LIBERTY AND LIBERALISM:

  A protest against the growing tendency towards undue interference by the State with individual liberty, private enterprise, and the rights of property.
—By Bruce Smith : George Robertson and Co., Melbourne and Sydney.
 
The struggle between the rival principles of laissez faire and governmental interference is being waged with growing earnestness by writers and speakers of the highest intellectual rank. It covers, indeed, nearly the whole field of party controversy on questions of substantive legislation. Its relation to current questions is seen in the tendency to recognise the State's obligation to inspect mines and dwellings; to secure to the people the fruit of their Labor and the safe investment of their savings ; to educate them, and to protect them in their employment from outside competition. Few departments of life indeed are free from the operation of State interference, and the question is whether its indefinite extension is a thing to be desired or discouraged. That its inevitable consequence is the subordination of individual liberty to collective dictation is not denied by its advocates. They attribute social imperfections to defective institutions, and their proposals for remedial legislation proceed on the assumption that the individual should suffer inconvenience, or even deprivation, if that is inseparable from the removal of the more severe forms of poverty and discontent. The current doctrines of Socialism and Communism have a fascination for thinkers who are not dreamy enthusiasts ; for though Ruskin, who has avowed in other words the possibility of substituting for the actual world a millenial Utopia, and Matthew Arnold, who has waged a crusade against the "Philistines" or middle class, and denounced the aristocracy as barbaric, may not on this subject be taken seriously, no charge of visionary partisanship can be brought against Mr. Froude, who has openly sneered at the doctrine of laissez faire, and announced that by all sensible men it has been abandoned. Laissez faire has been defined as " personal freedom tempered only by the enforcement against every man of respect for the rights of others." It is a denial of the belief that legislative wisdom can remove all the ills of humanity ; but those who, like Mr. Bruce Smith in the book before us, protest against "undue" interference by the State, have not always an easy task in defining the meaning of the qualification. That the State, for instance, should prevent the employment of unseaworthy vessels, and should punish negligence which endangers the lives of sailors, is now acknowledged by all as a duty, though a few years ago a proposition that the State should resume this power was regarded as an assault upon the sacred rights of property, in the schemes for the better housing of the poor formulated to-day by Conservatives may be witnessed another illustration of the general recognition of the State's right to interfere up to a certain point in the relations between classes.   At what stage shall that right cease ? If landlords may be justly compelled at their own loss to demolish unhealthy dwellings and substitute tenements where the poor may be comfortably housed, why may not the State go farther and correct other inequalities which private liberty has permitted if not caused? Sometimes, as in the instance of the Irish Land Act—the most gigantic invasion of the principle of laissez faire in recent times —Government interference may be invoked as a Deus ex machina to solve some difficulty of which it is imperative that the State should get rid. It is the business of the advocates of laissez faire to show that the State cannot assume the paternal functions with which Socialists would invest it without evils resulting, for which the actual benefits would not compensate.

 Mr. Smith in his somewhat bulky volume sets himself to the task of demonstrating the injurious effects which the interference of the State in the relations between the various classes have upon personal freedom. He parades the opinions of a host of authorities to show that every additional transfer of duties to the State from the shoulders of individuals saps the belief in the value of " natural liberty." Abstract principles and the teaching of experience are, he contends, rejected in favor of expedients which promise immediate relief. Habits of self-reliance are submerged by an infinite series of calls upon the State to arbitrate between one section of the community and another— to hold the balance, to fix a standard for bargains, to provide roles for the conduct of business.  Mr. Smith naturally enough from his point of view illustrates the tendency of paternal or philanthropic legislation by a reference to the results of the English poor law of fifty years ago, but the repeal of that measure was not brought about by any sentimental objection to State interference with labor, but because it was proved that the laborers who should theoretically have been benefited were actually pauperised. Mr. Smith will have the sympathy of few observant readers when he affects to treat politics as a fixed science. The absurdity of a political economy which can for the convenience of theorists be summarily transplanted to Jupiter, or Saturn has long been recognised by practical statesmen not only in Great Britain but abroad. The English Factory Acts are frequently quoted as examples of what the State may legitimately do for those among the poor who are unable to take due care of their own interests. Those Acts, among other beneficial changes prohibited people working in factories from taking their meals in the room where they were employed lest their food should be rendered hurtful by the poisonous effects of their trade. They were compelled to take these and other precautions whether they cared to do so or not. Statesmen who propose legislation for the benefit of the laboring poor are driven by their own principles to admit that the labor market cannot, as Mr. Smith contends, be left to regulate itself. In foreign countries the obligation of the State to interfere for the protection of its poorer subjects is still more widely recognised. In Germany, for instance, Prince Bismarck's scheme of State socialism is a distinct contradiction of the doctrine of laissez faire. Working men are there compelled by a system of insurance to protect themselves against the miseries of sickness and the effects of poverty at a time when they are past work. It is all very well to ridicule the modern enthusiasm of humanity, but few statesmen nowadays allow themselves to be impeded in action by a rigid adherence to any political formulary. There are undoubtedly wise thinkers—Herbert Spencer among the number—who constantly dwell upon the evils they believe to be inseparable from the growing desire for legislative change. In theory Spencer admits that the recognition of the executive as the all wise and benevolent agent of the community answers well enough. The practical evils he ascribes to it are the weakening of individual responsibility, and the drain upon the national resources entailed by an official system of control. John Stuart Mill, whom Mr. Smith does not forget to quote, shares the misgiving with which Herbert Spencer looks upon the probable future when the regulation of the most minute affairs of our daily life will be in the hands of a Parliamentary majority "as ready as any organs of oligarchy to assume arbitrary power and encroach unduly upon private liberty." Against all this talk of legislative tyranny we have the testimony of Buckle, Froude, and many other historians, that a nation which does not respond to the demands of the great bulk of its members must fall back in greatness as compared with other nations—it cannot stand still. The Mahometans dislike change, so do the Chinese. But both are moving with the times. Human society is in a constant state of development, and as political economy is not an exact science it follows that legislation must adapt itself to the requirements of the time and country to which it is applied.  Mr. Smith is compelled to admit that limitations to his creed of laissez faire are not unnecessary. He acknowledges the soundness of the argument advanced by Mr. Stanley Jevons that "the State is justified in passing any law or even in doing any single act which, without ulterior consequences, adds to the sum total of happiness. Good done is sufficient justification of any act in the absence of evidence that equal or greater evil will subsequently follow." In other words, expediency is to be the test of legislation. Mr. Smith, however, contends that some limit should be placed upon the right of the State to interfere in the correction of social inequalities, but where is the line to be drawn ? Mr. Smith admits the difficulty of giving any precise reply when he quotes the statement of M. Leon Say, that "the proper limit of State action cannot be laid down in the same way as a boundary line on a map, because it is a boundary which alters in accordance with the times and the political, economical, and moral condition of the people." A scientific definition of State duties being impossible we must be content to be guided in our legislation by certain broad principles; and these as laid down by Mr. Smith would prevent the State from imposing taxes, using public revenue, or interfering with legally acquired property unless the owner should be fully compensated, or in any way restricting personal liberty "for any other purpose than that of securing equal freedom to all." But will regulations of this kind really help the cause of laissez faire ? The justice of taxation for the relief of severe distress is recognised in the policy of most countries, yet what is this but the spoliation, however justifiable, of one class for the benefit of another ? And as regards "legally acquired property " a definition is wanted as to what constitutes the right to ownership. Henry George, for instance, has declined to regard the possession of land as being valid in the same sense as the possession of movable property. Less drastic innovators profess to see in their schemes the mere recognition of the principle of retaliation; and before agreeing to exempt "legally-acquired property" from interference they would want to know how such property came to be acquired, and the nature of the return made to the State. Might it not in some cases be found—such innovators would say—that the original title to land constituted as great an interference by the State as its forfeiture would now ?  The truth is that the difference between the advocates of laissez faire and their opponents is merely one of degree. They concur in the wisdom of meeting particular evils by special enactments, though they may concede that their enactments are not entirely logical. The State may invest the people's savings for them, but according to the school to which Mr. Bruce Smith belongs it must not compel them as in Germany to make provision for future necessities out of their wages; it may educate them and so prevent them from turning thieves and vagabonds, but it must not by regulation of commerce keep them in employment; it may prohibit injurious practices in factories but it may not shorten the hours of labor. And as in other departments of life the State may violate consistency where the object is the encouragement of industry or the production of happiness. That incidental dangers are inseparable from capricious interference by the State is inevitable, but that they are as serious or frequent as Mr. Smith imagines we may safely doubt. Most of his readers will probably disagree with his conclusions, but they will not fail to be struck with his clear and forcible putting of the case for laissez faire, and will be surprised at the extent of the information of which he has made himself master.

The South Australian Advertiser 4 October 1887