Individual Freedom; T. Bayard

Step by step, and largely owing to the confusion of civil strife, it has succeeded in obtaining control of the sovereign power of taxa tion; never hesitating at any alFrom an address by the Honorable Thomas F. Bayard before the Edinburgh Philosophical Institution, circa 1897. liance, or the resort to any com bination that promises to assist its purpose of perverting public taxation from its only true justi fication and function of creating revenue for the support of a gov ernment of the whole people, into an engine for the selfish and pri vate profits of allied beneficiaries and combinations called "Trusts." Under its dictation individual enterprise and independence have been oppressed, and the energy of discovery and invention debili,;. tated and discouraged. It has un hesitatingly allied itself with every policy which tends to commercial isolation, dangerously depletes the Treasury, and saps the popular conscience by a scheme of cor rupting favor and largesse to spe cial classes, whose support is there by attracted ....

It is incorrect to speak of "Pro tection" as a national policy, for 635 636 THE FREEMAN October that it can never be; because it can never be other than the fos tering of special interests at the expense of the rest; and this over throws the great principle of equality before the law, and that resultant sense of justice and equity in the administration of sovereign powers which is the true cause of domestic tranquility and human contentment. The value of "protective" legislation to its bene ficiaries consists in its inequality; for without discrimination in fa vor of someone there is no advan tage to anyone, and if the tax is equally laid on all, all will be kept upon the relative level from which they started; and this simply means a high scale of living to all, high cost of production of every thing, and consequent inability to compete anywhere outside the or bit of such restrictive laws.

But the enfeeblement of indi vidual energies and the impair ment of manly self-reliance are necessarily involved; and the be lief in mysterious powers of the state and a reliance upon them to take the place of individual exer tion, fosters the growth of state socialism, and personal liberty ceases to be the great end of gov ernment. I) IDEAS ON LIBERTY The Curbing of Factions SO STRONG is this propensity of mankind to fall into mutual ani mosities that where no substantial occasion presents itself the most frivolous and fanciful distinctions have been sufficient to kindle their unfriendly passions and excite their most violent conflicts. But the most common and durable source of factions has been the various and unequal distribution of property. Those who hold and those who are without property have ever formed distinct interests in society. Those who are creditors, and those who are debtors, fall under a like discrimination. A landed in terest, a manufacturing interest, a mercantile interest, a moneyed interest, with many lesser interests, grow up of necessity in civil ized nations, and divide them into different classes, actuated by different sentiments and views. The regulation of these various and interfering interests forms the principal task of modern legis lation and involves the spirit of party and faction in the neces sary and ordinary operations of the government.

JAMES MADISON, from No. 10 of The Federalist Papers A REVIEWER'S NOTEBOOK JOHN CHAMBERLAIN Contra SINCE I find the prose of Herbert Marcuse to be an almost impene trable thicket, maybe I am not the best person in the world to render an informed opinion on the quality of Dr. Eliseo Vivas's critical view of his subject in Contra Marcuse (Arlington House, $8.95). But Dr. Vivas has his own troubles with what he calls the "merciless jar gon" which passes for style in the. Marcusean world. He has done the best he can. So I will do the best I can to act as a collaborator in an effort to clarify what must, in the nature of things, resist trans lation. Like Dr. Vivas, I know what the "kids" get out of Mar cuse: it is permission to "wreck the joint." I happen to share with Dr. Vivas at least a qualified fond ness for "the joint" (meaning Western civilization), so I feel Marcuse justified in regarding Marcuse as an evil influence even though I do not fully understand his motiva tions, his analyses, his grammar, and his rhetoric.