( PDF ) The Voluntaryist Creed and A Plea for Voluntaryism

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THE

VOLUNTARYIST CREED

BEING THE ttERBERT SPENCER LECTURE

DELIVERED AT OXFORD, JUNE 7, 1906

AND

A PLEA FOR VOLUNTARYISM

AUBERON HERBERT

PRINTED FOR W. J. SIMPSON

AT THE OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS

LONDON. HENRY FROWDE

AMEN CORNER E.C.

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THE first of the two papers which this book contains is

the Herbert Spencer Lecture delivered by Mr. Auberon

Herbert in the Sheldonian Theatre at Oxford on June 7,

, i9o6. Permission has very kindly been given by the

University Authorities to publish it here for the first

_ time.

The second paper was only completed by Mr. Herbert

a few days before his death in November, I9o6. He had

intended to circulate this summary of the Voluntaryist

Creed for signature by those who agreed with it.

College Library

-I llt_| 2_ "1

MR. SPENCER AND TItE

GREAT MACHINE

BECaNmy lecture at Oxford by expressing my sense

of the debt that we owed to Mr. Spencer for his splen-

did attempt to show us the great meanings that underlie

all things--the order, the intelligibility, the coherence,

that exist in this world of ours. I confessed that, on

some great points of his philosophy, I differed from his

teaching, parting, so to speak, at right angles from him ;

but that difference did not alter my view of how much

he had helped us in the clear bold way in which he had

traced the great principles running through the like and

unlike things of our world ; and in which with so skilful

a hand he had grouped the facts round those principles,

that he always followed--might I say--with the keen

instinct of a hound that follows the scent of the prey in _,

front of him. Time, I thought, might take away much,

and might add much ; but the effort to unite all parts of

the great whole, to bind and connect them all together,

would remain as a splendid monument of what one man,

treading a path of his own, could achieve.

But to-day we are only concerned with his social and

political teaching, where we may, I think, follow his

leading with more reliance, and with but little reserve.

I have often laughed and said that, as far as I myself

was concerned, he spoilt my political life. I went into

the House of Commons, as a young man, believing that

6 MR. SPENCER AND

we might do much for the people by a bolder and more

unsparing use of the powers that belonged to the great

law-making machine; and great, as it then seemed to

me, were those still unexhausted resources of united

national action on behalf of the common welfare. It

was at that moment that I had the privilege of meeting

Mr. Spencer, and the talk which we had--a talk that

will always remain very memorable to me--set me

busily to work to study his writings. As I read and

thought over what he taught, a new window was opened

in my mind. I lost my faith in the great machine; I

saw that thinking and acting for others had always

hindered not helped the real progress, that all forms of

compulsion deadened the living forces in a nation ; that

every evil violently stamped out still persisted, almost

always in a worse form, when driven out of sight, and

festered under the surface. I no longer believed that

the handful of us--however well-intentioned we might

be--spending our nights in the House, could manufac-

ture the life of a nation, could endow it out of hand with

happiness, wisdom and prosperity, and clothe it in all

the virtues. I began to see that we were only playing

with an imaginary magician's wand, that the ambitious

work we were trying to do lay far out of the reach of

our hands, far, far, above the small measure of our

strength. It was a work that could only be done in one

way--not by gifts and doles of public money, not by

making that most corrupting and demoralizing of all

things, a common purse ; not by restraints and compul-

sions of each other ; not by seeking to move in a mass,

obedient to the strongest forces of the moment, but by

acting through the living energies of the free individuals

left free to combine in their own way, in their own

groups, finding their own experience, setting before

THE GREAT MACHINE 7

themselves their own hopes and desires, aiming only at

such ends as they truly shared in common, and ever as

the foundation of it all, respecting deeply and religious-

ly alike their own freedom, and the freedom of all others.

And if it was not in our power,--we excellent and

worthy people,-- fighting our nightly battle of words,

with our half-light, our patchwork of knowledge, and

our party passions, often swayed, in a great measure

unconsciously, by our own interests, half autocrats, half

puppets, if it was not given to us to create progress, in

any true sense of the word, and to present it to the

nation, ready-made, fresh from our ever busy anvil,

much in the fashion that kind-hearted nurses hand out

cake and jam to expectant children ; if all this taking of

a nation's life out of its own hands into our hands was

but a bewildered dream, a careless conceit on our part,

might it not, on the other hand, be only too easily in our

power to mislead and to injure, to hinder and destroy the

voluntary self-helping efforts and experiments that were

beyond all price, to depress the great qualities, to soften

and break down the national fibre, and in the end, as we

flung our gifts broadcast, to turn the whole people into

two or three reckless quarrelling crowds, that had lost

all confidence in their own qualities and resources, that

were content to remain dependent on _hat others did

for them--ever disappointed, ever discontented, because

the natural and healthy field of their own energies had

been closed to them, and all that they now had to do

was to clamour as loudly as possible for each new thing

that their favourite speakers hung in glittering phrases

before their eyes ? I saw that no guiding, no limiting or

moderating principle existed in the competition of poli-

tician against politician ; but that almost all hearts were

filled with the old corrupting desire, that had so long

8 MR. SPENCER AND

haunted the world for its ceaseless sorrow, to possess

that evil mocking gift of power, and to use it in their own

imagined interest--without question, without scruple--

over their fellow men. From that day I gave myself to

preaching, in my own small way, the saving doctrine of

liberty, of self-ownership and self-guidance, and of resist-

ing that lust for power, which had brought such count-

less sufferings and misfortunes on all races in the past,

and which still, to-day, turns the men and women of the

same country, who should be as friends and close allies,

if the word ' country' has any meaning, into two hostile

armies, ever wastefully, uselessly, and to the destruction

of their own happiness and prosperity, striving against

each other, always dreading, often hating, those whom

the fortunes of war may at any moment make their

masters. Was it for this--this bitter, reckless and

rather sordid warfare--I tried to ask--that we were

leading this wonderful earth-life; was this the true end,

the true fulfilment of all the great qualities and nobler

ambitions that belonged to our nature ?

Now, whether you judge that I acted rightly or

wrongly in thus yielding myself to Mr. Spencer's

influence, you will not, I think, quarrel very" seriously

with me, if I say that between Mr. Spencer's mind and

the mind of the politician there lies the deepest of all

gulfs; and that there is no region of human thought

which is so disorderly, so confused, so lawless, so little

under the rule of the great principles, as the region of

political thought. It must be so, because that disorder

and confusion are the inevitable consequence and

penalty of the strife for power. You cannot serve two

masters. You cannot devote yourself to the winning of

power, and remain faithful to the great principles.

The great principles, and the tactics of the political

THE GREAT MACHINE 9

campaign, can never be made one, never be reconciled.

In that region of mental and moral disorder, which we

call political life, men must shape their thoughts and

actions according to the circumstances of the hour, and

in obedience to the tyrant necessity of defeating their

rivals. When you strive for power, you may form

a temporary, fleeting alliance with the great principles,

if they happen to serve your purpose of the moment,

but the hour soon comes, as the great conflict enters

a new phase, when they will not only cease to be

serviceable to you, but are likely to prove highly

inconvenient and embarrassing. If you really mean to

have and to hold power, you must sit lightly in your

saddle, and make and remake your principles with the

needs of each new day ; for you are as much under the

necessity of pleasing and attracting, as those who gain

their livelihood in the street. We all know that the

course which our politicians of both parties will take,

even in the near future, the wisest man cannot foresee.

We all know that it will probably be a zig-zag course ;

that it will have ' sharp curves ', that it may be in self-

evident contradiction to its own past; that although

there are many honourable and high-minded men in both

parties, the interest of the party, as a party, ever tends

to be the supreme influence, overriding the scruples

of the truer-judging, the wiser and more careful. Why

must it be so, as things are to-day? Because this

conflict for power over each other is altogether different

in its nature to all other--more or less useful and

stimulating--conflicts in which we engage in daily life.

As soon as we place unlimited power in the hands of

those who govern, the conflict which decides who is to

possess the absolute sovereignty over us involves our

deepest interests, involves all our rights over ourselves,

Io MR. SPENCER AND

all our relations to each other, all that we most deeply

cherish, all that we have, all that we are in ourselves.

It is a conflict of such supreme fateful importance, as

we shall presently see in more detail, that once engaged

in it we must win, whatever the cost; and we can

hardly suffer anything, however great or good in itself,

to stand between us and victory. In that conflict

affecting all the supreme issues of life, neither you nor

I, if we are on different sides, can afford to be beaten.

Think carefully what this conflict and what the posses-

sion of unlimited power in plainest matter of fact

means. If I win, I can deal with you and yours as

I please; you are my creature, my subject for experi-

ment, my plastic material, to which I shall give any

shape that I please; if you win, you in the same way

can deal with me and mine, just as you please; I am

your political plaything, 'your chattel, your anything.'

Ought we to wonder that, with so vast a stake flung

down on the table, even good men forget and disregard

all the restraints of their higher nature, and in the

excitement of the great game become utterly un-

scrupulous ? There are grim stories of men who have

staked body and soul in the madness of their play ; are

we after all so much unlike them--we gamesters of

the political table--staking all rights, all liberties, and

the very ownership of ourselves? And what results,

what must result from our consenting to enter into this

reckless soul-destroying conflict for power over each

other ? Will there not necessarily be the ever-present,

the haunting, the maddening dread of how I shall deal

with you if I win; and how you will deal with me if

you win ? That dread of each other, vague and un-

defined, yet very real, is perhaps the worst of all the

counsellors that men can admit to their hearts. A man

THE GREAT MACHINE H

who fears, no longer guides and controls himself; right

and wrong become shadowy and indifferent to him;

the grim phantom drives, and he betakes himself to the

pathQwhatever it is--that seems to offer the best

chance of safety. We see the same vague dread

acting upon the nations. At times you may have an

aggressive and ambitious Government, planning a world-

policy for its own aggrandizement, that endangers the

peace of all other nations; but in most eases it is the

vague dread of what some other rival nation will do

with its power that slowly leads up to those disastrous

and desolating international conflicts. So it is with our

political parties. We live dreading each other, and

become the reckless slaves of that dread, losing

conscience, losing guidance and definite purpose, in

our desperate effort to escape from falling under the

subjection of those whose thoughts and beliefs and

aims are all opposed to our own. True it is that the

leaders of a party may have their own higher desires,

their own personal sense of right, but it is a higher

desire and sense of right which they must often with

a sigh--or without a sigh--put away into their pockets,

bowing themselves before the ever present necessity

of winning the conflict and saving their own party from

defeat. The stake is too great to allow room for

scruples, or the more delicate balancings of what is right

and wrong in itself. We all know--' Need must, when

the devil drives.' ' Skin for a skin, what will a man not

do for his skin.'

Now let us look how that winning of the political

battle has to be done ? Winning means securing for

our side the larger crowd ; and that can only be done,

as we know in our hearts, though we don't always put

it into words, by clever baiting of the hook which is to

x2 MR. SPENCER AND

catch the fish. It is of little use throwing the bare hook

into the salmon pool; you must have the colours

brightly and artistically blended--the colours that suit

the particular pool, the state of the water, the state of

the weather. Unless you are learned in the fisherman's

art, it is but few fish you will carry home in your

basket. So in the political pool you must skilfully

combine all the glittering attractions that you have to

offer; you must appeal to all the different special

interests, using the well chosen lure for each. It is

true that there may be exceptional moments with all

nations when the political arts lose much of their

importance, when some great matter rises above special

interests, and the people also rise above themselves.

But that is human nature at its best; and not the

human nature as we have to deal with it on most days

of the week. It is also true that the best men in every

party stoop unwillingly; but, as I have said, they are

not their own masters; they are acting under forces

which decide for them the course they must follow, and

reduce to silence the voice within them. They have

gone in for the winning of power, and those who play

for that stake must accept the conditions of the game.

You can't make resolutions--it is said--with rose-water ;

and you can't play at politics, and at the same time

listen to what your soul has to say in the matter. The

soul of a high-minded man is one thing; and the great

game of politics is another thing. You are now part of

a machine with a purpose of its own--not the purpose

of serving the fixed and supreme principles--the great

game laughs at all things that stand before and above

itself, and brushes them scornfully aside, but the purpose

of securing victory; and to that purpose all the more

scrupulous men must conform, like the weaker brethren,

THE GREAT MACHINE 13

or--as the noblest men do occasionally--stand aside.

As our system works, it is the party interests that rule

and compel us to do their bidding. It must be so ; for

without unity in the party there is no victory, and

without victory no power to be enjoyed. When once

we have taken our place in the great game, all choice

as regards ourselves is at an end. We must win;

and we must do the things which mean winning, even

if those things are not very beautiful in themselves.

And what is it that we have to do ? In plain words--

and plainness of thought, directness of speech, is the

only wholesome course--we must buy the larger half of

the nation; and buying the nation means setting up

before all the various groups, of which it is composed,

the supreme object, the idol of their own special interests.

We must offer something that makes it worth while for

each group to give us their support, and that something

must be more than our rivals offer. Put your own self-

interests in the first place, and see that you get them--

is the watchword of all politics--though we don't often

express it in those crude and unashamed terms. Politi-

cal art has, like many another accomplishment, its own

refinements for half veiling the real meanings. If we

wish to do our work in the finer fashion, in the artist's

way, we must use the light and skilful hand; we must

mix in the attractive phrases, appeal to patriotic motives,

borrow--a little cautiously--such assistance as we can

from the great principles--a slight passing bow that

does not too deeply commit us to their acquaintance as

regards the future--and throw dexterously over it all--

as a clever cook introduces into her dishes her choicest

seasoning--a flavour of noble and disinterested purpose.

It is a fine art of its own, to buy, and at the same time

to gild and beautify the buying: to get the voter into

14 MR. SPENCER AND

the net, and at the same time to inspire him with the

happy consciousness that, whilst he is getting what he

wants, he is through it all the devoted patriot, serving

the great interests of his country. And then also you

must study and understand human nature; you must

play--as the skilled musician plays on his instrument--

on all the strings--both the higher and lower--of that

nature; you must utilize all ambitions, desires, pre-

judices, passions and hatreds--lightly touching, as occa-

sion offers, on the higher notes. But in this matter, as

in all other matters, underneath the fine words, business

remains business ; and the business of politics is to get

the votes, without which the great prize of power could

not by any possibility be won. Votes must be had--

the votes of the crowd, both the rich and the poor

crowd, whatever may be the price which the market of

the day exacts from those who are determined to win.

So rolls the ball. We follow the inevitable course

that seeking for power forces upon us. Politics, in spite

of all better desires and motives, become a matter of

traffic and bargaining; and in the rude process of

buying, we find ourselves treading not only on the in-

terests, but on the rights of others, and we soon learn

to look on it as a quite natural and unavoidable part of

the great game. Keener and keener grows the com-

petition, more heart and brain-absorbing grows the

great conflict, and the people and the politicians cannot

help mutually corrupting each other. This buying:up

of the groups is so distinctly recognized nowadays,

that lately a Times correspondent--whose letters we

read with much interest--speaking of a newly formed

THE GREAT MACHINE 15

ministry abroad, wrote, with unconscious cynicism, that

it would have to choose between leaning on the extreme

right or the extreme left.

What then--you may say--are we to believe; that

the whole body of those concerned with politics--in

which class we almost all in our degree are included--

--are selfish and corrupt, utterly disregarding and

despising the just claims of each other ? I hope things

are not quite so bad as that. Human nature is a mixed

thing, and many of us contrive to think in the nobler

way and the smaller way at the same time. There is

at least one excuse that may be pleaded for us all.

What happens here--as happens in so many other

cases--is that carelessly and without reflection we place

ourselves under an untrue, a demoralizing and wrong

system, that fatally blinds and misleads us, lowers and

blunts the better part of our nature, and almost com-

pels us, by the force that it exerts, to follow crooked

paths and do wrong things. I have not time to illus-

trate this simple truth of the sacrifice of character to

system ; but let me take one instance of the injury that

results, whenever we lose our own self-guidance under

a system, that is wrong in itself, and, as a wrong system

so often is apt to be, despotic in its nature. I think

many of us see the existence of this injury as regards

character, when we watch that part of fashionable

society which makes of organized pleasure-hunting the

first occupation--I might almost say the duty--of life.

Here also people construct a system which overpowers

their individual sense of what is right and useful and

fitting; they submit themselves to the tyrannous rule

of follies of different kinds, as if they had no judgement,

no discriminating sense of their own, and as a con-

sequence become as a mere race of butterflies, losing

I6 MR. SPENCER AND

the higher sense of things, and wasting their lives. In

all such instances, where lies the remedy? I think

both Mr. Spencer and Mr. Mill would have made the

same answer--you can only mend matters by individual-

izing the individual. It is of little use preaching against

any hurtful system, until you go to the heart of the

matter, until you restore the individual to himself, until

you awaken in him his own perceptions, his own judge-

ment of things, his own sense of right, until you allow

what Mr. Spencer called his own apparatus of motive--

and not an apparatus constructed for him by others--to

act freely upon him--an apparatus that tends sooner or

later to work to the better things; and so detach him

from his crowd, which whirls him along helplessly,

wherever it goes, as the stream carries its unresisting

bubbles along with it. There lies the great secret of

the whole matter. We have as individuals to be above

every system in which we take our place, not beneath

it, not under its feet, and at its mercy; to use it, and

not to be used by it; and that can only be when we

cease to be bubbles, cease to leave the direction of

ourselves to the crowd--whatever crowd it is--social,

religious, or political--in which we so often allow our

better selves to be submerged.

It was for this individualizing of the individual that

both Mr. Spencer and Mr. Mill pleaded so powerfully;

only in the free individual, self-restraining, self-guiding,

that they saw, I think, the hope of true permanent good.

They saw that nobody yet has ever been saved--in the

best sense-or ever will be saved by vast systems of

machinery; Mr. Mill, perhaps, specially looking from

the moral point of view, and Mr. Spencer contrasting the

intellectual and material consequences of the two op-

posed systems--self-guidance, and guidance by others.

THE GREAT MACHINE t7

And here, perhaps, I ought to add a few words.

Whilst we lay the heaviest share of blame upon the

political system that takes possession of us, and leaves

little room for self-guidance, are we to lay no direct

blame upon ourselves, for being content to take our

place in the system, that few, I think, in calm moments

of reflection, can fully justify to their own hearts ? Let

us be completely frank in this great matter. Is the

system of giving away power over ourselves, or seeking

to possess it over others, in itself right or wrong ? If it

is wrong, don't let us make excuses for acquiescing

in it; don't let us sigh and feebly wring our hands,

confessing the faults and dangers, but pleading that we

see no other way before us. Where there is a bad way,

there is also a good way, if men once resolutely set

themselves to find it. But you may, perhaps, doubt if

the system is wrong in itself; if it is not merely perverted

and turned from its true purpose by our human weak-

nesses. You may be inclined to plead--' It is true that

politicians must suppress a part of their own opinions ;

it is true that there is a sort of bargaining that goes

on among the groups, that in order to gain their own

special end, they have to act with other groups--groups

which may differ strongly from themselves on some

important points; it is true also that the leaders of

a party must take all these groups into their calculations;

and as our American friends saymplacate the interests;

but there is not necessarily anything corrupt in such

action on the part of either the groups or the politicians,

or their leaders, at least so long as we can fairly credit

them all with desiring the common good, at the same

time as they pursue their own special interests, and

doing the best that the situation allows alike for these

two ends; even if these ends may occasionally diverge

18 MR. SPENCER AND

somewhat from each other. Of course we admit that

men may be easily tempted to overstep the just and

true line, may be tempted in the rivalry of parties,

in the strife for power, in the desire to seize the glitter-

ing prize, to forget for a while the common good, to

push it back into the second place, to be over-keen

about their own interests; no doubt the possession

of power has its dangers, and tempts many men to

say and do what we cannot defend ; but we must trust

to the general better and wiser feeling of the whole

people, or of the whole party, to hold in check these

aberrations of some of the fighters, and to strike the

balance fairly between the two influences. We must

remember that all action in common demands some

sacrifices; has its disabilities, as well as its great

advantages. We cannot act together, unless there is

a considerable--sometimes a large suppression of our

own selves. We must accept that bit of necessary

discipline; we must be prepared to keep step with the

marching--(or ought you to say the manoeuvring)--

regiment, if we are to achieve anything by united action,

and not to remain as separate sticks, that no bond holds

together. All through life the same principle runs. In

every club, society, joint-stock undertaking, we submit

to guidance ; we give up a part of our views and desires

to gain the more important object_yet when we do

so, nobody accuses us of sacrificing our own guiding

sense, or of being corrupt, or of entering into a hurtful

and dangerous traffic.

Yes--I should reply--but in all these voluntary

associations you retain your own free choice; you

can enter into them or leave them, as you think right;

and that free choice in all these cases is the saving

element. But I ought to ask pardon of our friend, the

THE GREAT MACHINE 19

apologist, for interrupting him. 'Even if our political

system '--it is our friend who is again speaking--' has

its defects--grave defects if you like--still after all, it is

the instrument of progress, and we know of no other to

take its place. Surely it is more profitable to try to

mend its faults, than to quarrel with the whole thing, for

which we can see no substitute.' That I think is a fair

representation of the way in which many of us look

at political life, a way that perhaps supplies us with

some momentary consolation, when our minds are

troubled with what we see passing before us ; but how

far, if we try to see quite clearly, can we accept such

reasoning, as giving any real answer to the graver doubts

and hesitations ? Is it not only a bit of agreeable

sticking-plaster, laid over the sore place, an opiate-like

soothing of troubled consciences, hardly intended

seriously to touch the deeper part of the matter ? Let

us now try to look frankly beneath the surface, and

do our best to see what is the true nature of the system

in which we so easily acquiesce.

What does representative government mean? It

means the rule of the majority and the subjection of the

minority; the rule of every three men out of five, and

the subjection of every two men. It means that all

rights go to the three men, no rights to the two men.

The lives and fortunes, the actions, the faculties and

property of the two men, in some cases their beliefs and

thoughts, so far as these last can be brought within the

control of machinery, are all vested in the three men, as

long as they can maintain themselves in power. The

three men represent the conquering race, and the two

men--vat v_ctis as of old--the conquered race. As

citizens, the two men are de-citizenized ; they have lost

all share for the time in the possession of their country,

2o MR. SPENCER AND

they have no recognized part in the guidance of its

° fortunes; as individuals they are de-individualized, and

hold all their rights--if rights they have--on sufferance.

The ownership of their bodies, and the ownership of

their minds and souls--so far as you can transfer by

machinery the ownership of mind and soul from the

rightful owners to the wrongful owners-no more

belongs to them, but belongs to those who hold the

position of the conquering race. Now that is I believe

a true and uncoloured description of the system, as it is

in its nakedness, as it is in its real self, under which

we are content to live. It is not an exaggerated

description--there is not a touch in the picture with

which you can fairly quarrel. It is true that the real

logic of the system does not yet prevail. It is tree that

a certain number of things may for a time modify and

restrain the final triumphs of the majority. In some

parliamentary countries, the majority tends to be more

composite in its character than with us, and therefore

tumbles more easily to pieces. On the other hand, with

us at least--whatever it may be in some other countries

that have Parliaments--minorities may rend the air and

reach the skies, if they can, with their cries and

complaints, and so to a certain extent may raise

difficulties--a method of warfare in which all minorities

grow more or less skilful by practice--in the path of the

majority; with us also there still exists happily a

friendlier, more genial spirit between all parts of the

people than prevails in other countries. Thanks to the

fact that the great serpent of bureaucracy holds us as

yet less closely in its folds--thanks to the still lingering

traditions of self-help and voluntary work/' thanks to the

good humour and love of fair play, which is to some

extent nursed by our fellowship in the same games that

THE GREAT MACHINE 2r

all classes love--games that I think have redeemed

some part of the politician's mistakes,--the rule of the

majority is with us as yet more tempered, less violent

and unscrupulous, than it is in some other countries;

but give their full weight to all these modifying

influences, which as yet restrain our system of the

conquering and the conquered races from finding its

full development--still they do not alter the main, the

essential fact, that we are content to live under a system

that vests the rights of citizenship, the share in th_

common country, the ownership of body, faculties, and

property, and to some extent, the ownership of mind

and soul, of, say, two-fifths of the nation in the hands of

the three-fifths. Such is the system in which we think

it right and self-respecting to acquiesce--a system which,

in the case of every two men out of five, wipes out at

a stroke, so far as the duties of citizenship are con-

cerned, and even to a large extent as regards their

personal relations, all the higher part of their nature, their

judgement, conscience, will--treating them as degraded

criminals, who, for some unrecorded offence have

deserved to forfeit all the great natural rights, and to

lose their true rank as men. They tell us that now-

adays men are not. punished for their opinions. They

succeed in forgetting, I suppose, the case of every two

men out five.

Plead then, if you like, on behalf of such a system all

the expediencies of the moment, all the conveniences

that belong to power, all the pressing things you desire

to do through its machinery, plead objects of patriotism

plead objects of philanthropy ; yet are you right for the

sake of these things--excellent as they may be in them-

selves--to acquiesce in that which--when stripped bare

to its real, its lowest terms, is--the words are not too

MR. SPENCER AND

harsh--the turning of one part of the nation into those

who own their slaves, and the other part into the slaves

who are owned ? You may say, as a friend of mine

says--' I feel neither like a slave-owner, nor like a

slave'--but his feelings, however admirable in them-

selves, do not alter the system, in which he consents to

take part, of trying to obtain control over his fellow men ;

and, if he fails, in acquiescing in their control over him-

self. He may never wish or mean to exercise unfairly

the power in which he believes, should it fall into his

hands; but can he answer for himself in the great

conflict; can he answer for his allies, for the great

crowd, in which he will count for such a minute

fractional part, for what they will do, or where they will

go ?

Ill

MY friend is quite aware, I think, that power is a

rather dangerous thing to handle ; but he will handle it

with good sense, in the spirit of moderation and fairness,

he will not suffer himself to let go of the great principles ;

he will not cross the boundary line that divides the

rightful from the wrongful use. Well, moderation, and

fairness, and good sense are excellent ithings, not in

this matter alone, but in all matters. And so are the

great principles ; that is to say, if you see them in all

clearness and are determined to follow them. But the

saving power of the great principles depends upon how

far we loyally and consistently accept them. They can

be of little real help and guidance to us if we play and

trifle with them, accepting them to-day, and leaving

them on one side to-morrow, making them conform, as

THE GREAT MACHINE 23

occasion arises, to our desires and ambitions, and then

lightly finding excuses for deserting them whenever

we find them inconvenient. Let us once more be quite

frank. When we talk of fairness and moderation and

good sense, as constituting our defence against the

abuse of unlimited power, are we not living in the

region of words--using convenient phrases, as we so

often do, to smooth over and justify some course which

we desire to take, but about which in our hearts we feel

uncomfortable misgivings ? Let us by all means culti-

vate as much fairness and moderation as possible--they

will always be useful--but don't let our trust in these good

things lead us away from the question that--like the

Sphinx's riddle--must be answered under penalties from

which there is no escape :--Is unlimited power--whether

with or without good sense and fairness--a right or wrong

thing in itself ? Can we in any way make it square with

the great principles ? Can we morally justify the putting

of the larger part of our mind and body--in some cases

almost the whole--under the rule of others; or the

subjecting of others in the same way to ourselves?

If you answer that it is a right thing--then see plainly

what follows. You are putting the force of the most

numerous, or perhaps of the most cunning, who often

lead the most numerous--which, disguise and polish the

external form of it as much as you like, will always

remain true to its own essentially brutal and selfish

nature--in the first place, making of it our supreme

principle; and if unlimited power--remember it is

unlimited power--power to do whatever the governing

majority thinks right--is a right thing, must you not

leave it--whatever may be your own personal views--

to those who possess it to decide how they will employ

it? You can't dictate to others, in the hour of their

24 MR. SPENCER AND

victory, as to what they will do or not do; and they

can't dictate to you, in the hour of your victory. Un-

limited power--as the term expresses--can only be

defined and limited by itself; if it were subject to any

limiting principle, it would cease to be unlimited, and

become something of a different nature. And remember

always--when once you entered into the struggle for

the possession of this unlimited power, that you

sanctioned its existence, as a lawful prize, for which we

may all rightly contend; and if the prize does not fall

to you, it will only remain for you to accept the con-

sequences of your consent to take part in the reckless

and dangerous competition. By entering into that

conflict, by competing for that prize, you sanctioned the

ownership of some men by other men ; you sanctioned

the taking away from some men--say two-fifths of the

nation--all the great rights, and the reducing of them

to mere cyphers, who have lost power over themselves.

Once you have sanctioned the act of stripping the

individual of his own intelligence and will and conscience,

and of the self-guidance which depends upon these

things, you cannot then turn your back upon yourself,

and indignantly point to the mass of unhappy individuals

who are now writhing under the stripping process.

You should have thought of all this before you con-

sented to put up the ownership of the individual to

public auction, before you consented to throw all these

rights into the great melting-pot. In your desire to

have power in your own hands, you threw away all

restraints, all safeguards, all limits as regards the using

of it ; you wanted to be able to do just as you yourself

pleased with it, when once you possessed it; and what

good reason have you now to complain, when your rivals

--or shall I say your conquerors--in their turn do just

THE GREAT MACHINE _5

what they please with it ? You entered into the game

with all its possible penalties; you made your bed, it

only remains for you to lie on it.

Let us follow a little further this rightfulness of

unlimited power in which you believe. If it is a right

thing in itself, who shall give any clear and certain rule

to tell us when and where it ceases to be a right thing ?

Is any right thing by being pushed a little further, and

then a little further, and yet a little further, transformed

at some definite point into a wrong thing, unless some

new element, that changes its nature, comes into the

matter? The question of degree can hardly change

right into wrong in any authoritative way, that men

with their many varying opinions will agree to accept.

We may, and should for ever dispute over such mov-

able boundary lines--lines that each man according to

his own views and feeling would draw for himself. If

it is right to use unlimited power to take the one-tenth

of a man's property, is it also right to take one-half or

the whole ? If it is not right to take the half, where

is the magical undiscoverable point at which fight is

suddenly converted into wrong ? If it is right to restrict

a man's faculties-- not employed for an act of aggression

against his neighbour--in one direction, is it right to

restrict them in half a dozen or a dozen different

directions ? Who shall say ? It is a matter of opinion,

taste, feeling. Perhaps you answer--we will judge

each ease on its merits; but then once more you are

in the illusory region of words, for, apart from any fixed

principle, the merits will be always determined by our

varying personal inclinations. It is all slope, ever

falling away into slope, with no firm level standing

place to be found anywhere. Nor do I feel quite sure,

if we speak the truth, that any of us are much inclined

26 MR. SPENCER AND

to accept the rule of moderation and good sense in this

matter. You and I, who have entered into this great

struggle for unlimited power, have made great efforts

and sacrifices to obtain it; now that we have won our

prize, why should we not reap the full frmts of victory;

why should we be sparing and moderate in our use of

it ? Is not the labourer worthy of his wage ; is not the

soldier to receive his prize money ? If power was worth

winning, it must be worth using. If power is a good

thing, why should we hold back our hand ; why not do

all we can with it, and extract from it its full service and

usefulness ? Our efforts, our sacrifices of time, money

and labour, and perhaps of principle--if that is worth

counting--were not made for the possession of mere

fragmentary pieces of power, but for power to do

exactly as we please with our fellow men. It is rather

late in the day, now that we have won the stake, to tell

us that we must leave the larger part of it lying on the

table; that, having defeated the enemy, we must

evacuate his territory, and not even ask for an in-

demnity to compensate us for our sacrifices. If power,

as an instrument, is good in itself, now that we hold it

in our hand, why break its point and blunt its edge?

And then what about the great principles, which my

friend does not propose exactly to follow, but on which

at all events he will be good enough to keep a watchful

eye ? Where are they ? What are they ? What great

principle remains, when you have sanctioned unlimited

power ? You can't appeal to any of the great rights--as

rights; the rights of self-ownership and self-guidance,

the rights of the free exercise of faculties, the rights of

thought and conscience, the rights of property, they are

no longer the recognized and accepted rules of human

actions; they are now reduced to mere expediencies, to

THE GREAT MACHINE 27

which each man will assign such moderate value as he

chooses. You are now out in the great wilderness, far

away from all landmarks. Around the throne of

unlimited power stretches the vast solitude of an empty

desert. Nothing can be fixed or authoritative in its

presence; by the fact of its existence, by the con-

ditions of its nature, it becomes the one supreme thing,

acknowledging--except perhaps occasionally in courtly

phrases for soothing purposes--nothing above itself,

writing its own ethics, interpreting its own necessities,

making of its own safety and continuance the highest

law, and contemptuously dismissing all other dis-

crowned rivals from its presence.

Now turn from the discussion of the moral basis of

unlimited power to the practical working of our power-

systems. There is I think one blessed fact that runs

through all life--that if a thing is wrong in itself, it

won't work. No skill, no ingenuity, no elaborate com-

binations of machinery, will make it work. No amount

of human artifice and contrivance, no alliance with force,

no reserves of guns and bayonets, no nation in arms

even if almost countless in number, can make it work.

So is it with our systems of power. They don't work

and they can't work. In no real sense, can you, as the

autocrat, govern men ; in no real sense, can the people

imitate the autocrat and govern each other. The govern-

ment of men by men is an illusion, an unreality, a mere

semblance, that mocks alike the autocrat and the crowd

that attempt to imitate him. We think in our amazing

insolence that we can deprive our fellow men of their

intelligence, their will, their conscience; we think we

can take their soul into our own keeping; but there is

no machinery yet discovered by which we can do what

seems to us so small and easy. a matter. We think that

28 MR. SPENCER AND

the autocrat governs his slaves, but the autocrat himself

is only one slave the more amongst the crowd of other

slaves. In the first place he himself is governed by his

own vast machinery; helpless he stands--one of the

pitiable objects in this world of ours--in the midst of the

countless wheels which he can set in motion, but which

other forces direct; and then even the wheels have

souls of their" own, though not perhaps very beautiful

ones, and ever likely to go a persistent and obstinate

way of their own ; but what is of deeper consequence is

that his government is silently conditioned by the slaves

themselves. Sunk in their darkness, helpless, inarticu-

late, they may be ; yet for all that they in their turn are

slave-owners as well as slaves, as always happens wher-

ever you build up these great fabrics of power. Whilst

the slaves obey, they also, though they utter no word,

in their turn command. If the autocrat disregards that

silent voice, disregards the unspoken conditions that

they impose upon him, then in its own due time comes

the great crash, and his power passes from him, a

broken and miserable wreck. You may crush and hold

in subjection for a time the external part of men, but

you cannot govern and possess their soul. Their soul

lies out of your reach, and is in its nature as ungovern-

able as the wind or the wave. You may trick and deceive

it for a time ; you may make it the instrument of its own

slavery by cleverly arranged systems of conscription,

and other governing devices; you may cast it into a

deep sleep, but sooner or later it wakes, and rebels, and

claims its own inheritance in itself. In the same way

there is no such thing as what is calied the self-govern-

ment of a nation. How can you get self-gove_nment

by turning one half of a nation into a second-hand copy

of a Tsar? That, as Mill showed long ago, is not self-

THE GREAT MACHINE 29

government; but government by others. It is true

that here, as with the autocrat, a majority can for

a season use for its own ends and oppress a minority,

can do with it what in its heart it lusts to do, can make

it the corpus vile of its experiments, can make of it

a drawer of water and hewer of wood ; but it is only for

a short day. Here again that uncompromising thing,

the soul, stands in the way, and refuses to be transferred

from the rightful to the wrongful owner. The power of

the majority wanes, and the power of the minority grows,

and the oppressor and the oppressed change places.

But apart from all the deeper reasons that make the

subjection of men by men impossible, was there ever

such a hopeless, I might say absurd, bit of machinery--

only to be compared to a child's attempt to put together

a wooden clock out of the chippings left in the wood

basket--as the thing which we call a representative

system ? Invent all the ingenious plans that you like,

but by no possibility can you represent a nation for

governing purposes. The whole thing is a mere phrase.

Let us see what actually happens. Suppose a nation

with 5,ooo,ooo voters--2,ooo,ooo voting on one side, and

3,ooo,ooo on the other. In such a case we start with

the astounding, the absurd, the grotesque fact that there

is no attempt made to represent the 2,ooo, ooo. Even if

you had a system of minority representation, it might

possibly serve in some small measure to soothe the

feelings of the subject race ; it would not alter the hard

fact of their subjection. But at present the 2,00o#oo

voters find no place of any kind in our calculations;

they are simply swept off the board, not counted. That

is the first remarkable feature of the representative

system ; and that, as you will admit, is not the happiest

beginning with which to start. If representation con-

3° MR. SPENCER AND

stitutes the moral basis of power--then the fact, that

out of every five men two should be left unrepresented,

requires a good deal of explanation; two-fifths of the

moral basis at all events are wholly wanting. We are

fond of talking of our representative system as if it

rested on a democratic foundation; but under which of

the three great democratic principles--equality, fra-

ternity, liberty--does the sweeping off the board of two-

fifths of the nation, the two men out of every five, find

its sanction ?

Let us, however, for the present leave the 2,ooo,ooo

voters to their fate. They are, as we have seen, only

a subject race; and subject races must be duly reason-

able, and not expect too great a share in the privileges of

conquering races. Now let us turn to the case of the

happy triumphant 3,ooo,ooo voters, who hold in sub-

jection the 2,ooo,ooo voters. Are they themselves

represented in any true sense? Let us dee what

happens to them--the majority, who are good enough

for a time to take charge of all of us. Unlimited power

means that our lords and masters of the moment may

deal, that they will probably try to deal, with every,

or almost every field of human activity. If there are--

say--ten great State departments, such as trade, foreign

affairs, local government, home government, and the

rest ; and if we suppose with due moderation that there

are ten great questions connected with each of these

departments, that may at any moment occupy the

attention of our presiding majority, then we have a grand

total of a hundred questions, upon which the opinions

of the 3,ooo, ooo electors will have to be represented.

But alas! for our unfortunate and inconvenient human

differences; how can the victorious 3,ooo, ooo be repre-

sented on these hundred questions, when, if they think

THE GREAT MACHINE 3I

at all, they will all think more or less differently from

each other ? To express fully their many differences,

they ought to have nearly 3,000,000 repl'esentatives;

but we will not ask for perfection; so let us divide

the number by a hundred and say 30,000 representatives

--an arrangement which, if the representatives met and

talked for twenty hours every day in the year, would

give, let us say, something over eight seconds of talking

time for each representative during the course of the

year as regards each of the hundred questions. When

they had each talked their eight or nine seconds, how

much real agreement should you expect to find among

our 30,000 representatives on their hundred questions ?

Place twenty men in a room to discuss one subject;

and how many different opinions will you collect at the

end, if the twenty men are intelligent, and interested in

the subject ? Will you not probably find three or four

groups of opinions, each group representing a more

or less different view ? Now bring the 30,000 repre-

sentatives together, and require them to agree, not on

one subject, but on a hundred important and often

complicated subjects. Remember they must agree--

they have no choice--that necessity of agreement

overrides everything else, for otherwise they cannot act

together; but then comes the question--what is their

agreement--forced upon them by the practical necessity

of acting together as one man--morally worth ? Is

is not a mere form, a mere mockery, a mere illusion ?

They must agree; and they do agree; for the

continuance of the party system, the winning of power,

the subjecting of their rivals--all this depends on their

agreeing; but in what sort of fashion, by what kind

of mental legerdemain, is their agreement reached ? It

can only be reached in one simple way--by a wholesale

32 MR. SPENCER AND

system of self-effacement. The 3o,ooo individuals must

be content on, say, ninety-five per cent. of the hundred

questions, to have no opinions ; or if they have opinions,

to swallow ninety-five per cent. of their opinions at a

gulp, and to play the convenient, if somewhat inglorious

part of cyphers. Yet under our system it is this larger

half of the nation, these 3,ooo,coo voters, who have

undertaken the responsibility of thinking and acting for

the nation, of deciding these hundred questions both for

themselves and for the rest of us; and the only way

of deciding left to them is to efface themselves, and

have no opinions--a rather sad anti-climax, I am afraid,

to some of our everyday rhetoric on the subject of

representative systems. If we look closely we find that

these systems only mean--that if we have no personal

opinions, we can be represented, so far as it is possible

or worth while to represent blank sheets of paper; if we

have personal opinions, we can't be represented. The

question then forces itself upon us, is it a bit of honest

work, is it profitable, is it worth the trouble, to construct

a huge machinery for the purpose of representing

cyphers, who have no opinions; and when we have

constructed our illusory, our make-believe machine,

to go into the market-place, and therefrom deliver

ourselves of speeches about the excellence of our

self-governing system ? Is it right and true to set

up a moral responsibility on the part of those who

profess to govern, that cannot by any possibility be

turned into a reality ; to ask half the nation to sit in the

seat of universal judgement--there to take their part in

what is and must be an only half disguised farce?

Does it not tell us something of the true nature of

power, when we find ourselves obliged to descend

to tricks of this kind in order to possess and to use. it ?

THE GREAT MACHINE 33

Does it mend matters to say that under our system

we choose the best man available, and leave the hundred

questions for him to deal with ? That is only our

old friend, the autocrat, come back once more, with

a democratic polish rubbed over his face to disguise and,

as far as may be, to beautify his appearance. Our

sin consists in the suppression of our own selves and

our own opinions, and in one sense we fall lower than

the slaves of the autocrat, for they are simply sinned

against, but we take an active part in the sin against

ourselves.

And now how does this suppression of ourselves

come about? There must be some powerful motive

acting upon us, to induce us to take our place cheerfully

in such a poor sort of comedy. Men don't suppress

themselves, except to gain something that they much

desire. Let us be frank once more, and confess we are

bribed into this self-suppression by our reckless desire

for power, and our desire to use the power, when gained,

for special interi_sts of our own. The power that we seek

to win is a hard taskmaster as regards its conditions, and

exacts that humiliating price from us. We take our own

bribe for giving up our opinions, and play the part ot

cyphers, and at the same time bribe those others who are

to play their part with us ; we ask no questions of our

conscience, but go on to the political Exchange, and there

with a light heart do the necessary selling and buying.

Now follow a little further this process of self-sup-

pression, this process of making the cyphers. When

you have once required of men to efface themselves and

all the higher part of themselves, in order that they may

act together, then follows that bargaining and juggling

with the groups, of which I have already spoken. The

disinterested opinions--95 per cent. of them, as we

34 MR. SPENCER AND

calculated--have vanished, much in the same fashion as

the 2,ooo,ooo voters vanished; they are .swept off the

board, as things for which no place can be found, but

which are only very much in the way of the real

business in hand ; and only a few leading self-interests

--three or four perhaps--still remain. Now you may

bind unbought men together, in the one and true way,

by their opinions; but when they have no opinions

you must find a cement of a coarser and more material

kind. Having once turned men into cyphers, nothing

remains but to treat them as cyphers. The great trick

--the winning o'f power--requires cyphers, and can't be

played in any other fashion. Having once turned men

into cyphers, you must appeal to them as good loyal

party followers; or you must appeal to them as likely

to get more from you than from any other buyer in

the market: you can't appeal to them--except in the

imaginative moments when you are treading the flowery

paths of rhetoric--as men, possessed of conscience, and

will, and responsibility, for in that case they might once

more regain possession of their suppressed consciences

and their higher faculties, and begin to think and judge

for themselves--a result that would have very incon-

venient consequences; for then they would no longer

agree to have one opinion on the hundred subjects;

they would divide and scatter themselves in all sorts of

directions; they would be a source of infinite trouble

and vexation to the distracted party-managers; they

would no longer be of use as fighting material ; and the

well-disciplined army would dissolve into an infinite

number of separate and divergent fragments. No! as

long as party faces party, and the great struggle for

power goes on, the rank and file, however intelligent,

however well-educated, must be content to think with

THE GREAT MACHINE 35

the party. They can't think for themselves, for if they

did they would think differently; and if they thought

differently, they could not act together ; so they must be

content to be just war-material, very like the masses of

conscripts which foreign governments occasionally

employ to hurl against each other. If they were any-

thing else, it would be a very poor fighting show that

our political parties would make on their battle-field.

The great struggle for power would die out, would

come naturally to its end, when the suppression of self

and the making of the cyphers had ceased to be.

It is well to notice here that in some other countries

you have not two political parties of the same definite

character as with us, but a large number of groups.

The fact of the groups very slightly affects the situation.

Under every system the vices that go with the seeking

for power return in pretty nearly the same form. The

groups can't form a majority, and obtain power, unless

they amalgamate, which means that each group has its

market price, makes the best bargain that it can for

itself, and for the sake of that bargain consents to act

with, and so to increase the strength and influence of

those with whom it may be in strong disagreement. Of

course hopeless moral confusion arises from this

temporary amalgamation of the odds and evens, and

separate, unlike pieces, from this making of a common

cause by those who mean different things, and are

almost as much opposed to each other as they are to

the common enemy, to whom for the moment they are

oppose d. Under no circumstances can we afford to

depart from the great principle that we must never

abandon our own personality, that we must only strive

for the ends in which we ourselves believe, and never

consent to enter into combinations, in which we either

36 MR. SPENCER AND

are used against our convictions, or use others against

their convictions. Whenever we descend to 'log

rolling '--your services to pay for my services--we are

lost in a sea of intrigue and corruption, and all true

guidance disappears. There is no true guidance forany

of us, except in our own best and highest selves, in our

own personal sense of what is true and right. When

that goes, there is little, if anything, worth the saving.

And now, passing by many incidents in the working

of t.he great machine, that is so largely indulgent to our

fighting and bargaining propensities, I come to what

seems to me the very heart of Mr. Spencer's social and

political teaching. It is not often given to a man to sum

up in three words a great truth, that is fated sooner or

later to revolutionize the thought and action of all

nations; and yet that is, I think, what Mr. Spencer

happily achieved. The three words were--' progress is

difference'--that is, if you or I are to think more

clearly, or to act more efficiently and more rightly than

those who have preceded us, it can only be because at

some point we leave the path which they followed, and

enter a new path of our own--in other words, we must

have the temper and courage to differ from accepted

standards of thought and perception and action. If we

are to improve in any direction, we must not be bound

up with each other in inseparable bundles, we must

have the power in ourselves to find and to take the new

path of our own. Is not every improvement of

machinery and method, every gain made in science and

art, every choosing of the truer road and turning away

from the false road that we have hitherto trodden--does

it not all arise from those differences of thought and

perception which, so long as freedom exists, even in its

present imperfect forms, are from time to time born

THE GREAT MACHINE 37

amongst us? Whenever men become merely copies

and echoes of each other, when they act and think

according to fixed and sealed pattern, is not all growth

arrested, all bettering of the world made difficult, if not

impossible ? What hope of real progress, when differ-

ence has almost ceased to exist ; when men think in the

same fashion as a regiment marches ; and no mindefeels

the life-giving stimulating impulse which the varying

competing thoughts of others brings with it? Do we

not see in some parts of the East, when men are bound

rigidly together under one system of thought, how

difficult, how painful, the next upward step becomes;

and when the change comes, how dissolvent and

destructive it tends to be? Do we not see the same

thing in Churches and States nearer home--the more

that minds are uniformly subjected to one system, the

more difficult becomes the adaptation of the old to the

new, the more violent revolutionary and catastrophic

the change when it takes place ? Safety only lies in the

constant differences which many living minds, looking

from their own standpoint, in turn contribute. All

unity, that exists by means .of social or artificial restraint

of differences, is slowly but inevitably moving towards

its own destruction--a destruction that must finally

involve much pain and confusion and disorder, because

change and adaptation have been so long resisted.

Now if we accept this simple but most far-reaching

truth--' progress is difference '--as I think we must

do--let us frankly and loyally accept it with all the

great consequences which follow from it. If progress

is the child of difference, then it is for us to let our

social and political systems favour difference to the

fullest extent possible. At no point must we imprison

minds under those fighting systems, which'always

38 MR. SPENCER AND

restrain thought and tavour mechanical discipline--

fighting is one thing and thinking is another; at no

point must we stereotype action, preventing its natural

and healthy divergence; at no point throw difficulties

in the way of effort and experiment; at no point

de-individualize men by making them dull repetitions

of each other, soulless, automatic cyphers, lost, helpless

in their crowd; but everywhere we must allow the

natural rewards and inducements and motives to act

upon free self-guiding men and women, encouraging

them to feel that the work of improvement, the work

of world-bettering, the achieving of progress, lies in

their own hands, as individuals, and that, if they wish

to share in this great common work, they must strive

individually to live at their best. Throughout the

whole nation, we must let every man and woman,

instead of looking to their parties and parliaments and

governments, feel the full strength of the inspiring

inducement to do something in their own individual

capacities and to join with others in doing something--

the smallest or the greatest thing--better than it has

yet been done, and so make their own contribution to

the great fund of general good. Only so can the

far-reaching powers, which lie in human nature, but

which, like the talent, are so often wrapped in the

napkin, hidden and unused, find their full scope and

development; only so can our aims and ambitions be

ennobled and purified ; only so can the true respect for

the individuality of others soften the strife of opinions,

and the intolerant spirit in which we so often look

upon all that is opposed to and different from ourselves.

As we recognize and respect the individuality both of

ourselves and others; as we realize that the bettering

of the world depends upon our individual actions and

THE GREAT MACHINE 39

perceptions; that this bettering can only be done by

ourselves, acting together in free combination; that it

depends upon the efforts of countless individuals, as

the rain-drops make the streams, and the streams make

the rivers, that it cannot be done for us by proxy,

cannot be relegated, in our present indolent fashion, to

systems of machinery, or handed over to an army of

autocratic officials to do for us; and as we realize that

we shall have failed in our part, have lived almost in

vain, if in some direction, in some department of

thought or action--whatever it may be--we have not

individually striven to make the better take the place of

the good; life will become for all of us a better and

nobler thing, with more definite aims, and greater

incentives to useful action. The work that we do will

react on ourselves; and we shall react on the work.

Each victory gained, each new thing well done will

make the men, the fighters for progress; and as

the fighters are raised to a higher capacity, the progress

made will advance with bolder, swifter strides, invading

in turn every highway and by-way of life. But this

healthy reaction cannot be as long as we live under

the depressing and dispiriting influence of the great

machines, that take the work out of our hands, and

encourage in us all a sense of personal uselessness.

The appeal must be straight and direct to the in-

dividuals, to their own self-direction, their own self-

sacrifice, to their own efforts in free unregulated

combinations, their own willing gifts and services.

It is in vain that you will ask for the progress, that

is born in the conflict of _ompeting thoughts and

perceptions, from the great official departments, into

whose hands you now so complacently resign yourself.

They are incapacitated as instruments of progress by

4o MR. SPENCER AND

the law of theirown being. Whenever you actand

thinkwholesale,and in authoritativefashionforothers,

you become toa certainextentlimitedand incapacitated

in your own nature. That mental penaltyfor ever

dogs the possessionof power. You losesightof the

greatand vitalends,and allow the smallthingsto

change placeswith the all-importantthings.You are

no more in touchwith thelivingforcesthatmake for

progress.Why ? Are the reasonsfarto seek? The

body ofofficials--howevergoodand honourableinthem-

selves--forma caste,thatadministerstheadministered,

and does not reallyshare in the actuallifeof the

nation; thechiefs,intentupon thehuge machine,which

theydirectfrombehindtheirofficewindows ; thelarge

body,dutifullyfollowingtheirtraditions,and clinging

totheirprecedents.They arecutofffrom allthegreat

inspirations,for the greatinspirationsare only likely

tocome tothosewho shareinthe activethrobbinglife

thatisnot found in any one part,but in thewhole,of

a freenation,and thatexists,as we have seen,as the

sum of countlessdifferingcontributions.The best

inspirations_onlyreadilycome to thosewho liveopen

to allinfluences,who arenot narrowedand limitedby

thatsense of slightlycontemptuoussuperiority,which

we all--however excellent we may be--are apt to feel

when we are treating others as passive material under

our hands. I doubt if you can ever impose your own

will by means of force on others, without acquiring in

yourself something of this superior scorn. But this

scorn is fatal to the great inspirations, for they are only

born in us when we are in truest personal sympathy

with the upward movement, whatever it may be, when

we ourselves are part of it, when we are thinking and

feeling freely, and are surrounded by those thinking

THE GREAT MACHINE 4t

and feeling like ourselves, for in real free life we are for

ever giving and receiving, absorbing and radiating.

There and there only do you get the true soil-bed of

progress. Nor, if our official classes were willing to

be helped by the thought of others, is it possible.

Under their authoritative systems they have made the

people helpless, apathetic, indifferent; and so have to

carry the great burden of thinking for a nation on their

own shoulders alone. Few people really think or

perceive, who can give no practical effect to their

thoughts and perceptions; and so it is that we see

administered nations grow first indifferent, and then

revolutionary. It is thus, in this vicious circle, that

bureaucracy ever works. Our bureaucrats, with their

universal systems, paralyse and benumb the best

thought and energies of the nation; and then them-

selves are mentally starved in the dead-alive condition

of things that they have created. Then again our official

classes are not only, like the autocrat, controlled and

disabled by their own machinery, but they fall--who

could help it ?--under the drowsy influence of the ever

revolving wheels. The habit of doing the one thing

in the same fixed way depresses the brighter faculties,

and the vis inerliae becomes the paramount force. The

machinery, on which everything depends, takes the

first place; its moral and spiritual effect upon the

people take the second or third place, or no place at

all. Thus it is that every huge administrative system

tends to that barren uniformity which is a kind of

intellectual death, and from which that essential element

of progress--experiment, is necessarily absent. When

you have constructed a universal system, embracing

the whole nation, you can't _xperiment. The thousands

of wheels must all follow each other in the same track

42 MR. SPENCER AND

with undeviating uniformity. Even if your official

feelings would allow of such an unorthodox proceeding,

it is mechanically very difficult to interfere with the

regularity and precision that make the working of

universal systems possible. And so it happens that not

only is a man with new ideas a real terror inside the

walls of a great department, but that there are two

phases that succeed each other in turn in the life of

these departments. There is the period of somnolence,

the mechanical repetition of what had been said and

done in past years, the same sending out of the old

time-honoured forms, the same pigeon-holing of the

answers, the same holding of inspections, the same

administering of the nation by the junior clerks; and

with it all, complete insensibility as to what influence

the system as a whole is exercising on the soul of the

people. The daily thought and care of a good official

begins and ends with taking precautions that the

system, as a system, is working smoothly and without

friction. As to what the system is in itself, it is not his

province to think, and he very rarely does think. He

did not create it; he is not directly responsible for it--as

a rule nobody knows who is responsible for it--his

work is simply to make the countless wheels duly

follow each other with regularity and precision. That

somnolent period, however, only lasts for a time;

presently comes the revolutionary period of remorse-

lessly pulling down and then building up in haste--

a period in which the department suddenly awakes

from its sleep--aroused perhaps by some external

impulse, perhaps by the truer perceptions, or perhaps

by the wayward fancies of some Minister, fresh to

office, who longs to inaugurate his own little revolution.

Then the sleepers become changed into reformers;

THE GREAT MACHINE 43

and suddenly we are authoritatively assured that we

have been following altogether wrong methods, that

the old system, under which serious evils have been

growing up, must be at once transformed into some-

thing of a new and very different order. The nation,

dully and dimly aware that things are not as they

should be, smiles approvingly, and through its press,

faintly applauds ; and the plant, perhaps of some twenty

years' growth, is straightway torn up by the roots--a

fate which after a few years will be again shared by

the new thing that now takes its place. It is not the

fault of the officials. If you or I were in their place

we should be just as somnolent, and just as revolu-

tionary. The fault lies in the great system itself; and

few of us could resist the spell that it exercises. The

truth is that you can no more administer a whole nation

than you can represent it. You cannot deal with

human nature wholesale ; you cannot throw it higgledy

piggledy into one common lot, and let half a dozen

men, no better or worse than ourselves, take charge

of it. No universal system is a living thing: they all

tend to become mere machines--machines of a rather

perverse kind, that have incurable tricks of going their

own way. We are apt to think that our machines

dutifully serve and obey us; but in large measure we

serve and obey them. They too have souls of their

own, and command as well as obey. Unfortunately for

us, progress and improvement are not amongst the

things that great machines are able to supply at

demand. Their soul lies in mechanical repetition,

not in difference; whilst progress requires not only

faeulties in the highest state of vital activity, but I might

almost say continual, mental dissatisfaction with what

has been already achieved, and continual preparedness

44 MR. SPENCER AND

to invade new territory and attempt new victories.

Progress depends upon a great number of small

changes and adaptations and experiments, constantly

taking place--each carried out by those who have

strong beliefs and clear perceptions of their own in the

matter; for the only true experimenter is he who finds

and follows his own way, and is free to try his

experiment from day to day. But this true experi-

mentation is impossible under universal systems. An

experiment can only be tried on a small scale by those

who are the clearer-sighted amongst us, and are aiming

at some particular end, and when those who are

affected by it are willing to take the risk. You can't

rightly experiment with a whole nation; and the

consequence is that the sin and mistakes of every

universal system go on silently accumulating, until the

time comes for the next periodical tearing up by the

roots of what exists comes due, and once more we

start afresh.

And now there are still many other points on which

I must not touch to-day. There is that great subject

of excessive public expenditure in all countries, which

is like a tide which flows and flows and hardly ever

ebbs. A few years ago when some of us began to

preach voluntary taxation, as the only effectual means

of recovering the gradually disappearing independence

of the individual, and of placing governments in their

true position of agents, and not, as they are to.day, of

autocrats and masters of the nation, and as the plainest

and most direct means of making the recognition of the

principle of individual liberty supreme in our national

life, I found most of my friends quite content to be used

as tax-material, even though the sums of money taken

from them were employed against their own beliefs and

THE GREAT MACHINE 45

interests. They had lived so long under the system

of using others, and then in their turn being used

by them, that they were like hypnotized subjects, and

looked on this subjecting and using of each other as

a part of the necessary and even Providential order

of things. The great machine had taken possession

of their souls ; and they only yawned and looked bored,

or slightly scornful at any idea of rebelling against

it. In vain we drew the picture of the nobler, happier,

safer life of the nation, when men of all conditions

voluntarily combined to undertake the great services,

class co-operating with class, each bound to the other

by new ties of friendship and kindliness, with all its

different groups learning to discover their own special

wants, to follow their own methods, and make their own

experiments. In that way only, as we urged, could we

replace the present dangerous and mischief-making

strife with blessed fruitful peace, create a happier,

better, nobler spirit amongst us all, destroy the old

traffic and bargaining of the political market, destroy

the fatal belief that one class might rightly prey upon

another class, and that all property finally belonged

to those who could collect the greater number of votes

at the polls. That belief in the omnipotent vote, as

we urged, was striking its roots deeper every year--it

was the certain, the inevitable result of our party

fighting for the possession of power. So long as the

vote carried with it the unlimited undefined power

of the majority, the giving away of property must

always remain as the easiest means of purchasing the

owners of the vote ; and that belief in the final owner-

ship of property being vested in the voter we could only

fight, not by resisting here or there, not by denouncing

this or that bit of excessive and wasteful expenditure,

46 MR. SPENCER AND

but by challenging the rightfulness and good sense

of the whole system, by pointing to a truer, nobler,

social life, and by resolutely standing on the plain broad

principle of individual' control over ourselves and our

own property. It was in friendly voluntary co-operation,

as free men and women, for all public wants and

services; in taking each other's hands, in sharing our

efforts, it was by destroying the belief in power, the

belief in 'pooling' property and faculties, the belief

in the false right of some men to hold other men in

subjection, and to use them as their material ; in building

up the belief in the true rights, the rights of self-owner-

ship and self-guidance, apart from which everything

tends to the confusion and corruption of public life--

it was only so that we could ward off the coming danger

and the inevitable strife. These great national services,

that we had so lightly flung into the hands of our

officials, were the true means of creating that higher

and better national life, with its friendly inter-depen-

dence, its need of each other, its respect for each other,

which was worth over and over" again all the political

gifts and compulsions--though you piled them up in

a heap as high as Pelion thrown on the top of Ossa. It

was only so that the nation would find its true peace

and happiness, and that the smouldering dread and

hatred of each other could die out. The years have

passed ; and I think a change of mood has silently come

over many persons. I find that some of those who

once clung to compulsion as the saving social bond,

as the natural expression of national life, are willing

to-day to consider whether some better and truer and

safer principle may not be found; are willing to

consider, as a practical question, if some limit should

not be placed on the power to take and to spend in

THE GREAT MACHINE 47

unmeasured quantity the money of others. Our friend

the Socialist has done, and is doing for us his excellent

and instructive work. He stands as a very striking--

I might say eloquent landmark, showing us plainly

enough where our present path leads, and what is

the logical completion of our compulsory interferences,

our restrictions of faculties, and our transfer of property

by the easy--shall I say by the laughable and grotesque

--process of the vote ? Into our present system, which

so many men accept without thinking of its real

meaning, and its further consequences, he introduces

an order, a consistency, a completeness of his own.

His logic is irresistible. If you can vote away half the

yearly value of property under the form of a rate, as

we do in some towns at present, then under the same

convenient and elastic right you can vote away the nine-

tenths or the whole. ' Only logic' perhaps you lightly

answer--but remember, unless you change the direction

of the forces, logic always tends to come out victorious in

the end. Let us then take the bolder, the truer, the

more manful course. If we believe in property, as

a right and just thing, if, as the product of faculties, we

believe it to be inseparably connected with the free

use of faculties, and therefore inseparably connected

with freedom itself; if we believe that it is a mere bit of

word-mockery to tell us--as our Socialist friends do--

that they are presenting the world with the newest, the

most perfect, the most up-to-date form of liberty, whilst

from their heights of scorn for liberty they calmly deny

to every man and woman the right to employ their

faculties in their own way and for their own advantages,

offering us in return a system beyond all words petty

and irritating, a system that would provoke rebellion

even in the nursery, and which, as a clever French

48 MR. SPENCER AND

writerwittilyremarked,would periodicallyconvulse

theState--withthe ever-recurringinsolublequestion--

might or might not a wife mend the trousersof her

husband; ifwe believethatthe Socialist,treading

inthefootstepsofhispredecessor,theautocrat,hasonly

discoveredone more impossiblesystemof slavery,then

letus individuallydo our besttoend thegreatdelusion

--thathas given birthto the Socialist,and made him

the power thathe isto-dayin Europe--thatproperty

belongs,nottotheproperty-owner,buttothosewho are

good enough to take the troubleto vote. Don't let

us playany longerwith thesedangerousforces,which,

iftheywin,willfora timewholly change the course

of human civilisation; and above alldon'tletus putit

inthepower ofthevotertoturnround some futureday

and saytous-' As longas itservedyour interestsand

ambitions,you acknowledged the supremacy of the

vote;you acknowledgedthisrightof takingproperty

from each other. You taught us, you sanctioned,

through many years,the principleof unlimitedpower,

vestedin some men over othermen. Is itnot now

a littlelateinthe day foryou suddenlyto cry 'halt'

inthepathalongwhichyou haveso longledus,because

you see new interestsand ambitionstakingtheirplace

by the side of your own discreditedinterestsand

ambitions,whichareno longerableto satisfythe heart

of the nation? Iftheoldgame was good enough and

rightenough inyourhands,when you were ourleaders,

so isthe new game rightand good enough in our

hands, now that it is our turn to lead.' What true, what

sufficient answer would there remain for us to make?

Were it not better to repent of our past sins to-day,

whilst there is yet time and opportunity to do something

to repair them ? If we are only to begin to quarrel

THE GREAT MACHINE 49

with power and its consequences when we find that it

has already slipped away from our hands, shall we not be

too much like the grey-haired sinner who turns saint

in that sad period when the pleasures of life have already

ceased to exist for him ? Better to repent whilst there

is still something to sacrifice and renounce ; and we can

still give some proof that our repentance is the child of

real conviction.

Let us try to clear our thoughts, and know our own

minds in this great matter. Do we or do we not mean

to consent to that final act in the long drama which is

euphemistically called ' the nationalizing of property' ?

If we do not mean to consent to that last crowning act

of the process of voting away the property of each

other, then it is not only an unworthy weakness on our

part, but a cruel wrong to encourage by our words and

actions in the mass of the people a belief, which some

day, when it grows to its full strength and height, we

shall scornfully--whatever our scorn may then avail--

disown and reject, forgetting with our changed attitude

how we once planted that belief in their hearts, used it.

and played with it for the sake of our ambition and our

desire to possess power. When the great bitter strife

comes--as it must come--shall we not be constrained

with shame to accuse ourselves, and to acknowledge

our misleading of the people, our responsibility in the

past for the infinite calamities we have brought both

upon them and upon ourselves. Do not let us wait for

that future so fraught with evil, which our own careless-

ness of thought, our disregard of the great principles,

our love of the wildly exciting political game, and our

subservience to party interests are preparing for us.

The hours of the day are not yet spent. The temper of

our people is a noble generous temper, if you appeal to

5° MR. SPENCER AND

it in the true way, appealingfor right'ssake,for

principle'ssake,notmerelyforthesakeofclassorpart)-

or personalinterests,not merely forthe sake of the

many pleasantthingsthatbelongto thepossessionof

property.Let us make some sacrificeof our political

ambitions,and take our standon the truest,highest

ground. Our task is to make itclearto the whole

nationthata greatprinciple,thatwhichinvolvesthefree

use of faculties, the independence of every life, the self-

guidance and self-ownership, the very manhood of all of

us, that commands and constrains us to preserve the

inviolability of property for all its owners--whoever

they may be. The inviolability of property is not

simply the material interest of one class who happen

to-day to possess it, it is the supreme interest of all

classes. True material prosperity can only be won by

the great body of the nation through the widest

measure of liberty--not the half-and-half, not the mock

system, that exists at present. Create the largest and

most generous system of liberty, create--as you will do

with it--the vital energizing spirit of liberty, and in

a few short years the working classes would cease to be

the propertyless class; would become with their great

natural qualities the largest property-owner in the

country. But this can only be, as they set themselves

in earnest to make property instead of taking it, and to

put the irresistible pence and shillings together for the

carrying out of all the great services. This in truth

was the splendid campaign on which he had entered,

when the politician, sometimes hungering to play the

important part, and to exalt his small restless self, some-

times misled by nobler dreams, drew his deluding

herring across the path, and pointed to the easier down-

hill way of the common fund and the all-powerful vote.

THE GREAT MACHINE 5r

It is the politician with his cheap liberality and his

giving away of what does not belong to him, who per-

petuates the depressed and unprogressive condition of

a large part of the people; he is only too much like

those who nurse poverty by their careless and mis-

placed charity. He stands in the way of the true efforts

of the people, of their friendly co-operation, their

discovery of all that they could achieve for their own

happiness and prosperity, if they acted together in their

free self-helping groups. Let us never forget the

power of the accumulated pence. If we could per-

suade a million men and women to lay aside one half-

penny a week, at the end of a year they would have

over _xoo, ooo to invest in farms, houses, recreation

grounds, in all that they felt they most needed. With

the acquisition of property would come many of the

helpful and useful qualities--the self-confidence, the

faculty of working together, and of managing property,

and the proud inspiring ambition to remake in peaceful

ways, unstained by any kind of violence, and therefore

challenging and encountering no opposing forces, the

whole condition of society, as it exists to-day. Such is

the goal to which we, who disbelieve in force, must ever

point the way. It is for us to show that everything can

be gained by voluntary effort and combination, and

nothing can be permanently and securely gained by

force. In every form, where men hold men in sub-

jection to themselves, force is always organized against

itself, is always tending sooner or later to destroy itself.

Autocrat, restless politician, or Socialist, they are all

only labourers in vain. There is a moral gravitation

that in its own time drags all their work remorsely to

the ground. Everywhere, across that work, failure is

written large. There are many reasons. In the first

52 MR. SPENCER AND

place, force begets force, and dies by the hand oi its

own offspring; then those who use force never act long

together, for the force-temper leads them to turn their

hand against each other; then the continued use of

force, as is natural, develops a superhuman stupidity,

a failure to see the real meaning and drift of things, in

thos who use it ; but greatest of all reasons, the soul of

man is made for freedom, and only in freedom finds its

true life and development. So long as we suppress

that true life of the soul, so long as we deny to it the

full measure of its freedom, we shall continue to strive

and to quarrel and to hate, and to waste our efforts, as

we have done through so many countless years, and

shall never enter the fruitful path of peace and friend-

ship that waits for us. Once show the people, make it

clear to their heart and understanding, that it is liberty

alone that can lead us into this blessed path of peace

and friendship ; that it alone can still the strife and the

hatreds; that it alone is the instrument of progress of

every kind; that it alone in any true sense can make

and hold together and preserve a nation--which, if it

rejects liberty, must in the end tear itself to pieces in

the great hopeless aimless strife--once show them this

supreme truth, feeling it yourself in the very depths of

your heart, and so speak to themmand then you wilt

find, as you touch the nobler, more generous part of

their nature, that gradually, under the influence of the

truer teaching, they will learn to throw aside the false

bribes and mischievous attractions of power, and to turn

away in disgust from that mad destructive game in

which they and we alike have allowed ourselves for

a time to be entangled. It is not the Socialist party, it

is not any of the Labour parties who have done the

most to lead astray the people, and to teach them to

THE GREAT MACHINE 53

believe that political power is the rightful instrument for

securing all that their heart desires. These extreme

parties have simply trodden more boldly the path in

which we went before them. They have only been the

pupils--the too apt pupils--in our school, who have

bettered our own teaching. It is we, the richer classes,

who in our love of power, our desire to win the great

game, have done the great wrong, have misled and

corrupted the people; and the fault and the blame and

the shame will rest in the largest measure with us,

when the evil fruit grows from the seed that we so

recklessly planted. When the chickens come home to

roost, we shall only have to say, as so many have said

before us--tu f as voulu, Georges Dandin. Let us then,

who have made the great mistake, let us try to redeem

it; let us show the people that there is a nobler, happier

form of life than to live as two scrambling, quarrelling

crowds, mad for their own immediate interests, void of

all scruple or restraint. Let us shake ourselves free

from this miserable party fighting; let us speak only in

the name of the great rights, the great all-guiding, ever-

enduring principles; let us oppose the power of some

men over other men, as a thing that is in itself morally

untrue, untrue from every higher point of view, that is

lise-ma]estg as regards all the best and noblest con-

eeptions of what we are--beings gifted with free

responsible souls--as the source of hopeless confusion

and scramble and injustice; and let us steadfastly set

our faces towards the one great ideal of making a nation,

in which all men and women will love their own liberty

--without which life is as salt that has lost its savour,

and is only fit to be east away--as deeply as they

respect and seek to preserve the liberty of others.

A few words to prevent a possible misunderstanding.

54 MR. SPENCER AND

I have not been preaching any form of Anarchy, which

seems to me--even in its most peaceful and reasonable

forms--quite apart from the detestable bomb--merely

one more creed of force (I am not referring here to

such a form of Anarchy--passive resistance under all

circumstances--as Tolstoy preaches, into the consider-

ation of which I cannot enter to-day). Anarchy is a

creed, which, as I believe, we can never rightly class

among the creeds of liberty. Only in condemning

Anarchy we shall do well to remember that, like Social-

ism, it is the direct product, the true child of those

systems of government that have taught men to believe

that they may rightly found their relations to each_other

on the employment of force. Both the Anarchist and

the Socialist find some measure of justification in the

practice and teaching of all our modern governments,

for if force is a right thing in itself, then it becomes

merely a secondary question--on which we may all

differ--as to the quantity and quality of it to be em-

ployed, the purposes for which we may use it, or in

what hands the employment of it should be placed.

There is, there can be, nothing sacred in the division of

ourselves into majorities and minorities. You may think

right to take only half a man's property from him by

force ; I may prefer to take the whole. You may think

right to entrust the use of force to every three men out

of five ; I may prefer to entrust it--as the Anarchist

does--to each one of the five separately; or as some

Russians and some Germans do, to the autocrat or half-

autocrat, and his all-embracing bureaucracy. Who

shall decide between us ? There is no moral tribunal

before which you can summon unlimited power, for it

acknowledges, as we have seen, nothing higher than

itself; if it did acknowledge any moral law above itself,

THE GREAT MACHINE 55

its wings would be clipped, and its nature changed, and

it would no longer be unlimited.

Now glance for a moment at the true character of

Anarchy, and see why we must refuse to class it among

the creeds of liberty, though many of the reasonable

Anarchists are inspired, as I believe, by a real love of

liberty. Under Anarchy, if there were 5,000,000 men

and women in a country, there would be 5,000,000 little

governments, each acting in its own case as council,

witness, judge, and executioner. That would be simply

a carnival, a pandemonium of force; and hardly an

improvement even upon our power-loving, force-using

governments. Force, as I believe, with Mr. Spencer,

must rest, not in the hands of the individual, but in the

hands of a government--not to be, as at present, an

instrument of subjecting the two men to the three men,

not to be exalted into the supreme thing, lifted up above

the will and conscience of the individual, judging all

things in the light of its own interests, but strictly as the

agent, the humble servant of universal liberty, with its

simple" duties plainly, definitely, distinctly marked out

for it. Our great purpose is to get rid of force, to

banish it wholly from our dealings with each other, to

give it notice to quit from this changed world of ours,

but as long as some men--like Bill Sykes and all his

tribe--are willing to make use of it for their own ends,

or to make use of fraud, which is only force in disguise,

wearing a mask, and evading our consent, just as force

with violence openly disregards it--so long we must use

.force 1o restrain force. That is the one and only one

rightful employment of force--force in the defence of

the plain simple rights of liberty, of the exercise of

faculties, and therefore of the rights of property, public

or private, in a word of all the rights of self.ownership

56 THE GREAT MACHINE

--force used defensively against force used aggressively.

The only true use of force is for the destruction, the

annihilation of itself, to rid the world of its own mischief-

making existence. Even when used defensively, it still

remains an evil, only to be tolerated in order to get rid

of the greater evil. It is the one thing in the world to be

bound down with chains, to be treated as a slave, and

only as a slave, that must always act under command of

something better and higher than itself. Wherever and

whenever we use it, we must surround it with the most

stringent limits, looking on it, as we should look on a

wild and dangerous beast, to which we deny all will and

free movement of its own. It is one of the few things

in our world to which liberty must be for ever denied.

Within those limits the force, that keeps a clear and

open field for every effort and enterprise of human

activity--that are in themselves untainted by force and

fraud--such force is in our present world a necessary

and useful servant, like the fire which burns in the

fireplaces of our rooms and the ranges of our kitchen ;

force, which once it passes beyond that purely defensive

office, becomes our worst, our most dangerous enemy,

like the fire which escapes from our fireplaces and takes

its own wild course. If then we are wise and clear-

seeing, we shall keep the fire in the fireplace, and never

allow it to pass away from our control.

A PLEA FOR VOLUNTARYISM

WE, who call ourselves Voluntaryists, appeal to you

to free yourselves from these many systems of State

force, which are rendering impossible the true and the

happy life of the nations of to-day. This ceaseless

effort to compel each other, in turn for each new object

that is clamoured for by this or that set of politicians,

this ceaseless effort to bind chains round the hands of

each other, is preventing progress of the real kind, is

preventing peace and friendship and brotherhood, and

is turning the men of the same nation, who ought to

labour happily together for common ends, in their own

groups, in their own free unfettered fashion, into

enemies, who live conspiring against and dreading,

often hating each other.

Look at the picture that you may see to-day in every

country of Europe. Nations divided into two or three

parties, which are again divided into several groups,

facing each other like hostile armies, each party intent

on humbling and conquering its rivals, on treading

them under their feet, as a conquering nation crushes

and tramples on the nation it has conquered. What

good, what happiness, what permanent progress of the

true kind can come out of that unnatural, denational-

izing, miserable warfare ? Why should you desire to

compel others; why should you seek to have power--

that evil, bitter, mocking thing, which has been from of

old, as it is to-day, the sorrow and curse of the wodd--

58 A PLEA FOR VOLUNTARYISM

over your fellow men and fellow women ? Why should

you desire to take from any man or woman their

own will and intelligence, their free choice, their own

self-guidance, their inalienable rights over themselves;

why should you desire to make of them mere tools and

instruments for your own advantage and interest ; why

should you desire to compel them to serve and follow

your opinions instead of their own; why should you

deny in them the soul--that suffers so deeply from all

constraint--and treat them as a sheet of blank paper

upon which you may write your own will and desires,

of whatever kind they may happen to be ? Who gave

you the right, from where do you pretend to have

received it, to degrade other men and women from

their own true rank as human beings, taking from them

their will, their conscience, and intelligence--in a word,

all the best and highest part of their nature--turning

them into mere empty worthless shells, mere shadows

of the true man and woman, mere counters in the game

you are mad enough to play; and just because you are

more numerous or stronger than they, to treat them as

if they belonged not to themselves, but to you ? Can

you believe that good will ever come by morally and

spiritually degrading your fellow men ? What happy

and safe and permanent form of society can you hope

to build on this pitiful plan of subjecting others, or

being yourselves subjected by them ?

We show you the better way. We ask you to

renounce this old, weary, hopeless way of force, ever

tear-stained and blood-stained, which has gone on so

long under Emperors and autocrats and governing

classes, and still goes on toMay amongst those who, whilst

they condemn Emperors and autocrats, continue to

walk in their footsteps, and understand and love liberty

A PLEA FOR VOLUNTARYISM 59

very little more than those old rulers of an old world.

We bid you ask yourselves--' What is all our boasted

civilization and gain in knowledge worth to us, if we

are still, like those who had not attained to our civili-

zation and knowledge, to hunger for power, still to

cling to the ways of strife and bitterness and hatred,

still to oppress each other as in the days of the old

rulers?' Don't be deceived by mere words and phrases.

Don't think that everything was gained when you got

rid of autocrat and emperor. Don't think that a change

in the mere form--without change in the spirit of men

--can really alter anything, or make a new world.

A voting majority, that still believes in force, that still

believes in crushing and ruling a minority, can be just

as tyrannous, as selfish and blind, as any of the old

rulers. Happy the nation that escapes from autocrat,

from emperor, and from its bureaucratic tyrants; but

that is only the beginning of the new good life; that

counts only for the first steps in the true path. When

that is done, the true goal has still to be won, the great

lesson still remains to be learnt. The old curse, the

old sorrow, did not simply lie in the heart of autocrat

and emperor; it lay in the common desire of men to

rule and possess for their own advantage the minds

and bodies of each other. It is that fatal, deluding

desire which even yet to-day prevents our realizing the

true and happy life. As a writer has well saidmmany

nations have been powerful, but has any one of them

found the true life--as yet ? It is this vainest of all vain

desires that we have to renounce, trample upon, cast

clean out of our hearts, if we are to win the better

things. We have to learn that our systems of force

destroy all the great human hopes and possibilities;

that as long as we believe in force there can be no

60 A PLEA FOR VOLUNTARYISM

abiding peace or friendship between us all ; that a half

disguised civil war will for ever smoulder in our midst ;

that each half of the nation must live, as it were, sword

in hand, ever watching the other half, and given up, as

we said, to suspicion and dread and hatred, knowing

that, if once defeated in the great contest, its own

deepest beliefs and interests will be roughly set aside

and trampled on, that it must accept the hard lot of

the conquered, kneeling down in the dust and sub-

mitting to whatever its opponents choose to decree for

it; that it will have no rights of its own ; no rights over

its own life, over its own actions and property; no

share in the common country, no share in the guidance

of its fortunes ; no voice in the laws passed ; it will be

a mere helpless crowd, defranchized, and decitizenized,

a degraded and subject race, bound to do the hard

bidding of its conquerors. Can you for a single

moment believe that the subjecting of others in this

conqueror's and conquered fashion is the true end of

our existence here, the true fulfilling of man's nature,

with all its great gifts and hopes and aspirations ?

And are the conquerors in the great conflict better

off--if we try to see clearly--than the conquere d ? We

can only answer--No; for power is one of the worst,

the most fatal and demoralizing of all gifts you can

place in the hands of men. He who has power--power

only limited by his own desires--misunderstands both

himself and the world in which he lives; he'sees

through a glass darkly, which dims and perverts his

whole vision; he magnifies and exalts his own little

self; he fondly imagines he may follow the lusts of his

heart wherever they lead him ; and disowns the control

of the great principles, that stand for ever above us

all, and refuses, alike to the autocrat and the voting

A PLEA FOR VOLUNTARYISM 61

majority, the rule and the subjecting of the lives of

others. If we feel shame and sorrow for those who are

subjected, we may feel yet more shame and sorrow for

the blind, self-deceiving instruments ot their subjection.

They in their pride sink to a lower depth than those

whom they subject. Better it were to be amongst

those who wear the chain than amongst those who

bind it on the hands of other men. For those who

suffer in subjection there is some hope, some glimmer-

ing of light, some teachings that come from the

passionate desire for the liberty denied to them; but

for those who cling to and believe in possessing power

there is only darkness of soul, where no light enters,

until at last, through a long bitter experience, they learn

how that for which they sacrificed so much has only

turned to their own deepest injury. See how power

hardens and brutalizes all of us. It not only makes

us selfish, unscrupulous, and intriguing, scornful and

intolerant, corrupt in our motives, but it veils our eyes

and takes from us the gift of seeing and understanding.

Power and stupidity are for ever wedded together.

Cunning there may be ; but it is a cunning that in the

end tricks and deceives itself. Power for ever tends

not only to develop in us the knave, but also to develop

the fool. If you wish to know how power spoils

character and narrows intelligence, look at the great

military empires; their steady perseverance in the

roads that lead to ruin ; their dread of free thought and

of liberty in all its forms; look at the sharp repressions,

the excessive punishments, the love of secrecy, the

attempt to drill a whole nation into obedience, and to

use the drilled and subject thing for every passing

vanity and aggrandizement of those who govern. Look

also at the great administrative systems. See how men

62 A PLEA FOR VOLUNTARYISM

become under them helpless and dispirited, incapable

of free effort and self-protection, at one moment sunk

in apathy, at another moment ready for revolution. Do

you wonder that it is so ? Is it wonderful that when

you replace the will and intelligence and self-guidance

of tile individual by systems of vast machinery, that

men should gradually lose all the better and higher

parts of their nature--for of what use to them is that

better and higher part, when they may not exercise it ?

Ought we to feel surprise, when we see them become

like over-restrained children, peevish, discontented and

quarrelsome, unable to control and direct themselves,

and ever loud in their complaints that enough cake and

jam do not fall to their share ?

Endless are the evils that power brings with it, both

to those who rule and are ruled. If you hold power,

your first aim and end are necessarily to preserve that

power. With power, as you fondly imagine, you possess

all that the world has to offer; without power you seem

to yourself only portionless, abject, humiliated--the gate

flung in your face, that leads to the palace of all the

desirable things. When you once play for so vast

a stake, what influence can mere right or wrong have in

your counsels ? The course that lies before you may

be right or wrong, tolerant or intolerant, wise or foolish,

but the fatal gift of power, that you have been mad

enough to desire and to grasp at, gives you no choice.

If you mean to have and to hold power, you must do

whatever is necessary for the having and holding of it.

You may have doubts and hesitations and scruples, but

power is the hardest of all taskmasters, and you must

either lay these aside, when you once stand on that

dangerous, dizzy height, or yield your place to others,

and renounce your part in the great conflict. And when

A PLEA FOR, VOLUNTARYISM 63

power is won, don't suppose that you are a free man,

able to choose your path and do as you like. From the

moment you possess power, you are but its slave, fast

bound by its many tyrant necessities. The slave-owner

has no freedom; he can never be anything but a slave

himself, and share in the slavery that he makes for

others. It is, I think, plain it must be so. Power once

gained, you must anxiously day by day watch over

its security, whatever its security costs, to prevent the

slippery thing escaping from your hands. You tremble

at every shadow that threatens its existence. You are

haunted by a thousand dreads and suspicions. It

becomes, whether you wish it or not, your first, your

highest law, and all other things fall into the second and

third place. Once you plunge into this all-absorbing

game of striving for power, you must go where the

strong fide carries you ; you must put away conscience

and sense of right, and play the whole game relentlessly

out, with the unflinching determination to win what you

are striving for. In that great game there is no room

left for inconvenient and embarrassing scruples. You

can't afford to let your opponents defeat you and wrest

the power that you hold from your hands. You can't

afford to let them become your masters and trample, as

conquerors, upon all the rights and beliefs that are

sacred to you. Whatever the price to pay, whatever

sacrifice it demands of what is just and upright and

honourable, you must harden your heart, and go on to

the bitter end. And thus it is that seeking for power

notOnly means strife and hatred, the splitting of a nation

into hostile factions, but for ever breeds trick and

intrigue and falsehood, results in the wholesale buying

of men, the offering of this or that unworthy bribe,

the playing with passions, the poor unworthy trade

64 A PLEA FOR VOLUNTARYISM

of the bitter unscrupulous tongue, that heaps every

kind of ab_se., deserved or not deserved, upon those

who are opposed to you,., that exaggerates their every

fault, mistake, and weakness, that caricatures, perverts

their words and actions, and claims in childish and

absurd fashion that what is good is only to be found in

your half of the nation, and what is evil is only to

be found in the other half.

Such are the fruits of the strife for power. Evil they

must be, because power is evil in itself. How can

the taking away from a man his intelligence, his will,

his self-guidance be anything but evil? If it were

not evil in itself, there would be no meaning in the

higher part of nature, there would be no guidance

in the great principles--for power, if we once acknow-

ledge it, must stand above everything else, and cannot

admit of any rivals. If the power of some and the

subjection of others are right, then men would exist

merely as the dust to be trodden under the feet of

each other; the autocrats, the emperors, the military

empires, the Socialist, perhaps even the Anarchist with

his detestable bomb, would each and all be in their own

right, and find their own justification; and we should

live in a world of perpetual warfare, that some devil, as

we might reasonably believe, must have planned for us.

To those of us who believe in the soul--and on that

great matter we who sign hold different opinions--the

freedom of the individual is not simply a question of

politics, but it is a religious question of the deepest

meaning. The soul to us is by its own nature a free

thing, living its life here in order that it may learn

to distinguish and choose between the good and the

evil, to find its own way--whatever stages of existence

may have to be passed through--towards the perfecting

A PLEA FOR VOLUNTARYISM 65

of itself. You may not then, either for the sake of

advancing your own interests, or for the sake of helping

any cause, however great and desirable in itself, in

which you believe, place bonds on the souls of other

men and women, and take from them any part of

their freedom. You may not take away the free life,

putting in its place the bound life. Religion that is not

based on freedom, that allows any form of servitude

of men to men, is to us only an empty and mocking

word, for religion means following our own personal

sense of right and fulfilling the commands of duty,

as we each can most truly read it, not with the hands

tied and the eyes blinded, but with the free, un-

constrained heart that chooses for itself. And see

clearly that you cannot divide men up into separate

parts--into social, political and religious beings. It is all "

one. All parts of our nature are joined in one great

unity; and you cannot therefore make men politically

subject without injuring their souls. Those who strive to

increase the power of men over men, and who thus create

the habit of mechanical obedience, turning men into

mere State creatures, over whose heads laws of all kinds

are passed, are striking at the very roots of religion,

which becomes but a lifeless, meaningless thing, sinking

gradually into a matter of forms and ceremonies, when-

ever the soul loses its freedom. Many men recognize

this truth, if not in words, yet in their hearts, for all

religions of the higher kind tend to become intensely

personal, resting upon that free spiritual relation with

the great Over-soul--a relation that each must interpret

for himself. And remember you can't have two opposed

powers of equal authority; you can't serve two masters.

Either the religious conscience and sense of right must

°stand in the first place, and the commands of all govern-

66 A PLEA FOR VOLUNTARYtSM

ing authorities in the second place; or the State

machine must stand first, and the religious and moral

conscience of men must follow after in humble sub-

jection, and do what the State orders. If you make the

State supreme, why should it pay heed to the rule of

conscience, or the individual sense of right ; why should

the master listen to the servant ? If it is supreme,

let it plainly say so, take its own way, and pay no heed,

as so many rulers before them have refused to do, to the

conscience of those they rule.

And here we ought to say that amongst those who

sign this appeal are some who, like the late Mr. Bradlaugh

ma devoted fighter for liberty--reject the doctrine of

soul and would not, therefore, base their resistance to

State power on any religious ground. But apart from

this great difference that may exist between us, we, who

sign, are united by the same detestation of State

power, and by the same perception of the evils that flow

from it. We both see alike that placing unlimited

power--as we do now--in the hands of the State means

degrading men from their true rank, the narrowing

of their intelligence, the encouragement of intolerance

and contempt for each other, and therefore the en-

couragement of sullen, bitter strife, the tricks of the

clever tongue, practised on both the poor and rich

crowd, and the evil arts of flattery and self-abasement in

order to conciliate votes and possess power, the excessive

and dangerous power of a very able press, which keeps

parties together, and too often thinks for most of us, the

repression of all those healthy individual differences

that make the life and vigour of a nation, the blind

following of blind leaders, the reckless rushing into

national follies, like the unnecessary Boer War--that

might have been avoided, as many of us believe, with

A PLEA FOR VOLUNTARYISM 67

a moderate amount of prudence, patience and good

temper--just because the individuals of the nation have

lost the habit of thinking and acting for themselves,

have lost control over their own actions, and are bound

together by party-ties into two great child-like crowds;

means also the piling up of intolerable burdens of debt

and taxation, the constant and rather mean endeavour to

place the heaviest of these burdens on others--whoever

the others may be, the carelessness, the high-handedness,

the insolence of those who spend money compulsorily

taken, the flocking together of the evil vultures of many °

kinds where the feast is spread, the deep poisonous cor-

ruption, such as is written in broad characters over the

government of some of the large towns in the United

States--a country bound to us by so many ties of friend-

ship and affection, and in which there is so much to admire

--a corruption, that in a lesser degree has soiled the

reputation of some of the large cities of the Continent,

and is already to be found here and there sporadically

existing amongst us in our own country; and which

only too surely means at the end of it all the setting up

of some absolute form of government, to which men fly

in their despair, as a refuge from the intolerable evils

they have brought upon themselves--a refuge that after

a short while is found to be wholly useless and impotent,

and is then violently broken up, perhaps amidst storm

and bloodshed, to be once more sflcceeded by the long

trainof returning evils, from which men had sought to

escape in the vain hope that more power would heal the

evils that power had brought upon them.

Such are the fruits of power and the strife for power.

It must be so. Set men up to rule their fellow men, to

treat them as mere soulless material with which they

may deal as they please, and the consequence is that

68 A PLEA FOR VOLUNTARYISM

you sweep away every moral landmark and turn this

world into a place of selfish striving, hopeless confusion,

trickery and violence, a mere scrambling-ground for the

strongest or the most cunning or the most numerous.

Once more we repeat--don't be deluded by the careless

everyday talk about majorities. The vote of a majority

is a far lesser evil than the edict of an autocrat, for you

can appeal to a majority to repent of its sins and to undo

its mistakes, but numbers--though they were as the

grains of sand on the seashoremcannot take away the

o rights of a single individual, cannot turn man or woman

into stuff for the politician to play with, or over-rule the

great principles which mark out our relations to each

other. These principles are rooted in the very nature

of our being, and have nothing to do with minorities and

majorities. Arithmetic is a very excellent thing in its

place, but it can neither give nor take away rights. Be-

cause you can collect three men on one side, and only

two on the other side, that can offer no reason--no

shadow of a reason--why the three men should dispose

of the lives and property of the two men, should settle

for them what they are to do, and what they are to be :

that mere rule of numbers can never justify the turning

of the two men into slaves, and the three men into slave-

owners. There is one and only one principle, on which

you can build a true, rightful, enduring and progressive

civilization, which can give peace and friendliness and

contentment to all differing groups and sects into which

we are dividedmand that principle is that every man

and woman should be held by us all sacredly and

religiously to be the one true owner of his or her

faculties, of his or her body and mind, and of all proper-

ty, inherited or--honestly acquired. There is no other

possible foundation--seek it wherever you will-on

A PLEA FOR VOLUNTARYISM 69

which you can build, if you honestly mean to make this

world a place of peace and friendship, where progress of

every kind, like a full river fed by its many streams, may

flow on its happy fertilizing course, with ever broadening

and deepening volume. Deny that principle, and we

become at once like travellers who leave the one sure

and beaten path and wander hopelessly in a trackless

desert. Deny that self-ownership, that self-guidance of

the individual, and however fine our professed motives

may be, we must sooner or later, in a world without

rights, become like the animals, that prey on each other.

Deny human rights, and however little you may wish

to do so, you will find yourself abjectly kneeling at the

feet of that old-world god Force--that grimmest and

ugliest of gods that men have ever carved for themselves

out of the lusts of their hearts ; you will find yourselves

hating and dreading all other men who differ from you;

you will find yourselves obliged by the law of the con-

flict into which you have plunged, to use every means

in your power to crush them before they are able to

crush you ; you will find yourselves day by day growing

more unscrupulous and intolerant, more and more com-

pelled by the fear of those opposed to you, to commit

harsh and violent actions, of which you would once

have said' Is thy servant a dog that he should do these

things?'; you will find yourselves clinging to and

welcoming Force, as the one and only form of protection

left to you, when you have once destroyed the rule of

the great principles. When once you have plunged _

into the strife for power, it is the fear of those who are

seeking for power over you that so easily persuades to

all the great crimes. Who shall count up the evil brood

that is born from power--the pitiful fear, the madness,

the despair, the overpowering craving for revenge, the

7° A PLEA FOR VOLUNTARYISM

treachery, the unmeasured cruelty ? It is liberty alone,

broad as the sky above our heads, and planted deep and

strong as the great mountains, that allows the better

and higher part of our nature to rule in us, and subdues

those passions that we share with the animals.

We ask you then to limit and restrain power, as you

would restrain a wild and dangerous beast. Make

everything subservient to liberty; use State force only

for one purpose--to prevent and restrain the use of force

amongst ourselves, and that which may be described as

the twin-brother of force, wearing a mask over its

features, the fraud, which by cunning sets aside the

consent of the individual, as force sets it aside openly and

violently. Restrain by simple and efficient machinery

the force and fraud that some men are always ready to

employ against other men, for whether it is the State

that employs force against a part of the citizens, or one

citizen who employs force or fraud against another

citizen, in both cases it is equally an aggression upon the

rights, upon the self-ownership of the individual ; it is

equally in both cases the act of the stronger who in

virtue of his strength preys upon the weaker. Safe-

guard therefore the lives and the property of every

citizen against the force or the cunning of Bill Sykes

and all his tribe. Make of our world a fair open field

where we may all act, according to our own choice,

individually, or in co-operation, for every unaggressive

purpose, and where good of every kind will fight its own

.. open unrestrained fight with evil of every kind. Don't

believe in suppressing by force any form of evil--always

excepting the direct attacks upon person and property.

An evil suppressed by force is only driven out of sight

under the surface--there to fester in safety and to take

new and more dangerous forms. Remember that

A PLEA FOR VOLUNTARYISM 7x

striking story of the German liberals, when Bismarck

had directed his foolish and useless weapon of repressive

laws against the Socialists. ' You have driven the

Socialists into silence '---they said--' you have forbidden

their meetings and confiscated their papers ; yet for all

that the movement goes on more actively than ever

underground and hidden from sight. And we who are

opposed to Socialism are also silenced. We have now

no enemy to attack. The enemy has vanished out of

our sight and out of our reach. How can we answer or

reason with those who speak and write no word in

public, and only teach and make new recruits in secret

and in the dark ?'

So it is always. You strike blindly, like a child in its

passion, with your weapons of force, at some vice, at

some social habit, at some teaching you consider danger-

ous, and you disarm your own friends who would fight

your battle for you--were they allowed to do so--in the

one true way of discussion and persuasion and example.

You prevent discussion, and the expression of all

healthier opinion, you disarm the reformers and paralyse

their energiesmthe reformers who, if left to themselves,

would strive to move the minds of men, and to win their

hearts, but who now resign themselves to sleep and to

indifference, fondly believing that you with your force

have fought and won their battle for them, and that

nothing now remains for them to do. But in truth you

have done nothing ; you have helped the enemy. You

may have made the outside of things more respectable

to the careless eye, you may have taught men to believe

in the things that seem, and in reality are not ; but you

have left the poisonous sore underneath to work its own

evil undisturbed, in its own way and measure. The evil,

whatever it was, was the result of perverted intelligence

72 A PLEA FOR VOLUNTARYISM

or perverted nature; and your systems of force have

left that intelligence and that nature unchanged; and

you have done that most dangerous of all things--you

have strengthened the general belief in the rightfulness

and usefulness of employing force. Do you not see

that of all weapons that men can take into their

hands force is the vainest, the weakest? In the long

dark history of the world, what real, what permanent

good has ever come from the force which men have

never hesitated to use against each other? By force

the great empires have been built up, only in due time

to be broken into pieces, and to leave mere ruins of

stones to tell their story. By force the rulers have

compelled nations to accept a religion--only in the end

to provoke that revolt of men's minds which always in

in its own time sweeps away the work of the sword, of

the hangman and the torture-table. What persecution

has in the end altered the course of human belief?

What army, used for ambitious and aggressive purposes,

has not at last become as a broken tool ? What claim of

a Church to exercise authority and to own the souls of

men has not destroyed its own influence and brought

certain decay on itself? Is it not the same to-day, as it

has been in all the centuries of the past ? Has not the

real prosperity, the happiness, the peace of a nation

increased just in proportion as it has broken all the

bonds and disabilities that impeded its life, just in pro-

portion as it has let liberty replace force; just in

proportion as it has chosen and established for itself all

rights of opinion, of meeting, of discussion, rights of

free trade, rights of the free use of faculties, rights of self-

ownership as against the wrongs of subjection? And

do you think that these new bonds and restrictions in

which the nations of to-day have allowed themselves to

A PLEA FOR VOLUNTARYISM 73

be entangled--the conscription which sends men out to

fight, consenting or not consenting, which treats them

as any other war-material, as the guns and the rifles

dispatched in batches to do their work; or the great

systems of taxation , which make of the individual mere

tax-material, as conscription makes of him mere war-

material ; or the great systems of compulsory education,

under which the State on its own unavowed interest

tries to exert more and more of its own influence and

authority over the minds of the children, tries--as we

see specially in other countries--to mould and to shape

those young minds for its own ends--' Something of

religion will be useful--school-made patriotism will be

useful--drilling will be useful '--so preparing from the

start docile and obedient State-material, ready made for

taxation, ready made for conscription--ready made for

the ambitious aims and ends of the rulers--do you think

that any of these modern systems, though they are more

veiled, more subtle, less frank and brutal than the

systems of the older governments, though the poison in

them is more thickly smeared with the coating of sugar,

will bear different fruit, will work less evil amongst us

all, will endure longer than those other broken and

discredited attempts, which men again and again in

their madness and presumption have made to possess

themselves of and to rule the bodies and minds of others ?

No I one and all they belong to the same evil family;

they are all part of the same conspiracy against the true

greatness of human nature ; they are all marked broad

across the forehead with the same old curse ; and they

will all end in the same shameful and sorrowful ending.

Over us all is the great unchanging law, ever the same,

unchanged and unchanging, regardless of all our follies

and delusions, that come and go, that we are not to

74 A PLEA FOR VOLUNTARYISM

take possession of and rule the body and mind of others ;

that we are not to take away from our fe]low-beings

their own intelligence, their own choice, their own

conscience and free will; that we are not to allow any

ruler, be it autocrat, emperor, parliament, or voting

crowd, to take from any human being his own true rank,

making of him the degraded State-material that others

use for their own purposes.

' But '--some of your friends may say--' look well at

the advantages of this State-force. See how many

good things come to you by taking money out of the

pockets of others. Would the rich man continue to

serve your needs, if you had not got your hands upon

him, and held him powerless under your taxation

system? No! He would be only too glad to find an

escape from it. Keep then your close grips upon him,

now that you once hold him in it, and by more and

more skilful and searching measures relieve him of

what you want so much, and what is merely super-

fluous to him. Why spare your beast of burden?

What is the use of your numbers, of your organiza-

tions, of the all-powerful vote, that can alone equalize

conditions, making the poor man rich, and the rich man

poor, if you are tempted to lay the useful weapon of

force aside ? Force in the old days was used against

you; it is your turn now to use force, and spare not.

Think well of what the vote can do for you. There

lies the true magician's wand. You want pensions,

provision for old age and sickness, land, houses, a

minimum wage, lots and lots of education, breakfast

and dinner for the children who go to school, scholar-

ships for the clever pupils, libraries, museums, public

halls, national operas, amusements and recreations of all

kinds, and many another good thing which you will

A PLEA FOR VOLUNTARYISM 75

easily enough discover when you once begin to help

yourselvesmfor, as the French say, the appetite comes

with the eating ; and there stand the richer classes with

their laden pockets, only encumbered with the wealth

that, if they knew it, they would be better without,

defenceless, comparatively few and weak, with no

power to stand against the resistless vote, if you once

turn your strength to good account and learn how to

organize your numbers for the great victory. Of course

they will give you excellent reasons why you should

keep your hands off them, and let them go free. Don't

be fooled any longer by mere words. Force rules

everything in this world; and to-day it is at last your

turn to use force, and enter into possession of all that

the world has to offer.'

We answer--that all such language is the language

of passionate unthinking children, who, regardless of

right or wrong, with no questions of conscience, no

perception of consequences, snatch at the first glittering

thing that they see before them; that those who once

listen to these counsels of violence would be changed

in their nature from the reasonable man to the

unreasonable beast; that all such counsels mean revolt

against the great principles, against the honest and true

methods that alone can redeem this world of ours, that,

if faithfully followed, will in the end make a society

happy, prosperous and progressive in its every part,

ever levelling up, ever peacefully redistributing wealth,

ever turning the waste places of life into the fruitful

garden. But in violence and force there is no

redemption. Force--whether disguised or not under

the forms of voting--has but one meaning. It means

universal confusion and strife, it means flinging the

sword--that has never yet helped any of us--into the

76 A PLEA FOR VOLUNTARYISM

scale and preparing the way for the utterly wasted and

useless shedding of much blood. Even if these good

things, and many more of the same kind, lay within

your grasp, waiting for your hand to close upon them,

you have no right to take them by force, no fight to

make war upon any part of your fellow citizens, and to

treat them as mere material to serve your interests.

The rich man may no more be the beast of burden of

the poor man, than the poor may be the beast of burden

of the rich. Force rests on no moral foundations; you

cannot justify it ; it rests on no moral basis ; you cannot

reconcile it with reason and conscience and the higher

nature of men. It lies apart in its own evil sphere,

separated by the deepest gulf from all that makes for

the real good of life--a mere devil's instrument. Even

if force to-morrow could lay at your feet all the material

gifts which you rightly desire, you may not, you dare

not, for the sake of the greater good, for the sake of the

higher nature that is in all of us, for the sake of the

great purposes and the nobler meanings of life, accept

what it offers. Our work is to make this life of ours

prosperous, happy and beautiful for all who share in

it, working with the instruments of liberty, of peace,

and of friendship--these and these only are the

instruments which we may rightly take in our hands,

these are the only instruments that can do our work

for us.

Those who bid you use force are merely using

language of the same kind as every blood-stained ruler

has used in the past, the language of those who paid

their troops by pillage, the language of the war-loving

German general, who in old days looked down from

the heights surrounding Paris, and whispered with

a gentle sighw' What a city to sack !' It is the language

A PLEA FOR VOLUNTARYISM 77

of those who through all the past history of the world

have believed in the right of conquering, in the right

of making slaves, who have set up force as their god,

who have tried to do by the violent hand whatever

smiled to their own desires, and who only brought

curses upon themselves, and a deluge of blood and

tears upon the world. Force--whatever forms it takes

--can do nothing for you. It can redeem nothing; it

can give you nothing that is worth the having, nothing

that will endure; it cannot even give you material

prosperity. There is no salvation for you or for any

living man to be won by the force that narrows rights,

and always leaves men lower and more brutal in

character than it found them. It is, and ever has been

the evil genius of our race. It calls out the reckless,

violent, cruel part of our nature, it wastes precious

human effort in setting men to strive one against the

other; it turns us into mere fighting animals; and

ends, when men at last become sick of the useless

strife and universal confusion, in ' the man on the black

horse' who calls himself and is greeted as ' the saviour

of society'. Make the truer, the nobler choice. Resist

the blind and sordid appeal to your interests of the

moment, and take your place once and for good on the

side of the true liberty, that calls out all the better and

higher part of our nature, and knows no difference

between rulers and ruled, majorities and minorities,

rich and poor. Declare once and for good that all men

and women are the only true owners of their faculties, of

their mind and body, of the property that belongs to

them ; that you will only build the new society on the

one true foundation of self-ownership, self-rule, and

self-guidance; that you turn away from and renounce

utterly all this mischievous, foolish and corrupt business

78 A PLEA FOR VOLUNTARYISM

of compelling each other, of placing burdens upon each

other, of making force, and the hateful trickery that

always goes with it, into our guiding principles, of

treating first one set of men and then another set of

men as beasts of burden, whose lot in life it is to serve

the purposes of others. True it is that there are many

and many things good in themselves which you do not yet

possess, and which you rightly desire, things which the

believers in force are generous enough to offer you in

any profusion at the expense of others; but they are

merely cheating you with vain hopes, dangling before

your eyes the mocking shows of things that can never

be. Force never yet made a nation prosperous. It

has destroyed nation after nation, but never yet built

up an enduring prosperity. It is through your own

free efforts, not through the gifts of those who have

no right to give them, that all these good things can

come to you; for great is the essential difference

between the gift--whether rightly or wrongly given--

and the thing won by free effort. That which you

have won has made you stronger in yourselves, has

taught you to know your own power and resources, has

prepared you to win more and more victories. The

gift flung to you has left you dependent upon others,

distrustful and dispirited in yourselves. Why turn to

your governments as if you were helpless in your-

selves ? What power lies in a government, that does

not lie also in you ? They are only men like you--men,

in many ways disadvantaged, overweighted by the

excessive burdens they have taken on themselves,

seldom able to give concentrated attention to any one

subject, however important; necessarily much under

the influence of subordinates, from whom they must

gather the information on which they have to act;

A PLEA FOR VOLUNTARYISM 79

often turned from their own course by the dissensions

and differences of their followers; always obliged to

plan and manoeuvre in order to keep their party

together, and then losing their own guiding purpose,

and tempted into misleading and unworthy courses;

often deciding the weightiest matters in a hurry, as in

the case of the famous 'Ten Minutes Reform Bill';

and physically leading a life which over-taxes health

and endurance with the call made upon it, by the cares

of their own office, their attendance far into the night

at the House, their social occupations, the necessity to

follow carefully all that is passing in the great theatre

of European politics, and of studying the questions

which each week brings with it. Think cat'efully,and

you will feel that all these rash attempts of the handful

of men, that we call a government, to nurse a nation

are a mere delusion. You can't throw the cares and

the wants and the hopes of a whole people on some

sixteen or eighteen over-burdened workers. You might

as well try to put the sea into a quart pot. A handful

of men can't either think or act for you. Their task

is impossible. If they try to do so, they can only be

as blindguides who lead blind followers into the ditch.

It all ends in scramble and confusion, in something

being done in order to have something to show, in

great expectations and woeful disappointments, in rash

action and grievous mistakes, resulting from hurry and

over-pressure and insufficient knowledge, which lead

the nation in wrong directions, and bring their long

train of evil consequences. Why place your fortunes,

all that you have, and all that you are, in other hands?

You have in yourselves the great qualities--though still

undeveloped--for supplying in your own free groups

the growing wants of your lives. You are the children

80 A PLEA FOR VOLUNTARYISM

of the men who did so much for themselves, the men

who broke the absolute power; who planted the

colonies of our race in distant lands, who created our

manufactures, and carried our trade to every part of

the world; who established your co-operative and

benefit societies, your Trade Unions, who built and

supported your Nonconformist Churches. In you is

the same stuff, the same power to do, as there was in

them ; and if only you let their spirit breathe again in

you, and tread in their footsteps, you may add to their

triumphs and successes tenfold and a hundredfold.

As the French well say:-'Ou les p_res ont passe,

passeront bientOt les enfants' (Where the fathers

passed, there soon shall the children pass). To this

point--the work to be undertaken in your own free

groups, without any compulsion and subjection of

others, we will return later.

But nothing can be well and rightly done, nothing

can bear the true fruit, until you become deeply and

devotedly in love with personal liberty, consecrating in

your hearts the great and sacred principle of self-owner-

ship and self-direction. That great principle must be

our guiding star through the whole of this life's pilgrim-

age. Away from its guiding we shall only continue to

wander, as of old, hopelessly in the wilderness. For its

sake we must be ready to make any and every sacrifice.

It is worth them all--many times worth them all. For

its sake you must steadily refuse all the glittering gifts

and bribes which many politicians of both parties

eagerly press upon you, if you will but accept them as

your leaders, and lend them the power which your

numbers can give. Enter into none of these corrupt

and fatal compacts. All such leaders are but playing

with you, fooling you for their own ends. In the pride

A PLEA FOR VOLUNTARYISM 8_

and vanity of their hearts they wish to bind you to

them, to make you dependent upon them. You are to

fight their battles, and you will be paid in return much

in the same manner as the old leaders paid their soldiers

by giving them a conquered city to sack. Can any real

good come to you by following that unworthy and

mercenary path ? When once you have become a mere

pillaging horde, when once you have lost all guidance

and control and purpose of your own, bound to your

leaders, and dependent on them for the sake of the

spoils that they fling to you, do you think that any of

the greater and nobler things of life will still be possible

to you ? The great things are only possible for those

who keep their hearts pure and exalted, and their hands

clean, who are true to themselves, who follow and serve

the fixed principles that are above us all, and are our

only true guides, who never sell themselves into the

hands of others. Your very leaders, who have cheated

you, and used you, will despise you ; and in your own

hearts, if you dare honestly to search into them, you will

despise yourselves. But your self-contempt will hardly

help you. You will have lost the great qualities of your

nature; the old corrupt contract, into which you have

entered, will still bind you; you may in your wild

discontent revolt against your leaders ; but as in the

legends of the evil controlling spirit, that both serves

and enslaves, you will each be a fatal necessity to the

other. You have linked your fortunes together, and it

will be hard to dissolve the partnership. Remember

ever the old words--as true to-day as when they were

first spoken--' What shall it profit a man if he gain ttte

whole world, and lose his own soul ?' If you lose all

respect for the rights of others, and with it your own

self-respect, if you lose your own sense of right and

82 A PLEA FOR VOLUNTARYISM

fairness, ff you lose your belief in liberty, and with it the

sense of your own worth and true rank, if you lose your

own will and self-guidance and control over your own

lives and actions, what can all the buying and trafficking,

what can all the gifts of politicians give you in return ?

Why let the true diamond be taken from you in

exchange for the worthless bit of glass ? Is not the

ruling of your own selves worth a hundred times this

mad attempt to rule over others ? If your house were

filled with silver and gold, would you be happy if your

own self no more belonged to you ? Have you ever

carefully thought out what life would be like under the

schemes of the Socialist party, who offer us the final,

the logical completion of all systems of force ? Try to

picture the huge overweighted groaning machine of

government; the men who direct it vainly, miserably

struggling with their impossible task of managing

everything, driven for the sake of their universal system

to extinguish all differences of thought and action,

allowing no man to possess his own faculties, or to

enjoy the fruit that he has won by their exercise, to call

land or house or home his own, allowing no man to do

a day's work for another, or to sell and buy on his own

account, denying to all men the ownership and posses-

sion of either body or mind, necessarily intolerant, as

the Tsar's government is intolerant, of every form of free

thought and free enterprise, trembling at the very

shadow of liberty, haunted by the perpetual terror that

the old love of self-guidance and free action might some

day again awake in the breast of men, obliged to

exercise a discipline, like that which exists in the

German army, from fear that the first beginning of

revolt might prove the destruction of the huge trembling

ill-balanced structure, with no sense of right,--right

A PLEA FOR VOLUNTARYISM 83

a mere word that would be lost to their language--but

only the ever present, ever urgent necessities of main.

raining their unstable power, which was always out of

equilibrium, always in danger, because opposed to the

essential nature of men--that unconquerable nature,

which has always broken and will always break in its

own time these systems of bondage. Picture also the

horde of countless officials, who would form a bureau-

cratie, all-powerful army, vast as that which exists in

Russia, and probably as corrupt--for the same reason--

because only able to fulfil their task, if allowed to have

supreme unquestioned power; always engaged in

spying, restraining, and repressing, for ever mono-

tonously repeating, as if they governed a nursery--

'Don't, you mustn't ;' and then picture imprisoned

under the bureaucratic caste a nation of dispirited

cyphers--cyphers, who would be as peevish, discon-

tented and quarrelsome as shut-up children, because

shut off by an iron fence from all the stimulating

influences of free life, and forbidden, as if it were

a crime, to exercise their faculties according to their

own interests and inclinations ; picture also the intense,

the ludicrous pettiness that would run through the

whole thing. As a French writer (Leroy Beaulieu)

wittily said--it would be a great State question, ever

recurring to trouble the safety of the trembling quaver-

ing system, whether or no a wife should be allowed to

mend the trousers of her husband. Who could

exorcise and lay to rest that insoluble problem, for if

the wife were once allowed to perform this bit of useful

household duty, might not the whole wicked unsocial-

istie trade of working for others, in return for their

sixpences and shillings, come flowing back with irresist-

ible force? Such is the small game that you are

84 A PLEA FOR VOLUNTARYISM

obliged to hunt, such are the minute pitiful necessities

to which you are obliged to stoop, when once you

construct these great State machineries, and take upon

yourself, in your amazing and ignorant presumption, to

interfere with the natural activities of human existence.

See also another truth. There are few greater

injuries that can be inflicted on you than taking out of

your hands the great services that supply your wants.

Why ? Because the healing virtue that belongs to all

these great services--education, religion, the winning of

land and houses, the securing greater comfort and

refinement and amusement in your lives--lies in the

winning of these things for yourselves by your own

exertions, through your own skill, your own courage,

your friendly co-operation one with another, your

integrity in your common dealings, your unconquerable

self-reliance and confidence in your own powers of

doing. This winning, these efforts, are the great

lessons in life-long education; that lasts from childhood

to the grave; and when learnt, they are learnt not

for yourselves alone, but for your children, and your

children's children. They are the steps and the only

steps up to the higher levels. You can't be carried to

those higher levels on the shoulders of others. The

politician is like those who boasted to have the keys of

earth and heaven in their pocket. Vainest of vain

pretences! The keys both of heaven and earth lie in

your own pocket;it is only you--you, the free in-

dividuals-who can unlock the great door. All these

great wants and services are the means by which we

acquire the great qualities which spell victory; they are

the means by which we become raised and changed in

ourselves, and by which, as we are changed, we change

and remake all the circumstances of our lives. Each

A PLEA FOR VOLUNTARYISM 85

victory so gained prepares the way for the next victory,

and makes that next victory the easier, for we not only

have the sense of success in our hearts, but we have

begun to acquire the qualities on which it depends. On

the other hand the more of his ready-made institutions

the politician thrusts upon you, the weaker, the more

incapable you become, just because the great qualities

are not called out and exercised. Why should they be

called out ? There is no need for them; their practice-

ground is taken away; and they simply lie idle, rusting,

and at last ceasing to be. Tie up your right hand for

three months and what happens ? The muscles will

have wasted, and your hand will have lost its cunning

and its force. So it is with all mental and moral

qualities. Given time enough, and a politician with his

restless scheming brain and his clumsy hands would

enfeeble and spoil a nation of the best and truest

workers. He is powerless to help you; he can only

stand in your way, and prevent your doing.

Refuse then to put your faith in mere machinery, in

party organizations, in Acts of Parliament, in great

unwieldy systems, which treat good and bad, the

careful and the careless, the striving and the indifferent,

on the same plan, and which on account of their vast

and cumbrous size, their complexity, their official

central management, pass entirely out of your control.

Refuse to be spoon-fed, drugged and dosed, by the

politicians. They are not leading you towards the

promised land, but further and further away from it.

If the world could be saved by the men of words and

the machine-makers, it would have been saved long

ago. Nothing is easier than to make machinery; you

may have any quantity of it on order in a few months.

Nothing is easier than to appoint any number of

86 A PLEA FOR VOLUNTARYISM

officials.Unluckilythe truefightis of anotherand

much sternerkind; and the victorycomes of our own

climbingof the hills,not by sittingin the plain,with

foldedhands,watching those otherswho professto

do our businessfor us. Do you think itlikelyor

reasonable,do you thinkitfitsinwithand agreeswith

your dailyexperienceof thisfighting,workingworldof

ours,thatyou couldtakeyour chairin thepolitician's

" shop,and orderacrosshiscounterso much prosperity

and progressand happiness,justas you might order

cottongoods by the piece or wheat by the quarter?

Be brave and clear-sighted,and face the stern but

wholesome truth,thatitis only you, you with your

own hands, you with your unconquerableresolve,

withoutany dependence on others,without any of

thesechildishand mischievouspartystruggles,which

are perhaps a littlemore excitingthan cricket,or

football,or even 'bridge'to some of us,but a good

deal more profitlessto the nationthan diggingholes

intheearthand then fillingthem up again,withoutany

use of force,withoutany oppressionof each other,

withoutany oftheseblindrecklessattemptstohumiliate

and defeatthosewho hold differentbeliefsfrom our-

selves,and who desiretofollowdifferentmethodsfrom

thosewhich we follow,without any divisionof the

nationintotwo, three or more hostilecamps, ever

inspiredwithdreadand hatredof eachother--itisonly

you yourselves,fightingwith the good, pure,honest

weapons of persuasionand example,of sympathy and

friendlyco-operation--itis only you, callingout in

yourselvesthe great qualities,and flingingaway all

the meaner things,the strifes,the hates,thejealousies,

the mere loveof fightingand conquering--itisonly

you,treadingintheblessedpathof peaceand freedom,

A PLEA FOR VOLUNTARYISM 87

who can bring about the true regeneration of society,

and with it the true happiness of your own lives.

And through it all avoid that favourite, that much

loved snare of the politician, by which he ever seeks

to rivet his hold upon you, refuse to attack and weaken

in any manner the full rights of property. You, who

are workers, could not inflict on your own selves

a more fatal injury. Property is the great and good

inducement that will call out your efforts and energies

for the remaking of the present form of society. Deprive

property of its full value and attractiveness, and we

shall all become stuff only fit to make the helpless

incapable crowd that the Socialist so deeply admires,

and hopes so easily to eontrol. But it is not only for

the sake of the 'magic of property', its power to call

out the qualities of industry and saving ; it is above all

because you cannot weaken the rights of property

without diminishing, without injuring that first and

greatest of all possessions--human liberty; it is for

that supreme reason that we must resist every attempt

of the politician to buy votes by generously giving

away the property that does not belong to him. The

control of his own property by the individual, and the

liberty of the individual can never be separated from

each other. They must stand, or fall, together.

Property, when earned, is the product of faculties, and

results from their free exercise; and, when inherited,

represents the full right of a man, free from all

imaginary and usurped control of others, to deal as

he likes with his own. Destroy the rights of property,

and you will also destroy both the material and the

moral foundations of liberty. To all men and women,

rich or poor, belong their own faculties, and as a con-

sequence, equally belongs to them all that they can

88 A PLEA FOR VOLUNTARYISM

honestly gain in free and open competition, through

the exercise of those faculties.

It is idle to talk of freedom, and, whilst the word is

on one's lips, to attack property. He who attacks

property, joins the camp of those who wish to keep

some men in subjection to the will of others. You

cannot break down any of the defences of liberty, you

cannot weaken liberty at any one point, without

weakening it at all points. Liberty means refusing to

allow some men to use the State to compel other men

to serve their interests or their opinions; and at what-

ever point we allow this servitude to exist, we weaken

or destroy in men's minds the sacredness of the

principle, which must be, as regards all actions, all

relations, our universal bond. But it is not only for the

sake of liberty--though that is far the greater and

higher reason--it is also for the sake of your own

material progress--that you, the workers, must resolutely

reject all interference with, all mutilations of the rights

of property.

For the moment the larger part of existing property

belongs to the richer classes; but it will not be so, as

soon as ever you, the workers, take out of the hands

of the politicians, and into your own hands, the task of

carving out your own fortunes. The working body

of the people must no longer be content--not for

a single day--to be the property-less class. In every

city and town and village they must form their associa-

tions for the gaining of property; they must put their

irresistible pence and shillings together, so that, step by

step, effort upon effort, they may become the owners

of land, of farms, of houses, of shops, of mills, and

trading ships; they must take shares in the great

well-managed trading companies and railways, until the

A PLEA FOR VOLUNTARYISM 89

time comes, as their capital increases, when they will

be able to become the owners at first of small trading

concerns, established by themselves, and then later

of larger and more important concerns. They must--

for all reasons, the best and the second best--become

the owners of property. Without property no class

can take its true place in the nation. They must

devote much of their resolution and self-denial to the

steady persistent heaping together of the pence and

shillings for this purpose. As they become possessed

of property, they will see a definite goal lying before them-

selves--one good and useful ambition ever succeeding

to another. The old dreary hopelessness will disappear,

they will gain in power and influence; the difference

between classes will disappear; they will break the

enfeebling and corrupting influence of the politicians

--what influence would remain to the man of words

if he could no longer offer gratis--in return for nothing

but votes--the property of others, without any greater

exertion on the part of the people than marking their

voting papers in his favour ? And with the acquiring

of property, the workers will also acquire the qualities

that the management of property brings with it ; whilst

they add a new interest, a new meaning to their lives.

We appeal to the many thousands of strong, capable,

self-denying men that are to be found among us. Is

the gaining of property only a dream; is the thing

so very difficult, so far out of your reach ? Say that

a million men and women begin to-morrow to subscribe

one halfpenny a week--who would miss that magical

halfpenny, which is to transform so many things ?--at

the end of the year you will have a fund of over

£'Ioo, ooo to start with--not we think, a bad beginning

for the great campaign. In many cases the property,

9o A PLEA FOR VOLUNTARYISM

such as land and houses, that you would so acquire,

you would probably rent or redistribute on remunerative

but easy terms to your own members; in the case of

workers in towns, you would be able to allow those

of your members who desired rest and change, to

work for a time on your farms, and you would also be

able to make a holiday ground and common meeting-

place of some farm that belonged to you, and that

could be easily reached by that true instrument of

social progress for men and women, the bicycle. Many

will be the new forms of health and comfort and

amusement that will become possible to you, when

once you steadily determine to pile the pence and the

shillings together for becoming owners of property;

and when once you have put your hand to this good

work, you must not relax your efforts until you have

become, as you will become before many years have

passed, the greatest of property holders in the nation.

All is possible to you if you resolutely fling away from

you the incitements to strife, the tamperings with

liberty and individual property, and pile up the pence

and the shillings for the acquiring of your own property.

Resist, therefore, all reckless, unthinking appeals made

to you to deprive the great prize of any part of its

attractions. If you surround property with State

restrictions, interfere with free trade and any part

of the open market, interfere with free contract, make

compulsory arrangements for tenant and landowner,

allow the present burdens of rate and tax to discourage

ownership and penalize improvements, you will weaken

the motives for acquiring property, and blunt the edge

of the most powerful material instrument that exists

for your own advancement. Only remember--as we

have said--that great as is your material interest in

A PLEA FOR VOLUNTARYISM 9_

safeguarding the rights of individual property, yet

higher and greater are and ever will be the moral

reasons that forbid our sanctioning any attack upon it,

or our suffering State burdens and restrictions and

impediments to grow round it. True liberty--as we

said--cannot exist apart from the full rights of property;

for.property is--so to speak--only the crystallized form

of free faculties. They take the name of liberty in vain,--"

they do not understand its nature, who would allow the

State--or what goes by the name of the State--the

worthy eighteen or twenty men who govern us--to

play with property. Everything that is surrounded

with State restrictions, everything that is State-mutilated,

everything taxed and burdened, loses its best value,

and can no longer call out our energies and efforts in

their full force. Preserve, then, at its best and strongest

the magic of property; leave to it all its stimulating

and transforming virtues. It is one of the great

master keys that 6pen the door to all that in a material

sense you rightly and proudly wish to do and to be.

Many other points remain; we can only touch here

on a few of them. Keep clear of both political parties,

until one of them seriously, earnestly, with deep

conviction, pledges itself to the cause of personal

liberty. At present they are both of them opportunist,

seeking power, rejecting fixed principles. It is true

that we owe great debts to the Liberal party in the

past, but at present it is deserting its own best tradi-

tions, ceasing to guide and inspire the people, fighting

the downhill not the uphill battles, and intent on

playing the great game. Some day, as we may hope,

it may refind its better self and breathe again the spirit

of true exalted leadership, and regardless of its own

fortunes for the hours place itself, openly on the side

92 A PLEA FOR VOLUNTARYISM

of Mr. Spencer's ' widest possible Liberty'. But to-day

both parties mean anything or nothing; they represent

only too often mere scrambling, mere lust for power.

It is true that one or other of the two parties may mean

to you some of the things that you yourselves mean, but

it will also mean a great many things that you do not

mean. They both believe in subjecting some men to

the will of other men, in using the State as the instru-

ment of universal force, and you cannot rightly take

your place in their ranks, or fight with them. Have

nothing to do with the scramble for power. Hold on

your own course and stand 'foursquare to all the

winds'. Pick out your boldest and most resolute men,

and fight every by-election. Don't fight to win, but

fight to teach and inspire. The more resolutely you

stand on your own ground, the more men of both

parties, who begin to see the worthlessness and the

mischief of these party conflicts, and the growing

danger of using force, will come to you and join your

small army. Few as you are to-day, you are stronger

than the huge ill-assorted crowds--representing many

conflicting opinionsmthat stand opposed to you, for no

one can measure the strength that a great and true

cause, devotedly followed, gives to those who con-

sistently serve it. Fight .the battle of liberty at every

point. Give your best help to those who are resisting

municipal trading, or resisting interference with home

work, or resisting the placing of power in the hands of

the medical or any other profession. You must not

confer any form of authority or monopoly on any

profession; you must not give to any of them the

power to force their services upon us. Let every

profession that will, organize itself and make rules for

its own members ; but we, the public, must remain free

A PLEA FOR VOLUNTARYISM 93

in every respect to take or to leave what they offer to

us. The monopolies that they all so dearly love are

fatal to their own efficiency, and to their own higher

qualities, as well as full of danger to the public. We

all lose our best perceptions, we all become intel-

lectually hide-bound, we all begin to believe that the

public exist for us, exist for our professional purposes,

whenever we are protected by a monopoly. In the

same way never hand over any question to be decided

by those who are called experts. The knowledge of

the experts is very useful and valuable, but wisdom and

discernment and well balanced judgement are different

things from knowledge, and they do not always keep

company. Knowledge is great, some one has written,

but prejudice is greater. The experts are excellent as

advisers, but never as authoritative judges, allowed to

stand between the public and the questions that affect

its interest. The real service that the experts can

perform for us is to place their knowledge in the

clearest and simplest form before us all, and to explain

their reasons for advising a certain course. There is

no limit to the mistakes that the most learned men may

make when they are allowed to deliver judgement

behind closed doors, when they are not called upon to

submit their reasons to open discussion, and to justify

publicly the counsels that they offer.

Strive also to make this great Empire of ours an

instrument of help and usefulness and friendliness for

the whole world. It is a great world-trust placed in

our hands, that we must interpret in no selfish and

narrow, in no boastful and vainglorious spirit. Cast

away all the tawdry and sordid dreams of an Empire

stronger than all other nations; but let "it rest on the

one true foundation of peace and friendship, and as far

94 A PLEA FOR VOLUNTARYISM

as lies with you of free intercourse between all nations--

an Empire of equal generous rights, with no privileges

reserved for any of us. So, and only so, shall this

great Empire endure, saved from the fate that has so

justly swept away all the other great Empires, that were

founded on meaner and more selfish conceptions.

Have nothing to do with this pitiful cowardly un-

English war against the aliens. Even if your interests

should seem to suffer for awhile--which there is strong

reason for believing would not be the case--we ask you

to make this sacrifice for the sake of the liberty of

all, even the poorest, and for the sake of the proud

traditions of our race. Unswerving, disinterested

devotion to the principle of universal liberty, and to

those noble traditions that have always opened the

gates of this country to the suffering and oppressed,

will far, far outbalance any hurt that may for a time

result from the presence with us of the suffering and

oppressed. Plead always that there should be no

unworthy exceptions; all such exceptions are bad in

themselves, and have the bad habit of becoming the

rule. The temper of timorous selfishness that would

exclude any aliens, that would treat any natives as

different from our own flesh and blood, is our real

danger--the danger that threatens our true greatness.

Indulge that temper in any one direction, and you will

presently encourage it to become the evil genius of the

nation.

Lastly, let us all work together, to soften and improve

the relations of capital and labour. War between

capital and labour is only too like the unreasonable and

disastrous war between nations, or between parties in

a nation. All war is a crime, and, as all crimes are,

a mischievous folly--in almost all cases a mere outburst

A PLEA FOR VOLUNTARYISM 95

of childishness. Everywhere we have to learn the wise

art of pulling in friendly forbearing fashion with each

other, and not against each other; everywhere we have

to learn to abandon the useless wasteful brutal methods

of war, and to enter the blessed and fruitful paths

of peace. Is there any war of any kind, that might not

have been avoided by better temper, more patience, and

a stronger love of peace ? Is there any war, excepting

on very rare occasions the wars to repel invasion or the

attacking of great human rights, that in the end has not

brought disappointment and sorrow, and bitter fruits of

its own, as much or even more to the nation that was

successful, as to the nation that was unsuccessful?

And who profits from these great labour contests, and

the stirring of hurtful passions, that goes with them ?

Friendship, friendly co-operation, the making of common

cause for common ends, are the true ends to be aimed

at between labour and capital; and each contest makes

the good day of reconciliation more difficult, puts it

further and further from us. We cannot choose in this

great matter. There is only one way. We must be

friends. Nothing less than honest heartfelt friendship

will mend the old evils, and make the happier future.

As we asked, who profits by these contests ? If you--

the workers--win to-day, the capitalists organize them-

selves to-morrow more strongly than before; if the

capitalists win, the workers in the same way strengthen

their fighting forces. And so--just as between nations

--runs for ever the vicious circle. And as with the

nations, so our labour strife is not only lost and wasted,

but it fatally injures both sides alike--both the con-

querors and the conquered. Let us then love and

honour peace, cling to her, open our hearts to her, make

sacrifices for her, bear and forbear for her sake, place

96 A PLEA FOR VOLUNTARYISM

her great ends before everything else, and resolve that,

as far as lies with us, her happy reign shall at last

be established over the whole land. Peace--always

hand-in-hand with her great twin-sister liberty--not only

represents the higher meaning of our moral life, but

also like liberty represents the greatest material interest

that the workers have ; their industry and skill will never

bear their full fruits as long as we cling to war, and the

destructive methods of force. Capital and labour, like

the rest of us, must obey the great moral law and tread

in the path of peace and friendship. It is their duty, as

it is the duty of all of us in the other relations of life--

worthy of every effort, of all patience and sacrifice on

our part. Only with peace can the true prosperity

come. With peace and friendship, trade and enterprise

would develop a much more vigorous life, and find

for themselves many new directions. Nothing limits

enterprise so fatally, and with it the employment of the

workers, as the dissensions and quarrels between capital

and labour. With peace and friendship not only does

more and more capital flow into trade and production ;

but new enterprises are confidently undertaken in every

direction; and then, as the consequence, wages rise

in the one true healthy manner--with the security that

peace brings, capital bidding against capital, and the

capitalist accepting lower profits. All insecurity, all

disturbance of trade relations, must be paid for, and

they are paid for by the worker; for insecurity and

uncertainty mean that a higher rate of profit is necessary

to tempt the investment of capital lying idle, and there-

fore necessarily results in lower wages.

Reorganize then your trade societies on a peace

basis, or establish new unions on that basis. Preserve

your independence; but do all in your power to enter

A PLEA FOR VOLUNTARYISM 97

into friendly alliances with capital. Remember that

friendship is the triumph of good sense and wise

temper; strife is the indulgence of the undisciplined,

the childish part of our nature. Form associations in

which both the workers and the capitalists would be

represented ; where they would meet and take common

action, as friends, working together to make the

conditions of labour better, more comfortable, more

sanitary, and using every peace expedient to remove

difficulties as they arise. If times of depression come,

and wages fall low, use the common fund to draft away

some of the workers, find temporary employment for

them on the farms and lands that you will acquire as

your own, start workshops of your own, which in some

cases might provide articles of home use and comfort for

your members; and let your unemployed members in

turn receive a grant to enable them to spend their

unoccupied time usefully in study and education. At

present an unoccupied workman wastes time and temper

during a slack time. Like his own tools he rusts and

deteriorates with them. Why should that be so?

Have your own classes and day schools, and let the

unoccupied men turn the time to golden use. But

through it all, even if you strike, refuse as a matter

of principle, as faithful followers of liberty in everything,

to use any of the-old bad methods of force. If, after

every effort, after attempting mediation and arbitration,

you cannot agree about wages with the employers, and if

you think it wise and right and necessary to do so,throw

up your work ; but if there are those who will take the

wage that you are unwilling to take--let them do so, wi(h-

ottt let or hindrance. It is their right ; and we must never

deny or fight against a human right for the sake of what

seems to be our interest of the moment. We say what

98 A PLEA FOR VOLUNTARYISM

' seems' to be ; for in the end you will gain far more by

clinging faithfully to the methods of peace and respect

for the rights of others than by allowing yourselves

to use the force that always calls out force in reply,

always brings its own far-reaching hurtful consequences,

for the sake of the advantage or victory of the moment.

Once be tempted to use force, and force will become your

master, your tyrant, tempting you again and again to seek

its aid and to enter its service. No man employs force

to-day without being easily persuaded to use it once more

to-morrow, and then again the next day. There are in

all that we do only two ways--the way of peace and

co-operation, the way of force and strife. Can you

hesitate between them ? Do not good sense and right

sense plead for the one and against the other? Set

yourselves then to discover and practise every concili-

atory method;wherever practicable, become share-

owners and partners in the concerns where you labour,

and make it your pride to join hands frankly with the

employers, wiping out for ever the old disastrous war

feeling, that has brought so much useless suffering and

loss with it.

Remember, also, as another great and vital interest, to

keep a free and open market in everything. Only so

again can you get the fullest return of your labour.

High wages are of little profit, when prices rule high,

and production becomes a dull monopoly, benumbing

the best energies of the producers. Under a monopoly

we all grow stupid, unperceiving, apathetic, given up to

routine. Leave all traders free to bring to your door

the best articles that the world produces at the lowest

cost. If they are better and cheaper than what you

produce, they will be the truest incentive for greater

exertions both on your part and on the capitalist's part.

A PLEA FOR VOLUNTARYISM 99

It is only the coward's policy to kneel down in the dust,

and wail, and confess inferiority, as regards the pro-

ducers of other nations. Take upthe challenge bravely,

from whatever quarter it comes; improve method and

process and machinerymabove all improve the relations

between capital and labour; on that, more perhaps than

on anything else, industrial victory depends. Be

willing to learn from all, of any country, who have any-

thing useful to teach. Never be tempted to build

Chinese walls for your protection, and to go indolently

to sleep behind them. Your system of free trade is

another great world-trust placed in your hands. You

stand before all nations holding a bright and shining

light, that if you are true to the great destiny of our

country you will never allow to be dimmed or ex-

tinguished. Mr. Cobden spoke the truth when he said

that you would convert the other nations to your own

brave way of competition ; only he did not allowenough

for all the reactionary influences, the narrow unen-

lightened so-called patriotism, the timidities of some

traders and their desire to take their ease comfortably,

and not to over-exert themselves, so long as they could

compel the public to buy at their own price, and to

accept their own standard of good workmanship, the

warlike Emperors, the Chauvinists of all countries, the

extravagant spendings with the resulting difficulties of

getting blood from a stone, and the temptation of

scraping revenue together in any mischievous fashion

that offered itself, the party intrigues, the effort to

discover something that would serve as an attractive

policy, the unavowed purpose of some politicians, living

for party, and keen for power, to bind a large part of the

people by the worst of bonds to their side by means of

a huge and corrupt money interest. But the con-

too A PLEA FOR VOLUNTARYISM

sequences of protection are fighting their battle every-

where on the side of free trade--as the consequences of

folly and blindness always fight on the side of the better

things ; and if we remain faithful to our great trust will

in their due time fulfil Mr. Cobden's words. The high

prices and dear living, the harassing interferences with

trade, the rings and corners, the trickeries and corrup-

tion, that all tread so close on the heels of protection,

the wild extravagance, the domineering insolent attitude

"of the State-made monopolists, the ever-growing power

of the governments to go their own way, where they

can gather vast sums of money so easily through their

unseen, tax collectors, the ever spreading Socialism,

that is only protection made universal--all these things

are preaching their eloquent lesson, and slowly prepar-

ing the way in other countries for free trade. Sooner

or later the world after years of bitter experience learns

to unmask all the impostor systems that have traded on

its hopes and passions and fears. The thin coating

wears off, and the baser metal betrays itself underneath.

So it will fare with the Protection, that asks you to be

credulous enough to tie up your left hand in order that

your fight hand may work more profitably. It is true

that in protected countries the wages of the workers

may be pushed up higher than in the case of free trade

countries, but life will remain harder and more difficult.

Why ? Because, as we have said, prices rule so high ;

corners and combinations flourish ; trickery and corrup-

tion find their opportunity ; more vultures of every kind

flock to the feast ; and with the feast of the vultures the

burden of rates and taxes becomes intolerable. The

whole thing hangs together. Establish freedom and

open comPetition in everything, and all forms of trade

and enterprise, all relations of men to each other, tend

A PLEA FOR VOLUNTARYISM Ioi

to become healthy and vigorous, pure and clean. The

better and more efficient forms--as they do throughout

nature's world--slowly displacing the inefficient forms.

It must be so ; for in the fairopen fight the good always

tend to win over the bad, if only you restrain all

interferences of force. It is so with freedom ever3,-

where and in all things. Freedom begets the conflict;

the conflict begets the good and helpful qualities ; and

the good and helpful qualities win their own victor3,.

They must do so ; for they are in themselves stronger,

more energetic, more efficient, than the forces--the

trickeries, the corruptions, the timidities, the selfishness

--to which they are opposed. The same truth rules

our good and bad habits. Only keep the field open and

allow the fair fight, and the bad at last must yield to the

good. Sooner or later the time comes when the clearer

sighted, the more rightly judging few denounce some

evil habit that exists; gradually their influence and

example act on others in ever-widening circles, until

many men grow ashamed of what they have so long

done, and the habit is abandoned. Such is the uni-

versal law of progress, which prevails in everything, so

long as we allow the free open fight between all good

and evil. But in order that the good may prevail there

must be life and vigour in the people, and this can only

be where freedom exists. If freedom does not exist, if

life and vigour have died, then protection--whatever its

form--cannot prevent, it can only put off for a short

time the inevitable ruin and disaster. Nations only

continue to exist as long as they keep in themselves the

great simple virtues. As we have seen again and again,

they go to pieces, and yield their places to others when

once the fatal corruption takes root in their character;

corruption can only be fought by liberty with its

io2 A PLEA FOR VOLUNTARYISM

strengthening, raising, purifying influences. Protection,

that is artificial in its nature, protection that rests on

force, always means, if long enough continued, failure

and death in the end ; for it prevents our developing the

qualifies which can alone enable us to keep our place in

a world that never stands still. As Mr. Darwin pointed

out so clearly those races of plants and animals which

for a time were protected by mountains or desert or an

arm of the sea, were doomed to fail when at last they

came into competition with the unprotected forms. So

is it with us men. If you wish to understand the deadly

influences of protection, if you wish for a practical

example, look carefully at all the distorted and perverted

growths of trade enterprise that exist in some protected

countries, the unwholesome combinations, the universal

selfish scramble, the poisonous mixture of politics and

trade influences, the use of the State power to watch

over and favour great moneyed monopolies, the long

endurance of the public that tolerates the vilest things at

the hands of its politicians, and you will realize how

deadly is every form of protection, that resting on force

sends us to sleep, and how vital is the liberty that for

ever fights the evil by opposing it to the good, that

never sleeps, that is always stirring us into new forms

of doing and resisting, and for ever tends to make the

better take the place of the good. There is only one

true form of protection, and that is universal liberty with

its ceaseless striving and effort.

Strongly as we are opposed to the Protectionists, who

whitewash their creed under the name of Tariff Reform,

it is fair to remember one plea on their behalf. They

have one true grievance. As long as the present ex-

travagant spending goes on in its compulsory fashion

they may fairly complain that the income-tax payers are

A PLEA FOR VOLUNTARYISM _o3

likely to be unjustly treated. The remedy does not lie

in extending our compulsory system of taking from the

public but in limiting it, and presently transforming it

into voluntary giving. Under our compulsory system

free trade will never be a safe possession. It is with us

to-day; it will be lost to-morrow. If we were pushed

again into a war, as we were pushed headlong into the

Boer War, just because one statesman got into a temper,

shut his eyes and put his head down, and another states-

man looked sorrowfully on, like the gods of Olympus,

smiling at the follies of the human race, we should at

once hear the double cry ringing in our ears for conscrip-

tion and protection--conscription to force us to fight with

our conscience or against our conscience ; protection to

force us to pay for what we might look on as a crime

and a folly. You may be sure that free trade will

sooner or later be swept away, unless we go boldly

forward in its own spirit and in its own direction and

destroy the compulsory character of taxation. There

lies the stronghold of all war and strife and oppression

of each other. As long as compulsory taxation lasts--

in other words giving power to some men to use other

men against their beliefs and their interests--liberty

will be but a mocking phrase. Between liberty and

compulsory taxation there is no possible reconciliation.

It is a struggle of life and death between the two.

That which is free and that which is bound can never

long keep company. Sooner or later one of the two

must prevail over the other. If a war came, conserva-

tive ministers would see their great opportunity, and

with rapture of heart would fasten round us the two

chains that they dearly love, conscription and protection.

Liberal ministers would sorrowfully shake their heads,

wring their hands, utter a last pathetic tribute to liberty

Io4 A PLEA FOR VOLUNTARYISM

and free trade, and with handkerchiefs to their eyes

would take the same course. If you mean to secure

the great victory just gained for free trade you must

go boldly and resolutely on in the same good path.

Dangers lie strewn around you on every side. There

is no security for what you have gained, but in pressing

forward. There is one and only one way of perma-

nently saving free trade, and that is to sweep away all

the compulsory system in which we are entangled.

And now place before yourselves the picture of the

nation that not simply out of self-interest but for rights'

sake and conscience sake took to its heart the great

cause of true liberty, and was determined that all men

and women should be left free to guide themselves and

take charge of their own lives; that was determined

to oppress and persecute and restrain the actions of no

single person in order to serve any interest or any

opinion or any class advantage; that flung out of its

hands the bad instrument of force--using force only for

its one clear, simple and rightful purpose of restraining

all acts of force and fraud, committed by one citizen

against another, of safeguarding the lives, the actions,

the property of all, and thus making a fair open field for

all honest effort; think, under the influences of liberty

and her twin-sister peace--for they are inseparably

bound together--neither existing without the otherD

how our character as a people would grow nobler and

at the same time softer and more generous--think how

the old useless enmities and jealousies and strivings

would die out; how the unscrupulous politician would

become a reformed character, hardly recognizing his

old self in his new and better self; how men of all

classes would learn to co-operate together for every

kind of good and useful purpose; how, as the results of

A PLEA FOR VOLUNTARYISM xo5

thisfreeco-operation,innumerabletiesoffriendshipand

kindlinesswould springup amongst us allof every

classand condition,when we no longersought to

humble and crush each other,butinvitedallwho were

willingto work freelywith us; how much truerand

more realwould be the campaignagainstthebesetting

vicesand weakness of our nature,when we soughtto

change thatnature,not simplytotiemen'shands and

restrainexternalaction,no longersettingup and estab-

lishingin allpartsof lifethatpoor weak motive--the

fearof punishment--thoseclumsy uselesspenalties,

evaded and laughed at by the cunning,that have

neveryet turnedsinnerintosaint;how we shouldre-

discoverinourselvesthegood vigorousstuffthatlies

hiddenthere,thepower toplan,todareand todo ; how

we shouldseein clearerlightour duty towardsother

nations,and fulfilmore faithfullyour greatworld-trust;

how we shouldceaseto be a peopledividedintothree

or four quarrelsomeunscrupulousfactions--readyto

sacrificeallthegreatthingsto theirintensedesirefor

power--and grow intoa peoplereallyone inheartand

mind,becausewe franklyrecognizedtherighttodiffer,

the rightof each one to choosehisown path because

we respectedand cherishedthe will,the intelligence,

the freechoiceof others,as much as we respectand

cherishthesethingsin ourselves,and were resolved

never to trample,for the sake of any plea,for any

motive,,onthe higherpartsof human nature,resolved

that--comestorm or sunshine--wewould not falterin

our allegiance to liberty and her sister peace, that we

would do all, dare all and suffer all, if need be, for their

sake, then at last the regeneration of society would

begin, the real promised land, not the imaginary land

of vain and mocking desires, would be in sight.

IO6 A PLEA FOR VOLUNTARYISM

And now for the practical measures that we must set

before ourselves :--

_i) So far as force is concerned, we must use State

force only to protect ourselves against those who would

employ force or fraud ; using it to safeguard all public

and private property, and to repel if a real necessity

arises the foreign aggressor. We must employ force

simply as the servant of liberty, and under the strongest

conditions that liberty would impose upon it; we must

refuse utterly and in everything to employ it so as to

deprive the innocent and unaggressive citizen of his

own will and self-guidance.

(2) We must place limits upon every form of com-

pulsory taxation, until we are strong enough to destroy

it finally and completely; and to transform it into a

system of voluntary giving. Under that voluntary

system alone can a nation live in peace and friendship

and work together happily and profitably for common

ends. in voluntary taxation we shall find the one true

form of life-long education which will teach us to act

together, creating innumerable kindly ties between us

all which will call out all the truest and most generous

qualities of our best citizens, doubling and trebling their

energies, as they find themselves working for their own

beliefs and ideas, and no longer used as the mere tools

and creatures of others ; which will slowly bring under

the influence of the better citizens the selfish and the

indifferent, teaching them too to share in public move.

ments, and common efforts; which will multiply those

differences of method, those experiments made from

new points of view--experiments, upon which all pro-

gress depends, and replacing the great clumsy universal

systems which treat good and bad alike, which are mere

developments of the official mind, and escape entirely

A PLEA FOR VOLUNTARYISM Io7

from the control of those in whose interest they are

supposed to exist; which will call into life again the

proud feeling of self-help and independence which

belongs to this nation of ours, and which the politician

has done so much to weaken and destroy.

The great choice lies before you. No nation stands

still. It must move in one direction or the other.

Either the State must grow in power, imposing new

burdens and compulsions, and the nation sink lower

and lower into a helpless quarrelling crowd, or the in-

dividual must gain his own rightful freedom, become

master of himself, creature of none, confident in himself

and in his own qualities, confident in his power to plan

and to do, and determined to end this old-world, profit-

less and worn-out system of restrictions and com-

pulsions, which is not good or healthy even for the

children. Once we realize the waste and the folly of

striving against each other, once we feel in our hearts

that the worst use to which we can turn human energies

is gaining victories over each other, then we shall at

last begin in true earnest to turn the wilderness into

a garden, and to plant all the best and fairest of the

flowers where now only the nettles and the briars grow.

We wish it to be understood that we who sign this

paper are in agreement with its general spirit, reserving

our own judgement on special points.

OXFORD" HORACE IIART

PRINTER TO THE UNIVERSITY

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