Self-Help; S. Smiles

[259 ] But in all times men have been prone to believe that their happiness and well-being were to be secured by means of institutions rather than by their own conduct. Hence the value of legislation as an agent in human advance ment has usually been much overestimated. To con stitute the millionth part of a Legislature, by voting for one or two men once in three or :five years, however conscientiously this duty may be performed, can exercise but little active influence upon any man's life and char acter. Moreover, it is every day becoming more clearly under stood that the function of government is negative and restrictive, rather than positive and active; being resolv able principally into protection-protection of life, liberty, and property. Laws, wisely administered, will secure men in the enjoyment of the fruits of their labor, whether of mind or body, at a comparatively small personal sacrifice; but no laws, however stringent, can make the idle in dustrious, the thriftless provident, or the drunken sober.

Such reforms can only be effected by means of individual action, economy, and self-denial; by better habits, rather than by greater rights .... The Greatest Charity If this view be correct, then it follows that the highest patriotism and philanthropy consist, not so much in alter ing laws and modifying institutions, as in helping and stimulating men to elevate and improve themselves by their own free and independent individual action. [260 ] It may be of comparatively little consequence how a man is governed from without, whilst every thing de pends upon how he governs himself from within. The greatest slave is not he who is ruled by a despot, great though that evil be, but he who is the thrall of his own moral ignorance, selfishness, and vice. Nations who are thus enslaved at heart can not be freed by any mere changes of masters or of institutions; and so long as the fatal delusion prevails, that liberty solely depends upon and consists in government, so long will such changes, no matter at what cost they may be effected, have as little practical and lasting result as the shifting of the figures in a phantasmagoria. The solid foundations of liberty must rest upon individual character; which is also the only sure guaranty for social security and national prog ress. John Stuart Mill truly observes that cCeven despotism does not produce its worst effects so long as individuality exists under it; and whatever crushes individuality is despotism, by whatever name it be called."

[261 ] OUR NATION'S WATER RESOURCES ADMIRAL Ben Moreell is one of the most fearsomely efficient men alive today. He organized the Seabees dur ing World War II. Since his retirement from the Navy in 1946, he has presided over the rising fortunes of the Jones and Laughlin Steel Corporation. In addition to his skills·as industrial planner and administrator, Ben More ell is an intellectual in the non-pejorative, non-egghead sense of the word. He thinks clearly, and his thoughts How easily into lucid, direct English. Beyond all this, fusing it all into an effective entity, Ben Moreell has a firm grip on the moral values that underlie both the American Constitution and the system of voluntary eco nomic association and free exchange. Given his special characteristics, it was a foregone con clusion that Admiral Moreell's chairmanship of the Second Hoover Commission Task Force on Water Re sources and Power would result in a report that would go way beyond the journeymen necessities of the assign ment. The Task Force not only gathered the facts, which Mr. Chamberlain is the well-known literary critic and a regular contributor to the Wall Street Journal, The Freeman, and other publications.