be mnltipHed by ten or more, a conception will be formed c? the aggregate evils caused by law-making unguided by social science. In a paper read to the Statistical Society in May, 187^, Mr. Janson, vice-president of the Law Society, stated that from the Statute of Mcrton (20 Heniy III.) to the end of 1872, there hail been passed 18,110 public Acts; of which he estimated that four- fifths had been wholly or partially repealed. He also stated that the number of public Acts repealed wholly or in part, or amended, during the three years 1870-71-72 had been 3,532, of which 2,75i> had been totally repealed. To see whether this rate of repeal has continued, I have referred to the annually-issued volumes of " The Public General Statutes" for the last three sessions. Saying- nothing of the numerous amended Acts, the result is that in the last three sessions there have been totally repealed, separately or in groups, 650 Acts, belong 'ng to tJie present reign, besides many of preceding reigns. This, of course, is gr'atly above the average rate; for there has of late been an active purgation of the statute- book. But making every allowance, we must infer that within our own times, repeals have mounted some distance into the thousands. Doubtless a number of them have been of laws that were obsolete; others have been demanded by changes of circum- stances (though seeing how many of them are of quite recent Acts, this has not been a large cause); others simply because they wore inoperative; and others have been consequent on the con- solidations of numerous Acts into single Acts. But unques- tionably in multitudinous cases, repeals came because the Acts had proved injurious. We talk glibly of such changes — we think of cancelled legislation with indifference. We forget that before laws are abolished they have generally been inflicting evils more or less serious; some for a few years, some for tens of years, snme for centuries. Change your vague idea of a bad law into a definite idea of it as an agency operating on 2:»eople's lives, and you. see that it means so much of pain, so much of illness, so much of mortality. A vicious form of legal procedure, for example, either enacted or tolerated, entails on suitors, costs, or delays, or defeats. What do these imply? Loss of money, often ill-spared; great and prolonged anxiety; frequently consequent illness; unhap- ness of family and dependents; children stinted in food and clothing — all of them miseries which bring after them multi- plied remoter miseries. Add- to which there are the far more THE SINS OF LEGISLATOPtS. 51 Dumerons cases of those who, lacking the means or the courage to enter on law-suits, and therefore submitting to frauds, are im- poverished; and have similarly to bear the pains of body and mind which ensue. Even to say that a law has been simply a hindrance, is to say that it has caused needless loss of time, extra trouble, and additional worry; and among over-burdened people extra trouble and worry imply, here and there, break-downs in health with their entailed direct and indirect sufferings. Seeing, then, that bad legislation means injury to men's lives, jadge what must be the total amount of mental distress, physical pain, and raised mortality, which these thousands of repealed Acts of Parliament represent! Fully to bring home the truth that law-making unguided by ade- quate knowledge brings immense evils, let me take a special case which a question of the day recalls.
Already I have hinted that interferences with the connexion be- tween supply and demand, given up in certain fields after immense- mischiefs had been done during many centuries, are now taking place in other fields. This connexion is supposed to hold only where it has been proved to hold by the evils of disregarding it: so feeble is men's belief in it. There seems no suspicion that in cases where it seems to fail, natural causatioji has beeu^traversed by artificial hindrances. And yet in the case to which I now refer — that of the supply of houses for the poor — it needs but to ask what laws have been doing for a long time past, to see that the terrible evils complained of are mostly law-made.
A generation ago discussion was taking place concerning the in-- adequacy and badness of industrial dwellings, and I had occasion to deal wdth the question. Here is a passage then written: — " An architect and surveyor describes it [the Building Act] as having worked after the following manner. In those districts of London consist- ing of inferior houses built in tliMt unsubstantial fashion which the New Building Act was to mend, there obtains an average rent, sufficiently re- munerative to landlords whose houses were run up economically before the New Building Act passed. This existing average rent fixes the rent that must be charged in these districts for new houses of the same accom- modation— that is the same number of rooms, for the people they are built for do not appreciate the extra safety of living within walls strengthened with hoop-iron bond. Now it turns out upon trial, that houses built in accordance with the present regulations, and let at this established rate, bring in nothing like a reasonable return. Builders have consequently 62 TIIL: MAN VERS us THE STATE.
confined themselves to erecting houses in better districts (where the possi- bility of a profitable competition with pre-existing houses shows that those pre-existing houses were tolerably substantial), and have ceased to erect dwellings for the masses, except in the suburbs where no pressing sanitary evils exist. Meanwhile, in the inferior districts above described, has re- sulted an increase of overcrowding — half-a-dozen families in a house, a score lodgers to a room. Nay, more than this has resulted. That state of miserable dilapidation into which these abodes of the poor are allowed to fill, is due to the absence of competition from new houses. Landlords do not find their tenants tempted away by the offer of better accommodation. Eepairs, being unnecessary for securing the largest amount of profit, *\ve not made In fact for a large percentage of the ver}'- horrors which our sanitary agitators are trying to cure by law, we have to thank previous agitators of the same school! " — Social Statics, p. 384 (edition of 1851).
These were not the only law-made causes of such evils. As shown in the following further passage, sundry others were recognized: — " Writing before the repeal of the brick-duty, the Builder says: — ' It is feupposed that one-fourth of the cost of a dwelling which lets for 25. Qid. or 3s. a week is caused by the expense of the title-deeds and the tax on wood and bricks used in its construction. Of course, the owner of such property must be remunerated, and he therefore charges 1\d. or Qd. a week to cover these burdens.' Mr. C. Gatliff, secretary to the Society for Improving the Dwellings of the Working Classes, describing the effect of the window-tax, SLiys: — 'Tlieyare now paying upon their institution in St. Pancras the sum of £162 165. in window-duties, or 1 per cent, per annum upon the original outlay. The average rental paid by the Society's tenants is bs. Qd. per week, and the window-duty deducts from this Tjd per week.' " — Times^ January 31, 1850. — Social Statics, p, 385 (edition of 1851).
Kcither is this all the evidence which the press of those days afrnrded. There was published in the Times of December 7, 1850 (too late to be used in the above-named work, which I issued in the last week of 1850), a letter dated from the Reform Club, and • "signed " Architect," which contained the following passages: — ' Lord Kinnaird recommends in your paper of yesterday the construc- hon of model lodging-houses by throwing two or three houses into one.
" Allow me to suggest to his Lordship, and to his friend Lord Ashley -to whom he refers, that if, — " 1. The window-tax were repealed, " 2. The Building Act repealed (excepting the clauses enacting that party and external walls shall be fireproof), -** 3. The timber duties either equalized or repealed, and, THE SINS OF LEGISLATORS. 53 "4. An Act passed to facilitate the transfer of property, "There would be no more necessity for model lodging-houMes than there is for model ships, model cotton-mills, or model steam-engines. " The first limits the poor man's house to seven windows, "The second limits the size of the poor man's house to 25 feet by 18 (about the size of a gentleman's dining-room), into which space the builder has to cram a staircase, an entrance-passage, a parlour, and a kitchen (walls and partitions included).
" The third induces the builder to erect the poor man's house of timber unfit for building purposes, the duty on the good material (Baltic) being fifteen times more than the duty on the bad or injurious article (Cana- dian). The Government, even, exclude the latter from all their contracts. " The fourth would have considerable influence upon the present miser- able state of the dwellings of the poor. Small freeholds might then be transferred as easily as leaseholds. The efi'ect of building leases has been a direct inducement to bad building."
To guard against mis-statement or over-statement, I have taken the precaution to consult a large East-end builder and contractor of forty years' experience, Mr. C. Forrest, Museum Works, 17, Victoria Park Square, Bethnal Green, who, being churchwarden, member of the vestry, and of the board of guardians, adds exten- sive knowledge of local public affairs to his extensive knowledge of the building business. Mr. Forrest, who authorizesjne to give Iciia name, verifies the foregoing statements with the exception of one which he strengthens. He says that " Architect " understates the evil entailed by the definition of " a fourth-rate house; " since the^ dimensions are much less than those he gives (perhaps in con- formity with the provisions of a more recent Building Act). Mr. Forrest has done more than this. Besides illustrating the bad effects of great increase in ground-rents (in sixty years from £1 to £8 105. for a fourth-rate house) which, joined with other causes, had obliged him to abandon plans for industrial dwellings he had intended to build — besides agreeing with "Architect" that this evil has been greatly increased by the difficulties of land-transfer due to the law-established system of trusts and entails; he pointed out that a further penalty on the building of small houses is inflicted by additions to local burdens ("prohibitory imposts" he called them): one of the instances he named being that to the cost of each new house has to be added the cost of pavement, roadway and sewerage, which is charged according to length of frontage, and 54 THE MAN vehsus tiiE state.
■which, consequently, bears a far larger ratio to the value of a gmall house than to the value of a large one.
From these law-produced mischiefs, which were great a gene- ration ago and have since been increasing, let us pass to more recent iaw-produccd mischiefs. The misery, the disease, the mortality in " rookeries," made continually worse by artificial impediments to the increase of fourth-rate houses, and by the necessitated greater crowding of those which existed, having become a scandal. Govern- ment was invoked to remove the evil. It responded by Artisans' Dwellings Acts; giving to local authorities powers to pull down bad houses and provide for the building of good ones. What have been the results? A summary of the operations of the Metropolitan Board of Works, dated December 21, 1883, shows that up to last September it had, at a cost of a million and a quarter to ratepayers, unhoused 21,000 persons and provided houses for 12,000 — the remaining 9,000 to be hereafter provided for, being, meanwhile, left houseless. This is not all. Another local lieutenant of the Govern- ment, the Commission of Sewers for the City, working on the same lines, has, under legislative compulsion, pulled down in Golden Lan-e and Petticoat Square, masses of condemned small houses, which, together, accommodated 1,734 poor people; and of the spaces thus cleared five years ago, one has, by State-authority, been sold for a railway station, and the other Is only now being covered with industrial dwellings which will eventually accommodate one-half of the expelled population: the result up to the present time being that, added to those displaced by the Metropolitan Board of Works, these 1,734 displaced five years ago, form a total of nearly 11,000 arti- ficially made homeless, who have had to find corners for themselves in miserable places that were already overflowing!
See then what legislation has done. By ill-imposed taxes, raising the prices of bricks and timber, it added to the costs of houses; and prompted, for economy's sake, the use of bad materials in scanty quantities. To check the consequent production of wretched dwellings, it established regulations which, in mediaeval fashion, dictated the quality of the commodity produced: there being- no perception that by insisting on a higher quality and therefore higher price, it would limit the demand and eventually diminish the supply. By additional local burdens, legislation has of late still further hindered the building of small houses. Finally, having, by successive measures, produced first bad houses and then a deficiency THE SINS OF LEGISLA.TORS. 65 of better ones, it has at length iDuovIded for the artificially-increased overflow of poor people by diminishing the house-capacity which already could not contain them!
Where then lies the blame for the miseries of the East-end? Against whom should, be raised " the bitter cry of outcast London? " The German anthropologist Bastian, tells us that a sick native of Guinea w^ho causes the fetish to lie by not recovering, is strangled;* and we may reasonably suppose that among the Guinea people, any one audacious enough to call in question the power of the fetish would be promptly sacrificed. In days when govern- mental authority was enforced by strong measures, there was a kindred danger in saying anything disrespectful of the political fetish. Nowadays, however, the worst punishment to be looked foi by one who questions its omnipotence, is that he will be reviled as a reactionary who talks laissez-faire. That any facts he may bring forward will appreciably decrease the established faith is not to be expected; for we are daily shown tliat this faith is proof against all adverse evidence. Let us contemplate a small part of that vast mass of it which passes unheeded.
"A Government-office is like an inverted filteif: you send in accounts clear and they come out muddy." Such was the com- parison I heard made many years ago by the late Sir Charles Fox, who, in the conduct of his business, had considerable experience of public de'partments. That his opinion was not a singular one, though his comparison was, all men know. Exposures by the press and criticisms in Parliament, leave no one in ignorance of the vices of red-tape routine. Its delays, perpetually complained of, and which in the time of Mr. Fox Maule went to the extent that *' the commissions of officers in the army " were generally " abou'i, two years in arrear," is afresh illustrated by the issue of the tir&l volume of the detailed census of 1881, more than two years after the information was collected. If we seek explanations of such delays, we find one origin to be a scarcely credible confusion. In the case of the census returns, the Registrar- General tells us that " the difficulty consists not merely in the vast multitude of different areas that have to be taken into account, but still more in the bewildering complexity of their boundaries: '* there being 39,000 56 THE MAN VEHSUS THE STATE.
administrative areas of twenty-two different kinds which oierlap one another — hundreds, parishes, boroughs, wards, petty sessional divisions, lieutenancy divisions, urban and rural sanitary districts^ dioceses, registration districts, &c. And then, as Mr. Rathbone. M.P., points out,* these many superposed sets of areas with inter- secting boundaries, have their respective governing bodies with authorities running into one another's districts. Does any one ask •why for each additional administration Parliament has established n fresh set of divisions? The reply which suggests itself is — To preserve consistency of method. For this organized confusion cor- responds completely with that organized confusion which Parlia- ment each year increases by throwiug on to the heap of its old Acts a hundred new Acts, the provisions of which traverse and qualify in all kinds of ways the provisions of multitudinous Acts on to which they are thrown: the onus of settling what is the law being lett to private persons, who lose their property in getting judges* interpretations. And again, this system of putting networks of districts over other networks, with their conflicting authorities, is quite consistent with the method under which the reader of- the Public Health Act of 1872, who wishes to know what are the powers exercised over him, is referred to 2G preceding Acts of several classes and numerous dates. f So, too, with administrative inertia. Continually there occur cases showing the resistance of officialism to improvements; as by the Admiralty when use of the electric telegraph was proposed, and the reply was — '* We have a very good semaphore system; " or as by the Post Office, which the late Sir Charles Siemens years ago said had obstructed the em- ployment of improved methods of telegraphing, and which since then has impeded the use of the telephone. Other cases akin to the case ot industrial dwellings, now and then show how the State with one hand increases evils which with the other iiand it tries to diminish; as when it puts a duty on fire-insurances and then makes regulations for the better putting out of fires: dictating, too, cer- tain modes of construction, which, as Captain Shaw shows, entail additional dangers.;}; Again, the absurdities of official routine, rigid * T/ie Nineteenth Ceniuri;, February, 18S3.
t "Tlie Stat-stics ot' Legislation." By F. H. Janson, Esq., F.L.S., Vice- president of the Incorporated Law Society. [Read before tlie Statistical Society, X Fire Survei/s; or, a Summary of the Principles to he observed in, Usti' mating the Risk of Build in.gs.
THE SINS OF LEGISLATORS. 57 where it need not be and lax where it should be rigid, occasionally become glaring enough to cause scandals; as when a secret State- document of importance, put into the hands of an ill-paid copying clerk wlio was not even in permanent Government employ, was made public by him; or as when the mode of making the Moorsom fusc» which was kept secret even from our highest artillery officers, wns taught to them by the Russians, who had been allowed to learn it; or as when a diagram showing the " distances at w^hich British and foreign iron-clads could be perforated by our large guns," communi- cated by an enterjDrisIng attache to his own Government, then became known " to all the Governments of Europe," while Englisli officers remained ignorant of the facts.* So, too, with State- super- vision. Guaranteeing of quality by inspection has been shown, in the hall-marking of silver, to be superfluous, while the silver trade has been decreased by it;t and in other cases it has lowered the quality by establishing a standard which it is useless to exceed: instance the case of the Cork butter-market, where the hifjher kinds are disadvantaged in not adequately profiting by their better repute; X ov, instance the case of herring-branding (now optiona') the effect of w^hich is to put the many inferior curers who just reach the level of official approval, on a par with the few^ better ones who rise above it, and so to discourage these. But such lessons pass unlearned. Even where the failure of inspection is most glaring, no notice is taken of it; as instance the terrible catastrophe by which a train full of people was destroyed along with the Tay bridge. Countless denunciations, loud and unsparing, were vented against engineer and contractor; but little, if any- thing, was said about the Government officer from whom the bridge received State-approval. So, too, with prevention of disease. It matters not that under the management or dictation of State- agents some of the worst evils occur; as when the lives of 87 wives and children of soldiers are sacrificed in the ship Accrington; ^ or as when typhoid fever and diphtheria are diffused by a State- ordered drainage system, as in Edinburgh; || or as when officially- • See Times, October 0, 1874, where otiier instances arc given.
t T^ s Stale in its Relation to Trade, by Sir Thomas Fai'rer, p. 147.
II Letter of an Edinburgh M.D. in Times of 17th January, 187G, verifying other testimonies; one of which I had previously cited eoneerni'g Windsor, wliere, as in Edinburgh, there was absolutely no tvplioid in tiie vmdiained parts, while il was verj latal in the drained parts. — Study of Sociolojij, chap, i, notes.
58 THE MAN VEESUS THE STATE.
enforced sanitary appliances, ever getting out of order, increase ihe evils they were to decrease.* Masses of such evidence leave unabated the confidence with which sanitary inspection is invoked — invoked, indeed, more than ever; as is shown in the recent suggestion that all public schools should be under the supervision of health- oflBcers. Nay, even when the State has manifestly caused tlie mischief complained of, faith in its beneficent agency is not at all diminished; as we see in the fact that, havins: a generation ago authorized, or rather required, towns to establish drainage systems Avhich delivered sewage into the rivers, and having thus polluted the sources of water-supply, an outcry was raised against the water-companies for the impurities of their water — an outcry which continued after these towns had been compelled, at vast extra cost, to revolutionize their drainage systems And now, as the only remedy, there follows the demand that the State, by its local proxies, shall undertake the whole business. The State's misdoings become, as in the case of industrial dwellings, reasons for praying it to do more.
This worship of the legislature is, in one respect, indeed, less excusable than the fetish- worship to which I have tacitly compared it. The savage has the defence that his fetish is silent — does not confess its inability. But the civilized man persists in ascribing to this idol made with his own hands, powers which in one way or other it confesses it has net got. I do not mean merely that the debates daily tell us of legislative measures which have done evil instead of good; nor do I mean merely that the thousands of Acts of Parliament which repeal preceding Acts, are so many tacit admissions of failuie. Neither do I refer only to such quasi- governmental confessions as that contained in the report of the Poor Law Commissioners, who said that — " We find, on the one hand, that there is scarcely one statute connected with the adminis- tration of public relief which has produced the effect designed by the legislature, and that the majority of them have created new evils, and aggravated those which they were intended to prevent. "f 1 refer rather to confessions made by statesmen, and by State-depart- * I say this partly from personal knowledge; having now before me memoranda made 25 yca's ago concenung such results produced under my own observation. Verifying facts have recently been given by Sir Richard Cross iis the Nineteenth Century for January, 1881, p. 155.
t Nicholl's History of Enylish I'uor Law, ii. p. 252.
THE SINS OF LEGISLATORS. 59 ments. Here, for example, in a memorial addressed to Mr. Glad- stone, and adopted by a highly-influential meeting held under the chairmanship of the late Lord Lyttelton, I read: — "We, the undersigned, Peers, Members of the House of Commons, Ratepayers, and Inhabitants of the Metropolis, feeling strongly the truth and force of your statement made in the House of Commons, in 1866, that, ' there is still a lamentable and deplorable state of our whole arrange- ments, with regard to public works — vacillation, uncertainty, costliness, extravagance, meanness, and all the conflicting vices that could be enumerated, are united in our present system,' " &c,, &c."^ Here, again, is an example furnished by a recent minute of the Board of Trade (November, 1883), in which it is said that since " the Shipwreck Committee of 1836 scarcely a session has passed without some Act being passed or some step being taken by the legislature or the Government with this object " [prevention of shipwrecks]; and that " the multiplicity of statutes, Avhich were all consolidated into one Act in 185i, has again become a scandal and a reproach: " each measure being passed because previous ones had failed. And then comes presently the confession that " the loss of life and of ships has been greater since 1876 than it ever was before." Meanwhile, the cost of administration has been raised from £17,0G0 a year to £73,000 a year.f It is surprising how, spite of better knowledge, the imagination is excited by artificial appliances used in particular ways. We see it all through human history, from the war-paint with which the savage frightens his adversary, down through religious ceremonies and regal processions, to the robes of a Speaker and the wand of an officially- dressed usher. I remember a child who, able to look with tolerable composure on a horrible cadaverous mask while it was held in the hand, ran away shrieking when his father put it on. A kindred change of feeling comes over constituencies when, from boroughs and counties, their members pass to the Legislative Chamber. While before them as candidates, they are, by one or other party, jeered ar, lampooned, "heckled," and in all ways t In these paragraplis are contained just a few additional examples. Num- bers which I hare before given in books and essays, will be found in Social Statics (1851); "Over-Legislation" (1853); " Kepresentative Government" (1857); "Specialized Administration" (1871); Studi/ of Social o(/i/ (1873), and Postscript to ditto (1880); besidei cases in smaller essays.
60 THE MAX VERSUS THE STATE.
treated with utter disrespect. But as soon as they assemble at Westminster, those against whom taunts and invectives, charn^es of incompetence and folly, had been showered from press and platform, excite unlimited faith. Judging from the prayers made to them, there is nothing which their wisdom and their power cannot compass.
The reply to all this will doubtless be that nothing better than guidance by " collective wisdom " can be had — that the select men of the nation, led by a re-selected few, bring their best powers, enlightened by all the knowledge of the time, to bear on the matters before them. " What more would you have? " will be the question asked by most.