vidual agency naturally tends to throw the work, because they are capable of doing it better and on cheaper terms than any other persons. So far as this is the case, it is evident that government, by excluding or even by superseding individual agency, either substitutes a less qualified instrumentality for one better qualified, or at any rate substitutes its own mode of accomplishing the work, for all the variety of modes which would be tried by a number of equally qualified persons aiming at the same end; a competition by many degrees more propitious to the progress of improvement, than any uniformity of system.

$ 6. I have reserved for the last place one of the strongest of the reasons against the extension of government agency. Even if the government could comprehend within itself, in each department, all the most eminent intellectual capacity and active talent of the nation, it would not be the less desirable that the conduct of a large portion of the affairs of society should be left in the hands of the persons immediately interested in them. The business of life is an essential part of the practical education of a people; without which, book and school instruction, though most necessary and salutary, does not suffice to qualify them for conduct, and for the adaptation of means to ends. Instruction is only one of the desiderata of mental improvement; another, almost as indispensable, is a vigorous exercise of the active energies; labor, contrivance, judgment, self-control; and the natural stimulus to these is the difficulties of life. This doctrine is not to be confounded with the complacent optimism, which represents the difficulties of life. as desirable things, because they call forth qualities adapted to combat with difficulties. It is only because the difficulties exist, that the qualities which combat with them are of any value. As practical beings it is our business to free human life from as many as possible of its difficulties, and 44*

VOL. II.

not to keep up a stock of them as hunters preserve game, for the exercise of pursuing it. But since the need of active talent and practical judgment in the affairs of life can only be diminished, and not, even on the most favorable supposition, done away with, it is important that those endowments should be cultivated not merely in a select few, but in all, and that the cultivation should be more varied and complete than most persons are able to find in the narrow sphere of their merely individual interests. A people among whom there is no habit of spontaneous action for a collective interest-who look habitually to their government to command or prompt them in all matters of joint-concern-who expect to have everything done for them, except what can be made an affair of mere habit and routine-have their faculties only half developed; their education is defective in one of its most important branches.

Not only is the cultivation of the active faculties by exercise, diffused through the whole community, in itself one of the most valuable of national possessions; it is rendered, not less, but more, necessary, by the fact, that a high degree of that indispensable culture is systematically kept up in the chiefs and functionaries of the state. There cannot be a combination of circumstances more dangerous to human welfare, than that in which intelligence and talent are maintained at a high standard within a governing corporation, but starved and discouraged outside the pale. Such a system, more completely than any other, embodies the idea of despotism, by arming with intellectual superiority as an additional weapon, those who have already the legal power. It approaches as nearly as the organic difference between human beings and other animals admits, to the government of sheep by their shepherd, without anything like so strong an interest as the shepherd has in the thriving condition of the flock. The only security against

political slavery, is the check maintained over governors, by the diffusion of intelligence, activity, and public spirit among the governed. Experience proves the extreme difficulty of permanently keeping up a sufficiently high standard of those qualities; a difficulty which increases, as the advance of civilization and security removes one after another of the hardships, embarrassments, and dangers against which individuals had formerly no resource but in their own strength, skill, and courage. It is therefore of supreme importance that all classes of the community, down to the lowest, should have much to do for themselves; that as great a demand should be made upon their intelligence and virtue as it is in any respect equal to; that the government should not only leave as much as possible to their own faculties the conduct of whatever concerns themselves alone, but should suffer them, or rather encourage them, to manage as many as possible of their joint concerns by voluntary coöperation; since the discussion and management of collective interests is the great school of that public spirit, and the great source of that intelligence of public affairs, which are always regarded as the distinctive character of the public of free countries.

A democratic constitution, not supported by democratic institutions in detail, but confined to the central government, not only is not political freedom, but often creates a spirit precisely the reverse, carrying down to the lowest grade in society the desire and ambition of political domination. In some countries the desire of the people is for not being tyrannized over, but in others it is merely for an equal chance to everybody of tyrannizing. Unhappily this last state of the desires is fully as natural to mankind as the former, and in many of the conditions even of civilized humanity, is far more largely exemplified. In proportion as the people are accustomed to manage their affairs by their own active intervention, instead of leaving them to

the government, their desires will turn to repelling tyranny, rather than to tyrannizing; while in proportion as all real and initiative direction resides in the government, and individuals habitually feel and act as under its perpetual tutelage, popular institutions develop in them not the desire of freedom, but an unmeasured appetite for place and power; diverting the intelligence and activity of the country from its principal business, to a wretched competition for the selfish prizes and the petty vanities of office.

§ 7. The preceding are the principal reasons, of a general character, in favor of restricting to the narrowest compass the intervention of a public authority in the business of the community; and few will dispute the more than sufficiency of these reasons, to throw, in every instance, the burden of making out a strong case, not on those who resist, but on those who recommend, government interference. Laisser-faire, in short, should be the general practice; every departure from it, unless required by some great good, is a certain evil.

The degree in which the maxim, even in the cases to which it is most manifestly applicable, has heretofore been infringed by governments, future ages will probably have difficulty in crediting. Some idea may be formed of it from the description by M. Dunoyer* of the restraints imposed on the operations of manufacture under the old government of France, by the meddling and regulating spirit of legislation.

"La société exerçait sur la fabrication la juridiction a plus illimitée et la plus arbitraire; elle disposait sans scrupule des facultés des fabricants; elle décidait qui pourrait travailler, quelle chose on pourrait faire, quels matériaux on devrait employer, quels procédés il faudrait suivre, quelles formes

De la Liberté du Travail, vol. ii. pp. 353, 354.

on donnerait aux produits, etc. Il ne suffisait pas de faire bien, de faire mieux, il fallait faire suivant les règles. Qui ne connaît ce règlement de 1670, qui prescrivait de saisir et de clouer au poteau, avec le nom des auteurs, les marchandises non conformes aux règles traceés, et qui, à la seconde récidive, voulait que les fabricants y fussent attachés euxmêmes? Il ne s'agissait pas de consulter le goût des consommateurs, mais de se conformer aux volontés de la loi. Des légions d'inspecteurs, de commissaires, de contrôleurs, de jurés, de gardes, étaient chargés de les faire exécuter; on brisait les métiers, on brûlait les produits qui n'y étaient pas conformes: les améliorations étaient punies; on mettait les inventeurs à l'amende. On soumettait à des règles différentes la fabrication des objets destinés à la consommation intérieure et celle des produits destinés au commerce étranger. Un artisan n'était pas le maître de choisir le lieu de son établissement, ni de travailler en toute saison, ni de travailler pour tout le monde. Il existe un décret du 30 Mars 1700, qui borne à dix-huit villes le nombre des lieux où l'on pourra faire des bas au métier; un arrêt du 18 Juin 1723 enjoint aux fabricants de Rouen de suspendre leurs travaux du 1er Juillet au 15 Septembre, afin de faciliter ceux de la récolte; Louis XIV., quand il voulut entreprendre la colonnade du Louvre, défendit aux particuliers d'employer des ouvriers sans sa permission, sous peine de 10,000 livres d'amende, et aux ouvriers de travailler pour les particuliers, sous peine, pour la première fois, de la prison, et pour la seconde, des galères."

That these and similar regulations were not a dead letter, and that the officious and vexatious meddling was prolonged down to the French revolution, we have the testimony of Roland, the Girondist minister. "I have

* I quote at second hand, from Mr. Carey's Essay on the Rate of Wages, pp. 195, 196.