_March 20, 1867._
63. I have your most interesting letter,[A] which I keep for
reference, when I come to the consideration of its subject in its
proper place, under the head of the abuse of Food. I do not wonder
that your life should be rendered unhappy by the scenes of drunkenness
which you are so often compelled to witness; nor that this so gigantic
and infectious evil should seem to you the root of the greater part of
the misery of our lower orders. I do not wonder that George Cruikshank
has warped the entire current of his thoughts and life, at once to my
admiration and my sorrow, from their natural field of work, that he
might spend them, in struggle with this fiend, for the poor lowest
people whom he knows so well. I wholly sympathize with you in
indignation at the methods of temptation employed, and at the use of
the fortunes made by the vendors of death; and whatever immediately
applicable legal means there might be of restricting the causes of
drunkenness, I should without hesitation desire to bring into
operation. But all such appliance I consider temporary and
provisionary; nor, while there is record of the miracle at Cana (not
to speak of the sacrament) can I conceive it possible, without
(logically) the denial of the entire truth of the New Testament, to
reprobate the use of wine as a stimulus to the powers of life.
Supposing we did deny the words and deeds of the Founder of
Christianity, the authority of the wisest heathens, especially that of
Plato in the 'Laws,' is wholly against abstinence from wine; and much
as I can believe, and as I have been endeavoring to make you believe
also, of the subtlety of the Devil, I do not suppose the vine to have
been one of his inventions. Of this, however, more in another place.
By the way, was it not curious that in the 'Manchester Examiner,' in
which that letter of mine on the abuse of dancing appeared, there
chanced to be, in the next column, a paragraph giving an account of a
girl stabbing her betrayer in a ball-room; and another paragraph
describing a Parisian character, which gives exactly the extreme type
I wanted, for example of the abuse of Food?[B]
[A] Appendix 4.
[B] Appendix 5.
64. I return, however, now to the examination of possible means for
the enforcement of justice, in temper and in act, as the first of
political requirements. And as, in stating my conviction of the
necessity of certain stringent laws on this matter, I shall be in
direct opposition to Mr. Stuart Mill; and, more or less, in opposition
to other professors of modern political economy, as well as to many
honest and active promoters of the privileges of working men (as if
privilege only were wanted and never restraint!), I will give you, as
briefly as I can, the grounds on which I am prepared to justify such
opposition.
65. When the crew of a wrecked ship escape in an open boat, and the
boat is crowded, the provisions scanty, and the prospect of making
land distant, laws are instantly established and enforced which no one
thinks of disobeying. An entire equality of claim to the provisions is
acknowledged without dispute; and an equal liability to necessary
labor. No man who can row is allowed to refuse his oar; no man,
however much money he may have saved in his pocket, is allowed so much
as half a biscuit beyond his proper ration. Any riotous person who
endangered the safety of the rest would be bound, and laid in the
bottom of the boat, without the smallest compunction, for such
violation of the principles of individual liberty; and, on the other
hand, any child, or woman, or aged person, who was helpless, and
exposed to great danger and suffering by their weakness, would receive
more than ordinary care and indulgence, not unaccompanied with
unanimous self-sacrifice on the part of the laboring crew.
There is never any question under circumstances like these, of what is
right and wrong, worthy and unworthy, wise or foolish. If there _be_
any question, there is little hope for boat or crew. The right man is
put at the helm; every available hand is set to the oars; the sick are
tended, and the vicious restrained, at once, and decisively; or if
not, the end is near.
66. Now, the circumstances of every associated group of human society,
contending bravely for national honors and felicity of life, differ
only from those thus supposed, in the greater, instead of less,
necessity for the establishment of restraining law. There is no point
of difference in the difficulties to be met, nor in the rights
reciprocally to be exercised. Vice and indolence are not less, but
more, injurious in a nation than in a boat's company; the modes in
which they affect the interests of worthy persons being far more
complex, and more easily concealed. The right of restraint, vested in
those who labor, over those who would impede their labor, is as
absolute in the large as in the small society; the equal claim to
share in whatever is necessary to the common life (or commonwealth) is
as indefeasible; the claim of the sick and helpless to be cared for by
the strong with earnest self-sacrifice, is as pitiful and as
imperative; the necessity that the governing authority should be in
the hands of a true and trained pilot is as clear and as constant. In
none of these conditions is there any difference between a nation and
a boat's company. The only difference is in this, that the
impossibility of discerning the effects of individual error and crime,
or of counteracting them by individual effort, in the affairs of a
great nation renders it tenfold more necessary than in a small society
that direction by law should be sternly established. Assume that your
boat's crew is disorderly and licentious, and will, by agreement,
submit to no order;--the most troublesome of them will yet be easily
discerned; and the chance is that the best man among them knocks him
down. Common instinct of self-preservation will make the rioters put a
good sailor at the helm, and impulsive pity and occasional help will
be, by heart and hand, here and there given to visible distress. Not
so in the ship of the realm. The most troublesome persons in _it_ are
usually the least recognized for such, and the most active in its
management; the best men mind their own business patiently, and are
never thought of; the good helmsman never touches the tiller but in
the last extremity; and the worst forms of misery are hidden, not only
from every eye, but from every thought. On the deck, the aspect is of
Cleopatra's galley--under hatches there is a slave hospital; while,
finally (and this is the most fatal difference of all), even the few
persons who care to interfere energetically, with purpose of doing
good, can, in a large society, discern so little of the real state of
evil to be dealt with, and judge so little of the best means of
dealing with it, that half of their best efforts will be misdirected,
and some may even do more harm than good. Whereas it is the sorrowful
law of this universe, that evil, even unconscious and unintended,
never fails of _its_ effect; and in a state where the evil and the
good, under conditions of individual "liberty," are allowed to contend
together, not only every _stroke_ on the Devil's side tells--but every
_slip_, (the mistakes of wicked men being as mischievous as their
successes); while on the side of right, there will be much direct and
fatal defeat, and, even of its measure of victory, half will be
fruitless.
67. It is true, of course, that, in the end of ends, nothing but the
right conquers; the prevalent thorns of wrong, at last, crackle away
in indiscriminate flame: and of the good seed sown, one grain in a
thousand some day comes up--and somebody lives by it; but most of our
great teachers, not excepting Carlyle and Emerson themselves, are a
little too encouraging in their proclamation of this comfort, not, to
my mind, very sufficient, when for the present our fields are full of
nothing but darnel instead of wheat, and cockle instead of barley; and
none of them seem to me yet to have enough insisted on the inevitable
power and infectiousness of all evil, and the easy and utter
extinguishableness of good. Medicine often fails of its effect--but
poison never: and while, in summing the observation of past life, not
unwatchfully spent, I can truly say that I have a thousand times seen
patience disappointed of her hope, and wisdom of her aim, I have never
yet seen folly fruitless of mischief, nor vice conclude but in
calamity.
68. There is, however, one important condition in national economy, in
which the analogy of that of a ship's company is incomplete: namely,
that while labor at oar or sail is necessarily united, and can attain
no independent good, or personal profit, the labor properly undertaken
by the several members of a political community is necessarily, and
justly, within certain limits, independent; and obtains for them
independent advantage, of which, if you will glance at the last
paragraph of the first chapter of 'Munera Pulveris,' you will see I
should be the last person to propose depriving them. This great
difference in final condition involves necessarily much complexity in
the system and application of general laws; but it in no wise
abrogates,--on the contrary, it renders yet more imperative,--the
necessity for the firm ordinance of such laws, which, marking the due
limits of independent agency, may enable it to exist in full energy,
not only without becoming injurious, but so as more variously and
perfectly to promote the entire interests of the commonwealth.
I will address myself therefore in my next letter to the statement of
some of these necessary laws.