"When goldsmiths, and mercers, and fishmongers, and traders of other kinds, severally formed guilds for the pro tection and regulation of their respective businesses, they would have thought insane the prophecy that centuries afterwards the guilds would be composed of men uncon nected with these businesses, who would spend the vast funds accumulated chiefly in gigantic and luxurious feasts. Those who in past times founded schools for the poor, never dreamt that the funds they bequeathed would be perverted to the use of the rich; nor could they have believed that by pro viding what was then thought good education they would eventually hinder the spread of better education. How do I know that an agency which I aid in establishing to achieve one end, will not similarly be turned in future to some other end? or that what now seems to me a benefit, wrill not eventually prove an evil by standing in the way of greater benefit? Am I told that in future, more control and better judgment will prevent corruptions and perversions? I can not hope it. Even now I see recurring, mischiefs of the same nature as have before occurred under like conditions. For instance, there are signs that again in Ireland, the steps taken to meet distress are working evils akin to those worked dur ing the distress of 1847, when the relief -system fostered 'an organised combination to discourage the cultivation of the 378 THE STUDY OF SOCIOLOGY.
soil, and to persuade the people that if they leave it until led the Government and Parliament will forever be obliged to maintain them ' (Debates, February 19, 1847); and when a landlord, responding- to the request of his tenants for seed- wheat, but doubting their intentions, had the 800 stones he bought ' steeped in a solution of sulphate of iron and then announced that they might have it, but they, finding they could not eat it, would not take a grain;' (Times, March 2(5th, 1847). Every day brings examples of the -ways in wThich measures work these unexpected results: instance the evil which has come along with the good promised by State- telegraphy. Just noting that within the metropolis teleg raphy has been doubled in price that a lower uniform rate might be given for all places — observing, too, that as the telegraph-wires extended into remote districts yield miserably small returns, it results that the more populous places are taxed for the benefit of the less populous; I pass to the fact which chiefly strikes me. Improvement in telegraphy has been arrested since State purchase of the telegraphs. As Dr. Charles Siemens, the highest authority points out, before this change England led the way in telegraphic inventions; but since this change telegraphic inventions come to us from America, where telegraphs do not belong to the State, and are here introduced not at all or with difficulty after great delay. And further proof is now furnished by the Times (May 27, 1880), which tells us that its chief difficulty in establishing Parliamentary reporting by telephone, has been the opposi tion of the Post-office.
" More reasons for pausing are disclosed on observing the wider results produced. Beyond the special effects of each measure taken for artificially curing evils or achieving bene fits, there comes a general effect of an unobtrusive but moment ous kind. Every extension of public action limits the sphere for private action; modifies the conceptions of private re sponsibility and public responsibility; makes further exten sions of public responsibility easier; and tends eventually to make them needful, since the more help the more helplessness. Obligations even of primary kinds are willingly transferred by individuals to the community, when the opportunity is given. Witness the history of the Bureau Municipal des Nourrices POSTSCRIPT. 379 in Paris, which has existed for more than a century, at a cost latterly of £20,000 a year, to assist the bourgeoises in finding wet-nurses — an institution under which the mortality of chil dren has varied from 45 per cent, downwards, and which has been at length abolished (see Medical Times, February, 1870). And if, where parental affection might be expected to resist, such a perversion of normal into abnormal relations between parent and offspring may take place, still more may it take place where the natural resistance to be anticipated is less. Certain sequences of State-teaching now showing themselves amoiig us, may presently have large developments. Already in London there have been set up in connexion with Board- schools, sundry nurseries where infants are taken care of while the elder children are taught their lessons: and, con venient as they are, such school appendages, multiplying, may make public nursing a familiar idea and the care of infants by their mothers a less peremptory obligation. Public feed ing, too, has been not only suggested but even effected, though not yet in Board-schools (see Times, May 17th, 1880, where the advantages derived are insisted upon). Some urge that shoeless and ragged children should be provided with cloth ing by the Parish, that they may be more fit to attend school; and presently, perhaps, some steps in this direction, first small and then large, will be taken. Though at present there seems little fear that the rearing of children will be made a State- business instead of a family-business, which is the logical out come of the policy, yet the tendency in that direction must increase with the widening of popular power. Every exten sion of the policy affects at once the type of social organiza tion and the concomitant social sentiments and theories. As fast as there are established by the help of taxes, public libra ries, public museums, public gardens, public gas and water supplies, public industrial dwellings, and by and by public railways as well as telegraphs — as fast as there are multiplied, inspectors of schools, of factories, of ships, of mines, of lodg ing houses, and of multitudinous things down to water-closets and prostitutes — there is strengthened the idea that corporate agency is to do everything and individual agency nothing.
The inevitable result is an increasing dissociation of faculty from prosperity; first as realized in experience and then as 380 THE STUDY OF SOCIOLOGY.
established in the general belief. The greater the number of benefits provided by public means for all, and the fewer bene fits provided by each for himself, the less marked becomes the advantage of merit and the less effort is there to be meritori ous. This uridiscriminating distribution of aids, as its effects grow familiar, becoming popular with the inferior who form the majority, must tend ever to grow where the majority can get their way by voting or by intimidation— the more so since each generation, habituated to it from childhood, accepts it as the natural order of things and becomes impatient if every suggested good is not provided or evil cured. One who recalls the cry of the Eoman populace ' bread and games,' may see to what lengths this policy and its concomitant theory may go. Long-established and spreading usage can produce the most perverse ideas. Who, for instance, would have imagined that the State-licensing system under the French despotism would have generated the belief that ' the right of working is a royal right which the prince can sell and subjects must buy.' And if thus by a certain social system, the correlative doctrine may be carried to so astonishing an extreme in one direction; so, to an equally astonishing extreme, may another social system carry its correlative doctrine in an opposite direction. In the alleged ' right to a maintenance out of the soil,' claimed for each man whatever his conduct, which was the popular dogma under the old Poor-law, we have a conception which, fostered by ever-multiplying public agencies for carrying home benefits to individuals irrespective of labour expended by them, is capable of developing into the conviction that the personal well being of each is a matter not of private concern but of public concern: the manifest limit being absolute com munism.
" And then if I go a step further, and ask how these ideas and usages react on the characters and capacities of citizens, there is forced upon me the conclusion that they work towards industrial inefficiency and national decay. This equalising, so far as may be, the results of merit and demerit, slowly pro duces in a large community effects that are not easy to trace and identify; but in small corporate bodies the effects are quickly and clearly shown. A typical instance is furnished by the history of the Chamounix guides. Some twenty years POSTSCRIPT. 381 ago things stood on their proper footing. Climbers of the high peaks chose guides whose skill and trustworthiness had been well proved; while guides of characters not so well es tablished, received smaller pay for less difficult expeditions. At the same time there was a free choice of mules, and travel lers naturally picked out the best. Afterwards arose an incor poration of guides which put a check on this liberty of selec tion; and their system was further developed on the annexa tion of Savoy to France: with French annexation came French officialism. Guides had to pass an examination; and, when certified, were placed on a list from which travellers had to accept them in rotation. The mules, too, had to be taken in turn. That is, differences of efficiency were, as much as possible, prevented from producing their normal effects. And now what has happened? Mr. Wills, a late president of the Alpine Club, writes (and his statement is confirmed by another late president, Professor Tyndall): — ' I have been a resident in Savoy during a part of every year since the an nexation, as well as having known it very well before, and I have seen with pain and sorrow the rapid deterioration brought about by a system so fearfully and wonderfully perfect in all the arts and means by which public spirit, independence, and self-respect can be crushed out of the national life. Now the influences here seen operating in a special way, on a small scale, and in a short time, inevitably operate in a general way on a large scale, and in a long time, throughout a nation which divorces individual worth from individual prosperity. When funds raised from all citizens, are turned into advan tages distributed in common to all citizens, the better and the worse are to that extent reduced to the same level; and the more multitudinous the ways in which this is done, the more are the lives of the efficient and prudent made like the lives of the inefficient and imprudent. Inevitably, therefore, socie ties which pursue this policy which impedes the multiplica tion of the better while aiding the multiplication of the worse, must so deteriorate in average nature that in the struggle for existence they must go to the wall before societies which allow the worthy to reap their rewards and the unworthy to suffer their penalties.
" Thus when I consider what steps I ought to take in 382 THE STUDY OF SOCIOLOGY.
furtherance of social evolution, there rise before me so many probabilities of evils likely to be entailed by this or the other measure proposed, that I think it safer to remain passive."
But now, admitting in full these arguments, which rein force arguments set forth in sundry of the foregoing chapters, it may be contended that, so far from justifying passivity, they render all the more imperative a special kind of activity. For if the outcome of them is that evil arises from divorcing cause and consequence in conduct, then the implication is that good arises from making the connexion between cause and consequence more definite and certain. And in improv ing the means to this end there is ample scope for effort. Contemplate a moment the obverse of.the proposition above set forth.
Though in low societies, formed of unadapted men held together by coercion, no better arrangement is practicable than that under which the relation between effort and benefit is traversed by force, so that those who work enjoy but little of that which they produce, while that which they produce is largely appropriated by others who have not worked; yet we recognize this regime as one not consistent with the greatest individual welfare or greatest sum of happiness. Along with advance to a higher social state, in which life is carried on not by compulsory cooperation but by voluntary cooperation, there has grown the moral perception of what we call equity. Continued through many generations, the discipline of indus trialism (implying in every transaction fulfilment of contract, which involves respect for the claims of others and assertion of the claims of self) has developed the consciousness that each ought to get neither more nor less than an equivalent for his services, of what kind soever they may be: the amount of such equivalent being in every case determined by the agree ment to give it. And, considered in their ensemble, the pro gressive improvements of laws, and all those political amelio rations which bring after them improvements of laws, have as their general effect the better maintenance of this normal relation between effort and benefit.
It follows, then, that successful endeavours to make the administration of justice prompt, complete, and economical, POSTSCRIPT. 3S3 will bring1 pure benefit; or if not pure benefit, still, an im mense surplus of benefit. That which the philanthropist and the political reformer leave almost unthought of as an object to be laboured for, is that which, above all other objects, is worthy of their labour. Attracted as their attention is by special evils to be cured, they think little of the universally- diffused evils which the non-enforcement of equity entails. Nor do they see that many of the beneficial changes which they fail to achieve by direct measures, would be achieved in directly were easy remedies for all injustices within the reach of every citizen. Let us consider the matter under its several aspects — some familiar, some unfamiliar.
On the individual sufferings entailed by the uncertainty and costliness of law, it is needless to dwell. Every family can furnish one or more histories of lawsuits by which rela tives seeking- justice have been impoverished. When I have repeated the remark lately made to me by a judge, in agree ment with another judge he quoted, that he often wished he could charge the costs of the suits brought before him, on the lawyers who conducted them — when I have conveyed the feeling of a solicitor expressed to me but yesterday, that how ever strong his case might be, he would rather toss-up with his antagonist which should yield than go into court; I have said enough to remind all how vicious is the judicial system under which we live, and how often ruin rather than restitu tion comes to those who seek its aid when wronged. Usually, indeed, it is thought that these evils which, extreme as they are, custom reconciles us to, are evils felt only by the classes carrying on business and by those who possess property. Though in rural districts there frequently occur such aggres sions on labourers as those which take away rights of com mon — though by magistrates belonging to the upper ranks, the punishments inflicted for offences committed by those be longing to the lower ranks are often utterly disproportioned— though the assault which, in default of money, brings impris onment on the poor man, brings on the rich man only a fine easily paid; yet the silence concerning law-reform at work ing-class meetings, and the coldness with which the topic is received if introduced, imply the current belief that a better administration of justice is a matter which touches the few 384 THE STUDY OP SOCIOLOGY.
rather than the many. But besides the ways in which they individually suffer from time to time from injustices for which no remedy is to be had, the people at large suffer uni versally in diffused ways.
For maladministration of justice raises, very considerably, the cost of living for all. Payments to lawyers form one of the current expenses of business in general. Manufacturers and merchants and traders have to take account of these items in their outlays, and average extra profits on their transac tions have to be made to meet these items. Further, there are bad debts — debts which are crossed off from ledgers because, even if recoverable at all, their amounts would probably be exceeded by the costs of recovering them; and there are also occasional losses by bankruptcies, made needlessly great by the involved legal process of liquidation. These, too, are items of expenditure which have to be met by larger profits on the commodities sold. Moreover, the rise of prices necessi tated in these several ways is cumulative. The producer has to charge extra to the wholesale distributor; the wholesale distributor must add to this extra charge a further extra charge to the retail distributor; and the retail distributor must do the like to the consumer. Nor after observing that the effect is thus triplicated shall we fully appreciate the total rise caused. For on recalling the truth that every tax on a com modity increases its price by a greater amount than the amount imposed, because of the extra capital employed and business transacted, we must infer that similarly, the loss which maladministration of justice entails on the producer, the wholesale dealer, and the retailer, raises each of their prices by a greater amount than is directly needed to meet it: all three of these enhancements eventually coming on the consumer.
Not by the raised prices of commodities only, does the con sumer, and especially the poor consumer, suffer from imper fect enforcement of equity. He suffers, too, in the rela tive badness of the things he buys. It is needless to enlarge on the prevalence of adulteration. All it concerns us here to observe is that the nutritive qualities of food eaten and the wearing qualities of fabrics worn, are diminished, often very greatly, by breaches of contract, which good laws well admin- POSTSCRIPT. 385 istered would prevent. Whoso sells as the thing asked for, that which is in part some other thing-, breaks the tacit agree ment to give so much of the commodity for so much money; and a legal process easily available ought quickly to bring punishment on him for the fraud.
But the immediate evils resulting from a system which affords inadequate protection against aggressors, are not the sole evils — not, indeed, the chief evils. A further evil is the multiplication of aggressions. That impunity generates con fidence — that the man who has committed a wrong and es caped punishment is thereby encouraged to commit another wrong is a trite remark. As certain as it is that pickpockets would multiply if the police became less efficient in catching them, and that the cooking of joint-stock companies' accounts would be made still more common were there no prospect of possible imprisonment on discovery; so certain is it that in all cases, failure of justice tempts men to injustices. Every un punished delinquency has a family of delinquencies. Those on whom is urged the need for a judicial system which shall give to the citizen easy remedies for injuries suffered, com monly reply that the amount of litigation would become enormous. But they overlook the fact that with facilities for obtaining remedies the occasions for seeking remedies would decrease. As it is clear that the criminal aggressor would not commit a crime if he were quite certain to be caught and punished; so it is clear that the civil aggressor would not do the inequitable thing he is tempted to do, did he know that the aggrieved person would without difficulty at once obtain justice. So that intelligible laws and a good judicial system, would advantage everyone, not simply by righting him when wronged, but by preventing him from being wronged.
And then there has to be added the remoter but no less cer tain result — a raised moral tone. If punishments follow trans gressions with certainty, and if the temptations to transgress are, by the prospect of certain punishment, more effectually repressed, such temptations must diminish in strength. Ener gies directed to the illegitimate pursuit of advantages, will be turned to the legitimate pursuit of advantages; and with the decrease of those antagonistic relations among citizens caused 26 386 THE STUDY OP SOCIOLOGY.
by injustices, by the fears of injustices, and by the precautions against injustices, will go a growth of good feeling and more sympathetic social relations.
Here, then, is an ample iield for efforts that must, beyond all question, be beneficent. If, as above shown, more evil than good eventually results from measures which give to in dividual citizens benefits which their individual efforts have given them no claims to; then, contrariwise, more benefits than evils, if not pure benefits, will eventually result from measures which ensure to them the full advantages due to their efforts. Enforcement of justice is nothing else than maintenance of the conditions to life as carried on in the so cial state. And the more completely justice is enforced, the higher will the life become.
NOTES.
NOTES TO CHAPTER I.