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THE FOUNDATIONS OF LIBERTY

THE FOUNDATIONS

OF LIBERTY

E. F. B. FELL

METHUEN & CO.

36 ESSEX STREET W.C

LONDON

First Published in i<p8

'T'HIS little book aims at setting forth Liberty,
Personal and National — not as a mere Utility
as is usually the case — but as an o priori moral
necessity, the sine qud non of all true civilisation.

No apology will be required by students of Words-
worth for the great use here made of that Author's
works. They are all too little read at the present day,
and more is the pity, seeing how wonderfully Words-
worth's philosophy, political and moral, is adapted to
the problems of the present time.

342546

It is not to be thought of that the flood

Of British freedom, which to the open sea

Of the world's praise, from dark antiquity

Hath flowed, '* with pomp of waters unwithstood,"

Roused though it be full often to a mood

Which spurns the check of salutary bands,

That this most famous stream in bogs and sands

Should perish ; and to evil and to good

Be lost for ever. In our halls is hung

Armoury of the invincible knights of old ;

We must be free or die, who speak the tongue

That Shakespeare spoke ; the faith and morals hold

Which Milton held. In everything we are sprung

Of earth's first blood, have titles manifold.

Wordsworth

▼1

PART I

INTRODUCTORY

THE FOUNDATIONS OF
LIBERTY

INTRODUCTORY

THE partisan or extreme man is one who selects at
will certain of the facts or truths of the matter
with which he is called upon to deal, and ignores
others which, for whatever reason, are less agreeable to
him. Truth is generally to be found in a just balance.
This balance obviously cannot be maintained if we
assert our own predilections and proceed to pick and
choose among the facts. The facts we select will all
be of one type, and all restraint arising from the
presence in our minds of the correcting or balancing
truths having been lost, we shall proceed to extremes
of foolishness, the only limit to which will be the
strength of the partisan's energy or the condition of
his sense of humour. Such persons having nothing to
consider more solid or more permanent than their own
desires, are often subject and always liable to violent
oscillations of opinion, and in the process of selecting
a new set of truths will frequently go direct from one
extreme to the other.

I It is as though the truth or Aristotelian " mean "
were the apex of a triangle, with the related " untruths "
or " extremes " at the angles of the base, so that he
who falls from Truth can pass directly from one

4 THE FOUNDATIONS OF LIBERTY

extreme to the other without passing through the
" mean " on the way — that is to say, without ever
arriving at Truth.

The Truth, however, is not a mere compromise
between its opposite aspects or component ideas, nor
is it their sum or their mixture. As water is more
than its elemental gases, and a song than its several
notes, so is Truth more than those things into which it
can be analysed.

There are two chief ways in which " extremism "
or passionate, unjust, unbalanced opinion is injuriously
affecting modern politics.

On the one hand we have partial and consequently
extreme and partisan views as to the fundamental and
essential Nature of Man. Some will have it that he
is only a Mind in conflict with unreality, or with a
" matter " which is purely evil ; others that he is wholly
material, or at any rate wholly conditioned by his
material environment.

The former of these schools may become a political
danger in the distant future, but the latter are already
a danger.

The second is intimately connected with this, and
concerns the partial, ill-considered, and passionate views,
which are everywhere rife, as to the relation of the
Individual to the Society.

To take first the popular views as to the relation
of Man to his material environment.

There is at present a certain more or less un-
philosophic reaction against materialism — that is to
say, as that is popularly conceived and accepted —
expressing itself hazily in the various forms of
occultism, and among the upper classes from time to

INTRODUCTORY ;

time in a so-called Buddhism, and indeed in a great
variety of ways._ But the movement or tendency is
expressed with much more definite intention in the
dogmas of the various sects, of which the Christian
" Scientists " might be taken as typical.

These modern reactionaries for the most part regard
matter as lawless, or purely subjective, or illusory, and
as wholly or mainly evil, or at any rate the source of
evil; while the social aspect of the individual and the
dependence of his moral and physical well-being
upon his social environment are among them greatly
minimised.

Such people, however, it is needless to say, do not at
present constitute a political danger, and their case
need not here be dwelt upon.

But the opposite extreme or materialistic conception
of Man is of grave political import.

The political evil of materialism lies in the atheism
or agnosticism involved in it; for atheism and agnos-
ticism sap the moral foundations upon which all Society
is based. And so, perhaps, it might seem better,
instead of speaking of a materialistic view as the
political danger of the day, to ascribe the danger to a
popular atheism or agnosticism. But this is largely a
question of names, because among the populace agnos-
m ticism is for all practical purposes materialism, and has
■ its origin and its end in an indifference to, and elimina-
I tion of, all that is ultra-physical, and a willing surrender
B to the dogma that the Substance of the universe,
H whether that be Absolute or not, is the only thing
I with which Man, as they have limited and defined him,
B can have any concern. Furthermore, there are persons
W who, consciously or unconsciously, are influenced by

6 THE FOUNDATIONS OF LIBERTY

materialism (and who are a political danger in pro-
portion to the strength of that influence), who yet
could not possibly be described as atheists ; and to
describe them as "atheists who are partly theists " is
not so fitting as to speak of them as theists who are in
some measure influenced by materialism.

We only know of matter through our own bodies,
where we see it, as it were, from within. The notions
we entertain of matter will therefore depend on the
assumption we make concerning our own Nature — that
is, the Nature of Man. Were it otherwise, and the
only means of attaining to a materialistic or agnostic
view of things lay in pursuing the painful paths of
arduous scientific research and profound philosophic
meditation on the subject of Matter and Reality, we
might be delivered from any alarm as to this creed
ever becoming in the least degree popular. But the
usual materialistic views as to Man and his material
nature are by no means the result of elaborate study
and c<^ent reasoning, nor, on the other hand, do they
spring from the soil of faith, conscience, and moral
discipline. They are, on the contrary — whether in the
fashionable world or among the populace — the result
of gratuitous one-sided assumptions made by the indi-
vidual, which involve, neither at the time of making
them nor subsequently, any moral effort or intellectual
ability. They are suggested by pride and passion, and
when once made open the door to every destructive
political influence. Busybodies of a certain type are
not slow to perceive this, and diffuse among the people
in various ways materialistic propaganda, not, as is
affected, with a philosophic or scienti&c aim, but with
the purely political intent of resolving into du^t those

transcendental ideas which are the life and inspiration
I of human society.

I Associated with and depending upon these mate-
rialistic views of the Nature of Man, there remains
as the second menace to all that is of permanent
value in social and individual life, the extravagant
ideas which are now everywhere so acceptable on
the subject of the relation of the individual to the
Society.

On the one side there is the pure Socialistic con-
ception, and on the other the extreme Individualistic
and Anarchistic ; both the Socialistic and Individual-
istic conception being wide of the Truth, and indeed
about equally so.

As to the anarchistic attitude, it must be remarked,
in passing, that while the anarchistic policy is un-
doubtedly a development of Socialism — perhaps its
only logical issue — yet the immediate aims of the two
parties are, for all practical purposes, diametrically
opposed ; so much so that Anarchism may be re-
garded as having assimilated the essential theories
of materialistic Individualism.

It becomes necessary at this point to state what
in this book is meant by an Individualist. At present
the term Individualism is universally employed merely
to connote the various political opinions which are not
described as Socialistic; so that Individualistic now
means nothing more than anti-Socialistic. So it -
happens that Individualism connotes many opinions
which are mean and base and possessed of no ethical
or religious foundation, but are founded rather upon
inductions based upon observations of the brute crea-
n. The doctrine of "each one for himself," which

8 THE FOUNDATIONS OF LIBERTY

pretends to the support of biological science, is charac-
teristic of this type of Individualism.

The term Individualism is a purely negative one,
and does not suggest any ethic or any positive con-
structive political ideal. It is therefore confined
b throughout this argument to denote the opinions of
f those persons who are not Socialists, and do not base
I their claim to self-government and general Personal
Liberty on an ethical and spiritual conception of Man,
but upon their own self-interest or class interest, or
upon the Socialist doctrine of seeming public " Utility,"
i.e, the alleged advantage of the majority, or "Good
of the Whole," as it is hopefully styled.

But the term Individualism also denotes a body
of opinion which is most emphatically founded on
Christian ethics and the Christian religion, and which
has, moreover, a positive political ideal, and is inspired
by a noble public spirit. This most legitimate creed
has suffered much by being classified under the title
Individualism, with a variety of other non-Socialisttc
opinions with which it has nothing in common, and to
which it is radically opposed. It is therefore proposed,
for the sake of avoiding ambiguity, to designate this
political philosophy, or rather religion, by the term
Personalism. The reason for the selection of this name
is that the non-Socialist of this positive and moral
creed, unlike those whom we have here styled In-
_ dividualists, bases his claim to self-determination, i.e.
his claim to Freedom, on the transcendental fact of
Personality. This claim he makes equally for all
others, and on the same ground, viz., this fact of Per-
, sonaiity, with all that this involves of Free-will, and
|.of correspondence with, and responsibility to, an ultra-

tNTSOB

political and ultra -social Environment, to wit the
supreme Person, from whom he and his fellow men
derive that Divine element existing in them and which
alone makes them human, namely their Personality,
To the Personalist the claim to liberty does not in-
volve questions of demonstrable political Utility, for
it is not in Utility that it has its origin. The claim
is set forth as one of absolute moral Right, and the
obtaining and maintaining of Liberty thus becomes
the beginning and end of Political Justice.

Employing then the term Personalism in contra-
distinction to the terra Individualism, let us return
from this digression to the consideration of the extreme
Views of the Individualist, and Socialist.

It will not be disputed that the subject matter of
politics, as indeed in a certain sense of all branches of
abstract thought — including religion — is Man, that is
Man in his entirety ; and that a partial or sectarian
estimate of Man will vitiate our conclusions on almost
any matter, but especially on matters religious or
political.

Hence arises the importance — before discussing
politics, that is, before attempting to apply principles
to the solution of political issues — of being sure that
we have any principles to apply ; and if we have any,
of ascertaining exactly what they are, and on what
authority they rest.

When we have decided what we mean by a Man,
and consequently by a citizen, a government, a state, a
nation, then will it be quite soon enough to discuss
and pronounce upon the vast political questions which
centre round the family, the nation, religion, private
property, and personal freedom.

THE FOUNDATIONS OF LIBERTY'

The whole matter resolves itself into what we mean
by a Man ; and the more simple and childlike the
spirit in which we approach this question, the more
likely are we to arrive at a truthful solution of the
grave political questions that are more and more
ui^ently forcing themselves upon us. For the present
then, and to put the matter as briefly as possible, it
may be said that the whole of the two-sided political
truth concerning Man is involved in the conception of
him as a personal spiritual Being ; a Being which is
spiritual as well as material, and related to Heaven
as well as to Earth. He has both a divine relation
and a social relation, neither of which has any signi-
ficance without the other. He therefore cannot be
regarded either as an Individual pure and simple, nor
yet can be be treated as a "social animal." His un-
conscious social instincts have become transformed into
deliberate social principle, which principle has its origin
in the nature of his divine and ultra-social relation.
For is not our duty to our neighbour always supported
by religion of some sort or another? If we dismiss
the divine relation, and own ourselves the outcome of
chemical and mechanical forces, what becomes of Duty?
Does not that too become the result of chance — a
meaningless and momentary disposition of chaos?

It is this dual relation in which human Personality
exists, and without which there is no human Personality,
which gives rise to the social question regarding the
relation of the Individual to Society. The bees in a
hive, the ants in a nest, the leaves on a tree with their
various developments into flowers and seeds, have no
social question, because the individuals have no ultra-
social relation, and so have no significance beyond their

INTRODUCTORY 1 1

connection with the society in which they live. Were
Man so situated, he too would lead a blind, automatic
and infallible life; but as it is his ultra-social relation
introduces a disturbing element For what is this rela-
tion to the Supreme Person if it does not involve a
community of character and idea with that Person ?
How else could there be a reciprocal relation? If this
relation exists, must not we too on our side also be
possessed of self-consciousness and free-will? For
what moral meaning or reality could this relation have
without the existence of these qualities? And if we
are thus possessed of free-will or self-determination,
must not we be also morally responsible to that Supreme
Person, who is the Author of our free-will ? And what
meaning has moral responsibility apart from self-de-
velopment, self-control, independence, liberty ?

It is this distracting claim to personal liberty, a
claim which increases in force as Man develops, which
entering in, complicates at once the problem of social
organisation.

But why should it complicate it? Surely it is
admitted by all that the individual cannot realise
or develop his powers except by social intercourse.
Why should the fact that Man has an individual
as well as a social aspect cause such terrible com-
plications ?

These complications are indeed terrible, culminating
at times in fire and sword, and every horror of revolu-
tion. The answer is that there can be no human
intercourse on lines of social irresponsibility. Human
intercourse involves human subjection, and liberty in-
volves obedience. Human Society, with a view to
maintaining the moral and transcendental character

12 'ifSE POUND A'nONS OF UBEI^tY

of its units, claims a moral right to coerce by force,
that is by law with a physical sanction, each and all
of its individual members. It is this power of demand-
ing obedience, and of exacting it by compulsion which
is the immediate cause of the ever recurring conflict
between the Individual and the State, between Personal
freedom and civic restraint. According to the good
or bad adjustment of this matter, so we have a good
or bad government. Everything depends upon what
we call upon each other to obey ; upon whether the
obedience exacted is justified by the fidelity of the laws
to the claims of the Personal, individual Man; — upon
whether, that is, the laws make for the freedom of the
Person and the consequent education or calling forth
of individual character; or whether they make for in-
dividual diminution and suppression in the supposed
interests of the Good of the Whole.

It may then safely be said that for practical purposes
at any rate, it is at that point in the social relations of
the individual where coercive law becomes operative,
that there arises the conflict of idea between the In-
dividual and the Society ; and it is at this point, there-
fore, that there emerge the rival parties of the Individual-
ist and the Socialist. Graduated, indeed, these parties
are ; for it is not to be supposed that the views of the
parties have in all cases been pushed so far in their
various directions as practically to constitute a contra-
diction of the whole Truth. It is a question of degree,
and extreme doctrines generally will be found to be
— not so much total violations of the Truth — as partisan
expressions of it, and so partial defections from it. It
may be added, however, that though this is the case,
yet " half-truths," while infinitely preferable to " no

INTRODUCTORY

truths," may become very much more dangerous. But
however graduated these parties may be, the ideas of
the Individualists and Socialists, which 'are to be seen
in their nakedness among the extreme men of these
denominations, exist as distinct tendencies, among all
grades of these two schools.

According as we desert the Truth of the Person as
this is known and felt in its entirety, so will we be in
a position to become either blank Individualists or
Socialists. We may hold that Man seeks his interests
best as an individual on absolutely independent and
irresponsible lines, and that all State interference is
essentially an evil; or we may hold with the Socialists
that the Greater Number of Men will best satisfy their
individual desires by entirely surrendering their in-
dividual character and becoming wholly merged in the
political "organism." Whichever of these political
sects we elect to follow, our choice will be the result
of an ignoring of that transcendental relation of the
individual, which making him into a Person provides
him at once with the moral claim or Right to Freedom,
and at the same time imposes on him inevitable
responsibility for the Rights of others. The purely
individual and the purely social view of Man are both
alike based on a partial conception of the Truth, on a
conception, that is, which is limited by materialistic
ideals. But it is only by frankly recognising the whole
Truth of the material, the social and divine relations
of Man, that we shall tread with certainty the path of
politics, beset as that is with doubts and complexities,
and be able to make laws which will avoid the materi-

Ialism and the follies of Socialism and Individualism ;
and so, while providing for the social relations of the

THE FOUNDATIONS OF UBERTY

individual, at the same time, and thereby increase his
Freedom and intensify his Personality.

It has already been stated that the attitude which
persons adopt regarding the relation of the Individual
to the State, is intimately associated with the views they
hold concerning the relation of Man to Matter, that is
with the idea the person has of himself; and it was
further observed that a political danger lies in the wide-
spread tendency to interpret the Person exclusively in
terms of Matter — that is to say, in the tendency to
materialism. The materialist may not style himself
such; he may call himself an agnostic. But among
the great mass of people absence of active religious
faith is in practice, for obvious reasons, equivalent to
materialism.

The person has undoubtedly a material aspect ; and,
doubtless, to limit our contemplation of him to this one
point of view, is a great temptation. It appeals to
our intellectual idleness and vanity by its seeming
simplicity and comprehensibility, and furthermore it
involves no moral effort.

Materiahsts having thus boldly reduced the essen-
tially incomprehensible to a neat formula well within
their grasp, they can become, according to their tempera-
ments or interests, either Socialists or Individualists.

We may hold with the Socialists that the individual
is a pure abstraction ; that he is exclusively a member
of the social " organism " ; and that his significance is
wholly exhausted in that relation. That is to say,
that the State is to be no longer trammelled and guided
by considerations of the " a priori" or " moral " rights
inherent in the idea of Personality, but is henceforth to
adopt as its sole criterion of right and wrong, or as a

INTRODUCTORY

substitute For morals altogether, the notions which the
State — or rather Government of the moment — may
entertain, or affect to entertain, on the subject of
political "Utility" or "Good of the Whole." Or we
may cleave to the Individualists and maintain simply,
either that the Good of the Whole is not our concern —
the non-philosophic type — or that that Good will be
best attained by each person pursuing in an almost un-
trammelled manner his own advantage and asserting
his own independence and liberty, leaving it to others
to do likewise if and according as they are .
"mind your own business" and "the devil take the
hindmost " being adopted by us, under these circum-
stances, as our political mottoes.

In Socialism we have the extreme where legal inter-
ference is idolised and the State deified. Even among
the less convinced and more moral Socialists the State
dictates morality on principles of its own making,
without reference to a priori or personal rights as a
guide or limitation in its search for " Utility."

These Socialists, however — some of whom style
themselves "Christian Socialists" — save themselves from
the risk of being compelled in this way to abandon all
or part of the Christian morality, by affecting to have
proved empirically that the accepted ethics are so
demonstrably of utilitarian value that there could be
no collision between these ethics and the conclusions
of the Utilitarian ; and they proceed, in consequence,
to set forth their morals^which are very often specific-
ally Christian — in the guise of Utilitarian discoveries.
But it is clear that in this matter they have made a
pure assumption, and, from a Utilitarian point of view,
a most treasonable one. For these ethics of theirs are

THE FOUNDATIONS OF LIBERTY

not the result of calculation or experiment at all, nor
can they even now (especially in view of the conflicting
ideas both as to means and ends entertained by Utili-
tarians) be regarded as of a logically demonstrable and
irrefutably proven Utility. They have, of course, their
real origin in the securer region of Faith, in a belief
that is in the transcendental relation of the individual
and his consequent Personality, and in an a priori
Right and Wrong, arising from the divine or extra-
social relation and origin of the Person, and of his
spiritual attributes.

The true Socialists, it may be observed, who have
attempted to arrive on empirical lines at the utilities
that make for the Good of the Whole, deny that the
received morality has any value whatever.

So it may be said that the half-convinced or semi-
Socialist in reality begins and ends with the considera-
tion of the Person and not of the Commonwealth.
The reason they style themselves Socialists, and not
Reformers, is partly because of the melodramatic soul
within them, and the necessity of attracting attention,
and partly because they think it necessary to the
attainment of their reforms to get rid of individual
initiative and to "socialise" private property. It is
obvious that these things can be more easily and swiftly
effected if their movers are not too closely bound by
notions of an a priori Right and Wrong, but may also
consider the apparent convenience of the Common-
wealth, i.e. of the majority. If we say that the test of
" Right" is " Utility " we have clearly a freer hand than
if we say that the test of " Utility " is " Right."

The " Useful " and the " Right " are no doubt
ultimately identical ; but, unfortunately, while every

common man has a fairly reliable test of Right — apart
from Right, not only have we no test of Utility, but
we have not even any certain indication of the End to
which our various Utilities are to avail.

There is, therefore, for practical purposes, a great
difference between the sayings that " the Right is the
Useful" and the "Useful is the Right."

But, while faith in Personality, and the a priori
moral rights and relations of the Person, plays a large,
though unacknowledged, part in the political doctrines
of the distinctively English Socialists, and still more
in those of the party styling themselves Christian
Socialists, yet among their more logical and less com-
promising brethren there are no such saving scruples.

Among the wholly converted Socialists the State
takes the place entirely of the transcendental relation,
and rids itself of a priori morality altogether. While
the moral semi-Socialist makes a pope of the State,
these men make it their God. In their view, Natural
or a priori Rights have no existence except in imagina-
tion ; laws are not the product of Rights inherent in
the very idea of Personality; Rights are the product
of laws; Rights are only abilities and immunities con-
ferred on the individual at the will of the State as a
matter of "Utility" — i.e. of what a majority at any
time esteems to be the Desire of the greatest number.

The question, therefore, arises why anyone who thus
derives the moral or a priori rights of the individual
Person from non-moral conceptions of UtiUty, should
feel himself morally compelled to concern himself with
the Good of the Majority of Persons, and should not
rather confine himself to the search after his own private
[' or class interests, as (he alleges) does the material-

THE FOUNDATIONS OP LIBERTY

istic Individualist. The individual, as such, has by-
hypothesis no a priori claim on his consideration. In
so far as he considers him, it must be because he cal-
culates that it will redound to his own advantage.
This is, of course, also the logical position of the
materialistic Individualist But even if in a senti-
mental manner some public spirit or illogical sense of
''duty" possessed him, and he pursued disinterestedly
what he supposed to be the Greatest Good of the
Greatest Number — in the absence of any belief in the
a priori Personal Rights of each individual — such an
aim would inevitably involve the grossest and most
immoral tyranny, such tyranny as the Socialists
attribute to the extreme individualists. For the posi-
tion of Minorities, especially of small ones, would be
most unenviable, and indeed desperate — Serfdom,
political exile, destruction of the sick, vivisection of
criminals and imbeciles, and innumerable other things,
impossible to contemplate under our present morality,
might at some time appear to make for the convenience
of the Greatest Number.

Socialists, however, claim that no group of individuals,
or political majority, could advantage themselves at the
expense of other citizens (as, e.g., by re-introducing
slavery), even though the Good of the Greatest Number
might appear to be subserved thereby, because of an
alleged substantive Socialist doctrine of "equality of
consideration." But unless this doctrine is based on its
proven utility to the State as a Whole — which it clearly
is not — we are compelled to ask why citizens should be
"equally considered" if they have no moral a priori
" right " to be so treated ? If, however, they have this
particular " right," on what is it based if not on their

lNTS6»fICT6RV

f moral and Personal Nature ? And if it is so based,
' what of the other Rights that are equally deducible
from that Nature — the Right, for instance, to Personal
Freedom ? Leaving this question for the consideration
of the SociaHst, we go a step farther and ask another
one. To wit — if the individual has no mora! right to
be considered, what claim has the Whole, or in practice
the Majority, to be so considered ? That is to say, if
politics is a simple question of non-moral Utihty, i.e.
the pleasure of the majority, why should any one vex
himself with the question at all ?

Why should not the Socialist confine himself to the
pursuit of his own individual or class interests as does
the individualist, and, when convenient, pursue them in
I the same manner?

The answer is that in his character of Socialist he
generally does pursue his own private interests, and in
theory at any rate, if he chose to do so, he could equally
well pursue them on the lines of Individualism. But
in practice he tends to become Anarchist rather than
avowedly Individualist. It will be perceived, however,
that though not generally adopting Individualistic
politics, yet in so far as he is logical he is inspired by
the maxim of "each for himself," which is also the
inspiration of the pure Individualist; though he finds
it more advantageous to seek "himself" through civic
co-operation and conspiracy, that is, through the medium
of the State. But the fact that the one hopes to attain
his ends by glorifying the State, and the other by per-
forming the same office for the Individual, is due merely
to the respective temperaments and material interests

I of the persons composing the two parties.
Turning now to the Individualist (the term is used in

THE FOUNDATIONS OF LIBERTY

opposition to " Personalist"), it will be found that neither
is he in his turn compelled by his theory to seek the
Good of the Whole. He, too, denies the moral a priori
claims arising from the transcendental nature of the
Person, and in so doing repudiates responsibility for
the condition and development of his fellow-men. His
fundamental principle is "each for himself," and so far
as he seeks the Good of the Commonwealth at all —
which he is not logically bound to do — he contends
that his simple creed provides the solution for all social
problems.

The pure Individualist teaching expresses itself in a
claim to untrammelled freedom, and to the consequent
right to obtain and keep and enjoy private property.
In this there is undoubtedly much truth and much to
admire. But he disfigures it all and renders it con-
temptible by his refusal to acknowledge a concurrent
social responsibility of any kind, especially any re-
sponsibility to be enforced by law. To such law,
whether it relates to contractual relations, or to the
more fundamental issue of Family and National
existence, the logical Individualist is and must be
opposed. This opposition is ultimately founded on
a partial and materialistic view of Man. The ultra-
social or transcendental relation of the individual, upon
which alone social responsibility can be founded, has
either been deliberately dismissed by him, or has been
allowed to become inoperative. The elimination of this
relation, while indeed it delivers him from any " moral "
claims which may be made on him by his fellow citizens,
deprives himself, at the same time, of the power to make
" moral " claims on their consideration — deprives him,
that is, of all moral or a priori Rights.

If the materialistic Individualist is strict he affects to
base his claims to freedom on purely Utilitarian grounds.
But unfortunately Utilitarianism is a shifting sand on
which to found anything ; — what appears useful to-day
under the changed circumstances of to-morrow may
appear otherwise. Moreover, the Individualist is not un-
reasonably suspicious of the views which at any time a
popular materialistic and Socialistic government might
find it desirable to adopt regarding the truly " Useful."
This naturally results in the great body of Individualists
fortifying their position by making an illogical claim
for the recognition on the part of the State of some
sort of sentimental and illogical a priori Right to
Liberty, and also — for the benefit of those who can
get it — to Property. Such a right, however, obviously
cannot be deduced from the Individualist's own premises.
For, in so far as he is an Individualist, he too denies
that quality in Man upon which alone any claim to
I moral or a priori rights can be founded.

Confining ourselves first to the consideration of the
partial or modified individualist — it is a strange anomaly
that the chief and commonest modification of the
Individualistic creed consists in the frequent recog-
nition of the moral character of the Family and the
Nation, and the assumption of the necessity for their
maintenance, even to the extent of calling upon the
State to use its powers to assist in the defence of these
primal social developments. And this is the more
strange when we reflect that the Socialist in his turn,
contrary to what one might have expected, actually
opposes with his whole force these beginnings of
Society, which are essentially anti-individualistic and
essentially Social. But it must be noted that the

FOUNDATIONS OP LIBERTY

Individualist, in so far as he acquiesces in the legal
sanction for the family and the Nation, has so far
departed from his Individualism, and in so doing has
placed himself a good deal farther than he was before
from the pure Socialist. He has, in fact, so far become
a political Personalist, for to the Personalist the Family
and the Nation are of the essence of Social life, as
providing for the development of the Individual and
the realisation of his Personality.

The anomaly stated above has a certain explanation.
The Socialist perceives and frankly admits that the
social relation of the Family is alike in theory and in
practice, subversive of his doctrines. He recognises
that the vital social relations, the relations that are the
Inevitable outcome of natural affection and tribal and
territorial affinity, tend rather to the emphasising and
development of the individual, than to his easy
mergence in a National or rather International body
corporate — a body which in the Socialist view should
consist of a quantity of detached homogeneous in-
dividuals, united only by what they suppose to be their
interests.

There exists, then, the apparent anomaly of persons,
who in other respects are individualists, insisting on
certain primal social relations, which are openly re-
pudiated by genuine Socialists, and regarded in a half-
hearted and supercilious manner by those who, without
being pure Socialists, are socialistically inclined.

But individualists are by no means all prepared to
thus modify their views in favour of the legal character
of the Family and the Nation. Pure individualism
exists, and with the spread of practical materialism all
individualism tends to become " Purer." In its purity

INTRODUCrORy

its motto is "each for himself," and so far as persons
adopt this maxim as the solution of social problei
so far are they influenced by pure individualism.
Leaving then the modified Individualist — the Indivi-
dualist with saving clauses — let us revert to the con-
sideration of this purer and more consistent and logical
School.

Notwithstanding the Individualist's extreme objection
to social claims and consequent State Interference, it
is true he upholds for purposes of such mutual pro-
tection as is absolutely necessary to bare existence, a
certain low maximum of coercive law, which he
generally maintains, partly from a lurking and illogical
recognition of the value of his neighbour, and partly
and professedly because of the convenience or " utility "
which the majority of citizens — he, of course, being of
that majority — find in being so protected. But, not-
withstanding this concession to necessity, his teaching
is " each for himself," each for his own self-development,
each to secure to himself the conditions necessary for
his own completion. He is indifferent as to whether
others have actually succeeded, each fighting single-
handed, in becoming able to obtain even the minimum
of liberty and opportunity — that lowest quota of
independence in which self-development and self-
realisation can normally take place, and free-will and
conscience have their full meaning.

He has, further, no faith in the moral right of the
State to control marriage ; and, furthermore, regards
the legal or civic Nation merely as a convenient nucleus
for the protection from outside aggression of private
property and such personal freedom as he may enjoy.
That is to say, if it appeared that Private Property and

THE FOUNDATIONS OF LIBERTY

individual freedom would be equally secured, or actually
enhanced, by annexation to some menacing Power ; —
or if it appeared that to resist the encroachments of
such Power would cost too much liberty and too much
property, he could not logically resent such annexation,
or resist such encroachment. It happens, however,
that while the Socialist — temperamentally anti-social
as he is, and devoting himself habitually to appealing
to individual interests — objects strongly to the main-
tenance of Nations, and all that that maintenance
involves, the pure Individualist, notwithstanding the
claims of logic, is in this connection still comparatively
rare. But notwithstanding this, the individualistic and
purely self-regarding view of the Family and the Nation
is gaining ground surely and steadily. So that in this
respect also pure Individualism is seen to be allied to
Socialism.

The bottom of the whole matter is that both the
Individualist and the Socialist ultimately repudiate
the transcendental doctrine of Personality, and in
consequence all that conduces thereto — Family, Nation,
Religion. A brief glance at the fundamental in-
dividualistic position may serve to convince of the
inevitableness of this conclusion.

It is impossible to believe fully in the idea involved
in the term Person, and at the same time to maintain
that each Person's responsibility begins and ends with
himself. It is extremely important to realise that the
belief in a Personal Man (as opposed to an automaton,
social unit, or member of an organism) is essentially a
religious belief. The person is what he is, in virtue of
his relation with the Supreme Being. It is to this
relation he owes it that he is not wholly determined by

INTRODUCTORY

his physical and social environment, but is possessed of
conditional free-will and of moral responsibility. This
moral responsibility attaches not only to the use he
makes of those things which make for his own develop-
mentj but to all things in any direction whatsoever
which he does or leaves undone. Indeed, apart from
his recognition of claims on the part of his neighbour,
the expression " his own development " can have no
reference to other than purely physical and intellectual
culture. For how shall Justice, Mercy, Truth, and the
other moral qualities have existence, meaning or appli-
cation, except in our spiritual relations with our fellow-
men, and the conviction that we are bound to them by
a surpassing mystical union, necessitating that we con-
sider and enforce their proper interests equally with our
own.

Persons are not a quantity of separate units, united
by common interest as the Individualistic and Socialistic
creeds really imply, but each being a spirit is related to
others not only by the ties of a physical and mysterious
spiritual heredity, but by the fact that the spiritual
powers of each have one common origin in the Supreme
or Absolute Being. It is only in relation or corres-
pondence with this Being that the transcendental
powers of the Person can have existence or meaning.
Without this his significance becomes exhausted in his
relation to the Social "organism," and no appeal that
he could make to the Rights and Liberties essential to
Personality, could avail anything to promote, to stay or
to influence the physical force of the State. The
Supreme Divine Person therefore is the source of all
Personality, and is its Maintenance — that is to say,
there is a common Life and a common Environment

26 THE FOUNDATIONS OF LIBERTY

and that Life and that Environment is no other than
the Absolute Being Himself.

It is in virtue of this common Divine Immanence,
that each Person is compelled to regard all Persons,
himself included — from an Absolute point of view, or
from the point of view of the Absolute Mind. He is in
consequence compelled to regard all Persons as of equal
importance with himself, and in all that he does or
leaves undone he must consider their development
equally with his own. In so far as he does not do this,
but makes himself his own centre, so far he ceases to
believe in the Personality of others and therefore also
of himself, and so far — on both counts — he dissolves
that relation and correspondence with the Absolute
which is the origin of the moral, ultra-physical or
Personal qnalities in himself and all other Persons.

The doctrine therefore of " each for himself," however
legally safe-guarded, involves the repudiation of the
Personal nature of Man ; and those who hold this
doctrine, and in so far as they hold it, are anti-social
in tendency, whether their interest or caprice causes
them to range themselves on the side of the In-
dividualists or the Socialists. Both parties taken at
their best base their claims and their methods on
"Utility" or the Good of the Majority, modified by
an illogical doctrine of Equality of Consideration ; and
both equally deprive the individual of the "duty" of
seeking the Good of the Majority, and of the " right "
to be " equally considered " or indeed considered at all.

Before leaving the subject of the pure Individualist,
it may be well to glance briefly at the position of the
Anarchist.

Evolved from the Socialist, he like them began by

INTRODUCTORY

denying the transcendental character and consequent
a priori " rights " of the Individual. To proceed from
this to denying the rights of the " majority " of in-
dividuals, was on his part a very natural and logical
act. He was aware that you might multiply " nought "
indefinitely and still always arrive at " nought."

But in addition to this logical position, the Anarchist
had other and more human reasons for his aversion to
what is usually implied in the idea of Government. It
has been said of him by Socialists that his only offence
consisted in his being egregiously in advance of his
times. That he was an idealist, and that his dreams
would come true, and that some day we should have
and need no laws. This may all be true enough. But
the Anarchist's real objection to coercive law lay, not
in this ideal atmosphere at all, but in his characteristic
and temperamental dislike to those things for which
coercive law is most necessary, and for which it is most
commonly employed — to wit, the defence of the Family
and the Nation, and the protection of private property
and other Rights.

It may be observed that his objection to these three
institutions is in reality as arbitrary and capricious as
is the defence of them by the Individualist, and the
attack on them by the Socialist. Sentimentality,
prejudice, envy, class, and self-interest are the real source
of all the differences between the three parties.

In concluding this briefest possible review of the
fundamental position of the Individualists, the Socialists
— and incidentally of the Anarchists, there is a re-
flection arising from their substantive relationship,
which in the universality of its application is not
wholly without interest.

THE FOUNDATIONS OF LtBEETf

The origin of all sects and heresies (as distinct from
schisms which are often financial or political) lies in an
arrogant desire to simplify Truth, so that it shall not
only be apprehensible but also comprekensiliU. Truth,
however, is complex, and ultimate Truths can never be
comprehended until and unless we can get outside our-
selves and analyse our own natures ; and even then
the ultimate mystery must presumably remain with
the Deity himself. Tcrtullian's dictum quoted in the
Religio Mediii, — " cerium est quia impossibUe est" points
to a great truth, and would have done so more cer-
tainly had it been better expressed. Incomprehensi-
bility is necessarily a test of ultimate truth ; but vanity
and self-interest will not have it so, and compel us to
omit from the Truth certain of its seemingly contra-
dictory elements, in order that we may have something
that we can thoroughly comprehend and make our own
and patronise.

It is clear that if we approach Truth — be it relative
to any matter whatsoever — in a spirit of self-assertion,
we shall be at the mercy of caprice and self-interest.
Some will elect to adopt one element thereof and some
another, thereby forming sects. But these sects, as in
the case of the political parties under consideration,
will always and inevitably be found to be separated
from one another by arbitrary or extraneous considera-
tions. Having once decided that the Incomprehensible
is the Untrue, we can at our pleasure, and in a purely
arbitrary manner, select any portion of the Truth which
our idiosyncrasies or interests suggest to us as suitable
to our comprehension, and forthwith assert that to be
the Truth ; and again we can equally at our pleasure
and at any time discard our treasured possession and

iNtftobu(?r6RY

select another truth, which we consider will suit our
purposes better. In the case under consideration of
the Individualists as opposed to Fersonalists and the
Socialists, dichotomy first took place over the question
of whether Man was matter or spirit. They both
decided for the former — or practically so. The ques-
tion then arose as to whether IVIan was individual or
social. Having already cast aside the remaining and
uniting truth of the transcendental or Personal nature
of Man, and being thus inevitably in a position where
arbitrary picking and choosing was the only course
open, they were compelled to treat the "individual"
and the "social" qualities of Man as separate and
therefore seemingly "comprehensible" Truths.

The result of this attitude of mind is, and always will
be, the multiplication of sects and parties — contributing
indeed in the long run to the sum of Truth, but un-
intentionally and awkwardly, by the painful process
of all equally opposing it, and all equally opposing
each other. ,

Now in opposition to the present fashionable notion i

that Truth must be simple and not complex, that it
must be a blank unity rather than a subtle harmony,
the familiar analogy of the dome-shaped surface may
be produced. Doubtless the introduction of spatial J

terms into such a discussion is not without danger; i

but an analogy which applied throughout its length ji

and breadth would of course cease to be an analogy,
and would become a mere restatement of the case,
only in another connection. Such a surface then might
by some be regarded as convex, to others again it
might appear as concave, that is to say — as the exact
opposite. To be either of course it must be both. So

THE FOUNDATIONS OF LIBERTY

is it with the individual. He may owe the realisation
of all that makes him an individual Person to his social
environment ; and yet on the other hand all that he
has of conscious or semi-conscious social principle is
due to his Personality, Society is the medium through
which Personality expresses itself, but is itself at the
same time the expression of Personality. But while
the Person thus owes the realisation of his Personality
to Society, it must be borne in mind (which in popular
discussions it seldem is) that there is a distinction
between Society and the State. A Person could not
exist as such without Society ; — he could do so, how-
ever, without a State. The State is the Society viewed
as organised for purposes of government, and to that
end equipped with coercive powers over the individual.

In discussing the social responsibility of the Person,
imposed on him by the fact of his Personality or ultra-
social relation, no limit was placed, as indeed no limit
can be placed on the extent of that responsibility.
But there is nevertheless a limit to which social respon-
sibilities can be created and enforced by coercive law,
owing to the limitations of the moral application of
such law. These limitations are due to the essential
requirements of Personality on the one hand, and on
the other to the nature of law and the methods it
adopts.

The Person as has already been stated is something
more than a part of the finite whole. He is something
more than a member of Society, and so a fortiori is he
something more than a member of the State, which is
Society viewed as organised for a particular purpose.
The Man, that is to say, is more than the citizen. He
cannot be merged in the Good of the Whole as can an

mntODUCToaY

ant or a bee. All laws must be made with a view to
his individual development; and the character of the
individual— that is to say the requirements of Person-
ality, must be the criterion of Utility or the Good of
the Whole. The State in its various operations must
begin with the individual and not with the Society: it
must begin with the Person and not merely end with
him. It is compelled to assume that in making the
moral requirements or Rights of the individual at once
its goal and its guide, that the Good of the Whole will
follow. Utopias, attractive and various as they are,
being but idle speculations and anticipations as to the
unknown and unknowable, must be dismissed as guides
and inspirations, in favour of that which is known and
knowable ; and political empiricism tending daily to
become more untrammelled and more libertine, must
again seek a clear aim and an unerring guide in the
nature and claims of Personality. Nothing short of
this will save us from a Jesuitical method of subordinat-
ing the Moral Right as it exhibits itself in and through
the individual, to considerations of a hypothetical
expediency, and of ultimately regarding this assumed
expediency as the test of political morality.

Pride prompts us to speculate as to the future, and
fills us with mistrust of the results of simple right
doing, and it compels us to attempt — as has been
attempted a thousand times — to determine for ourselves
io accordance with our ignorances, prejudices and
ambitions — the form which the Society of the future is
to take. In consequence a tendency arises to modify
morality, so as to avoid the evils we prognosticate,
and achieve the Utopian ideals at which we variously

THE FOUNDATIONS OF LIBERTY

Morality has its origin in the individual and not in
the State. The State is but part of the "complex,"
constituting the environment necessary to the realisa-
tion and development of Personality. A seed requires
innumerabJe conditions for its development, but the life
is not in any one of these conditions, nor yet is it in
the environment in general, but in the seed itself. So
is it with the Person and the State. The State, if it
would contribute to the development of spiritual beings,
must conform itself to the conditions which Are a priori
necessary to spiritual life. It cannot prescribe and
invent these conditions ; they are already invented
and prescribed.

What then are these conditions? The conditions
are the characteristics of Personality itself. The lead-
ing characteristic of personality is its ultra-social
relation and the free-will which springs from that.
Free-will thus taken in connection with its origin gives
rise to moral responsibility, and to the claim to self-
development and self-control. In brief Personality
involves liberty, and as In the course of history the
Person develops, so does he find himself compelled to
demand this liberty to an ever-increasing extent, and
at an ever-Increasing number of points.

But why does the Person " demand " liberty in view
of the numerous temptations to do otherwise ? Why
further is he spoken of as being "compelled" to
demand it? The answer is to be found in the essential
fact of his moral responsibility. Being responsible for
maintaining Personality in its integrity, he is responsible
for character in general, and so for liberty in genera! —
his own character and his own liberty not less than that
of other Persons, and those of other Persons not less

INTRODUCTORY

than his own. The " Rights " he demands for others he
claims because he demands them also for himself.
He demands them, for himself not in pride, but in
that proper humility which compels him to recognise
that he too is but a Man, and one with his fellows
in all essential characteristics and consequent needs.
"Thou shalt love thy neighboui' as thyself" is not a
mere sentimental expression, which we are to admire
for its ardour, and which our modern zeal and superior
ethic should ever attempt to exceed ; it is on the
contrary a distinct accurate statement of the whole
facts of the case, and is the epitome of the epistemo-
logical philosophy of all true legislation. For all
sound law, in view of its nature and methods, and in
view of the nature of Personality, must consist in the
emphasising of Rights, and not in their so-called
" sacrifice " ; and if a Person through vanity or insensi-
bility ceases to believe in the essential character of his
own Rights, he will certainly cease to believe that
those Rights are essential to his neighbour, and will
inevitably become an extremely bad citizen. What we
are morally bound or entitled to claim for ourselves is
the measure of what we are morally bound to claim
for our neighbour; and the greater the demands we
make for our own Personality, the greater will be the
demands we shall be in a position to make for that of
others.

The Person then claims liberty for himself, and the
grounds on which he claims it compel him, owing to
his moral responsibility for character in general, to
demand it equally for all other persons. He is morally
compelled to claim his own Rights, because he is re-
sponsible for Rights in general. He does not claim

■ them
M may i

THE FOUNDATIONS OF LIBERTY

them in his own name, but in the name of Right He
may indeed for the purpose of advancing the cause of
Right in general, forego the fruition of his rights — that
is another matter altogether. But if he is compulsorily
deprived of his Rights, he must not through apathy,
idleness, timidity, or spiritual egotism, or al! combined,
"patiently" and without protest acquiesce, and affect
to make a christian virtue out of his treachery to his
fellow men, and to the Religion which gave the
eternal foundation to the dignity of the Man and to
his inviolable sanctity.

So then while the power of the State to make legal
obligations which shall be morally binding on the in-
dividual, arises from the quality in the individual called
Personality, yet that same Personality, in its claim to
liberty equal and universal, provides a moral limitation
to the extent to which such obligations can be morally
created and enforced.

There remains then the second moral limitation to
the scope and direction of the activities of the State.
This arises from the nature of law itself and the
methods it adopts — taken of course in conjunction with
the meaning and nature of Personality.

First as to the nature of law. It is of the essence
of sound law that it should approach in idea the so-
called "laws" of Nature as regards uniformity and
universality. It cannot and should not contemplate
modifications in favour of individuals or groups of
individuals, unless such modifications are themselves
defined and prescribed by law. It is essential that
there be not incessant and arbitrary variations in its
application, but that on the contrary it be wholly
calculable in its operation, as are the " laws " of Nature.

INTRODUCTORY

But Natural laws are only the physical background
of morality, and taken per se and apart from moral
Beings, they have no moral content, that is they are
only constructively moral. Moreover, they are not
commands at all, but merely statements of observed
relations and sequences to which our faith in the
intelligibility of the universe ascribes uniformity and
universality. Civic laws on the other hand are distinct
commands ; and as they are commands to moral agents
they must be moral commands. Therefore, while
natural laws may apparently sacrifice the individual
in the cause of uniformity and universality, and the
general thinkableness of the universe, civic law cannot
thus sacrifice the individual. But then neither can it
sacrifice its uniformity and universality. So there is
nothing left for the State, but to refrain from making
any law which would involve the infringement of the
moral rights of any group of individuals, — however
tempting such an act might appear as affording a
short cut "to the solution of a social problem — be-
cause such a law in so far as it violates the rights of
even a small class of Persons is immoral, the outcome
of a non-moral utilitarianism.

It is impossible for those who believe in the Per-
sonality of Man, who believe that Man is more than a
citizen, more that is than " a part of a whole," and
that he has correspondence with and immediate re-
sponsibility to a Power above and beyond the State
and the Society, not to perceive in the physical sanc-
tion of law, a limit to the application of law. If
free-will exists in Man, as is involved in the idea of
his Personality, it is a divine gift — the very essence
of the Man — and must find unobstructed expression

THE FOUNDATIONS OF LIBERTY

in every possible direction. The law, coercive, im-
personai, mechanical as it undoubtedly is, if devoting
itself to securing the equal Freedom of all the Persons
who are subject to it, will contain no menace to the
Manhood of any citizen. Force will not then be
opposed to Freedom, and law will be at one with
liberty. It is then to the pursuit ajid enhancement
of liberty that law is limited, owing to its power to
resort to physical force, and to its qualities of uni-
formity and universality.

To conclude then this prefatory chapter : — I have so
far attempted to make a brief introduction to a philo-
sophy of Political Society and of Social Reform, a
philosophy which I have provisionally ventured to
style " Personalism." The term is invented for the
purpose of differentiating the various schools of " in-
dividualism," and so of setting on one side, for the
purposes of our consideration, the school which is on
the side of Personal Liberty on a priori moral grounds,
and of opposing this to the school or schools which en-
courage Liberty on grounds of personal convenience or
of public Utility, The term " Individualist " is there-
fore here limited to the designation of the latter school
or schools.

PART II

THE PERSON

/ ' ^ -

/ .

/ ' / '/ ^

/ / /

PART II

THE PRINCIPLES OF MORAL GOVERNMENT
ARE MORAL ASSUMPTIONS

" There is no middle course : two masters cannot be served. Justice
' must either be enthrcned above might, and the moral law take the place
□f the edicts of selfish passion ; or the heart of the people, which alone
can sustain the efTorts of the people, will languish ; (heir desires will not
spread beyond the plough and the loom, the held and the fireside ; the
sword will appear to them an emblem of no promise ; an instrument of no
hope ; an object of indifference, of disgust or fear. . . . Let the fire,
which is never wholly extinguished, break out afresh ; let bat the human
creature be roused ; whether he have laio headless and torpid in religions
or civil slavery ; have languished under a thraldom, domestic or foreign,
. . . Itl him rise and at!" (Wordsworth, " Essay on the Convention
of Ciotra," quoted in the " Albion" edition of his poems).

IF Government is to be moral, the principles that
underlie the action of the State must be moral
assumptions. The Science of Politics like that of
Ethics or of Formal logic must be a normative or
teaching Science. Its principles cannot be simply due
to generalisations of observed facts, as in the physical
sciences ; they must on the contrary be statements of
what ought to be. The State cannot claim as regards
its first principles themselves, to base these principles
on inductions from observed facts. The facts may
corroborate the principles, but that is all. Instance the
almost universal laws against murder. The State does
not claim to have collected instances of murder, to have

noted that these have been uniformly injurious to
Society as a whole, and then to have made a generali-
sation on the subject and induced a principle of law to
the effect that all murders are injurious to Society, and
then on the strength of that principle to have legislated
against such deeds. History and observation are alike
against such a notion. The legislation proceeded, of
course, from an a priori conviction that murder was
morally wrong; it being an invasion by one citizen of
the absolute and a priori Right of another ; and this
apart altogether from official or other statistics.

To produce another instance of the deductive methods
of true politics. The nations of Christendom — as also
many other nations — in their upward course have par-
ticularly extolled and rejoiced in their national and
individual liberty, and individual liberty has been
insisted upon with passion and persistence, and some-
times with an almost incredible heroism. If ever
anything in the whole realm of politics has been urged
on purely a priori grounds as a moral assumption it
is this claim to religious and political liberty. None of
the heroes of the cause even affect to have made
numerous and accurate experiments as to the "Utility"
of liberty to States in general, or to their own respective
States in particular, and then to have induced from their
observations the principle that successful States have
free citizens. The whole history of liberty is that of an
incessant appUcation to particular circumstances of an
ethical doctrine held independently of expert generalisa-
tions from political phenomena.

The First or moral Principles which animate a moral
State are not the doubtful result of calculation and
experiment, nor can they be regarded as amenable to

modification, excepting in the sense of growth and
development. But this must not be confused with the
means adopted for the application of these first moral
principles ; such means being, generally speaking and
as far as morals are concerned, capable of being
adopted, changed, or deserted at the dictates of
expediency, or such estimate of expediency as the
State can make.

THE FIRST PRINCIPLES OF THE STATE—
THEIR ORIGIN IN PERSONALITY

What then are these First Principles, and why are
they to be regarded as the basis of all moral politics ?

The answer is to be found in the nature of the
subject-matter of politics, i.e. Man. As Man is — so
must the laws be that govern him. Everything must
depend on whether we regard a man as a Person endowed
with all the attributes of Personality and with all the
a priori " Rights " inherent in that idea, or whether we
regard him as a part of an organism with no signifi-
cance other than is contained in his physical relation
thereto.

It is here assumed that Man is a Personal Being, and
that while related to a social " organism " his significance
is not therein exhausted. It is further assumed that
Personality and its essential qualities of self-conscious-
ness, free-will, and conscience are due to a relation
which is ultra-social, viz., to his relation to the Supreme
and Absolute Person, from whom he obtains his power
of self-determination, and to whom he is immediately
responsible.

THE FOUNDATIONS OF LIBERTY

In order to perceive more closely how the fact of
Personality with all that flows from it, while it inspires
the State with a definite moral ideal, also limits and
directs it, it will be necessary to inquire as to what is
meant by a Person. The matter is important owing to
the necessity {a necessity frequently ignored) of all
disputants, before engaging in political discussion, being
clear as to the meaning of all the salient terms they
employ, especially as to what they respectively mean
by a Man, whether he is a Person or not, and if a
Person, what is meant by that, and what follows
therefrom.

One thing at least is clear, and that is, that no being
whose significance is exhausted in his relation to other
created beings, animate or inanimate, can be a Person, or
be possessed of individuality. No being can be merely a
part of the finite Whole and be in any true sense a Per-
son. That is to say, that if the individual were merely
a part of a Whole, he would necessarily be determined
by that Whole. But we know that he is only Personal
in so far as he is determined, not from without, but
from within — that is to say, is self-determined.

Personality implies freewill and moral responsibility,
both of which imply a certain independence of Society
on the part of the individual, and a relation to an
ultra-social authority, to whom he is immediately
responsible.

Reviewing Kant's position, a learned writer says of
him : —

" He pointed out that all persons, in virtue of their inherent
freedom, are ends in themselves, and never merely means to other
ends. Their power of self-determination, of becoming a law to
themselves, is inalienable, irresistibly compelling them to regaid

THE PERSON 43

themselves as ends, ultimate objects of endeavour or development,
and entitling them to such consideration from others. However
much, therefore, they may minister 10 or sacrifice themselves for
others, of their own free-will, they may never be degraded into
passive instruments of another's power or pleasure, as if they
were impersonal things" {Bampton Lectures, 1394. "Personality
Human and Divine," page 22).

Furthermore, Personality is the highest and most
real thing within our ken, so that we are again from
this point of view compelled to regard each Person as
an end in himself— *that is to say, we may not limit a
Person in the supposed interests of anything which is
not simply and wholly himself ; which again means
that we may not compel a Person except in the interests
of his own freedom.

" Whatever affects me permanently or intensely is more real to
me than a thing whose relation to me is momentary or slight And
as nothing influences me so variously or intensely, or possesses
so permanent a possibility of influence as another person,
personality is the most real thing which I can conceive outside
tne, since it corresponds most completely to my own personality
within. Hence each person is, as we have already seen, an end
to me, and not a means to an end ; something which in that
particular direction I cannot go beyond, and in which I am con-
tent to rest" {ibid, page 44)-

It is evident, therefore, that the fact that the State
is concerned with Personal beings, imposes on the
State great moral limitations to its action, and on the
positive side provides it with a definite principle.
Personality being what it is, and implying as of the
very essence of it, and without which it would cease
to exist, self-determination, and relation and direct
responsibility to the Absolute Person ; and being, more-

Iover, the highest thing of which we can conceive, it is
clear, in view of the uniformity and the universality of

THE FODNDATIONS OP LIBERTY

Law, and in view of its coercive methods, that the
function of the State, if it would act morally, must
primarily consist in securely establishing the freedom
of the individual Person, conditioning that freedom not
by speculations as to the Good of the Whole or of the
Majority, but solely by considerations of the equal
freedom of all other Persons ; and, of course, also by
considerations of the condition of its own existence,
viz., the maintenance of national independence.

The end which the State must have in view must
be not less than the provision of that atmosphere, that
environment of liberty and self-discipline in which
alone Personality can live and breathe and grow.
Thus, providing that perfect Freedom, without which
there can be no true morality, and without which lofty
personalities and noble citizens cannot be produced, —
it must trust that under other social influences than
those exercisable by the State, this liberty will be well
used, and that a noble type of citizen will be developed.
Given this condition of things, the " Good of the
Whole" will follow. The Good of the Whole, wholly
speculative as this must otherwise be, is thus compassed
— as far as the State is concerned — by securing to the
Person his individual political good, viz., his known
liberties or Rights, and trusting largely to social in-
fluences, other than civic or legal, to develop the
Person and to organise a Society.

It has been said that the duty of the State to its
individual citizens is nothing more nor less than the
development of Character. But this statement, while
it contains truth, is too vague and general. The truth
is that the State only contributes to the development of
character, and does so only along certain definite lines.

THE PERSON

Owing to the confused and confusing manner in
which the terms State and Society and Nation are so
frequently employed, the State is sometimes credited
with containing within itself the sum of social influences ;
and it is contended, in consequence, that the realisation
of Personality, essentially social as is that process, is
due exclusively to the State ; and that, as the Socialist
saying is, "the Person is the product of the State."
The inference from this is, of course, that the Person
is in some sort the property of the State, and it is
consequently claimed that the State can do what it
likes with its own.

It is therefore highly necessary, before proceeding
further, to define each of the above-mentioned terms,
or rather to state as exactly as may be the sense in
which each of them is employed in this argument.

SOCIAL INFLUENCES OTHER THAN CIVIC
CONTRIBUTING TO DEVELOPMENT OF
CHARACTER AND PERSONALITY

The State is not Society, and the State is not the
Nation, nor yet is it the Government The " State "
is the political nation viewed as organised and armed
for governmental purposes, i.e. for the purpose of
governing through the medium of its instrument the
Government; and the "citizen" thereof is a Person
regarded exclusively in his relation to the State, i.e. in
his civic capacity. The Nation, on the other hand, is a
Society or collection of units, but one which is subject
to one common law and one political authority ; so
that the national Society is co-terminous with the
State — the geographical limits of the State deter-

THE FOUNDATIONS OF LIBERTY

mining the geographical limits of the Society, i.e. of
the Nation.'

Society itself is a complex of relations, some of which
only are by their nature " civic " or State regarding.
The rest of the relations subsisting between the
individuals constituting the nation are from their
nature, and from the nature of Personality, free and
spontaneous ; and only gross usurpation and tyranny
on the part of the State could make them otherwise.
It is essential that an action or forbearance to be
"civic" should arise in obedience to particular civic
laws, and should be viewed in its legal aspect. It is
necessary to add this latter condition, because many
actions and forbearances which are enjoined by law are
not invariably performed or refrained from with regard
simply to legal requirement. Thus it is generally on
grounds other than legal that people support their
children, or abstain from blasphemy or murder. When,
however, the law enjoins an action or forbearance we
should not necessarily otherwise perform, or one which
at any rate we might not perform invariably, or might,
whether for worse or better, perform differently, we
perform a function which is purely civic. We may
say, therefore, that when a person acts in a purely
civic capacity, i.e. as a citizen, he acts impersonally, since
his actions thus performed are wholly or in large
measure the outcome of coercive laws, over which he
has practically no control, and which are not necessarily
or even probably the spontaneous expression of his
own Personality.

1 There ate, of course, also n
the Gy|)sies ; but these nre eih
which this argumenl hns no com

i-polilical "nalioDs" like the Jaws or
c nations, better styled "rmces," with

■ Rut hpfnrf

THE PERSON 47

But before proceeding further, it may be well to give
parenthetically an instance illustrative of the ambigu-
ous manner in which the terms Nation and State are
sometimes employed. This ambiguity is exemplified
by Ruskin in a manner typical of a kind of Socialism
which has now become popular, and of which indeed
that august author — so intensely accurate in his own
special pursuit — was in large measure the creator.
Ruskin, the most constructive of artistic critics, was
the least constructive of political writers, and devoted
himself as a politician almost exclusively to destructive
criticism, not always without a certain cynicism, and
indeed also a certain petulance, unworthy both of the
man himself, and of the substantive nobility and worth
of the persons and institutions which he desired to
re-inspire and to reform. He seems in some measure
to have lacked that human sympathy which would
have enabled him to perceive that life, individual,
social and political, is very difficult; and that while
there is much of evil in it, there is also underneath it
all, and inspiring all our more rooted institutions and
customs, a vast amount of permanent, solid worth.
Thus in a somewhat acid criticism of the English as a
Nation, Ruskin pretends that when individuals act
unworthily it is the Nation in its corporate capacity
which does the wrong, as though it were a deliberate
political act. "I say first," says Ruskin in "Sesame
and Lilies," "we have despised literature; what do
we as a Nation care about ' books ? ' " (page 64), and
he proceeds to comment on the comparatively small
sums expended on libraries, public and private. Before
proceeding to discuss his statement as it bears on this
argument, we may observe in passing — first, that it is

THE FOUNDATIONS OF LIBERTY

not demonstrable that the whole of a population should
concern itself with literature or Art; — those who lead
a stirring life at first hand can usually dispense with
literary or artistic reflections of such life. Secondly,
the comparative expenditure test is an extremely bad
one. It is useless comparing a man's expenditure on
" books " with his expenditure on " horses," because
books are cheap and lasting and horses are neither of
these things,'

The same argument applies to the whole of the Arts
generally.

But to revert to Ruskin's charge against the Nation
as a Nation. Even though we could prove that the
individuals of the Nation expended sufficiently largely
on books, Ruskin (as the context shows) would still
object that that expenditure was merely individual and
was not effected by the "Nation." In this way the
"Nation" is accused of having "despised Art" (tdid.,
page 71), "Nature" (page 73), "Compassion" (page
75). But seeing that the writer in many cases really
means by the " Nation" merely that aspect or function
of it here called the " State," it is clear that in such
cases the accusation against the " Nation " is devoid of
meaning or application. It is doubtless true that the
State does not usually concern itself with such matters
as are contained in Ruskin's indictment, but then it
must be noted that to provide for such things as
Ruskin here contemplates, is not demonstrated to be
a necessary or even proper function of the State.

* Thus a shilling cop; of the Scriptures might sulEce the most sainClf
and energetic prelate fen his lifetime, wbile a. siogle holiday trip might
cost thonxands of tirnes as mach. But it would be absurd to infer from
Uui that Euch an one esteems lb e tourist life more highlj than Holy Writ 1 1

The case — if such can be imagined — of a National Church
embracing the entire Nation, may provide an illustra-
tion of this point. In considering such a church, we
should be contemplating a Nation organised for
purposes which, instead of being civic or governmental,
are exclusively religious. In such a case it is patent
that it would be ridiculous for any one to accuse the
Church or the Nation of " despising " say astronomy or
cooking, because the Nation viewed as organised for
Ecclesiastical purposes ignored such matters as beyond
the province of the organisation.

. It is clear, therefore, that the use of the term
" Nation " to mean either the individuals comprising
the Nation, or to mean the political organisation of the
Nation, enables all sorts of accusations, but especially
accusations of sins of omission and " despising," to be
brought by Socialistic critics of existing Society against
Society at large, which are either wholly or in large
measure untrue.

Among disciples of Ruskin, if individuals do wrongs
the " Nation " is credited with it, as if the wrong had
been committed by the Nation deliberately in its
corporate capacity through the machinery of the State,
and was to be regarded as the National conception of
a wise political measure. When, however, Individuals
do right the " Nation " gets no credit whatever, it even
gets censure ; for we are told that these good things
have been done in spite of the Nation. " I say," says
Ruskin, "we have despised science. 'What,' you
exclaim, ' are we not foremost in all discovery, and is
not the whole world giddy by reason, or unreason of
our inventions ? ' Yes, but do you suppose that that is
National work? That work is all done in spite of

THE FOUNDATIONS OF LIBERTY ^^

the Nation, by private people's zeal and money."
(" Sesame and Lilies," page 67).

There is another connection in which Ruskin employs
similarly ambiguous language, only on this occasion
the term "Country " is employed instead of either
State or Nation. ". . . Consider how it happens that
a poor old woman will be ashamed to take a shilling
a week from the Country, but no one is ashamed to
take a pension of a thousand a year " {ibid., page 82),
As a matter of fact, no one likely to require such a
thing would be in the least ashamed to take a pension
of a shilling a week from the State, provided it were
really a pension, i.e. payment for services rendered to
the State, and not a mere dole to supplement
economic incompetence and expressive of parasitism.
The existing confusion in the Socialist mind between
State pensions and poor relief, is due to a supposition
that all those who are engaged in work are servants of
the State, They are of course members of the Nation,
but that is all. The servants of the State are those
who are employed and paid by the State, as civil
servants, soldiers, sailors, police, etc. All other
workers are independent persons, pursuing their own
interests in the manner of their choice, and must look
for pensions from their own employers or their own
Societies. As a matter of fact, these private pensions
or what have the effect of such, are on one system or
another becoming increasingly common. But nc
one not in the employ of the State can claim from th
State money, or pensions, or relief work as a "righ
It may be — and in this country it indeed is — the will
all classes that the economic failures (whether they
such on their own account or on account of the rew

THE PERSON 51

ness of their relatives) should, as a present makeshift,
receive doles at the hand of the State ; not, however,
because this is the proper function of the State, but on
the principle that the law is made for Man and not
Man for the law ; and under our existing arrangements
doles being a necessity, we cannot find any less
unsuitable medium for their collection and distribution
than the State itself.^

Another instructive instance of the confused manner
in which such terms as Nation, Country, State, are
employed is provided by a contributor to the " Fabian
Essays," though here the word " Society " is substituted
for the other terms.

" Those relations of the individual with his fellows
in which subjective morality is chiefly recognised have
no existence at all apart from Society. Subjective
morality therefore being only distinguishable in the
State, the extent of our panorama is already much
diminished" (" Fabian Essays," page 106 — Sydney
Olivier. The italics are my own.)

Seeing then that there is a marked distinction

' It may, however, be observed, thai doles from the State, even thoogh
concealed under the names of " Relief Work," " Useful Work, "etc., plac^
the State in a false position, tend to increase the economic helplessness
they palliate, and constitute in themselves a mechanical, impersonal and
mock charity. Real charity exalts and uniles both giver and receiver ;
the mechanical doles of the State collected by force, patted with under
pressure and received as a "right," disunite, debase and deceive. The
nation can only solve the difficulty and remove the numerous dangers of
State doles and State provided labour by introducing moral, educational,
fiscal and other reform (including the reform of some o( the mote
disastrous Trade Union limitations on skill and etieigy)— and the reform
and enlightenment of employers r^arding profit-sharing, etc. , and of the
people regarding co-operation and house-keeping. In the matter of such
reforms the Stale will play its part, yet the great mass of the work must
be done by private enthusiasm and enterprise.

52 THE FOUNDATIONS OF LIBERTY ■

between the ideas here designated the Nation, Society,
or Country on the one hand, and the State on the
other (though these terms may doubtless be other-
wise employed provided the distinction between the
ideas is duly observed) it follows that there is a sphere
of activity which is other than political or State
regarding, which is not in itself legal or civic, but is
that in behalf of which all legislation and civic
activity exist The civic relation between Persons is
not the only relation between them, that is to say a
man is something more than a citizen. For instance a
person may be a parent or a child, a husband or a wife,
a prophet, a priest, a poet, a friend, an inventor, a
merchant, an author — and innumerable other spontane-
ous relations could be adduced. In addition to these
social relations, there is the supreme and ultra-civic
and ultra-social relation of the individual, viz., his
relation to his Divine Environment. This last relation
is of the first importance as providing the moral
sanction for all other relations including the "civic,"
and because it implies the responsibility of the Person
to an Authority altogether apart from the State for all
that he does or fails to do.

Now, none of these relations are in any sense " civic,"
and this it is which causes many Socialists to regard
them with such jealousy. Wholly misunderstanding
the nature of the civic nexus, they suppose that the
State somehow loses by the existence of free non-
civic relations ; whereas the exact reverse is the case.
The reason why we perform civic duties, such as
obeying laws and regulations, paying taxes, voting,
serving on juries, appearing as witnesses, serving as
soldiers, etc., or why we have civic regulation of educa-

THE PERSON 53

tion, sanitation, factories and numerous other things,
is in order that the free relations between man and
man and between man and God may be preserved
and insured from force or fraud.

The instituting of free relations between men has
always resulted ultimately in an increase of State
activity, and so far from there being a contradiction
between the ideas of liberty and law, it is the case
that an increase of liberty involves an increase of law.
The Rights of Women and Children and Lunatics,
for instance, as discerned in modern times and now
recognised and enforced by the State, have certainly
not diminished the area of the State's activity. The
freeing of Slaves again has invested at least one State
with an excess of occupation and responsibility. Even
animals are now recognised as possessed of Rights
of a conditional kind — and our statute books bear
marked evidence thereof.

In brief, the activity of the State is necessary to
the establishment and preservation of free human re-
lations ;^that is to say, the civic relation is that which
under existing conditions renders all the olhers possible,
or at any rate secure ; so that the more numerous and
highly developed these become, the greater will be the
field of action of the State.

The State then is not the sole force concerned in
the development of character ; it only contributes to it
along certain lines. Owing to the nature and methods
of law, it aims, as its duty towards the individual, at
establishing and securing his freedom, freedom being
of the very essence of the idea of " Personality," and
■ Personality being the highest thing of which we can

imJ

THE FOUNDATIONS OF LIBERTY

conceive, and the Fostering thereof the highest thing
at which we can aim.

Now if the Person is not the highest thing of which
our thought is capable, it follows there must be some-
thing which is higher. This higher thing is generally
imagined to be that union of Persons which we call a
State. But such a position is untenable, seeing that
a State has no "ego" or personality of its own, and is
only spoken of as an individual for purposes of brevity
or convenience. The State is a collection of Persons
related for more or less specific ends, and who are
viewed as being so related. The State is therefore
an abstraction.

If then the State cannot be regarded as "higher"
than the individual, perhaps the Society or Nation for
whose benefit the State exists, is " higher," and that
the Socialist dogma that the " Person is the product
of the State" would not only have a meaning, but
would be perfectly true — provided we read " Society "
or " Nation " for " State."

Now that the individual owes the development or

realisation of his Personality to the sum-total of social

forces and influences, is of course in large measure

true. It is further true to say that in the history of

law we find that the family was originally regarded

as the unit, whereas now the individual is the unit,

while law itself has fostered this sense of individuality.

But while all this is indisputable, it is quite obvious

I tliat this legal transition could not have been accom-

Bplished had there been no pre-existing Personality

f on which the law could operate, and which in its own

turn could make use of and further develop the law

•ts own further realisation. So that all that we

THE PERSON

are able to claim for social environment in general,
and law in particular, is that they are due to and
have reacted favourably upon an already existing
Personality.

To ai^ue otherwise is to foi^et the real nature and
meaning of the Political Society, and to regard it as
something superhuman, and gifted with miraculous
creative powers.

PERSONS CANNOT BE MERGED IN THE
"WHOLE" OR CONTROLLED IN THE
ALLEGED INTERESTS OF ITS "HIGH-
EST GOOD "

The Person thus being related to an ultra-social
Environment, viz., the Absblute Person, and being
moreover essentially self-determined, and being lastly
not a product of the "State," but a divine creation,
and the highest thing we can think of, cannot be sub-
ordinated to the supposed interests of the political
Society, that is — to speculations relative to the " Good
of the Whole" or the good of the Majority — but must
always be regarded as an end In himself, and only
to be controlled in the interests of his own Freedom.
We may only legitimately speak of a Person as a
part of the Whole, when we mean that he is one
among other similar free beings to whom he is related.
But it must not be forgotten that he is not himself
that " whole," and so far as he is not that whole, and
in so far as his freedom is conditioned, not by the
equal freedom of others, but by considerations of the
alleged " highest good " of the whole, so far he ceases
to be regarded as an end in himself.

56 THE FOUNDATIONS OF LIBERTY

It may be claimed that the Good of the " Whole " is
necessarily the Good of the Individual. But it will be
admitted that the speculative conclusions of a political
Majority on this subject, are by no means necessarily
good for the individual, nor for the whole, not even
always for the Majority itself. It is easy to find the
immediate " good " of a dominant political section, but
to find on purely empirical grounds what is equally
good for all, and to obtain the political power to pre-
scribe it when found, is obviously a different matter —
a thing almost impossible in itself, and rendered entirely
so by the interests, ignorances, prejudices and passions
of the people who decide the issue. But apart alto-
gether from this view of the matter, it cannot be too
strongly insisted upon that, so far as people undertake
to determine for the individual what is his "highest
good," so far they stultify his free-will, conscience and
judgment, and to that extent cease to regard him as
self-determined, and so far merge the individual in the
Whole, They must secure to him his Liberty, and
leave it to himself to determine his own " Highest
Good."

The evils of any philosophy involving interference
with the Person for the purpose of securing what at any
moment is regarded as his " Highest Good " have been
exemplified with great frequency in political and eccle-
siastical history, but more obviously, perhaps, in the
latter case. But as the matter now stands, and in our
present state of advanced Personal Liberty, the objec-
tion to the Church controlling the individual against
his will is most generally based on a priori grounds of
the individual's natural or inherent right to religious
liberty, and does not pretend to be the outcome of

THE PERSON S7

speculations concerning Public Utility ; while even the
most socialistic of the populace in this matter make
common cause with their opponents, and urge their
claim to religious liberty on this same ground.

This fact is full of significance. Largely owing to
the reformed religion in this Country, the personal
detriment arising from the subordinatiou of the in-
dividual to the supposed "good of the Whole" is here
perfectly apparent to the popular mind, that mind
being no longer prejudiced and terrorised by a power-
ful priestly organisation, which has in view nothing but
the Good of the Whole, i.e. the assumed Good of the
organisation to which the priests belong. There can
be no question but that all persecution whether " re-
ligious " or other, is based upon and seeks its moral
justification in the attractive and plausible dogma that
the individual can with moral propriety be subordinated
to the " good of the Whole," It is further certain that
where that dogma prevails we shall in some form or
another get persecution.

The difficulty of determining the mutual relations of
the Political Society or Nation, and the individual, is
greatly enhanced by the gratuitous introduction of
metaphors drawn from the laboratory and the dissect-
ing-room. Up to a certain point the oi^anised Nation
is loosely analogous to an organism, and persons of
Socialistic tendency and of inaccurate mental method,
attempt in consequence to define the relations between
the State and the individual, by pointing to the re-
lation that subsists between an organism and its
members. The physical scientist has entered the
domain of Human Life and claimed it as wholly his
own, as indeed he has entered everywhere, demon-

THE FOUNDATIONS OF LIBERTY

strating the tendency of the dominant thought of the
day to arrogate to itself every sphere of thought and
action. As formerly in the case of theology, so now in
the case of science, the dominant thought is a veritable
Procrustes, lopping and stretching all other forms of
thought till they come to the measure of its own
understanding.

It has been claimed, and no doubt rightly, that the
social sciences ought not to stand aloof from biology,
but ought to obtain from it any light it is able to give
them. But such statements as the following are ex-
tremely misleading. We are told that it is time " for
the biologist to advance over the frontier and carry the
methods of his science boldly into human society,
where he has but to deal with the phenomena of life "
(Benjamin Kidd, " Social Evolution," page 28), To
make thus, as it were, a play upon the word " life " so
that the term biology shall connote not merely that
life which is wholly controlled by physical law, but also
that life which, on a religious hypothesis, transcends it,
and on any showing cannot be proved to come wholly
within it, is to Jeopardise honest inquiry,

This analogy of the organism is of course highly

useful to those persons who desire, for the purpose of

facilitating their extensive and peculiar "reforms," to

merge the individual in the whole so that he cannot

appeal to his moral Rights as against the decision of

the State. All such moral defence would be swept

■■hat by the analogy he is merely a part of

<ose convenience alone he exists, and

with that organism exhaust his

'^.ApptndU A.

THE MEANING OF RIGHTS AND THE
RELATION OF THE STATE THERETO

Seeing then that the Person cannot be merged in
the " Whole " or controlled in the alleged interests of
its alleged "highest good," it will now be well to
examine at greater length that thing in the interests of
which he can be controlled.

Unless we are to do violence to the sanctity and
integrity of Personality, the Person can only be forcibly
controlled in the interests of his Freedom, that is to
say — in the interests of his natural " Rights." It is
this moral or personal " Right " that inspires the State
with a moral aim or ideal, and indicates the kind of
means to be adopted for the attainment of that aim.

Those who hold that the individual's Rights and
claims are wholly relative and subordinate to the
alleged "good" of the Whole, are compelled also to
maintain that the " right " is that which is {i.e. appears
to be) " useful " for society, and that the justification of
any human relation or activity is to be sought in its
demonstrable utility to the Whole. Thus we read in
the " Fabian Essays " — " The actions and propensities
of the individual have always, it appears, been judged
I by his fellows moral or immoral chiefly according to
ieir supposed effects upon society. The object of
^ery living creature being to do as he pleases, if what
' he proposes to do incommodes other people, they will
take measures to restrain him from doing it. This
they strive to do by means of laws and conventional

fi of morality . . ." (Mr Sydney Olivier, in " Fabian
ys," p. I lO). Again — " We find that in all Societies

fby I
thei
evei

h. T

THE FOUNDATIONS OF LIBERTY

those actions and habits are approved as moral which
tend to preserve the existence of Society and con-
venience of its members ; and that those which are, or
seem to be, fraught with contrary tendencies, are con-
sidered immoral" {ibid., 107). This is the Socialist
view, a view somewhat similar to that entertained by a
section of the Roman Catholic Communion. The only
alternative standard of right and wrong must be sought
in the independent moral nature, i.e. the a priori Rights
of the individual. It is evident to all who believe in
Personality, that our relation with our Divine environ-
ment and consequent relation with our fellow men are
not justified, i.e. do not become right, because a political
majority considers that they have been experimentally
proved to be good for society; but, on the con-
trary, they are good for Society because they are
right. So that morality is not the product of Society,
Society only provides the occasion of the manifesta-
tion of morality, and so becomes a condition of its
development.

The Person is more than a member of the finite
Whole. If he were not so he would be wholly deter-
mined by that Whole, in which case he could not be a
Person, though he might be a sentient automaton.
The Person has correspondences {to which he owes his
personality) outside society, outside phenomena, with
an Environment which is Divine and Personal, to
which he owes his free-will, and to which he is respon-
sible for the use to which he puts that free-will. Such
a relation implies self- consciousness, with its corollary
of jc^-development, je^-discipline, .rf^determination,
conscience, and free deliberation and decision. Now
all this implies an area of independent activity — free

THE PERSON

•om the coercion of our neighbours. But what is this
' area to be ? What are its limits ?

It is to be replied that there are no limits to this area
of personal liberty at all, save only that, in the enjoy-
ment of our freedom, we secure a similar freedom to
our neighbour. This area, sacred from the forcible
intrusion of our neighbour, is what is ultimately meant
by a Person's Rights. Rights owe their existence to
the recognition by each individual of his own personality
on the one hand, and upon the other to an equal
recognition of a similar personality in others. These
two attitudes are intimately associated.

Thus speaking of " my neighbour and myself,"
F. D. Maurice says : " Supposing I forget cither, I
forget the other. I cease to recognise the distinctness
or worth of my neighbour if I do not recognise my own ;
I cease to recognise my own distinctness and worth if
I do not recognise his " (" Social Morality," p. 3),

It follows therefore that the preservation of the
Rights of the individual is all important to the preser-
vation of that respect by each one for his neighbour
which Is the basis of all society. No legislation which
ignores the rights of the Individual as its basis, and
attempts instead some " short cut " to the Good of the
Whole, can do otherwise than undermine mutual
reverence and respect, and so make for the dissolution
of Society.

It will be seen, therefore, that the type of individualism
I have ventured to call Political Personalism is
essentially altruistic. The Personalist insisting on his
own rights Insists equally upon those of his neighbour,

ithe common fact of Personality compelling him ; for
the Personalist is compelled to seek and to enforce the

THE FOUNDATIONS OF LIBERTY

sanctity and integrity of Personality in general; his
own Personality as well as that of others, the Personality
of others as well as that of himself.

It is extremely common to hear the attitude of the
Socialist described and extolled as being necessarily
unselfish or altruistic, while that of their opponents is
assumed to be essentially the reverse, As already
observed.thcwordindividualisthas a double significance.
It may either denote the person who on principfe seeks
his own individual advantage, and recommends all others
to follow his example ; or it may be applied to the
individual who seeks to maintain the sanctity and
integrity under all circumstances of the individual
Person, i.e. of Personality in general.

To the first of these persons we have limited the
application of the term individualist, introducing the
term Personalist to denote the second. That the
political theory of the individualist, as above described,
would involve not only selfishness, but the exaltation
of selfishness to the level of a virtue, may be readily
conceded. But it cannot be admitted that the type of
individualism here styled Political Fersonalism can be
condemned as selfish, or as in any way involving
selfishness. We are selfish if we seek our own interests
or political ideals, or the interests or ideals of our class
or party without due regard to the Rights of others.
But the Socialist, who is so widely regarded as altru-
istic, for his part does not even allow of the existence
of the rights of others ; and, unless those others con-
stitute a powerful political party, he is not bound in
his search for the Good of the Whole to consider them
at all. Indeed, it may be said further, that he is not
even bound to search for the Good of the Whole at all

in the absence of the a priori rights of the individuals
composing it to demand this of him. He need not
seek, and in actual practice frequently does not seek,
anything but his own advantage, Just as do the indi-
vidualists of the type here differentiated from Person-
alists. The fact that Socialists combine together, and
propose to use the arm of the law instead of their own
right hands to attain their ends, does not in itself make
their schemes altruistic; and, indeed, it may be said
that in so far as their aims are selfish, i.e. subversive of
the rights of individuals, so far they prostitute the law
and the State which exist for the protection of the
individual, and so are more immoral than the indi-
vidualists. It is worthy of note that even Socialists
themselves recf^nise that they are at any rate liable
to be actuated by the same spirit as Individualists ;
thus we read in the " Fabian Essays " : " Socialism
is merely Individualism rationalised, organised, clothed,
and in its right mind " (Sydney Olivier, " Fabian
Essays," p. 105).

The following statement of Professor Drummond in
the "Ascent of Man " is expressive of a certain preva-
lent vagueness of idea as to the meaning and nature
both of Individualism and Socialism.

" In the later world, one (the struggle for life) seeks
its end in personal aggrandisement, the other (the
struggle for the life of others) in ministration. One
begets competition, self-assertion, war ; the other, un-
selfishness, self-effacement, peace. One is Indi-
vidualism, the other Altruism " (p. 24).

Now the opposite of " altruism " is not " indi-
vidualism." The true antithesis is "selfishness," and
the statement that "one is selfishness and the other

64 THE FOUNDATIONS OF LIBERTY

altruism," would be less open to the objection of
ambiguity. As it is, Professor Drummond in this
passage means by individualism the individualism here
opposed to Personalism, i.e. selfish individualism, and
that being the case we are not surprised to find it
opposed to altruism. But there is most evidently an
"individualism" which is unselfish and based on the
highest morality ; an " individualism " which, though
for the nonce newly named " Personalism," is in itself
by no means new, but has been accepted among nations
according to their respective degrees of development
from time immemorial.

We must beware, therefore, of that prejudice arising
from superficiality, sentimentality, and want of moral
conviction which has been raised against the idea of
Personal Right, on the ground that the belief in the
Person and in the political and social rights based upon
it, are selfish and anti-social.

The existence of "natural" or "a priori" rights is
of course strongly objected to by the Socialists.
Socialists in general urge that the so-called "natural
rights " are only abilities and immunities conferred on
the individual at the will of the State, and that the
State can augment or diminish them at its pleasure.
In support of this doctrine of the State authorship of
right, it is argued, first : That since much of what we
call natural Rights to-day was not so regarded in the
past, it follows that these rights are relative to the will
of the citizens in general, or of some sufficient part of
them, and so have no absolute character and cannot be
arrived at a priori. The following quotation gives a
good epitome of the Socialist objection. Discussing
Mr Herbert Spencer's view of natural rights ; —

THE PERSON

" Can Mr Spencer really mean," says Mr Ritchie, " that all the
persona] rights which the British Government secures to its
citizens always existed as 'natural rights'? Probably Mr Spencer
regards some sort of copyright as necessary lo secure to himself
that justice which he had defined as ' a rigorous maintenance of
those normal relations among citizens under which each gets in
return for his labour ... as much as is proved to be its value by
the demand for it, such return, therefore, as will enable him to
thrive and rear offspring in proportion to the superiorities which
make him valuable to himself and others.' But did the Angles
and Saxons recognise copyright? On the other hand, most races
have at some time or other recognised a 'natural right ' to hold
captives in war, or inferior races as slaves " (" Principles of State
Interference," page 40).

In reply to this it is necessary to point out that

" rights " — such, e.g., as " copyright " — are only applica-
tions to particular cases under particular circumstances
of the doctrine of " right " ; and it is upon the nature of
personal " right " that we must be assured before we can
profitably discuss " rights," i.e. those numerous applica-
tions of " right " to the varying circumstance and detail
of life. As personality develops, as in the process of
the ages we are able to perceive more and more clearly
what is involved in the idea of Right ; as we rise in the
scale of things, and new horizons ever open out before
us, so our perception of personal right is ever extending.
As personality develops, so we claim more and more
for free will, self-responsibility, conscience, judgment,
self-development, self-discipline, and self-sacrifice, i.e.
for all that is involved in Personality, and without
which Personality cannot be. As time goes on we
make these claims at an increasing number of points,
and it is these claims which constitute our " rights,"
i.e. the detailed and circumstantial application of our
"right" As long, therefore, as we continue to pro-
S

'HE FOUNDATIONS OF LIBERTY

gress, we shall be finding that we have ever more and
more rights over ourselves, and therefore ever fewer
over our neighbour.

So it is no argument against "natural rights," or
rather the application to particular cases and varying
conditions, of natural or personal " right," to assert that
they are " developments " ; that there was a time when
these applications of the doctrine were few and meagre,
and that the views of the Angles and Saxons on the
point were not as developed as ours. The fact is that the
Angles and Saxons were themselves not as developed
as we are. They had not yet realised (nor, indeed, have
we ourselves fully) the sacredness, completeness, and
finality of the individual Person. Nor had they the
same number of social activities and relations providing
each of them occasion for the application of personal
right as have we in these latter days. As the value
and meaning of the individual Person became more
fully realised, social life became more developed ; that
is to say, the nature and meaning of Right became
clearer in men's minds, and at the same time the
occasions to insist upon it multiplied.

Right, then, is the claim which each Person makes to
self-ownership and liberty, in view of — or rather as a
result of — the qualities inherent in Personality ; and
the fact that " rights " are developments neither indi-
cates that they have their origin in utilitarian specula-
tion, nor does it militate against their absolute character
and a priori mora.\ necessity as the inevitable outcome
and necessary expression of Personality.

'''here is a second point urged by Socialists in sup-
'^tate authorship of rights, and that is that
State there could be no rights, because

THE PERSON

J without the State it would be impossible to enforce
them. " Before permanent government exists," con-
tinues our author, " and in many cases after it is
considerably developed, the rights of each individual
are maintained by himself or by his family. In such
a condition one would think that the rights of the
individual, except so far as checked by the customs of
his family and tribe, are pretty nearly commensurate to
his strength and his cunning " {ibid., page 41).

Now, not to be able to enforce any particular right,
does not of itself prove that that right does not exist.
A man's rights are not what he can enforce, but what
he can and does morally claim. True it is that, until
a moral right becomes a legal one, it is generally —
though by no means always — less morally wrong to
forgo one's right than to enforce it to the detriment of
law and order. But it is a grave error to limit rights
to legal rights. On the contrary, most of our great
political reforms have been based on the ground that
men had a moral right to this thing or that, and the
character given to the proposed legislation by this con-
sideration is what has inspired the reformers, disarmed
(hostility, and carried the reform. Thus, for example,
it is in a measure misleading to say that Magna Carta
gave us certain rights. It was, on the contrary, the
perception of fresh applications of the doctrine of right
that gave us Magna Carta, and all that Magna Carta
did was to give legal support to the newly-perceived
liberties which had been claimed as moral or natural
rights, thereby adding to their quality of " morality "
the quality of " legality." ,

L Instance again those Rights in regard to freedom of
Keonscience, the recognition of which constituted the

THE FOUNDATIONS OF LIBERTY

religious part of the Reformation, This particular
kind of personal freedom was claimed as a moral or
natural right, and therefore as a moral necessity. It
was not regarded as a means or expedient which, for
the time being at any rate, would possibly be " useful "
for the attainment of some public end, which, when
attained, might appear to a majority to be for the
" greatest good of the greatest number." This was not
at all theframeof mind of the Reformers. Theirclaims
and assertions were not the outcome of Machiavellian
calculations regarding the future prosperity of the
" State," but were statements of the fact that each man
in view of his Personal nature, had a relation to the
Almighty which was direct and immediate, and that he
had a natural right to the unmolested fruition of this
relation. The rights which the Reformers demanded
that the State should recognise and secure, were merely
the liberty necessary to this new (or rather revived)
development of Personality. That the prosperity of
the State would ensue if it thus courageously and faith-
fully pursued the path of Right — (even though the
expediency of that course was not presently evident) —
such reformers as ever considered the matter do not
appear to have doubted. The Reformers did not argue
politically, but then neither did they argue theologically.
They did not plead for the substitution of some other
compulsory religion or church which should be more
moral or more theologically correct. Had they done
so the Reformation would not have stood for a great
step in the moral progress of mankind ; they con-
tended, or the contrary, for liberty pure and simple;
that is to say, they aimed at getting another right
MOOgtused — i.e. a new liberty was to be instituted to

THE PERSON 69

correspond to a new spiritual growth, and a new
development of Personality.

" Ungrateful Country, if thou ere forget
The sons who for Ihy civil rights have bled !
How, like a Roman, Sidney bowed his head.
And Russell's milder blood the scaffold wet ;
But these had fallen for proiitless regret
Had not thy Holy Church her champions bred ;
And claims _/h)»i other worlds inspirited
The star of liberty to rise. Nor yet
(Grave this within thy heart), if spiritual things
Be lost thro' apathy, or scorn, or fear,
Shalt thou thy humbler franchises support,
However hardly won or justly dear ;
What came from Heaven to Heaven by nature clings,
And, if dissevered thence, its course is short."

Wordsworth

The right to liberty of the Person is religious in
origin, and is maintained by religion, It cannot be
regarded as a matter of expediency or utility. Rights
are not things which the State can either give or take
away, it can only recognise and enforce them or refuse
to do so. The State may refuse a moral right, and
grant an immoral one, but the claim refused will
remain a moral right, and that granted will not be a
right at all. In the last phase of American legalised
slavery, the whole of Western Christendom had come
to realise that slavery was a violation of the natural
right of the Person, and even in America, it was either
resented as immoral, or defended on purely utilitarian
grounds. The fact that the moral appeal in favour of
abolition was rejected by the States immediately con-

(cemed, and that the non-moral or utilitarian argument
against it was accepted by them, did not deprive the

70 THE FOUNDATIONS OF LIBERTY

slave of his moral right, nor did it give a moral right
to his owner.

It is instructive in this connection to notice how
moral and religious were the arguments and appeals of
the abolitionists. Even the conspicuous misery of large
numbers of slaves, while it did much to attract atten-
tion to the advantages of personal freedom, would
have been quite powerless, apart from this supreme
moral consideration, effectually to attack the pernicious
cause of the misery. For without the inspiring and
directing or constraining principle of the sanctity of
the right of every individual man, humanitarian appeals
tend to a forceless, unprincipled sentimentalism, always
subject to collapse and violent reaction, and ready
always to oppress some in order that others may be
relieved.

The State then cannot give the Person the right to
liberty, nor can it deprive him of that right. True
liberty is not a boon conferred on us by our fellow
citizens, having its origin in sentimentality or utilitar-
ianism, and withdrawable on a change in the mood or
calculation of the ruling section ; it is, as already
insisted, the expression of our moral nature. True,
even a State wholly given over to utilitarianism might
allow numerous liberties to its citizens, but as it would
not allow the "ri^ht" to liberty in general, or to any
liberty in particular, the citizens, or sections of them,
would hold their freedom on a most insecure tenure.
Moreover the right to liberty not being allowed,
liberties would be granted to which the recipients
had no moral right — as the world rightly uses the
term at present — and withheld where, as we at
present should say, such right emphatically existed.

THE PERSON

The effect of denying that personal right is the in-
spiration and constraining and directing force of the
legislative activities of the ruling section of the Nation,
is to leave the Nation and all the individuals composing
it at the mercy of the doctrine that Might is Right, —
a doctrine to be modified, though hardly improved, by
the introduction of an element of unprincipled senti-
mentality and hysterical humanitarian ism.

"UTILITY" OR "GOOD OF THE WHOLE"

The State then, in all that it does or leaves undone,
must consider first the rights of all persons within its
borders, whether they belong to a large political
section or a small one. Secure in the possession of a
guiding principle, the State, when it comes to consider
what is most " useful " to the attainment of the end it
has in view, i.e. when it comes to the practical applica-
tion of its principle, need have no fear of the disasters
which must await a State which is purely empirical and
utilitarian.

Utilitarianism when set forth as a substitute for a
definite moral principle is a most meaningless philo-
sophy, for it lacks that definite direction in its search
for the Good of the Whole, without which all such
quest must end in the wildest empiricism or in follow-
ing the line of least moral resistance.

The doctrine of the Right of the Person provides
at once a definite motive, a definite goal, and a definite
method. Armed with the moral doctrine of Right, we
shall Icnow (what is otherwise by no means agreed
upon) to what end a thing should be of " utility," and

THE FOXJNDATIONS OF LIBERTY

to whom it should be useful ; for we shall have made
up our minds that the coercive force of the ruling
section can only be morally applied in the interest of
true personal liberty; and secondly, that this liberty
is not to be confined to the politically powerful, but
is to be for all Persons equally.

In the practical application of the principle, the
opinion of the majority as to the best method under
particular circumstances and in some particular con-
nection, of guaranteeing universal freedom, must
override that of the minority. But the majority in
such case is overriding the minority as it were by
accident, and in the interest of the equal liberty of
the minority; and the liberty of the minority would
be as much a part of the political purpose as that
of the majority. The liberty of the minority be it
observed, not the good of the minority ; for that must
be determined by the persons themselves, and not
dictated to them by the political majority, which will
invariably suffer from many human failings — besides
that of ignc-ance.

Mistakes in calculation will always be made under
any system, and that which it was supposed was for
the freedom of all, may turn out under actual ex-
periment to make for the freedom of some and the
oppression of others. But a nation nurtured on the
doctrine that the citizen must be free, and free at all
costs, will be disposed to rectify those errors in calcu-
lation which had given rise to oppression.

The control, in the interests of freedom, of locomo-
tion, exercised by the State over street traffic, is an in-
stance of legislation in behalf of liberty. The free and
equitable spirit in which that is done leaves nothing

THE PERSON '^J

be desired. If the authority representing the
' majority were at any time wrong in its calculation
as to what in this connection is true "utility" {i.e. as
to what makes for the equal freedom of locomotion
for all), an injured minority however small would un-
doubtedly have its case attended to.

Again as to the overriding of the minority by the
majority in the selection of the means for attaining
this freedom of locomotion — a majority might wish
to compel all drivers to drive to the left, and a
minority might deem it more expedient that they
should drive to the right ; but those who had desired
the latter, and had been defeated, would not consider

tthat an attack had been made on their liberty, but only
on their conception of "utility," i.e. upon their notion
as to what would best contribute to the attainment
of a defined end upon which both majority and minority
were agreed.

It is reasonable to suppose that the extreme equity
with which even Socialists propose to conduct such
things as street traffic, is due not solely t>i the moral
respect for the liberty of minorities which still survives
in this country, but to the fact that such an indifferent
matter involves no passions whatever — none of those
passions which must always determine the action of
persons who are possessed of no clear a priori moral
principle, or at any rate who are possessed of none
strong enough to withstand seductive arguments, which,

I pivoting on " expediency," persuade us in the direction
of our own desires,
Where all forms of Utilitarianism and Socialism
break down is in the presence of matters (and they
are the generality) involving passion, envy, prejudice,

THK POimDATIONB OF IJBERTV

religious intolerance, party spirit, and class interest.
There Is furtbermofe to be considered on the one
IuukI that oeccMaiy ^norance of the future, and of
the ultioMte outcome of empirical legislation, and on
the other hand the profound disagreements as to the
nature of the Supreme Good — and this ignorance and
difufreement must always render unreliable and con-
flicting the pronouncements even of the astutest and
mrjftt dtsintereited ipeculators in the field of " Utility."

Utili'tarianiim — at any rate as conceived of by the
non-academic — stands for a definite political policy.
It Is Nupposed to be very " practical," i.e. it represents
no definite Ideal and raises, as n supposed, no awkward
qucRtlonn, involving intelligence and conscience for
their solution, regarding the nature of the Supreme
Good. Hut as against this position it must be observed
that when we itpeak of a thing as a "utility" we imply
that we have in view some clear definite End to which
the thing Is "useful." It is meaningless to speak of
n thing as being " useful " per se apart from some End
— sufficiently formulated in our minds — to which it
contributes.

To seek to secure the " Good of the Whole " when
one haH not made any clear assumption regarding first
the nature of that Good and secondly the principles to
be obHcrved in the effort to attain it, is to admit that
one has no definite ideas regarding the nature of Man.
Soelnp however that Man — and Man in his entirety — is
the subject matter of the whole inquiry, such an
attitude surely stands aclf-condcmncd. For one to say
that his political policy Is simply to aim at the Good
of the Whole, Is as If he should say merely that he is
un anilublc and well-disposed person. Such a person

THE PERSON

Ehaving no confessed political End, and having no clear
political principles, and no criterion, no guide, no
limitation of any sort, must obviously really mean by
the Good of the Whole — either a " hand to mouth "
political existence — the ignominious and non-moral
principle of " muddling through," or he must have a
political scheme or Utopia of his own, which he desires
the majority to adopt and force on the minority. This
latter alternative indeed represents an End of some
sort, but the End is a mere guess, desire or dream.
He has nothing to guide or limit him whether as to
Ends or Means, save only his own amiability. In the
Personalist creed the end of political action is to obtain
and maintain the freedom of the Person ; and the
character of the means is therefore in its main outlines
prescribed by the nature of the End. But when we
try to obtain the Supreme Good directly, and as it were
by a short cut, by the simple process of imposing it (or
rather our conception of it) by coercive law, and when
we have cast aside the inherent or Personal rights of
the individual as not being inherent at all, but merely
relative to the convenience of the dominant political
faction, we are left not only without a rationally
conceived End, but also without any limitation to the
kind of Means we may employ.

Under such a system or want of system, there could
be no Means however base or scoundrellish, which
could not have the support of amiable or well disposed
but unprincipled public spirit, were that spirit strictly
logical. This logicality undoubtedly exists. It has
existed, and still exists for instance in certain schools

I of the Roman Catholic communion, where it is main-
tained that there are no Means which cannot be
■

THE FOUNDATIONS OF LIBERTY

properly resorted to in the interests of the " Good " of
the Church — the " Good " of the Church is the Roman
Catholic " Good of the Whole," — and we know the kind
of Means that were frequently resorted to (and that
still have their champions) for the attainment of that
End.' We know also how the Good of the Individual
was and is supposed to follow from the alleged " Good "
of the Church, and how the Individual in consequence
ceased to be allowed to pursue his own Good, but had
another Good thrust upon him by Means, which though
often horrible, were perfectly Justifiable, if the premises
of certain sections of that communion be accepted.

AN END CEASES TO BE SUCH IF SUPPRES-
SION OF PERSONALITY IS ESSENTIAL
TO ITS ATTAINMENTS, AND IN PROPOR-
TION TO THE EXTENT, PERMANENCE,
AND UNIVERSALITY OF THAT SUP-
PRESSION

There can be no true End which involves the sup-
pression of Personality, because as has been already
stated each Person is his own End, and must be
regarded as such by all other Persons. The State is
composed of Individual Persons, and can therefore
have no other aim than to secure the integrity, the
sanctity, and the inviolability of the Person. And the
Persons which a Government is most bound to consider,
are the Persons existing at the time of its taking
action. Thus if any Person were to encourage or to
countenance the stultification of the Personality of his
' See Appendix B.

THE PERSON

existing fellow countrymen in favour of some hypo-
thetical "good" to accrue to Persons not yet in
existence, who in their turn on some ground supposed
to be " altruistic " would be compelled to sacrifice their
Personality to some succeeding generation — if any
citizen were to countenance such a policy, it would be
because he had no belief in the existence of, or concep-
tion of the meaning of, Personality. For Personality
is necessarily the highest thing we can conceive of, and
it is no less " altruistic " to consider the highest interests
of persons in existence, than to subordinate that
welfare to the supposed advantage of people yet
unborn. Furthermore, to subordinate a Person to any-
thing which is not himself is in itself an immoral
proceeding,'

There are those who pretend to wax enthusiastic
over the Social Status of a bee in a beehive, as de-
picted, for instance, by M. Maeterlinck, where the
individual bee is supposed to be wholly sacrificed to
the good of the Community, and each generation of
bees to be wholly sacrificed to the good of the next
generation, a good which that generation will not
enjoy, but will again hand on. It is desired by Social-
istic sentimentalists, that the bee conception of things
be adopted as the ideal for human society, and it Is
argued that the attitude of the bee is "altruistic." So
far, however, from that being the case, it is only justi-
fiable at all on the ground that bees have no individual
Personality or significance, and that their actions are

' The Person, however, cai
existence of the Family and l
wLU he dealt with when wi
Family.

subordinated to cons ideral ions of the
curily of the Kalion ; a matler which
ne to consider the Nation and the

THE FOUNDATIONS OF LIBFRTY

involuntary and non-moral. A bee, it is reasonable to
suppose, is only "busy" because it cannot think of
anything else to do, and it " sacrifices " itself — and
possibly its neighbours also, if bees have compulsory
powers — for precisely the same reason. A bee, in
short, has no individual worth or significance, and could
not be regarded as an End in itself; and the total
effacement of the individual bee in the interests of
prospective generations, or even of the generation
actually in being, is analagous to the corporate
functioning of the leaves of a tree, or the corpuscles
in the blood, and is part of the automatic, unconscious
workings of Nature. But this cannot be accepted as
the ideal for human Society. In the first place —
within the region of its application — instinct is in-
fallible; whereas Reason is far otherwise, and indeed
it is in a sense distinctively human to err. While
among bees there are evidently no differences of
political or other opinion, among men these differences
will be great, because their actions are deliberate
owing to the gift of Reason. But as Reason in the
widest sense is the highest part of a Man, it is clear
that for one body of Persons to suppress — whether by
law or otherwise — the effective reasoning of individuals
or of other bodies of Persons is to violate the sanctity
of Personality. For the Person is an End in himself,
and cannot rightly be subordinated to the Ends or
ideals of others ; even though those others may be
convinced that their opinions are excellent, and would
be of the highest utility to those upon whom they
desire forcibly to impose them.

Herein we perceive the error of the Utopists.
These numerous and ingenious persons are determined

I to produce by means of the coercive powers of the
State some one type of man, or, if they cannot do
that, to force upon individuals the will and opinion of
those who are in power, arguing that where intentions
are amiable, Might is Right. They further assert that
they are in possession of the whole truth, and that it
must necessarily be advantageous for a man that he
should be compelled by such all-wise persons in the
interest of his own good, and that he should enjoy or
endure what they have discovered to their own satis-
faction to be " useful." But when we come to ask to
what End things should be useful, many, if not most,
will find themselves in direct conflict with the authors
of Utopias. It is always contended by Utilitarians that
there is for practical purposes no real difference of
opinion as to the nature of the End. But that is
merely because they have tacitly assumed that con-
siderations of comfort, security, and pleasure are para-
mount in human life, and that the sacrifice of individual
freedom and manhood is a small matter in comparison.
But the dissentient will object that it is possible to pur-
chase even the bourgeois joys and tranquilities dangled
before us — as, for instance, in such a socialistic work as
" Looking Backward " — at too great a cost, and that
the surrender of one's soul, manhood, freedom, is too
high a price to pay for anything ; — for — " What shall
it profit. a man if he gain the whole world — and lose
his own soul ? " And so here arises the difference as to
the End, and so therefore also as to the means. The
Personalist will maintain, as against the Utopists or
Socialists generally, that as there is nothing higher
than Personality, so Personality, with the self-deter-

[ mination, individual initiative, and conscience involved

THE FOUNDATIONS OF LIBERTY

In itj must be an End in itself, and that therefore
nothing — not even an alleged Good of the Greatest
Number — can be regarded as an End if it involves the
diminution of Personality or of any of its essential
qualities. He will contend that however tempting to
our lower natures the bourgeois ideals of the Socialist
may be, it Js necessary to morality that men be left in
full self-ownership and individual political freedom,
even should it be at the cost of much of the
security and luxury so confidently promised us by
the Socialist.

We may sell our birthright for a mess of pottage,
but the pottage will not last us long. With the decay
of the Person and his independent moral character
will come the decay of the State, and of government,
and of all mutual confidence, and with that decay will
come the loss of all that wealth, ease and security
which had cost us so dear.

" I, Freedom, dwell with knowledge ! I abide
With men whom dust of faction cannot blind
To the slow tracings of the Eternal mind ;
With men by culture trained and fortified
Who bitter duty to sweet lusts prefer."

Lowell.
How many there are in this day of our decadence,
who will not stand with Milton : —

" Free, and to none accoimtable, preferring
Hard Liberty before the easy yoke
Of servile pomp."

Says Wordsworth : —

"Milton t thou shouldst be living at this hour ;
England hath need of thee ; sbc is a fen
Of stagnant waters i altar, sword and pen.
Fireside, ibe heroic wealth of hall and bower.

THE PERSON

Have forfeited their ancient English dower
Of inward happiness. We are selfish
up, return to us again ;
And give us manners, virtue, freedom, power."

The situation becomes the more serious when we
consider that the Socialist himself does not, and
cannot pretend that all individuals and all types of
individuals will benefit equally under Socialistic rigimes
in general, or any one in particular. He can only
consider the " Greatest Good of the Greatest Number,"
which in practice means the advantage of the dominating
section in the State. Under certain conditions of
Parliament, the majority in the country might possibly
be satisfied, but all differences of opinion as to the
object and conduct of life being practically suppressed,
the minority (entertaining, as it must do, in its in-
dividual members, innumerable different and perhaps
mutually conflicting convictions and ideals), will find
itself submerged and its convictions stultified.

Surely the very idea of Reason, and so therefore of
Personality, involves the idea of individual difference.
Indeed, one may ask whether if two minds were in all
respects exactly similar, and must through all time
continue to be so — these could be regarded as two
minds or two Persons at all, or whether there could be
such a thing as Personality in such a case. The
differences between Persons, inseparable apparently
from the idea of Personality, must — if the Person is
not to be subordinated to that which is not himself — be
capable of finding the fullest expression in all directions.
Those who deny this, whether they call themselves

t Socialists, or whether they call themselves by any other
political or religious name, are animated by the same
L

82 THE FOUNDATIONS OF LIBERTY

spirit as animates the Socialist, viz., the desire to merge
the individual in the Whole, and to seek to attain what
at any time is supposed to be the Good of the Whole,
directly and by any and every means. Here the law
of liberty ceases, and there is substituted therefore
Oppression's law that Might is Right

Thus, there is no reason to suppose that the Roman
legislature did other than they were convinced was for
the Good of the Whole, when it opposed the spread of
Christianity, and set the law in motion against its
adherents. It must be remembered that the Roman
authorities could not, of course, know what we now
know of the beneficent effects of Christianity, for that
is the result of the experience of many subsequent
centuries. But the fact remains, that had they realised
the real meaning of Personality — a thing then impos-
sible, as that realisation is the product of Christianity
itself — immense suffering might have been avoided,
and the nation might have obtained the advantage of
a creed which it subsequently adopted with enthusiasm,
at a much earlier date than it did obtain it. Had the
people and government of that nation recognised the
spiritual nature of Man and his consequent claim to
liberty, such perception would have acted as a limi-
tation and a guide to the action of the State, and
so a sorry chapter in history would never have been
written.

The fact is that the moment the State acts in
opposition to the Freedom of the Person, it acts in the
dark; for it is only the experience of centuries that
can tell us what religious or political opinions are to be
praised or blamed. Personal liberty maintained, rank
follies will quickly die out, and great truths will prevail

THE PERSON

S3.

without persecution and without revolution— the fre-
quent corollary of repression.

But as the Church had her period of persecution, so
she herself in her turn resorted frequently to the same
materialistic means. Thus to take one case alone — at
the time of the forcible suppression of the Reformation
in France and Spain, the two governments were con-
vinced of the moral correctness of their attitude, because
they had nothing but dubious calculations as to the
Good of the Church, by which they meant the Good of
the Whole. But time has gone on, and even in Spain
there are now many serious persons in the upper classes
who hold that the action of the Spanish and French
governments was harmful in itself, and was as disastrous
as it appears to be irretrievable.

Taking, then, these two instances of persecution — i,e,
the persecution of the Church by the pagan Romans,
and the persecution of Reformers by the Roman
Church — as typical examples of what, fundamentally
speaking, we may call Socialistic government, it may
be objected by Socialists that the instances here pro-
duced are cases of the subordination of the individual
in matters regarding which experience has now shown
he should not be subordinated, and that therefore such
action could not take place again, it having been
" discovered " experimentally that religious freedom is
" useful " to the Nation or State. Apart from the fact
that this usefulness is denied by a large number of
utilitarians, as, e.g., Roman Catholics, who have a
different End in view to that of the political Socialist,
and who, however wrong they may be, cannot be
precluded from speaking and voting, and possibly
ultimately winnnig their case, it is, as we have already

^^4

THE FOUNDATIONS OF LIBERTY

pointed out, quite false to pretend that religious or any
other freedom is claimed by individuals or maintained
by the State, in view of some theory held by them
regarding the Utility thereof to the State or Nation ;
it is, on the contrary, as a matter of history and of
current experience, claimed and at present maintained
as a moral a priori right. In England we are apt to
make an exception of religious liberty, and allow that
that may be claimed as a moral right, but that nothing
else may. But freedom " claimed " as a moral a priori
right at whatever point soever, if that claim be accepted,
establishes the whole claim to individual freedom in
general ; for the grounds on which religious freedom is
demanded are precisely those on which all personal
liberty is based.

Secondly, as to the impossibility of invasion of
religious liberty for the future owing to the alleged
discovery of its inutility to the Whole, some points are
here raised which are of great general importance.
The first is that nations very seldom learn by exper-
ience. A Nation will repeat its own errors, and the
follies of one Nation will be repeated by another.
Secondly, political experience is of dubious inter-
pretation, as is seen by the differences that prevail
between Statesmen and Sociologists and Economists.
Moreover, often the same identical experience is relied
on both by the supporters and by the opponents of a
certain state of things, or course of action. Thus a
Russian of the governing classes is opposed to freedom
of speech, claiming that it is his experience that the
control he thus exercises helps to maintain the despot-
ism. But this is precisely the experience which an
opponent of despotism would adduce in support of

THE PERSON

establishing the liberty of the subject in tiiis particular
matter. He might say that the despotism was wrong,
but apart from antecedent ideas regarding the moral
right to liberty, and taking good despots with bad, ft
would be extremely difficult to convince the Russian
of this with anything approaching to logical demon-
stration. Thirdly, the experience of one generation is
not always of the highest utility to another, as, espec-
ially in these days, the circumstances change so
rapidly. Moreover, and fourthly, the experience of the
past is not known to the mass of voters, or, if known,
is not adequately analysed and classified by them.
But even though these things were not so, and ex-
periment presented no complexities, the fact remains
that learned and unlearned alike will be ruled by
interest or passion, except they have a definite moral
criterion to guide them in their choice of the truly
"useful." To this passion a government must bow,
however enlightened its individual members, and,
again, however despotic it may be. Thus it is alleged
that the Russian oligarchy cultivated the massacres of
the Jews to please the people, and for that end only.'
The mass of people do not cast their votes in accord-

■ It is only a short lime ago that an English public body refused to let
allotments unless the prospective lessees gave ao undertaking that they
would not work in them on Sunday. This was done, apparently, not
even undei the mask of "nlility," but as a popular rnove. This is
doubtless a small matter in itself, but it is one of the many indications of
the enormous political, religious and an ti- religious, power which muni-
cipalities will exercise over individuals if Socialistic ideals are realised.

Since writing these words, a municipal body in the North of England
has utilised the powers it possesses over the (own and its resources to
prevent the publication in a lociil paper of certain matter to which the
majority of the body object, albeit the publication of such matter ii
perfectly legal.

86 THE FOUNDATIONS OF LIBERTY ■

ance with views based on a mature study of history.
The one restraint upon them, and it is the only
restraint there can ever be, is the developed belief in
the Rights of the Person — a belief which, though
ominously wavering at points, still for the main part
prevails.

THE CLAIM TO LIBERTY CAN ONLY BE
MAINTAINED ON A PRIOR/ MORAL
GROUNDS AND AS A NATURAL RIGHT

No argument based on Utility can maintain or
promote liberty except by way of accident, and in a
partial manner as a temporary expedient. There are
two types of utilities set before us. First, we may
consider something which is imagined to be for the
Good of the Greatest Number, commonly called the
Good of the Whole ; or, secondly, we may consider
what the majority esteem to be for the Good of the
Individual, and which they prescribe for that Good.
Thus, e.g., if we employ the forces of the State to forbid
freedom of speech to those who differ from us, we do
so because we persuade ourselves that such a course is
for the Good of the Whole. If, however, we use these
same forces for the purpose of imposing on the individual
some special religious creed or observance, we generally
do so because we consider this course to conduce or be
useful to the highest Good of the Individual. Both
methods of trying to secure the Good of the Whole are
wrong ; both involve the total or partial annihilation of
the volition and initiative essential to Personality ; and
both methods pave the way for every possible kind of

THE PEBSOS St

tyranny. Thu-i two such Socialists as Plato and Store
both insisted on the institution of slavery as being for
the Good of the Whole. The intellects of these two
men were not inferior to those of the Socialistic leaders
of the present day, who, however, are uniformly opposed
to the institution. The Socialists of ro-day declare
that they are democratic, and that democracy and
slavery are incompatible. But democracy is not
essential to Socialism, nor is Socialism logically and
necessarily more incompatible with the complete en-
slavement of a few than it is with the partial tyranny
it is becoming eager to exercise ewer minoritiea, or wttli
the total enslavement of all, which is its ultimate aim.'
Dsmocracy and government by majoritiea afTbrd no
protettion to indtvidaal liberty whatever — if we sup-
pose a Nation whose children have been brought up to
despise kigbt and Freedom. Indeed, Socialists seem
to be less <lisposed to abide by the ruling of the
majority — which h supposed to be our safety — than
are olher parties in the State. Thus, an English
S«;)ali9t of prominence in his party recently declared
that If be could not obtain what he wanted by constitu-
tional methods he would instigate his followers to
employ armed force. This declaration is all the more
significant, seeing that It was made by one who is
rcp'j'rtGd on n previous occasion to have described all
war as " hellish." But civil war in the interests of one's
paiiy is one thin^ ; war against the Nation's enemies
in the interest of all parties alike — even of one's political
opponents — is quite another. The fact is that the
Socialist, like the A narcliist, having lost his faith in the
Individual Person, Ims, in so far as he is a Socialist, also
' Ucc Appendix (J.

88 THE FOUNDATIONS OF LIBERTY

lost his belief in the Majority of Persons; and, if
opportunity served, would attempt to terrorise that
majority into doing his will.^

As soon as hberty comes to be regarded as a mere
utility or temporary expedient, so soon will it be
endangered and begin in this or that direction to be
regarded as an inutility. It is true that J. S, Mill, in
his " Essay on Liberty," elected to base the claim to
individual liberty on the ground of a demonstrable
utility, and no one pursuing that line of argument has
ever produced a better case. But it must be recognised
that the End which Mill's Utility was to subserve is
different from the End entertained by the Socialist.
That is to say, Mill's ideal Man and Ideal State are
diff^erent from the ideals of certain other utilitarians,
and so no argument of his as to the utility of liberty
could possibly weigh with utilitarians aiming at dia-
metrically opposite Ends. And herein must always
lie the weakness of Political or Ecclesiastical Utili-
tarianism. For it is impossible at the time of taking
action to know which of the various schools of
Utilitarians is right — such knowledge being necessarily
empirical and only obtainable after some considerable
period — even in those cases where it could be obtained
and agreed upon at all. And then, when we have
gained our knowledge, it is, as we have said, generally
of but little use as a guide for the future, because
history does not repeat itself, and people and circum-
stances will be both changed ; passion in its various
forms, and the imperious craving forcibly to impose
upon others political, religious, or ethical opinions;
and the polemical exigencies of the various political
' Aa at the last general election in Paris.

THE PERSON

parties at any particular moment, all enter in to vitiate
the calculations regarding what is supposed to be the
result of passionless empiricism, viz., the knowledge of
the truly useful. The difficulty of arriving in any prac-
tical manner at that knowledge is rendered the more
hopeless by the eagerness with which professional
politicians, both political and municipal, seize upon the
passions and injustice of the people for the promotion
of their own immediate political or municipal ends.

That Mill's intense faith in individual liberty was
really the result of the marshalling of endless evidence
of its usefulness, it is not easy to believe. It is surely
more credible that he started with a certain deep
conviction, and that this conviction he found abun-
dantly corroborated by the facts of human nature and
of social life.^

Thus, in the "Essay on Liberty," discussing the
suppression of private opinion by governments, he
surmises that this is not likely in future to take place,
extopt the government, by so doing, makes itself "the
organ of the general intolerance of the public." He
goes on to say — " but I deny the right of the people
to exercise such coercion, either by themselves or by
their government. The power itself is illegitimate."
(Page 10, People's Edition.) Again, speaking of a
social obligation of the individual, he says: "This
conduct consists, first, in not injuring the interests of
one another ; or, rather, certain interests which, either
by express legal provision or by tacit understanding,
ought to be considered as rights." {Ibid., page 44.)
Again, he speaks of certain things which, " whenever it
is obviously a man's duly to do, he may rightfully be
' See Api^eniUx D.

90 THE FOUNDATIONS OF LIBERTY

made responsible to society for not doin^." {Ibid.,
page 7. Italics throughout are my own.) It would
seem as if Mill's doctrine of liberty were not simply an
induction from observed social phenomena, but had
pre-existed in his mind as a moral «^/7or(' assumption.
For a Utilitarian as such cannot speak of a "right" or
a "duty" except in the general sense that each in-
dividual may expect his neighbour to conform to what
at any moment a certain section of the population (or
rather, in the present day, a certain conspiracy of
parties in Parliament) may elect to regard as useful,
and so make the object of legislation.

As soon as we allow ourselves to loose our hold on
the sanctity of individual liberty, oppression will rear
its head, and in some matter, if not in all, the people
will be a helpless prey. Oppression takes many
different forms, and the spirit that underlies Socialism
underlies all tyrannical laws and governments under
which the Person's claim to self-ownership has been
ignored. Ecclesiastical tyranny, as we have seen, is
one of the forms of oppression. We think we have got
rid of that form for ever, but this has not been done by
the conversion of the Church which mainly practised it,
and it may in some future generation arise again. But,
supposing we are now safe from religious tyranny, are
we secure from tyranny of an anti- religious kind. The
action of the French Government is hardly reassuring,
and the disposition of a large proportion of the Italian
people is distinctly menacing. Again, the statements
of Socialists in general on the subject of religion, in
their rancour and bitterness, leave us to suppose that
they would regard it as being for the Good of the
Great Number if religious obacr" ^ ''ere prohibited.

THE PERSON

Lastly, we may say that it is all the more important
that the claim to liberty should be based on exclusively
moral grounds, when a country is governed democratic-
ally. For while the majority are extremely anxious to
obtain such particular modes or expressions of the
doctrine of liberty which they themselves favour, and
while they claim these particular applications of the
doctrine on moral grounds, they are generally not only
indifferent to, but actually opposed to, the claim to
liberty in the abstract Thus, when others claim this
or that Right or liberty, and do so on precisely the
same grounds that the existing majority have claimed
their liberties, the majority are immediately imbued
with contrariness. The Rights claimed are not palat-
able to them, and while they will Justly and properly
appeal to the doctrine of the Rights of Man to secure
such things as they themselves desire, they will not
allow such appeal to be made by others, but confine
themselves to considerations regarding the "inutility"
or the " danger to the community " of the liberties
claimed by the minority, or by sections thereof

And now, to conclude this section of our argument,
how much nobler than the doctrine of the annihilation,
moral or physical, of the minority in the interests of the
Majority, is this conception of Walt Whitman's : —

Qclancholy fact that popular opinion does not yet gennsllr
fevoui a claim to liberty if that claim runs counter to the prejudices or
passions of ihe people. The opposition lo relieving Dissenters from the
' Test Act was a purely popular movement, as Mr Bryce has pointed out.
authority points out how the Act (acilitatine the naturalisation
■jOf Jews was, in obedience to popular clamour, repealed j and how the
moderate measnre of 1778, for the mideation of the penal laws against
I Catholics, gave rise in 17S0 to an outbreak of tevolulionary

92 THE FOUNDATIONS OF LIBERTY

"Affection shall solve the problems of Freedom yet ;
Those who love each other shall become invincible ;

If need be a. thousajid shall sternly immolate themselves for one."
And this of Tennyson, exhibiting the idea of what is
here called Personalism : —

" Self- revere nee, self-knowledge, self-control,
These three alone lead life to sovereign power,

Actbg the law we live by without fear ;
And because Right is right, to follow Right
Were wisdom — in the scorn of consequence,"

^^H To cite yet one more Poet — Wordsworth, in an hour

^^^ of National thanksgiving, exclaims : —

^^^1 "What offering, what transcendent monument,

^^^1 Shall our sincerity to Thee present ?

^^^1 Not work of hands, but trophies tliat may reach

^^^^^ To highest heaven — the labour of the soul,

^^^1 That builds, as thy unerring precepts teach,

^^^H Upon the iffwan/ victories ofeaci,

^^^B Her hope of lasting glory for the whole''

^P "WHAT A DEMOCRATIC STATE DOES IS

DONE BY THE CITIZENS "~A FALLACY

Recognising, then, that individual liberty cannot be
maintained against all comers on grounds of its
demonstrable utility, we now come to consider a second
menace, which does not immediately arise from utili-
tarian doctrine, but rather from the nature and structure
of the machinery through which a democratic State
works, viz., its Government. J. S. Mill's essay "On
Liberty" is not as well known by any means as it

THE PERSON

should be, seeing that it is one of the greatest works
on modern politics that has been given to the public
No apology, therefore, is needed for introducing from
that noble work a somewhat lengthy quotation, bearing
as that quotation does upon the issues under considera-
tion, and setting them forth in a manner patently
impossible to the present writer.

" A time, however, came in the progress of human afTairs, when
men ceased to think it a necessity of nature that their governors
should be an independent power, opposed in interest to them-
selves. It appeared to them much better that the various
magistrates of the State should be their tenants or delegates,
revocable at their pleasure. In that way alone, it seemed, could
they have complete security that the powers of government would
never be abused to their disadvantage. By degrees this new
demand for elective and temporary rulers became the prominent
object of the exertions of the popular party, whenever any such
party existed ; and superseded, to a considerable extent, the
previous efforts to limit the power of rulers. As the struggle
proceeded for making the ruling power emanate from the peri-
odical choice of the ruled, some persons began to think that too
much importance had been attached to the limitation of the power
itself. That (it might seem) was a resource against rulers
whose interests were habitually opposed to those of the people.
What was now wanted was that the rulers should be identified
with the people ; that their interest and will should be the interest
and will of the nation. The nation did not need to be protected
against its own will. There was no fear of it tyrannising over
itself. Let the rulers be effectually responsible to it, promptly
removable by it, and it could afford to trust them with power of
which it could itself dictate the use to be made. Their power was
but the nation's own power, coacentrated and in a form convenient
for

But in political and philosophical theories, as well as in persons,
success discloses faults and infirmities which failure might have
concealed from observation. The notion that the people have no

THE FOUNDATIONS OF LIBERTY

need to limit their pouier over themselves might sc
when popular government was a thing only dreamed about, or
read of as having existed at some distant period of the past.
Neither was that notion necessarily disturbed by such teniporary
aberrations as those of the French Revolution, the worst of
which were the work of an usurping few ; and which, in any
case, belot^ged, not to the permanent working of popular institu-
tions, but to a sudden and convulsive outbreak against monarchical
and aristocratic despotism. In time, however, a democratic
republic came to occupy a large portion of the earth's surface,
and made itself felt as one of the most powerful members of the
community of nations ; and elective and responsible government
became subject to the observations and criticisms which wait
upon a great existing fecL It was now perceived that such
phrases as ' self-government ' and ' the power of the people over
themselves,' do not express the true state of the case. The
'people' who exercise the power are not always the same people
with those over whom it is exercised ; and the ' self-government '
spoken of is not the government of each by himself, but of each
by all the rest. The will of the people, moreover, practically
means the will of the most numerous or the most active part of
the people ; the majority, or those who succeed in making them-
selves accepted as the majority ; the people consequently may
desire to oppress a part of their number ; and precautions
are as much needed against this as against any other abuse of
power. The limitation, therefore, of the power of government
over individuals loses none of its importance when the holders of
power are regularly accountable to the community, that is, to the
strongest party therein " {"' On Liberty," page 2).

cautiously and cunningly we devise a
democratic constitution in the interests of iibeity, if
the Spirit of liberty ceases to inspire and animate the
Nation, we shall find that there is nothing more in a
democratic form of government to exclude tyranny
than there is in any other form. The fact is that
" democracy " is not a " utility " over and above any
other form of rational government ; rather does it

■ THE PERSON 95

B stand for the recognition of a moral Right, one which
in former ages had not been seriously claimed, to wit,
the Right of a Person to have a voice in the govern-
ment of the country if he was compelled to contribute
to that government. Seeing, then, that democracy,
contrary to early speculation and hope, forms no
safeguard against tyranny, surely it behoves those who
care for the Commonwealth to imbue as far as possible
the minds of all — but especially of the young — with
the Spirit of liberty. That Spirit established, nothing
need give us fear. Exceptional legal measures will not
alarm us, they will be but transient expedients — steps
up to liberty.

In insisting on the dangers attending democratic
government, as we have, it may not be out of place to
point out two principal fallacies regarding it which are
commonly held. The first is that the popular opinion
is reflected by the Government majority.

Now there are two senses in which the word
" majority " is employed. Sometimes it means the
parliamentary majority, and sometimes the majority
of opinion among the electorate. Thus in a community
consisting of parties A., B., and C.,A. may entertain an
opinion of which B. does not approve, and B. may have
an opinion disliked by A. ; C, on the other hand, may
be opposed to both opinions. It is clear that among
the electorate — were issues judged separately — both

A. and B. would be in a minority. But experience
shows that A, will dishonestly conspire with B. to pro-
duce a fictitious parliamentary majority. Both A. and

B. then come forward in their Parliament, and claim

I that they have a mandate from the people.
Parliamentary majorities have a tendency to be mere

THE FOUNDATIONS OF LIBERTY

conspiracies. In the early days of party Government,
the domestic questions that arose were comparatively
few, and the issues on which a party were elected to
power were proportionately clear. Moreover, the
science and art of parliamentary intrigue and con-
spiracy were not then in the developed state in which
they are now. But while nowadays any parliamentary
majority may be the mere outcome of an intrigue
between minorities, Radical majorities are, for various
reasons, peculiarly liable to this failing. No one, e.g.,
can pretend that the Radical bourgeoisie are really at
one with their communist "allies." It is also impos-
sible to believe in the bona fides of the Irish Home
Rule party when it finds itself able to vote unanimously
on subjects which do not concern it (as a Home Rule
party) and which played no part in its election. It is
also absurd to suppose that by some coincidence, the
people opposed to the employment of Chinese labour
in South Africa, should also, for instance, be opposed
to the Education Bill or the use of alcohol, or the
establishment of the Church, or vaccination, or the
House of Lords.

It was very significant after the last election, that
newly elected members should one day claim — on this
count or that — a mandate from the people, and the
next day discuss dubiously on what grounds they had
been elected.

The fact is, of course, as we have said, that there are
two senses in which the term " majority " is used, viz.,
firstly, the majority of opinion in the country, and
secondly, the majority by way of conspiracy in Parlia-
ment, and of this ambiguity politicians are not slow to
avail themselves. The danger to liberty arising from

THE PERSON

this state of things has long been apparent. All kinds
of measures are passed, many of which would certainly
have been repudiated by the people, had they had the
opportunity of declaring their opinion by way of the
referendum. But even if the electoral majority of the
moment greets with acclaim certain curtailments of
public liberty as favourable to their party interests, and
so does not itself at the time consciously suffer from
such curtailments, yet that majority — when the party
exigencies which created it are overpast, and it has
broken up again into its several parts — will have
occasion to consider whether their successful Parlia-
mentary conspiracy had not cost more than it was
permanently worth. The Radicals — who are largely
bourgeoisie — are already considering whether it is
worth paying an unlimited price for the Wage Vote;
and some of the Wage party are considering the
advisability of transferring their allegiance to the
Unionists.

The second fallacy is that a minority, if it is "right,"
has only to bide its time to become a majority. Even
were this historically true, the fact remains that the
individuals composing the minority would — in a State
not inspired by love of Liberty and Right — suffer
wrong. Let us take the case of a minority desiring a
certain liberty. The opinion of that minority may be
an enduring thing ; and as the individuals composing
the minority are ever approaching severally the time
of death — while tliey are waiting to get their claim to
liberty recognised, the years of their servitude are
increasing, and the time in which they may enjoy their
liberty is ever diminishing. If we ultimately discover
they are and were " right," how shall we justify ourselves

98 THE FOUNDATIONS OF LIBFRTi^

and how compensate them? But the individuals, as
frequently happens, may have already passed away,
and the minority which may ultimately prevail will be
in reality a different minority. The departed, at any
rate, cannot be compensated.

The Jews in Russia, and those Armenians who were
the first to call attention to their loss of liberty, have
long since been enjoying their freedom — but among
the dead; their descendants are not even yet, however,
among the political majority, and when they become
so it will be in another epoch — perhaps in another
land.

It is not our province here to discuss the suppression
of minorities, except in so far as that is effected politi-
cally; but we may notice in passing that there is a
social tyranny, — the oppression of the social minority
by the majority. Religion, philosophy, poetry, litera-
ture, politics, the arts, and the sciences, all have their
martyrs — people who were abused, impeded, sup-
pressed, and who died in ignominy. Glorious for them
indeed, but their glory is the others' shame. For the
people we refer to have since turned out to have been
" right." It is not the mere indifferentism of the
majority which is to blame ; everybody has a right,
generally speaking, to be indifferent, and even wilfully
to abstain from hearing certain arguments and theories.
But active opposition, opposition which does not con-
fine itself to fair criticism, is surely immoral ; that is to
say if Personal Right has any meaning at all.

Let us now pass on to the consideration of yet
another popular misconception. The danger of major-
ities tyrannising over minorities is greatly enhanced by
the methods of Parliamentary representations, especi-

THE PERSON

' ally such methods as are adopted in this country. For
instance, let us take a case where the Parliamentary
majority is genuine, i.e. not made up by means of
conspiracy. Let us suppose a Parliament elected
practically on one issue. There would then be, let
us suppose, two main opinions among the Electorate,
But those two opinions will rarely be represented in
Parliament in the same proportions as they are held
in the country, and a large minority may find itself
practically unrepresented. The country, indeed, might

' be practically equally divided in its opinion, and yet

I one of the parties might, owing to accident, or some
passing extraneous issue arising at the time of election,
practically fail of representation. That this state of
things has in some considerable degree already arisen
is a matter of history, but it must be remembered that
if half the electorate can, as a possibility, be largely
ignored, the position of lesser minorities is still more
precarious.

The moral of this is, that our existing methods of

I representation, and our Parliamentary methods in
general, postulate a certain moral attitude of mind
in the electorate, a desire for justice, liberty, and
right, so that minorities, even though small and im-
potent, will suffer no invasion of their rightful freedom.

" Is true freedom but to break . . ■ • i

Fetters for our own dear 5ake, ' *

And with leathern hearts forget
That we owe mankind a debt ?

No, true freedom is to share
All the chains our brothers wear ;
And with heart and hand to be
Earnest to make others free.

lOo THE FOUNDATIONS OP LIBERTY

They are slaves who dare not b
In the right with two or tkrte."

CHRISTIAN "SOCIALISM"

The term " Individualist," as we have observed, has
always been used to connote all those who are opposed
to Socialism, regardless of the difference in their various
beliefs and motives. The opinion which, pending the
invention of a better name, we have here styled Per-
sonalism, an opinion which regards the rights or liberty
of each and every man as the political object of each
and every citizen ; and which, while it differs from
Socialism, differs also (and about equally) from Indi-
vidualism, was never sufficiently formulated, recognised,
and allowed for. At the same time, it was not unper-
ceived that differences between Individualists existed ;
that some were blank materialists, with a doctrine of
" ckacun pour sot" " laisses /aire" and " the devil take
the hindermost," while others perceived that all men
are in great measure dependent on the attitude and
action of other men, and that Liberty is the greatest
boon that the State can realise for its citizens ; and
tiial,. therefore, it is the duty of every man to contend
tor the Right or Liberty of all others, cost what it may.
That this Liberty belonging to the Person, if it is to be
a reality and not a fiction, is no mere matter of laisses
/aire, the Personalist was and is aware. He knows that
if it is to be secured at all, the coercive powers of the
State must play their part ; he knows, further, that
existing conditions, deplorable as these in many ways

are, must be allowed for. The ignorance of our people,
and their individual inefficiency and incapacity, must
especially be considered. He is therefore prepared, as
a step towards freedom, to countenance even things
that appear at first sight to militate against it ; such as,
e^., free and compulsory education.

There are many people who, supposing that they
must be either Individualists or Socialists, have declared
for Socialism, and have proceeded to try and modify
the meaning of that term in order to suit their views.
The type of person we refer to is in reality a Personalist.
He is all for positive views and actions, and for the
abolition of laissez faire as a doctrine of universal
application. He perceives the necessity of good legis-
lation and plenty of it. So far, therefore, he imagines
himself to be in some sort of agreement with the
Socialists ; and, in the absence of a third political school,
he was induced to join himself to them and adopt their
appellation. That, in the existing absence of a third
recognised position, the Personalist element is being
withdrawn from Individualism, and is being handed
over to Socialism, there is abundant evidence. Thus
the late Bishop of Durham, a great Reformer and
believer in Personality, in a paper entitled " Socialism,"
thus contrasts Socialism with Individualism.^

" The lerm Socialism has been discredited by it
with many extravagant and revolutionary schemes, but it is a
term which needs to be claimed for nobler uses. It has no
necessary affinity with any forms of violence, or confiscalioo, or
class selfishness, or financial arrangement. I shall therefore
o employ it as describing a theory of life, and not only a

1S90, and republished by the Chriatian

io2 Tiffi FOl

ITY

theOTy of economics, in this sense Socialism is the opposite of .
Individualism, ajid it is by contrast with Individualism that the
true character of Socialism can best be discerned.

" Individualism and Socialism correspond with opposite views
of humanity. Individualism regards humanity as made up f^ •
disconnected or warring atoms ; Socialism regards it as an organic
whole, a vital unity formed by the combination of contributory
members mutually interdependent.

"It follows that Socialism differs from Individualism both in
method and in aim. The method of Socialism is co-operation,
and the method of Individualism is competition. The one regards
man as working with man for a common end, the other regards
man as working against man for private gain. The aim of
Socialism is the fullilment of service ; the aim of Individualism
is the attainment of some persona! advantage, riches, or place, or
fame. Socialism seeks such an organisation of life as shall secure
for everyone the most complete development of his powers ;
Individualism seeks primarily the satisfaction of the particular
wants of each one in the hope that the pursuit of private interest
will in the end secure public welfare.

" If men were perfect, with desires and powers harmoniously- '
balanced, both lines of action would lead to the same end."

But true Socialism consists in the mergence of the
individual in the Society, and complete or perfect
Socialism exists when the individual is thus completely
and perfectly mei^ed — ;>. when he has lost all indi-
vidual significance. The main reason for the desire to
claim the word Socialism " for nobler uses " consists ia
the fact that many of those who have adopted the
appellation of Socialist do not wish to prosecute their
views to their logical conclusion — i.e. to the extremes
to which the genuine or logical Socialists have pro-
ceeded. They therefore wish, in capturing the term
Socialism, to try and make it mean something else than
the logical Socialist means by it, in order that, while.,
calling themselves Socialists, they may feel justified ia'

THE PERSON

still retaining these their just and proper scruples. In
order to prevent excess of confusion, they have
invented the expression "Christian Socialism," which
is Socialism with reservations and saving clauses. The
term Socialist thus comes merely to mean a public
spirited person willing to support such political courses
as appeal to him individually as desirable. In this
vague and practically undefined use of the word, one
might even say that the Individualist who "seeks
primarily the satisfaction of the wants of each one in
the hope that the pursuit of private interests will in
the end secure public welfare," is himself a Socialist.
How much safer and wiser would it be for Christian
Reformers to avoid all this dangerous ambiguity, and
set forth in quest of some new appellation which shall
be confused neither with Individualism or Socialism.
Some term which shall not be employed to indicate
some particular party or course of legislation, but which
shall point rather to a particular philosophy, or rather
religious belief, underlying the actions of all those
people, whatever their political views, who believe in
Personality and Liberty and Right.

CHRISTIAN SOCIALISM AND THE

STATE

The adjective connected with the terms Socialist
and Socialism is the word " Socialistic," and not the
adjective " Social." A person may be " social " in his
domestic life, in his amusements, in his religion, or in
his politics, and yet not be "socialistic" at any point.
K It is to be noticed that when ordinary social reformers

THE FOUNDATIONS OF LIBERTY

describe themselves as Socialists and their politics as
Socialism, there is sometimes an arriire pensie in the
matter, to wit — a certain desire to have their political
measures pulled through by the Socialists, and also a
desire to float in on what they regard as the rising
tide ; so that in the day of destruction and inundation
the property and status of, e.g., the Church, or of this or
that sect, or of certain colleges, or of whatever it may
be, may be preserved. However worthy may be the
aim of such persons, it is open to question whether
their attitude is either judicious or wholly moral.
However, though they tend to increase they are still
few in number; and the fact remains that, as already
stated, many people who call themselves Socialists do
so simply because they have no better terra ; disliking,
as they very properly do, the negative term Indi-
vidualist. The distinction between the qualifying
terms " social " on the one hand, and " socialistic " or
"socialist" on the other, has been admirably main-
tained by the Christian Social Union, which, when
selecting a title for itself, definitely repudiated the term
" socialistic " or " socialist" This is a Society whose
members undertake to concern themselves in social
welibeing, subject to the direction and restriction of
the Christian Religion as that is set forth in the
doctrines of the Anglican Church. The members may
be of any shade of Anglican opinion, and may belong
to any political party or to none at all. They may act
in their individual capacity, performing useful public
or private functions, including the study of social
questions ; and when on any particular matter there is
sufficient agreement among them, the Society may
take corporate action, or some Branch may do so. So

los

that the word " social " has here a very wide signifi-
cance. Thus, e,g., a person conducting a Sunday
school, or instructing the poor how to live more com-
fortably at less expense, are promoting social welfare
and social reform no less than those who focus their
attention on legislation and politics. But there Is,
nevertheless, a marked tendency among Christian
Reformers in general, and in this Society (which we
have taken as typical) in particular, to overestimate
the political side of social welfare and reform, and to
regard the State and the Law as instruments which
should be employed for the direct and immediate
enforcement — not indeed of Christian dogma — but of
ethics in general and Christian ethics in particular.
So great are the mechanical forces wielded by the
State, and so great is the belief of persons who have
been influenced by materialism in those forces, that
social reform is coming to mean exclusively political or
legislative reform. It seems so much easier and swifter
to impose upon the people by coercive law that which
— to have any Christian or ethical value at all — must
in reality be spontaneous and the result of individual
moral growth, than patiently to abide the slow con-
summation of that growth.

That Christianity should claim and utilise all true
human forces and energies, including therefore the
Law, in the interests of its own furtherance is surely
indisputable But everything must be used in its own
proper manner, and this manner is prescribed by the
nature of the force and the nature of Man. The first
duty of the Reformer, therefore, is to ascertain the
nature of the particular contribution which any par-
ticular force or energy is capable of yielding towards

Io6 THE FOUNDATIONS OF UBERTY

the furtherance of the spiritual growth of Men. As
has been already pointed out, the State, owing to the
nature of its methods — (to wit, universal, uniform, and
coercive laws, originating often, as is inevitable, in
political exigency and party intrigue) — is extremely
limited in its direct contribution to the ethical and
religious elevation of the people. Nor is the State
singular in being thus limited. All worthy energies
and institutions contribute to the advancement of the
Kingdom of Heaven, but they do so along certain definite
lines. The State, e.g., provides for the freedom and
security of the Person, and so far, therefore, of Person-
ality. It provides, that is, the soil in which virtue and
religion may flourish provided other forces are duly
energising. We may call that soil Political or Civic or
Legal Justice. Perhaps the most conspicuous instance
of Christian Socialists desiring to misuse the powers of
the State in what they suppose to be the interest of
Christianity, is to be found in an effort now being
made by them to introduce a state of things which they
describe as Christian Communism, and which it is
alleged is analogous to a Communism which prevailed
under peculiar circumstances for a brief period in the
Early Church, it is claimed that Communism stands
for a Christian ideal, and that therefore the State
should compel all citizens to be Communists, whether
they gain or lose by it, and whether they are Christian,
or indiffierent, or even intensely anti-Christian, as are a
few of the opponents of Communists, and significantly
enough most of their supporters.

If this attack on Liberty and Justice is not an abuse
of the powers of the State, then surely there can be no
such abuse at all. The State alone of human institu-

THE PERSON 107

tions is to be regarded as infallible — the God of the
political Socialist. It is not intended at this point to
enter upon the general question of private property,
nor to regard it in any particular state or form, but
only to consider it as it is attacked in the abstract by
' specifically Christian Socialist arguments.

CHRISTIAN "SOCIALISTS" AND POLITICAL
COMMUNISM

If we accept the Jewish law against theft — a law
common to most other comparatively advanced nations
— as a moral law, then the morality of private owner-
ship in the abstract is established.

Now, it may be urged by Socialists that this law was
not a -moral law, any more than our law that under
certain conditions the citizen must drive to the left
side; that both stand for public conveniences and
nothing more ; that the law against theft was merely
an expression of the fact that private property was
calculated to be for the Good of the Whole for the
time being, and was maintained on these speculative
grounds only ; that this particular law against theft
was selected at haphazard as typical of law and order
in general, and that its real meaning is that citizens are
to obey the laws and byelaws of their State whatever
those laws may be.

The obvious reply to this kind of argument is that if

it is applied to one commandment it must be applied

H equally to the rest of the decalogue. We should then

^1 have a very pure Socialism indeed, but it would hardly

be Christian Socialism, however that expression be
interpreted.

Another slightly different way of stating this quasi-
communist argument is to the effect, that the law here
under consideration was intended to prevent individuals
from stealing private property, but that it does not pre-
clude the State from taking it. In other words, the
individual's right to private property (as indeed, there-
fore, any other right) has its origin in the will of the
State. That is to say the State, or ruling section of
the people, can grant or create a Right, or abolish a
Right. That, as we have seen, is not the case. A
Right is a moral claim made by Persons in virtue of
their Personality, and cannot be made or destroyed by
the State ; it can only be recognised and enforced, or
ignored and suppressed. But if we regard the Freedom
of the Person to get and to keep property, and to make
contracts, as an essential part of that Liberty inherent
in the idea of Personality, no such ability on the part
of the State can be allowed. That the State has the
moral power to take private property for the purposes
of necessary taxation is of course indisputable ; but it
has not the power to inaugurate taxation merely for
the purpose of confiscation. Nor has it the moral
power to so contrive its laws or so adjust its taxation
that directly or indirectly the Right or Freedom to get
property is partially or wholly stultified. The Eighth
Commandment, in short (at any rate from a Christian
w), stands for an a priori moral Right or
erent in the Person.
■ not become a Right simply because it
the State. There is thus a certain
ople, well "voiced" by demagogues,

THE PERSON 109

who assert that assistance should not be given them in
the form of charity, but that they should " claim " all
that they desire as a " Right," and obtain it through
the rates. But it does not follow because money has
been obtained by legal and coercive means that there-
fore the recipients have any more moral Right to such
money than they had before. In Political or Legal
Communism, as opposed to Christian Communism,
those who will lose by a Communistic regime (as, e.g.,
people with means or ability) are to be coerced by
those who will gain. All kinds of base motives will be
(and are being) appealed to for Communistic ends —
as envy, avarice, hedonism, idleness ; while promises
of the abolition of the Family, the Nation, and Religion
are telling effectively. It is quite clear that Christian
Communism has but little in common with Political or
Secular Communism. Under the former system all
were free ; under the latter one half of the people claim
as a " Right " not only to possess the existing goods of
the other half, but to prevent them enjoying the produce
of their own abilities in the future.

Christian Communism unquestionably presupposes
the Right of the individual to get and to keep.

It is significant in this connection to observe that
when St Peter, by the word of his mouth, caused the
death of Ananias and his wife, it was not because these
persons had withheld part of their property from the
common fund, " Whiles it remained, was it not thine
own ? " was the Apostle's protest.

This primitive little community of the early Chris-
tians was untouched by materialism. The spirit was
everything; the money per se nothing. The swift,
brief tragedy of Ananias had its origin and consumma-

tion — not in the hedonism, greed, or envy of the other
members of the Community ; nor yet in speculations as
to the Good of the Whole or of the Greatest Number ;
but in his own vanity and hypocrisy.

It is curious to note how uniformly the abstract right
of the individual to possess private property is recog-
nised in the New Testament. Whenever there is any
question relative to the distribution of wealth, the
appeal is invariably made to those who possess the
wealth, and not to those to whom it is to be given ;
and it is there stated that those who dispensed their
wealth for the benefit of the less wealthy were blessed
in a sense in which the recipients were not. There is
in the New Testament no suggestion that a person
may not possess private property if he wishes to do so.
The counsel to the rich young man to sell all that he
had and to give to the poor — while it points to a
danger often dwelt on in the New Testament — is not
to be regarded as a Law binding upon all ; but is, as it
were, a prescription to meet the special moral condi-
tion of the young man; and still less is this counsel
to be regarded as an incentive to the poorer to
capture the possessions of the richer on the ground
that the latter, though entitled to them, would be
morally better without them. The duty to " give " is,
however, much insisted upon ; and, indeed, St Paul
urges his followers to acquire private property, not
merely in order that they might be individually inde-
pendent, as he himself always strove to be, but that
they might be able to perform the duty and enjoy the
privilege of " giving."

Now, unless the right to possess private property is
compatible with Christianity, "giving" could not be

THE PERSON in

Kregfarded as a virtuous work or work of " charity," any
Itnore than we could describe as charitable a thief, who
I practised giving away the goods that he had stolen,
' It may, indeed, be contended by some that even Slavery
itself is not condemned in the New Testament, but
that in the Divine Wisdom the abolition of that institu-
tion was left to a time when the extended application
of Christian principles and the growth of Christian
casuistry should render its immorality evident; and
that this same argument applies to the possession of
private property. In answer to this, it must first be
noticed that Christian opinion did not, as a matter of
history, oppose slavery because it stood for a mode of
private property, but because it stood for an immoral
mode ; implying therefore the existence of a private
ownership which is moral. Secondly, the grounds on
which Christian opinion proclaimed slavery as immoral
are precisely the grounds on which the abstract right
to private property is based; viz., the sanctity of the
individual Person, and the moral claim which Person-
ality makes to perfect Liberty — a liberty which of course
involves the freedom to make, to keep and to contract,
without which freedom there is no civic Liberty.

The appeal, therefore, is always to those who have
more, that they should " give," and never to those who
have less that they should " take " ; as would have been
the case had the possession of private property been
itself wrongful — and herein lies a great gulf between
true Christian and Political Communism.^

' That ihe Slale may, in the interests of Liberty and so of property
itself, prohibit certain forms of private property or certain tnelhuds of
oblainiiig it, is not to be questioned ; but that is an entirely dilTerent
matter — such itction having about it nothing Caoimmiistic or confiscatory.

112 THE FOUNDATIONS OF LIBERTY

In conclusion it may be said that the difference
between Political and Christian Communism is primarily
one of motive. The original Christian Community
was a small body and probably largely homogeneous,
i.e. there were presumably no very great differences in
wealth, and there were no differences in religious and
ethical belief. They "were of one heart and of one
soul." And so when we read that none of the Com-
munity said "that ought of the things which he
possessed was his own," we are at liberty to believe
that none of them adopted this attitude with any
ulterior motive, such as a desire to benefit themselves,
or their class, at the expense of the property, ability,
or liberty of others ; but that they had within them the
desire to give rather than to receive.

When Christian Socialists speak of Political Com-
munism, they confine themselves to the external form,
and ignore the spirit or motive of the thing. They
are then able to pretend that Christianity has so
leavened the masses, that in some sense or another we
are rapidly attaining a state of things which one might
call the Community of Saints; and that all that is
required is a little more legislation, a little more coercive
force — and behold the miracle is complete. But
Christian Communism is more than a question of form.
Were this otherwise, brigands and pirates — many of
whom used to lead a communistic life — would so far as
they individually called nothing their own, not only be
Christians, but Christians of an advanced type, i.e. as
regards their ethics. But as people may in their indi-
vidual capacity violate the rights of others, so they may
combine tt^ether in an organisation, and carry out their
'orojects in a disciplined, orderly and consistent manner,

THE PERSON

as do certain types of brigands, and also such bodies
as the criminal secret societies of Italy and elsewhere —
though indeed these latter are not fully communistic.
To borrow a phrase from Wordsworth, we may say of
all the communism, organisation and order of these ill-
doers, that "discipline was passion's dire excess." But
further, those who would violate the rights of others,
whether in the interests of Socialism, Communism, or
whatever else, may enlarge the field of their operations,
and by becoming a political majority, or getting them-
selves accepted as such, may prostitute the law itself
for the furtherance of their aims, and then claim that
they have gained their ends in an orderly and law
abiding manner. . But they have really committed two
offences instead of one ; and while those who formerly
lost their possessions or liberty at the hands of robbers
had the Law of the Land on their side, now these will
find that those who would take their possessions and
exploit their ability have captured the Law for them-
selves ; and that while the confiscators make great
protestations of their adoration of the State and respect
for the Law, yet it is for a Law of an ex parte kind, to
which alone they are prepared to so subordinate them-
selves — " A discipline the rule whereof is passion," as
. another writer has it.'

' Here is a type of uncliristian Communism — " My son, if sinners entice
thee, consent thou not. If they say, Cotne with us ... we shall find all
precious substance, we shall fill out houses with spoil ; cast in thy lot
among us ; let us all have one purse ; my son, wa,lk not thou in the way
with them."— Proverbs i., ii.

114 THE FOUNDATIONS OF LIBERTY

"SACRIFICE" OF RIGHT AND COERCIVE
LAW

The difference between Christian Communism and
Political Communism is not only one of motive; it is
also one of method. There can be no compulsion,
physical or moral, in the methods of the former — no
persecution, no social ostracism. The Christian must
recognise that a Person's Rights are, as regards his
neighbours' demands, his own to keep or to sacrifice,
and that if he does not sacrifice them he is responsible
for not doing so to God alone, in Whom all Right has
its origin. Such an expression as "our wealth is not
our own, it is only a loan, a trust " — a typical Christian
Socialist formula — is one to be used by the owner of
the wealth, and not by those who desire to obtain it
These latter cannot morally resort to coercive law for
the distribution of the wealth on the ground that the
owner might be expected by the Deity to surrender it
for His purposes, and that to sacrifice one's Right is a
duty. For it is not the function of coercive law to
protect the Deity, and to see that every individual
serves Him as the governing faction suppose at any
time that He should be served, nor even as the Chris-
tian Religion prescribes that service. Secondly, no one
can be compelled to "sacrifice" a Right. There are
those who admit the existence of Right, but urge that
it is a duty to sacrifice that Right ; and that if this is a
duly attaching to all individuals, the law should see to
it that this surrender is duly effected. Apart from the
immorality of compelling people on moral grounds to
surrender what on moral grounds it is admitted they

THE PERSON

' have a Right to keep, there is the objection that there
would not be any " sacrifice," for " sacrifice " expresses
and involves an internal state, and not merely an
external act, and could not therefore be the product of
coercive law. There can, then, be no such thing as
compulsory Christian Socialism. The majority cannot
on Christian grounds use the physical force of the
State to compel the individuals composing the minority
to surrender the results of their superior abilities, or
those of their forbears, in the interests of the majority.
Those who describe themselves as in some sense
Christian Socialists frequently use ambiguous language
in this respect, and the reader is left doubtful as to the
part which the writer expects or desires the forces of
the State to take in his social and moral reforms.
Thus, in the pamphlet entitled " Socialism," alluded to
above, there are one or two passages which will be
perplexing to not a few readers. Speaking of the
Christian Socialist, the author says: "He will claim
that all should confess in action that every power, every
endowment, every possession is not of private use, but
a trust to be administered in the name of the Father
for their fellow men." We read again ; " It remains to
show how the richest variety of individual differences
can be made to fulfil the noblest ideal of the State,
when fellow labourers seek in the whole the revelation
of the true meaning of their separate offerings" {Note —
the italics are ray own.) Again we have : " Here, then,
lies the duty of the Christian teacher. The thoughts
of a true Socialism — the thoughts that men are one man
in Christ, sons of God and brethren, suffering and
rejoicing together, that each touches all and all touch
each with an inevitable influence, that as we live by

ii6 THE FOUNDATIONS OF LIBERTY

others we can find no rest till we live for others, are
fundamental thoughts of the Law and the Prophets, of
the Gospels and the Epistles, which he is empowered
and bound to make effective under the conditions of
modern life." That these passages convey an ideal
which in the abstract is truthful and beautiful there is
no question, and they are produced here merely for the
purpose of showing that even the greatest writers on
this subject leave many of their readers in doubt as
to what part is to be played by coercive force, and
in ignorance of the author's views as to the proper
function of coercive law.

Even supposing the whole Nation were Christian,
which is far from being the case — the great mass of the
people having apparently no particular creed, while
many of them are positively hostile to religion in
general and Christianity in particular — the question of
the morality of making use of the Law for the purpose
of securing the mergence of the individual in the
Society would even so undoubtedly arise. Still less is
it morally possible to resort to the Deus ex niachina
under the moral and religious conditions which at
present prevail.

Our author continues ; " I ask then . . . whether we
have pondered over the moral significance of the poor,
and whether we have reflected on the wider application
of that principle which it is the glory of medicine to
have guarded, that every discovery affecting man's
well-being is the property of the race and not of the
finder?" I do not know any medical men who put
such a communistic construction on the medical tradi-
tion here referred to. It is to be observed first and
foremost that while medical men undoubtedly surrender

THE PERSON

their rights in the matter of inventions, yet, nevertheless,
they are not compelled to do so by direct legal enact-
ment, nor are they compelled indirectly — by the State
rendering private enterprise and private property im-
possible. Their action in this matter is, on the contrary,
the result of their own private opinion and free-will —
an opinion which they may change at any time or in
any particular case, and which they are not bound to
hold ; and, as a matter of fact, do not hold, with regard
to rights in general or other medical rights in particular.
The second point to be noticed is that in matters of
life and death it is reasonable that a different course
should be pursued to that pursued under normal con-
ditions, and in view of the fact that the law is made for
Man and not Man for the law, it might under extreme
circumstances be reasonable and just that the Law
or other physical force should be employed to the
diminution of individual rights in a manner which
would be immoral under conditions which were
normal — just as an individual in grievous plight may
legitimately break the Law, as did King David of
Israel when he stole the " shew-bread," Thus ship-
wrecked persons reduced to great straits waive ques-
tions of individual rights, especially of rights to such
private property as is actually in possession at the
time. But as King David did not attack by his action
the general principle of Law or the special Law
relating to "shew-bread," so shipwrecked people do not
deny individual rights when, if the circumstances
render the course inevitable, a communistic law be
imposed upon the community, even though they
provide such law with a physical sanction.

But, as regards the whole question of inventions,

Ii8 THE FOUNDATIONS OF LIBERTY

business ability, and so on, it is highly undesirable
that under nonnal conditions the community should
be parasitic on a few of its members. There is always
a strong tendency that way in any case ; but it is not
one to be encouraged if we value our own characters
and those of our fellow-citizens. Rather should the
Christian citizen see to it, that whoever confers an
exceptional benefit on the community, as, e.g., an in-
ventor, shall receive — not in compliments, for they are
cheap, but in gold which costs something- — ^the full
value of the benefit he has conferred, as that is deter-
mined in an open, and, as far as may be, honest
market

It is asserted by Christian Socialists that private
gain is a bad motive. It is certainly not less bad to
obtain or desire to obtain advantages without paying
for them according to their worth. Ruskin, in his
" Munera Pulveris" (p. i86), mentions a district on the
Continent which needed certain public works. These
works were duly executed by a Company. Ruskin
observes that so far all was well, and that the Com-
pany could not have done better than provide these
necessary works. But there is a fly in the ointment.
The Company permitted itself, as per agreement, to
take a reward for their risk and labour in the form
of a profit Here was the offence. But obviously the
error did not lie with the Company, a commercial
affair, but with the Government (local or central),
which, in view of the poverty of the district, should
have provided these necessary public works out of the
general taxes.

Apart from the difficulty of conducting commercial
companies in general on the lines suggested by Ruskin,

THE PERSON

119

one cannot imagine any self-respecting citizen, with any
pride in his district or city, or possessed of any honesty
at all, desiring or permitting a commercial Company
— in no way beholden to the city — to effect ordinary
public works gratuitously, that is to say, of course, as
a normal thing, and as part of the municipality's
ordinary business methods. But the fact is, that
Christian Socialists are so enamoured with the beauty
of the sacrifice of rights, that they are apt to overlook
the beauty of performing duties, even the duty of re-
munerating those to whom they are specially beholden
for great profits and advantages.

The fact is, that when a nation's virtues begin to
decay, the decadence or absence of these virtues is
accounted for by the statement that these were not
really virtues at all, that modern virtues have been
substituted for them, and that we have the " higher
morality," an ethic higher than that to which the
noblest in the world have so far attained. We are
assured, e.g., that the love of the Fatherland is a narrow
and egotistical sentiment, and that modern humani-
tarianism is now such an uncontrollable force that it
cannot even begin at home. War, again, is organised
murder; and sufferers from nervous degeneration, and
sufferers from selfishness and materialism, describe the
courageous men who can face it as "hired assassins."
With the decay of the self-discipline and religious
belief necessary to the existence of the Family, we
find that the Family also is unworthy of us, being
also "narrow," and, indeed, selfish; while with the
decline of the desire to produce children, and to pay
for them, the "higher" morality (which, unlike most
morality, certainly cannot be accused of being a

I20 THE FOUNDATIONS OF UBERTY"

■ narrow way "}, declares that the production of
children is "disgusting," and that if the manner
thereof cannot be altered, then " perish the race " ;
and from remote Russia we hear that the human
race will continue to drag on until the world is so
moral that no more children are produced. And so
it is with property. The desire to be independent,
self-respecting, and just and honest to others, is on
the wane. Parasitism and spoliation are in the air;
and the desire to get things without paying for them
(compelling others to perform this mean task) is now
promoted to be the modem virtue of Socialistic
Altruism ; while those who object to being thus mulcted,
are accused of setting up private gain as the motive of
their actions.

That a man should be permitted to work for his own
gain is unquestionably essential to his liberty, that is
to say it is a right of his, which therefore he cannot be
compelled to " sacrifice " without involving a contradic-
tion in terms, and setting morality against morality.
Christian Socialists tell us that the motive of private
gain " must " be got rid of, and a higher impulse sub-
stituted. Apart from the difficulty of substituting
" higher impulses " by means of Parliamentary intrigue
or the dead weight of an interested majority, there is
no evidence that private gain is as an impulse either
inefficient or immoral. Thus, what is there base in the
action of a young man who, starting in life, desires to
be independent of assistance from his relatives — and
still more from the State — and works with might and
main to that good end ? Or we may take the case of
a poor man desiring to marry. Clearly he must first
earn wealth for himself, and ha\^ng married he must

THE PERSON 121

continue to work for private gain, in order to bring up
his children, and establish them as well as he can in the
world. Or we may take the perfectly normal case of
those whose zeal to obtain wealth is intensified by the
desire to maintain parents or elderly relatives, or
brothers and sisters. Or again a person may desire
to amass riches in order to enable him to embark on
some worthy though more or less costly pursuit, which
in so far as it is successful may be of benefit to certain
others, perhaps even to the general public. And other
honourable motives for private gain could be adduced
in great number and variety. Indeed so general arc
noble motives that one might ask whether if a man
were deprived of family, relations, friends, public spirit
and all objects of charity, private gain would generally
speaking constitute in itself an effective motive. But
we are not here so much concerned with demonstrating
the reasonableness of the motives underlying the pur-
suit of private gain, as with emphasising the fact that
the right of an individual to make a profit, i.e. to share
in the public gain arising from his risk or labour,
cannot be eliminated without a gross violation of
Personal Liberty. If the private wealth of an in-
dividual — however great it may be — has been made
honestly and without violation of the equal Liberty of
others, it is not for those others to ask what his private
motives were or to criticise those motives ; not at any
rate with the object of utilising the forces of the State
for the purpose of capturing his present wealth, or of
preventing him from obtaining wealth in the future.

However willing Christian Socialists may be to
surrender their own political right to the obtaining of
private wealth and financial independence, they have

122 THE FOUNDATIONS OP LIBERTY

no right whatever to abolish or prejudice that liberty
on behalf of those who come after them — the legal
infants and the yet unborn. Where popular desire and
passion are concerned, as is so very apt to be the case
when there is a question of compulsory distribution of
wealth, it is far more easy to institute communistic
legislation, than it is afterwards to repeal that legisation.
Before leaving the subject of Christian Socialism, it
may be observed that a great prejudice against the
abstract right to private property is aroused by the
present attitude of social reformers on the one hand, and
the extraordinary follies of a small number of wealthy
people on the other. It is true there are a certain
number of persons — generally rich mercantile people
with a number of aristocratic parasites — whose whole
life is spent in ostentation ; and as regards the younger
and even the middle-aged, in a sort of boisterous
" showing off," and our more popular journals are largely
filled with elaborate accounts of their self-conscious
sillinesses and wanton extravagance, to the exclusion
of information regardir^ the upper classes in general.
Naturally there is a tendency on the part of the populace
to suppose that all owners of property are "snobbish"
and futile. Far be it from me to assert that many of
those possessed of property beyond the average do not
require criticism and exposure. But this fact has been
so universally and so acridly recognised, that there is
no necessity to dwell upon it here. But this criticism
is far too one-sided *, and so gives a false impression.

' It is Dol only one-^ded, but is carried loo fac. Recentlj even such
■ small matter as the amount of food a lady gives to her Up-dot; was the
mbjeci of a scaihiog diatribe in public. But we do not hear nowadsyi
tliM these reforming enthu^asts go lo the wage earrien in certain vast

THE PERSON 123

Social reformers, especially popular preachers, in their
criticisms should cover the whole field, and not limit

themselves to saying that which is popular. There
was a time when to criticise adversely the rich was to
criticise the powerful, and such criticism if open and
effective could only be effected at great personal risk
to the critic. All that is now changed, as many of the
critics realise. Among these critics are many ministers
of religion, some of whom seem to suppose that in
denouncing that now ever-changing section called the
upper classes, they arc playing the part of the saints,
heroes and martyrs of old. But at the same time,
these persons and others like them, must be sub-
consciously aware that there is no political course at the
present moment more safe, more popular, and more
" paying " than that which they have adopted. Such
of them as are in personal contact with gentlefolk, i.e.
such of them as alone are entitled to criticise, continue
to have the entree into the Society which they condemn,
and Society continues to throng their churches and
meeting halls.

The fact is that the political position of the poor is
not now what it was at the beginning of the Christian
era. The rich on their side, thanks to the power of
the common Religion, have felt themselves compelled
to abandon views that in the previous history of the
world they always victoriously maintained. They have
with a sub-conscious deliberation dethroned their own
districts of England and publiclj, effectively and frequcDtly reprove
them for putchasing big dogs for large soms, and for feeding them on
butcher's meat, while the childreo perforce go hungry. The lady aX any
rate does not deprive her children. These attacks on the wage earners
are indeed somelimes made, but generally not in the exclusive presence of
the wage earners concerned.

124 THE FOUNDATIONS OF LTBKRTY

tyranny, and even in matters still disputable they are
much less intransigeant. The poor have now, on the
other hand, individually the same l^al protection as
the rich, and individually the same political power.
The position is further reversed in that the burden of
taxation does not now fall directly and almost exclu-
sively upon the poor as formerly, but is paid in greatest
part by the wealthier few ; while, in the case of local
taxation, it is the poor who mainly reap the benefit.
Furthermore, among the modem poor exists a large
numt^er of wealthy and powerful corporations, which,
while not universally on the side of the poor, do in
their own interests, and as it were by accident, con-
stantly fight their battle. The danger is that the
Christian Sodatist, while he pleads the cause of "the
poor and him that hath no helper," may really mean
by the poor the Trades Unions, with their capital of
;^S,ooo,ooo, and their enormous income and wages and
excellent political organisation. That is to say. in
pleading the cause of the poor, he may possibly find
himself in reality pleading the cause of the Trades
Unions, who are quite strong enough to look after
themselves, and who dislike his interference and do not
want his assistance. And so it happens that many,
while affecting to be patrons of the poor, are really
parasites on the Trades Unions. It is the business of
the Trade Unionist, as such, to pursue the advantage
of Trade Unions ; it is the duty of the Christian
Reformer to consider Justice and Righteousness, as
these apply to the whole Nation at large, and every
class and individual composing the Nation. Such
action will frequently make him intensely unpopular ;
it may bring him into collision with potent forces, and

THE PERSON

may even draw down disaster upon him and his
organisation. But the Christian Reformer must not
consider mere popularity ; he is not as other men are ;
he knows that the battle is not to the strong ; and he
can afford — not being in pursuit of any personal ends —
to abide God's good time, reflecting, in times of adversity,
that it is almost impossible for an honest public man
consistently to do what is right, and yet to retain an
unbroken hold upon the good opinion of the majority
of his fellow citizens. He is of those who " dare to be
in the Right with two or three."

PRIVATE PROPERTY IN RELATION TO
INEQUALITY

It is much to be regretted that discussions regarding
the merits of Socialism and Communism generally
commence with disputations concerning private pro-
perty, whereas that is one of the last issues that should
be raised. Before that matter can be discussed profit-
ably it is necessary, first of all, that an agreement
should have been arrived at between the disputants
regarding the existence and meaning of Rights in
general ; otherwise the argument will be tossed back-
wards and forwards between morality and utility, and
no progress will be made. The discussion of private
property involves special difficulties. We do not here
so much refer to the passions now involved — as were
involved formerly in the discussion of the right to
freedom of conscience — nor yet to the great practical
_ difficulties which arise at every turn when it is attempted
B to apply any political doctrine to private property —

126 THE FOUNDATIONS OF LIBERTY

as to the fact that the expression Right to Property is
used in two distinct senses. Thus, for example, while
we say that we have a Right to freedom of speech, it is
also permissible to speak of freedom of speech as itself
a Right. But, on the other hand, while we say that we
have a Right to property^:>. an abstract moral Right
to individual ownership — the word " property" is at the
same time also used to denote some particular thing
owned, or to connote all those things in general which
are the subject of ownership. That is to say, one may
have a Right to a field, a house, or a horse, but none of
these things can be spoken of as being themselves
Rights. It is this difficulty of distinguishing clearly
between an abstract right of the individual Person to
the private ownership of things on the one hand, and
the concrete expressions of this Right as exhibited in
the things owned, and the manner of their acquisition
and ownership, on the other, that complicates the whole
subject of private property.

In this book, however, we are only concerned —
firstly, with the existence of the abstract moral Right
of the individual Person to the private ownership of
things; and, secondly, with the consideration of certain
of the conditions under which private ownership may
become public ownership — i.e. with the consideration of
taxation.

In treating of Christian Socialism we dealt with
some of the objections to private property, which are
specifically Christian Socialistic. There remain the
hostile arguments of certain schools of Utilitarians —
with which we are not here concerned (as we are dis-
cussing the existence of a moral Right arising out of
the fact of Personality, and essential therefore to the

THE PERSON

I moral development of the Person) — and the arguments
of certain schools of moralists with which we are very
much concerned. I neither attack nor defend existing
modes of Private Property nor existing methods of ob-
taining it, except so far as to declare my conviction that,
in view of modern social conditions and novel business
methods, there is, in the interests of true Liberty, need
for reform — including legislative reform — of some of
the methods by which, and channels through which,
private Property is acquired. But, whatever the reform
needed — and the extent of the reforms required can
be much exaggerated — the right of the Individual to
create private property for himself, or to obtain it in
return for work or goods as those are valued in an open
and untrammelled market, remains unimpaired.

The outcome of this Liberty is admittedly to produce
inequality of material possessions, sometimes called
simply Inequality. But the word Inequality standing
alone in this connection is very misleading, being too
general. There is, nowadays, at any rate, no moral
inferiority attributed to those who are not financially
independent, or financially powerful. The day has
long gone by — Christianity itself caused the change —
since either rich man or poor man, on being told of the
comparative difficulty which the richer classes have in
leading active Christian lives, would ask in despairing
astonishment, " Who then can be saved " ? There is
not even general intellectual inferiority ascribed to
them, because there are many types of intellect which,
though good, are not able to produce those things,
generally of a material nature, the value of which can
be accurately measured in money, and for which the
L public will pay. It is impossible, e.g., to estimate in

128 THE FOUNDATIONS OF LIBERTY ^

money the value of the work of converting a soul, of
leading a party, of creating a philosophy, or of com-
posing a symphony or a poem. The actual value of
the printing, paper, etc., is ascertainable, but that is all.
Therefore it is that those who make, e.g., ships, engines,
or houses, are liable to make lai^er incomes ; first,
because there is a very grave financial risk incurred in
the production of these things, which does not exist in
the other cases ; and secondly, because the purchaser
knows exactly the quality of the thing he is buying,
and the exact extent of its usefulness or value to
himself in money.

As the Right of getting property at all is an
expression of our Liberty, so the Right to obtain it in
greater or less quantities according to the material value
a free and open market sets upon our work, is also
essential to the true Liberty of the Person.

When men claim Liberty and add to this a demand
for Equality, they are denying in their second demand
what they have claimed in their first. They are aware
that men by nature differ very widely from each other,
and that if left free, these differences will find expression
in varying degrees of wealth, and in some kind or
another of social differentiation, and so it is attempted
to guard against this by qualifying Liberty with
Equality. There is a certain pusillanimity about this
attitude. Why can we not boldly follow after Liberty,
simply because we know it to be right ? For is not
Liberty political Justice ? Let us not try to determine
beforehand what the exact social and civic regime is to
be in the future as do the Utopists, and as did the
French when they prescribed Equality and camaraderie.
For history shows us we shall be disappointed.

THE PERSON

Political Nations are not made, but grow. But they
must be \eh free to grow; the growth must not be
cramped, and lopped, and thwarted in order to suit a
preconceived idea. It is impossible to see into the
future, or to know how many or how various are the
possibilities of National development. And as we
cannot see into the future, so neither can we under-
stand, even approximately, the complex forces in
human life and the paradoxes involved in the truth.
In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries the learned
explained most matters, and those they could not
explain they " explained away." The material universe
presented but few difficulties ; the mysteries of organic
structure were accounted for quite simply by "chance"
" microscopic " changes, and the negative process of
eliminating such organisms as had not the questionable
advantage of such "microscopic" changes. It was
common to preface lectures on physiology and psycho-
logy by the statement that he — the lecturer — could
reduce the will and intelligence of a Newton or a
Darwin to a residuum at the bottom of a wine glass.'

But we in our day have become much more " chary "
of explanations, especially of the superficial solutions
of the epoch in question. While the scientific and
philosophical explanations of the last two centuries
are being called in question, the political and social
formulae of those centuries are now at last being also
reviewed in a spirit of grave mistrust. It was supposed
but a generation or two ago by persons of advanced
views, that justice was a very simple matter, that it was
an external thing, and that it could be arranged by

' Note the smallnsss of the amount ; had it been a. barrelftil it would of

mrse have been not quite so wonderful.

no THE FOUNDATIONS OF LIBERTY

" rule of thumb." Give everybody equal clothing,
board and lodgment and behold I perfect justice — i.e.
equality as regards material wealth. All this seemed
very simple and obvious. But justice and external
equality do not march hand in hand,

If the public receive more economic value from one
man than they do from another they ought not only to
pay that man more, but where freedom prevails they
will find themselves compelled to do so. It must be
understood that the people of a country cannot morally
be called upon to pay value for labour — merely as
labour — but they can, not only be justly expected to
pay, but will find themselves (owing to competition)
compelled to pay, value for value ; and that is the
proper cause of difference in wealth — savings and
thrift apart.^

There are two principal causes why a people cannot
be compelled to pay value for labour ywi labour. First,
the labour may be futile, as in the common case of
persons spending laborious years in inventing things
which have already been invented ; or the labourer,
however laborious, may be highly inefficient ; or he
may labour at something which — whether good in
itself or no — is not esteemed by the public or any
sufficient section thereof. The second cause is, that
while manual labour, viewed as a whole, is of as much
importance as economic intelligence, yet no individual
manual labourer is of the same value to the public as a
' No notice is bere taken of famous soldiers a.nd sailors who have saved
the Nation, and who in the old days of British patriotism were somelimes
— though rarely— finely rewarded. Most of ihe survivors of the " Charge
of Balaclava " died in penury, notwithstanding promises. The reason is
that such service) cannot be measured in money. But we are here
dealing only with simple creditor and debtor accounts.

THE PEHSON 131

corresponding individual of economic intelligence. To
depart for a moment from purely economic intelligence,
we may say that intelligence in general, if it is to
continue to exist, must receive a higher wage than
manual labour. Thus if we were to teach 10,000 of
our labourers to play the organ, out of that number we
might find one good organist. But the whole 10,000
could "blow "the organ. The difference between the
organist and the blower is that the public get more
satisfaction out of the organist than they do out of any
individual blower — the blower leads up to the organist,
not the organist to the blower. Having received more,
they are willing to pay more, and indeed in a free
country (owing to the competition for exceptional
ability) they will be compelled to do so, or lose the
possession of first-rate organists altogether. It may
be objected that in a religious communism such as a
monastery, the blower and the organist receive the same
reward, and that this represents the ideal for secular
society. But the attempt to establish any real analogy
between a modern nation and a monastery is extra-
vagant and absurd. The points of essential difl!"erence
are numerous, we will mention but one. Those who
enter a monastery do so of their own free will as the
result of deliberate choice ; and morever, as far as the
law is concerned, theycan leave it when they choose.
This is not the case with the citizens of a State. But
can one really set up the communistic monastic life as
the ideal, at any rate under modern conditions ? Is not
there something base and wilful in this discarding of
individual responsibility and individual character and
all the expressions of character ? And if a deliberately
chosen and self-imposed religious monasticism Is in

132 THE FOUNDATIONS OF LIBERTY

some measure degrading, how much more so would be
an irreligious or at any rate non-religious monasticism
imposed on the individual by physical forces beyond
his control.

Reverting now to wealth-producing intelligence,
labour — intellectual or other — is a means to an end,
and that end is the production of value. But nothing
has any absolute material value. The producers com-
peting for custom, and purchasers competing for
produce, provide the only means of arriving at value.
It is therefore impossible for a third party, such as the
State, acting directly as a moral and doctrinaire body
to determine value. For to do so it would have to
establish a relation between morals and money; and
commodities and services would have to be estimated,
not according to their usefulness, but according to the
moral merit of the producer or performer.'

But both of these things are impossible. Neither
even can the State determine values by reference to
the amount of intelligence or originality involved ;
because nobody wants things because they are clever
or original, but because they are of value in themselves.
But, notwithstanding, the State has a moral task to
perform in relation to the fixing of prices, and that is,
to provide the legal conditions under which people will
be able to bargain together and contract in a state
of freedom which is genuine and not half imaginary ;
though from this ideal we are still very far.

Value, then, is determined not by these or those

' Thus if a man is able by his economic intelligence Iq produce ■
machine costing ;Cio, and I in the long run make ^30 therefrom, I
cannot morally (even apart from Ic^l compulsion) deny him the ^10 on
the giound that morally he is no better (ban peisons receiving a lesser
ertiin other kinds of labour. I must pa; my debts.

THE PERSON

abstract theorists, but by actual experiment in a free
market It is absurd, therefore, to speak of the State
as " rewarding " the citizens for their work, and to trace
inequalities of possession to immoral, or illogical, or
inefficient methods of "rewarding," employed by the
State. In the first place, there is no question of
rewards at all. It is a question of exchange of com-
modities. Thus a person produces a machine and
receives commodities in return, either directly, or in-
directly, in the form of money, according to the esti-
mated value of the machine. In the second place, the
State, as here defined, is not in reality concerned. In
this book the word State is employed (as already ex-
plained) to denote the Nation viewed as organised for
civic or governmental purposes. But however the word
be employed, whether it be to mean Nation or Society,
it remains that the people of the country are not cor-
porately concerned in fixing values or "rewarding"
producers. It therefore follows that the inequalities
that subsist between individuals are not due to any
foolish or arbitrary action on the part of the State,
but to the fact that that Institution is performing its
primary function of securing Liberty, i.e. Civic Justice
to the individual Person — ^a course of action which
must result in the full play of individual forces, and
consequent social and financial difi'erentiation of the
people.

That competition, or the testing of powers and
abilities in the open market, is largely the cause of
inequaUties of possessions is of course patent, and
much in consequence has been urged against it. But,

if an opponent of competition be questioned, it will be i

^ found that it is not competition to which he really I

THE FOUNDATIONS OF LIBERTY

objects, but to the inequalities of fortune that result
therefrom. This is, of course, a very different matter.
Thus there is no objection to a man competing for a
wife, but there is great hostility to his competing to
obtain a pleasing nUnage for her. It is permissible
also to compete for political power or popular adula-
tion. Indeed, as regards this latter point. Socialists
tell us that popular adulation ought to be the prime
object of competition, and sufficient reward to anyone
who, by his industry or ability, has benefited the public,
and that he ought to desire nothing so base as value
for value — though how long intelligent persons would
be likely to desire the glib compliments of a public,
which, with its tongue in its cheek, presents its applause
as a cheap substitute for payment of debts. Socialists
do not tell us. There are many other things in which
competition is permitted, and indeed regarded as
meritorious. So competition per se is not objected
to ; the objection is only to competition in a certain
field, and this owing to the inequalities of material
conditions that result.

Owing to recent innovations in commerce, mechani-
cal and other, there is no question but that competition
requires to be hedged about by fresh legislation— not in
order to destroy it, but in order to preserve it Thus
the Trust with its rebates, its systematic sellings at a
loss, and other crooked ways, is not a supreme result of
competition, but a deliberate attempt to eliminate it, a
distinct attack on freedom of trade. That it is a priori
impossible for a Nation which is united and sincere in
its purpose, to employ its legislature to the suppression
and prevention of such tyranny, it is difficult to believe.
One incipient trust has already been suppressed in this

THE PERSON

country, at any i2.t£ />ro tempore, by the mere force of a
public opinion, already half educated by observation of
Transatlantic phenomena, and completely educated (in
this respect) by a popular English journal — and this
without any legal interference whatever. If time is ,

taken by the forelock, these attacks on liberty, these
attempts to destroy competition, can be frustrated—
given knowledge, courage, and sincerity.

Let us then allow that competition requires in this
respect to be protected, and that in many respects it
requires to be controlled so that it be conducted at, as .

it were, a higher level; allowing all this, there remains I

the fact that there is a great deal of ignorance as to the I

character of really properly conducted competition, not ■

only among the manual labourers and their representa-
tives, but also among the upper and middle classes —
who (though the wage-earner leaders will not believe
it) are in large part sympathetic with the ambitions of
the manual labourers, and very often extravagantly so.

There are two "cries" which under our existing J

imperfect conditions prevail with success. I

The first cry is that what one man gets is taken from I

another or from others. It may be so on occasion, and I

under our existing system I am aware that it often is 1

so. But we are not considering the existing System —
that has moved too quick for our Law; it is only here I

contended that it is not necessarily so, and ought not
to be so at all. Let us leave all extraneous matters on i

one side, rates of wages and so forth, and let us suppose
the case of a man who produces, e^., a productive
instrument, which is of the highest use to the com- i

Imunity; and let us suppose that the members of the J

community, one and all, purchase this instrument from I

THE FOUNDATIONS OF LIBERTT

the producer- The members of the community will
not be so foolish as to pay such a price for the instru-
ment that they themselves get no profit. On the
contrary, they purchase it expressly because they
perceive that such a course will be remunerative.
That is to say, in short, the total profits arising from
the use of the instrument in question are divided
between the purchasers and the producer. Un-
doubtedly the result of it all is that, as regards the
profits of this particular instrument, the producer gets
very much more total profit than any other individual
member of the community. But assuming all the
purchasers to have profited equally, and suppose the
community to consist of a thousand purchasers, the
profit to the community will be a thousand times
greater than is the profit to any individual member ;
and we must judge of the producer's profit in relation,
not to the profit of some one purchaser, but in relation
to the profit to the total number of purchasers.

It may seem absurd to produce so simple an instance,
but this book is not intended for the learned ; and,
secondly, one may remark that it is extremely common,
even among cultivated people, to hear successful pro-
ducers of useful objects much blamed for their wealth,
on the ground that the community must have been
somehow mysteriously robbed. Whereas the fact is
that (viewing the matter in its essence) the wealth
obtained by the producer from the community is the
correlative of the economic worth of the producer to
the community; or, one might say, of the wealth
indirectly obtained by the Community from the
producer.

Of course, the whole question can be complicated

THE PERSON

flf

infinitum; the wage question alone is a grave
complication. But while one may object to the exist-
ing profits of the producer on the ground that his
labourers should receive higher remuneration, or on the
ground that many producers resort to crooked ways,
or on whatever other ground, the basal principle for
which we are here contending remains unassailed, viz.,
that the making of private wealth is not necessarily a
violation of the Rights or Liberty of others ; but that
the universal suppression of the ability to do so would
be a most grave trespass against Personal Liberty.

The second popular objection to competition is that
the weaker go to the wall.

Now, whether it be among the greatest merchant
princes or august boards of Directors on the one hand,
or whether it be among the humblest manual labourers
on the other — under a system of free and lively com-
petition—weakness will out. But the advantages are —
first, that the economic world knows who the weak or
inefficient man is; and secondly, that the inefficient
man becomes aware of his own inefficiency, and so has
a chance of improving himself Competition, properly
regulated and honestly conducted, is not a system
whereby a few gain all and the rest gain nothing.
Efficiency and inefficiency are relative terms. There
are prizes greater and less for all, and these prizes are
found all along the route, and not alone at some far-
off terminus. It is surely very desirable that these
economic prizes — wages, salaries, promotions (both on
grounds of justice and of policy) — be allowed to go,
as unimpeded they will, to those who are economically
worthy of them. Even now and here the actual
failures are comparatively few, though they un-

doubtedly exist. But surely it is better boldly to face
hard facts, and frankly and candidly recognise degrees
of merit from the economically successful men at the
top to the failures at the bottom. One may, of course,
as the Socialists desire, merge the failures in the
Whole, and distribute their weakness over the whole
of Society, taking from the comparatively efficient a
balance to make up the deficit of the comparatively
inefficient, so that all have equal remuneration, and so
that at last one half of the people is in large measure
maintaining the other half; — but such action is neither
honest nor politic. We are hiding our heads in the
sand, in order that we may not see the Truth — the
Truth that in a state of Freedom some will prosper
economically, and some will not ; and the second
Truth, that the World is based on Charity, and cannot
live without it. Wherever there is Life and Liberty,
there will be a striving and contesting and a matching
the one against the other — and the economic world is
no exception ; and where there is honest contest there
will be the more and the less successful. The economic-
ally victorious are themselves too often injured in their
success, " pierced through with many sorrows " ; these
are indeed hard to help; but the economically in-
adequate are easy to deliver, where there is humility
and good-will on the side of the helper and of the
helped. "Curse their Charity" — emblazoned on flags
in a procession! I am no cynic, and I know and
sympathise with what lay behind this ; but, never-
theless, it represented a wrong spirit. These people
were not averse to receiving assistance, but they wanted
to take it by force — through the law — so as to be able
to say proudly that they had a " right " to it, i.e. a

THE PERSON

legal right. Perhaps in some measure they had— the
Liberty of our social units is yet far from realised —
but under a system of even perfectly realised individual
freedom, and just because the freedom is indeed real,
there will be need of charity, private and personal for
preference, charity by way of impersonal Societies
where that fails. Charity binds man to man, force
separates them. But there must be Christianity, and,
aboye all, humility on both sides. We in our material-
istic proud days are trying to invent a system whereby
we can get rid of Charity. It can only be done by
getting rid of freedom ; that gone, a blow has been
strucli at the root of self-respect and mutual respect,
and at the desire to be, to do, and to dare, nay — at the
very foundations of religion itself. A state thus
situated will not endure long. What is wanted is —
side by side with legislative reforms— the reformation
of the hearts of men. This country is at present mori-
bund ; consideration of our pleasure on the one hand,
and sentimental considerations, i.e, regard for our own
" nerves " on the other, is nearly all that remains to us.
Let us overthrow our materialism and bourgeois —
Socialistic ideals— and let us aim, not at making cul-
tured or comfortable men, but at making Men — Men
who care for nothing until and unless their Nation
first, and their fellows next, are Free.

To close, then, this slight disquisition on Inequality,
Nature has given us a Law, that Unity is not to be
arrived at by a multiplication of identities. Indeed,
all mundane progress consists in progressive differen-
tiation, progress from the homogeneous to the hetero-
geneous. The beginning is a quantity of separate
L identical units, and the end is difference and unity —

I THE FOUNDATION'S OF LIBERTY

And in oar world we find diSereoces of
! and of ability. It is the few who lead — the
many who follow. The most violent and rerolutionary
mob is helpless till it has delegated to some few men
the wboJe of its powers. It can, to some extent, injore
and destroy, but it can do nothing else. And so it is
in Oic ecoDOQiic world. The mass of men, however
prosperous they may be, depend upon the few. Thus
it is common to hear people say, if^ are superior to
the Zulus because we have invented the telephone,
dectric trams, and the rest. But if a passenger in an
electric tram were to be questioned as to how it worked,
he would generally be found to be as ignorant as the
Zulu. And even so, out of the few who could give an
ade(]uate reply to the questions, there would be few
indeed — outside the circle of those engaged in the
trade — who could possibly manufacture one of these
machines, even if they were given the facilities. And
so it is in all things. Among, for instance, those who
themselves use such a common thing as an electric
bell, how many could explain its working?

Were we materialists, one and all, and regarded this
mundane life as the beginning, and also the end, i.e.
did we regard this world as the final End, and not as a
training-ground in which men are tested in the various
capacities in which they arc placed, the Socialistic
position would be, not indeed right (because under
such conditions there would be neither right nor
wrong), but it would be in some sort logical. " Let
us eat and drink, for to-morrow we die," Let us cast
aside justice, righteousness, self-respect, respect for
others, liberty, family relations, and patriotism (for,
materialistically speaking, these things are mere

THE PERSON 141

fictions), and let us pursue our pleasure, and make
our belly our god. But those who do not take this
view will assert with confidence that external inequality
is the corollary of Liberty, and Liberty is the expres-
sion of a Divine idea.

THE CONTINUATION OF INEQUALITIES
THROUGH THE FAMILY

Allowing then, for the sake of argument, that the
Inequalities of wealth or social position, arising from
the free intercourse of heterogeneous individuals, are
in themselves reasonable and just, what shall we say
of the inequalities which do not arise from the merits
of the individual? How defend advantages obtained
by inheritance or testament, and the perpetuation of
the social differentiations of classes which arises there-
from?

It is first of all to be observed that the various
classes in Society are only perpetual in a certain
sense. That is to say, that while the various classes
retain their respective forms, functions and traditions,
yet the families of which they are individually composed
are for ever changing. Some go up in the world, and
some go down, and some become extinct. Indeed,
with our modern political and social improvements, it
is easier now than it ever was for persons to rise from
one class to another, and this facility will doubtless
increase. Each class has special and worthy traditions
of its own, and the members of any particular class are
■ thereby enabled to perform effectively a certain type
H of functions which could not be performed as certainly

142 THE FOUNDATIONS OF UBERTY

by any other class. So that Liberty, which is the cause
of Social stratification, is thereby also the cause of
variety, richness, and national efficiency.

But "classes" are intimately associated with — first
the making, and — secondly — the transmission of private
property. The former has been already dealt with
above ; and we must now answer the question whether
it is just and reasonable that a person should possess
wealth or social position which he has not obtained by
his own endeavour, but by some form of transmission.

The whole question of inheritance, which is by far
the commonest mode in which wealth is transmitted to
those who have not earned it, is intimately bound up
with the three institutions of the Family, the Nation,
and Religion. So much so is this the case that
private property cannot be discussed apart from these
institutions, and the views we take regarding these
latter will determine our views on private property.
Not only do persons leave money to their descendants,
but they also bequeath it to their collateral relations,
and this simply on account of the claim which they
consider the tie of Family and kinship makes upon
them. The family relation in all morally vigorous
nations (as for instance the Jews and the early Greeks)
is regarded as supremely sacred. The solidarity of the
Family among such peoples is intense, and (as the
greatest poets love to insist) is maintained frequently
at the cost of the sacrifice of labour, property and even
life itself The children moreover are seen to inherit
the result of their parents' character and actions ; but
our only concern at this point with the Family is in its
relation to the inheritance of wealth. It is with the
general consideration of the Family and the Nation,

THE PERSON

and their relation to Personality, that this treatise will
close.

To put the matter in its briefest form — it is clear
that one of the expressions of the character of an
individual, is the response made by the material world
to his various activities. The correspondence of the
Person with his material environment issues in the
production of utiUties, i.e. wealth, so that wealth is an
expression of Personality.^ These utilities he may
exchange for others which to him will be of more value.
Provided he has practised neither force nor fraud he
can and does claim that the product of these his
activities belong to himself, and indeed is in some sort
a part of himself. While he lives his family share
with hira in his greater or less prosperity ; but the
question arises, what is to happen to his wealth when
he dies? Are his neighbours to capture it by coercion
or the threat of it ? or is he to be permitted to hand it
on to his own flesh and blood, his children if he has
any, or if he has none — then to his parents' children or
their descendants ? There can be but one answer for
those who believe in the divine appointment of the
Family, in its essential solidarity, and its importance as
the foundation of the State and of the Nation. These
will insist that a man's children have the first claim on
his wealth, in the same way, as for good and ill, they
inherit from him in other respects.

^e a.re not here discussing rtlative wealth ; we merely assert that a
has a moral right to make private property in view of his Personality,
n undeveloped country, of two men of eqaal ability and energy, one

' might become richer than the other owing to the quality or situation of
his land. This advantage might be fortuitous. Bur in a developed

[ country such advantages tend to disappear
question of tent will arise later.

144 THE FOUNDATIONS OF LIBERTY

It is true that in primitive societies of low political
and ethical development, the " State " was die pro-
prietor, and there was a distinct approach to commun-
ism. But it must be remembered that the " State" was
a tribe, and that the " citizens " were related by kinship ;
that in fact the State not merely took the place of the
Family, but was in itself in some measure a lai^e Family,
and the relations between people were consequently to
a great extent Personal. The tribal element in the
Political Nation is now much modi6ed, and at any
rate has ceased to exist as the basis of the Political
Nation.

The following is quoted from F, D, Maurice's " Social
Morality." " Sir H, Maine tells us that Ancient Law
implies a state previous to its establishment, the unit
of Society in that state being not the Individual but
the Family. There comes a time, he says, when the new
spirit intrudes itself. Law as Law assumes Contiguit})
of Place, not kinsmanship, as the ground of social
existence. Law as Law treats each man as a distinct
person, and not one as responsible for another. The
change from the first of these conditions to the second
is so amazing, so mysterious, that Sir H. Maine can
only speak of it as one of the greatest of revolutions "
(p. 109).

Again, speaking of the Legal Society, he says : —

" The two elements, Contiguity of Place, Individual
distinctness, constitute it" (p. ill).

Now, while there are certain external conditions
which have to be fulfilled in order that the change
from a tribal to a territorial State may take place, yet
the ultimate cause of that change, the "mystery"
alluded to above, is the emergence from the Family of

THE PERSON

\ the Person or true Individual. This process is recog-
nised both by Personalists and Socialists — the latter
styling the Family in a popular phrase, "the hotbed of
Individualism," meaning by Individualism all political
views which are not Socialistic, and asserting frankly
that Socialistic ideals cannot be realised until the
Family is abolished. It is not, of course, contended
by Personalists that Personality was created by the
Family, but that the Family is the only soil in which it
can realise itself and grow. With the growth of Per-
sonahty came necessarily " Individual distinctness," the
claim to individual Liberty, and so to the freedom of
contract, and the right to get and to keep private
property.

That the true Socialists perceive this with great
distinctness the folJowing quotations will show.
With their fundamental materialism Socialists seem
unable to believe that the world at large can ever be
actuated by any considerations other than those of
ease, security, pleasure, or envy and revenge. The
quotations referred to are not given with the design of
raising prejudice and blind anger against the writers
cited, but that ail those persons who are infected with
Socialism may see the lengths to which they will have
to go if they would be as honest, courageous, and
logical as these persons that they might be tempted to
criticise.

It will be observed that these authors hold that
because one of the results of the Family is the collec-
tion of private property, that therefore the desire for
private property is the origin of the Family. That is
to say that the Family is the result of deliberate fore-
thought and Machiavellian scheming on the part of

Mfi

iN^ OF UBER'

our tttrhzric aocir^^tors, and that therefore the purer the
Family life is, the more knavish are the families con-
cerned. One wonders what such persons must think
of the Greek tr^edies which hinge so largely on the
purity of Family life; and what they must think of
histoiy and biolog>-, which both contradict their views.
They will not. verj- properly, admit of a contractual or
deliberately formed State as the origin of States, and
yet they insist on the deliberate artiliciality of the
Family, out of which the State grew.

This attitude of the modem Socialists is no new one,
for indeed it is essential to their posttioo. The leading
Socialists are rarely illogical ; that is, given their
premises one must accept their conclusions. Nor is
their task a difficult one. In their premises they leave
out all the spiritual, mysterious, inexplicable elements
of life, and so find themselves in a region in which it
is very easy to play the logician. Thus Plato (not
having got as far as Municipal Stud Farms) demands
that children be taken from their parents at birth by
the State ; and that all children bom to parents who
have passed the age prescribed by the State are to
be destroyed by their parents ; but parents are to try
to prevent children coming to birth. Dramatic poetry
is to be suppressed, for there are few who could read
a Greek tragedy, without being impressed with the
glory and mystery of the abiding union of a man and a
woman, and with the mystic Trinity which is evolved.
Of course, also, this author holds that marriages
and number of births should be controlled by the
State.

As a matter of fact it is not the Family alone that ir "'
assailed. The Socialists perceive, as most people ha- ■yc

THE PERSON

147

done, that It is impossible to get rid of the Family
without getting rid of Religion also. Nor is this all;
their logic shows them that they must in addition get
rid of the Nation. One reason for this is obvious. It
is impossible to unite men, or rather a section of them,
on the superficial grounds of self-interest, class and
finance, while such mightily and naturally appealing
social forces as the Family, the Nation, and Religion
remain extant.

Mr Bax, who is a leader among English Socialists,
in his " Religion of Socialism," describes Socialism as
an "atheistic humanism," which "utterly despises the
other world with ail its stage properties — that is the
present objects of religion." He further asserts that
our existing religious belief " is so closely entwined with
the current mode of production, that the two things
must stand or fall together"^ (pp. 52, 81).

Again, "The establishment of Socialism on any
national or race basis is out of the question. The
foreign policy of the great international Socialist party
must be to break up these hideous race monopolies
called empires, beginning in each case at home. Hence
anything that makes for this disruption and dis-
integration of the empire to which he belongs, must be
welcomed by the Socialist as an ally. It is his duty
to urge on any movement tending in any way to
dislocate the commercial relations of the world, knowing
that every shock the modern complex commercial
system suffers weakens it and brings its destruction
nearer" (p. 126).

Bebel in a work entitled " On Woman," which has

' For Ihe whole passage sec Appendii I.

148 THE FOUNDATIONS OF LIBERTY

been translated and forms a classic for English
Socialists, insists on the desirability of free love.

In the " Historical Basis of Socialism," Mr Hyndman
tells us that : " This breaking down and building up
go slowly on together, and new forms arise to displace
the old. It is the same with the family. That, in the
German-Christian sense of marriage for life and respon-
sibility of the parents for the children born in wedlock,
is almost at an end even now. Divorce and habitual
use of prostitution among men of the upper and middle
classes, are but symptoms of the complete change in
all family relations which is going on among the mass
of the people. . . . The Socialist tendencies are clearly
developing themselves, and the next stage in the
history of the human race must be a widely extended
Communism " (p. 451).

William Morris, writing in conjunction with Mr Bax,
says, speaking of the Family, "... no binding con-
tract would be necessary between the parties as regards
livelihood ; while property in children would cease to
exist. . . . Thus a new development of the Family
would take place, on the basis, not of a predetermined
life-long business arrangement , . . but on mutual
inclination and affection, an association terminable at
the will of either party. It is easy to see how great
the gain would be to morality and sentiment in this
change. . . - There would be no vestige of reprobation
weighing on the dissolution of one tie and the forming
of another" {"Socialism, its Growth and Outcome,"
p. 299). The above quotations will be sufficient to show
how alive the Socialists are to the fact that their ideals
regarding private property and Liberty in general
cannot be attained without the abolition of Religion,

THE PERSON

the Family and the Nation. In this matter Personalists
will of course be in full agreement with them.

The fact that " Contiguity of Place " and " Individual
distinctness " now constitute the basis of Law, does
not mean that the Law has become in some sense
adverse to the Family. On the contrary, the Law still
extends its protection to the Family, as being the
fouadation of Society, and the soil out of which springs
the true individual or Person. But Personality has
emerged, and once the individual has become a Person
he can never again be merged either in his Family or
in the Nation, as he was before he reaSised his Per-
sonality. He is, indeed, a member o&his Family, and
he is also a citizen, but he is now more than eitiier of
these things.

The nature of the actions and forbearances which
one person can rightly demand of another varies
according as whether consanguinity is the basis of the
relation between them, or Contiguity of Place, i.e.
neighbourhood. Thus, if we imagine two persons, A.
and B., members of the same Nation and living under
the same Law, it will be generally admitted that the
children of A. have more claims on A. than have the
children of B. B. has indeed claims on A., but they
are, normally speaking {i.e. omitting questions of
national safety, with which we will deal later), only
claims to such actions and forbearances on the part of
A. as arise from Neighbourhood, and without which
social life would be impossible — the most obvious of
which, as we have seen, is that A. do not molest B,
But the claims made by A.'s children on A. are based,
not on Contiguity of Place, but on consanguinity, and
K are different in character, and are morally and legally

' THE FOUNDATIONS OF LIBERTY

more extensive. If this be denied, there is no alterna-
tive but the Socialist position, viz., that the children of
B. have as much claim on the property of A. as have
A.'s own children.

It is held by some that Contiguity of Place or
Neighbourhood justifies every kind of claim which one
Person can make upon another, and references to the
Scriptures are made which are supposed to bear out
this point. Thus our duty towards our neighbour, as
set forth in the Gospels, and especially exemplified in
the parable of the Good Samaritan, is much utilised by
a certain type of political agitators for this purpose.
But as the context shows, the co-operation of coercive
law (even of the best, let alone that which is the result
of Parliamentary conspiracies) is not contemplated ;
the Pharisee, it will be observed, being legally at
liberty to pass by on the other side. Of course it is
not contended that the Pharisee did right, or that a
modern jury should not gravely censure him. The
case was one of life and death, and, as we have before
said, that issue takes precedence of all others ; though
it should be observed that it is the function of the law
to prevent such circumstances, as those in which the
robbed man found himself, from arising. But, sup-
pose he were in health and asked the Pharisee for
money for no better reason than that such money
would suit his desires, the Pharisefe, were there no
other relation between them than that of neigh-
bourhood, might well refuse. But supposing that
he had not merely asked for funds, but had threat-
ened the employment of physical force to obtain
them, piost assuredly the Pharisee would have been
'■■^*5'""'°^nrotesting. Another expression in common
cannot be •>.

THE PERSON 151

use for political purposes is, " Am I not my brother's
keeper?" The reference being to an exclamation of
Cain when asked to account for his brother, " Am I my
brother's keeper?" But, it must be remembered, that
Abe! was the actual and not the metaphorical brother
of Cain. Finally, while there is a certain moral liability
for keeping one's neighbour, it may be remarked paren-
thetically that that fact does not entitle one to compel
one's neighbour to keep oneself And, when a person
desires to keep his neighbour, he should, as far as the
law is concerned, keep him at his own expense, and not
vote large sums of money to which he is determined
not to contribute, in support of his cheap charity.

It is surely certain to most minds that the claims
arising from " Contiguity of Place " (even though the
"place "be the Fatherland) which one individual can
make upon another are less than the claims which a
man's children can make upon their father.

We conclude then by saying, that whether it is right
that external inequalities among men, that is to say,
social and financial inequalities, should be capable of
being continued through and by means of the Family,
depends on the one hand upon whether we believe in
the Family, and, on the other, upon whether we
believe in the Person and the Liberty essential to

■ Personality.

I THE CONDITIONS UNDER WHICH PRIVATE

■ PROPERTY MAY BECOME PUBLIC PRO-

■ PERTY

In considering that species of taxation whereby
private property is converted into public property, if

THE FOUNDATIONS OF LIBERTY

we deare as citizens to retain our respect for each
other and our belief in political Right and Wrong, two
principles will emerge which will limit and direct the
State in its function of imposing taxes.

The first of these principles is that taxation must not
be used as a means for confiscation, however "useful"
such confiscation might appear to a political majority,
but must be used for the purpose of maintaining the
necessary machinery of the State.

The second principle is that in the case of direct
taxes on private capital or inosme, those who pay
these taxes should by one means or another have a
power regarding them preponderating over that of
those who do not so pay them.

As regards the first principle, it must be stated in
the first place that taxation must not be used for the
purpose of transferring wealth from one set of persons to
another ; the justification for converting private property
into public property by means of taxation lying in the
fact that those who pay the taxes arc interested in that
to which the revenue is devoted, viz., the maintenance
of the proper functions of the State, A conspicuous
violation of this first principle is to be found in the
proposed Graduated Income Tax. Thb proposal is
based on the theory that if one person makes more
property than another, he is more indebted to the
State than his less efficient neighbour. Doubtless the
successful man may have made his money improperly,
by force or fraud or, by means of effective conspiracy to
prevent other people from trading. The duty of the
State in such cases is to prevent persons acquiring
wealth by such methods. Specially to tax all fortunes
on the ground that some are improperly made, is to

THE PERSON iS3

base taxation on the immorality of some, and to
behave unjustly to those persons who have made
fortunes with perfect honesty, and to the great advan-
tage of the public. In considering the argument in
favour of a graduated income tax, we will assume that
large fortunes and the small ones are made honestly, as
would be the case in a State with suitable and effective
laws.

It is undoubtedly true that the man who makes a
large fortune has benefited more in respect of that by
the presence of the State, than the man who has made
a small fortune or none at all; and seeing that as
a matter of fact a person with means beyond a certain
amount pays in income tax exactly in proportion to
his wealth — the principle of a debt to the State
varying according to individual prosperity, is already
fully recognised. But the more successful man does
not owe more to the StaXs per pound of his income than |

the less successful. The State is common to both i

parties, and both can utilise it according to their
opportunities and abilities ; and for each pound made |

under its auspices both parties, as an ideal, should pay I

the same tax. Let us take as an illustration the case
of two competing swimmers. It would be absurd to say |

of the one who swam the faster that he should not I

carry off the prize for his higher rate of progression, on I

the ground that this was due to the resistance afforded
to his hands and feet by the water. Obviously the |

water was common to both, and must be eliminated I

from the discussion ; the question resolving itself into
one regarding the efficiency of the two parties.
L To take another instance. Supposing some railway

■ of this country were the property of the State, it would

be very unjust to compel persons who used the railway
to greater advantage than others, to pay more for their
tickets (or otherwise pay more towards the maintenance
of the railway) than was being paid by other persons,
who used it to less advantage. Each person should of
course pay for the railway in proportion as he uses it,
i.e. all persons should pay the same charge per mile,
regardless of the profit to themselves which they
variously succeed in achieving.

But while there are those who propose confiscation
by taxation on purely political and pseudo-economic
grounds, there are people who are in favour of it on
moral grounds. That is to say, there are a large
number of persons divided into groups, which groups
or parties respectively entertain various moral views,
to which they desire to give effect by taxing (taxing
out of existence as they hope), certain industries or
modes of life to which they themselves take exception.
These persons receive enormous support from politicians
and voters, who do not share their views. This is due
to the fact that the latter see in the proposals of the
former a means of transferring property from one
section of the people to another, and to do this they
find it advantageous to screen themselves behind the
moralists — a thing we see constantly in Parliament
with regard for instance to the brewing industry.
Now leaving on one side the reasonable control of an
industry which would otherwise become dangerous and
indeed ultimately destroy itself — a consideration which
is not directly moral— the State, as we have attempted
to point out, is not immediately concerned with morals
in general,^ or with religion in general, but from the
' With the exception of morals immediately connectecl with the family.

ISS

nature of its influences, it contributes, and can only
contribute to these things indirectly and along certain
definite lines. But even supposing this were not so,
and a genuine majority (as apart from a mere conspiracy
of parties) could with moral rectitude impose some
particular religion or ethic on the minority, it would
still be a grossly immoral proceeding to tax an industry
on the one hand, or mode of life on the other (as, e.g.,
male or female celibacy), on the ground that the industry,
or mode of life, was immoral. Thus, for instance, we
do not tax burglars or fraudulent persons, but we
pursue the honourable and direct course of prohibiting
these persons from pursuing their mischievous courses.
But this is because in the case of such people there is
a genuine consensus of opinion among the public, an
agreement which does not exist, as for example, in the
case of brewers ; moreover, it is realised that the
immorality of burglars and fraudulent persons is of a
kind that comes legitimately within the purview of the
State.

An industry or mode of life is morally justifiable, or
it is not. If it is not, and the immorality is of a kind
to come within the purview of the State, the Govern-
ment of the moment must be open and honest, and
abolish the thing at issue on purely moral grounds.
To tax particular properties or industries on the ground
that they are immoral, is so far to base taxation on
immorality, and reduce it to a species of blackmail.
Properties or industries if they are of an immoral nature,
must be openly and universally asserted to be so, and
forthwith abolished ; they cannot, however great the

i.t. sexual morals. This will be dealt with when we come lo Ibe Caa-
ndemtion of the Family and the Nation.

lUNDATIONS OF LIBERTY

convenience, be regarded as a litlU immoral — owing to
the moral attitude of a certain political section, and be
victimised by all parties in consequence.

Doubtless breweries, like any other industry, may be
taxed by the State for ordinary purposes of revenue,
but they cannot morally be taxed subject to the
arriere pensee th^x. they are immoral, and that the tax
in question will injure them.

There is a species of confiscation by taxation pro-
posed in connection with the private ownership of land.
The scheme referred to being that popularised by
Henry George. So well-known are the works of this
writer that it will not be necessary to give any sum-
mary of his arguments. But while the author has
apparently exaggerated the advantages to be derived
from his scheme, there can be no doubt that land is
essentially of a different nature to other capital, and
that viewing the matter in the abstract, it is more ad-
vantageous to the community that the State should
own the land, than that individuals should do so, and
that this advantage is especially conspicuous in the
case of town lands. ^ But while it is granted that the
private ownership of land is in the abstract undesirable,
yet it must be admitted that of the families who own
land, the greater proportion of them have at one time
or another, often very recently, purchased their land

> As aguDst the disadvantage of the existing piirate ownership of land,
it must never be forgotten that much land is owtied by the Church, by
the NoncoDforniisl retigioos bodies, uiil b; educational and philanthropic
bodies, by hospitals, etc. Henry Geotge^s scheme would in all cases injure
these bodies, and in many cases would ruin them- In view of the fact
that they spend their rentals, etc, wholly in the interests of the public,
and often in a manner and in directions impossible lo the Stale, their
injury or ruin would be a loss indeed.

157

with the produce of their toil. In so doing they
enjoyed the good opinion of the Nation and the full
sanction and support of the State; while on the other
iiand, there was nothing which could have been regarded
s immoral in their action.
Their land must therefore be regarded by all parties
as legitimate private property, and should not be
I confiscated by the State even by means of the most

■ gradually increasing land tax — until and unless every

■ other expedient had been properly tried. ^ However
' seductive may be the various schemes for solving social

problems by the simple means of coercion of the indi-
vidual and confiscation of his property, and the general
violation of the rights of the Person, and however few
and helpless the victims of violation might be, those
who believe in Personality will refuse to be seduced.
They will not be party to the mergence of the indi-
vidual Person in the Political Nation, because they
know that such action is of the essence of political

» immorality. They also realise that the sanctity of the
Person gone, the sanctity of the Law will have gone
with it, and that it is better for the Nation to dare to
pay the price which all honest and righteous dealing
occasionally demands than to attempt a course of
action which shall cost nothing; but which, by violating
the rights of individuals, will cause not only those who
have suffered injustice, but all others with them, to lose
their confidence in the Nation, the State, and the Law,
and their proper admiration and reverence for these
essential institutions.

So much, then, for the first principle involved in any

■ just system of taxation. The second principle, viz.,

■ ' C/. Appendix F. on State purchase ofland.

that those who pay direct taxes should have a power
regarding those taxes preponderating over that of those
who do not pay them, is surely so obviously just that
the consideration of it need not detain us. But, apart
from its justice, this principle operates to check poli-
ticians in their tendency to get into power by bribing
one section of the electorate with the money of another
section. Such temptation would be dangerous to any
one, but it is especially so among persons so prone to
devious courses as are politicians — both national and
more especially municipal. Moreover, it is unjust and
immoral to place temptation in the way of the poorer
members of the electorate, especially when they are
acting as members of a political party (as at elections) ;
for, as is well known, persons acting in a crowd will
sanction conduct of which at other times as individuals
they would disapprove.

POVERTY IS NOT MIsfeRE

Before leaving this brief attempt at applying the
doctrine of Personal Right and Justice to the issue of
Property and Taxation, a passing reference must be
made to a doctrine very popular especially among
Christian Socialists.

It is held by many that as long as there is poverty
existing in a population, there can be no mora.\ apriori
limitations to the method or extent of taxation in relief
of it; the argument being that poverty is one of the
principal causes of immorality, that indeed immorality
is practically inseparable from it, and that therefore it
would be setting morality against morality to urge

THE PERSON

I Moral a priori limitation;; to the methods of obtaining

money permissible to the State for the relief of the

I poor. Limitations of a practical kind they of course

I admit exist, but they claim — very often by implication

— that the situation does not allow of limitations of a

moral and a priori character.

We regretfully admit that the poverty existing in
this country is excessive, and in large measure avoid-
able,^ and we claim that it is a matter with which
reformers should actively concern themselves ; — but
that is not the issue with which we are here concerned.
Now as long as there is Personal Liberty in a country,
and the Family, with its corollary of the Right of
Inheritance, is maintained in purity and vigour, there
will be degrees of fortune, and at the two ends of the
scale there will be found extremes of wealth and
extremes of poverty.
\ Those people, however, it may be noticed in passing,
[ who are in extremes bear even in England — the hot-
bed of destitution — but a small proportion to the whole
population. The point which must be combated is
that poverty as such is in itself a cause of gross
immorality, or of a low ethical standard. That poverty,
especially in modern industrial centres, is liable to be
associated with a quantity of evils, is indeed painfully
evident. The association of poverty with indolence,
incompetence, thriftlessness, with vice, disease and
hideous surroundings is very much what is meant by
misire. But these evils are not inherent, they are
I accidents of poverty as that exists under the conditions

' Instance the entraordinary fact that ihe greater number of women io
e lower otders in England are unable properly Co cook, sew, rear
I children, or keep house.

' tfe THE FOUNDATIONS OF LIBERTY

that are prevailing in modem industrial centres. We
need not cite in support of this the cases of saints and
holy men, who elected to live in extreme poverty, nor
the case of the Founder of our Faith, who it appears
sometimes could not pay for a lodging for the night,
and who enunciated the maxim " Blessed are the
poor."

But leaving on one side as exceptional the Saints
and holy men of old, there remain abundant instances
of widespread poverty unaccompanied by the moral
degradation and the repulsive environment that, in this
country at any rate, we have come to associate with
narrow means. In various parts of the world, among
pastoral and agricultural people, and among those who
follow the sea, side by side with extreme poverty will
be found a lofty virtue, a religion taught to and
accepted by all, dignity, cleanliness, industry and thrift
Their environment is as noble and beautiful as the
greatest wealth could buy — field, and sky, and sea.
It is true they pay but little conscious tribute to these
things, still less do they prate of them in artistic
formulae, nor do they sink to the artistic level
where the " beauty " of a thing is separated from the
thing itself, which thing becomes of no consequence,
unreal and unloved. But nevertheless air and "sun,
greenery and sea and all the plenitude of nature give a
peace and a joy to life and secretly develop character
along the lines of Truth. Misere is poverty existing
under certain conditions, which conditions beir^
unwholesome and unnatural should be discouraged by
any Nation which esteems manliness, health and virtue
before any other consideration before even the most
seductive economic theory.

THE PERSON

Manufacture should always be limited and counter-
acted in its worst effects by the deliberate encourage-
ment of agriculture, fishing and the mercantile marine.
As it is, the whole policy of this country has been to
suppress agriculture, and half the mercantile marine
is manned by foreigners, and the fishing industry is
being wantonly ruined. The result is that instead of
doing healthy and manly work in the roomy country
and on the wholesome sea, our population is crammed
into industrial centres, which are necessarily crowded,
and where for the most part they perfor
and unintelligent functions; or they are driven to
grimy labour in the darkness of the earth, to supply
the coal which shall give the crowning touch of
gloom and misery to our modern manufacturing
towns.

Another cause of mis&re is the almost universal
absence of religious education or belief in our manu-
facturing centres. This at least has visibly nothing to
do with poverty qud poverty. If one speaks with such
persons as shepherds or fishermen, one is struck with
the deep religious vein, and one observes how their
poverty is ennobled, dignified, beautified, and rendered
altogether tolerable by their religious belief. One
observes, moreover, how the worst element in misire,
viz., vice, is held in check by the moral teaching in-
volved in their religion. The vice of our manu-
facturing centres is attributed to overcrowding and
many other causes, notwithstanding that in many
countries where there is scant house room, the people
are by no means vicious. But while the unwhole-
some crowding inseparable from manufacture may
be a factor, the absence of religious education

162 THE FOUNDATIONS OF LIBERTY

and belief is unquestionably the more important
cause.^

Let us then conclude. That there is a great deal of
unnecessary and unjust poverty existing at present is
generally conceded ; but such poverty as is unjust
should be rectified (if and when that is possible) on the
simple ground that it is unjust, and not on the ground
that all poverty is productive of immorality, and that
virtue is only possible to those in comfortable circum-
stances. For such a doctrine is purely materialistic,
and in its political bearing constitutes an attack on the
Rights of the Persons, who.by the mere fact of possessing
property, will be held responsible (constructively) for the
immorality of a section of the poor in our larger cities.^

In concluding this section of this little book, I would
say that had it been possible for me in setting forth
that form of doctrine hitherto included under the vague
term "individualism," but here called " Personalism,"
to neglect altogether the subject of Property, I should
certainly have done so. Of the indirect relation that

' Another cause of miiire is the tatal sepaiation that has taJcen place
as regards domicile between the rich and the poor. This sepaiatioD is
b»d for both, and one of its worst results is that all charitable and relig-
ious work is done more or less mechanically through inipersotia.1 agencies ;
that is to sa;, cha.iitible and religious work, instead of being actually
done by the richer classes in person, is merely paid for by them — a very
different matter. Though Ibe eitravagant growth among the middle
classes of "snobbeiy " — that painful accompaniment of democracy — ^may
have much to do with their eiodus from the quarters of the manual
labourers ; yet, on the other hand, there is no doubt thai maoufaclure, as
we at present know it, with its inevitable areas of jeriy-buih workman's
dwellings, its monotony and soul -deadening "greyness," is the main
cause of the objection which our middle classes entertain to their own
commercial centres.

" See Appendix C.

THE PERSON

163

Property bears to Right I have already spoken, and of
the consequent difficulties in treating of it. And
furthermore the subject of Property raises so much
passion on all sides, that even in such a brief dis-
cussion of it as is to be here found, the main issue for
which one contends is likely to be overwhelmed and
lost to view, in the ocean of dispute which surges
round the question of Property — dispute which too
often is based on no clear first principles. In this dis-
cussion of Property the attempt has been more to
show that these problems have a relation to the whole
question of the Liberty essential to Personality, and so
to indicate a moral point of view from which to regard
them, rather than to suggest immediate practical solu-
tions. Therefore it is not upon the views here enter-
tained regarding Property that I would fain fix the
attention of the reader, but rather upon the philosophy
of which these views are the outcome or application ;
a philosophy which, while retaining its integrity as
such, might (I need hardly say) be better applied by
others.

PART III

THE FAMILY AND THE NATION

*< Wonld'st tfaon go forth to bless ?
Be sore of thine own ground !
Fix well thy centre first.

Then draw thy circles ronnd."

" God moves from whole to parts ; bat hnman Soul
Most rise from individiial to the whole."

Pops

s66

THE ENVIRONMENT NECESSARY TO
PERSONALITY

THE previous portion of this argument on behalf of
Personal Liberty has been limited to the tracing
of the claim to Liberty bacli to the Personal character
of Man. The argument has been that the claim to
Liberty does not arise from a utilitarian induction, but
is an a priori moral claim arising from the existence
and nature of Personality.

This treatise is not so much concerned with Liberty
itself, as with its moral foundation — viz., Personality.
It is necessary therefore to inquire what are the
conditions essential to the realisation and development
of this Personal element. For if Personality exists at
all it must be the highest part of Man, and its develop-
ment the first care of the State and of the individual.
We have seen already that Freedom is one of these
conditions, and that the more developed Personality
becomes, the more Freedom will it demand. But
Freedom itself is not an active cause of Personal growth.
It is merely a condition without which Personality
cannot develop; it is the atmosphere in which the
Person, when developed by active forces, can energise,
bringing into full operation free will, conscience, and
responsibility for his own Personality and for that of

others ; and so energising can ever increase. But all
this presupposes the active existence of a more or less
developed Personality, and of those qualities and
abilities essential to it. For a Personality which was a
mere potentiality, undeveloped and unrealised at all,
would have no use for Freedom, and indeed would
probably be better without it.

It is only when the individual begins to realise the
transcendental element in his own being, and a similar
element in the being of others, that some beginnings of
personal Liberty become a necessity.

It will be observed that we do not here inquire as to
what is the actual cause of Personality itself, but as to
what are the active causes of its realisation and
development.

That the Family on the one hand, and the Political
Nation on the other, are the two causes in question,
that these constitute the active environment of character,
and spiritual life, has been consciously and uncon-
sciously accepted by mankind at large since the dawn
of history. Among the great majority of the learned
also, as, e.g., among historians, sociologists, and
ecclesiastics of all religions, the Family and the Political
Nation are regarded as the twin pillars supporting
human Society; — that conscious, deliberate social life
unknown to animals, peculiar to Man.

Fiirst, then, let us consider the relation of the Family
to the Person and so to Society.

THE RELATION OF THE FAMILY TO
PERSONALITY

It will not be necessary to speak at length of the
Family in this connection, seeing that it is in theory
at any rate almost universally recognised, both by
the various schools of thought commonly known as
Individualistic, and also on the other hand, by the more
advanced and consistent Socialists, that the family is
one of the most important of the forces making for
Individualism, meaning by Individualism all that is
not Socialism. This aspect of the case has already
been dealt with when we were considering the ethic of
the inheritance of wealth.

It is surely impossible that any person who is dis-
interested and unprejudiced could seriously believe that
the right way to promote social views of life, is to
commence by destroying what are obviously and
unquestionably social institutions. That the institu-
tions of the Family and the Nation are natural and
spontaneous does not detract from, but obviously adds
to, their power as social forces ; for independent of
forms of Government, political parties, forms of religion
and academic reasoning, these spring living from the
great human heart.

The Family, and that which is descended from it, and
is equally necessary to the existence of a State and a
Government, viz., the Nation, are the foundations upon
which the State rests. They are in a sense anterior to
the State and to Law; so that if we would have Law,
we must see that the foundations thereof are secure.
For though the Law had ceased to regard the Family

I70 T^ FOUNDATIONS OF UBERTY

as the unit, it still finds and must for ever find, its ulti-
mate human foundation in that primal human relation.
What is the statement of the Personalist that the
prime function of the State is to protect man from
man, to protect Personality in general in so far as this
is invaded by others, but an assertioa of the truth that
we are morally bound to esteem others as we esteem
ourselves. As we have seen, if we have a low ideal of
our own personality we shall have a yet lower concep-
tion of the personality of others. Again, since it is not
only true that we judge, or rather estimate, others by
ourselves, but that we also estimate ourselves by
others, we shall discover that if we have a low concep-
tion of the personality of others, the sense of our own
personality will be impaired. Society, State, Law, are
based upon our willing recognition of the equal person-
ality of others, and without this recognition, this
altruism, if we would so call it. Society must inevitably
crumble into ruins. But whence are we to obtain a
lofty conception of personality which shall be lasting
and indelible? We would reply that the Family is
the first element in the creation and developing of this
conception. At that period of life when aione im-
pressions can be made which shall be vivid and effective,
at once sober, strong, living and enduring, the person
finds himself embosomed in a family. Willing sacrifices
in his behalf, prompted in the first instance by nature
herself, give him a sense of his value, his value as a
man. The response on his part, which nature also
prompts, gives him his first insight into the value and
import of the personality of others ; and these two
feelings will react upon each other to their mutual
strengthening. It is in the Family, in this all-

THE FAMILY AND THE NATION

H important atmosphere of affection, permanence and

■ continuity, that a man is first enabled to learn some-
thing of the meaning of the "solidarity" of the human
race. This is his first natural lesson in brotherhood
and fellowship, and that strenuous reaching out to
others which will one day ripen and expand into
patriotism. Men are finite, and it is not possible for
them to have an affection for their fellow-men at large,
which shall be at once strong and real and yet equally
distributed. The Infinite Being can undoubtedly

_ entertain an equal affection for an indefinite number of

■ beings, but not so Man. As it is with rings on a pond,
P when a stone falls into its midst, so is it with Man's

■ affection. It advances from a centre in waves, which
lessen in intensity as they increase in radius, while
both the intensity and the radius of all the waves
depend upon the force of that nearest the centre.
This wave must be stirred by the kindly forceful hand
of Nature, or it will in all likelihood be never stirred at
all. No artificial conditions can ever produce the same
results as Nature. The State or Municipal Body
cannot take the place of the home. The inevitably
rigid and uniform regulations of the State; officials
(more or less in the nature of female policemen) to
take the place of mothers ; and " comrades " to take
the place of brothers and sisters ; the inevitable de-
fined curriculum of education and amusement ; re-
ligious teaching (if it could exist at all) given with no
"atmosphere," with no parental love, anxiety, sacrifice
and example, but administered as a series of facts and
propositions ; the total absence of natural, unconscious
and spontaneous affection, and the general hopeless
externalism and impersonalism of civic methods; —

172 THE FOUNDATIONS OF LIBERTY

such conditions cannot call forth the individuality of
a young child ; they might in some measure suffice for
ao older child, whose character was already more or
less de^-eloped; but being the exact antithesis of the
home they could not otherwise succeed. In the Family
each child is as if there were no other; that is to say
" individual distinctness " cannot be carried further than
it is in the Family. But the civic method is the exact
opposite of this, and tends to the complete mei^cnce of
the individual child in a homogeneous herd of others.

The Family then evokes Personality, Individuality,
Character. The Individual here learns his value and
the value of others. He learns that he is a Person,
and that all others are Persons and so ends in themselves.
The transcendental origin of Personality makes him
responsible not for his own alone, but for personality in
general, that of all men, especially of his fellow citizens.
In brief, it is in the Family that the Individual learns
dtizensbip — not that of the unconscious, slavish kind,
known to the ant or the bee, but the deliberate citizen-
ship characteristic of developed Persons, proper to
free Men,

This being so, the State is Justified in making laws
for the protection of the Family. These laws un-
doubtedly limit the freedom of the individual, but they
tend by preserving the Family to preserve also Pct-
sonality and the Personal view of the individual, and
so to secure the foundations of Liberty.

But while the Laws regulating the Family do primA
facte limit the freedom of the Person, they do but
constitute a limitation which must in any case exist in
one manner or another under any conceivable system
of Government It is the duty of the State, acting

THE FAMILY AND THE NATION 173

through whatever form of Government may be in
vogue, to secure that children be protected and de-
veloped. The Personahst will argue, with unimpeach-
able logic on his side, that a young child is as much
a Person as the King or the Pope, given the supreme
assumption (an assumption upon which depend all
religion and all ethic) that Personality exists, and is
the leading characteristic of Man. But while the
Personality of a child may be developed to a certain
perfection as regards the domestic hearth, it is
necessarily regarded by the State as an unrealised
quality or rather entity, and therefore — as far as the
purposes of the State are concerned — the State regards
it as a mere potentiality. That is to say, it is not
possible, whatever efforts the child might make, that
its reason, conscience, free-will, and deliberation should
as yet be correlated to the phenomena of adult life.
I The institution of the Family exists in the last resort
' for the good of the children, who have no duty to act
as adults before the time prescribed by nature. That
a child should be in large measure irresponsible and
n on -deli berate is a part of the negative side of the
ideal of childhood; just as it is part of the necessary
conception of modern manhood, that the man be de-
liberate and responsible — or learn wisdom by suffering
for his folly. It is clear, therefore, that the State must
either interfere directly with the children — Persons in
its charge — or act through the parents. It has wisely
elected to act through the parents, securing the good
of the young by prohibiting incessant re-marriage on
the part of the parents ; by compelling parents to
maintain their children in reasonable manner; by pre-
venting ill usage; securing education, and so forth.

174 THE FOUNDATIONS OF LIBERTY

The fact is that exceptional interference must take
place on the part of the State in favour of these
necessarily undeveloped Persons, and it is better that
this should take place through the parents, rather than
that the Communistic ideal of delivering all parents
from responsibility, and handing over all children to
the State, should find realisation.

Assuredly this question of the Family shows with
great clearness the impossibility of pursuing directly
the Good of the Whole, and of considering that to be
Right which at the time appears to be Useful ; instead
of referring first to the individual Person, and finding
in his moral nature the criterion of political morality,
and a definite End to which the activities of the State
may be " Useful." On this question of the Family
the Christian Socialists apparently invariably part
company with their more consistent and intransigeant
allies — the logical Socialists and Communists, The
Christian Socialists contend that just because they are
Socialists, they have no difficulty with the Family,
and do not require to trace its relation to the individual
Person ; it conduces, they assert:, to the Good of the
Whole, and that there the matter ends.

That it does so conduce, they are, from the point oi
view of the Personalist, unquestionably right But
that the Christian Socialists have in reality assumed
the utility to the State and to Socialism of the Family,
and have based their position in this respect upon an
a priori morality having its origin in the Person, is
evident from the fact that non-christian Socialists, who
do not believe in an absolute a priori Right and
Wrong, dispute the utility of the Family, and frankly
and strenuously assail it

THE FAMILY AND THE NATION

1/5

^ TI

H There is surely no middle course between the
B Sociatistic-Comnmnistic position and the Personalistic'
The Personalist, in contending for the maintenance
of the Family, does so in the interests of the individual
Persons. He maintains that In view of the nature of
Human Personality, the developed Man can only be
produced in the Family. Here alone can exist the
natural forces and the exclusiveness (this latter so
essential to development from within outwards), and
the continuity of personal relationship, which alone can
enable a man to realise the real meaning of himself,
and so of each and every human life. ( Here therefore
he begins to become a public-spirited man ; and here
are laid the seeds of good citizenship. Although this pro-
cess militates against current doctrines concerning the
Good of the Whole, the Personalist, on purely religious-
moral grounds, maintains that having done what was
possible for the development and integrity of the
individual, the Good of the Whole will follow. He
does not mean by this that everybody will become
rich or equal in material things, but that everybody
will become a Man, and — whatever his position — ^he
will be a respecter of himself and others. That sufficient,
political, military and material prosperity will result,
is to the Personalist partly a matter of estimation, but

I at bottom a matter of moral conviction.
Now be it observed, that while the Christian Socialist
(and others unconsciously subject to the same tradi-
tions) make the assumption on moral grounds that the
Indj

' Such middle posilion as there may be belongs to the materialistic
Individualist — the person who refrains from Socialism oo what he
iq^rds u utililaiiac grounds, or fiom reaaoiis of self-interest. He
indeed can allow Che Family, bat be cannot logically insist upon iL

' 176 THE FOUNDATIONS OF LIBERTY

maintenance of the Family makes for the Good of the
Whole, the Personalists still true to their fundamental
principles — also make the same assumption. The
difference in this matter between the two parties is
that, while the assumption of the latter is admitted as
such, and follows from their principle that what
secures or increases Personality is Good for the Whole,
the assumption of the former is not by them admitted
to be an assumption, and even if it were so admitted, it
would gud a priori assumption be contrary to their
Socialistic principles.

To conclude then this portion of the argument.
Obviously it could not be pretended by Personalists,
or by anybody else, that those who see in Personality
the ultimate foundation of social institutions and the
criterion of the " Useful," that these persons invented
the Family or (indeed the Nation) in order to foster
Personality. On the contrary the Family and the
political Nation were the prime factors in the Person's
first realisation of himself — a point which has been
much insisted on by Socialists. ^

It is just because those who realise the Personal, trans-
cendental character of themselves and others, did not
artificially contrive the Family and the Nation, but on
the contrary find themselves developed therefrom that

'Thus: "The Person is the product of the Slate." A fomUiar
maxim of Socialists. They mean of course that Personality finds its
cealisslion in Social life. It is obTiously impossible that the cba[a(;teriacics
of Personality, vi!., self-consciousness, free-wiil, deliberation and
conscience should be actually created by laws ; if only for the reason that
laws postulate the eiistence of these abilities. Law t
material il works upon, it can only develop it ; and out of nothing i'
impossible to produce something. The Creator Himself i
things fcom His own coojcionsness — not from nothing.

nothing it is I

THE FAMILY AND THE NATION 177

their faith in these spontaneous social institutions is so
great. Furthermore, while it is true that Personalistic
arguments did not make the Family, it is also true that
neither those, arguments nor any other ultimately
maintain it, ! | We believe that the Universe is the
expression of moral ideas ; secondly, that in the main
we know what those moral ideas are, i.e. we believe we
know substantively the ethic that should govern human
conduct ; thirdly, that what is truly natural must
have at least a substratum of good and of truth ;
especially if it involve self-control, love and self-sacrifice,
as do sincere Family life and Patriotism, These three
propositions are corollaries from the fundamental
premise, which underlies all religion, viz., that Man
lives not only in the plane of physics, but also in a
metaphysical plane, in which by metaphysical means
he is able to apprehend the Divine mind. So that
while the Personalist may find abundant corrobora-
tion of his views in history, sociology and his own
experience, yet nevertheless he is able in this as in
the other fundamentals of Patriotism and Religion, to
appeal to the common conscience of mankind, as that
reveals to us the Divine origin and Divine relation and
inspiration of Man.

The Family has taken many shapes at different
times and in different places, and still the forms of it
are very various. But those who believe in evolution
will be disposed to regard the Christian form as the
highest yet reached. But whether they do so regard
it or not, one thing is certain, viz., that practically all
men have recognised and still do recognise, that in
this matter above all others, there must be restraint
and discipline.

178 THE FOUNDATIONS OF UBERTY

Socialists speak of a yet further evolution. They
say that a time is at hand when free love will prevail
and ultimately sexual promiscuity; — they claim that
we are entering upon a higher plane, and that the I
enormous growth of prostitution is indicative of this, '
showing as it does the breaking up of the marriage |
relation. It is to be observed, however, that this ,'
alleged higher plane is one to which all nations ,'
approximate when they are dying of security and \
ease. Other invariable symptoms of decay — evident
in this country at this moment — are the decay of ^
patriotism, the evisceration or total disappearance of i
definite religion, and the rise of every kind of super-
stition and occultism.

Higher planes cannot be attained by destroying the
essentials of the existing plane. True evolution takes
the organs, functions and forces which it finds exist-
ing, and devotes them to the purposes of the next
development

THE NATION IN RELATION TO
PERSONALITY

Leaving ethnic nations on one side, such, e.g:, as
the Hebrews, we will consider only political nations.
These, when viewed as organised for political purposes,
are known as States ; and it is therefore evident that
there could be no State and no Government acting on
behalf of it, were the Nation from any cause to dis-
appear. That is to say, there is a deeper relation
among men than that which is civic or legal, lyiz., the
National relation, and it is on this latter .that the

THE FAMILY AND THE NATION 179

former is based. So the first principle we arrive at,
is that the State and the Government are not the
cause of the Nation, but the Nation is the cause of
the State and the Government. Yet should one
expatiate to Socialists on the meaning and the glory
of the Nation, and even though the reference be to
their own nationality, there would be little or no
responsive enthusiasm. One may show them how
the Nation binds men with the spontaneous love of
a common Fatherland, instead of with the "cash
nexus," or any other form of self or class interest ;
how it stands for a common character and conscience,
and a responsibility each for all and all for each; a
common tradition, aspiration, mission and faith; a
common History, whose pages stained with blood and
tears, shine glorious with the well-earned fame of Men
[l of Peace and Men of War ; how that in the mysterious
I solidarity of the Nation the generations that follow
P share deeply in the spiritual life of these Men, and can
claim their glory for themselves ; and finally one may
show them how this common spiritual life and inherit-
ance binds all the Nation together, especially in the
face of war, in a living brotherhood — " Duke's son,
Cook's son, son of a Millionaire " — shoulder to shoulder
without suspicion, contempt or envy, children of one
Fatherland, "high and low, rich and poor, one with
another," a perfect example of true, living and essential
Democracy ; — one might reveal to them the whole

I reality and power of patriotism, but the more the true
socialist believed in that reality and power the more
would he be filled with suspicion, and alarm for the
Future of mankind.
Now the Socialist in this matter may at first sight

i8o THE FOUNDATIONS OF LIBERTY

appear to be inconsistent ; but that is not really the
case. He perceives that the Nation unites men along
lines which militate against the Socialistic ideal. This
ideal can only be attained by substituting for the
natural, spontaneous and common relation called forth
by Patriotism, a nexus which shall be artificial, legal,
and based on class interest The appeal is to be — not
to the brotherhood of those who share a common
Fatherland — but to the self-interest, the envy, the
revenge, and the love of ease and luxury of the
individuals constituting the poorer class. So far this
" individualism organised and in its right mind " has
not appealed to this class with the readiness that many
people had hoped. It was found when it came to the
test, that the character of the British manual labourer
had been much misunderstood and underestimated.

It is therefore impossible, while Patriotism exists, to
divide the Nation into upper class and lower class, rich
and poor, capital and labour. National issues, such as
danger from another country, generally produce a
conscious unity and brotherhood between all classes
and parties ; but even when these issues, instead of
uniting, divide the Nation, the division does not take
place along the lines the Socialist would favour, but
constitute a cross division through the classes ; — upper
classes and lower classes being found indifferently on
either side.

It is therefore the business of the logical Socialist
to get rid of the Nation and the fellow feeling and
class goodwill that flow from it, and substitute instead
a Universal State. By this mechanical nexus, British
manual labourers are to join hands with, e.g., German o
French manualists, so as to fight owners of property,

, British I
irman or I
roperty,

THE FAMILY AND THE NATION

and all persons of education or social position, whether
they be British, or German, or French, or of any
Nationality whatsoever.

It is only recently that a conspicuous English
politician strongly urged upon his Trade Unionist
followers, that, should war be declared at any time
between Great Britain and Germany, they should
abstain from having anything to do with it at all. The
argument was that the class addressed would not gain
anything by the war, that is — would not get anything
out of it for themselves! How much the Trade
Unionists enjoyed this insult is probably best known
to the politician in question.

How long this ugly International State, based on
"organised individualism," would continue, would de-
pend presumably upon how long it took the lower classes
of the countries involved in it, to assimilate the property
of their upper classes. The predatory spirit being in
the air, and being indeed the inspiration of this new
social nexus, it is extremely improbable that the lower
classes of such a State, when they had absorbed their
respective upper classes, would not quickly break up
into the old groups or Nations, or into new groups,
and fly at each other's throats in ignoble struggle for
gain. Thus, supposing, the English group was found
to be richer than the others, it is not to be believed
that the Russian or German Groups, if they retained
anything of their present strong martial instincts,
would hesitate as to their course of action. In the end
therefore we should either come back again to Nations,
or the Universal State would be merely the universal
domination of one Nation, to wit — the strongest.

THE INCLUSIVENESS OF THE NATION

The " ex elusive ness " alluded to above, which is a
necessary characteristic of the Family and of the Nation,
and which is so important a condition in all true growth,
t.e., all growth from within outwards, is not the exclus-
iveness which arises from hatred, envy, suspicion, or
even of indifference, but is the expression of an active
and positive virtue. This virtue, viz., affection, obviously
involves inclusiveness and therefore also exclusiveness.
To " include " means of course " to shut in," and con-
tains the implication that something is in some measure
"shut out." Ali definition is the result of inclusion
and implied exclusion, and the Family is a definite
idea, seeing that it is a definite relation. It is of the
genus "human relation," but it is a particular species
of that genus. Just as the Nation is another species,
and numerous other species could be named. Thus
when it is said that a certain term connotes a certain
circle of things, it is implied that all other things are
excluded. The word "thing" includes everything which
is the object of consciousness, including consciousness
itself, and it excludes nothing. It is therefore incapable
of definition, and is, taken alone, a meaningless term.
If again we say that a certain thing is " blue," we mean
it is blue in apposition to other coloured objects which
exist and are not blue, and are therefore excluded from
that idea. If all visible things were blue we should
not be conscious of blueness. It is only by apposition
and contrast that we are able to realise blueness or
indeed any other quality. That is to say we cannot
be conscious of blueness, or include any objects together

THE FAMILY AND THE NATION

183

as possessing that quality, unless wc know of some
other quality in the same category, which can and must
be excluded from the idea of blueness, — as for instance
" redness."

It is evident, therefore, that all inclusion involves
exclusion.

But the Socialist, unable or unwilling to see the
positive or inclusive side of Family and National life,
dwells solely upon their negative or exclusive aspect.
He regards the Nation as a "hideous race monopoly,"
and the Family as "a nucleus of resistance to the
outside world," and imagines a world composed of
isolated and unattached individuals who will yet be
united together by self-interest, a common humanity,
or — as some writers seem to think — by fear of an inter-
national police.

Let us take the noblest and only possible one of
these motives^the common humanity.

Affection involves exclusion and apposition. When
the individual begins life, inherited instinct and con-
tinuous experience acting among permanent and indis-
soluble relationships coupled with a sense of duty,
cause him to include as it were in his own Personality
a number of other Persons, viz., his parents and brothers
and sisters. He does not exclude the outside world
consciously, but nevertheless it is excluded, and forms
the contrast which makes him conscious of his Family
life, and causes him to realise his oneness or solidarity
with those whom Nature and experience have compelled
him to include in his own Personality, that is in a
measure to identify with himself He has therefore,
e have already observed, by realising his own value
and the value of certain others, made the first step in

THE FOUNDATIONS OF LIBERTY

citizenship. The step between this and the realisation
of the meaning and value of Families in general, and
so of individuals in general, is a small one.

The relation of the individual to the Nation, while it
is similar to his relation to the Family, is also the
result of that relation. In the Family the sense of
Personality having been called forth — the Personality
of himself and equally the Personality of all others — he
now finds himself as it were in a larger Family. He
finds himself among men who generally speaking are
racially connected with him, but who in any case have
the same character as himself, the same traditions, the
same function to perform in the world, the same
territory and State and laws, and frequently — indeed
generally — the same ethical and religious point of
view. He finds himself among men who themselves,
and their forbears, have lived and joyed and suffered
together for generations. This being so, and he being
already educated in the principles of altruism, he
proceeds to include in his own Personality this great
group of Persons which constitutes his Nation. He
finds he is part of a Nation, i.e. he finds his Nation is a
part, and a large part, of himself. If one says that a
man's nationality is nine-tenths of his character, does
one exa^erate? Let any Englishman deduct from
himself all that is specifically English, and how little
remains — something does remain, and that something
is of infinite importance, it being the element that
makes him an individual Person. But Personality
must have something to work on, a material to its
hand, a definite line on which to develop, and this is
provided by his nationality. Do we not know well
that the pure cosmopolitan is the most hopeless of

THE FAMILY AND THE NATION

ISS

■ men, cynical and negative, and inspired by no positive
I ideal, and no public aim involving continued generosity

and self-sacrifice? And if this tends to be the
condition of the cosmopolitan of to-day, influenced as
he is by the opinion and example of men of strong
national character, what would be the state of things
were all the Nations of the world to disintegrate into a
horde of homogeneous individuals, and each individual,
with none of the present restraining and inspiring
influences, were to find himself a hopeless, loveless,
aimless cosmopolitan ?

The individual has therefore now included in himself
his own Nation. But the matter does not stop there.
He has now learned to understand, not only the
meaning and value of his own Nation, but he now is
able to believe in and respect Nations in general, i.e.
the fact of Nationality, a thing otherwise impossible.
For a man who believes only in his own Nation, does
not in reality believe even in that Because apart from
the nobility and moral foundation of nationality in
general, his own Nation can, as such, have no nobility
or moral foundation. That is to say, such a man is
not a patriot — for if he were he would respect all
L patriotism — he is a mere "jingoist" and a boaster.

■ Now the Nation would not be conscious of itself as
I such, were it not for that which it excludes, viz., the

other Nations, To realise itself into full consciousness,
it must have something in the same category which is
not itself, something in contrast, in apposition, even in
actual or possible oppositon. In support of this one
has only to cite the instance of the Boer war ; how that
war suddenly drew all classes and parties together, and
vivified enormously the sense of brotherhood or

^^^^ i8(

I Na

B wa:

I by

■ the

i86 THE FOUNDATIONS OF LIBERTY

National life, although the public did not regard that
war as in any way a serious menace to Great Britain,

The unity of the world will never be brought about
by the destruction of differences, for progress is from
the homogeneous to the heterogeneous. The unity of
the world will not be a blank unison of like with like,
but harmony of contrast In organisms which are
living and progressing, advance takes place by means
of increased differentiation of parts, and if the world is
to become one living body corporate of the highest
possible development, the same basal idea, must be
followed.. It is of course only the basal idea, because
though all growth, biological or spiritual, contains
certain principles in common, the analogy between
the two breaks down after a certain point, as a result
of the fact that the less cannot contain the greater. It
will be found in the case of this mystical, universal
organism that the very differences (intellectual or
moral) existing between the parts are the cause first of
the unity of the Whole, and secondly of the vitality
and richness of the Whole. As regards the unity of
the Whole: — If by any process of "oi^anised in-
dividualism " the world became a congeries of homo-
geneous individuals, it would not be long before the
world broke up again into States. Local character,
instincts, interests, ideals, ambitions and jealousies; —
and the universal necessity and craving for realised
nationhood, would inevitably find expression sooner or
later. Alliances, open or secret, would take place, and
this amorphous world-state, founded upon the sand,
would totter and fall. But the world would not be
again what it had been before, viz. a few large political
nations, each with a developed character and tradition

iat [|

,Y AND THE NATION

(more or less ancient) of its own, and all with a
common understanding together and a certain
tradition and mutual comprehension, the outcome of
the friction of the ages ; but it would inevitably break
up into a number of petty States small and irre-
sponsible, wars would again be incessant, progress
would cease, and a second " dark ages " would ensue.
Already with the growth of materialism and the decay
of patriotism, there are agitators hard at work trying
to break up each one his own Nation ; while as regards
this country it is significant that those English who
are most enthusiastic for the independence and glory
of Ireland, or of India, are by no means those who
are most devoted to the independence and glory and
honour of their own country.

So much then for the unity of the Whole as de-
pendent upon the grouping of the world into Nations.
But the variety, richness and vitality of the Whole
depend also upon the same thing. How poor the
world would be had independent nations never existed,
and the world had by some means or another always
consisted of cosmopolitan individuals. How poor
we should be as individuals, as Nations, as a world,
if for instance the Hebrews had never existed, or
again the Greeks, or the Romans, the French or the
English. This indeed opens up a large and fascinating
subject, but one with which it is impossible here to
deal. Suffice it to say that all Nations have their
mission in the world, and as long as a Nation lives
up to its duty and performs its function, so long will
it live and enrich itself and the whole earth. Let
us consider then only the British and their special

a certain ^^^|

common ^^^

contribution to the Virtue, the Joy and the Glory of
the world.

Surely it is theirs to have brought from Heaven
to Earth the sacred undying fire of Libert}'. It is still
theirs also to maintain and intensiTy at home and
throughout the wide world an ideal of Liberty and a
zeal for the sanctity of the individual Person, — that
ideal and that zeal by which already so much of the
world has benefited and does sdll benefit, but to which
the world in general has contributed comparatively
speaking but little. Let us leave on one side our
domestic individual freedom, of which the most of us
are still so justly proud ; let us leave aside our now
world-famous trial by jury, our Magna Carta, our
Ancient House of Commons, our judicious limitation
of the powers of King, of Nobles and of Church, and
our more recent factory acts— a species of legislation
of which England was the pioneer ;^Iet us leave all
these things on one side and glance at the lessons in
individual liberty we have given in more direct fashion
to the world at lai^e. Consider the large part this
country has played in the abolition of slavery ; how
throughout the western world in general, and through-
out her own dominions, eastern and western, she has
waged war by land and sea against this violation of
the Right of Man, The Boers alone, it seems, could
speak volumes on this subject The Nation has
recently smetled slavery in the Congo — another
country's territory ; — what continued indignation, and
that of the most spontaneous and real kind, has been
aroused. If we are true to our mission we shall see to
it that that also disappears. As regards slavery, the
most cursory student of bygone history or of current

THE FAMILY AND THE NATION

189

affairs, could produce abundant examples of the
British love of personal freedom.

Leaving therefore slavery, let us consider the British
hatred of persecution, whether religious or political.
For example, have we not alone in Europe taken to
heart the cause of the Armenians? It is impossible
here to go into the case, one can only refer to it. But
here is a strange thing. The persons who were most
zealous as regards this matter (and all credit be to
them) were the radical party and the socialists— then
the bulk of the Opposition. It is strange, because
if the English socialists and those who are socialistically
inclined were in this matter strictly logical, so far
from interfering in behalf of the Armenians, they
would have argued that the individual has no rights
as against the will of his State. They would have
contended that the Good of the Whole was the
objective to be immediately pursued, and that, therefore,
if in the case of any State whatever (but in this case
the State of Turkey), it appeared to that State to be
for the Good of the Whole that a section of the people
should be treated in this or that manner, there was
nothing more to be said. It would be futile for them
to contend that in their view the action of the Turkish
State did not conduce to the good of Turkey. It is
sufficient answer to say that there is no question but
that the majority of Turks considered that such action
did so conduce. That is to say, we are compelled to
suppose that the Turkish State, like any other State,
knew its own business better than an "outsider." But
as a matter of fact those British who concerned them-
selves did not agitate in the matter on grounds of
Turkish expediency, but because they heartily detested

I90

Turkish tyranny, and Turkish violation of the rights
of individuals. We do not interfere or desire to
interfere with Turkey, or with any other country
generally speaking, because they do things which we
regard as contrary to the best interest of the country
concerned. But we do interfere, and as long as we are
true to our particular mission as a Nation, we always
shall interfere, when reasonably possible, with the
grosser violations of the Liberty of the individual
Person. Socialists are merely Utilitarians of a certain
school, but Utilitarians are human like the rest, and
when certain crises arrive, which are of a sufficiently
sensational and emotional nature, they bring themselves
back to n on- utilitarian views and show themselves not
as Socialists, Communists, Utilitarians, etc., but as
individual Men, who believe in the natural or Personal
Rights of the individual Man.

The instituting of progressive freedom is, therefore,
unquestionably the particular mission of the British
Nation, The matter must, of course, not be forced as
some are attempting in, for instance, India, We must
bide our opportunities ; but we must continue to hold
up our ideal, to fulfil our special function, to contribute
our quota to the virtue and glory of the world, or as
a Nation we shall be effaced, and the world will be the
poorer by the loss of a Nation, a Nation which like
others had a mission.

Throughout this brief survey of the meaning and
importance to human life of the nation, no suggestions
have been made as to the origin of the nation or as to
what is meant by its identity. It has so far been
sufficient to accept this spontaneous institution as a
fact, and as the expression of the necessity for affection

THE FAMILY AND THE NATION

191

to expand from a centre in widening circles; one of
which is the Nation. In case, however, the view here
taken of the nature of the Nation should be misunder-
stood, it will be advisable to touch briefly on this
subject of origin and identity.

The origins of Nations are various, and generally
only half deliberate. The American Republic is an
exceptional case of a Nation in large measure
deliberately Instituted, But though its actual institu-
tion was deliberate, its subsequent development, as is
universally the case, was the result of unforeseen and
incalculable factors. In considering the American
Republic as it is, the various developments which led
L up to the present state of things, must of course be
I regarded as part of the origin or cause of the present
p State. So we may say that the mode of development,
and the social, religious and political form and character
and the territorial situation and limitation of a Nation
are not the result of human foresight and ingenuity.
In other words History cannot be made in advance.
There is a sense in which men do not make history,
but are rather the material of which history is made by
a Power beyond themselves. Yet there are always
men who are determined to mould the future, religious
or political, so that it shall be in accordance with their
I own views ; or else who simply predict the future,
B having calculated to their own satisfaction whither the
■ Stream of Tendency must, as they suppose, inevitably
I lead us. They are not content with laying down
I certain basal moral axioms, certain ethical rules of
I justice and honesty which must be obeyed at all times
I and at all costs if the nation is to survive, but they
I attempt to prescribe by definite action, or predict by

192 THE FOUNDATIONS OF LIBERTY

calculation what the political, religious and social
conditions of the future are to be. But history shows
how in every generation of every country the predeter-
miners have been wrong ; for the Universal Providence
holds in its bosom forces, complexities and mysteries,
which as the history of the world reveals, it is not
competent for Man to anticipate, and which, until he
can look back on them as lemote history, he cannot
even properly understand. Existing movements are
but a poor index to the future. There is a tendency,
especially among superficial persons, to regard all
movements of their own time, which are popular and
successful, as in some sense final, and to suppose that
they must go to their logical extreme, and must triumph
throughout the world and throughout all future history.
But from history itself this view receives no encourage-
ment. Tendencies and movements, from various causes,
cease to be, and are replaced by other tendencies and
other movements, which are frequently of the most
unexpected and surprising character.

How futile then is it to attempt to bind the future
and to chain events as do Socialists in general and
authors of Utopias in particular. They wish to find
the justification for their actions in Utility. But
whether their actions are " useful " or not must depend
first upon whether this external crystallised, unessential
state of things at which they aim is itself "useful" — a
matter for the decision of history alone, and secondly,
upon whether the tendency or movement leading to
this state will not exhaust itself before reaching the
goal or be swept aside by some new and unexpected
movement

Let all men by all means lay down moral principles

THE FAMILY AND THE NATION 193

which shall be (whatever the future may bring forth)
the life, the guidance, and the inspiration of the State ;
but let us abstain from the folly of arbitrarily binding
the future and future generations, and of saying (not
as a matter of essential morality, but as a matter of our
present conception of convenience and utility) thus
and thus shall these things be for ever ; and from the
kindred folly of creating (through the medium of the
doctrine of Utility) principles which are expressly
contrived for the purpose of justifying our prejudice in
favour of this or that ultimate state of Society. It
is evident that in this case the conclusion has given
rise to the principles, and not the principles to the con-
clusion.

We conclude then that the prime origin of a Nation
may be deliberate. It may even be founded by agree-
ment among individuals of different Nationalities. But
history shows that the subsequent development and
ultimate condition of the Nation cannot be determined
beforehand, and therefore those who attempt to so
determine it are in error.

Let us then now proceed to the consideration of the
second point, viz., the meaning of the identity of a
Nation.

It is evident, as has been already stated, that there
is a sense in which Man does not — in any deliberate
sense — make his own history. That is to say, the
origin of a Nation, the course of its development, its
character and function, are for the most part beyond
the control of any individual, any party, or any genera-
tion. But there is a sense in which the men and
women of a Nation certainly do make history. That is
to say, while they cannot determine the course of
13

their history, they can in large measure determine
whether it shall have a future history at all. This, we
are btound to believe, they can do by maintaining and
acting on the principles of Justice and Righteousness
— a matter with which we have already dealt, and also
by keeping the Nation in moral and physical strength.
First we must believe that there is a Providence which
watches over Nations, blessing the good even though
weak, and condemning the bad even though strong.
Subject to that conviction we may go further and
express our belief that a Nation which, though small,
is morally and physically robust and effective, is very
likely to be able to secure friends among the Powers
of the world.' But how are we to obtain this moral
and physical power ? Surely only by each individual
Mieving tn Ats Nation, reaMsing that in this regard he is
something more than an individual, and humbling him-
self — and yet exalting himself — to believe that the
greater part of his own individual character, especially
of all that is good in that character, owes itself to his
Nationality.

The Nation in itself has no identity, that is, it is not
self-identical in the full and proper sense of the word
— in the sense, that is to say, in which we say a person
is self-identical. It may be divided into two Nations,
or it may by conquest, or by mutual interests and
sympathies, become merged in another Nation, and so
become one with that other Nation. But the Nation
' Thus Spain is much smallsT than the United States. Bat had that
Nstion resisted downward tendeocies, nud kept hecEclf at a high point of
moral and pbjsical stiengtb, it is inciedibit; that she would have lost
Cuba, oi indeed that there would have been a war at all. When a
Nation decays, it proTolces war, thougb against its will, and invites
defeat.

iii

THE FAMILY AND THE NATION 195

while it exists is as real as anything can be. It lives
in the consciousness, the will and the character and
affections of all the individuals composing it. The
individuals pass away, but the Nation with its character,
its solidarity, and its mission continues on its way,
adding always to the glory of those who were true to it
in its past. A river flows by and wc call it always the
same river, though it retains nothing but its form and
its function — how much more may we speak of an
indentity of a Nation, a River of Men? Here every
individual seeks to perfect his own soul, and to perfect
his own generation, and so to provide succeeding
generations — not indeed with a mechanical social
organisation — but with a continuous moral, living, and
national tradition and inspiration. This inheritance
will enable them to form and reform social organisation
according to circumstances, with wisdom and safety,
and to hold their place on the Earth throughout such
time as they shall prove themselves worthy, by fulfill-
ing the mission that has been bestowed upon them at
hand of the Maker and ruler of the World. The River
of physics depends wholly upon extraneous sources for
its existence, but we are able to perceive that the River
of Men, to wit the Nation, is, and must be if it is to
exist at all, in a sense its own cause and its own effect.
So here, in conclusion, we arrive at a certain unity of
idea. History shows us that it is impossible for any
individual party or generation to predetermine the
lines which future events are to follow ; and this must
be left, according "as we think, either in the pit of
chaos or in the hand of Providence ; but it is in our
own power, if we obey divine laws, to provide for our
existence by existing righteously, and to provide for

196 THE FOUNDATIONS OP LIBERTY

the future fulfilment of our mission by the continuous,
present fulfilling of it.

THE FORCE OF THE NATION

" We bow out heads before Tbee and we [aad
And magnify Thjp name, Almight; God I
But Thy most dreaded instrument
Id working out a pure intent
Is man— airayed for mutual slaugllter, —
Yea, Carnage is Thy daughter 1
Thou cloth'st the wicked in their daiiling mwil,
And by Thy just permission they pievail ;
Thine arm from peril guards the coasts
Of them who in Thy laws delight :
Thy presence turns the scale of doubtful fight,
Tremendous God of battles, Lord of Hosts."

(Wordsworth, "Thanksgiving Ode.") >

We have seen that the Nation realises itself by means
of contrast, that is by the existence of other Nations.
And it is a strange thing to note, that notwithstanding
the great intercommunication of modern Nations, and
indeed because of that intercommunication. Nations
become increasingly different in their respective
characteristics as time goes on. Thus a Briton who
lives much in foreign lands is more British than he
who knows no country but his own. If he is unaffected
and sincere he becomes not only British, but delibe-
rately and consciously so. Nations copy each other's
mechanical inventions, but each uses those inventions
subject to its own spirit and character, and so develops
yet further upon its own lines. The more Nations
advance and intercommunicate the more different from
'See Appeodin G.

THE FAMILY AND THE NATION

197

r each other they become, for intercommunication aids
development and self-reaiisation. There is for instance
no question that the Americans are more different from
ourselves to-day than they were a century ago. The
Teutons and the Gauls of the days of Julius Caesar
differed from each other less than do the Germans and
the French of to-day. One condition of this increasing
difference between Nations is of course the fact
that as Nations develop, there are more points at
which it is possible for differences to arise. But
positively speaking the development of differences can
only be accounted for by a difference of character
between the Nations^a difference at first almost
invisible, but which increases with development.

So we perceive that the existence of Nations in
general enables every Nation in particular to realise
itself and to develop along a certain defined course
suited to its own character — the only possible course
of development.

But the existence of Nations in general does more
than this. By means of actual or threatened com-
petition for place and power upon the earth, every
Nation is compelled to maintain its vitality or disappear.
Hence arises War or the possibility of War. Nature
will have no corpses to vitiate the atmosphere ; she
provides scavengers who will make short work of the
corpse or the moribund. One of the greatest statesmen
has observed, that weak moribund Nations are among
the most fruitful sources of war. The Sweet Singer of
Israel has it : " The Lord shall give strength unto His
people : the Lord shall give His people the blessing of

I peace" A greater than this experienced statesman
and man of war has said, " Wheresoever the carcase is,

198 THE FOUNDATIOPre OF UBEHTY

there will the eagles be gathered together." Here
around us on every side are the eagles : the eagles of
Germany, of France, of Austria, of America, of Russia ;
when they attack the Iton of Britain, shall they find
sentimentality and sweetness where they should have
found strength? If Britain as a Nation surrenders
vitality in a fatuous love of peace as such, even though
that be a dishonourable and disgraceful peace, it is
Britain that will be the cause, the wanton cause of War.
We may prate of the negative virtue of the British people
and of our love of not fighting, we may condemn the
impiety of the Nations that attack us ; but those Nations
wilt only be putting into effect what is obviously the
divine will, namely, that there is to be no decay upon
the Earth.

There are those who will allow us to resort to armed
force provided it is for purely defensive purposes, but
who declare all other warfare to be immoral. If that
is so, then the English have no moral right to be in
England or in Africa, or the Americans in America, or
Teutons In Germany or Scandinavia — and this list of
immoral trespasses could be extensively added to.
But that the world has benefited by the rise and
expansion of the Nations, and the corresponding
subduing and reduction of the decayed or backward
and stationary races previously in possession, there can
be no (doubt whatever. In the Old Testament the
moral purpose of war is set before us with some clear-
ness. Israel is there depicted as being conscious of an
actual divine commission to go forth and conquer and
take possession. And who shall say the world has not
benefited by the rise of that most remarkable Nation,
a rise effected at the cost of the overthrow of what

I THE FAMILY AND THE NATION

I were apparently morallj' degenerate and more or less
I effete civilisations ? About this warfare at any rate
I there was nothing defensive.

I The advantage to the world, to take another in-

' stance, of the conquests by the Romans, has never
been seriously questioned ; while to come to modern
times, who but a few professional politicians would
pretend seriously to believe that the conquest by
Britain of the numerous feeble and mutally hostile
nations and races which people India has not made for

I their peace and their progress, both moral and material ?
As it is with India, so it is also with Egypt. But
surely it is not necessary to labour the point. It is
clearly impossible to limit war to defensive war. Strong,
healthy, and vigorous Nations must expand, and those
which are the opposite must tend to be absorbed orex-
I terminated ; though it may be observed parenthetically
that war or the menace thereof tends to the conversion
of weakness into strength — as instance the case of the
Japanese, Indeed this effect of war as a moral tonic
to a Nation has been dwelt upon by John Ruskin, that
greatest lover of true peace.

("Crown of Wild Olive," III. 4 and 9. Compare also "Time and
Tide," page 206.) " For it is aa assured truth that, whenever the
faculties of men are at their fulness, they must express themselves
by art ; and to say that a State is without such expression, is to
say that it is sunk trom its proper level of manly nature. So that
when I tell you that war is the foundation of all the arts, 1 mean
also that it is the foundation of all the high virtues and faculties
of men.

" It was very strange to me to discover this ; and very dreadful
— but I saw it to be quite an undeniable fact. The common
notion that peace and the virtues of civil life flourished together,
I found to be wholly imCenable. Peace and the vices of civil life

'■ aoo THE FOUXDATIOVS OF LIBE

onljr floarisk togctber. We tiQc of peace nsd leuning, and ef
peace and ftaaj, of peace and civiluation ; but I found that
tbese were oot the words which the Muse of Histor>- coupled
together : ihM on her lq» the words were — peace, and seasuality
— peace, and setfislutess — peace, and death. 1 fotind, in brie^
that all great Nations learned their trtith of word, and strength of
thoaght, in war ; that thef were nourished in war, and wasted by
peace ; taaight b; war, and deceived bf peace ; trained by war,
aad betraved by peace ; — in a word, that they were bom in war,
and expired in peace*

Far be it from any one to say that war must be for
all time a condition of earthly human progress. But
that it is so now under the existing conditions of human
frailty and general tendency to degeneration and re-
lapse is as evident as it is possible for any sociolt^cal
proposition to be. If we ever get rid of war, it will
not be because the Nations are too weak to fight, or
too ease-loving and pleasure-loving, or because patriot-
ism is dead; or because having ceased to beJieve in
the immortality or even the existence of the soul, we
are too timid to look at death or too selfish or too
material to care for the highest or death-bought glory;
— it will be because all nations are keeping themselves
at their best physically, intellectually, and morally, so
that the Angel of Justice, who must then be reigning
among men, will find no cause to sever himself from
the Angel of Peace. Strength and Love, Justice and
Mercy will then be walking hand in hand ; Righteous-
ness and Peace wilt have kissed one another.

That it is possible to wage a disgraceful war is
undoubtedly true ; just as it is tnac that it is possible
to encourage and enjoy a shameful peace. But war
taken at its best is an expression of the affection and
mutual reverence that prevails and should prevail

THE FAMILY AND THE NATION 201

among fellow-citizens. War is a battling for Nation-
ality, that is for character and for mission. Each patriot,
whether he fights, or pays, or only prays, is fighting
for the character, the personality of his fellow-country-
men. Warfare thus viewed, we perceive that there are
not two kinds of warfare, one a spiritual conflict which
is waged within the soul and which is laudable, and
one a battle of the warrior which " is with confused
noise and garments rolled in blood," which is con-
temptible; but that both taken at their best,^ these
warfares are in the end the same ; both being conflicts
for character, battles for the integrity of the soul.

The soldier then, the warrior, stands for National
character, that large element in the Personality of each
one of us which is due to our Nationality, and without
which our individual Personalities would be almost
meaningless.

Consider for a moment how it happens that all
simple, healthy-minded men, and practically all women
and children, venerate the warrior, be he soldier or
sailor. Is there no reader of these lines who, when
witnessing a "gallop past" at a review, has not felt
then — even if it were for the first time — that he is more
than an individual man, that he is, as it were, a Nation ?
Has he not felt in the presence of this awe-inspiring
force, representing the might, the determination, the
courage, the brotherhood-unto-death of the Nation —
that he could grip every neighbouring man by the hand

iand own him friend and brother ; and that the fount of
tears — so long dry— seemed welling up near to over-
bw

' I say "both tiken at their besi," for as there may be an
there may be an evil spiritual battle, as when a ir
tgumt bis betlei self in a deliberate delenDination to do evil.

1 lights

flowing ? Here is no partisan affair which one-half of
tbe people hate and the other half affect to believe in.
Here at least is sooiethtiig which is not the result of
party "squabbles" and hatreds; something which is
not the Odtcome of tbe triumph of a political majority,
composed of bickering sects who detest each other ; —
no, here is something which represents the Nation as a
whole — not this or that part}-, this or that group of
half-knavish consptiators, but the whole undivided
Nation, the Brotherhood of the Fatherland. A friend
of mine, a most prominent Christian Socialist, spoke
before many people (more in sorrow than in anger)
against tbe display of military force which accompanied
the "Diamond Jubilee" of her late lamented Majesty.
He was unable to pcrcei« that the occasion being a
National one, it was reasonable that those forces which
represent and secure National character, as opposed to
those civil bodies which tend to National convenience
and comfort, should be especially in evidence, and
should like the Sovere^ himself be put forward as
representing the continuity and the unity of the
Nation.

To continue this latter train of thought — why is
it that no civil bodies, be they civic or private, can in
any of their doings bestir the popular minds, produce
public enthusiasm, and inspire the souls of poets and
artists, in the same manner and in the same degree as
do our National watch-dc^s, whether by land or sea ?
" Discipline," says some one ; — this discipline, this
regimentation, so adored of us Socialists, is the cause
of this popular admiration. But examination will
reveal that this is not really so. Take for instance the
discipline of a gaol. Here the discipline, as discipline.

THE FAMILY AND THE NATION 203

is far more perfect than that which prevails in the
army ; yet notwithstanding it is entirely hideous and
contemptibJe. The objector will say that this is not a
fair case, and we must choose some other. — Let us
choose, therefore, the case of the discipline in a shop,
in 2 factory, or in a bank ; — how poorly does this
compare with the discipline of our armed forces, of
those who are prepared to do and die, not for the
comfort of the people, but for their existence and their
character? But the objector again replies to the effect
that if we would make a just comparison, we must
compare the fighting forces, which are maintained at
public expense, with other bodies of men maintained
from the same sources.

Very well then, let us compare the results of the
energies of, we will say, the greatest municipal bodies
with those of the army and navy. Who, for instance,
contemplating the tramcars or steamboats of municipal
bodies, or their armies of street scavengers, or their
workhouses or lunatic asylums, however successfully
managed these things may be, can pretend for one
moment that the contemplation of these things sets
them afire with the glow of patriotism, with the intense
realisation of fellowship and brotherhood, in the same
sense and in the same degree as they are most
righteously and most divinely inflamed at the spectacle
of a united body of men, who for the merest pittance
are prepared to do and to dare, to endure all and to
die, not for the comfort or convenience of this or that
section of the Nation, but for Nationality itself and all
of spiritual and noblest that that involves?

We can divide the matter into two separate considera-

204

?ti5NS OF LIBEftTY

tions : and first, as regards the methods and the aims
or ends of civic bodies.

They arrive at their ends by party means, and what
one party does is generally done jn spite of the others ;
i.e. anything that the majority effects is deeply sus-
pected and entirely detested by the party or parties
who for the moment are in the minority. As regards
the ends, party spite and the determination at all costs
to catch votes at the next election largely constitute
them ; and as for the rest of their intentions and aims,
there are visible as factors the ambition, avarice, and
envy of the various individuals composing the parties.

The second point to consider is that the ideals and
energies of civic bodies as such are for the greater part
confined to considerations of mere popular convenience,
or hygienic security or of luxury ; whereas, as we have
already seen, the National Armaments are concerned
directly with the very existence of the Nation. The
former bodies stand for convenience, the latter for
character and national solidarity and unity. It ts
doubtless right and necessary that public convenience
should be sought after ; but we ought never to lose
sight of the fact that this convenience, personal security
of all kinds, and public comfort and luxury, tend to
destroy public spirit, civil concord, and National char-
acter, rather than to maintain them and to fosrter them.
That is to say, it is quite evident, that just i is under a
democratic party system of government, ci vil govern-
ment in all its degrees from the House ot.-T Commons
down to the smallest local council, involv^'es division,
sectarianism, and mutual suspicion and ha^Hred, so on
the other hand the Armed Forces of the N"ation stand
for Unity and continuity and cohesion, ai^id promote

THE FAMILY AND THE NATION 205

brotherhood and mutual trust. Peace, when it seems
assured, brings with it Internal discord, and a species
of civil War. War, or the possibility thereof, brings
with it internal concord and civil Peace. That is to
say external pressure is politically speaking one of the
conditions of internal coherence, or as it might be
expressed — brotherhood is realised in danger and
adversity. By promoting that wider circle of com-
munion and fellowship we call Patriotism, the National
Forces bind men together on lines of a common
tradition, a common mission, and a common Character ;
and by promoting faith in the nobility and divine
sanction of nationhood, they induce respect for
patriotism in general, respect, that is, for all nations
in so far as they are good and wholesome Nations ;
and therefore so far they become one of the most
important factors in the promotion of universal
Strength, moral and physical, and so of universal
Peace.

There are two principal objections to militarism,
even to that of the most reasonable kind, which it is
worth while briefly to consider

One of the commonest objections is one which is
frequently regarded as humanitarian and moral, but
is mainly neurotic, and of physical and purely self-
regarding origin. And I think this is demonstrable.
Thus: — if one were to deduct from this alleged
humanitarianism the whole of that element which is
merely a nervous horror of all physical pain and
bloodshed whatever, even when such is obviously
good and useful (as, e.g., in the case of corporal
punishment, protection of the weak, surgical opera-
tions, or the putting of doomed creatures out of their

pain) : ' if we deduct the whole of the physical,
hysterical horror of bloodshed as such from the
humanitarianism which objects to War, there would
be very little true humanitarian objection remaining.
The fact is that the world is not so vastly more
altruistic than it was a century ago, before nervous
degeneracy had become a popular failing. There exist
at this moment plenty of persons who would faint at
the sight of the slightest wound, but who do not
hesitate to inflict upon others (and this purely for their
own gratification) shame and loss and sorrow, and all
mental and spiritual suffering.

It is a remarkable thing how well " nerves " can be
kept in hand when it is a question of convenience.
While there are many nowadays who throw up hands
of holy horror at the mere suggestion of men suffering
and dying for the integrity of their Nation, or for its
honour or its glory, these same persons are composed
and resigned in the presence of the perennial slaughter
which takes place in the field of commerce,

I understand that last year in the United States of
America alonethere were upwards of /ooomen entombed
in mines. In the same country (at any rate in 1905, and
1 suppose the figures are much the same each year)
there were 10,000 people killed on the railways and
90,000 injured. Add to this list the figures (whatever
they may be) relating to disease and death in the
factories of that one country, in its iron-works, ship-

' So far removed from bumaniUiuuiiEin (in its liiU and proper lense
and as opposed to scntimeDtalism) is this selGsh bortor of inflicting
physicil pain under any drcamslances, that there «re numbers of people
who >.re nervously incapible of even putting a doomed animal, even such
a small aniiaa! as a pheasant oc a hare, ont «f mortal pain, even though
their moral judgmeot telle them that they ought to do so.

THE FAMILY AND THE NATION

m building yards, engineering works, and mercantile
■ marine, and we shall have a total of killed and wounded
as great or greater than that of a Nation which has
supported a War. A difference as regards this matter,
between the slaughter in the field of battle and that in
the field of commerce, is that the former is of
comparatively rare occurrence and is quickly over;
whereas the latter is of unfailing continuity and
persistence, without truce and without respite, ceasing
not year in year out, by day or by night. And the
II bulk of this disease and death is for purposes of
convenience, comfort, and luxury.' But as we do not
say that because modern commerce involves risk to
life and health, therefore such commerce should be
abolished, so we ought not to argue that because the
maintenance of Nations may involve the sacrifice of
life that therefore Nations should be abolished.

To continue then. There is a second objection to
militarism, which is so mean, and so disgraceful, that
one can hardly bring oneself to speak upon it
Happily, however, it does not require many words.
There exists among the manual workers of this
country a section, which, though small indeed, is
extremely noisy and notorious, and able to menace
and to influence every weak, timorous, and uncon-
vinced Government : this section entertain an intense
jealousy of ail money which is not expended upon
themselves, and of all power and authority which
they themselves do not more or less immediately
control. It is from among this number that the
officers of our Navy and Army have been spat upon,
not only by irresponsible speakers at public meetings,
' See Appendiii H.

bat in the Hoose of Cotnmotss itstiL These officen
have been described in public as "gildol popinjays,'
" murderers, " and " tnicd assasstns.* The Erst of
tbcsc temts was, 1 understand, employed io the House
of Commons itself. When one cotoiders Uiat these
evil appellations apply (and we take two instances
only out of bandreds) to such men as Lord Roberts
and General Gordon,* one can only be filled with
contempt for the men who, for a materia] gain alleged
to accrue to a section of the people, will vilify the
Nation's noblest, most courageous, and most faithful
servants.

There remains one other, and somewhat curious,
objection to militarism. Certain modem writers
contend that the true spirit of war has now ceased to
exist and that war must therefore cease to exist also.
The ground of their contention is as follows. In
modem warfare we take care of the women and
children of the enemy, and we also take care of their
wounded. On account of this fact the authors to
whom I allude suppose that we have ceased to believe
war. Surely the exact opposite is the case — that
is to say, we have at last learnt the true meaning and
ntention of war. War nowadays has nothing to do
with personal animosities and individual spite. It is
not an expression of hatred of other peoples or of the

' Hcie ii an example of the gcDenil Sodalisdc atdtude towaidt
ioldiera, "... for this the sham bjutic and heroic restorer of ChiDcse
despotism reluclantly (?) consenls lo go to Khartomn oa a pacific mission,
collects a bodf of adveniurers on bis arrival, proceeds to attack the
latioundiog liibes, and then shrieks for Britisb troops lo protect bim ;
for this, lastly, is Lord Wolseley sent with an expedition in response
op tbe Wile." The "for this" refers to interests of cajntalista. I
(" ReliEUm of Socialism," E. B. Bax, p. 126).

2og

persons of the enemy, but rather of the love we bear
to our own people viewed as a Nation. We do not
desire to injure individuals because they have fought
against us; such injury as is inflicted on them being
for the subduing or reduction of the power of their
Nation ; and we now therefore realise that a soldier
who is hors de combat should be treated with all the
respect that patriotic men owe to patriotism wherever
they And it

Our defence of sane militarism does not mean that
we should regard warasanythingbut a heavy calamity;
but it does mean that when war is necessary, it should
be viewed (as we view a surgical operation) as a
wholesome calamity.

Nor is it to be supposed that any defence of militarism
maintains war. We do not maintain war as though It
were some useful national tonic which we might take
at our pleasure. On the contrary war will vigorously
maintain itself, and will flesh its sword when and where
it finds moral and physical decay. We ourselves may
degenerate and decay, we may lose our sense of
brotherhood in party or in class spirit, in wrangling
and in robbing ; but the Sword of the Ruler of Nations
will remain true — heavy and swift, and bleak, and sure,
for the purification of Nations, and for their constant
and most utter proving.

For the elimination of wholly unnecessary wars, an
International Arbitration Council is most unquestion-
ably an excellent device, and I consider it a great evil
that militarists in general regard this Council with such
suspicion. But the dislike on the part of militarists to
this scheme, is in large part due to the extravagant
claims made on behalf of that body by enthusiastic

SIO THE FOUNDATIONS OF LIBERTY

anti-militarists. It has been ai^ed that as individuals
can be controlled in the interests of the peace of their
respective nations, so nations can by coercive force
control each other in the interest of the peace of the
world. But the analogy is a false one. The power of
any individual is as though it were not, in comparison
with the power of his State. At any International
Council, on the other hand, the individual States would
not be thus merged, and as it were " swamped," because
the Council would not represent millions of States, as
a State represents millions of individuals, but it would
represent only some ten or a dozen States.

The power of each individual State (especially as
regards the more powerful States) would therefore be
a matter of high importance.

Furthermore, it is to be observed, that those re-
sponsible for the conduct of foreign affairs are first of
ail trustees for their Nation. It follows, therefore, that
the decisions of an International Council must always
be in some measure suspect, because the representatives
of the various Nations will unquestionably first of all
consider the interests of the States they variously
represent.^

This will be the case whether the Board obtains

> There can be no question but tba.t the deciiioo of the Hague Cfm-
ference regarding the North Sea incident (which, however, wat in no
■ense a vital matter) was largely influenced by the intense desire of tlie
European States to avoid a geaetH conflagration, such as troold hare
been caused by Biitain being dragged into the war. The objector may
Hy thai tbii is as it should he ; and the duty of the Conference is and
will be to prevent universal condagratioos. But this does not aflect my
Rtatement thai the deci^ons of the Council will be suspect ; because when
■ibiUatori have ulterior tnolives, their decisions must necessarilj be
regarded by the puties prunaiily aoDcemed, as inadeqnate and unjust

compulsory powers {i.e. what it may regard as such)
or whether it does not.

The one chance of success for such a Council is to
avoid even the suggestion of compulsion. It must
neither attempt to compel States to resort to arbitra-
tion, nor can it propose to enforce its decisions. For
surely it is evident that such a body must of necessity
contain within it open or secret alliances or cabals.
Thus supposing some question vitally affecting the
interests of Great Britain were to arise, and a majority
of the States represented on the Council (whether acting
bond fide or acting in their own interests) were to decide
adversely to this country, it is surely highly improb-
able that this country in resenting the decision of the
Council, would not be able openly or secretly to secure
the adherence of one or two powerful States represented
on the Council. If now the Council wish to enforce their
decision they will undoubtedly be compelled to resort
to arms ; that is to say the majority of States represented
on the Council will now have to fight the minority,
which may or may not be less powerful. It follows
that if the Council gets compulsory powers and uses
them, the tendency of the future will be for all wars
to become general and universal, instead of being
deliberately localised, — as was, e.g. the Russo-Japanese
war.

Another point has to be noted in respect of coercion.
If the Council does not pretend to coercive powers, the
representatives of Nations will willingly resort to that
body for decisions on non-vital points, and willingly
abide by their decision. They will not have been
compelled to resort to arbitration ; and even having
done so, there will be no question of being physically

FOTODATIONS OF LIBEHTY

compelled to abide by the decisions. But they will
tend to so abide nevertheless, because there will now
arise the question of national honour and good faith,
which let the cynic say what he will, arc powerful factors
in international politics.

In the last resort Nations must look straight to the
God of Nations for their justification and for their
liberty. Just as the individual claims his liberty, not
as a boon, nor as a Utility, but as a moral right, a right
for the due recognition of which he will in the last
extreme resort to the sword and the horrors of civil
war ; — so the Nation must, when and if the occasion
arises, boldly assert its own liberty, and claim a re-
sponsibility direct to Heaven itself, and repudiate all
other.

Our liberty must be our own ; and our consequent
responsibility must be our own also ; that wc may not,
cannot, dare not allow others, however threatening — to
take from us. Either we hold our liberty by our own
virtue and might, or our liberty is a fiction and a name ;
for no Nation can call itself free, which owns its liberty
as a gift and as a boon : —

" A gift of that which is not to be given
By all the blended powers of earth and heaven."

CONCLUSION -<^

I have pleaded the cause of Personal Liberty, and
have shown the grounds upon which that liberty must
rest. I have shown that Liberty cannot be claimed or
maintained on grounds of demonstrable Utility or of
that which a Government of the moment may esteem

THE FAMILY AND THE NATION

213

as such, but that its foundations are laid deep in the
spiritual nature of Men. I have shown also how with-
out the Family and the Nation Liberty cannot endure.

We are, however, still far from the ideal, and as
things are we must be content with many temporary
limitations of Liberty. But it should be our endeavour
to see to it that these limitations tend towards universal
Liberty and not against it.

Thus, for instance, free and compulsory education,
such as is given by the Board Schools, while it is in the
first place a violation of Liberty, especially of the
Liberty of those who have to pay for that education,
does yet nevertheless, under existing conditions, make
for the independence of the poor. But I look forward
to a day when the Board School will be abolished, and
the manual labourers will be enabled to send their
children to schools of their own choosing, as do the
upper and middle classes of this country. I look
forward to a time when public spirit, meeting a newly
formed desire, will cause rich men to become "pious
founders," and endow schools for the manual labourers,
as they have, in times gone by, endowed them at
Oxford and Cambridge and elsewhere for other classes.
In this way two added advantages will accrue: we
shall get rid of the terrible religious education question,
and shall also get rid of the soul-killing, character-
killing system of wooden uniformity and spiritless
compromise.

Again, as regards the feeding of Board School
children — I would say that at present the English
lower orders are peculiar among the Nations, in respect
of the fact that they seem to have but little regard for
their own young. As a temporary expedient, I cannot

214 THE FOUNDATIONS OF LIBERTY

see why, on the principles I have laid down in this
book, children should not have two good meals a day.
But I am convinced that, on these principles, parents
should be compelled to pay for this, or at any rate,
contribute towards it according to their ability — and
this entirely regardless of their alcoholic requirements.

Take, on the other hand, the question of Old Age
Pensions. It is proposed that these be universal and
regardless of character. They are of course a mere
extension of the principle of " outdoor relief" ; and one
class pays for what another class receives ; the recipient
class becoming less independent and more parasitical
than they were before. This surely constitutes a viola-
tion of the rights of the class which pays. And it is a
violation which will become more extreme as time goes
on. Once the principle is introduced, the advocates
thereof have only got to reduce the age at which the
dole is received, and at the same time to increase the
amount of the dole, to land the Nation in a perfect
communistic system. The Socialists first propose to
parents that they need not support their young, because
this will be done by a sort of extension of the poor
law ; they then proceed to say that children need not
support their parents in their old age ; that this too will
be effected through the rates.

I cannot bring myself to believe that such a scheme
makes for the solidarity and maintenance of Family
life, or for the independence of the individual. On the
contrary [ believe that the two schemes, as they are at
present set forth by Socialistic persons, are deliberately
designed for the destruction of the Family, and for the
promotion of a communistic scheme, under which (the
wealthier classes having been ruined) the comparatively

NATIOTJ

215

unskilled, the vicious, and the idle, who will always be
in a majority, will be enabled to live on the earnings
of the more skilled and more industrious section of the
manual labourers.

I conclude by saying, that while there must in our
present imperfect social condition be interferences with
Personal Liberty (as that is previously defined in this
book), yet these interferences should be of a kind ulti-
mately to conduce towards independence and Liberty, I
have ventured to give two instances illustrative of my
opinion. Thus — free compulsory education (and the
feeding of children under certain conditions) is, as things
now are, the best means we have at present for
securing the independence and Liberty of the citizen ;
but on the other hand any system of doles (such as
Old Age pensions, as at present understood) attacks
the rights of the middle and upper classes, who will
have in the immediate future to pay them, and ulti-
mately attacks (when these classes have been robbed
out of existence) that minority of labourers who are
skilled and industrious above the others, and who
would, under the circumstances contemplated, become
the "upper classes."

I have thought it well to produce these two concrete
instances of the application of the principles set forth
in this little book. Many others might of course be
produced. But, I would state, I have set these forward,
less on their own account, than as a means for the
exemplification of the principles I have enounced.

I attach but little importance to the special appli-
cations I have in this book made of my own principles ;
rather is it to the principles themselves that I would
attract the attention of the reader. I am not competent

to apply fundamental political principles to immediate
practical issues. This is the work of essentially practical
persons, such as statesmen and practical economists.
1 have merely attempted to set forth, not a. scheme of
social reform, but some positive philosophy of reform.
That is to say, I have attempted to formulate an
epistemological philosophy of politics, suited — as I
myself believe — to the requirements of the present
time, and which shall appeal to all those who believe —
not that Man is merely an organism whose significance
is exhausted in his relation to the State — but who
believe that he is a creation of, and in the likeness of a
Supreme and Absolute Mind.

Those who do not believe this, but hold that Man is
the result of the blind conflict of the atoms — a chance
product of chaos, can become either Socialists or
Individualists according to their fancy or their interests.
But they are not morally bound to seek anybody
else's welfare at all. For such can admit of no
moral laws ; all that they can fall back upon is
chemistry and mechanics. And seeing what a meaning-
less and contemptible creature a Man would be (if their
philosophy were true) one cannot see why he should be
regarded as worth considering or preserving.

But those who believe that there is indeed a
Supreme and Absolute Person, the Source of all
Being, in Whom and to Whom all men are related,
upon them rests a responsibility — confessed and in-
evitable — for the welfare of their fellow-men, but
especially for the welfare of those of their own Natios,

APPENDICES

APPENDIX A

'T'HE objections to this abuse of the "organic theory
of the Stale " are of course very patent, though in
ordinary discussion they are among a large class of persons
so frequently ignored. Thus : If the parts be moral the
Whole must presumably be ethically higher, or at any rate not
less high, than its parts. The State, however, cannot be said
to be possessed of an "ego" except by use of extravagant
metaphors ; while on the organic hypothesis it exists for itself
alone, and is therefore among the lowest of organisms.
Again : It is only by similarities to other organisms, that we
can logically say of the State that it too is an oiganism.
Since, however, in all other organisms the relations betwsen
the parti are controlled by physical law, while in the political
Nation they are largely controlled, by volition, it is evident
that the analogy fails at an important point. Thirdly ; In all
other organisms the significance of the parts is exhausted in
their reiation to the Whole. Man, however, has other and
higher relations with a Being which is not the organism, and
though under existing conditions the higher are partially
dependent upon the lower, they are nevertheless distinct.

The organic theory of the " State," i.e. the physiological
view of the relation of the individual to the State, receives in
the popular mind a sort of support from the fact that the
various social sciences provide us with a quantity of so-called
"laws," which are popularly supposed to govern human
conduct. In consequence a notion prevails that human
conduct is not free, and that if laws of Nature dictate our
& conduct either wholly or at certain points, the State has a

t'.t .H

220 THE FOUNDATIONS OP LIBERTY

good precedent for interference in general, and could not be
regarded as injuring the individual, if at those points at any
rate, it made yet other laws to control or counteract these
Natural laws. Apart from the extreme difficulty of conceiving
people either making or obeying laws in the absence of
volition and the power of deliberate choice, it is obvious that
these " laws " of social science — as, for instance, of political
economy — do not "govern" human conduct, nor are they
" laws " in the sense in which we speak of " laws of nature,"
for the reason that they lack universality. They are really
only statements of what is generally done by certain persons
under certain circumstances, and are not applicable to human
beings as a whole. Supposing that for the purposes of
Economic Science it is assumed that the sole motive of
human conduct is the desire for wealth, i.e. we assume the
Economic Man; the economist then goes on to discover
similarities of conduct which he proceeds to classify and call
laws. But seeing that it is impossible for science to deal with
motive direct, and that it can only deal with it through
actions, the scientist is compelled to limit his investigations
to those persons who already are seen to possess the very
similarities of conduct which he proposes to discover and
classify, viz., to persons who consistently maintain strict
trading relations with the world at large, that is to persons
who (as it has been previously ascertained) are examples in
favour of the Economist's assumption and who were selected
on that account. All his conclusions, therefore, are really
contained in his original assumption, and taken together are
a re-statement in a complex form of what he originally stated
in a simple form.

The economist, therefore, has not discovered laws "con-
trolling " conduct ; he has merely classified his observations
of the conduct of selected persons at certain times, eliminating
from his investigations all other persons whatsoever. In the
matter of universality he cannot claim more for his " laws "

than that they apply to those persons whom he has selected

ad hoc. Even the selected persons themselves, or individuals

among them, can, as a moral and physical possibility, in some

particular connection, deliberately "disobey" any of these

"laws," i.e. they may elect (as indeed they constantly do)

L not to pursue in some particular matter the most paying line

■ of conduct. It is to be observed however that these persons

r then cease to be Economic Men : — because having proved

themselves an exception to one of the conclusions of the

Economist, it is evident that they were already ruled out by

the Economist's first assumption, which contains and involves

»the conclusions.'
Because the Spirit of Man is essentially creative and
original, by no inductive process can we ever discover laws
controlling it. Our conclusions will always be deductions
from fundamental assumptions, and not inductions from
the total of observed facts. To take another instance :
Suppose it be said (as it frequently is) that the diseased have
a tendency to vice or crime. It is, of course, impossible to
know anything of tendencies except in so far as they are
expressed in action ; we are therefore compelled to limit our
investigation to diseased persons who, as a matter of pre-
ascertained fact, are actually criminals or have actually done
things vicious. That is to say, the persons on whom we
would base our law indeed present similarities of conduct,
but it must be borne in mind that they were specially selected
because they did so, We may produce innumerable instances
of diseased criminals, but we have no means of inducing a
" law " regarding the conduct of the diseased in general.

The psychologist, it is true, sometimes discovers laws
relating to conduct, but when he succeeds in this it is because
he has been able to subtract certain conduct or activity from
the region of volition to which it had hitherto been supposed

I ' It is as if one should say Chat 60 seconds always make a. minute ; ||

H when we mean slwftys by a minute 60 seconds. J

I ■^■kodf kMMB IS be wndttBUrj, and woo
of the k^t^oK pacnol Mfitf , B ■

vfaidi Eke political Iswit ne «Ma ofs

omtnnllis^ vUck aic tke ouooHC of tltt c

iA>t «e (Cv ov ivcKBt p»pQae) wlxiOj tomidile

APPENDIX B
Tlw letter hu been aikea St midon, bat is s bs specaBCB
of Ifae BOdon aigamau for p qaemli on i —

THE VIRTUE OF TOLEKATIOH.
(To the Editor of tbe ^eOMMr.)

Soi,— Do yon Dot, by tbe ose of that phnse <4*MW)pr,
(jid AogostX bef tbe vbolc qoestioD xt issue r^atirc to

253

persecution? Is toleration a virtue at all, — or is it a
euphemism for indifference ? Will any one maintain that we
are not entitled, nay, bound, to prevent the foolish from
injuring themselves and others by their folly? Otherwise,
how are we to justify our late doings in South Africa, how
justify our rule in India, in Egypt, nay in Ireland? We force
our social economics upon three or four hundred millions of
men who do not want them, and would not have them if they
were able to resist. And we do so rightly, because — and only
because — we know what is good for those millions better than
they know it themselves. And the resuh justifies us. And
yet a man's inherent right to damn himself (as we believe)' is
not to be interfered with on any account, though we wholly
disallow his right to have small-pox or to bring up his
children in ignorance when he insists upon those luxuries.
If we justify our interference on selfish grounds, so much the
worse. For surely it is more intolerable to tyrannise over
our neighbour for our own selfish ends than purely for his
good. But the common-sense of the matter is that we are
justified in constraining others for their own good (i) when
we are reasonably certain that we arc right, and (z) when we
are physically able to do it. The real reason why religious
persecution is unpopular to-day is that nobody is strong
enough to persecute. No doubt there is a secondary reason
why toleration is held to be a virtue; since religion has
been based upon human opinion, and not upon divine faith,
honest men have had a very reasonable diffidence in imposing
on their fellows what they were far from sure about them-
selves. — I am, Sir, etc.

W. D, Gainsford.
Skbndlbhv Hall, Spilsbv.

T believe": — But as regards Ihose who are condemned and
those who >re saved, it is impossible (o prodace statistics or other tangible
evidence. Whereas in the governance of counliies by raling Nations this '
can be effectively done. Take, t^., the case of Egypt. There are

THE FOUNDATIONS OF UBERTTT

[Our Roman Catholic correspoDdeot, Mr Gainsford, puts
very clearly the essential difference between Roman Catholics
and English Protestants, or at any rate between us and bim,
as regards toleration. He regards toleration as a vice when
it is voluntary, and not forced upon men by physical weak-
ness. We regard it as a positive virtue. He, that is, con-
siders nontolerance to be a religious duty. We consider
tolerance to be a religious duty. If we did not feel sure that
our correspondent was a great deal better than the ruthless
logic of the creed he expounds, we should be inclined to
say; "The teeth and claws have been cut, but the nature
of the tiger is the same." Cromwell (witness his Irish
campaign) was not always as tolerant as in his best moments
he desired to be, but he said ore of the best things ever
said about toleration. " Liberty of conscience," he said, " is
a natural right, and he that would have it ought to give it"
As men rise higher in the spiritual scale, they will, we believe,
come to see that toleration is per si a religious act ; and not
a mere convention based on weakness or convenience or
indolence. They will find that they can yield full liberty of
conscience to others without yielding up or weakening their
own faith. This may not be logical, but it is something
better than that useful but over-honoured little foot-rule. It
is the state of mind to which the sanest, noblest, most
spiritual, and so most religious men in all the Christian
creeds have always, consciously or unconsciously, tended. —
Ed., Spec/aior.]

The following quotations may serve to show how as soon
as we begin to despise the Liberty of the Person, we com-
mence to despise the Person. They will also show that
though we only despise the Liberty of the Person at some
one point, some point which particularly concerns our own
Watistics and other tangible evidence, which demonstiile to all (except of
covrsi ex />ar(e dispotanls) chat Egypt has benefited extensively by British

APPENDICES

225

theories or interests, we in reality attack Liberty as a whole.
The following quotation is from Mr Frederick Meyrick's
" Memories of Life at Oxford and Elsewhere," the work at
once of an academic and of a student of human affairs.
"Talbot is sure that Newman is organising the laity to
govern the Church. 'What is the province of the laity?'
says the Pope's Chamberlain writing to Manning. 'To hunt,
to shoot, to entertain ! These matters they understand, but
to meddle with ecclesiastical matters they have no right at
all.' . . . Dr Newman is the most dangerous man in England,
and you will see that he will make use of the laity against
your Grace. You must not be afraid of him." This and a
great deal more about the " detestable spirit growing up in
England," which had been repressed by Wiseman, "who
knew how to keep the laity in order " (page 209).

Speaking of the Catholic Reform movement in Portugal,
brought to a head by recent extravagances and innovations
brought about by the Vaticanists, Mr Meyrick gives us a
glimpse of the Roman attitude towards conscientious
objectors.

"At the time of my visit in 1892 only one of the four
original clergy was still living. This was Da Costa, of Rio
de Monro. On the day after my return to Lisbon I went to
Rio de Mouro with the Archbishop and the Bishop. Da
Costa had been originally a Roman Priest at Rio de Mouro.
He now kept a school and had a large congregation in the
satne place. In 18S2 he had been excommunicated, and
the form of his excommunication and that of his wife is very
characteristic. 'The crime of these unhappy persons,'
declared the Archbishop of Mytelene, ' is horrible. It is the
awful sin of public heresy, manifested externally, with all the
anti-Catholic demonstrations which the furious fanaticism of
error can inspire against the truth; the public teaching of
Protestantism carried on by the heretical school founded in
Rio di Mouro, at the expense of the dreadful Protestant
IS

226 THE FOUNDATIONS OF UBERTY

Propaganda; the circulation of Bibles and pamphlets, where
attacks are made on Catholic dogma, upon the worship of
the sacred images. . . . Fly from them Christians ! You
roust avoid them as persons struck with pestilence. Hold
no intercourse of any kind with them ! At present there
presses upon them the justice of God, who punishes them
with the thunderbolts of the anathema. . . ." "Given in
Sao Vicente under our seal and the stamp and arms of His
Eminence (the Cardinal Patriarch of Lisbon) on the 23rd
November 1882."

A quotation from the El Siglio Futuro follows: "Is it
just or equitable, reasonable or politic, to disregard the way
in which 18,000,000 Catholics choose that we should be
religious ... in order to favour the filthy, immoral and
obscurantist demand of that group of microscopic dimen-
sions, headed by a few monks living with their concubines
and trebly apostate? The rehgious opinions and worship of
Protestants are manifestly contrary to and subversive of
Christian morals, for they teach and preach, in opposition to
them, doctrines horrid in theory and profoundly immoral in
practice, offensive to God, degrading to man, and ruinous to
Society" (page 324).

The extreme dangers of Socialistic Views (whether they
be political or religious) regarding the Person and hia
Liberty are further exemplified by the late Mr Lecky in his
" Democracy and Liberty."

" It (the Roman Church) had already abundantly shown
that its old spirit of intolerance was not abandoned. This
was clearly manifested in the encyclical letter of Gregory XVI.,
which was issued in 1832 condemning the prevailing doctrine
that men of honest and upright lives might obtaui salvation
in any faith — tracing to this noxious source the 'absurd and
erroneous opinion, or rather form of madness, which was
spread abroad to the ruin of religious and civil society,' that
'liberty of conscience must be assured and guaranteed to

APPENDICES 227

everyone,' and condemoiog in terms of equal violence unre-
stricted liberty of publication. In the concordat with Spain
in 1851, and in the concordat with the Equator in 1862, it
was expressly stipulated tbat ' no other forms of worship than
tbe Catholic one should be tolerated in the land.' ' That each
man is free to embrace and profess the religion which by the
light of his reason he believes to be true.' ' That the Church
may not employ force.' ..." That it is no longer expedient
that the Catholic religion should be considered as the onJy
religion of the State to the exclusion of ail other forms of
worship.' 'That in Countries called Catholic ihe public
exercise of their own religions may be laudably granted to
immigrants.' 'That the Roman Pontiff ought to come to terms
with progress, liberalism and modern civilisation,' are among
tbe propositions enumerated in the famous syllabus of 1862
as authoritatively condemned by the Church " {" Democracy
and Liberty," vol, a, page 19).

"The Council of the Vatican laid down that all Catholics,
whatever may be their position, ' are subject to the duty of
hierarchical subordination and of a true obedience, not only
in the things that concern faith and morals, but also in those
which belong to the discipline and the government of the
Church throughout the Universe.' On the strength of this
decree, and on the strength of various Papal encyclicals or
instructions relating to political or social matters, attempts
have been made to draw the whole fields of politics, political
economy, and social questions within the empire of the Church;
on the ground that particular courses adopted on all these
questions may promote or impede its interests. In the words
of Cardinal Lavigerie, ' In the order of facts which practically
interest religion and the Church,' the counsels or precepts of
the Vicar of Christ have an absolute right to the submission
of Catholics. To dispute this and to draw distinctions between
I less authoritative and more authoritative Papal commands, is,
I according to the Caidinal, 'a grave error, condemned by the

jl |Htia w» be apd^ ntsficd a^
iiMiiiiliia'w' wken tke PUh aaH i

MiMi Hafcii I Is k ftelr dnt if Ihe I
tepHiBKtfibeGaod oftke Whdcr

: at ipeBck

aMi^ otker Skhs el Vbatj (nd tfil ■med^ Id da » if
the o p tWiM MlT BBcs) thai the SodAa pmtf vffl be able to
doocbeivis^ar cfaidesetods udKiauc ItBDOtclnr
indeed afar ^ Anid deare lo

APPENDICES

229

pression of any form of Liberty is quite consonant with their
doctrines. Already a conspicuous Socialistic Politician has
approved in public the principle of the boua di lioni of
medijeval Venice; and has expressed the opinion that the
loHzal Government Board should be given the powers of a
Court of Law, that it might itself be able to both try and to
punish all persons to whose actions or views it took objection.

Note : — I earnestly hope that none of the above criticisms of the Roman
Church will be interpreted as ao attack on the Authority of the Catholic
Chnrch in general, or on the lesser Authority of any of the various
Calbolic Churches in particular. The signs of the times on the contrary
point lo Ihe fact that Christianity must disappear altogether without it
has some reasonable crilerioQ, some 6nal Court of Appeal. The error
consists in applying ibis Authority in wrong directions, and in attempting
to enforce it by various modes of compulsion. This authority has no
meaning if it does not rest on the conscience, the reason and the
affections.

APPENDIX C

The following lines are part of a description in the
" Excursion " (Wordsworth) of the growth and development
of a country boy belonging to the poorest class. Although
the poverty of his class (shepherds) was greater than that of
most London factory hands, yet notwithstanding there is no
trace of the debasement known as misire.

Contrast the environment and upbringing of this boy with
that of the child of a factory hand in — we will say — the East
end of Londoa

" From his sixth year, the boy of whom I speak.
In summer, tended cattle on the bills ;
But, through the inclement and perilous days
Of long continued winter, he repaired.
Equipped with satchel, to a school, that stood
Sole building on a mountain's dreary edge
Remote from view of dEy spire, or aound

Aad br IfacB did k Eve ; Otr "B" iB H^

la mA atom ol^ad,m lack a^lM^
Of n^t^ioB boa Ac Im^ God.

t APPENDICES 231

, Thought was not ; in enjoj'meRt it expired.

No thanks he breathed, he proffered no request ;

Rapt into still commnnion that transcends

The imperfect offices of prayer and praise,

His mind was a thanksgiving to the power

That made him ; it was blessedness and love.

A herdsman on the lonelf mountain tops, '

Such intercourse was his, and in this sort

Was his eiistenee ofteotimes possessed.
L Oh, thee bow tieautiful, how bright appeared

I The written promise I Early had he learned

I To reverence the Volume that displays

The mystery, the life which cannot die ;

But in the mountains did he/ft/his faith."
The description does not end here, but enough has been
quoted for the present purpose.

Compare the life of this poor shepherd of the hills of Athol
with the lives of the people {no poorer than himself) who
work in manufacturing towns, and whose misery and
debasement have been depicted with such force by the
author of "No. 5 John Street." For them are no "moving
seasons " bringing change of environment and of occupation,
no seed time and harvest, hardly even morning and evening.
Day after day, morning and evening, week in week out,
spring, summer, autumn and winter, they perform the same
unchanging, dreary, mechanical task. The peasant on the
other hand has tasks which vary with the time of day and
the time of year, and is (as Adam Smith has pointed out) at
bottom much more intelligent than the factory hand. For
the town labourer there is no sea, hardly a sky, no fresh air,
no exalted rocky mountains, no gentle rolling hills, no streams,
no waterfalls, no changing fields, no trees, flowers, grasses,
ferns, mosses, — for them there is nothing at all, but to spend
ignominious days in dexterously picking pens out of a machine,
or putting almonds on biscuits, as they stream eternally past
them ; or some other equally silly, monotonous and degrading
occupation. His work done, he can go out and contemplate

^ 232 THE FOUNDATIONS OF LIBERTY

the grey, unchaDging inspidity and monotony of the streets of
a manufacturing town. For him is no silent night whose
stillness is disturbed only by the voice of the nightingale;
his are the relentless racket and hideous hootings of the streets,
and the sound and sight of every horror associated with
industrial centres.

Protectionists tell us that their fiscal policy will enormously
increase the manufacturing industry of this country, and
Free Traders claim the same for their policy. But why any-
one who loves life more than gold should wish to increase
manufacture, I cannot understand. Let us by all means
effectuaily protect and encourage in every way our agriculture,
fishing and forestry. That done, protection of manufacture
can be considered.

Regarding this matter, the first question we must ask our-
selves is not an economic one, but a political. The question
is whether as a Nation we are as safe in the event of war when
producing no food, as we should be if we produced an
enormous quantity. The second question is a social one —
viz., is it a good thing for a Nation that the bulk of its popula-
tion should live under conditions in which degradation and
vice flourish best, and in which a child is the most likely to
grow up with an unbcautiful mind and an unwholesome
body ; in which, indeed, it is the most probable that he will
grow up filled with envy and hatred of those who do not
share his lot, and so become a bad and revolutionary
citizen ?

The next and last question is the economic one. This,
however, does not as yet come up for consideration. Before
we can consider that aspect of things, we must have answered
the two previous questions with a decided Yes or No.

It must be admitted that some of our recent legislation gives
cause for alarm. For instance that bodies of men should be
appointed (with the express permission of the law) by labour
organisations, so to act as to hinder persons not belonging to
those organisations from going unmolested about business
admitted by the State to be lawfid, is a gross surrender of
the finest British tradition regarding the freedom of the
citizen. It is to be feared that the talk about "peaceful
persuasion " is purely deceptive. For one thing nobody has a
moral right to force an argument on somebody else contrary
to that person's desire. If ailment and persuasion were all
that was really desired it would not be necessary to have
large and numerous "pickets" consisting of powerful men,
because a bureau could be maintained, of the existence of
which free workers could be informed in some reasonable
manner, and to which they could resort if they desired to
obtain the arguments of the Organisations. But it is surely
quite clear that something more than a mere invitation to
argue is intended when a body of men stand outside a
man's cottage, depriving him of privacy and inflicting end-
less annoyances and harassments on himself, his wife and
children.

Again a certain type of moralist is a great danger to
Liberty. I refer to that type of moralist who desires to
produce moral conduct, or at any rate a simulacrum thereof,
by direct legal enactment. Of course the law can only
provide the soil in which Virtue may thrive, if — as one may
say — it wajits to. Thus to take the so-called Temperance
movement. Attempts have been made to prohibit in certain
localities, and if possible throughout the whole country, the
consumption of all alcoholic beverages. That the methods
obtaining in the liquor traffic should not be subject to civil
control is not here contended. Sach control is not on ideal,

THE FOUNDATIONS OF LIBERTY

but we are far from perfect liberty yet, and from the con-
ditions under which it can perfectly exist. The control
indeed, if effected in the spirit of liberty, may actually
conduce to those conditions, and freedom in this matter
will then exist, and so far the ideal will have been reached,
and we shall be able to abolish all legislation regarding that
matter. But the matter must not be conducted in any spirit
of sectarianism— hygienic, moral, or political. The practical
freedom of all must be observed. Thus a person must be
able to obtain sufficient alcoholic beverages to suit what he
supposes he requires, but it is not necessary that in our
present state of ignorant, diseased, town-herded population,
that such beverages should be as it were " forced " upon
them (as the conjurers say), nor is it necessary to the idea
of liberty that the liquors should be permitted to be impure,
and of an impurity specially calculated to produce excessive
indulgence. No legislation is dangerous in the long run if
inspired by the idea of Liberty; for if it is oppressive it
will very soon be altered — not indeed by political exigency
and the " cadging " for votes, but by an overmastering
belief in Liberty. It may be said that if this is so, let us
first of all by way of securing a sober nation, prohibit alcohol
altogether, and such sober nation produced we shall then be
able with safety to allow practically a free sale of it. But the
liberty to enjoy alcohol unimpeded, must rest on a previous
liberty, under which indulgence took place subject to
restrictions. In drinking nations like England and France,
temperance cannot be produced by a party conspiracy in
Parliament. Total abstinence may be created for a period,
but a turn in the political wheel and it will be found that
what was supposed to be a "temperate" nation was not so in
reality.

Larger liberties must grow out of smaller ones, they cannot
grow out of nothing at all. It is reasonable to suppose — and
indeed our recent experience justifies us, that religious and

APPENDICES 235

secular education tend to reduce the drink bill ; let us then
be disposed to rely as far as possible on such a freedom pro-
moting instrument as education, and also better still manly
and miUtary pursuits, rather than fall back on directly legal
methods of attaining our end ; methods which owing to the
indiscrimination which belongs to Ihem, must oppress the
large number of temperate, while they dubiously liberate from
their vice the small number of drunkards.

There seemj to be no limit to the extent to which moralists
of the type of the .political " temperance " enthusiasts wUl go
in their interference with individual liberty. Some years ago
the whole question of "total prohibition" was under dis-
cussion in Canada, and it was proposed that wine should be
permitted for the purpose of administering the Holy Sacra-
ment according to usage. An English Radical journal of
wide — and I may add of well-merited popularity — expressed
itself as opposed to the proposed exception. Now whether
or not ecclesiastics are correct in claiming that this Rite
cannot be duly performed without the use of alcohol, such a
question has nothing to do with the |matter. The fact
remains that they and those they influence were strongly
under that impression. Now even if the persons making this
claim were in a very small and feeble minority, it would not
be morally right to employ legal coercion in order to destroy
the freedom which that minority had hitherto enjoyed in this
connection.

In the end those who desired to employ alcohol for the
above purpose won the day. But they did not do so because
they were able to demonstrate the Utility to the Community
of maintaining this Right, but because it was felt to be dis-
graceful that even in matters of private and {ptr si) innocuous
religious belief, a minority however small should be at the
mercy of the Civic Machine. Thus, prepared to tyrannise in
the interests of the Good of the Whole, as vast numbers were>
they could not rid themselves of the idea of natural or

236 THE FOUNDATIONS OF LIBERTY

personal Right when that was appealed to in the sphere of
Religion. But of course it is logically impossible to admit
the absolute existence of Natural Right at one point, and then
when other matters come under consideration to deny the
absolute character of Natural Right, and to assert that it
exists merely in relation to what the majority esteem useful.
The prohibitionists must surely have perceived that if it was
really for the Good of the Whole that alcohol should be
prohibited throughout the land — as was the contention of
some — it could not be equally for the Good of the Whole that
at the same time the consumption thereof should be elevated
to the august position of a Christian duty and a Christian
symbol of imparted spiritual power. The fact is that the
prohibitionists beheved much more in Man and his Rights
than they did in their religious and political utilitarianism.
All credit be to them.

But there is another danger to individual liberty, likely,
with the spread of semi-scientific knowledge and of the
Socialistic idea, to become vastly greater even than it is at
present. This danger arises from a type of person daily
becoming more popular, viz., the Hygienist. The remarkable
thing is that with the exception of a few exceptional medical
men, who desire to attract attention to themselves in journals
and reviews, medical men in general are actually opposed to
their patients (or indeed to any one else), excessively con-
sidering their health and the innumerable things that are at
any moment supposed to conduce to it, or to militate against
it. We need not weary the reader with the interminable list
of "hygienic" fads: — no meat, nothing but meat — alcohol
a food, alcohol a poison — bread fatal, raw fruit essential, raw
fruit deadly — the smell of flowers highly dangerous, salt and
also tomatoes will make you live interminably; tomatoes
give cancer, as also does whole-meal bread^ — ^salt shortens
life. If you would live long sit in the sunlight; the dark
rays of the sun impair the nerves and produce suicide. ' We

APPENDICES

237

W have now begun Co complaia of our neighbour's hair and
whiskers as providing lodgment for hostile germs. But why
limit ourselves to whiskers ? as long as my neighbour has a
body at all he constitutes a permanent menace to ray health.
Let the majority get rid of the bodies of the minority— and
then begin on each other. But let them first begin shaving
horses and cattle and cats and dogs and sparrows and rats
and mice. As moralists of a certain type desire that all men
should be practically imprisoned on the solitary system lest
they should do wrong, so the hypochondriac is beginning to
find that the only way of surely avoiding disease is to isolate
or amputate the body. Any reader of ephemeral literature
could produce hundreds of these wild fads. But leaving on
one side such older things as " cork soles," sterilised foods
and drinks, woollen underclothing (which it now appears is
intensely dangerous — must use flax) we come to the modern
notions. You must not touch money or (oddly enough) the
handle of a railway carriage door without you are armed with
germicide gloves. Mothers must not kiss their babies — in
fact nobody should kiss, or for that matter be kissed —
certainly not if he has recently shaved. You must not
attend public performances, certainly not Church — everyone
seems agreed about that, though ballrooms do not seem to
matter so much. In fact every one should live isolated,
wrapped up in germicide cotton wool and subsisting on
tabloids according to medical prescription.'

Of course the obvious answer to all this is that this per-
petual buttressing of Nature can only end in weakening
Nature, who is at present sufficiently armed. Moreover
nervous conditions must be taken into account. We must

I' Of course nothing here said is meant to deny that medical art may
step in to assist nature at pailiculai ctises, or wheti an iodividaat is the
Bubject of abnormal conditions. Bui such assistaoce should be limited
to abnormal states, and should not be legBided as a substitute for natural
tacTgf i or oaiutal energy will very swiftly commence to deteriorate.

Mlil be fnptm u to abate the bvia odcr lotece c

to mton to bit tfaeones. SamtatAai

vievi nswdbK tbe Good of ife WUkv «

Ihe or dimi y poGtieal »*'-"'i«*« lo dte blodi — sack

tBttanceas dx paopoil to BBifar ddicite riiiiA>^i

Tlioe » nolitiBg nore coaunoM at paaoA in c ~
•ode^ than b> bear botb bxd and vmacn asseitaig —
vitbout a qaalm of coosdence — that it is obriooslj Sor the

Good of the Comvauoitj that children wlio are not i iiii i1

lo be tip to a certain physical standard, should be destrorcd,
and that indeed all penoos of inferior phjnqiie sboold either
be entirely isolated for lif^ or "bumandy" got lid of.
These people are of course not withoat precedents to go
ujioD ; e.g., the Spanans — a people of high cerebral develop-
ment—employed methods of this kind, though it is not clear
that i>y this means they became mentally or physically better
than say the Athenians.

A variety of objections not only moral but also utilitarian
present themselves in opposition to this view. First, that
vast numbers of persons who in childhood and early youth
have promised badly, have — under proper treatment — survived

APPENDICES 239

to be singularly fine specimens of the human race. Secondly,
by exposing children to conditions which are really abnormal,
as did the Spartans, with the object of destroying the unfit —
while it may be true (though there is no evidence for this),
that such procedure got rid of the physically unfit, yet there
can be no question that this method must have also impaired
the health of many of the survivors. Thirdly, supposing we
ourselves undertake to decide who is physically fit to survive,
and directly destroy the physically unfit ; — we should by such
action be merely suppressing the symptoms of moral and
social disorder, that of which the unhealthy are the outcome.
But the causes of disease would remain and would continue
to militate in a manner which would be insidious and un-
observed (whereas under the existing system that manner is
most patent and obvious) against the health of the survivors.
On the other hand if we are compelled to maintain our
mentally and physically unfit, the milk of human kindness
and the shallowness of most purses, will conspire together
to get rid of the causes of such unfitness as are obviously
remediable, provided we will desert wool-gathering, and use
the law for the purpose of protecting the weak from the
strong.

Here is another diametrically opposite view. Regarding
the injury to survivors resulting from exposure to abnormal
conditionsj it has been contended that, on biological grounds,
there is no call for amelioration by the State of "Slum"
conditions. It is argued that these conditions kill oS all but
the very fit, who are therefore "adapted." In support of this
the vast and ancient slum districts in tropical Asia are
pointed to, where the people ate healthy. The objections to
this biological theory are manifold. Firstly, one has only to
inspect personally the slums in England, to convince oneself
that while the weaklings may be eliminated, those who might

■ otherwise be fit are rendered very imperfect specimens.

■ Secondly, it is only certain types of unfit who are eliminated.

THE FOUNDATIONS OF LIBERTY

For there are malarial and sanitary conditions vhich are
more injurious to the strong than to the weak. Thirdly, the
instance of tropical and sub-tropical Asia affords no analogy,
because the people there live practically out of doors, and
have no glazed vindows, and even now but few are employed
under our pent-up factory conditions, and formally none
were. Fourthly, there must obviously be a limit to adapta-
tion. Thus no elimination of the unfit would enable mankind
to survive in the absence of oxygen. Fifthly, those who
would survive under vile conditions would be of a low
mental type. If we imagine a number of persons of both
sexes imprisoned indiscriminately in a dark and loathsome
dungeon — an environment in which certain types of reptile
would prosper admirably — we may be certain that those
persons who nearest approached to the reptile would be
the most likely to survive. Sixthly — -as a matter of
history and observation — Mankind does not progress
by the simple process of the elimination of the unfit.
Indeed such negative process accounts for no progress at
all, it merely maintains things at a level to which they have
(so far unexplainably) attained. The life of Man is not
analogous to that of the Flora and Fauna, because Man
can collectively and individually so deliberately supervise
and direct his own actions, and so deliberately modify his
own environment, as to obtain or maintain an approximate
and sufhcieot normal.

So though this particular biological theory is on the side
q{ lais set f aire and non-interference, it is not— -as we are at
present situated — on the side of true liberty. For true liberty
surely involves the principle that no person, manufacturer,
builder or other may take advantage of the helplessness of his
neighbour to force him into conditions which are necessarily
injurious to the Man himself, and in the long run {pact certain
biologists) to the Nation at large.

But now to revert to the consideration of deliberate, legal

APPENDICES 241

eliininative process. It must be borne in mind that the
noajority who are healthy are responsible for the unhealthiness
of the unhealthy minority, or they are mainly so. They must
not therefore he base and selfish, and in order to protect their
own health add to the burdens of the sick (those burdens of
pain, depression and abstention) the further calamity of
destruction or isolation. Rather should they the majority
own that they are guilty — directly or indirectly — and be pre-
pared to face some risks — though not of course all risks.
Violently "catching" complaints of a serious kind must of
course be taken in hand, and treated according to the degree
of their infectiousness.

Lastly it may be well to call attention to the strange fact
that many of the greatest contributors to the spiritual, intel-
lectual and political welfare of the race, have been men of
extremely poor physique.

Indeed one may say that "mind" and still more so
"spirit" tend to devour the body. The great thing to re-
member is that physical health is not the chief thing in life.
Charity and self-sacrifice and justice rank far before it ; and
rather than commit an injustice or unkindness to man or
beast, let us dare to face the possibility of sickness or of
death ; for health is only one of the means to the Great End.
Moreover it is better for the character of a people that in-
dividuals among them should be sometimes ill, and that all
should be always free, rather than that nobody should be ill
and nobody free; and that human affection and intercourse
should lose all spontaneity and be governed by the selfish
arrih'spmsie of the doctrinaire hygienist and hypochondriac.

Freedom, rightly understood, is more than worth the
price it is alleged we pay for it. How pusilanimous and
absurd is the proposed measure in Switzerland, now I under-
stand a local law, prohibiting the use of the common Com-
munion Cup on hygienic grounds, a measure now apparently
about to be copied in America. Such a measure should also
16

142 THE FOUNDATIONS OP LIBERTY

include all hotels, restaurants, clubs, inns, and every place
domestic or other where the same water is employed to
cleanse many utensils, and where in any case the cleansing is
not and could not be conducted with anything approachiiig
to scientific thoroughness.'

APPENDIX E

Is it not the case that in all science one realty starts with a
idea which one ends by " proving." Newton, e.g., could not
possibly have induced the conception of Natural Law from
his own infinitesimal observation, or indeed from any amount
of observation, unless in some mode or another the idea of
Law already existed subconsciously in his mind. And so it
is with particular natural laws. Darwin could never have in-
duced the doctrine of Evolution from observation, unless that
observation had as it were set fire to an idea already purposely
implanted within him. Again the contemplation of
phenomena would never reveal Beauty or Morality in the
external things, unless those ideas found a corresponding
pre-existing idea in the mind of the contemplator. We are
told that God Himself cannot be found out by searching, that
is by pure empiricism, and so says one in a poem of great
beauty r —

" Jlluminafe oar minds that we taty see

In all around us holy signs of Thee."

Without the " light that lighteneth every man," i.e. without

' The deliberate ad hct inocalation of animals wilh bacleris collected
ftom certain vessels produces exaggerated results. The noimals were oot
participators in the joy and confidence (great germiddes) that belonged
to the featl spiritual or other, Irom which ibe vessels were taken for the
purposes of the eiperimenE ; bal were probably in a slate of fear ajid de-
pieGsion ; and secondly, the methods adopted by inoculators are of a
kind specially and scientiQcally dasigaed for the purpose of leproducing

APPENDICES

243

inspiration, phenomena would have no meaning; each of
them would be a meaningless experience. We should know
by association of idea that some were pleasing, some painful ;
some useful, some otherwise, but that would be all. There
must be something in common (if any interpretation of
phenomena is to be discovered), between the observer and
the thing observed. The light within a man (which is given
in varying degrees and qualities to different ages, nations,
and individuals) will enable him to perceive the divine idea or
intention in this or that series of phenomena. That this
divine intention once perceived is largely communicable is
proved by the ready acceptance of the essential part of the
Darwinian theory. One soul catches fire and will burn with
an inextinguishable flame, provided his generation have been
given (as usually is the case) the power to perceive and
comprehend the light once it shall have been given forth ;
though of course sometimes the generation cannot perceive it.
Every truthful, original man, scientist or other is a Prometheus
who brings us fire from heaven. In their pride discoverers
of laws— these interpreters of Nature — sometimes choose to
think that their hght is the mere result of their own studious,
but infinitesimal observation. Observation is undoubtedly
necessary, helper se it would lead to nothing more than does
the intense observation of a stag, a starling, or a camera plate.
As it is with science, so with politics. One may try after
pure receptivity, and so observe political phenomena. But
without we refer these phenomena to a spiritual light or
moral Law within us, we shall discover no great abiding laws
at all, but we shall arrive where the materialists have arrived.
We shall find ourselves involved in an interminable number
of utterly insoluble questions regarding what, at any given
moment, is to be regarded as "useful."

THEl

APPENDIX F

Land Nationalisation

Having admitted that it is desirable to nationalise the land,
and having provisionally objected to the most popular scheme
for so doing, it is not unreasonable that I should be expected
to suggest some alternative scheme.

There is at the present moment a great amount of agri-
cultural land which could be purchased by the Slate at a very
low price. This land could be bought piecemeal. It is
always happening, and it will presumably continue to happen,
that valueless lands become very valuable either unexpectedly
(as in the case of the discovery of minerals), or owing to the
dehberate " developing " of the land by the owners. While
the first of these causes of value should not be left out of
count, the second is the more important. In these days of
cheap and easy locomotion the site of a town is of compara-
tively slight importance ; and moreover the worst and most
unproductive soils will do as well for building on as the best.
The State then having purchased a certain area of cheap land
could proceed to " develop " some part of this, the building
and roadmaking being put out to contract. Buildings and
land would thus both belong to the State, and would be
worked by a Government Estate Office situated on the spot.
There would be thus no leasing of land to builders or specu-
lators,^ but in order to convenience prospective tenants the
State would be at liberty to consider the wishes of individuals,
and when desirable to build to order. If it is true that the
State would make such a desirable landlord as some affirm,
such a town if laid out in a healthy and attractive manner {as
would be very possible under the circumstances), and if
managed on business lines, ought to be very successful. The

' This elimiDation of the BpeculaCive builder is not b necessity of fl
sctieme, though in many ways it seems desirable.

APPENDICES 245

profits accruing from such State properties, whether from
towns, market gardens in their neighbourhood, or from farms,
should be devoted to the purchase of more land elsewhere.
That is, none of the net profits should be spent on the
property — especially in the case of a town — in relief of rates,
for such action would interfere with economic rent {rates of
course forming an element in the fixing of rent), and specula-
tion in leases would at once establish itself, and the State
would be driven to raise the rents, and thus an absurd
situation would have arisen.

The State could make sure of quickly securing to itself any
increase in town values by limiting ordinary leases of smaller
houses and prospective building land to a period of twenty-
one years.

It is quite true that this scheme of nationalising the land,
however successful it might be, might possibly never, or at
any rate not for a long time, succeed in handing all the land
over to the State. Nor indeed is such a consummation
necessary or even desirable. By establishing a dual system
of public and private ownership, a healthy competition
between the State and the private owner would be established,
— a state of things which would tend to keep both parties in
order.

APPENDIX G
The following is the conclusion at which Wordsworth, poet
and seer, had arrived regarding the force of the Nation.
(The italics are my own.)

'* Nor is it at the expense of rational patriotism or in dis-
regard of sound philosophy, that the author hath given vent
to feelings tending to encourage a martial spirit in the bosoms
of his countrymen, at a time when there is a general outcry
against the prevalence of these dispositions. The British
army, both by its skill and valour in the field, and by the
discipline which has rendered it much less formidable than

346 THE FOUNDATIONS OF LIBERTY

the armies of other powers to the inhabitants of the several
countries where its operations were carried on, has performed
services that will not allow the language of gratitude and
admiration to be suppressed or restrained (whatever be the
temper of the public mind), through a scrupulous dread lest
the tribute due to the past should prove an injurious incentive
lo the future. Every man deserving the name of Briton adds
his voice to the chorus which extols the exploits of his
countrymen, with a consciousness at times overpowering the
effort, that they transcend all praise. But this particular
sentiment, thus irresistibly excited, is not sufficient. The
nation would err grievously, if she suffered the abuse which
other states have made of military power, to prevent her from
perceiving that no people ever was, or can be, independent,
free, or secure, much iess great, in any sane application of
the word, without martial propensities, and an assiduous
cultivation of military virtues. . . , But some have more
than insinuated that a design exists to subvert the civil
character of the English people by unconstitutional applica-
tions, and unnecessary increase of military power. The
advisers and abetters of such a design, were it possible that it
should exist, would be guilty of the most heinous crime,
which, upon this planet, can be committed. The author,
trusting that this apprehension arises from the delusive
influences of an honourable jealousy, hopes that the martial
qualities he renerales will be fostered by adhering to those
good old usages which experience has sanctioned ; and by
availing ourselves of new means of indisputable promise;
particularly by applying, in its utmost possible extent, thai
system of tuition whose master-spring is a habit of gradually
enlightened subordination : by imparting knowledge, civH,
moral, and religious, in such measure that the mind, among
all classes of the community, may love, admire, and be
prepared and accomplished to defend that country under
whose protecHim its faculties have been unfolded, and its riches

APPENDICES

I acquired — by just dealing towards a;7 orders of the state, so
that no members of it being trampled upon, courf^e may
everywhere continue to rest immovably upon its ancient
English fouTidation, personal self-respeil; by adequate rewards,
and personal honours, conferred upon the deserving ; by
encouraging athletic exercises and manly sports . . . and by
especial care to provide and support institutions, in which,
during a time of peace, a reasonable proportion of the youth
of the country may be instructed in military science."

APPENDIX H

The matter is rendered worse by the fact that so much of the
disease and death resulting from modern commerce is
admittedly avoidable. But the indifference of the public is
so great that it is difEcult to improve the conditions. What
numbers of people there are, in England especially, who will
preach against warfare in terms of infinite scorn and horror,
and who would swoon at the sight of blood, but who are
practically indifferent to the unnecessary and unjust miseries
of the poor. Take the case of lead poisoning as an instance
of this. People who will rave against war as murderous, will
not hesitate to purchase glazed wares which are made at the
cost of human anguish and death, when for the same money
they could buy equally fine goods, the manufacture of which
involves no risk to those engaged in it The fact is that to
obtain these latter goods involves a certain very slight amount
of trouble ; and the hysteric, while he will agitate against the
horror and expense of war, is essentially self-regarding, and is
no more disposed to sacrifice his convenience than are his
neighbours — indeed he is less so. With the exception of
War, which is dramatic and emotional, the rule of the
hysteric seems to be " out of sight, out of mind." There are
people who will pride themselves on their inability to kill an
animal or even to look at a butcher's shop, regardmg them-

2^ THE FOUNDATION'S OF LIBERTY

sdres as in this lespea superior to the rest of mankind,
who DCTCitfaeiess secuie the deaths of animals by purchasi

APPENDIX I

. B.

(Passage from " Religion of SodaJism,'
pp. Si, 8a).
SociALtsu has been well described as a new conceptioQ of
the world presenting itself in industry as co-operadve
Communism, in politics as international Republicanism, in
religion as an atheistic Humanism, by which is meant the
recognition of social progress as our being's highest end and
aim- The establishment, of society on a Socialistic basis
would imply the definitive abandonment of all theological
cults, since the notion of a transcendent god or semi-divine
prophet is but the counterpart and analogue of the trans-
cendent governing class. So soon as we are rid of the desire
of one section of society to enslave another, the dogmas of
an effete creed will lose their interest As the religion of
slave industry was Paganism ; as the religion of serfage was
Catholic Christianity, or Sacerdotalism ; as the religion of
Capitalism is Protestant Christianity or Biblical Dogma ; so
the religion of collective and co-operate industry is Humanism,
which is only another name for Socialism.

There b a party who think to overthrow the current
theology by disputation and ridicule. They fail to see that
the theology ihcy detest is so closely entwined with the
current mode of production that the two things must stand or
fall together — that not until the establishment of a collective
rigime can the words of Algernon Charles Swinburne be
fulfilled :—

"Thoueh before thee the thtoned Cylhert

Be follen and bidden lier head.

Yet Ihy kiogdom shall pass, Galilean,

Tb; dead shall go down to the dead."

d, but
hasing I

APPENDICES

But ere we reach our reconstruction we have the last
agonised throes of K.e volution to pass through. The
privileged classes, it is too much to hope, will surrender
without a struggle. But we are Hearing the catastrophe.
Our churches and chapels, our prisons, our reformatories, our
workhouses, may be full to overflowing, but the end is
approaching. Already the discerning may see the open tomb
in the distance, already hear the chant of the goblins of
destiny indicating the termination of the mad chase and the
dissolution, it may be by a quiet euthanasia, it may be in
blood and fire, of the ghastly mockery of human aspiration
we call " the civilisation of the nineteenth century."

Whatever we may say against these and the general
Opinions of this writer, and of other Socialistic writers, it
cannot be denied that these men are courageous and logical
Let others then who would dabble in Socialism perceive the
lengths to which they will have to go, if they would retain
any honesty or consistency.

.1
Ji

;

INDEX ^^^^1

AssoLUTisM, 55

Affection, 183-4

Altniism, 61-3, 7G-7, 120, 1S4

Communion Cup and Hygiene, ^^H

America, 69, 191, 194, 197-8, !lo6.

241 ^H

241

Anarchism, 7, 87

'4S ^H

Andent Law, 144

Arbitration, 209-11

Anncoia, 98, rSg

Competition, 133-8 ^^H
Conduct, government of, 219-2Z ^^H

Armaments, display of, 201-5

Asimt ef Man, 6-i

Eampton Lbctures, 42-3

Conscience, freedom of, 68-9, 224 ^^H

Bax, E. B„ .47, 148, 2d8. 248

Continuity of Place, 149-51 ^^^|

Biology, 58

Cosmopolitan, the, 184-5, 187 ^^H

Board Schools, 213

Connty and town life compared, ^^^H

Boer War, 185-6, 223

229-32 ^^H

Breweries, 156

Cromwell, Oliver, 224 ^^^|

Britain, mission of, 187-9 i lion of,

198
Brotherhood (see Unity)

Crown Bf Wild Olivt. 224 ^^H

Da Costa, 225 ^^^|

Biyce, James, 91

Darwin, 129, 243 ^^H

Democracy, S7, 94-5, 179 ^^H

C^SAR, Julius, 197

Democtacy and Liberty, 226-S ^^^H

Catbolic Reform, 225-S

Discipline, 202-3 ^H

■ Charity, 138

Drummond. Professor, 63-4 ^^^H

Children and State Protection, 146,

Durham, Bishop of, 101 ^^^H

172-3, 213.5

^^1

Christian Social Union, loi, 104-5

Education, 213, 315 ^^^H

Christian Socialism, 15, 103-7, 114,

Egypt, 199, 223 ^^H

119-125, 158, 174-S

Eod, the, aod personality, 76 ^^^H

Christianity, opposition to, 82

Environment, 60 ^^^|

Church Congress (1890), 101

Essay en the Convtntiin ef Cinira, ^^H

, national, 49; control, 56;

.^H

persecution, 83

en Libtrly, 88-9, 92-4 .^^H

Ethnic nations, 46 ^^^H

Civic relations, 50.3 .

Evolution, 242 ^^^^1

Classes, distinction of, 141 ; separa-

Excursion, Tie, sag ^^^^|

. tioQ of, 162 ; mixing of, 179

^^M

aS2 THE FOUNDATIONS OF USER'^^^^^

Funily, ^i Soeklisn^ I46-8 ; and

Land taxadoD, 156-7 ^^^H

the Sute, 169-70; piwedioD bf

Uvigerie, Cardinal. «7 ^^H

law, 173-4 ! and penooalisQ,

Lecky, 22M I

r7s-7 ; "uid Sutc support, 214

iibeny, ineieas, _., 53 T

Feeding of Board School childrcD.

ai3S

60-1 J

F«n«, 197-8

Z««^ B<Kkp,«rd, 79 ^^M

Free Trade, 3J2

Lo-eU.8o ^^H

Gaihspobd, W, D., M3

Maktzbiikck, 77 ^^^^1

Geo^e. Henry, 156

Magna Cana, 67, 18S ^^^H

GennaDy, 197-8

Maine, Sir H., 144 ^^~

Gordon. General, ao8

Majority, good of the, a6 ; >mpK-

ficalion of, 95-9

Hague Confbkincr, zio

HistsTval Baiis of SKtalism, I4S

of, 35-6^ '

Htstor;, making of, t9l-2

Manning, Z25

House of Commom, 188, loS

Marriage, 173

Materialism, 5-7, 187

HTgienists, 236-7

Maurice, F. D., 61, 144

Hypochondria, 237-8

HfndmaD, 148

Manaries of Life at Oxford, 235

Meyrick, Frederick, 225

IttPSKSONALtTV, 46

MUilarism, 201-9

Income Tax, 151-3

Mill, J. S., S8-90, 92

India, 190, 199, 323

Milton, 80

Individnalism, 7-16, 21-4, 36, 61-3,

Missions of nations, 186-96
Moral government, 39-41

Inequality, 139.41

Moral rights, 3I-4. 21a

Inhere lance, 1 41

Morals, general, 154-5

looculadoo, 242

M«.ality and Poverty, 158-9;

foundations 0^ 192.3

More, Sir Thomas, 87

309-11

Morris, William, 14S
Mmrra Pulverii. 118
Mytelene, ArchbUhop of, 225

Iteknd, 323
Isr«:l. 197-8

Nation, definition of, 45-50;

Ruskin's charge against the, 48;

■'98'

Juiy. trial by, l88
Justice, 129-30

of the, 197 1

Nationality, belief in, 194- j ^^^B

Kant, 43

Natural Law, 341-3 ^^^^H

Kidd, Benjamin, ;8

Newman, 225 ^^^^H

Kipling, Rodyard, 179

Newton, 129, 242 ^^^H

North Sea indden^ 310 ^^^H

Labodk and valae, 130-3

Old Age Pensions, 214 ^^^^|

P INDEX 2]3 ^^^

1 Olivier, Sydney, 51, 59, 63

Sacbificb, 114-S J

Schools, 213 1

Patriotism, 179-8O1 194, 201-3,

SelRshness, 62-4 ^^^^|

246-7

Sesame anJ Lilia, 47, 5a ^^^^1

Peace, 197-201, TOJ*

Slavery, 70, 87, in, >SS ^^H

Pensions, Stale, 50, 130

Slums, 239-40 ^^^H

Persecution, 189, 222-3

Social Evalutien, 58 ^^^H

Personalism, 36, 62-4, 74-5, 92,

Social MoraUty, 61, 144 ^^H

Socialism, and the individual, 7- ^^^^|

16 ; attitude of, 62 ; de6nilion ^^^H

PeisonaliLy, delinilion and develop-

of, 63 ; weakness of, 74 ; and ^^^^H

ment of, 42-S4i politics of, 61 i

democracy, 87 ; and anarchism, ^^^H

and govemmenl, 76-7 ; and

88; and individualism, loi-l ; ^^H

and Christianity, 103- S ; and ^^^H

81 ; essentials of, 167-8

family ties, 146-S ; and marriage, ^^^^|

17S ; and national life, 183 ; and ^^^B

4^-3

Utilitarianism, 190; and discip- 1

Plato, 87, 146

line, 202-3 ; and State support,

Politital Personalis^,, 61

214 ; and religion, 248

Politics, science of, 39-41

Socialism of Rnskin, 47-50

Poor, position of the, 113-4

Socialism, lis Growth and Outcome

Pope. 166

148

Portugal, 325

Society and State, 51, 54

Poverty and Immorality, ijK-g

Soldiers, n^lect of, 130

Principle! of Stall IrUcrftrcncc, 65
Progress, War and, 199-200

Spain, 194, 227 ^

Spectator, 222-4 .^H

Property (see Wealth)

Spencer, Herbert, 64 ^^H

Protection, 232

State interference, 23 ; aims of the, ^^H

44-5 ) definicioa of the, 45-50 ; ^^^H

Proverbs, Book of, IIZ

and the individual, 57-8; op- ^^H

position to personal freedom, 82 ^^^1

Railways, 153.4

Survival of the unfit, 239-41 ^^^1

Reformalion, 68, S3

Religion ef Socialism, 147, 2oS, 248

TALBOT, 225 ^^^1

Religious Education, 161-2, 213

Taxation, 151-4 ^^^H

Temperance movement, 233-6 ^^^H
Tendencies, tgi-2 ^^^H

Rights, natural, 17-19; meanrng

of, 59 i limiution of, 61; pre-

Tennyson, 92 ^^^H

servation of, 61; a priori, 64;

Test Act, 91 ^^^H

ThanMspiving Ode, 196 ^^^H

66; given by the State, 69-71 ;
of religion, 84.5 ; of man, 91 ;
individual, 117-8; personal, 190

Time and Tide, 199 ^^H

Toleration, 122-4 ^^^H

Town and Country life compared, ^^^H

Rio de Monro, 225

229-32 ^^^H

Ritchie, C. T-, 65

Trades Unions, 51, 124, 233 ^^^H

Roman Catholidsm, 60, 76, 83, 91,

Traffic (street), 73 ^^^^1

Z24-9

Tribal element, 142-6 ^^^^^|

Roman Conquest, advantage of, 199

Trusts, 134-5 ^^^H

L Ruskin, Jolin, 47-50; nB, 199

Truth, 3-4, 28 ^^^H

1 Russia, 198

Turkey, 189-90 ^^^^H

254 THE FOUNDATIONS OF LIBERTY

Unity, 139, 179-80, 185-6
United States (see America)
Universal State, 180- 1
Utilitarianism, 15-23, 71-49

85-90, 126, 190
Utopias, 78-9, 192

Valuk and Labour, 130-3
"^^rtiies, national, 119

Was, 197-902, 205-9

i\v

79.

Wealth, distribntion o^ no- 14;
private, 120-7 » right to gain,
128 ; and intelligence, 132 ; and
personality, 143 ; conversion of
private, 152 ; and right, 162-3

Whitman, Walt, 91-2

Wiseman, 225

Women and Socialism, 147-8

Wordsworth, Wm., 39, 69, 80, 92,
113. 196, 229, 247

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F„Mrlk Edition. Cr. ft» fil.
THE TRAIL OF THE SWORD, lllu*.

AN ADVENTURER OF THE NORTH,

Fiction

UERRV-GARDEN ind otheh S:
MAJOK'vICOUEEUX. Third J!

THE POMP 07 THE LAVILETTES.

Third Bdilisn. Cr, Bhb. «. &i
NORTHERN LIGHTS. Pnrth Eiitin.

Cr. atj. is.

PaBturs IHfi. Hsnry de ta). THE
TYRANT. Fsvrtk EJliioit. Cr.in>. 6*.

Pomberton (Maii THE FOOTSTEPS

OF A THRONE. Uluitrand. J'tMrIA

Ediliim. Cr. S™. Si.
1 CROWN THEE KINO. lUiutrated. Cr.

Sfo. 6i.
LOVE THE HARVESTER; A Stout of

THI SiIiKlns. llIusUMHl. Tkird Zdllim.

Cr.tT,^. u. W.
THU MYSTKRY OF THE GREEN

HEART. Third Edition. Cr. tM. 6i.

Parrin <Alloe). THE CHARM. JV*
BdMn. Cr.Bar. 61.

Phlllpotts (Eden). LVINO PROPHETS.

rtird Ediii^t. Cr. a™. 61.

CHILDREN OF THE MIST. SUti Edi-

Htm. Cr.Svt. fii.
THE HUMAN BOY. lV;ih« Fromlipli!™.

Snimlk Edilien. Cr.ivo. 61.
SONS OF THE MORNINa Sand

Edili-m

Cr.U

THE SECRET WOMAN. Fnrlk Edilien.

KNOCK AT A VENTURE. TUrd Ediii-m.

Cr. Bod. Si.
THE PORTREEVE, FtiH-lh Xditint. Cr.

fliw. 6/.
THEPOACHER'SWIFE. Sutud Edilin.

Cr. Bw. 5i.
THE STRIKING HOURS. SiendEdUhn.

Cr. B™. 61.
DEMETER'S DAUGHTER. Third

KdiUtn. Cr.tva. 61.

Ptekthall (KnrniBdutra). SAID THE
FISHERMAN. Eighth Edilim. Cr.ivt.

■O" [A. T. QuUlep Couch). THE WHITE

WOLF. S/ccitd Edili^i. Cr. Bm. 61.
THE MAYOR OF TROY. Fmrlh Editiim.

Hideo {W. Petl). ERR Sia

A SON OF THE STATE. Th.

-. Bm. 6(.

THE WICKHAMaES. FanrlA Editien.

Cr. a™. 61.
NAME OF GARLAND. Third Edilin.

Cr. %v. it.
SPLENDID BROTHER. Fmrlk Ediliai.

Cr. Bw. Gi.
NINE TO SIX-THIRTY. Tiini Ediiiin.

Cr. a™. 61.
THANKS TO SANDERSON. SKind

Ediliim. Cr.ivi. ti.

Boblns (BUzsbetll). THE CONVERT.

Hussstl <W. CUrk}.

HIS iSLAND PRINCESS. IHiuMlni.

Srcond Ediliim. Cr. Srm. «1,
AEAtiDO^iKD.Seumd Edition. Cr.
MASTER ROCKAFELLAR'S VO

lUu^iuiud. FcurIA Editiim. Cr. Sdd

Sldewlck (Mrs. Alfred). THE KINS-
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a™. «i.

THE SEVERINS. Sixth Editiin
Sm 6».

THE LANTERN-BEARERS. Third Ed.
Cr. B™. 61.

ANTHEA'S GUEST. Fl/lh Ediliim. C.

Someiwllle <B. ffi.) and Boss (Haptln)
DAN RUSSEL THE FOX. llluiIrBted
Fourth EdilioH. Cr.ivn. ii.

ThuPrton IB. Temple), mirage. FturiA

Watson (H. B. Harriott). TWISTED
EGLANTINE. llluiUiud. Tiird Edi-

THE'hIG'h TOBY. Tiird Ediliim. Cr.

the:' PRIVATEERS, llluinted. SicmJ

Ediliim. Cr. am 61.
ALISK Of ASTRA. Third BdilitH. Cr.

WeblInK

THE STORV <

IK (PaKR?' TSIS ■

IINIA PERFECT. Third Edilii

THE SPIRIT or MIRTH. F<fUL E^lln

Methuen and Company Limited

Warman [Stanlerl. under the red

ROBE. llliiUiaied. TumtyMrd Edilien.
Cr.itf^ ir.

Whitby (Bentrleel- ROSAMUND. Snmd

WUtlamson (C V. ud A. ■). THE

LIGHTNING CONDUCTOR: The
5lnD(t Advcnlurei of a Mihoc Cir. tllus-
■runl. S/vtntmt* Edilian. Cr. Bnr.
6>. AlioCr. tiv. II. H^
THE PRINCESS PASSES : A RanunM ot
A'w/* Editim.

IUu>

LADY BETTY ACROSS THE WATER.

THE BOTOR CHAPERON.
SCARLET RUNNE'r. lUuiiiatcd. TIdri
SET IN SILVER, inunud. Fturih
LORD LOVELAND DISCOVERS

S OF BERCtJLES. Cr. Bra

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Ht CNOmc'lAL' HONEYMOON.

Vethuen'B Two-Shilling HoveU.

Cr. %ji<>. It. na.

BookB for BojB and Qirls.

lUustraUd. Cnrjm Sva. 37. W.

&<>« *ND DAcni!». Tic C™s.d. ot the
Children, ma. W. Scotl Dnmnl,

Srp Bkltom : Th» Bo

7 -bo •ot.ld

Thh Gbttimo Wuj. o» Dobotht. SIo,

Thb Rbp GBAffii. Mr

M<.]«-art>>.

W. K. ClLffMd.

A GlBi. o» TH. People.

L. T. Meida.

Onlt a GCJA.D-KO0M Dog. Editl. E.

Utrey GifST. L. T. M

=dt. u. W.

CuthElI.

The Honouwbl. Mjss

L. T. Mudc

Mantes RocuAFSLLAK'a VarAsi. W. Claik
RuudL

Mun.

HCE. Mn. lU

Uethnen's Shilling Novels.

I MliAGB. E. Tonptg ThuntoD.
ViiQiHiA PnriCT. Pe(ET WcbliDx,
Sfuuii Gold. G. A. BimiliiEbuB.

Tha Novels of Alexandre Dumas.
Malium Sva, Price 6d. DouhU Valumii, ti,
Leone-Lioha.

Thi Bdid or Fats.
Thh Buck Tultp.
Th« Castlb or Eppsteik.

CATHBRtHE BlUH.
C«CIL«.

The ChAivlet.

Tiis Chevauek D'Haiuent

1 Mask. (Danbl*

. (DoDbLe mlimie-)

Talis or the Sun
Tald o» Stuange

Uehki he Navaeh:
K£l.tNll DE Ckavb
Thh HonDSCorc.

Ifethuen's Sixpenny Books.

Midium %vs.

Albanasl CB- M»rla). LOVK AND

LOUISA.
1 KNOW A MAIDEN,
THE BLUNDER OF AN INNOCENT.
PETER A PARASITE.

Anstay (F.)- A BAVARD OF BENGAL.

Aiuten [J.l. PRIDE AND PREJUDICE.

Basot (Hlcharill, A ROMAN MYSTERY,
■ i OF NETS.
\ DIANA,

BY STROKE OF

Baring-Gould {S.)- FURZE BLOOM.
CHEAP JACK ZITA.
KITTY ALONE,

THE BROOU SQUIRE,

IN THE ROAR or THE SKA.

NOEMI.

A BOOK OF FAIRY TALES, Uluilnled.

LITTLE TU-PENNY.

WINEFRED.

THE FROBISHERS.

THE QUEEN OF LOVK.

BoMUUIwt. TBI DITISX

coiattr ic^fi.
Dnto'A

UGHtivL
' BUt K tm t m- TRK mu. OSr TBK

fHawlW Ma* K)- THE CSSX3
GRAVIS OTBALOOWUK.

Sallin (Tool- ucxsssrs follt.

fiohoniMrs.). CRASrOMD.
MART EAKTO:*.
NORTH AXD SOnTH.

G«npd (Sorothaa). BOLT HA-nu-

UOKV.

THK COS (JUEST Of LONDOX.
UAOK OF UOKZY.

A cDOjec or naixcnox.
Han Kn. ■. K.1. IIRS. petek

SOWARO.
AtOST ESTATS.
THE CEIIA2 STAX.
OXE AKOTREK'S BTTHDEitS,
THE FATTEX EXPESUIEKT.
A WUnZVS TALE.

SSEcriXT.

■arch [RIA>rdJ. AHETAUORPHO'^I^
THE TWICKZNHAU FEEBjtGK
THE GODDESS.
THE loss.

Mason (A. E. W.I, CLEMENTINA.

Mathers (Helen). HONEY.
CRIFT Of GRIFFITHSCOURT.
SAM'S SWEETHEART.
THE FERRYMAN.

Heads i»rs. L. T.). DRIFT.
HUIer jEsther). LIVING LIES.
MllfoPd raorWam). THE SIGN OF THE
Hontresor (7, F,), TUB ALIEN.
Borrlson [Artbur). the kols in

E WALL.

Nesblt :e.J.

; RED HOUSE.
HIS GRACE.

Norrls [W. B.

GILES INGILBV.

THE CREDIT OF THE

LORD LEONARD THE LUCKLESS.

MATTHEW AUSTEN.

CLARISSA FURIOS.'V.

Ollphant (Mrs.). THE LADY'S WALK.

SIR ROBERT'S FORTUNE.

THE PRODIGALS.

THE TWO MARYS.

Oppenhelm (E. P.}, MASTER OF MEN.

Parltep (piIbBPtl. THE POMP OF THE

LAV1LKTTE5.
WHEN VALMOND CAME TO PONTIAC.
THE TRAIL OF THE SWORD.

PBmbertoti (Mail, THE FOOTSTEPS

I CROWN THEE KING.

PhlllDOlW (Eden), the HUMAN BOY.
CHILDREN OF THE MIST.
THE POACHER'S WIFE,
THB RIVEK.

•Q' |A. T. Qulller Couchl. THE
WHlIi: WOLF.

Bldge (W. Patll. A SON OF THE ST.\TE.

LOST PROPERTY.

GEORGE anJ THE GENERAI.

A BREAKER OF LAWS.

ERB.

Russell IVf. Clark), abandoned.

A MARRIAGE AT SEA.

MY DANISH SWEETHEART.

HIS ISLAND PRINCESS.

THE MASTER OF

B^Cl

BEECH WOOD.

Sld^iek (Bra, Alfred), the kins.

Surtees (R. S.l. HANDLEY CROSS.
MR. SPONGE'S SPORTING TOUR. ■
ASK MAMMA.

Walford IXn. L. B.). UR. SUITH.

COUSINS.

THE BABVS GRANDMOTHER,

TROUBLESOME DAUGHTERS.

Watson (H.B.MaPriott). THEADVEN-

, PRISONERS OF WAR.
, THE SEA LADV.

Weekes (A. B
Wells (H. G.I,

White (Percy). A PASSIONATE PIV

WUllamson (Mrs. C. H.), PAPA,

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