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vernment, and interference by associa-therefore, may, and in many cases tions of individuals, subscribing their ought to, establish schools and colown money for the purpose, like the leges, it must neither compel nor bribe two great School Societies. It is, of any person to come to them; nor ought course, not desirable that anything the power of individuals to set up rival should be done by funds derived from establishments, to depend in any degree compulsory taxation, which is already upon its authorization. It would be sufficiently well done by individual justified in requiring from all the people liberality. How far this is the case that they shall possess instruction in with school instruction, is, in each par- certain things, but not in prescribing ticular instance, a question of fact. to them how or from whom they shall The education provided in this country obtain it. on the voluntary principle has of late been so much discussed, that it is needless in this place to criticise it minutely, and I shall merely express my conviction, that even in quantity it is, and is likely to remain, altogether insufficient, while in quality, though with some slight tendency to improvement, it is never good except by some rare accident, and generally so bad as to be little more than nominal. I hold it therefore the duty of the government to supply the defect by giving pecuniary support to elementary schools, such as to render them accessible to all the children of the poor, either freely, or for a payment too inconsiderable to be sensibly felt.

One thing must be strenuously insisted on; that the government must claim no monopoly for its education, either in the lower or in the higher branches; must exert neither authority nor influence to induce the people to resort to its teachers in preference to others, and must confer no peculiar | advantages on those who have been instructed by them. Though the government teachers will probably be superior to the average of private instructors, they will not embody all the knowledge and sagacity to be found in all instructors taken together, and it is desirable to leave open as many roads as possible to the desired end. It is not endurable that a government should, either in law or in fact, have a complete control over the education of the people. To possess such a control, and actually exert it, is to be despotic. A government which can mould the opinions and sentiments of the people from their youth upwards, can do with them whatever it pleases. Though a government,

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§ 9. In the matter of education, the intervention of government is justifiable, because the case is not one in which the interest and judgment of the consumer are a sufficient security for the goodness of the commodity. Let us now consider another class of cases, where there is no person in the situa tion of a consumer, and where the interest and judgment to be relied on are those of the agent himself; as in the conduct of any business in which he is exclusively interested, or in entering into any contract or engagement by which he himself is to be bound.

The ground of the practical principle of non-interference must here be, that most persons take a juster and more intelligent view of their own interest, and of the means of promoting it, than can either be prescribed to them by a general enactment of the legislature, or pointed out in the particular case by a public functionary. The maxim is unquestionably sound as a general rule; but there is no difficulty in perceiving some very large and conspicuous exceptions to it. These may be classed under several heads.

First:-The individual who is presumed to be the best judge of his own interests may be incapable of judging or acting for himself; may be a lunatic, an idiot, an infant: or though not wholly incapable, may be of immature years and judgment. In this case the foundation of the non-interference principle breaks down entirely. The person most interested is not the best judge of the matter, nor a co judge at all. Insane person where regarded as proper

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are of the state. In the case of children and young persons, it is common to say, that though they cannot judge for themselves, they have their parents or other relatives to judge for them. But this removes the question into a different category; making it no longer a question whether the government should interfere with individuals in the direction of their own conduct and interests, but whether it should leave absolutely in their power the conduct and interests of somebody else. Parental power is as susceptible of abuse as any other power, and is, as a matter of fact, constantly abused. If laws do not succeed in preventing parents from brutally ill-treating, and even from murdering their children, far less ought it to be presumed that the interests of children will never be sacrificed, in more commonplace and less revolting ways, to the selfishness or the ignorance of their parents. Whatever it can be clearly seen that parents ought to do or forbear for the interest *The practice of the English law with respect to insane persons, especially on the all-important point of the ascertainment of insanity, most urgently demands reform. At present no persons, whose property is worth coveting, and whose nearest relations are unscrupulous, or on bad terms with them, are secure against a commission of Junacy. At the instance of the persons who would profit by their being declared insane, a jury may be impanelled and an investigation held at the expense of the property, in which all their personal peculiarities, with all the additions made by the lying gossip of low servants, are poured into the credulous ears of twelve petty shopkeepers, ignorant of all ways of life except those of their own class, and regarding every trait of individuality in character or taste as eccentricity, and all eccentricity as either insanity or wickedness. If this sapient tribunal gives the desired verdict, the property is handed over to perhaps the last persons whom the rightful owner would have desired or suffered to possess it. Some recent instances of this kind of investigation have been a scandal to the administration of justice. Whatever other changes in this branch of law may be made, two at least are imperative: first, that, as in other egal proceedings, the expenses should not De borne by the person on trial, but by the promoters of the inquiry, subject to recovery of costs in case of success: and secondly, that the property of a person declared insane, should in no case be made

over to heirs while the proprietor is alive, but should be managed by a public officer until his death or recovery.

of children, the law is warranted, if it is able, in compelling to be done or for borne, and is generally bound to do so. To take an example from the peculiar province of political economy; it is right that children, and young persons not yet arrived at maturity, should be protected, so far as the eye and hand of the state can reach, from being over-worked. Labouring for too many hours in the day, or on work beyond their strength, should not be permitted to them, for if permitted it may always be compelled. Freedom of contract, in the case of children, is but another word for freedom of coercion. Education also, the best which circumstances admit of their receiving, is not a thing which parents or relatives, from indifference, jealousy, or avarice, should have it in their power to withhold.

The reasons for legal intervention in favour of children, apply not less strongly to the case of those unfortu nate slaves and victims of the most brutal part of mankind, the lower animals. It is by the grossest misunderstanding of the principles of liberty, that the infliction of exemplary punishment on ruffianism practised towards these defenceless creatures, has been treated as a meddling by government with things beyond its province; an interference with domestic life. The domestic life of domestic tyrants is one of the things which it is the most imperative on the law to interfere with; and it is to be regretted that metaphysical scruples respecting the nature and source of the authority of government, should induce many warm supporters of laws against cruelty to animals, to seek for a justification of such laws in the incidental consequences of the indulgence of ferocious habits, to the interests of human beings, rather than in the intrinsic merits of the case itself. What it would be the duty of a human being, possessed of the requisite physical strength, to prevent by force if attempted in his presence, it cannot be less incumbent on society generally to repress. The existing laws of England on the subject are chiefly defective in the trifling, often almost nominal,

maximum, to which the penalty even in the worst cases is limited.

Among those members of the community whose freedom of contract ought to be controlled by the legislature for their own protection, on account (it is said) of their dependent position, it is frequently proposed to include women: and in the existing Factory Act, their labour, in common with that of young persons, has been placed under peculiar restrictions. But the classing together, for this and other purposes, of women and children, appears to me both indefensible in principle and mischievous in practice. Children below a certain age cannot judge or act for themselves; up to a considerably greater age they are in evitably more or less disqualified for doing so; but women are as capable as men of appreciating and managing their own concerns, and the only hindrance to their doing so arises from the injustice of their present social position. So long as the law makes everything which the wife acquires, the property of the husband, while by compelling her to live with him it forces her to submit to almost any amount of moral and even physical tyranny which he may choose to inflict, there is some ground for regarding every act done by her as done under coercion : but it is the great error of reformers and philanthropists in our time, to nibble at the consequences of unjust power instead of redressing the injustice itself. If women had as absolute a control as men have, over their own persons and their own patrimony or acquisitions, there would be no plea for limiting their hours of labouring for themselves, in order that they might have time to labour for the husband, in what is called, by the advocates of restriction, his home. Women employed in factories are the only women in the labouring rank of life whose position is not that of slaves and drudges; precisely because they cannot easily be compelled to work and earn wages in factories against their will. For improving the condition of women, it should, on the contrary, be an object to give them the readiest access to inde

pendent industrial employment, instead of closing, either entirely or partially, that which is already open to them.

§ 10. A second exception to the doctrine that individuals are the best judges of their own interest, is when an individual attempts to decide irrevocably now, what will be best for his interest at some future and distant time. The presumption in favour of individual judgment is only legitimate, where the judgment is grounded on actual, and especially on present, personal experience; not where it is formed antecedently to experience, and not suffered to be reversed even after experience has condemned it. When persons have bound themselves by a contract, not simply to do some one thing, but to continue doing something for ever or for a prolonged period, without any power of revoking the engagement, the presumption which their perseverance in that course of conduct would otherwise raise in favour of its being advantageous to them, does not exist; and any such presumption which can be grounded on their having voluntarily entered into the contract, perhaps at an early age, and without any real knowledge of what they undertook, is commonly next to null. The practical maxim of leaving contracts free, is not applicable without great limitations in case of engagements in perpetuity; and the law should be extremely jealous of such engagements; should refuse its sanction to them, when the obligations they impose are such as the contracting party cannot be a competent judge of; if it ever does sanction them, it should take every possible security for their being con tracted with foresight and deliberation; and in compensation for not permit ting the parties themselves to revoke their engagement, should grant them a release from it, on a sufficient case being made out before an impartial authority. These considerations are eminently applicable to marriage, the most important of all cases of engagement for life.

§ 11. The third exception which I

than those of management by jointstock.

shall notice, to the doctrine that government cannot manage the affairs of individuals as well as the individuals The true reasons in favour of leaving themselves, has reference to the great to voluntary associations all such things class of cases in which the individuals as they are competent to perform, ean only manage the concern by dele- would exist in equal strength if it were gated agency, and in which the so- certain that the work itself would be called private management is, in point as well or better done by public officers. of fact, hardly better entitled to be These reasons have been already called management by the persons in- pointed out: the mischief of overloadterested, than administration by a ing the chief functionaries of governpublic officer. Whatever, if left to ment with demands on their attention, spontaneous agency, can only be done and diverting them from duties which by joint-stock associations, will often they alone can discharge, to objects be as well, and sometimes better done, which can be sufficiently well attained as far as the actual work is concerned, without them; the danger of unnecesby the state. Government manage- sarily swelling the direct power and. ment is, indeed, proverbially jobbing, indirect influence of government, and careless, and ineffective, but so like- multiplying occasions of collision bewise has generally been joint-stock tween its agents and private citizens; management. The directors of a and the inexpediency of concentrating joint-stock company, it is true, are in a dominant bureaucracy, all the always shareholders; but also the skill and experience in the managemembers of a government are invari- ment of large interests, and all the ably taxpayers; and in the case of power of organized action, existing in directors, no more than in that of go- the community; a practice which keeps vernments, is their proportional share the citizens in a relation to the governof the benefits of good management, ment like that of children to their equal to the interest they may possibly guardians, and is a main cause of the have in mismanagement, even without inferior capacity for political life which reckoning the interest of their ease. has hitherto characterized the overIt may be objected, that the share-governed countries of the Continent, holders, in their collective character, whether with or without the forms of exercise a certain control over the representative government.* directors, and have almost always full power to remove them from office. Practically, however, the difficulty of exercising this power is found to be so great, that it is hardly ever exercised except in cases of such flagrantly unskilful, or, at least, unsuccessful management, as would generally produce the ejection from office of managers Appointed by the government. Against the very ineffectual security afforded by meetings of shareholders, and by their individual inspection and enquiries, may be placed the greater publicity and more active discussion and comment, to be expected in free countries with regard to affairs in which the general government takes part. The defects, therefore, of government management, do seem to be necessarily much greater, if necessarily greater at all

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But although, for these reasons, most things which are likely to be even tolerably done by voluntary associa tions, should, generally speaking, be

A parallel case may be found in the distaste for politics, and absence of publie spirit, by which women, as a class, are cha racterized in the present state of society, and political reformers, without, in general, which is often felt and complained of by making them willing to recognise, or de sirous to remove, its cause. It obviously arises from their being taught, both by

institutions and by the whole of their educa tion, to regard themselves as entirely apart from politics. Wherever they have been politicians, they have shown as great interest in the subject, and as great aptitude for it, according to the spirit of their time, as the men with whom they were cotemporaries: in that period of history (for example) in which Isabella of Castile and Elizabeth of England were, not rare exceptions, but merely brilliant examples of a spirit and capacity very largely diffused among women of high station and cultivation in Europe,

left to them; it does not follow that | own benefit, on all the malt produced the manner in which those associations in the country, or on all the cotton perform their work should be entirely imported into it. To make the conuncontrolled by the government. There cession for a limited time is generally are many cases in which the agency, justifiable, on the principle which jusof whatever nature, by which a service tifies patents for inventions: but the is performed, is certain, from the nature state should either reserve to itself a of the case, to be virtually single; in reversionary property in such public which a practical monopoly, with all works, or should retain, and freely exthe power it confers of taxing the com- ercise, the right of fixing a maximum munity, cannot be prevented from ex- of fares and charges, and, from time to isting. I have already more than once time, varying that maximum. It is adverted to the case of the gas and perhaps necessary to remark, that the water companies, among which, though state may be the proprietor of canals perfect freedom is allowed to competi- or railways without itself working tion, none really takes place, and prac- them; and that they will almost tically they are found to be even more always be better worked by means of irresponsible, and unapproachable by a company, renting the railway or canal individual complaints, than the govern- for a limited period from the state. ment. There are the expenses without the advantages of plurality of agency; and the charge made for services which cannot be dispensed with, is, in substance, quite as much compulsory taxation as if imposed by law: there are few householders who make any distinction between their "water rate" and their other local taxes. In the case of these particular services, the reasons preponderate in favour of their being performed, like the paving and cleansing of the streets, not certainly by the general government of the state, but by the municipal authorities of the town, and the expense defrayed, as even now it in fact is, by a local rate. But in the many analogous cases which it is best to resign to voluntary agency, the community needs some other security for the fit performance of the service than the interest of the managers; and it is the part of government, either to subject the business to reasonable conditions for the general advantage, or to retain such power over it, that the profits of the monopoly may at least be obtained for the public. This applies to the case of a road, a canal, or a railway. These are always, in a great degree, practical monopolies; and a government which concedes such monopoly unreservedly to a private company, does much the same thing as if it allowed an individual or an association o levy any tax they chose, for their

§ 12. To a fourth ease of exception I must request particular attention, it being one to which, as it appears to me, the attention of political economists has not yet been sufficiently drawn. There are matters in which the interference of law is required, not to overrule the judgment of individuals respecting their own interest, but to give effect to that judgment; they being unable to give effect to it except by concert, which concert again cannot be effectual unless it receives validity and sanction from the law. For illustration, and without prejudging the particular point, I may advert to the question of diminishing the hours of labour. Let us suppose, what is at least supposable, whether it be the fact or not-that a general reduction of the hours of factory labour, say from ten to nine, would be for the advantage of the work-people: that they would receive as high wages, or nearly as high, for nine hours labour as they receive for ten. If this would be the result, and if the operatives generally are convinced that it would, the limitation, some may say, will be adopted spon taneously. I answer, that it will not be adopted unless the body of operatives bind themselves to one another to abide by it. A workman who refused to work more than nine hours while there were others who worked ten, would either not be employed at

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