employes in matoli-works, that tliey might not take meals on the premises except in the wood-cutting places. Also there were passed a Chimney-S weepers Act, an Act for further regulating the sale of beer in Ireland, an Act for compulsory testing of cables and anchors, an Act extending the Public Works Act of 1863, and the Contagious Diseases Act: which last gave the police, in specified places, powers which, in respect of certain classes of women, abolished sundry of those safeguards to individual freedom estab- lished in past times. The year I860 witnessed further provision for the reception and temporary relief of wanderers at the cost of ratepayers; another public-house closing Act; and an Act making compulsory regulations for extinguishing fires in London. Then, Tinder the Ministry of Lord John Russell, in 1866, have to be named an act to regulate cattle-sheds, &c., in Scotland, giving local authorities powers to inspect sanitary conditions and fix the numbers of cattle; an Act forcing hop-growers to label their bags wath the year and place of growth and the true weight, and giving police powers of search; an Act to facilitate the building of lodging- houses in Ireland, and providing for regulation of the inmates; a Public Health Act, under which there is registration of lodginghouses and limitation of occupants, with inspection and directions for lime-washing, &c.; and a Public Libraries Act, giving local powers by which a majority can tax a minority for their books.
Passing now to the legislation under the first Ministry of Mr. Gladstone, we have, in 1869, the establishment of State- telegraphy, with the accompanying interdict on telegraphing through any other apency; we have the empowering a Secretary of State to regulate hired conveyances in London; we have further and more stringent regulations to prevent cattle-diseases from spreading, another Beer- house Regulation Act, and a Sea-birds Preservation Act (ensuring greater mortality of fish). In 1870 we have a law authorizing the Board of Public Works to make advances for landlords' improve- ments and for purchase by tenants; we have the Act which enables the Education De[)artment to form school-boards which shall pur- chase sites for schools, and may provide free schools supported by local rates, and enabling scliool-boards to pay a child's fees, to compel parents to send their children, &c. &c.; we have a further Factories and Workshops Act, making, among other restrictions, Bomc on the employment of women and children in fruit-preserving ail 1 tish-cariiior works. In 1871 we meet with an amended Mcr- THE NEW TORYISM. 11 chant Shipping Act, directing officers of the Board of Trade to record the draiight of sea-going vessels leaving port; there is another Factory and Workshops Act, making further restrictions; there is a Pedlar's Act, inflicting penalties for hawking without a certificate, and limiting the district within which the certifi- cate holds, as well as giving the police power to search pedlars' packs; and there are further measures for enforcing vaccination. The year 1872 had, among other Acts, one which makes it illegal to take for hire more than one child to nurse, unless in a house registered by the authorities, who prescribe the number of infants to be received; it had a Licensing Act, interdicting sale of spirits to those apparently under sixteen; and it had another Merchant Ship, ping Act, establishing an annual survey of passenger steamers. Then in 1873 was passed the Agricultural Children's Act, which makes it penal for a farmer to employ a child who has neither certificate of elementary education nor of certain prescribed school-attendances; and there was passed a Merchant Shipping Act, requiring on each vessel a scale showing draught and giving the Board of Trade power to fix the numbers of boats and life-saving appliances to be carried.
Turn now to Liberal law-making under the present Ministry. We have, in 1880, a law which forbids conditional advance-notes in payment of sailors' wages; also a law which dictates certain arrangements for the safe carriage of grain-cargoes; also a law increasing local coercion over parents to send their children to school. In 1881 comes legislation to prevent trawling over clam- beds and bait-beds, and an interdict making it impossible to buy a glass of beer on Sunday in Wales. In 1882 the Board of Trade was authorised to grant licences to generate and sell electricity, and municipal bodies were enabled to levy rates for electric-lighting; further exactions from ratepayers were authorized for facilitating more accessible baths and washhouses; and local authorities were empowered to make bye-laws for securing the decent lodging of persons engaged in picking fruit and vegetables. Of such legislation during 1883 may be named the Cheap Trains Act, which, partly by taxing the nation to the extent of £400,000 a year (in the shape of relinquished passenger duty), and partly at the iOt,i of railway-proprietors, still further cheapens travelling for workmen: the Board of Trade, through the Railway Commissioners, being empowered to ensure sufficiently good and frequent accommodation. Again, there is the Act which, under 12 THE MAN VKUSUS THE STATE.
penalty of £10 for disobcJicnce, forbids the payment of wa^^cs to -workmen at or witliin pubb'c-housos; there is another Factory:ind Workshops Act, commanding inspection of white lead works {to see that there are provided overalls, respirators, baths, acidulated drinks, ttc.) and of bake-houses, regulating times of employnicnb in both, and prescribing in detail some constructions for the last, which are to be kept in a condition satisfactory to the inspectors.
Bat we are far from forming an adequate conception if we look only at the compulsory legislation which has actually been estab- blished of late years. We must look also at that which is advo- <;ated, and which threatens to be far more sweeping in range and stringent in character. We have lately had a Cabinet Minister, ono of the most advanced Liberals, so-called, who pooh-poohs the plana of the late Government for improving industrial dwellings as so much "tinkering;" and contends for effectual coercion to be exer- cissd over owners of small houses, over land-owners, and over rate- payers. Here is another Cabinet Minister who, addressing his constituents, speaks slightingly of the doings of philanthropic societies and religious bodies to help the poor, and says that "the whole of the people of this country ought to look upon this work as being their own work:" that is to say, some extensive Govern- ment measure is called for. Again, we have a Radical member of Parliament who leads a large and powerful bod}^, aiming with annually-increasing promise of success, to enforce sobriety by giving to local majorities powers to prevent freedom of cxchango in respect of certain commodities. Regulation of the hours of labour for certain classes, which has been made more and more general by successive extensions of the Factories Acts, is likely now to be made still more general: a measure is to be proposed bringing the employes in all shops under such regulation. There is a rising demand, too, that education shall be made gratis for all. The payment of school-fees is beginning to be denounced as a wrong: the State must take the whole burden. Moreover, it is proposed by many that the State, regarded as an undoubtedly com- petent judge of -what constitutes good education for the poor, shall undertake also to prescribe good education for the middle classes — shall stamp the children of these, too, after a State pattern, con- cerning the goodness of which they have no more doubt than the Chinese had when they fixed theirs. Then there is the " endow- ment of research," of late energetically urged. Already tho THE NEW TOIIYISM. 13 Governmsnt gives every year the sum or £-i,000 for this purpose, to be distributed througli the Royal Society; and in the absence of those who have strong motives for resisting the pressure of the interested backed by those they easily persuade, it may by-and-by establish that paid " priesthood of science " long ago advocated b^ Sir David Brewster. Once more, plausible proposals are made that there should be organized a system of compulsory insurance, by which men during their early lives shall bo forced to provide for the time when they will be incapacitated.
iNor does enumeration of these further measures of coercive rule, looming on ns near at hand or in the distance, complete the account. Nothing more than cursory allusion has yet been made to that accompanying compulsion which takes the form of increased taxation, general and local. Partly for defraying the costs of carrying out these ever-multiplying coercive measures, each of which requires an additional staff of officers, and partly to meet the outlny for new public institutions, such as board-schools, free llbi'aries, public museums, baths and washhouses, recreation grounds, &c., &c,, local rates are year after year increased; as the general taxation is increased by grants for education and to the departments of science and art, &c. Every one of these involves further coercion — restricts still more the freedom j)f the citizen, ^or the implied address accompanying every additional exaction is — "Hitherto you have been free to spen-i this portion of your earnings in any Avay which pleased you; hereafter you shall not be free so to spend it, bat we will spend it for the general benefit.'* Thus, either directly or indirectl}^, and in most cases both at once, the citizen is at each further stage in the growth of this compulsory legislation, deprived of some liberty which he previously had.
Such, then, are the doings of the party which claims the name of Liberal; and which calls itself Liberal as being the advocate of extended freedom.
I doubt not that many a member of the pnrty has read tbo preceding section with impatience; wanting, as he does, to point ijut an immense oversight which he thinks destroys the validity of the argument. "You forget," he wishes to say, " the fundamental dilierence between the power which, in the past, established those restraints that Liberalism abolished, and the power which, in the present, csfcciblishcs the restraints yoq. call anti-Liberal. Yo^l 14 THE MAN VERSUS THE STATE.
forget tliat tlie one was an irresponsible power, while the other is a responsible power. You forget that if by the recent legislation of Liberals, people are variously regulated, the body which regu- lates them is of their own creating, and has their warrant for its acts."
My answer is, that I have not forgotten this difference, but am prepared to contend that the difference is in large measure irrele- vant to the issue.
In the first place, the real issue is whether the lives of citizens are more interfered with than they were; not the nature of the agency which interferes with them. Take a simpler case. A member of a trades' union has joined others in establishing an organization of a purely representative character. By it he is compelled to strike if a majority so decide; he is for- bidden to accept work save under the conditions they dictate; he is prevented from profiting by his superior ability or energy to the extent he might do were it not for their interdict. He cannot dis- obey without abandoning those pecuniary benefits of the organi- zation for which he has subscribed, and bringing on himself the persecution, and perhaps violence, of his fellows. Is he any the less coerced because the body coercing him is one which he had an equal voice -with the rest in forming?
In the second place, if it be objected that the analogy is faulty, since the governing body of a nation, to which, as protector of the national life and interests, all must submit under penalty of social disorganization, has a far higher authority over citizens than the government of any private organization can have over its members; then the reply is that, granting the difference, the answer made continues valid. If men use their liberty in such a way as to sur- render their liberty, are they thereafter any the less slaves? If people by 2, })Jehiscite elect a man despot over them, do they remain free because the despotism was of their own making? Are the coercive edicts issued by him to be regarded as legitimate because they are the ultimate outcome of their own votes? As well might it be argued that the East Afncan, Avho breaks a spear in another's presence that he may so become bondsman to him, still retains his liberty because he freely chose his master.
Finally if any, not without marks of irritation as I can imagine, repudiae this reasoning, and say that there is no true parallelism between the relation of people to government where an irresponsible THE NEW TORYISM. 15 single ruler Las been permanently eleoted, and the relation where a responsible representative body is maintained, and from time to time re-elected; then there comes the ultimate reply — an altogether heterodox reply — by which most will be greatly astonished. This reply is, that thes*^ multitudinous restraining acts are not defensible on the ground that they proceed from a popularly-chosen body; for that the authority of a popularly-chosen body is no more to be regarded as an unlimited authority than the authority of a monarch; and that as true Liberalism in the past disputed the assumption of a monarch's unlimited authority, so true Liberalism in the present will dispute the assumption of unlimited parliamentary authority. Of this, however, more anon. Here I merely indicate it as an ultimate answer.
Meanwhile it suffices to point out that until recently, just as of old, true Liberalism was shown by its acts to be moving towards the theory of a limited parliamentary authority. All these aboli- tions of restraints over religious beliefs and observances, over exchange and transit, over trade-combinations and the travelling of artisans, over the publication of opinions, theological or political, &c., &c., were tacit assertions of the desirableness of limitation. Tn the same way that the abandonment of sumptuary laws, of laws forbidding this or that kind of amusement, of Jaws dictating modes of farming, and many others of like meddling nature, which took place in early days, w^as an implied admission that the State ought not to interfere in such matters; so those removals of hindrances to individual activities of one or other kind, which the Liberalism of the last generation effected, were practical confes- gions that in these directions, too, the sphere of governmental action should be narrowed. And this recognition of the propriety of restricting governmental action was a preparation for restricting it in theory. One of the most familiar political truths is that, in the course of social evolution, usage precedes law; and that when usage has been well established it becomes law by receiving autho- litative endorsement and defined form. Manifestly then, Liberalism in the past, by its practice of limitation, was preparing the way for the principle of limitation.
But returning from these more general considerations to the special question, I emphasize the reply that the liberty which a citizen enjoys is to be measured, not by the nature of the govern- mental machincx-y he lives under, whether representative or other.
18 THE l^IAN VEIiSCS THE STATE.
bufc by tbo relative paucity of the restraints it imposes on liim; and that, whether this machinery is or is not one that he has shared in making, its actions are not of the kind proper to Liberalism if they increase such restraints beyond those wbich are needful for preventing him from directly or indirectly aggressing on his fellows — needful, that is, for maintaining the liberties of his fbllows against his invasions of them: restraints which are, there- fore, to be distinguished as negatively coercive, not positively coercive.
Probably, however, the Liberal, and still more the snb-spccief=; Kadical, who more than any other in these latter days seems under the impression that so long as he has a good end in view he is warranted in exercising over men all the coercion he is able, vrill continue to i^rotost. Knowing that his aim is popular benefit of some kind, to be achieved in some way, and believing that the Tory is, contrariwise, prompted by chiss-interest and the desire to main- tain class-power, he Avill regard it as palpably absurd to gronp him as one of the same genno, and will scorn the reasoning used to prove that he belongs to it.
Perhaps an analogy will help him to see its validity. If, away in the far East, where personal government is the only foi-m of government known, he heard from the inhabitants an account of c^ struggle by which they had deposed a cruel and vicious despot, and put in his place one whose acts proved his desire for their welfare — ii, after listening to their self-gratulatious, he told them that they had not essentially changed the nature of their government, he would greatly astonish them; and probably he would have diffi- culty in making them understand that the substitution of a bene- volent despot for a malevolent despot, still left the government a despotism. Similarly with Toryism as rightly conceived. Standing as it does for coercion by the State versus the freedom of the indi< vidual. Toryism remains Toryism, whether it extends this coercion for selfish or unselfish reasons. As certainly as the despot is still a despot, whether his motives for arbitrary rale are good or bad j so certainly is the Tory still a Tory, whether he has egoistic or al- truistic motives for using State-power to restrict the liberty of tho cidzen, beyond the degree required for maintaining the liberties of other citizens. The altruistic Tory as well as the egoistic Tory boiongs to the gcnas Tory; though he forms a new species of the THE NEW TOUYTSM. 17 )^e-mis. And both staucl in distinct contrast with the Liberal as defined in the days wlicn Liberals were rightly so called, and when the definition wns — " one who adv^ocates greater freedom from restraint, especially in political institutions."
Thus, then, is justified the paradox I set out with. As we have seen, Toryism and Liberalism originally emerged, the one frora militancy and the other from industrialism. The one stood for the regime of status and the other for the regime of contract — the one for that system of compulsory co-operation which accompanies the legal inequality of classes, and the other for that voluntary co- operation which accompanies their legal equality; and beyond all question the early acts of the two parties were respectively for the maintenance of agencies which effect this compulsory co-operation, and for the weakening or curbing of them. Manifestly the implication is that, in so far as it has been extending the system -of compulsion, what is now called Liberalism is a new form of Toryism.
How truly this is so, we shall see still more clearly on looking at the facts the other side upward:i, which we will presently do.
Note. — By sundry newspapers which noticed this article when it was originally published, the meaning of the above paragraphs was supposed to be that Liberals and Tories have changed i)laces. This, however, is by no means the implication. A new species of Tory may arise without disappearance of the original species. When saying, as on page 8, that in our days " Conservatives and Liberals vie with one another in multiplying " interferences, I clearly implied the belief that while Liberals have taken to coercive legislation. Conservatives have not abandoned it. Nevertheless, it is true that the laws made by Liberals are so greatly increasing the compulsions and restraints exercised over citizens, that among Conservatives who suffer from this aggressiveness there is growing lip a tendency to resist it. Proof is furnished by the fact that the " Liberty and Property Defence Leagae," largely consisting of Conservatives, has taken for its motto " Individualism versus Socialism." So that if the present drift of things continues, it may by and by really happen that the Tories will be defenders of liberties which the Liberals, in pursuit of what they think popular welfare, trample under foot, 0 THE COMING SLAVERY.
'I'iiE kinship of pity to love is shown among other ways in this, that it idealizes its object. Sympathy with one in suffering suppresses, for the time beino-, remembrance of his transgressions. The feeling which vents itself in " poor follow! " on seeing one in agony, excludes the thought of " bad fellow," which might at another time arise. Naturally, then, if the wretched are unknown or but vaguely known, all the demerits they may have are ignored; and thus it happens that when, as just now, the miseries of the poor are depicted, they are thought of as the miseries of the deserving poor, instead of being thought of, as in large measure they should be, as the miseries of the undeserving poor. Those whose hardships are set forth in pamphlets and proclaimed in sermons and speeches which echo throughout society, are assumed to be all worthy souls, grievously wronged; and none of them are thought of as bearing the penalties of their own misdeeds.
On hailing a cab in a London street, it is surprising how frequently the door is officiously opened by one who expects to get something for his trouble. The surprise lessens after counting the many loungers about tavern-doors, or after observing the quickness with which a street-performance, or procession, draws from neighbouring slums and stable-yards a group of idlers. Seeing how numerous they are in every small area, it becomes manifest that tens of thousands of such swarm through Ijoudon. " They have no work," you say. Say rather that they either refuse work or quickly turn themselves out of it. They are simply good-for-nothings, who in one way or other live on the good-for-somethiags — vagrants aad sots, criminals and those on the way to crime, youths who are burdens on hard-wox'kcd parents, THE COMING SLAVERY. 19 men -who appropriate the wages of their wives, fellows who share the gains of prostitutes; and then, less visible and less numerous, there is a corresponding class of women.
Is it natural that happiness shoald be the lot of such? or is it natural that they should bring unhappiness on themselves and those connected with them? Is it not manifest that there must exist in our midst an immense amount of misery which is a normal result of misconduct, and ought not to be dissociated from it? There is a notion, always more or less prevalent and just now vociferously expressed, that all social suffering is removable, and that it is the duty of somebody or other to remove it. Both these beliefs are false. To separate pain from ill-doing is to fight against the constitution of things, and will be followed by far more pain. Saving men from the natural penalties of dissolute living, even- tually necessitates the infliction of artificial penalties in solitary cells, on tread-whieols, and by the lash. I suppose a dictum, on which the current creed and the creed of science are at one, may be considered to have as high an authority as can be found. Well, the command " if any would not work neither should he eat," is • simply a Christian enunciation of that universal law of Nature under which life has reached its present height — the law that a creature not energetic enough to maintain itself must tiie: the sole difference being that the law which in the one case is to be arti- ficially enforced, is, in the other case, a natural necessity. And yet this particular tenet of their religion which science so manifestly justifies, is the one which Christians seem least inclined to accept. The current assumption is that there should be no suffering, and that society is to blame for that which exists.
" But surely we are not without responsibilities, even when the suffering is that of the unworthy? " If the meaning of the word " we " be so expanded as to include with ourselves our ancestors, and especially our ancestral legislators, I agree. I admit that those who made, and modified, and administered, the old Poor Law, were responsible for pro- ducing an appalling amount of demoralization, which it will take more than one generation to remove. I admit, too, the partial responsibility of recent and present law-makers for regulations which have brought into being a permanent body of tramps, who ramble from union to union; and also their responsibility for maintaining a constant supply of felons by sending back convicts 20 THE MAN VEnSUS THE STATE.
into society under such, conditions tliat they are almost compelled ng-ain to commit crimes. Moreover, I admit that the philanthropic are not without their share of responsibility; since, that they may aid the offspring of the unworthy, they disadvantage the offsprins: of the worthy through burdening their parents by increased local rates, Nay, I even admit that these swarms of good-for-nothings, fostered and multiplied by public and private agencies, have, by sundry mischievous meddlings, been made to suffer more than they would otherwise have suffered. Are these the responsibilities jtneant? I suspect not.
But now, leaving the question of responsibilities, however con- ceived, and considering only the evil itself, what shall we say of its .treatment? Let me begin with a fact.