Of restrictions it scarcely needs saying that they are even more directly inequitable than hounties. Deducible as it is from the law of equal freedom, the right of exchange is 'as sacred as any other right (Chap. XIII.), and exists as much between members of different nations as between members of the same nation. Morahty knows nothing of geographical boundaries, or distinctions of race. You may put men on opposite sides of a river or a chain of mountains; may else part them by a tract of salt water; may give them, if you like, distinct languages; and may even colour their skins differently; but you cannot change their fundamental relationships. Originating as these do in the facts of man's constitution, they are unalterable by the accidents of external condition. The moral law is cosmopoUte — is no respecter of nation ah ties: and between men who are the antipodes of each other, either in locality or anything else, there must still exist the same balance of rights as though they were next-door neighbours in all things.
Hence, in putting a veto upon the commercial intercourse of two nations, or in putting obstacles in the way of that intercourse, a government trenches upon men's Hberties of action; and by so doing directly reverses its function. To secure for each man the fullest freedom to exercise his faculties, compatible with the like freedom of all others, we find to be the state's duty. Now trade prohibitions and trade restrictions not only do not secure this freedom, but they take it away. So that in enforcing "them the state is transformed from a maintainer of rights into a violator of rights. If it be criminal in a civil power commissioned to shield us from murder to turn murderer itself; if it be criminal in it to play the thief, though set to keep off thieves; then must it be criminal in it to deprive men, in any way, of liberty to pursue the objects of desire, when it ■was appointed to ensure them that hberty. Whether it kills, or robs, or enslaves, or shackles by trade regulations, its guilt is alike in kind, and differs only in degree. In the one extreme it wholly destroys the power to exercise the faculties; in the other it does this partially. And in strict ethics the same species of condemnation must be visited upon it in both cases.
Not a few will be startled by this view of the matter. Let such reflect awhile upon the antecedents and associations of this tradcrruling. They will find, on doing so, that it is allied in both origin and practice to all other forms of wrong. More than once it has been pointed out, that as unjust customs and institutions derive their viciousness from a moral defect in the people living Tinder them, they must he uniformly pervaded by that viciousness — that as social laws, creeds, and arrangements consist merely of solidified character, the same character will be shown in all the social laws, creeds, and arrangements which co-exist; and, further, that any process of amelioration will affect them simultaneously. This truth was amply illustrated (pp. 161 and 178). We saw that tyranny in forms of government, tyranny in the conduct of lord to serf, tyranny in rehgious organizations and discipline, tyranny in the matrimonial relationship, and tyranny in the treatment of children, regularly flourished together and regularly decreased at a like rate. In the same category we must now put — tyranny in commercial laws. Sinking those minor irregularities which pervade all nature's processes, we shall find that from the days when exportation was a capital crime, down to our own free- trade era, there has been a constant ratio kept between the stringency of mercantile restraints and the stringency of other restraints, as there has between the increase of commercial liberty and the increase of general liberty.
A few facts will sufficiently exemplify this. Take as one the instance just alluded to, in which associated with autocratic rule in chrurch, in state, and in feudal hall, we find Edward III., for the purpose of making foreigners come and buy in our markets, prohibiting his subjects from sending abroad any staple goods " under penalty of death and confiscation; " and further enacting, " that the law should be unalterable either by himself or his successors." Observe, too, how this same de^ spotic spirit was exhibited in the regulations requiring these continental traders to reside during their stay with certain inspectors commissioned to see the cargoes sold withih a specified time, and the proceeds re-invested in Enghsh goods, and charged to transmit to the Exchequer periodical statements of each merchant's bargains — ^regulations, by the way, of which the abandonment was in after times lamented by the veneraters of ancestral ■wisdom, mucli as the abolition of the sUding scale is mourned over by a certain party of our own day.
Note again how, under the same regime, labourers were coerced into working for fixed wages; and then how, to keep the balance even, shopkeepers had the prices of provisions dictated to them. Mark further, that when the most tyrannical of these ordinances fell into disuse, there still continued the less burdensome ones, such as those usury laws, orders to farmers, prescribings of the material for grave-clothes, instructions to manufacturers, &c., referred to iu the last chapter.
But without going into further detail — without enlarging upon the fact that those intolerable restraints once borne by the manufacturing classes of France were cotemporary with intense despotism at court, and a stiU hngering feudahsm in the provinces— without tracing the paraUeHsm that exists between the political and commercial bondage, under which, in spite of their revolutions, the French still live — without pointing out at length the same coimection of phenomena in Prussia, in Austria, and in other similarly-ruled countries — without doiog all this, the evidence adduced suf&ciently shows that the oppressiveness of a nation's mercantile laws varies as the oppressiveness of its general arrangements and government. Whilst, conversely, if we glance over the annals of progress, and then contemplate the changes that have taken place within these few years, or which are yet in progress, we cannot but remark a similar kinship between the manifestations of a juster feeling in poHtical organization, in ecclesiastical affairs, in the family, and in our commercial code.
Thus, trade restrictions are of the same race with irresponsible government and slavery. An obtuse perception of, and an insufficient sympathy with, the claims of man, are the parents of all tyrannies and dishonesties, bear they what name they may. Interferences with the freedom of exchange are as certainly their progeny as are the worst violations of human rights: they are constantly found in the society of these: and though not popularly classed as crimes, they are in both origin and nature closely related to them.
THE EEGUJLATION OF COMMERCE.
There is another aspect under which these trade regulations, in common with many kindred contrivances for the management of social affairs, may be regarded. They £u:e all in essence idolatrous. The worship of dead, powerless things made with human hands is not extinct, as people flatter themselves — cannot be extinct — never will be entirely extinct. The elements of man's nature are persistent: the change is in their ratios. Typical remains of every disposition must continue traceable even to the remotest future. If, on the one band, it is an error to suppose that humanity has not altered at all, it is, on the other hand, an error to suppose that it has altered, or even will alter, so completely as to retain no traces of its bygone character.
Scientifically defined, idolatry is a mode of thought under which all causation is attributed to entities. It results from the first generahzation of the undeveloped intellect, which, having constantly seen results produced by visible, tangible objects, infers that all results are so produced. In the mind of the savage every effect is believed to be due to a special worker, because special workers have been observed to precede effects in a multitude of instances. The laws of mental action necessitate that, as all known causes have presented themselves to him as personal agencies, all unknown causes must be conceived by him of the same nature. Hence the original fetishism. A stone thrown by an unseen hand, a piece of wood that, when heated, bursts into flame, or an animal found in the nei<Thbourhood of some natural catastrophe, is at once assumed to be the acting power. Here is a phenomenon — a visible change of state in some observed object: past experience inevitably suggests that there is a worker of this change: past experience also inevitably suggests that such worker is an entity: the entity to which the character of worker is ultimately ascribed will be that which past experience points out as most probable: aad, in the absence of other entities, this character of worker wUl attach to the wood that gives out the flame, or to the stone that inflicts the blow. Thus the wood and stone, being looked upon as agents of unknown power capable of inflicting injury, are prayed to and propitiated.
From the very first, however, there begins an accumulation of facts calculated to undermine this theory of things, and certain ultimately to overthrow it For, whilst he regards aU phenomena as the doings of living beings, the primitive man necessarily attributes to such beings qualities similar to those of the beings he sees — men and brutes. Eeasoning, as he must^ from the known to the unknown, he is obliged to conceive the unknown generators of change to be like the known ones in all things: and we find that he does this; we find that he represents them by forms either human, or bestial, or both, and that he imagines their passions and habits to be like his own. Now an attiibute, possessed in common by all the beings known to him, is that of irregular volition. He sees no creature whose acts are so uniform that he can say positively what its future behaviour wiU be. Hence it happens that when certain natural events, originally ascribed by him to living agents — events such as the rising and setting of the sun and the falling of bodies to the earth — come to be perpetually repeated, and follow the same antecedents without exception, his notion of personal agency is shaken. This perfect uniformity of action is at variance with his knowledge of all known beings — is at variance with his very conception of a being. And thus in respect to the most familiar sequences, experience silently forces upon him the idea of a constant course of procedure — or what we express by the word law; and a belief in iwpersonal agency slowly supplants the original belief in personal agency. This revolution in his mode of thinking, though at first confined to the every-day instances of causation, extends in process of time to a wider and wider range of cases. The unceasing accumulation of facts which begins when increase of population provides a multitude of observers, continually furnishes new illustrations of that uniformity of sequence which conflicts with the notion of special workers; and thus the domain of the so-called supernatural is step hy step usurped by the so-called natural. Still, it is only in as far as uniformity of sequence is made abundantly manifest, that the old theory is superseded. Though, amongst the Greeks, Thales taught that there were laws of matter, he nevertheless considered that a load-stone had a soul. Where the occiurence is unusual — that is, where the connection between antecedent and consequent is not familiar — that is, where circumstances do not discountenance the original belief in special workers, that behef is still held. Hence it happens that, long after all ordinary phenomena have come to be considered as due to the properties of things, or, in other words, to impersonal agency, such an event as an eclipse or an earthquake is explained as a dragon eating the sun, or as a god turning over in his sleep; an epidemic is ascribed to witchcraft; a luminous whiff of marsh-gas is regarded as a " Will o' the whisp; " a failure in the dairy or brewhouse is set down to fairy malice; and there are myths about Giants' Causeways andDevils' Bridges. Where the connection between cause and effect is very remote or obscure, as in matters of fortune and in certain bodily affections, this disposition to attribute power to entities continues even after science has made great progress; and thus we find that in our own day the old fetishism still lingers in the regard shown to crooked sixpences, wart- charms, and omens.
It hngers, moreover, as already hinted, in less suspected forms. Many much-reverenced social instrumentalities, also, have originated in this primitive necessity of ascribing all causation to special workers — this inabihty to detach the idea of force from an individual something. Just in proportion as natural phenomena are regarded by any people as of personal instead of impersonal origin, will the phenomena of national life be similarly construed: and, indeed, since moral sequences are less obvious than physical ones, they wiU be thus construed even more generally. The old belief that a king could fix the value of coinage, and the cry raised at the change of style — " Give us our eleven days," obviously implied minds incapable of conceiving social affairs to be regulated by other than visible, tangible agencies. That there should be at work some unseen but universally-diffused influence determining the buyings and sellings of citizens and the transactions of merchants from abroad, in a way the most advantageous to all parties, was an idea as foreign to such minds as was that of uniform physical causation to the primitive Greeks ^; and, conversely, as the primitive Greeks could understand the operations of nature being performed by a number of presiding individuahties, so to the people of the middle ages it was comprehensible that a proper production and distribution of commodities should be ensured by acts of Parhament and government officials. Whilst the due regulation of trade by a natural indestructible force was inconceivable to them, they could conceive trade to be duly regulated by a force resident in some material instrumentality put together by legislators, clothed in the robes of office, painted by court flatterers, and decorated with "jewels five words long."''
But with the complex phenomena of commerce, as with the simpler phenomena of the inorganic world, constancy of sequence has gradually undermined the theory that power dwells in entities. Irresistible evidence is at length estabhshing a belief in the law of supply and demand, as some thousands of years ago it established a belief in the law of gravitation. And the development of politico-economical science, being thus a further conquest of the faith in impersonal agencies over the faith in personal agencies, must be regarded as one of that series of changes which commenced with the first victory of natural philosophy over superstition.
Fortunately it is now needless to enforce the doctrine of commercial freedom by any considerations of poHcy. After making continual attempts to improve upon the laws of trade, ' See Grate's History.
^ A metaphor that "has been nsed to denote the pride with which the German officials regard their titles.
304 THE KEGULATION OF COMMERCE.
from the time of Solon downwards, men are at length beginning to see that such attempts are worse than useless. Pohtical economy has sho'^n us in this matter — what indeed it is its chief mission to show — that our wisest plan is to let things take their own course. An increasing sense of justice, too, has assisted in convincing us. We have here learned, what our forefathers learned in some cases, and what, alas! we have yet to learn in many more, that nothing hut evil can arise from inequitable regulations. The necessity of respecting the principles of abstract rectitude — this it is that we have had another lesson upon. Look at it rightly and we shall find that all the Anti-Com-Law League did, with its lectures, its newspapers, its bazaars, its monster meetings, and its tons of tracts, was to teach people — what should have been very clear to them without any such teaching — that no good can come of violating men's rights. By bitter experience and a world of talk we have at length been made partially to believe as much. Be it txue or not in other cases, we are now quite certain that it is true in trade. In respect to this at least we have declared that, for the future, we will obey the law of equal freedom.
CHAPTEE XXIV.
CHAPTEE XXIV.
As a matter of routine, it is needful here to point out what the reader -will have inferred irom Chap. XXII., that, by devoting a portion of its revenues or a part of the nation's property to the propagation of Christianity or any other creed, a government necessarily commits a wrong. If, as with ourselves, such government forcibly takes a citizen's money for the support of a national church, it is guilty of infiinging the rights it ought to maintain — of trespassing upon that freedom to exercise the faculties which it was commissioned to guard. For, as already shown, by diminishing a subject's hberty of action more than is needful for securing the remainder, the civil power becomes an aggressor instead of a protector. If, on the other hand, the right to ignore the state is recognised, as, in considering the question abstractedly, we must suppose it to be, then, by insisting upon conditions which drive some men to abandon its aid, and which unnecessarily restrict the freedom of those who do not, the state fails to that extent in discharging its duty. Hence, specifically applying the principle lately set forth in general terms, we find that a government cannot undertake the teaching of a reUgious faith without either directly reversing its function, or partially incapacitating itself for the performance of that function, In the conduct of English churchmen we have a curious illustration of the way in which men will re- adopt, when it is X 306 EELIGIOUS ESTABLISHMENTS.
thinly disguised, a belief they had iDdignantly cast from them. That same Romish dogmatism, against -which our clergy exclaim with such vehemence, they themselves defend when it is exercised on behalf of their o-mi creed. Eveiy state-church is essentially popish. We also have a Vatican — St. Stephen's. It is true that our arch-priest is a composite one. It is true that -with us the triple tiara is separated into its parts — one for monarch, one for peers, and one for commons. But this fact makes no difference. In substance, popeiy is the assumption of infallibiUty. It matters not in principle whether this assumption is made by one man, or by an assembly of men. No doubt the astounding announcement — "You must believe what we say is right, and not what you think is right," comes less offensively from the hps of a parHamentary majority than from those of a single individual. But there still arises the question — By what authority do these men assert tliis? Whence do they derive their infalUbility?
That in establishing any religion a government does claim to be infallible, scarcely needs proof Before a church organization can be set to work, a distinct understanding as to what it is to do must be arrived at. Before state-paid ministers can be set to preach, it must first be decided what they are to preach. And who is to say? Clearly the state. Either it must itself elaborate a creed, or it must depute some man or men to do so. It must in some way sift out truth from error, and cannot escape the responsibihty attending this. If it undertakes itself to settle the doctiines to be taught, it is responsible. If it adopts a ready-made.set of doctrines, it is equally responsible. And if it selects its doctrines by proxy, it is still responsible; both as appointing those who chose for it, and as approving their choice. Hence, to say that a government ought to set up and maintain a system of rehgious instruction, is to say that it ought to pick out from amongst the various tenets that men hold or have held, those wliich are right; and that, when it has done this — when it has settled between the Roman Catholic, the G-reek, the Lutheran, and the Anglicaii creeds, or between EELIGIODS ESTABLISHMENTS. 307 the Puseyite, BQgh Church, and Evangelical ones — when it has decided whether we should he haptized during infancy or at a mature age, whether the truth is with Trinitarians or Unitarians, whether men are saved by faith or by works, whether pagans go to hell or not, whether ministers should preach in black or white, whether confirmation is scriptural, whether or not saints' days should be kept, and (as we have lately seen it debating) whether baptism does or does not regenerate— when, in short, it has settled all those controversies which have split mankind into innumerable sects, it ought to assert that its judgment is incapable of eiTor — is unquestionable — is beyond appeal. There is no alternative. Unless the state says this, it convicts itself of the most absurd inconsistency.
Only on the supposition of infaUibihty can its ecclesiastical doings be made to seem tolerable. How else shall it demand rates and tithes of the dissenter? What answer can it make to his expostulations? "^Are you quite sm'e about these doctrines of yours?" inquires the dissenter. " No," rephes the state; "not quite sure, but nearly so." " Then it is just possible you may he wrong, is it not?" "Yes." "And it is just possible that I may he right, is it not? " " Yes." " Yet you threaten to inflict penalties upon me for nonconformity! You seize my goods; you imprison me if I resist; and all to force from me the means to preach up doctrines which you admit may be false, and by implication to preach down doctrines which you admit may be true! How do you justify this? " No reply. Evidently, therefore, if the state persists, the only position open to it is that its judgment cannot he mistaken — that its doctrines cannot he erroneous. And now observe, that if it says this, it stands committed to the whole Roman Catholic discipline as well as to its theory. Having a creed that is beyond the possibility of doubt, and being commissioned to disseminate that creed, the state is in duty hound to employ the most efiicient means of doing this — is bound to put down all adverse teachers, as usurping its function and hindering the reception of its unquestionable doctrine — is hound to use as much force as may be needful for doing this — is bound, therefore, to imprison, to fine, and if necessary, to inflict severer penalties, so that error may be exterminated and truth be triumphant. There is no half-way. Being charged to put men in the way to heaven, it cannot without sin permit some to be led the other way. If, rather than punish a few on earth, it allows many to be eternally damned for misbelief, it is manifestly culpable. Evidently it must do all, or it must do nothing. If it does not claim infallibility, it cannot in reason set up a national religion; and if, by setting up a national rehgion, it does claim infaUibnity, it ought to coerce all men into the belief of that religion. Thus, as was said, every state-church is essentially popish.
But there has been gradually dawning upon those who think, the conviction that a state-church is not so much a rehgious as a political institution. " Who does not see," inquires Locke, speaking of the clergy, " that these men ai-e more ministers of the government than ministers of the gospel V Probably in Locke's time there were few who did see this; but there are now many. Nor, indeed, is the fact altogether derded, as you shall hear firom some poUtic supporter of rehgious estabhshments during an after-dinner confidence. " Between ourselves," will whisper such an one, " these churches and parsons, and all the rest of it, are not for sensible men, such as you and I; we know better; we can do without all that; but there must be something of the Mud to keep the people in order."' And then he will go on to show what influential restraints religious services are; how they encourage subordination and contentment; and how the power which the clergy obtain over their parishioners strengthens the hands of the civil ruler. That some such view widely prevails may be gathered fi-om the acts and proposals of our statesmen. How otherwise can we understand that avowed wilUngness in the pohtical leaders of all par- The writer has himself been thus addressed.
ties to endow the Koman Catholic Church in Ireland if the religious piihlic of England -would let them? Or what but a political motive can that States' lieutenant — the East India Company — have for giving an annual subsidy of 23,000 rupees to the temple of Juggernaut, reimbursing itself by a tax upon the pilgrims? Or why else should the Ceylon government take upon itself to be curator of Buddha's tooth, and to commission the Buddhist priests ^?
Of the clergy who, on the other hand, commonly advocate a state-church as being needful for the upholding of reUgion, it may be said that by doing this they condemn their own case, pass sentence upon their creed as worthless, and bring themselves in guilty of hypocrisy. What! will they allow this faith, which they value so highly, to die a natural death if they are not paid for propagating it? Must all these people, about whose salvation they profess such anxiety, be left to go to perdition if livings, and canonries, and bishoprics, are abohshed? Has that apostolic inspiration, of which they claim to be the inheritors, brought with it so little apostolic zeal that there would be no preaching were it not for parsonages and tithes? Do they who, on ordination, declared themselves " inwardly moved by the Holy Ghost," now find that they are inwardly moved only by the chink of gold? This would be called slander coming from any but themselves. And then their flocks — what say they of these? Do these care so httle for the faith they have been taught, that its maintenance cannot be entrusted to them? After centuries of church-culture, has Christianity got so little root in men's hearts that but for government watering-pots it must wither away? Are we to understand that these perpetual prayers and sacraments, these homilies and exhortations, these visitings and scripture-readings, have not even generated as much enthusiasm as can keep itself alive?
' See letter of Sir Colin Campbell to Lord Stanley, May 2, 1845.
Have ten thousand sermons a week done so little that the hearers will not contribute a sum sufficient for the sustentation of a ministry? Why, if this he true, what is the system good for? These advocates do but open their briefs, and then straightway argue themselves out of court. They labour to prove either how powerless is the faith they teach, or how miserably they teach it! The sum and substance of their plea for the state propagation of this creed is, that it has failed in animating its ministers with its owa spirit of self-sacrifice, and failed to arouse in its devotees a spark of its own generosity!
It is needless, however, in this year of grace 1850, with its Gorham controversies and Puseyite divisions, with its Romish and Rationahst secessions, with confusion inside the church, and a hostile association outside — to debate the question at greater length. Events are proving to most of the reflective — -even to many of the clergy themselves — that a state-support of any particular faith is wrong, and that in England at least, it must shortly cease. For those who do not yet see this there are already volumes of argument to which addition is almost superfluous. The conclusions above come to, that the state cannot establish a rehgion without assuming infallibiUty, and that to argue an estabhshment of it needful is to condemn the rehgion itself, will sufficiently enforce, for present purposes, our abstract proposition.
CHAPTER XXV.
CHAPTER XXV.
In common with its other assumptions of secondary offices, the assumption hy a government of the office of Relievergeneral to the poor, is necessarily forbidden by the principle that a government cannot rightly do anything more than protect. In demanding from a citizen contributions for the mitigation of distress — contributions not needed for the due administration of men's rights — the state is, as we have seen, reversing its fanction, and diminishing that liberty to exercise the faculties which it was instituted to maintain. Possibly, unmindful of the explanations already given, some will assert that by satisfying- the wants of the pauper, a government is in reality extending his liberty to exercise his faculties, inasmuch as it is giving him something without which the exercise of them is impossible; and that hence, though it decreases the ratepayer's sphere of action, it compensates by increasing that of the rate-receiver. But this statement of the case imphes a confounding of two widely-different things. To enforce the fundamental law — to take care that every man has freedom to do aU that he wills, provided he infringes not the equal freedom of any other man — this is the special purpose for which the civil power exists. Now insuring to each the right to pursue within the specified limits the objects of his desires without let or hindrance, is quite a separate thing from insuring him satisfaction. Of two individuals, one may use his hberty of action successfully — may achieve the gratifications he seeks after, or accumulate what is equivalent to many of them — property; whilst the other, having like privileges, may fail to do [_^o. But with these results the state has no concern. All that. lies within its commission is to see that each man is allowed to I use such powers and opportunities as he possesses; and if it 1 takes from him who has prospered to give to him who has not, \ it violates its duty towai'ds the one to do more than its duty \ towards the other. Or, repeating the idea elsewhere expressed S (p. 278), it breaks down the vital law of society, that it may 1 effect what social vitality does not caU for.