, 1941), p. 333.

  [60. ]The collection of these conventions, published by The International Labour Office under the title Intergovernmental Commodity Control Agreements (Montreal, 1943).

  [61. ]Marx, Das Kapital, 7th ed. (Hamburg, 1914), Vol. I, p. 728. Publisher’s Note: In English edition, p. 836.

  [62. ]Marx, Zur Kritik der politischen Ökonomie, ed. Kautsky (Stuttgart, 1897), p. xi. Publisher’s Note: In English edition by Kerr, pp. 11-12; by Eastman, p. 10.

  [63. ]Ibid., p. xii. Publisher’s Note: In English edition by Kerr, p. 12; by Eastman, p. 11.

  [64. ]Marx, Der Bürgerkrieg in Frankreich, ed. Pfemfert (Berlin, 1919), passim. Publisher’s Note: In English, “The Civil War in France.” Reprinted in Eastman anthology, pp. 367-429.

  [65. ]Marx, Value, Price and Profit, ed. Eleanor Marx Aveling (New York, 1901), pp. 72-74.

  [66. ]Blueprint for World Conquest as Outlined by the Communist International, Human Events (Washington and Chicago, 1946), pp. 181-82.

  [67. ]David J. Dallin, The Real Soviet Russia (Yale University Press, 1944), pp. 88-95.

  [68. ]Pius XII (pope, 1939-1958) (Pub.).

  [69. ]Christmas Eve broadcast, New York Times, December 25, 1941.

  [70. ]The annexation of Carpatho-Russia utterly explodes their hypocritical indignation about the Munich agreements of 1938.

  [71. ]The Hölz riot was a communist uprising in Germany (March 1921 in Mansfeldischen), led by World War I veteran Max Hölz (1889-1933). Hölz was sentenced to life imprisonment as a result, granted amnesty in 1928, and then left Germany for the Soviet Union (Pub.)

  [72. ]Mises, Bureaucracy (Yale University Press, 1944).

  [73. ]Benda, La trahison des clercs (Paris, x927). Publisher’s Note: In English, The Treason of the Intellectuals (New York: William Morrow, 1928) and The Betrayal of the Intellectuals (Boston: Beacon Press, 1955)

  [74. ]Stahlhelm was an association of German World War veterans, established 1918. Cagoulards were members of a secret French extreme rightist, terrorist organization, the Cagoule. It was responsible for several assassinations of socialists and Italian anti-fascists and it collaborated with the Nazis and the French Vichy government during WWII (Pub.).

  [75. ]This programme is reprinted in English in Count Carlo Sforza’s book, Contemporary Italy, translated by Drake and Denise de Kay (New York, 1944), pp. 295-6.

  [76. ]For instance Mario Palmieri, The Philosophy of Fascism (Chicago, 1936), p. 248.

  [77. ]Sombart, Das Lebenswerk yon Karl Marx (Jena, 1909), p. 3.

  [78. ]Sombart, A New Social Philosophy, trans. and ed. K. F. Geiser (Princeton University Press, 1937), p. 194.

  [79. ]The devastating critique of eugenics by H. S. Jennings, The Biological Basis of Human Nature (New York, 1930), pp. 223-52.

  [80. ]Marx, Der Bürgerkrieg in Frankreich, ed. Pfemfert (Berlin, 1919), p. 54. Publisher’s Note: In English, “The Civil War in France,” p. 408.

  [81. ]Hayek, Individualism and the Economic Order (Chicago University Press, 1948), pp. 89-91.

  [82. ]Quoted by Hayek, The Road to Serfdom (1944), Chapter IX, p. 119.

• Back to Top

  8: 8. Ludwig von Mises, Liberalism: The Classical Tradition (1962, LF ed. 2005)

  Ludwig von Mises, Liberalism: The Classical Tradition, trans. Ralph Raico, ed. Bettina Bien Greaves (Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, 2005).

  Accessed from oll.libertyfund.org/title/1463 on 2008-01-25

  The copyright to this edition, in both print and electronic forms, is held by Liberty Fund, Inc.

  ---

  PREFACE, 1985

  The term “liberalism,” from the Latin “liber” meaning “free,” referred originally to the philosophy of freedom. It still retained this meaning in Europe when this book was written (1927) so that readers who opened its covers expected an analysis of the freedom philosophy of classical liberalism. Unfortunately, however, in recent decades, “liberalism” has come to mean something very different. The word has been taken over, especially in the United States, by philosophical socialists and used by them to refer to their government intervention and “welfare state” programs. As one example among many possible ones, former U.S. Senator Joseph S. Clark, Jr., when he was mayor of Philadelphia, described the modern “liberal” position very frankly in these words:

  To lay a ghost at the outset and to dismiss semantics, a liberal is here defined as one who believes in utilizing the full force of government for the advancement of social, political, and economic justice at the municipal, state, national, and international levels. . . . A liberal believes government is a proper tool to use in the development of a society which attempts to carry Christian principles of conduct into practical effect. (Atlantic, July 1953, p. 27)

  This view of “liberalism” was so prevalent in 1962, when the English translation of this book appeared, that Mises believed then that to translate literally the original title, Liberalismus, would be too confusing. So he called the English version The Free and Prosperous Commonwealth. By the following year, however, Mises had decided that the advocates of freedom and free markets should not relinquish “liberalism” to the philosophical socialists. In the prefaces of both the second (1963) and third (1966) editions of his magnum opus, Human Action, Mises wrote that the advocates of the freedom philosophy should reclaim “the term ‘liberal’ . . . because there is simply no other term available to signify the great political and intellectual movement” that ushered in modern civilization by fostering the free market economy, limited government and individual freedom. It is in this sense that “liberalism” is used throughout this book.

  For the benefit of readers who are not familiar with the works of Ludwig von Mises (1881–1973), he was for decades the leading spokes-man of the “Austrian” school of economics, so named because Mises as well as his two prominent predecessors—Carl Menger and Eugen von Böhm-Bawerk—were all Austrian born. The cornerstone of the “Austrian” school is the subjective value marginal utility theory. This theory traces all economic phenomena, simple and complex, to the actions of individuals, each undertaken as a result of personal subjective values. On the basis of this subjective value theory, Mises explained and analyzed methodology, value, action, prices, markets, money, monopoly, government intervention, economic booms and busts, etc., making especially significant contributions in the fields of money and economic calculation.

  Mises earned his doctorate from the University of Vienna in 1906. His thesis, The Theory of Money and Credit, published in German in 1912 and in English in 1934, was the first of his many theoretical works in economics. During the interwar years, in addition to writing articles and books, such as the powerful treatise, Socialism, Mises worked full time at the Austrian Chamber of Commerce as economic adviser to the Austrian government and taught part time as a Privatdozent (lecturer) at the University of Vienna. He also conducted a private economics seminar for scholars, many of whom became influential worldwide. In 1926 he established the private Austrian Institute for Business Cycle Research which still survives.

  After Hitler came to power in Germany, Mises anticipated trouble for Austria. So in 1934 he took a position in Switzerland with the Graduate Institute of International Studies. While there he wrote Nationaloekonomie (1940). Although there were few German readers in national socialist Europe for this monumental economic treatise, Mises’s explanations of sound economic principles have reached a much wider audience through the English-language version of Nationaloekonomie, completely rewritten by Mises for American readers under the title of Human Action (1st edition, 1949).

  To escape Hitler-dominated Europe, Mises and his wife left Switzerland in 1940 and came to the United States. His reputation had been well established in Europe, but he was little known in this country. Therefore, he had to begin practically all over again to attract students and readers. English-language books began to appear from his pen—Omnipotent Government and Bureaucracy, both in 1944. And then his masterful economic treatise, Human Action, in 1949. There soon followed Planning for Freedom (1952), The Anti-Capitalistic Mentality (1952), Theory and History (1957) and The Ultimate Foundations of Economic Science (1962), all important books in economic theory.

  In 1947, Mises was instrumental in founding the international Mont Pèlerin Society. He lectured widely in the U.S. and Latin America and for 24 years he conducted his well-known graduate economics seminar at New York University. He also served as a consultant to the National Association of Manufacturers and as adviser to the Foundation for Economic Education.

  Mises received many honors throughout the course of his lifetime—honorary doctorates from Grove City College (1957), New York University (1963), and the University of Freiburg (1964) in Germany. His accomplishments were recognized in 1956 by his alma mater, the University of Vienna, when his doctorate was memorialized on its 50th anniversary and “renewed,” a European tradition, and in 1962 by the Austrian government. He was also cited in 1969 as “Distinguished Fellow” by the American Economic Association.

  Mises’s influence continues to spread among thoughtful persons. His most prominent student from his European days, Nobel Laureate F. A. Hayek, has written: “Mises’s influence now reaches beyond the personal sphere. . . . The torch which you [Mises] have lighted has become the guide of a new movement for freedom which is gathering strength every day.” And one of his leading students in the United States, Professor Israel Kirzner of New York University, has described his impact on modern students: “[T]o the ferment and sense of excitement now evident in the resurgence of interest in this Austrian perspective, Mises’s contributions have been crucial and decisive.”

  Mises was always the careful and logical theoretician, but he was not only an ivory tower theoretician. Driven by the logic of his scientific reasoning to the conclusion that a liberal society with free markets is the only road to domestic and international peace and harmony, he felt compelled to apply the economic theories he expounded to government policy. In Liberalism Mises not only offers brief explanations of many important economic phenomena, but he also presents, more explicitly than in any of his other books, his views on government and its very limited but essential role in preserving social cooperation under which the free market can function. Mises’s views still appear fresh and modern and readers will find his analysis pertinent.

  Mises’s message, that ideas rule the world, runs as a constant refrain throughout all his books. But it comes through especially strong in Liberalism. “The ultimate outcome of the struggle” between liberalism and totalitarianism, he wrote in 1927, “will not be decided by arms, but by ideas. It is ideas that group men into fighting factions, that press the weapons into their hands, and that determine against whom and for whom the weapons shall be used. It is they alone, and not arms, that, in the last analysis, turn the scales.”

  In fact, the only hope of keeping the world from plunging still further into international chaos and conflict is to convince the people to abandon government intervention and adopt liberal policies.

  Bettina Bien Greaves

  • The Foundation for Economic Education, Inc.

  August, 1985

  PREFACE TO THE ENGLISH-LANGUAGE EDITION

  The social order created by the philosophy of the Enlightenment assigned supremacy to the common man. In his capacity as a consumer, the “regular fellow” was called upon to determine ultimately what should be produced, in what quantity and of what quality, by whom, how, and where; in his capacity as a voter, he was sovereign in directing his nation’s policies. In the precapitalistic society those had been paramount who had the strength to beat their weaker fellows into submission. The much decried “mechanism” of the free market leaves only one way open to the acquisition of wealth, viz., to succeed in serving the consumers in the best possible and cheapest way. To this “democracy” of the market corresponds, in the sphere of the conduct of affairs of state, the system of representative government. The greatness of the period between the Napoleonic Wars and the first World War consisted precisely in the fact that the social ideal after the realization of which the most eminent men were striving was free trade in a peaceful world of free nations. It was an age of unprecedented improvement in the standard of living for a rapidly increasing population. It was the age of liberalism.

  Today the tenets of this nineteenth-century philosophy of liberalism are almost forgotten. In continental Europe it is remembered only by a few. In England the term “liberal” is mostly used to signify a program that only in details differs from the totalitarianism of the socialists.* In the United States “liberal” means today a set of ideas and political postulates that in every regard are the opposite of all that liberalism meant to the preceding generations. The American self-styled liberal aims at government omnipotence, is a resolute foe of free enterprise, and advocates all-round planning by the authorities, i.e., socialism. These “liberals” are anxious to emphasize that they disapprove of the Russian dictator’s policies not on account of their socialistic or communistic character but merely on account of their imperialistic tendencies. Every measure aiming at confiscating some of the assets of those who own more than the average or at restricting the rights of the owners of property is considered as liberal and progressive. Practically unlimited discretionary power is vested in government agencies the decisions of which are exempt from judicial review. The few upright citizens who dare to criticize this trend toward administrative despotism are branded as extremists, reactionaries, economic royalists, and Fascists. It is suggested that a free country ought not to tolerate political activities on the part of such “public enemies.”

  Surprisingly enough, these ideas are in this country viewed as specifically American, as the continuation of the principles and the philosophy of the Pilgrim Fathers, the signers of the Declaration of Independence, and the authors of the Constitution and the Federalist papers. Only few people realize that these allegedly progressive policies originated in Europe and that their most brilliant nineteenth-century exponent was Bismarck, whose policies no American would qualify as progressive and liberal. Bismarck’s Sozialpolitik was inaugurated in 1881, more than fifty years before its replica, F. D. Roosevelt’s New Deal. Following in the wake of the German Reich, the then most successful power, all European industrial nations more or less adopted the system that pretended to benefit the masses at the expense of a minority of “rugged individualists.” The generation that reached voting age after the end of the first World War took statism for granted and had only contempt for the “bourgeois prejudice,” liberty.

  When, thirty-five years ago, I tried to give a summary of the ideas and principles of that social philosophy that was once known under the name of liberalism, I did not indulge in the vain hope that my account would prevent the impending catastrophes to which the policies adopted by the European nations were manifestly leading. All I wanted to achieve was to offer to the small minority of thoughtful people an opportunity to learn something about the aims of classical liberalism and its achievements and thus to pave the way for a resurrection of the spirit of freedom after the coming debacle.

  On October 28, 1951, Professor J. P. Hamilius of Luxembourg ordered a copy of Liberalismus from the publishing firm of Gustav Fischer in Jena (Russian Zone of Germany). The publishing firm answered, on November 14, 1951, that no copies of the book were available and added: “Die Vorräte dieser Schrift mussten auf Anordnung behördlicher Stellen restlos makuliert werden.” (By order of the authorities all the copies of this book had to be destroyed.) The letter did not say whether the “authorities” referred to were those of Nazi Germany or those of the “democratic” republic of East Germany.

  In the years that elapsed since the publication of Liberalismus I have written much more about the problems involved. I have dealt with many issues with which I could not deal in a book the size of which had to be limited in order not to deter the general reader. On the other hand, I referred in it to some matters that have little importance for the present. There are, moreover, in this book various problems of policy treated in a way which can be understood and correctly appreciated only if one takes into account the political and economic situation at the time in which it was written.

  I have not changed anything in the original text of the book and did not influence in any way the translation made by Dr. Ralph Raico and the editing done by Mr. Arthur Goddard. I am very grateful to these two scholars for the pains they took in making the book available to the English-reading public.

  Ludwig von Mises

  New York, April, 1962

  liberalism

  The Classical Tradition

  Introduction

  1

  Liberalism

  The philosophers, sociologists, and economists of the eighteenth and the early part of the nineteenth century formulated a political program that served as a guide to social policy first in England and the United States, then on the European continent, and finally in the other parts of the inhabited world as well. Nowhere was this program ever completely carried out. Even in England, which has been called the homeland of liberalism and the model liberal country, the proponents of liberal policies never succeeded in winning all their demands. In the rest of the world only parts of the liberal program were adopted, while others, no less important, were either rejected from the very first or discarded after a short time. Only with some exaggeration can one say that the world once lived through a liberal era. Liberalism was never permitted to come to full fruition.

  Nevertheless, brief and all too limited as the supremacy of liberal ideas was, it sufficed to change the face of the earth. A magnificent economic development took place. The release of man’s productive powers multiplied the means of subsistence many times over. On the eve of the World War (which was itself the result of a long and bitter struggle against the liberal spirit and which ushered in a period of still more bitter attacks on liberal principles), the world was incomparably more densely populated than it had ever been, and each inhabitant could live incomparably better than had been possible in earlier centuries. The prosperity that liberalism had created reduced considerably infant mortality, which had been the pitiless scourge of earlier ages, and, as a result of the improvement in living conditions, lengthened the average span of life.

  Nor did this prosperity flow only to a select class of privileged persons. On the eve of the World War the worker in the industrial nations of Europe, in the United States, and in the overseas dominions of England lived better and more graciously than the nobleman of not too long before. Not only could he eat and drink according to his desire; he could give his children a better education; he could, if he wished, take part in the intellectual and cultural life of his nation; and, if he possessed enough talent and energy, he could, without difficulty, raise his social position. It was precisely in the countries that had gone the farthest in adopting the liberal program that the top of the social pyramid was composed, in the main, not of those who had, from their very birth, enjoyed a privileged position by virtue of the wealth or high rank of their parents, but of those who, under favorable conditions, had worked their way up from straitened circumstances by their own power. The barriers that had in earlier ages separated lords and serfs had fallen. Now there were only citizens with equal rights. No one was handicapped or persecuted on account of his nationality, his opinions, or his faith. Domestic political and religious persecutions had ceased, and international wars began to become less frequent. Optimists were already hailing the dawn of the age of eternal peace.

  But events have turned out otherwise. In the nineteenth century strong and violent opponents of liberalism sprang up who succeeded in wiping out a great part of what had been gained by the liberals. The world today wants to hear no more of liberalism. Outside England the term “liberalism” is frankly proscribed. In England, there are, to be sure, still “liberals,” but most of them are so in name only. In fact, they are rather moderate socialists. Everywhere today political power is in the hands of the antiliberal parties. The program of antiliberalism unleashed the forces that gave rise to the great World War and, by virtue of import and export quotas, tariffs, migration barriers, and similar measures, has brought the nations of the world to the point of mutual isolation. Within each nation it has led to socialist experiments whose result has been a reduction in the productivity of labor and a concomitant increase in want and misery. Whoever does not deliberately close his eyes to the facts must recognize everywhere the signs of an approaching catastrophe in world economy. Antiliberalism is heading toward a general collapse of civilization.

  If one wants to know what liberalism is and what it aims at, one cannot simply turn to history for the information and inquire what the liberal politicians stood for and what they accomplished. For liberalism nowhere succeeded in carrying out its program as it had intended.

  Nor can the programs and actions of those parties that today call themselves liberal provide us with any enlightenment concerning the nature of true liberalism. It has already been mentioned that even in England what is understood as liberalism today bears a much greater resemblance to Toryism and socialism than to the old program of the freetraders. If there are liberals who find it compatible with their liberalism to endorse the nationalization of railroads, of mines, and of other enterprises, and even to support protective tariffs, one can easily see that nowadays nothing is left of liberalism but the name.

  Nor does it any longer suffice today to form one’s idea of liberalism from a study of the writings of its great founders. Liberalism is not a completed doctrine or a fixed dogma. On the contrary, it is the application of the teachings of science to the social life of man. And just as economics, sociology, and philosophy have not stood still since the days of David Hume, Adam Smith, David Ricardo, Jeremy Bentham, and Wilhelm Humboldt, so the doctrine of liberalism is different today from what it was in their day, even though its fundamental principles have remained unchanged. For many years now no one has undertaken to present a concise statement of the essential meaning of that doctrine. This may serve to justify our present attempt at providing just such a work.

  2

  Material Welfare

  Liberalism is a doctrine directed entirely towards the conduct of men in this world. In the last analysis, it has nothing else in view than the advancement of their outward, material welfare and does not concern itself directly with their inner, spiritual and metaphysical needs. It does not promise men happiness and contentment, but only the most abundant possible satisfaction of all those desires that can be satisfied by the things of the outer world.

  Liberalism has often been reproached for this purely external and materialistic attitude toward what is earthly and transitory. The life of man, it is said, does not consist in eating and drinking. There are higher and more important needs than food and drink, shelter and clothing. Even the greatest earthly riches cannot give man happiness; they leave his inner self, his soul, unsatisfied and empty. The most serious error of liberalism has been that it has had nothing to offer man’s deeper and nobler aspirations.

  But the critics who speak in this vein show only that they have a very imperfect and materialistic conception of these higher and nobler needs. Social policy, with the means that are at its disposal, can make men rich or poor, but it can never succeed in making them happy or in satisfying their inmost yearnings. Here all external expedients fail. All that social policy can do is to remove the outer causes of pain and suffering; it can further a system that feeds the hungry, clothes the naked, and houses the homeless. Happiness and contentment do not depend on food, clothing, and shelter, but, above all, on what a man cherishes within himself. It is not from a disdain of spiritual goods that liberalism concerns itself exclusively with man’s material well-being, but from a conviction that what is highest and deepest in man cannot be touched by any outward regulation. It seeks to produce only outer well-being because it knows that inner, spiritual riches cannot come to man from without, but only from within his own heart. It does not aim at creating anything but the outward preconditions for the development of the inner life. And there can be no doubt that the relatively prosperous individual of the twentieth century can more readily satisfy his spiritual needs than, say, the individual of the tenth century, who was given no respite from anxiety over the problem of eking out barely enough for survival or from the dangers that threatened him from his enemies.

  To be sure, to those who, like the followers of many Asiatic and medieval Christian sects, accept the doctrine of complete asceticism and who take as the ideal of human life the poverty and freedom from want of the birds of the forest and the fish of the sea, we can make no reply when they reproach liberalism for its materialistic attitude. We can only ask them to let us go our way undisturbed, just as we do not hinder them from getting to heaven in their own fashion. Let them shut themselves up in their cells, away from men and the world, in peace.

  The overwhelming majority of our contemporaries cannot understand the ascetic ideal. But once one rejects the principle of the ascetic conduct of life, one cannot reproach liberalism for aiming at outer well-being.

  3

  Rationalism

  Liberalism is usually reproached, besides, for being rationalistic. It wants to regulate everything reasonably and thus fails to recognize that in human affairs great latitude is, and, indeed, must be, given to feelings and to the irrational generally—i.e., to what is unreasonable.

  Now liberalism is by no means unaware of the fact that men sometimes act unreasonably. If men always acted reasonably, it would be superfluous to exhort them to be guided by reason. Liberalism does not say that men always act intelligently, but rather that they ought, in their own rightly understood interest, always to act intelligently. And the essence of liberalism is just this, that it wants to have conceded to reason in the sphere of social policy the acceptance that is conceded to it without dispute in all other spheres of human action.

  If, having been recommended a reasonable—i.e., hygienic—mode of life by his doctor, someone were to reply: “I know that your advice is reasonable; my feelings, however, forbid me to follow it. I want to do what is harmful for my health even though it may be unreasonable,” hardly anybody would regard his conduct as commendable. No matter what we undertake to do in life, in order to reach the goal that we have set for ourselves we endeavor to do it reasonably. The person who wants to cross a railroad track will not choose the very moment when a train is passing over the crossing. The person who wants to sew on a button will avoid pricking his finger with the needle. In every sphere of his practical activity man has developed a technique or a technology that indicates how one is to proceed if one does not want to behave in an unreasonable way. It is generally acknowledged that it is desirable for a man to acquire the techniques which he can make use of in life, and a person who enters a field whose techniques he has not mastered is derided as a bungler.

  Only in the sphere of social policy, it is thought, should it be otherwise. Here, not reason, but feelings and impulses should decide. The question: How must things be arranged in order to provide good illumination during the hours of darkness? is generally discussed only with reasonable arguments. As soon, however, as the point in the discussion is reached when it is to be decided whether the lighting plant should be managed by private individuals or by the municipality, then reason is no longer considered valid. Here sentiment, world view—in short, unreason—should determine the result. We ask in vain: Why?

  The organization of human society according to the pattern most suitable for the attainment of the ends in view is a quite prosaic and matter-of-fact question, not unlike, say, the construction of a railroad or the production of cloth or furniture. National and governmental affairs are, it is true, more important than all other practical questions of human conduct, since the social order furnishes the foundation for everything else, and it is possible for each individual to prosper in the pursuit of his ends only in a society propitious for their attainment. But however lofty may be the sphere in which political and social questions are placed, they still refer to matters that are subject to human control and must consequently be judged according to the canons of human reason. In such matters, no less than in all our other mundane affairs, mysticism is only an evil. Our powers of comprehension are very limited. We cannot hope ever to discover the ultimate and most profound secrets of the universe. But the fact that we can never fathom the meaning and purpose of our existence does not hinder us from taking precautions to avoid contagious diseases or from making use of the appropriate means to feed and clothe ourselves, nor should it deter us from organizing society in such a way that the earthly goals for which we strive can be most effectually attained. Even the state and the legal system, the government and its administration are not too lofty, too good, too grand, for us to bring them within the range of rational deliberation. Problems of social policy are problems of social technology, and their solution must be sought in the same ways and by the same means that are at our disposal in the solution of other technical problems: by rational reflection and by examination of the given conditions. All that man is and all that raises him above the animals he owes to his reason. Why should he forgo the use of reason just in the sphere of social policy and trust to vague and obscure feelings and impulses?

  4

  The Aim of Liberalism

  There is a widespread opinion that liberalism is distinguished from other political movements by the fact that it places the interests of a part of society—the propertied classes, the capitalists, the entrepreneurs—above the interests of the other classes. This assertion is completely mistaken. Liberalism has always had in view the good of the whole, not that of any special group. It was this that the English utilitarians meant to express—although, it is true, not very aptly—in their famous formula, “the greatest happiness of the greatest number.” Historically, liberalism was the first political movement that aimed at promoting the welfare of all, not that of special groups. Liberalism is distinguished from socialism, which likewise professes to strive for the good of all, not by the goal at which it aims, but by the means that it chooses to attain that goal.

  If it is maintained that the consequence of a liberal policy is or must be to favor the special interests of certain strata of society, this is still a question that allows of discussion. It is one of the tasks of the present work to show that such a reproach is in no way justified. But one cannot, from the very outset, impute unfairness to the person who raises it; though we consider his opinion incorrect, it could very well be advanced in the best of faith. In any case, whoever attacks liberalism in this way concedes that its intentions are disinterested and that it wants nothing but what it says it wants.

  Quite different are those critics of liberalism who reproach it for wanting to promote, not the general welfare, but only the special interests of certain classes. Such critics are both unfair and ignorant. By choosing this mode of attack, they show that they are inwardly well aware of the weakness of their own case. They snatch at poisoned weapons because they cannot otherwise hope for success.

  If a doctor shows a patient who craves food detrimental to his health the perversity of his desire, no one will be so foolish as to say: “The doctor does not care for the good of the patient; whoever wishes the patient well must not grudge him the enjoyment of relishing such delicious food.” Everyone will understand that the doctor advises the patient to forgo the pleasure that the enjoyment of the harmful food affords solely in order to avoid injuring his health. But as soon as the matter concerns social policy, one is prone to consider it quite differently. When the liberal advises against certain popular measures because he expects harmful consequences from them, he is censured as an enemy of the people, and praise is heaped on the demagogues who, without consideration of the harm that will follow, recommend what seems to be expedient for the moment.

  Reasonable action is distinguished from unreasonable action by the fact that it involves provisional sacrifices. The latter are only apparent sacrifices, since they are outweighed by the favorable consequences that later ensue. The person who avoids tasty but unwholesome food makes merely a provisional, a seeming sacrifice. The outcome—the nonoccurrence of injury to his health—shows that he has not lost, but gained. To act in this way, however, requires insight into the consequences of one’s action. The demagogue takes advantage of this fact. He opposes the liberal, who calls for provisional and merely apparent sacrifices, and denounces him as a hard-hearted enemy of the people, meanwhile setting himself up as a friend of humanity. In supporting the measures he advocates, he knows well how to touch the hearts of his hearers and to move them to tears with allusions to want and misery.

  Antiliberal policy is a policy of capital consumption. It recommends that the present be more abundantly provided for at the expense of the future. It is in exactly the same case as the patient of whom we have spoken. In both instances a relatively grievous disadvantage in the future stands in opposition to a relatively abundant momentary gratification. To talk, in such a case, as if the question were one of hard-heartedness versus philanthropy is downright dishonest and untruthful. It is not only the common run of politicians and the press of the antiliberal parties that are open to such a reproach. Almost all the writers of the school of Sozialpolitik have made use of this underhanded mode of combat.

  That there is want and misery in the world is not, as the average newspaper reader, in his dullness, is only too prone to believe, an argument against liberalism. It is precisely want and misery that liberalism seeks to abolish, and it considers the means that it proposes the only suitable ones for the achievement of this end. Let whoever thinks that he knows a better, or even a different, means to this end adduce the proof. The assertion that the liberals do not strive for the good of all members of society, but only for that of special groups, is in no way a substitute for this proof.

  The fact that there is want and misery would not constitute an argument against liberalism even if the world today followed a liberal policy. It would always be an open question whether still more want and misery might not prevail if other policies had been followed. In view of all the ways in which the functioning of the institution of private property is curbed and hindered in every quarter today by antiliberal policies, it is manifestly quite absurd to seek to infer anything against the correctness of liberal principles from the fact that economic conditions are not, at present, all that one could wish. In order to appreciate what liberalism and capitalism have accomplished, one should compare conditions as they are at present with those of the Middle Ages or of the first centuries of the modern era. What liberalism and capitalism could have accomplished had they been allowed free rein can be inferred only from theoretical considerations.

  5

  Liberalism and Capitalism

  A society in which liberal principles are put into effect is usually called a capitalist society, and the condition of that society, capitalism. Since the economic policy of liberalism has everywhere been only more or less closely approximated in practice, conditions as they are in the world today provide us with but an imperfect idea of the meaning and possible accomplishments of capitalism in full flower. Nevertheless, one is altogether justified in calling our age the age of capitalism, because all that has created the wealth of our time can be traced back to capitalist institutions. It is thanks to those liberal ideas that still remain alive in our society, to what yet survives in it of the capitalist system, that the great mass of our contemporaries can enjoy a standard of living far above that which just a few generations ago was possible only to the rich and especially privileged.

  To be sure, in the customary rhetoric of the demagogues these facts are represented quite differently. To listen to them, one would think that all progress in the techniques of production redounds to the exclusive benefit of a favored few, while the masses sink ever more deeply into misery. However, it requires only a moment’s reflection to realize that the fruits of all technological and industrial innovations make for an improvement in the satisfaction of the wants of the great masses. All big industries that produce consumers’ goods work directly for their benefit; all industries that produce machines and half-finished products work for them indirectly. The great industrial developments of the last decades, like those of the eighteenth century that are designated by the not altogether happily chosen phrase, “the Industrial Revolution,” have resulted, above all, in a better satisfaction of the needs of the masses. The development of the clothing industry, the mechanization of shoe production, and improvements in the processing and distribution of foodstuffs have, by their very nature, benefited the widest public. It is thanks to these industries that the masses today are far better clothed and fed than ever before. However, mass production provides not only for food, shelter, and clothing, but also for other requirements of the multitude. The press serves the masses quite as much as the motion picture industry, and even the theater and similar strongholds of the arts are daily becoming more and more places of mass entertainment.

  Nevertheless, as a result of the zealous propaganda of the antiliberal parties, which twists the facts the other way round, people today have come to associate the ideas of liberalism and capitalism with the image of a world plunged into ever increasing misery and poverty. To be sure, no amount of depreciatory propaganda could ever succeed, as the demagogues had hoped, in giving the words “liberal” and “liberalism” a completely pejorative connotation. In the last analysis, it is not possible to brush aside the fact that, in spite of all the efforts of antiliberal propaganda, there is something in these expressions that suggests what every normal person feels when he hears the word “freedom.” Antiliberal propaganda, therefore, avoids mentioning the word “liberalism” too often and prefers the infamies that it attributes to the liberal system to be associated with the term “capitalism.” That word brings to mind a flint-hearted capitalist, who thinks of nothing but his own enrichment, even if that is possible only through the exploitation of his fellow men.

  It hardly occurs to anyone, when he forms his notion of a capitalist, that a social order organized on genuinely liberal principles is so constituted as to leave the entrepreneurs and the capitalists only one way to wealth, viz., by better providing their fellow men with what they themselves think they need. Instead of speaking of capitalism in connection with the prodigious improvement in the standard of living of the masses, antiliberal propaganda mentions capitalism only in referring to those phenomena whose emergence was made possible solely because of the restraints that were imposed upon liberalism. No reference is made to the fact that capitalism has placed a delectable luxury as well as a food, in the form of sugar, at the disposal of the great masses. Capitalism is mentioned in connection with sugar only when the price of sugar in a country is raised above the world market price by a cartel. As if such a development were even conceivable in a social order in which liberal principles were put into effect! In a country with a liberal regime, in which there are no tariffs, cartels capable of driving the price of a commodity above the world market price would be quite unthinkable.

  The links in the chain of reasoning by which antiliberal demagogy succeeds in laying upon liberalism and capitalism the blame for all the excesses and evil consequences of antiliberal policies are as follows: One starts from the assumption that liberal principles aim at promoting the interests of the capitalists and entrepreneurs at the expense of the interests of the rest of the population and that liberalism is a policy that favors the rich over the poor. Then one observes that many entrepreneurs and capitalists, under certain conditions, advocate protective tariffs, and still others—the armaments manufacturers—support a policy of “national preparedness”; and, out of hand, one jumps to the conclusion that these must be “capitalistic” policies.

  In fact, however, the case is quite otherwise. Liberalism is not a policy in the interest of any particular group, but a policy in the interest of all mankind. It is, therefore, incorrect to assert that the entrepreneurs and capitalists have any special interest in supporting liberalism. Their interest in championing the liberal program is exactly the same as that of everyone else. There may be individual cases in which some entrepreneurs or capitalists cloak their special interests in the program of liberalism; but opposed to these are always the special interests of other entrepreneurs or capitalists. The matter is not quite so simple as those who everywhere scent “interests” and “interested parties” imagine. That a nation imposes a tariff on iron, for example, cannot “simply” be explained by the fact that this benefits the iron magnates. There are also persons with opposing interests in the country, even among the entrepreneurs; and, in any case, the beneficiaries of the tariff on iron are a steadily diminishing minority. Nor can bribery be the explanation, for the people bribed can likewise be only a minority; and, besides, why does only one group, the protectionists, do the bribing, and not their opponents, the freetraders?

  The fact is that the ideology that makes the protective tariff possible is created neither by the “interested parties” nor by those bribed by them, but by the ideologists, who give the world the ideas that direct the course of all human affairs. In our age, in which antiliberal ideas prevail, virtually everyone thinks accordingly, just as, a hundred years ago, most people thought in terms of the then prevailing liberal ideology. If many entrepreneurs today advocate protective tariffs, this is nothing more than the form that antiliberalism takes in their case. It has nothing to do with liberalism.

  6

  The Psychological Roots of Antiliberalism

  It cannot be the task of this book to discuss the problem of social cooperation otherwise than with rational arguments. But the root of the opposition to liberalism cannot be reached by resort to the method of reason. This opposition does not stem from the reason, but from a pathological mental attitude—from resentment and from a neurasthenic condition that one might call a Fourier complex, after the French socialist of that name.

  Concerning resentment and envious malevolence little need be said. Resentment is at work when one so hates somebody for his more favorable circumstances that one is prepared to bear heavy losses if only the hated one might also come to harm. Many of those who attack capitalism know very well that their situation under any other economic system will be less favorable. Nevertheless, with full knowledge of this fact, they advocate a reform, e.g., socialism, because they hope that the rich, whom they envy, will also suffer under it. Time and again one hears socialists say that even material want will be easier to bear in a socialist society because people will realize that no one is better off than his neighbor.

  At all events, resentment can still be dealt with by rational arguments. It is, after all, not too difficult to make clear to a person who is filled with resentment that the important thing for him cannot be to worsen the position of his better situated fellow men, but to improve his own.

  The Fourier complex is much harder to combat. What is involved in this case is a serious disease of the nervous system, a neurosis, which is more properly the concern of the psychologist than of the legislator. Yet it cannot be neglected in investigating the problems of modern society. Unfortunately, medical men have hitherto scarcely concerned themselves with the problems presented by the Fourier complex. Indeed, they have hardly been noticed even by Freud, the great master of psychology, or by his followers in their theory of neurosis, though it is to psychoanalysis that we are indebted for having opened up the path that alone leads to a coherent and systematic understanding of mental disorders of this kind.

  Scarcely one person in a million succeeds in fulfilling his life’s ambition. The upshot of one’s labors, even if one is favored by fortune, remains far inferior to what the wistful daydreams of youth allowed one to hope for. Plans and desires are shattered on a thousand obstacles, and one’s powers prove too weak to achieve the goals on which one has set one’s heart. The failure of his hopes, the frustration of his schemes, his own inadequacy in the face of the tasks that he has set himself—these constitute every man’s most deeply painful experience. They are, indeed, the common lot of man.

  There are two ways in which man can react to this experience. One way is indicated by the practical wisdom of Goethe:

  • Dost thou fancy that I should hate life,
  • Should flee to the wilderness,
  • Because not all my budding dreams have
  • blossomed?

  his Prometheus cries. And Faust recognizes at the “highest moment” that “the last word of wisdom” is:

  • No man deserves his freedom or his life
  • Who does not daily win them anew.

  Such a will and such a spirit cannot be vanquished by any earthly misfortune. He who accepts life for what it is and never allows himself to be overwhelmed by it does not need to seek refuge for his crushed self-confidence in the solace of a “saving lie.” If the longed-for success is not forthcoming, if the vicissitudes of fate destroy in the twinkling of an eye what had to be painstakingly built up by years of hard work, then he simply multiplies his exertions. He can look disaster in the eye without despairing.

  The neurotic cannot endure life in its real form. It is too raw for him, too coarse, too common. To render it bearable he does not, like the healthy man, have the heart to “carry on in spite of everything.” That would not be in keeping with his weakness. Instead, he takes refuge in a delusion. A delusion is, according to Freud, “itself something desired, a kind of consolation”; it is characterized by its “resistance to attack by logic and reality.” It by no means suffices, therefore, to seek to talk the patient out of his delusion by conclusive demonstrations of its absurdity. In order to recuperate, the patient himself must overcome it. He must learn to understand why he does not want to face the truth and why he takes refuge in delusions.

  Only the theory of neurosis can explain the success enjoyed by Fourierism, the mad product of a seriously deranged brain. This is not the place to adduce evidence of Fourier’s psychosis by quoting passages from his writings. Such descriptions are of interest only to the psychiatrist and, perhaps, also to people who derive a certain pleasure from reading the productions of a lewd phantasy. But the fact is that Marxism, when it is obliged to leave the field of pompous dialectical rhetoric and the derision and defamation of its opponents and to make a few meager remarks pertinent to the issue, never has anything different to advance from what Fourier, the “utopian,” had to offer. Marxism is likewise unable to construct a picture of a socialist society without making two assumptions already made by Fourier that contradict all experience and all reason. On the one hand, it assumes that the “material substratum” of production, which is “already present in nature without the need of productive effort on the part of man,” stands at our disposal in such abundance that it need not be economized; hence the faith of Marxism in a “practically limitless increase in production.” On the other hand, it assumes that in a socialist community work will change from “a burden into a pleasure”—indeed, that it will become “the primary necessity of life.” Where a superfluity of all goods abounds and work is a pleasure, it is, doubtless, an easy matter to establish a land of Cockaigne.

  Marxism believes that from the height of its “scientific socialism” it is entitled to look down with contempt on romanticism and romantics. But in reality its own procedure is no different from theirs. Instead of removing the impediments that stand in the way of the realization of its desires, it too prefers to let all obstacles simply fade away in the mists of phantasy.

  In the life of the neurotic the “saving lie” has a double function. It not only consoles him for past failure, but holds out the prospect of future success. In the case of social failure, which alone concerns us here, the consolation consists in the belief that one’s inability to attain the lofty goals to which one has aspired is not to be ascribed to one’s own inadequacy, but to the defectiveness of the social order. The malcontent expects from the overthrow of the latter the success that the existing system has withheld from him. Consequently, it is entirely futile to try to make clear to him that the utopia he dreams of is not feasible and that the only foundation possible for a society organized on the principle of the division of labor is private ownership of the means of production. The neurotic clings to his “saving lie,” and when he must make the choice of renouncing either it or logic, he prefers to sacrifice logic. For life would be unbearable for him without the consolation that he finds in the idea of socialism. It tells him that not he himself, but the world, is at fault for having caused his failure; and this conviction raises his depressed self-confidence and liberates him from a tormenting feeling of inferiority.

  Just as the devout Christian could more easily endure the misfortune that befell him on earth because he hoped for a continuation of personal existence in another, better world, where those who on earth had been first would be last and the last would be first; so, for modern man, socialism has become an elixir against earthly adversity. But whereas the belief in immortality, in a recompense in the hereafter, and in resurrection formed an incentive to virtuous conduct in this life, the effect of the socialist promise is quite different. It imposes no other duty than that of giving political support to the party of socialism; but at the same time it raises expectations and demands.

  This being the character of the socialist dream, it is understandable that every one of the partisans of socialism expects from it precisely what has so far been denied to him. Socialist authors promise not only wealth for all, but also happiness in love for everybody, the full physical and spiritual development of each individual, the unfolding of great artistic and scientific talents in all men, etc. Only recently Trotsky stated in one of his writings that in the socialist society “the average human type will rise to the heights of an Aristotle, a Goethe, or a Marx. And above this ridge new peaks will rise.”1 The socialist paradise will be the kingdom of perfection, populated by completely happy supermen. All socialist literature is full of such nonsense. But it is just this nonsense that wins it the most supporters.

  One cannot send every person suffering from a Fourier complex to the doctor for psychoanalytic treatment; the number of those afflicted with it is far too great. No other remedy is possible in this case than the treatment of the illness by the patient himself. Through self-knowledge he must learn to endure his lot in life without looking for a scapegoat on which he can lay all the blame, and he must endeavor to grasp the fundamental laws of social cooperation.}}

  LIBERALISM
  
  The Classical Tradition

  CHAPTER 1

  The Foundations of Liberal Policy

  1

  Property

  Human society is an association of persons for cooperative action. As against the isolated action of individuals, cooperative action on the basis of the principle of the division of labor has the advantage of greater productivity. If a number of men work in cooperation in accordance with the principle of the division of labor, they will produce (other things being equal) not only as much as the sum of what they would have produced by working as self-sufficient individuals, but considerably more. All human civilization is founded on this fact. It is by virtue of the division of labor that man is distinguished from the animals. It is the division of labor that has made feeble man, far inferior to most animals in physical strength, the lord of the earth and the creator of the marvels of technology. In the absence of the division of labor, we would not be in any respect further advanced today than our ancestors of a thousand or ten thousand years ago.

  Human labor by itself is not capable of increasing our well-being. In order to be fruitful, it must be applied to the materials and resources of the earth that Nature has placed at our disposal. Land, with all the substances and powers resident within it, and human labor constitute the two factors of production from whose purposeful cooperation proceed all the commodities that serve for the satisfaction of our outer needs. In order to produce, one must deploy labor and the material factors of production, including not only the raw materials and resources placed at our disposal by Nature and mostly found in the earth, but also the intermediate products already fabricated of these primary natural factors of production by previously performed human labor. In the language of economics we distinguish, accordingly, three factors of production: labor, land, and capital. By land is to be understood everything that Nature places at our disposal in the way of substances and powers on, under, and above the surface of the earth, in the water, and in the air; by capital goods, all the intermediate goods produced from land with the help of human labor that are made to serve further production, such as machines, tools, half-manufactured articles of all kinds, etc.

  Now we wish to consider two different systems of human cooperation under the division of labor—one based on private ownership of the means of production, and the other based on communal ownership of the means of production. The latter is called socialism or communism; the former, liberalism or also (ever since it created in the nineteenth century a division of labor encompassing the whole world) capitalism. The liberals maintain that the only workable system of human cooperation in a society based on the division of labor is private ownership of the means of production. They contend that socialism as a completely comprehensive system encompassing all the means of production is unworkable and that the application of the socialist principle to a part of the means of production, though not, of course, impossible, leads to a reduction in the productivity of labor, so that, far from creating greater wealth, it must, on the contrary, have the effect of diminishing wealth.

  The program of liberalism, therefore, if condensed into a single word, would have to read: property, that is, private ownership of the means of production (for in regard to commodities ready for consumption, private ownership is a matter of course and is not disputed even by the socialists and communists). All the other demands of liberalism result from this fundamental demand.

  Side by side with the word “property” in the program of liberalism one may quite appropriately place the words “freedom” and “peace.” This is not because the older program of liberalism generally placed them there. We have already said that the program of present-day liberalism has outgrown that of the older liberalism, that it is based on a deeper and better insight into interrelationships, since it can reap the benefit of the advances that science has made in the last decades. Freedom and peace have been placed in the forefront of the program of liberalism, not because many of the older liberals regarded them as coordinate with the fundamental principle of liberalism itself, rather than as merely a necessary consequence following from the one fundamental principle of the private ownership of the means of production; but solely because freedom and peace have come under especially violent attack from the opponents of liberalism, and liberals have not wanted to give the appearance, through the omission of these principles, that they in any way acknowledged the justness of the objections raised against them.

  2

  Freedom

  The idea of freedom has become so ingrained in all of us that for a long time no one dared to call it into question. People were accustomed always to speaking of freedom only with the greatest of reverence; it remained for Lenin to call it a “bourgeois prejudice.” Although the fact is often forgotten today, all this is an achievement of liberalism. The very name of liberalism is derived from freedom, and the name of the party in opposition to the liberals (both designations arose in the Spanish constitutional struggles of the first decades of the nineteenth century) was originally the “servile.”

  Before the rise of liberalism even high-minded philosophers, founders of religions, clerics animated by the best of intentions, and statesmen who genuinely loved their people, viewed the thralldom of a part of the human race as a just, generally useful, and downright beneficial institution. Some men and peoples are, it was thought, destined by nature for freedom, and others for bondage. And it was not only the masters who thought so, but the greater number of the slaves as well. They put up with their servitude, not only because they had to yield to the superior force of the masters, but also because they found some good in it: the slave is relieved of concern for securing his daily bread, for the master is obliged to provide him with the necessities of life. When liberalism set out, in the eighteenth and the first half of the nineteenth century, to abolish the serfdom and subjection of the peasant population in Europe and the slavery of the Negroes in the overseas colonies, not a few sincere humanitarians declared themselves in opposition. Unfree laborers are used to their bondage and do not feel it as an evil. They are not ready for freedom and would not know how to make use of it. The discontinuation of the master’s care would be very harmful to them. They would not be capable of managing their affairs in such a way as always to provide more than just the bare necessities of life, and they would soon fall into want and misery. Emancipation would thus not only fail to gain for them anything of real value, but would seriously impair their material well-being.

  What was astonishing was that one could hear these views expressed even by many of the slaves whom one questioned. In order to counter such opinions, many liberals believed it necessary to represent as the general rule and even on occasion to depict in an exaggerated manner the exceptional cases in which serfs and slaves had been cruelly abused. But these excesses were by no means the rule. There were, of course, isolated instances of abuse, and the fact that there were such cases was an additional reason for the abolition of this system. As a rule, however, the treatment of bondsmen by their masters was humane and mild.

  When those who recommended the abolition of involuntary servitude on general humanitarian grounds were told that the retention of the system was also in the interest of the enslaved, they knew of nothing to say in rejoinder. For against this objection in favor of slavery there is only one argument that can and did refute all others—namely, that free labor is incomparably more productive than slave labor. The slave has no interest in exerting himself fully. He works only as much and as zealously as is necessary to escape the punishment attaching to failure to perform the minimum. The free worker, on the other hand, knows that the more his labor accomplishes, the more he will be paid. He exerts himself to the full in order to raise his income. One has only to compare the demands placed on the worker by the tending of a modern tractor with the relatively small expenditure of intelligence, strength, and industry that just two generations ago was deemed sufficient for the enthralled ploughmen of Russia. Only free labor can accomplish what must be demanded of the modern industrial worker.

  Muddleheaded babblers may therefore argue interminably over whether all men are destined for freedom and are as yet ready for it. They may go on contending that there are races and peoples for whom Nature has prescribed a life of servitude and that the master races have the duty of keeping the rest of mankind in bondage. The liberal will not oppose their arguments in any way because his reasoning in favor of freedom for all, without distinction, is of an entirely different kind. We liberals do not assert that God or Nature meant all men to be free, because we are not instructed in the designs of God and of Nature, and we avoid, on principle, drawing God and Nature into a dispute over mundane questions. What we maintain is only that a system based on freedom for all workers warrants the greatest productivity of human labor and is therefore in the interest of all the inhabitants of the earth. We attack involuntary servitude, not in spite of the fact that it is advantageous to the “masters,” but because we are convinced that, in the last analysis, it hurts the interests of all members of human society, including the “masters.” If mankind had adhered to the practice of keeping the whole or even a part of the labor force in bondage, the magnificent economic developments of the last hundred and fifty years would not have been possible. We would have no railroads, no automobiles, no airplanes, no steamships, no electric light and power, no chemical industry, just as the ancient Greeks and Romans, with all their genius, were without these things. It suffices merely to mention this for everyone to realize that even the former masters of slaves or serfs have every reason to be satisfied with the course of events after the abolition of involuntary servitude. The European worker today lives under more favorable and more agreeable outward circumstances than the pharaoh of Egypt once did, in spite of the fact that the pharaoh commanded thousands of slaves, while the worker has nothing to depend on but the strength and skill of his hands. If a nabob of yore could be placed in the circumstances in which a common man lives today, he would declare without hesitation that his life had been a beggarly one in comparison with the life that even a man of moderate means can lead at present.

  This is the fruit of free labor. It is able to create more wealth for everyone than slave labor once provided for the masters.

  3

  Peace

  There are high-minded men who detest war because it brings death and suffering. However much one may admire their humanitarianism, their argument against war, in being based on philanthropic grounds, seems to lose much or all of its force when we consider the statements of the supporters and proponents of war. The latter by no means deny that war brings with it pain and sorrow. Nevertheless, they believe it is through war and war alone that mankind is able to make progress. War is the father of all things, said a Greek philosopher, and thousands have repeated it after him. Man degenerates in time of peace. Only war awakens in him slumbering talents and powers and imbues him with sublime ideals. If war were to be abolished, mankind would decay into indolence and stagnation.

  It is difficult or even impossible to refute this line of reasoning on the part of the advocates of war if the only objection to war that one can think of is that it demands sacrifices. For the proponents of war are of the opinion that these sacrifices are not made in vain and that they are well worth making. If it were really true that war is the father of all things, then the human sacrifices it requires would be necessary to further the general welfare and the progress of humanity. One might lament the sacrifices, one might even strive to reduce their number, but one would not be warranted in wanting to abolish war and to bring about eternal peace.

  The liberal critique of the argument in favor of war is fundamentally different from that of the humanitarians. It starts from the premise that not war, but peace, is the father of all things. What alone enables mankind to advance and distinguishes man from the animals is social cooperation. It is labor alone that is productive: it creates wealth and therewith lays the outward foundations for the inward flowering of man. War only destroys; it cannot create. War, carnage, destruction, and devastation we have in common with the predatory beasts of the jungle; constructive labor is our distinctively human characteristic. The liberal abhors war, not, like the humanitarian, in spite of the fact that it has beneficial consequences, but because it has only harmful ones.

  The peace-loving humanitarian approaches the mighty potentate and addresses him thus: “Do not make war, even though you have the prospect of furthering your own welfare by a victory. Be noble and magnanimous and renounce the tempting victory even if it means a sacrifice for you and the loss of an advantage.” The liberal thinks otherwise. He is convinced that victorious war is an evil even for the victor, that peace is always better than war. He demands no sacrifice from the stronger, but only that he should come to realize where his true interests lie and should learn to understand that peace is for him, the stronger, just as advantageous as it is for the weaker.

  When a peace-loving nation is attacked by a bellicose enemy, it must offer resistance and do everything to ward off the onslaught. Heroic deeds performed in such a war by those fighting for their freedom and their lives are entirely praiseworthy, and one rightly extols the manliness and courage of such fighters. Here daring, intrepidity, and contempt for death are praiseworthy because they are in the service of a good end. But people have made the mistake of representing these soldierly virtues as absolute virtues, as qualities good in and for themselves, without consideration of the end they serve. Whoever holds this opinion must, to be consistent, likewise acknowledge as noble virtues the daring, intrepidity, and contempt for death of the robber. In fact, however, there is nothing good or bad in and of itself. Human actions become good or bad only through the end that they serve and the consequences they entail. Even Leonidas would not be worthy of the esteem in which we hold him if he had fallen, not as the defender of his homeland, but as the leader of an invading army intent on robbing a peaceful people of its freedom and possessions.

  How harmful war is to the development of human civilization becomes clearly apparent once one understands the advantages derived from the division of labor. The division of labor turns the self-sufficient individual into the ζῷον πολιτιϗόν [political animal] dependent on his fellow men, the social animal of which Aristotle spoke. Hostilities between one animal and another, or between one savage and another, in no way alter the economic basis of their existence. The matter is quite different when a quarrel that has to be decided by an appeal to arms breaks out among the members of a community in which labor is divided. In such a society each individual has a specialized function; no one is any longer in a position to live independently, because all have need of one another’s aid and support. Self-sufficient farmers, who produce on their own farms everything that they and their families need, can make war on one another. But when a village divides into factions, with the smith on one side and the shoemaker on the other, one faction will have to suffer from want of shoes, and the other from want of tools and weapons. Civil war destroys the division of labor inasmuch as it compels each group to content itself with the labor of its own adherents.

  If the possibility of such hostilities had been considered likely in the first place, the division of labor would never have been allowed to develop to the point where, in case a fight really did break out, one would have to suffer privation. The progressive intensification of the division of labor is possible only in a society in which there is an assurance of lasting peace. Only under the shelter of such security can the division of labor develop. In the absence of this prerequisite, the division of labor does not extend beyond the limits of the village or even of the individual household. The division of labor between town and country—with the peasants of the surrounding villages furnishing grain, cattle, milk, and butter to the town in exchange for the manufactured products of the townsfolk—already presupposes that peace is assured at least within the region in question. If the division of labor is to embrace a whole nation, civil war must lie outside the realm of possibility; if it is to encompass the whole world, lasting peace among nations must be assured.

  Everyone today would regard it as utterly senseless for a modern metropolis like London or Berlin to prepare to make war on the inhabitants of the adjacent countryside. Yet for many centuries the towns of Europe kept this possibility in mind and made economic provision for it. There were towns whose fortifications were, from the very beginning, so constructed that in case of need they could hold out for a while by keeping cattle and growing grain within the town walls.

  At the beginning of the nineteenth century by far the greater part of the inhabited world was still divided into a number of economic regions that were, by and large, self-sufficient. Even in the more highly developed areas of Europe, the needs of a region were met, for the most part, by the production of the region itself. Trade that went beyond the narrow confines of the immediate vicinity was relatively insignificant and comprised, by and large, only such commodities as could not be produced in the area itself because of climatic conditions. In by far the greater part of the world, however, the production of the village itself supplied almost all the needs of its inhabitants. For these villagers, a disturbance in trade relations caused by war did not generally mean any impairment of their economic well-being. But even the inhabitants of the more advanced countries of Europe did not suffer very severely in time of war. If the Continental System, which Napoleon I imposed on Europe in order to exclude from the continent English goods and those coming from across the ocean only by way of England, had been enforced even more rigorously than it was, it would have still inflicted on the inhabitants of the continent hardly any appreciable privations. They would, of course, have had to do without coffee and sugar, cotton and cotton goods, spices, and many rare kinds of wood; but all these things then played only a subordinate role in the households of the great masses.

  The development of a complex network of international economic relations is a product of nineteenth-century liberalism and capitalism. They alone made possible the extensive specialization of modern production with its concomitant improvement in technology. In order to provide the family of an English worker with all it consumes and desires, every nation of the five continents cooperates. Tea for the breakfast table is provided by Japan or Ceylon, coffee by Brazil or Java, sugar by the West Indies, meat by Australia or Argentina, cotton from America or Egypt, hides for leather from India or Russia, and so on. And in exchange for these things, English goods go to all parts of the world, to the most remote and out-of-the-way villages and farmsteads. This development was possible and conceivable only because, with the triumph of liberal principles, people no longer took seriously the idea that a great war could ever again break out. In the golden age of liberalism, war among members of the white race was generally considered a thing of the past.

  But events have turned out quite differently. Liberal ideas and programs were supplanted by socialism, nationalism, protectionism, imperialism, etatism, and militarism. Whereas Kant and Von Humboldt, Bentham and Cobden had sung the praises of eternal peace, the spokesmen of a later age never tired of extolling war, both civil and international. And their success came only all too soon. The result was the World War, which has given our age a kind of object lesson on the incompatibility between war and the division of labor.

  4

  Equality

  Nowhere is the difference between the reasoning of the older liberalism and that of neoliberalism clearer and easier to demonstrate than in their treatment of the problem of equality. The liberals of the eighteenth century, guided by the ideas of natural law and of the Enlightenment, demanded for everyone equality of political and civil rights because they assumed that all men are equal. God created all men equal, endowing them with fundamentally the same capabilities and talents, breathing into all of them the breath of His spirit. All distinctions between men are only artificial, the product of social, human—that is to say, transitory—institutions. What is imperishable in man—his spirit—is undoubtedly the same in rich and poor, noble and commoner, white and colored.

  Nothing, however, is as ill-founded as the assertion of the alleged equality of all members of the human race. Men are altogether unequal. Even between brothers there exist the most marked differences in physical and mental attributes. Nature never repeats itself in its creations; it produces nothing by the dozen, nor are its products standardized. Each man who leaves her workshop bears the imprint of the individual, the unique, the never-to-recur. Men are not equal, and the demand for equality under the law can by no means be grounded in the contention that equal treatment is due to equals.

  There are two distinct reasons why all men should receive equal treatment under the law. One was already mentioned when we analyzed the objections to involuntary servitude. In order for human labor to realize its highest attainable productivity, the worker must be free, because only the free worker, enjoying in the form of wages the fruits of his own industry, will exert himself to the full. The second consideration in favor of the equality of all men under the law is the maintenance of social peace. It has already been pointed out that every disturbance of the peaceful development of the division of labor must be avoided. But it is well-nigh impossible to preserve lasting peace in a society in which the rights and duties of the respective classes are different. Whoever denies rights to a part of the population must always be prepared for a united attack by the disenfranchised on the privileged. Class privileges must disappear so that the conflict over them may cease.

  It is therefore quite unjustifiable to find fault with the manner in which liberalism put into effect its postulate of equality, on the ground that what it created was only equality before the law, and not real equality. All human power would be insufficient to make men really equal. Men are and will always remain unequal. It is sober considerations of utility such as those we have here presented that constitute the argument in favor of the equality of all men under the law. Liberalism never aimed at anything more than this, nor could it ask for anything more. It is beyond human power to make a Negro white. But the Negro can be granted the same rights as the white man and thereby offered the possibility of earning as much if he produces as much.

  But, the socialists say, it is not enough to make men equal before the law. In order to make them really equal, one must also allot them the same income. It is not enough to abolish privileges of birth and of rank. One must finish the job and do away with the greatest and most important privilege of all, namely, that which is accorded by private property. Only then will the liberal program be completely realized, and a consistent liberalism thus leads ultimately to socialism, to the abolition of private ownership of the means of production.

  Privilege is an institutional arrangement favoring some individuals or a certain group at the expense of the rest. The privilege exists, although it harms some—perhaps the majority—and benefits no one except those for whose advantage it was created. In the feudal order of the Middle Ages certain lords had the hereditary right to hold a judgeship. They were judges because they had inherited the position, regardless of whether they possessed the abilities and qualities of character that fit a man to be a judge. In their eyes this office was nothing more than a lucrative source of income. Here judgeship was the privilege of a class of noble birth.

  If, however, as in modern states, judges are always drawn from the circle of those with legal knowledge and experience, this does not constitute a privilege in favor of lawyers. Preference is given to lawyers, not for their sake, but for the sake of the public welfare, because people are generally of the opinion that a knowledge of jurisprudence is an indispensable prerequisite for holding a judgeship. The question whether a certain institutional arrangement is or is not to be regarded as a privilege granted to a certain group, class, or person is not to be decided by whether or not it is advantageous to that group, class, or person, but according to how beneficial to the general public it is considered to be. The fact that on a ship at sea one man is captain and the rest constitute his crew and are subject to his command is certainly an advantage for the captain. Nevertheless, it is not a privilege of the captain if he possesses the ability to steer the ship between reefs in a storm and thereby to be of service not only to himself, but to the whole crew.

  In order to determine whether an institutional arrangement is to be regarded as the special privilege of an individual or of a class, the question one should ask is not whether it benefits this or that individual or class, but only whether it is beneficial to the general public. If we reach the conclusion that only private ownership of the means of production makes possible the prosperous development of human society, it is clear that this is tantamount to saying that private property is not a privilege of the property owner, but a social institution for the good and benefit of all, even though it may at the same time be especially agreeable and advantageous to some.

  It is not on behalf of property owners that liberalism favors the preservation of the institution of private property. It is not because the abolition of that institution would violate property rights that the liberals want to preserve it. If they considered the abolition of the institution of private property to be in the general interest, they would advocate that it be abolished, no matter how prejudicial such a policy might be to the interests of property owners. However, the preservation of that institution is in the interest of all strata of society. Even the poor man, who can call nothing his own, lives incomparably better in our society than he would in one that would prove incapable of producing even a fraction of what is produced in our own.

  5

  The Inequality of Wealth and Income

  What is most criticized in our social order is the inequality in the distribution of wealth and income. There are rich and poor; there are very rich and very poor. The way out is not far to seek: the equal distribution of all wealth.

  The first objection to this proposal is that it will not help the situation much because those of moderate means far outnumber the rich, so that each individual could expect from such a distribution only a quite insignificant increment in his standard of living. This is certainly correct, but the argument is not complete. Those who advocate equality of income distribution overlook the most important point, namely, that the total available for distribution, the annual product of social labor, is not independent of the manner in which it is divided. The fact that that product today is as great as it is, is not a natural or technological phenomenon independent of all social conditions, but entirely the result of our social institutions. Only because inequality of wealth is possible in our social order, only because it stimulates everyone to produce as much as he can and at the lowest cost, does mankind today have at its disposal the total annual wealth now available for consumption. Were this incentive to be destroyed, productivity would be so greatly reduced that the portion that an equal distribution would allot to each individual would be far less than what even the poorest receives today.

  The inequality of income distribution has, however, still a second function quite as important as the one already mentioned: it makes possible the luxury of the rich.

  Many foolish things have been said and written about luxury. Against luxury consumption it has been objected that it is unjust that some should enjoy great abundance while others are in want. This argument seems to have some merit. But it only seems so. For if it can be shown that luxury consumption performs a useful function in the system of social cooperation, then the argument will be proved invalid. This, however, is what we shall seek to demonstrate.

  Our defense of luxury consumption is not, of course, the argument that one occasionally hears, that is, that it spreads money among the people. If the rich did not indulge themselves in luxuries, it is said, the poor would have no income. This is simply nonsense. For if there were no luxury consumption, the capital and labor that would otherwise have been applied to the production of luxury goods would produce other goods: articles of mass consumption, necessary articles, instead of “superfluous” ones.

  To form a correct conception of the social significance of luxury consumption, one must first of all realize that the concept of luxury is an altogether relative one. Luxury consists in a way of living that stands in sharp contrast to that of the great mass of one’s contemporaries. The conception of luxury is, therefore, essentially historical. Many things that seem to us necessities today were once considered as luxuries. When, in the Middle Ages, an aristocratic Byzantine lady who had married a Venetian doge made use of a golden implement, which could be called the forerunner of the fork as we know it today, instead of her fingers, in eating her meals, the Venetians looked on this as a godless luxury, and they thought it only just when the lady was stricken with a dreadful disease; this must be, they supposed, the well-merited punishment of God for such unnatural extravagance. Two or three generations ago even in England an indoor bathroom was considered a luxury; today the home of every English worker of the better type contains one. Thirty-five years ago there were no automobiles; twenty years ago the possession of such a vehicle was the sign of a particularly luxurious mode of living; today in the United States even the worker has his Ford. This is the course of economic history. The luxury of today is the necessity of tomorrow. Every advance first comes into being as the luxury of a few rich people, only to become, after a time, the indispensable necessity taken for granted by everyone. Luxury consumption provides industry with the stimulus to discover and introduce new things. It is one of the dynamic factors in our economy. To it we owe the progressive innovations by which the standard of living of all strata of the population has been gradually raised.

  Most of us have no sympathy with the rich idler who spends his life in pleasure without ever doing any work. But even he fulfills a function in the life of the social organism. He sets an example of luxury that awakens in the multitude a consciousness of new needs and gives industry the incentive to fulfill them. There was a time when only the rich could afford the luxury of visiting foreign countries. Schiller never saw the Swiss mountains, which he celebrated in Wilhelm Tell, although they bordered on his Swabian homeland. Goethe saw neither Paris nor Vienna nor London. Today, however, hundreds of thousands travel, and soon millions will do so.

  6

  Private Property and Ethics

  In seeking to demonstrate the social function and necessity of private ownership of the means of production and of the concomitant inequality in the distribution of income and wealth, we are at the same time providing proof of the moral justification for private property and for the capitalist social order based upon it.

  Morality consists in the regard for the necessary requirements of social existence that must be demanded of each individual member of society. A man living in isolation has no moral rules to follow. He need have no qualms about doing anything he finds it to his advantage to do, for he does not have to consider whether he is not thereby injuring others. But as a member of society, a man must take into consideration, in everything he does, not only his own immediate advantage, but also the necessity, in every action, of affirming society as such. For the life of the individual in society is possible only by virtue of social cooperation, and every individual would be most seriously harmed if the social organization of life and of production were to break down. In requiring of the individual that he should take society into consideration in all his actions, that he should forgo an action that, while advantageous to him, would be detrimental to social life, society does not demand that he sacrifice himself to the interests of others. For the sacrifice that it imposes is only a provisional one: the renunciation of an immediate and relatively minor advantage in exchange for a much greater ultimate benefit. The continued existence of society as the association of persons working in cooperation and sharing a common way of life is in the interest of every individual. Whoever gives up a momentary advantage in order to avoid imperiling the continued existence of society is sacrificing a lesser gain for a greater one.

  The meaning of this regard for the general social interest has frequently been misunderstood. Its moral value was believed to consist in the fact of the sacrifice itself, in the renunciation of an immediate gratification. One refused to see that what is morally valuable is not the sacrifice, but the end served by the sacrifice, and one insisted on ascribing moral value to sacrifice, to renunciation, in and for itself alone. But sacrificing is moral only when it serves a moral end. There is a world of difference between a man who risks his life and property for a good cause and the man who sacrifices them without benefiting society in any way.

  Everything that serves to preserve the social order is moral; everything that is detrimental to it is immoral. Accordingly, when we reach the conclusion that an institution is beneficial to society, one can no longer object that it is immoral. There may possibly be a difference of opinion about whether a particular institution is socially beneficial or harmful. But once it has been judged beneficial, one can no longer contend that, for some inexplicable reason, it must be condemned as immoral.

  7

  State and Government

  The observance of the moral law is in the ultimate interest of every individual, because everyone benefits from the preservation of social cooperation; yet it imposes on everyone a sacrifice, even though only a provisional one that is more than counterbalanced by a greater gain. To perceive this, however, requires a certain insight into the connection between things, and to conform one’s actions in accordance with this perception demands a certain strength of will. Those who lack the perception, or, having the perception, lack the necessary will power to put it to use, are not able to conform to the moral law voluntarily. The situation here is no different from that involved in the observance of the rules of hygiene that the individual ought to follow in the interest of his own well-being. Someone may give himself over to unwholesome dissipation, such as indulgence in narcotics, whether because he does not know the consequences, or because he considers them less disadvantageous than the renunciation of the momentary pleasure, or because he lacks the requisite will power to adjust his behavior to his knowledge. There are people who consider that society is justified in resorting to coercive measures to set such a person on the right path and to correct anyone whose heedless actions imperil his own life and health. They advocate that alcoholics and drug addicts be forcibly deterred from indulging their vices and compelled to protect their good health.

  The question whether compulsion really answers the purpose in such cases we shall reserve for later consideration. What concerns us here is something quite different, namely, the question whether people whose actions endanger the continued existence of society should be compelled to refrain from doing so. The alcoholic and the drug addict harm only themselves by their behavior; the person who violates the rules of morality governing man’s life in society harms not only himself, but everyone. Life in society would be quite impossible if the people who desire its continued existence and who conduct themselves accordingly had to forgo the use of force and compulsion against those who are prepared to undermine society by their behavior. A small number of antisocial individuals, i.e., persons who are not willing or able to make the temporary sacrifices that society demands of them, could make all society impossible. Without the application of compulsion and coercion against the enemies of society, there could not be any life in society.

  We call the social apparatus of compulsion and coercion that induces people to abide by the rules of life in society, the state; the rules according to which the state proceeds, law; and the organs charged with the responsibility of administering the apparatus of compulsion, government.

  There is, to be sure, a sect that believes that one could quite safely dispense with every form of compulsion and base society entirely on the voluntary observance of the moral code. The anarchists consider state, law, and government as superfluous institutions in a social order that would really serve the good of all, and not just the special interests of a privileged few. Only because the present social order is based on private ownership of the means of production is it necessary to resort to compulsion and coercion in its defense. If private property were abolished, then everyone, without exception, would spontaneously observe the rules demanded by social cooperation.

  It has already been pointed out that this doctrine is mistaken in so far as it concerns the character of private ownership of the means of production. But even apart from this, it is altogether untenable. The anarchist, rightly enough, does not deny that every form of human cooperation in a society based on the division of labor demands the observance of some rules of conduct that are not always agreeable to the individual, since they impose on him a sacrifice, only temporary, it is true, but, for all that, at least for the moment, painful. But the anarchist is mistaken in assuming that everyone, without exception, will be willing to observe these rules voluntarily. There are dyspeptics who, though they know very well that indulgence in a certain food will, after a short time, cause them severe, even scarcely bearable pains, are nevertheless unable to forgo the enjoyment of the delectable dish. Now the interrelationships of life in society are not as easy to trace as the physiological effects of a food, nor do the consequences follow so quickly and, above all, so palpably for the evildoer. Can it, then, be assumed, without falling completely into absurdity, that, in spite of all this, every individual in an anarchist society will have greater foresight and will power than a gluttonous dyspeptic? In an anarchist society is the possibility entirely to be excluded that someone may negligently throw away a lighted match and start a fire or, in a fit of anger, jealousy, or revenge, inflict injury on his fellow man? Anarchism misunderstands the real nature of man. It would be practicable only in a world of angels and saints.

  Liberalism is not anarchism, nor has it anything whatsoever to do with anarchism. The liberal understands quite clearly that without resort to compulsion, the existence of society would be endangered and that behind the rules of conduct whose observance is necessary to assure peaceful human cooperation must stand the threat of force if the whole edifice of society is not to be continually at the mercy of any one of its members. One must be in a position to compel the person who will not respect the lives, health, personal freedom, or private property of others to acquiesce in the rules of life in society. This is the function that the liberal doctrine assigns to the state: the protection of property, liberty, and peace.

  The German socialist, Ferdinand Lassalle, tried to make the conception of a government limited exclusively to this sphere appear ridiculous by calling the state constituted on the basis of liberal principles the “night-watchman state.” But it is difficult to see why the night-watchman state should be any more ridiculous or worse than the state that concerns itself with the preparation of sauerkraut, with the manufacture of trouser buttons, or with the publication of newspapers. In order to understand the impression that Lassalle was seeking to create with this witticism, one must keep in mind that the Germans of his time had not yet forgotten the state of the monarchical despots, with its vast multiplicity of administrative and regulatory functions, and that they were still very much under the influence of the philosophy of Hegel, which had elevated the state to the position of a divine entity. If one looked upon the state, with Hegel, as “the self-conscious moral substance,” as the “Universal in and for itself, the rationality of the will,” then, of course, one had to view as blasphemous any attempt to limit the function of the state to that of serving as a night watchman.

  It is only thus that one can understand how it was possible for people to go so far as to reproach liberalism for its “hostility” or enmity towards the state. If I am of the opinion that it is inexpedient to assign to the government the task of operating railroads, hotels, or mines, I am not an “enemy of the state” any more than I can be called an enemy of sulphuric acid because I am of the opinion that, useful though it may be for many purposes, it is not suitable either for drinking or for washing one’s hands.

  It is incorrect to represent the attitude of liberalism toward the state by saying that it wishes to restrict the latter’s sphere of possible activity or that it abhors, in principle, all activity on the part of the state in relation to economic life. Such an interpretation is altogether out of the question. The stand that liberalism takes in regard to the problem of the function of the state is the necessary consequence of its advocacy of private ownership of the means of production. If one is in favor of the latter, one cannot, of course, also be in favor of communal ownership of the means of production, i.e., of placing them at the disposition of the government rather than of individual owners. Thus, the advocacy of private ownership of the means of production already implies a very severe circumscription of the functions assigned to the state.

  The socialists are sometimes wont to reproach liberalism with a lack of consistency. It is, they maintain, illogical to restrict the activity of the state in the economic sphere exclusively to the protection of property. It is difficult to see why, if the state is not to remain completely neutral, its intervention has to be limited to protecting the rights of property owners.

  This reproach would be justified only if the opposition of liberalism to all governmental activity in the economic sphere going beyond the protection of property stemmed from an aversion in principle against any activity on the part of the state. But that is by no means the case. The reason why liberalism opposes a further extension of the sphere of governmental activity is precisely that this would, in effect, abolish private ownership of the means of production. And in private property the liberal sees the principle most suitable for the organization of man’s life in society.

  8

  Democracy

  Liberalism is therefore far from disputing the necessity of a machinery of state, a system of law, and a government. It is a grave misunderstanding to associate it in any way with the idea of anarchism. For the liberal, the state is an absolute necessity, since the most important tasks are incumbent upon it: the protection not only of private property, but also of peace, for in the absence of the latter the full benefits of private property cannot be reaped.

  These considerations alone suffice to determine the conditions that a state must fulfill in order to correspond to the liberal ideal. It must not only be able to protect private property; it must also be so constituted that the smooth and peaceful course of its development is never interrupted by civil wars, revolutions, or insurrections.

  Many people are still haunted by the idea, which dates back to the preliberal era, that a certain nobility and dignity attaches to the exercise of governmental functions. Up to very recently public officials in Germany enjoyed, and indeed still enjoy even today, a prestige that has made the most highly respected career that of a civil servant. The social esteem in which a young “assessor”* or lieutenant is held far exceeds that of a businessman or an attorney grown old in honest labor. Writers, scholars, and artists whose fame and glory have spread far beyond Germany enjoy in their own homeland only the respect corresponding to the often rather modest rank they occupied in the bureaucratic hierarchy.

  There is no rational basis for this overestimation of the activities carried on in the offices of the administrative authorities. It is a form of atavism, a vestige from the days when the burgher had to fear the prince and his knights because at any moment he might be spoliated by them. In itself it is no finer, nobler, or more honorable to spend one’s days in a government office filling out documents than, for example, to work in the blueprint room of a machine factory. The tax collector has no more distinguished an occupation than those who are engaged in creating wealth directly, a part of which is skimmed off in the form of taxes to defray the expenses of the apparatus of government.

  This notion of the special distinction and dignity attaching to the exercise of all the functions of government is what constitutes the basis of the pseudodemocratic theory of the state. According to this doctrine, it is shameful for anyone to allow himself to be ruled by others. Its ideal is a constitution in which the whole people rules and governs. This, of course, never has been, never can be, and never will be possible, not even under the conditions prevailing in a small state. It was once thought that this ideal had been realized in the Greek city-states of antiquity and in the small cantons of the Swiss mountains. This too was a mistake. In Greece only a part of the populace, the free citizens, had any share in the government; the metics and slaves had none. In the Swiss cantons only certain matters of a purely local character were and still are settled on the constitutional principle of direct democracy; all affairs transcending these narrow territorial bounds are managed by the Federation, whose government by no means corresponds to the ideal of direct democracy.

  It is not at all shameful for a man to allow himself to be ruled by others. Government and administration, the enforcement of police regulations and similar ordinances, also require specialists: professional civil servants and professional politicians. The principle of the division of labor does not stop short even of the functions of government. One cannot be an engineer and a policeman at the same time. It in no way detracts from my dignity, my well-being, or my freedom that I am not myself a policeman. It is no more undemocratic for a few people to have the responsibility of providing protection for everyone else than it is for a few people to undertake to produce shoes for everyone else. There is not the slightest reason to object to professional politicians and professional civil servants if the institutions of the state are democratic. But democracy is something entirely different from what the romantic visionaries who prattle about direct democracy imagine.

  Government by a handful of people—and the rulers are always as much in the minority as against those ruled as the producers of shoes are as against the consumers of shoes—depends on the consent of the governed, i.e., on their acceptance of the existing administration. They may see it only as the lesser evil, or as an unavoidable evil, yet they must be of the opinion that a change in the existing situation would have no purpose. But once the majority of the governed becomes convinced that it is necessary and possible to change the form of government and to replace the old regime and the old personnel with a new regime and new personnel, the days of the former are numbered. The majority will have the power to carry out its wishes by force even against the will of the old regime. In the long run no government can maintain itself in power if it does not have public opinion behind it, i.e., if those governed are not convinced that the government is good. The force to which the government resorts in order to make refractory spirits compliant can be successfully applied only as long as the majority does not stand solidly in opposition.

  There is, therefore, in every form of polity a means for making the government at least ultimately dependent on the will of the governed, viz., civil war, revolution, insurrection. But it is just this expedient that liberalism wants to avoid. There can be no lasting economic improvement if the peaceful course of affairs is continually interrupted by internal struggles. A political situation such as existed in England at the time of the Wars of the Roses would plunge modern England in a few years into the deepest and most dreadful misery. The present level of economic development would never have been attained if no solution had been found to the problem of preventing the continual outbreak of civil wars. A fratricidal struggle like the French Revolution of 1789 cost a heavy loss in life and property. Our present economy could no longer endure such convulsions. The population of a modern metropolis would have to suffer so frightfully from a revolutionary uprising that could bar the importation of food and coal and cut off the flow of electricity, gas, and water that even the fear that such disturbances might break out would paralyze the life of the city.

  Here is where the social function performed by democracy finds its point of application. Democracy is that form of political constitution which makes possible the adaptation of the government to the wishes of the governed without violent struggles. If in a democratic state the government is no longer being conducted as the majority of the population would have it, no civil war is necessary to put into office those who are willing to work to suit the majority. By means of elections and parliamentary arrangements, the change of government is executed smoothly and without friction, violence, or bloodshed.

  9

  Critique of the Doctrine of Force

  The champions of democracy in the eighteenth century argued that only monarchs and their ministers are morally depraved, injudicious, and evil. The people, however, are altogether good, pure, and noble, and have, besides, the intellectual gifts needed in order always to know and to do what is right. This is, of course, all nonsense, no less so than the flattery of the courtiers who ascribed all good and noble qualities to their princes. The people are the sum of all individual citizens; and if some individuals are not intelligent and noble, then neither are all together.

  Since mankind entered the age of democracy with such high-flown expectations, it is not surprising that disillusionment should soon have set in. It was quickly discovered that the democracies committed at least as many errors as the monarchies and aristocracies had. The comparison that people drew between the men whom the democracies placed at the head of the government and those whom the emperors and kings, in the exercise of their absolute power, had elevated to that position, proved by no means favorable to the new wielders of power. The French are wont to speak of “killing with ridicule.” And indeed, the statesmen representative of democracy soon rendered it everywhere ridiculous. Those of the old regime had displayed a certain aristocratic dignity, at least in their outward demeanor. The new ones, who replaced them, made themselves contemptible by their behavior. Nothing has done more harm to democracy in Germany and Austria than the hollow arrogance and impudent vanity with which the Social-Democratic leaders who rose to power after the collapse of the empire conducted themselves.

  Thus, wherever democracy triumphed, an antidemocratic doctrine soon arose in fundamental opposition to it. There is no sense, it was said, in allowing the majority to rule. The best ought to govern, even if they are in the minority. This seems so obvious that the supporters of antidemocratic movements of all kinds have steadily increased in number. The more contemptible the men whom democracy has placed at the top have proved themselves to be, the greater has grown the number of the enemies of democracy.

  There are, however, serious fallacies in the antidemocratic doctrine. What, after all, does it mean to speak of “the best man” or “the best men”? The Republic of Poland placed a piano virtuoso* at its head because it considered him the best Pole of the age. But the qualities that the leader of a state must have are very different from those of a musician. The opponents of democracy, when they use the expression “the best,” can mean nothing else than the man or the men best fitted to conduct the affairs of the government, even if they understand little or nothing of music. But this leads to the same political question: Who is the best fitted? Was it Disraeli or Gladstone? The Tory saw the best man in the former; the Whig, in the latter. Who should decide this if not the majority?

  And so we reach the decisive point of all antidemocratic doctrines, whether advanced by the descendants of the old aristocracy and the supporters of hereditary monarchy, or by the syndicalists, Bolsheviks, and socialists, viz., the doctrine of force. The opponents of democracy champion the right of a minority to seize control of the state by force and to rule over the majority. The moral justification of this procedure consists, it is thought, precisely in the power actually to seize the reins of government. One recognizes the best, those who alone are competent to govern and command, by virtue of their demonstrated ability to impose their rule on the majority against its will. Here the teaching of l’Action Française coincides with that of the syndicalists, and the doctrine of Ludendorff and Hitler, with that of Lenin and Trotsky.

  Many arguments can be urged for and against these doctrines, depending on one’s religious and philosophical convictions, about which any agreement is scarcely to be expected. This is not the place to present and discuss the arguments pro and con, for they are not conclusive. The only consideration that can be decisive is one that bases itself on the fundamental argument in favor of democracy.

  If every group that believes itself capable of imposing its rule on the rest is to be entitled to undertake the attempt, we must be prepared for an uninterrupted series of civil wars. But such a state of affairs is incompatible with the stage of the division of labor that we have reached today. Modern society, based as it is on the division of labor, can be preserved only under conditions of lasting peace. If we had to prepare for the possibility of continual civil wars and internal struggles, we should have to retrogress to such a primitive stage of the division of labor that each province at least, if not each village, would become virtually autarkic, i.e., capable of feeding and maintaining itself for a time as a self-sufficient economic entity without importing anything from the outside. This would mean such an enormous decline in the productivity of labor that the earth could feed only a fraction of the population that it supports today. The antidemocratic ideal leads to the kind of economic order known to the Middle Ages and antiquity. Every city, every village, indeed, every individual dwelling was fortified and equipped for defense, and every province was as independent of the rest of the world as possible in its provision of commodities.

  The democrat too is of the opinion that the best man ought to rule. But he believes that the fitness of a man or of a group of men to govern is better demonstrated if they succeed in convincing their fellow citizens of their qualifications for that position, so that they are voluntarily entrusted with the conduct of public affairs, than if they resort to force to compel others to acknowledge their claims. Whoever does not succeed in attaining to a position of leadership by virtue of the power of his arguments and the confidence that his person inspires has no reason to complain about the fact that his fellow citizens prefer others to him.

  To be sure, it should not and need not be denied that there is one situation in which the temptation to deviate from the democratic principles of liberalism becomes very great indeed. If judicious men see their nation, or all the nations of the world, on the road to destruction, and if they find it impossible to induce their fellow citizens to heed their counsel, they may be inclined to think it only fair and just to resort to any means whatever, in so far as it is feasible and will lead to the desired goal, in order to save everyone from disaster. Then the idea of a dictatorship of the elite, of a government by the minority maintained in power by force and ruling in the interests of all, may arise and find supporters. But force is never a means of overcoming these difficulties. The tyranny of a minority can never endure unless it succeeds in convincing the majority of the necessity or, at any rate, of the utility, of its rule. But then the minority no longer needs force to maintain itself in power.

  History provides an abundance of striking examples to show that, in the long run, even the most ruthless policy of repression does not suffice to maintain a government in power. To cite but one, the most recent and the best known: when the Bolsheviks seized control in Russia, they were a small minority, and their program found scant support among the great masses of their countrymen. For the peasantry, who constitute the bulk of the Russian people, would have nothing to do with the Bolshevik policy of farm collectivization. What they wanted was the division of the land among the “landed poverty,” as the Bolsheviks call this part of the population. And it was this program of the peasantry, not that of the Marxist leaders, which was actually put into effect. In order to remain in power, Lenin and Trotsky not only accepted this agrarian reform, but even made it a part of their own program, which they undertook to defend against all attacks, domestic and foreign. Only thus were the Bolsheviks able to win the confidence of the great mass of the Russian people. Since they adopted this policy of land distribution, the Bolsheviks rule no longer against the will of the great mass of the people, but with their consent and support. There were only two possible alternatives open to them: either their program or their control of the government had to be sacrificed. They chose the first and remained in power. The third possibility, to carry out their program by force against the will of the great mass of the people, did not exist at all. Like every determined and well-led minority, the Bolsheviks were able to seize control by force and retain it for a short time. In the long run, however, they would have been no better able to keep it than any other minority. The various attempts of the Whites to dislodge the Bolsheviks all failed because the mass of the Russian people were against them. But even if they had succeeded, the victors too would have had to respect the desires of the overwhelming majority of the population. It would have been impossible for them to alter in any way after the event the already accomplished fact of the land distribution and to restore to the landowners what had been stolen from them.

  Only a group that can count on the consent of the governed can establish a lasting regime. Whoever wants to see the world governed according to his own ideas must strive for dominion over men’s minds. It is impossible, in the long run, to subject men against their will to a regime that they reject. Whoever tries to do so by force will ultimately come to grief, and the struggles provoked by his attempt will do more harm than the worst government based on the consent of the governed could ever do. Men cannot be made happy against their will.

  10

  The Argument of Fascism*

  If liberalism nowhere found complete acceptance, its success in the nineteenth century went so far at least as that some of the most important of its principles were considered beyond dispute. Before 1914, even the most dogged and bitter enemies of liberalism had to resign themselves to allowing many liberal principles to pass unchallenged. Even in Russia, where only a few feeble rays of liberalism had penetrated, the supporters of the Czarist despotism, in persecuting their opponents, still had to take into consideration the liberal opinions of Europe; and during the World War, the war parties in the belligerent nations, with all their zeal, still had to practice a certain moderation in their struggle against internal opposition.

  Only when the Marxist Social Democrats had gained the upper hand and taken power in the belief that the age of liberalism and capitalism had passed forever did the last concessions disappear that it had still been thought necessary to make to the liberal ideology. The parties of the Third International consider any means as permissible if it seems to give promise of helping them in their struggle to achieve their ends. Whoever does not unconditionally acknowledge all their teachings as the only correct ones and stand by them through thick and thin has, in their opinion, incurred the penalty of death; and they do not hesitate to exterminate him and his whole family, infants included, whenever and wherever it is physically possible.

  The frank espousal of a policy of annihilating opponents and the murders committed in the pursuance of it have given rise to an opposition movement. All at once the scales fell from the eyes of the non-Communist enemies of liberalism. Until then they had believed that even in a struggle against a hateful opponent one still had to respect certain liberal principles. They had had, even though reluctantly, to exclude murder and assassination from the list of measures to be resorted to in political struggles. They had had to resign themselves to many limitations in persecuting the opposition press and in suppressing the spoken word. Now, all at once, they saw that opponents had risen up who gave no heed to such considerations and for whom any means was good enough to defeat an adversary. The militaristic and nationalistic enemies of the Third International felt themselves cheated by liberalism. Liberalism, they thought, stayed their hand when they desired to strike a blow against the revolutionary parties while it was still possible to do so. If liberalism had not hindered them, they would, so they believe, have bloodily nipped the revolutionary movements in the bud. Revolutionary ideas had been able to take root and flourish only because of the tolerance they had been accorded by their opponents, whose will power had been enfeebled by a regard for liberal principles that, as events subsequently proved, was overscrupulous. If the idea had occurred to them years ago that it is permissible to crush ruthlessly every revolutionary movement, the victories that the Third International has won since 1917 would never have been possible. For the militarists and nationalists believe that when it comes to shooting and fighting, they themselves are the most accurate marksmen and the most adroit fighters.

  The fundamental idea of these movements—which, from the name of the most grandiose and tightly disciplined among them, the Italian, may, in general, be designated as Fascist—consists in the proposal to make use of the same unscrupulous methods in the struggle against the Third International as the latter employs against its opponents. The Third International seeks to exterminate its adversaries and their ideas in the same way that the hygienist strives to exterminate a pestilential bacillus; it considers itself in no way bound by the terms of any compact that it may conclude with opponents, and it deems any crime, any lie, and any calumny permissible in carrying on its struggle. The Fascists, at least in principle, profess the same intentions. That they have not yet succeeded as fully as the Russian Bolsheviks in freeing themselves from a certain regard for liberal notions and ideas and traditional ethical precepts is to be attributed solely to the fact that the Fascists carry on their work among nations in which the intellectual and moral heritage of some thousands of years of civilization cannot be destroyed at one blow, and not among the barbarian peoples on both sides of the Urals, whose relationship to civilization has never been any other than that of marauding denizens of forest and desert accustomed to engage, from time to time, in predatory raids on civilized lands in the hunt for booty. Because of this difference, Fascism will never succeed as completely as Russian Bolshevism in freeing itself from the power of liberal ideas. Only under the fresh impression of the murders and atrocities perpetrated by the supporters of the Soviets were Germans and Italians able to block out the remembrance of the traditional restraints of justice and morality and find the impulse to bloody counteraction. The deeds of the Fascists and of other parties corresponding to them were emotional reflex actions evoked by indignation at the deeds of the Bolsheviks and Communists. As soon as the first flush of anger had passed, their policy took a more moderate course and will probably become even more so with the passage of time.

  This moderation is the result of the fact that traditional liberal views still continue to have an unconscious influence on the Fascists. But however far this may go, one must not fail to recognize that the conversion of the Rightist parties to the tactics of Fascism shows that the battle against liberalism has resulted in successes that, only a short time ago, would have been considered completely unthinkable. Many people approve of the methods of Fascism, even though its economic program is altogether antiliberal and its policy completely interventionist, because it is far from practicing the senseless and unrestrained destructionism that has stamped the Communists as the arch-enemies of civilization. Still others, in full knowledge of the evil that Fascist economic policy brings with it, view Fascism, in comparison with Bolshevism and Sovietism, as at least the lesser evil. For the majority of its public and secret supporters and admirers, however, its appeal consists precisely in the violence of its methods.

  Now it cannot be denied that the only way one can offer effective resistance to violent assaults is by violence. Against the weapons of the Bolsheviks, weapons must be used in reprisal, and it would be a mistake to display weakness before murderers. No liberal has ever called this into question. What distinguishes liberal from Fascist political tactics is not a difference of opinion in regard to the necessity of using armed force to resist armed attackers, but a difference in the fundamental estimation of the role of violence in a struggle for power. The great danger threatening domestic policy from the side of Fascism lies in its complete faith in the decisive power of violence. In order to assure success, one must be imbued with the will to victory and always proceed violently. This is its highest principle. What happens, however, when one’s opponent, similarly animated by the will to be victorious, acts just as violently? The result must be a battle, a civil war. The ultimate victor to emerge from such conflicts will be the faction strongest in number. In the long run, a minority—even if it is composed of the most capable and energetic—cannot succeed in resisting the majority. The decisive question, therefore, always remains: How does one obtain a majority for one’s own party? This, however, is a purely intellectual matter. It is a victory that can be won only with the weapons of the intellect, never by force. The suppression of all opposition by sheer violence is a most unsuitable way to win adherents to one’s cause. Resort to naked force—that is, without justification in terms of intellectual arguments accepted by public opinion—merely gains new friends for those whom one is thereby trying to combat. In a battle between force and an idea, the latter always prevails.

  Fascism can triumph today because universal indignation at the infamies committed by the socialists and communists has obtained for it the sympathies of wide circles. But when the fresh impression of the crimes of the Bolsheviks has paled, the socialist program will once again exercise its power of attraction on the masses. For Fascism does nothing to combat it except to suppress socialist ideas and to persecute the people who spread them. If it wanted really to combat socialism, it would have to oppose it with ideas. There is, however, only one idea that can be effectively opposed to socialism, viz., that of liberalism.

  It has often been said that nothing furthers a cause more than creating martyrs for it. This is only approximately correct. What strengthens the cause of the persecuted faction is not the martyrdom of its adherents, but the fact that they are being attacked by force, and not by intellectual weapons. Repression by brute force is always a confession of the inability to make use of the better weapons of the intellect—better because they alone give promise of final success. This is the fundamental error from which Fascism suffers and which will ultimately cause its downfall. The victory of Fascism in a number of countries is only an episode in the long series of struggles over the problem of property. The next episode will be the victory of Communism. The ultimate outcome of the struggle, however, will not be decided by arms, but by ideas. It is ideas that group men into fighting factions, that press the weapons into their hands, and that determine against whom and for whom the weapons shall be used. It is they alone, and not arms, that, in the last analysis, turn the scales.

  So much for the domestic policy of Fascism. That its foreign policy, based as it is on the avowed principle of force in international relations, cannot fail to give rise to an endless series of wars that must destroy all of modern civilization requires no further discussion. To maintain and further raise our present level of economic development, peace among nations must be assured. But they cannot live together in peace if the basic tenet of the ideology by which they are governed is the belief that one’s own nation can secure its place in the community of nations by force alone.

  It cannot be denied that Fascism and similar movements aiming at the establishment of dictatorships are full of the best intentions and that their intervention has, for the moment, saved European civilization. The merit that Fascism has thereby won for itself will live on eternally in history. But though its policy has brought salvation for the moment, it is not of the kind which could promise continued success. Fascism was an emergency makeshift. To view it as something more would be a fatal error.

  11

  The Limits of Governmental Activity

  As the liberal sees it, the task of the state consists solely and exclusively in guaranteeing the protection of life, health, liberty, and private property against violent attacks. Everything that goes beyond this is an evil. A government that, instead of fulfilling its task, sought to go so far as actually to infringe on personal security of life and health, freedom, and property would, of course, be altogether bad.

  Still, as Jacob Burckhardt says, power is evil in itself, no matter who exercises it. It tends to corrupt those who wield it and leads to abuse. Not only absolute sovereigns and aristocrats, but the masses also, in whose hands democracy entrusts the supreme power of government, are only too easily inclined to excesses.

  In the United States, the manufacture and sale of alcoholic beverages are prohibited. Other countries do not go so far, but nearly everywhere some restrictions are imposed on the sale of opium, cocaine, and similar narcotics. It is universally deemed one of the tasks of legislation and government to protect the individual from himself. Even those who otherwise generally have misgivings about extending the area of governmental activity consider it quite proper that the freedom of the individual should be curtailed in this respect, and they think that only a benighted doctrinairism could oppose such prohibitions. Indeed, so general is the acceptance of this kind of interference by the authorities in the life of the individual that those who are opposed to liberalism on principle are prone to base their argument on the ostensibly undisputed acknowledgment of the necessity of such prohibitions and to draw from it the conclusion that complete freedom is an evil and that some measure of restriction must be imposed upon the freedom of the individual by the governmental authorities in their capacity as guardians of his welfare. The question cannot be whether the authorities ought to impose restrictions upon the freedom of the individual, but only how far they ought to go in this respect.

  No words need be wasted over the fact that all these narcotics are harmful. The question whether even a small quantity of alcohol is harmful or whether the harm results only from the abuse of alcoholic beverages is not at issue here. It is an established fact that alcoholism, cocainism, and morphinism are deadly enemies of life, of health, and of the capacity for work and enjoyment; and a utilitarian must therefore consider them as vices. But this is far from demonstrating that the authorities must interpose to suppress these vices by commercial prohibitions, nor is it by any means evident that such intervention on the part of the government is really capable of suppressing them or that, even if this end could be attained, it might not therewith open up a Pandora’s box of other dangers, no less mischievous than alcoholism and morphinism.

  Whoever is convinced that indulgence or excessive indulgence in these poisons is pernicious is not hindered from living abstemiously or temperately. This question cannot be treated exclusively in reference to alcoholism, morphinism, cocainism, etc., which all reasonable men acknowledge to be evils. For if the majority of citizens is, in principle, conceded the right to impose its way of life upon a minority, it is impossible to stop at prohibitions against indulgence in alcohol, morphine, cocaine, and similar poisons. Why should not what is valid for these poisons be valid also for nicotine, caffein, and the like? Why should not the state generally prescribe which foods may be indulged in and which must be avoided because they are injurious? In sports too, many people are prone to carry their indulgence further than their strength will allow. Why should not the state interfere here as well? Few men know how to be temperate in their sexual life, and it seems especially difficult for aging persons to understand that they should cease entirely to indulge in such pleasures or, at least, do so in moderation. Should not the state intervene here too? More harmful still than all these pleasures, many will say, is the reading of evil literature. Should a press pandering to the lowest instincts of man be allowed to corrupt the soul? Should not the exhibition of pornographic pictures, of obscene plays, in short, of all allurements to immorality, be prohibited? And is not the dissemination of false sociological doctrines just as injurious to men and nations? Should men be permitted to incite others to civil war and to wars against foreign countries? And should scurrilous lampoons and blasphemous diatribes be allowed to undermine respect for God and the Church?

  We see that as soon as we surrender the principle that the state should not interfere in any questions touching on the individual’s mode of life, we end by regulating and restricting the latter down to the smallest detail. The personal freedom of the individual is abrogated. He becomes a slave of the community, bound to obey the dictates of the majority. It is hardly necessary to expatiate on the ways in which such powers could be abused by malevolent persons in authority. The wielding of powers of this kind even by men imbued with the best of intentions must needs reduce the world to a graveyard of the spirit. All mankind’s progress has been achieved as a result of the initiative of a small minority that began to deviate from the ideas and customs of the majority until their example finally moved the others to accept the innovation themselves. To give the majority the right to dictate to the minority what it is to think, to read, and to do is to put a stop to progress once and for all.

  Let no one object that the struggle against morphinism and the struggle against “evil” literature are two quite different things. The only difference between them is that some of the same people who favor the prohibition of the former will not agree to the prohibition of the latter. In the United States, the Methodists and Fundamentalists, right after the passage of the law prohibiting the manufacture and sale of alcoholic beverages, took up the struggle for the suppression of the theory of evolution, and they have already succeeded in ousting Darwinism from the schools in a number of states. In Soviet Russia, every free expression of opinion is suppressed. Whether or not permission is granted for a book to be published depends on the discretion of a number of uneducated and uncultivated fanatics who have been placed in charge of the arm of the government empowered to concern itself with such matters.

  The propensity of our contemporaries to demand authoritarian prohibition as soon as something does not please them, and their readiness to submit to such prohibitions even when what is prohibited is quite agreeable to them shows how deeply ingrained the spirit of servility still remains within them. It will require many long years of self-education until the subject can turn himself into the citizen. A free man must be able to endure it when his fellow men act and live otherwise than he considers proper. He must free himself from the habit, just as soon as something does not please him, of calling for the police.

  12

  Tolerance

  Liberalism limits its concern entirely and exclusively to earthly life and earthly endeavor. The kingdom of religion, on the other hand, is not of this world. Thus, liberalism and religion could both exist side by side without their spheres’ touching. That they should have reached the point of collision was not the fault of liberalism. It did not transgress its proper sphere; it did not intrude into the domain of religious faith or of metaphysical doctrine. Nevertheless, it encountered the church as a political power claiming the right to regulate according to its judgment not only the relationship of man to the world to come, but also the affairs of this world. It was at this point that the battle lines had to be drawn.

  So overwhelming was the victory won by liberalism in this conflict that the church had to give up, once and for all, claims that it had vigorously maintained for thousands of years. The burning of heretics, inquisitorial persecutions, religious wars—these today belong to history. No one can understand any longer how quiet people, who practiced their devotions as they believed right within the four walls of their own home, could have been dragged before courts, incarcerated, martyred, and burned. But even if no more stakes are kindled ad majorem Dei gloriam [for the greater glory of God], a great deal of intolerance still persists.

  Liberalism, however, must be intolerant of every kind of intolerance. If one considers the peaceful cooperation of all men as the goal of social evolution, one cannot permit the peace to be disturbed by priests and fanatics. Liberalism proclaims tolerance for every religious faith and every metaphysical belief, not out of indifference for these “higher” things, but from the conviction that the assurance of peace within society must take precedence over everything and everyone. And because it demands toleration of all opinions and all churches and sects, it must recall them all to their proper bounds whenever they venture intolerantly beyond them. In a social order based on peaceful cooperation, there is no room for the claim of the churches to monopolize the instruction and education of the young. Everything that their supporters accord them of their own free will may and must be granted to the churches; nothing may be permitted to them in respect to persons who want to have nothing to do with them.

  It is difficult to understand how these principles of liberalism could make enemies among the communicants of the various faiths. If they make it impossible for a church to make converts by force, whether its own or that placed at its disposal by the state, on the other hand they also protect that church against coercive proselytization by other churches and sects. What liberalism takes from the church with one hand it gives back again with the other. Even religious zealots must concede that liberalism takes nothing from faith of what belongs to its proper sphere.

  To be sure, the churches and sects that, where they have the upper hand, cannot do enough in their persecution of dissenters, also demand, where they find themselves in the minority, tolerance at least for themselves. However, this demand for tolerance has nothing whatever in common with the liberal demand for tolerance. Liberalism demands tolerance as a matter of principle, not from opportunism. It demands toleration even of obviously nonsensical teachings, absurd forms of heterodoxy, and childishly silly superstitions. It demands toleration for doctrines and opinions that it deems detrimental and ruinous to society and even for movements that it indefatigably combats. For what impels liberalism to demand and accord toleration is not consideration for the content of the doctrine to be tolerated, but the knowledge that only tolerance can create and preserve the condition of social peace without which humanity must relapse into the barbarism and penury of centuries long past.

  Against what is stupid, nonsensical, erroneous, and evil, liberalism fights with the weapons of the mind, and not with brute force and repression.

  13

  The State and Antisocial Conduct

  The state is the apparatus of compulsion and coercion. This holds not only for the “night-watchman” state, but just as much for every other, and most of all for the socialist state. Everything that the state is capable of doing it does by compulsion and the application of force. To suppress conduct dangerous to the existence of the social order is the sum and substance of state activity; to this is added, in a socialist community, control over the means of production.

  The sober logic of the Romans expressed this fact symbolically by adopting the axe and the bundle of rods as the emblem of the state. Abstruse mysticism, calling itself philosophy, has done as much as possible in modern times to obscure the truth of the matter. For Schelling, the state is the direct and visible image of absolute life, a phase in the revelation of the Absolute or World Soul. It exists only for its own sake, and its activity is directed exclusively to the maintenance of both the substance and the form of its existence. For Hegel, Absolute Reason reveals itself in the state, and Objective Spirit realizes itself in it. It is ethical mind developed into an organic reality—reality and the ethical idea as the revealed substantial will intelligible to itself. The epigones of idealist philosophy outdid even their masters in their deification of the state. To be sure, one comes no closer to the truth if, in reaction to these and similar doctrines, one calls the state, with Nietzsche, the coldest of all cold monsters. The state is neither cold nor warm, for it is an abstract concept in whose name living men—the organs of the state, the government—act. All state activity is human action, an evil inflicted by men on men. The goal—the preservation of society—justifies the action of the organs of the state, but the evils inflicted are not felt as any less evil by those who suffer under them.

  The evil that a man inflicts on his fellow man injures both—not only the one to whom it is done, but also the one who does it. Nothing corrupts a man so much as being an arm of the law and making men suffer. The lot of the subject is anxiety, a spirit of servility and fawning adulation; but the pharisaical self-righteousness, conceit, and arrogance of the master are no better.

  Liberalism seeks to take the sting out of the relationship of the government official to the citizen. In doing so, of course, it does not follow in the footsteps of those romantics who defend the antisocial behavior of the lawbreaker and condemn not only judges and policemen, but also the social order as such. Liberalism neither wishes to nor can deny that the coercive power of the state and the lawful punishment of criminals are institutions that society could never, under any circumstances, do without. However, the liberal believes that the purpose of punishment is solely to rule out, as far as possible, behavior dangerous to society. Punishment should not be vindictive or retaliatory. The criminal has incurred the penalties of the law, but not the hate and sadism of the judge, the policeman, and the ever lynch-thirsty mob.

  What is most mischievous about the coercive power that justifies itself in the name of the “state” is that, because it is always of necessity ultimately sustained by the consent of the majority, it directs its attack against germinating innovations. Human society cannot do without the apparatus of the state, but the whole of mankind’s progress has had to be achieved against the resistance and opposition of the state and its power of coercion. No wonder that all who have had something new to offer humanity have had nothing good to say of the state or its laws! Incorrigible etatist mystics and state-worshippers may hold this against them; liberals will understand their position even if they cannot approve it. Yet every liberal must oppose this understandable aversion to everything that pertains to jailers and policemen when it is carried to the point of such overweening self-esteem as to proclaim the right of the individual to rebel against the state. Violent resistance against the power of the state is the last resort of the minority in its effort to break loose from the oppression of the majority. The minority that desires to see its ideas triumph must strive by intellectual means to become the majority. The state must be so constituted that the scope of its laws permits the individual a certain amount of latitude within which he can move freely. The citizen must not be so narrowly circumscribed in his activities that, if he thinks differently from those in power, his only choice is either to perish or to destroy the machinery of state.

  CHAPTER 2

  Liberal Economic Policy

  1

  The Organization of the Economy

  It is possible to distinguish five different conceivable systems of organizing the cooperation of individuals in a society based on the division of labor: the system of private ownership of the means of production, which, in its developed form, we call capitalism; the system of private ownership of the means of production with periodic confiscation of all wealth and its subsequent redistribution; the system of syndicalism; the system of public ownership of the means of production, which is known as socialism or communism; and, finally, the system of interventionism.

  The history of private ownership of the means of production coincides with the history of the development of mankind from an animal-like condition to the highest reaches of modern civilization. The opponents of private property have gone to great pains to demonstrate that in the primeval beginnings of human society the institution of private property still did not exist in a complete form because a part of the land under cultivation was subject to periodic redistribution. From this observation, which shows that private property is only a “historical category,” they have tried to draw the conclusion that it could once again be quite safely dispensed with. The logical fallacy involved in this reasoning is too flagrant to require any further discussion. That there was social cooperation in remote antiquity even in the absence of a completely realized system of private property cannot provide the slightest proof that one could manage without private property just as well at higher stages of civilization. If history could prove anything at all in regard to this question, it could only be that nowhere and at no time has there ever been a people which has raised itself without private property above a condition of the most oppressive penury and savagery scarcely distinguishable from animal existence.

  The earlier opponents of the system of private ownership of the means of production did not attack the institution of private property as such, but only the inequality of income distribution. They recommended the abolition of the inequality of income and wealth by means of a system of periodical redistribution of the total quantity of commodities or, at least, of land, which was at that time virtually the only factor of production taken into consideration. In the technologically backward countries, where primitive agricultural production prevails, this idea of an equal distribution of property still holds sway today. People are accustomed to call it agrarian socialism, though the appellation is not at all apposite since this system has nothing to do with socialism. The Bolshevist revolution in Russia, which had begun as socialist, did not establish socialism in agriculture—i.e., communal ownership of the land—but, instead, agrarian socialism. In large areas of the rest of Eastern Europe, the division of big landed estates among the small farmers, under the name of agrarian reform, is the ideal espoused by influential political parties.

  It is unnecessary to enter further into a discussion of this system. That it must result in a reduction in the output of human labor will scarcely be disputed. Only where land is still cultivated in the most primitive way can one fail to recognize the decrease in productivity which follows upon its division and distribution. That it is utterly senseless to break up a dairy farm equipped with all the devices of modern technology will be conceded by everyone. As for the transference of this principle of division and distribution to industry or commercial enterprises, it is altogether unthinkable. A railroad, a rolling mill, or a machine factory cannot be divided up. One could undertake to carry out the periodical redistribution of property only if one first completely broke up the economy based on the division of labor and the unhampered market and returned to an economy of self-sufficient farmsteads existing side by side without engaging in exchange.

  The idea of syndicalism represents the attempt to adapt the ideal of the equal distribution of property to the circumstances of modern large-scale industry. Syndicalism seeks to invest ownership of the means of production neither in individuals nor in society, but in the workers employed in each industry or branch of production.1

  Since the proportion in which the material and the personal factors of production are combined is different in the different branches of production, equality in the distribution of property cannot be attained in this way at all. From the very outset the worker will receive a greater portion of property in some branches of industry than in others. One has only to consider the difficulties that must arise from the necessity, continually present in any economy, of shifting capital and labor from one branch of production to another. Will it be possible to withdraw capital from one branch of industry in order thereby more generously to equip another? Will it be possible to remove workers from one branch of production in order to transfer them to another where the quota of capital per worker is smaller? The impossibility of such transfers renders the syndicalist commonwealth utterly absurd and impracticable as a form of social organization. Yet if we assume that over and above the individual groups there exists a central power that is entitled to carry out such transfers, we are no longer dealing with syndicalism, but with socialism. In reality, syndicalism as a social ideal is so absurd that only muddleheads who have not sufficiently thought the problem through have ventured to advocate it on principle.

  Socialism or communism is that organization of society in which property—the power of deploying all the means of production—is vested in society, i.e., in the state, as the social apparatus of compulsion and coercion. For a society to be judged as socialist it is of no consequence whether the social dividend is distributed equally or according to some other principle. Neither is it of decisive significance whether socialism is brought about by a formal transfer of the ownership of all the means of production to the state, the social apparatus of compulsion and coercion, or whether the private owners retain their property in name and the socialization consists in the fact that all these “owners” are entitled to employ the means of production left in their hands only according to instructions issued by the state. If the government decides what is to be produced and how, and to whom it is to be sold, and at what “price,” then private property still exists in name only; in reality, all property is already socialized, for the mainspring of economic activity is no longer profit-seeking on the part of entrepreneurs and capitalists, but the necessity of fulfilling an imposed duty and of obeying commands.

  Finally, we still have to speak of interventionism. According to a widespread opinion, there is, midway between socialism and capitalism, a third possibility of social organization: the system of private property regulated, controlled, and guided by isolated authoritarian decrees (acts of intervention).

  The system of periodical redistribution of property and the system of syndicalism will not be discussed in what follows. These two systems are not generally at issue. No one who is in any way to be taken seriously advocates either one. We have to concern ourselves only with socialism, interventionism, and capitalism.

  2

  Private Property and Its Critics

  Man’s life is not a state of unalloyed happiness. The earth is no paradise. Although this is not the fault of social institutions, people are wont to hold them responsible for it. The foundation of any and every civilization, including our own, is private ownership of the means of production. Whoever wishes to criticize modern civilization, therefore, begins with private property. It is blamed for everything that does not please the critic, especially those evils that have their origin in the fact that private property has been hampered and restrained in various respects so that its full social potentialities cannot be realized.

  The usual procedure adopted by the critic is to imagine how wonderful everything would be if only he had his own way. In his dreams he eliminates every will opposed to his own by raising himself, or someone whose will coincides exactly with his, to the position of absolute master of the world. Everyone who preaches the right of the stronger considers himself as the stronger. He who espouses the institution of slavery never stops to reflect that he himself could be a slave. He who demands restrictions on the liberty of conscience demands it in regard to others, and not for himself. He who advocates an oligarchic form of government always includes himself in the oligarchy, and he who goes into ecstasies at the thought of enlightened despotism or dictatorship is immodest enough to allot to himself, in his daydreams, the role of the enlightened despot or dictator, or, at least, to expect that he himself will become the despot over the despot or the dictator over the dictator. Just as no one desires to see himself in the position of the weaker, of the oppressed, of the overpowered, of the negatively privileged, of the subject without rights; so, under socialism, no one desires himself otherwise than in the role of the general director or the mentor of the general director. In the dream and wish phantasies of socialism there is no other life that would be worth living.

  Anticapitalist literature has created a fixed pattern for these phantasies of the daydreamer in the customary opposition between profitability and productivity. What takes place in the capitalist social order is contrasted in thought with what—corresponding to the desires of the critic—would be accomplished in the ideal socialist society. Everything that deviates from this ideal image is characterized as unproductive. That the greatest profitability for private individuals and the greatest productivity for the community do not always coincide was long considered the most serious reproach against the capitalist system. Only in recent years has the knowledge gained ground that in the majority of these cases a socialist community could proceed no differently from the way individuals in a capitalist community do. But even where the alleged opposition actually does exist, it cannot simply be assumed that a socialist society would necessarily do what is right and that the capitalist social order is always to be condemned if it does anything else. The concept of productivity is altogether subjective; it can never provide the starting point for an objective criticism.

  It is not worth while, therefore, to concern ourselves with the musings of our daydream-dictator. In his dream vision, everyone is willing and obedient, ready to execute his commands immediately and punctiliously. But it is quite another question how things must appear in a real, and not merely visionary, socialist society. The assumption that the equal distribution of the total annual output of the capitalist economy among all members of society would suffice to assure everyone a sufficient livelihood is, as simple statistical calculations show, altogether false. Thus, a socialist society could scarcely achieve a perceptible increase in the standard of living of the masses in this way. If it holds out the prospect of well-being, and even riches, for all, it can do so only on the assumption that labor in a socialist society will be more productive than it is under capitalism and that a socialist system will be able to dispense with a number of superfluous—and consequently unproductive—expenditures.

  In connection with this second point, one thinks, for example, of the abolition of all those expenses originating in the costs of marketing merchandise, of competition, and of advertising. It is clear that there is no room in a socialist community for such expenditures. Yet one must not forget that the socialist apparatus of distribution too will involve not inconsiderable costs, perhaps even greater than those of a capitalist economy. But this is not the decisive element in our judgment of the significance of these expenses. The socialist assumes, without question, as a matter of course, that in a socialist system the productivity of labor will be at least the same as in a capitalist society, and he seeks to prove that it will be even greater. But the first assumption is by no means as self-evident as the advocates of socialism seem to think. The quantity of things produced in a capitalist society is not independent of the manner in which production is carried on. What is of decisive significance is that at every single stage of each branch of production the special interest of the persons engaged in it is bound up most intimately with the productivity of the particular share of labor being performed. Every worker must exert himself to the utmost, since his wages are determined by the output of his labor, and every entrepreneur must strive to produce more cheaply—i.e., with less expenditure of capital and labor—than his competitors.

  Only because of these incentives has the capitalist economy been able to produce the wealth that is at its command. To take exception to the alleged excessive costs of the capitalist marketing apparatus is to take a myopic view of things indeed. Whoever reproaches capitalism with squandering resources because there are many competing haberdashers and even more tobacconists to be found on bustling business streets fails to see that this sales organization is only the end result of an apparatus of production that warrants the greatest productivity of labor. All advances in production have been achieved only because it is in the nature of this apparatus continually to make advances. Only because all entrepreneurs are in constant competition and are mercilessly weeded out if they do not produce in the most profitable manner are methods of production perpetually being improved and refined. Were this incentive to disappear, there would be no further progress in production and no effort to economize in the application of the traditional methods. Consequently, it is completely absurd to pose the question how much could be saved if the costs of advertising were abolished. One must rather ask how much could be produced if competition among producers were abolished. The answer to this question cannot be in doubt.

  Men can consume only if they labor, and then only as much as their labor has produced. Now it is the characteristic feature of the capitalist system that it provides each member of society with this incentive to carry on his work with the greatest efficiency and thus achieves the highest output. In a socialist society, this direct connection between the labor of the individual and the goods and services he might thereby enjoy would be lacking. The incentive to work would not consist in the possibility of enjoying the fruit of one’s labor, but in the command of the authorities to work and in one’s own feeling of duty. The precise demonstration that this organization of labor is unfeasible will be offered in a later chapter.

  What is always criticized in the capitalist system is the fact that the owners of the means of production occupy a preferential position. They can live without working. If one views the social order from an individualistic standpoint, one must see in this a serious shortcoming of capitalism. Why should one man be better off than another? But whoever considers things, not from the standpoint of individual persons, but from that of the whole social order, will find that the owners of property can preserve their agreeable position solely on condition that they perform a service indispensable for society. The capitalist can keep his favored position only by shifting the means of production to the application most important for society. If he does not do this—if he invests his wealth unwisely—he will suffer losses, and if he does not correct his mistake in time, he will soon be ruthlessly ousted from his preferential position. He will cease to be a capitalist, and others who are better qualified for it will take his place. In a capitalist society, the deployment of the means of production is always in the hands of those best fitted for it; and whether they want to or not, they must constantly take care to employ the means of production in such a way that they yield the greatest output.

  3

  Private Property and the Government

  All those in positions of political power, all governments, all kings, and all republican authorities have always looked askance at private property. There is an inherent tendency in all governmental power to recognize no restraints on its operation and to extend the sphere of its dominion as much as possible. To control everything, to leave no room for anything to happen of its own accord without the interference of the authorities—this is the goal for which every ruler secretly strives. If only private property did not stand in the way! Private property creates for the individual a sphere in which he is free of the state. It sets limits to the operation of the authoritarian will. It allows other forces to arise side by side with and in opposition to political power. It thus becomes the basis of all those activities that are free from violent interference on the part of the state. It is the soil in which the seeds of freedom are nurtured and in which the autonomy of the individual and ultimately all intellectual and material progress are rooted. In this sense, it has even been called the fundamental prerequisite for the development of the individual. But it is only with many reservations that the latter formulation can be considered acceptable, because the customary opposition between individual and collectivity, between individualistic and collective ideas and aims, or even between individualistic and universalistic science, is an empty shibboleth.

  Thus, there has never been a political power that voluntarily desisted from impeding the free development and operation of the institution of private ownership of the means of production. Governments tolerate private property when they are compelled to do so, but they do not acknowledge it voluntarily in recognition of its necessity. Even liberal politicians, on gaining power, have usually relegated their liberal principles more or less to the background. The tendency to impose oppressive restraints on private property, to abuse political power, and to refuse to respect or recognize any free sphere outside or beyond the dominion of the state is too deeply ingrained in the mentality of those who control the governmental apparatus of compulsion and coercion for them ever to be able to resist it voluntarily. A liberal government is a contradictio in adjecto [a contradiction in terms]. Governments must be forced into adopting liberalism by the power of the unanimous opinion of the people; that they could voluntarily become liberal is not to be expected.

  It is easy to understand what would constrain rulers to recognize the property rights of their subjects in a society composed exclusively of farmers all of whom were equally rich. In such a social order, every attempt to abridge the right to property would immediately meet with the resistance of a united front of all subjects against the government and thus bring about the latter’s fall. The situation is essentially different, however, in a society in which there is not only agricultural but also industrial production, and especially where there are big business enterprises involving large-scale investments in industry, mining, and trade. In such a society, it is quite possible for those in control of the government to take action against private property. In fact, politically there is nothing more advantageous for a government than an attack on property rights, for it is always an easy matter to incite the masses against the owners of land and capital. From time immemorial, therefore, it has been the idea of all absolute monarchs, of all despots and tyrants, to ally themselves with the “people” against the propertied classes. The Second Empire of Louis Napoleon was not the only regime to be founded on the principle of Caesarism. The Prussian authoritarian state of the Hohenzollerns also took up the idea, introduced by Lassalle into German politics during the Prussian constitutional struggle, of winning the masses of workers to the battle against the liberal bourgeoisie by means of a policy of etatism and interventionism. This was the basic principle of the “social monarchy” so highly extolled by Schmoller and his school.

  In spite of all persecutions, however, the institution of private property has survived. Neither the animosity of all governments, nor the hostile campaign waged against it by writers and moralists and by churches and religions, nor the resentment of the masses—itself deeply rooted in instinctive envy—has availed to abolish it. Every attempt to replace it with some other method of organizing production and distribution has always of itself promptly proved unfeasible to the point of absurdity. People have had to recognize that the institution of private property is indispensable and to revert to it whether they liked it or not.

  But for all that, they have still refused to admit that the reason for this return to the institution of free private ownership of the means of production is to be found in the fact that an economic system serving the needs and purposes of man’s life in society is, in principle, impracticable except on this foundation. People have been unable to make up their minds to rid themselves of an ideology to which they have become attached, namely, the belief that private property is an evil that cannot, at least for the time being, be dispensed with as long as men have not yet sufficiently evolved ethically. While governments—contrary to their intentions, of course, and to the inherent tendency of every organized center of power—have reconciled themselves to the existence of private property, they have still continued to adhere firmly—not only outwardly, but also in their own thinking—to an ideology hostile to property rights. Indeed, they consider opposition to private property to be correct in principle and any deviation from it on their part to be due solely to their own weakness or to consideration for the interests of powerful groups.

  4

  The Impracticability of Socialism

  People are wont to consider socialism impracticable because they think that men lack the moral qualities demanded by a socialist society. It is feared that under socialism most men will not exhibit the same zeal in the performance of the duties and tasks assigned to them that they bring to their daily work in a social order based on private ownership of the means of production. In a capitalist society, every individual knows that the fruit of his labor is his own to enjoy, that his income increases or decreases according as the output of his labor is greater or smaller. In a socialist society, every individual will think that less depends on the efficiency of his own labor, since a fixed portion of the total output is due him in any case and the amount of the latter cannot be appreciably diminished by the loss resulting from the laziness of any one man. If, as is to be feared, such a conviction should become general, the productivity of labor in a socialist community would drop considerably.

  The objection thus raised against socialism is completely sound, but it does not get to the heart of the matter. Were it possible in a socialist community to ascertain the output of the labor of every individual comrade with the same precision with which this is accomplished for each worker by means of economic calculation in the capitalist system, the practicability of socialism would not be dependent on the good will of every individual. Society would be in a position, at least within certain limits, to determine the share of the total output to be allotted to each worker on the basis of the extent of his contribution to production. What renders socialism impracticable is precisely the fact that calculation of this kind is impossible in a socialist society.

  In the capitalist system, the calculation of profitability constitutes a guide that indicates to the individual whether the enterprise he is operating ought, under the given circumstances, to be in operation at all and whether it is being run in the most efficient possible way, i.e., at the least cost in factors of production. If an undertaking proves unprofitable, this means that the raw materials, half-finished goods, and labor that are needed in it are employed by other enterprises for an end that, from the standpoint of the consumers, is more urgent and more important, or for the same end, but in a more economical manner (i.e., with a smaller expenditure of capital and labor). When, for instance, hand weaving came to be unprofitable, this signified that the capital and labor employed in weaving by machine yield a greater output and that it is consequently uneconomical to adhere to a method of production in which the same input of capital and labor yields a smaller output.

  If a new enterprise is being planned, one can calculate in advance whether it can be made profitable at all and in what way. If, for example, one has the intention of constructing a railroad line, one can, by estimating the traffic to be expected and its ability to pay the freight rates, calculate whether it pays to invest capital and labor in such an undertaking. If the result of this calculation shows that the projected railroad promises no profit, this is tantamount to saying that there is other, more urgent employment for the capital and the labor that the construction of the railroad would require; the world is not yet rich enough to be able to afford such an expenditure. But it is not only when the question arises whether or not a given undertaking is to be begun at all that the calculation of value and profitability is decisive; it controls every single step that the entrepreneur takes in the conduct of his business.

  Capitalist economic calculation, which alone makes rational production possible, is based on monetary calculation. Only because the prices of all goods and services in the market can be expressed in terms of money is it possible for them, in spite of their heterogeneity, to enter into a calculation involving homogeneous units of measurement. In a socialist society, where all the means of production are owned by the community, and where, consequently, there is no market and no exchange of productive goods and services, there can also be no money prices for goods and services of higher order. Such a social system would thus, of necessity, be lacking in the means for the rational management of business enterprises, viz., economic calculation. For economic calculation cannot take place in the absence of a common denominator to which all the heterogeneous goods and services can be reduced.

  Let us consider a quite simple case. For the construction of a railroad from A to B several routes are conceivable. Let us suppose that a mountain stands between A and B. The railroad can be made to run over the mountain, around the mountain, or, by way of a tunnel, through the mountain. In a capitalist society, it is a very easy matter to compute which line will prove the most profitable. One ascertains the cost involved in constructing each of the three lines and the differences in operating costs necessarily incurred by the anticipated traffic on each. From these quantities it is not difficult to determine which stretch of road will be the most profitable. A socialist society could not make such calculations. For it would have no possible way of reducing to a uniform standard of measurement all the heterogeneous quantities and qualities of goods and services that here come into consideration. In the face of the ordinary, everyday problems which the management of an economy presents, a socialist society would stand helpless, for it would have no possible way of keeping its accounts.

  The prosperity that has made it possible for many more people to inhabit the earth today than in the precapitalist era is due solely to the capitalist method of lengthy chains of production, which necessarily requires monetary calculation. This is impossible under socialism. In vain have socialist writers labored to demonstrate how one could still manage even without monetary and price calculation. All their efforts in this respect have met with failure.

  The leadership of a socialist society would thus be confronted by a problem that it could not possibly solve. It would not be able to decide which of the innumerable possible modes of procedure is the most rational. The resulting chaos in the economy would culminate quickly and irresistibly in universal impoverishment and a retrogression to the primitive conditions under which our ancestors once lived.

  The socialist ideal, carried to its logical conclusion, would eventuate in a social order in which all the means of production were owned by the people as a whole. Production would be completely in the hands of the government, the center of power in society. It alone would determine what was to be produced and how, and in what way goods ready for consumption were to be distributed. It makes little difference whether we imagine this socialist state of the future as democratically constituted or otherwise. Even a democratic socialist state would necessarily constitute a tightly organized bureaucracy in which everyone, apart from the highest officials, though he might very well, in his capacity as a voter, have participated in some fashion in framing the directives issued by the central authority, would be in the subservient position of an administrator bound to carry them out obediently.

  A socialist state of this kind is not comparable to the state enterprises, no matter how vast their scale, that we have seen developing in the last decades in Europe, especially in Germany and Russia. The latter all flourish side by side with private ownership of the means of production. They engage in commercial transactions with enterprises that capitalists own and manage, and they receive various stimuli from these enterprises that invigorate their own operation. State railroads, for instance, are provided by their suppliers, the manufacturers of locomotives, coaches, signal installations, and other equipment, with apparatus that has proved successful elsewhere in the operation of privately owned railroads. Thence they receive the incentive to institute innovations in order to keep up with the progress in technology and in methods of business management that is taking place all around them.

  It is a matter of common knowledge that national and municipal enterprises have, on the whole, failed, that they are expensive and inefficient, and that they have to be subsidized out of tax funds just to maintain themselves in operation. Of course, where a public enterprise occupies a monopolistic position—as is, for instance, generally the case with municipal transportation facilities and electric light and power plants—the bad consequences of inefficiency need not always express themselves in visible financial failure. Under certain circumstances it may be possible to conceal it by making use of the opportunity open to the monopolist of raising the price of his products and services high enough to render these enterprises, in spite of their uneconomic management, still profitable. The lower productivity of the socialist method of production merely manifests itself differently here and is not so easily recognized as otherwise; essentially, however, the case remains the same.

  But none of these experiments in the socialist management of enterprises can afford us any basis for judging what it would mean if the socialist ideal of the communal ownership of all means of production were to be realized. In the socialist society of the future, which will leave no room whatsoever for the free activity of private enterprises operating side by side with those owned and controlled by the state, the central planning board will lack entirely the gauge provided for the whole economy by the market and market prices. In the market, where all goods and services come to be traded, exchange ratios, expressed in money prices, may be determined for everything bought and sold. In a social order based on private property, it thus becomes possible to resort to monetary calculation in checking on the results of all economic activities. The social productivity of every economic transaction may be tested by the methods of bookkeeping and cost accounting. It yet remains to be shown that public enterprises are unable to make use of cost accounting in the same way as private enterprises do. Nevertheless, monetary calculation does give even governmental and communal enterprises some basis for judging the success or failure of their management. In a completely socialist economic system, this would be quite impossible, for in the absence of private ownership of the means of production, there could be no exchange of capital goods in the market and consequently neither money prices nor monetary calculation. The general management of a purely socialist society will therefore have no means of reducing to a common denominator the costs of production of all the heterogeneous commodities that it plans to produce.

  Nor can this be achieved by setting expenditures in kind against savings in kind. One cannot calculate if it is not possible to reduce to a common medium of expression hours of labor of various grades, iron, coal, building materials of every kind, machines, and all the other things needed in the operation and management of different enterprises. Calculation is possible only when one is able to reduce to monetary terms all the goods under consideration. Of course, monetary calculation has its imperfections and deficiencies, but we have nothing better to put in its place. It suffices for the practical purposes of life as long as the monetary system is sound. If we were to renounce monetary calculation, every economic computation would become absolutely impossible.

  This is the decisive objection that economics raises against the possibility of a socialist society. It must forgo the intellectual division of labor that consists in the cooperation of all entrepreneurs, landowners, and workers as producers and consumers in the formation of market prices. But without it, rationality, i.e., the possibility of economic calculation, is unthinkable.

  5

  Interventionism

  The socialist ideal is now beginning to lose more and more of its adherents. The penetrating economic and sociological investigations of the problems of socialism that have shown it to be impracticable have not remained without effect, and the failures in which socialist experiments everywhere have ended have disconcerted even its most enthusiastic supporters. Gradually people are once more beginning to realize that society cannot do without private property. Yet the hostile criticism to which the system of private ownership of the means of production has been subjected for decades has left behind such a strong prejudice against the capitalist system that, in spite of their knowledge of the inadequacy and impracticability of socialism, people cannot make up their minds to admit openly that they must return to liberal views on the question of property. To be sure, it is conceded that socialism, the communal ownership of the means of production, is altogether, or at least for the present, impracticable. But, on the other hand, it is asserted that unhampered private ownership of the means of production is also an evil. Thus people want to create a third way, a form of society standing midway between private ownership of the means of production, on the one hand, and communal ownership of the means of production, on the other. Private property will be permitted to exist, but the ways in which the means of production are employed by the entrepreneurs, capitalists, and landowners will be regulated, guided, and controlled by authoritarian decrees and prohibitions. In this way, one forms the conceptual image of a regulated market, of a capitalism circumscribed by authoritarian rules, of private property shorn of its allegedly harmful concomitant features by the intervention of the authorities.

  One can best acquire an insight into the meaning and nature of this system by considering a few examples of the consequences of government interference. The crucial acts of intervention with which we have to deal aim at fixing the prices of goods and services at a height different from what the unhampered market would have determined.

  In the case of prices formed on the unhampered market, or which would have been formed in the absence of interference on the part of the authorities, the costs of production are covered by the proceeds. If a lower price is decreed by the government, the proceeds will fall short of the costs. Merchants and manufacturers will, therefore, unless the storage of the goods involved would cause them to deteriorate rapidly in value, withhold their merchandise from the market in the hope of more favorable times, perhaps in the expectation that the government order will soon be rescinded. If the authorities do not want the goods concerned to disappear altogether from the market as a result of their interference, they cannot limit themselves to fixing the price; they must at the same time also decree that all stocks on hand be sold at the prescribed price.

  But even this does not suffice. At the price determined on the unhampered market, supply and demand would have coincided. Now, because the price was fixed lower by government decree, the demand has increased while the supply has remained unchanged. The stocks on hand are not sufficient to satisfy fully all who are prepared to pay the prescribed price. A part of the demand will remain unsatisfied. The mechanism of the market, which otherwise tends to equalize supply and demand by means of price fluctuations, no longer operates. Now people who would have been prepared to pay the price prescribed by the authorities must leave the market with empty hands. Those who were on line earlier or who were in a position to exploit some personal connection with the sellers have already acquired the whole stock; the others have to go unprovided. If the government wishes to avoid this consequence of its intervention, which runs counter to its intentions, it must add rationing to price control and compulsory sale: a governmental regulation must determine how much of a commodity may be supplied to each individual applicant at the prescribed price.

  But once the supplies already on hand at the moment of the government’s intervention are exhausted, an incomparably more difficult problem arises. Since production is no longer profitable if the goods are to be sold at the price fixed by the government, it will be reduced or entirely suspended. If the government wishes to have production continue, it must compel the manufacturers to produce, and, to this end, it must also fix the prices of raw materials and half-finished goods and the wages of labor. Its decrees to this effect, however, cannot be limited to only the one or the few branches of production that the authorities wish to regulate because they deem their products especially important. They must encompass all branches of production. They must regulate the price of all commodities and all wages. In short, they must extend their control over the conduct of all entrepreneurs, capitalists, landowners, and workers. If some branches of production are left free, capital and labor will flow into these, and the government will fail to attain the goal that it wished to achieve by its first act of intervention. But the object of the authorities is that there should be an abundance of production in precisely that branch of industry which, because of the importance they attach to its products, they have especially singled out for regulation. It runs altogether counter to their design that precisely in consequence of their intervention this branch of production should be neglected.

  It is therefore clearly evident that an attempt on the part of the government to interfere with the operation of the economic system based on private ownership of the means of production fails of the goal that its authors wished to achieve by means of it. It is, from the point of view of its authors, not only futile, but downright contrary to purpose, because it enormously augments the very “evil” that it was supposed to combat. Before the price controls were decreed, the commodity was, in the opinion of the government, too expensive; now it disappears from the market altogether. This, however, is not the result aimed at by the government, which wanted to make the commodity accessible to the consumer at a cheaper price. On the contrary: from its viewpoint, the absence of the commodity, the impossibility of securing it, must appear as by far the greater evil. In this sense one can say of the intervention of the authorities that it is futile and contrary to the purpose that it was intended to serve, and of the system of economic policy that attempts to operate by means of such acts of intervention that it is impracticable and unthinkable, that it contradicts economic logic.

  If the government will not set things right again by desisting from its interference, i.e., by rescinding the price controls, then it must follow up the first step with others. To the prohibition against asking any price higher than the prescribed one it must add not only measures to compel the sale of all stocks on hand under a system of enforced rationing, but price ceilings on goods of higher order, wage controls, and, ultimately, compulsory labor for entrepreneurs and workers. And these regulations cannot be limited to one or a few branches of production, but must encompass them all. There is simply no other choice than this: either to abstain from interference in the free play of the market, or to delegate the entire management of production and distribution to the government. Either capitalism or socialism: there exists no middle way.

  The mechanism of the series of events just described is well known to all who have witnessed the attempts of governments in time of war and during periods of inflation to fix prices by fiat. Everyone knows nowadays that government price controls had no other result than the disappearance from the market of the goods concerned. Wherever the government resorts to the fixing of prices, the result is always the same. When, for instance, the government fixes a ceiling on residential rents, a housing shortage immediately ensues. In Austria, the Social Democratic Party has virtually abolished residential rent. The consequence is that in the city of Vienna, for example, in spite of the fact that the population has declined considerably since the beginning of the World War and that several thousand new houses have been constructed by the municipality in the meantime, many thousands of persons are unable to find accommodations.

  Let us take still another example: the fixing of minimum wage rates.

  When the relationship between employer and employee is left undisturbed by legislative enactments or by violent measures on the part of trade unions, the wages paid by the employer for every type of labor are exactly as high as the increment of value that it adds to the materials in production. Wages cannot rise any higher than this because, if they did, the employer could no longer make a profit and hence would be compelled to discontinue a line of production that did not pay. But neither can wages fall any lower, because then the workers would turn to other branches of industry where they would be better rewarded, so that the employer would be forced to discontinue production because of a labor shortage.

  There is, therefore, in the economy always a wage rate at which all workers find employment and every entrepreneur who wishes to undertake some enterprise still profitable at that wage finds workers. This wage rate is customarily called by economists the “static” or “natural” wage. It increases if, other things being equal, the number of workers diminishes; it decreases if, other things being equal, the available quantity of capital for which employment in production is sought suffers any diminution. However, one must, at the same time, observe that it is not quite precise to speak simply of “wages” and “labor.” Labor services vary greatly in quality and quantity (calculated per unit of time), and so too do the wages of labor.

  If the economy never varied from the stationary state, then in a labor market unhampered by interference on the part of the government or by coercion on the part of the labor unions there would be no unemployed. But the stationary state of society is merely an imaginary construction of economic theory, an intellectual expedient indispensable for our thinking, that enables us, by contrast, to form a clear conception of the processes actually taking place in the economy which surrounds us and in which we live. Life—fortunately, we hasten to add—is never at rest. There is never a standstill in the economy, but perpetual changes, movement, innovation, the continual emergence of the unprecedented. There are, accordingly, always branches of production that are being shut down or curtailed because the demand for their products has fallen off, and other branches of production that are being expanded or even embarked upon for the first time. If we think only of the last few decades, we can at once enumerate a great number of new industries that have sprung up: e.g., the automobile industry, the airplane industry, the motion picture industry, the rayon industry, the canned goods industry, and the radio broadcasting industry. These branches of industry today employ millions of workers, only some of whom have been drawn from the increase in population. Some came from branches of production that were shut down, and even more from those that, as a result of technological improvements, are now able to manage with fewer workers.

  Occasionally the changes that occur in the relations among individual branches of production take place so slowly that no worker is obliged to shift to a new type of job; only young people, just beginning to earn their livelihood, will enter, in greater proportion, the new or expanding industries. Generally, however, in the capitalist system, with its rapid strides in improving human welfare, progress takes place too swiftly to spare individuals the necessity of adapting themselves to it. When, two hundred years or more ago, a young lad learned a craft, he could count on practicing it his whole life long in the way he had learned it, without any fear of being injured by his conservatism. Things are different today. The worker too must adjust himself to changing conditions, must add to what he has learned, or begin learning anew. He must leave occupations which no longer require the same number of workers as previously and enter one which has just come into being or which now needs more workers than before. But even if he remains in his old job, he must learn new techniques when circumstances demand it.

  All this affects the worker in the form of changes in wage rates. If a particular branch of business employs relatively too many workers, it discharges some, and those discharged will not easily find new work in the same branch of business. The pressure on the labor market exercised by the discharged workers depresses wages in this branch of production. This, in turn, induces the worker to look for employment in those branches of production that wish to attract new workers and are therefore prepared to pay higher wages.

  From this it becomes quite clear what must be done in order to satisfy the workers’ desire for employment and for high wages. Wages in general cannot be pushed above the height that they would normally occupy in a market unhampered either by government interference or other institutional pressures without creating certain side effects that cannot be desirable for the worker. Wages can be driven up in an individual industry or an individual country if the transfer of workers from other industries or their immigration from other countries is prohibited. Such wage increases are effected at the expense of the workers whose entrance is barred. Their wages are now lower than they would have been if their freedom of movement had not been hindered. The rise in wages of one group is thus achieved at the expense of the others. This policy of obstructing the free movement of labor can benefit only the workers in countries and industries suffering from a relative labor shortage. In an industry or a country where this is not the case, there is only one thing that can raise wages: a rise in the general productivity of labor, whether by virtue of an increase in the capital available or through an improvement in the technological processes of production.

  If, however, the government fixes minimum wages by law above the height of the static or natural wage, then the employers will find that they are no longer in a position to carry on successfully a number of enterprises that were still profitable when wages stood at the lower point. They will consequently curtail production and discharge workers. The effect of an artificial rise in wages, i.e., one imposed upon the market from the outside, is, therefore, the spread of unemployment.

  Now, of course, no attempt is being made today to fix minimum wage rates by law on a large scale. But the position of power that the trade unions occupy has enabled them to do so even in the absence of any positive legislation to that effect. The fact that workers form unions for the purpose of bargaining with the employers does not, in and of itself, necessarily provoke disturbances in the operation of the market. Even the fact that they successfully arrogate to themselves the right to break, without notice, contracts duly entered into by them and to lay down their tools would not itself result in any further disturbance in the labor market. What does create a new situation in the labor market is the element of coercion involved in strikes and compulsory union membership that prevails today in most of the industrial countries of Europe. Since the unionized workers deny access to employment to those who are not members of their union, and resort to open violence during strikes to prevent other workers from taking the place of those on strike, the wage demands that the unions present to the employers have precisely the same force as government decrees fixing minimum wage rates. For the employer must, if he does not wish to shut down his whole enterprise, yield to the demands of the union. He must pay wages such that the volume of production has to be restricted, because what costs more to produce cannot find as large a market as what costs less. Thus, the higher wages exacted by the trade unions become a cause of unemployment.

  The unemployment originating from this source differs entirely in extent and duration from that which arises from the changes constantly taking place in the kind and quality of the labor demanded in the market. If unemployment had its cause only in the fact that there is constant progress in industrial development, it could neither assume great proportions nor take on the character of a lasting institution. The workers who can no longer be employed in one branch of production soon find accommodation in others which are expanding or just coming into being. When workers enjoy freedom of movement and the shift from one industry to another is not impeded by legal and other obstacles of a similar kind, adjustment to new conditions takes place without too much difficulty and rather quickly. For the rest, the setting up of labor exchanges would contribute much toward reducing still further the extent of this type of unemployment.

  But the unemployment produced by the interference of coercive agencies in the operation of the labor market is no transitory phenomenon continually appearing and disappearing. It is incurable as long as the cause that called it into existence continues to operate, i.e., as long as the law or the violence of the trade unions prevents wages from being reduced, by the pressure of the jobless seeking employment, to the level that they would have reached in the absence of interference on the part of the government or the unions, namely, the rate at which all those eager for work ultimately find it.

  For the unemployed to be granted support by the government or by the unions only serves to enlarge the evil. If what is involved is a case of unemployment springing from dynamic changes in the economy, then the unemployment benefits only result in postponing the adjustment of the workers to the new conditions. The jobless worker who is on relief does not consider it necessary to look about for a new occupation if he no longer finds a position in his old one; at least, he allows more time to elapse before he decides to shift to a new occupation or to a new locality or before he reduces the wage rate he demands to that at which he could find work. If unemployment benefits are not set too low, one can say that as long as they are offered, unemployment cannot disappear.

  If, however, the unemployment is produced by the artificial raising of the height of wage rates in consequence of the direct intervention of the government or of its toleration of coercive practices on the part of the trade unions, then the only question is who is to bear the costs involved, the employers or the workers. The state, the government, the community never do so; they load them either onto the employer or onto the worker or partially onto each. If the burden falls on the workers, then they are deprived entirely or partially of the fruits of the artificial wage increase they have received; they may even be made to bear more of these costs than the artificial wage increase yielded them. The employer can be saddled with the burden of unemployment benefits to some extent by having to pay a tax proportionate to the total amount of wages paid out by him. In this case, unemployment insurance, by raising the costs of labor, has the same effect as a further increase in wages above the static level: the profitability of the employment of labor is reduced, and the number of workers who still can be profitably engaged is concomitantly decreased. Thus, unemployment spreads even further, in an ever widening spiral. The employers can also be drawn on to pay the costs of the unemployment benefits by means of a tax on their profits or capital, without regard for the number of workers employed. But this too only tends to spread unemployment even further. For when capital is consumed or when the formation of new capital is at least slowed down, the conditions for the employment of labor become, ceteris paribus, less favorable.2

  It is obviously futile to attempt to eliminate unemployment by embarking upon a program of public works that would otherwise not have been undertaken. The necessary resources for such projects must be withdrawn by taxes or loans from the application they would otherwise have found. Unemployment in one industry can, in this way, be mitigated only to the extent that it is increased in another.

  From whichever side we consider interventionism, it becomes evident that this system leads to a result that its originators and advocates did not intend and that, even from their standpoint, it must appear as a senseless, self-defeating, absurd policy.

  6

  Capitalism: The Only Possible System of Social Organization

  Every examination of the different conceivable possibilities of organizing society on the basis of the division of labor must always come to the same result: there is only the choice between communal ownership and private ownership of the means of production. All intermediate forms of social organization are unavailing and, in practice, must prove self-defeating. If one further realizes that socialism too is unworkable, then one cannot avoid acknowledging that capitalism is the only feasible system of social organization based on the division of labor. This result of theoretical investigation will not come as a surprise to the historian or the philosopher of history. If capitalism has succeeded in maintaining itself in spite of the enmity it has always encountered from both governments and the masses, if it has not been obliged to make way for other forms of social cooperation that have enjoyed to a much greater extent the sympathies of theoreticians and of practical men of affairs, this is to be attributed only to the fact that no other system of social organization is feasible.

  Nor is there any further need to explain why it is impossible for us to return to the forms of social and economic organization characteristic of the Middle Ages. Over the whole area now inhabited by the modern nations of Europe the medieval economic system was able to support only a fraction of the number of people who now dwell in that region, and it placed much less in the way of material goods at the disposal of each individual for the provision of his needs than the capitalist form of production supplies men with today. A return to the Middle Ages is out of the question if one is not prepared to reduce the population to a tenth or a twentieth part of its present number and, even further, to oblige every individual to be satisfied with a modicum so small as to be beyond the imagination of modern man.

  All the writers who represent the return to the Middle Ages, or, as they put it, to the “new” Middle Ages, as the only social ideal worth striving for reproach the capitalist era above all for its materialistic attitude and mentality. Yet they themselves are much more deeply committed to materialistic views than they believe. For it is nothing but the crassest materialism to think, as many of these writers do, that after reverting to the forms of political and economic organization characteristic of the Middle Ages, society could still retain all the technological improvements in production created by capitalism and thus preserve the high degree of productivity of human labor that it has attained in the capitalist era. The productivity of the capitalist mode of production is the outcome of the capitalist mentality and of the capitalist approach to man and to the satisfaction of man’s wants; it is a result of modern technology only in so far as the development of technology must, of necessity, follow from the capitalist mentality. There is scarcely anything so absurd as the fundamental principle of Marx’s materialist interpretation of history: “The hand mill made feudal society; the steam mill, capitalist society.” It was precisely capitalist society that was needed to create the necessary conditions for the original conception of the steam mill to be developed and put into effect. It was capitalism that created the technology, and not the other way round. But no less absurd is the notion that the technological and material appurtenances of our economy could be preserved even if the intellectual foundations on which they are based were destroyed. Economic activity can no longer be carried on rationally once the prevailing mentality has reverted to traditionalism and faith in authority. The entrepreneur, the catalytic agent, as it were, of the capitalist economy and, concomitantly, also of modern technology, is inconceivable in an environment in which everyone is intent solely on the contemplative life.

  If one characterizes as unfeasible every system other than that based on private ownership of the means of production, it follows necessarily that private property must be maintained as the basis of social cooperation and association and that every attempt to abolish it must be vigorously combatted. It is for this reason that liberalism defends the institution of private property against every attempt to destroy it. When, therefore, people call the liberals apologists for private property, they are completely justified, for the Greek word from which “apologist” is derived means the same as “defender.” Of course, it would be better to avoid using the foreign word and to be content to express oneself in plain English. For to many people the expressions “apology” and “apologist” convey the connotation that what is being defended is unjust.

  Much more important, however, than the rejection of any pejorative suggestion that may be involved in the use of these expressions is the observation that the institution of private property requires no defense, justification, support, or explanation. The continued existence of society depends upon private property, and since men have need of society, they must hold fast to the institution of private property to avoid injuring their own interests as well as the interests of everyone else. For society can continue to exist only on the foundation of private property. Whoever champions the latter champions by the same token the preservation of the social bond that unites mankind, the preservation of culture and civilization. He is an apologist and defender of society, culture, and civilization, and because he desires them as ends, he must also desire and defend the one means that leads to them, namely, private property.

  To advocate private ownership of the means of production is by no means to maintain that the capitalist social system, based on private property, is perfect. There is no such thing as earthly perfection. Even in the capitalist system something or other, many things, or even everything, may not be exactly to the liking of this or that individual. But it is the only possible social system. One may undertake to modify one or another of its features as long as in doing so one does not affect the essence and foundation of the whole social order, viz., private property. But by and large we must reconcile ourselves to this system because there simply cannot be any other.

  In Nature too, much may exist that we do not like. But we cannot change the essential character of natural events. If, for example, someone thinks—and there are some who have maintained as much—that the way in which man ingests his food, digests it, and incorporates it into his body is disgusting, one cannot argue the point with him. One must say to him: There is only this way or starvation. There is no third way. The same is true of property: either-or —either private ownership of the means of production, or hunger and misery for everyone.

  The opponents of liberalism are wont to call its economic doctrine “optimistic.” They intend this epithet either as a reproach or as a derisive characterization of the liberal way of thinking.

  If by calling the liberal doctrine “optimistic” one means that liberalism considers the capitalist world as the best of all worlds, then this is nothing but pure nonsense. For an ideology based, like that of liberalism, entirely on scientific grounds, such questions as whether the capitalist system is good or bad, whether or not a better one is conceivable, and whether it ought to be rejected on certain philosophic or metaphysical grounds are entirely irrelevant. Liberalism is derived from the pure sciences of economics and sociology, which make no value judgments within their own spheres and say nothing about what ought to be or about what is good and what is bad, but, on the contrary, only ascertain what is and how it comes to be. When these sciences show us that of all the conceivable alternative ways of organizing society only one, viz., the system based on private ownership of the means of production, is capable of being realized, because all other conceivable systems of social organization are unworkable, there is absolutely nothing in this that can justify the designation “optimistic.” That capitalism is practicable and workable is a conclusion that has nothing to do with optimism.

  To be sure, the opponents of liberalism are of the opinion that this society is very bad. As far as this assertion contains a value judgment, it is naturally not open to any discussion that intends to go beyond highly subjective and therefore unscientific opinions. As far, however, as it is founded on an incorrect understanding of what takes place within the capitalist system, economics and sociology can rectify it. This too is not optimism. Entirely aside from everything else, even the discovery of a great many deficiencies in the capitalist system would not have the slightest significance for the problems of social policy as long as it has not been shown, not that a different social system would be better, but that it would be capable of being realized at all. But this has not been done. Science has succeeded in showing that every system of social organization that could be conceived as a substitute for the capitalist system is self-contradictory and unavailing, so that it could not bring about the results aimed at by its proponents.

  How little one is justified in speaking in this connection of “optimism” and “pessimism” and how much the characterization of liberalism as “optimistic” aims at surrounding it with an unfavorable aura by bringing in extrascientific, emotional considerations is best shown by the fact that one can, with as much justice, call those people “optimists” who are convinced that the construction of a socialist or of an interventionist commonwealth would be practicable.

  Most of the writers who concern themselves with economic questions never miss an opportunity to heap senseless and childish abuse on the capitalist system and to praise in enthusiastic terms either socialism or interventionism, or even agrarian socialism and syndicalism, as excellent institutions. On the other hand, there have been a few writers who, even if in much milder terms, have sung the praises of the capitalist system. One may, if one wishes, call these writers “optimists.” But if one does so, then one would be a thousand times more justified in calling the antiliberal writers “hyperoptimists” of socialism, interventionism, agrarian socialism, and syndicalism. The fact that this does not happen, but that, instead, only liberal writers like Bastiat are called “optimists,” shows clearly that in these cases what we are dealing with is not an attempt at a truly scientific classification, but nothing more than a partisan caricature.

  What liberalism maintains is, we repeat, by no means that capitalism is good when considered from some particular point of view. What it says is simply that for the attainment of the ends that men have in mind only the capitalist system is suitable and that every attempt to realize a socialist, interventionist, agrarian socialist, or syndicalist society must necessarily prove unsuccessful. Neurotics who could not bear this truth have called economics a dismal science. But economics and sociology are no more dismal because they show us the world as it really is than the other sciences are—mechanics, for instance, because it teaches the impracticability of perpetual motion, or biology because it teaches us the mortality of all living things.

  7

  Cartels, Monopolies, and Liberalism

  The opponents of liberalism assert that the necessary preconditions for the adoption of the liberal program no longer exist in the contemporary world. Liberalism was still practicable when many concerns of medium size were engaged in keen competition in each industry. Nowadays, since trusts, cartels, and other monopolistic enterprises are in complete control of the market, liberalism is as good as done for in any case. It is not politics that has destroyed it, but a tendency inherent in the inexorable evolution of the system of free enterprise.

  The division of labor gives a specialized function to each productive unit in the economy. This process never stops as long as economic development continues. We long ago passed the stage at which the same factory produced all types of machines. Today a machine factory that does not limit itself exclusively to the production of certain types of machinery is no longer able to meet competition. With the progress of specialization, the area served by an individual supplier must continue to widen. The market supplied by a textile mill that produces only a few kinds of fabrics must be larger than that served by a weaver who weaves every kind of cloth. Undoubtedly this progressive specialization of production tends toward the development in every field of enterprises that have the whole world for their market. If this development is not opposed by protectionist and other anticapitalist measures, the result will be that in every branch of production there will be a relatively small number of concerns, or even only a single concern, intent on producing with the highest degree of specialization and on supplying the whole world.

  Today, of course, we are very far from this state of affairs, since the policy of all governments aims at snipping off from the unity of the world economy small areas in which, under the protection of tariffs and other measures designed to achieve the same result, enterprises that would no longer be able to meet competition on the free world market are artificially preserved or even first called into being. Apart from considerations of commercial policy, measures of this kind, which are directed against the concentration of business, are defended on the ground that they alone have prevented the consumers from being exploited by monopolistic combinations of producers.

  In order to assess the validity of this argument, we shall assume that the division of labor throughout the whole world has already advanced so far that the production of every article offered for sale is concentrated in a single concern, so that the consumer, in his capacity as a buyer, is always confronted with only a single seller. Under such conditions, according to an ill-considered economic doctrine, the producers would be in a position to keep prices pegged as high as they wished, to realize exorbitant profits, and thereby to worsen considerably the standard of living of the consumers. It is not difficult to see that this idea is completely mistaken. Monopoly prices, if they are not made possible by certain acts of intervention on the part of the government, can be lastingly exacted only on the basis of control over mineral and other natural resources. An isolated monopoly in manufacturing that yielded greater profits than those yielded elsewhere would stimulate the formation of rival firms whose competition would break the monopoly and restore prices and profits to the general rate. Monopolies in manufacturing industries cannot, however, become general, since at every given level of wealth in an economy the total quantity of capital invested and of available labor employed in production—and consequently also the amount of the social product—is a given magnitude. In any particular branch of production, or in several, the amount of capital and labor employed could be reduced in order to increase the price per unit and the aggregate profit of the monopolist or monopolists by curtailing production. The capital and labor thereby freed would then flow into another industry. If, however, all industries attempt to curtail production in order to realize higher prices, they forthwith free labor and capital which, because they are offered at lower rates, will provide a strong stimulus to the formation of new enterprises that must again destroy the monopolistic position of the others. The idea of a universal cartel and monopoly of the manufacturing industry is therefore completely untenable.

  Genuine monopolies can be established only by control of land or mineral resources. The notion that all the arable land on earth could be consolidated into a single world monopoly needs no further discussion; the only monopolies that we shall consider here are those originating in the control of useful minerals. Monopolies of this kind do, in fact, already exist in the case of a few minerals of minor importance, and it is at any rate conceivable that attempts to monopolize other minerals as well may some day prove successful. This would mean that the owners of such mines and quarries would derive an increased ground rent from them and that the consumers would restrict consumption and look for substitutes for the materials that had become more expensive. A world petroleum monopoly would lead to an increased demand for hydroelectric power, coal, etc. From the standpoint of world economy and sub specie aeternitatis [under the aspect of eternity], this would mean that we would have to be more sparing than we otherwise would have been in our use of those costly materials that we can only exhaust, but cannot replace, and thus leave more of them for future generations than would have been the case in an economy free of monopolies.

  The bugbear of monopoly, which is always conjured up when one speaks of the unhampered development of the economy, need cause us no disquiet. The world monopolies that are really feasible could concern only a few items of primary production. Whether their effect is favorable or unfavorable cannot be so easily decided. In the eyes of those who, in treating economic problems, are unable to free themselves from feelings of envy, these monopolies appear as pernicious from the very fact that they yield their owners increased profits. Whoever approaches the question without prepossessions will find that such monopolies lead to a more sparing use of those mineral resources that are at man’s disposal only in a rather limited quantity. If one really envies the monopolist his profit, one can, without danger and without having to expect any harmful economic consequences, have it pass into the public coffers by taxing the income from the mines.

  In contradistinction to these world monopolies are the national and international monopolies, which are of practical importance today precisely because they do not originate in any natural evolutionary tendency on the part of the economic system when it is left to itself, but are the product of antiliberal economic policies. Attempts to secure a monopolistic position in regard to certain articles are in almost all cases feasible only because tariffs have divided the world market up into small national markets. Besides these, the only other cartels of any consequence are those which the owners of certain natural resources are able to form because the high cost of transportation protects them against the competition of producers from other areas in the narrow compass of their own locality.

  It is a fundamental error, in judging the consequences of trusts, cartels, and enterprises supplying a market with one article alone, to speak of “control” of the market and of “price dictation” by the monopolist. The monopolist does not exercise any control, nor is he in a position to dictate prices. One could speak of control of the market or of price dictation only if the article in question were, in the strictest and most literal sense of the word, necessary for existence and absolutely irreplaceable by any substitute. This is evidently not true of any commodity. There is no economic good whose possession is indispensable to the existence of those prepared to purchase it on the market.

  What distinguishes the formation of a monopoly price from the formation of a competitive price is the fact that, under certain very special conditions, it is possible for the monopolist to reap a greater profit from the sale of a smaller quantity at a higher price (which we call the monopoly price) than by selling at the price that the market would determine if more sellers were in competition (the competitive price). The special condition required for the emergence of a monopoly price is that the reaction of the consumers to a price increase does not involve a falling off of demand so sharp as to preclude a greater total profit from fewer sales at higher prices. If it is actually possible to achieve a monopolistic position in the market and to use it to realize monopoly prices, then profits higher than average will be yielded in the branch of industry concerned.

  It may be that, in spite of these higher profits, new enterprises of the same kind are not undertaken because of the fear that, after reducing the monopoly price to the competitive price, they will not prove correspondingly profitable. One must, nevertheless, take into account the possibility that related industries, which are in a position to enter into production of the cartelized article at a relatively small cost, may appear as competitors; and, in any case, industries producing substitute commodities will be immediately at hand to avail themselves of the favorable circumstances for expanding their own production. All these factors make it extraordinarily rare for a monopoly to arise in a manufacturing industry that is not based on monopolistic control of particular raw materials. Where such monopolies do occur, they are always made possible only by certain legislative measures, such as patents and similar privileges, tariff regulations, tax laws, and the licensing system. A few decades ago people used to speak of a transportation monopoly. To what extent this monopoly was based on the licensing system remains uncertain. Today people generally do not bother much about it. The automobile and the airplane have become dangerous competitors of the railroads. But even before the appearance of these competitors the possibility of using waterways already set a definite limit to the rates that the railroads could venture to charge for their services on several lines.

  It is not only a gross exaggeration, but a misunderstanding of the facts, to speak, as one commonly does today, of the formation of monopolies as having eliminated an essential prerequisite for the realization of the liberal ideal of a capitalist society. Twist and turn the monopoly problem as one may, one always comes back to the fact that monopoly prices are possible only where there is control over natural resources of a particular kind or where legislative enactments and their administration create the necessary conditions for the formation of monopolies. In the unhampered development of the economy, with the exception of mining and related branches of production, there is no tendency toward the exclusion of competition. The objection commonly raised against liberalism that the conditions of competition as they existed at the time when classical economics and liberal ideas were first developed no longer prevail is in no way justified. Only a few liberal demands (viz., free trade within and between nations) need to be realized in order to re-establish these conditions.

  8

  Bureaucratization

  There is yet another sense in which it is commonly said that the necessary conditions for the realization of the liberal ideal of society no longer obtain today. In the big businesses made necessary by progress in the division of labor, the personnel employed must increase more and more. These enterprises must, therefore, in their conduct of business, become ever more like the government bureaucracy that the liberals in particular have made the target of their criticism. From day to day they become more cumbersome and less open to innovations. The selection of personnel for executive positions is no longer made on the basis of demonstrated proficiency on the job, but in accordance with purely formal criteria, such as educational background or seniority, and often just as a result of personal favoritism. Thus the distinctive feature of private, as opposed to public, enterprise finally disappears. If it was still justifiable in the age of classical liberalism to oppose government ownership on the ground that it paralyzes all free initiative and kills the joy of labor, it is no longer so today when private enterprises are carried on no less bureaucratically, pedantically, and formalistically than those that are publicly owned and operated.

  In order to be able to assess the validity of these objections, one must first be clear as to what is really to be understood by bureaucracy and the bureaucratic conduct of business, and just how these are distinguished from commercial enterprise and the commercial conduct of business. The opposition between the commercial and the bureaucratic mentality is the counterpart in the intellectual realm of the opposition between capitalism—private ownership of the means of production—and socialism—communal ownership of the means of production. Whoever has factors of production at his disposal, whether his own or those lent to him by their owners in return for some compensation, must always be careful to employ them in such a way as to satisfy those needs of society that, under the given circumstances, are the most urgent. If he does not do this, he will operate at a loss and will find himself at first under the necessity of curtailing his activity as owner and entrepreneur and ultimately ousted from that position altogether. He ceases to be the one or the other and has to fall back into the ranks of those who have only their labor to sell and who do not have the responsibility of guiding production into those channels that, from the point of view of the consumers, are the right ones. In the calculation of profits and losses, which constitutes the whole sum and substance of the businessman’s bookkeeping and accounting, entrepreneurs and capitalists possess a method that enables them to check, with the greatest attainable exactitude, every step in their procedure down to the smallest detail and, where possible, to see what effect each individual transaction in the conduct of their operations will have on the total outcome of the enterprise. Monetary calculation and cost accounting constitute the most important intellectual tool of the capitalist entrepreneur, and it was no one less than Goethe who pronounced the system of double-entry bookkeeping “one of the finest inventions of the human mind.” Goethe could say this because he was free from the resentment that the petty literati always foster against the businessman. It is they that form the chorus whose constant refrain is that monetary calculation and concern with profit and loss are the most shameful of sins.

  Monetary calculation, bookkeeping, and statistics on sales and operations make it possible for even the biggest and most complex business concerns to make an exact check on the results achieved in every single department and thereby to form a judgment on the extent to which the head of each department has contributed to the total success of the enterprise. Thus, a reliable guide is provided for determining the treatment to be accorded to the managers of the various departments. One can know what they are worth and how much they are to be paid. Advancement to higher and more responsible positions is by way of unquestionably demonstrated success in a more circumscribed sphere of action. And just as one is able to check on the activity of the manager of each department by means of cost accounting, so one can also scrutinize the activity of the enterprise in every single field of its over-all operation, as well as the effects of certain organizational and similar measures.

  There are, to be sure, limits to this exact control. One cannot determine the success or failure of the activity of each individual within a department as one can that of its manager. There are, besides, departments whose contribution to the total output cannot be comprehended by means of calculation: what a research department, a legal bureau, a secretariat, a statistical service, etc., accomplishes cannot be ascertained in the same way as, for instance, the performance of a particular sales or production department. The former may be quite safely left to the approximate estimation of the person in charge of the department, and the latter to that of the general manager of the concern; for conditions can be seen with relative clarity and those who are called upon to make these judgments (both the general management and that of the various departments) have a personal interest in their correctness, as their own incomes are affected by the productivity of the operations of which they are in charge.

  The opposite of this type of enterprise, whose every transaction is controlled by the calculation of profit and loss, is represented by the apparatus of public administration. Whether a judge (and what is true of a judge is true in the same way of every high administrative official) has discharged his duties better or worse cannot be demonstrated by any computation. There is no possible way of establishing by an objective criterion whether a district or a province is being administered well or badly, cheaply or expensively. The judgment of the activity of public officials is thus a matter of subjective, and therefore quite arbitrary, opinion. Even the question whether a particular bureau is necessary, whether it has too many or too few employees, and whether its organization is or is not suited to its purpose can be decided only on the basis of considerations that involve some element of subjectivity. There is but one field of public administration in which the criterion of success or failure is unquestionable: the waging of war. But even here the only thing certain is whether the operation has been crowned with success. The question how far the distribution of power determined the issue even before the beginning of hostilities and how much of the outcome is to be attributed to the competence or incompetence of the leaders in their conduct of the operations and to the appropriateness of the measures they took cannot be strictly and precisely answered. There have been generals celebrated for their victories who, in fact, did everything to facilitate the triumph of the enemy and who owe their success solely to circumstances so favorable as to outweigh their mistakes. And vanquished leaders have sometimes been condemned whose genius had done everything possible to prevent the inevitable defeat.

  The manager of a private enterprise gives the employees to whom he assigns independent duties only one directive: to make as much profit as possible. Everything that he has to say to them is comprehended in this one order, and an examination of the accounts makes it possible to determine easily and accurately to what extent they have followed it. The manager of a bureaucratic department finds himself in a quite different situation. He can tell his subordinates what they have to accomplish, but he is not in a position to ascertain whether the means employed for the attainment of this result are the most appropriate and economical under the circumstances. If he is not omnipresent in all the offices and bureaus subordinate to him, he cannot judge whether the attainment of the same result would not have been possible with a lesser expenditure of labor and materials. The fact that the result itself is also not amenable to numerical measurement, but only to approximate assessment, need not be discussed here. For we are not considering administrative technique from the point of view of its external effects, but merely from the standpoint of its reaction upon the internal operation of the bureaucratic apparatus; we are concerned with the result attained, therefore, only in its relation to the expenses incurred.

  Because it is out of the question to undertake to determine this relationship by means of computations after the manner of commercial bookkeeping, the manager of a bureaucratic organization must provide his subordinates with instructions with which compliance is made obligatory. In these instructions provision is made, in a general way, for the ordinary and regular course of business. In all extraordinary cases, however, before any money is spent, permission must first be obtained from higher authority—a tedious and rather ineffectual procedure in favor of which all that can be said is that it is the only method possible. For if every subaltern bureau, every department head, every branch office, were given the right to make the expenditures that they deemed requisite, the costs of administration would soon soar without limit. One should not delude oneself about the fact that this system is seriously defective and very unsatisfactory. Many expenses are incurred that are superfluous, and many that would be necessary are not made because a bureaucratic apparatus cannot, by its very nature, adjust itself to circumstances as a commercial organization can.

  The effect of bureaucratization is most apparent in its representative—the bureaucrat. In a private enterprise, the hiring of labor is not the conferring of a favor, but a business transaction from which both parties, employer and employee, benefit. The employer must endeavor to pay wages corresponding in value to the labor performed. If he does not do this, he runs the risk of seeing the worker leave his employment for that of a better-paying competitor. The employee, in order not to lose his job, must in his turn endeavor to fulfill the duties of his position well enough to be worth his wages. Since employment is not a favor, but a business transaction, the employee does not need to fear that he may be discharged if he falls into personal disfavor. For the entrepreneur who discharges, for reasons of personal bias, a useful employee who is worth his pay harms only himself and not the worker, who can find a similar position elsewhere. There is not the slightest difficulty in entrusting to the manager of each department the authority to hire and fire employees; for under the pressure of the control exercised over his activities by bookkeeping and cost accounting he must see to it that his department shows as great a profit as possible, and hence he is obliged, in his own interest, to be careful to retain the best employees there. If out of spite he discharges someone whom he ought not to have discharged, if his actions are motivated by personal, and not objective, considerations, then it is he himself who must suffer the consequences. Any impairment of the success of the department headed by him must ultimately redound to his loss. Thus, the incorporation of the nonmaterial factor, labor, into the process of production takes place without any friction.

  In a bureaucratic organization things are quite different. Since the productive contribution of the individual department, and hence also of the individual employee, even when he occupies an executive position, cannot in this case be ascertained, the door is wide open to favoritism and personal bias both in appointment and remuneration. The fact that the intercession of influential persons plays a certain role in filling official positions in the civil service is not due to a peculiar baseness of character on the part of those responsible for filling these posts, but to the fact that from the very outset there is no objective criterion for determining an individual’s qualification for appointment. Of course, it is the most competent who ought to be employed, but the question is: Who is the most competent? If this question could be as easily answered as the question what an ironworker or a compositor is worth, there would be no problem. But since this is not the case, an element of arbitrariness is necessarily involved in comparing the qualifications of different individuals.

  In order to keep this within the narrowest possible limits, one seeks to set up formal conditions for appointment and promotion. Attainment to a particular position is made dependent on the fulfillment of certain educational requirements, on the passing of examinations, and on continued employment for a certain period of time in other positions; promotion is made dependent on years of previous service. Naturally, all these expedients are in no sense a substitute for the possibility of finding the best available man for every post by means of the calculation of profit and loss. It would be supererogatory to point out in particular that attendance at school, examinations, and seniority do not offer the slightest guarantee that the selection will be correct. On the contrary: this system from the very outset prevents the energetic and the competent from occupying positions in line with their powers and capabilities. Never yet has anyone of real worth risen to the top by way of a prescribed program of study and promotion in due course along the established lines. Even in Germany, which has a pious faith in her bureaucrats, the expression, “a perfect functionary,” is used to connote a spineless and ineffectual person, however well intentioned.

  Thus, the characteristic mark of bureaucratic management is that it lacks the guidance provided by considerations of profit and loss in judging the success of its operations in relation to the expenses incurred and is consequently obliged, in the effort to compensate for this deficiency, to resort to the entirely inadequate expedient of making its conduct of affairs and the hiring of its personnel subject to a set of formal prescriptions. All the evils that are commonly imputed to bureaucratic management—its inflexibility, its lack of resourcefulness, and its helplessness in the face of problems that are easily solved in profit-seeking enterprise—are the result of this one fundamental deficiency. As long as the activity of the state is restricted to the narrow field that liberalism assigns to it, the disadvantages of bureaucracy cannot, at any rate, make themselves too apparent. They become a grave problem for the whole economy only when the state—and naturally the same is true of municipalities and other forms of local government—proceeds to socialize the means of production and to take an active part in it or even in trade.

  A public enterprise conducted with an eye to maximizing profits can, to be sure, make use of monetary calculation as long as most business is privately owned and hence a market still exists and market prices are formed. The only hindrance to its operation and development is the fact that its managers, as functionaries of the state, do not have the personal interest in the success or failure of the business that is characteristic of the management of private enterprises. The director cannot, therefore, be given freedom to act independently in making crucial decisions. Since he would not suffer the losses that could result, under certain circumstances, from his business policy, his conduct of affairs could all too easily be disposed to run risks that would not be taken by a director who, because he must share in the loss, is genuinely responsible. His authority must, therefore, be in some way limited. Whether it is bound by a set of rigid regulations or the decisions of a control council or the consent of a superior authority, bureaucratic management in any case continues to suffer from the unwieldiness and the lack of ability to adjust itself to changing conditions that have everywhere led public enterprises from one failure to another.

  But, in fact, it is only seldom that a public enterprise aims at nothing but profit and sets aside all other considerations. As a rule, it is demanded of a public enterprise that it keep in mind certain “national” and other considerations. It is expected, for instance, in its procurement and sales policy, to favor domestic as against foreign production. It is demanded of state railways that they set a schedule of rates that will serve a specific commercial policy on the part of the government, that they construct and maintain lines that cannot be profitably operated simply in order to promote the economic development of a certain area, and that they operate certain others for strategic or similar reasons. When such factors play a role in the conduct of a business, all control by the methods of cost accounting and the calculation of profit and loss is out of the question. The director of the state railways who presents an unfavorable balance sheet at the end of the year is in a position to say: “The railway lines under my supervision have, to be sure, operated at a loss if considered from the strictly commercial point of view of profit-seeking private enterprise; but if one takes into consideration such factors as our national economic and military policy, one must not forget that they have accomplished a great deal that does not enter into the calculation of profit and loss.” Under such circumstances the calculation of profit and loss has clearly lost all value for judging the success of an enterprise, so that—even apart from other factors having the same tendency—it must necessarily be managed quite as bureaucratically as, for example, the administration of a prison or a tax bureau.

  No private enterprise, whatever its size, can ever become bureaucratic as long as it is entirely and solely operated on a profit basis. Firm adherence to the entrepreneurial principle of aiming at the highest profit makes it possible for even the largest concern to ascertain with complete precision the part played by every transaction and by the activity of every department in contributing to the total result. As long as enterprises look only to profit, they are proof against all the evils of bureaucratism. The bureaucratization of privately owned enterprises that we see going on about us everywhere today is purely the result of interventionism, which forces them to take into account factors that, if they were free to determine their policies for themselves, would be far from playing any role whatsoever in the conduct of their business. When a concern must pay heed to political prejudices and sensibilities of all kinds in order to avoid being continually harassed by various organs of the state, it soon finds that it is no longer in a position to base its calculations on the solid ground of profit and loss. For instance, some of the public utility enterprises in the United States, in order to avoid conflicts with public opinion and with the legislative, judicial, and administrative organs of the government which it influences, make it a policy not to hire Catholics, Jews, atheists, Darwinists, Negroes, Irishmen, Germans, Italians, and all newly arrived immigrants. In the interventionist state, every business is under the necessity of accommodating itself to the wishes of the authorities in order to avoid burdensome penalties. The result is that these and other considerations foreign to the profit-seeking principle of entrepreneurial management come to play an ever increasing role in the conduct of business, while the part played by precise calculation and cost accounting concomitantly dwindles in significance, and private enterprise begins increasingly to adopt the mode of management of public enterprises, with their elaborate apparatus of formally prescribed rules and regulations. In a word, it becomes bureaucratized.

  Thus, the progressing bureaucratization of big business is by no means the result of an inexorable tendency inherent in the development of the capitalist economy. It is nothing but the necessary consequence of adopting a policy of interventionism. In the absence of government interference with their operations, even the largest firms could be run in exactly as businesslike a way as the small ones.

  CHAPTER 3

  Liberal Foreign Policy

  1

  The Boundaries of the State

  For the liberal, there is no opposition between domestic policy and foreign policy, and the question so often raised and exhaustively discussed, whether considerations of foreign policy take precedence over those of domestic policy or vice versa, is, in his eyes, an idle one. For liberalism is, from the very outset, a world-embracing political concept, and the same ideas that it seeks to realize within a limited area it holds to be valid also for the larger sphere of world politics. If the liberal makes a distinction between domestic and foreign policy, he does so solely for purposes of convenience and classification, to subdivide the vast domain of political problems into major types, and not because he is of the opinion that different principles are valid for each.

  The goal of the domestic policy of liberalism is the same as that of its foreign policy: peace. It aims at peaceful cooperation just as much between nations as within each nation. The starting point of liberal thought is the recognition of the value and importance of human cooperation, and the whole policy and program of liberalism is designed to serve the purpose of maintaining the existing state of mutual cooperation among the members of the human race and of extending it still further. The ultimate ideal envisioned by liberalism is the perfect cooperation of all mankind, taking place peacefully and without friction. Liberal thinking always has the whole of humanity in view and not just parts. It does not stop at limited groups; it does not end at the border of the village, of the province, of the nation, or of the continent. Its thinking is cosmopolitan and ecumenical: it takes in all men and the whole world. Liberalism is, in this sense, humanism; and the liberal, a citizen of the world, a cosmopolite.

  Today, when the world is dominated by antiliberal ideas, cosmopolitanism is suspect in the eyes of the masses. In Germany there are overzealous patriots who cannot forgive the great German poets, especially Goethe, whose thinking and feeling, instead of being confined by national bounds, had a cosmopolitan orientation. It is thought that an irreconcilable conflict exists between the interests of the nation and those of mankind and that one who directs his aspirations and endeavors toward the welfare of the whole of humanity thereby disregards the interests of his own nation. No belief could be more deeply mistaken. The German who works for the good of all mankind no more injures the particular interests of his compatriots—i.e., those of his fellow men with whom he shares a common land and language and with whom he often forms an ethnic and spiritual community as well—than one who works for the good of the whole German nation injures the interests of his own home town. For the individual has just as much of an interest in the prosperity of the whole world as he has in the blooming and flourishing of the local community in which he lives.

  The chauvinistic nationalists, who maintain that irreconcilable conflicts of interests exist among the various nations and who seek the adoption of a policy aimed at securing, by force if need be, the supremacy of their own nation over all others, are generally most emphatic in insisting on the necessity and utility of internal national unity. The greater the stress they place on the necessity of war against foreign nations, the more urgently do they call for peace and concord among the members of their own nation. Now this demand for domestic unity the liberal by no means opposes. On the contrary: the demand for peace within each nation was itself an outcome of liberal thinking and attained to prominence only as the liberal ideas of the eighteenth century came to be more widely accepted. Before the liberal philosophy, with its unconditional extolment of peace, gained ascendancy over men’s minds, the waging of war was not confined to conflicts between one country and another. Nations were themselves torn by continual civil strife and sanguinary internal struggles. In the eighteenth century Briton still stood arrayed in battle against Briton at Culloden, and even as late as the nineteenth century, in Germany, while Prussia waged war against Austria, other German states joined in the fighting on both sides. At that time Prussia saw nothing wrong in fighting on the side of Italy against German Austria, and, in 1870, only the rapid progress of events prevented Austria from joining the French in the war against Prussia and its allies. Many of the victories of which the Prussian army is so proud were won by Prussian troops over those of other German states. It was liberalism that first taught the nations to preserve in their internal conduct of affairs the peace that it desires to teach them to keep also in their relations with other countries.

  It is from the fact of the international division of labor that liberalism derives the decisive, irrefutable argument against war. The division of labor has for a long time now gone beyond the boundaries of any one nation. No civilized nation today satisfies its need as a self-sufficient community directly from its own production. All are obliged to obtain goods from abroad and to pay for them by exporting domestic products. Anything that would have the effect of preventing or stopping the international exchange of goods would do immense damage to the whole of human civilization and undermine the well-being, indeed, the very basis of existence, of millions upon millions of people. In an age in which nations are mutually dependent on products of foreign provenance, wars can no longer be waged. Since any stoppage in the flow of imports could have a decisive effect on the outcome of a war waged by a nation involved in the international division of labor, a policy that wishes to take into consideration the possibility of a war must endeavor to make the national economy self-sufficient, i.e., it must, even in time of peace, aim at making the international division of labor come to an end at its own borders. If Germany wished to withdraw from the international division of labor and attempted to satisfy all its needs directly through domestic production, the total annual product of German labor would diminish, and thus the well-being, the standard of living, and the cultural level of the German people would decline considerably.

  2

  The Right of Self-Determination

  It has already been pointed out that a country can enjoy domestic peace only when a democratic constitution provides the guarantee that the adjustment of the government to the will of the citizens can take place without friction. Nothing else is required than the consistent application of the same principle in order to assure international peace as well.

  The liberals of an earlier age thought that the peoples of the world were peaceable by nature and that only monarchs desire war in order to increase their power and wealth by the conquest of provinces. They believed, therefore, that to assure lasting peace it was sufficient to replace the rule of dynastic princes by governments dependent on the people. If a democratic republic finds that its existing boundaries, as shaped by the course of history before the transition to liberalism, no longer correspond to the political wishes of the people, they must be peacefully changed to conform to the results of a plebiscite expressing the people’s will. It must always be possible to shift the boundaries of the state if the will of the inhabitants of an area to attach themselves to a state other than the one to which they presently belong has made itself clearly known. In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, the Russian Czars incorporated into their empire large areas whose population had never felt the desire to belong to the Russian state. Even if the Russian Empire had adopted a completely democratic constitution, the wishes of the inhabitants of these territories would not have been satisfied, because they simply did not desire to associate themselves in any bond of political union with the Russians. Their democratic demand was: freedom from the Russian Empire; the formation of an independent Poland, Finland, Latvia, Lithuania, etc. The fact that these demands and similar ones on the part of other peoples (e.g., the Italians, the Germans in Schleswig-Holstein, the Slavs in the Hapsburg Empire) could be satisfied only by recourse to arms was the most important cause of all the wars that have been fought in Europe since the Congress of Vienna.

  The right of self-determination in regard to the question of membership in a state thus means: whenever the inhabitants of a particular territory, whether it be a single village, a whole district, or a series of adjacent districts, make it known, by a freely conducted plebiscite, that they no longer wish to remain united to the state to which they belong at the time, but wish either to form an independent state or to attach themselves to some other state, their wishes are to be respected and complied with. This is the only feasible and effective way of preventing revolutions and civil and international wars.

  To call this right of self-determination the “right of self-determination of nations” is to misunderstand it. It is not the right of self-determination of a delimited national unit, but the right of the inhabitants of every territory to decide on the state to which they wish to belong. This misunderstanding is even more grievous when the expression “self-determination of nations” is taken to mean that a national state has the right to detach and incorporate into itself against the will of the inhabitants parts of the nation that belong to the territory of another state. It is in terms of the right of self-determination of nations understood in this sense that the Italian Fascists seek to justify their demand that the canton Tessin and parts of other cantons be detached from Switzerland and united to Italy, even though the inhabitants of these cantons have no such desire. A similar position is taken by some of the advocates of Pan-Germanism in regard to German Switzerland and the Netherlands.

  However, the right of self-determination of which we speak is not the right of self-determination of nations, but rather the right of self-determination of the inhabitants of every territory large enough to form an independent administrative unit. If it were in any way possible to grant this right of self-determination to every individual person, it would have to be done. This is impracticable only because of compelling technical considerations, which make it necessary that a region be governed as a single administrative unit and that the right of self-determination be restricted to the will of the majority of the inhabitants of areas large enough to count as territorial units in the administration of the country.

  So far as the right of self-determination was given effect at all, and wherever it would have been permitted to take effect, in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, it led or would have led to the formation of states composed of a single nationality (i.e., people speaking the same language) and to the dissolution of states composed of several nationalities, but only as a consequence of the free choice of those entitled to participate in the plebiscite. The formation of states comprising all the members of a national group was the result of the exercise of the right of self-determination, not its purpose. If some members of a nation feel happier politically independent than as a part of a state composed of all the members of the same linguistic group, one may, of course, attempt to change their political ideas by persuasion in order to win them over to the principle of nationality, according to which all members of the same linguistic group should form a single, independent state. If, however, one seeks to determine their political fate against their will by appealing to an alleged higher right of the nation, one violates the right of self-determination no less effectively than by practicing any other form of oppression. A partition of Switzerland among Germany, France, and Italy, even if it were performed exactly according to linguistic boundaries, would be just as gross a violation of the right of self-determination as was the partition of Poland.

  3

  The Political Foundations of Peace

  One would think that after the experience of the World War the realization of the necessity of perpetual peace would have become increasingly common. However, it is still not appreciated that everlasting peace can be achieved only by putting the liberal program into effect generally and holding to it constantly and consistently and that the World War was nothing but the natural and necessary consequence of the antiliberal policies of the last decades.

  A senseless and thoughtless slogan makes capitalism responsible for the origin of the war. The connection between the latter and the policy of protectionism is clearly evident, and, as a result of what is certainly a grievous ignorance of the facts, the protective tariff is identified outright with capitalism. People forget that only a short time ago all the nationalistic publications were filled with violent diatribes against international capital (“finance capital” and the “international gold trust”) for being without a country, for opposing protective tariffs, for being averse to war and inclined toward peace. It is altogether absurd to hold the armaments industry responsible for the outbreak of the war. The armaments industry has arisen and grown to a considerable size because governments and peoples bent on war demanded weapons. It would be really preposterous to suppose that the nations turned to imperialistic policies as a favor to the ordnance manufacturers. The armaments industry, like every other, arose in order to satisfy a demand. If the nations had preferred other things to bullets and explosives, then the factory-owners would have produced the former instead of the materials of war.

  One can assume that the desire for peace is today universal. But the peoples of the world are not at all clear as to what conditions would have to be fulfilled in order to secure peace.

  If the peace is not to be disturbed, all incentive for aggression must be eliminated. A world order must be established in which nations and national groups are so satisfied with living conditions that they will not feel impelled to resort to the desperate expedient of war. The liberal does not expect to abolish war by preaching and moralizing. He seeks to create the social conditions that will eliminate the causes of war.

  The first requirement in this regard is private property. When private property must be respected even in time of war, when the victor is not entitled to appropriate to himself the property of private persons, and the appropriation of public property has no great significance because private ownership of the means of production prevails everywhere, an important motive for waging war has already been excluded. However, this is far from being enough to guarantee peace. So that the exercise of the right of self-determination may not be reduced to a farce, political institutions must be such as to render the transference of sovereignty over a territory from one government to another a matter of the least possible significance, involving no advantage or disadvantage for anyone. People do not have a correct conception of what this requires. It is therefore necessary to make it clear by a few examples.

  Examine a map of linguistic and national groups in Central or Eastern Europe and notice how often, for example, in northern and western Bohemia, boundaries between them are crossed by railway lines. Here, under conditions of interventionism and etatism, there is no way of making the borders of the state correspond to the linguistic frontier. It will not do to operate a Czech state railroad on the soil of the German state, and it will do even less to run a railroad line that is under a different management every few miles. It would be just as unthinkable after every few minutes or quarter of an hour on a railroad trip to have to face a tariff barrier with all its formalities. It is thus easy to understand why etatists and interventionists reach the conclusion that the “geographic” or “economic” unity of such areas must not be “ruptured” and that the territory in question must therefore be placed under the sovereignty of a single “ruler.” (Obviously, every nation seeks to prove that it alone is entitled and competent to play the role of ruler under such circumstances.) For liberalism there is no problem here at all. Private railroads, if quite free of government interference, can traverse the territory of many states without any trouble. If there are no tariff boundaries and no limitations on the movement of persons, animals, or goods, then it is of no consequence whether a train ride in a few hours crosses over the borders of the state more or less often.

  The linguistic map also reveals the existence of national enclaves. Without any land connection of the same nationality with the main body of their people, compatriots dwell together in closed-off settlements or linguistic islands. Under present political conditions, they cannot be incorporated into the mother country. The fact that the area encompassed by the state is today protected by tariff walls makes unbroken territorial continuity a political necessity. A small “foreign possession,” in being isolated from the immediately adjacent territory by tariffs and other measures of protectionism, would be exposed to economic strangulation. But once there is free trade and the state restricts itself to the preservation of private property, nothing is simpler than the solution of this problem. No linguistic island then has to acquiesce in the infringement of its rights as a nation merely because it is not connected to the main body of its own people by a territorial bridge inhabited by its fellow nationals.

  The notorious “problem of the corridor” also arises only in an imperialist-etatist-interventionist system. An inland country believes that it needs a “corridor” to the sea in order to keep its foreign trade free of the influence of the interventionist and etatist policies of the countries whose territories separate it from the sea. If free trade were the rule, it would be hard to see what advantage an inland country could expect from the possession of a “corridor.”

  Transfer from one “economic zone” (in the etatist sense) to another has serious economic consequences. One need only think, for instance, of the cotton industry of upper Alsatia, which has twice had to undergo this experience, or the Polish textile industry of Upper Silesia, etc. If a change in the political affiliation of a territory involves advantages or disadvantages for its inhabitants, then their freedom to vote for the state to which they really wish to belong is essentially limited. One can speak of genuine self-determination only if the decision of each individual stems from his own free will, and not from fear of loss or hope of profit. A capitalist world organized on liberal principles knows no separate “economic” zones. In such a world, the whole of the earth’s surface forms a single economic territory.

  The right of self-determination works to the advantage only of those who comprise the majority. In order to protect minorities as well, domestic measures are required, of which we shall first consider those involving the national policy in regard to education.

  In most countries today school attendance, or at least private instruction, is compulsory. Parents are obliged to send their children to school for a certain number of years or, in lieu of this public instruction at school, to have them given equivalent instruction at home. It is pointless to go into the reasons that were advanced for and against compulsory education when the matter was still a live issue. They do not have the slightest relevance to the problem as it exists today. There is only one argument that has any bearing at all on this question, viz., that continued adherence to a policy of compulsory education is utterly incompatible with efforts to establish lasting peace.

  The inhabitants of London, Paris, and Berlin will no doubt find such a statement completely incredible. What in the world does compulsory education have to do with war and peace? One must not, however, judge this question, as one does so many others, exclusively from the point of view of the peoples of Western Europe. In London, Paris, and Berlin, the problem of compulsory education is, to be sure, easily solved. In these cities no doubt can arise as to which language is to be used in giving instruction. The population that lives in these cities and sends its children to school may be considered, by and large, of homogeneous nationality. But even the non-English-speaking people who live in London find it in the obvious interest of their children that instruction is given in English and in no other language, and things are not different in Paris and Berlin.

  However, the problem of compulsory education has an entirely different significance in those extensive areas in which peoples speaking different languages live together side by side and intermingled in polyglot confusion. Here the question of which language is to be made the basis of instruction assumes crucial importance. A decision one way or the other can, over the years, determine the nationality of a whole area. The school can alienate children from the nationality to which their parents belong and can be used as a means of oppressing whole nationalities. Whoever controls the schools has the power to injure other nationalities and to benefit his own.

  It is no solution of this problem to suggest that each child be sent to the school in which the language of his parents is spoken. First of all, even apart from the problem posed by children of mixed linguistic background, it is not always easy to decide what the language of the parents is. In polyglot areas many persons are required by their profession to make use of all the languages spoken in the country. Besides, it is often not possible for an individual—again out of regard for his means of livelihood—to declare himself openly for one or another nationality. Under a system of interventionism, it could cost him the patronage of customers belonging to other nationalities or a job with an entrepreneur of a different nationality. Then again, there are many parents who would even prefer to send their children to the schools of another nationality than their own because they value the advantages of bilingualism or assimilation to the other nationality more highly than loyalty to their own people. If one leaves to the parents the choice of the school to which they wish to send their children, then one exposes them to every conceivable form of political coercion. In all areas of mixed nationality, the school is a political prize of the highest importance. It cannot be deprived of its political character as long as it remains a public and compulsory institution. There is, in fact, only one solution: the state, the government, the laws must not in any way concern themselves with schooling or education. Public funds must not be used for such purposes. The rearing and instruction of youth must be left entirely to parents and to private associations and institutions.

  It is better that a number of boys grow up without formal education than that they enjoy the benefit of schooling only to run the risk, once they have grown up, of being killed or maimed. A healthy illiterate is always better than a literate cripple.

  But even if we eliminate the spiritual coercion exercised by compulsory education, we should still be far from having done everything that is necessary in order to remove all the sources of friction between the nationalities living in polyglot territories. The school is one means of oppressing nationalities—perhaps the most dangerous, in our opinion—but it certainly is not the only means. Every interference on the part of the government in economic life can become a means of persecuting the members of nationalities speaking a language different from that of the ruling group. For this reason, in the interest of preserving peace, the activity of the government must be limited to the sphere in which it is, in the strictest sense of the word, indispensable.

  We cannot do without the apparatus of government in protecting and preserving the life, liberty, property, and health of the individual. But even the judicial and police activities performed in the service of these ends can become dangerous in areas where any basis at all can be found for discriminating between one group and another in the conduct of official business. Only in countries where there is no particular incentive for partiality will there generally be no reason to fear that a magistrate who is supposed to apply the established laws for the protection of life, liberty, property, and health will act in a biased manner. Where, however, differences of religion, nationality, or the like have divided the population into groups separated by a gulf so deep as to exclude every impulse of fairness or humanity and to leave room for nothing but hate, the situation is quite different. Then the judge who acts consciously, or still more often unconsciously, in a biased manner thinks he is fulfilling a higher duty when he makes use of the prerogatives and powers of his office in the service of his own group.

  To the extent that the apparatus of government has no other function than that of protecting life, liberty, property, and health, it is possible, at any rate, to draw up regulations that so strictly circumscribe the domain in which the administrative authorities and the courts are free to act as to leave little or no latitude for the exercise of their own discretion or arbitrary, subjective judgment. But once a share in the management of production is relinquished to the state, once the apparatus of government is called upon to determine the disposition of goods of higher order, it is impossible to hold administrative officials to a set of binding rules and regulations that would guarantee certain rights to every citizen. A penal law designed to punish murderers can, to some extent at least, draw a dividing line between what is and what is not to be considered murder and thus set certain limits to the area in which the magistrate is free to use his own judgment. Of course, every lawyer knows only too well that even the best law can be perverted, in concrete cases, in interpretation, application, and administration. But in the case of a government bureau charged with the management of transportation facilities, mines, or public lands, as much as one may restrain its freedom of action on other grounds (which have already been discussed in section 2), the most one can do to keep it impartial in regard to controversial questions of national policy is to give it directives couched in empty generalities. One must grant it a great deal of leeway in many respects because one cannot know beforehand under what circumstances it will have to act. Thus, the door is left wide open for arbitrariness, bias, and the abuse of official power.

  Even in areas inhabited by people of various nationalities, there is need for a unified administration. One cannot place at every street-corner both a German and a Czech policeman, each of whom would have to protect only members of his own nationality. And even if this could be done, the question would still arise as to who is to intervene when members of both nationalities are involved in a situation that calls for intervention. The disadvantages that result from the necessity of a unified administration in these territories are unavoidable. But if difficulties already exist even in carrying out such indispensable functions of government as the protection of life, liberty, property, and health, one should not raise them to really monstrous proportions by extending the range of state activity to other fields in which, by their very nature, still greater latitude must be granted to arbitrary judgment.

  Large areas of the world have been settled, not by the members of just one nationality, one race, or one religion, but by a motley mixture of many peoples. As a result of the migratory movements that necessarily follow shifts in the location of production, more new territories are continually being confronted with the problem of a mixed population. If one does not wish to aggravate artificially the friction that must arise from this living together of different groups, one must restrict the state to just those tasks that it alone can perform.

  4

  Nationalism

  As long as nations were ruled by monarchical despots, the idea of adjusting the boundaries of the state to coincide with the boundaries between nationalities could not find acceptance. If a potentate desired to incorporate a province into his realm, he cared little whether the inhabitants—the subjects—agreed to a change of rulers or not. The only consideration that was regarded as relevant was whether the available military forces were sufficient to conquer and hold the territory in question. One justified one’s conduct publicly by the more or less artificial construction of a legal claim. The nationality of the inhabitants of the area concerned was not taken into account at all.

  It was with the rise of liberalism that the question of how the boundaries of states are to be drawn first became a problem independent of military, historical, and legal considerations. Liberalism, which founds the state on the will of the majority of the people living in a certain territory, disallows all military considerations that were formerly decisive in defining the boundaries of the state. It rejects the right of conquest. It cannot understand how people can speak of “strategic frontiers” and finds entirely incomprehensible the demand that a piece of land be incorporated into one’s own state in order to possess a glacis. Liberalism does not acknowledge the historical right of a prince to inherit a province. A king can rule, in the liberal sense, only over persons and not over a certain piece of land, of which the inhabitants are viewed as mere appendages. The monarch by the grace of God carries the title of a territory, e.g., “King of France.” The kings installed by liberalism received their title, not from the name of the territory, but from that of the people over whom they ruled as constitutional monarchs. Thus, Louis Philippe bore the title “King of the French”; thus too, there is a “King of the Belgians,” as there was once a “King of the Hellenes.”

  It was liberalism that created the legal form by which the desire of the people to belong or not to belong to a certain state could gain expression, viz., the plebiscite. The state to which the inhabitants of a certain territory wish to belong is to be ascertained by means of an election. But even if all the necessary economic and political conditions (e.g., those involving the national policy in regard to education) were fulfilled in order to prevent the plebiscite from being reduced to a farce, even if it were possible simply to take a poll of the inhabitants of every community in order to determine to which state they wished to attach themselves, and to repeat such an election whenever circumstances changed, some unresolved problems would certainly still remain as possible sources of friction between the different nationalities. The situation of having to belong to a state to which one does not wish to belong is no less onerous if it is the result of an election than if one must endure it as the consequence of a military conquest. But it is doubly difficult for the individual who is cut off from the majority of his fellow citizens by a language barrier.

  To be a member of a national minority always means that one is a second-class citizen. Discussions of political questions must, of course, be carried on by means of the written and spoken word—in speeches, newspaper articles, and books. However, these means of political enlightenment and debate are not at the disposal of the linguistic minority to the same extent as they are for those whose mother tongue—the language used in everyday speech—is that in which the discussions take place. The political thought of a people, after all, is the reflection of the ideas contained in its political literature. Cast into the form of statute law, the outcome of its political discussions acquires direct significance for the citizen who speaks a foreign tongue, since he must obey the law; yet he has the feeling that he is excluded from effective participation in shaping the will of the legislative authority or at least that he is not allowed to cooperate in shaping it to the same extent as those whose native tongue is that of the ruling majority. And when he appears before a magistrate or any administrative official as a party to a suit or a petition, he stands before men whose political thought is foreign to him because it developed under different ideological influences.

  But even apart from all this, the very fact that the members of the minority are required, in appearing before tribunals and administrative authorities, to make use of a language foreign to them already handicaps them seriously in many respects. There is all the difference in the world, when one is on trial, between being able to speak in court directly to one’s judges and being compelled to avail oneself of the services of an interpreter. At every turn, the member of a national minority is made to feel that he lives among strangers and that he is, even if the letter of the law denies it, a second-class citizen.

  All these disadvantages are felt to be very oppressive even in a state with a liberal constitution in which the activity of the government is restricted to the protection of the life and property of the citizens. But they become quite intolerable in an interventionist or a socialist state. If the administrative authorities have the right to intervene everywhere according to their free discretion, if the latitude granted to judges and officials in reaching their decisions is so wide as to leave room also for the operation of political prejudices, then a member of a national minority finds himself delivered over to arbitrary judgment and oppression on the part of the public functionaries belonging to the ruling majority. What happens when school and church as well are not independent, but subject to regulation by the government, has already been discussed.

  It is here that one must seek for the roots of the aggressive nationalism that we see at work today. Efforts to trace back to natural rather than political causes the violent antagonisms existing between nations today are altogether mistaken. All the symptoms of supposedly innate antipathy between peoples that are customarily offered in evidence exist also within each individual nation. The Bavarian hates the Prussian; the Prussian, the Bavarian. No less fierce is the hatred existing among individual groups within both France and Poland. Nevertheless, Germans, Poles, and Frenchmen manage to live peacefully within their own countries. What gives the antipathy of the Pole for the German and of the German for the Pole a special political significance is the aspiration of each of the two peoples to seize for itself political control of the border areas in which Germans and Poles live side by side and to use it to oppress the members of the other nationality. What has kindled the hatred between nations to a consuming fire is the fact that people want to use the schools to estrange children from the language of their fathers and to make use of the courts and administrative offices, political and economic measures, and outright expropriation to persecute those speaking a foreign tongue. Because people are prepared to resort to violent means in order to create favorable conditions for the political future of their own nation, they have established a system of oppression in the polyglot areas that imperils the peace of the world.

  As long as the liberal program is not completely carried out in the territories of mixed nationality, hatred between members of different nations must become every fiercer and continue to ignite new wars and rebellions.

  5

  Imperialism

  The lust for conquest on the part of the absolute monarchs of previous centuries was aimed at an extension of their sphere of power and an increase in their wealth. No prince could be powerful enough, for it was by force alone that he could preserve his rule against internal and external enemies. No prince could be rich enough, for he needed money for the maintenance of his soldiers and the upkeep of his entourage.

  For a liberal state, the question whether or not the boundaries of its territory are to be further extended is of minor significance. Wealth cannot be won by the annexation of new provinces, since the “revenue” derived from a territory must be used to defray the necessary costs of its administration. For a liberal state, which entertains no aggressive plans, a strengthening of its military power is unimportant. Thus, liberal parliaments resisted all endeavors to increase their country’s war potential and opposed all bellicose and annexationist policies.

  But the liberal policy of peace which, in the early sixties of the last [nineteenth] century, as liberalism swept from one victory to another, was considered as already assured, at least in Europe, was based on the assumption that the people of every territory would have the right to determine for themselves the state to which they wished to belong. However, in order to secure this right, since the absolutist powers had no intention of peacefully relinquishing their prerogatives, a number of rather serious wars and revolutions were first necessary. The overthrow of foreign domination in Italy, the preservation of the Germans in Schleswig-Holstein in the face of threatening denationalization, the liberation of the Poles and of the South Slavs could be attempted only by force of arms. In only one of the many places where the existing political order found itself opposed by a demand for the right of self-determination could the issue be peacefully resolved: liberal England freed the Ionian islands. Everywhere else the same situation resulted in wars and revolutions. From the struggles to form a unified German state developed the disastrous modern Franco-German conflict; the Polish question remained unresolved because the Czar crushed one rebellion after another; the Balkan question was only partially settled; and the impossibility of solving the problems of the Hapsburg monarchy against the will of the ruling dynasty ultimately led to the incident that became the immediate cause of the World War.*

  Modern imperialism is distinguished from the expansionist tendencies of the absolute principalities by the fact that its moving spirits are not the members of the ruling dynasty, nor even of the nobility, the bureaucracy, or the officers’ corps of the army bent on personal enrichment and aggrandizement by plundering the resources of conquered territories, but the mass of the people, who look upon it as the most appropriate means for the preservation of national independence. In the complex network of antiliberal policies, which have so far expanded the functions of the state as to leave hardly any field of human activity free of government interference, it is futile to hope for even a moderately satisfactory solution of the political problems of the areas in which members of several nationalities live side by side. If the government of these territories is not conducted along completely liberal lines, there can be no question of even an approach to equality of rights in the treatment of the various national groups. There can then be only rulers and those ruled. The only choice is whether one will be hammer or anvil. Thus, the striving for as strong a national state as possible—one that can extend its control to all territories of mixed nationality—becomes an indispensable requirement of national self-preservation.

  But the problem of linguistically mixed areas is not limited to countries long settled. Capitalism opens up for civilization new lands offering more favorable conditions of production than great parts of the countries that have been long inhabited. Capital and labor flow to the most favorable location. The migratory movement thus initiated exceeds by far all the previous migrations of the peoples of the world. Only a few nations can have their emigrants move to lands in which political power is in the hands of their compatriots. Where, however, this condition does not prevail, the migration gives rise once again to all those conflicts that generally develop in polyglot territories. In particular cases, into which we shall not enter here, matters are somewhat different in the areas of overseas colonization than in the long-settled countries of Europe. Nevertheless, the conflicts that spring from the unsatisfactory situation of national minorities are, in the last analysis, identical. The desire of each country to preserve its own nationals from such a fate leads, on the one hand, to the struggle for the acquisition of colonies suitable for settlement by Europeans, and, on the other hand, to the adoption of the policy of using import duties to protect domestic production operating under less favorable conditions against the superior competition of foreign industry, in the hope of thereby making the emigration of workers unnecessary. Indeed, in order to expand the protected market as far as possible, efforts are made to acquire even territories that are not regarded as suitable for European settlement. We may date the beginning of modern imperialism from the late seventies of the last [nineteenth] century, when the industrial countries of Europe started to abandon the policy of free trade and to engage in the race for colonial “markets” in Africa and Asia.

  It was in reference to England that the term “imperialism” was first employed to characterize the modern policy of territorial expansion. England’s imperialism, to be sure, was primarily directed, not so much toward the incorporation of new territories as toward the creation of an area of uniform commercial policy out of the various possessions subject to the King of England. This was the result of the peculiar situation in which England found itself as the mother country of the most extensive colonial settlements in the world. Nevertheless, the end that the English imperialists sought to attain in the creation of a customs union embracing the dominions and the mother country was the same as that which the colonial acquisitions of Germany, Italy, France, Belgium, and other European countries were intended to serve, viz., the creation of protected export markets.

  The grand commercial objectives aimed at by the policy of imperialism were nowhere attained. The dream of an all-British customs union remained unrealized. The territories annexed by European countries in the last decades, as well as those in which they were able to obtain “concessions,” play such a subordinate role in the provision of raw materials and half-manufactured goods for the world market and in their corresponding consumption of industrial products that no essential change in conditions could be brought about by such arrangements. In order to attain the goals that imperialism aimed at, it was not enough for the nations of Europe to occupy areas inhabited by savages incapable of resistance. They had to reach out for territories that were in the possession of peoples ready and able to defend themselves. And it is here that the policy of imperialism suffered shipwreck, or will soon do so. In Abyssinia, in Mexico, in the Caucasus, in Persia, in China—everywhere we see the imperialist aggressors in retreat or at least already in great difficulties.

  6

  Colonial Policy

  The considerations and objectives that have guided the colonial policy of the European powers since the age of the great discoveries stand in the sharpest contrast to all the principles of liberalism. The basic idea of colonial policy was to take advantage of the military superiority of the white race over the members of other races. The Europeans set out, equipped with all the weapons and contrivances that their civilization placed at their disposal, to subjugate weaker peoples, to rob them of their property, and to enslave them. Attempts have been made to extenuate and gloss over the true motive of colonial policy with the excuse that its sole object was to make it possible for primitive peoples to share in the blessings of European civilization. Even assuming that this was the real objective of the governments that sent out conquerors to distant parts of the world, the liberal could still not see any adequate basis for regarding this kind of colonization as useful or beneficial. If, as we believe, European civilization really is superior to that of the primitive tribes of Africa or to the civilizations of Asia—estimable though the latter may be in their own way—it should be able to prove its superiority by inspiring these peoples to adopt it of their own accord. Could there be a more doleful proof of the sterility of European civilization than that it can be spread by no other means than fire and sword?

  No chapter of history is steeped further in blood than the history of colonialism. Blood was shed uselessly and senselessly. Flourishing lands were laid waste; whole peoples destroyed and exterminated. All this can in no way be extenuated or justified. The dominion of Europeans in Africa and in important parts of Asia is absolute. It stands in the sharpest contrast to all the principles of liberalism and democracy, and there can be no doubt that we must strive for its abolition. The only question is how the elimination of this intolerable condition can be accomplished in the least harmful way possible.

  The most simple and radical solution would be for the European governments to withdraw their officials, soldiers, and police from these areas and to leave the inhabitants to themselves. It is of no consequence whether this is done immediately or whether a freely held plebiscite of the natives is made to precede the surrender of the colonies. For there can scarcely be any doubt as to the outcome of a truly free election. European rule in the overseas colonies cannot count on the consent of its subjects.

  The immediate consequence of this radical solution would be, if not outright anarchy, then at least continual conflicts in the areas evacuated by the Europeans. It may be safely taken for granted that up to now the natives have learned only evil ways from the Europeans, and not good ones. This is not the fault of the natives, but rather of their European conquerors, who have taught them nothing but evil. They have brought arms and engines of destruction of all kinds to the colonies; they have sent out their worst and most brutal individuals as officials and officers; at the point of the sword they have set up a colonial rule that in its sanguinary cruelty rivals the despotic system of the Bolsheviks. Europeans must not be surprised if the bad example that they themselves have set in their colonies now bears evil fruit. In any case, they have no right to complain pharisaically about the low state of public morals among the natives. Nor would they be justified in maintaining that the natives are not yet mature enough for freedom and that they still need at least several years of further education under the lash of foreign rulers before they are capable of being left on their own. For this “education” itself is at least partly responsible for the terrible conditions that exist today in the colonies, even though its consequences will not make themselves fully apparent until after the eventual withdrawal of European troops and officials.

  But perhaps it will be contended that it is the duty of the Europeans, as members of a superior race, to avoid the anarchy that would presumably break out after the evacuation of the colonies and therefore to maintain their dominion in the interests and for the benefit of the natives themselves. In order to strengthen this argument, a lurid picture may be painted of the conditions that existed in Central Africa and in many parts of Asia before the establishment of European rule. One may recall the hunts for slaves conducted by the Arabs in Central Africa and the wanton outrages that many Indian despots allowed themselves. Of course, there is much that is hypocritical in this mode of argumentation, and one should not forget, for example, that the slave trade in Africa could prosper only because the descendants of Europeans in the American colonies entered the slave market as buyers. But it is not at all necessary for us to go into the pros and cons of this line of reasoning. If all that can be adduced in favor of the maintenance of European rule in the colonies is the supposed interest of the natives, then one must say that it would be better if this rule were brought to an end completely. No one has a right to thrust himself into the affairs of others in order to further their interest, and no one ought, when he has his own interests in view, to pretend that he is acting selflessly only in the interest of others.

  There is, however, yet another argument in favor of the continuance of European authority and influence in the colonial areas. If the Europeans had never brought the tropical colonies under their dominion, if they had not made their economic system dependent to a considerable extent on the importation of tropical raw materials and overseas agricultural products that they paid for with industrial goods, it would still be possible to discuss quite calmly the question whether or not it is advisable to draw these areas into the network of the world market. But since colonization has already forced all these territories into the framework of the world-wide economic community, the situation is quite different. The economy of Europe today is based, to a great extent, on the inclusion of Africa and large parts of Asia in the world economy as suppliers of raw materials of all kinds. These raw materials are not taken from the natives of these areas by force. They are not carried away as tribute, but handed over in voluntary exchange for the industrial products of Europe. Thus, relations are not founded on any one-sided advantage; they are, on the contrary, mutually beneficial, and the inhabitants of the colonies derive from them just as many advantages as the inhabitants of England or Switzerland. Any stoppage in these trade relations would involve serious economic losses for Europe as well as for the colonies and would sharply depress the standard of living of great masses of people. If the slow extension of economic relations over the whole earth and the gradual development of the world economy was one of the most important sources of the increasing wealth of the last hundred and fifty years, a reversal of this trend would represent for the world an economic catastrophe of hitherto unprecedented proportions. In its extent and consequences, this catastrophe would exceed by far the crisis connected with the economic consequences of the World War. Ought the well-being of Europe and, at the same time, that of the colonies as well to be allowed to decline further in order to give the natives a chance to determine their own political destinies, when this would lead, in any event, not to their freedom, but merely to a change of masters?

  This is the consideration that must be decisive in judging questions of colonial policy. European officials, troops, and police must remain in these areas, as far as their presence is necessary in order to maintain the legal and political conditions required to insure the participation of the colonial territories in international trade. It must be possible to carry on commercial, industrial, and agricultural operations in the colonies, to exploit mines, and to bring the products of the country, by rail and river, to the coast and thence to Europe and America. That all this should continue to be possible is in the interest of everyone, not only of the inhabitants of Europe, America, and Australia, but also of the natives of Asia and Africa themselves. Wherever the colonial powers do not go beyond this in the treatment of their colonies, one can raise no objection to their activities even from the liberal standpoint.

  But everyone knows how seriously all the colonial powers have sinned against this principle. It is hardly necessary to recall the horrors that trustworthy English correspondents have reported as having been perpetrated in the Belgian Congo. Let us assume that these atrocities were not intended by the Belgian government and are only to be attributed to the excesses and evil characters of the functionaries sent out to the Congo. Yet the very fact that almost all the colonial powers have established in their overseas possessions a commercial system that grants a favored position to the goods of the mother country shows that present-day colonial policy is dominated by considerations altogether different from those that ought to prevail in this field.

  In order to bring the interests of Europe and of the white race into harmony with those of the colored races in the colonies in regard to all questions of economic policy, the League of Nations must be given supreme authority in the administration of all those overseas territories in which there is no system of parliamentary government. The League would have to see to it that self-government is granted as soon as possible to the lands that today do not yet possess it and that the authority of the mother country is limited to the protection of property, of the civil rights of foreigners, and of trade relations. The natives as well as the nationals of other powers must be granted the right to bring complaints directly to the League if any measures of the mother country exceed what is required to guarantee the security of trade and commerce and of economic activity in general in these territories, and the League of Nations must be granted the right to make an effective settlement of such complaints.

  The application of these principles would mean, in effect, that all the overseas territories of the European countries would at first be turned into mandates of the League. But even this would have to be viewed only as a transitional stage. The final goal must continue to be the complete liberation of the colonies from the despotic rule under which they live today.

  With this solution to a difficult problem—which is becoming ever more difficult with the passage of time—not only the nations of Europe and America that do not possess colonies, but also the colonial powers and the natives would have to be content. The colonial powers have to realize that in the long run they will not be able to maintain their dominion over the colonies. As capitalism has penetrated into these territories, the natives have become self-reliant; there is no longer any cultural disparity between their upper classes and the officers and officials who are in charge of the administration on behalf of the mother country. Militarily and politically, the distribution of power today is quite different from what it was even a generation ago. The attempt of the European powers, the United States, and Japan to treat China as a colonial territory has proved a failure. In Egypt, the English are even now in retreat; in India, they are already in a defensive position. That the Netherlands would be unable to hold the East Indies against a really serious attack is well known. The same is true of the French colonies in Africa and Asia. The Americans are not happy with the Philippines and would be prepared to give them up if a suitable occasion presented itself. The transfer of the colonies to the care of the League of Nations would guarantee to the colonial powers the undiminished possession of their capital investments and protect them against having to make sacrifices to quell native uprisings. The natives too could only be grateful for a proposal that would assure them independence by way of a peaceful evolution and with it the guarantee that no neighbor bent on conquest would threaten their political independence in the future.

  7

  Free Trade

  The theoretical demonstration of the consequences of the protective tariff and of free trade is the keystone of classical economics. It is so clear, so obvious, so indisputable, that its opponents were unable to advance any arguments against it that could not be immediately refuted as completely mistaken and absurd.

  Nevertheless, nowadays we find protective tariffs—indeed, often even outright prohibitions on imports—all over the world. Even in England, the mother country of free trade, protectionism is in the ascendancy today. The principle of national autarky wins new supporters with every day that passes. Even countries with only a few million inhabitants, like Hungary and Czechoslovakia, are attempting, by means of a high-tariff policy and prohibitions on imports, to make themselves independent of the rest of the world. The basic idea of the foreign trade policy of the United States is to impose on all goods produced abroad at lower costs import duties to the full amount of this difference. What renders the whole situation grotesque is the fact that all countries want to decrease their imports, but at the same time to increase their exports. The effect of these policies is to interfere with the international division of labor and thereby generally to lower the productivity of labor. The only reason this result has not become more noticeable is that the advances of the capitalist system have always been so far sufficient to outweigh it. However, there can be no doubt that everyone today would be richer if the protective tariff did not artificially drive production from more favorable to less favorable localities.

  Under a system of completely free trade, capital and labor would be employed wherever conditions are most favorable for production. Other locations would be used as long as it was still possible to produce anywhere under more favorable conditions. To the extent to which, as a result of the development of the means of transportation, improvements in technology, and more thorough exploration of countries newly opened to commerce, it is discovered that there are sites more favorable for production than those currently being used, production shifts to these localities. Capital and labor tend to move from areas where conditions are less favorable for production to those in which they are more favorable.

  But the migration of capital and labor presupposes not only complete freedom of trade, but also the complete absence of obstacles to their movement from one country to another. This was far from being the case at the time that the classical free-trade doctrine was first developed. A whole series of obstacles stood in the way of the free movement of both capital and labor. Because of ignorance of conditions, a general insecurity in regard to law and order, and a number of similar reasons, capitalists felt reluctant about investing in foreign countries. As for the workers, they found it impossible to leave their native land, not only because of their ignorance of foreign languages, but because of legal, religious, and other difficulties. At the beginning of the nineteenth century, it was, to be sure, generally true that capital and labor could move freely within each country, but obstacles stood in the way of their movement from one country to another. The sole justification for distinguishing in economic theory between domestic and foreign trade is to be found in the fact that in the case of the former there is free mobility of capital and labor, whereas this is not true in regard to the commerce between nations. Thus, the problem that the classical theory had to solve may be stated as follows: What are the effects of free trade in consumers’ goods between one country and another if the mobility of capital and labor from one to the other is restricted?

  To this question Ricardo’s doctrine provided the answer. The branches of production distribute themselves among the individual countries in such a way that each country devotes its resources to those industries in which it possesses the greatest superiority over other countries. The mercantilists had feared that a country with unfavorable conditions for production would import more than it would export, so that it would ultimately find itself without any money; and they demanded that protective tariffs and prohibitions on imports be decreed in time to prevent such a deplorable situation from arising. The classical doctrine shows that these mercantilist fears were groundless. For even a country in which the conditions of production in every branch of industry are less favorable than they are in other countries need not fear that it will export less than it will import. The classical doctrine demonstrated, in a brilliant and incontrovertible way that has never been contested by anybody, that even countries with relatively favorable conditions of production must find it advantageous to import from countries with comparatively unfavorable conditions of production those commodities that they would, to be sure, be better fitted to produce, but not so much better fitted as they are to produce other commodities in whose production they then specialize.

  Thus, what the classical theory of free trade says to the statesman is: There are countries with relatively favorable and others with relatively unfavorable natural conditions of production. In the absence of interference on the part of governments, the international division of labor will, of itself, result in every country’s finding its place in the world economy, no matter how its conditions of production compare with those of other countries. Of course, the countries with comparatively favorable conditions of production will be richer than the others, but this is a fact that cannot be altered by political measures in any case. It is simply the consequence of a difference in the natural factors of production.

  This was the situation that confronted the older liberalism, and to this situation it responded with the classical doctrine of free trade. But since the days of Ricardo world conditions have changed considerably, and the problem that the free-trade doctrine had to face in the last sixty years before the outbreak of the World War was completely different from the one with which it had to deal at the close of the eighteenth and the beginning of the nineteenth century. For the nineteenth century partially eliminated the obstacles that, at its beginning, had stood in the way of the free mobility of capital and labor. In the second half of the nineteenth century it was far easier for a capitalist to invest his capital abroad than it had been in Ricardo’s day. Law and order were established on a considerably firmer foundation; knowledge of foreign countries, manners, and customs had spread; and the joint-stock company offered the possibility of dividing the risk of foreign enterprises among many persons and thereby reducing it. It would, of course, be an exaggeration to say that at the beginning of the twentieth century capital was as mobile in its passage from one country to another as it was within the territory of the country itself. Certain differences still existed, to be sure; yet the assumption that capital had to remain within the boundaries of each country was no longer valid. Nor was this any longer true of labor either. In the second half of the nineteenth century millions left Europe to find better opportunities for employment overseas.

  In so far as the conditions presupposed by the classical doctrine of free trade, viz., the immobility of capital and labor, no longer existed, the distinction between the effects of free trade in domestic commerce and in foreign commerce likewise necessarily lost its validity. If capital and labor can move as freely between one country and another as they do within the confines of each, then there is no further justification for making a distinction between the effects of free trade in domestic commerce and in foreign commerce. For then what was said in regard to the former holds for the latter as well: the result of free trade is that only those locations are used for production in which the conditions for it are comparatively favorable, while those in which the conditions of production are comparatively unfavorable remain unused. Capital and labor flow from the countries with less favorable conditions of production toward those where the conditions of production are more favorable, or, more precisely, from the long-settled, thickly populated European countries toward America and Australia, as areas that offer more favorable conditions of production.

  For the European nations that had at their disposal, besides the old areas of settlement in Europe, overseas territories suitable for colonization by Europeans, this meant nothing more than that they now settled a part of their population overseas. In England’s case, for example, some of her sons now lived in Canada, Australia, or South Africa. The emigrants who had left England could retain their English citizenship and nationality in their new homes. But for Germany the case was quite different. The German who emigrated landed in the territory of a foreign country and found himself among the members of a foreign nation. He became the citizen of a foreign state, and it was to be expected that after one, two, or at the most three generations, his attachment to the German people would be dissolved and the process of his assimilation as a member of a foreign nation would be completed. Germany was faced with the problem of whether it was to look on with indifference while a part of her capital and her people emigrated overseas.

  One must not fall into the error of assuming that the problems of commercial policy that England and Germany had to face in the second half of the nineteenth century were the same. For England, it was a question of whether or not she ought to permit a number of her sons to emigrate to the dominions, and there was no reason to hinder their emigration in any way. For Germany, however, the problem was whether it ought to stand by quietly while her nationals emigrated to the British colonies, to South America, and to other countries, where it was to be expected that these emigrants, in the course of time, would give up their citizenship and nationality just as hundreds of thousands, indeed, millions, who had previously emigrated, had already done. Because it did not want this to happen, the German Empire, which during the sixties and seventies had been approaching ever more closely to a policy of free trade, now shifted, toward the end of the seventies, to one of protectionism by the imposition of import duties designed to shield German agriculture and industry against foreign competition. Under the protection of these tariffs German agriculture was able to some extent to bear East-European and overseas competition from farms operating on better land, and German industry could form cartels that kept the domestic price above the price on the world market, enabling it to use the profits thereby realized to undersell its competitors abroad.

  But the ultimate goal that was aimed at in the return to protectionism could not be achieved. The higher living and production costs rose in Germany as a direct consequence of these protective tariffs, the more difficult its trade position necessarily became. To be sure, it was possible for Germany to make a mighty industrial upswing in the first three decades of the era of the new commercial policy. But this upswing would have occurred even in the absence of a protective tariff, for it was primarily the result of the introduction of new methods in the German iron and chemical industries, which enabled them to make better use of the country’s abundant natural resources.

  Antiliberal policy, by abolishing the free mobility of labor in international trade and considerably restricting even the mobility of capital, has, to a certain extent, eliminated the difference that existed in the conditions of international trade between the beginning and the end of the nineteenth century and has reverted to those prevailing at the time the doctrine of free trade was first formulated. Once again capital and, above all, labor are hindered in their movements. Under the conditions existing today, unhampered trade in consumers’ goods could not give rise to any migratory movements. Once again, it would result in a state of affairs in which the individual peoples of the world would be engaged in those types and branches of production for which the relatively best conditions exist in their own countries.

  But whatever may be the prerequisites for the development of international trade, protective tariffs can accomplish only one thing: to prevent production from being carried on where the natural and social conditions are most favorable for it and to cause it to be carried on instead where conditions are worse. The outcome of protectionism is, therefore, always a reduction in the productivity of human labor. The freetrader is far from denying that the evil that the nations of the world wish to combat by means of a policy of protectionism really is an evil. What he maintains is only that the means recommended by the imperialists and protectionists cannot eliminate that evil. He therefore proposes a different way. In order to create the indispensable conditions for a lasting peace, one of the features of the present international situation that the liberal wishes to change is the fact that emigrants from nations like Germany and Italy, which have been treated like stepchildren in the division of the world, must live in areas in which, because of the adoption of antiliberal policies, they are condemned to lose their nationality.

  8

  Freedom of Movement

  Liberalism has sometimes been reproached on the ground that its program is predominantly negative. This follows necessarily, it is asserted, from the very nature of freedom, which can be conceived only as freedom from something, for the demand for freedom consists essentially in the rejection of some sort of claim. On the other hand, it is thought, the program of the authoritarian parties is positive. Since a very definite value judgment is generally connoted by the terms “negative” and “positive,” this way of speaking already involves a surreptitious attempt to discredit the political program of liberalism.

  There is no need to repeat here once again that the liberal program—a society based on private ownership of the means of production—is no less positive than any other conceivable political program. What is negative in the liberal program is the denial, the rejection, and the combatting of everything that stands in opposition to this positive program. In this defensive posture, the program of liberalism—and, for that matter, that of every movement—is dependent on the position that its opponents assume towards it. Where the opposition is strongest, the assault of liberalism must also be strongest; where it is relatively weak or even completely lacking, a few brief words, under the circumstances, are sufficient. And since the opposition that liberalism has had to confront has changed during the course of history, the defensive aspect of the liberal program has also undergone many changes.

  This becomes most clearly evident in the stand that it takes in regard to the question of freedom of movement. The liberal demands that every person have the right to live wherever he wants. This is not a “negative” demand. It belongs to the very essence of a society based on private ownership of the means of production that every man may work and dispose of his earnings where he thinks best. This principle takes on a negative character only if it encounters forces aiming at a restriction of freedom of movement. In this negative aspect, the right to freedom of movement has, in the course of time, undergone a complete change. When liberalism arose in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, it had to struggle for freedom of emigration. Today, the struggle is over freedom of immigration. At that time, it had to oppose laws which hindered the inhabitants of a country from moving to the city and which held out the prospect of severe punishment for anyone who wanted to leave his native land in order to better himself in a foreign land. Immigration, however, was at that time generally free and unhampered.

  Today, as is well known, things are quite different. The trend began some decades ago with laws against the immigration of Chinese coolies. Today in every country in the world that could appear inviting to immigration, there are more or less stringent laws either prohibiting it entirely or at least restricting it severely.

  This policy must be considered from two points of view: first, as a policy of the trade unions, and then as a policy of national protectionism.

  Aside from such coercive measures as the closed shop, compulsory strikes, and violent interference with those willing to work, the only way the trade unions can have any influence on the labor market is by restricting the supply of labor. But since it is not within the power of the trade unions to reduce the number of workers living in the world, the only other possibility remaining open to them is to block access to employment, and thus diminish the number of workers, in one branch of industry or in one country at the expense of the workers employed in other industries or living in other countries. For reasons of practical politics, it is possible only to a limited extent for those engaged in a particular branch of industry to bar from it the rest of the workers in the country. On the other hand, no special political difficulty is involved in imposing such restrictions on the entrance of foreign labor.

  The natural conditions of production and, concomitantly, the productivity of labor are more favorable, and, as a consequence, wage rates are higher, in the United States than in vast areas of Europe. In the absence of immigration barriers, European workers would emigrate to the United States in great numbers to look for jobs. The American immigration laws make this exceptionally difficult. Thus, the wages of labor in the United States are kept above the height that they would reach if there were full freedom of migration, whereas in Europe they are depressed below this height. On the one hand, the American worker gains; on the other hand, the European worker loses.

  However, it would be a mistake to consider the consequences of immigration barriers exclusively from the point of view of their immediate effect on wages. They go further. As a result of the relative oversupply of labor in areas with comparatively unfavorable conditions of production, and the relative shortage of labor in areas in which the conditions of production are comparatively favorable, production is further expanded in the former and more restricted in the latter than would be the case if there were full freedom of migration. Thus, the effects of restricting this freedom are just the same as those of a protective tariff. In one part of the world comparatively favorable opportunities for production are not utilized, while in another part of the world less favorable opportunities for production are being exploited. Looked at from the standpoint of humanity, the result is a lowering of the productivity of human labor, a reduction in the supply of goods at the disposal of mankind.

  Attempts to justify on economic grounds the policy of restricting immigration are therefore doomed from the outset. There cannot be the slightest doubt that migration barriers diminish the productivity of human labor. When the trade unions of the United States or Australia hinder immigration, they are fighting not only against the interests of the workers of the rest of the countries of the world, but also against the interests of everyone else in order to secure a special privilege for themselves. For all that, it still remains quite uncertain whether the increase in the general productivity of human labor which could be brought about by the establishment of complete freedom of migration would not be so great as to compensate entirely the members of the American and Australian trade unions for the losses that they could suffer from the immigration of foreign workers.

  The workers of the United States and Australia could not succeed in having restrictions imposed on immigration if they did not have still another argument to fall back upon in support of their policy. After all, even today the power of certain liberal principles and ideas is so great that one cannot combat them if one does not place allegedly higher and more important considerations above the interest in the attainment of maximum productivity. We have already seen how “national interests” are cited in justification of protective tariffs. The same considerations are also invoked in favor of restrictions on immigration.

  In the absence of any migration barriers whatsoever, vast hordes of immigrants from the comparatively overpopulated areas of Europe would, it is maintained, inundate Australia and America. They would come in such great numbers that it would no longer be possible to count on their assimilation. If in the past immigrants to America soon adopted the English language and American ways and customs, this was in part due to the fact that they did not come over all at once in such great numbers. The small groups of immigrants who distributed themselves over a wide land quickly integrated themselves into the great body of the American people. The individual immigrant was already half assimilated when the next immigrants landed on American soil. One of the most important reasons for this rapid national assimilation was the fact that the immigrants from foreign countries did not come in too great numbers. This, it is believed, would now change, and there is real danger that the ascendancy—or more correctly, the exclusive dominion—of the Anglo-Saxons in the United States would be destroyed. This is especially to be feared in the case of heavy immigration on the part of the Mongolian peoples of Asia.

  These fears may perhaps be exaggerated in regard to the United States. As regards Australia, they certainly are not. Australia has approximately the same number of inhabitants as Austria; its area, however, is a hundred times greater than Austria’s, and its natural resources are certainly incomparably richer. If Australia were thrown open to immigration, it can be assumed with great probability that its population would in a few years consist mostly of Japanese, Chinese, and Malayans.

  The aversion that most people feel today towards the members of foreign nationalities and especially towards those of other races is evidently too great to admit of any peaceful settlement of such antagonisms. It is scarcely to be expected that the Australians will voluntarily permit the immigration of Europeans not of English nationality, and it is completely out of the question that they should permit Asiatics too to seek work and a permanent home in their continent. The Australians of English descent insist that the fact that it was the English who first opened up this land for settlement has given the English people a special right to the exclusive possession of the entire continent for all time to come. The members of the world’s other nationalities, however, do not in the least desire to contest the right of the Australians to occupy any of the land that they already are making use of in Australia. They think only that it is unfair that the Australians do not permit the utilization of more favorable conditions of production that today lie fallow and force them to carry on production under the less favorable conditions prevailing in their own countries.

  This issue is of the most momentous significance for the future of the world. Indeed, the fate of civilization depends on its satisfactory resolution. On the one side stand scores, indeed, hundreds of millions of Europeans and Asiatics who are compelled to work under less favorable conditions of production than they could find in the territories from which they are barred. They demand that the gates of the forbidden paradise be opened to them so that they may increase the productivity of their labor and thereby receive for themselves a higher standard of living. On the other side stand those already fortunate enough to call their own the land with the more favorable conditions of production. They desire—as far as they are workers, and not owners of the means of production—not to give up the higher wages that this position guarantees them. The entire nation, however, is unanimous in fearing inundation by foreigners. The present inhabitants of these favored lands fear that some day they could be reduced to a minority in their own country and that they would then have to suffer all the horrors of national persecution to which, for instance, the Germans are today exposed in Czechoslovakia, Italy, and Poland.

  It cannot be denied that these fears are justified. Because of the enormous power that today stands at the command of the state, a national minority must expect the worst from a majority of a different nationality. As long as the state is granted the vast powers which it has today and which public opinion considers to be its right, the thought of having to live in a state whose government is in the hands of members of a foreign nationality is positively terrifying. It is frightful to live in a state in which at every turn one is exposed to persecution—masquerading under the guise of justice—by a ruling majority. It is dreadful to be handicapped even as a child in school on account of one’s nationality and to be in the wrong before every judicial and administrative authority because one belongs to a national minority.

  If one considers the conflict from this point of view, it seems as if it allows of no other solution than war. In that case, it is to be expected that the nation inferior in numbers will be defeated, that, for example, the nations of Asia, counting hundreds of millions, will succeed in driving the progeny of the white race from Australia. But we do not wish to indulge in such conjectures. For it is certain that such wars—and we must assume that a world problem of such great dimensions cannot be solved once and for all in just one war—would lead to the most frightful catastrophe for civilization.

  It is clear that no solution of the problem of immigration is possible if one adheres to the ideal of the interventionist state, which meddles in every field of human activity, or to that of the socialist state. Only the adoption of the liberal program could make the problem of immigration, which today seems insoluble, completely disappear. In an Australia governed according to liberal principles, what difficulties could arise from the fact that in some parts of the continent Japanese and in other parts Englishmen were in the majority?

  9

  The United States of Europe

  The United States of America is the mightiest and richest nation in the world. Nowhere else was capitalism able to develop more freely and with less interference from the government. The inhabitants of the United States of America are therefore far richer than those of any other country on earth. For more than sixty years their country was not involved in any war. If they had not waged a war of extermination against the original inhabitants of the land, if they had not needlessly waged war against Spain in 1898, and if they had not participated in the World War, only a few graybeards among them would today be able to give a first-hand account of what war means. It is doubtful whether the Americans themselves appreciate how much they owe to the fact that more of the policies of liberalism and capitalism have been realized in their country than in any other. Even foreigners do not know what it is that has made the much-envied republic rich and powerful. But—apart from those who, filled with resentment, affect a profound contempt for the “materialism” of American culture—all are agreed in desiring nothing more eagerly than that their country should be as rich and as powerful as the United States.

  In various quarters it is being proposed, as the simplest way to achieve this end, that a “United States of Europe” be formed. By themselves the individual countries of the European continent are too thinly populated and do not have enough land at their disposal to be able to hold their own in the international struggle for supremacy as against the ever increasing power of the United States, against Russia, against the British Empire, against China, and against other groupings of similar size that may be formed in the future, perhaps in South America. They must therefore consolidate into a military and political union, into a defensive and offensive alliance, which alone would be capable of assuring to Europe in the centuries to come the importance in world politics that it has enjoyed in the past. What gives special support to the idea of a Pan-European union is the realization, which is every day impressing itself more strongly on everyone, that nothing can be more absurd than the protective tariff policies presently being pursued by the nations of Europe. Only the further development of the international division of labor can increase the well-being and produce the abundance of goods needed to raise the standard of living, and thereby also the cultural level, of the masses. The economic policies of all countries, but especially those of the smaller European nations, are aimed precisely at destroying the international division of labor. If the conditions under which American industry operates, with a potential market of more than a hundred twenty million rich consumers, unhampered by tariffs or similar obstacles, are compared with those against which German, Czechoslovakian, or Hungarian industry must contend, the utter absurdity of endeavors to create little autarkic economic territories becomes immediately obvious.

  The evils that those who champion the idea of a United States of Europe are trying to combat undoubtedly exist, and the sooner they are eliminated, the better. But the formation of a United States of Europe would not be an appropriate means to achieve this end.

  Any reform in international relations must aim at abolishing a situation in which each country seeks in every way possible to enlarge its territory at the expense of other countries. The problem of international boundaries, which has assumed such overwhelming importance today, must lose all its significance. The nations must come to realize that the most important problem of foreign policy is the establishment of lasting peace, and they must understand that this can be assured throughout the world only if the field of activity permitted to the state is limited to the narrowest range. Only then will the size and extent of the territory subject to the sovereignty of the state no longer assume such overwhelming importance for the life of the individual as to make it seem natural, now as in the past, for rivers of blood to be shed in disputes over boundaries. The narrow-mindedness which sees nothing beyond one’s own state and one’s own nation and which has no conception of the importance of international cooperation must be replaced by a cosmopolitan outlook. This, however, is possible only if the society of nations, the international superstate, is so constituted that no people and no individual is oppressed on account of nationality or national peculiarities.

  Nationalist policies, which always begin by aiming at the ruination of one’s neighbor, must, in the final analysis, lead to the ruination of all. In order to overcome such provincialism and to replace it by a policy genuinely cosmopolitan in its orientation, it is first necessary for the nations of the world to realize that their interests do not stand in mutual opposition and that every nation best serves its own cause when it is intent on promoting the development of all nations and scrupulously abstains from every attempt to use violence against other nations or parts of other nations. Thus, what is needed is not the replacement of national chauvinism by a chauvinism that would have some larger, supranational entity for its object, but rather the recognition that every sort of chauvinism is mistaken. The old, militaristic methods of international politics must now give way to new, peaceful methods aiming at cooperative effort, and not at mutual warfare.

  The champions of Pan-Europe and of the United States of Europe, however, have other ends in view. They do not plan on establishing a new kind of state different in its policies from the imperialistic and militaristic states that have existed up to now, but on a reconstitution of the old imperialistic and militaristic idea of the state. Pan-Europe is to be greater than the individual states that will comprise it; it is to be more powerful than they are and therefore more efficient militarily and better suited to oppose such great powers as England, the United States of America, and Russia. A European chauvinism is to take the place of the French, the German, or the Hungarian variety; a united front formed of all the European nations is to be directed against “foreigners”: Britons, Americans, Russians, Chinese, and Japanese.

  Now one can base a chauvinistic political consciousness and a chauvinistic military policy on a national foundation, but not on a geographic one. Community of language binds members of the same nationality close together, while linguistic diversity gives rise to a gulf between nations. If it were not for this fact—aside from all ideologies—chauvinistic thinking would never have been able to develop. The geographer, with map in hand, may, no doubt, very well view the European continent (with the exception of Russia) as a unity if he is so minded; but this does not create among the inhabitants of that region any feeling of community or solidarity on which the statesman could base his plans. A Rhinelander can be made to understand that he is defending his own cause if he goes into battle for the Germans of East Prussia. It may even be possible to bring him to see that the cause of all mankind is also his own cause. But he will never be able to understand that, while he has to stand side by side with the Portuguese because they too are Europeans, the cause of England is that of an enemy, or, at best, of a neutral alien. It is not possible to efface from men’s minds (nor, incidentally, does liberalism have any desire to do so) the imprint left by a long historical development that has brought it about that the heart of a German beats faster at every mention of Germany, of the German people, or of all that is typically German. This feeling of nationality existed before any political attempt was made to base upon it the idea of a German state, a German policy, and German chauvinism. All the well-intentioned schemes for replacing national states by a federation of states, whether Central European, Pan-European, Pan-American, or constructed on some similar artificial basis, suffer from the same fundamental defect. They fail to take account of the fact that the words “Europe” or “Pan-Europe” and “European” or “Pan-European” do not have this kind of emotional connotation and are thus incapable of evoking sentiments of the kind called forth by such words as “Germany” and “German.”

  The matter may be seen in its clearest light if we direct our attention to the problem, which plays a decisive role in all these projects, of agreeing on a commercial policy for such a federation of states. As conditions are today, a Bavarian can be induced to regard the protection of German labor—let us say, in Saxony—as a sufficient justification for a tariff that makes it more expensive for him, the Bavarian, to purchase some article. We may hope that some day he will succeed in being converted to the realization that all political measures designed to achieve autarky, and hence all protective tariffs, are senseless and self-defeating and consequently ought to be abolished. But never will one succeed in inducing a Pole or a Hungarian to consider it justified that he should pay more than the world market price for any commodity merely in order to enable the French, the Germans, or the Italians to carry on its production in their countries. One can certainly win support for a policy of protectionism by combining an appeal to feelings of national solidarity with the nationalistic doctrine that the interests of different nations are mutually incompatible; but there is nothing similar that could serve a federation of states as an ideological basis for a system of protectionism. It is manifestly absurd to break up the ever increasing unity of world economy into a number of small national territories, each as autarkic as possible. But one cannot counteract the policy of economic isolation on a national scale by replacing it with the same policy on the part of a larger political entity comprising a number of different nationalities. The only way to counteract tendencies toward protectionism and autarky is to recognize their harmfulness and to appreciate the harmony of the interests of all nations.

  Once it has been demonstrated that the disintegration of the world economy into a number of small autarkic areas has detrimental consequences for all nations, the conclusion in favor of free trade necessarily follows. In order to prove that a Pan-European zone of autarky should be set up under the shelter of a protective tariff, it would first be necessary to demonstrate that the interests of the Portuguese and the Rumanians, although in harmony with each other, both collide with those of Brazil and Russia. One would have to adduce proof that it is good for the Hungarians to give up their domestic textile industry in favor of the German, the French, and the Belgian, but that the interests of the Hungarians would be injured by the importation of English or American textiles.

  The movement in favor of the formation of a federation of European states has arisen from a correct recognition of the untenability of all forms of chauvinistic nationalism. But what the supporters of this movement wish to set in its place is impracticable because it lacks a vital basis in the consciousness of the people. And even if the goal of the Pan-European movement could be achieved, the world would not be in the least the better for it. The struggle of a united European continent against the great world powers outside its territory would be no less ruinous than is the present struggle of the countries of Europe among themselves.

  10

  The League of Nations

  Just as, in the eyes of the liberal, the state is not the highest ideal, so it is also not the best apparatus of compulsion. The metaphysical theory of the state declares—approaching, in this respect, the vanity and presumption of the absolute monarchs—that each individual state is sovereign, i.e., that it represents the last and highest court of appeals. But, for the liberal, the world does not end at the borders of the state. In his eyes, whatever significance national boundaries have is only incidental and subordinate. His political thinking encompasses the whole of mankind. The starting-point of his entire political philosophy is the conviction that the division of labor is international and not merely national. He realizes from the very first that it is not sufficient to establish peace within each country, that it is much more important that all nations live at peace with one another. The liberal therefore demands that the political organization of society be extended until it reaches its culmination in a world state that unites all nations on an equal basis. For this reason he sees the law of each nation as subordinate to international law, and that is why he demands supranational tribunals and administrative authorities to assure peace among nations in the same way that the judicial and executive organs of each country are charged with the maintenance of peace within its own territory.

  For a long time the demand for the establishment of such a supranational world organization was confined to a few thinkers who were considered utopians and went unheeded. To be sure, after the end of the Napoleonic Wars, the world repeatedly witnessed the spectacle of the statesmen of the leading powers gathered around the conference table to arrive at a common accord, and after the middle of the nineteenth century, an increasing number of supranational institutions were established, the most widely noted of which are the Red Cross and the International Postal Union. Yet all of this was still a very far cry from the creation of a genuine supranational organization. Even the Hague Peace Conference signified hardly any progress in this respect. It was only the horrors of the World War that first made it possible to win widespread support for the idea of an organization of all nations that would be in a position to prevent future conflicts. With the end of the war, the victors took steps to create an association which they called “The League of Nations” and which is widely held throughout the world to be the nucleus of what could be a really effective future international organization.

  In any case, there can be no doubt that what today goes under that name is in no way a realization of the liberal ideal of a supranational organization. In the first place, some of the most important and powerful nations of the world do not belong to the League at all. The United States, not to mention smaller nations, still stands outside. Besides, the covenant of the League of Nations suffers from the very outset from the fact that it distinguishes between two categories of member states: those that enjoy full rights and those that, having been on the losing side in the World War, are not fully qualified members. It is clear that such an inequality of status in the community of nations must bear within itself the seeds of war in the same way that every such division into castes does within a country. All these shortcomings have combined to weaken the League lamentably and to render it impotent in regard to all the substantive questions with which it has been confronted. One has only to think of its conduct in the conflict between Italy and Greece or in regard to the Mosul question, and especially in those cases in which the fate of oppressed minorities depended on its decision.

  There are in all countries, but especially in England and Germany, groups that believe that in the interest of transforming this sham League of Nations into a real one—into a genuine supranational state—its present weaknesses and defects should be treated in the most indulgent possible way. Such opportunism never does any good, no matter what question is at issue. The League of Nations is—and this would certainly have to be conceded by everybody except the functionaries and the staff employed in its bureaus—an inadequate institution in no way corresponding to the demands that one is entitled to make of a world organization. This fact, far from being minimized or ignored, needs to be repeatedly and insistently emphasized so that attention is called to all the changes that would have to be made in order to transform this sham into a real League of Nations. Nothing has done greater harm to the idea of a supranational world organization than the intellectual confusion arising from the belief that the present League constitutes a complete or virtually complete realization of what every honest and sincere liberal must demand. It is impossible to build a real League of Nations, capable of assuring lasting peace, on the principle that the traditional, historically determined boundaries of each country are to be treated as inalterably fixed. The League of Nations retains the fundamental defect of all previous international law: in setting up procedural rules for adjudicating disputes between nations, it is not in the least interested in creating any other norms for their settlement than the preservation of the status quo and the enforcement of existing treaties. Under such circumstances, however, peace cannot be assured unless it be by reducing the whole world situation to a state of frozen immobility.

  To be sure, the League does hold out, even though very cautiously and with many reservations, the prospect of some future boundary adjustments to do justice to the demands of some nations and parts of nations. It also promises—again very cautiously and qualifiedly—protection to national minorities. This permits us to hope that from these extremely inadequate beginnings a world superstate really deserving of the name may some day be able to develop that would be capable of assuring the nations the peace that they require. But this question will not be decided at Geneva in the sessions of the present League, and certainly not in the parliaments of the individual countries that comprise it. For the problem involved is not at all a matter of organization or of the technique of international government, but the greatest ideological question that mankind has ever faced. It is a question of whether we shall succeed in creating throughout the world a frame of mind without which all agreements for the preservation of peace and all the proceedings of courts of arbitration will remain, at the crucial moment, only worthless scraps of paper. This frame of mind can be nothing less than the unqualified, unconditional acceptance of liberalism. Liberal thinking must permeate all nations, liberal principles must pervade all political institutions, if the prerequisites of peace are to be created and the causes of war eliminated. As long as nations cling to protective tariffs, immigration barriers, compulsory education, interventionism, and etatism, new conflicts capable of breaking out at any time into open warfare will continually arise to plague mankind.

  11

  Russia

  The law-abiding citizen by his labor serves both himself and his fellow man and thereby integrates himself peacefully into the social order. The robber, on the other hand, is intent, not on honest toil, but on the forcible appropriation of the fruits of others’ labor. For thousands of years the world had to submit to the yoke of military conquerors and feudal lords who simply took for granted that the products of the industry of other men existed for them to consume. The evolution of mankind toward civilization and the strengthening of social bonds required, first of all, overcoming the intellectual and physical influence of the military and feudal castes that aspired to rule the world and the substitution of the ideal of the bourgeois for that of the hereditary lord. The supplanting of the militaristic ideal, which esteems only the warrior and despises honest labor, has not, by any means, even yet been completely achieved. In every nation there are still individuals whose minds are altogether taken up with the ideas and images of the militaristic ages. There are nations in which transient atavistic impulses toward plunder and violence, which one would have presumed to have long since been mastered, still break out and once more gain ascendancy. But, by and large, one can say of the nations of the white race that today inhabit central and western Europe and America that the mentality that Herbert Spencer called “militaristic” has been displaced by that to which he gave the name “industrial.” Today there is only one great nation that steadfastly adheres to the militaristic ideal, viz., the Russians.

  Of course, even among the Russian people there are some who do not share this attitude. It is only to be regretted that they have not been able to prevail over their compatriots. Ever since Russia was first in a position to exercise an influence on European politics, it has continually behaved like a robber who lies in wait for the moment when he can pounce upon his victim and plunder him of his possessions. At no time did the Russian Czars acknowledge any other limits to the expansion of their empire than those dictated by the force of circumstances. The position of the Bolsheviks in regard to the problem of the territorial expansion of their dominions is not a whit different. They too acknowledge no other rule than that, in the conquest of new lands, one may and indeed must go as far as one dares, with due regard to one’s resources. The fortunate circumstance that saved civilization from being destroyed by the Russians was the fact that the nations of Europe were strong enough to be able successfully to stand off the onslaught of the hordes of Russian barbarians. The experiences of the Russians in the Napoleonic Wars, the Crimean War, and the Turkish campaign of 1877–78 showed them that, in spite of the great number of their soldiers, their army is unable to seize the offensive against Europe. The World War merely confirmed this.

  More dangerous than bayonets and cannon are the weapons of the mind. To be sure, the response that the ideas of the Russians found in Europe was due, in the first place, to the fact that Europe itself was already full of these ideas before they came out of Russia. Indeed, it would perhaps be more nearly correct to say that these Russian ideas themselves were not originally Russian, however much they may have suited the character of the Russian people, but that they were borrowed by the Russians from Europe. So great is the intellectual sterility of the Russians that they were never able to formulate for themselves the expression of their own inmost nature.

  Liberalism, which is based completely on science and whose policies represent nothing but the application of the results of science, must be on its guard not to make unscientific value judgments. Value judgments stand outside of science and are always purely subjective. One cannot, therefore, classify nations according to their worth and speak of them as worthy or as less worthy. Consequently, the question whether or not the Russians are inferior lies completely outside the scope of our consideration. We do not at all contend that they are so. What we maintain is only that they do not wish to enter into the scheme of human social cooperation. In relation to human society and the community of nations their position is that of a people intent on nothing but the consumption of what others have accumulated. People among whom the ideas of Dostoyevsky, Tolstoy, and Lenin are a living force cannot produce a lasting social organization. They must revert to a condition of complete barbarism. Russia is endowed far more richly by nature with fertility of soil and mineral resources of all kinds than is the United States. If the Russians had pursued the same capitalistic policy as the Americans, they would today be the richest people in the world. Despotism, imperialism, and Bolshevism have made them the poorest. Now they are seeking capital and credits from all over the world.

  Once this is recognized, it clearly follows what must be the guiding principle of the policy of the civilized nations toward Russia. Let the Russians be Russians. Let them do what they want in their own country. But do not let them pass beyond the boundaries of their own land to destroy European civilization. This is not to say, of course, that the importation and translation of Russian writings ought to be prohibited. Neurotics may enjoy them as much as they wish; the healthy will, in any case, eschew them. Nor does this mean that the Russians ought to be prohibited from spreading their propaganda and distributing bribes the way the Czars did throughout the world. If modern civilization were unable to defend itself against the attacks of hirelings, then it could not, in any case, remain in existence much longer. This is not to say, either, that Americans or Europeans ought to be prevented from visiting Russia if they are attracted to it. Let them view at first hand, at their own risk and on their own responsibility, the land of mass murder and mass misery. Nor does this mean that capitalists ought to be prevented from granting loans to the Soviets or otherwise to invest capital in Russia. If they are foolish enough to believe that they will ever see any part of it again, let them make the venture.

  But the governments of Europe and America must stop promoting Soviet destructionism by paying premiums for exports to Soviet Russia and thereby furthering the Russian Soviet system by financial contributions. Let them stop propagandizing for emigration and the export of capital to Soviet Russia.

  Whether or not the Russian people are to discard the Soviet system is for them to settle among themselves. The land of the knout and the prison-camp no longer poses a threat to the world today. With all their will to war and destruction, the Russians are no longer capable seriously of imperiling the peace of Europe. One may therefore safely let them alone. The only thing that needs to be resisted is any tendency on our part to support or promote the destructionist policy of the Soviets.

  CHAPTER 4

  Liberalism and the Political Parties

  1

  The “Doctrinairism” of the Liberals

  Classical liberalism has been reproached with being too obstinate and not ready enough to compromise. It was because of its inflexibility that it was defeated in its struggle with the nascent anticapitalist parties of all kinds. If it had realized, as these other parties did, the importance of compromise and concession to popular slogans in winning the favor of the masses, it would have been able to preserve at least some of its influence. But it has never bothered to build for itself a party organization and a party machine as the anticapitalist parties have done. It has never attached any importance to political tactics in electoral campaigns and parliamentary proceedings. It has never gone in for scheming opportunism or political bargaining. This unyielding doctrinairism necessarily brought about the decline of liberalism.

  The factual assertions contained in these statements are entirely in accordance with the truth, but to believe that they constitute a reproach against liberalism is to reveal a complete misunderstanding of its essential spirit. The ultimate and most profound of the fundamental insights of liberal thought is that it is ideas that constitute the foundation on which the whole edifice of human social cooperation is constructed and sustained and that a lasting social structure cannot be built on the basis of false and mistaken ideas. Nothing can serve as a substitute for an ideology that enhances human life by fostering social cooperation—least of all lies, whether they be called “tactics,” “diplomacy,” or “compromise.” If men will not, from a recognition of social necessity, voluntarily do what must be done if society is to be maintained and general well-being advanced, no one can lead them to the right path by any cunning stratagem or artifice. If they err and go astray, then one must endeavor to enlighten them by instruction. But if they cannot be enlightened, if they persist in error, then nothing can be done to prevent catastrophe. All the tricks and lies of demagogic politicians may well be suited to promote the cause of those who, whether in good faith or bad, work for the destruction of society. But the cause of social progress, the cause of the further development and intensification of social bonds, cannot be advanced by lies and demagogy. No power on earth, no crafty stratagem or clever deception could succeed in duping mankind into accepting a social doctrine that it not only does not acknowledge, but openly spurns.

  The only way open to anyone who wishes to lead the world back to liberalism is to convince his fellow citizens of the necessity of adopting the liberal program. This work of enlightenment is the sole task that the liberal can and must perform in order to avert as much as lies within his power the destruction toward which society is rapidly heading today. There is no place here for concessions to any of the favorite or customary prejudices and errors. In regard to questions that will decide whether or not society is to continue to exist at all, whether millions of people are to prosper or perish, there is no room for compromise either from weakness or from misplaced deference for the sensibilities of others.

  If liberal principles once again are allowed to guide the policies of great nations, if a revolution in public opinion could once more give capitalism free rein, the world will be able gradually to raise itself from the condition into which the policies of the combined anticapitalist factions have plunged it. There is no other way out of the political and social chaos of the present age.

  The most serious illusion under which classical liberalism labored was its optimism in regard to the direction that the evolution of society was bound to take. To the champions of liberalism—the sociologists and economists of the eighteenth and the first half of the nineteenth century and their supporters—it seemed certain that mankind would advance to ever higher stages of perfection and that nothing would be able to arrest this progress. They were firmly convinced that rational cognition of the fundamental laws of social cooperation and interdependence, which they had discovered, would soon become common and that thereafter the social bonds peacefully uniting mankind would become ever closer, there would be a progressive improvement in general well-being, and civilization would rise to ever higher levels of culture. Nothing could shake their optimism. As the attack on liberalism began to grow steadily fiercer, as the ascendancy of liberal ideas in politics was challenged from all sides, they thought that what they had to contend with was only the last volleys fired in retreat by a moribund system that did not require serious study and counterattack because it would in any case soon collapse of itself.

  The liberals were of the opinion that all men have the intellectual capacity to reason correctly about the difficult problems of social cooperation and to act accordingly. They were so impressed with the clarity and self-evidence of the reasoning by which they had arrived at their political ideas that they were quite unable to understand how anyone could fail to comprehend it. They never grasped two facts: first, that the masses lack the capacity to think logically; and secondly, that in the eyes of most people, even when they are able to recognize the truth, a momentary, special advantage that may be enjoyed immediately appears more important than a lasting greater gain that must be deferred. Most people do not have even the intellectual endowments required to think through the—after all very complicated—problems of social cooperation, and they certainly do not have the will power necessary to make those provisional sacrifices that all social action demands. The slogans of interventionism and of socialism, especially proposals for the partial expropriation of private property, always find ready and enthusiastic approval with the masses, who expect to profit directly and immediately from them.

  2

  Political Parties

  There can be no more grievous misunderstanding of the meaning and nature of liberalism than to think that it would be possible to secure the victory of liberal ideas by resorting to the methods employed today by the other political parties.

  In a caste and status society, constituted not of citizens with equal rights, but divided into ranks vested with different duties and prerogatives, there are no political parties in the modern sense. As long as the special privileges and immunities of the different castes are not called into question, peace reigns among them. But once the privileges of caste and status are contested, the issue is joined, and civil war can be avoided only if one side or the other, recognizing its weakness, yields without an appeal to arms. In all such conflicts, the position of each individual is determined from the outset by his status as a member of one caste or another. To be sure, there can be renegades who, in the expectation of being better able to provide for their personal advantage on the side of the enemy, fight against the members of their own caste and are consequently viewed by them as traitors. But, apart from such exceptional cases, the individual is not confronted with the question of which of the opposing groups he ought to join. He stands by the members of his own caste and shares their fate. The caste or castes that are dissatisfied with their position rebel against the prevailing order and have to win their demands against the opposition of the others. The ultimate outcome of the conflict is—if everything does not, in fact, remain as it was because the rebels have been worsted—that the old order is replaced by a new one in which the rights of the various castes are different from what they were before.

  With the advent of liberalism came the demand for the abolition of all special privileges. The society of caste and status had to make way for a new order in which there were to be only citizens with equal rights. What was under attack was no longer only the particular privileges of the different castes, but the very existence of all privileges. Liberalism tore down the barriers of rank and status and liberated man from the restrictions with which the old order had surrounded him. It was in capitalist society, under a system of government founded on liberal principles, that the individual was first granted the opportunity to participate directly in political life and was first called upon to make a personal decision in regard to political goals and ideals. In the caste and status society of earlier days, the only political conflicts had been those among the different castes, each of which had formed a solid front in opposition to the others; or, in the absence of such conflicts, there were, within those castes that were permitted a share in political life, factional conflicts among coteries and cliques for influence, power, and a place at the helm. Only under a polity in which all citizens enjoy equal rights—corresponding to the liberal ideal, which has nowhere ever been fully achieved—can there be political parties consisting of associations of persons who want to see their ideas on legislation and administration put into effect. For there can very well be differences of opinion concerning the best way to achieve the liberal aim of assuring peaceful social cooperation, and these differences of opinion must join issue as conflicts of ideas.

  Thus, in a liberal society there could be socialist parties too. Even parties that seek to have a special legal position conceded to particular groups would not be impossible under a liberal system. But all these parties must acknowledge liberalism (at least temporarily, until they emerge victorious) so far as to make use in their political struggles solely of the weapons of the intellect, which liberalism views as the only ones permissible in such contests, even though, in the last analysis, as socialists or as champions of special privileges, the members of the antiliberal parties reject the liberal philosophy. Thus, some of the pre-Marxist “utopian” socialists fought for socialism within the framework of liberalism, and in the golden age of liberalism in western Europe, the clergy and the nobility tried to achieve their ends within the framework of a modern constitutional state.

  The parties that we see at work today are of an entirely different kind. To be sure, some part of their program is concerned with the whole of society and purports to address itself to the problem of how social cooperation is to be achieved. But what this part of their program says is only a concession wrung from them by the liberal ideology. What they aim at in reality is set forth in another part of their program, which is the only part that they pay any attention to and which stands in irreconcilable contradiction to the part that is couched in terms of the general welfare. Present-day political parties are the champions not only of certain of the privileged orders of earlier days that desire to see preserved and extended traditional prerogatives that liberalism had to allow them to keep because its victory was not complete, but also of certain groups that strive for special privileges, that is to say, that desire to attain the status of a caste. Liberalism addresses itself to all and proposes a program acceptable to all alike. It promises no one privileges. By calling for the renunciation of the pursuit of special interests, it even demands sacrifices, though, of course, only provisional ones, involving the giving up of a relatively small advantage in order to attain a greater one. But the parties of special interests address themselves only to a part of society. To this part, for which alone they intend to work, they promise special advantages at the expense of the rest of society.

  All modern political parties and all modern party ideologies originated as a reaction on the part of special group interests fighting for a privileged status against liberalism. Before the rise of liberalism, there were, of course, privileged orders with their special interests and prerogatives and their mutual conflicts, but at that time the ideology of the status society could still express itself in a completely naive and unembarrassed way. In the conflicts that occurred in those days between the champions and the opponents of special privilege, there was never any question of the antisocial character of the whole system nor any need of maintaining the pretense of justifying it on social grounds. One cannot, therefore, draw any direct comparison between the old system of privileged orders and the activities and propaganda of the present-day parties of special interests.

  To understand the true character of all these parties, one must keep in mind the fact that they were originally formed solely as a defense of special privileges against the teachings of liberalism. Their party doctrines are not, like those of liberalism, the political application of a comprehensive, carefully thought-out theory of society. The political ideology of liberalism was derived from a fundamental system of ideas that had first been developed as a scientific theory without any thought of its political significance. In contradistinction to this, the special rights and privileges sought by the antiliberal parties were, from the very outset, already realized in existing social institutions, and it was in justification of the latter that one undertook subsequently to elaborate an ideology, a task that was generally treated as a matter of little moment that could easily be disposed of with a few brief words. Farm groups think it sufficient to point out the indispensability of agriculture. The trade unions appeal to the indispensability of labor. The parties of the middle class cite the importance of the existence of a social stratum that represents the golden mean. It seems to trouble them little that such appeals contribute nothing to proving the necessity or even the advantageousness to the general public of the special privileges they are striving for. The groups that they desire to win over will follow them in any case, and as for the others, every attempt at recruiting supporters from their ranks would be futile.

  Thus, all these modern parties of special interests, no matter how far apart their goals may diverge or how violently they may contend against one another, form a united front in the battle against liberalism. In the eyes of all of them, the principle of liberalism that the rightly understood interests of all men are, in the long run, compatible is like a red cloth waved in front of a bull. As they see it, there are irreconcilable conflicts of interests that can be settled only by the victory of one faction over the others, to the advantage of the former and the disadvantage of the latter. Liberalism, these parties assert, is not what it pretends to be. It too is nothing but a party program seeking to champion the special interests of a particular group, the bourgeoisie, i.e., the capitalists and entrepreneurs, against the interests of all other groups.

  The fact that this allegation forms part of the propaganda of Marxism accounts for much of the latter’s success. If the doctrine of the irreconcilable conflict between the interests of different classes within a society based on private ownership of the means of production is taken as the essential dogma of Marxism, then all the parties active today on the European continent would have to be considered as Marxist. The doctrine of class antagonisms and of class conflict is also accepted by the nationalist parties in so far as they share the opinion that these antagonisms do exist in capitalist society and that the conflicts to which they give rise must run their course. What distinguishes them from the Marxist parties is only that they wish to overcome class conflict by reverting to a status society constituted along the lines that they recommend and by shifting the battlefront to the international arena, where they believe it should be. They do not dispute the statement that conflicts of this kind occur in a society based on private ownership of the means of production. They merely contend that such antagonisms ought not to arise, and in order to eliminate them, they want to guide and regulate private property by acts of government interference; they want interventionism in place of capitalism. But, in the last analysis, this is in no way different from what the Marxists say. They too promise to lead the world to a new social order in which there will be no more classes, class antagonisms, or class conflicts.

  In order to grasp the meaning of the doctrine of the class war, one must bear in mind that it is directed against the liberal doctrine of the harmony of the rightly understood interests of all members of a free society founded on the principle of private ownership of the means of production. The liberals maintained that with the elimination of all the artificial distinctions of caste and status, the abolition of all privileges, and the establishment of equality before the law, nothing else stands in the way of the peaceful cooperation of all members of society, because then their rightly understood, long-run interests coincide. All the objections that the champions of feudalism, of special privileges, and of distinctions of caste and status sought to advance against this doctrine soon proved quite unjustified and were unable to gain any notable support. But in Ricardo’s system of catallactics one may find the point of departure for a new theory of the conflict of interests within the capitalist system. Ricardo believed that he could show how, in the course of progressive economic development, a shift takes place in the relations among the three forms of income in his system, viz., profit, rent, and wages. It was this that impelled a few English writers in the third and fourth decades of the nineteenth century to speak of the three classes of capitalists, landowners, and wage-laborers and to maintain that an irreconcilable antagonism exists among these groups. This line of thought was later taken up by Marx.

  In the Communist Manifesto, Marx still did not distinguish between caste and class. Only later, when he became acquainted in London with the writings of the forgotten pamphleteers of the twenties and thirties and, under their influence, began the study of Ricardo’s system, did he realize that the problem in this case was to show that even in a society without caste distinctions and privileges irreconcilable conflicts still exist. This antagonism of interests he deduced from Ricardo’s system by distinguishing among the three classes of capitalists, landowners, and workers. But he by no means adhered firmly to this distinction. Sometimes he asserts that there are only two classes, the propertied and the propertyless; at other times he distinguishes among more classes than just the two or three great ones. At no time, however, did Marx or any one of his many followers attempt in any way to define the concept and nature of the classes. It is significant that the chapter entitled “The Classes” in the third volume of Capital breaks off after a few sentences. More than a generation elapsed from the appearance of the Communist Manifesto, in which Marx first makes class antagonism and class war the keystone of his entire doctrine, to the time of his death. During this entire period Marx wrote volume after volume, but he never came to the point of explaining what is to be understood by a “class.” In his treatment of the problem of classes Marx never went beyond the mere statement, without any proof, of a dogma or, let us rather say, of a slogan.

  In order to prove that the doctrine of class warfare is true, one would have to be able to establish two facts: on the one hand, that there is an identity of interests among the members of each class; and, on the other hand, that what benefits one class injures the other. This, however, has never been accomplished. Indeed, it has never even been attempted. Precisely because “class comrades” are all in the same “social situation,” there is no identity of interests among them, but rather competition. The worker, for example, who is employed under better-than-average conditions has an interest in excluding competitors who could reduce his income to the average level. In the decades when the doctrine of the international solidarity of the proletariat was proclaimed time and time again in verbose resolutions adopted at the international Marxist congresses, the workers of the United States and Australia set up the greatest obstacles to immigration. By means of a complex network of petty regulations, the English trade unions made impossible the entrance of outsiders into their branches of labor. What has been done by the labor parties in this regard in every country during the last few years is well known. Of course, one can say that this ought not to have happened; the workers ought to have acted differently; what they did was wrong. But one cannot deny that it directly served their interests—at least for the moment.

  Liberalism has demonstrated that the antagonism of interests, which, according to a widely prevalent opinion, is supposed to exist among different persons, groups, and strata within a society based on private ownership of the means of production, does not, in fact, occur. Any increase in total capital raises the income of capitalists and landowners absolutely and that of workers both absolutely and relatively. As regards their income, any shifts in the various interests of the different groups and strata of society—the entrepreneurs, capitalists, landowners, and workers—occur together and move in the same direction as they pass through different phases in their fluctuations; what varies is only the ratio of their shares of the social product. The interests of the landowners oppose those of the members of the other groups only in the one case of a genuine monopoly of a certain mineral. The interests of the entrepreneurs can never diverge from those of the consumers. The entrepreneur prospers the better, the better he is able to anticipate the desires of the consumers.

  Conflicts of interests can occur only in so far as restrictions on the owners’ free disposal of the means of production are imposed by the interventionist policy of the government or by interference on the part of other social forces armed with coercive power. For example, the price of a certain article can be artificially raised by a protective tariff, or the wages of a certain group of workers can be increased by excluding all competitors for their jobs. The famous line of reasoning of the free-trade school, never refuted and forever irrefutable, applies to cases of this kind. Such special privileges can, of course, benefit the particular group on whose behalf they were instituted only if other groups have been unable to win similar privileges for themselves. But it cannot be assumed that it would be possible, in the long run, to deceive the majority of the people about the real significance of such special privileges so that they will tolerate them willingly. Yet if one undertakes to use force to compel their acceptance, one will provoke violent rebellion—in short, a disturbance of the peaceful course of social cooperation, the preservation of which is in the interest of everyone. If one seeks to solve the problem by making these special privileges, not exceptions on behalf of just one or a few persons, groups, or strata of society, but the general rule, as, for example, by resorting to import duties to protect most of the articles sold on the home market, or by using similar measures to bar access to the majority of occupations, the advantages gained by each particular group are counterbalanced by the disadvantages that they must suffer, and the end result is only that all are injured by the consequent lowering of the productivity of labor.

  If one rejects this doctrine of liberalism, if one heaps ridicule on the controversial theory of the “harmony of interests of all men,” then it is not true, either, as is wrongly assumed by all schools of antiliberal thought, that there could still be a solidarity of interests within narrower circles, as, for instance, among members of the same nation (as against other nations) or among members of the same “class” (as against other classes). In order to demonstrate the existence of such an alleged solidarity, a special line of reasoning would be necessary that no one has followed or has even attempted to follow. For all the arguments that could be employed to prove the existence of a solidarity of interests among the members of any of these groups prove much more besides, viz., the universal solidarity of interests within ecumenical society. How those apparent conflicts of interest that seem at first sight to be irreconcilable are in fact resolved can be shown only by means of a line of reasoning that treats all mankind as an essentially harmonious community and allows no room for the demonstration of any irreconcilable antagonisms among nations, classes, races, and the like.

  The antiliberal parties do not, as they believe, prove that there is any solidarity of interests within nations, classes, races, etc. All that they actually do is to recommend to the members of these particular groups alliances for a common struggle against all other groups. When they speak of a solidarity of interests within these groups, they are not so much affirming a fact as stating a postulate. In reality, they are not saying, “The interests are identical,” but rather, “The interests ought to be made identical by an alliance for united action.”

  The modern parties of special interests declare quite frankly and unequivocally, from the very outset, that the aim of their policy is the creation of special privileges for a particular group. Agrarian parties strive for protective tariffs and other advantages (e.g., subsidies) for farmers; civil service parties aim at securing privileges for bureaucrats; regional parties are dedicated to gaining special advantages for the inhabitants of a certain region. All these parties evidently seek nothing but the advantage of a single group in society, without consideration of the whole of society or of all other groups, however much they may seek to palliate their procedure by declaring that the welfare of the whole of society can be achieved only by furthering the interests of agriculture, the civil service, etc. Indeed, their exclusive concern with but a single segment of society and their labors and endeavors on its behalf alone have become increasingly obvious and more cynical with the passage of the years. When the modern antiliberal movements were still in their infancy, they had to be more circumspect in regard to such matters, because the generation that had been reared on the liberal philosophy had learned to look upon the undisguised advocacy of the special interests of various groups as antisocial.

  The champions of special interests can form great parties only by composing a single combat unit out of the combined forces of various groups whose special interests are in conflict. Privileges granted to a particular group, however, have practical value only when they accrue to a minority and are not outweighed by the privileges granted to another group. But unless circumstances are exceptionally favorable, a small group cannot hope at present, while the liberal condemnation of the privileges of the nobility still retains some traces of its earlier influence, to be able to have their claim to be treated as a privileged class prevail against all other groups. The problem of all the parties of special interests, therefore, is to form great parties out of relatively small groups with differing and, indeed, directly conflicting interests. But in view of the mentality that leads these smaller parties to put forth and defend their demands for special privileges, it is quite impracticable to achieve this end by way of an open alliance among the various groups. No provisional sacrifice can be asked of the man who strives for the acquisition of a privileged position for his own group or even for himself alone; if he were capable of understanding the reason for making the provisional sacrifice, then he would certainly think along liberal lines and not in terms of the demands of those engaged in the scramble for special privileges. Nor can one openly tell him that he will gain more from the privilege intended for him than he will lose from the privileges that he will have to concede to others, for any speeches and writings to this effect could not, in the long run, remain hidden from the others and would impel them to raise their demands even higher.

  Thus, the parties of special interests are obliged to be cautious. In speaking of this most important point in their endeavors, they must resort to ambiguous expressions intended to obscure the true state of affairs. Protectionist parties are the best example of this kind of equivocation. They must always be careful to represent the interest in the protective tariffs they recommend as that of a wider group. When associations of manufacturers advocate protective tariffs, the party leaders generally take care not to mention that the interests of individual groups and often even of individual concerns are by no means identical and harmonious. The weaver is injured by tariffs on machines and yarn and will promote the protectionist movement only in the expectation that textile tariffs will be high enough to compensate him for the loss that he suffers from the other tariffs. The farmer who grows fodder demands tariffs on fodder, which the cattle raisers oppose; the winegrower demands a tariff on wine, which is just as disadvantageous to the farmer who does not happen to cultivate a vineyard as it is to the urban consumer. Nevertheless, the protectionists appear as a single party united behind a common program. This is made possible only by throwing a veil of obscurity over the truth of the matter.

  Any attempt to found a party of special interests on the basis of an equal apportionment of privileges among the majority of the population would be utterly senseless. A privilege accruing to the majority ceases to be such. In a predominantly agricultural country, which exports farm products, an agrarian party working for special favors for farmers would be, in the long run, impossible. What should it demand? Protective tariffs could not benefit these farmers, who must export; and subsidies could not be paid to the majority of producers, because the minority could not provide them. The minority, on the other hand, which demands privileges for itself must induce the illusion that great masses stand behind it. When the agrarian parties in the industrial countries present their demands, they include in what they call the “farm population” landless workers, cottagers, and owners of small plots of land, who have no interest in a protective tariff on agricultural products. When the labor parties make some demand on behalf of a group of workers, they always talk of the great mass of the working people and gloss over the fact that the interests of trade-unionists employed in different branches of production are not identical, but, on the contrary, actually antagonistic, and that even within individual industries and concerns there are sharp conflicts of interest.

  This is one of the two fundamental weaknesses of all parties aiming at privileges on behalf of special interests. On the one hand, they are obliged to rely on only a small group, because privileges cease to be privileges when they are granted to the majority; but, on the other hand, it is only in their guise as the champions and representatives of the majority that they have any prospect of realizing their demands. The fact that many parties in different countries have sometimes succeeded in overcoming this difficulty in carrying on their propaganda and have managed to imbue each social stratum or group with the conviction that its members may expect special advantages from the triumph of the party speaks only for the diplomatic and tactical skill of the leadership and for the want of judgment and the political immaturity of the voting masses. It by no means proves that a real solution of the problem is, in fact, possible. Of course, one can simultaneously promise city-dwellers cheaper bread and farmers higher prices for grain, but one cannot keep both promises at the same time. It is easy enough to promise one group that one will support an increase in certain government expenditures without a corresponding reduction in other government expenditures, and at the same time hold out to another group the prospect of lower taxes; but one cannot keep both these promises at the same time either. The technique of these parties is based on the division of society into producers and consumers. They are also wont to make use of the usual hypostasis of the state in questions of fiscal policy that enables them to advocate new expenditures to be paid out of the public treasury without any particular concern on their part over how such expenses are to be defrayed, and at the same time to complain about the heavy burden of taxes.

  The other basic defect of these parties is that the demands they raise for each particular group are limitless. There is, in their eyes, only one limit to the quantity to be demanded: the resistance put up by the other side. This is entirely in keeping with their character as parties striving for privileges on behalf of special interests. Yet parties that follow no definite program, but come into conflict in the pursuit of unlimited desires for privileges on behalf of some and for legal disabilities for others, must bring about the destruction of every political system. People have been coming to recognize this ever more clearly and have begun to speak of a crisis of the modern state and of a crisis of the parliamentary system. In reality, what is involved is a crisis of the ideologies of the modern parties of special interests.

  3

  The Crisis of Parliamentarism and the Idea of a Diet Representing Special Groups

  Parliamentarism, as it has slowly developed in England and in some of her colonies since the seventeenth century, and on the European continent since the overthrow of Napoleon and the July and February Revolutions, presupposes the general acceptance of the ideology of liberalism. All who enter a parliament charged with the responsibility of there deciding how the country shall be governed must be imbued with the conviction that the rightly understood interests of all parts and members of society coincide and that every kind of special privilege for particular groups and classes of the population is detrimental to the common good and must be eliminated. The different parties in a parliament empowered to perform the functions assigned to it by all the constitutions of recent times may, of course, take different sides in regard to particular political questions, but they must consider themselves as the representatives of the whole nation, not as representatives of particular districts or social strata. Above all their differences of opinion there must prevail the conviction that, in the last analysis, they are united by a common purpose and an identical aim and that only the means to the attainment of the goal toward which they all aspire are in dispute. The parties are not separated by an unbridgeable gulf nor by conflicts of interests that they are prepared to carry on to the bitter end even if this means that the whole nation must suffer and the country be brought to ruin. What divides the parties is the position they take in regard to concrete problems of policy. There are, therefore, only two parties: the party in power and the one that wants to be in power. Even the opposition does not seek to obtain power in order to promote certain interests or to fill official posts with its party members, but in order to translate its ideas into legislation and to put them into effect in the administration of the country.

  Only under these conditions are parliaments or parliamentary governments practicable. For a time they were realized in the Anglo-Saxon countries, and some traces of them can still be found there today. On the European continent, even during the period usually characterized as the golden age of liberalism, one could really speak only of a certain approximation to these conditions. For decades now, conditions in the popular assemblies of Europe have been something like their direct opposite. There are a great number of parties, and each particular party is itself divided into various subgroups, which generally present a united front to the outside world, but usually oppose one another within the party councils as vehemently as they oppose the other parties publicly. Each particular party and faction feels itself appointed to be the sole champion of certain special interests, which it undertakes to lead to victory at any cost. To allot as much as possible from the public coffers to “our own,” to favor them by protective tariffs, immigration barriers, “social legislation,” and privileges of all kinds, at the expense of the rest of society, is the whole sum and substance of their policy.

  As their demands are, in principle, limitless, it is impossible for any one of these parties ever to achieve all the ends it envisages. It is unthinkable that what the agrarian or labor parties strive for could ever be entirely realized. Every party seeks, nevertheless, to attain to such influence as will permit it to satisfy its desires as far as possible, while also taking care always to be able to justify to its electors why all their wishes could not be fulfilled. This can be done either by seeking to give in public the appearance of being in the opposition, although the party is actually in power, or by striving to shift the blame to some force not answerable to its influence: the sovereign, in the monarchical state; or, under certain circumstances, foreign powers or the like. The Bolsheviks cannot make Russia happy nor the socialists Austria because “western capitalism” prevents it. For at least fifty years antiliberal parties have ruled in Germany and Austria, yet we still read in their manifestoes and public statements, even in those of their “scientific” champions, that all existing evils are to be blamed on the dominance of “liberal” principles.

  A parliament composed of the supporters of the antiliberal parties of special interests is not capable of carrying on its business and must, in the long run, disappoint everyone. This is what people mean today and have meant for many years now when they speak of the crisis of parliamentarism.

  As the solution for this crisis, some demand the abolition of democracy and the parliamentary system and the institution of a dictatorship. We do not propose to discuss once again the objections to dictatorship. This we have already done in sufficient detail.

  A second suggestion is directed toward remedying the alleged deficiencies of a general assembly composed of members elected directly by all the citizens, by either supplementing or replacing it altogether with a diet composed of delegates chosen by autonomous corporative bodies or guilds formed by the different branches of trade, industry, and the professions. The members of a general popular assembly, it is said, lack the requisite objectivity and the knowledge of economic affairs. What is needed is not so much a general policy as an economic policy. The representatives of industrial and professional guilds would be able to come to an agreement on questions whose solution either eludes entirely the delegates of constituencies formed on a merely geographical basis or becomes apparent to them only after long delay.

  In regard to an assembly composed of delegates representing different occupational associations, the crucial question about which one must be clear is how a vote is to be taken, or, if each member is to have one vote, how many representatives are to be granted to each guild. This is a problem that must be resolved before the diet convenes; but once this question is settled, one can spare oneself the trouble of calling the assembly into session, for the outcome of the voting is thereby already determined. To be sure, it is quite another question whether the distribution of power among the guilds, once established, can be maintained. It will always be—let us not cherish any delusions on this score—unacceptable to the majority of the people. In order to create a parliament acceptable to the majority, there is no need of an assembly divided along occupational lines. Everything will depend on whether the discontent aroused by the policies adopted by the deputies of the guilds is great enough to lead to the violent overthrow of the whole system. In contrast to the democratic system, this one offers no guarantee that a change in policy desired by the overwhelming majority of the population will take place. In saying this, we have said everything that needs to be said against the idea of an assembly constituted on the basis of occupational divisions. For the liberal, any system which does not exclude every violent interruption of peaceful development is, from the very outset, out of the question.

  Many supporters of the idea of a diet composed of guild representatives think that conflicts should be settled, not by the submission of one faction to another, but by the mutual adjustment of differences. But what is supposed to happen if the parties cannot succeed in reaching agreement? Compromises come about only when the threatening spectre of an unfavorable issue induces each party to the dispute to make some concession. No one prevents the different parties from coming to an agreement even in a parliament composed of delegates elected directly by the whole nation. No one will be able to compel agreement in a diet consisting of deputies chosen by the members of occupational associations.

  Thus, an assembly so constituted cannot function like a parliament that serves as the organ of a democratic system. It cannot be the place where differences of political opinion are peacefully adjusted. It is not in a position to prevent the violent interruption of the peaceful progress of society by insurrection, revolution, and civil war. For the crucial decisions that determine the distribution of political power in the state are not made within its chambers or during the elections that decide its composition. The decisive factor in determining the distribution of power is the relative weight assigned by the constitution to the different corporate associations in the shaping of public policy. But this is a matter that is decided outside the chambers of the diet and without any organic relationship to the elections by which its members are chosen.

  It is therefore quite correct to withhold the name “parliament” from an assembly consisting of representatives of corporate associations organized along occupational lines. Political terminology has been accustomed, in the last two centuries, to make a sharp distinction between a parliament and such an assembly. If one does not wish to confound all the concepts of political science, one does well to adhere to this distinction.

  Sidney and Beatrice Webb, as well as a number of syndicalists and guild socialists, following in this respect recommendations already made in earlier days by many continental advocates of a reform in the upper chamber, have proposed letting two chambers exist side by side, one elected directly by the whole nation, and the other composed of deputies elected from constituencies divided along occupational lines. However, it is obvious that this suggestion in no way remedies the defects of the system of guild representation. In practice, the bicameral system can function only if one house has the upper hand and has the unconditional power to impose its will on the other, or if, when the two chambers take different positions on an issue, an attempt at a compromise solution must be made. In the absence of such an attempt, however, the conflict remains to be settled outside the chambers of parliament, in the last resort by force alone. Twist and turn the problem as one will, one always returns in the end to the same insurmountable difficulties. Such are the stumbling blocks on which all proposals of this and a similar kind must come to grief, whether they are called corporativism, guild socialism, or anything else. The impracticability of these schemes is admitted when people finally content themselves by recommending a completely inconsequential innovation: the establishment of an economic council empowered to serve solely in an advisory capacity.

  The champions of the idea of an assembly composed of guild deputies labor under a serious delusion if they think that the antagonisms that today rend the fabric of national unity can be overcome by dividing the population and the popular assembly along occupational lines. One cannot get rid of these antagonisms by tinkering with technicalities in the constitution. They can be overcome only by the liberal ideology.

  4

  Liberalism and the Parties of Special Interests

  The parties of special interests, which see nothing more in politics than the securing of privileges and prerogatives for their own groups, not only make the parliamentary system impossible; they rupture the unity of the state and of society. They lead not merely to the crisis of parliamentarism, but to a general political and social crisis. Society cannot, in the long run, exist if it is divided into sharply defined groups, each intent on wresting special privileges for its own members, continually on the alert to see that it does not suffer any setback, and prepared, at any moment, to sacrifice the most important political institutions for the sake of winning some petty advantage.

  To the parties of special interests, all political questions appear exclusively as problems of political tactics. Their ultimate goal is fixed for them from the start. Their aim is to obtain, at the cost of the rest of the population, the greatest possible advantages and privileges for the groups they represent. The party platform is intended to disguise this objective and give it a certain appearance of justification, but under no circumstances to announce it publicly as the goal of party policy. The members of the party, in any case, know what their goal is; they do not need to have it explained to them. How much of it ought to be imparted to the world is, however, a purely tactical question.

  All antiliberal parties want nothing but to secure special favors for their own members, in complete disregard of the resulting disintegration of the whole structure of society. They cannot withstand for a moment the criticism that liberalism makes of their aims. They cannot deny, when their demands are subjected to the test of logical scrutiny, that their activity, in the last analysis, has antisocial and destructive effects and that even on the most cursory examination it must prove impossible for any social order to arise from the operations of parties of special interests continually working against one another. To be sure, the obviousness of these facts has not been able to damage the parties of special interests in the eyes of those who lack the capacity to look beyond the immediate present. The great mass of people do not inquire what will happen the day after tomorrow or later on. They think of today and, at most, of the next day. They do not ask what must follow if all other groups too, in the pursuit of their special interests, were to display the same unconcern for the general welfare. They hope to succeed not only in realizing their own demands, but also in beating down those of others. For the few who apply higher standards to the activities of political parties, who demand that even in political action Kant’s categorical imperative be followed (“Act only on that principle which you can will—at the same time—to be a universal law, i.e., so that no contradiction results from the attempt to conceive of your action as a law to be universally complied with”), the ideology of the parties of special interests certainly has nothing to offer.

  Socialism has gained a considerable advantage from this logical deficiency in the position adopted by the parties of special interests. For many who are unable to grasp the great ideal of liberalism, but who think too clearly to be content with demands for privileged treatment on behalf of particular groups, the principle of socialism took on a special significance. The idea of a socialist society—to which one cannot, in spite of its necessarily inherent defects, which we have already discussed in detail, deny a certain grandeur of conception—served to conceal and, at the same time, to vindicate the weakness of the position taken by the parties of special interests. It had the effect of diverting the attention of the critic from the activities of the party to a great problem, which, whatever one may think of it, was at all events deserving of serious and exhaustive consideration.

  In the last hundred years, the socialist ideal, in one form or another, has found adherents among many sincere and honest people. A number of the best and noblest men and women have accepted it with enthusiasm. It has been the guiding star of distinguished statesmen. It has achieved a dominant position at the universities and has served as a source of inspiration to youth. It has so filled the thoughts and fed the emotions of both the past and the present generation that history will some day quite justly characterize our era as the age of socialism. In the last decades, in all countries people have done as much as they could to make the socialist ideal a reality by nationalizing and municipalizing enterprises and by adopting measures designed to lead to a planned economy. The defects necessarily involved in socialist management—its unfavorable effects on the productivity of human labor and the impossibility of economic calculation under socialism—everywhere brought these endeavors to the point where virtually every step further in the direction of socialism threatened too flagrant an impairment of the supply of goods available to the public. From sheer necessity one had to pause on the road to socialism; and the socialist ideal—even while preserving its ideological ascendancy—became, in practical politics, merely a cloak for the labor parties in their scramble for privileges.

  This could be shown to be true of each of the many socialist parties, such as, for instance, the various factions among the Christian socialists. We propose, however, to confine our discussion to the case of the Marxian socialists, who undoubtedly were and are the most important socialist party.

  Marx and his followers were really serious about socialism. Marx rejected all those measures on behalf of particular groups and strata of society that are demanded by the parties of special interests. He did not dispute the validity of the liberal argument that the outcome of such acts of interference can only be a general reduction in the productivity of labor. When he thought, wrote, and spoke consistently, he always took the position that every attempt to tamper with the mechanism of the capitalist system by acts of intervention on the part of the government or of other social organs armed with the same coercive power is pointless because it does not bring about the result intended by its advocates, but instead reduces the productivity of the economy. Marx wanted to organize the workers for the conflict that would lead to the establishment of socialism, but not for the achievement of certain special privileges within a society still based on private ownership of the means of production. He wanted a socialist labor party, but not, as he put it, a “petty-bourgeois” party aiming at individual, piecemeal reforms.

  Prevented by blind adherence to the preconceptions of his scholastic system from taking an unbiased view of things as they are, he thought that the workers, whom the writers under his intellectual influence had organized into “socialist” parties, would be content to stand by quietly watching the evolution of the capitalist system according to doctrine, so as not to postpone the day when it would be fully ripe for the expropriation of the expropriators and would “turn into” socialism. He did not see that the labor parties, just like the other parties of special interests that were simultaneously springing up everywhere, while acknowledging the socialist program as correct in principle, in practical politics were concerned only with the immediate goal of winning special privileges for the workers. The Marxist theory of the solidarity of the interests of all workers, which Marx had developed with quite other political ends in view, rendered excellent service in skillfully concealing the fact that the costs of the victories won by some groups of workers had to be borne by other groups of workers; that is to say, that in the field of allegedly “prolabor” legislation, as well as in trade-union struggles, the interests of the proletarians by no means coincide. In this respect, the Marxist doctrine performed the same service for the party championing the special interests of the workers as was accomplished for the German Centrist and other clerical parties by the appeal to religion; for the nationalist parties, by the appeal to national solidarity; for the agrarian parties, by the contention that the interests of the various groups of agricultural producers are identical; and for the protectionist parties, by the doctrine of the necessity of a comprehensive tariff for the protection of national labor. The more the social-democratic parties grew, the stronger became the influence of the trade unions within them and the more they became an association of trade unions that saw everything from the point of view of the closed shop and the increase of wages.

  Liberalism does not have the least thing in common with any of these parties. It stands at the very opposite pole from all of them. It promises special favors to no one. It demands from everyone sacrifices on behalf of the preservation of society. These sacrifices—or, more accurately, the renunciation of immediately attainable advantages—are, to be sure, merely provisional; they quickly pay for themselves in greater and more lasting gains. Nevertheless, for the time being, they are sacrifices. Because of this, liberalism finds itself, from the very outset, in a peculiar position in the competition among parties. The antiliberal candidate promises special privileges to every particular group of voters: higher prices to the producers and lower prices to the consumers; higher salaries to public officeholders and lower taxes to taxpayers. He is prepared to agree to any desired expenditure at the cost of the public treasury or of the rich. No group is too small for him to disdain to seek its favor by a gift from the pocket of the “general public.” The liberal candidate can only say to all voters that the pursuit of such special favors is antisocial.

  5

  Party Propaganda and Party Organization

  When liberal ideas began to spread to central and eastern Europe from their homeland in western Europe, the traditional powers—the monarchy, the nobility, and the clergy—trusting in the instruments of repression that were at their disposal, felt completely safe. They did not consider it necessary to combat liberalism and the mentality of the Enlightenment with intellectual weapons. Suppression, persecution, and imprisonment of the malcontents seemed to them to be more serviceable. They boasted of the violent and coercive machinery of the army and the police. Too late they realized with horror that the new ideology snatched these weapons from their hands by conquering the minds of officials and soldiers. It took the defeat suffered by the old regime in the battle against liberalism to teach its adherents the truth that there is nothing in the world more powerful than ideologies and ideologists and that only with ideas can one fight against ideas. They realized that it is foolish to rely on arms, since one can deploy armed men only if they are prepared to obey, and that the basis of all power and dominion is, in the last analysis, ideological.

  The acknowledgment of this sociological truth was one of the fundamental convictions on which the political theory of liberalism was based. From it liberalism had drawn no other conclusion than that, in the long run, truth and righteousness must triumph because their victory in the realm of ideas cannot be doubted. And whatever is victorious in this realm must ultimately succeed in the world of affairs as well, since no persecution is capable of suppressing it. It is therefore superfluous to trouble oneself especially about the spread of liberalism. Its victory is, in any case, certain.

  The opponents of liberalism can be understood even in this respect only if one keeps in mind that their actions are nothing but the reverse of what liberalism teaches; that is, they are based on the rejection of and reaction against liberal ideas. They were not in a position to offer a comprehensive and consistent body of social and economic doctrine in opposition to the liberal ideology, for liberalism is the only possible conclusion that can be validly drawn from such a doctrine. Yet a program that promised something to only one group or a few groups had no chance of winning general support and was doomed from the outset to political failure. Thus, these parties had no other recourse than to hit upon some arrangement that would bring the groups to whom they addressed themselves completely under their sway and to keep them that way. They had to take care that liberal ideas found no adherents among the classes on which they depended.

  To this end, they created party organizations that hold the individual so tightly in their grip that he dare not even think of resigning. In Germany and Austria, where this system was developed with pedantic thoroughness, and in the countries of eastern Europe, where it was copied, the individual is today no longer primarily a citizen, but a party member. Already as a child he is taken care of by the party. Sports and social activities are organized on partisan lines. The farmers’ cooperative system, through whose intervention alone the farmer can lay claim to his share of the subsidies and grants accruing to agricultural producers; the institutions for the advancement of the professional classes; and the workingmen’s labor exchange and savings bank system are all managed along party lines. In all matters on which the authorities are free to use their discretion, the individual, in order to be respected, requires the support of his party. Under such circumstances, laxity in party affairs leads to suspicion, but resignation means serious economic detriment, if not ruination and social ostracism.

  The parties of special interests reserve for the problem of the professional classes a treatment peculiar to it alone. The independent professions of the lawyer, the doctor, the writer, and the artist are not represented in sufficiently great number to permit them to figure as parties of special interests in their own right. They are therefore the least open to the influence of the ideology of special class privileges. Their members clung longest and most stubbornly to liberalism. They had nothing to gain from adopting a policy of ruthless and unyielding struggle for the promotion of their particular interests. This was a situation that the parties working on behalf of organized pressure groups viewed with the utmost misgiving. They could not tolerate the intelligentsia’s continued adherence to liberalism, for they feared that their own ranks might be thinned if liberal ideas, once again developed and expounded by a few individuals in these groups, were to gain enough strength to find acceptance and approval among the mass of their members. They had just learned how dangerous such ideologies could be to the prerogatives of the privileged orders of the caste and status society. The parties of special interests therefore proceeded systematically to organize themselves in such a way as to make the members of the “liberal” professions dependent on them. This was soon achieved by incorporating them into the mechanism of the party machinery. The doctor, the lawyer, the writer, the artist must enroll themselves in and subordinate themselves to the organization of their patients, clients, readers, and patrons. Whoever holds back or openly rebels is boycotted into compliance.

  The subjugation of the independent professional classes finds its complement in the procedure followed in making appointments to teaching positions and to posts in the civil service. Where the party system is fully developed, only party members are appointed, whether of the one currently in power or of all the parties of special interests in accordance with an arrangement, tacit though it may be, arrived at among themselves. And ultimately even the independent press is brought under control by the threat of a boycott.

  A crowning stroke in the organization of these parties was the establishment of their own bands of armed men. Organized in military fashion, after the pattern of the national army, they have drawn up their mobilization and operational plans, have weapons at their disposal, and are ready to strike. With their banners and brass bands they march through the streets heralding to the world the dawn of an era of endless agitation and warfare.

  Two circumstances have so far served to mitigate the dangers of this situation. In the first place, a certain balance of power among the party forces has been reached in some of the more important countries. Where this is lacking, as in Russia and Italy, the power of the state, in disregard of the few remaining liberal principles that the rest of the world still acknowledges, is used to suppress and persecute the adherents of the opposition parties.

  The second circumstance that, for the moment, still prevents the worst from happening is that even nations imbued with hostility toward liberalism and capitalism count on capital investment from the lands that have been the classical exemplars of the liberal and capitalist mentality—above all, the United States. Without these credits, the consequences of the policy of capital consumption that they have been pursuing would have already become much more obvious. Anticapitalism can maintain itself in existence only by sponging on capitalism. It must therefore take into consideration to a certain extent the public opinion of the West, where liberalism is still acknowledged today, even though in a much diluted form. In the fact that capitalists generally desire to lend only to such borrowers as hold out some prospect of repaying the loan, the destructionist parties profess to see that “world ascendancy of capital” about which they raise such a hue and cry.

  6

  Liberalism as the “Party of Capital”

  Thus, it is easily seen that liberalism cannot be put into the same class with the parties of special interests without denying its very nature. It is something radically different from them all. They are out for battle and extol violence; liberalism, on the contrary, desires peace and the ascendancy of ideas. It is for this reason that all parties, however badly disunited they may otherwise be, form a united front against liberalism.

  The enemies of liberalism have branded it as the party of the special interests of the capitalists. This is characteristic of their mentality. They simply cannot understand a political ideology as anything but the advocacy of certain special privileges opposed to the general welfare.

  One cannot look on liberalism as a party of special interests, privileges, and prerogatives, because private ownership of the means of production is not a privilege redounding to the exclusive advantage of the capitalists, but an institution in the interest of the whole of society and consequently an institution that benefits everyone. This is the opinion not only of the liberals, but even, up to a certain point, of their opponents. When the Marxists champion the view that socialism cannot be made a reality until the world is “ripe” for it, because a social system never becomes extinct before “all the productive forces have developed for which it is broad enough,” they concede, at least for the present, the social indispensability of the institution of private property. Even the Bolsheviks, who only a little while ago propagated with fire, sword, and the gallows their interpretation of Marxism—that is, that “ripeness” had already been achieved—now have to admit that it is still too early. If, however, even if it is only for the moment, conditions are such that capitalism and its juridical “superstructure,” private property, cannot be dispensed with, can one say of an ideology that considers private property the foundation of society that it serves only to promote the selfish interests of the owners of capital against the interests of everyone else?

  To be sure, if the antiliberal ideologies treat private property as indispensable, whether just for the present or forever, they believe, nevertheless, that it must be regulated and restricted by authoritarian decrees and similar acts of intervention on the part of the state. They recommend, not liberalism and capitalism, but interventionism. But economics has demonstrated that the system of interventionism is contrary to purpose and self-defeating. It cannot attain the ends that its advocates intend it to attain. Consequently, it is an error to suppose that besides socialism (communal property) and capitalism (private property) still a third system of organizing social cooperation is thinkable and workable, namely, interventionism. Attempts to put interventionism into effect must, of necessity, lead to conditions that run counter to the intentions of their authors, who are then faced with the alternative either of abstaining from all acts of intervention, and thereby leaving private property on its own, or of replacing private property by socialism.

  This too is a thesis that liberal economists are not alone in maintaining. (Of course, the popular idea that economists are divided along party lines is altogether mistaken.) Marx too, in all his theoretical discussions, saw only the alternatives of socialism or capitalism and had nothing but derision and contempt for those reformers who, imprisoned in “petty-bourgeois thinking,” reject socialism and, at the same time, still want to remodel capitalism. Economics has never even attempted to show that a system of private property regulated and restricted by government intervention would be practicable. When the “socialists of the chair” wanted to prove this at any cost, they began by denying the possibility of scientific knowledge in the economic field and ultimately ended by declaring that whatever the state does must surely be rational. Since science demonstrated the absurdity of the policy that they wished to recommend, they sought to invalidate logic and science.

  The same is true of the proof of the possibility and practicability of socialism. The pre-Marxist writers had labored in vain to provide it. They could not do so, nor were they able in any way to attack the validity of the weighty objections to the practicability of their utopia that their critics based on the findings of science. Around the middle of the nineteenth century the socialist idea seemed already to have been effectively disposed of. Then Marx made his appearance. He did not, to be sure, adduce the proof—which, indeed, cannot be adduced—that socialism is realizable, but he simply declared—of course, without being able to demonstrate it—that the coming of socialism is inevitable. From this arbitrary assumption and from the axiom, which seemed to him self-evident, that everything occurring later in human history represents an advance over what came earlier, Marx drew the conclusion that socialism is therefore more perfect than capitalism and so there could naturally be no doubt as to its practicability. Consequently, it is altogether unscientific to concern oneself with the question of the possibility of a socialist society or even to study the problems of such a social order at all. Whoever wanted to try it was ostracized by the socialists and excommunicated by public opinion, which they controlled. Heedless of all these—to be sure, only external—difficulties, economics occupied itself with the theoretical construction of a socialist system and demonstrated irrefutably that every type of socialism is unworkable because economic calculation is impossible in a socialist community. The advocates of socialism have scarcely ventured to make any reply to this, and what they have advanced in rebuttal has been altogether trivial and devoid of significance.

  What was proved by science theoretically was corroborated in practice by the failure of all socialist and interventionist experiments.

  Hence, it is nothing but specious propaganda designed to rely for its effectiveness on the lack of judgment of the thoughtless to assert, as people do, that the defense of capitalism is purely an affair of the capitalists and the entrepreneurs, whose special interests, as opposed to those of other groups, are furthered by the capitalist system. The “have’s” do not have any more reason to support the institution of private ownership of the means of production than do the “have-not’s.” If their immediate special interests come into question, they are scarcely liberal. The notion that, if only capitalism is preserved, the propertied classes could remain forever in possession of their wealth stems from a misunderstanding of the nature of the capitalist economy, in which property is continually being shifted from the less efficient to the more efficient businessman. In a capitalist society one can hold on to one’s fortune only if one perpetually acquires it anew by investing it wisely. The rich, who are already in possession of wealth, have no special reason to desire the preservation of a system of unhampered competition open to all; particularly if they did not themselves earn their fortune, but inherited it, they have more to fear than to hope from competition. They do have a special interest in interventionism, which always has a tendency to preserve the existing division of wealth among those in possession of it. But they cannot hope for any special treatment from liberalism, a system in which no heed is paid to the time-honored claims of tradition advanced by the vested interests of established wealth.

  The entrepreneur can prosper only if he provides what the consumers demand. When the world is afire with the lust for war, the liberal seeks to expound the advantages of peace; the entrepreneur, however, produces artillery and machine-guns. If public opinion today favors capital investment in Russia, the liberal may endeavor to explain that it is as intelligent to invest capital in a land whose government openly proclaims as the ultimate goal of its policy the expropriation of all capital as it would be to dump goods into the sea; but the entrepreneur does not hesitate to furnish supplies to Russia if only he is in a position to shift the risk to others, whether it be to the state or to some less clever capitalists, who allow themselves to be misled by public opinion, itself manipulated by Russian money. The liberal struggles against the trend toward commercial autarky; the German manufacturer, however, builds a factory in the eastern province, which excludes German goods, in order to serve this market while under the protection of the tariff. Clear-thinking entrepreneurs and capitalists may view the consequences of an antiliberal policy as ruinous for the whole of society; but in their capacity as entrepreneurs and capitalists they must seek, not to oppose it, but to adjust themselves to the given conditions.

  There is no class that could champion liberalism for its own selfish interests to the detriment of the whole of society and the other strata of the population, simply because liberalism serves no special interest. Liberalism cannot count on the help that the antiliberal parties receive from the fact that everyone who seeks to win some privilege for himself at the expense of the rest of society attaches himself to them. When the liberal comes before the electorate as a candidate for public office and is asked by those whose votes he solicits what he or his party intends to do for them and their group, the only answer he can give is: Liberalism serves everyone, but it serves no special interest.

  To be a liberal is to have realized that a special privilege conceded to a small group to the disadvantage of others cannot, in the long run, be preserved without a fight (civil war), but that, on the other hand, one cannot bestow privileges on the majority, since these then cancel one another out in their value for those whom they are supposed to specially favor, and the only net result is a reduction in the productivity of social labor.

  CHAPTER 5

  The Future of Liberalism

  All earlier civilizations perished, or at least reached a state of stagnation, long before they had attained the level of material development that modern European civilization has succeeded in achieving. Nations were destroyed by wars with foreign enemies as well as by internecine strife. Anarchy forced a retrogression in the division of labor; cities, commerce, and industry declined; and, with the decay of their economic foundations, intellectual and moral refinements had to give way to ignorance and brutality. The Europeans of the modern age have succeeded in intensifying the social bonds among individuals and nations much more strongly than was ever the case before in history. This was an achievement of the ideology of liberalism, which, from the end of the seventeenth century, was elaborated with ever increasing clarity and precision and continually gained in influence over men’s minds. Liberalism and capitalism created the foundations on which are based all the marvels characteristic of our modern way of life.

  Now our civilization is beginning to scent a whiff of death in the air. Dilettantes loudly proclaim that all civilizations, including our own, must perish: this is an inexorable law. Europe’s final hour has come, warn these prophets of doom, and they find credence. An autumnal mood is perceptibly beginning to set in everywhere.

  But modern civilization will not perish unless it does so by its own act of self-destruction. No external enemy can destroy it the way the Spaniards once destroyed the civilization of the Aztecs, for no one on earth can match his strength against the standard-bearers of modern civilization. Only inner enemies can threaten it. It can come to an end only if the ideas of liberalism are supplanted by an antiliberal ideology hostile to social cooperation.

  There has come to be a growing realization that material progress is possible only in a liberal, capitalist society. Even if this point is not expressly conceded by the antiliberal, it is fully acknowledged indirectly in the panegyrics extolling the idea of stability and a state of rest.

  The material advances of recent generations, it is said, have, of course, been really very agreeable and beneficial. Now, however, it is time to call a halt. The frantic hustle and bustle of modern capitalism must make way for tranquil contemplation. One must acquire time for self-communion, and so another economic system must take the place of capitalism, one that is not always restlessly chasing after novelties and innovations. The romantic looks back nostalgically to the economic conditions of the Middle Ages—not to the Middle Ages as they actually were, but to an image of them constructed by his fancy without any counterpart in historical reality. Or he turns his gaze upon the Orient—again not, of course, the real Orient, but a dream-vision of his phantasy. How happy men were without modern technology and modern culture! How could we ever have renounced this paradise so light-mindedly?

  Whoever preaches the return to simple forms of the economic organization of society ought to keep in mind that only our type of economic system offers the possibility of supporting in the style to which we have become accustomed today the number of people who now populate the earth. A return to the Middle Ages means the extermination of many hundreds of millions of people. The friends of stability and rest, it is true, say that one by no means has to go as far as that. It suffices to hold fast to what has already been achieved and to forgo further advances.

  Those who extol the state of rest and stable equilibrium forget that there is in man, in so far as he is a thinking being, an inherent desire for the improvement of his material condition. This impulse cannot be eradicated; it is the motive power of all human action. If one prevents a man from working for the good of society while at the same time providing for the satisfaction of his own needs, then only one way remains open to him: to make himself richer and others poorer by the violent oppression and spoliation of his fellow men.

  It is true that all this straining and struggling to increase their standard of living does not make men any happier. Nevertheless, it is in the nature of man continually to strive for an improvement in his material condition. If he is forbidden the satisfaction of this aspiration, he becomes dull and brutish. The masses will not listen to exhortations to be moderate and contented; it may be that the philosophers who preach such admonitions are laboring under a serious self-delusion. If one tells people that their fathers had it much worse, they answer that they do not know why they should not have it still better.

  Now, whether it is good or bad, whether it receives the sanction of the moral censor or not, it is certain that men always strive for an improvement in their conditions and always will. This is man’s inescapable destiny. The restlessness and inquietude of modern man is a stirring of the mind, the nerves, and the senses. One can as easily restore to him the innocence of childhood as lead him back to the passivity of past periods of human history.

  But, after all, what is being offered in return for the renunciation of further material progress? Happiness and contentment, inner harmony and peace will not be created simply because people are no longer intent on further improvement in the satisfaction of their needs. Soured by resentment, the literati imagine that poverty and the absence of wants create especially favorable conditions for the development of man’s spiritual capacities, but this is nonsense. In discussing these questions, one should avoid euphemisms and call things by their right names. Modern wealth expresses itself above all in the cult of the body: hygiene, cleanliness, sport. Today still the luxury of the well-to-do—no longer, perhaps, in the United States, but everywhere else—these will come within the reach of everyone in the not too distant future if economic development progresses as it has hitherto. Is it thought that man’s inner life is in any way furthered by excluding the masses from the attainment of the level of physical culture that the well-to-do already enjoy? Is happiness to be found in the unkempt body?

  To the panegyrists of the Middle Ages one can only answer that we know nothing about whether the medieval man felt happier than the modern man. But we may leave it to those who hold up the mode of life of the Orientals as a model for us to answer the question whether Asia is really the paradise that they describe it as.

  The fulsome praise of the stationary economy as a social ideal is the last remaining argument that the enemies of liberalism have to fall back upon in order to justify their doctrines. Let us keep clearly in mind, however, that the starting-point of their critique was that liberalism and capitalism impede the development of productive forces, that they are responsible for the poverty of the masses. The opponents of liberalism have alleged that what they are aiming at is a social order that could create more wealth than the one they are attacking. And now, driven to the wall by the counterattack of economics and sociology, they must concede that only capitalism and liberalism, only private property and the unhampered activity of entrepreneurs, can guarantee the highest productivity of human labor.

  It is often maintained that what divides present-day political parties is a basic opposition in their ultimate philosophical commitments that cannot be settled by rational argument. The discussion of these antagonisms must therefore necessarily prove fruitless. Each side will remain unshaken in its conviction because the latter is based on a comprehensive world view that cannot be altered by any considerations proposed by the reason. The ultimate ends toward which men strive are diverse. Hence, it is altogether out of the question that men aiming at these diverse ends could agree on a uniform procedure.

  Nothing is more absurd than this belief. Aside from the few consistent ascetics, who seek to divest life of all its external trappings and who finally succeed in attaining to a state of renunciation of all desire and action and, indeed, of self-annihilation, all men of the white race, however diverse may be their views on supernatural matters, agree in preferring a social system in which labor is more productive to one in which it is less productive. Even those who believe that an ever progressing improvement in the satisfaction of human wants does no good and that it would be better if we produced fewer material goods—though it is doubtful whether the number of those who are sincerely of this opinion is very large—would not wish that the same amount of labor should result in fewer goods. At most, they would wish that there should be less labor and consequently less production, but not that the same amount of labor should produce less.

  The political antagonisms of today are not controversies over ultimate questions of philosophy, but opposing answers to the question how a goal that all acknowledge as legitimate can be achieved most quickly and with the least sacrifice. This goal, at which all men aim, is the best possible satisfaction of human wants; it is prosperity and abundance. Of course, this is not all that men aspire to, but it is all that they can expect to attain by resort to external means and by way of social cooperation. The inner blessings—happiness, peace of mind, exaltation—must be sought by each man within himself alone.

  Liberalism is no religion, no world view, no party of special interests. It is no religion because it demands neither faith nor devotion, because there is nothing mystical about it, and because it has no dogmas. It is no world view because it does not try to explain the cosmos and because it says nothing and does not seek to say anything about the meaning and purpose of human existence. It is no party of special interests because it does not provide or seek to provide any special advantage whatsoever to any individual or any group. It is something entirely different. It is an ideology, a doctrine of the mutual relationship among the members of society and, at the same time, the application of this doctrine to the conduct of men in actual society. It promises nothing that exceeds what can be accomplished in society and through society. It seeks to give men only one thing, the peaceful, undisturbed development of material well-being for all, in order thereby to shield them from the external causes of pain and suffering as far as it lies within the power of social institutions to do so at all. To diminish suffering, to increase happiness: that is its aim.

  No sect and no political party has believed that it could afford to forgo advancing its cause by appealing to men’s senses. Rhetorical bombast, music and song resound, banners wave, flowers and colors serve as symbols, and the leaders seek to attach their followers to their own person. Liberalism has nothing to do with all this. It has no party flower and no party color, no party song and no party idols, no symbols and no slogans. It has the substance and the arguments. These must lead it to victory.

  APPENDIX

  1

  On the Literature of Liberalism

  To prevent this book from becoming too long, I have tried to keep this bibliography short. This seems justified since I have already treated all the basic problems of liberalism thoroughly in a number of books and monographs.

  For the reader who wishes to acquire a more exhaustive understanding of these matters, I append the following compilation of the most important literature.

  Liberal ideas are already to be found in the works of many of the earlier writers. The great English and Scotch thinkers of the eighteenth and the beginning of the nineteenth century were the first to formulate these ideas into a system. Whoever wants to familiarize himself with the liberal mind must return to them:

  • David Hume, Essays Moral, Political, and Literary (1741 and 1742), and
  • Adam Smith, An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations (1776), but especially
  • Jeremy Bentham, numerous writings, beginning with Defence of Usury (1787), up to the Deontology, or the Science of Morality, published after his death in 1834. All his writings, with the exception of the Deontology, were published in the complete edition edited by Bowring between 1838 and 1843.

  John Stuart Mill is an epigone of classical liberalism and, especially in his later years, under the influence of his wife, full of feeble compromises. He slips slowly into socialism and is the originator of the thoughtless confounding of liberal and socialist ideas that led to the decline of English liberalism and to the undermining of the living standards of the English people. Nevertheless—or perhaps precisely because of this—one must become acquainted with Mill’s principal writings:

  • Principles of Political Economy (1848)
  • On Liberty (1859)
  • Utilitarianism (1862)

  Without a thorough study of Mill it is impossible to understand the events of the last two generations, for Mill is the great advocate of socialism. All the arguments that could be advanced in favor of socialism are elaborated by him with loving care. In comparison with Mill all other socialist writers—even Marx, Engels, and Lassalle—are scarcely of any importance.

  One cannot understand liberalism without a knowledge of economics. For liberalism is applied economics; it is social and political policy based on a scientific foundation. Here, besides the writings already mentioned, one must familiarize oneself with the great master of classical economics:

  • David Ricardo, Principles of Political Economy and Taxation (1817).

  The best introductions to the study of modern scientific economics are:

  • H. Oswalt, Vorträge über wirtschaftliche Grundbegriffe (many editions)
  • C. A. Verrijn Stuart, Die Grundlagen der Volkswirtschaft (1923).

  The German masterpieces of modern economics are:

  • Carl Menger, Grundsätze der Volkswirtschaftslehre (first edition, 1871). [An English translation of this work was published as Principles of Economics (Glencoe, Ill.: The Free Press, 1950).]
  • Eugen von Böhm-Bawerk: The Positive Theory of Capital (New York, 1923). [Published in a new English translation as Volume II of Böhm-Bawerk’s 3-volume Capital and Interest (South Holland, Ill.: Libertarian Press, 1959). Also instructive is Böhm’s Karl Marx and the Close of His System (1896), available in English translation as “Unresolved Contradiction in the Marxian Economic System” in Shorter Classics of Böhm-Bawerk, Volume I. (Grove City, Pa.: Libertarian Press, 1962.)]

  The two most important contributions that Germany made to liberal literature suffered a misfortune no different from that which befell German liberalism itself. Wilhelm von Humboldt’s On the Sphere and Duties of Government (London, 1854) lay completed in 1792. In the same year Schiller published an excerpt in the Neuen Thalia, and other excerpts appeared in the Berliner Monatsschrift. Since, however, Humboldt’s publisher feared to issue the book, it was set aside, forgotten, and, only after the death of the author, discovered and published.

  Hermann Heinrich Gossen’s work, Entwicklung der Gesetze des menschlichen Verkehrs und der daraus fliessenden Regeln für menschliches Handeln, found a publisher, to be sure, but when it appeared in 1854 it attracted no readers. The work and its author remained forgotten until the Englishman Adamson came upon a copy.

  Liberal thinking permeates German classical poetry, above all the works of Goethe and Schiller.

  The history of political liberalism in Germany is brief and marked by rather meager success. Modern Germany—and this includes the defenders of the Weimar Constitution no less than their opponents—is a world apart from the spirit of liberalism. People in Germany no longer know what liberalism is, but they know how to revile it. Hatred of liberalism is the only point on which the Germans are united. Of the newer German writings on liberalism reference should be made to the works of Leopold von Wiese, Der Liberalismus in Vergangenheit und Zukunft (1917); Staatssozialismus (1916); and Freie Wirtschaft (1918).

  Hardly a breath of the liberal spirit has ever reached the peoples of eastern Europe.

  Although liberal thought is in decline even in western Europe and in the United States, one may yet call these nations liberal in comparison to the Germans.

  Of the older liberal writers one should also read Frédéric Bastiat, Oeuvres Complètes (Paris, 1855) [The works of Frédéric Bastiat—Economic Sophisms, Economic Harmonies, and Essays on Political Economy—English translations published by D. Van Nostrand, 1964, are available from The Foundation for Economic Education, Irvington-on-Hudson, N.Y.]. Bastiat was a brilliant stylist, so that the reading of his writings affords a quite genuine pleasure. In view of the tremendous advances that economic theory has made since his death, it is not astonishing that his teachings are obsolete today. Yet his critique of all protectionist and related tendencies is even today unsurpassed. The protectionists and interventionists have not been able to advance a single word in pertinent and objective rejoinder. They just continue to stammer: Bastiat is “superficial.”

  In reading the more recent political literature in English, one must not ignore the fact that in England today the word “liberalism” is frequently understood as denoting a moderate socialism. A concise presentation of liberalism is given by the Englishman L. T. Hobhouse, Liberalism (1911), and by the American Jacob H. Hollander, Economic Liberalism (1925). Even better introductions to the mind of the English liberals are:

  • Hartley Withers, The Case for Capitalism (1920).
  • Ernest J. P. Benn, The Confessions of a Capitalist (1925). If I Were a Labor Leader (1926). The Letters of an Individualist (1927). The last-named book includes a bibliography (pp. 74 et seq.) of the English literature on the basic problems of the economic system. The Return to Laisser Faire (London, 1928).

  A critique of protectionist policy is presented by Francis W. Hirst in Safeguarding and Protection (1926).

  Also instructive is the record of the public debate held in New York on January 23, 1921, between E. R. A. Seligmann and Scott Nearing on the topic: “That capitalism has more to offer to the workers of the United States than has socialism.”

  Introductions to sociological thought are provided by Jean Izoulet, La cité moderne (first edition, 1890), and R. M. MacIver, Community (1924).

  The history of economic ideas is presented by Charles Gide and Charles Rist, Histoire des doctrines économiques (many editions) [English translation of second revised and augmented edition of 1913 published as A History of Economic Doctrines: From the Time of the Physiocrats to the Present Day, D. C. Heath (New York, 1915)]; Albert Schatz, L’individualisme économique et social (1907); and Paul Barth, Die Philosophie der Geschichte als Soziologie (many editions).

  The role of political parties is treated by Walter Sulzbach in Die Grundlagen der politischen Parteibildung (1921).

  Oskar Klein-Hattingen, Geschichte des deutschen Liberalismus (1911/1912, two volumes) provides an essay on the history of German liberalism, and Guido de Ruggiero does the same for liberalism in Europe in The History of European Liberalism (Oxford, 1927).

  Finally, I cite my own works in so far as they stand in close connection with the problems of liberalism:

  • Nation, State, and Economy (1919). [English translation, New York University Press, 1983; new publication scheduled by Liberty Fund.]
  • Socialism: An Economic and Sociological Analysis (1922). [English translation, Macmillan, 1938; Yale University Press, 1951; Jonathan Cape, 1969; Liberty Fund, 1981.]

  * * * *

  Editor’s Note: Mises’s major post-1927 works, listed here with the date and publisher of their first English editions, are also pertinent:

  • Critique of Interventionism (1929). English translation, Arlington House, 1977.
  • Epistemological Problems of Economics (1933). English translation, D. Van Nostrand, 1962.
  • Omnipotent Government, Yale University Press, 1944.
  • Bureaucracy, Yale University Press, 1944.
  • Human Action, Yale University Press, 1949; 3rd edition, Regnery, 1966.
  • The Anti-Capitalistic Mentality, D. Van Nostrand, 1956.
  • Theory and History, Yale University Press, 1957.
  • The Ultimate Foundation of Economic Science, Yale University Press, 1962.
  • Interventionism: An Economic Analysis (1940). English translation, Foundation for Economic Education, 1998.

  2

  On the Term “Liberalism”

  Those who are familiar with the writings on the subject of liberalism that have appeared in the last few years and with current linguistic usage will perhaps object that what has been called liberalism in the present volume does not coincide with what is understood by that term in contemporary political literature. I am far from disputing this. On the contrary! I have myself expressly pointed out that what is understood by the term “liberalism” today, especially in Germany, stands in direct opposition to what the history of ideas must designate as liberalism because it constituted the essential content of the liberal program of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Almost all who call themselves “liberals” today decline to profess themselves in favor of private ownership of the means of production and advocate measures partly socialist and partly interventionist. They seek to justify this on the ground that the essence of liberalism as they define this word does not consist in adherence to the institution of private property, but in other things, and that these other things demand a further development of “liberalism” so that it must today no longer advocate private ownership of the means of production but instead either socialism or interventionism.

  As to just what these “other things” might be, these pseudo “liberals” have yet to enlighten us. We hear much about humanity, magnanimity, real freedom, etc. These are certainly very fine and noble sentiments, and everyone will readily subscribe to them. And, in fact, every ideology does subscribe to them. Every ideology—aside from a few cynical schools of thought—believes that it is championing humanity, magnanimity, real freedom, etc. What distinguishes one social doctrine from another is not the ultimate goal of universal human happiness, which they all aim at, but the way by which they seek to attain this end. The characteristic feature of liberalism as the term is used in this book is that it proposes to reach it by way of private ownership of the means of production.

  But terminological issues are, after all, of secondary importance. What counts is not the name, but the thing signified by it. However fanatical may be one’s opposition to private property, one must still concede at least the possibility that someone may be in favor of it. And if one concedes this much, one will, of course, have to have some name to designate this school of thought. One must ask those who today call themselves “liberals” what name they would give to an ideology that advocates the preservation of private ownership of the means of production. They will perhaps answer that they wish to call this ideology “Manchesterism.” The word “Manchesterism” was originally coined as a term of derision and abuse. Nevertheless, this would not stand in the way of its being employed to designate the liberal ideology if it were not for the fact that this expression has hitherto always been used to denote the economic rather than the general program of liberalism.

  The school of thought that advocates private ownership of the means of production must in any case also be granted a claim to some name or other. And it is best to adhere to the traditional name. It would only create confusion if one followed the new usage that allows even protectionists, socialists, and warmongers to call themselves “liberal” when it suits them to do so.

  The question could rather be raised whether, in the interest of facilitating the diffusion of liberal ideas, one ought not to give the ideology of liberalism a new name, so that the general prejudice fostered against it, especially in Germany, should not stand in its way. Such a suggestion would be well-intentioned, but completely antithetic to the spirit of liberalism. Just as liberalism must, from inner necessity, eschew every trick of propaganda and all the underhanded means of winning general acceptance favored by other movements, so it must also avoid abandoning its old name simply because it is unpopular. Precisely because the word “liberal” has a bad connotation in Germany, liberalism must stick with it. One may not make the way to liberal thinking easier for anyone, for what is of importance is not that men declare themselves “liberals,” but that they become liberals and think and act as liberals.

  A second objection that can be raised against the terminology used in this book is that liberalism and democracy are not here conceived as opposites. Today in Germany “liberalism” is often taken to mean the doctrine whose political ideal is the constitutional monarchy, and “democracy” is understood as that which takes as its political ideal the parliamentary monarchy of the republic. This view is, even historically, altogether untenable. It was the parliamentary, not the constitutional, monarchy that liberalism strove for, and its defeat in this regard consisted precisely in the fact that in the German Empire and in Austria it was able to achieve only a constitutional monarchy. The triumph of antiliberalism lay in the fact that the German Reichstag was so weak that it might be accurately, if not politely, characterized as a “babblers’ club,” and the conservative party leader who said that a lieutenant and twelve men would suffice to dissolve the Reichstag was speaking the truth.

  Liberalism is the more comprehensive concept. It denotes an ideology embracing all of social life. The ideology of democracy encompasses only that part of the realm of social relationships that refers to the constitution of the state. The reason why liberalism must necessarily demand democracy as its political corollary was demonstrated in the first part of this book. To show why all antiliberal movements, including socialism, must also be antidemocratic is the task of investigations that undertake to provide a thorough analysis of the character of these ideologies. In regard to socialism, I have attempted this in my book, Socialism.

  It is easy for a German to go astray here, for he thinks always of the National Liberals and the Social Democrats. But the National Liberals were not, even from the outset—at least in matters of constitutional law—a liberal party. They were that wing of the old “liberal” party which professed to take its stand on “the facts as they really are”; that is, which accepted as unalterable the defeat that liberalism had sustained in the Prussian constitutional conflict from the opponents on the “Right” (Bismarck) and on the “Left” (the followers of Lassalle). The Social Democrats were democratic only so long as they were not the ruling party; that is, so long as they still felt themselves not strong enough to suppress their opponents by force. The moment they thought themselves the strongest, they declared themselves—as their writers had always asserted was advisable at this point—for dictatorship. Only when the armed bands of the Rightist parties had inflicted bloody defeats on them did they again become democratic “until further notice.” Their party writers express this by saying: “In the councils of the social democratic parties, the wing which declared for democracy triumphed over the one which championed dictatorship.”

  Of course, the only party that may properly be described as democratic is one that under all circumstances—even when it is the strongest and in control—champions democratic institutions.

  The typeface used in setting this book is Electra, designed in 1935 by the great American typographer William Addison Dwiggins. Dwiggins was a student and associate of Frederic Goudy and served for a time as acting director of Harvard University Press. In his illustrious career as typographer and book designer (he coined the term “graphic designer”), Dwiggins created a number of typefaces, including Metro and Caledonia, and designed as well many of the typographic ornaments or “dingbats” familiar to readers.

  Electra is a crisp, elegant and readable typeface, strongly suggestive of calligraphy. The contrast between its strokes is relatively muted, and it produces an even but still “active” impression in text. Interestingly, the design of the italic form—called “cursive” in this typeface—is less calligraphic than the italic form of many faces, and more closely resembles the roman.

  This book is printed on paper that is acid-free and meets the requirements of the American National Standard for Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, z39.48–1992. ○∞

  Book design adapted by Erin Kirk New, Watkinsville, Georgia, after a design by Martin Lubin Graphic Design, Jackson Heights, New York

  Typography by G&S Typesetters, Inc., Austin, Texas

  Printed and bound by Edwards Brothers, Inc., Ann Arbor, Michigan

  [* ]Yet one should mention the fact that a few eminent Englishmen continue to espouse the cause of genuine liberalism.

  [1. ]Leon Trotsky, Literature and Revolution, trans. by R. Strunsky (London, 1925), p. 256.

  [* ][One who has passed his second state examination.—Editor. (Original note from the 1st English translation, 1962.)]

  [* ]Ignace Jan Paderewski (1860–1941), Polish statesman, patriot, and composer.

  [* ]In this section, Mises distinguishes between (1) antiliberals who were Communists, Bolsheviks, and Marxians and (2) antiliberals whom he called “Fascists.” Mises recognized no redeeming feature in Communism. The “intellectual and moral heritage” of the Communists descended from “barbarian peoples . . . whose relationship to civilization has never been any other than that of marauding denizens of forest and desert,” and whose “senseless and unrestrained destructionism . . . has stamped the Communists as the archenemies of civilization.” On the other hand, the anti-Communist and anti-Marxist Fascists, which included nationalists, socialists, collectivists, and interventionists, had operated among nations—notably Italy and Germany—“in which the intellectual and moral heritage of some thousands of years of civilization” had prevailed. This “liberal and moral heritage” temporarily stayed their governments’ use of unscrupulous methods and saved civilization in the short run. However, Mises warned (1927) that in time their reliance on naked force to impose their antiliberal socialist programs would give rise to dictatorship and “an endless series of wars that must destroy modern civilization.” Incidentally, it was the anti-Communist anti-Marxists who later became National-Socialists or Nazis.

  [1. ]Syndicalism as an end and as a social idea is not to be confused with syndicalism as a trade-union tactic (the “direct action” of the French syndicalists). Of course, the latter can serve as a means in the struggle for the realization of the syndicalist ideal, but it can also be made to serve other ends incompatible with that ideal. One can strive, for example—and this is precisely what some of the French syndicalists hope to do—to achieve socialism by resorting to syndicalist tactics.

  [2. ]Even if wages were artificially raised (by intervention on the part of the government or by coercion on the part of the trade unions), simultaneously throughout the whole world and in all branches of production, the result would simply be capital consumption and ultimately, as a further consequence of the latter, a still further reduction in wages. I have treated this question in detail in the writings listed in the appendix.

  [* ]The assassination by a Serbian national, Gavrilo Princip, on June 28, 1914, of Archduke Francis Ferdinand, heir apparent to his uncle, Hapsburg Emperor Francis Joseph.