gruity is between the institution of government on the one side, and a certain consequence of the law of equal freedom on the other. Which of the two is to be condemned for this? In the above objection it is tacitly assumed that the blame lies with this consequence of the law of equal freedom: whereas the fact is just the other way. It is with the institution of government that the blame lies. Were the institution of government an essentially right one, there would be reason to suppose that our conclusion was fallacious; but being as it is the offspring of immorality, it must be condemned for conflicting with the moral law, and not the moral law for conflicting with it. Were the moral law universally obeyed, government would not exist; and did government not exist, the moral law could not dictate the political enfranchisement of children. Hence the alleged absurdity is traceable to the present evil constitution of society, and not to some defect in our conclusion.
Concerning the extension of the law of equal freedom to children, we must therefore say, that equity commands it, emd that expediency recommends it. We find the rights of children to be deducible from the same axiom, and by the same argument as the rights of adults; whilst denial of them involves us in perplexities out of which there seems to be no escape. The association between filial subservience and barbarism — the evident kinship of fiUal subservience to social and marital slavery — and the fact that fiUal subservience declines with the advance of civUization, suggest that such subservience is bad.
The viciousness of a coercive treatment of children is further proved by its utter failure to accomplish the chief end of moral education — the culture of the sympathies; by its tendency to excite feelings of antagonism and hate; and by the check which it necessarily puts upon the development of the all-important faculty of self-control. Whilst, on the other hand, a noncoercive treatment being favourable to, and almost necessitating, constant appeals to the higher feelings, must, by exercising those feelings, improve the character; and must, at the same time, accustom the child to that condition of freedom in which its after-Ufe is to he passed. It turns out, too, that the very need for a moral training of children is but temporary, and that, consequently, a true theory of the filial relationship must not presuppose Uke the command-and-obedience theory that such a need is permanent. Lastly, we find reason to attribute whatever of incompatibiUty there may be between these conclusions and our daily experience, not to any error in them, but to the necessary incongruity between the perfect law and an imperfect humanity.
PART III.
CHAPTER XVIII.
Our principle is the primordial one. It is the first pre-requisite to the realization of the Divine -will. Every mode of interpreting that will points to this as the all-essential condition of its fulfilment. If we start with an a priori view of creative design, we are immediately led to the law of equal freedom (Chap. III). Do we appeal to the general character of the human constitution? the law of equal freedom is its corollary (Chap. IV). And when, pursuing the examination ftirther, we observe the detailed arrangements of that constitution, we discover a faculty by which the law of equal freedom is recognised and responded to (Chap. V.). Otherwise viewed, this law is seen to be a direct deduction from the necessities of existence: as thus. Life depends upon the performance of certain actions. Abrogate entirely the Hberty to exercise the faculties, and we have death: abrogate it partially, and we have pain or partial death. This remains true of man whether he be savage or civilized — isolated or social. And as there must be hfe before there can be society, this first principle of hfe must take precedence of tiie first principle of society — must fix or govern it. Or, speaking definitely, as liberty to exercise the faculties is the first condition of individual hfe, the hberty of each, limited only by the like liberty of all, must be the first condition of social life.
Derived, therefore, as it is, directly from the Divine will, and underlying as-it does the right organization of society, the law of equal freedom is of higher authority than all other laws. The creative purpose demands that everything shall be subordi- ]90 POLITICAL EIGHTS.
nated to it. Institutions and social forms must just marshal themselves as it commands. It dates from the creation; they are of yesterday. It is constant; they are changeable. It appertains to the perfect; they to the imperfect. It is coenduring with humanity; they may die to-morrow. As surely then as the incidental must how before the necessary, so surely must all conventional arrangements be subject to the absolute moral law.
Allusion has from time to time been made to a school of politicians, especially claiming for themselves the title of philosophical, who demur to this. They do not recognise any such supreme authority to which all human regulations must bend. Practically, if not professedly, they hold, with Archelaus, that nothing is intrinsically right or wrong; but that it becomes either by the dictum of the state. If we are to credit them government determines what shall be morality; and not morality what shall be government. They believe in no oracular principle by whose yea or nay we may be guided: their Delphi is the House of Commons. By their account man lives and moves and has his being by legislative permit. His freedom to do this or that is not natural, but conferred. The question — Has the citizen any claim to the work of bis hands? can only be decided by a parliamentary division. If " the ayes have it," he has; if " the noes," he has not.
The reader who has arrived thus far, needs not to have the fallacy of this doctrine pointed out. The expediency-system, of which it forms an essential part, has been repeatedly proved untenable, and with it must fall its dependent propositions. And having, moreover, been collaterally refuted in foregoing chapters, the notion that man has no rights save those of government manufacture, might safely be left where it lies. There are, however, additional evidences of its untruth, which it may be as well to state. And first let us inquire how it has originated.
Considering society as a corporate body, we may say that man, when he first enters into it, has the repulsive force in excess, wliilst in the cohesive force he is deficient. His passions are strong; his sympathies weak. Those propensities which fitted him for savage life necessarily tend to breed war between himself and his neighbours. His condition has been that of perpetual antagonism; and his antagonistic habits must of course accompany him into the social state. Aggression, dispute, anger, hatred, revenge — these are the several stages of the process by which the members of a primitive community are continually being sundered. Hence the smaUness of the first communities. Populations burst as fast as they increase. Eaces spUt into tribes; tribes into factions. Only as civilization advances do larger unions become possible. And even these have to pass through some such stage as that of feudalism, with its small chieftainships and right of private war, showing that the tendency to repel is still active.
Now, in proportion to the repulsive force subsisting between atoms of matter, must be the restraint required to keep them from exploding. And in proportion to the repulsive force subsisting between the units of a society must be the strength of the bonds rec[uisite to prevent that society from flying to pieces. Some powerful concentrative influence there must be to produce even these smallest unions: and this influence must be strong in proportion to die savageness of the people; otherwise the unions cannot be maintained. Such an influence we have in the sentiment of veneration, reverence for power, loyalty, or, as Carlyle terms it — hero-worship. By this feeliag it is, that society begins to be organized; and where the barbarism is greatest, there is this feeling strongest. Hence the fact that all traditions abound in superhuman beings, in giants and demigods.' The mythical accounts of Bacchus and Hercules, of Thor and Odin, and of the various divine and halfdivine personages who figure in the early histories of aU races.
merely prove the intensity of the awe with which superiority was once regarded. In that behef of some of the Polynesian Islanders that only their chiefs have souls, we find a still extant example of the almost incredible influence which this sentiment of reverence has over savage men. Through it only does all authority, whether that of ruler, teacher, or priest, become possible. It was ahke the parent of behefs in the miraculous conception of Gengis Khan, in the prophetic characters of Zoroaster, Confucius, and Mahomet, and in the infallibility of the Pope. Where it no longer deifies power, it associates it with divine attributes. Thus it was death for the Assyrian to enter unbidden into the presence of his monarch. The still stationary Orientals ascribe to their emperors celestial relationsliips. Schamyl, the prophet-chief of the Circassians, is beUeved to have entire union with the Divine essence. And the Eussian soldiers pray for their Czar as " our God upon earth." The fealty of vassal to feudal lord — the devotion of Highland Celt to chief — were exhibitions of the same feeling. Loyalty it made the brightest virtue, and treason the blackest crime.
With the advance of civilization this awe of power diminishes. Instead of looking up to the monarch as a God, it begins to view him as a man reigning by divine authority — as " the Lord's anointed." Submission becomes less abject. Subjects no longer prostrate themselves before their rulers, nor do serfs kiss their master's feet..Obedience ceases to be unlimited: men will choose their own faiths. Gradually, as there grow up those sentiments which lead each to maintain his own rights, and sympathetically to respect the rights of others — gradually as each, thus, by the acquirement of self-restraining power, becomes fitted to live in harmony with liis fellow — so gradually do men cease to need external restraint, and so gradually does this feehng which makes them submit to that external restraint decrease. The law of adaptation necessitates this. The feeling must lose power just as fast as it. ceases to be needful. As the new regulator grows, the old one must dwindle. The first amehoration of a piu-e despotism is a partial supplanting of the one by the other. Mixed constitutions exhibit the two acting conjointly. And whilst the one advances to supremacy, the other sinks into decrepitude: divine right of kings is exploded, and monarchical power becomes but a name.
Although the adaptation of man to the social state has already made considerable progress — although the need for external restraint is less — and although consequently that reverence for authority which makes restraint possible, has greatly diminished — diminished to such an extent that the holders of power are daily caricatured, and men begin to listen to the National Anthem with their hats on — stiU the change is far from complete. The attributes of the aboriginal man have not yet died out. We stiU trench upon each other's claims — stQl pursue happiness at each other's expense. Our savage selfishness is seen in commerce, in legislation, in social arrangements, in amusements. The shopkeeper imposes on his lady customer; his lady customer beats down the shopkeeper. Classes quarrel about their respective " interests; " and corruption is defended by those who profit from it. The spirit of caste morally tortures its victims with as much coolness as the Indian tortures his enemy. Gamblers pocket their gains with unconcern: and your share-speculator cares not who loses, so that he gets his premium. No matter what their rank, no matter in what they are engaged — whether in enacting a Com Law, or in strugghng with each other at the doors of a theatre — men show themselves as yet, little else than barbarians in broadcloth.
Hence we still require shackles; rulers to impose them; and power-worship to make those rulers obeyed. Just as much as the love of God's law is deficient, must the fear of man's law be called in to supply its place. And to the extent that man's law is needful there must be reverence for it to ensure the necessary allegiance. Hence, as men are still under the influence of this sentiment, we must expect their customs,, creeds, and philosophies to testify of its presence.
Here, theD, we have a rationale of the expediency-idea of government. It is the latest and most refined form assumed hy this disposition to exalt the state at the expense of the individual. There have heen books written to prove that the monarch's will should be the subject's absolute law; and if instead of monarch we read legislature, we have the expediencytheory. It merely modifies "divine right of kings" into diviae right of governments. It is despotism democratized. Between that old eastern regime under which the citizen was the private property of his ruler, having no rights at aU, and that final state under which his rights will be entire and inviolable, there comes this intermediate state in which he is allowed to possess rights, but only by sufferance of parUament. Thus the expediency-philosophy falls naturally into its place as a phenomenon attending our progress from past slavery to future freedom. It is one of a series of creeds through which mankind have to pass. Like each of its predecessors, it is natural to a certain phase of human development. And it is fated to lose its hold as fast as our adaptation to the social state increases.
It is only by bearing in mind that a theory of some kind being needful for men tliey wiU espouse any absurdity in default of something better, that we can understand how Kousseau's doctrine of Social Contract ever came to be so widely received. This fact remembered, however, the belief in such a doctrine becomes comprehensible. Here were men combined together under government and law. It seemed clear that the arrangement was on the whole a beneficial one. Hence the very natural, though erroneous, conclusion that state-authority was a moral institut€f. And state-authority being taken for a moral institute, it became needful to account for it, to defend it, to reconcile it with justice and truth. Under which stimulus there suggested itself this theory of a covenant originally entered into between individuals on the one hand, and the community, or agents acting for it, on the other, by -which allegiance was agreed to he exchanged for protection; and iu virtue of which supposed covenant governments continue to exercise power and demand obedience.
That such an explanation should have satisfied the unthinking, is not to be wondered at; but it is passing strange that it should have gained credence amongst educated men. Observe the battery of fatal objections which may be opened upon it.
In the first place, the assumption is a purely gratuitous one. Before submitting to legislative control on the strength of an agreement alleged to have been made by our forefathers, we ought surely to have some proof that such agreement was made. But no proof is given. On the contrary, the facts, so far as we can ascertain them, rather imply that under the earliest social forms, whether savage, patriarchal, or feudal, obedience to authority was given unconditionally; and that when the ruler afforded protection it was because he resented the attempt to exercise over one of his subjects a power similar to his own — a conclusion quite in harmony with what we know of oaths of allegiance taken in later times.
Again; even supposing the contract to have been made, we are no forwarder, for it has been repeatedly invalidated by the violation of its terms. There is no people but what has from time to time rebelled; and there is no government but what has, in an infinity of cases, failed to give the promised protection. How, then, can this hypothetical contract be considered binding, when, if ever made, it has been broken by both parties?
But, granting the agreement, and granting that nothing positive has occurred to vitiate it, we have still to be shown on what principle that agreement, made, no one knows when, by no one knows/whom, can be held to tie people now hving. Dynasties have,, changed, and different forms of government have supplanted each other, since the alleged transaction could have taken place; -whilst, between the people who are supposed 202 POLITICAL EIGHTS.
to have been parties to it, and their existing descendants, unnumbered generations have lived and died. So we must assume that this covenant has over and over again survived the deaths of all parties concerned! Truly a strange power this which our forefathers wielded — to be able to fix the behaviour of their descendants for all futurity! What would any one think of being required to kiss the Pope's toe, because his greatgreat-great-grandfather promised that he should do so?
However, there never was such a contract. If there had been, constant breaches must have destroyed it. And even if undestroyed it could not bind us, but only those who made it.
The self-importance of a Malvoho is sufficientiy ludicrous; but we must go far beyond it to parallel the presumption of legislatures. Some steward who, deluded by an intense craving after dominion, and an impudence equal to his craving, should construe his stewardship into proprietorship, would more fitly illustrate it. Were such an one to argue that the estate he was appointed to manage had been virtually resigned into his possession — that to secure the advantages of his administration its owner had given up all titie to it — that he now lived on it only by his (the steward's) sufierance — and that he was in futiure to receive no emoluments firom it, except at his (the steward's) good pleasure — then should we have an appropriate travesty upon the behaviour of governments to nations; then should we have a doctrine perfectly analogous to this fashionable one, which teaches how men on becoming members of a community, give up, for the sake of certain social advantages, their natural rights. Adherents of tliis fashionable doctrine will doubtless protest against such an interpretation of it. They have no reasonable cause for doing so, however, as will appear on submitting them to a cross-examination. Suppose we begin it thus: — "Your hypothesis that men, when they entered into the POLITICAL EIGHTS. 203 social state, surrendered their original freedom, implies that they entered into such state voluntarily, does it not? " " It does."
" Then they must have considered the social state preferable to that under which they had previously lived? " " Necessarily."
" Why did it appear preferable? " " Because it offered greater security."
" Greater security for what? " " Greater security for life, for property, for the things that minister to happiness."
" Exactly. To get more happiness: that must have been the object. If they had expected to get more ««happiness, they would not have wiUingly made the change, would they?"
"No."
" Does not happiness consist in the due satisfaction of all the desires? in the due exercise of all the faculties? " "And this exercise of the faculties is impossible without freedom of action. The desires cannot be satisfied without liberty to pursue and use the objects of them."
" True."
"Now it is this freedom to exercise the faculties within specific limits, which we signify by the term ' rights,' is it not? " " Well, then, summing up your answers, it seems that, by your hypothesis, man entered the social state voluntarily; which means that he entered it for the sake of obtaioiag greater happiness; which means that he entered it to obtain fuller exercise of his faculties; which means that he entered it to obtain security for such exercise; which means that he entered it for the guaranteeing of his ' rights.' " " Put your proposition iu a more tangible form."
" Very good. If this is too abstract a statement for you, let us attempt a simpler one. You say that a state of political combination was preferred mainly because it afforded greater security for life and property than the isolated state, do you " Certainly."
" Are not a man's claims to his life and his property amongst ■what we term his rights; and moreover, the most important of them? " " They are."
" Then to say that men formed themselves into communities to prevent the constant violation of their claims to life and property, is to say that they did it for the preservation of their rights? " " Wherefore, either way we find that the preservation of rights was the object sought."
" So it would seem."
" But your hypothesis is that men give up their rights on entering the social state? " " See now how you contradict yourself. You assert that on becoming members of a society, men give up, what by your own showing they joined it the better to obtain! " " Well, perhaps I ought not to have said that they ' give up' their rights, but that they place them in trust."
" In whose trust? " " In that of a government."
" A government, then, is a kind of agent employed by tlie members of a community, to take care of, and administer for their benefit, something given into its charge? " " Exactly."
"And of course, like all other agents, exercises authority only at the wiU of those who appoint it — performs aU that it is commissioned to do subject to their approval?"
" Just so."
" And the things committed to its charge still belong to the original owners. The title of the people to the rights they have placed in trast continues valid: the people may demand from this agent the full benefit accruing from these rights; and may, if they please, resume possession of them? " " Not so."
" Not so! What, can they not reclaim their own? " " No. Having once consigned their rights into the keeping of a legislature, they must he content with such use of them as that legislature permits."
And thus we arrive at the ciuious doctrine above referred to, that the members of a community having entrusted an estate (their rights) to the care of a steward (their government) j thereby lose all proprietorship in such estate, and can have no: benefit from it, except what their steward pleases to vouchsafe!
But it is needless to assault this theory of governmentomnipotence from without, for it is betrayed from witliin. It is self-destructive. It is disproved by its own innermost principle. The very witness called to testify of its truth lets out its falsity. For to what end is this attempted denial of rights? It is to the end of estabhshing the law of the greatest happiness to the greatest number — a law to carry out which government is said to exist — a law by whose dictates alone government ought to be guided — a law, therefore, of higher authority than government; antecedent to it — a law to which government must be subservient, subordinate. But what, when scrutinized, does this law of the greatest happiness to the greatest number resolve itself into? Why, into the ultrademocratic dogma — all men have equal rights to happiness (page 22).. Wherefore it is to carry out the law — all men have equal rights to happiness, that government exists. And thus, even according to the opposition hypothesis, rights are the be-aU and end-aU of government; and rank above it, as the end above the means.
CHAPTER XIX.
As a corollary to the proposition that all institutions must be subordinated to the law of equal freedom, we cannot choose but admit the right of the citizen to adopt a condition of voluntary outlawry. If every man has freedom to do aU that he wills, provided he infiinges not the equal freedom of any other man, then he is free to drop connection with the state — to relinquish its protection, and to refuse paying towards its support. It is self-evident that in so behaving he in no way trenches upon the liberty of others; for his position is a passive one; and whilst passive he cannot become an aggressor. It is equally selfevident that he cannot be compelled to continue one of a political corporation, without a breach of the moral law, seeing that citizenship involves payment of taxes; and the taking away of a man's property against his will, is an infringement of his rights (p. 134). Government being simply an agent employed in common by a number of individuals to secure to them certain advantages, the very nature of the connection implies that it is for each to say whether he will employ such an agent or not.
If any one of them determines to ignore this mutual-safety confederation, nothing can be said except that he loses all claim to its good offices, and exposes himself to the danger of maltreatment— a thing he is quite at liberty to do if he likes. He cannot be coerced into political combination without a breach of the law of equal freedom; he can withdraw from it without committing any such breach; and he has therefore a right so to withdraw.
" No human laws are of any validity if contraiy to the law of nature; and such of them as are valid derive all their force and all their authority mediately or immediately from this original." Thus writes Blaekstone, to whom let all honour he given for having so far outseen the ideas of his time; and, indeed, we may say of our time. A good antidote, this, for those pohtical superstitions which so widely prevail. A good check upon that sentiment of power- worship which sdll misleads us by magnifying the prerogatives of constitutional governments as it once did those of monarchs. Let men learn that a legislature is not " our God upon earth," though, by the authority they ascribe to it, and the things they expect from it, they would seem to think it is. Let them learn rather that it is an institution serving a purely temporary purpose, whose power, when not stolen, is at the best borrowed.
Nay, indeed, have we not seen (p. 13) that government is essentially immoral? Is it not the offspring of evil, bearing about it all the marks of its parentage? Does it not exist because crime exists? Is it not strong, or, as we say, despotic, when crime is great? Is there not more liberty, that is, less government, as crime diminishes? And must not government cease when crime ceases, for very lack of objects on which to perform its function? Not only does magisterial power exist because of evil, but it exists by evil. Violence is employed to maintain it; and all violence iavolves criminality. Soldiers, policemen, and gaolers; swords, batons, and fetters, are instruments for inflicting pain; and aU infliction of pain is in the abstract wrong. The state employs evil weapons to subjugate evil, and is alike contaminated by the objects with which it deals, and the means by which it works. Morality cannot recognise it; for morality, being simply a statement of the perfect law, can give no countenance to anything growing out of, and living by, breaches of that law (Chap. I.). Wherefore, legislative authority can never be ethical— must always be conventional merely.
Hence, there is a certain inconsistency in the attempt to determine the right position, structure, and conduct of a government by appeal to the first principles of rectitude. For, as just pointed out, the acts of an institution which is in both nature and origin imperfect, cannot be made to square with the perfect law. All that we can do is to ascertain, firstly, in what attitude a legislature must stand to the community to avoid being by its mere existence an embodied wrong; — secondly, in what manner it must be constituted so as to exhibit the least incongruity with the moral law; — and thirdly, to what sphere its actions must be limited to prevent it firom multiplying those breaches of equity it is set up to prevent.
The first condition to be confoimed to before a legislature can be established without violating the law of equal fi:eedom, is the acknowledgment of the right now under discussion — the right to ignore the state ^.
Upholders of pure despotism may fitly beheve state-control to be unlimited and unconditional. They who assert that men are made for governments and not governments for men, may consistently hold that no one can remove himself beyond the pale of poUtical organization. But they who maintain that the people are the only legitimate source of power — that legislative authority is not original, hut deputed — cannot deny, the right to ignore the state without entangling themselves in an absurdity.
For, if legislative authority is deputed, it follows that those firom whom it proceeds are the masters of those on whom it is conferred: it follows further, that as masters they confer the said authority voluntarily: and this impUes that they may give or withhold it as they please. To call that deputed which is ° Hence may be drawn an argiunent for direct taxation; seeing that only when taxation ia direct does repudiation of state burdens become possible.
wrenched from men whether they will or not, is nonsense. But what is here true of all collectively is equally true of each separately. As a government can rightly act for the people, only when empowered by them, so also can it rightly act for the individual, only when empowered by him. If A, B, and C, debate whether they shall employ an agent to perform for them a certain service, and if whilst A and B agree to do so, C dissents, C cannot equitably be made a party to the agreement in spite of himself. And this must be equally true of thirty as of three; and if of tliirty, why not of three hundred, or three thousand, or three millions?
Of the pohticai superstitions lately alluded to, none is so universally diffused as the notion that majorities are omnipotent. Under the impression that the preservation of order will ever require power to be wielded by some party, the moral sense of our time feels that such power cannot rightly bo conferred on any but the largest moiety of society. It interprets literally the saying that " the voice of the people is the voice of God," and transferring to the one the sacredness attached to the other, it concludes that from the wiU of the people, that is, of the majority, there can be no appeal. Yet is this belief entirely erroneous.
Suppose, for the sake of argument, that, struck by some Malthusian panic, a legislature duly representing pubhc opinion were to enact that all children bom during the next ten years should be drowned. Does any one think such an enactment would be warrantable? If not, there is evidently a Hmit to the power of a majority. Suppose, again, that of two races living together — Celts and Saxons, for example — the most numerous determined to make the others their slaves. Would the authority of the greatest number be in such case vahd? If not there is something to which its authority must be subordinate. Suppose, once more, that all men having incomes under £50 a year p