Table of Contents
This collection of essays makes available the major and representative writings in political philosophy of one of the distinctive figures in the profound and wide-ranging intellectual debate which took place during the late Victorian age. It was during this period, in the intellectual and social ferment of the 1880s and 1890s, that Auberon Herbert (1838-1906) formulated and expounded voluntaryism, his system of thorough individualism. Carrying natural rights theory to its logical limits, Herbert demanded complete social and economic freedom for all noncoercive individuals and the radical restriction of the use of force to the role of protecting those freedomsincluding the freedom of peaceful persons to withhold support from any or all state activities. All cooperative activity, he argued, must be founded upon the free agreement of all those parties whose rightful possessions are involved.
Auberon Herbert was by birth and marriage a well-placed member of the British aristocracy. He was educated at Eton and at St. John's College, Oxford. As a young man he held commissions in the army for several years and served briefly with the Seventh Hussars in India (1860). On his return to Oxford he formed several Conservative debating societies, was elected a Fellow of St. John's, and lectured occasionally in history and jurisprudence. In 1865, as a Conservative, he unsuccessfully sought a seat in the House of Commons. By 1868, however, he was seeking a parliamentary seat, again unsuccessfully, as a Liberal. Finally, in 1870, Herbert successfully contested a by-election and entered the Commons as a Liberal representing Nottingham. Most notably, during his time in the House of Commons, Herbert joined Sir Charles Dilke in declaring his republicanism and Herbert supported Joseph Arch's attempts to form an agricultural laborer's union. Although, through hindsight, many of Herbert's actions and words during the sixties and early seventies can be read as harbingers of his later consistent libertarianism, he actually lacked, throughout this period, any consistent set of political principles. During this period, for instance, he supported compulsory state educationalbeit with strong insistence on its being religiously neutral.
In late 1873 Herbert met and was much impressed by Herbert Spencer. As he recounts in Mr. Spencer and the Great Machine, a study of Spencer led to the insight that
thinking and acting for others had always hindered, not helped, the real progress; that all forms of compulsion deadened the living forces in a nation; that every evil violently stamped out still persisted, almost always in a worse form, when driven out of sight, and festered under the surface. I no longer believed that the handful of ushowever well-intentioned we might bespending our nights in the House, could manufacture the life of a nation, could endow it out of hand with happiness, wisdom, and prosperity, and clothe it in all the virtues.
However, it was even before this intellectual transformation that Herbert had decided, perhaps out of disgust with party politics or uncertainty about his own convictions, not to stand for reelection in 1874. Later, in 1879, he again sought Liberal support to regain a seat from Nottingham. But at that point his uncompromising individualist radicalism was not acceptable to the majority of the Central Council of the Liberal Union of Nottingham. In the interim, 1877, he had organized the Personal Rights and Self-Help association. And in 1878 he had been one of the chief organizers of the antijingoism rallies in Hyde Park against war with Russia. Along with other consistent classical liberals, Herbert repeatedly took anti-imperialist stands. He called for Irish self-determination. He opposed British intervention in Egypt and later opposed the Boer War.
In 1880 following his rejection by the Liberals of Nottingham, Herbert turned to the publication of addresses, essays, and books in defense of consistent individualism and against all forms of political regimentation. Even in 1877 he had been disturbed by a constant undertone of cynicism in the writings of his mentor, Herbert Spencer, and had resolved to do full justice to the moral side of the case for a society of fully free and voluntarily cooperative individuals. And while Spencer grew more and more crusty, conservative, and pessimistic during the last decades of the nineteenth century, Herbert, who continued to think of himself as Spencer's disciple, remained idealistic, radical, and hopeful. And though he refused to join, he willingly addressed such organizations as the Liberty and Property Defense League which he felt to be a little more warmly attached to the fair sister Property than to the fair sister Liberty. Similarly, Herbert held himself separate from the Personal Rights Association, whose chief mover, J. H. Levy, favored compulsory taxation for the funding of state protective activities. With the exception of the individualistic reasonable anarchists, Herbert thought of himself as occupying the left wing of the individualist camp, that is, the wing most willing to carry liberty furthest.
In 1885 Herbert sought to establish the Party of Individual Liberty and under this rubric gave addresses across England. The title essay for this collection, The Right and Wrong of Compulsion by the State, was written as a statement of the basis for, the character of, and the implications of, the principles of this party. Again with the aim of advancing libertarian opinion, Herbert published the weekly (later changed to monthly) paper Free Life, The Organ of Voluntary Taxation and the Voluntary State, from 1890 to 1901. Free Life was devoted to One Fight MoreThe Best and the Last, the fight against the aggressive use of force which is a mere survival of barbarism, a mere perpetuation of slavery under new names, against which the reason and moral sense of the civilized world have to be called into rebellion. Also during the 1890s, Herbert engaged in lengthy published exchanges with two prominent socialists of his day, E. Belfort Bax and J. A. Hobson. Herbert continued to write and speak into this century, and two of his best essays, Mr. Spencer and the Great Machine and A Plea for Voluntaryism, were written in 1906, the last year of his life.
In all his mature writings Auberon Herbert defended a Lockean-Spencerian conception of natural rights cording to which each person has a right to his own person, his mind and body, and hence to his own labor. Furthermore, each person has a right to the products of the productive employment of his labor and faculties. Since each person has these rights, each is under a moral obligation to respect these rights in all others. In virtue of each person's sovereignty over himself, each individual must consent to any activity which directly affects his person or property before any such activity can be morally legitimate. Specifically, each must forgo the use of force and fraud. Each has a right to live and produce in peace and in voluntary consort with others, and all are obligated to respect this peace.
In The Right and Wrong of Compulsion by the State, Herbert is anxious to point out that there is a potentially dangerous confusion between two meanings which belong to the word force. Direct force is employed when person A, without his consent, is deprived, or threatened with the deprivation, of something to which he has a rightfor example, some portion of his life, liberty, or property. Anyone subject to such a deprivation or threat is, in his own eyes, the worse for it. His interaction with the wielder of force (or fraud) is something to be regretted, something to which he does not consent. In contrast, if B induces A to act by threatening (so-called) merely to withhold something that B rightfully owns and A values, then, according to Herbert, we can say that B has used indirect force upon A. But such indirect force is radically different from direct force. In the case of indirect force, A does not act under a genuine threat. For he is not faced with being deprived of something rightfully his (his arm or his life). Instead he is bribed, coaxed, induced into acting by the lure of B's offer of something which is rightfully B's. No action endangering rights plays any role in motivating A. A may, of course, wish that B had offered even more. But in accepting B's offer, whatever it may be, A indicates that on the whole he consents to the exchange with B. He indicates that he values this interchange with B over the status quo. He indicates that he sees it as beneficialunlike all interactions involving direct force.
The employer may be indirectly forced to accept the workman's offer, or the workman may be indirectly forced to accept the employer's offer; but before either does so, it is necessary that they should consent, as far as their own selves are concerned, to the act that is in question. And this distinction is of the most vital kind, since the world can and will get rid of direct compulsion; but it can never of indirect compulsion.
Besides, Herbert argues, any attempt to rid the world of indirect force must proceed by expanding the role of direct force. And when you do so, you at once destroy the immense safeguard that exists so long as [each man] must give his consent to every action that he does. The believer in strong government cannot claim, says Herbert, that in proposing to regulate the terms by which individuals may associate, he is merely seeking to diminish the use of force in the world.
What, then, may be done when the violation of rights threatens? So strong is Herbert's critique of force that, especially in his early writings, he is uncomfortable about affirming the propriety of even defensive force. Thus, in A Politician in Sight of Haven the emphasis is on the fact that the initiator of force places his victim outside the moral-relation and into the force-relation. Force, even by a defender, is not moral. The defender's only justification is the necessity of dealing with the aggressor as one would with a wild beast. Indeed, so pressed is Herbert in his search for some justification that he says, in justification of his defense of himself, The act on my part was so far a moral one, inasmuch as I obeyed the derived moral command to help my neighbor.
In The Right and Wrong of Compulsion by the State, Herbert starts by identifying the task of finding moral authority for any use of force and the task of finding moral authority for any government. He declares that no perfect foundation for such authority can be found, that all such authority is a usurpationthough when confined within certain exact limits a justifiable usurpation.
In his later writings, Herbert seems to have fully overcome his hesitancy about defensive force. Possibly his most forceful statement appears in the essay A Voluntaryist Appeal:
If you ask us why force should be used to defend the rights of self-ownership, and not for any other purpose, we reply by reminding you that the rights of self-ownership are supreme moral rights, of higher rank than all other human interests or institutions; and therefore force may be employed on behalf of these rights, but not in opposition to them. All social and political arrangements, all employments of force, are subordinate to these universal rights, and must receive just such character and form as are required in the interest of these rights.
According to Herbert, each person's absolute right to what he has peacefully acquired through the exercise of his faculties requires the abolition of compulsory taxation. The demand for voluntary taxation only is a simple instance of the demand for freedom in all human interaction. An individual does not place himself outside the moral relation by merely retaining his property, by not donating it for some other person's conception of a worthy project. Such a peaceful individual is not a criminal and is not properly subject to the punishment of having a portion of his property confiscated. Herbert particularly urged those in the individualist camp to reject compulsory taxation.
I deny that A and B can go to C and force him to form a state and extract from him certain payments and services in the name of such state; and I go on to maintain that if you act in this manner, you at once justify state socialism. The only difference between the tax-compelling individualist and the state socialist is that while they both have vested ownership of C in A and B, the tax-compelling individualist proposes to use the powers of ownership in a very limited fashion, the socialist in a very complete fashion. I object to the ownership in any fashion.
It is compulsory taxation which generates and sustains the corrupt game of politicsthe game in which all participants strive to further their aims with resources forcefully extracted from those who do not share their aims. Compulsory taxation breaks the link between the preferences of the producers and peaceful holders of resources with respect to how those resources (their property, their faculties, their minds and bodies) should be used, and the actual use of those resources. For instance, compulsory taxation
gives great and undue facility for engaging a whole nation in war. If it were necessary to raise the sum required from those who individually agreed in the necessity of war, we should have the strongest guarantee for the preservation of peace. Compulsory taxation means everywhere the persistent probability of a war made by the ambitions or passions of politicians.
Herbert's demand for a voluntary state, that is, a state devoted solely to the protection of Lockean-Spencerian rights and funded voluntarily, combined with his continual condemnation of existing state activities led to Herbert's being commonly perceived as an anarchist. Often these perceptions were based on hostility and ignorance, but Herbert was also regarded as an anarchist by serious and reasonably well-informed prostate critics like J. A. Hobson and T. H. Huxley. Similarly, J. H. Levy thought that to reject the compulsory state was to reject the state as such. And while, for these men, Herbert's purported anarchism was a fault, the individualist anarchist Benjamin Tucker always insisted that, to his credit, Auberon Herbert was a true anarchist.
Of course, there can be no question of whether Auberon Herbert was an anarchist of the coercive collectivizing or terrorist sort. Nothing could be further from his own position. For as Herbert points out in his The Ethics of Dynamite, coercion, systematic or random, is nothing but a celebration of the principles on which the coercive state rests. Whether Herbert was an anarchist of the individualist, private property, free market sort is another and far more complex question. Herbert himself continually rejected the label; and although he maintained cordial relationships with men like Benjamin Tucker and Wordsworth Donisthorpe, he insisted that his views were sufficiently different from theirs in important respects to place him outside the camp of reasonable anarchists.
In what ways did Herbert's views differ from those of the individualist anarchists as represented by Tucker? Tucker had tied himself to a labor theory of value. It followed for him that such activities as lending money and renting property were not genuinely productive and that those who gained by such activities advanced themselves improperly at the expense of less-propertied people. Thus, Tucker took the laboring class to be an exploited class, exploited by the holders of capital. And he duly sympathized with, and often shared the rhetoric of, others who were announced champions of the proletariat against the capitalist class. Herbert did not accept this sort of economic analysis. He saw interest as a natural market phenomenon, not, as Tucker did, as the product of state enforced monopolization of credit. And Herbert saw rent as legitimate because he believed, contrary to Tucker, that one did not have to be continually using an object in order to retain just title to it and therefore morally charge others for their use of that object.
I suspect it was these differencesdifferences not actually relevant to the issue of Herbert's anarchismalong with Herbert's desire not to grant the political idiots of his day the verbal advantage of tagging him an anarchist, that sustained Herbert's insistence that what he favored was, in fact, a type of state. But other factors and nuances entered in. Herbert argued that a voluntarily supported state would do a better job at defining and enforcing property rights than would the cooperative associations which anarchists saw as taking the place of the state and protecting individual liberty and property. Unfortunately, in his exchanges with Tucker on this matter, the question of what sort of institution or legal structure was needed for, or consistent with, the protection of individual life, liberty, and property tended to be conflated with the question of the genuine basis for particular claims to property. Finally, Herbert's considered judgment was that individualistic supporters of liberty and property who, like Tucker, favored the free establishment of defensive associations and juridical institutions were simply making a verbal error in calling themselves anarchists. They were not for no government, Herbert thought, but for decentralized, scattered, fragmented government. Herbert's position was that, although it would be better to have many governments within a given territory (a republican one for republicans, a monarchical one for monarchists, etc.) than to compel everyone to support a single state, individuals, if given the choice, would converge on a single government as their common judge and defender within a given territory. How we ultimately classify Herbert depends upon our answers to these two questions: (1) Does the fact that Herbert would allow individuals to withhold support from the state and to form their own alternative rights-respecting associations, show him to be an anarchist? (2) Does the fact that Herbert thought that it would be unwise for individuals to form such splinter associations, and unlikely that they would form them, show that the central institution which he favored was a state?
No sketch of Herbert's views could be complete, even as a sketch, without some mention of Herbert's multidimensional analysis of powerthe sorrow and the curse of the world. Following Spencer's distinction between industrial and militant societies, Herbert continually emphasized the differences between two basic modes of interpersonal coordination. There is the way of peace and cooperation founded upon respect for selfownership and the demand for only voluntary association. And there is the way of force and strife founded upon either the belief in the ownership of some by others or the simple reverence of brute force.
It is difficult, however, to summarize Herbert's analysis of these modes since it involves a great number of interwoven moral, psychological, and sociological insights. One of course must look to his writings, but chiefly his two last essays, Mr. Spencer and the Great Machine, and A Plea for Voluntaryism. Insofar as there is a division of labor between these two essays, the former focuses on the inherent dynamic of political powerthe ways in which the great game of politics captures its participants no matter what their own initial intentionswhile the latter essay focuses on the corrupting results of this captivity within those participants. According to Herbert, no man's integrity or moral or intellectual selfhood can withstand participation in the battle of power politics.
The soul of the high-minded man is one thing; and the great game of politics is another thing. You are now part of a machine with a purpose of its ownnot the purpose of serving the fixed and supreme principlesthe great game laughs at all things that stand before and above itself, and brushes them scornfully aside, but the purpose of securing victory. When once we have taken our place in the great game, all choice as regards ourselves is at an end. We must win; and we must do the things which mean winning, even if those things are not very beautiful in themselves.
Progress is a matter of the development of human individuality, not the growth of uniformity and regimentation. Hence,
Progress depends upon a great number of small changes and adaptations and experiments constantly taking place, each carried out by those who have strong beliefs and clear perceptions of their own in the matter. But true experimentation is impossible under universal systems. Progress and improvement are not amongst the things that great machines are able to supply at demand.
Progress, then, is part of the price we all pay for power. But the possessors of power pay a further price. For, according to Herbert, power is a fatal gift.
If you mean to have and to hold power, you must do whatever is necessary for the having and holding of it. You may have doubts and hesitations and scruples, but power is the hardest of all taskmasters, and you must either lay these aside, when you once stand on that dangerous, dizzy height, or yield your place to others, and renounce your part in the great conflict. And when power is won, don't suppose that you are a free man, able to choose your path and do as you like. From the moment you possess power, you are but its slave, fast bound by its many tyrant necessities.
Ultimately, therefore, it is in no one's interest to seek power over others. Such an endeavor simply generates a dreadful war of all upon all which, even when momentarily won, makes the victor the slave of the vanquished and which robs all contestants of their dignity as selfowning and self-respecting beings. It is necessary to emphasize that, according to Herbert, liberty and respect for all rights are, ultimately, in each individual's interest. For Herbert often couched his appeals in terms of self-denial and self-sacrifice. This was especially true of his appeals to the working class, which he envisioned as forming electoral majorities for the purpose of legislating downward redistributions of property. In fact, it seems that Herbert's calls for self-denial were calls for the discipline to withstand the temptations of (merely) short-term political windfalls and to appreciate the long-term moral, psychological, and economic importance, for each person, of respect for all individual rights. Thus, on the moral and psychological level, Herbert rhetorically asks,
If you lose all respect for the rights of others, and with it your own self-respect; if you lose your own sense of right and fairness; if you lose your belief in liberty, and with it the sense of your own worth and true rank; if you lose your own will and self-guidance and control over your own lives and actions,what can all the gifts of politicians give you in return?
And on the tactical level he adds, In the end you will gain far more by clinging faithfully to the methods of peace and respect for the rights of others than by allowing yourselves to use the force that always calls out force in reply. The skepticism of Herbert's contemporaries about whether they would have to live with such long-term consequences was, for them, no virtue, and, for us, no favor.
Tulane UniversityNew Orleans,
Endnotes
The Canadian Confederation. Fortnightly Review, 1867.
Address on the Choices between Personal Freedom and State Protection. Delivered at the annual meeting of the Vigilance Association for the Defense of Personal Rights, March 9, 1880. London: Vigilance Association, 1880.
State Education: A Help or Hindrance? Fortnightly Review, 1880.
A Politician in Trouble About His Soul. Fortnightly Review (in five parts) 1883, 1884. The last sequel bore the separate title, A Politician in Sight of Haven. The whole work was reprinted as A Politician in Trouble About His Soul (London: Chapman & Hill, 1884). A Politician in Sight of Haven was serialized in Benjamin Tucker's Liberty in 1884, and published by Tucker in Boston in 1884 and 1890.
The Right and Wrong of Compulsion by the State. London: Williams & Norgate, 1885based on a series of articles in and on letters to the Newcastle Weekly Chronicle.
The Rights of Property. The proceedings of and Herbert's address at the seventh annual meeting of the Liberty and Property Defense League, December l0, 1889. London: Liberty & Property Defense League, 1890.
Free Life. Edited by Herbert (weekly, later monthly). London, 1890-190l.
'The Rake's Progress' in Irish Politics. Fortnightly Review, 1891.
The True Line of Deliverance. In A Plea of Liberty. Edited by T. Mackay. London: John Murray, 1891.
Under the Yoke of the Butterflies. Fortnightly Review (in two parts), 1891, 1892.
A Cabinet Minister's Vade-mecum; a Satire. Nineteenth Century1893.
Is the Hope of Our Country an Illusion? New Review, 1894.
The Ethics of Dynamite, Contemporary Review, 1894.
Wares for Sale in the Political Market. The Humanitarian: A Monthly Review of Sociological Science (in two parts), 1895.
State Socialism in the Court of Reason. The Humanitarian: A Monthly Review of Sociological Science (in two parts), 1895.
The Principles of Voluntaryism and Free Life. Edited by E. E. Krott. Burlington, Vt.: Free Press Assoc., 1897. Second edition, 1899.
A Voluntaryist Appeal. The Humanitarian: A Monthly Review of Sociological Science, 1898.
Salvation by Force. The Humanitarian: A Monthly Review of Sociological Science, 1898.
Lost in the Region of Phrases. The Humanitarian: A Monthly Review of Sociological Science, 1899.
The Tragedy of Errors in the War in Transvaal.Contemporary Review, 1900.
How the Pot Called the Kettle Black. Contemporary Review, 1902.
The Voluntaryist Creed (consisting of Mr. Spencer and the Great Machine and A Plea of Voluntaryism). London: W. J. Simpson, 1908.
Taxation and Anarchism. With and edited by J. H. Levy. London: Personal Rights Assoc., 1912.
E. Belfort Bax. Voluntaryism Versus Socialism.The Humanitarian: A Monthly Review of Sociological Science, 1895.
Dictionary of National Biography. Second Supplement. London: Smith, Elder & Co., 1912.
S. Hutchinson Harris. Auberon Herbert: Crusader for Liberty. London: Williams & Norgate, 1943.
S. Hutchinson Harris. Auberon Herbert. Nineteenth Century and After, 1938.
J. A. Hobson. Rich Man's Anarchism. The Humanitarian: A Monthly Review of Sociological Science, 1898.
T. H. Huxley. Government: Anarchy or Regimentation. Nine-teenth Century, 1890.
Liberty. Edited by Benjamin Tucker. Boston and New York, 1851-1908. Reprinted by Greenwood Press (Westport, Conn., 1970).
Some of the relevant material appears in Tucker's Instead of a Book (New York: Tucker, 1893), reprinted by Arno Press (New York, I972).
This address was given by Auberon Herbert before a meeting of the Vigilance Association for the Defense of Personal Rights in London on March 9, 1880. It was published shortly thereafter by the Vigilance Association.
In the midst of much that is written and said about progress and improvement, it is seldom perceived how disorderly are our usual habits of political thinking. Those who are engaged in political work usually reject any kind of systematic thought, and disdain the authority of general principles. Whether they are writers or speakers they dislike to look forward and to consider questions that are not already well above their horizon; they have a generous confidence in the guidance of the future and their own unprepared instincts. They could with difficulty, and perhaps not altogether with satisfaction to themselves, reconcile their votes or opinions on different subjects, and the history of their conduct would contain nearly as many anomalies as does the British constitution. Except in the most general terms they could not describe the goal toward which their efforts are directed, nor have they ever placed before their own minds a distinct and coherent picture of what they seek to make of this England which is subjected to their treatment. They cannot see the forest on account of the trees, and their horizon is inexorably bounded by the immediate struggles in which their party is engaged. Like the rest of the world, they are not unwilling to dislike and condemn what they do not practice. They look on every system of thought as a newfangled invention of the doctrinaires, a sign both of want of practicality and of intellectual conceit, and they resent it vigorously as an attempt to restrain their intelligence from flowing, like Wordsworth's river, at its own sweet will. Expressions of pious thankfulness for the prosperous flowings of this mental river meet us on every side. Thank Heaven! we hear men say, we are not as our neighbors! We are not enslaved by formulas! We are not afraid of doing any wise or useful thing, because it is inconsistent with our general views! We have the gift of always stopping in time, and we can therefore safely move to any point, north, south, east, or west, of our political compass. We can never go far wrong, for we always have our good sense ready to protect us!
In listening to such language we are tempted to ask, does anyone in reality escape the thraldomif thraldom it beof general principles? We may not recognize in our own minds the general principles which direct our conduct; we may be profoundly ignorant of their existence; but I think in every case, putting out of consideration actions which are instinctive, it may be shown that whether these general principles are, or are not known to us, nevertheless we are all acting under their guidance. One man may be quite conscious of the principles he is following; he has deliberately examined, tested, and chosen them as his guides; another man is equally under the authority of some other set of principles, though he has never consciously placed himself in that position, and does not even know the name or nature of what he obeys; in one case they may be narrower; in another case, wider; more consistently or more uncertainly applied; but in every case, however carelessly adopted or inconsistently followed, or however little recognized they may be, general principles of some kind or another will be found as the guides of conduct. This will become plainer when we remember that a general principle implies the classing together of certain factswith or without an injunction added to itand that daily life is only carried on from hour to hour by means of the knowledge which results from such classifications. We perceive that a certain thing acting under similar conditions produces a certain effect, and having repeatedly observed this same cause and this same effect accompanying each other, we enact for ourselves a command to do or to forbear, and we act so as to produce or avoid a foreseen effect. It will be plain to everyone who considers the matter, that there could be no advance in knowledge of any kind, unless facts were always being classified, and unless, with the enormous increase of facts so classified, the further work were to go on of arranging them in groups according to their relations amongst themselves. This is the work on which the race has been engaged ever since the dim early days when it first classified the effect of fire and water, by saying fire burns and water quenches. Advance of knowledge means that we are learning as regards some substance whatever it may be, metal, plant, animal, that the same cause is accompanied by the same effectby placing this effect in connection with other effects, and gathering from the members of the group the law which is common to them all. It means not only learning new facts, but introducing order amongst facts already learned. All available knowledge consists of classification, since facts unarranged and unclassified are of no more present use to us, than bricks are until they are built into some kind of a building. What is true as regards material substances of the world is true as regards human nature. Now politics are essentially one part of the science of human nature, and it is the same human nature, neither more nor less, as that with which we come in contact every hour of our lives. This simple truth is often forgotten in presence of the machinery of Parliaments, public offices, parties, organizations, caucuses, and all the other instruments of political life, but we cannot go back in mind too often to the fundamental facts, first, that we are dealing with the simple human nature of every day, and, second, that human nature must be studied and understoodits facts must be classifiedlike causes connected with like effects, furnishing us with their own special generalizationsthen these effects connected with other effects furnishing us with their own special generalizationsthen these effects connected with other effects furnishing us with wider generalizationsif we are to act as successfully upon it as we do upon any of the materials that we use in our manufactures. It seems almost like urging the importance of study of the alphabet to urge that all successful political conduct must be founded upon the classification of those facts that affect human nature, of those conditions which as we learn from the common everyday experience of life, either aid or impede its development. Is proof required that in our views of human nature we recognize general principles? Si quaeris signa, circumspice! A speech that wins the applause of its hearers, a character skillfully drawn in a novel, a successful play bear witness to the self-evident proposition that men have classified certain facts regarding their own selves, and recognized what are called laws of human nature. Otherwise we could not by a sort of common agreement praise the skill and truth of the artist; the effect upon each of us would be purely personal, subjective and accidental. We should be without that common standard of reference which we now possess and of which our common judgments of praise and blame are the evidence. And yet the very words general principles cause a sort of horror to those who are ingaged in politics. There is a vague superstitious dread about the use of them; and men feel, when an appeal is made in their name, almost as if they were asked to give up the study of facts and to return to those verbal explanations of earlier days, which merely supplied a new clothing of words and left the matter itself standing where it did before.
But amongst the objectors to general principles in politics will be found some men of cautious and exact thought whose mental inclination will be to hand over each question as it arises to the decision of those who have given special attention to it, and may be looked on as authorities in the matter. These men will deny that there is at present sufficient material to justify the laying down of wide general principles; they will be on the side of experiment; they will wish each question to be separately treated, and treated according to the recommendations of those most familiar with it; they will attach immense importance to special knowledge and special experience, and exceedingly little importance to knowledge and experience of a wider kind. I cannot attempt to reply at length here to such objections, which must however be treated with respect. It is sufficient to point out that those great advances in knowledge, which cause mental and moral revolutions, are more often made by those men who fit themselves to connect existing groups of facts, than by those who add one more group to the many thousand groups now in existence. Without undervaluing the gain of a new fact in any department of life, I think one is justified in saying that at present the accumulation of facts is in advance of the power of using and connecting facts, and that the balance seems likely to be still further inclined in this direction; especially as regards the science of human nature the mass of unused facts is enormous. Every history, every novel, every newspaper, every household is full of them; but they are lost to the world for want of careful attempts to follow their connections and to introduce order amongst them. I must also urge as against following the advice of political specialists, that they are seldom if ever men who have studied the body politic as a whole, or who have given much thought to the effect on the general system of the local remedy they would apply. A specialist in medicine is only really deserving of confidence if, in addition to his knowledge of the part, he has thorough knowledge of the whole system, but our local advisers in politics, who are often men of great thoroughness and worthy of all respect for their own special knowledge, would generally disclaim such wider knowledge. In politics quite as much as in medicine the local evil is often but a symptom of the systematic evil, and only to be removed when some condition of life, at first sight unconnected with it, is altered.
But it may be urged that the acceptance of general principles in politics would lead to an idle way of thinking. All questions would be dismissed from political consideration at the dictation of an assumed formula which, as it is remarked, might not be true after all. No doubt there is a saving of intellectual labor. So there is when an astronomer takes the law of gravitation for granted; or a mechanician the properties of the lever; or a chemist the laws of the combining weights of the elements; or a physiologist the law that work implies waste. No worker in any of these departments would be grateful for the obligation to do such work over again on each occasion for himself. He would complain that a science that was not in possession of certain accepted generalizations, could not be treated as a science at all, but as a mere aggregate of floating facts. As regards the objection that incalculable harm might follow from the acceptance of a false general principle, we must bear in mind that every wide generalization that continues to live and gather strength in the world, bears in itself a certain evidence of its truth. It is so far true, that presumably the existing generation of men have not the requisite knowledge to disprove it. The wider it is, the more exposed to attack it is in many places and at many times. It stands in the presence of all men, always inviting attack. The wider it is spread amongst an intelligent people, the more probable it becomes that if not true in itself, the experience of some person or other will provide the weapon for its destruction. Unless, as some persons believe, the human race is born to err, it is as nearly certain as can be that the doom of refutation sooner or later will descend upon any false first principle that has been exalted into a law of conduct.
We must also remember that in seeking for a guide for conduct, we have not really the choice of either consistently following general principles, or being guided in each case by special knowledge. Few men can have special knowledge on many subjects, and what are those to do who are not amongst the happy few? Follow the specialists? but generally the specialists are divided. The more carefully we examine the springs which move those who reject the guidance of general principles, the more clearly we shall see that either they are swayed by general principles, which they have never examined, and are scarcely conscious of, and which in such a case are degenerated into mere prejudices (prejudice being I think a general principle that has never been submitted to the examination of reason), and therefore that they are likely to select that specialist as their guide who most agrees with their ordinary way of thinking; or else that they leave themselves at the mercy of that chapter of accidents, popular excitement, private interest, advantage of party, contagion of emotion, or whatever it may be which is responsible for so many of our actions, and which explains why our actions so often present startling contrasts between themselves.
Last, it must be said, that those who object to general principles in politics and disclaim their supremacy, are themselves betrayed by their incautious cautionnimium premendo littus iniquuminto making a generalization of a very wide and rash character. Those like effects which follow from like causesthat unbroken interdependence of every group of facts with every other group of factsthat order and that arrangement which prevail everywhere else in the worldthese things are suddenly and miraculously to be suspended in the political world, here alone in the whole realm of nature, for the benefit of the politician who wishes to have no further embarrassment than those of the present time, and to fulfill from hour to hour of his shifting course, the maxim sufficient for the day is the evil thereof. This is the startling general principle to which we find ourselves committed in our vain attempt to discover a region behind the north wind. I have spent much of your time today in trying to show that our great work in politics, as in every other science, is to bring facts into groups, or to use the more common expression, under law, to connect these groups with each other, until from them we establish the great principles which are to be the guides of our action. I believe until this is done, whatever work of reform we undertake for special objects is in a great measure wasted. You break off today with infinite labor the chains that fasten one limb, to find tomorrow that chains of the same kind have been placed on another limb. At present in England no reform can be attempted until the part affected is in an acute state of suffering and the effects are visible to all men. No reform has the least chance of success which appeals to abstract justice, and which simply says, Evil must follow, because the primary laws are broken. I do not wish to undervalue the fair-mindedness of Englishmen; we have some small measure of that quality which is scarcely as yet at all developed amongst civilized men, the power of being convinced; but I wish to attack the self-complacency with which Englishmen regard their present state of mental disorder, and their satisfaction at placing their convictions at the mercy of the chapter of accidents. Half the evils in politics arise from our being obliged, whenever and wherever a reform is needed, to show that the immediate (and I may say the lower) interests of some class are involved in the matter; until at last, thanks to such constant appeals, the feeling arises in those classes that their immediate interest is the right standpoint from which to view every political question. If, instead of such appeals, we stood on those great and primary principles which underlie every group of political facts, then there would be an ennobling and transforming influence in politics, because the sense of direct personal interest would be put on one side, and men would seek to interpret rightly in each case the universal law. The universal law cannot be disregarded without injury to every part of society, and it is a truer method to regard political questions from this point of view, than to attempt to balance the loss or profit which will accrue to some special class.
And now, if there be great primary laws controlling the intercourse of men and regulating their relations with each other; if order prevails in human science as it does in every other science, can we yet speak confidently as to what these laws are? Mr. Herbert Spencer, to whom in all this matter we owe largely, to whom I am convinced the world owes a debt which it will some day much more fully recognize than it has yet done, to whom personally I owe directly or indirectly every belief for which this paper contends, has expressed the law which binds men in their relations to each other. We can suppose no other object to be placed before ourselves but happiness, though we may differently interpret the word, in a higher or in a lower sense. We are then entitled to pursue happiness in that way in which it can be shown we are most likely to find it, and as each man can be the only judge of his own happiness, it follows that each man must be left free so to exercise his faculties and so to direct his energies as he may think fittest to produce happiness;with one most important limitation, which must always be understood as accompanying the liberty of which I speak. His freedom in this pursuit of happiness must not interfere with the exactly corresponding freedom of others. Neither by force nor by fraud may he restrain the same free use of faculties enjoyed by every other man. This then, the widest possible liberty, is the great primary law on which all human intercourse must be founded if it is to be happy, peaceful, and progressive. Perfect obedience to it will produce constant advance in our capabilities for happiness, in our feelings of kindliness and good will toward each other, in our intellectual acquisitions. Just as I believe this to be the master-principle of good in human affairs, so do I believe that old desire which is so firmly planted in the breasts of menthe desire to exercise force over each otherto be the master-principle of evil. Where liberty is to be bounded by liberty, it is necessary for us to define liberty and to restrain all aggressions upon it. In this one case force acquires its true sanction, that of being employed in the immediate defense of liberty, but except in this case physical force has no place or part in civilized life, and represents the antiprogressive power that still exists amongst us. If this principle be trueand I believe that the more it is examined and subjected to attacks, the more clearly will it be seen to be truethen how sure and how simple is the guide which we possess in political life, and how mischievous though well intentioned are all those efforts of the reformer or the philanthropist who believes in his own special method of coercion and restraint, and has never learned to believe in the all-healing method of liberty. I do not ask that the principle of liberty should be accepted by any man until he has most carefully and most anxiously viewed it in its every bearing, and has examined every group of political facts with the purpose of ascertaining whether mischievous results, like in kind, do not, sooner or later, follow wherever there is a neglect or contempt of liberty. If the principle be true we shall be able, with increasing knowledge and better methods of examination, to vindicate it at every point. Of all the serious steps in life, that is the most serious when a man chooses the guiding principle of his actions. I think, therefore, we ought to search out for ourselves and to listen to all that can be said against the principle of liberty. Let us hear all the counter evidence possible before we finally exalt it as our rule and guide, though, perhaps, when we have once done so, we shall be as much inclined to smile when it is impatiently proposed to disregard it for the sake of some passing evil, as the Astronomer Royal would be if some new group of facts were to be hastily explained in disregard of the influence of gravitation. Nor must we assign to liberty qualities which it does not possess, and which, if we were in a mood of unreasoning enthusiasm to attribute to it, would only lead to our disappointment. Like other great beneficent forces in nature, such as natural selection, there is a sternness in it, and its direct effects are often accompanied with pain. It is, as I believe, the great all-healer, but healing must sometimes be a painful process.
Now let me point out to you that we have not arrived simply at an abstract result, but that this question of liberty as against force will be found to enter into all the great questions of the day. It is the only one real and permanent dividing line between opinions. Whatever party names we may give ourselves, this is the question always waiting for an answer, Do you believe in force and authority, or do you believe in liberty? Hesitations, inconsistencies there may bemen shading off from each side into that third party which in critical and decisive times has become a proverb of weaknessbut the two great masses of the thinking world are ever ranged on the one side or the other, supporters of authority, believers in liberty.
What, then, is the creed of liberty, and to what, in accepting it, are we committed? We have seen that there exists a great primary right that as men are placed here for happiness (we need not dispute as to the meaning of the term), so each man must be held to be the judge of his own happiness. No man, or body of men, has the right to wrest this judgment away from their fellow man. It is impossible to deny this, for no man can have rights over another man unless he first have rights over himself. He cannot possess the right to direct the happiness of another man, unless he possess rights to direct his own happiness: and if we grant him the latter right, this is at once fatal to the former right. Indeed to deny this right, or to abridge anything from it, is to reduce the moral world to complete disorder. Deny this right and you have no foundation left for rights of any kindfor justice, political freedom, or political equalityyou have established the reign of force, and whatever gloss of civilization you may place over it, you have brought men once more to the good old plan on which our fathers stood.
This I believe to be the plain truth. There is this one strong simple foundation, or there is nothing. We may accustom our minds to Houses of Parliament, to majorities in the House, or majorities in the nation; we may talk our political jargon and push forward our party schemes, but this great truth remains unaltered through all our sayings and doings. It is true that here, as elsewhere in nature, we may live in disregard of the law, but here, as elsewhere, there is no escape from the consequences. All the partialities and privilegesall the bitter envyings and hostilities which exist amongst usall the craving for powerall the painful unrest and blind effortsall the wild and dangerous remediesall the clinging to old forms, and the want of faith and courage to choose the newall these will be found in an ultimate analysis to be amongst the consequencesand serious enough they areof not recognizing and obeying the law on which our intercourse with each other is founded.
In very few words I will point out what are the derivatives from this law of liberty. Granted that a man is to be judge of his own happiness, and to direct his exertions in whatever manner he will, he is entitled to receive the full reward of those exertions. Except for the defense of liberty itself, which defense is necessary to ensure the receiving of this full reward, no man or body of men may rightfully step in and intercept any part of that reward. We know as a fact that governmentswho are the last to recognize rightsare not encumbered with scruples in this matter, and that they do not hesitate to help themselves out of the resources of their subjects, as largely as they consider necessary for the furtherance of any and every kind of object, which they either consider is desired by some influential part of the nation, or which they have personal motives for desiring themselves. But few men will contend that the actions of governments are founded on right; and few men amongst those who look for the foundations of right below existing customs and current expressions, will accept the will of a majority as a sanction for taking from a man what he has won by his own exertions. It may be inconvenient, and it is often highly so in politics, to recognize the truth; but there the truth is, that if a man possesses rightsI mean primary rights, rights belonging to human existence, not created by any majority of his fellow menneither that majority nor any other majority outside that man can dispossess him of those rights. To do so is to abolish the very word rights from any place in civilized language.
To resume the argument, once let this right be granted this right of free action and full enjoymentand what follows? By it all those attempts of government to restrain people for their own good, are condemned. The man is to be his own judge, and you are not to tell him in what fashion he is to follow his religion, pursue his trade, enjoy his amusements, or in a word, live any part of his life. Neither are you to protect him in either body or mind. To protect one man you must take from the resources of another manyou must abridge the amount which the latter by his exertions has earned for himself. It is impossible to protect any one man save by diminishing the result of what the perfect enjoyment of libertythat is the free use of his own facultieshas brought to another man, and therefore without taking into consideration here the weakening and destroying effects of protection upon the person protected, all protection equally with all restraint by force of government, must be held as a diminution from perfect liberty. It comes then to this, that except to protect the liberty of one man from the aggression of another man, that is, to repel force and fraud, which latter is force in disguise, you cannot justify the interferences of government in the affairs of the people, however benevolent or philanthropic may be the cloak you throw over them. That there may be certain cases which, from their very nature, are not cases to which the law applies, and which require special consideration, such, for example, as the management of property, wisely or unwisely placed in the hands of a government, I at once admit; into these I need not here enter. But bearing in mind that which Mr. Spencer has pointed out, the imperfection of all human definitions, and that at the boundary of every division into which we place existences of any kind, whether physical or mental, there is a point where it is impossible to say on which side of the line the thing in question lies; remembering that nature has not divided plant or animal, qualities of the mind, or even those ancient opposites, good and bad, into black and white squares, like those of a chessboard; but that, however complete and manifest may be their differences today, in virtue of that common root which existed in the ages of long ago, they still melt into each other by gradations too delicate for any point of separation to be fixed; remembering this, and making such allowance for it as is necessary, we may still say, and say truly, that the law knows no exception. You must accept human liberty whole or entire, or you must give up all cogency of reasoning by which to defend any part of it. Either it is a right, as sacred in one part as in another, an intelligible and demonstrable right, from which political justice and political equality intelligibly and demonstrably descend, or else it only exists in the world as a political luxury, a passing fashion, a convenience for obtaining certain economical advantages, which today is and tomorrow is not. Either you must treat men as self-responsible, as bearing their own burdens, and making their own lives, as free in thought, word and action, or you must treat them as so much political matter, which any government that can get into power may protect, restrain and fashion as it likes. In this case it all becomes subject matter for experiment, and Tory or Communist are alike free to work out their theories upon it, if they can only once count hands enough to transfer the magic possession of power to themselves. It is easy to perceive how long the reign of force has lasted in the world, how withering to conscience and to intellect has been its influence, when we find the great mass of men practically supporting such a creed. Out belief in force, our readiness to use it, and our obedience yielded to it, are but forms of fetish worship still left amongst us. Written in almost every heart, though unknown to the owner of it, are the words force makes right. Those who wish to escape from this baneful superstition, who wish to destroy its altar and cut down its groves, can only do so by taking their stand on plain, intelligible principle; can only do so by recognizing that there are moral laws standing above our human dealings with each other, laws which we cannot depart from, which we cannot recognize at one moment and ignore at the next to suit our party conveniences. No detached effort, no rising of a few people against some special wrong which personally affects them, will ever alter the world's present way of thinking. It must be the battle of principlesthe principle of liberty against the principle of force. With slight alterations we may take the words of Lowell, and read our own meaning in them:
Endnotes
This article appeared in the Fortnightly Review for July 1850.
For ten years we have been busy organizing national education. A vigorous use of bricks and mortar is not generally accompanied by a careful examination of first principles, but now that we have built our buildings and spent our millions of public money, and civilized our children in as speedy a fashion as that in which the great Frank christianized his soldiers, we may perhaps find time to ask a question which is waiting to be discussed by every nation that is free enough to think, whether a state education is or is not favorable to progress?
It may seem rash at first sight to attack an institution so newly created and so strong in the support which it receives. But there are some persons at all events whom one need not remind, that no external grandeur and influence, no hosts of worshipers can turn wrong principles into right principles, or prevent the discovery by those who are determined to see the truth at any cost that the principles are wrong. Sooner or later every institution has to answer the challenge, Are you founded on justice? Are you for or against the liberty of men? And to this challenge the answer must be simple and straightforward; it must not be in the nature of an outburst of indignation that such a question should be asked; or a mere plea of sentiment; or the putting forward of usefulness of another kind. These questions of justice and liberty stand first they cannot take second rank behind any other considerations, and if in our hurry we throw them on one side, unconsidered and unanswered, in time they will find their revenge in the imperfections and failure of our work.
National education is a measure carried out in the supposed interest of the workmen and the lower middle class, and it is they especiallythe men in whose behalf the institution existswhom I wish to persuade that the inherent evils of the system more than counterbalance the conveniences belonging to it.
I would first of all remind them of that principle which many of us have learned to accept, that no man or class accepts the position of receiving favors without learning, in the end, that these favors become disadvantages. The small wealthy class which once ruled this country helped themselves to favors of many kinds. It would be easy to show that all these favors, whether they were laws in protection of corn, or laws favoring the entail of estates, creating sinecures, or limiting political power to themselves, have become in the due course of time unpleasant and dangerous burdens tied round their own necks. Now, is state education of the nature of a political favor?
It is necessary, if discussion is in any way to help us, to speak the truth in the plainest fashion, and therefore I have no hesitation in affirming that it is so. Whenever one set of people pay for what they do not use themselves, but what is used by another set of people, their payment is and must be of the nature of a favor, and does and must create a sort of dependence. All those of us who like living surrounded with a slight mental fog, and are not overanxious to see too clearly, may indignantly deny this; but if we honestly care to follow Dr. Johnson's advice, and clear our minds of cant, we shall perceive that the statement is true, and if true, ought to be frankly acknowledged. The one thing to be got rid of at any cost is cant, whether it be employed on behalf of the many or the few.
Now, what are the results of this particular favor? The most striking result is that the wealthier class think that it is their right and their duty to direct the education of the people. They deserve no blame. As long as they pay by rate and tax for a part of this education, they undoubtedly possess a corresponding right of direction. But having the right they use it; and in consequence the workman of today finds that he does not count for much in the education of his children. The richer classes, the disputing churches, the political organizers are too powerful for him. If he wishes to realize the fact for himself let him read over the names of those who make up the school boards of this country. Let him first count the ministers of all denominations, then of the merchants, manufacturers, and squires. There is something abnormal here. These ministers and gentlemen do not place the workmen on committees to manage the education of their children. How, then, comes it about that they are directing the education of the workmen's children? The answer is plain. The workman is selling his birthright for the mess of pottage. Because he accepts the rate and tax paid by others, he must accept the intrusion of these others into his own home affairsthe management and education of his children. Remember, I am not urging, as some do, the workmen to organize themselves into a separate class, and return only their own representatives as members of school boards; such action would not mend the unprofitable bargain. To take away money from other classes, and not to concede to them any direction in the spending of it, would be simply unjustwould be an unscrupulous use of voting power. No, the remedy must be looked for in another direction. It lies in the one real form of independencethe renunciation of all obligations. The course that will restore to the workmen a father's duties and responsibilities, between which and themselves the state has now stepped, is for them to reject all forced contributions from others, and to do their own work through their own voluntary combinations. Until that is done no workman has more, or has a claim to have more, than half rights over his own children. He is stripped of one-half of the thought, care, anxiety, affection, responsibility, and need of judgment which belong to other parents.
I used the expression, the forced contributions of the rich. There are some persons who hold that the more money you can extract by legislation from the richer classes for the benefit of the poorer classes the better are your arrangements. I entirely dissent from such a view. It is fatal to any clear perception of justice. Justice requires that you should not place the burdens of one man on the shoulders of another man, even though he is better able to bear them. In plainer words, that you should not make one set of men pay for what is used by another set of men. If this law be once disregarded it simply reduces politics to a universal scramble, in which the most selfish will have the most success. It turns might into right, and proclaims that each man may rightfully possess whatever he can vote into his pocket. Whoever is intent on justice must be as just to the rich man as to the poor man; and because so-called national education is not for the children of the rich man, it is simply not just to take by compulsion one penny from him. No columns of sophistry can alter this fact. And yet, when once the obligation disappears, and the grace of free-giving is restored, it is a channel in which the money of the richer classes may most worthily flow. Whatever the faults are of our richer classes, there is no lack amongst them of generous giving. Take any newspaper and you will find that although by unwise legislation we are closing many of the great channels existing for their gifts, yet the quality persists. The endowment of colleges at one period, the endowment of grammar schools at another period, gifts to religious institutions, and the support given to that narrow, partial, vexatious, and official-minded system of education which prevailed up to 1870, are all evidence of what the richer people are ready to do as long as you do not withhold the opportunities. It may, however, be said, Do not rich gifts bring obligations, and with them their mischievous consequences? It is plain that the most healthy state of education will exist when the workmen, dividing themselves into natural groups according to their own tastes and feelings, organize the education of their children without help, or need of help, from outside. But between obligatory and voluntary contributions there is the widest distinction. There is but slight moral hurt to the giver or receiver in the voluntary gift, provided only that the spirit on both sides be one of friendly equality. It is the forced contribution, bringing neither grace to the giver nor to the receiver, which has the evil savor about it, and brings the evil consequence. The contribution taken forcibly from the rich is justified on the ground that the thing to be provided is a necessity for which the poorer man cannot pay. Thus the workman is placed in the odious position of putting forward the pauper's plea, and two statments equally deficient in truth are made for him: one, that book education is a necessity of lifea statement which for those who look for an exact meaning in words that are used is simply not trueand the other, that our people cannot provide it for themselves if left to do so in their own fashion.
I wish to push still further the question of how much real power the workman possesses over the education of his children. I maintain that, setting aside the interference of ministers, merchants, manufacturers, doctors, lawyers, and squires in his affairs, he has only the shadow and semblance of power, and that he never will possess anything more substantial under a political system. Let us see for what purposes political organization can be usefully applied. It is well adapted to those occasions when some definite reply has to be made to a simple question. Shall there be peace or war? Shall political power be extended to a certain class? Shall certain punishments follow certain crimes? Shall the form of government be republican or monarchical? Shall taxes be levied by direct or indirect taxation? These are all questions which can be fairly answered by yes or no, and on which every man enrolled in a party can fairly express his opinion if he has once decided to affirm or deny. But whenever you call upon part of the nation to administer some great institution the case becomes wholly different. Here all the various and personal views of men cannot be represented by a simple yes or no. A mixed mass of men, like a nation, can only administer by suppressing differences and disregarding convictions. Take some simple instance. Suppose a town of 50,000 electors should elect a representative to assist in administering some large and complicated institution. Let us observe what happens. It is only possible to represent these 50,000 people, who will be of many different mental kinds and conditions, by some principle which readily commands their assent. It will probably be some principle which, from its connection with other matters, is already familiar to their mindmade familiar by preceding controversies. For example, the electors may be well represented on such questions as Shall the institution be open or closed on Sundays? Shall it be open to women? Shall the people be obliged to support it by rate? and, When rate-supported, to make use of it? But it will at once be seen that these are principles which do not specially apply to any one institution but to many institutions. They are principles of common political applicationthey are, in fact, external to the institution itself, and distinct from its own special principles and methods. The effect then will be that the representative will be chosen on principles that are already familiar to the minds of the electors, and not on principles that peculiarly and specially affect the institution in question. Existing controversies will influence the minds of the electors, and the constituency will be divided according to the lines of existing party divisions. Both school boards and municipal government yield an example that popular elections must be fought out on simple and familiar questions. The existing political grooves are cut too deeply to allow of any escape from them.
But, it may be replied, as intelligence increases, and certain great political questions which are always protruding themselves are definitely settled, the electorate may become capable of conducting their contests simply with regard to the principles which really belong to the matter itself. Another difficulty arises here. Without discussing the possible settlement of these ever-recurring political questions, it ought to be remembered that, in the case of increased intelligence, we should have an increase in the number of different views affecting the principles and methods of the institution in question; and, as we should still have only one representative to represent us, it would be less possible for him than before to represent our individual convictions. If he represent A he cannot represent B, or C, or any of those that come after C; that is to say, if A, B, C, and the others are all thinking units, and therefore, do not accept submissively whatever is offered to them. He can only represent one section, and must leave other sections unrepresented. But as these individual differences are both the accompaniment and sign of increasing intelligence, this unhappy result follows, that the more intelligent a nation becomes, the greater pain it must suffer from a system which forces its various parts to think and act alike when they would naturally be thinking and acting differently.
But if this is so, then there is no such thing possible as representation. If one person cannot represent many persons, then administration of all kinds fails equally in fulfilling a common purpose. All united effort therefore becomes impossible.
No doubt effective personal representation is under any circumstances a matter of difficulty; but political organization admits only of the most imperfect form of it, voluntary organization of the most perfect. Under political organization you mix everybody together, like and unlike, and compel them to speak and act through the same representative; under voluntary organization like attracts like, and those who share the same views form groups and act together, leaving any dissident free to transfer his action and energy elsewhere. The consequence is that under voluntary systems there is continual progress, the constant development of new views, and the action necessary for their practical application; under political systems, immobility on the part of the administrators, discontented helplessness on the part of those for whom they administer.
But still there remain certain things which, however much you may desire to respect personal differences, the state must administer; such, for example, as civil and criminal law, or the defense of the country.
The reason why the nation should administer a system of law, or should provide for external defense, and yet abstain from interference in religion and education, will not be recognized until men study with more care the foundations on which the principle of liberty rests. Many persons talk as if the mere fact of men acting together as a nation gave them unlimited rights over each other; and that they might concede as much or as little liberty as they liked one to the other. The instinct of worship is still so strong upon us that, having nearly worn out our capacity for treating kings and such kind of persons as sacred, we are ready to invest a majority of our own selves with the same kind of reverence. Without perceiving how absurd is the contradiction in which we are involved, we are ready to assign to a mass of human being unlimited rights, while we acknowledge none for the individuals of whom the mass is made up. We owe to Mr. Herbert Spencerthe truth of those writings the world will one day be more prepared to acknowledge, after it has traveled a certain number of times from Bismarckism to communism, and back from communism to Bismarckismthe one complete and defensible view as to the relations of the state and the individual. He holds that the great condition regulating human intercourse is the widest possible liberty for all. Happiness is the aim that we must suppose attached to human existence; and therefore each man must be freewithin those limits which the like freedom of others imposes on himto judge for himself in what consists his happiness. As soon as this view is once clearly seen, we then see what the state has to do and from what it has to abstain. It has to make such arrangements as are necessary to ensure the enjoyment of this liberty by all, and to restrain aggressions upon it. Wherever it undertakes duties outside this special trust belonging to it, it is simply exaggerating the rights of some who make up the nation and diminishing the rights of others. Being itself the creature of liberty, that is to say, called into existence for the purposes of liberty, it becomes organized against its own end whenever it deprives men of the rights of free judgment and free action for the sake of other objects, however useful or desirable they may be.
It is on account of our continued failure to recognize this law of liberty that we still live, like the old border chieftains, in a state of mutual suspicion and terror. Far the larger amount of intolerance that exists in the world is the result of our own political arrangements, by which we compel ourselves to struggle, man against man, like beasts of different kinds bound together by a cord, each trying to destroy the other out of a sense of self-preservation. It is evident that the most fair-minded man must become intolerant if you place him in a position where he has only the unpleasant choice either to eat or be eaten, either to submit to his neighbor's views or force his own views upon his neighbor. Cut the cord, give us full freedom for differing amongst ourselves, and it at once becomes possible for a man to hold by his own convictions and yet be completely tolerant of what his neighbor says and does.
I come now to another great evil belonging to our system. The effort to provide for the education of children is a great moral and mental stimulus. It is the great natural opportunity of forethought and self-denial; it is the one daily lesson of unselfishness which men will learn when they will pay heed to none other. There is no factor that has played so large a part in the civilization of men as the slow formation in parents of those qualities which lead them to provide for their children. In this early care and forethought are probably to be found the roots of those things which we value so highlyaffection, sympathy, and restraint of the graspings of self for the good of others. We may be uncertain about many of the agents that have helped to civilize men, but here we can hardly doubt. What, then, is likely to be the effect when, heedless of the slow and painful influences under which character is formed, you intrude a huge all-powerful something, you call the state, between parents and children, and allow it to say to the former, You need trouble yourself no more about the education of your children. There is no longer any occasion for that patience and unselfishness which you were beginning to acquire, and under the influence of which you were learning to forego the advantage of their labor, that they might get the advantage of education. We will give you henceforth free dispensation from all such painful efforts. You shall at once be made virtuous and unselfish by a special clause in our act. You shall be placed under legal obligations, under penalty and fine, to have all the proper feelings of a parent. Why toil by the slow irksome process of voluntary efforts and your own growing sense of right to do your duty, when we can do it so easily for you in five minutes? We will provide all for youmasters, standards, examinations, subjects, and hours. You need have no strong convictions, and need make no efforts of your own, as you did when you organized your chapels, your benefit societies, your trade societies, or your cooperative institutions. We are the brain that thinks; you are but the bone and muscles that are moved. Should you desire some occupation, we will throw you an old bare bone or two of theological dispute. You may settle for yourselves which dogmas of the religious bodies you prefer; and while you are fighting over these things our department shall see to the rest of you. Lastly, we will make no distinctions between you all. The good and the bad parent shall stand on the same footing, and our statutes shall assume with perfect impartiality that every parent intends to defraud his child, and can only be supplied with a conscience at the police court. This cynical assumption of the weakness and selfishness of parents, this disbelief in the power of better motives, this faith in the inspector and the policeman, can have but one result. Treat the people as unworthy of trust, and they will justify your expectation. Tell them that you do not expect them to possess a sense of responsibility, to think or act for themselves, withhold from them the most natural and the most important opportunities for such things, and in due time they will passively accept the mental and moral condition you have made for them. I repeat that the great natural duties are the great natural opportunities of improvement for all of us. We can see every day how the wealthy man, who strips himself entirely of the care of his children, and leaves them wholly in the hands of tutors, governesses, and schoolmasters, how little his life is influenced by them, how little he ends by learning from them. Whereas to the man whose are much occupied with what is best for them, who is busied with the delicate problems which they are ever suggesting to him, they are a constant means of both moral and mental change. I repeat that no man's character, be he rich or poor, can afford the intrusion of a great power like the state between himself and his thoughts for his children. Observe the corresponding effect in another of our great state institutions. The effect of the Poor Law which undertakes the care in the last resort of the old and helplesshas been to break down to a great extent the family feelings and affections of our people. It is simply and solely on account of this great machine that our people, naturally so generous, recognize much less the duty of providing for an old parent than is the case either in France or in Germany. With us, each man unconsciously reasons, Why should I do that which the state will do for me? All such institutions possess a philanthropical outside, but inwardly they are full of moral helplessness and selfishness.
These, then, are the first charges that I bring against state education; that the forced payments taken from other classes place the workman under an obligation; that, in consequence, the upper and middle classes interfere in the education of his children; that under a political system there is no place for his personal views, but that practically the only course of action left open to him is to join one of the two parties who are already organized in opposition to each other, and record a vote in favor of one of them once in three years. I do not mean to make the extreme statement that it is impossible to persuade either one party or both parties to adopt some educational reform, but I mean to say that one body acting for a whole country or a whole town can only pursue one method, and, therefore, must act to the exclusion of all views which are not in accordance with that one method; and that bodies which are organized for fighting purposes, and whose first great object is to defeat other great bodies nearly as powerful as themselves, are bound by the law of their own condition not to be easily moved by considerations which do not increase their fighting efficiency.
I have just touched upon the evils of uniformity in education; but there is more to say on the matter. At present we have one system of education applied to the whole of England. The local character of school boards deceives us, and makes us believe that some variety and freedom of action exist. In reality they have only the power to apply an established system. They must use the same class of teachers; they must submit to the same inspectors; the children must be prepared for the same examination, and pass in the same standards. There are some slight differences, but they are few and of little value. Now, if any one wishes to realize the full mischief which this uniformity works, let him think of what would be the result of a uniform method being established everywherein religion, art, science, or any trade or profession. Let him remember that canon of Mr. Herbert Spencer, so pregnant with meaning, that progress is difference. Therefore, if you desire progress, you must not make it difficult for men to think and act differently; you must not dull their senses with routine or stamp their imagination with the official pattern of some great department. If you desire progress, you must remove all obstacles that impede for each man the exercise of his reasoning and imaginative faculties in his own way; and you must do nothing to lessen the rewards which he expects in return for his exertions. And in what does this reward consist? Often in the simple triumph of the truth of some opinion. It is marvelous how much toil men will undergo for the sake of their ideas; how cheerfully they will devote life, strength, and enjoyment to the work of convincing others of the existence of some fact or the truth of some view. But if such forces are to be placed at the service of society, it must be on the condition that society should not throw artificial and almost insuperable obstacles in the way of those reformers who search for better methods. If, for example, a man holding new views about education can at once address himself to those in sympathy with him, can at once collect funds and proceed to try his experiment, he sees his goal in front of him, and labors in the expectation of obtaining some practical result to his labor. But if some great official system blocks the way, if he has to overcome the stolid resistance of a department, to persuade a political party, which has no sympathy with views holding out no promise of political advantage, to satisfy inspectors, whose eyes are trained to see perfection of only one kind, and who may summarily condemn his school as inefficient, and therefore disallowed by law, if in the meantime he is obliged by rates and taxes to support a system to which he is opposed, it becomes unlikely that his energy and confidence in his own views will be sufficient to inspire a successful resistance to such obstacles. It may be said that a great official department, if quickened by an active public opinion, will be ready to take up the ideas urged on it from outside. But there are reasons why this should not be so. When a state department becomes charged with some great undertaking, there accumulates so much technical knowledge round its proceedings, that without much labor and favorable opportunities it becomes exceedingly difficult to criticize successfully its action. It is a serious study in itself to follow the minutes and the history of a great department, either like the Local Board or the Education Department. And if a discussion should arise, the same reason makes it difficult for the public to form a judgment in the matter. A great office which is attacked envelopes itself, like a cuttlefish, in a cloud of technical statements which successfully confuses the public, until its attention is drawn off in some other direction. It is for this reason, I think, that state departments escape so easily from all control, and that such astounding cases of recklessness and mismanagement come periodically to light, making a crash which startles everybody for the moment. The history of our state departments is like that of some continental governments, unintelligent endurance through long periods on the part of the people, tempered by spasmodic outbursts of indignation and ineffectual reorganization of the institutions themselves. It must also be remembered that the manner in which new ideas produce the most favorable results is not by a system under which many persons are engaged in suggesting and inventing, and one person only in the work of practical application. Clearly the most progressive method is that whoever perceives new facts should possess free opportunities to apply and experiment upon them.
Add one more consideration. A great department must be by the law of its own condition unfavorable to new ideas. To make a change it must make a revolution. Our Education Department, for example, cannot issue an edict which applies to certain school boards and not to others. It knows and can know of no exceptions. Our bastard system of half-central half-local government is contrived with great ingenuity to render all such experiments impossible. If the center were completely autocratic (which Heaven forbid) it could try experiments as it chose; if the localities were independent, each could act for itself. At present our arrangements permit of only intolerable uniformity. Follow still further the awkward attempts of a department at improvement. Influenced by a long-continued public pressure, or moved by some new mind that has taken direction of it, it determines to introduce a change, and it issues in consequence a wholesale edict to its thousands of subordinates. But the conditions required for the successful application of a new idea are, that it should be only tentatively applied; that it should be applied by those persons who have some mental or moral affinity with it, who in applying it, work intelligently and with the grain, not mechanically and against the grain. No wonder, therefore, that departments are so shy of new ideas, and by a sort of instinct become aware of their own unfitness to deal with them. If only one wishes to realize why officialism is what it is, let him imagine himself at the center of some great department which directs an operation in every part of the country. Whoever he was he must become possessed with the idea of perfect regularity and uniformity. His waking and sleeping thought would be the desire that each wheel should perform in its own place exactly the same rotation in the same time. His life would simply become intolerable to him if any of his thousands of wheels began to show signs of consciousness, and to make independent movements of their own.
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The Right and Wrong of Compulsion by the State and Other ...
