1838 - 1906

Nationality:
English

Historical Period:
The 19th Century

Groups

• 19th Century English Radical Individualists
• 19th Century Natural Rights Theorists

Auberon Herbert (1838-1906) was an English radical individualist who was influenced by the work of Herbert Spencer. With a group of other late Victorian classical liberals he was active in such organizations as the Personal Rights and Self-Help Association and the Liberty and Property Defense League. He formulated a system of “thorough” individualism that he described as “voluntaryism.”

Titles:

• Author: A Plea for Liberty: An Argument against Socialism and Socialistic Legislation (LF ed.)
• Author: A Plea for Liberty: An Argument against Socialism and Socialistic Legislation (1891 ed.)
• Author: The Right and Wrong of Compulsion by the State (1885)
• Author: The Right and Wrong of Compulsion by the State and Other Essays (1978 ed.)
• Author: Taxation and Anarchism: A Discussion between the Hon. Auberon Herbert and J.H. Levy
• Author: The Voluntaryist Creed and A Plea for Voluntaryism

Quotations:

• Auberon Herbert discusses the "essence of government" when the veneer of elections are stripped away (1894)
• Auberon Herbert on compulsory taxation as the "citadel" of state power (1885)
• Auberon Herbert on the "magic of private property" (1897)
• Auberon Herbert warns that the use of force is like a wild and dangerous beast which can easily get out of our control (1906)
• Auberon Herbert’s aim is to destroy the love of power and the desire to use force against others (1897)

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