LIBERTY.

 "THE story of Liberty, how men have struggled to be free, is the epic of humanity," says Sir John Macdonnell, in a recent essay. And, at the same time, he asks us to share his perplexity in defining precisely what liberty means and connotes. An earlier age regarded it as "the right of every man to wallop his  own nigger," a concept crude and tyrannical. The term and the doctrine, we suppose, is as old as the beginning of civil polity, and as new as the latest embodiment of "loving coercion" in restricted statutory enactment. The history of social progress is the record of the continuous and persistant struggle between freedom and authority. We phrase it variously ; as "every citizen is free to exercise his individual will and caprice, within  the law," and "liberty is the only foundation on which democracy can rest securely." The fact is, as Sir John remarks, no word in the language has lent itself more to juggling and sophisms than liberty ; and any discussion of it must be some some abstract. Fifty four years ago Mill published his celebrated essay on Liberty. It was regarded as the true political Bible, from the doctrines of which no future society could reasonably depart. It was profound in reasoning, logical to a degree, authoritative beyond all question ; yet, to-day, under modern ultra-liberal conditions tinged with socialist theories, Mill's axioms are very far indeed from universal acceptance. He framed his principles without reference to problems that in modern times have become urgent. He was concerned more with the individual citizen than with the State of which the citizen was a member. Bentham and the elder Mill, Grote, Molesworth and Buller had argued before him that " the best government is that which governs least," or, in other words, which interferes least with the exercise of individual liberty. And Mill endorsed and expanded that view. For all of them Government was "a necessary evil ;" the less you have of it the better; the less government, the more liberty ; and laissez faire was the last word on the subject. This pure unchecked individualism almost of necessity was despotic and wholly unsuited to the spirit of progress. It developed into "Manchesterism," individualism run riot. It connoted unrestricted competition, every man for himself and the devil take the hindmost, and the survival of the fittest. " It was," says another critic, " pre-eminently a creed for the strong, the vigorous,  and the self-reliant; but it had no gospel for the helpless, the hopeless, the incapable, and the downtrodden. Its fatal defect was that  it expected universal selfishness to do the work of universal love." Liberty was a synonym for selfishness; and well might it induce the exclamation against the crimes committed in its name. With liberty thus narrowly interpreted, it is not surprising that progressive humanitarians and social reformers set themselves to overthrow this " dangerous and mischievous superstition. They protested against laissez faire." They repudiated the dismal fatalism which considers all human misery as the necessary product of unalterable law. They shook off the superstition of the Mill school that a man might be at liberty to starve, which was his own concern, and in no wise interested his fellow men. They superseded Manchesterism by the " New Socialism,"' which was nothing more than an appeal to the whole community to save the free individual from being crushed to death in that "infinite jumble and mass and dislocation which men call the Battle of Life." The transition was natural, but the results were startling so far as the old concepts of liberty were concerned. Liberty became not merely the employment of the minimum of restraint, the removal of disabilities : it became much more than that. It announced the new doctrine that true liberty was impossible save with the aid of the State. It insisted that the reality of liberty was not complete without coercive measures, and that "a man is freed when you coerce him for his own good." They called this "loving coercion." With it as a basis, they constructed the whole modern theory of State interference, under which the free man is only free to do what the State dictates, under penalty even of loss of personal liberty. Pushed to the extreme, their concept meant that liberty is conferred upon a man when you put him in prison in order to improve him. Rousseau tells of a gaol over the portals of which was inscribed "Libertas ;" and to read some modern writers it might be supposed that not the Phrigian Cap, but chains and gyves, were its symbol. Nevertheless, the modern concept of liberty is by no means unacceptable. To be free, a man must be independent. The growth of modern democracy has exhibited a double movement corresponding to these two essentials and limitations. " Manchesterism" would thus be impossible in modern democracy. It would be met with Factories Acts, Public Health Acts, Education Acts, and indeed the whole series of compulsory statutary enactments which regulate and control any well balanced and well-governed community—in which men are independent, and deserve to be independent. It is said, in warning, that this new concept of liberty and State interference may be pushed too far; that by travelling far enough east we are in danger of again reaching the west; that liberty may become a sham and a mockery where a free democracy develops into a despotic bureaucracy. And all that is doubtless true enough. Yet the "cure for liberty is more liberty." Given sufficient freedom, men will resist authority overstrained, and will defeat the tyrannous advance of bureaucracy. Sir John Macdonnell looks askance in this respect at the Australian Democracy. He describes our ideals as " magnificent and captivating." We are seeking, he says, a land with no poverty, with no slums, with high wages and ample leisure, with no reserve of unorganised labor, with no great fortunes, and with a general high standard of comfort. It may, he thinks, be all for the best; but, he adds, " it is to be realised by restrictions and  compulsions; it is no more a state of liberty than was the condition of things in the Roman Empire in  the time of Trajan and the Antonines, when, only the Image of  Liberty remaining, the condition of  the human race was, according to Gibbon, the most unhappy ever known." He thinks that the "New Freedom" is very like the old " benevolent despotism." We have slain one kind of tyranny in order to set up another; and we have compassed both ends in the name of liberty. We call it " restraint in the right place;" and democracy can, and does, employ coercion as much as any individual has ever done. We excuse it all, because, in modern phrase, coercion is only a transition or means to a right end, and the end sanctifies the means, and that Liberty in its truest form and essence is the far-off goal. What we need is a nice adjustment between individual liberty and communal good; every citizen must be free to get the highest good out of his own life, thereby conducing to the highest good of the greatest number of his fellows. That is the "perfect law " to which democracy seeks to conform. It is the best expression of liberty. 

Maryborough and Dunolly Advertiser (Vic. : 1857 - 1867 ; 1914 - 1918), Monday 1 November 1915, page 2