APPLICATIONS.
The principles asserted in these pages must be more generally admitted
as the basis for discussion of details, before a consistent application
of them to all the various departments of government and morals can be
attempted with any prospect of advantage. The few observations I propose
to make on questions of detail, are designed to illustrate the
principles, rather than to follow them out to their consequences. I
offer, not so much applications, as specimens of application; which may
serve to bring into greater clearness the meaning and limits of the two
maxims which together form the entire doctrine of this Essay, and to
assist the judgment in holding the balance between them, in the cases
where it appears doubtful which of them is applicable to the case.
The maxims are, first, that the individual is not accountable to society
for his actions, in so far as these concern the interests of no person
but himself. Advice, instruction, persuasion, and avoidance by other
people if thought necessary by them for their own good, are the only
measures by which society can justifiably express its dislike or
disapprobation of his conduct. Secondly, that for such actions as are
prejudicial to the interests of others, the individual is accountable
and may be subjected either to social or to legal punishments, if
society is of opinion that the one or the other is requisite for its
protection.
In the first place, it must by no means be supposed, because damage, or
probability of damage, to the interests of others, can alone justify the
interference of society, that therefore it always does justify such
interference. In many cases, an individual, in pursuing a legitimate
object, necessarily and therefore legitimately causes pain or loss to
others, or intercepts a good which they had a reasonable hope of
obtaining. Such oppositions of interest between individuals often arise
from bad social institutions, but are unavoidable while those
institutions last; and some would be unavoidable under any institutions.
Whoever succeeds in an overcrowded profession, or in a competitive
examination; whoever is preferred to another in any contest for an
object which both desire, reaps benefit from the loss of others, from
their wasted exertion and their disappointment. But it is, by common
admission, better for the general interest of mankind, that persons
should pursue their objects undeterred by this sort of consequences. In
other words, society admits no rights, either legal or moral, in the
disappointed competitors, to immunity from this kind of suffering; and
feels called on to interfere, only when means of success have been
employed which it is contrary to the general interest to permit--namely,
fraud or treachery, and force.
Again, trade is a social act. Whoever undertakes to sell any description
of goods to the public, does what affects the interest of other persons,
and of society in general; and thus his conduct, in principle, comes
within the jurisdiction of society: accordingly, it was once held to be
the duty of governments, in all cases which were considered of
importance, to fix prices, and regulate the processes of manufacture.
But it is now recognised, though not till after a long struggle, that
both the cheapness and the good quality of commodities are most
effectually provided for by leaving the producers and sellers perfectly
free, under the sole check of equal freedom to the buyers for supplying
themselves elsewhere. This is the so-called doctrine of Free Trade,
which rests on grounds different from, though equally solid with, the
principle of individual liberty asserted in this Essay. Restrictions on
trade, or on production for purposes of trade, are indeed restraints;
and all restraint, _quâ_ restraint, is an evil: but the restraints in
question affect only that part of conduct which society is competent to
restrain, and are wrong solely because they do not really produce the
results which it is desired to produce by them. As the principle of
individual liberty is not involved in the doctrine of Free Trade, so
neither is it in most of the questions which arise respecting the limits
of that doctrine: as for example, what amount of public control is
admissible for the prevention of fraud by adulteration; how far sanitary
precautions, or arrangements to protect work-people employed in
dangerous occupations, should be enforced on employers. Such questions
involve considerations of liberty, only in so far as leaving people to
themselves is always better, _cæteris paribus_, than controlling them:
but that they may be legitimately controlled for these ends, is in
principle undeniable. On the other hand, there are questions relating to
interference with trade, which are essentially questions of liberty;
such as the Maine Law, already touched upon; the prohibition of the
importation of opium into China; the restriction of the sale of poisons;
all cases, in short, where the object of the interference is to make it
impossible or difficult to obtain a particular commodity. These
interferences are objectionable, not as infringements on the liberty of
the producer or seller, but on that of the buyer.
One of these examples, that of the sale of poisons, opens a new
question; the proper limits of what may be called the functions of
police; how far liberty may legitimately be invaded for the prevention
of crime, or of accident. It is one of the undisputed functions of
government to take precautions against crime before it has been
committed, as well as to detect and punish it afterwards. The preventive
function of government, however, is far more liable to be abused, to the
prejudice of liberty, than the punitory function; for there is hardly
any part of the legitimate freedom of action of a human being which
would not admit of being represented, and fairly too, as increasing the
facilities for some form or other of delinquency. Nevertheless, if a
public authority, or even a private person, sees any one evidently
preparing to commit a crime, they are not bound to look on inactive
until the crime is committed, but may interfere to prevent it. If
poisons were never bought or used for any purpose except the commission
of murder, it would be right to prohibit their manufacture and sale.
They may, however, be wanted not only for innocent but for useful
purposes, and restrictions cannot be imposed in the one case without
operating in the other. Again, it is a proper office of public authority
to guard against accidents. If either a public officer or any one else
saw a person attempting to cross a bridge which had been ascertained to
be unsafe, and there were no time to warn him of his danger, they might
seize him and turn him back, without any real infringement of his
liberty; for liberty consists in doing what one desires, and he does not
desire to fall into the river. Nevertheless, when there is not a
certainty, but only a danger of mischief, no one but the person himself
can judge of the sufficiency of the motive which may prompt him to incur
the risk: in this case, therefore (unless he is a child, or delirious,
or in some state of excitement or absorption incompatible with the full
use of the reflecting faculty), he ought, I conceive, to be only warned
of the danger; not forcibly prevented from exposing himself to it.
Similar considerations, applied to such a question as the sale of
poisons, may enable us to decide which among the possible modes of
regulation are or are not contrary to principle. Such a precaution, for
example, as that of labelling the drug with some word expressive of its
dangerous character, may be enforced without violation of liberty: the
buyer cannot wish not to know that the thing he possesses has poisonous
qualities. But to require in all cases the certificate of a medical
practitioner, would make it sometimes impossible, always expensive, to
obtain the article for legitimate uses. The only mode apparent to me, in
which difficulties may be thrown in the way of crime committed through
this means, without any infringement, worth taking into account, upon
the liberty of those who desire the poisonous substance for other
purposes, consists in providing what, in the apt language of Bentham, is
called "preappointed evidence." This provision is familiar to every one
in the case of contracts. It is usual and right that the law, when a
contract is entered into, should require as the condition of its
enforcing performance, that certain formalities should be observed, such
as signatures, attestation of witnesses, and the like, in order that in
case of subsequent dispute, there may be evidence to prove that the
contract was really entered into, and that there was nothing in the
circumstances to render it legally invalid: the effect being, to throw
great obstacles in the way of fictitious contracts, or contracts made in
circumstances which, if known, would destroy their validity. Precautions
of a similar nature might be enforced in the sale of articles adapted to
be instruments of crime. The seller, for example, might be required to
enter into a register the exact time of the transaction, the name and
address of the buyer, the precise quality and quantity sold; to ask the
purpose for which it was wanted, and record the answer he received. When
there was no medical prescription, the presence of some third person
might be required, to bring home the fact to the purchaser, in case
there should afterwards be reason to believe that the article had been
applied to criminal purposes. Such regulations would in general be no
material impediment to obtaining the article, but a very considerable
one to making an improper use of it without detection.
The right inherent in society, to ward off crimes against itself by
antecedent precautions, suggests the obvious limitations to the maxim,
that purely self-regarding misconduct cannot properly be meddled with
in the way of prevention or punishment. Drunkenness, for example, in
ordinary cases, is not a fit subject for legislative interference; but I
should deem it perfectly legitimate that a person, who had once been
convicted of any act of violence to others under the influence of drink,
should be placed under a special legal restriction, personal to himself;
that if he were afterwards found drunk, he should be liable to a
penalty, and that if when in that state he committed another offence,
the punishment to which he would be liable for that other offence should
be increased in severity. The making himself drunk, in a person whom
drunkenness excites to do harm to others, is a crime against others. So,
again, idleness, except in a person receiving support from the public,
or except when it constitutes a breach of contract, cannot without
tyranny be made a subject of legal punishment; but if either from
idleness or from any other avoidable cause, a man fails to perform his
legal duties to others, as for instance to support his children, it is
no tyranny to force him to fulfil that obligation, by compulsory labour,
if no other means are available.
Again, there are many acts which, being directly injurious only to the
agents themselves, ought not to be legally interdicted, but which, if
done publicly, are a violation of good manners and coming thus within
the category of offences against others may rightfully be prohibited. Of
this kind are offences against decency; on which it is unnecessary to
dwell, the rather as they are only connected indirectly with our
subject, the objection to publicity being equally strong in the case of
many actions not in themselves condemnable, nor supposed to be so.
There is another question to which an answer must be found, consistent
with the principles which have been laid down. In cases of personal
conduct supposed to be blamable, but which respect for liberty precludes
society from preventing or punishing, because the evil directly
resulting falls wholly on the agent; what the agent is free to do, ought
other persons to be equally free to counsel or instigate? This question
is not free from difficulty. The case of a person who solicits another
to do an act, is not strictly a case of self-regarding conduct. To give
advice or offer inducements to any one, is a social act, and may
therefore, like actions in general which affect others, be supposed
amenable to social control. But a little reflection corrects the first
impression, by showing that if the case is not strictly within the
definition of individual liberty, yet the reasons on which the
principle of individual liberty is grounded, are applicable to it. If
people must be allowed, in whatever concerns only themselves, to act as
seems best to themselves at their own peril, they must equally be free
to consult with one another about what is fit to be so done; to exchange
opinions, and give and receive suggestions. Whatever it is permitted to
do, it must be permitted to advise to do. The question is doubtful, only
when the instigator derives a personal benefit from his advice; when he
makes it his occupation, for subsistence or pecuniary gain, to promote
what society and the state consider to be an evil. Then, indeed, a new
element of complication is introduced; namely, the existence of classes
of persons with an interest opposed to what is considered as the public
weal, and whose mode of living is grounded on the counteraction of it.
Ought this to be interfered with, or not? Fornication, for example, must
be tolerated, and so must gambling; but should a person be free to be a
pimp, or to keep a gambling-house? The case is one of those which lie on
the exact boundary line between two principles, and it is not at once
apparent to which of the two it properly belongs. There are arguments on
both sides. On the side of toleration it may be said, that the fact of
following anything as an occupation, and living or profiting by the
practice of it, cannot make that criminal which would otherwise be
admissible; that the act should either be consistently permitted or
consistently prohibited; that if the principles which we have hitherto
defended are true, society has no business, _as_ society, to decide
anything to be wrong which concerns only the individual; that it cannot
go beyond dissuasion, and that one person should be as free to persuade,
as another to dissuade. In opposition to this it may be contended, that
although the public, or the State, are not warranted in authoritatively
deciding, for purposes of repression or punishment, that such or such
conduct affecting only the interests of the individual is good or bad,
they are fully justified in assuming, if they regard it as bad, that its
being so or not is at least a disputable question: That, this being
supposed, they cannot be acting wrongly in endeavouring to exclude the
influence of solicitations which are not disinterested, of instigators
who cannot possibly be impartial--who have a direct personal interest on
one side, and that side the one which the State believes to be wrong,
and who confessedly promote it for personal objects only. There can
surely, it may be urged, be nothing lost, no sacrifice of good, by so
ordering matters that persons shall make their election, either wisely
or foolishly, on their own prompting, as free as possible from the arts
of persons who stimulate their inclinations for interested purposes of
their own. Thus (it may be said) though the statutes respecting unlawful
games are utterly indefensible--though all persons should be free to
gamble in their own or each other's houses, or in any place of meeting
established by their own subscriptions, and open only to the members and
their visitors--yet public gambling-houses should not be permitted. It
is true that the prohibition is never effectual, and that whatever
amount of tyrannical power is given to the police, gambling-houses can
always be maintained under other pretences; but they may be compelled to
conduct their operations with a certain degree of secrecy and mystery,
so that nobody knows anything about them but those who seek them; and
more than this, society ought not to aim at. There is considerable force
in these arguments; I will not venture to decide whether they are
sufficient to justify the moral anomaly of punishing the accessary, when
the principal is (and must be) allowed to go free; or fining or
imprisoning the procurer, but not the fornicator, the gambling-house
keeper, but not the gambler. Still less ought the common operations of
buying and selling to be interfered with on analogous grounds. Almost
every article which is bought and sold may be used in excess, and the
sellers have a pecuniary interest in encouraging that excess; but no
argument can be founded on this, in favour, for instance, of the Maine
Law; because the class of dealers in strong drinks, though interested in
their abuse, are indispensably required for the sake of their legitimate
use. The interest, however, of these dealers in promoting intemperance
is a real evil, and justifies the State in imposing restrictions and
requiring guarantees, which but for that justification would be
infringements of legitimate liberty.
A further question is, whether the State, while it permits, should
nevertheless indirectly discourage conduct which it deems contrary to
the best interests of the agent; whether, for example, it should take
measures to render the means of drunkenness more costly, or add to the
difficulty of procuring them, by limiting the number of the places of
sale. On this as on most other practical questions, many distinctions
require to be made. To tax stimulants for the sole purpose of making
them more difficult to be obtained, is a measure differing only in
degree from their entire prohibition; and would be justifiable only if
that were justifiable. Every increase of cost is a prohibition, to those
whose means do not come up to the augmented price; and to those who do,
it is a penalty laid on them for gratifying a particular taste. Their
choice of pleasures, and their mode of expending their income, after
satisfying their legal and moral obligations to the State and to
individuals, are their own concern, and must rest with their own
judgment. These considerations may seem at first sight to condemn the
selection of stimulants as special subjects of taxation for purposes of
revenue. But it must be remembered that taxation for fiscal purposes is
absolutely inevitable; that in most countries it is necessary that a
considerable part of that taxation should be indirect; that the State,
therefore, cannot help imposing penalties, which to some persons may be
prohibitory, on the use of some articles of consumption. It is hence the
duty of the State to consider, in the imposition of taxes, what
commodities the consumers can best spare; and _à fortiori_, to select in
preference those of which it deems the use, beyond a very moderate
quantity, to be positively injurious. Taxation, therefore, of
stimulants, up to the point which produces the largest amount of revenue
(supposing that the State needs all the revenue which it yields) is not
only admissible, but to be approved of.
The question of making the sale of these commodities a more or less
exclusive privilege, must be answered differently, according to the
purposes to which the restriction is intended to be subservient. All
places of public resort require the restraint of a police, and places of
this kind peculiarly, because offences against society are especially
apt to originate there. It is, therefore, fit to confine the power of
selling these commodities (at least for consumption on the spot) to
persons of known or vouched-for respectability of conduct; to make such
regulations respecting hours of opening and closing as may be requisite
for public surveillance, and to withdraw the licence if breaches of the
peace repeatedly take place through the connivance or incapacity of the
keeper of the house, or if it becomes a rendezvous for concocting and
preparing offences against the law. Any further restriction I do not
conceive to be, in principle, justifiable. The limitation in number, for
instance, of beer and spirit-houses, for the express purpose of
rendering them more difficult of access, and diminishing the occasions
of temptation, not only exposes all to an inconvenience because there
are some by whom the facility would be abused, but is suited only to a
state of society in which the labouring classes are avowedly treated as
children or savages, and placed under an education of restraint, to fit
them for future admission to the privileges of freedom. This is not the
principle on which the labouring classes are professedly governed in any
free country; and no person who sets due value on freedom will give his
adhesion to their being so governed, unless after all efforts have been
exhausted to educate them for freedom and govern them as freemen, and it
has been definitively proved that they can only be governed as children.
The bare statement of the alternative shows the absurdity of supposing
that such efforts have been made in any case which needs be considered
here. It is only because the institutions of this country are a mass of
inconsistencies, that things find admittance into our practice which
belong to the system of despotic, or what is called paternal,
government, while the general freedom of our institutions precludes the
exercise of the amount of control necessary to render the restraint of
any real efficacy as a moral education.
It was pointed out in an early part of this Essay, that the liberty of
the individual, in things wherein the individual is alone concerned,
implies a corresponding liberty in any number of individuals to regulate
by mutual agreement such things as regard them jointly, and regard no
persons but themselves. This question presents no difficulty, so long as
the will of all the persons implicated remains unaltered; but since that
will may change, it is often necessary, even in things in which they
alone are concerned, that they should enter into engagements with one
another; and when they do, it is fit, as a general rule, that those
engagements should be kept. Yet in the laws, probably, of every country,
this general rule has some exceptions. Not only persons are not held to
engagements which violate the rights of third parties, but it is
sometimes considered a sufficient reason for releasing them from an
engagement, that it is injurious to themselves. In this and most other
civilised countries, for example, an engagement by which a person should
sell himself, or allow himself to be sold, as a slave, would be null and
void; neither enforced by law nor by opinion. The ground for thus
limiting his power of voluntarily disposing of his own lot in life, is
apparent, and is very clearly seen in this extreme case. The reason for
not interfering, unless for the sake of others, with a person's
voluntary acts, is consideration for his liberty. His voluntary choice
is evidence that what he so chooses is desirable, or at the least
endurable, to him, and his good is on the whole best provided for by
allowing him to take his own means of pursuing it. But by selling
himself for a slave, he abdicates his liberty; he foregoes any future
use of it, beyond that single act. He therefore defeats, in his own
case, the very purpose which is the justification of allowing him to
dispose of himself. He is no longer free; but is thenceforth in a
position which has no longer the presumption in its favour, that would
be afforded by his voluntarily remaining in it. The principle of freedom
cannot require that he should be free not to be free. It is not freedom,
to be allowed to alienate his freedom. These reasons, the force of which
is so conspicuous in this peculiar case, are evidently of far wider
application; yet a limit is everywhere set to them by the necessities of
life, which continually require, not indeed that we should resign our
freedom, but that we should consent to this and the other limitation of
it. The principle, however, which demands uncontrolled freedom of action
in all that concerns only the agents themselves, requires that those who
have become bound to one another, in things which concern no third
party, should be able to release one another from the engagement: and
even without such voluntary release, there are perhaps no contracts or
engagements, except those that relate to money or money's worth, of
which one can venture to say that there ought to be no liberty whatever
of retractation. Baron Wilhelm von Humboldt, in the excellent essay from
which I have already quoted, states it as his conviction, that
engagements which involve personal relations or services, should never
be legally binding beyond a limited duration of time; and that the most
important of these engagements, marriage, having the peculiarity that
its objects are frustrated unless the feelings of both the parties are
in harmony with it, should require nothing more than the declared will
of either party to dissolve it. This subject is too important, and too
complicated, to be discussed in a parenthesis, and I touch on it only so
far as is necessary for purposes of illustration. If the conciseness and
generality of Baron Humboldt's dissertation had not obliged him in this
instance to content himself with enunciating his conclusion without
discussing the premises, he would doubtless have recognised that the
question cannot be decided on grounds so simple as those to which he
confines himself. When a person, either by express promise or by
conduct, has encouraged another to rely upon his continuing to act in a
certain way--to build expectations and calculations, and stake any part
of his plan of life upon that supposition, a new series of moral
obligations arises on his part towards that person, which may possibly
be overruled, but cannot be ignored. And again, if the relation between
two contracting parties has been followed by consequences to others; if
it has placed third parties in any peculiar position, or, as in the case
of marriage, has even called third parties into existence, obligations
arise on the part of both the contracting parties towards those third
persons, the fulfilment of which, or at all events the mode of
fulfilment, must be greatly affected by the continuance or disruption of
the relation between the original parties to the contract. It does not
follow, nor can I admit, that these obligations extend to requiring the
fulfilment of the contract at all costs to the happiness of the
reluctant party; but they are a necessary element in the question; and
even if, as Von Humboldt maintains, they ought to make no difference in
the _legal_ freedom of the parties to release themselves from the
engagement (and I also hold that they ought not to make _much_
difference), they necessarily make a great difference in the _moral_
freedom. A person is bound to take all these circumstances into account,
before resolving on a step which may affect such important interests of
others; and if he does not allow proper weight to those interests, he is
morally responsible for the wrong. I have made these obvious remarks for
the better illustration of the general principle of liberty, and not
because they are at all needed on the particular question, which, on the
contrary, is usually discussed as if the interest of children was
everything, and that of grown persons nothing.
I have already observed that, owing to the absence of any recognised
general principles, liberty is often granted where it should be
withheld, as well as withheld where it should be granted; and one of the
cases in which, in the modern European world, the sentiment of liberty
is the strongest, is a case where, in my view, it is altogether
misplaced. A person should be free to do as he likes in his own
concerns; but he ought not to be free to do as he likes in acting for
another, under the pretext that the affairs of another are his own
affairs. The State, while it respects the liberty of each in what
specially regards himself, is bound to maintain a vigilant control over
his exercise of any power which it allows him to possess over others.
This obligation is almost entirely disregarded in the case of the
family relations, a case, in its direct influence on human happiness,
more important than all others taken together. The almost despotic power
of husbands over wives need not be enlarged upon here because nothing
more is needed for the complete removal of the evil, than that wives
should have the same rights, and should receive the protection of law in
the same manner, as all other persons; and because, on this subject, the
defenders of established injustice do not avail themselves of the plea
of liberty, but stand forth openly as the champions of power. It is in
the case of children, that misapplied notions of liberty are a real
obstacle to the fulfilment by the State of its duties. One would almost
think that a man's children were supposed to be literally, and not
metaphorically, a part of himself, so jealous is opinion of the smallest
interference of law with his absolute and exclusive control over them;
more jealous than of almost any interference with his own freedom of
action: so much less do the generality of mankind value liberty than
power. Consider, for example, the case of education. Is it not almost a
self-evident axiom, that the State should require and compel the
education, up to a certain standard, of every human being who is born
its citizen? Yet who is there that is not afraid to recognise and
assert this truth? Hardly any one indeed will deny that it is one of the
most sacred duties of the parents (or, as law and usage now stand, the
father), after summoning a human being into the world, to give to that
being an education fitting him to perform his part well in life towards
others and towards himself. But while this is unanimously declared to be
the father's duty, scarcely anybody, in this country, will bear to hear
of obliging him to perform it. Instead of his being required to make any
exertion or sacrifice for securing education to the child, it is left to
his choice to accept it or not when it is provided gratis! It still
remains unrecognised, that to bring a child into existence without a
fair prospect of being able, not only to provide food for its body, but
instruction and training for its mind, is a moral crime, both against
the unfortunate offspring and against society; and that if the parent
does not fulfil this obligation, the State ought to see it fulfilled, at
the charge, as far as possible, of the parent.
Were the duty of enforcing universal education once admitted, there
would be an end to the difficulties about what the State should teach,
and how it should teach, which now convert the subject into a mere
battle-field for sects and parties, causing the time and labour which
should have been spent in educating, to be wasted in quarrelling about
education. If the government would make up its mind to _require_ for
every child a good education, it might save itself the trouble of
_providing_ one. It might leave to parents to obtain the education where
and how they pleased, and content itself with helping to pay the school
fees of the poorer class of children, and defraying the entire school
expenses of those who have no one else to pay for them. The objections
which are urged with reason against State education, do not apply to the
enforcement of education by the State, but to the State's taking upon
itself to direct that education; which is a totally different thing.
That the whole or any large part of the education of the people should
be in State hands, I go as far as any one in deprecating. All that has
been said of the importance of individuality of character, and diversity
in opinions and modes of conduct, involves, as of the same unspeakable
importance, diversity of education. A general State education is a mere
contrivance for moulding people to be exactly like one another; and as
the mould in which it casts them is that which pleases the predominant
power in the government, whether this be a monarch, a priesthood, an
aristocracy, or the majority of the existing generation, in proportion
as it is efficient and successful, it establishes a despotism over the
mind, leading by natural tendency to one over the body. An education
established and controlled by the State, should only exist, if it exist
at all, as one among many competing experiments, carried on for the
purpose of example and stimulus, to keep the others up to a certain
standard of excellence. Unless, indeed, when society in general is in so
backward a state that it could not or would not provide for itself any
proper institutions of education, unless the government undertook the
task; then, indeed, the government may, as the less of two great evils,
take upon itself the business of schools and universities, as it may
that of joint stock companies, when private enterprise, in a shape
fitted for undertaking great works of industry, does not exist in the
country. But in general, if the country contains a sufficient number of
persons qualified to provide education under government auspices, the
same persons would be able and willing to give an equally good education
on the voluntary principle, under the assurance of remuneration afforded
by a law rendering education compulsory, combined with State aid to
those unable to defray the expense.
The instrument for enforcing the law could be no other than public
examinations, extending to all children, and beginning at an early age.
An age might be fixed at which every child must be examined, to
ascertain if he (or she) is able to read. If a child proves unable, the
father, unless he has some sufficient ground of excuse, might be
subjected to a moderate fine, to be worked out, if necessary, by his
labour, and the child might be put to school at his expense. Once in
every year the examination should be renewed, with a gradually extending
range of subjects, so as to make the universal acquisition, and what is
more, retention, of a certain minimum of general knowledge, virtually
compulsory. Beyond that minimum, there should be voluntary examinations
on all subjects, at which all who come up to a certain standard of
proficiency might claim a certificate. To prevent the State from
exercising, through these arrangements, an improper influence over
opinion, the knowledge required for passing an examination (beyond the
merely instrumental parts of knowledge, such as languages and their use)
should, even in the higher class of examinations, be confined to facts
and positive science exclusively. The examinations on religion,
politics, or other disputed topics, should not turn on the truth or
falsehood of opinions, but on the matter of fact that such and such an
opinion is held, on such grounds, by such authors, or schools, or
churches. Under this system, the rising generation would be no worse off
in regard to all disputed truths, than they are at present; they would
be brought up either churchmen or dissenters as they now are, the state
merely taking care that they should be instructed churchmen, or
instructed dissenters. There would be nothing to hinder them from being
taught religion, if their parents chose, at the same schools where they
were taught other things. All attempts by the state to bias the
conclusions of its citizens on disputed subjects, are evil; but it may
very properly offer to ascertain and certify that a person possesses the
knowledge, requisite to make his conclusions, on any given subject,
worth attending to. A student of philosophy would be the better for
being able to stand an examination both in Locke and in Kant, whichever
of the two he takes up with, or even if with neither: and there is no
reasonable objection to examining an atheist in the evidences of
Christianity, provided he is not required to profess a belief in them.
The examinations, however, in the higher branches of knowledge should, I
conceive, be entirely voluntary. It would be giving too dangerous a
power to governments, were they allowed to exclude any one from
professions, even from the profession of teacher, for alleged deficiency
of qualifications: and I think, with Wilhelm von Humboldt, that degrees,
or other public certificates of scientific or professional acquirements,
should be given to all who present themselves for examination, and stand
the test; but that such certificates should confer no advantage over
competitors, other than the weight which may be attached to their
testimony by public opinion.
It is not in the matter of education only, that misplaced notions of
liberty prevent moral obligations on the part of parents from being
recognised, and legal obligations from being imposed, where there are
the strongest grounds for the former always, and in many cases for the
latter also. The fact itself, of causing the existence of a human being,
is one of the most responsible actions in the range of human life. To
undertake this responsibility--to bestow a life which may be either a
curse or a blessing--unless the being on whom it is to be bestowed will
have at least the ordinary chances of a desirable existence, is a crime
against that being. And in a country either over-peopled, or threatened
with being so, to produce children, beyond a very small number, with
the effect of reducing the reward of labour by their competition, is a
serious offence against all who live by the remuneration of their
labour. The laws which, in many countries on the Continent, forbid
marriage unless the parties can show that they have the means of
supporting a family, do not exceed the legitimate powers of the state:
and whether such laws be expedient or not (a question mainly dependent
on local circumstances and feelings), they are not objectionable as
violations of liberty. Such laws are interferences of the state to
prohibit a mischievous act--an act injurious to others, which ought to
be a subject of reprobation, and social stigma, even when it is not
deemed expedient to superadd legal punishment. Yet the current ideas of
liberty, which bend so easily to real infringements of the freedom of
the individual, in things which concern only himself, would repel the
attempt to put any restraint upon his inclinations when the consequence
of their indulgence is a life, or lives, of wretchedness and depravity
to the offspring, with manifold evils to those sufficiently within reach
to be in any way affected by their actions. When we compare the strange
respect of mankind for liberty, with their strange want of respect for
it, we might imagine that a man had an indispensable right to do harm
to others, and no right at all to please himself without giving pain to
any one.
I have reserved for the last place a large class of questions respecting
the limits of government interference, which, though closely connected
with the subject of this Essay, do not, in strictness, belong to it.
These are cases in which the reasons against interference do not turn
upon the principle of liberty: the question is not about restraining the
actions of individuals, but about helping them: it is asked whether the
government should do, or cause to be done, something for their benefit,
instead of leaving it to be done by themselves, individually, or in
voluntary combination.
The objections to government interference, when it is not such as to
involve infringement of liberty, may be of three kinds.
The first is, when the thing to be done is likely to be better done by
individuals than by the government. Speaking generally, there is no one
so fit to conduct any business, or to determine how or by whom it shall
be conducted, as those who are personally interested in it. This
principle condemns the interferences, once so common, of the
legislature, or the officers of government, with the ordinary processes
of industry. But this part of the subject has been sufficiently enlarged
upon by political economists, and is not particularly related to the
principles of this Essay.
The second objection is more nearly allied to our subject. In many
cases, though individuals may not do the particular thing so well, on
the average, as the officers of government, it is nevertheless desirable
that it should be done by them, rather than by the government, as a
means to their own mental education--a mode of strengthening their
active faculties, exercising their judgment, and giving them a familiar
knowledge of the subjects with which they are thus left to deal. This is
a principal, though not the sole, recommendation of jury trial (in cases
not political); of free and popular local and municipal institutions; of
the conduct of industrial and philanthropic enterprises by voluntary
associations. These are not questions of liberty, and are connected with
that subject only by remote tendencies; but they are questions of
development. It belongs to a different occasion from the present to
dwell on these things as parts of national education; as being, in
truth, the peculiar training of a citizen, the practical part of the
political education of a free people, taking them out of the narrow
circle of personal and family selfishness, and accustoming them to the
comprehension of joint interests, the management of joint
concerns--habituating them to act from public or semi-public motives,
and guide their conduct by aims which unite instead of isolating them
from one another. Without these habits and powers, a free constitution
can neither be worked nor preserved, as is exemplified by the too-often
transitory nature of political freedom in countries where it does not
rest upon a sufficient basis of local liberties. The management of
purely local business by the localities, and of the great enterprises of
industry by the union of those who voluntarily supply the pecuniary
means, is further recommended by all the advantages which have been set
forth in this Essay as belonging to individuality of development, and
diversity of modes of action. Government operations tend to be
everywhere alike. With individuals and voluntary associations, on the
contrary, there are varied experiments, and endless diversity of
experience. What the State can usefully do, is to make itself a central
depository, and active circulator and diffuser, of the experience
resulting from many trials. Its business is to enable each
experimentalist to benefit by the experiments of others, instead of
tolerating no experiments but its own.
The third, and most cogent reason for restricting the interference of
government, is the great evil of adding unnecessarily to its power.
Every function superadded to those already exercised by the government,
causes its influence over hopes and fears to be more widely diffused,
and converts, more and more, the active and ambitious part of the public
into hangers-on of the government, or of some party which aims at
becoming the government. If the roads, the railways, the banks, the
insurance offices, the great joint-stock companies, the universities,
and the public charities, were all of them branches of the government;
if, in addition, the municipal corporations and local boards, with all
that now devolves on them, became departments of the central
administration; if the employés of all these different enterprises were
appointed and paid by the government, and looked to the government for
every rise in life; not all the freedom of the press and popular
constitution of the legislature would make this or any other country
free otherwise than in name. And the evil would be greater, the more
efficiently and scientifically the administrative machinery was
constructed--the more skilful the arrangements for obtaining the best
qualified hands and heads with which to work it. In England it has of
late been proposed that all the members of the civil service of
government should be selected by competitive examination, to obtain for
those employments the most intelligent and instructed persons
procurable; and much has been said and written for and against this
proposal. One of the arguments most insisted on by its opponents, is
that the occupation of a permanent official servant of the State does
not hold out sufficient prospects of emolument and importance to attract
the highest talents, which will always be able to find a more inviting
career in the professions, or in the service of companies and other
public bodies. One would not have been surprised if this argument had
been used by the friends of the proposition, as an answer to its
principal difficulty. Coming from the opponents it is strange enough.
What is urged as an objection is the safety-valve of the proposed
system. If indeed all the high talent of the country _could_ be drawn
into the service of the government, a proposal tending to bring about
that result might well inspire uneasiness. If every part of the business
of society which required organised concert, or large and comprehensive
views, were in the hands of the government, and if government offices
were universally filled by the ablest men, all the enlarged culture and
practised intelligence in the country, except the purely speculative,
would be concentrated in a numerous bureaucracy, to whom alone the rest
of the community would look for all things: the multitude for direction
and dictation in all they had to do; the able and aspiring for personal
advancement. To be admitted into the ranks of this bureaucracy, and when
admitted, to rise therein, would be the sole objects of ambition. Under
this régime, not only is the outside public ill-qualified, for want of
practical experience, to criticise or check the mode of operation of the
bureaucracy, but even if the accidents of despotic or the natural
working of popular institutions occasionally raise to the summit a ruler
or rulers of reforming inclinations, no reform can be effected which is
contrary to the interest of the bureaucracy. Such is the melancholy
condition of the Russian empire, as is shown in the accounts of those
who have had sufficient opportunity of observation. The Czar himself is
powerless against the bureaucratic body; he can send any one of them to
Siberia, but he cannot govern without them, or against their will. On
every decree of his they have a tacit veto, by merely refraining from
carrying it into effect. In countries of more advanced civilisation and
of a more insurrectionary spirit, the public, accustomed to expect
everything to be done for them by the State, or at least to do nothing
for themselves without asking from the State not only leave to do it,
but even how it is to be done, naturally hold the State responsible for
all evil which befalls them, and when the evil exceeds their amount of
patience, they rise against the government and make what is called a
revolution; whereupon somebody else, with or without legitimate
authority from the nation, vaults into the seat, issues his orders to
the bureaucracy, and everything goes on much as it did before; the
bureaucracy being unchanged, and nobody else being capable of taking
their place.
A very different spectacle is exhibited among a people accustomed to
transact their own business. In France, a large part of the people
having been engaged in military service, many of whom have held at least
the rank of non-commissioned officers, there are in every popular
insurrection several persons competent to take the lead, and improvise
some tolerable plan of action. What the French are in military affairs,
the Americans are in every kind of civil business; let them be left
without a government, every body of Americans is able to improvise one,
and to carry on that or any other public business with a sufficient
amount of intelligence, order, and decision. This is what every free
people ought to be: and a people capable of this is certain to be free;
it will never let itself be enslaved by any man or body of men because
these are able to seize and pull the reins of the central
administration. No bureaucracy can hope to make such a people as this do
or undergo anything that they do not like. But where everything is done
through the bureaucracy, nothing to which the bureaucracy is really
adverse can be done at all. The constitution of such countries is an
organisation of the experience and practical ability of the nation, into
a disciplined body for the purpose of governing the rest; and the more
perfect that organisation is in itself, the more successful in drawing
to itself and educating for itself the persons of greatest capacity from
all ranks of the community, the more complete is the bondage of all, the
members of the bureaucracy included. For the governors are as much the
slaves of their organisation and discipline, as the governed are of the
governors. A Chinese mandarin is as much the tool and creature of a
despotism as the humblest cultivator. An individual Jesuit is to the
utmost degree of abasement the slave of his order, though the order
itself exists for the collective power and importance of its members.
It is not, also, to be forgotten, that the absorption of all the
principal ability of the country into the governing body is fatal,
sooner or later, to the mental activity and progressiveness of the body
itself. Banded together as they are--working a system which, like all
systems, necessarily proceeds in a great measure by fixed rules--the
official body are under the constant temptation of sinking into indolent
routine, or, if they now and then desert that mill-horse round, of
rushing into some half-examined crudity which has struck the fancy of
some leading member of the corps: and the sole check to these closely
allied, though seemingly opposite, tendencies, the only stimulus which
can keep the ability of the body itself up to a high standard, is
liability to the watchful criticism of equal ability outside the body.
It is indispensable, therefore, that the means should exist,
independently of the government, of forming such ability, and furnishing
it with the opportunities and experience necessary for a correct
judgment of great practical affairs. If we would possess permanently a
skilful and efficient body of functionaries--above all, a body able to
originate and willing to adopt improvements; if we would not have our
bureaucracy degenerate into a pedantocracy, this body must not engross
all the occupations which form and cultivate the faculties required for
the government of mankind.
To determine the point at which evils, so formidable to human freedom
and advancement, begin, or rather at which they begin to predominate
over the benefits attending the collective application of the force of
society, under its recognised chiefs, for the removal of the obstacles
which stand in the way of its well-being; to secure as much of the
advantages of centralised power and intelligence, as can be had without
turning into governmental channels too great a proportion of the general
activity, is one of the most difficult and complicated questions in the
art of government. It is, in a great measure, a question of detail, in
which many and various considerations must be kept in view, and no
absolute rule can be laid down. But I believe that the practical
principle in which safety resides, the ideal to be kept in view, the
standard by which to test all arrangements intended for overcoming the
difficulty, may be conveyed in these words: the greatest dissemination
of power consistent with efficiency; but the greatest possible
centralisation of information, and diffusion of it from the centre.
Thus, in municipal administration, there would be, as in the New England
States, a very minute division among separate officers, chosen by the
localities, of all business which is not better left to the persons
directly interested; but besides this, there would be, in each
department of local affairs, a central superintendence, forming a branch
of the general government. The organ of this superintendence would
concentrate, as in a focus, the variety of information and experience
derived from the conduct of that branch of public business in all the
localities, from everything analogous which is done in foreign
countries, and from the general principles of political science. This
central organ should have a right to know all that is done, and its
special duty should be that of making the knowledge acquired in one
place available for others. Emancipated from the petty prejudices and
narrow views of a locality by its elevated position and comprehensive
sphere of observation, its advice would naturally carry much authority;
but its actual power, as a permanent institution, should, I conceive, be
limited to compelling the local officers to obey the laws laid down for
their guidance. In all things not provided for by general rules, those
officers should be left to their own judgment, under responsibility to
their constituents. For the violation of rules, they should be
responsible to law, and the rules themselves should be laid down by the
legislature; the central administrative authority only watching over
their execution, and if they were not properly carried into effect,
appealing, according to the nature of the case, to the tribunal to
enforce the law, or to the constituencies to dismiss the functionaries
who had not executed it according to its spirit. Such, in its general
conception, is the central superintendence which the Poor Law Board is
intended to exercise over the administrators of the Poor Rate throughout
the country. Whatever powers the Board exercises beyond this limit, were
right and necessary in that peculiar case, for the cure of rooted habits
of maladministration in matters deeply affecting not the localities
merely, but the whole community; since no locality has a moral right to
make itself by mismanagement a nest of pauperism, necessarily
overflowing into other localities, and impairing the moral and physical
condition of the whole labouring community. The powers of administrative
coercion and subordinate legislation possessed by the Poor Law Board
(but which, owing to the state of opinion on the subject, are very
scantily exercised by them), though perfectly justifiable in a case of
first-rate national interest, would be wholly out of place in the
superintendence of interests purely local. But a central organ of
information and instruction for all the localities, would be equally
valuable in all departments of administration. A government cannot have
too much of the kind of activity which does not impede, but aids and
stimulates, individual exertion and development. The mischief begins
when, instead of calling forth the activity and powers of individuals
and bodies, it substitutes its own activity for theirs; when, instead of
informing, advising, and, upon occasion, denouncing, it makes them work
in fetters, or bids them stand aside and does their work instead of
them. The worth of a State, in the long run, is the worth of the
individuals composing it; and a State which postpones the interests of
_their_ mental expansion and elevation, to a little more of
administrative skill, or of that semblance of it which practice gives,
in the details of business; a State which dwarfs its men, in order that
they may be more docile instruments in its hands even for beneficial
purposes, will find that with small men no great thing can really be
accomplished; and that the perfection of machinery to which it has
sacrificed everything, will in the end avail it nothing, for want of the
vital power which, in order that the machine might work more smoothly,
it has preferred to banish.