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CHAPTER I CHAPTER II CHAPTER III CHAPTER IV CHAPTER V
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 right, 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 recognized, 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, qua 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, caeteris 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 in 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. Drunkennesses, 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 labor, 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 blameable,
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 endeavoring 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; of 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 favor, 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 a
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 license 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
laboring 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 laboring
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 civilized
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 favor, 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 recognized 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 can not 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 recognized 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 the others taken together. The almost
despotic power of husbands over wives needs 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 recognize 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 unrecognized, 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 labor 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 classes
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 labor, 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 recognized, 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 labor by their competition, is a
serious offence against all who live by the remuneration of their labor.
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 employees 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 organized 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 regime, not only is the outside public ill-qualified, for want of
practical experience, to criticize 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 civilization 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 organization 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 organization 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 organization 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 recognized
chiefs, for the removal of the obstacles which stand in the way of its
well-being, to secure as much of the advantages of centralized 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 centralization 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
mal-administration 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 laboring 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 a
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
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. |
