§ 7.

By dispersing that haze of political superstition through which the state and its appendages loom so large, the foregoing considerations suggest a somewhat startling question. For if when men’s savageness and dishonesty render the administration Edition: current; Page: [265] of justice most necessary, it is impossible; if it becomes possible only in proportion as men themselves become just; and if that same universal uprightness, which permits the administration of justice to become perfect, also makes it needless, as it evidently must, then we may naturally ask—Can the state really administer justice at all? Does it, looking at society as a whole, secure to the people any fuller enjoyment of their rights than they would have without it? May we not conclude that it takes away from men’s liberties in one direction, as much as it gives in another? Is it not a mere dead mechanism worked by a nation’s moral sense; neither adding to, nor deducting from, the force of that moral sense; and consequently unable to alter the sum-total of its effects?

A strange idea, this, some will think; and so at first sight it seems. We have such a habit of regarding government in its protective character, and forgetting its aggressive one, that to ask whether the rights it secures are not about balanced by the rights it violates, seems almost laughable. Nevertheless we shall find that on drawing up a debtor and creditor account, the absurdity of the doubt disappears. Passing over those ruling powers of the East, which, in return for the small amount of security they guarantee, are in the habit of confiscating, under one pretence or other, any property not efficiently concealed by the unfortunate owners, and which, in some cases, push their exactions so far as to have to give back for seed in the spring a part of that crop they had taken from the husband-man at the previous harvest—passing over, too, those middle-age systems of government under which protection, such as it was, had to be purchased by the resignation of personal freedom, let us institute as favourable a comparison as possible. Let us take the relatively good governments we now know, and setting down on the one side the benefits conferred, and on the other the evils inflicted, let us strike a balance between them. Under the head of obligations may be entered the efficient curb which our police system puts upon offences against person and property; our courts of law, too, with all their defects, afford a Edition: current; Page: [266] partial defence against civil injuries which needs setting down in the estimate; and to these must be added what far outweigh them both—that sense of habitual security, and that consequent ability to fearlessly carry on the business of life, which are produced by the mere presence of an active civil power. Even after deducting from these a heavy discount on the score of shortcomings, there unquestionably remains a large surplus of benefit for which the state may claim credit. Turn we now to the per contra statement. As the first item on the list there stands that gigantic injustice inflicted upon nineteen-twentieths of the community by the usurpation of the soil—by the breach of their rights to the use of the earth (Chap. IX.). For this the civil power is responsible—has itself been a party to the aggression—has made it legal, and still defends it as right. Next comes the trespass committed against the many by subordinating them to the few, and forcing them to obey laws to which their consent was never asked. Note again the tyrannies accompanying national defence—the impressments and militiadrawings, the continuous abnegation of liberty in the persons of soldiers and sailors, ending not unfrequently in the sacrifice of their lives. Remember also how our rights are trenched upon by commercial restrictions; and how men are not only prevented from buying and selling where they please, but are debarred from following certain occupations until they have bought government permits. Nor let us forget the penalties that until lately so seriously transgressed religious freedom—penalties which, as the Anti-State-Church Association can show, have by no means disappeared. And all these, together with the many minor restrictions hedging us about, are accompanied by those never-ceasing incursions made upon our property by the tax-gatherer and the officers of customs and excise, by poorrate collectors and churchwardens. Measuring wrongs, as we must, by the degree in which they limit the exercise of faculties, let us now add up the two accounts and contrast their sum-totals. On the one side government partially saves us (only partially, mind) from those assaults, robberies, murders, cheatings, Edition: current; Page: [267] and kindred injuries, to which, were there no such institution, the existing immorality of men would expose us. These we must imagine to be distributed over the community at large, and over the life of each citizen, and then conceive to what average restriction on the free exercise of faculties they would be equivalent. On the other side government itself transgresses men’s liberties by the monopoly of land, by the usurpation of power, by restrictions on trade, by the slavery and death of thousands of soldiers, by the ruin of hundreds it ought to protect, by favouritism to creeds and classes, by the civil functions it makes imperative, by petty restraints too numerous to name, but above all by a remorseless taxation, which, affecting seven-eighths of the nation as it does by abstracting a large percentage from earnings already insufficient for necessaries, virtually obliterates, in great measure, the spheres needed for the development of their natures. We have now to suppose these manifold limitations to the free exercise of faculties averaged like the others, and then to ask ourselves whether the two averages are, or are not, equal. Is the question after all so very irrational? Is not the answer doubtful?

Nay, indeed; consider it rightly and the answer is not at all doubtful. It is very certain that government can not alter the total amount of injustice committed. The absurdity is in supposing that it can—in supposing that by some ingenious artifice we may avoid the consequences of our own natures. The civil power no more does what to the careless eye it seems to do, than the juggler really performs his apparent miracles. It is impossible for man to create force. He can only alter the mode of its manifestation, its direction, its distribution. The power that propels his steamboats and locomotives is not of his making; it was all lying latent in the coal. He telegraphs by an agent set free during the oxidation of zinc; but of which no more is obtained than is due to the number of atoms that have combined. The very energy he expends in moving his arm is generated by the chemical affinities of the food he eats. In no case can he do anything but avail himself of dormant forces. Edition: current; Page: [268] This is as true in ethics as in physics. Moral feeling is a force—a force by which men’s actions are restrained within certain prescribed bounds; and no legislative mechanism can increase its results one iota. By how much this force is deficient, by so much must its work remain undone. In whatever degree we lack the qualities needful for our state, in the same degree must we suffer. Nature will not be cheated. Whoso should think to escape the influence of gravitation by throwing his limbs into some peculiar attitude, would not be more deceived than are those who hope to avoid the weight of their depravity by arranging themselves into this or that form of political organization. Every jot of the evil must in one way or other be borne—consciously or unconsciously; either in a shape that is recognised, or else under some disguise. No philosopher’s stone of a constitution can produce golden conduct from leaden instincts. No apparatus of senators, judges, and police, can compensate for the want of an internal governing sentiment. No legislative manipulation can eke out an insufficient morality into a sufficient one. No administrative sleight of hand can save us from ourselves.

But must not this imply that government is of no use whatever? Not at all. Although unable to alter the sum-total of injustice to be supported, it can still alter its distribution. And this is what it really does. By its aid, men to a considerable extent equalize the evil they have to bear—spread it out more uniformly over the whole community, and over the life of each citizen. Entire freedom to exercise the faculties, interrupted by entire deprivations of it, and marred by the perpetual danger of these deprivations, is exchanged for a freedom on which the restrictions are constant but partial. Instead of those losses of life, of limb, or of the means of subsistence, which, under a state of anarchy, all are liable to, and many suffer, a political organization commits universal aggressions of a comparatively mild type. Wrongs that were before occasional, but crushing, are now unceasing, but bearable. The system is one of mutual assurance against moral disasters. Just as men, Edition: current; Page: [269] whilst they cannot prevent fires and shipwrecks, can yet guarantee each other against ruin from these, by bearing them in common, and distributing the injuries entailed over long periods of time; so, although by uniting together for judicial purposes men cannot diminish the amount of injustice to be borne, they can, and do, insure themselves against its otherwise fatal results.