of those who are loudest in their advocacy of a new social order under the paternal control of a Government, shows that even in private voluntarily-formed societies, the power of the regulative organization becomes great, if not irresistible: often, indeed, causing grumbling and restiveness among tliose controlled. Trades Unions' which carry on a kind of industrial war in defence of workers' in- lerests versus employers' interests, find that subordination almost military in its strictness is needful to secure elKcient action: for divided councils prove fatal to success. And even in bodies of co- operators, formed for carrying on manufacturing or distributing businesses, and not needing that obedience to leaders which is required where the aims are offensive or defensive, it is still found that the administrative agency gains such, supremacy that there arise complaints about "the tyranny of organization." Judge then what must happen when, instead of relatively small combina- tions, to which men may belong or not as they please, we have n national combination in which each citizen finds himself incor- porated, and from which he cannot separate himself without leaving the country. Judge what must under such conditions become the despotism of a graduated and centralized officialism, holding in its hands the resources of the community, and having behind it what- •ever amount of force it finds requisite to carry out its decrees and maintain what it calls order. Well may Prince Bismarck display leanings to^rards State-socialism.
And then after recognizing, as they must if they think out their scheme, the power possessed by the regulative agency in the new social system so temptingly pictured, let its advocates ask them- selves to what end this power must be used. Not dwelling exclu- sively, as they habitually do, on the material well-being and the mental gratifications to be provided for them by a beneficent administration, let them dwell a little on the price to be paid. The officials cannot create the needful supplies: they can but distribute among individuals that which the individuals have joined to pro- duce. If the public agency is required to provide for them, it must reciprocally require them to furnish the means. There cannot be, as under our existing system, agreement between employer and employed — this the scheme excludes. There must in place of it be command by local authorities over w^orkers, and acceptance by the workers of that which the authorities assign to them. And this, in- deed, is the arrangement distinctly, but as it would seeminidverter tly, THE COMING SLAVEllY. 41 pointed to by the members of the Democratic Federation. For they propose that production should be carried on by " agricultural and industrial armies under State-control: " apparently not re- membering that armies pre-suppose grades of officers, by whom obedience would have to be insisted upon; since otherwise neither order nor efficient work could be ensured. So that each would fitand toward the governing agency in the relation of slave to master.
" But the governing agency would be a master which he and others made and kept constantly in check; and one which therefore would not control him or others more than was needful for the benefit of each and all."
To which reply the first rejoinder is that, even if so, each member of the community as an individual would be a slave to the community as a whole. Such a relation has habitually existed in militant communities, even under quasi-popular forms of govern- ment. In ancient Grreece the accepted principle was that the citizen belonged neither to himself nor to his family, but belonged to his city — the city being with the Greek equivalent to the com- munity. And this doctrine, proper to a state of constant warfare, is a doctrine which socialism unawares re-introduces into a state intended to be purely industrial. The services of ea^h will belong to the aggregate of all; and for these services, such returns will be given as the authorities think proper. So that even if the adminis- tration is of the beneficent kind intended to be secured, slavery, however mild, must be the outcome of the arrangement.
A second rejoinder is that the administration will presently become not of the intended kind, and tliat the slavery will not be mild. The socialist speculation is vitiated by an assumption like that which vitiates the speculations of the " practical " politician. It is assumed that officialism will work as it is intended to work, which it never does. The machinery of Communism, like existing social machinery, has to be framed out of existing human nature; and the defects of existing human nature will generate in the one the same evils as in the other. The love of power, the selfishness, the injustice, the untruthfulness, which often in comparatively short times bring private organisations to disaster, will inevitably, where their effects accumulate from generation to generation, work evils far greater and less remediable; since, vast and complex and possessed of all the resources, the administrative organization once 42 THE ^lAN Vf:Ji<SUS THE STATE.
developed and consolidated, must become irresistible. And if there needs proof, that the periodic exercise of electoral power would fail to prevent this, it suffices to instance the French Government, which, purely popular in origin, and subject at short intervals to popular judgment, nevertheless tramples on the freedom of citizens to an extent which the English delegates to the late Trades Unions. Congress say " is a disgrace to, and an anomaly in, a Republican nation."
The final result would be a revival of despotism. A disciplined army of civil officials, like an army of military officials, gives supreme power to its head— a power which has often led to usurpa- tion, as in mediaeval Europe and still more in Japan — nay, has thus so led among our neighbours, within our own times. The recent confessions of M. de Maupas have shown how readily a constitu- tibnal head, elected and trusted by the whole people, may, with the aid of a few unscrupulous confederates, paralyze the representative body and make himself autocrat. That those who rose to power in a socialistic organization would not scruple to carry out their aims at all costs, we have good reason for concluding. When we find that shareholders who, sometimes gaining but often losing, have made that railway- system by which national prosperity has been so greatly increased, are spoken of by the council of the Democratic Federation as having "laid hands" on the means of communica- tion, we may infer that those who directed a socialistic administration might interpret with extreme perversity the claims of individuals and classes under their control. And when, further, we find members of this same council urging that the State should take possession of the railwa}s, " with or without compensation," we may suspect that the hcatls of the ideal society desired, would be but little deterred by considerations of equity from pursuing whatever policy they thought needful: a policy'' which would always be one identi- fied with their own supremacy. It would need but a war with an adjacent society, or some internal discontent demanding forcible suppression, to at once transform a socialistic administration into a grinding tyranny like that of ancient Peru; under which the mass of the people, controlled by grades of officials, and leading lives that were inspected out-of-doors and in-doors, laboured for the support of the organisation which regulated them, and were left with but a bare subsistence for themselves. And then would be completely revived, under a different form, that regime of status-— THE COMING SLAVERY. 43 that system of compulsory co-operation, the decaying tradition of which is represented by the old Toryism, and towards which the new Toryism is carrying us back.
" But we shall be on our guard against all that — we shall take precautions to ward off such disasters," will doubtless say the enthusiasts. Be they " practical" politicians with their new regu- lative measures, or communists with their schemes for re-organizing labour, their reply is ever the same: — " It is true that plans of kindred nature have, from unforeseen causes or adverse accidents. or the misdeeds of those concerned, been brought to failure; but this time we shall profit by past experiences and succeed." There seems no getting people to accept the truth, which nevertheless is conspicuous enough, that the welfare of a society and the justice of its arrangements are at bottom dependent on the characters of its members; and that improvement in neither can take place with- out that improvement in character which results from carrying on peaceful industry under the restraints imposed by an orderly social life. The belief, not only of the socialists but also of those so-called Liberals who are diligently preparing the way for them, is that by due skill an ill- working humanity may be framed into well-working institutions. It is a delusion. The defective natures of citizens will show themselves in the bad acting of whatevei^^social structure they are arranged into. There is no political alchemy by which you can get golden conduct out of leaden instincts.
Note. — Two replies by socialists to the foregoing article have appeared since its publication — Socialism and Slavery by H. M. Hyndman and Herbert Spencer on Socialism by Frank Fairman. Notice of tliem here must be limited to saying that, as usual with antagonists, they ascribe to me opinions which I do not hold. Disapproval of Socialism does not, as Mr. Hyndman assumes, necessitate approval of existing arrangements. Many things he reprobates I reprobate quite as much; but I dissent from his remedy. The gentleman who writes under the pseudonym of "Frank Fairman," reproaches me with having receded from that sympathetic defence of the labouring-classes which he finds in Social Statics; but I am quite unconscious of any such change as he alleges. Looking with a lenient eye upon the irregularities of those whose lives are hard, by no means involves tolerance of good- for-nothings.
44 THE SINS OF LEGISLATORS.
Be it or be it not true that Man is sliapen in iniquity and con- ceived in sin, it is unquestionably true that Government is begotten of aggression and by aggression. In small undeveloped societies where for ages complete peace has continued, there exists nothing like what we call Government: no coercive agency, but mere honorary headship, if any headsliip at all. In these exceptional communities, unaggressive and from special causes unaggressed. upon, there is so little deviation from the virtues of truthfulness, honesty, justice, and generosity, that nothing beyond an occasional expression of public opinion by informally-assembled elders is needful.* Conversely, we find proofs that, at first recognized but temporarily during leadership in war, the authority of a chief is permanently established by continuity of war; and grows strong where successful aggression ends in subjection of neighbouring tribes. And thence onwards, examples furnished by all races put beyond doubt the truth, that the coercive power of the chief, deve- loping into king, and king of kings (a frequent title in the ancient East), becomes great in proportion as conquest becomes habitual and the union of subdued nations extensive. f Comparisons dis- close a further truth which should be ever present to us — the truth that the aggressiveness of the ruling power inside a society increases with its aggressiveness outside the society. As, to mu.\e an efficient army, the soldiers in their several grades must be subordinate to the commander; so, to make an efficient fighting community, must the citizens be subordinate to the ruling power.
THE SINS OF LEGISLATORS. 45 They nmst furnish recruits to tho extent demanded, and yield up whatever property is required.
An obvious implication is that the ethics of Government, origi- nally identical with the ethics of war, must long remain akin to them; and can diverge from them only as warlike activities and preparations become less. Current evidence shows this. At pre- sent on the Continent, the citizen is free only when his services as a soldier are not demanded; and during the rest of his life he is largely enslaved in supporting the military organization. Even among ourselves, a serious war would, by the necessitated con- scription, suspend the liberties of large numbers and trench on the liberties of the rest, by taking from them through taxes whatever supplies were needed — that is, forcing them to labour so many days more for the State. Inevitably the established code of conduct in the dealings of Governments with citizens, must be allied to their code of conduct in their dealings with one another.
I am not, under the title of this article, about to treat of the trespasses and the revenges for trespasses, accounts of which consti- tute the great mass of history; nor to trace the internal inequities which have ever accompanied the external inequities. I do not propose here to catalogue the crimes of irresponsible legislators; beginning with that of King Khufu, the stones of \yhose vast tomb were laid in the bloody sweat of tens of thousands of slaves toiling through long years under the lash; going on to those committed by conquerors, Egyptian, Assyrian, Persian, Macedonian, Roman and the rest; and ending with those of Napoleon, whose ambition to set his foot on the neck of the civilized world, cost not less than two million lives.*!N^or do I propose hero to enumerate those sins of responsible legislators seen in the long list of laws made in the interests of dominant classes — a list coming down in our own country to those under which there were long maintained slavery and the slave-trade, torturing nearly 40,000 negroes annually by close packing during a tropical voyage, and killing a large per- centage of them, and ending with that of the corn-laws, by which,, says Sir Erskine May, " to ensure high rents, it had been decreed that multitudes should liunger."t Not, indeed, that a presentation of the conspicuous misdeeds of legislators, responsible and irresponsible, would be useless. It would * Lanfrey. See also Study of Sociology, p. 42, and Appeiidix, f Constitutional History of England, ii. p. 617.
46 THE MAN VJ'^IiSUS THE STATE.
have several uses — one of them relevant to the truth above pointed out. Such a presentation would make clear how that identity of governmental ethics with military ethics which necessarily exists during primitive times, when the army is simply the mobilized society and the society is the quiescent army, continues through long stages, and even now affects in great degrees our law-pro- ceedings and our daily lives. Having, for instance, shown that in numerous savage tribes the judicial function of the chief does not exist, or is nominal, and that very generally during early stages of European civilization, each man had to defend himself and rectify his private wrongs as best he might — having shown that in medisDval times the right of private war among members of the military order was brought to an end, not because the head ruler thought it his duty to arbitrate, but because private wars interfered witli the efficiency of his army in public wars — having shown that tlie administration of justice displayed through subsequent ages a large amount of its primitive nature, in trial by battle carried on before the king or his deputy as umpire, and which, among our- selves, continued nominally to be an alternative form of trial down to 1819; it might then be pointed out that even now there survives trial by battle under another form: counsel being the champions and purses the weapons. In civil cases, the ruling agency cares scarcely more than of old about rectifying the wrongs of the injured; but, practically, its deputy does little else than to enforce the rules of the fight: the result being less a question of equity than a question of pecuniary ability and forensic skill. Nay, so little concern for the administration of justice is shown by the ruling agency, that when, by legal conflict carried on in the presence of its deputy, the combatants have been pecuniarily bled even to the extent of producing pro&tration, and when an appeal being made by one of them the decision is reversed, the beaten combatant is made to pay for the blunders of the dejjuty, or of a preceding deputy; and not unf requently the wronged man, who sought pro- tection or restitution, is taken out of court pecuniarily dead.
Adequately done, such a portrayal of governmental misdeeds of commission and omission, proving that the partially-surviving code of ethics arising in, and projoer to, a state of war, still vitiates governmental action, might greatly moderate the hopes of those who are anxious to extend governmental control. After observing that along \vith the still-manifest traits of that primitive political THE SINS OF LEGISLATOKS. 47 structare which chronic militancy produces, there goes a still, manifest survival of its primitive principles; the reformer and the philanthropist might be less sanguine in their anticipations of good from its all-pervading ag^ency, and might be more inclined to trust agencies of a non-governmental kind.
But leaving out the greater part of the large topic comprehended under the title of this article, I propose here to deal only with a comparatively small remaining part — those sins of legislators vvhich are not generated by their personal ambitions or class in- terests, but result from a lack of the study by which they are morally bound to prepare themselves.
A druggist's assistant who, after listening to the description of pains which he mistakes for those of colic, but which are really caused by inflammation of the ccecum, prescribes a sharp purgative and kills the patient, is found guilty of manslaughter. He is not allowed to excuse himself on the ground that he did not intend harm but hoped for good. The plea that he simply made a mis- take in his diagnosis is not entertained. He is told that he had no right to risk disastrous consequences by meddling in a matter con- cerning which his knowledge was so inadequate. The fact that he was ignorant how great was his ignorance is not accepted in bar of judgment. It is tacitly assumed that the experience common to all should have taught him that even the skilled, and much more the unskilled, make mistakes in the identification of disorders and in the appropriate treatment; and that having disregarded the warning derivable from common experience, he was answerable for the consequences.
We measure the responsibilities of legislators for mischiefs they may do, in a much more lenient fashion. In most cases, so far from thinking of them as deserving punishment for causing disasters by laws ignorantly enacted, we scarcely think of them as deserving reprobation. It is held that common experience should have taught the druggist's assistant, untrained as he is, not to inter- fere; but it is not held that common experience should have taught the legislator not to interfere till he has trained himself. Though multitudinous facts r.i'e before him in the recorded legislation of our own country and of other countries, which should impress on him the immense evils caused by wrong treatment, he is not con- demned for disregarding these warnings against rash meddling.
48 THE MAN VERSUS THE STATK Contrariwise, it is tliouf]^lit meritorious in him wLen — perhaps lately from college, perhaps fresh from keeping a pack of hounds which made him popular in his count}'', perhaps emerging from a provincial town where he acquired a fortune, perhaps rising from the bar at which he has gained a name as an advocate — he enters Parliament; and forthwith, in quite a light-hearted way, begins to aid or hinder this or that means of operating on the body politic. In this case there is no occasion even to make for him the excuse that he does not know how little he know^s; for the public at large agrees with him in thinking it needless that he should know any- thing more than what the debates on the proposed measures tell him.
And yet the mischiefs wrought by nninstructcd law-making, enormous in their amount as compared with those caused by un- instructed medical treatment, are conspicuous to all who do but glance over its history. The reader must pardon me while I recall a few familiar instances. Century after century, statesmen went on enacting usury laws which made worse the condition of the debtor — raising the rate of interest " from five to six when in- tending to reduce it to four,"* as under Louis XV.; and indirectly producing undreamt of evils of many kinds, such as preventing the reproductive use of spare capital, and " burdening the small pro- prietors with a multitude of perpetual services." f So, too, the endeavours which in England continued through five hundred years to stop forestalling, and which in France, as Arthur Young witnessed, prevented any one from buying "more than two bushels of wheat at market," % went on generation after generation in- creasing the miseries and mortality due to dearth; for, as every- body now knows, the wholesale dealer, who was in the statute " De Pistoribus " vituperated as "an open oppressor of poor people," § is simply one whose function it is to equalize the supply of a commodity by checking unduly rapid consumption. Of kindred nature was the measure which, in 1315, to diminish the pressure of famine, prescribed the prices of foods, but which was hastily repealed after it had caused entire disappearance of various * Lecky, Eaiionalism, ii. 203-4.
t De Tocqucville, The Stale of Society in France he/ore tlte Levoluliois THE SINS OF LEGISLATOr.S. 4.9 foods from tlie markets; and also such measures, more continuously operating, as those which settled by magisterial order " the leasonable gains " of victuallers.* Of like spirit and followed by allied mischiefs have been the mnny endeavours to fix wages, which began witli the Statute of Labourers under Edward IIT., and ceased only sixty years ago; when, having long galvanized iu Spitalfields a dccnying industry, and fostered there a miserable population. Lords and Commons finally gave up fixing silk-weavers* earnings by the decisions of magistrates.
Here I imagine an impatient interruption. "Wo know all that; the story is stale. The mischiefs of interfering with trade have been dinned in our ears till Vv^e are weary; and no one needs to be taught the lesson afresh." My first reply is that by the great majority the lesson was never properly learnt at all, and that many of those who did learn it have forgotten it. For just the same pleas which of old were put in for these dictations, are again put in. In the statute 35 of Edward III., which aimed to keep down the price of herrings (but was soon repealed because it raised the price), it was complained that people "coming to the fair...do bargain for herring, and every of them, by malice and envy, increase upon other, and, if one proffer forty shillings, another Vv'ill proffer ten shillings more, and the third sixty shillings, and so everyone surmounteth other in the baigain."t And now the *' higgling of the market," here condemned and ascribed to " malice and envy," is being again condemned. The evils of competition have all along been the stock cry of the Socialists; and the council of the Democratic Federation denounces the carrying on of exchange under "the control of individual greed and profit." jMy second reply is that interferences wdth the law of supply and demand, which a generation ago were admitted to be habitually mischievous, are now being daily made by Acts of Parliament in new fields; and that, as I shall presently show, they are in these fields increasing the evils to be cured and producing fresh ones, as of old they did in fields no longer intruded upon.
Returning from this parenthesis, I go on to explain that th© ibove Acts are named to remind the reader that uninstructed ■legislators have in past times continually increased human suffering in their endeavours to mitigate it; and I have now to add that if these evils, shown to bs legislatively intensified or produced, * Craik's H'Stori/ of British Commerce, i. 13G-7. t Craik, loc. cit., i. 137.
50 THE MAN VERSUS THE STATE.