The Principles of Political Economy
by John Stuart Mill

Book 5

Chapter 11

Of the Grounds and Limits of the Laisser-faire or
Non-interference Principle

    1. We have now reached the last part of our undertaking; the
discussion, so far as suited to this treatise (that is, so far as
it is a question of principle, not detail) of the limits of the
province of government: the question, to what objects
governmental intervention in the affairs of society may or should
extend, over and above those which necessarily appertain to it.
No subject has been more keenly contested in the present age: the
contest, however, has chiefly taken place round certain select
points, with only flying excursions into the rest of the field.
Those indeed who have discussed any particular question of
government interference, such as state education (spiritual or
secular), regulation of hours of labour, a public provision for
the poor, &c., have often dealt largely in general arguments, far
outstretching the special application made of them, and have
shown a sufficiently strong bias either in favour of letting
things alone, or in favour of meddling; but have seldom declared,
or apparently decided in their own minds, how far they would
carry either principle. The supporters of interference have been
content with asserting a general right and duty on the part of
government to intervene, wherever its intervention would be
useful: and when those who have been called the laisser-faire
school have attempted any definite limitation of the province of
government, they have usually restricted it to the protection of
person and property against force and fraud; a definition to
which neither they nor any one else can deliberately adhere,
since it excludes, as has been shown in a preceding chapter,(1*)
some of the most indispensable and unanimously recognized of the
duties of government. 
    Without professing entirely to supply this deficiency of a
general theory, on a question which does not, as I conceive,
admit of any universal solution, I shall attempt to afford some
little aid towards the resolution of this class of questions as
they arise, by examining, in the most general point of view in
which the subject can be considered, what are the advantages, and
what the evils or inconveniences, of government interference. 
    We must set out by distinguishing between two kinds of
intervention by the government, which, though they may relate to
the same subject, differ widely in their nature and effects, and
require, for their justification, motives of a very different
degree of urgency. The intervention may extend to controlling the
free agency of individuals. Government may interdict all persons
from doing certain things; or from doing them without its
authorization; or may prescribe to them certain things to be
done, or a certain manner of doing things which it is left
optional with them to do or to abstain from. This is the
authoritative interference of government. There is another kind
of intervention which is not authoritative: when a government,
instead of issuing a command and enforcing it by penalties,
adopts the course so seldom resorted to by governments, and of
which such important use might be made, that of giving advice and
promulgating information; or when, leaving individuals free to
use their own means of pursuing any object of general interest,
the government, not meddling with them, but not trusting the
object solely to their care, establishes, side by side with their
arrangements, an agency of its own for a like purpose. Thus, it
is one thing to maintain a Church Establishment, and another to
refuse toleration to other religions, or to persons professing no
religion. It is one thing to provide schools or colleges, and
another to require that no person shall act as an instructor of
youth without a government licence. There might be a national
bank, or a government manufactory, without any monopoly against
private banks and manufactories. There might be a post-office,
without penalties against the conveyance of letters by any other
means. There may be a corps of government engineers for civil
purposes, while the profession of a civil engineer is free to be
adopted by every one. There may be public hospitals, without any
restriction upon private medical or surgical practice. 

    2. It is evident, even at first sight, that the authoritative
form of government intervention has a much more limited sphere of
legitimate action than the other. It requires a much stronger
necessity to justify it in any case; while there are large
departments of human life from which it must be unreservedly and
imperiously excluded. Whatever theory we adopt respecting the
foundation of the social union, and under whatever political
institutions we live, there is a circle around every individual
human being, which no government, be it that of one, of a few, or
of the many, ought to be permitted to overstep: there is a part
of the life of every person who has come to years of discretion,
within which the individuality of that person ought to reign
uncontrolled either by any other individual or by the public
collectively. That there is, or ought to be, some space in human
existence thus entrenched around, and sacred from authoritative
intrusion, no one who professes the smallest regard to human
freedom or dignity will call in question: the point to be
determined is, where the limit should be placed; how large a
province of human life this reserved territory should include. I
apprehend that it ought to include all that part which concerns
only the life, whether inward or outward, of the individual, and
does not affect the interests of others, or affects them only
through the moral influence of example. With respect to the
domain of the inward consciousness, the thoughts and feelings,
and as much of external conduct as is personal only, involving no
consequences, none at least of a painful or injurious kind, to
other people: I hold that it is allowable in all, and in the more
thoughtful and cultivated often a duty, to assert and promulgate,
with all the force they are capable of, their opinion of what is
good or bad, admirable or contemptible, but not to compel others
to conform to that opinion; whether the force used is that of
extra.legal coercion, or exerts itself by means of the law. 
    Even in those portions of conduct which do affect the
interest of others, the onus of making out a case always lies on
the defenders of legal prohibitions. It is not a merely
constructive or presumptive injury to others, which will justify
the interference of law with individual freedom. To be prevented
from doing what one is inclined to, from acting according to
one's own judgment of what is desirable, is not only always
irksome, but always tends, pro tanto, to starve the development
of some portion of the bodily or mental faculties, either
sensitive or active; and unless the conscience of the individual
goes freely with the legal restraint, it partakes, either in a
great or in a small degree, of the degradation of slavery.
Scarcely any degree of utility, short of absolute necessity, will
justify a prohibitory regulation, unless it can also be made to
recommend itself to the general conscience; unless persons of
ordinary good intentions either believe already, or can be
induced to believe, that the thing prohibited is a thing which
they ought not to wish to do. 
    It is otherwise with governmental interferences which do not
restrain individual free agency. When a government provides means
of fulfilling a certain end, leaving individuals free to avail
themselves of different means if in their opinion preferable,
there is no infringement of liberty, no irksome or degrading
restraint. One of the principal objections to government
interference is then absent. There is, however, in almost all
forms of government agency, one thing which is compulsory. the
provision of the pecuniary means. These are derived from
taxation; or, if existing in the form of an endowment derived
from public property, they are still the cause of as much
compulsory taxation as the sale or the annual proceeds of the
property would enable to be dispensed with.(2*) And the objection
necessarily attaching to compulsory contributions, is almost
always greatly aggravated by the expensive precautions and
onerous restrictions, which are indispensable to prevent evasion
of a compulsory tax. 

    3. A second general objection to government agency, is that
every increase of the functions devolving on the government is an
increase of its power, both in the form of authority, and still
more, in the indirect form of influence. The importance of this
consideration, in respect of political freedom, has in general
been quite sufficiently recognized, at least in England, but
many, in latter times, have been prone to think that limitation
of the powers of the government is only essential when the
government itself is badly constituted; when it does not
represent the people, but is the organ of a class, or coalition
of classes: and that a government of sufficiently popular
constitution might be trusted with any amount of power over the
nation, since its power would be only that of the nation over
itself. This might be true, if the nation, in such cases, did not
practically mean a mere majority of the nation, and if minorities
were only capable of oppressing, but not of being oppressed.
Experience, however, proves that the depositaries of power who
are mere delegates of the people, that is of a majority, are
quite as ready (when they think they can count on popular
support) as any organs of oligarchy, to assume arbitrary power,
and encroach unduly on the liberty of private life. The public
collectively is abundantly ready to impose, not only its
generally narrow views of its interests, but its abstract
opinions, and even its tastes, as laws binding upon individuals.
And the present civilization tends so strongly to make the power
of persons acting in masses the only substantial power in
society, that there never was more necessity for surrounding
individual independence of thought, speech, and conduct, with the
most powerful defences, in order to maintain that originality of
mind and individuality of character, which are the only source of
any real progress, and of most of the qualities which make the
human race much superior to any herd of animals. Hence it is no
less important in a democratic than in any other government, that
all tendency on the part of public authorities to stretch their
interference, and assume a power of any sort which can easily be
dispensed with, should be regarded with unremitting jealousy.
Perhaps this is even more important in a democracy than in any
other form of political society; because where public opinion is
sovereign, an individual who is oppressed by the sovereign does
not, as in most other states of things, find a rival power to
which he can appeal for relief, or, at all events, for sympathy. 

    4. A third general objection to government agency, rests on
the principle of the division of labour. Every additional
function undertaken by the government, is a fresh occupation
imposed upon a body already overcharged with duties. A natural
consequence is that most things are ill done; much not done at
all, because the government is not able to do it without delays
which are fatal to its purpose; that the more troublesome and
less showy, of the functions undertaken, are postponed or
neglected, and an excuse is always ready for the neglect; while
the heads of the administration have their minds so fully taken
up with official details, in however perfunctory a manner
superintended, that they have no time or thought to spare for the
great interests of the state, and the preparation of enlarged
measures of social improvement. 
    But these inconveniences, though real and serious, result
much more from the bad organization of governments, than from the
extent and variety of the duties undertaken by them. Government
is not a name for some one functionary, or definite number of
functionaries: there may be almost any amount of division of
labour within the administrative body itself. The evil in
question is felt in great magnitude under some of the governments
of the Continent, where six or eight men, living at the capital
and known by the name of ministers, demand that the whole public
business of the country shall pass, or be supposed to pass, under
their individual eye. But the inconvenience would be reduced to a
very manageable compass, in a country in which there was a proper
distribution of functions between the central and local officers
of government, and in which the central body was divided into a
sufficient number of departments. When Parliament thought it
expedient to confer on the government an inspecting and partially
controlling authority over railways, it did not add railways to
the department of the Home Minister, but created a Railway Board.
When it determined to have a central superintending authority for
pauper administration, it established the Poor Law Commission.
There are few countries in which a greater number of functions
are discharged by public officers, than in some states of the
American Union, particularly the New England States; but the
division of labour in public business is extreme; most of these
officers being not even amenable to any common superior, but
performing their duties freely, under the double check of
election by their townsmen, and civil as well as criminal
responsibility to the tribunals. 
    It is, no doubt, indispensable to good government that the
chiefs of the administration, whether permanent or temporary,
should extend a commanding, though general, view over the
ensemble of all the interests confided, in any degree, to the
responsibility of the central power. But with a skilful internal
organization of the administrative machine, leaving to
subordinates, and as far as possible, to local subordinates, not
only the execution, but to a greater degree the control, of
details; holding them accountable for the results of their acts
rather than for the acts themselves, except where these come
within the cognizance of the tribunals; taking the most effectual
securities for honest and capable appointments; opening a broad
path to promotion from the inferior degrees of the administrative
scale to the superior; leaving, at each step, to the functionary,
a wider range in the origination of measures, so that, in the
highest grade of all, deliberation might be concentrated on the
great collective interests of the country in each department; if
all this were done, the government would not probably be
overburthened by any business, in other respects fit to be
undertaken by it; though the overburthening would remain as a
serious addition to the inconveniences incurred by its
undertaking any which was unfit. 

    5. But though a better organization of governments would
greatly diminish the force of the objection to the mere
multiplication of their duties, it would still remain true that
in all the more advanced communities, the great majority of
things are worse done by the intervention of government, than the
individuals most interested in the matter would do them, or cause
them to be done, if left to themselves. The grounds of this truth
are expressed with tolerable exactness in the poplar dictum, that
people understand their own business and their own interests
better, and care for them more, than the government does, or can
be expected to do. This maxim holds true throughout the greatest
part of the business of life, and wherever it is true we ought to
condemn every kind of government intervention that conflicts with
it. The inferiority of government agency, for example, in any of
the common operations of industry or commerce, is proved by the
fact, that it is hardly ever able to maintain.. itself in equal
competition with individual agency, where the individuals possess
the requisite degree of industrial enterprise, and can command
the necessary assemblage of means. All the facilities which a
government enjoys of access to information; all the means which
it possesses of remunerating, and therefore of commanding, the
best available talent in the market -- are not an equivalent for
the one great disadvantage of an inferior interest in the result.

    It must be remembered, besides, that even if a government
were superior in intelligence and knowledge to any single
individual in the nation, it must be inferior to all the
individuals of the nation taken together. It can neither possess
in itself, nor enlist in its service, more than a portion of the
acquirements and capacities which the country contains,
applicable to any given purpose. There must be many persons
equally qualified for the work with those whom the government
employs, even if it selects its instruments with no reference to
any consideration but their fitness. Now these are the very
persons into whose hands, in the cases of most common occurrence,
a system of individual agency naturally tends to throw the work,
because they are capable of doing it better or 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 the 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; labour, 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 evils of life as
desirable things, because they call forth qualities adapted to
combat with evils. 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 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 favourable 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, when 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 far 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
co-operation; since this 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 distinct. ive 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 man. kind 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 initiative and 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 favour 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 burthen 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 of
M. Dunoyer(3*) of the restraints imposed on the operations of
manufacture under the old government of France, by the meddling
and regulating spirit of legislation. 'La societe exercait sur la
fabrication la juridiction la plus illimitee et la plus
arbitraire: elle disposait sans scrupule des facultes des
fabricants; elle decidait qui pourrait travailler, quelle chose
on pourrait faire, quels materiaux on devrait employer, quels
procedes il faudrait suivre, quelles formes on donnerait aux
produits, etc. Il ne suffisait pas de faire bien, de faire mieux,
il fallait faire suivant les regles. Qui ne connait ce reglement
de 1670, qui prescrivait de saisir et de clouer au poteau, avec
le nom des auteurs, les marchandises non conformes aux regles
tracees, et qui, a la seconde recidive, voulait que les
fabricants y fussent attaches eux memes? Il ne s'agissait pas de
consulter le gout des consommateurs, mais de se conformer aux
volontes de la loi. Des legions d'inspecteurs, de commissaires,
de controleurs, de jures, de gardes, etainet charges de les faire
executer; on brisait les metiers, on brulait les produits qui n'y
etaient pas conformes: les ameliorations etaient punies; on
mettait les inventeurs a l'amende. On soumettait a des regles
differentes la fabrication des objets destines a la consommation
interieure et celle des produits destines au commerce etranger.
Un artisan n'etait pas le maitre de choisir le lieu de son
etablissement, ni de travailler en toute saison, ni de travailler
pour tout le monde. Il existe un decret du 30 Mars 1700, qui
borne a dix-huit villes le nombre des lieux ou l'on pourra faire
des bas au metier; un arret du 18 Juin 1723 enjoint aux
fabricants de Rouen de suspendre leurs travaux du 1er Juillet au
15 Septembre, affin de faciliter ceux de la recolte; Louis XIV,
quand il voulut entreprendre la colonnade du Louvre, defendit 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 premiere fois, de la
prison, et pour la seconde, des galeres.'
    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.(4*) 'I have seen', says he, 'eighty, ninety,
a hundred pieces of cotton or woollen stuff cut up, and
completely destroyed. I have witnessed similar scenes every week
for a number of years. I have seen manufactured goods
confiscated; heavy fines laid on the manufacturers; some pieces
of fabric were burnt in public places, and at the hours of
market: others were fixed to the pillory, with the name of the
manufacturer inscribed upon them, and he himself was threatened
with the pillory, in case of a second offence. All this was done
under my eyes, at Rouen, in conformity with existing regulations,
or ministerial orders. What crime deserved so cruel a punishment?
Some defects in the materials employed, or in the texture of the
fabric, or even in some of the threads of the warp. 
    'I have frequently seen manufacturers visited by a band of
satellites who put all in confusion in their establishments,
spread terror in their families, cut the stuffs from the frames,
tore off the warp from the looms, and carried them away as proofs
of infringement; the manufacturers were summoned, tried, and
condemned: their goods confiscated; copies of their judgment of
confiscation posted up in every public place; fortune,
reputation, credit, all was lost and destroyed. And for what
offence? Because they had made of worsted, a kind of cloth called
shag, such as the English used to manufacture, and even sell in
France, while the French regulations stated that that kind of
cloth should be made with mohair. I have seen other manufacturers
treated in the same way, because they had made camlets of a
particular width, used in England and Germany, for which there
was a great demand from Spain, Portugal, and other countries, and
from several parts of France, while the French regulations
prescribed other widths for camlets.'
    The time is gone by, when such applications as these of the
principle of 'paternal government' would be attempted, in even
the least enlightened country of the European commonwealth of
nations. In such cases as those cited, all the general objections
to government interference are valid, and several of them in
nearly their highest degree. But we must now turn to the second
part of our task, and direct our attention to cases, in which
some of those general objections are altogether absent, while
those which can never be got rid of entirely, are overruled by
counter-considerations of still greater importance.
    We have observed that, as a general rule, the business of
life is better performed when those who have an immediate
interest in it are left to take their own course, uncontrolled
either by the mandate of the law or by the meddling of any public
functionary. The persons, or some of the persons, who do the
work, are likely to be better judges than the government, of the
means of attaining the particular end at which they aim. Were we
to suppose, what is not very probable, that the government has
possessed itself of the best knowledge which had been acquired up
to a given time by the persons most skilled in the occupation;
even then, the individual agents have so much stronger and more
direct an interest in the result, that the means are far more
likely to be improved and perfected if left to their uncontrolled
choice. But if the workman is generally the best selector of
means, can it be affirmed with the same universality, that the
consumer, or person served, is the most competent judge of the
end? Is the buyer always qualified to judge of the commodity? If
not, the presumption in favour of the competition of the market
does not apply to the case; and if the commodity be one, in the
quality of which society has much at stake, the balance of
advantages may be in favour of some mode and degree of
intervention, by the authorized representatives of the collective
interest of the state. 

    8. Now, the proposition that the consumer is a competent
judge of the commodity, can be admitted only with numerous
abatements and exceptions. He is generally the best judge (though
even this is not true universally) of the material objects
produced for his use. These are destined to supply some physical
want, or gratify some taste or inclination, respecting which
wants or inclinations there is no appeal from the person who
feels them; or they are the means and appliances of some
occupation, for the use of the persons engaged in it, who may be
presumed to be judges of the things required in their own
habitual employment. But there are other things, of the worth of
which the demand of the market is by no means a test; things of
which the utility does not consist in ministering to
inclinations, nor in serving the daily uses of life, and the want
of which is least felt where the need is greatest. This is
peculiarly true of those things which are chiefly useful as
tending to raise the character of human beings. The uncultivated
cannot be competent judges of cultivation. Those who most need to
be made wiser and better, usually desire it least, and if they
desired it, would be incapable of finding the way to it by their
own lights. It will continually happen, on the voluntary system,
that the end not being desired, the means will not be provided at
all, or that, the persons requiring improvement having an
imperfect or altogether erroneous conception of what they want,
the supply called forth by the demand of the market will be
anything but what is really required. Now any well-intentioned
and tolerably civilized government may think, without
presumption, that it does or ought to possess a degree of
cultivation above the average of the community which it rules,
and that it should therefore be capable of offering better
education and better instruction to the people, than the greater
number of them would spontaneously demand. Education, therefore,
is one of those things which it is admissible in principle that a
government should provide for the people. The case is one to
which the reasons of the non.interference principle do not
necessarily or universally extend.(5*)
    With regard to elementary education, the exception to
ordinary rules may, I conceive, justifiably be carried still
further. There are certain primary elements and means of
knowledge, which it is in the highest degree desirable that all
human beings born into the community should acquire during
childhood. If their parents, or those on whom they depend, have
the power of obtaining for them this instruction, and fail to do
it, they commit a double breach of duty, towards the children
themselves, and towards the members of the community generally,
who are all liable to suffer seriously from the Consequences of
ignorance and want of education in their fellow-citizens. It is
therefore an allowable exercise of the powers of government, to
impose on parents the legal obligation of giving elementary
instruction to children. This, however, cannot fairly be done,
without taking measures to insure that such instruction shall be
always accessible to them, either gratuitously or at a trifling
expense. 
    It may indeed be objected that the education of children is
one of those expenses which parents, even of the labouring class,
ought to defray; that it is desirable that they should feel it
incumbent on them to provide by their own means for the
fulfilment of their duties, and that by giving education at the
cost of others, just as much by giving subsistence, the standard
of necessary wages is proportionally lowered, and the springs of
exertion and self-restraint is so much relaxed. This argument
could, at best, be only valid if the question were that of
substituting a public provision for what individuals would
otherwise do for themselves; if all parents in the labouring
class recognized and practised the duty of giving instruction to
their children at their own expense. But inasmuch as parents do
not practise this duty, and do not include education among those
necessary expenses which their wages must provide for, therefore
the general rate of wages is not high enough to bear those
expenses, and they must be borne from some other source. And this
is not one of the cases in which the tender of help perpetuates
the state of things which renders help necessary. Instruction,
when it is really such, does not enervate, but strengthens as
well as enlarges the active faculties: in whatever manner
acquired, its effect on the mind is favourable to the spirit of
independence: and when, unless had gratuitously, it would not be
had at all, help in this form has the opposite tendency to that
which in so many other cases makes it objectionable; it is help
towards doing without help. 
    In England, and most European countries, elementary
instruction cannot be paid for, at its full cost, from the common
wages of unskilled labour, and would not if it could. The
alternative, therefore, is not between government and private
speculation, but between a government provision and voluntary
charity: between interference by government, and interference by
associations of individuals, subscribing their own money for the
purpose, like the two great School Societies. It is, of course,
not desirable that anything should be done by funds derived from
compulsory taxation, which is already sufficiently well done by
individual liberality. How far this is the case with school
instruction, is, in each particular instance, a question of fact.
The education provided in this country on the voluntary principle
has of late been so much discussed, that it is needless in this
place to criticize 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 de jure
or de facto, 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, therefore, may,
and in many cases ought to, establish schools and colleges, it
must neither compel nor bribe any person to come to them; nor
ought the power of individuals to set up rival establishments, to
depend in any degree upon its authorization. It would be
justified in requiring from all the people that they shall
possess instruction in certain things, but not in prescribing to
them how or from whom they shall obtain it. 

    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 situation 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 laisser.faire principle breaks down
entirely. The person most interested is not the best judge of the
matter, nor a competent judge at all. Insane persons are
everywhere regarded as proper objects of the care of the
state.(6*) 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 of children, the law is warranted, if
it is able, in compelling to be done or forborne, 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 unfortunate 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 Acts, 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 inevitably
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. When 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 chose
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
labour. ing 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, in the contrary, be
an object to give them the readiest access to independent
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
engagement 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 contracted with
foresight and deliberation; and in compensation for not
permitting 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 shall notice, to the doctrine
that government cannot manage the affairs of individuals as well
as the individuals themselves, has reference to the great class
of cases in which the individuals can only manage the concern by
delegated agency, and in which the so-called private management
is, in point of fact, hardly better entitled to be called
management by the persons interested, than administration by a
public officer. Whatever, if left to spontaneous agency, can only
be done by joint-stock associations, will often be as well, and
sometimes better done, as far as the actual work is concerned, by
the state. Government management is, indeed, proverbially
jobbing, careless, and ineffective, but so likewise has generally
been joint-stock management. The directors of a joint.stock
company, it is true, are always shareholders; but also the
members of a government are invariably taxpayers; and in the case
of directors, no more than in that of governments, is their
proportional share of the benefits of good management, equal to
the interest they may possibly have in mismanagement, even
without reckoning the interest of their case. It may be objected,
that the shareholders, in their collective character, exercise a
certain control over the 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 inquiries, 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 not
seem to be necessarily much greater, if necessarily greater at
all, than those of management by joint-stock. 
    The true reasons in favour of leaving to voluntary
associations all such things as they are competent to perform,
would exist in equal strength if it were certain that the work
itself would be as well or better done by public officers. These
reasons have been already pointed out: the mischief of
overloading the chief functionaries of government with demands on
their attention, and diverting them from duties which they alone
can discharge, to objects which can be sufficiently well attained
without them; the danger of unnecessarily swelling the direct
power and in. direct influence of government, and multiplying
occasions of collision between its agents and private citizens;
and the inexpediency of concentrating in a dominant bureaucracy,
all the skill and experience in the management of large
interests, and all the power of organized action, existing in the
community; a practice which keeps the citizens in a relation to
the government like that of children to their guardians, and is a
main cause of the inferior capacity for political life which has
hitherto characterized the over-governed countries of the
Continent, whether with or without the forms of representative
government.(7*) But although, for these reasons, most things
which are likely to be even tolerably done by voluntary
associations, should, generally speaking, be left to them; it
does not follow that the manner in which those associations
perform their work should be entirely uncontrolled by the
government. There are many cases in which the agency, of whatever
nature, by which a service is performed, is certain, from the
nature of the case, to be virtually single; in which a practical
monopoly, with all the power it confers of taxing the community,
cannot be prevented from existing. I have already more than once
adverted to the case of the gas and water companies, among which,
though perfect freedom is allowed to competition, none really
takes place, and practically they are found to be even more
irresponsible, and unapproachable by individual complaints, than
the government. 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 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 the 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 in 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 to levy any tax they chose, for their own benefit, on
all the malt produced in the country, or on all the cotton
imported into it. To make the concession for a limited time is
generally justifiable, on the principle which justifies patents
for invention: but the state should either reserve to itself a
reversionary property in such public works, or should retain, and
freely exercise, the right of fixing a maximum of fares and
charges, and, from time to time, varying that maximum. It is
perhaps necessary to remark, that the state may be the proprietor
of canals or railways without itself working them; and that they
will almost always be better worked by means of a company,
renting the railway or canal for a limited period from the state.


    12. To a fourth case 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 workpeople: 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 spontaneously. 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 all, or if employed, must submit to lose
one-tenth of his wages. However convinced, therefore, he may be
that it is the interest of the class to work short time, it is
contrary to his own interest to set the example, unless he is
well assured that all or most others will follow it. But suppose
a general agreement of the whole class: might not this be
effectual without the sanction of law? Not unless enforced by
opinion with a rigour practically equal to that of law. For
however beneficial the observance of the regulation might be to
the class collectively, the immediate interest of every
individual would lie in violating it: and the more numerous those
were who adhered to the rule, the more would individuals gain by
departing from it. If nearly all restricted themselves to nine
hours, those who chose to work for ten would gain all the
advantages of the restriction, together with the profit from
infringing it; they would get ten hours' wages for nine hours'
work, and an hour's wages besides. I grant that if a large
majority adhered to the nine hours, there would be no harm done;
the benefit would be, in the main, secured to the class, while
those individuals who preferred to work harder and earn more,
would have an opportunity of doing so. This certainly would be
the state of things to be wished, for; and assuming that a
reduction of hours without any diminution of wages could take
place without expelling the commodity from some of its markets --
which is in every particular instance a question of fact, not of
principle -- the manner in which it would be most desirable that
this effect should be brought about, would be by a quiet change
in the general custom of the trade; short hours becoming, by
spontaneous choice, the general practice, but those who chose to
deviate from it having the fullest liberty to do so. Probably,
however, so many would prefer the ten hours' work on the improved
terms, that the limitation could not be maintained as a general
practice: what some did from choice, others would soon be obliged
to do from necessity, and those who had chosen long hours for the
sake of increased wages, would be forced in the end to work long
hours for no greater wages than before. Assuming then that it
really would be the interest of each to work only nine hours if
he could be assured that all others would do the same, there
might be no means of attaining this object but by converting
their supposed mutual agreement into an engagement under penalty,
by consenting to have it enforced by law. I am not expressing any
opinion in favour of such an enactment, which has never in this
country been demanded, and which I certainly should not, in
present circumstances, recommend: but it serves to exemplify the
manner in which classes of persons may need the assistance of
law, to give effect to their deliberate collective opinion of
their own interest, by affording to every individual a guarantee
that his competitors will pursue the same course, without which
he cannot safely adopt it himself. 
    Another exemplification of the same principle is afforded by
what is known as the Wakefield system of colonization. This
system is grounded on the important principle, that the degree of
productiveness of land and labour depends on their being in a due
proportion to one another; that if a few persons in a
newly-settled country attempt to occupy and appropriate a large
district, or if each labourer becomes too soon an occupier and
cultivator of land, there is a loss of productive power, and a
great retardation of the progress of the colony in wealth and
civilization: that nevertheless the instinct (as it may almost be
called) of appropriation, and the feelings associated in old
countries with landed proprietorship, induce almost every
emigrant to take possession of as much land as he has the means
of acquiring, and every labourer to become at once a proprietor,
cultivating his own land with no other aid than that of his
family. If this propensity to the immediate possession of land
could be in some degree restrained, and each labourer induced to
work a certain number of years on hire before he became a landed
proprietor, a perpetual stock of hired labourers could be
maintained, available for roads, canals, works of irrigation,
&c., and for the establishment and carrying on of the different
branches of town industry; whereby the labourer, when he did at
last become a landed proprietor, would find his land much more
valuable, through access to markets, and facility of obtaining
hired labour. Mr Wakefield therefore proposed to check the
premature occupation of land, and dispersion of the people, by
putting upon all unappropriated lands a rather high price, the
proceeds of which were to be expended in conveying emigrant
labourers from the mother country. 
    This salutary provision, however, has been objected to, in
the name and on the authority of what was represented as the
great principle of political economy, that individuals are the
best judges of their own interest. It was said, that when things
are left to themselves, land is appropriated and occupied by the
spontaneous choice of individuals, in the quantities and at the
times most advantageous to each person, and therefore to the
community generally; and that to interpose artificial obstacles
to their obtaining land, is to prevent them from adopting the
course which in their own judgment is most beneficial to them,
from a self.conceited notion of the legislator, that he knows
what is most for their interest, better than they do themselves.
Now this is a complete misunderstanding, either of the system
itself, or of the principle with which it is alleged to conflict.
The oversight is similar to that which we have just seen
exemplified on the subject of hours of labour. However beneficial
it might be to the colony in the aggregate, and to each
individual composing it, that no one should occupy more land than
he can properly cultivate, nor become a proprietor until there
are other labourers ready to take his place in working for hire;
it can never be the interest of an individual to exercise this
forbearance, unless he is assured that others will do so too.
Surrounded by settlers who have each their thousand acres, how is
he benefited by restricting himself to fifty? or what does a
labourer gain by deferring the acquisition altogether for a few
years, if all other labourers rush to convert their first
earnings into estates in the wilderness, several miles apart from
one another? If they, by seizing on land, prevent the formation
of a class of labourers for wages, he will not, by postponing the
time of his becoming a proprietor, be enabled to employ the land
with any greater advantage when he does obtain it; to what end
therefore should he place himself in what will appear to him and
others a position of inferiority, by remaining a hired labourer,
when all around him are proprietors? It is the interest of each
to do what is good for all, but only if others will do likewise. 
    The principle that each is the best judge of his own
interest, understood as these objectors understand it, would
prove that governments ought not to fulfil any of their
acknowledged duties -- ought not, in fact, to exist at all. It is
greatly the interest of the community, collectively and
individually, not to rob or defraud one another. but there is not
the less necessity for laws to punish robbery and fraud; because,
though it is the interest of each that nobody should rob or
cheat, it is not any one's interest to refrain from robbing and
cheating others when all others are permitted to rob and cheat
him. Penal laws exist at all, chiefly for this reason -- because
even an unanimous opinion that a certain line of conduct is for
the general interest, does not always make it people's individual
interest to adhere to that line of conduct. 

    13. Fifthly; the argument against government interference
grounded on the maxim that individuals are the best judges of
their own interest, cannot apply to the very large class of
cases, in which those acts of individuals with which the
government claims to interfere, are not done by those individuals
for their own interest, but for the interest of other people.
This includes, among other things, the important and much
agitated subject of public charity. Though individuals should, in
general, be left to do for themselves whatever it can reasonably
be expected that they should be capable of doing, yet when they
are at any rate not to be left to themselves, but to be helped by
other people, the question arises whether it is better that they
should receive this help exclusively from individuals, and
therefore uncertainly and casually, or by systematic
arrangements, in which society acts through its organ, the state.

    This brings us to the subject of Poor Laws; a subject which
would be of very minor importance if the habits of all classes of
the people were temperate and prudent, and the diffusion of
property satisfactory; but of the greatest moment in a state of
things so much the reverse of this, in both points, as that which
the British islands present. 
    Apart from any metaphysical considerations respecting the
foundation of morals or of the social union, it will be admitted
to be right that human beings should help one another; and the
more so, in proportion to the urgency of the need: and none needs
help so urgently as one who is starving. The claim to help,
therefore, created by destitution, is one of the strongest which
can exist; and there is prima facie the amplest reason for making
the relief of so extreme an exigency as certain to those who
require it, as by any arrangements of society it can be made.
    On the other hand, in all cases of helping, there are two
sets of consequences to be considered; the consequences of the
assistance, and the consequences of relying on the assistance.
The former are generally beneficial, but the latter, for the most
part, injurious; so much so, in many cases, as greatly to
outweigh the value of the benefit. And this is never more likely
to happen than in the very cases where the need of help is the
most intense. There are few things for which it is more
mischievous that people should rely on the habitual aid of
others, than for the means of subsistence, and unhappily there is
no lesson which they more easily learn. The problem to be solved
is therefore one of peculiar nicety as well as importance; how to
give the greatest amount of needful help, with the smallest
encouragement to undue reliance on it. 
    Energy and self-dependence are, however, liable to be
impaired by the absence of help, as well as by its excess. It is
even more fatal to exertion to have no hope of succeeding by it,
than to be assured of succeeding without it. When the condition
of any one is so disastrous that his energies are paralysed by
discouragement, assistance is a tonic, not a sedative: it braces
instead of deadening the active faculties: always provided that
the assistance is not such as to dispense with self-help, by
substituting itself for the person's own labour, skill, and
prudence, but is limited to affording him a better hope of
attaining success by those legitimate means. This accordingly is
a test to which all plans of philanthropy and benevolence should
be brought, whether intended for the benefit of individuals or of
classes, and whether conducted on the voluntary or on the
government principle.
    In so far as the subject admits of any general doctrine or
maxim, it would appear to be this -- that if assistance is given
in such a manner that the condition of the person helped is as
desirable as that of the person who succeeds in doing the same
thing without help, the assistance, if capable of being
previously calculated on, is mischievous: but if, while available
to every. body, it leaves to every one a strong motive to do
without it if he can, it is then for the most part beneficial.
This principle, applied to a system of public charity, is that of
the Poor Law of 1834. If the condition of a person receiving
relief is made as eligible as that of the labourer who supports
himself by his own exertions, the system strikes at the root of
all individual industry and self-government; and, if fully acted
up to, would require as its supplement an organized system of
compulsion, for governing and setting to work like cattle, those
who had been removed from the influence of the motives that act
on human beings. But if, consistently with guaranteeing all
persons against absolute want, the condition of those who are
supported by legal charity can be kept considerably less
desirable than the condition of those who find support for
themselves, none but beneficial consequences can arise from a law
which renders it impossible for any person, except by his own
choice, to die from insufficiency of food. That in England at
least this supposition can be realized, is proved by the
experience of a long period preceding the close of the last
century, as well as by that of many highly pauperized districts
in more recent times, which have been dispauperized by adopting
strict rules of poor-law administration, to the great and
permanent benefit of the whole labouring class. There is probably
no country in which, by varying the means suitably to the
character of the people, a legal provision for the destitute
might not be made compatible with the observance of the
conditions necessary to its being innocuous.
    Subject to these conditions, I conceive it to be highly
desirable, that the certainty of subsistence should be held out
by law to the destitute able-bodied, rather than that their
relief should depend on voluntary charity. In the first place,
charity almost always does too much or too little: it lavishes
its bounty in one place, and leaves people to starve in another.
Secondly, since the state must necessarily provide subsistence
for the criminal poor while undergoing punishment, not to do the
same for the poor who have not offended is to give a premium on
crime. And lastly, if the poor are left to individual charity, a
vast amount of mendacity is inevitable. What the state may and
should abandon to private charity, is the task of distinguishing
between one case of real necessity and another. Private charity
can give more to the more deserving. The state must act by
general rules. It cannot undertake to discriminate between the
deserving and the undeserving indigent. It owes no more than
subsistence to the first, and can give no less to the last. What
is said about the injustice of a law which has no better
treatment for the merely unfortunate poor than for the
ill-conducted, is founded on a misconception of the province of
law and public authority. The dispensers of public relief have no
business to be inquisitors. Guardians and overseers are not fit
to be trusted to give or withhold other people's money according
to their verdict on the morality of the person soliciting it; and
it would show much ignorance of the ways of mankind to suppose
that such persons, even in the almost impossible case of their
being qualified, will take the trouble of ascertaining and
sifting the past conduct of a person in distress, so as to form a
rational judgment on it. Private charity can make these
distinctions; and in bestowing its own money, is entitled to do
so according to its own judgment. It should understand that this
is its peculiar and appropriate province, and that it is
commendable or the contrary, as it exercises the function with
more or less discernment. But the administrators of a public fund
ought not to be required to do more for anybody, than that
minimum which is due even to the worst. If they are, the
indulgence very speedily becomes the rule, and refusal the more
or less capricious or tyrannical exception. 

    14. Another class of cases which fall within the same general
principle as the case of public charity, are those in which the
acts done by individuals, though intended solely for their own
benefit, involve consequences extending indefinitely beyond them,
to interests of the nation or of posterity, for which society in
its collective capacity is alone able, and alone bound, to
provide. One of these cases is that of Colonization. If it is
desirable, as no one will deny it to be, that the planting of
colonies should be conducted, not with an exclusive view to the
private interests of the first founders, but with a deliberate
regard to the permanent welfare of the nations afterwards to
arise from these small beginnings; such regard can only be
secured by placing the enterprise, from its commencement, under
regulations constructed with the foresight and enlarged views of
philosophical legislators; and the government alone has power
either to frame such regulations, or to enforce their observance.

    The question of government intervention in the work of
Colonization involves the future and permanent interests of
civilization itself, and far outstretches the comparatively
narrow limits of purely economical considerations. But even with
a view to those considerations alone, the removal of population
from the overcrowded to the unoccupied parts of the earth's
surface is one of those works of eminent social usefulness, which
most require, and which at the same time best repay, the
intervention of government. 
    To appreciate the benefits of colonization, it should be
considered in its relation, not to a single country, but to the
collective economical interests of the human race. The question
is in general treated too exclusively as one of distribution; of
relieving one labour market and supplying another. It is this,
but it is also a question of production, and of the most
efficient employment of the productive resources of the world.
Much has been said of the good economy of importing commodities
from the place where they can be bought cheapest; while the good
economy of producing them where they can be produced cheapest, is
comparatively little thought of. If to carry consumable goods
from the places where they are superabundant to those where they
are scarce, is a good pecuniary speculation, is it not an equally
good speculation to do the same thing with regard to labour and
instruments? The exportation of labourers and capital from old to
new countries, from a place where their productive power is less,
to a place where it is greater, increases by so much the
aggregate produce of the labour and capital of the world. It adds
to the joint wealth of the old and the new country, what amounts
in a short period to many times the mere cost of effecting the
transport. There needs be no hesitation in affirming that
Colonization, in the present state of the world, is the best
affair of business, in which the capital of an old and wealthy
country can engage. 
    It is equally obvious, however, that Colonization on a great
scale can be undertaken, as an affair of business, only by the
government, or by some combination of individuals in complete
understanding with the government; except under such very
peculiar circumstances as those which succeeded the Irish famine.
Emigration on the voluntary principle rarely has any material
influence in lightening the pressure of population in the old
country, though as far as it goes it is doubtless a benefit to
the colony. Those labouring persons who voluntarily emigrate are
seldom the very poor; they are small farmers with some little
capital, or labourers who have saved something, and who, in
removing only their own labour from the crowded labour market,
withdraw from the capital of the country a fund which maintained
and employed more labourers than themselves. Besides, this
portion of the community is so limited in number, that it might
be removed entirely, without making any sensible impression upon
the numbers of the population, or even upon the annual increase.
Any considerable emigration of labour is only practicable, when
its cost is defrayed, or at least advanced, by others than the
emigrants themselves. Who then is to advance it? Naturally, it
may be said, the capitalists of the colony, who require the
labour, and who intend to employ it. But to this there is the
obstacle, that a capitalist, after going to the expense of
carrying out labourers, has no security that he shall be the
person to derive any benefit from them. If all the capitalists of
the colony were to combine, and bear the expense by subscription,
they would still have no security that the labourers, when there,
would continue to work for them. After working for a short time
and earning a few pounds, they always, unless prevented by the
government, squat on unoccupied land, and work only for
themselves. The experiment has been repeatedly tried whether it
was possible to enforce contracts for labour, or the repayment of
the passage money of emigrants to those who advanced it, and the
trouble and expense have always exceeded the advantage. The only
other resource is the voluntary contributions of parishes or
individuals, to rid themselves of surplus labourers who are
already, or who are likely to become, locally chargeable on the
poor.rate. Were this speculation to become general, it might
produce a sufficient amount of emigration to clear off the
existing unemployed population, but not to raise the wages of the
employed: and the same thing would require to be done over again
in less than another generation. 
    One of the principal reasons why Colonization should be a
national undertaking, is that in this manner alone, save in
highly exceptional cases, can emigration be self-supporting. The
exportation of capital and labour to a new country being, as
before observed, one of the best of all affairs of business, it
is absurd that it should not, like other affairs of business,
repay its own expenses. Of the great addition which it makes to
the produce of the world, there can be no reason why a sufficient
portion should not be intercepted, and employed in reimbursing
the outlay incurred in effecting it. For reasons already given,
no individual, or body of individuals, can reimburse themselves
for the expense; the government, however, can. It can take from
the annual increase of wealth, caused by the emigration, the
fraction which suffices to repay with interest what the
emigration has cost. The expenses of emigration to a colony ought
to be borne by the colony; and this, in general, is only possible
when they are borne by the colonial government. 
    Of the modes in which a fund for the support of colonization
can be raised in the colony, none is comparable in advantage to
that which was first suggested, and so ably and perseveringly
advocated, by Mr Wakefield: the plan of putting a price on all
unoccupied land, and devoting the proceeds to emigration. The
unfounded and pedantic objections to this plan have been answered
in a former part of this chapter: we have now to speak of its
advantages. First, it avoids the difficulties and discontents
incident to raising a large annual amount by taxation; a thing
which is almost useless to attempt with a scattered population of
settlers in the wilderness, who, as experience proves, can seldom
be compelled to pay direct taxes, except at a cost exceeding
their amount; while in an infant community indirect taxation soon
reaches its limit. The sale of lands is thus by far the easiest
mode of raising the requisite funds. But it has other and still
greater recommendations. It is a beneficial check upon the
tendency of a population of colonists to adopt the tastes and
inclinations of savage life, and to disperse so widely as to lose
all the advantages of commerce, of markets, of separation of
employments, and combination of labour. By making it necessary
for those who emigrate at the expense of the fund, to earn a
considerable sum before they can become landed proprietors, it
keeps up a perpetual succession of labourers for hire, who in
every country are a most important auxiliary even to peasant
proprietors: and by diminishing the eagerness of agricultural
speculators to add to their domain, it keeps the settlers within
reach of each other for purposes of co-operation, arranges a
numerous body of them within easy distance of each centre of
foreign commerce and non-agricultural industry, and insures the
formation and rapid growth of towns and town products. This
concentration, compared with the dispersion which uniformly
occurs when unoccupied land can be had for nothing, greatly
accelerates the attainment of prosperity, and enlarges the fund
which may be drawn upon for further emigration. Before the
adoption of the Wakefield system, the early years of all new
colonies were full of hardship and difficulty: the last colony
founded on the old principle, the Swan River settlement, being
one of the most characteristic instances. In all subsequent
colonization, the Wakefield principle has been acted upon, though
imperfectly, a part only of the proceeds of the sale of land
being devoted to emigration: yet wherever it has been introduced
at all, as in South Australia, Victoria, and New Zealand, the
restraint put upon the dispersion of the settlers, and the influx
of capital caused by the assurance of being able to obtain hired
labour, has, in spite of many difficulties and much
mismanagement, produced a suddenness and rapidity of prosperity
more like fable than reality.(8*)
    The self-supporting system of Colonization, once established,
would increase in efficiency every year; its effect would tend to
increase in geometrical progression: for since every able-bodied
emigrant, until the country is fully peopled, adds in a very
short time to its wealth, over and above his own consumption, as
much as would defray the expense of bringing out another
emigrant, it follows that the greater the number already sent,
the greater number might continue to be sent, each emigrant
laying the foundation of a succession of other emigrants at short
intervals without fresh expense, until the colony is filled up.
It would therefore be worth while, to the mother country, to
accelerate the early stages of this progression, by loans to the
colonies for the purpose of emigration, repayable from the fund
formed by the sales of land. In thus advancing the means of
accomplishing a large immediate emigration, it would be investing
that amount of capital in the mode, of all others, most
beneficial to the colony; and the labour and savings of these
emigrants would hasten the period at which a large sum would be
available from sales of land. It would be necessary, in order not
to overstock the labour market, to act in concert with the
persons disposed to remove their own capital to the colony. The
knowledge that a large amount of hired labour would be available,
in so productive a field of employment, would insure a large
emigration of capital from a country, like England, of low
profits and rapid accumulation: and it would only be necessary
not to send out a greater number of labourers at one time, than
this capital could absorb and employ at high wages.
    Inasmuch as, on this system, any given amount of expenditure,
once incurred, would provide not merely a single emigration, but
a perpetually flowing stream of emigrants, which would increase
in breadth and depth as it flowed on; this mode of relieving
overpopulation has a recommendation, not possessed by any other
plan ever proposed for making head against the consequences of
increase without restraining the increase itself: there is an
element of indefiniteness in it; no one can perfectly foresee how
far its influence, as a vent for surplus population, might
possibly reach. There is hence the strongest obligation on the
government of a country like our own, with a crowded population,
and unoccupied continents under its command, to build, as it
were, and keep open, in concert with the colonial governments, a
bridge from the mother country to those continents, by
establishing the self-supporting system of colonization on such a
scale, that as great an amount of emigration as the colonies can
at the time accommodate, may at all times be able to take place
without cost to the emigrants themselves. 
    The importance of these considerations, as regards the
British islands, has been of late considerably diminished by the
unparalleled amount of spontaneous emigration from Ireland; an
emigration not solely of small farmers, but of the poorest class
of agricultural labourers, and which is at once voluntary and
self-supporting, the succession of emigrants being kept up by
funds contributed from the earnings of their relatives and
connexions who had gone before. To this has been added a large
amount of voluntary emigration to the seats of the gold
discoveries, which has partly supplied the wants of our most
distant colonies, where, both for local and national interests,
it was most of all required. But the stream of both these
emigrations has already considerably slackened, and though that
from Ireland has since partially revived, it is not certain that
the aid of government in a systematic form, and on the
self-supporting principle, will not again become necessary to
keep the communication open between the hands needing work in
England, and the work which needs hands elsewhere. 

    15. The same principle which points out colonization, and the
relief of the indigent, as cases to which the principal objection
to government interference does not apply, extends also to a
variety of cases, in which important public services are to be
performed, while yet there is no individual specially interested
in performing them, nor would any adequate remuneration naturally
or spontaneously attend their performance. Take for instance a
voyage of geographical or scientific exploration. The information
sought may be of great public value, yet no individual would
derive any benefit from it which would repay the expense of
fitting out the expedition; and there is no mode of intercepting
the benefit on its way to those who profit by it, in order to
levy a toll for the remuneration of its authors. Such voyages
are, or might be, undertaken by private subscription; but this is
a rare and precarious resource. Instances are more frequent in
which the expense has been borne by public companies or
philanthropic associations; but in general such enterprises have
been conducted at the expense of government, which is thus
enabled to entrust them to the persons in its judgment best
qualified for the task. Again, it is a proper office of
government to build and maintain lighthouses, establish buoys,
&c. for the security of navigation: for since it is impossible
that the ships at sea which are benefited by a lighthouse, should
be made to pay a toll on the occasion of its use, no one would
build lighthouses from motives of personal interest, unless
indemnified and rewarded from a compulsory levy made by the
state. There are many scientific researches, of great value to a
nation and to mankind, requiring assiduous devotion of time and
labour, and not unfrequently great expense, by persons who can
obtain a high price for their services in other ways. If the
government had no power to grant indemnity for expense, and
remuneration for time and labour thus employed, such researches
could only be undertaken by the very few persons who, with an
independent fortune, unite technical knowledge, laborious habits,
and either great public spirit, or an ardent desire of scientific
celebrity. 
    Connected with this subject is the question of providing, by
means of endowments or salaries, for the maintenance of what has
been called a learned class. The cultivation of speculative
knowledge, though one of the most useful of all employments, is a
service rendered to a community collectively, not individually,
and one consequently for which it is, prima facie, reasonable
that the community collectively should pay; since it gives no
claim on any individual for a pecuniary remuneration; and unless
a provision is made for such services from some public fund,
there is not only no encouragement to them, but there is as much
discouragement as is implied in the impossibility of gaining a
living by such pursuits, and the necessity consequently imposed
on most of those who would be capable of them, to employ the
greatest part of their time in gaining a subsistence. The evil,
however, is greater in appearance than in reality. The greatest
things, it has been said, have generally been done by those who
had the least time at their disposal; and the occupation of some
hours every day in a routine employment, has often been found
compatible with the most brilliant achievements in literature and
philosophy. Yet there are investigations and experiments which
require not only a long but a continuous devotion of time and
attention: there are also occupations which so engross and
fatigue the mental faculties, as to be inconsistent with any
vigorous employment of them upon other subjects, even in any
intervals of leisure. It is highly desirable, therefore, that
there should be a mode of insuring to the public the services of
scientific discoverers, and perhaps of some other classes of
savants, by affording them the means of support consistently with
devoting a sufficient portion of time to their peculiar pursuits.
The fellowships of the Universities are an institution
excellently adapted for such a purpose; but are hardly ever
applied to it, being bestowed, at the best, as a reward for past
proficiency, in committing to memory what has been done by
others, and not as the salary of future labours in the
advancement of knowledge. In some countries, Academies of
science, antiquities, history, &c., have been formed, with
emoluments annexed. The most effectual plan, and at the same time
least liable to abuse, seems to be that of conferring
Professorships, with duties of instruction attached to them. The
occupation of teaching a branch of knowledge, at least in its
higher departments, is a help rather than an impediment to the
systematic cultivation of the subject itself. The duties of a
professorship almost always leave much time for original
researches; and the greatest advances which have been made in the
various sciences, both moral and physical, have originated with
those who were public teachers of them; from Plato and Aristotle
to the great names of the Scotch, French, and German
Universities. I do not mention the English, because until very
lately their professorships have been, as is well known, little
more than nominal. In the case, too, of a lecturer in a great
institution of education, the public at large has the means of
judging, if not the quality of the teaching, at least the talents
and industry of the teacher; and it is more difficult to
misemploy the power of appointment to such an office, than to job
in pensions and salaries to persons not so directly before the
public eye. 
    It may be said generally, that anything which it is desirable
should be done for the general interests of mankind or of future
generations, or for the present interests of those members of the
community who require external aid but which is not of a nature
to remunerate individuals or associations for undertaking it, is
in itself a suitable thing to be undertaken by government:
though, before making the work their own, governments ought
always to consider if there be any rational probability of its
being done on what is called the voluntary principle, and if so,
whether it is likely to be done in a better or more effectual
manner by government agency, than by the zeal and liberality of
individuals.

    16. The preceding heads comprise, to the best of my judgment,
the whole of the exceptions to the practical maxim, that the
business of society can be best performed by private and
voluntary agency. It is, however, necessary to add, that the
intervention of government cannot always practically stop short
at the limit which defines the cases intrinsically suitable for
it. In the particular circumstances of a given age or nation,
there is scarcely anything really important to the general
interest, which it may not be desirable, or even necessary, that
the government should take upon itself, not because private
individuals cannot effectually perform it, but because they will
not. At some times and places, there will be no roads, docks,
harbours, canals, works of irrigation, hospitals, schools,
colleges, printing-presses, unless the government establishes
them; the public being either too poor to command the necessary
resources, or too little advanced in intelligence to appreciate
the ends, or not sufficiently practised in joint action to be
capable of the means. This is true, more or less, of all
countries inured to despotism, and particularly of those in which
there is a very wide distance in civilization between the people
and the government: as in those which have been conquered and are
retained in subjection by a more energetic and more cultivated
people. In many parts of the world, the people can do nothing for
themselves which requires large means and combined action: all
such things are left undone, unless done by the state. In these
cases, the mode in which the government can most surely
demonstrate the sincerity with which it intends the greatest good
of its subjects, is by doing the things which are made incumbent
on it by the helplessness of the public, in such a manner as
shall tend not to increase and perpetuate, but to correct, that
helplessness. A good government will give all its aid in such a
shape, as to encourage and nurture any rudiments it may find of a
spirit of individual exertion. It will be assiduous in removing
obstacles and discouragements to voluntary enterprise, and in
giving whatever facilities and whatever direction and guidance
may be necessary: its pecuniary means will be applied, when
practicable, in aid of private efforts rather than in
supersession of them, and it will call into play its machinery of
rewards and honours to elicit such efforts. Government aid, when
given merely in default of private enterprise, should be so given
as to be as far as possible a course of education for the people
in the art of accomplishing great objects by individual energy
and voluntary co-operation.
    I have not thought it necessary here to insist on that part
of the functions of government which all admit to be
indispensable, the function of prohibiting and punishing such
conduct on the part of individuals in the exercise of their
freedom, as is clearly injurious to other persons, whether the
case be one of force, fraud, or negligence. Even in the best
state which society has yet reached, it is lamentable to think
how great a proportion of all the efforts and talents in the
world are employed in merely neutralizing one another. It is the
proper end of government to reduce this wretched waste to the
smallest possible amount, by taking such measures as shall cause
the energies now spent by mankind in injuring one another, or in
protecting themselves against injury, to be turned to the
legitimate employment of the human faculties, that of compelling
the powers of nature to be more and more subservient to physical
and moral good. 

NOTES:

1. Supra, Bk, v, Ch. I.

2. The only cases in which government agency involves nothing of
a compulsory nature, are the rare cases in which, without any
artificial monopoly, it pays its own expenses. A bridge built
with public money, on which tolls are collected sufficient to pay
not only all current expenses, but the interest of the original
outlay, is one case in point. The government railways in Belgium
and Germany are another example. The Post Office, if its monopoly
were abolished, and it still paid its expenses, would be another.


3. De la Liberte du Travail, Vol. II, pp. 353-4.

4. I quote at second hand, from Mr Carey's Essay on the Rate of
Wages, pp. 195-6. 

5. In opposition to these opinions, a writer, with whom on many
points I agree, but whose hostility to government intervention
seems to me too indiscriminate and unqualified, M. Dunoyer,
observes, that instruction, however good in itself, can only be
useful to the public in so far as they are willing to receive it,
and that the best proof that the instruction is suitable to their
wants is its success as a pecuniary enterprise. This argument
seems no more conclusive respecting instruction for the mind,
than it would be respecting medicine for the body. No medicine
will do the patient any good if he cannot be induced to take it;
but we are not bound to admit as a corollary from this, that the
patient will select the right medicine without assistance. Is it
not probable that a recommendation, from any quarter which he
respects, may induce him to accept a better medicine than he
would spontaneously have chosen? This is, in respect to
education, the very point in debate. Without doubt, instruction
which is so far in advance of the people that they cannot be
induced to avail themselves of it, is to them of no more worth
than if it did not exist. But between what they spontaneously
choose, and what they will refuse to accept when offered, there
is a breadth of interval proportioned to their deference for the
recommender. Besides, a thing of which the public are bad judges,
may require to be shown to them and pressed on their attention
for a long time, and to prove its advantages by long experience,
before they learn to appreciate it, yet they may learn at last;
which they might never have done, if the thing had not been thus
obtruded upon them in act, but only recommended in theory. Now, a
pecuniary speculation cannot wait years, or perhaps generations
for success; it must succeed rapidly, or not at all. Another
consideration which M. Dunoyer seems to have overlooked, is, that
institutions and modes of tuition which never could be made
sufficiently popular to repay, with a profit, the expenses
incurred on them, may be invaluable to the many by giving the
highest quality of education to the few and keeping up the
perpetual succession of superior minds, by whom knowledge is
advanced, and the community urged forward in civilization. 

6. 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 lunacy. 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. lf 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 legal proceedings, the expenses should
not be 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. 

7. A parallel case may be found in the distaste for politics, and
absence of public spirit, by which women, as a class, are
characterized in the present state of society, and which is often
felt and complained of by political reformers, without, in
general, making them willing to recognise, or desirous to remove,
its cause. It obviously arises from their being taught, both by
institutions and by the whole of their education, 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 contemporaries: 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. 

8. The objections which have been made, with so much virulence,
in some of these colonies, to the Wakefield system, apply, in so
far as they have any validity, not to the principle, but to some
provisions which are no part of the system, and have been most
unnecessarily and improperly engrafted on it; such as the
offering only a limited quantity of land for sale, and that by
auction, and in lots of not less than 640 acres, instead of
selling all land which is asked for, and allowing to the buyer
unlimited freedom of choice, both as to quantity and situation,
at a fixed price.